Truth Social's AI chatbot thinks "balanced news" means exclusively quoting Fox News, which is about as balanced as someone hoarding 7,470 browser tabs on a single computer (yes, that actually happened).
Meanwhile, Australia's deadliest killer isn't the poisonous spider lurking in your toilet - it's the friendly horse in the paddock next door. And if you think that's absurd, wait until you hear about the Russian oligarchs who keep accidentally falling out of windows or the two bank robbers who covered themselves in lemon juice to make themselves invisible, leading to an entire psychological phenomenon being named after them.
Truth Social's "Balanced" AI: When Fair Means Fox
Truth Social launched an AI chatbot that promises to deliver balanced, unbiased news by pulling from diverse sources across the political spectrum. Sounds great in theory. But the reality? This digital oracle of objectivity gets most of its information from Fox News and other right-leaning outlets, then claims it's providing fair and balanced reporting. Hmm.
The AI is programmed to diversify sources and avoid bias, but somehow keeps landing on the same conservative talking points. Sounds like confirmation bias is coded right into its algorithms. Nothing says "balanced journalism" quite like an AI that thinks diversity means reporting on both Fox News and Fox Business.
The Browser Tab Champion: 7,470 Tabs and Counting
In 2015, a Reddit user achieved what might be humanity’s most pointless world record: 7,470 browser tabs open simultaneously - and not just a whole bunch of empty new tabs like the guy who tried to get to a billion.
Most of us struggle to keep track of five tabs, but this person turned their browser into a digital archaeological dig where every click was a journey through layers of forgotten internet history. It's either the ultimate expression of digital curiosity or proof that some people really need to learn about bookmarks.
Australia's Real Killers: Horses, Not Spiders
Everyone knows Australia is trying to kill you with its venomous snakes, deadly spiders, and man-eating sharks. But our country’s actual top assassin is the humble horse. According to data from the Australian National Coronial Information System, these four-legged farm animals cause more deaths than all the exotic killers combined, proving that Darwin's principles of natural selection work in the most mundane ways possible.
While tourists worry about funnel-web spiders and box jellyfish, Australians are getting kicked to death by Clydesdales. It turns out the real danger isn't the creatures that look scary - it's the ones that look like they belong in a children's book about friendship and carrots.
The Dunning-Kruger Effect: Born from Lemon Juice Logic
Two bank robbers once covered themselves in lemon juice before attempting to rob banks, genuinely believing it would make them invisible to security cameras. Their logic? Lemon juice is used in invisible ink, so obviously it would make them invisible too. Duh.This spectacularly failed heist led psychologists to identify the Dunning-Kruger effect - the phenomenon where people with limited knowledge massively overestimate their competence.
These citrus-scented criminals became the poster children for why a little knowledge is often quite dangerous. Their story perfectly explains why social media is full of people who think watching three YouTube videos makes them experts on everything from vaccines to quantum physics.
Russian Oligarchs and the Window Problem
Russian elites have developed a concerning habit of mysteriously falling out of windows, meeting untimely deaths that would make even the most paranoid conspiracy theorist raise an eyebrow. The frequency of these "accidents" among Putin's inner circle has turned defenestration into a modern political art form.
So major science revelations for this week? Don't trust an AI that only reads one news source, maybe learn what bookmarks are for, respect horses more than spiders, remember that a little knowledge can be dangerous and if you're ever in Russia, whatever you do, don’t go near the windows.
CHAPTERS:
00:00 Truth Social's AI Chatbot
01:54 Media Bias and Source Selection
06:50 Desktop Organisation and Tab Overload
10:56 Animal-Related Deaths in Australia
14:28 Death by Farm Animals
16:45 The Dunning-Kruger Effect Explained
18:08 The Infamous Lemon Juice Robbery
20:12 Suspicious Deaths of Russian Oligarchs
26:31 Nostalgia and the Return to Analog
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[00:00:01] ROD: We've had a lot of fun on this show with ai. We've talked about gr AI's compulsive racism, which of course I wildly applaud chat, GP t's horrendous medical advice. So I simply couldn't resist an article I saw in Wide Magazine from early August. It was talking about the new truth social AI chatbot.
[00:00:19] What could possibly go wrong.
[00:00:36] WILL: It's time for a little bit of science. Cia, I'm will grant associate professor in science communication from the Australian National University.
[00:00:47] ROD: I am Rod Lambert, so I'm a 30 year science communication veteran, We're in the mind of a 15 ish year old boy.
[00:00:52] WILL: today for you, continuing on with a, but not really.
[00:00:56] I, I've got a, well, that was dumb.
[00:00:59]
[00:00:59] WILL: I'm gonna have some fun with animals.
[00:01:00]
[00:01:01] ROD: We might even let Alex talk again today, depending on our mood. He's our producer for all you people wondering. Who's Alex?
[00:01:07] WILL: So truth social. Yeah. I mean, 'cause Okay. We already had gr out there.
[00:01:12] Yeah, we had gr you know, it was, it was a pretty right wing sort of ai. I mean, going Mecca Hitler calling itself Mecca Hitler.
[00:01:17] ROD: Well, to be fair, it warmed up to it by going through the white genocide in South Africa, working up to Mecca
[00:01:22] WILL: Hitler. Yeah. Well
[00:01:23] ROD: Well give it a break.
