Big Picture Science - Skeptic Check: Fear Itself
ENCORE: Shhh. Is someone coming? Okay,
we’ll make this quick. There are a lot of scary things going on in the
world. Naturally you’re fearful. But sometimes fear has a sister
emotion: suspicion. A nagging worry about what’s really going on. You
know, the stuff they aren’t telling you. Don’t share this, but we have
evidence that both our fear response and our tendency to believe conspiracy
theories are evolutionarily adaptive.
A
sociologist who studies fear tells us why we’re addicted to its thrill when we
control the situation, and how the media exploit our fear of losing control to
keep us on edge. Plus, we examine some alien “cover-ups” and discover why
it’s not just the tinfoil hat crowd that falls for outrageous plots.
It’s
Skeptic Check …. but you didn’t hear it from us!
Guests:
This encore podcast was first released on December 21, 2015
Download podcast at -
http://bigpicturescience.org/episodes/skeptic-check-fear-itself
You
can listen to this and other episodes at
http://bigpicturescience.org/, and
be sure to check out
Blog Picture Science,
the companion blog to the radio show.