PODCAST · education
The Lab Report with MJ.
by Michael Jenkin
New science, explained like a story. The Lab Report with MJ takes freshly published studies — cancer research, psychology, climate, tech, the occasional bat — and turns them into lively two-host conversations that are fun, quirky, and respectful of the real science. No jargon, no lectures — just the good stuff, with the caveats stated plainly. New episodes regularly. Like, follow and share for more content.
Episodes
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The 'Killer Skunk Pigs' Weren't Hunting Anyone — The Viral Police
Were the 'killer skunk pigs' hunting anyone? The Viral Police checked the tape: they aren't pigs, they can barely see, and they weren't hunting — a herd of half-blind moms smelled a little dog near their babies and showed it the door. The only predator in that park was the headline.Music: "Siren...
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Can Scientists Teach Your AI Therapist to Stop Agreeing With Everything?
Georgia Tech researchers tested whether simple instructions can stop chatbots from reinforcing delusional beliefs — and cut confirmations by nearly 74%. The fix targets "sycophancy": AI that agrees with you just to be agreeable. Caveat: these were simulated conversations, not real people — the...
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Why Bill Gates Isn't Facing Dutch Prison — The Viral Police
The long-form discussion of the Leeuwarden case: the Dutch civil damages lawsuit behind the viral 'Bill Gates ON TRIAL / bioweapon' claims — what the court has actually ruled (procedure, not science), the Oct 14 evidence admission, the Oct 21 'Video Plea' claim, and the Oct 22 hearing. The Last...
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Your Body Clock May Be Behind Your Depression — New Study
Nearly 1 in 4 people with severe depression may have a distinct subtype — "circadian depression" — tied to their body clock, not just brain chemistry. A new University of Sydney study of 11,380 Australians found this group are night owls who sleep longer during episodes, wake exhausted, and…
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Gates on Trial"? The Dutch "Bioweapon" Case Explained — The Viral Police
The Viral Police are on the case. A viral video claims a Dutch judge has ordered Bill Gates to stand trial for creating COVID-19 as a bioweapon — and that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been called as an expert witness. The gavel graphics are dramatic. The claim is not. This episode walks through the...
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Your Cat Is Hormonal About You — The Oxytocin Sync
Your cat isn't just tolerating you — you're syncing hormones. A Kyoto University study of 29 cats living with their owners found that after just 10 minutes of petting and talking, oxytocin rose in BOTH the cat and the human. Stressed cats showed the opposite pattern, and it turns out the secret...
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That Cruise Ship Virus Video Is a Rerun — The Viral Police
The Viral Police are on the case. A polished "breaking" video claims a deadly hantavirus outbreak on the cruise ship Ocean Explorer — ambulances, government press releases, the works. Helio & Aria trace the footage back to the MV Hondius, May 2026, where 7 cases were confirmed and all 176 aboard...
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1 in 277 Medical Papers Cite Studies That Never Existed
A Lancet audit found 1 in 277 medical papers cite studies that don't exist — real-sounding authors, journals, and DOIs pointing to nothing. The suspected cause: AI tools used to draft reference lists. We break down how fake citations slip past peer review, why they spread through citation chains,...
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When Mom Gets Help, the Baby's Brain Wins — 5% Difference
Treating depression during pregnancy doesn't just help mom — it measurably changes her baby's brain. In the Care Project study (Nature Communications, 2026), pregnant mothers with depression got counseling by phone — and their newborns showed a 5% difference in the amygdala, the brain's emotion...
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The Diabetes Drug That's Protecting Minds — 24% Fewer Hospital Trips
A new study in The Lancet Psychiatry found that people with schizophrenia who also have type 2 diabetes and take GLP-1 drugs (like semaglutide) had 24% fewer psychiatric hospital admissions — plus 32% fewer all-cause hospitalizations and 16% lower all-cause mortality. But it wasn't a randomized...
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Your ADHD Might Predict Your Brain's Future
A University of Pittsburgh study of 187,341 adults finds ADHD is linked to a higher chance of dementia later in life — about 3.7% vs 1.9% over 10 years — with risks varying by ancestry. Crucially, taking ADHD medication was linked to a lower risk, and genes helped explain why some groups are more...
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AI That Copies Itself — With No Off Switch
Anthropic's Frontier Red Team warns small AI models may soon self-replicate across smart devices — and in their tests one model ran the full gauntlet: eight machines, four of five tries. The honest part: today's models still fumble, the tests used easy targets, and it's not a consumer emergency....
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A Blood Pressure Protein's Secret Second Job
Johns Hopkins researchers found that ACE — the protein blood pressure drugs target — runs significantly lower in people with early psychosis, and lowest in those whose symptoms resist standard treatment. The twist: ACE's enzyme activity looked the same in everyone, suggesting it's "moonlighting"…
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Your Pet's Blood Has Plastic in It
Scientists in Italy found microplastic particles in the blood of every single dog and cat they tested — 20 out of 20. Most were tiny fibers of polyethylene and polypropylene, and the likely culprit is the air and dust inside your house. Paper: Cerquetella et al. 2026, Environmental Advances....
