Serious Inquiries Only

Part 1: The Legal Stuff

Dr. Jenessa Seymour is here to break down something that even our moms are spreading on social media: a group in New York claims to have uncovered discrepancies in the vote count for the 2024 election, and they're suing over it! Dr. Seymour hits ALL of the expert boxes for this one - statistics, voting rights, the law, and New York.

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Inspired by an Opening Arguments episode during the heartbeat bills, Dr. Nathan Thompson and soon-to-be-Dr. Rachel Feltman embarked on research where they collated "facts" from abortion legislation across the country and examined its medical/anatomical accuracy and misleadingness. Their work was published (read it here!) in the February 2025 issue of Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health!

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Gary Chapman's model of five love languages has been well-embraced by people as they navigate dating, marriage, and other relationship moments. Dr. Sharon Flicker joins the show to discuss what exactly they are, how Chapman came up with them, and her research in evaluating whether your partner's ability to "speak" your love language actually results in a happier relationship.

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It's part 2 with Alejandro and Julia from theluddite.org! We get the worst AI "research" of all, we talk big picture, and then Alejandro and Julia give us some tools for spotting bad AI research and coverage on our own!

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Alejandro and Julia of theluddite.org join us to debunk some terrible AI research, and the bad reporting compounding the problems on top of that. Also, what is AI? Can it ever think for itself?

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This is a part 2! Make sure to catch the previous episode in the feed.

If you're on the left and at all active on the internet, you have probably seen this shared. It's called "Trump Lost. Vote Suppression Won." Here's the first bit: "Trump lost. That is, if all legal voters were allowed to vote, if all legal ballots were counted, Trump would have lost the states of Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Ge...

If you're on the left and at all active on the internet, you have probably seen this shared. It's called "Trump Lost. Vote Suppression Won." Here's the first bit: "Trump lost. That is, if all legal voters were allowed to vote, if all legal ballots were counted, Trump would have lost the states of Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Georgia. Vice-President Kamala Harris would have won the Presidency with ...

Katherine Stewart joins us again (she was on episode 439) to talk about her new book, Money, Lies, and God!

Katherine's books have been vital to understanding the Right. This book tackles different factions - the billionaires, Christian Nationlists, and the New Right, among others - and their strange alliances that have successfully taken over our country.

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The absolute man-babies who make up the anti-woke movement are always crying about some very minor thing that makes other people's lives better and is no actual burden to them, but is different than the past. This week, that thing happens to be... ASL interpreters at press conferences and such? It's hard to imagine how sensitive you'd have to be to have a problem with this, but their victimhood complex giv...

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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We're back with Dr. Rick to continue our discussion of what we might be facing with the next Trump administration's HHS, but he refuses to leave the recording without giving us something to feel happy about! Then we kick off Lydia's cabinet nominee deep dive with Dr. Janette Nesheiwat, Trump's nominee for the Surgeon General.

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Lydia has spread Opening Arguments' fashwatch to SIO, and we're calling in a doctor to keep it under control! Dr. Rick Sullivan joins us to walk through the Health and Human Services Agency, its various entities, and what kind of impact we might be looking at under the next Trump administration.

ProPublica obtained Project 2025 private training videos. Click here to check them out if you dare!

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I've felt like I wanted to say a ton about this since day 1, but keep holding back. I finally hit brain saturation and just need to share. I think I have a useful way of looking at this whole thing, hope you'll consider it. Oh and also, f--- UnitedHealthcare and f--- the for profit healthcare industry in its entirety.

Please read this incredible ProPublica piece. I finally started a monthly donation to the...

SIO466 - Dr. Gary Slutkin has been cited in Salon and other outlets as an expert epidemiologist who runs an impressive NGO that helps reduce violence. While he may be an epidemiologist, almost everything else about him and his claims seems to be... very likely bull shit. Dr. Jenessa Seymour joins us to break this down. It gets more and more bull shit as we go, and eventually we're both live debunking parts...