This week on Curiosity Theory, Dr. Dakotah Tyler and Justin Shaifer teamed up with Science in the City hosts Ashley Christine and Kalpana Pot for a wild conversation that jumps from sci fi to short form science, flat earthers, and the internet brain rot we are all swimming in. It is messy, funny, and unexpectedly thoughtful. Equal parts science, culture, and unfiltered curiosity.

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This week on Questionable Content, Dr. Dakotah Tyler (@dr.starkid) and Justin Shaifer (@mr.fascinate) break down Disney’s massive new partnership with OpenAI’s Sora and what it means for creators, the WGA, IP ownership, and the new wave of AI-driven media.

They discuss celebrity likeness exploitation, the decreasing leverage of creators in an AI-dominated landscape, and how authenticity might become the new currency of art.

Dakotah then explains the newest James Webb breakthrough: the first strong evidence of an atmosphere around a small rocky exoplanet, TOI-561 b. They explore the transit method, atmospheric signatures, rock vapor, volatile compositions, lava worlds, degeneracy in models, and the future of detecting Earth-like atmospheres.

The episode closes with a reaction to Juelz Santana’s viral claim that kids “don’t need to know how to read,” and why literacy still underpins human progress despite audio learning.

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Hosted by Dr. Dakotah Tyler and Justin Shafer

Stay curious.

On this episode of Curiosity Theory, Dr. Dakotah Tyler (@dr.starkid) and Justin Shaifer (@mr.fascinate) sit down with neuroscientist Lindsay Ejoh (@neuromelody) for a deep exploration into pain, gene editing, viral vectors, and the brain’s decision making machinery.

They break down how pain neurons work, how viruses modify DNA, what CRISPR allows us to change inside living tissue, and how empathy and fear circuits guide human behavior. They also tackle chronic pain, probabilistic reasoning, risk-taking behavior, and the ethical implications of future neurological interventions.

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Stay curious.

Are we the problematic generation?

In this episode of Curiosity Theory, astrophysicist Dr. Dakotah Tyler (@dr.starkid) and STEM educator and media producer Justin Shaifer (@mr.fascinate) unpack how fast culture is shifting, why kids see Justin as “unk,” how generational labels get created, and whether Justin’s TEDx talk helped cement the term “Gen Z.”

Topics include:
• How social media has created five-year “micro generations”
• Young people using AI as an operating system
• Whether an algorithm could make better decisions than human leaders
• Dolphin communication, Zipf’s Law, and overlooked animal intelligence
• How future generations might judge factory farming and eating animals
• Plant and fungal networks and whether societies behave like living systems

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Dr. Dakotah — @dr.starkid
Justin — @mr.fascinate
Show — @curiositytheorypod

This week on Curiosity Theory, Dr. Dakotah Tyler (@dr.starkid) and Justin Shaifer (@mr.fascinate) break down a new research study showing that taking a break from social media does not reliably improve or worsen mental health.

They dig into why detox narratives are so popular, the placebo and expectation effects behind “feeling better,” and the actual psychological mechanisms affecting mood, anxiety, and attention online. They also unpack dopamine myths, algorithm design, comparison culture, and how to build a healthier digital relationship grounded in evidence, not trends.

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Hosted by Dr. Dakotah Tyler and Justin Shaifer

On this episode of Curiosity Theory, Dr. Dakotah Tyler (@dr.starkid) and Justin Shaifer (@mr.fascinate) take you on a tour from ancient Mars to spiral galaxies to the trends moving through your social feeds.

We start with new NASA results and the possibility of life on Mars, unpack what counts as a real biosignature, and dig into ideas like panspermia and endosymbiosis to explain how life might start and how complex cells evolved.

Then we zoom out and connect the dots:

• Why most life in the universe is probably microbial
• How MRI and quantum spin actually work in practice
• How Starlink and satellite constellations mess with astronomy and reshape low Earth orbit
• How waves show up in oceans, galaxies, and even culture, as ideas move through people like physical waves move through matter

It is big picture, nerdy, practical, and philosophical all at once.

Follow us on socials: @curiositytheorypod, @dr.starkid, @mr.fascinate
Hosted by Dr. Dakotah Tyler and Justin Shaifer.

Stay curious

This week on Curiosity Theory, Dr. Dakotah Tyler (@dr.starkid) and Justin Shaifer (@mr.fascinate) sit down with Suh the Scholar (@suhthescholar) — a PhD stem-cell scientist — for a deep, funny, and inspiring conversation about the future of human biology.

They explore stem-cell breakthroughs, the ethics of replacing body parts, and whether open-sourcing scientific knowledge could accelerate discovery for everyone. They also dig into creativity in STEM, identity, and how curiosity connects science with culture.

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Hosted by Dr. Dakotah Tyler and Justin Shaifer

This week on Curiosity Theory, Dr. Dakotah Tyler (@dr.starkid) and Justin Shaifer (@mr.fascinate) unpack the rise of anti-intellectualism and the cultural war on science. From misinformation to AI ethics, they explore why people are losing trust in experts and sci-fi stories like Foundation and Alien Earth.

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