Consumed – Movie Review

Are we too old for all this GMO shit? Microblogganism and Cal certainly aren’t as they look at the 2016 anti-gmo drama “Consumed”. Intended as an examination of concerns over GMO’s, the film instead plays like one woman’s descent into madness. Featuring “GMO cops” whose sole job it is to drive aggressively near people, a thinly veiled mega corporation called Monsanto Clonestra. Monsanto  Clonestra is one evil, evil bunch of dudes lawsuits included!. Danny Glover stars as a good ole timey organic farmer relentlessly pursued by Monsanto Clonestra for cross pollination and he’s sure chemtrails are in use because of reasons.

Food Science Institute review: https://fo [...]

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Why People Reject Evidence, According to Matthew Facciani

What are some of the social and psychological factors which lead people to reject evidence that conflicts with their worldview? Joining us to tackle this and related questions is Matthew Facciani. Currently working on a PhD in sociology at the University of South Carolina, Matthew is an activist, speaker, and writer who teaches psychological statistics at USC. He received his B.A. in Psychology at Westminster College. Before switching into sociology, Matthew was working on a PhD in cognitive neuroscience. He currently writes for Patheos with his blog titled According to Matthew and hosts a podcast of the same name.

Links:

Matthew Facciani on Twitter: https://twitter.com/MatthewFacciani

Matthew Facciani’s website: http://www.matthewfacciani.com/

Matthew Facciani, “The Science of Why W [...]

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What is the public not understanding about GM foods that creates the significant gap between scientists and the public in how each views biotechnology? What are the science and public-policy benefits of widespread use of biotechnology in food and medicine that naysayers are not accounting for? And in what ways does embracing science and calling out fear-based myths impact justice and democracy?

Joining us as a special guest on this episode to discuss these questions is author, writer, and science activist Kavin Senapathy. Co-founder and director of the international, pro-science, and pro-biotech movement March Against Myths, Kavin communicates to the public on science topics ranging from health, medicine, biotechnology, agriculture and food. She’s co-author of the book “The Fear Babe: Shattering Vani Hari’s Glass House,” which discusses popular food misconceptions and why they proliferate despite evidence against them. As a mom to two children, Kavin often tackles he [...]

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What is race? Where did the concept of biological races come from, and does it make any logical or scientific sense? What does the history of human migration, invention, and conquest really teach us about the role of race in shaping human civilization? Why are racial stereotypes so powerful in society, and what can we do to effectively challenge racism?

In this episode, we tackle these questions with special guest Guy P. Harrison, journalist and author of the 2010 book “Race and Reality: What Everyone Should Know about Our Biological Diversity.” We talk about both the science and the social issues surrounding race and diversity, correcting the false assumptions and popular misconceptions that lead many people to think that biological race defines and divides humanity. The reality turns out not to be that simple.

Links:

Guy P. Harrison on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Harrisonauthor

Guy P. Harrison’s w [...]

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The Hormone Myth –

How many times have you heard a woman be dismissed as “hormonal”, or her rationality be questioned, because of assumed endocrine imbalance? Chances are you’ve heard the phrases “on the rag” or “PMSing” used to put someone down, or been witness to jokes about that “time of the month” where “women get moody” etc.

In this episode, our special guest Robyn Stein DeLuca, author of The Hormone Myth: How Junk Science, Gender Politics, and Lies About PMS Keep Women Down, joins Natalie and Jenna to discuss whether hormone fluctuations really play such a huge role in women’s behaviour. We talk post-natal depression, the menstrual cycle, social conditioning and behavioural assumptions, gender bias & perceptions and how much hormones really play a role in our cognitive variance.

Links:

Robyn Stein DeLuca on Twitter: HTTPS://Twitter.com/RSDeLuca
Robyn’s Website: http://delucainsight.com/
The Hormone Myth boo [...]

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What can a reincarnating Time Lord who gallivants across time and space in a 1950s-era police box whilst battling evil robots and aliens teach us about real-world science? To answer this question, Nathan, Jenn, and Cal are joined by Simon Guerrier, a documentary filmmaker, science fiction writer, and Whovian, to discuss the ideas in his book “The Scientific Secrets of Doctor Who,” co-authored with astronomer Marek Kukula.

In what ways does the Doctor in his various incarnations exemplify the scientific method in action? Has the life of science imitated the art of Doctor Who in any way? What is the source of the TARDIS’s power, and what does the Eye of Harmony have to do with black holes? What laws of time obtain in the Doctor Who universe, and do any of these in-universe laws conflict with what physicists know about time? How many episodes of Doctor Who are lost and/or missing, and how many have been recovered by dedicated, treasure-hunting Whovians? Can Simon Guerrier [...]

