Listen to learn the real state of science behind astronomy-, physics-, and geology-related creationist claims, hoaxes, conspiracy theories, misconceptions, and bad or incomplete media reporting.
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Episode 170 - Interlude, and Another Podcast Endeavor
41:39
41:39
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After being gone for a bit of time, I return to discuss where I have been, what to expect for the future (when more episodes will air), and if you need your fix of Dr. Stu, there is a new podcast that I have released with two of the co-hosts of The Reality Check podcast, entitled: 5 Minutes with an Astronomer. In this episode, I play four of the tw…
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Episode 169 - Modern Eclipse Lunacy, Part 3: Richard Hoagland's Claims
49:45
49:45
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In the final regular episode in the three-part Solar Eclipse of August 2017 series, several of the claims made by Richard Hoagland are addressed. Three types of claims are examined: Whether shadow bands indicate there are glass structures on the Moon, whether the Accutron watch readings indicate there is a hyperdimensional physics, and alleged disi…
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Episode 168 - Common (and False) Fine-Tuned Universe Beliefs, Discussed
21:44
21:44
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An exploration into four groups of fine-tuning arguments used by some to say that we are special: Solar outbursts, habitable zone, lunar origin and effects, and giant planets and impacts on Earth.By Stuart Robbins
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Episode 167 - Modern Eclipse Lunacy, Part 2: Flat Earth
30:36
30:36
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The August 2017 total solar eclipse was seen by hundreds of millions of people, and yet some of them have tried to use it to promulgate pseudoscience. In this Part 2 episode, I discuss ideas about the eclipse promoted by proponents of the idea that Earth is flat.By Stuart Robbins
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Episode 166 - Stellar Evolution, Age of the Universe, and Young-Earth Creationism
24:40
24:40
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The half-truth and misconception addressed in this episode is whether the age of a star with error bars that overlap with the age of the universe means all of science is wrong and the universe was created 6000 years ago.By Stuart Robbins
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Three separate topics all tied together by a commonality: A little bit of something that you tend to only experience in space. First up is microgravity, then near-vacuum, and then what it means to have a temperature in space.By Stuart Robbins
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Episode 164 - The World Didn't End on September 23, 2017
11:13
11:13
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The world did not end, again, on September 23, 2017. However, the story behind this latest doomsday prognostication may surprise you -- it did me as I investigated it.By Stuart Robbins
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Episode 163 - Modern Eclipse Lunacy, Part 1
42:08
42:08
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This past eclipse on August 21, 2017, was perhaps one of the most-hyped and most-viewed solar eclipses in human history. As with any such mass-sighted event, pseudoscience is bound to rear its ugly head. In this episode, I address doom and gloom, earthquake predictions, astrologic predictions, Planet X predictions, and other topics related to the e…
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Young-Earth creationists who are not geocentrists - those who accept the Copernican Revolution so far as Earth's place in the universe - have a vested interest in combatting some forms of pseudoscience, including geocentrism. In this episode, I lay out some of their more convincing arguments against geocentrism and point out that their methods of a…
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Episode 161 - Water on Earth— Coriolis and Tides
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33:07
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Inspired by one of the longest-running primetime television shows in history, and frustration with late-night radio hosts pretending they can Science, this episode addresses two common misconceptions about the forces from and on water on our planet and their effects on human scales. I first discuss whether Coriols makes toilet bowls swirl in opposi…
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Episode 160 - Apollo Hoax: The US Flag Waving, and the Moon of No Return
18:17
18:17
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A return to a tried-and-true subject of skepticism: the Apollo Moon Hoax. In this shorter episode, I discuss two of the most common claims that you may hear: Why does the US flag appear to be waving in photographs, and if we went to the moon, why haven't we been back?By Stuart Robbins
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Episode 159 - A Proposal for the Geologic Definition of Planet, Interview with Kirby Runyon
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51:01
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In 2006, the International Astronomical Union sparked an uproar and furious debate among scientists and non-scientists alike when they voted for a definition of the word, planet. Numerous proposals since that time have been made for the definition of that term. Eleven years later, a new proposal has gotten a lot of media attention and in this episo…
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Episode 158 - Getting Beyond the Photograph: Image Tricks with Dr. Tod Lauer
1:15:37
1:15:37
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In past episodes, I have talked about how you can't get any more information out of an image than what is in a single pixel. Dr. Tod Lauer is an astronomer who has worked on all kinds of telscopes and instrument data and has developed numerous image processing techniques over his career. In this episode, we discuss some of those and how to correctl…
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Episode 157 - Special Cross-Over Episode with The Reality Check, Astronomy Edition
1:10:33
1:10:33
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In a special cross-over episode, the cast of The Reality Check (Cheque?) podcast come over and we all did short-ish segments on astronomy-related topics: Do we live in a black hole, the Drake equation, are aliens likely to be hostile, did Earth's magnetic field recently collapse, and lunacy. I also did a quiz and learned how difficult it is to make…
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Episode 156 - The Scientific Method: How We Get to What We Know
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34:09
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The scientific method is the process through which most modern science is done. Whether done explicitly in its formalized steps or not, it underlies the very basics of how we know what we know, why science is inherently a self-correcting process, and why when there exists a long-standing scientific consensus with broad support, it should not be tak…
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Episode 155 - New Science: Evidence for the Mandela Effect?
