Skeptic Check: Fear Itself

Big Picture Science

Science, Technology

4.5 • 1K Ratings

🗓️ 19 December 2016

⏱️ 54 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Shhh. Is someone coming? Okay, we’ll make this quick. There are a lot of scary things going on in the world. Naturally you’re fearful. But sometimes fear has a sister emotion: suspicion. A nagging worry about what’s really going on. You know, the stuff they aren’t telling you. Don’t share this, but we have evidence that both our fear response and our tendency to believe conspiracy theories are evolutionarily adaptive. A sociologist who studies fear tells us why we’re addicted to its thrill when we control the situation, and how the media exploit our fear of losing control to keep us on edge. Plus, we examine some alien “cover-ups” and discover why it’s not just the tinfoil hat crowd that falls for outrageous plots. It’s Skeptic Check …. but you didn’t hear it from us! Guests: Margee Kerr – Sociologist who studies fear, author of Scream: Chilling Adventures in the Science of Fear Rob Brotherton – Psychologist, adjunct assistant professor at Barnard College, and author of Suspicious Minds: Why We Believe Conspiracy Theories Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to an Airwave Media Podcast.
0:05.0	Tech moves fast.
0:08.0	So keep pace with the Daily Crunch Podcast from Tech Crunch.
0:12.0	With new episodes every day, this podcast Crunch new tech, regulations, and more.
0:23.0	Listen to Tech Crunch Daily Crunch now,
0:25.5	wherever you get your podcasts.
0:27.6	That's Tech Crunch Daily Crunch,
0:29.9	wherever you get your podcasts.
0:37.4	The world is filled with many questions, such as, did giants exist?
0:39.0	What is junk DNA?
0:40.4	Does it mean that you're trash?
0:41.9	Do you ever wonder if aliens have underwater bases in our oceans and that's why there are so many
0:46.9	UFO sightings off the coast of islands all over the world?
0:50.8	How serious even is climate change and when should we start building our rafts?
0:55.0	Hello everyone you may recognize me as Gabby from the History of Everything podcast and my name is
1:00.3	Brenna and you don't recognize me from anything yet.
1:04.0	Together we're two scientists who explore the answers to these questions and many, many more in
1:08.0	our new podcast, Mystery of Everything, available everywhere you get your podcast.
1:13.0	Let's talk about the climate. It's worrisome.
1:17.0	Temperatures are rising.
1:18.0	Things are becoming unstable.
1:20.0	Panic is setting in. Sure, all that describes what's also happening with climate change, but I'm talking the political climate.
	...

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