https://www.sgutranscripts.org/w/api.php?action=feedcontributions&user=Hearmepurr&feedformat=atomSGUTranscripts - User contributions [en]2024-03-29T08:23:27ZUser contributionsMediaWiki 1.35.13https://www.sgutranscripts.org/w/index.php?title=SGU_Episode_967&diff=19208SGU Episode 9672024-02-19T12:01:53Z<p>Hearmepurr: links added</p>
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|caption = China-based Betavolt New Energy Technology has successfully developed a nuclear energy battery, which integrates {{w| Isotopes of nickel|nickel-63}} nuclear isotope decay technology and China’s first diamond semiconductor module.&nbsp;<ref>[https://www.greencarcongress.com/2024/01/20240114-betavolt.html Green Car Congress: China-based Betavolt develops nuclear battery for commercial applications]</ref><br />
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|guest1 =RS: {{w| Robert Sapolsky}}, American neuroendocrinology researcher<br />
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|qowText = Every great idea is a creative idea: The fact that you're using paint or you're using guitar strings or you're using equations, they're not really very different things. Getting that spirit into the education process … being curious about the world, that is a gift we would love to share.<br />
|qowAuthor = {{w| Damian Kulash}}, American musician<br />
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== Introduction, winter weather preparations ==<br />
''Voice-over: You're listening to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.''<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Hello and welcome to the {{SGU|link=y}}. Today is Wednesday, January 17<sup>th</sup>, 2024, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella... <br />
<br />
'''B:''' Hey, everybody!<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Cara Santa Maria... <br />
<br />
'''C:''' Howdy. <br />
<br />
'''S:''' Jay Novella... <br />
<br />
'''J:''' Hey guys. <br />
<br />
'''S:''' ...and Evan Bernstein. <br />
<br />
'''E:''' Good evening, everyone, or good morning, wherever you might be.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Good evening. How is everyone?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Good.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's late.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Doing good.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' My bronchitis is finally, basically gone. Just a little.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, that's good.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That crap.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Bronchitis.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That's forever.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I know. It only took months.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It was a hell of a gut workout, I'll tell you that much. My stomach muscles are way stronger now than they were.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, but coughing is not good for you. You know what I mean? It's not like you're, oh, yeah, I'm getting this coughing workout. Coughing is bad for your back. People who cough a lot get disc herniations and bad backs and back strain and everything. So, yeah, I hate it when I have a prolonged cough. I always get back pain when I have a prolonged cough.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Really?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Cara, you are in another continent.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It is true. It is also another continent. It's a funny way to put it. Yeah, I've been in Scotland for a week and a half. I think I'll be here another week. And so it is two in the morning. It was beautiful here, though. I've been spending a bit of time outside. We had a really, really nice snow yesterday and the day before, so it's quite white outside. How is it looking in the Northeast? I know there were horrible snowstorms all over the country.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' There were other parts of the country that got smacked super hard.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, we had some snow. Not horrible.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Usually, we're snowy here. But we had two light snowstorms.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It's definitely colder.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, it's cold here too.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, we're getting the remnants of the Arctic blast. What the, what do they call it?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Vortex or something? Yeah, I think it's pretty bad in parts of Canada.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' And the Midwest of the United States got it very badly.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But so far, I mean, it's early. There's nothing winter so far by New England standards.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' True.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You never know. February's really like, we can get hammered in February.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, boy.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I know it's gonna be cold and we're gonna get precipitation, but it always depends on the timing of those two things. Like, do we get the precipitation when it's cold or is it, do we get rain, you know what I mean? Because if it's all snow, it could be profound.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' But any time an ice storm happens by, that's dangerous. I mean, that is when the power goes out. That is when all the tree limbs come down. We've had some nightmare ice storms in prior years. Not very recently, but I can remember a few.