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In this episode of Trolling with Logic, the crew takes a hard look at the magical world of young-earth creationism, as envisioned by everyone’s favorite creationist Kent Hovind. Before spending the last decade in federal prison for tax fraud and evasion, Hovind was a traveling evangelist preaching creationism and attacking evolution, armed with wacky strawmen. There’s no shortage of weird and wonderful nonsense to unravel on this fascinating tour through the mind of a creationist: An Earth that’s 4,499,994,000 years younger than it looks (because scientists, like the IRS, are apparently agents of Satan), dinosaurs living with humans who live to be hundreds of years old, a global flood via magical comet, anti-government conspiracy theories, a single drop of water that can cover the whole Earth if you just spread it thin enough, and more.

Links:

Hovind’s “doctoral dissertation”: https [...]

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In this episode, the Trolling with Logic crew reviews the 2012 sci-fi travesty “Prometheus,” aka “Erich von D?niken’s Wet Dream.” It’s the prequel to the classic sci-fi horror “Alien” franchise, but this time it’s not a wonderful Lovecraftian tale of blood, terror, entropy, and female empowerment. Instead, “Prometheus” is about an over-expository, scientifically-illiterate mess of a movie that features a spaceship full of god-botherers who don’t understand how carbon-dating works and a misanthropic android who embark on a voyage to a distant planet to unravel the mystery of where humans came from.
To discover the answer, which would make even Michael Tellinger blush in embarrassment, our heroes must discover for themselves the spiritual joy of natural xeno-child birth. And also the terror of only being able to run in a straight line when running from a rolling donut-shaped alien spacecraft.

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Mission to Mars
In this episode, the Trolling with Logic crew reviews “Mission to Don Cheadle’s Tent,” aka “Skittles on Mars,” aka Brian De Palma’s 2000 fantasy film “Mission to Mars.” This movie tells the story of a band of scientific illiterates who are exiled to Mars on an ill-fated mission sponsored by Mars Inc. and Dr. Pepper Snapple Group. On the voyage there, the crew succeeds in demonstrating their utter incompetence, yet still somehow manage to land on the red planet unscathed so they can plant an American flag and fail at science even more.
“Mission to Mars” IMDb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0183523/

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In this episode of Trolling with Logic, the team learns that the only thing better than blasting off for Mars is a high-stakes helicopter chase in a desert on Earth. Nathan, Cal, and Jenn review the 1977 action thriller “Capricorn One,” the story of three astronauts who are unwittingly recruited to participate in a government conspiracy to fake a Mars landing and who must run for their lives from government mercenaries when they refuse to play along with the ruse. It’s also the story of an intrepid journalist who helps expose the hoax thanks to the government being powerless to kill him no matter what.

We talk about the cultural impact this film had on the conspiracy-theory community in general and the moon-landing conspiracy theorists specifically and the implausibility of such a massive conspiracy ever getting off the ground. We also ask some important questions: Why are government snipers such poor shots? How much does it cost to crop-dust a field? Will Nathan’s p [...]

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“For someone who was never meant for this world, I must confess I’m suddenly having a hard time leaving it. Of course, they say every atom in our bodies was once part of a star. Maybe I’m not leaving… maybe I’m going home.” - In this episode of TwL Cal, Nate, Jenn and Marty review the cult classic Sci-Fi “Gattaca” which is a dystopian look at a possible designer society where children are screened for genetic deficiences and the problems this would bring.

From wikipedia

“Gattaca is a 1997 American science fiction film written and directed by Andrew Niccol. It stars Ethan Hawke and 

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Be prepared, this episode of Trolling with Logic is very science-heavy. But that’s why we love it. Nathan, Cal, and Jenna are joined by none other than Jenna’s brother Fred Bowyer! Fred Bowyer studies at The University of Edinburgh’s School of GeoSciences, where he is working in a PhD program specializing in the geochemistry of the Ediacaran Period — the period lasting from about 635 to 542 million years ago — which preceded the famous Cambrian Period.

Fred provides us with an overview of the research he’s involved with, and how modern geochemical and geophysical techniques and technology have enabled scientists to resolve Darwin’s famous dilemma and come to an understanding of the environmental conditions way back at the dawn of animal life prior to the so-called “Cambrian Explosion.” We talk about what equipment scientists in this field are using, a primer on how fossils form, why pseudoscientific creationist arguments against geological dating te [...]

