Episode 54: Halloween special on psychic mediums

Episode 54: Halloween special on psychic mediums

Author: Tom Chivers and Stuart Ritchie October 29, 2024 Duration: 1:09:05

WoooOOOOOoooOOOOOoooo, it’s that time of year again! It’s Halloween, so it’s time for The Studies Show hosts to face their fears, and read the research from one of the weirdest areas of science, parapsychology.

This time it’s all about psychic mediums. What does it mean to test whether someone can talk to the dead? Are we any better at doing it now than we were 100 years ago at the height of “spiritualism”? And what do the most recent results tell us about the existence of the afterlife?

Happy Halloween! 🎃

This week, The Studies Show is brought to you by Semafor, the online newletter service that gives you everything you need to know about politics, business, economics, and much more in the form of email newsletters. This week we talked about Ben Smith’s newsletter on a topic that’s just as scary as Halloween: the US Presidential Election. You can find it and more excellent newsletters at www.semafor.com/newsletters.

Show notes

* Alfred Russel Wallace’s “Defence of Modern Spiritualism

* Article on Darwin’s views on spiritualism

* Peter Lamont’s book on Daniel Dunglas Home

* Sarcastic sceptical article on William Crookes’s botched investigation of Home

* Video of James Randi debunking the medium Peter Popoff

* Ray Hyman’s classic paper on cold reading

* 2021 meta-analysis on mediumship

* New Italian mediumship paper from 2022

* 2023 review on “Is Biological Death Final?” with discussion of the Drake Equation for parapsychology

Credits

The Studies Show 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

Every week, Tom Chivers and Stuart Ritchie pull apart the biggest arguments and most confusing claims making headlines. Science Fictions isn't just about celebrating breakthroughs; it's a necessary dive into the messy, contested, and often surprising realities of how science actually works. You'll hear them unpack heated debates, examine questionable studies, and explore why even solid research can sometimes lead to public confusion. This podcast serves as a guide through the noise, separating compelling evidence from overblown narratives. Each episode feels like a conversation with two deeply informed friends who aren't afraid to ask tough questions, offering clarity on topics that matter. For anyone curious about the stories behind the science headlines, this is an essential listen. Tune in for thoughtful analysis that goes beyond the press release, grounded in a genuine fascination with how we know what we know.
Author: Language: English Episodes: 100

Science Fictions
Podcast Episodes
Episode 36: Vitamin D [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 59:21
Preventing cancer. Curing depression. Single-handedly ending the COVID-19 pandemic. Oh, and something to do with your bones. Is there anything Vitamin D can’t do?Maybe the answer is: “quite a lot”. In this episode of The…
Episode 35: The loneliness epidemic [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 54:48
We can all agree that being lonely is bad. But apparently, science shows it’s really, really bad. Indeed, being lonely is so dangerous to your health that its equivalent to smoking 15 cigarettes a day. And it gets worse:…
Paid-only Episode 7: Youth gender medicine & the Cass Review [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 10:41
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit sciencefictionspod.substack.comThe evidence for puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones for young people with gender dysphoria is “remarkably weak”. That’s ac…
Episode 34: Does depression exist? [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:02:54
Several previous episodes of The Studies Show have covered depression and treatments for it, but none have really considered what depression is. It’s time to do that. It turns out that some scientists have made serious c…
Episode 33: Probability (and Tom's new book) [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:02:12
Everything is Predictable: How Bayes' Remarkable Theorem Explains the World. That’s the new book—out on April 25 in the UK and May 7 in the US—by our very own Tom Chivers!In this episode of The Studies Show, Tom and Stua…
Episode 32: Microplastics [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:00:30
Microplastics are everywhere: there are teeny-tiny plastic particles in your drinking water, your food, your air - and perhaps even in your internal organs. How worried should you be?In this episode of The Studies Show,…
Studies Show Short 1: Emotional Intelligence [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 22:33
As an extra way of thanking our paid subscribers, we’re going to post some shorter episodes in addition to the usual weekly hour-long ones.This first short episode (available to everyone for free; after this they’re paid…
Paid-only Episode 6: Bicycle helmets [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 10:06
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit sciencefictionspod.substack.comMost people think it’s obvious that you should wear a helmet when cycling. It might save your life if you fall off and hit your…
Episode 31: The trouble with meta-analysis [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:09:35
We all love to cite meta-analyses. They’re the review studies where scientists take every single piece of research ever published on a particular question, and then calculate the overall “true” effect across all of them.…

«1...678910