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Tell me about it with the hard freeze. I've been talking to some of my friends who live up in the Pacific Northwest where they had freezing rain, I think, for two days, but not snow, up in Oregon. And trees are down all over the place. People don't have power. It's been pretty brutal up there just because of the heaviness of that ice on everything.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' And they tend to not get ice storms, if I recall correctly.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, yeah, never. Like, they're just, yeah, the whole city. You know how it is. Anytime a city gets hit by something that's not typical weather for that city, they just don't know what to do with it.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It freezes, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It breaks everything.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, yeah, I remember I was in Phoenix. They had, like, an inch of rain, and it paralyzed the city.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It happens every time it rains in LA. We don't know what to do.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Las Vegas has a similar problem.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And everybody's house floods. We're like, oh.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And I was in DC, and they had, like, a pretty mild snowfall from Connecticut standards, and the city was paralyzed. They just didn't have the infrastructure for it, you know? And, of course, with the kind of snowstorms that would paralyze Connecticut, Canadians are like, you lowlanders, you know?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' We get 10 feet, and Toronto's like, big deal.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' We've actually we've been talking a lot out here in Scotland about the fact that they ice, or, sorry, that they salt the roads here, and it's quite destructive on the cars. Like, it's really, really corrosive, and probably cause millions of pounds of damage every year to the cars that are having to constantly clean this ice off of their. Undercarriage, yeah, and the engine damage and stuff. And we've been really talking about, like, why do they use salt?<br />
<br />
'''J''' It's totally inexpensive.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But sand.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Up to a temperature, it works, right?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Sand is cheaper, and it's not quite as efficient, but it's still efficient.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It has to do with the temperature, though.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It causes a lot less damage.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Sand has to be cleaned up, though. Like, salt just goes into the water.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Sand can just go into the dirt.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Plus, the melting effect of salt is pretty dramatic, isn't it?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, sand has no de-icing effect. That just temporarily adds friction to the road, whereas the ice, or de-icing chemicals, as they call them, actually melt the ice. But it depends on how much there is and what the temperature is. So there are some situations where the de-icing chemicals won't work, and you gotta use sand. But again, it's only, like, adding temporary friction. And they all have different environmental effects, so that there's no perfect solution.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It is superior. But the question would be, do we really need a superior melting effect if you have so much sort of negative side effects?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' They don't always use salt. They use sand sometimes, too.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I think out here, they only use salt, and it's quite infuriating to the people.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, you have to have the undercarriage of your car coated against that.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' They do. They do, but you still have to constantly clean it out. And it's just, yeah, it's pretty bad. Anyway.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I've never cleaned the bottom of my car.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Go to a car wash?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' If you go to a car wash, they will drive it through. It has an undercarriage.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's why you go to a car wash.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' They still have those?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Car washes? Last time I checked.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' They do. They're quite nice.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' They don't exist. They went the way of drive-in movies.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Drive-in movies, soda fountain counters, and pinball machines. They're all gone.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I went to a drive-in movie not that long ago. There's still a couple of them around. They're definitely very retro.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, that became kind of a thing again during COVID.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, I remember that.<br />
<br />
== News Items ==<br />
<br />
{{anchor|news#}} <!-- leave news items anchors directly above the news item section that follows each anchor --><br />
=== Betavolt 50-Year Battery <small>(6:28)</small> ===<br />
{{shownotes<br />
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|article_title = Betavoltaic Batteries<!-- please replace ALL CAPS with Title Case or Sentence case --><br />