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We’re mad as hell, and we’re not going to take it anymore! In this episode Nathan, Cal and Jenn review Paddy Chayefsky’s 1976 dark satire “Network,” the eerily-prophetic and highly prescient story of a down-and-out television news anchor named Howard Beale whose on-air descent into madness turns him into a populist icon that millions tune in to see. But when his pro-human spirit message runs afoul the agenda of the “corporate cosmology” of the infotainment industry, “the mad prophet of the airwaves” Beale changes course and begins preaching a new message: nihilism.
Links

IMDb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074958/ 
Dave Itzkoff’s book-length analysis of the movie, mentioned by Nathan on this episode: https://www.amazon.com/Mad-Hell-Network-Fateful-Angriest/dp/0805095691 
James Parker, “Madder Than Hell: [...]

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 Content Warning: In this episode there are lengthy discussions about suicide, mental illness and specifically, depression. 

In this episode we review the 2016 movie “Christine” and the issues arising from the film. Christine is a biographical look at the life and tragic suicide of the news reporter, Christine Chubbuck. Christine infamously shot herself live on air in 1974.

Film synopsis “In Sarasota, Fla., circa 1974, an ambitious, 29-year-old reporter is relentlessly motivated to succeed. She knows she has talent, but being a driven career woman in the ’70s comes with its own challenges, especially when competition for a promotion and a tumultuous home life lead to a dissolution of self. With ratings in the cellar, the station manager issues a mandate to deliver juicier and more exploitative stories, a story firmly at odds with her serious brand of issue-based journali [...]

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Captain’s Log, Stardate 11708.05. The Trolling with Logic crew welcomes aboard Dr. Ethan Siegel, an astrophysicist with expertise in cosmological perturbations. He has reported on his journeys “Beyond the Galaxy” in his book carrying that title, published two years ago. We have invited him on board to brief us on his latest research endeavor, an upcoming book entitled “Treknology: The Science of Star Trek from Tricorders to Warp Drive.” The question we are trying to answer: Are the technological advances that make possible the universe inhabited by millions of Trekkies an impossible pipe dream, or is such technology becoming more and more achievable with every forward step in understanding and harnessing the physical world?

From tricorders, hyposprays, replicators, and Synthehol to warp drive, holodecks, and the ethical conundrums we must face if we ever get our transporter working, we explore just how blurry the line between science fiction and science is becoming [...]

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In May 2014, two 12 year-old girls lured another girl their age into the woods in the town of Waukesha, Wisconsin. Their victim was stabbed multiple times but narrowly survived. What drove these two young girls to commit such an act? They were inspired by the fictional online Creepypasta character known as Slenderman, a very tall, thin, faceless, humanoid figure with tentacles. In another TwL movie review, Nathan, Cal, and Lundi discuss the chilling HBO documentary “Beware the Slenderman,” which examines this incident with actual footage from detectives’ interrogations of the two girls, interviews with the girls’ families, and interviews with psychologists, psychiatrists, and experts in “digital folklore” and meme replication.

Links:

Beware the Slenderman official website: http://www.hbo.com/documentaries/beware-the-slenderman

“The Slender Man” page on the Creepypasta Wiki:

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On this episode, Cal and Nathan speak with special guest Miles Greb, a Seattle-based comic writer, folk singer, and advocate for science, skepticism, and atheism. He has authored science-and-skepticism-based comics in the optimistic sci-fi tradition, including “After the Gold Rush,” a series of comics chronicling the adventures of a distant future in which a 16 year-old biologist who grew up on Saturn’s moon Titan returns to a sparsely-populated Earth to find she is the last scientist.

We talk to Miles about the value of comics as a storytelling medium, the importance of optimistic sci-fi in a landscape dominated by pessimistic dystopian stories, why science and the humanities should cross paths, and his experiences advocating for science outreach and education through campaigns like the March for Science.

Links:

Miles Greb’s website: http://www.afterthegoldrush.space/

Miles Greb on Twitter:

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Are we living in a post-truth era? What is “fake news,” and what problems does it pose to critical thinkers and reason-oriented activists? What is the alternative to “alternative facts”? In this episode, we speak with Dr. Gleb Tsipursky, a consultant, speaker, and author who specializes in behavioral science and the psychology of decision-making. Dr. Tsipursky is the President of the non-profit organization Intentional Insights, dedicated to advocating for truth and reason in politics. He is the author and organizer of the Pro-Truth Pledge, part of a movement designed to reverse the tide of lies and fake news in politics and the wider culture by providing incentives to public figures to base their statements on verifiable truth.

Gleb Tsipursky’s website: http://glebtsipursky.com/.

Gleb Tsipursky on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Gleb_Tsipursky

Intentional Insights website: http://intentionalinsights.org/

The Pro-Truth Pledge: https://www.protruth [...]

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