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 trees can communicate with one another through networks of fungi at their roots.

But is the wood wide web real? It turns out scientists have some major questions. We air them on this episode.

And just to be completely clear, there are no personal vendettas here! Everyone recording this podcast is 100% free of “beefs” of all kinds. Even the co-host who was beaten in a book contest by the aforementioned mushroom book.

The Science Fictions podcast is brought to you by Works in Progress magazine. Their most recent article is about the wonderful invention (and history) of the dishwasher, one of several incredible labour-saving devices that have made so many lives just a bit less dull. Read this, and so many more stories about human progress, at worksinprogress.co.

Show notes

* Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake

* Winner of the 2021 Royal Society book award

* Rupert Sheldrake and the concept of “morphic resonance”

* Suzanne Simard’s TED talk about “how trees talk to each other”

* Her 1997 paper on “net transfer of carbon”

* 2023 paper by Karst et al.: “Positive citation bias and overinterpreted results lead to misinformation on common mycorrhizal networks in forests”

* Nature piece following the 2023 paper

* 2015 paper on “stress signaling” via fungal networks

* 2023 paper on tree proximity

* Simard’s response to Karst et al.

Credits

The Science Fictions podcast is produced by Julian Mayers at Yada Yada Productions.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sciencefictionspod.substack.com/subscribe

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 A new paper, based on a tranche of unsealed historical documents, casts serious doubt on a piece of social psychology research from the mid-20th Century.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 about some of the fundamental inspirations for the idea of cognitive dissonance—the idea that holding contradictory views in one’s head creates discomfort and a need to change one of the beliefs. So what does the new historical research say? What about all the studies that claim to find evidence for cognitive dissonance—surely the whole thing isn’t a load of nonsense? Listen to this episode to find out.

The Science Fictions podcast is brought to you by Works in Progress magazine. They’ve recently been publishing a whole host of podcasts, including the one we mentioned this week, on “the economics of the baby bust” (that’s the opposite of a baby boom, by the way). You can find it and many other podcasts at podcast.worksinprogress.co.

Show notes

* The new paper, “Debunking When Prophecy Fails”

* And the related paper “Failed Prophecies are Fatal”

* The lobotomy article in the Washington Post

* Scott Alexander on using facts to persuade

* Dan Engber on the same

* Matti Heino on the original Festinger & Carlsmith (1959) paper

* The paper itself

* The GRIM test (with an online tool to do it yourself)

* 2024 multi-lab replication attempt on cognitive dissonance

* 1983 study that was replicated

Credits

The Science Fictions podcast is produced by Julian Mayers at Yada Yada Productions.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sciencefictionspod.substack.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit sciencefictionspod.substack.com

Creatine is the supplement of the moment, but both of us had vaguely heard that this one might actually not be total garbage.

On the other hand: there are a lot of surprising claims made about it! If proponents are to be believed, it doesn’t just boost muscle mass – it reduces depression, prevents cancer, and improves your cognitive function.

How much of this should we believe, and how much is it just a big load of crap? We thought we would take a look.

Around these parts, we have a tradition to do a paranormal episode at Halloween. We’ve done psychic powers, ghosts, and now… reincarnation. What are we to make of the stories—sometimes told in NYT-bestselling books—of children who appear to remember details of their past lives? What about the many peer-reviewed scientific papers that claim that something supernatural is going on here? In this EXTRA-SPOOKY episode, we find out.

🎃 Happy Halloween! 🎃

The Science Fictions podcast is brought to you by WoooOOOOOooooOOOOorks in ProoooooOOOOOooooooOOOOOooogress magazine, which is bursting with historical stories, policy ideas, and well-written scientific explanations, all focused on the topic of progress. You can find all of Works in Progress—essays, shorter pieces, podcasts, and even the chance to subscribe to the print edition—at worksinprogress.co.

Show notes

* The University of Virginia’s Department of Perceptual Studies

* And the University of Edinburgh’s Koestler Parapsychology Unit

* Jim Tucker, child psychologist and reincarnation researcher

* Tucker’s 2025 paper on the >2,500 reported cases of reincarnation

* 2024 review of cases on the “reincarnation birthmark” issue

* Michael Sudduth’s 94-page debunking of the James Leininger case

* Response from Jim Tucker on Leininger

* Reply from Sudduth

* Sudduth’s blog post on the same issue

* Steven Novella on memory, children’s learning, and supposed reincarnation

Credits

The Science Fictions podcast is produced by Julian Mayers at Yada Yada Productions.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sciencefictionspod.substack.com/subscribe

Maybe it’s the most important thing any scientist can study: what makes people happy? The trouble is, despite the importance, a lot of the science on “wellbeing” tends to be very rickety.

