Pigoted

Love Island. First Dates. Naked Attraction. Married At First Sight. There's a ton of reality TV dating shows on telly nowadays. But are they actually based in science? Or are they just vehicles for attractive people to have miniature meltdowns? Turns out it's a bit of both.

Dr Jaime Benjamin is an expert in how human beings process attraction towards one another. She also knows A LOT about the genitals of other animals, and if you've ever wanted to know why ducks fannies are so special, stay tuned.

Rob Mulholland is a stand up comedian. Check him out on his YouTube channel.

Enjoy the show? Feel free to subscribe! Really enjoy the show? Sign up to the patreon and help keep us going! www.patreon.com/pigoted

Facial bias is something we're all guilty of. We all do it every time we meet somebody. It's a human evolutionary response buried deep within us. So deep, in fact, that when we're *told* specifically to look out for facial biases, we do it even more.

There are obvious evolutionary advantages to being able to recognise behaviours early on. Being able to see aggression coming will help us to survive longer. But do they have any advantages in this day and age? And what are the disadvantages?

Kat Ford is a behavioural evolutionary psychologist who has studied facial bias. You can read her paper on Facial Masculinity and Agreeableness on Perceptions of Criminality online. Our guest comedian is Sam Avery, check out his podcast "Fix The World" is available on all podcast platforms.

Love the show? Remember to subscribe!

You'd be forgiven for thinking that Fake News wasn't much of a problem before Donald Trump came along and used it to label everything he didn't like, but the practice of politicians manipulating their population for a desired effect is a concept as old as civilization itself. 

However, the process of the media flat out lying to us in order to create "clickbait" (false articles used to drive revenue) is one with a much fresher history. 1835, to be exact.

Reality TV shows are among the most popular programs aired in the UK. And because they're cheap to produce because there's no need to pay for writers or actors, their popularity has soared in recent years. But as TV production companies are pressured to go bigger and engineer more high stakes drama to keep viewers hooked, are they exploiting the contestants on their shows? Is there a duty of care to the participants?

Lewis Ellis is a businessman and former contestant on The Apprentice. Here he gives his insightful opinion, as well as some hidden secrets about how the show manipulates outcomes. Also joining us is comedian Ray Bradshaw, an award winning Scottish comic.

Enjoying the show? Click subscribe so you'll never miss an episode! Really enjoying the show? Share it with your mates and help us grow!

What do you know about bees? They make honey? Well, some of them don't. They have a queen? Some of them don't. If we lost them then we wouldn't be able to pollinate and the world would end? Yeah, turns out that's rubbish as well.

Dr Philip Donkersley (aka Donkers) is an entomologist with a major focus on evolutionary and microbial ecology. He has worked on a range of ecosystems including pollinators and pathogen vectors. I don't know what that means either. Basically to put it in simple terms, the man is a bee expert. And a wasp expert too. If you've ever wondered why wasps are d*ckheads, he explains it perfectly and the answer blew my mind to pieces. He also talks about what one insect we couldn't afford to lose or else we'd be in the sh*t, literally. 

Michael Marshall is a skeptical activist, freelance journalist, co-founder and Vice President of the Merseyside Skeptic Society, project director of the Good Thinking Society and has featured in The Times, The Guardian and New Statesman. And in case you can't tell from that introduction, he doesn't believe in psychics. 

Joining us is stand up comedian Simon Wozniak, one of the most original and thought provoking comedy voices on the circuit today. A real breath of fresh air, Simon's comedy is winning over audiences across the country and gaining him legions of followers.

Dr Sarah Clement is an environmental social scientist and environmental governance researcher, which is an incredibly fancy way for saying that she advises governments on policies that will fight climate change. So we asked her the big questions - does putting your cardboard in one bin and your plastic in another actually make any difference whatsoever? Should the burden of environmentalism be on big corporations, governments, or the individual? And how screwed are we anyway?