Episodes
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I Don’t Know
It’s counter-intuative and perplexing, but the truth is, the less human beings know about a particular subject, the more they THINK they know about it. This has become known as The Dunning-Kruger Effectific. A new article in the Pacific Standard …
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One For the Books
A new article describes the benefits of long-form reading and suggests that the tactile feedback of printed books results in better retention than e-readers. While Jeff and Anthony are definitely on board with reading, they challenge the idea that enjoying …
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Tricked by Treats
On this special Halloween episode, Anthony and Jeff consider the nature of of the trick or treat tradition and the urban legend of poisoned Halloween candy. Is asking strangers for food an inherently unsafe activity, or did we manufacture a …
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Leave it to Beaver
A new Wired article recounts the medieval myth that beavers, when cornered by hunters, would castrate themselves by chewing off their own testicles. Jeff and Anthony unpack the myth and try to figure out why the Dark Ages were filled …
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Back to the Hoverboard Future
Previously on We Have Concerns… in the Welcome to the Hoverboard Future episode Anthony mocked Jeff’s enthusiasm for a mind-bending new technology that indicated that hoverboards may, in fact be possible. Now, there is a new article on Engadget that …
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Tell Me How to Feel
A new article describes a study in which doctors told patients they would just be getting a shot of vitamins, but instead gave them something a thousand times more powerful. Whether these subjects thought something strange was happening or not …
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Objects that Click
Anthony found an article that describes the community around the IBM Model M keyboard, a sublimely clicky keyboard that has spawned cult-like devotion and a second hand black market. It makes him consider our fetishization of things, and the ties …
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Who’s the Robo Boss?
Researchers have discovered that employees are actually more content taking orders from a robot than a human being in the workplace. This prompts Anthony and Jeff to wonder what it might take to promote robots into middle management, what the …
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That Runner’s High
As a runner himself, Jeff was very impressed to read of James Lawrence, the endurance athlete who is attempting 50 ultra-distance triathlons, in 50 different states, in 50 straight days. Anthony, on the other hand, thinks it is unhealthy, obsessive, …
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Spider House
Anthony has found a story about a Missouri family fleeing their home because between 4500 and 6000 spiders came “bleeding out of the walls”. To which Jeff of course wonders, “What the #%$#?!” Spider senses tingle, spider stories are shared, …
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