[00:01:23] WILL: Yeah. So truth social a, does it have enough data to train on or is it just all Trump's
[00:01:28] ROD: Fuck, there's a lot of data. Yeah. Oh yeah, there's heaps. There's heaps. launched on August 6th. So for us, you view people in the future. That's a long time ago for us, a couple of weeks. it's powered by Perplexity, ai.
[00:01:38] WILL: Ai, Ai, yep. yep.
[00:01:39] ROD: So the engine behind the scenes right, is your perplexities, and that answers questions using large language models, live web searches, et cetera, et cetera, as you'd expect.
[00:01:48] And apparently Perplexity likes to draw its sources from left and center ish.
[00:01:53] WILL: Oh, okay.
[00:01:53] Allegedly.
[00:01:54] ROD: so Wired, they asked the bot first the true social bot. How do you navigate media bias? You know, what do I do to be [00:02:00] less biased? It says, diversify your sources. It's good. Rely on news outlets across the political spectrum.
[00:02:06] Mm-hmm. Including those from both left-leaning and right-leaning perspectives. Sure. So that's pretty good. Okay.
[00:02:11] WILL: Okay.
[00:02:12] ROD: Um, weirdly though, the pieces, the sources it cite for that response, four of them are Fox News pieces, and the fifth one, a 400 page report from the us health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Junior's Health and Human Services Department, titled Treatment for Pediatric Gender Dysphoria.
[00:02:27] So for some reason, that was the fifth source at quoted about how to be more media diverse
[00:02:32] WILL: Okay. Okay.
[00:02:33] ROD: and less bias. So that's a good start. I think we're going well. So the Wired guys, they, I think it's guys, the wired people kept on. Testing the chat bot pinged with a bunch of questions and quizzes, and there were a number of 'em that didn't say exactly how many, but many tests.
[00:02:49] It only highlighted from seven different sources in total for all the things it looked at. They all came from Fox News, Fox Business for Epoch times, newsmax, just the news, the Washington Times and Breitbart. So no matter what it did, and it's fair and biased, it went to, okay, those seven sources, hilariously, there was one like this.
[00:03:11] I, I love this. This one query that they managed, they were reported on. The question was, what is 30 times?
[00:03:17] WILL: No one could work that out.
[00:03:18] ROD: No. Well, the AI could, but it offered a source, which I think is good. That's what you should do. And it source was an article from Fox Business called Inflation Reduction Act, estimated to induce mortality 30 times more than COVID.
[00:03:32] WILL: Okay. It had the 30 times in there. That's how you would work out what, 30 times, 30 is. By checking uh, a
[00:03:38] ROD: yeah. All, all of the internet.
[00:03:39] WILL: of the internet that mentioned 30 times
[00:03:41] ROD: in Mm-hmm. And it,
[00:03:42] WILL: tell you got
[00:03:43] Yeah. So 30 times 30 the average, it's gonna be floorboard, COVID.
[00:03:47] ROD: Yep. Exactly. So that's pretty cool. every query they asked that it only ever gave five sources, never used more than five sources. So for some reason that was its thing. So the joiner, the joiner says to the bot. Uh, Talk to me about your [00:04:00] biases Truth. Social chatbot, I source information from left wing centrist and right wing news outlets depending on the nature of the user's query and what sources are returned in the search result.
[00:04:10] It says very upright.
[00:04:12] WILL: Very upright.
[00:04:12] ROD: upright. My responses are designed to critically analyze and synthesize information from all credible perspectives to ensure accuracy and balance. And it returned the sources for that response as five Fox Business articles. So that's not bad though. Well done
[00:04:28] WILL: Fox.
[00:04:29] ROD: Okay.
[00:04:29] 'cause you know, that sounds all very reasonable, but that said, it's not as wacky as you thought. So it did not agree, for example, that the 2020 election was stolen. It did not stick up for that position. Okay. So that's impressive. I was surprised. about immigration, it, it's a bit up and down, but it net positive.
[00:04:45] It basically comes out as net positive. Immigration is net positive
[00:04:47] to the Country,
[00:04:48] Okay. Which again, is
[00:04:48] WILL: surprising
[00:04:49] You, you, but you need to tell me something shocking about this ai.
[00:04:52] ROD: I'll see what I can
[00:04:52] do.
[00:04:53] WILL: Ah
[00:04:54] ROD: the review of the current Trump term so far was quote, not exactly glowing. Oh,
[00:04:58] WILL: Oh,
[00:04:59] ROD: it notes particular voter dissent on the economy and inflation.
[00:05:02] WILL: Oh,
[00:05:02] ROD: So I know, I'm shocked too. Yeah, I see your disappointment and I get
[00:05:05] WILL: it.
[00:05:05] Yeah, no, I want it to go unhinged.
[00:05:07] ROD: Some of those answers actually cite Associated Press articles, but they've been republished in Fox News, so it does always go to those sources when perplexity is operating with truth. So I hear what you're asking.
[00:05:19] What about the Epstein in the room?
[00:05:21] WILL: What about the Epstein in the
[00:05:22] ROD: I can see it written on your, on your eyelids. It describes the connection between Trump and Epstein as quote, tenuous. It says. There's no credible evidence in the search results that the Daily Beast published on an article referencing a tape in which Epstein described Trump as his closest friend.
