Wassup TRC’ers! Darren kicks things off with a detailed segment about Guerrilla Skepticism on Wikipedia, aka GSoW. Adam serves us a lighthearted look at whether McDonald’s Happy Meal Minions are swearing at us. Finally, Cristina asks the burning question, what’s the science behind “The Munchies”?
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SHOW NOTES
Guerrilla Skepticism
Foul-mouthed Minions
Is this Mcdonald’s Minion toy swearing?
NAACP calls out Hallmark over ‘racist’ graduation greeting
The Munchies
Yale News: How the brain flips the hunger switch
NPR: How marijuana hijacks your brain to create the munchies
NPR: The Neuroscience Of Munchies
CBC: Marijuana munchies are all in the brain, study finds
IFL Science: Marijuana Triggers Munchies Flipping Hunger Switch
Nature: Hypothalamic POMC neurons promote cannabinoid-induced feeding
I loved the segment on audio pareidolia. Here are a couple of my favorite examples of the phenomenon.
The first example comes from Simon Singh, one of my favorite authors. He plays a Led Zeppelin song backwards, first without priming the audience, and then with priming.
Simon Singh
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bG7EFhMw8w
This next one was posted to reddit recently. Resist the temptation to read the article until you’ve played the sound clip, for obvious reasons. Once you know what you’re supposed to be hearing, you’re ruined forever!
Can’t Unhear
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/06/sounds-you-cant-unhear/373036/
Finally, you’ve probably heard of the McGurk Effect, but it’s somewhat related and pretty dramatic.
McGurk Effect
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-lN8vWm3m0
Smiles from Sunny New Mexico,
-DeeT
Oh! You might also like this guy. He hasn’t posted a video in a while but he reviews questionable toys of various sorts. Sometimes audio is involved; other times it’s an apparently inappropriate gesture or bit of anatomy, or just an altogether wrongheaded design, like a toy gun that shoots candy into your mouth.
The video I chose to link here shows a Disney themed toy where the moving Pluto figure just might be enjoying himself a little too much.
Jeepers Media
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9YxYRJhoAQ
Your first segment is actually specious, which you define for us so well — superficially sounds good but is actually wrong. GSoW is an ideological pushing coup. It’s wrong.
Thanks Sage.