Wild Truth Chase

New season incoming and this week we’re kicking off a series about scams, hoaxes and frauds. Scams appear to be part of the fabric nowadays, with Citizens Advice UK reporting that over 40 million people in the country were targeted between January and May 2022. Neeraj and Nick discuss scams that are common, those they’ve experienced and a couple of newsworthy examples. Nick begins to realise that...

Nick and Neeraj are back and still exploring topics for the first season of 2023. A trending topics season, while superficially appealing, appears hard to pull of in practice. We go over some great suggestions from audience members as well as some topics that Nick and Neeraj have in mind. A season on quantitative reasoning may have to wait until we’ve learned more about scams… Resources: All the D...

In yet another interruption to our normal seasonal style programming, Neeraj is going solo to briefly look back on 2022 and then discuss expectations for 2023. The episode is based on a recent report by Ipsos, which sought to gather viewpoints on the new year by polling 24,000 people from 36 countries. There's not too much optimism to be found, with widespread concerns around the economy, security...

Ned and Nick reminisce about Christmas and make recommendations for books and podcasts. Mostly, though, the sad state of American politics is on display. Happy New Year! Thumbnail DALL·E prompt: "a goose in cartoon style speaking in front of a podium with an American flag flying behind" Please join us on our website and Discord: https://www.wildtruthchase.com https://discord.gg/gqM54csKSB

It's nearly Christmas and Nick is on the road, so what's a lonesome Neeraj to do? He calls on the one person who can step in to save the day, his biggest fan, his harshest critic, his brother. Much mentioned and so far little heard, Tejas makes his debut on this week's Christmas themed episode. There's talk of presents, the industry of Christmas and the tropes of television specials. But in a blin...

The time has come for our hosts to move away from their basic dad jokes and into more expansive territory. In today’s episode, Neeraj and Nick discuss humour and storytelling, beginning with a performance of a short, maybe humorous, story written by Neeraj . From there, our hosts touch on Tropic Thunder and Joseph Heller’s “Catch 22” as examples of humour and storytelling. This leads Nick to explo...

We take a look at laughter and its connection with humor. Nick is interested in laughter because it is one of those phenomena, like aging, that is “hiding in plain sight”. Not traditionally considered a fit subject for scientific investigation, we run through some ideas that have arisen from relatively recent studies of laughter. Laughter is found to serve many purposes and to come in several form...

Please join us in welcoming a new guest on the podcast, ChatGPT , the recently released AI chat bot. Our new guest has been causing quite a stir for their strong conversational skills and in today’s episode on artificial intelligence and comedy, we check out ChatGPT’s comedic chops. Neeraj and Nick discover that ChatGPT is definitely no slouch and can match their comedic capabilities. In fact, in...

In this episode, Neeraj and Nicholas exit their comfort zones to talk about comedy and controversy. There has been no shortage of controversy in the comedic world over the past few years. In 2018, Kevin Hart quit as host of the 2019 Oscars due to decade old tweets. More recently, Dave Chappelle’s “The Closer” was accused of transphobia . Television shows have also come under the spotlight with fiv...

Enough theory, it’s time to learn by example! In today’s episode, Nicholas and Neeraj share a variety of jokes they’ve found online and in books. Nicholas enthusiastically delivers his Wild Truth Chase themed selection with the skill of a budding voice actor. Neeraj is still trying to make long jokes land, but either his delivery, the audience or the joke is not quite working. However, in a major...

We’re going back to basics in this episode and taking lessons from Greg Dean’s Step by Step to Stand-Up Comedy . In this book, Greg Dean describes the core elements of a joke, taking us from the setup to the punchline. The construction of humour presented resonates with Nick, who sees close parallels to an explanation for the existence of humour provided in the previously mentioned Inside Jokes ....

After last week’s disastrous attempt by Neeraj to tell a joke, Nick decided that an intervention was necessary. He’s spent the week reading and watching comedic experts explain the mechanics of good comedy and today he shares that with us. In this episode we go through the mindset and behaviours required to be a successful comedian. We speak about the value of broadening your experiences and a nee...

