Birds Aren't Real: The Joke That Flew Too Close to the Sun

Is Climate Change Really Cranking Up the Weather Dial?

Episode 14 — May 11, 2026 The claim is largely accurate. The IPCC's AR6 assessment calls it an "established fact" that human-caused warming has increased the frequency and/or intensity of several major categories of extreme weather — particularly heat extremes, heavy precipitation, droughts, and compound events. However, the claim overgeneralizes: total hurricane counts are not clearly rising, and evidence for tornadoes and hail remains weak. The science supports "some extreme weather events are becoming more frequent," not a blanket increase across all types. TRANSCRIPT Alex (CON): Hey everyone, welcome back to Truth or Total BS? — Episode 14, May 11th, 2026. I'm Alex, here with Maya, and today we're poking at something you've probably heard a thousand times after every hurricane or heatwave. Maya (PRO): Yeah, the line is basically: climate change is making extreme weather more frequent. It shows up in every news segment, every politician's speech. Alex (CON): Right, and I want to push back on it — because I think it's become this catch-all phrase. Every time it rains hard or it's hot, somebody says "climate change." That's not science, that's vibes. Maya (PRO): Okay, but the IPCC AR6 report — Chapter 11 — literally calls it an "established fact" that human emissions have increased the frequency and intensity of some extremes, especially heat extremes. That's not vibes, Alex, that's the most rigorous climate assessment on the planet. Alex (CON): Sure, but notice the word "some." NASA's own hurricane FAQ says climate change is "not necessarily increasing the overall number of hurricanes." The UK Met Office admits low confidence on tornadoes and hail trends. Maya (PRO): Right, and nobody serious is claiming every type everywhere. The mechanism is well understood — warmer air holds more moisture, so you get heavier downpours, and more evaporation means worse droughts. NASA and NOAA both lay that out. Alex (CON): Hmm… but Carbon Brief looked at attribution studies and found about 17% showed no human influence or were inconclusive. That's not a slam dunk. Maya (PRO): Hold on — 17% inconclusive means 83% did find a signal. That's an overwhelming majority! And inconclusive isn't "no effect," it's "we couldn't measure it cleanly yet." Alex (CON): Okay, fair. But the original claim doesn't say "some extremes." It says extreme weather, period. That's overstated. Maya (PRO): I'll give you that it's not perfectly worded. But look at the actual data — the Great Lakes assessment found the heaviest 1% of storms increased 42% in the Midwest and 55% in the Northeast since 1958. That's not subtle. Alex (CON): Wait, 55%? In what timeframe? Maya (PRO): 1958 to 2016. And NOAA's billion-dollar disaster tracker shows the number and cost of these events has climbed steadily since 1980, even after adjusting for inflation and stripping out the wealth-and-population effect. Alex (CON): Okay, that's actually pretty compelling. I still think people misuse the claim — they'll point at a tornado outbreak and the science doesn't really back that one up. Maya (PRO): Totally fair on tornadoes and hail specifically. But heat waves, heavy rain, drought, compound events, the strongest hurricanes getting stronger — those are all locked in. The core claim is right, even if the edges are fuzzy. Alex (CON): So you're saying directionally true, with caveats on which extremes. Maya (PRO): Exactly. The IPCC, NASA, NOAA, USGS — independent, high-authority bodies all agree. The pushback mostly comes from places like Cato, which has, let's say, motivated reasoning on climate policy. Alex (CON): Ha! Yeah, Cato isn't exactly a neutral referee here. Alright, I think I have to land somewhere reasonable on this one. Maya (PRO): The claim's a little broad-brush, but the underlying science genuinely supports it for most of the big categories people actually care about. Alex (CON): So our verdict today: Mostly True. Climate change is increasing the frequency of many extreme weather events — just not every single type, and the wording could use a little more nuance. Thanks for hanging with us — catch you next week on Truth or Total BS? Read the full transcript [https://lenz.io/podcast/is-climate-change-really-cranking-up-the-weather-dial-ep14] | See the full analysis [https://lenz.io/c/climate-change-extreme-weather-frequency-increase-04ddcf88]

The 10% Brain Myth: Where Did This Even Come From?

