The Reality Check reaches 500 episodes!

The last time I dedicated a post to The Reality Check, it was back in 2016 to celebrate their 400^th podcast. I thought that milestone was impressive.

Well, TRC didn’t go to sleep after that. They’ve kept up their incredible work, and have just celebrated an even more impressive milestone. On Friday, May 25^th, they published their 500^th episode.

The Reality Check podcast

If you haven’t heard of The Reality Check before, you’re in for a treat. The Reality Check is a weekly ~30 minute (31 ± 6 minutes) podcast produced in Ottawa by Darren McKee, Adam Gardner, Cristina Roach, and “Producer Pat” Roach. The standard format is three segments, each selected, researched, and presented by one of the producers, then the panel has a brief discussion about it.

Breaking the show up into segments makes it fast-paced, and easy to listen to while doing other things – and of course, the hosts are clever, insightful, and funny. But the real strength of the show is the depth of research each host goes into on their segment. A lot of the segments are silly or downright bizarre – examples include “did NASA change your zodiac sign?” (#417), “is air conditioning sexist?” (#411), and “is the Statue of Liberty Muslim?” (#437) – but the hosts always dig surprisingly deep into the question, way past the superficially silly surface, to discover intriguing facts hidden beneath. Often they dive far deeper into the question than anyone else; a recent example is the “Yanney/Laurel” “debate”, which every skeptical podcast covered, but TRC had by far the most in-depth analysis of what was really going on (#499).

Their 500^th episode was pretty cool, too (not that that should be a surprise). Most claims the crew investigates turn out to be false (what, you thought NASA really did change your zodiac sign?)… but some of them don’t! The crew looked back on some of the crazier claims that they’ve investigated that actually turned out to be (at least probably or mostly) true. Mind you, I could really have done without learning about castoreum, which is the secretion of beaver anal sacs used as a food additive and labelled only as “natural flavouring”… thanks a lot for that one, Pat. Also, I found the amount of thought Darren has put into violating the “sock rule” of strip poker – I assume there’s a difference between socks on your feet and socks stuffed somewhere else – to be mildly concerning (“stuffed somewhere else”?! that dude plays strip poker hard core). But other than that, great show!

If you don’t follow The Reality Check, I highly recommend adding it to your podcast list. You can find various ways to subscribe, along with past episodes, at their (great!) website: http://www.trcpodcast.com/

And while you’re at it, be sure to check out some of these other amazing Canadian podcasts: Life, the Universe & Everything Else, Left at the Valley, and The Brainstorm Podcast.

So congratulations to The Reality Check on making the half-mil milestone! Last time I gave the final word to Cristina; this time I’ll give it to Darren “don’t ask where that sock came from” McKee:

Think better to act better!