Science Vs - Welcome, New Listeners!

Episode Date: July 17, 2018

We'll be back in your ears with season 5 of Science Vs in the Fall... but in the meantime, new listeners, here's some episode recommendations to get you started.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Wendy Zuckerman and this is Science Versus from Gimlet Media, the show that pits facts against everything you think you know. We just finished our latest season of Science Versus and we're working hard on the next one, which will be back in your ears in the fall. So if you're new to the show, we just wanted to say welcome and point you towards some of our favourite episodes just to get you started.

One of our most popular episodes so far has been our guns episode. There's a lot of opinions about guns, particularly in America, but we looked at the science to find out if they really are that bad. Could a good guy with a gun be better than no gun at all? Last time I checked, none of my guns ever left the safe and went out and committed crimes in the middle of the night while I was sleeping. One of our top episodes from last season was about the opioid epidemic. More people in the US died from opioids in 2016 than those who died of AIDS at its peak. So how did we get here?

Oh, I've been accused of being responsible for our current drug abuse problem. What would you class your role in this as? Oh, dear. So that's from our episode, Opioids, How America Got Hooked. And another one of our popular episodes was on artificial sweeteners. Trust the ads and you'd think that sweeteners are pretty healthy. All that sugary deliciousness with none of the calories. But we wanted to know, can you really get something for nothing?

It feels like there's like a traitor in my stomach. And I thought it was my friend. The traitor's name is Aspartame. And I'm like, Aspartame, I trusted you. Science Versus will be back in September with a whole lot more science and human guinea pigs. Would you... s*** in a jar for science?

What? Which branch of science? I'm Wendy Zuckerman. Back to you soon.