[00:05:37] No credible evidence specifically talking about that. Evidence that isn't when you ask Perplexity, it didn't deny it. And it's cited daily Beast, Yahoo Vox and Yale Review. So Perplexity is acting in the service of its new master here and the Truth Bot, its sources for that response. Four Fox News articles and one from Brightbart.
[00:05:56] Weird, weird. Shocking, right? weird,
[00:05:57] shocking. what you're noticing they [00:06:00] say is one feature owners quote, source selection. source selection can take any number of forms for any number of needs from internal documentation within an organization, custom data sets, or as is the case you described domain filtering.
[00:06:15] See programmatic specificities are getting in their way. Okay? This is their choice for their audience, and we are committed to developer and customer choice. So of course, also, perplexity does not discriminate against any developers for any political reasons, and they emphasize they've never claimed that AI is a hundred percent
[00:06:32] WILL: accurate.
[00:06:33] So you say you go to a right wing uh, social network and use the AI there. It's gonna draw on right wing
[00:06:39] ROD: Weirdly, they're not saying it does, they're just not saying it wouldn't. And if it does, and they're not saying it does, but if it did, that would be reasonable in the service of all good things.
[00:06:50] WILL: I don't know if it's something that you would like to admit, I love seeing people's computer desktops. not the content of their emails or anything.
[00:06:57] I'm not, I'm not interested in that. I'm just, I'm just interested in how people organize themselves at work. Like,
[00:07:03] ROD: I, I've noticed,
[00:07:04] WILL: what is their desktop? Like, where do they store their files? How do they organize things? What's going on? I've, I've seen people, like, like one version I've told you before, you know, all of the files are literally on the desktop, like, like the images of the files and you just have to sort of sort them by moving them around to, to find the file that you want.
[00:07:21] ROD: But
[00:07:21] WILL: um, I've seen people with, email unread counts. In the hundreds of thousands. Um, well, in,
[00:07:30] ROD: Well, I'd have a fucking stroke. Like if I was, if I had my Internets and I saw that I'd, I'd be in an ambulance just going, how do I, how do I. Uh,
[00:07:37] WILL: I guess at a hundred thousand you've given up
[00:07:39] ROD: oh, I think you gave up way earlier.
[00:07:40] Yeah,
[00:07:41] I think a
[00:07:41] WILL: Like a thousand. Yeah. You're not in touch. Like, but anyway, as someone who likes to keep that number low, a hundred thousand stress me out,
[00:07:48] so anyway, one of the ones that I really do love is, you know, when you see someone's desktop, often, often it's like when they're sharing their screen to, to show something
[00:07:55] ROD: Oh, the accidental Zoom
[00:07:56] WILL: thing.
[00:07:56] and they share their screen and then it shows their [00:08:00] tabs and, and like it's the product of a disordered mind.
[00:08:04] I have a few tabs open at any time. I might have a dozen. Yeah, something like
[00:08:08] ROD: That's healthy.
[00:08:09] WILL: and a bit of my brain was like. how far can it go and what is the world record for? Most number of tabs open at
[00:08:17] ROD: time?
[00:08:17] when it depends on the machine, right?
[00:08:19] WILL: Well, First I was like.
[00:08:21] Surely no one has measured a world record for number of tabs open in their desktop,
[00:08:27] ROD: How wrong you were, how wrong you.
[00:08:29] WILL: And surprisingly, yes, there was discourse out there about who has the world record for multi number of tabs open.
[00:08:36] ROD: is it heated and impassion
[00:08:38] WILL: discourse?
[00:08:39] Not quite. Not quite. well, there were certainly people that were saying, I want evidence.
[00:08:43] That's ridiculous.
[00:08:44] ROD: get off the internet. You're boring bastard.
[00:08:46] WILL: bastar. So the first claim I saw, was in 2012, Mike Smith from British Columbia,
[00:08:52] ROD: Smith, fake name
[00:08:53] WILL: claims the world record with 2,610 Google Chrome tabs open.
[00:08:57] ROD: No way in hell lets the world
[00:08:59] WILL: record.
[00:08:59] Well, so.
[00:09:00] ROD: that's only four. Like there's one in the
[00:09:04] WILL: Reddit user, red Claw 42 trumped that in 2015 with 3,333. No, not
[00:09:09] ROD: No, not competitive.
[00:09:11] WILL: one that is, is routinely held to be plausible.
[00:09:16] Hazel had 7,470 tabs open for over two years, and these were real tabs. Now there's a difference here. I've seen people just hammering the open
[00:09:24] ROD: tabs new empty
[00:09:25] WILL: Yeah. And she kept them all open for nostalgia reasons. I like to scroll back and see clusters of tabs
[00:09:31] ROD: she could store them all in, in a file called bookmarks.
[00:09:35] WILL: now then we get into the, then we get into the big numbers. Like I saw someone claim 41,000.
[00:09:41] Good. John s reckons he has a hundred, a hundred thousand and 22 tabs open in 2016.
[00:09:49] ROD: Why
[00:09:50] WILL: Mr. Yeas Easter tried to get a billion tabs
[00:09:53] ROD: open,
[00:09:54] WILL: but, but his.
[00:09:56] ROD: I'll have a hundred thousand, fuck
[00:09:57] WILL: it.
[00:09:57] A billion.
[00:09:59] ROD: I'm gonna add three
[00:09:59] [00:10:00] zeros.
