December 20, 2014 12:37 pm

This Sunday, We Make Cosmic Queries: Pseudoscience Even Better!

Photo of Bill Nye, Elise Andrew and Neil deGrasse Tyson taken in 2013.

Bill Nye, Elise Andrew and Neil deGrasse Tyson photographed together in 2013.

How do we make our episode Cosmic Queries: Pseudoscience even better? By making it an “Extended Classic” this Sunday and adding 10 minutes of Elise Andrew of I F***ing Love Science, Bill Nye the Science Guy and Chuck Nice to the episode.

First of all, it’s one of our most popular shows – you voted it number 4 on the Fan Favorite Poll. Which is no surprise. There was plenty to love – and plenty to disagree with. (Just check out the 140 comments at the bottom of the original episode’s web page.)

Neil deGrasse Tyson and comic co-host Leighann Lord take their time exploring the human susceptibility to fool ourselves into thinking that one thing is true, when actually something else is – and how science invents methods and tools to reduce or protect against this tendency. They take an in-depth look at the difference between imagination and magical thinking, and how kids are enriched by one, but adults are deluded by the other.

Also on the table:

  • Alternative Medicine
  • Ancient Aliens
  • Bigfoot
  • Creationism
  • Crystals
  • Ouija boards

Now, on top of that, we’ve turned the episode into another “Extended Classic” – and once again, we’ve added a new segment from the day Elise Andrew skyped in to the studio. She joins Bill Nye, Neil and Chuck Nice for a discussion about how to tell good science from bad science in the internet era, when everybody can publish anything they want online and when websites and news organizations report on scientific papers newly published in journals as if they were the end of the story and accepted science fact long before they’ve actually been proven.

Join us for Extended Classic: Cosmic Queries: Pseudoscience, now with Elise Andrew of IFLS and Bill Nye Sunday, December 21 at 7:00 PM ET on our website, iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn and SoundCloud.

That’s it for now. Keep Looking Up.
–Jeffrey Simons

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