You Can Totally BS a BSer

Curiosity Weekly

Warner Bros. Discovery

Science

4.6 • 964 Ratings

🗓️ 19 April 2021

⏱️ 12 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Learn about why you can BS a BS-er; how you can get your hands on some of the world’s oldest books at the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library; and a sea slug in the genus Elysia that cuts off its own head when it wants a new body.

You *can* BS a BSer — but it depends on the kind of BS by Steffie Drucker

It Turns Out You Can Bullshit A Bullshitter After All. (2021, March 5). Research Digest; Research Digest. https://digest.bps.org.uk/2021/03/05/it-turns-out-you-can-bullshit-a-bullshitter-after-all/
Littrell, S., Risko, E. F., & Fugelsang, J. A. (2021). “You can’t bullshit a bullshitter” (or can you?): Bullshitting frequency predicts receptivity to various types of misleading information. British Journal of Social Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjso.12447
Research shows that BSers are more likely to fall for BS. (2021). EurekAlert! https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2021-03/uow-rst030821.php

You Can Encounter Some of the World's Oldest Books at the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library by Reuben Westmaas

Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library. (2020). Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library. https://fisher.library.utoronto.ca/
Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library. (2015, June 8). Atlas Obscura. https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/thomas-fisher-rare-books-library
Monstorum historia (1642). Pinterest. https://www.pinterest.com/poppadoug/monstrorum-historia-1642-ulyssis-aldrovandi/

There's a slug that cuts off its own head when it wants a new body by Cameron Duke

Meet the Sea Slugs That Chop Off Their Heads and Grow New Bodies. (2021). The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/08/science/decapitated-sea-slugs.html
Mitoh, S., & Yusa, Y. (2021). Extreme autotomy and whole-body regeneration in photosynthetic sea slugs. Current Biology, 31(5), R233–R234. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2021.01.014

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, you're about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from
0:04.9	Curiosity.com. I'm Cody Goff. And I'm Ashley Hamer. Today you learn about why you can
0:09.9	BS a Besser. A library where you can find some of the world's oldest books
0:15.2	and a slug that cuts off its own head when it wants a new body.
0:19.1	Let's satisfy some curiosity.
0:21.1	There's a saying that I'm not allowed to say on this
0:24.7	podcast, but it goes pretty much like this. You can't BS a bser. It's basically
0:31.9	a warning that you can't hoodwink or mislead or deceive someone who is good at doing that to other people.
0:39.0	But new research has found that in fact you can BS a besser.
0:45.0	And not only that, but regular BS artists are actually more likely to believe
0:50.0	BS themselves, although it depends on the kind of BS. This hilarious
0:56.9	research comes from the University of Waterloo in Canada and they did it because
1:01.5	it's important to understand the reasons why people believe and spread misleading information.
1:08.0	Because that way maybe we can put a stop to it.
1:11.0	So to dig into this question, scientists conducted three studies
1:14.9	with more than 800 participants in the US and Canada. And like any good
1:20.0	scientists, they separated the BS they studied into categories.
1:25.0	There's persuasive BS, which is intended to influence and impress people.
1:31.0	And then there's evasive BS, which people use to avoid hurting someone's feelings, or to protect their own reputation.
1:40.0	Think of a politician being intentionally vague to cover up a mistake.
1:45.4	Scientists used the BSing frequency scale. That's a real thing
1:50.7	the team published last year. And yes, the actual name of the scale includes the full original explicit term, but this podcast is family-friendly.
	...

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