The Reality Check

In what has become a yearly ritual to highlight the futility of ‘predictions’, Adam, Producer Pat, and Cristina guess at what might happen in 2023 and revisit the panel’s 2022 predictions to see how they did.

Happy New Year, Checkers! Darren lays out the Three Laws of Robotics, as devised by science fiction author Isaac Asimov, and why they are seemingly reasonable yet flawed. Adam bites into a segment about the Apple logo and ponders whether it’s based on the biblical apple that signifies the Fall of Man. 

‘Twas the night before Christmas so Cristina asks the proverbial question…did Coca-Cola really invent the now ubiquitous image of Santa Claus? Adam rounds out the show checking claims that the world’s population hit 8 billion people on November 15, 2022. Have a safe and happy holiday, Checkers and thank you for listening!

Le Gang is back! The freethinking foursome kick off the show with Darren taking us down an entertaining rabbithole that is the AI text bot, ChatGPT. Cristina investigates if at-home cosmetic LED masks are worth the hype and introduces us to evidence-based YouTubers Doctorly in the process. Finally, Pat orchestrates a delightful - as Darren would say - game of Name That: Spot The Fake.

Darren clears up some misinformation about a viral post that Iran was planning to execute 15,000 protesters.  Adam looks into a claim that medieval peasants work far fewer hours than we do in modern times.  Lastly we check in with our fifth Beatle, Dr. Stuart Robbins, about the slug in response to a listener email.

Greenwashing is making unsubstantiated claims to deceive consumers into believing that a company's products are environmentally friendly.  Cristina takes us through it. Darren asks: Is social media bad for us?  The answer must be yes, right? As usual, it's complicated.

It’s an all hallows eve mashup!  Darren takes us through the interesting history of Halloween.  Cristina debunks some long held Halloween myths and, lastly,  Adam wonders if less kids are trick or treating. 

Adam ran into a recent article which posed questions about whether nuclear power presents issues of racism, sexism and ageism.  He takes a deep dive and explores if and how this could be true.  Next up, our favourite astronomer and 5th Beatle joins us to talk all about lenses, following up on a segment about daredevil “Mad Mike” Hughes who died in a homemade rocket attempting to “prove” the Earth is flat.

Darren is joined by our resident economics expert, Lars, for an interesting conversation about inflation, deflation and related economic issues. Darren and Lars discuss the biography “The Man from the Future: The Visionary Life of John von Neumann”, who is a revered mathematician, physicist, computer scientist, engineer and polymath.

On Saturday the world lost a world renowned cardiovascular researcher in a tragic accident.  It was the day of his 50th wedding anniversary. Over the course of his 50-year career, he published more than 250 peer-reviewed scientific articles and his work has earned some of the most prestigious research awards. His name was Dr. Jeffrey Robbins, father of our good friend and TRC’s 5th Beatle, Dr. Stuart Robbins. In honour of Stuart’s father and his scientific legacy, we are running an interview Stuart did with him in 2014 for his Exposing PseudoAstronomy podcast about ethics in scientific research. Our hearts go out to Stuart and his family.