Baloney Detection with Dr. K

Episode Description The end of the semester comes up fast and with it we are at the end of Season 2 of Baloney Detection. I am very grateful for all of the guests that we have had this year and also what Adrianna brought to the podcast this spring. Adrianna and I talk about how this spring has unfolded and about a few current events topics that have come up since our last episode. Thank you for li...

Episode Description We are stepping away from our usual topics for a discussion of empathy with my colleague from the UW-Green Bay Psychology Department, Alison Jane Martigano. Alison Jane has been researching empathy in its various forms, with virtual reality as one of the important tools for measurement. Alison Jane describes her research, along with some important details about what empathy is,...

Episode Description I am very proud to share with you two interviews with my research students. Claire Bassett has been working with me throughout the current academic year, first getting more data for a project involving “liquid oxygen supplements”, and then some photochemical experiments that she developed. Grafton Smith and Logan Severns have been working with me for se...

Episode Description This is a topic that I have been thinking about for a very long time. Social media and YouTube have a litany of channels that create “debates” that allow for extremely controversial opinions and beliefs to be shared. This is very common on YouTube channels like Jubilee which generates a lot of views with shows like “Surrounded” and “Middl...

Episode 40 Description Vaccines are once again in the news and are a lightning rod for controversy. There are outbreaks of measles all around the United States and we are dealing with COVID and the flu every year. Mixes messaging from the current administration (to put it mildly) has no doubt caused a lot of people to do their own research about the components of vaccines. In this episode, Adriann...

Episode 39 Description While I have spent several episodes and parts of others talking about how challenging and potentially negative social media can be, I still use it and probably more than I should. Amongst all the other dreck that fills my social media feeds, I do see other scientists and doctors fighting against misinformation just like I am, but they often have much...

Episode 38 Description Adrianna and I talk about the life and legacy of Erin Brockovich, well known for the movie about her fight to bring money and justice to the victims of a chemical plume in Hinkley, California, starring Julia Roberts. Erin’s fight for clean water has gone far beyond that initial struggle and she now spends a lot of time and effort highlighting the problems with PFAS and other...

Episode Description We have already talked a lot about various wellness spaces, but one area that still remains a mystery to many is the “Manosphere”. These spaces focus on young men, promoting a toxic culture of misogyny, physical health and prowess, pick-up culture and social isolation. Val Pilmaier, an old friend and colleague and an Englis...

Episode 36 Description – My Mental Health Journey Part 4  It has been a few months since I last visited my mental health journey, and I wanted to pick up where I left off and draw the story up to present day. In this episode, I go over in detail how I returned to counseling, dealt with a significant loss in my life, and decided that medication was something that I sho...

Episode Description My guest and new intern Adrianna joins me for a conversation about her academic and career goals, interest in science communication and how she will be using the new @baloneydetectionintern Instagram account. I want to reach more students both at our university and other places also, and having a student engaging with the target demographic is a great avenue to take. You w...

Episode Description New guest, Chelsea Wooding, joins me to discuss how performance, “finding the edge” can drive many different people like athletes, dancers, executives and others to different mental support practices. Social media is full of influencers and personalities who will try to be life coaches and provide mantras, gimmicks and products to help get that peak performance, but would you r...

Episode Description Amanda Shaker returns to discuss something that has been in the wellness space quite a lot recently. Seed oils have become one of the new “bad guys” in the wellness world, because of an alleged connection between the oils and one of the main wellness boogeymen: “inflammation”. Make sure you listen to the Pseudoshort, as I go through a basic chemistry lesson about the structure...

Episode Description We talk a lot about different products on this podcast, but this interview with the two women who created Serious Lip Balm offers a glimpse into the challenges and rewards of developing a business. This was a fun hour of stories, insights and humor. I learned a lot about product creation and how economic issues can trickle into the smallest of businesses. I hope you enjoy it as...

Episode Description Have you ever been tempted to “cleanse”? There are many products on the market that suggest that they can get rid of “toxins” from your body, making you feel healthier and have more energy. But do these products really do anything that your body cannot? The same kind of analysis should be used for pet-related products, because, eventually, human products find their way to pets....

Episode Description Dr. Amy Kabrhel is back for a wonderful and therapeutic conversation about the use of social media, engaging with misinformation online, and how to emotionally deal with disappointment, anger, and frustration. Both of us use social media to a varying degree and our emotional responses are very different. We touch on specific types of information we see, including a little welln...

Episode Description Continuing the mini-series of episodes about social media, algorithms fit right into this season’s long-term story about Wellness. If you are a social media user, you know that once you click on one post, dozens of other posts on that same topic will suddenly be flooding your feed, whether you want them to or not. This is results of the hidden but powerful algorithms that boost...

Episode Description I get to share some interesting stories in this discussion about Reiki and crystals which always help frame the story. We start by talking about what energy is from a physics and chemistry aspect before describing the origin and nature of Reiki and what crystals can and cannot do. That Himalayan salt lamp may be a huge crystal and look beautiful, but it is not going to ionize t...

Episode Description This episode kicks off a special series of episodes focused on “Wellness”. Specifically, we are going to dive into the deep end with various Wellness topics, how much Wellness has pervaded social media spaces and political discourse. There is a huge amount of pseudoscience and misinformation in Wellness, and we are going to look at many different topics to hopefully give you so...

Episode Description We left off my journey at the end of my graduate school experience and headed into my first teaching job. That new experience along with my upcoming wedding gave me a lot of different things to think about that first year of my real career. Having a life partner to help to ground me keep me feeling supported and comforted, but anyone who has had problems with their mental healt...

Episode 25 Description – F is for Fluoride  The addition of fluoride to drinking water is considered one of the top public health developments of the 20th century. The reduction of tooth decay in citizens where fluoride was added has significantly benefited millions. Though the federal government recommended the addition after World War II, not all municipalities chose to incorporate fluoride...

Episode Description With a measles outbreak occurring and potentially more childhood disease outbreaks on the horizon due to vaccine skepticism, it is a great time to talk about how the current anti-vax movement developed, and how it is affecting policy decisions made by the current administration. Science denialism is at the heart of many of these decisions and it is incredibly important that we...

Enjoy this bonus episode of Baloney Detection as Dr. K reflects on one year of podcasting and topics for future episodes! View the transcript for this episode. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Episode Description – Four Out of Five Podcast Listeners Recommend This Podcast  The advertising of consumer products contains a lot of different buzzwords and phrases. Have you seen this one: “Four Out of Five Dentists Recommend This Toothe Paste”. I remember that kind of phrase a lot from my childhood. But who are those four dentists and why did the fifth one not recommend the product? We l...

Episode 22 – On Politics and Chicken Soup  When you are deeply angry about a certain subject, but you know that getting into conversations with others could be controversial and acrimonious, what do you do? I have been struggling with this very thing for a long time now, and I am just realizing that I have to engage with that anger, with those controversies, rather than just shy away and stay...

Baloney Detection Episode 21 - Jodi Pierre Interview Jodi Pierre is a research and instruction librarian at the University of Wisconsin‐Green Bay, where she specializes in information literacy, instruction, research assistance, and web and digital content design. She earned a Master of Library and Information Science from UW Milwaukee and a Bachelor of Arts from Beloit College. Jody has been...