PODCAST · news
Serious Inquiries Only
by seriouspod.com
Join Thomas for some critical thinking on questions of science, philosophy, skepticism and politics. These serious topics are discussed with some serious guests, but in an entertaining and engaging way! This is not your typical interview podcast; it’s a friendly dialogue, conducted thoughtfully and with plenty of humor. It's Serious Inquiries Only; but like, not boring or anything.
Episodes
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SIO531: Your Brain Is Actually Two Separate Organs, According to a New Stanford Study
We welcome back Dr. Eric Jaffe to help us understand a really cool, groundbreaking scientific discovery! Our brains are not one organ! Turns out your forebrain and your hindbrain might be two completely separate lineages that never actually came from each other, more like two kids in a trench…
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SIO530: Did AI Actually "Solve" That Famous Math Problem?
You've seen the headline: AI "solved" one of math's Millennium Prize problems. Thomas and Jenessa (here as a friend, not an expert) are joined by David Souther, a software engineer and LLM researcher, who's SO annoyed about it. Why did he answer Jenessa's text in all caps? And what's the deal…
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SIO529: AI in Schools Makes Students Feel Smarter. The Tests Say Otherwise.
How does AI use affect learning? You’d be surprised how much we already know. Dr. Jenessa Seymour takes us through the research on screen use, metacognition, cognitive offloading, and some recent papers Sources: Clinton, V. (2019). Reading from paper compared to screens: A systematic review and...
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SIO528: The Marshmallow Test Is Mostly BS, and It's Not the Only Classic Psych Test Like That
Kids are weird, like really weird, but in a fun way? Dr. Jenessa Seymour is back to tell us about some classic child development paradigms that really need to be reevaluated. Depending on when you learned about these experiments, you were either taught that they were the gospel truth, with...
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SIO527: The Science of Why We Ask Why, with Dr. Tania Lombrozo
Dr. Tania Lombrozo, professor of psychology at Princeton University (affiliated with its philosophy and cognitive science departments), joins Thomas to discuss her forthcoming book Why We Ask Why: The Science of Explanation and the Human Drive to Understand. Why are humans so driven to explain...
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SIO526: Why Is College So Expensive?
David O'Brien, higher education policy scholar with the California Community Colleges System, is back to answer the question Thomas posed last time: why is college so expensive? They get into tuition vs. total cost of attendance, the dirty little secret of private university pricing…
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Some More News Is COMPLETELY WRONG About Spider-Man Brand New Day
I cannot stop thinking about Cody from Some More News's video in which he could not stop thinking about Spider-Man: Brand New Day. Cody is INCREDIBLY sure that you're an idiot incapable of watching movies or consuming art if you don't agree with his conception of what the ending of Brand New Day...
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SIO525: Dude Who Said Autism Is "Extreme Male Brain" Walks It Back
... and other autism/ADHD research! So pleased to have Dr. Jenessa Seymour back - this time with a variety of studies in the Autism and ADHD realms. Jurek, L., Duchier, A., Gauld, C., Henault, L., Giroudon, C., Fourneret, P., … Nourredine, M. (2025). Sensory processing in individuals with...
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SIO524: Why We Haven't Cured Cancer Yet, Part 2 (with Dr. Eric Jaffe)
Part 2! Dr. Eric Jaffe returns to actually treat the cancer this time: why radiation is basically catching your kid smoking and making him finish the carton, how CRISPR turns your own T cells into an assassin squad, and why oncolytic viruses are just Jurassic World Dominion for tumors. Haven't...
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SIO523: What Cancer Actually Is, Part 1 (with Dr. Eric Jaffe)
Part 1! Dr. Eric Jaffe, the biology teacher who keeps naming proteins after cartoon characters, returns for a two-part cancer deep dive. Today: what cancer actually is at the cellular level, why elephants barely get it, why whales get it even less, and why the "they're hiding the cure" conspiracy...
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SIO522: College Is Impossibly Expensive. But It's Not Because of Bogus Degrees.
Part 2! Thomas is joined again by David O'Brien, a higher education policy scholar with the California Community Colleges system, to finish dismantling The Daily's take on Trump's student loan crackdown. Reagan, Pell Grants, and decades of quiet state defunding all get their due, plus a theory on...
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SIO521: The Daily Is Sane-Washing Trump's War on Higher Ed
Thomas is joined by David O'Brien, a higher education policy scholar who works for the California Community Colleges system, to pick apart Trump's new rules threatening to cut off student loans and Pell grants from "low-earning" degree programs, and to fact-check The Daily's recent take on the…
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SIO520: My Talk at SkeptiCal - Selective Skepticism Is Not Skepticism
Thanks so much to the folks at SkeptiCal for inviting me! Though the talk does deal with the Butler shooting, I thought some way different stuff for this including a ridiculously overwrought hypothetical, my favorite kind! And, I found a Young Turks video where they are apparently Joe Rogan now!