Episode 13 — May 05, 2026 This is one of the most persistent myths about the brain, but it is definitively false. Modern brain imaging (fMRI, PET scans) shows that humans routinely use all parts of their brain — not just 10%. Even during rest, widespread neural networks remain active. Harvard Health calls the claim "100% fiction," and MIT's McGovern Institute confirms we use our entire brain every day. The brain consumes roughly 20% of the body's energy, which would be biologically wasteful if 90% were unused. TRANSCRIPT Alex (CON): Hey everyone, welcome back to Truth or Total BS? — Episode 13, May 5th, 2026. I'm Alex, here as always with Maya, and today we're tackling that classic line you've heard in every bad sci-fi movie: the idea that we only use ten percent of our brains. Maya (PRO): Ha! The Lucy defense. I'm taking the pro side today, which means I have to convince Alex — and you — that there's something to this. Alex (CON): Good luck, genuinely. Because the science here is brutal. MIT's McGovern Institute literally calls it "100 percent a myth." Harvard Health uses the exact same phrase — "100% fiction." That's not wishy-washy hedging. Maya (PRO): Okay, but hear me out. Even Harvard concedes that "some parts may be more active at any given time." Cleveland Clinic talks about fMRI lighting up "specific areas" during tasks. So at any single moment, you're not running the whole engine. Alex (CON): Right, but that's a bait-and-switch though. The claim isn't "your whole brain doesn't peak simultaneously" — that's trivially true of every organ. The claim is that 90% of your brain is sitting there unused. And that's just… not what imaging shows. Maya (PRO): Hmm. Define unused, though? Alex (CON): Britannica and Medical News Today both point out that PET and fMRI scans show widespread activity even during rest or simple tasks. There's no dormant 90%. Even when you're doing nothing, your default-mode network is humming. Maya (PRO): Okay but — the metabolic argument. Couldn't the brain just be ticking over at baseline without really firing at capacity? Alex (CON): That's where the energy math kills it for me. Your brain is two percent of your body weight and burns twenty percent of your calories. Evolution does not build a Ferrari to leave 90% of it in the garage. That's biologically absurd. Maya (PRO): Wait, that's actually a great point. Natural selection would've trimmed it. Alex (CON): And the lesion evidence seals it. If 90% were truly unused, most strokes and brain injuries would be no big deal. But damage almost anywhere causes real deficits. There's no junk drawer up there. Maya (PRO): Okay, devil's advocate last gasp — where does this myth even come from? Someone smart must've said it. Alex (CON): That's the fun part! Everyone attributes it to William James. But James, back in 1907, just said we use "a small part of our possible mental and physical resources." Philosophical, not neurological. No number, no brain. Maya (PRO): Wait, really? So who put the ten percent in? Alex (CON): Lowell Thomas, 1936. He wrote the foreword to Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People and just… invented the number. Put it in James's mouth. That book sold tens of millions. Boom — myth crystallized. Maya (PRO): That is wild. So a self-help book foreword basically rewired pop culture's understanding of neuroscience for a century. Alex (CON): Pretty much. And every "unlock your brain's potential" guru since has been riding Lowell Thomas's made-up stat. Maya (PRO): Okay, I'm out. I came in trying to defend the spirit of it, but you're right — "regions activate selectively" is not the same as "90% unused," and the energy and lesion arguments really do close the door. I concede. Alex (CON): Appreciate the honesty. So the verdict on "humans use only 10 percent of their brains" — False. Total BS, with a fascinating origin story. Thanks for hanging out with us, and we'll catch you next week! Read the full transcript [https://lenz.io/podcast/the-10-brain-myth-where-did-this-even-come-from-ep13] | See the full analysis [https://lenz.io/c/humans-10-percent-brain-capacity-usage-973ee4de]