[00:10:00] WILL: actually think though, if you, you are clicking open tab, like even if, or you know the fastest, you can click a few times a second.
[00:10:06] ROD: It's how quickly you get bored
[00:10:07] WILL: a
[00:10:07] billion seconds is actually a long time. I don't doubt you
[00:10:10] ROD: you. Isn't that nine human lifetimes?
[00:10:12] WILL: and There's also people going for speed records who can open the most tabs. Like there's 239 in 30 seconds. This
[00:10:18] is how quickly you can click. Yeah, exactly. That's ridiculous. It's ridiculous. So, I have no purpose in this other than to say I like the fact that there are people out there who have at least verifiably 7,470 tabs open, that contain actual information, not just, I have a tab open.
[00:10:38] So, so listener, if you have a number of tabs, tell us how many is the appropriate number and how many you want to have open.
[00:10:44] ROD: gotta include in the email cheers at a little bit of science.com Include the URL of everyone in that email. I, I got some nice, nice new data
[00:10:55] you. Ooh.
[00:10:56] WILL: Ooh. From the Australian National Coronial Information System.
[00:10:59] it tells us how people die every so often and you know, it's only when we look at populations on the whole, we can find interesting ways people die. Obviously there's boring ones, heart attacks and cancer that sucks. Age. So, you know, there's always, obviously how many people die from having vending machines fall on them?
[00:11:16] How many people
[00:11:17] I don't have that data in front of me right now. I've got, animal deaths.
[00:11:20] ROD: deaths of animals. Not death
[00:11:21] WILL: animals. No. Deaths by animal. Deaths by animals. So, so I've got a, I've got a top 10 here.
[00:11:26] Mm-hmm. And, um, you can, you can play guests along. Mm-hmm. Um, you might not expect number one, but there's a, there's an entrant here and I've got a question about this entrant. And
[00:11:37] so who
[00:11:38] do you reckon, who do you reckon in Australia? Which, which animal is the top killer of humans?
[00:11:44] ROD: Does animal include insects?
[00:11:45] WILL: Ah, yeah. Yeah. The
[00:11:46] ROD: because then the boring one is mosquitoes
[00:11:48] WILL: Use your brain, man. How many people die of mosquitoes in Australia?
[00:11:52] ROD: It's increasing 'cause of climate
[00:11:53] change especially is coming down from the north, you know, with the Ross River Fever and your dengue.
[00:11:57] Okay,
[00:11:57] WILL: Not much, man.
[00:11:58] ROD: then I'm gonna say, I'm [00:12:00] gonna
[00:12:00] WILL: say,
[00:12:00] globally, yes, you are correct.
[00:12:01] Mosquitoes are the most deadly animal globally. Thank you. Globally
[00:12:05] in Australia.
[00:12:05] ROD: It's probably cats.
[00:12:08] WILL: Hmm.
[00:12:10] No
[00:12:10] ROD: toxoplasmosis. No,
[00:12:12] WILL: No. Is that
[00:12:13] ROD: that was for Alex. 'cause Alex used to be a
[00:12:15] WILL: doctor Look, look for those. For those of you, who might think Australia's native animals are savage? Dangerous, scary,
[00:12:21] Cass War. They don't make it very high ware.
[00:12:23] They did not make it on the
[00:12:25] ROD: list
[00:12:25] That's because when they do kill someone, it's spectacular. But it's not common.
[00:12:28] WILL: I've, I've been in a Cass sites like I was a kid at the time. and we were having a picnic and, and a Cass where he comes out and, and we go, all right, everyone in the car. we are sitting in the, and it's tapping on the window
[00:12:37] ROD: Get the shotgun. Get the
[00:12:39] shotgun.
[00:12:39] WILL: is a Jurassic Park scene.
[00:12:40] 'cause this thing is a dinosaur, like
[00:12:43] ROD: how how tall? Like car height? What are they like four, five feet tall
[00:12:46] WILL: No, no, no, no, no, no, no. The head would be above like, it,
[00:12:49] ROD: oh, the emu size
[00:12:50] WILL: Bigger. Like they're, they're heavier than an emu, so the head's like
[00:12:54] six,
[00:12:54] ROD: for our international listeners, an emu is like a huge chicken, but very
[00:12:57] WILL: different.
[00:12:58] Yeah. This is a, a fat, huge chicken and colorful, and it's got like a dinosaur, it looks like a beak on the top and it was tapping on the windows and we're like,
[00:13:06] ROD: I'm gonna kill your
[00:13:07] WILL: Well, no, it didn't look aggressive. It looks I guess in that friendly way where it could accidentally kill
[00:13:12] ROD: you.
[00:13:12] Murderously
[00:13:12] WILL: curious. Yeah.
[00:13:13] ROD: Yeah.
[00:13:13] WILL: murderously. curious. I just wanna see your
[00:13:16] ROD: Yeah. What do they look, what do they the same color as mine
[00:13:21] and
[00:13:21] tasty. Well, you're not using 'em anymore.
[00:13:23] I might as well have a crack.
[00:13:25] WILL: But native animals do not make even the, well, they don't make it until number
[00:13:29] four. I was gonna
[00:13:29] say in Australia's, most Australia's No, no,
[00:13:32] ROD: I meant spiders
[00:13:33] WILL: Ah,
[00:13:34] ROD: sharks. Exactly.