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SIO519: People Are Misinterpreting Obsession in Very Revealing Ways
The "nice guy" is the villain. We watched Obsession and cannot stop thinking about it. It has so much to say about gender, consent, "nice guys" and more. And it scarred Lydia for life. WARNING: CONTAINS SPOILERS. Are you an expert in something and want to be on the show? Apply here! Please…
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SIO518: Biological Definitions Do Not Do What Richard Dawkins Says They Do
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...
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SIO517: How Is It That 9 Days in Space Means Weeks of Rehabilitation?
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...
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SIO516: How a Botched 1840 Census "Proved" Freedom Made Black Americans Disabled, with Sari Altschuler
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...
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SIO515: A Vast, Global Network! ... of 3 Guys
Continuing the discussion of the CNN Rape Academy article. It gets even worse. And also, how our information environment is ruined and getting ruineder.
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SIO514: No Part of the "62 Million Men Enrolled In Online Rape Academy" Claim Was Correct
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...
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SIO513: Debunking Butler Conspiracy Theories in Descending Order by Scope
We continue the pruning of idiotic Butler Shooting conspiracy theories. Once we establish the facts using actual sources, what room is there left for a conspiracy or staging theory?
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SIO512: NO It Was Not Staged. Stop Being Joe Rogan.
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...
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SIO511: What a Recent Chappell Roan Incident Teaches Us About Sexism
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...
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SIO510: Digging Into the Science of the Placebo Effect
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…
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SIO509: What Project Hail Mary Gets Right (And Very Wrong...) About Biology
Everyone's favorite biologist and dinosaur enthusiast Dr. Eric Jaffe is back! Project Hail Mary is a very fun, and quite good, sciency movie that is cleaning up at the box office right now. You should see it! Eric is going to take us through the biology of the movie (and book) and what it gets...
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SIO508: The Data Shows That Authoritarianism Is Very Often Successfully Reversed. Yes, Really.
“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,...
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SIO507: Shirley You're Joking, Minnesota Fraud Man!
It's part 2 of the Minnesota fraud stuff. We get a little more Nick Shirley, dumbest person ever to testify in congress. And then I debunk the main claims against Gov. Walz and AG Ellison. Did Walz un-stop the payments to Feed Our Future? Did Ellison meet with, and then get campaign donations…
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SIO506: Minnesota Fraud and the Death of Information
So now that we've covered a real hearing with brave whistleblowers that got NO attention, it's time to look at what happens over on the other side of the aisle.
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SIO505: The ICE Whistleblower Hearing Was Astonishing. It Needs More Attention.
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…
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SIO504: The Other Kind of Nut Allergy. Well, Both Kinds, I Guess?
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…
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SIO503: Viral Post Claims Texas Has More Democrats Than Republicans. Is That True?
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...
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This Is The Dark Place. Why Aren't We Acting Like It?
I had a lot I needed to say about the ICE murders of Rene Good and Alex Pretti. And about the fascists who lie to our faces and know we can't do anything about it. And the concentration camps we already have. I did video because there was so much visual element to this, so watching would be best.
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SIO501: What Pluribus Gets Right about Neuroscience
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)…
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SIO500: A New Study Suggests Brain Imaging Might Have Significant Flaws
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...
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SIO499: Trump Is Weaponizing Government Against Political Enemies. Nick Fish, President of American Atheists, on How to Be Prepared
In late September, shortly after declaring antifa a "domestic terrorist", Trump issued a memorandum directing the IRS to investigate tax-exempt organizations that could be "directly or indirectly financing political violence or domestic terrorism" and nonprofit organizations reasonably felt...
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SIO498: The Science of Hallucinations, Ear-worms, and Phantom Limbs
Dr. Jenessa Seymour is on to teach us more about the brain! What do hallucinations, ear-worms, and phantom limbs have in common? And is "hallucinating" really a good term for what AI does when it makes something up?
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SIO497: The Mamdani Machine Exposed! Part 2
Part 2 of Asra Nomani's insanely terrible Fox News article. Make sure you listened to part 1! This is big, folks. Think Watergate combined with Deflate-gate combined with Christina Applegate combined with the Bowling Green Massacre. THAT's how big of a scandal this is. You thought Zohran Mamdani...
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SIO496: Asra Nomani Has EXPOSED the Mamdani Machine!