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'''S:''' All right, Bob, you're going to get us started with a talk. There's been a lot of discussion about this. This is really catching a lot of people's imagination, not in a very scientific way often. But tell us about this 50-year battery. What's going on?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah. Chinese firm called Betavolt Technology claims it's created a new nuclear battery that can power devices for 50 years. There's a lot of silly clickbait surrounding this stuff. Here's one press release from the Business Standard. Their article was titled, China Develops Radioactive Battery to Keep Your Phone Charged for 50 Years. Like, ah.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Sure they did.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh my God. Such annoying clickbait. Now, nuclear batteries, though, are fascinating. They are distinct, of course, from everyday electrochemical batteries that we use all the time, from AA's to the lithium-ion batteries in our phones and EVs. Nuclear batteries are also called atomic batteries, which I kind of like, or probably more accurately, radioisotope generators.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Didn't Batman's vehicle have atomic batteries or something?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yes. Yes.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh my gosh.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' And they essentially take nuclear energy and convert it to electricity at its most, top of the onion layer there. One layer down, more specifically, it takes the byproducts of the decay of radioactive particles and converts that into electricity. So are these batteries? You know, yes and no, in my mind. Nuclear batteries are atomic batteries. They can power devices for sure. So in that sense, they are batteries. But they do not recharge, and they don't turn off. The nuclear batteries do not turn off. So for those reasons, and especially the not-turning-off one, they are often referred to as generators. But hey, it's language. Many people use the word battery for them, and so that's fine. Atomic batteries are generally classified by how they convert the energy. And it kind of boils down to either they take advantage of large temperature differences, or they don't. The former, these are thermal-based atomic batteries. And they have one side of the device is very hot from the radioactive decay, and the other side is cold. And that's the key there, that differential. So using thermocouples, that temperature gradient can be used to take advantage of the Seebeck effect, look it up, to generate electricity. That's basically how it works. Now, the iconic, classic atomic battery that does this is an RTG, radioisotope thermoelectric generator. There's that generator word. These devices go back to the 50s and 60s. And I think the principle was proved, I think it was like 1913. So it goes back to the 50s and 60s. The most advanced devices today can generate tens of watts, up to 110 watts, for NASA's top-of-the-line RTG. And they can supply power literally for years and years and years. RTGs are heavy. They're big devices compared to our portable batteries. But they are amazing for remote locations and places with poor sunlight. The Voyager probes, more than 15 billion kilometers from the Earth and the sun, are powered by RTGs. Mars Rovers, too, and countless other systems and platforms and probes, NASA and our knowledge of the solar system would be greatly diminished if it did not have access to these wonderful devices. But if you want really small, portable atomic batteries, though, you then want this non-thermal kind. These extract energy from the emitted particles themselves, kind of like before it degrades into heat, directly tapping into and using the particles. The semiconductors in these devices use these particles to create a voltage. And typically, these types of batteries have efficiencies, from 1% to even up to 9%. And they go by various names depending on the emitted particles that they are using. So they're called alpha voltaics if it converts alpha particle radiation, which is essentially just two neutrons and two protons. It's called gamma photovoltaics if it converts energetic photons like gamma rays. The real standout, though, of this type of atomic battery is called beta voltaics. This converts emitted electrons or positrons to electricity. And it's popular because beta decay can more easily be converted into usable electrical power, much more so than alpha particles or photons. Beta voltaics are not theoretical. These are being used right now, right now, in countless sensors and other devices that require very low power for very long periods of time. Did you know that they were used as pacemakers in the 70s? People literally had them in their bodies for decades with no ill effects. They are very safe. These are known things and they can be very useful. So that's why this Beijing startup company calls itself BetaVolt. They're taking advantage of beta voltaics and their new atomic battery is based on that. The battery itself is called BV100. It's coin-sized, about 15 by 15 by 5 millimeters. And there's a decent amount going on inside that coin. It has layers of radioactive nickel-63 in between layers of diamond semiconductors. Nickel-63 has a half-life of 100 years, which means in 100 years it'll be emitting essentially half the particles it does initially as it decays into harmless copper. Now, so saying this battery can last 50 years, I think that's reasonable, if it's got a half-life of 100 years. After 50 years, it'll be still, what, 75% as effective?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, it's not linear, but close.