[00:13:36] WILL: spiders don't make the list.
[00:13:38] ROD: No. What
[00:13:39] I, I
[00:13:39] WILL: though Australia has champion spiders of, poisonous and
[00:13:42] ROD: and snakes.
[00:13:43] WILL: Champion. Yeah. Snakes. Snakes do make the
[00:13:45] ROD: list.
[00:13:45] Thank God.
[00:13:46] WILL: number one, butterflies, horses.
[00:13:48] ROD: You know why? Because you think they're a dog, but they're not. That's why I don't trust 'em. I look at 'em and go like, people act and treat them like
[00:13:56] they're
[00:13:56] WILL: You don't think they're like a dog? no one thinks they're like a dog.
[00:13:59] ROD: think they're like [00:14:00] a dog. That's why I don't interact with 'em. 'cause I know
[00:14:02] WILL: not. That does not kill people too. If you think they're a dog.
[00:14:05] Nah. Like it's boring.
[00:14:06] ROD: Kicked in the head, thrown from a horse. It's fallen
[00:14:09] WILL: off a horse, 60%. Like, like it's, it's, and, and thrown from a horse.
[00:14:12] ROD: the
[00:14:12] horse's
[00:14:13] WILL: fault. Yeah,
[00:14:13] I get it. Well,
[00:14:14] ROD: that's like blaming the ladder. You put the ladder up in a dumb way and fell off the ladder. Didn't kill you. You did. Or gravity.
[00:14:20] WILL: so anyway, 2001 to 2021. So 20 years. 222 people murdered by horses.
[00:14:26] Uhhuh,
[00:14:26] ROD: And deliberately murdered by horses. Yeah.
[00:14:28] WILL: But they fell off
[00:14:29] ROD: 222 since when
[00:14:31] WILL: over a 20 year period.
[00:14:32] So it's, it's not fast.
[00:14:33] ROD: that's almost two and a half people a year.
[00:14:35] WILL: It's 11 people a year,
[00:14:37] so, Yeah. It's people. But anyway who comes next?
[00:14:40] ROD: Bats?
[00:14:41] WILL: Cows.
[00:14:42] ROD: cows. Cow. 'cause you choked
[00:14:43] WILL: And you know, a lot of these are car crashes, but more of them are blunt force. This is people actually getting,
[00:14:48] ROD: kicked or
[00:14:49] WILL: kicked or rammed by a cow.
[00:14:50] It's bad.
[00:14:51] ROD: there's a lot to a cow
[00:14:52] WILL: then. It's dogs.
[00:14:54] Yeah.
[00:14:54] Dogs. 82 deaths over the period.
[00:14:56] ROD: as we always say, that's the owner's
[00:14:57] WILL: fault.
[00:14:58] So finally, here comes some of the native champions, kangaroos. You can imagine. No, you're not getting attacked. It's, it's hitting, it's a car crash.
[00:15:05] Mm. Snakes. There we go. Finally, snakes are, snakes are getting
[00:15:09] ROD: just all snakes. They didn't delineate between the species or subsets.
[00:15:13] WILL: But that would be
[00:15:15] ROD: versus your brown snake,
[00:15:16] WILL: like
[00:15:17] ROD: you
[00:15:17] versus your python,
[00:15:18] WILL: your racing horse versus your pony versus your mule. No,
[00:15:21] ROD: that's
[00:15:22] WILL: not the same. They, they
[00:15:23] ROD: because all horses have the same level of poison, whereas not all
[00:15:26] snakes.
[00:15:26] WILL: saying people like killed by an anaconda squeezing, like, like sucking you
[00:15:30] ROD: down
[00:15:30] versus a taipan biting on the dick while you're on the toilet in, in Townsville. That's very
[00:15:35] WILL: different.
[00:15:35] Well, that, that, that was actually number 11. Total number of
[00:15:37] ROD: deaths pitting on
[00:15:38] WILL: the
[00:15:38] ROD: dingdong by a tie pan. That's why you should never sit down when you pee.
[00:15:43] Gentlemen.
[00:15:44] WILL: okay. Snakes then bees, then sharks and crocs. good on sharks and
[00:15:48] ROD: crocs.
[00:15:48] bees. So that's anaphylactic reactions,
[00:15:50] WILL: it's an anaphylactic
[00:15:51] ROD: as opposed to.
[00:15:52] WILL: killer bees. You know, it's weird. I couldn't investigate all of the data.
[00:15:56] 'cause in the US the major causes of death by animals were hornets, [00:16:00] wasps, and bees. Um, so they must have excluded the data differently.
[00:16:03] ROD: What about bears?
[00:16:05] WILL: No, no, no. But number 10 on the list. Mm-hmm. as you guessed, pre before
[00:16:10] Kaz, over the period of 20 years, cats have killed 12 people in Australia.
[00:16:15] And there's a bit of me, I'm, I I
[00:16:17] ROD: you're putting this wrong. Only 12. 'cause they're fucking murderous death machines who wish us ill. So
[00:16:22] WILL: I'm just, I'm concluding this story with a say that I have put in a request for more information Yeah. From the National Coronial Information System to tell us
[00:16:32] what
[00:16:32] ROD: you, did you actually
[00:16:33] WILL: Yeah, I, I wrote a letter to the government and said how
[00:16:36] ROD: dear government,
[00:16:37] WILL: how have these cats been killing half a person every single year over the last year and we haven't
[00:16:42] ROD: noticed.
