SIO471 - I just can't anymore with this. It's so fucking pathetic that mainstream media and a whole bunch of pundits, even on the left, have to do this thing where they play dumb and pretend people like Elon have any sort of credibility. There is no plausible deniability on this and to pretend otherwise isn't good journalism or skepticism. It's... bad... those.

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Buckle up because we have so many Health and Human Services nominees to get into on this episode, and surprisingly nearly all of them are actually doctors of medicine!

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What's your best option? Stop the moon and let it fall? Nuke the center of the planet? Create a mini black hole?

Astrophysicist Dr. Bryan Gillis is here to help us destroy the entire planet. It might not be as easy as the movies make it seem...

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Today's guest is Hannah Edwards, a neuroscience grad student at Washington University in St. Louis, and part of the Cirrito Lab, which has released a new study on Alzheimer's and stress in mice. Stress causes the levels of Alzheimer's proteins to rise in females' brains but not males' brains. This difference may shed some light on the greater risk of developing Alzheimer's disease that women have. Hannah will take us through the study and also teach us a bit of the basics on Alzheimer's along the way!

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Maybe this sounds like a "no duh" but it's not neceessarily so straightforward. There are plenty of people who believe that not saying certain words gives them more power and we ought not to be afraid of them. Specifically, when the context is informational and not at all meant to be offensive. Dr. Alan Smerbeck is here to present the science of slurs and bad words and the effects they can have on us. Plus, there's plenty of interesting stuff along the way!

The website Stormy recommended at the end was https://bethematch.org/. I'm thinking I'll sign up too!

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Oh come on, ANOTHER thing we thought we all knew was true isn't? That's what today's expert, Madalyn Wilson-Fetrow, says! They are a PhD student in learning sciences at the University of New Mexico and they are here to explain what the science actually says! But it's not only a debunk, Madalyn also has some very useful info for us on how to ACTUALLY learn things more effectively! You don't want to miss it! (also I said this was 367 but I got mixed up from all the WTWing. It's 366.)

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Now here's the second half of the monster part 2 of WTW2! This one's a beast so I'm breaking it in two here, but you can get it all at once over at the Where There's Woke patreon or main feed!

Reminder, once we get to July the podcasts will fully go to their separate corners and we'll be on a regular schedule for both shows independently!

We're starting on the second episode of Where There's Woke! This one's a beast so I'm breaking it in two here, but you can get it all at once over at the Where There's Woke patreon or main feed!

Reminder, once we get to July the podcasts will fully go to their separate corners and we'll be on a regular schedule for both shows independently!

Yayyyyyyy I'm finally getting this out to you! Listen for the details, but this podcast is splitting in two. The other half will become Where There's Woke. I'm so excited! Please, pretty please check it out and support at patreon.com/wherethereswoke

In 2020, the United Kingdom’s (NHS) commissioned an inquiry to provide recommendations for the healthcare of transgender adolescents. It was overseen by a pediatrician named Dr. Hillary Cass and was completed in April 2024. It became known as the Cass Review, and it has since been used to justify depriving a lot of people of the healthcare they badly need. But is it good science? Obviously not.

Yale's Integrity Project gathered several actual experts in the field to conduct their own review of the review. The results are not pretty. They published an excellent report entitled "An Evidence-Based Critique of “The Cass Review” on Gender-affirming Care for Adolescent Gender Dysphoria." Three of these experts, Drs. Meredithe McNamara, Kellan Baker, and Ken C. Pang, were kind enough to join us to talk about their findings.

It looks to me like the anti-trans side is winning this information war, so please share this far and wide to get the word out!

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Hey folks, this is an episode related to the crap. Just be forewarned this isn't like a normal standard expert interview one. Thank you for listening.

Andrew's counter suit stuff

Docs backing up everything I'm saying.

This admittedly will sound like a very dark topic, but I promise the conversation was actually quite pleasant and VERY useful. Dr. Alan Smerbeck joins us to give actual, real, evidence based information on what to look out for to prevent child sexual abuse. But also, we talk quite a lot about kid body curiosity stuff and how to tell what's totally normal and what might be concerning. As a parent, I found this conversation incredibly useful and I think you will too!

