Serious Inquiries Only

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 sex."...

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 without your knowledge, and a wi...

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 and citiz...

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 gr...

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 HE F-CKIN...

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 opportunities to hate women.

• The Chap...

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 ...

“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 inv...

Last month, there was a devastating hearing featuring a victim of ICE, an ICE whistleblower, and a previous DHS attorney. It revealed what, in any other time, would have been a massive scandal likely resulting in multiple firings. But we live in the bad times, which means this hearing took place in a maintenance shed barely on Congressional property during lunchtime put on by a ragtag team of the few remai...

Part 2! Even more fun Quibbies.

• Allergies

  • Bansal, A.S., Chee, R., Nagendran, V., Warner, A., & Hayman, G. (2007). Dangerous liaison: Sexually transmitted allergic reaction to Brazil nuts. Journal of Investigational Allergology and Clinical Immunology, 17, 189-191.

• Testosterone

  • University of Zurich (2009, December 9). Testosterone does not induce aggression, study shows. Scien...

It's Quibi Time (tm) with Jenessa! (Don't worry, I'll explain...) It's 2 debunks for the price of 1, or actually 5 debunks for the price of 2, because this is a two-parter! Here are the first two:

• AI girlfriend

  • Caramela, S. (2025, January 31). Most Men Would Marry Their AI Girlfriend if it were Legal. Vice.

  • Fiorillo, C. & Bartlett, S. (2025, January 28). AI girlfriends could be a thing of the future as men admit t...

Subject of much sci-fi media and philosophy discussions, the "hive mind" is also a key element of Vince Gilligan's (Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul) new show, Pluribus. Dr. Jenessa Seymour joins the pod to walk us through examples that we have studied of hive mind behavior (in the insect world), and why we can reasonably assert that you could not maintain your individuality if our brains directly communicated with each other (in the...

Brain pics, or they didn't happen? There's a recent study that demonstrates that some brain region activity might interact differently with oxygen than previously assumed. This could upend significant neuroscience research spanning decades. Thankfully SIO has Dr. Jenessa Seymour to come in and break it all down for us!

We start with a primer on the science of neuroimaging tools and the images they pro...