[00:16:42] And which half,
[00:16:45] ALEX: So, so Dunning Kruger effect. Basically it was just the story, it just came up in my science feed about how this effect came to be named. I'll see if I can just show you a quick graph and then, um, I'll get, I'll get you to explain it
[00:16:58] ROD: So you've got your X axis, which is the one that isn't the Y axis.
[00:17:01] ALEX: X axis is competence, y axis is confidence. and then you've got this, this kind of saddle looking graph. You know, you start at zero, no competence, no confidence. And as you progress along the X axis, so your competence goes up a little bit, your confidence skyrockets disproportionately.
[00:17:18] You get a little bit of skill. You think you're the best in the world. You reach this point where then you get a bit better and you go, oh, hang on. I actually know very little now that I've done this more. And you progress along to the point where you go, yep, I'm pretty good and I know that I'm as good as I am.
[00:17:32] I don't think I'm better. I don't think I'm worse. And eventually you get even better and better and better, and your confidence goes up because you kick ass at this thing. But there's this nice little peak right at the start of the graph where you just get a bit of skill and you get a huge amount of confidence.
[00:17:46] WILL: That's great. It's a great place to live. Like
[00:17:48] ALEX: exactly. This, this, this ignorant
[00:17:50] WILL: I, I'm, I'm, I'm weaponized ignorance. That's what it is.
[00:17:53] ALEX: Yeah, it's what most, most of the influencers on socials could just get that little bit of confidence and then they, combined with a huge amount of confidence means they [00:18:00] start spanning a bunch of
[00:18:00] ROD: true. It's like me talking to my dietician the other day and she was describing the gut to me and I said, peristalsis. And she went, oh my God, you know, everything. And I said, yes, I do.
[00:18:08] ALEX: Anyway, before the Dunning Kruger effect was so named, it was based on a robbery
[00:18:15] ROD: Oh.
[00:18:16] ALEX: in, in Pittsburgh 30 years ago.
[00:18:18] ROD: yeah. Yeah. That rings a bell. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:18:20] ALEX: so these, these two, these two bank robbers, MacArthur Wheeler and Clifton Earl Johnson went to, went to Rob Banks and they thought, you know what?
[00:18:27] We are going to be super smart and hide from the security cameras by putting lemon juice on our
[00:18:31] ROD: That was it. Yes.
[00:18:33] ALEX: And because we're invisible, because invisible in right. You put lemon juice on paper, you heat it, you know you can and can't see it. Oh, cool. So they put it on their faces. One of them was smart enough to be a bit like dubious, like, oh, I, I don't know, man.
[00:18:45] So they did a Polaroid test before he put lemon juice on his face. The Polaroid shows up no face and, and the detectives and the people
[00:18:54] looking through their cases, it's like
[00:18:55] WILL: citizen
[00:18:55] ROD: science.
[00:18:55] Yes, it
[00:18:56] ALEX: it is highly likely they just tilted the camera. Like he just did a bad selfie
[00:19:00] ROD: Suddenly my face looks like my tumtum.
[00:19:03] ALEX: So anyway, they, they got caught and this uh, professor David Dunning, went through the case in the Pittsburgh Post and all that sort of stuff. And he was thought, he thought like, this is just complete stupidity. But then he was looked further and he was like, I think he was probably too stupid to know how stupid he is.
[00:19:17] And then he enlisted the help of his graduate student, Krueger, and they come up with the Dunning Krueger effect and, and published it to great avail.
[00:19:24] ROD: Too stupid to know how stupid he is. Like, how do we know we're not all that?
[00:19:28] WILL: We are all,
[00:19:29] ROD: we're all too stupid to know how stupid
[00:19:31] WILL: we
[00:19:31] are.
[00:19:31] No, but in general we are stupid about a
[00:19:33] ROD: lot
[00:19:33] of things. Like
[00:19:34] WILL: Like we, we all
[00:19:35] ROD: have No, I'm
[00:19:35] not pushing back. I'm, I'm not pushing back. I'm saying, how in the hell have we not just all died before we were born?
[00:19:41] That's terrifying.
[00:19:43] WILL: No,
[00:19:43] ROD: think a hundred years ago in the, I think it was during the wholesome show era of a little bit of science, we did a weep on Dunning Kruger, but it was a hundred years ago. So if you want the backstory, which will probably prove that Alex is smarter than us. Go hunt.
[00:19:56] It was episode n.
[00:19:58] ALEX: my God, it's hard to find [00:20:00] stuff you guys haven't talked about.
[00:20:01] ROD: Well, we're we're busy boys. You,
[00:20:03] WILL: boys. You don't gotta do,
[00:20:04] ROD: don't. No, this is good. I did, I did a rehash from something years ago. So this is perfect for that. This is perfect
[00:20:08] WILL: Just some shit.
[00:20:09] ALEX: Well, there's some shit.
[00:20:11] WILL: All right. Uh, I don't know how much, how closely you are following it, but uh, at the moment our friends Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin have recently sat down for chitchat over about the future of Ukraine.
[00:20:23] ROD: Big fans of the show too. I've, well, Vladimir is,
[00:20:26] WILL: he,
[00:20:27] ROD: Donald doesn't know how to start a podcast.