Flattened Fields and Alien Myths: The Real Story Behind Crop Circles

Episode 12 — April 28, 2026 The scientific and journalistic consensus overwhelmingly supports this claim. Doug Bower and Dave Chorley publicly confessed in 1991 to creating over 200 crop circles, and numerous independent teams have since replicated intricate designs using documented tools. No credible evidence links any crop circle to extraterrestrial origin. While a small number of researchers propose natural atmospheric mechanisms for some formations, these alternative explanations themselves contradict UFO attribution rather than support it. TRANSCRIPT Alex (PRO): Hey everyone, welcome back to Truth or Total BS? Episode 12, April 28th, 2026. I'm Alex, that's Maya, and today we're asking — crop circles. You know, those gorgeous geometric patterns that show up in fields overnight. Are they alien calling cards or just... people with planks and too much free time? Maya, you're skeptical of the human explanation. Maya (CON): I'm not saying little green men are out there with protractors, but I do think the blanket claim that every single UFO-attributed crop circle is human-made is an overreach. There are competing explanations still floating around in the literature. Alex (PRO): Okay but here's the thing — this isn't even a mystery anymore. In 1991, Doug Bower and Dave Chorley literally walked up to reporters and said 'yeah, we've been doing this since 1978.' Over 200 crop circles. Wooden planks, rope, a baseball cap with some wire on it. That's it. Maya (CON): Right, and that covers some famous English cases. But the claim says crop circles attributed to UFOs — all of them — are human-made. Bower and Chorley don't account for formations in Arkansas, or Australia, or— Alex (PRO): Hold on — they don't have to. Their confession cracked it wide open. After 1991, independent teams all over the world started replicating intricate designs. Modern circle-makers use GPS, drones, lasers. Live Science reported this pretty definitively — crop circles are landscape art made by people. Full stop. Maya (CON): But the Psi Encyclopedia catalogs multiple competing hypotheses — unusual weather, earth energies, other non-human agencies. And Colin Andrews, a prominent researcher, estimated maybe 20% of formations could be natural forces. Alex (PRO): Wait, think about what you just said. Even that estimate concedes 80% are human-made! And 'natural forces' isn't UFOs either. That actually undermines the alien attribution, not supports it. Maya (CON): Hmm… fair point. But what about those Arkansas cases from Ancient Origins? They reported abnormally high magnetic iron oxides in the soil, biological anomalies— Alex (PRO): Yeah, Ancient Origins — that's a pseudoscience-adjacent outlet reporting unverified anecdotal claims about 'human DNA hybrid growths.' Come on, Maya. You can't stack that against multiple corroborated confessions and documented replications from credible sources. Maya (CON): I mean… the sourcing is rough, I'll give you that. Alex (PRO): And the Psi Encyclopedia thing — it catalogs fringe hypotheses. That's not the same as providing evidence for them. Listing an idea doesn't make it credible. Meanwhile, Historic Mysteries, Live Science, and NAU's academic page all independently confirm the Bower and Chorley story. Maya (CON): Okay okay, I was also going to bring up the NASA center-pivot irrigation thing, where circular patterns form from farming equipment, which complicates— Alex (PRO): Oh — but those aren't attributed to UFOs! Nobody looks at an irrigation circle and thinks aliens. That's completely outside the scope of what we're talking about. Maya (CON): Ha! Yeah, you're right, that was a stretch. I think... honestly, the more I sit with it, the confession plus the independent replications plus the fact that even the counter-arguments don't actually support UFO origins — it's pretty overwhelming. Alex (PRO): That's the key part. Not a single credible source links any crop circle to extraterrestrial origin. Every alternative explanation either confirms humans did it or proposes natural atmospheric stuff — which still isn't aliens. Maya (CON): Yeah, I genuinely concede this one. The evidence is just stacked. Bower and Chorley started it, modern teams perfected it, and the fringe stuff doesn't hold up under any scrutiny. Alex (PRO): So our verdict today — crop circles attributed to UFOs being created by humans — that is True. Solidly, decisively true. Thanks for listening, folks. Catch you next week on Truth or Total BS! Read the full transcript [https://lenz.io/podcast/flattened-fields-and-alien-myths-the-real-story-behind-crop-circles-ep12] | See the full analysis [https://lenz.io/c/crop-circles-human-made-ufo-origins-dfa02215]