It’s time for a new season and Nick has chosen the topic of Humour. The plan is to spend the season learning about the theory and practise of humour. In this first episode, we chat about our existing relationships with humour, the types of humour we seek out, and a bit about how we use humour in our daily lives. Nick shares a theory about the existence of humour that goes a little over Neeraj’s he...

Nick and Neeraj wrap the season on the news. Reflecting on what they’ve learned, a few themes emerge. Limiting news consumption and being aware of the incentives at play are top of mind, as is giving yourself appropriate context by studying some relevant history. Our season on the news nearly perfectly coincided with the ‘reign’ of Liz Truss, the UK’s ill-fated prime minister. A head of lettuce no...

This week Nicholas takes us on a behind the scenes look at how scientific literature is made and shared. We talk about how ideas permeate within research groups, the process of publication, and how to filter and search academic articles. Neeraj shares his experience with the famous reviewer three syndrome and how he enjoys making the cheese more than writing about it. They discuss the intersection...

It’s an experiment week and in a freewheeling episode, Neeraj and Nicholas quiz each other about stories from the past. Nicholas comes armed with articles covering important dates in modern history and pokes holes in Neeraj’s knowledge. Taking a more haphazard approach, Neeraj does Nicholas no favours and brings what appears to be a random selection of articles peaking with the 1934 newspaper piec...

Nick and Neeraj explore the wild world of fake news (and real news) on social media. Chomsky's propaganda model makes another appearance, and we learn about a new aspect of the propaganda model: flak! While there's seemingly a lot of nonsense on social media, we find some light at the end of the tunnel when it turns out that popularity can actually correlate with quality, at least in some corners...

Ned Schafer makes a welcome return to the podcast and leads us through a fascinating and wide ranging conversation about news as propaganda. The initial premise is set by Noam Chomsky’s Propaganda Model which claims that journalists are indoctrinated to think in a certain way. From there we discuss how different news sources present their biases, a strange phenomenon in the perception of local cri...

Today Nicholas and Neeraj do a tour of news outlets to better understand what’s happening in the world. They find several common themes across the sources they review but stumble upon some surprises. Neeraj discovers that there is much more to migrants arriving in Martha’s Vineyard than he initially believed and bemoans the state of the Great British Pound. Meanwhile, Nicholas finds his hometown p...

That’s news to me! Neeraj and Nick introduce the new season on the news. We discuss our personal news habits and motivations for studying the news. We touch on a major news story from this week, the death of the British Queen, and talk about what aspects of the news we expect to touch on this season. New(s) intro and outro music by none other than Neeraj Shah; enjoy! Please join us on Twitter, Red...

Welcome one and all to the Wild Truth Chase podcast! After two seasons and ten episodes we take a short break from our normal programming to learn a little more about our hosts and why they’ve elected to go on this wild truth chase. If those first ten episodes have reeled you in or if you’re new around these parts, find out more about the type of content you can expect and what you might gain from...

A special guest saves Nicholas and Neeraj from their enthusiastic but bumbling journey through the topic of aging. Jane Potter, MD | College of Medicine | University of Nebraska Medical Center (unmc.edu) is a Professor of Gerontology at the University of Nebraska Medical Center and she’s kindly helped us wrap up this Season on aging like a boss with a much appreciated dose of expertise.

On today’s episode, we talk about sleep and aging, but only after Nicholas makes a startling admission about his diet and we explain the origin of our new logo. Each of us has prepared for the topic by reading a different paper. Neeraj read Sleep and Human Aging - PubMed (nih.gov) , which details changes in sleep as people age and the relationship with cognition and memory. Nicholas read How are a...

If you’ve made it this far into Season 1, you’ve heard us discuss our travails with exercise and battles with diet. In this episode, we widen the scope by diving into a paper studying factors behind successful aging. The paper Successful Aging | American Journal of Psychiatry (psychiatryonline.org) follows two groups of people throughout their lives to characterise key behaviours or traits that im...

Today we learn that Neeraj has a weakness for biscuits (cookies for our American listeners) and that the only time Nicholas thinks about diet is when he’s halfway through some artery clogging treats. We discuss our experience of trying to eat healthier, the challenge of untangling all the information, and recent dietary recommendations. Most shockingly, we discover that the potato is essentially a...