Super hottie Lydia Smith is on today so that we can evaluate whether or not our marriage is really helping the public good, according to this Catholic propaganda bull shit. You may remember that this was referenced by Dr. Alan Smerbeck (Stormy Decisis) in our recent episode. It sounded like a fun thing to... do a little review of. We had a great time, hope you enjoy!

Listen to the full thing at patreon.com/seriouspod!

Today I'm joined by Dr. Bader Chaarani, Assistant Professor at the University of Vermont Ph.D. in Biomedical engineering. Dr. Chaarani is here to break down the study he led that has us all yelling at our parents in 1994 saying why didn't you just let me play as much SNES as I wanted! You guys are the WORST! This sucks!

Anyway, also surprise-ish announcement to go along with this episode, my amazing wife Lydia and I are going to stream Tears of the Kingdom on twitch tomorrow! That's twitch.tv/srsnes, Thursday May 18th 2pm pacific! Come hang with us!

This movie was just so needlessly cruel. It was also, and this is true, f$%&ing terrible. It was so bad. Seriously, if you haven't seen it you might not even believe it when we tell you about it. Charone Frankel joins me to discuss the shocking fatphobia of this film, and how its writer and director were seemingly completely oblivious to it.

Today's expert is longtime friend of the show Cecil, from Cognitive Dissonance and Citation Needed! You might not know, but Cecil is also a trained chef with a delightful YouTube channel called Season Liberally. It is absolutely as delicious as it sounds and you should definitely check it out! Cecil and I chat about when and how he became a professionally trained chef, and he gives us some great tips on how to be (in my case) slightly less shitty at cooking! This one is so much fun, I hope you'll give it a listen!

Dr. Bryan Gillis is back! This time he's here to teach us about gravitational lensing. And along the way, we learn about dark matter and dark energy! What the hell are they? What the hell aren't they? Could you have a black hole made out of dark matter? So much fascinating stuff!

Links: ESA Euclid Page, Euclid Wikipedia page, Vimeo Channel for the Royal Observatory.

It's a science thingy breakdown! This one can barely be called a science thingy. It's not great. Dr. Alan Smerbeck is here to debunk one of the go-to citations for conservatives' homophobia. Does it hold up? No. Look I'm not going to pretend like it's a close call. Listen to find out why this is a shit study.

Regnerus, M. (2012). How different are the adult children of parents who have same-sex relationships? findings from the new family structures study. Social Science Research, 41(4), 752-770

Cheng, S., & Powell, B. (2015). Measurement, methods, and divergent patterns: Reassessing the effects of same-sex parents. Social Science Research, 52, 615-626

Rosenfeld, M. (2015). Revisiting the data from the new family structure study: Taking family instability into account. Sociological Science, 2(23), 478-501

And the Witherspoon Institute's weird marriage spiel

My podcast colleague and hopefully one day boyfriend if I can ever get him to commit, Heath Enwright, of Puzzle in a Thunderstorm podverse joins me to roast some Republican Ads! This is a Patron bonus but I wanted to give you folks a preview. But also it's a full self-contained segment so even if you can't become a patron, it's still super fun listening! I hope you enjoy, and please consider pledging to hear the rest of the ads, they are INCREDIBLE.

Hear the full 64 minutes, covering 6 ads! patreon.com/seriouspod.

Here's the ad: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLMMxgtxQ1Y&ab_channel=GOP

Racist nazi prick Tucker Carlson was fired by Fox News. But how should we feel about that? Can we have nice things? Or like sort of ok things? And how the hell did this happen? And what happens next? Will he run for president?
I share my thoughts, and play a few of his shittiest hits to send him off properly.

In this episode, Dr. Eric Jaffe walks us through the history of CRISPR, how it works, how it's being used currently, and how it could be applied in the future. How quickly will we be able to eradicate mosquitoes? I say let's just do it, but Dr. Jaffe has some concerns.

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Are all our password not belong to us? Part 2 of quantum computers! Our expert Anne tells us about the current landscape of actual quantum computers in the real world. It may not be what you think!

