Science Fictions
Tom Chivers and Stuart Ritchie
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Recent Episodes
Unpaywalled: The science of Johann Hari
We are sorry we’ve been missing so many episodes recently! Stuart’s been busy and Tom’s been… also busy. We’re busy. Hopefully back to normal service next week. In the meantime, here’s an old paid…
Episode 100: Replication, replication, replication
We made it: triple figures! And as luck would have it, Nature just simultaneously published four major meta-science papers that are right up our street. Aw. Thanks, Nature. You shouldn’t have.How…
Episode 99.5: Candidate genes
Here’s another one for the annals of “entire scientific field becomes totally misguided for decades”. How could it have been possible that so many scientists fell for the idea of candidate genes—that…
Episode 99: Power posing
For a while in the early-to-mid 2010s, the most prominent psychology research in the world was on power posing. Harvard’s Amy Cuddy did a TED talk that reached tens of millions; her exhortation to…
Paid-only episode 28: Tourette's syndrome
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit sciencefictionspod.substack.comHave you seen the award-winning film I Swear, about a Scottish man with Tourette’s? (The less said about…
Episode 98: Dark oxygen
In 2024, researchers claimed to find something mysterious at the bottom of the ocean. It was “dark oxygen”—oxygen produced where there’s no chance of photosynthesis. So what could possibly be…
Episode 97: The 2D:4D digit ratio
The last few episodes have been pretty heavy. So here’s… well, here’s the 2D:4D ratio. Does the difference in length between your index finger and your ring finger reveal a huge amount about your…
Paid-only episode 27: Antidepressants
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit sciencefictionspod.substack.comAnd now… following last week’s episode on ECT, here’s part two of our double episode on depression…
Episode 96: Electroconvulsive therapy
Open up some scientific papers, and you’ll hear electroconvulsive therapy described as the most effective treatment for depression (especially very severe depression). But open up others, and you’ll…
Episode 95: Critical thinking
This episode is dedicated to Justin Eldridge.We like to think that, in often hamfisted ways, we’re applying critical thinking on this show. But what even is “critical thinking”? Can you measure it?…
Episode 94: Medical marijuana
Here’s another episode that revists a topic we’ve covered before. A while back, we did an episode on the downsides of cannabis (for example, the risk of psychosis). But of course, a lot of people…
Paid-only episode 26: Microplastics redux
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit sciencefictionspod.substack.comIt’s rare that we return to a topic, but it’s also nice to have been right. In 2024 we did an episode on…
Episode 93: Many analysts
Here’s a cheery one for our first episode of the year. Guess what happens when you give several sets of scientists the same dataset and ask them to answer the same question? Well, they all find the…
A Christmas 2025 compendium
We’ve covered a lot of bad science stories over the year. Here are a few more. But in the optimistic spirit of the “holiday season”, the last one has a happy ending. Thanks for listening—especially…
Episode 92: Oliver Sacks
STOP PRESS: a beloved 20th Century populariser of psychology who wrote massively successful books has been shown to be full of crap. Actually… don’t stop press. Just put it on the pile with all the…
Paid-only episode 25: The menopause and hormone replacement therapy
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit sciencefictionspod.substack.comDoes the evidence support the use of hormone replacement therapy (HRT)? Depends on when you asked the…
Unpaywalled: Jonathan Haidt vs. social media
Hello everyone! We weren’t able to record a podcast this week, because 1) Stuart was busy and 2) it’s Tom’s birthday. So by way of apology we’re re-releasing this one about some drama last year…
Episode 91: Entangled Life and the wood wide web
Everyone has read Entangled Life, the wonderfully-written book about fungi that took the world by storm about 5 years ago. Among many other things, it popularised the “wood wide web”—the idea that…
Episode 90: Cognitive dissonance
It has happened again. A new paper, based on a tranche of unsealed historical documents, casts serious doubt on a piece of social psychology research from the mid-20th Century. Shocker!This time it’s…
Paid-only episode 24: Creatine
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit sciencefictionspod.substack.comCreatine is the supplement of the moment, but both of us had vaguely heard that this one might actually…
Frequently Asked Questions
Science Fictions has published 140 episodes since July 2023, covering topics in Science, Technology.
Science Fictions is currently declining with new episodes weekly. Average episode length is 1h 2m.
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