But did you know that even one of the best-known findings of wellbeing research—the midlife crisis, or “inverted U shape” of happiness over the lifespan—has been questioned? In this episode we discuss the controversy.

The Science Fictions podcast is brought to you by Works in Progress magazine. At worksinprogress.co you can read issue after issue of fascinating articles bursting with ideas on how humans made scientific and technological progress in the past, and how we can keep it going. You can also check out their selection of other podcasts at podcast.worksinprogress.co.

Show notes

* The American Psychologist paper that claimed to reveal the fluid dynamics of human happiness

* Nick Brown and Alan Sokal’s devastating rebuttal

* And coverage in The Guardian at the time

* David Blanchflower’s original work on the inverted U-shape of happiness

* And subsequent work that backs it up…

* …and subsequent work that does not back it up

* New paper that tries to work out why there are differing results

* Afghanistan reporting the lowest wellbeing in recorded history

* Our previous episode on the weird phenomenon of collider bias

Credits

We’re grateful to Dr. Julia Rohrer of Leipzig University for talking to us for this episode (though as usual, if there are mistakes, they’re ours and not hers). The Science Fictions podcast is produced by Julian Mayers at Yada Yada Productions.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sciencefictionspod.substack.com/subscribe

You requested; we delivered. Lots of Science Fictions listeners have asked us to take a look into Donald Trump and RFK, Jr.’s recent claims about Tylenol (that is, paracetamol or acetaminophen—all the same thing). Does it cause autism?

It turns out there’s more to this than you might’ve thought—regardless of all the recent hype, a lot of very reputable scientists take the idea seriously. But should they? In this emergency podcast, we go through all the relevant studies.

The Science Fictions podcast is brought to you by Works in Progress magazine. In the ad this week we mentioned “The Death Rays that Guard Life”, an article from Issue 20 of the magazine about far-UVC light and how—with a lot more research—it might be the next big thing for reducing the spread of germs in hospitals and classrooms. Find that and many other articles and podcasts at worksinprogress.co.

Show notes

* The FDA’s September 2025 announcement on Tylenol and autism

* The UK’s Department of Health and Social Care announcement the same day

* “The phrase ‘no evidence’ is a read flag for bad science communication”, by Scott Alexander

* 2003 theoretical paper with speculation about paracetamol and neurodevelopmental disorders

* 2013 sibling control study in the International Journal of Epidemiology

* “Ecological” study in Environmental Health from 2013 about circumcision rates, paracetamol, and autism

* 2015 Danish seven-year follow-up study

* 2019 cord blood study in JAMA Psychiatry

* 2021 “consensus statement” on paracetamol and neurodevelopment

* 2025 Japanese sibling-control study

* 2024 very large Swedish sibling-control study

* Study that sparked the current debate: the “Navigation Guide” review from Environmental Health

* Description of what “Navigation Guide” is

* STAT News on the evidence for a paracetamol-autism link; and on the controversy about the Dean of the Harvard School of Public Health

* White House statement defending the existence of the link

* BMJ article summing up the controversy

Credits

The Science Fictions podcast is produced by Julian Mayers at Yada Yada Productions.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sciencefictionspod.substack.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit sciencefictionspod.substack.com

Warning: As you can tell from the title, this podcast covers a potentially distressing topic.

Recent events have had us wondering about “copycat” violence. If people see violence reported in the media, are thRey more likely to do the same thing themselves? Does this apply to homicide, or suicide too?

We start with an episode on suicide—one on homicide is coming soon. What’s the evidence for suicide contagion? What does this mean for how we should portray suicide in the news, and in fiction? As ever, there’s a scientific controversy behind every question.

This is paid-only episode of the Science Fictions podcast: become a paid subscriber to hear the whole thing and read the show notes.

How can both of the following be true? (1) The world has record crop harvests this year; (2) climate change is ruining crop harvests and threatening food security. Does that make sense? Is it even really a contradiction?

We look into how climate change is affecting crop yields, whether positively or negatively, and try to answer the biggest question of all: do we actually have to hand it to climate change deniers who say “CO2 is plant food”?

The Science Fictions podcast is brought to you by Works in Progress magazine. You can now hear the editors of Works in Progress on their own podcast, talking to interesting people from the worlds of science, policy, technology, and history. Their most recent episode, on how traffic has ruined cities, is available at podcast.worksinprogress.co.