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What is this wizardry? I'm joined by a semi-anonymous expert who explains all about quantum computers. How they work, how they don't work, what's a qubit, all that kind of stuff. She also explains the limitations. After that, I explain why the delay in episodes and go on an unhinged rant about my new obsession... quantum computers... They're impossible and it's amazing!

Look for part 2 soon, in which Anne tells us how far away we actually are from real, working quantum computers. Are they about to crack all our passwords?

Two stories today! First a more upbeat delightful one. The musician Afroman had his home raided by police for reasons no one seems to know for sure. He and his wife took footage, and he used that footage in music videos and on merch. The police want... a cut? Or something.
And Matt also gives us a breakdown of the Clarence Thomas situation. Look we all already know there's not a damn thing we can immediately do about it, but that doesn't mean we should give up and not be angry. It truly is an astonishing breach of ethics.

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When I saw the headlines that Adnan Syed's murder conviction had been reinstated, I asked our friendly SIO legal expert Matt Cameron to take a look. We both assumed it was likely just some procedural thingy that would be quickly resolved. Well, turns out there's a lot more to it than that. Find out what happened and why Matt thinks there's a chance the conviction might not be going away after all.

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Matt's footnotes:

1. 85-page Court of Appeals decision in Lee v. State reinstating Adnan Syed’s conviction (3/28/23)
3. Mosby’s Sep 14, 2022 motion to vacate Adnan Syed’s conviction

4. Judge Phinn’s September 19, 2022 order on motion to vacate

5. Attorney General Brian Frosh’s statement re: SA Mosby’s motion to vacate

6. Attorney General’s fiery response to Adnan Syed’s motion to disqualify AG’s office from representing the state of Maryland in this appeal

7. More on the feud between the Attorney General and Baltimore City State’s Attorney over the Adnan Syed conviction: “Maryland AG questions integrity of process used to exonerate Adnan Syed,” Maryland Daily Record (10/25/22) 

8. Full transcription of prosecutor’s handwritten note which Mosby alleged constituted Brady evidence and more information in this Baltimore Banner story: “Was Adnan Syed Note Misinterpreted?” Baltimore Banner, (11/1/2022)

9. Appellant Young Lee’s brief in Lee v. State

10. Defendant Adnan Syed’s brief in Lee v. State

11. 2019 Court of Appeals case finding ineffective assistance of prior counsel in Adnan Syed’s case, but not enough prejudice to justify a new trial: State v. Syed :: 2019 :: Maryland Court of Appeals Decisions 

12. Jay Wilds Plea Agreement (adnansyedwiki.com)

Or wait... is it a special episode on General Relativity? Find out! Dr. Bryan Gillis takes us through some fascinating history on the discoveries and experiments that ultimately led to Einstein's Theory of Relativity. How did they measure the speed of light in like 18 dickety 2 or whatever? Impossible. Also why is faster than light travel equivalent to time travel? So much fun.

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HOLY SHIT WE GOT ONE JUSTICE UNIT POSSIBLY! THAT'S SO MANY MORE JUSTICE UNITS THAN WE'VE EVER RECEIVED WITH REGARD TO TRUMP!

Matt was kind enough to join me for a late night emergency recording on the Trump indictments. 34 counts!!!! And Lydia makes a quick guest appearance for an indictment toast!

This is going to have to take the place of the patron bonus I had planned. I'll save that for April. Only so many hours in the day!

It's another delightful and educational journey through sci-fi! In a Star Trek Next Gen episode, we learn about the famous Picard Maneuver - where Picard made his ship appear in two places at once. As much as this may sound like unrealistic sci-fi flair, could it actually work? Dr. Bryan Gillis says yes! Kind of. Come learn cool things about astrophysics and relativity and whatnot! Make sure to pledge to get Part 2 early!

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Matt's back! Ok so Trump was not arrested or indicted last week. What happened? No idea. But, Matt's here with some more in depth coverage of the cases we discussed last week. There's some fascinating stuff here and still reason for optimism. Does a letter by Michael Cohen ruin the whole Stormy case, as some pundits think? No. But is there a different, less... completely stupid reason the case might be problematic. Also, more from Georgia, and some SPEED law happened.

