Podcast Episode 93: The Importance, Methods, and Faults of Peer Review

How work is reviewed
Within the fields of science …
Vers’s pseudoscience.

This one’s an unconventional episode where I talk about one of the most basic ideas and processes in science: That of Peer Review.

As I gear up to do an episode every few days in prep for my trip to Australia, Dec. 16 – Jan. 21, more of these different kinds of episodes will be coming up – and episodes with just the main segment and not other ones like Q&A and Puzzler – and I’m also planning/conducting a lot of interviews to make putting out episodes over those ~5 weeks easier on me. There’s also still the reminder to let me know (if you haven’t yet) if you’re interested in participating in the 100th episode spectacular. To do so, you should have a decent microphone and be able to ad lib and come up with crazy ideas.

Podcast Episode 92: Spiral Galaxies and a Young Universe

Spiral Galaxies,
Young-Earth Creationists … a
Potent mixture here.

I managed to get this episode on young-Earth creationism out on time, somehow. It is not the expected episode on the Pioneer Anomaly, but, well, that required some work. This topic I could do more quickly and get out on time.

As I gear up to do an episode every few days in prep for my trip to Australia, Dec. 16 – Jan. 21, it’s going to be probably more of the same, and I have a lot of interviews slated for that time (yet to be recorded … most are yet to be confirmed, so we’ll see). I’m trying to figure out how to make an episode about the peer review process and an episode about uncertainties and errors sound interesting, for those are the next two planned at the moment.

Podcast Episode 91: The Binary Star Hypothesis

‘Tis fact or fiction
To think our Sun part of a
Binary system?

I think my haikus are getting worse. Anywho, this episode is about the thoughts some people hold with respect to the sun being a member of a binary star system. It’s a listener-requested episode. And, it turned out to be a lot like my Planet X episodes towards the end, so much so that I classified it there in my Episode Tree List. However, I do start off by talking about the more science-based ideas behind a binary star, the “Nemesis” star, so-called because terrestrial mass extinctions were attributed to it. And then we digress.

Since I still have 5 proposals to review in the next … 9 hours? … this was a somewhat shorter episode in that it’s the same length as others but lacks most of the normal extra parts. You still get about a half hour of my lovely voice, a voice made for print.

The next episode will be about the Pioneer Anomaly, so if you have ideas for a puzzler topic on it, send them in!