Loading…
Hosted by Tom Chivers and Stuart Ritchie · 🇺🇸 US · EN · 142 episodes
Established thought leaders with verified media credentials.
A weekly podcast about the latest scientific controversies, with Tom Chivers and Stuart Ritchie sciencefictionspod.substack.com
Tom Chivers and Stuart Ritchie hosts Science Fictions, a science show with 142 episodes published.
We are sorry we’ve been missing so many episodes recently! Stuart’s been busy and Tom’s been… also busy. We’re busy. Hopefully back to normal service next week. In the meantime, here’s an old paid episode, unpaywalled. A
We made it: triple figures! And as luck would have it, Nature just simultaneously published four major meta-science papers that are right up our street. Aw. Thanks, Nature. You shouldn’t have. How screwed is social/behav
Here’s another one for the annals of “entire scientific field becomes totally misguided for decades”. How could it have been possible that so many scientists fell for the idea of candidate genes—that there were individua
For a while in the early-to-mid 2010s, the most prominent psychology research in the world was on power posing. Harvard’s Amy Cuddy did a TED talk that reached tens of millions; her exhortation to “fake it til you make i
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit sciencefictionspod.substack.com Have you seen the award-winning film I Swear, about a Scottish man with Tourette’s? (The less said about what happened at the
In 2024, researchers claimed to find something mysterious at the bottom of the ocean. It was “dark oxygen”—oxygen produced where there’s no chance of photosynthesis. So what could possibly be producing it? Natural batter
The last few episodes have been pretty heavy. So here’s… well, here’s the 2D:4D ratio. Does the difference in length between your index finger and your ring finger reveal a huge amount about your personality (and much mo
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit sciencefictionspod.substack.com And now… following last week’s episode on ECT, here’s part two of our double episode on depression treatments. This time we’re
Open up some scientific papers, and you’ll hear electroconvulsive therapy described as the most effective treatment for depression (especially very severe depression). But open up others, and you’ll see it described as c
This episode is dedicated to Justin Eldridge. We like to think that, in often hamfisted ways, we’re applying critical thinking on this show. But what even is “critical thinking”? Can you measure it? Can you teach it to k
Here’s another episode that revists a topic we’ve covered before. A while back, we did an episode on the downsides of cannabis (for example, the risk of psychosis). But of course, a lot of people claim there are medical
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit sciencefictionspod.substack.com It’s rare that we return to a topic, but it’s also nice to have been right. In 2024 we did an episode on microplastics, and ca
Here’s a cheery one for our first episode of the year. Guess what happens when you give several sets of scientists the same dataset and ask them to answer the same question? Well, they all find the same results, right? R
We’ve covered a lot of bad science stories over the year. Here are a few more. But in the optimistic spirit of the “holiday season”, the last one has a happy ending. Thanks for listening—especially if you’re a subscriber
STOP PRESS: a beloved 20th Century populariser of psychology who wrote massively successful books has been shown to be full of crap. Actually… don’t stop press. Just put it on the pile with all the others. This time it’s
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit sciencefictionspod.substack.com Does the evidence support the use of hormone replacement therapy (HRT)? Depends on when you asked the question. At one point t
Hello everyone! We weren’t able to record a podcast this week, because 1) Stuart was busy and 2) it’s Tom’s birthday. So by way of apology we’re re-releasing this one about some drama last year between Jon Haidt, sworn e
Everyone has read Entangled Life, the wonderfully-written book about fungi that took the world by storm about 5 years ago. Among many other things, it popularised the “wood wide web”—the idea that trees can communicate w
It has happened again. A new paper, based on a tranche of unsealed historical documents, casts serious doubt on a piece of social psychology research from the mid-20th Century. Shocker! This time it’s about some of the f
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit sciencefictionspod.substack.com Creatine is the supplement of the moment, but both of us had vaguely heard that this one might actually not be total garbage.
Sponsor detection runs nightly. Check back soon.
No public pitch examples yet for this show.
Generate your own personalised pitchBased on semantic analysis of episode topics and host coverage, this show is a strong guest fit for executives in:
Industry fit is computed by PitchCentric using vector embeddings of the show's episode catalog.
Shows with the most semantically similar episode content. Pitch one, pitch all; producers cluster.
Science Fictions has a verified contact on file. Create a free PitchCentric account to access it and generate a personalised pitch in seconds. Research at least 3 recent episodes first and lead with a specific angle that serves their science audience.
Science Fictions is hosted by Tom Chivers and Stuart Ritchie. The show is categorised under science (technology) and has published 142 episodes.
Science Fictions has published 142 episodes.
Science Fictions regularly covers science, technology. It sits in the science category, with a technology focus.
Science Fictions is accessible for guests with genuine science expertise. A personalised, episode-aware pitch will still outperform a generic one every time.
Science Fictions hasn't explicitly signalled guest openness in recent episodes. That doesn't rule out pitching. your hook just needs to be especially compelling and relevant to their recent content.
Episodes of Science Fictions average 52 minutes. a focused format where a clear narrative arc and tight preparation matter most.
Our data rates Science Fictions's guest bar at 80/100 (Premium tier). Established thought leaders with verified media credentials. Sign in to PitchCentric to see how your own Pod Score compares against this show.
Methodology. Booking Probability™ blends Listen Score, 30-day Virality, open-to-guests detection, and Apple ratings. Data refreshed every 60 minutes. Listen Score and Booking Probability are calculated by PitchCentric. Last enriched today.