This week on the Are We Alone radio/podcast show, Seth Shostak and I talk about the Intention Experiment, a group of people who think they can meditate away various problems in the world… including the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. You can guess how I feel about this. Oh wait, you don’t need to! I’ve written about it.

Go to the Are We Alone website for a synopsis as well as a list of other segments on the show, or get the direct download here.

The podcast "Are We Alone" is a great weekly ‘cast from the SETI Institute, and this week’s episode has Seth Shostak and me discussing the nonsense about Iraq using bomb-detecting dowsing rods (here’s a direct download of the MP3). These magic wands do not work, and their use has allowed cars loaded with bombs through checkpoints in the Middle East. This is a direct example of how magical, antiscientific thinking can do real harm, resulting in dangerous situations and even deaths… hundreds of them.

The "Are We Alone" SETI podcast this week is a repeat from August, but in case you missed it the topic is 2012 and other Hollywood movies where science is abused, and I talk about the real ways the world might end. Listen before going to see the movie!

The SETI Institute’s latest episode of the podcast Are We Alone is now up, and I talk with Seth Shostak about the idea that somehow, forces unknown (God? The Universe Itself? The Doctor? Tony Newman and Doug Phillips?) have tried to sabotage the Large Hadron Collider… from the future!

Personally, I’m not buying it, but it’s an interesting idea. The authors of a published study say that we should perform some sort of experiment before turning the LHC on to see if someone from the future is trying to contact us. But I have a better idea: let’s turn the LHC on and see if it works. If it does, then we’re done with this idea. And if it doesn’t, hand me my sonic screwdriver. There’s work to do!

[Edited to add: Well, the folks at CERN have been injecting particles into the LHC stream since Friday. They'll be ramping it up to full speed in the coming weeks, so we'll know soon enough about all this!]