
Sign up to save your podcasts
Or


Shhh. Is someone coming? Okay, we’ll make this quick. There are a lot of scary things going on in the world. Naturally you’re fearful. But sometimes fear has a sister emotion: suspicion. A nagging worry about what’s really going on. You know, the stuff they aren’t telling you. Don’t share this, but we have evidence that both our fear response and our tendency to believe conspiracy theories are evolutionarily adaptive.
A sociologist who studies fear tells us why we’re addicted to its thrill when we control the situation, and how the media exploit our fear of losing control to keep us on edge. Plus, we examine some alien “cover-ups” and discover why it’s not just the tinfoil hat crowd that falls for outrageous plots.
It’s Skeptic Check …. but you didn’t hear it from us!
Guests:
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
By Big Picture Science4.5
912912 ratings
Shhh. Is someone coming? Okay, we’ll make this quick. There are a lot of scary things going on in the world. Naturally you’re fearful. But sometimes fear has a sister emotion: suspicion. A nagging worry about what’s really going on. You know, the stuff they aren’t telling you. Don’t share this, but we have evidence that both our fear response and our tendency to believe conspiracy theories are evolutionarily adaptive.
A sociologist who studies fear tells us why we’re addicted to its thrill when we control the situation, and how the media exploit our fear of losing control to keep us on edge. Plus, we examine some alien “cover-ups” and discover why it’s not just the tinfoil hat crowd that falls for outrageous plots.
It’s Skeptic Check …. but you didn’t hear it from us!
Guests:
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

64,037 Listeners

11,419 Listeners

1,087 Listeners

1,225 Listeners

603 Listeners

753 Listeners

1,349 Listeners

324 Listeners

3,895 Listeners

902 Listeners

2,880 Listeners

565 Listeners

548 Listeners

961 Listeners

407 Listeners

821 Listeners

6,441 Listeners

1,537 Listeners

363 Listeners

474 Listeners

8,318 Listeners

2,365 Listeners

384 Listeners