Part 1. This is big, folks. Think Watergate combined with Deflate-gate combined with Christina Applegate combined with the Bowling Green Massacre. THAT's how big of a scandal this is. You thought Zohran Mamdani was just an innocent 34 year old assemblyman who rose to stardom by being an…
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SIO495: Can AI Chatbots Make You Delusional? A Psychologist Explains
Stormy Decisis AKA Dr. Alan Smerbeck is back! With multiple stories in the news of AI Chatbots potentially driving people to delusion or psychosis, Stormy wanted to explain to us what's going on and what the actual differences are between psychosis, delusions, schizophrenia, and more. Visit...
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SIO494: Autism and ADHD, Part 2
***This is a two-parter. Listen to part 1! Previously, the leading theory was that kids with autism and/or ADHD had mental health struggles due to emotional regulation issues or other direct elements of their neurodivergence. But what if it's actually that they have to deal with more stressors…
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SIO493: Kids with ADHD/Autism Struggle with Mental Health. New Study Says Maybe It's the Stress of Being Different
Previously, the leading theory was that kids with autism and/or ADHD had mental health struggles due to emotional regulation issues or other direct elements of their neurodivergence. But what if it's actually that they have to deal with more stressors than the other kids? Dr. Jenessa Seymour,...
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SIO492: How Radicalized Was Kirk's Killer, Really?
Part 2 of my thoughts and observations based on all the info I could gather on Tyler Robinson. I think there's an aspect to him that isn't being emphasized enough that might help explain why he did what he did.
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SIO491: What Do We Actually Know About Tyler Robinson? Why Did He Kill Charlie Kirk?
The public has gone through several phases of evolution on what the shooter's motive was. At first, it was assumed he was a leftwing terrorist. Then it seemed clear he was on the right. Or maybe nihilist. Then, the charging documents were released. These contained some selected texts with...
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SIO490: The "Leaky Pipeline" of Academia
Dr. Bryan Gillis is back after far too long! But instead of space, he's here to talk about the problems in academia that lead to women and minority groups being underrepresented at astonishing and depressing levels.
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SIO489: TikTok Banned #Skinnytok and It Was Right to Do So
Dr. Jenessa Seymour joins to discuss why TikTok's move here is aligned with what we know about eating disorders from the literature, and what happens when the internet doesn't draw a line like this. Are you an expert in something and want to be on the show? Apply here! Please support the show on...
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SIO488: She Filmed Her Harassment and It Went Viral on TikTok
Lydia and I invite one of our good friends, Holly, to share her recent viral story of harassment at a public park in Glendale, California. We discuss what happened that day, the spread and impact of the video, as well as the broader issue at hand and how it has shifted with a new Trump...
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SIO487: How Close Is Iran Actually To Nuclear Weapons?
We had like, a mini war over Iran's nuclear situation and it is barely even a memory in today's news cycle. But what happened there? Did Iran have nuclear weapons? What does it take for them to make some? Was Obama's Iran Nuclear Deal good? And what happened after it was no longer in place? What...
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SIO486: Good News! According to The Economist, College Is Totally Affordable!
... what? Yep that's right. They say there is no college affordability crisis. And I guess then, presumably no student debt crisis as well? You can read for yourself here, and/or you can sit back and let Dr. Jenessa Seymore break down why this article is so... incorrect.
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SIO485: It's Not Rocket Science
Part 2: The Data Dr. Jenessa Seymour continues her breakdown of the supposed voting discrepancies that a New York organization has "discovered". Her expertise in statistics gets the spotlight in this episode! Be sure to check out the graphs! Are you an expert in something and want to be on the...
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SIO484: Lawsuit Alleges Voting Irregularities in 2024. Is There Any There There?
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...
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SIO483: Jordan Peterson Debated a Bunch of Atheists. So... How Did That Go? Part 2
We're going to take a look at Jordan Peterson's debate techniques and his arguments for God and have some fun along the way!
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
Join Thomas for some critical thinking on questions of science, philosophy, skepticism and politics. These serious topics are discussed with some serious guests, but in an entertaining and engaging way! This is not your typical interview podcast; it’s a friendly dialogue, conducted thoughtfully and with plenty of humor. It's Serious Inquiries Only; but like, not boring or anything.
HOSTED BY
seriouspod.com
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How many episodes does Serious Inquiries Only have?
Serious Inquiries Only currently has 847 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is Serious Inquiries Only about?
Join Thomas for some critical thinking on questions of science, philosophy, skepticism and politics. These serious topics are discussed with some serious guests, but in an entertaining and engaging way! This is not your typical interview podcast; it’s a friendly dialogue, conducted thoughtfully and...
How often does Serious Inquiries Only release new episodes?
Serious Inquiries Only releases new episodes frequently with a large back catalog of 847 episodes. Check the episode list for recent publication dates.
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Serious Inquiries Only is created and hosted by seriouspod.com.
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