George Howard sits down with Daniel Hodges of the Hodge Cast for a conversation that moves from the frontlines of the second Sphinx debate to the collapse of free speech in Britain, held together by a single recurring theme - why intelligent people keep shutting things down before they have done the work.The Filippo Biondi situation is live as they record. George's frustration is not with mainstream sceptics but with members of the alternative community dismissing Biondi's second Sphinx findings without visiting his website or engaging with his methodology. He made a public $100 wager with a prominent figure who put the odds of Biondi's research at 100 to 1. The wager was declined. George calls it the Presbyterian and Methodist problem - factionalism within a community is often more hostile than anything directed outward.He also revisits the Malcolm Bendall thunderstorm generator - a clean energy device he tested extensively that has since grown to an industrial-scale installation in Australia. He remains comfortable with ambiguity, but notes someone is spending serious money on something that had better work.Daniel brings the conversation to Britain - 12,000 social media arrests in a year, a mother jailed for two and a half years for a tweet while grooming gang members walked free with two years, and a writer detained by seven armed police at Heathrow for a joke on X. Both men land in the same place: staying genuinely curious, resisting the urge to decide before you understand, is rarer and more valuable than either side of any argument tends to acknowledge.https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/Z5KZ2cui8WDjyF6gJ/some-thoughts-on-toby-ord-s-existential-risk-estimateshttps://cosmictusk.com/wally-broecker-says-a-cosmic-impact-caused-the-younger-dryas/https://www.carolinajournal.com/opinion/uncovered-risks-no-oversight-of-uncs-extreme-virology/Enjoy this conversation? Catch more here: https://youtu.be/wULC5AJ3mqI?si=ryd5CW5X_SAgOpsW