TRC #708: The Telepathy Tapes + AI Cheating At Chess?
The Telepathy Tapes is a popular podcast that tells the story of non verbal people showing evidence of psychic abilities and logging on to a psychic virtual chat room called The Hill. Adam looks into how realistic these claims are given what we know about Facilitated Communication. Darren looks into some AI programs that seem to have been cheating at chess! What are they doing and what could this mean for the future of Artificial Intelligence?
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30:09
TRC #707: Is Tim Hortons Canadian? + Mysterious Structures Under The Great Pyramid
Is Tim Hortons Canadian? Darren takes a look at the history of the popular coffee and donut chain to see just how Canadian it is and what it even means to be a Canadian company. Adam dives into some recent news which suggests that there are massive structures underneath the Great Pyramid of Giza. Is this even possible? Could that structure be a Tim Hortons restaurant?
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29:05
TRC #706: An AI Generated Podcast by NotebookLM
Could Artificial Intelligence do a better job of recording a podcast than Darren and Adam? For this bonus episode we try something a little different. Darren gave Google’s NotebookLM the introduction Uncontrollable, his book on AI safety, and asked it to generate a podcast based on the content. Listen to what it produced! A somewhat convincing exchange between two virtual podcast hosts talking about concerns about the looming threat of AI. Following this simulated episode the real human hosts of The Reality Check podcast will share what we thought of it.
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20:15
TRC #705: Book Round Up: Family Unfriendly and One Billion Americans + Is The 401 The Busiest Highway In The World?
After reading two books touching on the theme of birth rates Adam gives us an overview and discussion on Family Unfriendly: How Our Culture Made Raising Kids Much Harder Than It Needs to Be by Timothy Carney and One Billion Americans: The Case for Thinking Bigger by Matthew Yglesias. Then Darren looks into whether or not Highway 401 in Toronto is the busiest highway in the world.
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40:36
TRC #704: Remembering Joe Nickell
Joe Nickell, the world renowned paranormal investigator, died earlier this week at the age of 80. He was a great inspiration to us here at The Reality Check and it was a great pleasure for some of us to have met him back in 2009 at The Amazing Meeting. At that time we recorded this interview, originally used in episode 53 of the show, where we talk with Joe Nickell about his fascinating career.
Ireland