Welcome to the new year! Obviously we start with some reflections on 2025 and we also give a shout-out to Haley Stevens and her article about Wikipedia in the Skeptic UK. In TWISH we learn that the practice of New Year’s resolutions is ancient although each resolution seldom lasts longer than a week or two. Then we look into the news for this week:

• INTERNATIONAL: Five lessons from fact checking in 2025
• ITALY: Lega only party refusing to agree not to use deepfake to attack political opponents
• SWEDEN: Fact check: How Sweden uses imported trash to produce electricity and heat homes
• INTERNATIONAL: Review of Autism Therapies finds they don’t hold up
• UK: Robin Ince quits The Infinite Monkey Cage
• UK: Use of AI for emotional support alarmingly widespread

The EU Chat Control 2.0 regulation is meant to prevent the spread of child abuse material but gets the Really Wrong Award for being ineffective and because it would have very serious effects on integrity. It’s a well meaning by bad idea.

Enjoy!

https://theesp.eu/podcast_archive/theesp-ep-512.html

Segments:

0:00:27 Intro

0:00:51 Greetings

0:22:32 TWISH

0:27:56 News

0:59:16 Really Wrong

1:02:39 Quote

1:05:02 Outro

1:06:25 Outtakes

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