Posts in Myth-Busting
What Happens When We Die? (part 2)

Today’s episode concludes our discussion about what people believe when they don't believe. We ask and answer the question what we believe happens when we die, as well as polling our patreon supporters. Atheists categorically reject the existence of gods and the practice of obeying any sort of higher power. Abraham defends the idea that atheism and agnosticism are the same. Shane makes some beautifully elegant points about what it all means at the end of the day.

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What Happens When We Die? (part 1)

Today’s episode discusses religion, but rather the lack thereof. Atheists categorically reject the existence of gods and the practice of obeying any sort of higher power. How does this develop? Where do they generate their morals from without a bible, torah, Quran, etc? While religion has united people around the world in admittedly prosocial and enriched ways, it has influenced others to commit unspeakable acts of violence too. Perhaps the same variables influence people differently, and maybe there is more to the story.

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What Listening to This Episode Says About You Personality

Like astrology and psychics, online personality tests generally use the Barnum effect to trick you into thinking they have something meaningful to say. They're tricksy like that. But they have also been used for extremely nefarious reasons, and in one instance, an implementation that lead to the beginning of the end of democracy in America. Also, we take some personality tests in real time.

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Astrology: It's All Fun Until Someone Gets Hurt

Horoscopes are mostly harmless bits of fun. But how do they work? Why do we believe them? And why does the episode title imply harm? Learn more and another vocab term.

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Exercise for What Ails Ya

Is exercise good for your mental health? A lot of people certain think so. We dig into the research and philosophy about if exercise is mentally healthy and if so, how?

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Why People Believe Conspiracy Theories

The majority of people who buy into conspiracy theories are victims of fraud. Unfortunately, they can become zealous, proselytizing mouthpieces for those conspiracies, which makes them unsympathetic to many. Conspiracies primarily work by exploiting human biases and insecurities. Listen in to find out more about why your weird friend is dedicated to their crystals and mythological beliefs.

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238 | Goop

You’re probably going to hear about some products that blow your mind. Also, some products that are most definitely not safe for work. In fact, they might not be safe in general. But that seems to be besides the point, because when you have gained an established brand name, then the possibilities are endless. Grab those consumers by catering toward their wants and needs, and you’ll have them wrapped around your finger forever. That is the Goop way, whether or not it was intended to be. Gwyneth Paltrow has forged her way into the world of wellness in a dynamic way, but not without a question of where good intentions meets ethical responsibility.

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230 | History of Halloween

Halloween season 2021! Shane and Abraham crack open the history books to learn about where the traditions and history of halloween come from. Amazingly, if you traveled back in time to witness this tradition, you might recognize many contemporary practices that are still around. Despite being hailed as demonic, Christians are largely responsible for bringing Halloween to modern culture, establishing many of the current traditions, and even coming up with the name. Also, we bust some myths and provide recommendations, like we do.

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224 | Speed Reading: Read Anything in Normal Minutes

A myth-busting discussion about the broken promise of speed reading. There is an upper limit to what humans are physically capable of doing and speed reading and quantum reading propose to break that physical barrier. So far, the evidence is not looking so good.

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210 | Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Sex Work (But Were Too Afraid To Ask)

A lot of myth-busting and a little proselytization. We describe how people get started in sex work and the kinds of policies and practices that make it safe or extremely dangerous. Sex workers are people who need protection and support. The “righteous” policies that have tried to end or block sex work have only lead to the worst things that have ever happened to sex workers. There is a better way!

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189 | Conversion "Therapy" is a No

Conversion “therapy” is a sexual identity and orientation intervention that needs to be banned. It doesn’t work, and it causes harm. Just over a century old, this harmful “treatment” was torture not unlike the witch trials. A handful of nations and some other smaller municipalities have taken the appropriate step to ban this, but it is otherwise still allowed. Learn more as we throw this intervention all the way under the bus.

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185 | Drunk Tank Pink

Does the color red make you think of food? Does blue make you patriotic? Are the marketers and government controlling our minds with subtle manipulations in color? No. But many PR people have figured out how to leverage and create associations between our feelings and certain colors or color patterns to modestly influence our mood and preconceptions. This is how they do it…

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183 | Handedness and Personality or Just Handedness

What does your hand dominance say about your personality? What about your brain? Probably very little. Either way, we dig into the research and implications of hand and foot preference.

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170 | The Hawthorne Effect

This episode explores the Hawthorne Effect, a famous psychological phenomenon that arose in the 1920s and 1930s and has been continuously debated by scientists since then. Once regarded as a simple relation between the presence of experimenters affecting worker performance, it has more recently been refuted as an excessively liberal, if not lazy, interpretation of data. Human behavior is complicated, but it can always be directly attributed to something in the environment.

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168 | Syphilis Part 2

In this second and final part, we bust a bunch of syphilis myths. Also, we talk about some behavioral health strategies to decrease the risk of catching syphilis at various levels of prevention and intervention. Oddly one of our funnier episodes.

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166 | Stockholm Syndrome

This episode will investigate a phenomenon that has been popular in entertainment and psychological literature for almost 50 years- Stockholm Syndrome, named after the eponymous location of a bank robbery that gave focus to this phenomenon. Do hostages, victims of abuse, and kidnapped individuals cross a threshold at some point into developing sympathy for their captors, or are they subtly forming a strategy for survival?

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164 | Would a Head Transplant Work?

If we had to ask, then the answer is obvious. At this point, it seems unlikely. But even if we figure it out later, it may be unnecessary. A few experiments have mostly failed to demonstrate this with animals and one claimed to have succeeded with a human cadaver. By why would you want a head transplant anyway? One of our more humorous and thorough discussions IMHO.

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163 | Can You Feel Yourself Being Watched?

Dreams are nocturnal hallucinations we do while asleep. Why do we do it? There are some hypotheses, but how it works is more interesting. Specifically, we carry our experiences with us and they are cued by environmental stimuli. By the way, there is nothing to dream interpretation.

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159 | Masturbation: The Original DIY

WARNING! This episode contains discussions related to sexual behavior. Although we joke about this during our discussion to keep the mood light, this is a serious scientific and professional discussion about a psychologically important topic. If you are uncomfortable with hearing sexual content, or do not want children to hear it, then do not listen. We are not marking this as explicit content because of the scientific nature of this discussion.

That being said, this is a fascinating look at the history and culture around masturbation. Furthermore, we explore some of the myths about masturbation and recent scientific literature about it. We also touch out sexual behavior of individuals with intellectual disabilities, and what to expect from children.

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146 | Right and Left Brain Personality

Begun in the work on patients with epilepsy, split-brain research suggested maybe people generally rely on one hemisphere of their brain over the other. Except, that doesn’t actually make any sense when you understand how the brain works. Although most people already know this, we expanded on this by elaborating on the history of this idea, and the one or two researchers who have continued to push this line of research despite its lack of fruitful outcomes… or general utility. Still, a lot to learn about this seemingly obvious urban myth.

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