Science Fictions

A weekly podcast about the latest scientific controversies, with Tom Chivers and Stuart Ritchie sciencefictionspod.substack.com

Science Fictions is a science podcast hosted by Unknown Host, with 145 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80. PitchCentric scores this show on Booking Probability, Listen Score, and live audience signals refreshed every 24 hours.

Unknown Host hosts Science Fictions, a science show with 145 episodes published.

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  Science Fictions

  Unpaywalled: The science of Johann Hari

  May 12, 20261h 11mS0

  <p>We are sorry we’ve been missing so many episodes recently! Stuart’s been busy and Tom’s been… also busy. We’re busy. Hopefully back to normal service next week. </p><p>In the meantime, here’s an old paid episode, unpaywalled. Apologies.</p><p>…</p><p>Johann Hari is a journalist with an interesting past who has now written four very popular books on scientific topics (addiction, depression, attention, and obesity). Are those books any good?</p><p>In this paid-subscriber-only episode of The Studies Show, Tom and Stuart—who have both written reviews of Hari’s books—discuss Hari...

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  Science Fictions

  Episode 100: Replication, replication, replication

  Apr 28, 20261h 17mS0

  <p>We made it: triple figures! And as luck would have it, Nature just simultaneously published four major meta-science papers that are right up our street. Aw. Thanks, Nature. You shouldn’t have.</p><p>How screwed is social/behavioural science? We read all four papers to find out.</p><p>We’re incredibly grateful to everyone who’s been listening for all this time. See you for the next hundred!</p><p>Show notes</p><p>* The four Nature papers:</p><p>* Replication</p><p>* Reproducibility</p><p>* Robustness</p><p>* The non-DARPA one</p><p>Credits</p><p>The Sc...

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  Science Fictions

  Episode 99.5: Candidate genes

  Apr 21, 20261h 13mS0

  <p>Here’s another one for the annals of “entire scientific field becomes totally misguided for decades”. How could it have been possible that so many scientists fell for the idea of candidate genes—that there were individual gene variants that explained huge chunks of variation in depression, aggression, intelligence, and many more psychological traits? How could they have written literally hundreds of peer-reviewed papers based on completely false “results”?</p><p>Well, they did. Here’s the story.</p><p>(Why 99.5? We’re putting off doing Episode 100, just so we can mark the occasion with an even better topic).</p><p>The Science...

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  Science Fictions

  Episode 99: Power posing

  Mar 31, 20261h 13mS0

  <p>For a while in the early-to-mid 2010s, the most prominent psychology research in the world was on power posing. Harvard’s Amy Cuddy did a TED talk that reached tens of millions; her exhortation to “fake it til you make it” struck a chord and produced endless book sales from readers fascinated to hear how, just by adopting an expansive posture, you could revolutionise your own psychology and succeed at life.</p><p>In this episode, with the benefit of hindsight, we ask: what was that all about?</p><p>This podcast is sponsored by Works in Progress magazine. In tod...

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  Science Fictions

  Paid-only episode 28: Tourette's syndrome

  Mar 24, 202610 minS0

  This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit sciencefictionspod.substack.com<br/><br/><p>Have you seen the award-winning film I Swear, about a Scottish man with Tourette’s? (The less said about what happened at the ceremony where it won said award, the better). If so, you might want to know more about this very weird medical condition. We’ve got you covered.</p><p>In this paid-only episode, we go into the competing neurological theories of what causes Tourette’s, the troubles with diagnosing it, what if anything can be done to treat it, an...

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