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26:26
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Magic mirror on the wall, when will reality shifts affect us all? A phenomenon known as the Mandela Effect has been making the rounds of paranormal shows for the last year or so, and it seems silly until they start to use real science to back it up. Then, I get mad, and you don't want to see me get mad. In this episode, we learn about our changing …
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Episode 154 - Impact Crater Pseudoscience Mishmash
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47:23
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Impact craters form the basis of, or fit into the claimed evidence for, several different kinds of pseudoscientific claims. In this episode, I review two of them and also discuss some sensational headlines and why those headlines were wrong.By Stuart Robbins
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Radiation is a mechanism for a large array of pseudosciences out there today, almost on par with quantum mechanics. The purpose of this episode is to provide a primer of radiation - what it is, what it isn't, why some is scary, and why some isn't. In going through this discussion, I also address numerous pseudosciences, including claims by proponen…
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Episode 152 - Modern Flat Earth Thought, Part 3 (Young-Earth Creationists Debunking Flat Earth)
28:21
28:21
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This podcast show most often focuses on refuting pseudoscience with real science, but it rarely sets out to make a positive case for real science. This episode is one of those rarer ones where I have used an unlikely source - youn-Earth creationists - to explain the case for why Earth is round and not flat.…
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Episode 151 - The Fake Story of Planet X, Part X - Nancy Leider Redux and Planet Nine Claims of 2016
33:49
33:49
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Planet X is one of those topics that keeps coming up in pseudoscientific circles, in part because people who have been claiming it will come by and cause destruction continue to do so, making up new excuses as to why their last prediction failed. In this episode, I delve into the latest claims by Nancy Leider, one of the originators of the Planet X…
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Episode 150 - Is Dark Matter Liberal Pseudoscience?
32:12
32:12
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Moving away from the Earth-centric episodes since The Return of the podcast, this epsidoe addresses the concept of dark matter and claims that it is pseudoscience (and liberal pseudoscience at that!). Throughout the episode, we explore the history of the concept, how it arose, and why it arose, and then some alternative explanations. I make the cas…
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Episode 149 - Modern Flat Earth Thought, Part 2 (U.N. Flag and Airplane Flights)
58:35
58:35
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Flat Earth proponents have numerous claims that they use to promote the concept that Earth is flat. In this episode, we examine two of the claims that are somewhat related: The world looks like the United Nations flag (therefore "they" are "giving it away"), and airplane flights somehow prove Earth is flat.…
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When a NASA press released announced that scientists had observed x-rays coming from Pluto, my knee-jerk reaction was that certain people would use this to claim that Pluto was built by aliens. A later thought was that some might use it to bolster their ideas of the electric universe. Conveniently, I was going to be seeing one of the main study aut…
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Episode 147 - The Hollow Earth According to David Icke
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40:16
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After 139 episodes, a return to some of the claims that Earth is hollow, this time as presented by David Icke. An examination into how gravity works, the structure of comets, magnetic fields, icebergs, and muskox migration patterns wrapped in an atmosphere of conspiracy that everything in our lives is run by fourth-dimensional reptilian aliens from…
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Episode 146 - BONUS: Tracking Failed Planet X Predictions of Marshall Masters
18:34
18:34
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Sometimes, things just get to you. A Planet X proponent who has been preaching catastrophe for years, keeps saying the doom will happen in about a year, and yet is objecitvely proven wrong each time, got to me. This episode is a documentation proving that Marshall Masters' Planet X timeline is wrong, that for years he's been saying it's about a yea…
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