The Skeptics Guide #907 - Nov 26 2022
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
You're listening to The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.
Hello and welcome to The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe. Today is Thursday, November 15th, 2022, and this is your host, Stephen Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella, Cara Santamaria, Jay Novella, and Evan Bernstein.
Good evening, everyone.
So, guys, did you see this media bias chart on Facebook?
You know we did. We were just talking about it. But only before we turned on the switch, Bob. It only counts after we turn on the switch.
It's not real unless we're recording.
Oh, I see. Clearly, according to this chart that we wound up being a part of.
Yeah, it's fine. I do like these sort of media bias charts. I look at them a lot. Hopefully, the source is reliable. It basically says there's two axes. Left-right is politically left-right, and then up-down is some measure of quality, objectivity or whatever. In this chart, they have at the top, it's a little odd that you have the top is fact reporting. And then one notch below that is mostly analysis or mix of fact reporting and analysis. So they're putting analysis inherently below fact. You know, I'm not sure I agree with that.
Yeah.
Because if you keep going, then it just straight up says opinion.
Yeah, then it's opinion and then incomplete, unfair persuasion, propaganda.
What does the new 'media bias' chart reveal about podcast positioning and objectivity?
Propaganda starts to hit. And then misleading info.
And then contains misleading info and contains inaccurate, fabricated.
Fabricated info. Oh, my gosh.
Not just biased, but you're just making shit up.
I get it, though, because if you look at the axis label, they're literally calling it news value and reliability. So it's true. Like the higher up on this axis, the more it's just straight reporting the news with no analysis whatsoever. This is what happened. And then down at the bottom, it's like, you know, completely fabricating stuff. Right.
It's fiction.
Right. And then, of course, an op-ed is going to be somewhere in the middle.
We're way above our bed. We rank pretty high. They put us just a tad bit left of center, which, okay, I don't necessarily agree with that, but I think reality is a little bit tad left of center. To be honest with you, I know I stole that joke. It's true, though. It works. I love the fact that Joe Rogan is like in his own little space way down in the middle.
Way down.
Yeah, he is. He's all alone.
Straddling the depths into misleading information.
He's weirdly in the middle, which I like question.
He's dead center.
I don't get how he's dead center. Between middle, left, and right. And my only idea, and it's funny because lots of people are commenting that too, like since when is Joe Rogan in the middle? Oh, they replied to this person who asked. So this is from the media company who produced this. Rogan himself has various political views, but his shows are mostly the guests talking about their views. So his ratings are guest dependent, making it both balanced bias and varying in reliability. So basically they're saying there's a ton of misleading claims and stuff on his show. It's all over the place, yeah. But it's all over the place in terms of its partisanship because his guests are all over the place. That kind of makes sense, actually.
And I have a feeling they're looking at his whole back catalog, not just how his show is now. Because his political bent has changed a lot. But yeah, ours hasn't. Has it? I mean, I don't know. Were you guys... Would you say that we skew more left now than, you know, 15 years ago when the show started simply because... the goalposts have moved in our, in our like actual political discourse, like in the country.
It's hard. You know, obviously it's, it's hard for us to say that, you know, first of all, probably a little, you know, I would say probably a little, only because the center of gravity on the right has moved so far to the right that even if you're standing still, you're going to be, you know what I mean?
Yeah. As a result of, yeah, the earth moves below your feet. Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, what's interesting is just politically speaking, four of the five people on this show, and you could probably guess who that is, 20 years ago would have described ourselves as right of center.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–1:33
2
What does the new 'media bias' chart reveal about podcast positioning and objectivity?
1:33–27:28
3
What is 'geophony' and how does bioacoustics classify geophony, biophony and anthropophony?
27:28–57:19
4
How did Artemis I launch work and what technologies power the SLS and Orion missions?
57:19–1:30:31