Birds Aren't Real: The Joke That Flew Too Close to the Sun

Episode 11 — April 21, 2026 This claim is entirely false. "Birds Aren't Real" is a well-documented satirical movement founded in 2017 by Peter McIndoe as absurdist commentary on conspiracy culture — not a genuine assertion. Its founder publicly confirmed it was a hoax in 2021. Centuries of ornithological science confirm birds are biological animals. No credible, independent evidence supports the idea that birds are government surveillance drones. The claim's cultural popularity reflects its success as satire, not any factual basis. TRANSCRIPT Alex (PRO): Hey everyone, welcome back to Truth or Total BS? Episode 11, April 21st, 2026. I'm Alex, that's Maya, and today — okay, I'm genuinely excited about this one — we're asking whether birds are actually government surveillance drones. Yes, really. Strap in. Maya (CON): I can already feel my brain cells leaving. But honestly, the real story here is way more interesting than the claim itself. Alex (PRO): Look, I know how it sounds. But hear me out — the Birds Aren't Real movement has a whole timeline. They say the CIA eliminated twelve billion birds between 1959 and 1971 and swapped them with drone replicas. It's published, it's detailed, it's got merch. Maya (CON): Alex. It has merch. That's your evidence? The movement's own website is literally the only source making this claim. That's like citing your own diary as proof you're the king of France. Alex (PRO): Ha! Okay, but it's not just their website. Audubon covered it, The Guardian covered it, the University of Miami wrote it up — this thing has massive cultural reach. You can't just dismiss something millions of people engage with. Maya (CON): Hold on — every single one of those outlets calls it satire. Audubon describes it as a narrative invented by a twenty-year-old college student. The Guardian says Peter McIndoe improvised the whole thing in Memphis in 2017 as an absurdist statement during a tense political moment. These sources document the meme, they don't validate it. Alex (PRO): Sure, but there's a genuine subset of people who engage with it as literal truth. Diggit Magazine and UAV Coach both document that. Doesn't that count for something? Maya (CON): That's a really common fallacy though — argumentum ad populum. Some people sincerely believing a hoax doesn't make it true. People believe all kinds of things. The question is: is there independent evidence that birds are drones? And the answer is zero. None. Alex (PRO): I mean… the fabricated historical documents are pretty elaborate. Fake JFK quotes, invented government memos— Maya (CON): You just said 'fabricated' yourself! That's the whole point. McIndoe broke character publicly in 2021 — told the New York Times directly, quote, 'it is a parody social movement with a purpose,' end quote. The creator admitted it's a joke. Alex (PRO): Okay but some followers kept believing even after he said that. Doesn't that twist kind of prove the cultural power of belief? Maya (CON): Wait wait wait — cultural power is not factual truth. We've got centuries of ornithological science. Britannica defines ornithology as a branch of zoology studying real biological animals — their anatomy, physiology, behavior, ecology, evolution. Birds are one of the most studied groups of organisms on Earth. You'd need extraordinary evidence to overturn all of that, and what we have is… a satirical website and some TikToks. Alex (PRO): Hmm… yeah. I think I've been arguing the meta-story when the actual claim is just — it's just not there, is it? Maya (CON): That's exactly it. The movement is genuinely fascinating as a mirror for how conspiracy thinking works in the post-truth era. But the claim itself? Birds are drones? It was designed to be absurd. That's the whole joke. Alex (PRO): You know what, I'll take the L on this one. The only 'evidence' is self-published by the movement itself, the founder called it a hoax, and actual science has birds pretty well covered. I'm convinced. Maya (CON): The most self-aware conspiracy of our time. I genuinely love it as satire. Just not as, you know, a fact. Alex (PRO): So our verdict today: this one is False. Birds are real, folks. Sorry to disappoint. But seriously, the Birds Aren't Real story is wild — go read up on it for the humor alone. We'll catch you next week on Truth or Total BS. Peace! Read the full transcript [https://lenz.io/podcast/birds-arent-real-the-joke-that-flew-too-close-to-the-sun-ep11] | See the full analysis [https://lenz.io/c/birds-government-surveillance-drones-a254b30d]

Ten Thousand Hours of Nonsense?

