What We Learned on Podcasts This Week

 This week, we learned about the dangers of Brain Rot; The bottled water scam; Junk science in Forensics; and how to build a skyscraper the right way.

 

Brain Rot

Dr. Judy Ho is a clinical and forensic neuropsychologist and the host of Savvy Psychologist. The show focuses on real psychology the audience can actually use. She helps the audience face life’s challenges with an evidence-based approach, a sympathetic ear, and zero judgment.

In a recent episode, Dr. Ho discussed brain rot. “Brain rot isn't a clinical diagnosis, and it isn't permanent structural brain damage, but it is a real change in how your attention and reward systems function,” Dr. Ho said. “It’s because of neuroplasticity- that’s the brain’s capacity to reorganize itself-those changes can be reversed. It’s also not about intelligence or your willpower. In fact, highly intelligent, highly achieving people are just as vulnerable, and maybe even more so, because their brains are particularly responsive to novelty and stimulation.”

On the episode, Dr. Ho explains: “The study that really changed this conversation was a study published in the Psychological Bulletin, and it reviewed 71 studies involving over 100,000 participants. The study found that heavy short-form video use was associated with meaningfully poorer cognition, reduced attention span, and weakened impulse control. It was also linked to higher rates of depression, anxiety, stress, and loneliness. And just this past month, another neuroimaging study found that exposure to short-form video weakened communication between the brain’s visual, attention, and cognitive control networks. And this affects memory retrieval; it affects attention control. So there are a lot of different things to contend with here.”

Dr. Ho reinforces: “The most important thing to understand about brain rot is that there is a self-reinforcing cycle. Heavy short-form video use reduces attention endurance, and then that reduced attentional endurance then selects for shorter and shorter content. The less you can focus, the more you reach for the things that require less focus, which of course then reduces focus further.”

TikTok and Instagram users beware.

Short Wave

Short Wave host Emily Kwong began this episode: “You’ve seen it. I’ve seen it — crime scene investigators doing what they do best — making perfect TV.”

On the episode, Kwong welcomed Chris Fabricant, the Director of Strategic Litigation at the Innocence Project. He started out as a public defender in New York City, in the Bronx. Emily explained: “And he told us that, in the early 2000s, forensic evidence came up all the time in court, the kind presented on TV and widely used by law enforcement in the real world.”

Then, a watershed report came out in 2009 from the National Academy of Sciences about forensic science.

Chris Fabricant explains: “That report examined 13 of the most commonly used forensic techniques and found the conclusions that were being accepted in criminal courts were scientifically indefensible.”

Fabricant calls them “junk science.” Later that year, he explained, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy created a subcommittee on forensic science to address problems and strengthen forensics overall. And then, a few years later, the Innocence Project partnered with criminal defense lawyers, the FBI, and the DOJ to review more than 2,000 criminal cases involving the debunked technique of microscopic hair analysis.

For example, hair microscopy is a discredited technique that was used to match suspects to hairs found at crime scenes.

Fabricant noted: “So a hair was found in a probative place at a crime scene. A suspect is developed. You pluck hairs from the suspect, examine the questioned hair and the known hair side by side under a microscope, and declare a match. But it was dressed up as very sciencey by the FBI, primarily. They claimed that there was a match. Often, they would make a probabilistic statement, like that it’s very, very likely that it came from this suspect, or something along those lines. But what they didn’t know, in reality, was that it could be 1 in 10 people who might also match that hair, or 1 in 10 million, right?”

Fabricant goes on: “There’s nothing probative that could ever come from a so-called bite mark comparison. Eyeballing an injury and determining that it’s a so-called bite mark, the research shows, and anecdotally, from wrongful convictions, forensic dentists are no better than you and me at diagnosing an injury as an adult human bite mark. Beyond that, these dentists were taking photographs of these injuries at a moment in time. A decomposing body changes hour to hour, day to day, week to week. So a so-called match, you know, could be a match one day and not.”

Finally, Fabricant discussed blood spatter evidence. “Blood spatter evidence, if it’s done by an expert who understands trigonometry, understands the effect of gravity on blood spatter, and understands fluid dynamics, which is an area of research that’s highly technical and highly scientific, and beyond the ken, certainly, of your average crime scene technician. So if it’s done in a way that's relatively rigorous and modest about what it can and cannot say, it could be used. The trouble is, blood spatter evidence is often used by under-trained police officers who don’t have a background in mathematics or real science. And it’s used to explain an entire crime scene, how everything unfolded, and is way overstated, and has led to wrongful convictions.”

Lies We Bought

In a 2025 episode of Lies We Bought, creator/host Emily Rask unpacked how a wartime nutrition memo turned into one of the most repeated health rules in modern history. From government guidelines to bottled water brands, hydration influencers, and luxury water culture, Emily explored how drinking water shifted from a basic necessity into a lifestyle, a status symbol, and a billion-dollar belief.

Emily covered two myths that deserve to be busted. First, she told the tale of how “luxury” bottled water brands such as Evian, Perrier, Fiji, and Smartwater used marketing psychology to reshape trust in tap water. The irony, Rask reveals, is that most of these bottled water companies are using tap water to fill their plastic bottles.

Myth number two was: You must drink eight glasses of water a day. Emily says: “We also break down what the science actually says about hydration, why the evidence never supported 8×8, and how fear, branding, and convenience quietly rewired our habits. We trace where the eight-glasses-a-day myth actually came from.”

The recommendation traces back to a 1945 U.S. National Research Council publication that suggested adults need about 1 milliliter of water for every calorie of food—roughly 2.5 liters a day. The very next sentence in that report noted that most of that water is already contained in the food and other beverages we consume (such as fruits, vegetables, coffee, and tea). People dropped the second part and turned the first part into a hard rule for plain water.

Short History of…

Finally, in an episode of Short History Of… by the Noiser Network, the show told the story of the building of the Empire State Building. The episode revealed several surprising, “I didn’t know that,” facts about the legendary skyscraper.

First, the Empire State Building was built in 410 days (March 17, 1930, and May 1, 1931). That was ahead of schedule! When does that happen today? Consider that the Sydney Opera House was originally scheduled to open in 1963 at a cost of $7 million. The expressionist masterpiece by architect Jørn Utzon finally opened in 1973.

The total construction and land cost of the Empire State Building was approximately $40.9 million (or about $24.7 million to $40 million depending on specific expense breakdowns). Amazingly, it came in millions under its original estimated budget (which had been projected around $50 million to $60 million).

The onset of the Great Depression sharply lowered raw material and labor costs, while builders Starrett Brothers and Eken used newly developed fast-track construction methods.

Finally, the Empire State Building’s 200-foot top spire was built as a dirigible mooring mast in 1931, but it was primarily a publicity stunt rather than a functional passenger terminal. Backers claimed the mast would let airships from Europe and South America dock, letting passengers walk down a gangplank and reach Manhattan streets in seven minutes. Regular docking never happened. Only a single private airship managed a brief, three-minute tie-up during high winds, and another dropped off a bundle of newspapers, with no passengers ever disembarking. Airship experts like Dr. Hugo Eckener warned that violent updrafts and turbulent wind currents around skyscrapers made docking extremely hazardous.

For the latest news in podcasting, podcast industry trends, new podcasts, and podcasting events, subscribe to Podnews.

TrueFans.fm is a creator-first podcasting and fan engagement platform. It’s designed for both podcast creators and podcast consumers.

Check out books by Frank Racioppi. Everything from novels and nonfiction to podcasting books and essays.

Ear Worthy is a digital publication dedicated to growing independent podcasters/creators.