Big Picture Science Skeptic Check: Playing Doctor
Jul 12, 2010
53:44
A new herbal supplements is on the shelf, and it claims to improve memory. Should you take it? It’s not easy to sort through the firehose of health and nutrition advice that comes at us daily. Find out how to get healthy about health advice, plus hear the story of Bernarr Macfadden, the eccentric who kicked off America’s fitness craze; he believed that eating less was good for you, but he didn’t believe germ theory.
Plus, our Hollywood skeptic spills his guts and other entrails for a phony class for nurses and Phil Plait gives us the latest lapse in critically-thinking brains.
It’s Skeptic Check… but don’t take our word for it.
Guests:
- Phil Plait - Author, badastronomy.com and Death from the Skies!: These Are the Ways the World Will End . . .
- Mark Adams - writer and editor, and author of Mr. America: How Muscular Millionaire Bernarr Macfadden Transformed the Nation Through Sex, Salad, and the Ultimate Starvation Diet
- Jim Underdown - Executive Director, Center for Inquiry, West - Los Angeles
- Steven Novella - Assistant professor of neurology at Yale School of Medicine
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