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Today's expert is none other than Stormy Decisis himself, Dr. Alan Smerbeck! Alan heard a recent episode of Dear Old Dads in which I talked about my efforts to get an ADHD diagnosis and it raised all kinds of interesting questions.

Here's the volunteer link Alan told us about! 

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Dr. Bryan Gillis breaks down some bad astrophysics in The Last Jedi, and we have some fun trying to reconstruct it to make sense!

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Please consider supporting SIO on Patreon! You get an ad free show, and goodies! Right now patrons are 1 episode ahead!

Dr. Eric Jaffe is back! This time, he's going to teach us about CRISPR. But, in order to do that, he first needs to lay a foundation about genetics more broadly, and how complex it actually is. Why is it that mapping the human genome didn't instantly give us the ability to change whatever we want about ourselves?

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Ok I know how this sounds but like, it might actually happen. And it all links back to, no shit, Stormy Daniels. Having been a little preoccupied lately, I'm very lucky to have expert Matt Cameron on to catch me up and explain which of the eleventy billion crimes Trump has committed might actually come with consequences.
Matt is a member of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, serves on the board of the Student Immigrant Movement (“SIM”), and is an adjunct lecturer at Northeastern University.

Hey go to patreon.com/seriouspod for the Star Wars episode and more to come asap!

Hey folks, I'm excited to get the show going again! In this update, I talk about my plans with it, and I put out a call for people to be on the show. Also, let's get the Facebook group active again!

Thank you so much for your support, it means the world to me and my family in these times. You're the absolute best. Heart emojis and heart eyes emojis.

Andrew Torrez, Thomas's 50/50 partner in Opening Arguments Media, LLC has been accused of sexual misconduct and unwanted/uncomfortable behavior by many women and 1 Thomas. Thomas's allegations are here, major content warning. Here's
Since then Andrew has gone off the deep end and completely stolen control of the show and company assets. Here's a drive link with tons of info.
I talk about all that, how you can support me if you choose, and give a heartbreaking update: Lindsey Osterman has left SIO. So much heartbreak these past weeks.

Please, pretty please, support this feed at patreon.com/seriouspod. Thank you so much, truly.

Science person and apparent druggy drug person Lindsey Osterman took us through what the science says on microdosing!

Links: Cavanna et al (2022) Microdosing with Psilocybin Mushrooms, Lea et al (2020) Microdosing Psychedelics: Motivations, Subjective Effects and Harm Reduction, Goldberg et al (2021) Post-Acute Psychological Effects of Classical Serotonergic Psychedelics, Yu et al (2021)  Psilocybin for End-of-Life Anxiety Symptoms

Mason et al (2021)  Spontaneous and Deliberate Creative Cognition During and After Psilocybin Exposure

Amoroso & Workman (2016)  Treating PTSD with MDMA-Assisted Psychotherapy

This is perhaps the final part in our series on the Turnaway Studies. The last part focuses on what happens when women are made to undergo an unneccesary ultrasound as a condition to get an abortion. And also, another perhaps under-covered way that abortion care is even more unaffordable for many people. These are all things that are perpetrated on uterus havers by Republicans. So... I guess what I'm saying is VOTE THEM OUT

Links: Kimport et al (2014) Beyond Political Claims: Women's Interest In and Emotional Response to Viewing Their Ultrasound Image in Abortion Care, Roberts et al (2014) Out-of-Pocket Costs and Insurance Coverage for Abortion in the United States , Guttmacher Institute: State Policies Regulating Abortion Coverage

It's a 3rd edition of turnaway studies!

Links: Gould et al. (2012) Patient Education and Emotional Support Practices in Abortion Care Facilities in the United States, Gould et al. (2013) Predictors of Abortion Counseling Receipt and Helpfulness in the United States, Foster et al (2013) Effect of Abortion Protesters on Women’s Emotional Response to Abortion, National Abortion Federation Releases 2020 Violence & Disruption Statistics

Would I go so far to call this qna spooktacular? I don't know. We report, you decide.