Show notes

* Hannah Ritchie’s new book, Clearing the Air

* Her article on record harvests in 2025

* An example of Matt Ridley making the argument that “CO2 is plant food”

* Our World in Data on crop yields

* Paper on the slower growth in crop yields due to climate change

* Nature Plants paper on trees in the Amazon getting bigger over time

* 2016 paper on the effects of climate change on crops and weeds

* EarthArxiv preprint on the balance of the effects of temperature and CO2 on crop yields

* The World Bank on fertilizer use per hectare

* And on cereal yields

* China’s fertiliser use peaking in around 2015

* Less good news from Sub-Saharan Africa

* Our older episode on climate sensitivity

* Global per capita dietary data on calories consumed per day

* Emissions from different kinds of food transportation

Credits

We’re very grateful to Dr. Hannah Ritchie from the University of Oxford and Our World in Data for talking to us for this episode. Any errors are ours, not hers. The Science Fictions podcast is produced by Julian Mayers at Yada Yada Productions.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sciencefictionspod.substack.com/subscribe

What is that? What is that!? What is it!? Augh! No! Not the bees! NOT THE BEES! AAAAAUGGGHHHHH MY EYES! MY EYES! AAAGGHHHH!!!!

This episode is about bees. And all insects, actually—are they in the process of being wiped out, in what’s become known as “insectageddon”? It’s one of those scientific beliefs that a lot of people kinda-sorta hold without knowing much about the evidence, so we thought we’d look into it.

Tune in to hear how, in exactly the same way as they affect our episodes on psychology and psychiatry and medicine, really difficult issues of measurement are at the bottom of the entire debate.

And once you’ve listened, feel free to buzz off.

We’ve been talking about Works in Progress magazine on this podcast for years, but it’s only ever been an online magazine. Now, you can become a subscriber and get a beautiful IRL physical copy of the magazine delivered to you: a gorgeously-produced item that’ll make you desperate to read the excellent articles on science, technology, and human progress within. Find out more at www.worksinprogress.co/print.

Show notes

* The Rothamstead insect survey

* The famous 2017 Krefeld paper in PLOS ONE

* An earlier 2012 survey study from the Zoological Society of London

* George Monbiot’s article where he coins the term “insectageddon”

* The 2019 meta-analysis finding 40% of insect species are at risk of extinction

* Response letter from Andrew Bladon et al.

* Improved 2020 meta-analysis from van Klink et al.

* Response letter

* New paper on the improvements to the Chicago River

* Two papers from the GLiTRS project

Credits

We’re very grateful to Dr. Andrew Bladon from the University of Reading for talking to us for this episode. As ever, all errors are ours. The Science Fictions podcast is produced by Julian Mayers at Yada Yada Productions.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sciencefictionspod.substack.com/subscribe

5—6—3—4—3—1—7—2

In the first episode under our new podcast name (it’s now the Science Fictions podcast!), we ask whatever happened to all those games that claimed to tell you your “brain age”—games that turned into a whole scientific literature on brain training.

We discuss: the still-unresolved question of whether training one specific cognitive ability makes you generally smarter; seemingly endless contrasting meta-analyses; and the small matter of what brain training might tell us about the nature of intelligence.

(If you can repeat the list of numbers from the top in reverse order then you have the brain of a 25-year-old. If you’re 25 or younger, then I don’t know what to tell you.)

We’re now an official part of the Works in Progress podcast world. You can find their other podcasts, including Hard Drugs, the one we talked about on today’s episode (about the remarkable development of a drug for HIV), at podcast.worksinprogress.co.

Show notes

* The 2008 PNAS paper that started the craze for working memory training

* The under-discussed rebuttal

* 2013 meta-analysis concluding there’s no evidence for far transfer

* 2015 meta-analysis concluding there is no convincing evidence brain training is effective

* 2016 meta-analysis saying there is no convincing evidence brain training is NOT effective

* Very useful and detailed 2016 review of the evidence and the methodological issues inherent in brain training (including active vs. passive control groups)

* 2020 meta-meta-analysis arguing that the active-passive distinction doesn’t matter

* 2023 review criticising the meta-meta-analysis

* And the authors’ own 2020 meta-analysis

* 2022 meta-analysis of commercial brain training in older people

Credits

The Science Fictions podcast is produced by Julian Mayers at Yada Yada Productions.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sciencefictionspod.substack.com/subscribe