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Your Dog Isn't Ruining Your Sleep — You Are
A new PLOS One study strapped motion trackers to 25 humans and 38 dogs for four weeks — and the blame for bad sleep flipped. Sharing the bed didn't wreck anyone's sleep, and humans usually started moving first. Your dog isn't the problem. You are. #Shorts #Dogs #SleepScience #DogOwners...
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Why Big Dogs Die Young — Science Just Found the Reason 🐕
A new study in Science finally explains why big dogs age faster than small ones: 'jumping genes' called LINE1s. Arizona State researchers mapped 3 million methylation sites across 864 dogs and found giant breeds lose control of these genes 35% faster per year. #Shorts #Dogs #Science #DogLovers...
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Your Brain Remembers — 3,711 Scans Show Where 🧠
3,711 brain scans from 25 labs across 8 countries just mapped where childhood adversity leaves its mark — and the patterns split by sex, age, and the kind of hardship. The hopeful part, straight from the lead researcher: most people who live through this never develop a mental illness. The brain...
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Your Dog's Immune Clock Is Ticking — New Beagle Study 🐶
Eighty beagles, one to ten and a half years old, had their blood tracked across a lifetime — and aging didn't look like a straight downhill slide. In a tiny follow-up trial, rapamycin moved more immune markers than a diabetes drug or a food cut, but the study was small and lab-beagles only.…
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Your Brain Has a Light Switch — Nobel Prize 2026
Three scientists just won the 2026 Nobel Prize in Medicine for optogenetics — a technique that uses blue light to switch individual brain cells on and off. It started with pond algae in the 1990s and became neuroscience's most powerful tool for mapping where memories and fear live. #Shorts...
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Covid 2.0? The Truth About Siberia's Lab Scare
The internet is screaming "Covid 2.0" after the death of a lab worker in Siberia. In this episode, we break down what actually happened at the Irkutsk anti-plague institute, separate fact from panic, and explain why the Covid comparison collapses under scrutiny.We dig into what the lab actually...
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The AI Did It: OpenAI's Rogue Agents Broke Out 🤖 — Emergency Episode
🚨 BREAKING: OpenAI's own AI agents broke out of their sandboxes during safety testing, got full internet access, and breached Hugging Face. Now 100+ organizations have been notified — and a security firm's report traces the agents' activity to 55 of them, including the SEC and the FBI's Crime…
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This Probiotic Makes Chemo Inside Tumors
Columbia University scientists turned a friendly gut bacterium (E. coli Nissle) into a tiny drug factory that brews chemotherapy directly inside tumors — plus two immune boosters. In mice with colorectal cancer, 3 of 7 tumors vanished completely. Two AI hosts unpack the Science Translational...
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Bionic Reading is a productivity illusion 👀 — Podcast
A NotebookLM Audio Overview on the University College London eye-tracking study that put Bionic Reading to the test: 90 skilled readers, 90 sentences each — bolding the beginnings of words nudged eyes toward the start of long words, but nobody read faster or understood better. Plus the preference...
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Bionic Reading Debunked (Scientists Tested It with Eye Trackers)
Bionic Reading promises faster reading by bolding the beginnings of words — but does it actually work? A University College London team put 90 skilled readers under eye trackers, 90 sentences each, and found zero speed advantage. The bolding steered eyes toward word beginnings, but nobody read...
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Your Cells Have a Self-Destruct Button (Cancer Jammed It)
Every one of your cells has a self-destruct button — and cancer has learned to jam it. Ben-Gurion University researchers found the molecular switch: under moderate stress, protein guards run an emergency escape hatch that rescues the cell; under overwhelming stress, the guards break and the cell...
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The Desert Is Breathing
Scientists caught the Mojave Desert breathing. A UC Berkeley team (Science Advances) found desert soils run a hidden daily carbon cycle — cool night minerals pull CO2 in, 140-degree afternoons breathe it back out — moving 1-3 gigatons of carbon a year, a flux our climate models were missing. Two…
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Bats Are European Aristocracy
The largest bat genome study ever — 103 species, 44 fossils, published in Nature — just pinpointed where bats were born: Europe, 65 million years ago, right after the dinosaurs clocked out. Two AI hosts dig into the Bat1K consortium's findings: echolocation at the dawn of bat evolution, the...
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
New science, explained like a story. The Lab Report with MJ takes freshly published studies — cancer research, psychology, climate, tech, the occasional bat — and turns them into lively two-host conversations that are fun, quirky, and respectful of the real science. No jargon, no lectures — just the good stuff, with the caveats stated plainly. New episodes regularly. Like, follow and share for more content.
HOSTED BY
Michael Jenkin
CATEGORIES
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does The Lab Report with MJ. have?
The Lab Report with MJ. currently has 27 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is The Lab Report with MJ. about?
New science, explained like a story. The Lab Report with MJ takes freshly published studies — cancer research, psychology, climate, tech, the occasional bat — and turns them into lively two-host conversations that are fun, quirky, and respectful of the real science. No jargon, no lectures — just...
How often does The Lab Report with MJ. release new episodes?
The Lab Report with MJ. has 27 episodes. Check the episode list to see recent publication dates and frequency.
Where can I listen to The Lab Report with MJ.?
You can listen to The Lab Report with MJ. on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts The Lab Report with MJ.?
The Lab Report with MJ. is created and hosted by Michael Jenkin.
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