Another very fascinating science thingy, in the realm of politics. This one is about how the right and the left perceive political consensus among their ranks and among the other side. It always feels harder to organize on the left... but should it?

Links: Stern et al. (2014) Ditto Heads: Do Conservatives Perceive Greater Consensus Within Their Ranks Than Liberals?, Ondish & Stern (2018) Liberals Possess More National Consensus on Political Attitudes in the US: An Examination Across 40 Years

Science denialism kills. Anti-vax conspiracy theory kills. This was obvious. But what are the numbers? How many more Republicans died of COVID than might have anyway? A new study has done a rigorous job answering that question, and the answer is grim. Very grim.

Links: Wallace et al. (2022) Excess Death Rates for Republicans and Democrats During the COVID-19 Pandemic, Pink et al. (2021) Vaccine endorsement from Republican leaders increases vaccine intentions in Republicans, Allcott et al (2020) Partisan differences in social distancing and transmission rates, KFF poll on partisan gap in COVID-19 vaccination status, Estimates of unnecessary deaths due to unvaccinated adults (Brown School of Public Health)

So many of us in this day and age are stuck at our desks, or at our homes, or both, and not getting enough movement. It doesn't take a certified science thingy person to know that's probably not great. But how bad is it? And what levels of exercise or movement make a difference? Find out!

Links:

Farrahi et al. (2022) Joint Profiles of Sedentary Time and Physical Activity in Adults and their Associations with Cardiometabolic Health, Matthews et al. (2021) Sedentary Behavior in US Adults: Fall 2019, Matthews et al. (2008) Amount of Time Spent in Sedentary Behaviors in the US, 2003-2004, Evenson et al. (2015) Physical Activity and Sedentary Behavior Patterns Using Accelerometry from a National Sample of US Adults, Pomeroy (Feb. 2022) Does Sex Count As Exercise? , METs for Common Recreational Activities, METs for 800+ Activities

Kelly Burke joins the pod again, this time to break down Facilitated Communication. A documentary recently came out on Netflix that explored this, and Kelly tells us why it's not just nonsense but also harmful, and how she and other experts in this field actually help people learn real communication techniques.

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Thanks so much for the questions! Lots of personal ones, plus some behind the scenes stuff.

It's a science thingy, but more fun! A recently published study claims that belief in Astrology correlates with some negative personality traits, like narcissism. But, is it a Good Science Thingy(tm)? Or did Mars being in retrograde cause the researchers to overstate their conclusions? It's definitely one or the other!

Links: Andersson et al (2022) Even the stars think that I am superior: Personality, intelligence, and belief in astrology, Pew Report (2018) "New Age' Beliefs Common Among Both Religious and Nonreligious Americans, YouGovAmerica Poll Report (2022) One in four Americans say they believe in Astrology, Mosher (1966) - Paper about sex guilt and belief in psychic abilities , Longest & Smith (2011) Finding about astrology belief prevalence in a cohort of millennials

It's an often cited statistic that a high percentage of late term abortions are to protect the health of the mother, or due to some complication. As it turns out... this is one example of a left wing talking point that just... isn't substantiated. But importantly, it does not matter. In part 2 of our series on The Turnaway Studies, Lindsey takes us through the data on later term abortions. If you plan on trying to change the minds of pro-lifers, this is a great episode to prepare you. Learn what the data say, and why even though the traditional pro-choice talking point may be incorrect, it doesn't actually affect the argument.

Links: Foster & Kimport (2013) Who Seeks Abortions at or After 20 Weeks?, Jones & Kooistra (2011) Abortion Incidence and Access to Services In The US, 2008, Foster et al. (2012) Attitudes and Decision Making Among Women Seeking Abortions at One US Clinic, Questions and Answers on Born-Alive Abortion Survivors (Pro-life article about later abortion), Foster & Biggs (2021) Timing of Pregnancy Discovery Among Women Seeking Abortion, Upadhyay et al. (2014) Denial of Abortion Because of Provider Gestational Age Limits in the US