Episode 10 — April 14, 2026 The 10,000-hour rule does not reliably predict expertise. Meta-analyses show deliberate practice explains only 18–26% of skill variance across domains. Individual variation is enormous — chess masters have achieved mastery in as few as 3,016 hours while others never reached it after 25,000+. The "rule" is a popularized oversimplification of one violinist study's average, and its originator, K. Anders Ericsson, distanced himself from this framing. Genetics, instruction quality, and learning rates matter significantly. TRANSCRIPT Alex (CON): Hey everyone, welcome back to Truth or Total BS! Episode 10 — April 14th, 2026. I'm Alex, that's Maya, and today we're tackling one of the most beloved self-help ideas out there: the 10,000-hour rule. You know — put in ten thousand hours of practice and you'll become an expert at basically anything. Maya's defending it, I'm calling BS. Let's go. Maya (PRO): Okay, look — this isn't some random internet myth. It comes from real research. Ericsson's 1993 violinist study found elite performers had accumulated around 10,000 hours of deliberate practice by age 20, compared to about 5,000 for less accomplished peers. That's a massive, measurable gap. Alex (CON): Sure, but here's what you're leaving out — that was an average. Not a threshold, not a magic number. Ericsson himself distanced himself from the whole '10,000-hour rule' framing. He literally wrote a book called Peak to set the record straight. Maya (PRO): Fair, but even critics admit deliberate practice is meaningfully linked to expert performance. The PubMed overview says expert performance can be traced to active engagement in deliberate practice. The framework captures something real. Alex (CON): But the claim isn't 'deliberate practice matters.' The claim is that 10,000 hours reliably predicts expertise. Those are completely different statements. And the meta-analytic data destroys the prediction part. Maya (PRO): How so? Alex (CON): Brooke Macnamara at Case Western did a huge meta-analysis — deliberate practice hours predicted only 26% of skill variation in games like chess, 21% in music, and even less in other domains. That means 74 to 80% of the variation comes from something else entirely. That's not 'reliable prediction' by any stretch. Maya (PRO): Okay but — in complex human performance, explaining even a quarter of the variance consistently across domains is actually meaningful. That's not nothing. Alex (CON): It's not nothing, but 'not nothing' and 'reliably predicts' are worlds apart. And wait — it gets worse. Studies on chess masters show some achieved mastery in as few as 3,016 hours. Others practiced over 25,000 hours and never made it. That's a wild range. Maya (PRO): Wait, really? Twenty-five thousand hours and still not a master? Alex (CON): Yeah! And that Guardian piece on Macnamara's research quotes her directly: 'The idea has become really entrenched in our culture, but it's an oversimplification.' She points to genetics, environmental factors, quality of instruction — all things the rule just ignores. Maya (PRO): I mean… I guess my strongest argument is really that the rule identifies the scale of commitment needed. Like, a ballpark. Alex (CON): But that's moving the goalposts, right? The claim says it 'reliably predicts the attainment of expertise.' A ballpark estimate that's off by a factor of eight — from 3,000 to 25,000 hours — isn't a reliable predictor of anything. Maya (PRO): Hmm… okay, yeah. When you put it that way, I'm kind of arguing for a different, weaker claim than what's actually on the table. Alex (CON): Exactly. And the original Ericsson research was about structured, feedback-rich deliberate practice — not just logging hours. Gladwell took a nuanced finding and turned it into a bumper sticker. Even Ericsson thought so. Maya (PRO): You know what, I'll give you this one. The idea that practice matters? Absolutely true. But a specific hour count reliably predicting expertise across fields and people? No. The variance is just too massive. Alex (CON): Well said. So folks, our verdict: the 10,000-hour rule reliably predicting expertise? That is False. It's a catchy oversimplification of real but way more complicated science. Practice smart, not just long. We'll catch you next week on Truth or Total BS! Read the full transcript [https://lenz.io/podcast/ten-thousand-hours-of-nonsense-ep10] | See the full analysis [https://lenz.io/c/10000-hour-rule-expertise-prediction-reliability-ccb5ab06]