Of all the people on the internet pretending to be geniuses, none are more aggravating than the Weinstein brothers. You have Bret, a fake biologist who tells everyone he deserves a Nobel prize for no reason, and really just spreads misinformation about biomedical topics on the internet which get people killed. Then you have Eric, a fake physicist who tells everyone he deserves a Nobel prize for no reason, and really just spreads anti-establishment tripe all over the internet that degrades public perception of academia and the scientific community. Basically, these guys are gigantic assholes. But they've managed to convince so many people that they're brilliant renegades who have been shunned by the establishment, because their truth is just too hot to handle. How are they able to do this, and can their fans be shown what massive frauds they really are? Let's take a crack at it!

Diary note: it may seem a while off, but the end of the world is still scheduled for 2030, precise date TBC. After once suggesting that nameless devastation could be upon us in 2012, the evergreen eschatologist Graham Hancock subsequently updated his advice to a comet, now six years off. Or thereabouts. MailOnline, which has been exhuming an ancient Hancock text, reminds readers of his “dire warning for our age”.

What is certain, anyway, is that a great and horrifying catastrophe will occur as soon as 16 October. This is the day Netflix will launch something astounding, almost beyond belief, something sceptics said could never happen: series 2 of Hancock’s Ancient Apocalypse. And stranger still: this terrible event stars, along with Hancock, the Hollywood actor Keanu Reeves.

But the marker is now one of at least 15 that say, without hesitation, that aliens have come to visit Earth.

They join more than 180,000 other historical markers dotting the country’s landscape, and NPR found they wouldn’t be the first to claim something that may, or may not, be true.

There’s a marker in Massachusetts that claims the town was once home to a real, live wizard. New York has a marker about a ghost that plays the fiddle on a bridge in the moonlight.

Edit: I can only think that the downvoters either believe the aliens are among us or that they don't understand the very obvious tongue-in-cheek nature of the article despite the whole "real, live wizard" part I pasted above.

A long conversation with one of the best people to fight the battle against archaeological pseudoscience on the internet. If you have not seen Milo's epic critical takedown of Graham Hancock's Ancient Apocalypse, I highly recommend checking it out:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-iCIZQX9i1A&t=136s

It's sad to see the Bowery King mystery mongering.

Come on, Keanu. Not you.

Get ready for another 8 hours of speculative bullshit. This time with Keanu Reeves for some reason.

"Shaken baby syndrome" was a fad medical diagnosis in the 80's and 90's that has led to many miscarriages of justice (e.g. Sally Clark). It has subsequently been widely discredited by most of the Medical community, but that won't stop some prosecuters...

There is an Ancient Aliens game. It's chock full of kooky conspiracies for us to fact check and debunk, plus we get to be hypnotised by Giorgio and turned into an alien. Who could say no to that?

Looking forward to the people coming in to tell us that Adam Conover is annoying.

What Luis Elizondo got very wrong about the UFO videos in his book "Imminent: Inside the Pentagon's Hunt for UFOs"

By Mick West

This is a well produced series. I'm tangentially professionally exposed to the talc issue so I'm aware of a lot of these problems.

I recommend folks add to their podcast feed.