FULL EPISODE: Don't Write An AI Love Poem - February 6, 2026
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
unfiltered discussions unexpected guests no topic is off limits from sex and relationships to the human condition personal anxieties and so much more the only talk show of its kind in the world world this is the last show with david cooper
What bottled water findings challenge our assumptions about microplastics?
Hello and welcome and happy Friday. We got a packed lineup tonight. I'm really excited about it. Here are some of the things you'll learn on the show. Calling all Bruce Willises. It looks like researchers have ran a simulation and if an asteroid is approaching Earth, we can nuke it. I've previously reported that doing that would cause catastrophic damage because of all the little bits. But no, we were wrong. If there's an asteroid headed for Earth, there's a good chance we can get rid of it with a nuke. How? What? Details in about 10 minutes time. Then after that... This Valentine's Day, you receive a love note from that special someone. Was it beautiful? Was it poetic? Was it secretly written by a robot?
And if so, does that feel kind of gross? Halfway through the hour, we'll unpack the science of AI romance letters and why outsourcing your feelings makes everyone feel worse.
How does a high-sugar breakfast affect cognitive focus?
So before you write a love note with ChatGPT to that special someone, you're going to want to tune into that. Those are some of the topics we'll cover on the show. There will be more. You will learn more. But for now, let's dive in. It's everything you wanted to know and maybe some things you didn't about the latest science news. We are joined by Professor Jesse Rogerson from York University. We asked the question, if you want to avoid microplastics, should you drink bottled water that comes in plastic? I would think the answer to this question is obviously no.
Welcome, Jesse.
Can we safely use nuclear options to deflect asteroids?
David, let's talk about microplastics in water. Yeah, you would have thought that the answer would be obviously no, but there's the misconception or maybe the good perception that bottled water would be safer, right? You'd think, okay, this water is like pristine, you know, it's in the bottle, it's in a plant, it's not the stuff coming out of my taps. You know, you open up your tap, you don't know what your pipes are like, you know, like That can be different all over the country, but you get like a quality product from a bottle of water. Maybe, you know, this is a perception even I had. And so this study was like, OK, well, let's look at the water coming out of taps across the United States and the water in bottling plants and and see how they compare with specifically with microplastics and nanoplastics.
And they found in this study that, in particular in the Lake Erie area, that bottled water contains three times as many nanoplastics than regular tap water. And the author of the study says, quote, for the average person who is thirsty, the best way to do that would be drinking water straight out of the tap.
Why do AI-written love notes make people feel guilty?
So you heard that straight from the scientist.
You heard that straight from the source and how eerie that finding is. I had to. You know, microplastics, how bad are they for you? I remember there was a plastic called BPA that they kind of like phased out and the plastics could like leach to your like hormone receptors. It was like demonstrably kind of bad for you. It probably shouldn't have been on the market in the first place, but that's been taken off the market. What do these microplastics do? Or is it a big, just like, we don't know. Some people worry, some people don't.
How does paid time off influence employee retention?
The evidence doesn't look great, but there's no conclusive findings.
Yeah. So I guess that's a good summary of it. There's some nuance there. First, with this study, the reason this one was able to be so successful in finding so much as two is they were really focusing on nanoplastics, which is smaller than microplastics. So you wouldn't be able to see them in other earlier studies. But then they had a couple of different ways of finding them. They were using scanning electromicroscopes and they were using chemical inducers. And they were able to dig in deeper and smaller and find more plastics. And it seems to be leaching from the plastic bottles themselves.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–0:25
2
What bottled water findings challenge our assumptions about microplastics?
0:25–1:16
3
How does a high-sugar breakfast affect cognitive focus?
1:16–1:50
4
Can we safely use nuclear options to deflect asteroids?
1:50–2:53
5
Why do AI-written love notes make people feel guilty?
2:53–3:22
6
How does paid time off influence employee retention?
3:22–3:57
7
What links psychopathy to digital sexual abuse crimes?
3:57–4:54
8
How do moral pursuits conflict with personal authenticity?
4:54–1:20:08
Speakers
9 identifiedMore from The Last Show with David Cooper
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