[00:20:29] WILL: is trying to get Donald to listen, but anyway, anyway, I just wanted to give an enormous shout out to one of the obscure pages on Wikipedia that everyone should pay close attention to, This one is the list of suspicious deaths of notable Russians and Belarusians since 2022.
[00:20:46] ROD: I? Okay, I've got,
[00:20:46] I've got one preemptive question. Do Windows feature,
[00:20:54] WILL: So, phenomenon was first noticed, let's say, first noticed in this era in June, 2022 by the Dutch NOS News Network, and it described the phenomenon as a grim series of Russian billionaires, mainly from the oil and gas industries found dead under unusual
[00:21:14] ROD: But in the, in the Dutch world, they're Supreme series of Russian deaths, which is found un unusual circumstances.
[00:21:21] I'm just translating for
[00:21:22] WILL: our that was shockingly necessary. know. And so since then people have been collecting these out there on Wikipedia and there's
[00:21:30] ROD: a weird hobby, isn't it? I'm, I'm collecting the history of the deaths of Russian
[00:21:33] WILL: oli, well sudden
[00:21:34] Russian death syndrome or sudden oligarch death syndrome.
[00:21:38] I just want, I just wanted to go through them because, because they're great fun. What it, what it says to me is. You know, if you're a dictator, how, how do you kill people? And it seems like
[00:21:48] ROD: what, what you mean is, 'cause this is a slightly science podcast. How interesting is data?
[00:21:53] That's what you mean to
[00:21:54] WILL: That's what I do
[00:21:54] mean,
[00:21:55] ROD: you mean to
[00:21:55] say? Yeah. Yeah,
[00:21:56] WILL: mean.
[00:21:56] So there's quite a, quite a few. And, um, it's, [00:22:00] it's updated all the time. And most recently updated were some in uh, August, 2025. Ooh. So it comes to right now, just a few last week. Just a few last week. I'm not gonna go through them all. but I love, there's, I'm just gonna pull out a few little highlights here.
[00:22:16] So, Colonel Vadim Bko, who was deputy head of a Naval School So he, he died in 16th of November by suicide after shooting himself in the chest five times.
[00:22:28] You
[00:22:28] ROD: this is a black outer episode after accidentally brutally stabbing himself in the next 75 times, then beheading and dragging himself behind his own oxcart. Uh, times.
[00:22:39] WILL: times. Five times, five times in the chest.
[00:22:41] ROD: I assume it was the machine gun, because really I'm thinking after the second bullet. That's a good
[00:22:48] WILL: one.
[00:22:48] Rael
[00:22:49] ROD: Rael ov,
[00:22:49] WILL: ov, who was chairman of the, the oil company, Luke. Luke Oil. Luke Oil uh, fell from a Kremlin hospital window weirdly. This one, this one, this one goes straight to the top. When the CCTV cameras had been turned off for repairs and President Putin himself was visiting the
[00:23:05] ROD: hospital,
[00:23:06] Oh God. What an unhappy bomber.
[00:23:08] WILL: Gregory ov, director of a key IT company fell to his death from his balcony while, officials from the investigative committee were searching his
[00:23:17] ROD: apartment, we're in another building.
[00:23:20] we
[00:23:20] don't know what you're talking about. Uh, Right behind him. Ha. He somehow felt jumped or it was pushed.
[00:23:28] WILL: Dimitri Pacha, 26th of January, 2023, burned alive while falling asleep with a lit cigarette. Jesus.
[00:23:35] ROD: Tits burned a, at least it's creative. 'cause you don't hear that very, it used to be a big deal in the seventies and eighties,
[00:23:42] WILL: you know? Yeah. Okay. Your cigarette, your lit cigarette falls into the curtains House goes up. I
[00:23:47] just
[00:23:47] ROD: of course it falls into the
[00:23:48] WILL: curtains.
[00:23:48] I feel like If your cigarette falls on your chest while
[00:23:51] you're
[00:23:52] ROD: you may react.
[00:23:53] WILL: I don't think your whole body is going up in like, I really, I really don't think
[00:23:58] ROD: that
[00:23:59] WILL: a way for your body [00:24:00] to
[00:24:00] ROD: I dunno about Russians, but I am personally not made of kindling. No, you go, ow that really hurt. Drunk or not. How that really hurt.
[00:24:08] WILL: It's not happening,
[00:24:09] ROD: But being held down by stary agents while they actually ignite you and cover you
[00:24:13] in
[00:24:13] WILL: Do you know the, but the, but the classic obviously in this is the def
[00:24:17] ROD: fenestration. Def fenestration always def
[00:24:19] WILL: fenestration the fall from a
[00:24:21] ROD: which is a great word.
[00:24:22] WILL: which is the right word? Want the look out window?
[00:24:23] ROD: Hey look, put the view, oopsie.
[00:24:25] WILL: So Miguel RJE October, 2024 found dead after falling out of the window of his Moscow era apartment. Uh, Vladimir uh,
[00:24:34] ROD: er ov
[00:24:35] WILL: ballet dancer and minor critic of the Ukraine War literally posted on social
[00:24:38] ROD: media
[00:24:39] I'm a bit miffed
[00:24:39] WILL: fell from his fifth floor apartment building.
[00:24:42] ROD: They get really clumsy, don't they?
