As we approach our one-year anniversary Squaring the Strange, the podcast I co-host with Pascual Romero and Celestia Ward, I wanted to review early episodes you may have missed!

Episode 7: Stop, Corroborate, and Listen

What are we skeptical of this week? Pascual gives us some background on MP3 sound files and talks about the flurry of headlines he’s seen decrying the “end of MP3s”; in actuality, a patent is expiring and the code will now be open-source. Ben revisits the Boko Haram abductions and “Bring Back Our Girls” hashtag campaign, examining some of the complexities of Nigerian politics and terrain. Then Ben and Pascual discuss corroboration, and how much weight we, as people, as jurors, as skeptics, give to stories that are backed up by multiple reports and agreeing witnesses. Yet studies show people will lie to corroborate a story for many reasons, and certain strange categories (UFO sightings, Bigfoot, ghosts) are so hard to narrowly define that they produce an illusion of corroboration. Popular cultural phenomena also influence corroboration–since people draw upon what’s on their mind to interpret ambiguous things, they can be primed to experience things a particular way (i.e. the chupacabra reports) or even change their memory after an experience happens. Ben brings up the discredited Rolling Stone rape story, where an instance of apparent corroboration was actually the result of a false accuser copying an earlier account of a real crime. Coerced confessions and lie detectors are also forms of false corroboration, and the guys discuss instances of people going to jail as a result. Lastly (fittingly so) Ben mentions near death experiences and how corroboration based on shared anatomy can take on a whole new angle and interpretation.

Radford”) on Vimeo, and please check out my podcast Squaring the Strange!