[00:24:44] WILL: Arthur P Kin February, 2025 found dead out his office after having fallen from a fifth floor window m Steen, February, 2025. Again,
[00:24:52] ROD: lemme guess. Window.
[00:24:54] WILL: Ninth floor window. Ninth floor window. I just, so it's,
[00:24:58] ROD: they don't even care
[00:24:58] WILL: anymore.
[00:24:59] Okay. Okay.
[00:24:59] Lessons from this is clearly don't go near the window
[00:25:03] ROD: Don't be in a building with
[00:25:04] WILL: windows.
[00:25:04] if Putin is in the, in the zone, And, and keep your apartments on the ground floor.
[00:25:09] I think
[00:25:09] ROD: I mean, the ground floor apartments, they're not the top sellers.
[00:25:12] WILL: I just, I just got a love somewhere that says Yes, definitely suicide five times in the
[00:25:16] ROD: chest.
[00:25:17] no, he fell through a window like the last guy. Duh.
[00:25:19] WILL: The,
[00:25:21] ROD: The contempt. Yeah, the
[00:25:23] WILL: the absolute
[00:25:23] And, and you know what's, you know what's interesting, you know, obviously Russia. The Soviet Union, that area of the world has had some interesting governments over the many hundred years, that have, have
[00:25:34] ROD: I think it's millions
[00:25:35] WILL: have used violence in interesting ways, let's just say that
[00:25:38] ROD: employed diverse methods of politics.
[00:25:41] WILL: But, you know, you know, in the Soviet Union, there's a whole bunch of, yeah, we kill you, but we're going to, you're never gonna find out. You will never, like your family, will never know which Gulag you died in. What,
[00:25:52] ROD: you never find out or be found. Yeah, yeah,
[00:25:54] WILL: yeah. It's like there's a semi free media there that's like Yeah.
[00:25:57] Like fell from window. Fell from [00:26:00] window fell
[00:26:00] ROD: from,
[00:26:00] No, we are reporting this true. What killed him fell from
[00:26:04] WILL: Which
[00:26:04] one? Here's the thing. I was like, which, which one of those is more sinister? The one where you never find out about anyone disappearing
[00:26:12] or,
[00:26:12] ROD: know, it's bullshit.
[00:26:13] WILL: Or the one where they're happy to say, look, everybody falls from
[00:26:16] ROD: Yeah. Killed by nine horses. Mostly chalking death. At least you'll know. Which is more like, what would you prefer?
[00:26:27] WILL: I just wanna know when the cats are gonna kill some people.
[00:26:31] Tiny little one just to drag us out. I was watching this lovely video last
[00:26:34] night. of this lovely couple in Pennsylvania they were a young hipstery sort of couple, um, but they'd taken out a loan to take over the world's oldest drive-in movie
[00:26:45] ROD: theater. That's
[00:26:45] WILL: It had been running since the 1930s. Had, had continually been going, the people who, who were selling they weren't getting out of the industry.
[00:26:53] Like it was like they were retiring, which,
[00:26:55] you
[00:26:55] ROD: know, 112 years
[00:26:56] old. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly. Yeah.
[00:26:57] WILL: And, and, this young couple had taken it on and they, you know, they were talking about their struggles running this business. You know, it's a lot to bring in a new movie and they, they, they gotta learn all of the, all of the stuff like
[00:27:08] that.
[00:27:08] Mm-hmm. gotta run the drive-in. Like it's, it's the two of them running this drive-in theater.
[00:27:13] ROD: Huh.
[00:27:13] WILL: But the thing that got
[00:27:14] ROD: me.
[00:27:14] WILL: Is that you mentioned the other day that, uh, there's a turn to analog. Yeah. Like, like people are returning to joys of the past.
[00:27:23] ROD: your vinyls, your books, your board games.
[00:27:26] WILL: Yeah. And I was thinking about that, like what is, what, what was that article about? But what was, what's the driving force there about, about people wanting to have the experiences that we had in the fifties or, or, you know, generations ago? Like what's the, what's the driver there for this return to
[00:27:43] ROD: Well, I can tell you from a sentimental point of view, the first time I actually saw a whole pointer movie was at a drive-in. And I'm not kidding. This is what[00:28:00]
[00:28:01] WILL: I
[00:28:02] ROD: I
[00:28:02] WILL: don't know. I dunno.
[00:28:05] ROD: I can tell you more.
[00:28:07] WILL: I
[00:28:07] dunno. I feel like that's where we gotta leave it. I feel like. What do we do with that?
[00:28:12] ROD: Well, it's true.
[00:28:14] WILL: You
[00:28:14] ROD: larger than life.
[00:28:15] I'm not gonna lie.
[00:28:16] I'm not gonna lie.
[00:28:18] WILL: Christ.
[00:28:18] ROD: Christ.
[00:28:19] WILL: A little bit of science is me Will Grant and him Rod Lambers.
[00:28:22] ROD: other guy.
[00:28:24] WILL: Well, look, someone's gonna have to edit this.
[00:28:25] ROD: Don't edit that bit. It's
[00:28:27] WILL: maybe, maybe we've got five minutes worth of podcasts in here. Who knows?
[00:28:32] ROD: You have suggestions to make it less bad, a little bit of science at Gmail.
[00:28:43] WILL: there is beer. In this beer. Like I think this is an alcoholic beer.
[00:28:47] ROD: What's our email address?