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' So it's still, it's a good rule of thumb to say, yeah, 50 years, you could say it'll last 50 years and perform well. So, and it's safe. These are safe. It needs minimal shielding. Sure, you'd have to inhale it if you're gonna get concerned that that will do it. You would be concerned if you inhaled it. And I wouldn't want it to leak on my skin, but no more so than I would want a AA battery to leak on my skin, you know? So it's not like this, it's radioactive, no! It's pretty damn safe. So can this get 110 watts output like the best RTG? No. No, not even close. This battery generates three volts, but only 100 microwatts. That's 100 millionths of a watt. A microwatt is a millionth of a watt. That's tiny. You would need, what, Steve? 30,000 of them to power a typical smartphone. That's really low. So let's look at 100 microwatts another way. Let's look at how many amps that is. So, all right, we got an equation here. Power in the form of watts equals voltage times current or amps, right? W equals V times A. We know the power in watts and we know the volts, so you calculate the amps. That's .000333 amps. Now an amp, amps indicates how many electrons per second pass through a point in a circuit. So .0000333 amps, super low. You know, you're not gonna be powering something big and power hungry with something like this at all. So clearly, these batteries are not meant for power hungry devices, as are all beta voltaics are not meant for that. And that's okay, because power density is not the strength of these batteries. Now power density is the rate that it can output the power for a given size. And as I've shown, it's super tiny for one of these batteries. Very low power density, but they do have energy density. That's the total energy per unit mass. In fact, nuclear batteries have 10,000 times approximately, 10,000 times the energy density of a chemical battery. That's a huge 10,000 times, that's huge. But that's spread over the lifetime of the battery, which could be years or decades or even centuries. But that's where these batteries shine. They can last for ridiculously long periods of time. Now the significance of this battery seems to me to be it's a miniaturization and not the power density that everyone no one seems to be focusing on any of the miniaturization advances that they may have made. You know, there's not too many details on that either. They also claim that these can be chained together and connected in a series. So I think we'll have to see that to happen because it looks like I'm looking at some translated article here and they claim that they can get up to multiple watts if you chain them together. I don't, I'm not seeing that anywhere else. I'd have to see that. But the real important thing here is they claim they're shooting for a one watt version of this battery by 2025. Next year, one watt.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Bullshit, it's not gonna happen.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It's not. That's an incredible improvement that no betavoltaics has ever come near. And so Steve and I apparently are very, very skeptical of that. Now, if you can connect-<br />
<br />
'''E:''' You'll not be investing, I guess, is what you're saying.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, I mean, if you can connect their batteries together as they claim and they also create if they can create a one watt version, then we would be in some interesting territory. But I don't believe that. I will wait, I'll have to wait to see if they even come close to doing that. I don't think they're gonna do that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Bob when I wrote about it, I did my calculation, like theoretically, how, what could you get to? So given a betavoltaic battery of the same size, let's say you maximize efficiency, that gives you one order of magnitude, maybe, right? So you still have two orders of magnitude to go to get to one watt. And the, I think, buried in the article about it, they say that they're looking to produce this one watt version. And they're also looking to produce versions that have a half-life of two years or one year. It's like, yeah, those two things are related. The only way you're gonna pick up another order of magnitude is if you go from a hundred year half-life to a one year half-life. But then you don't have a 50 year battery anymore. You got a one year battery.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' You can't have it both ways.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Which is still interesting.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' But you've also got a more radioactive and more expensive battery on hand, right?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Using a different isotope with a shorter half-life.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Exactly.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But even assuming they could shield it and make it safe and pick up all that radiation and everything, that's fine. It's just, you don't get a 50 year battery with that kind of power output in that kind of size. It simply does not work. The physics does not add up.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So I think it's, there's no way around the fact that this is gonna remain a niche technology for very low power devices.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, yeah. I don't see it really breaking out of that characterization. You know, and other companies have tried to go commercial with beta voltaics. Steve and I were excited about nano diamond battery a few years ago. That's the one that used radioactive waste from nuclear power plants encased in diamond that could run for millennia. I think they were saying 20,000 years. So I looked them up recently and they were charged with defrauding their investors. Right, and there's been other, and there was another company that was trying to commercialize beta voltaics. And they, if you go to their website anymore, you don't find it. Their website's like gone. So it's just like we've seen this before and we're kind of seeing it again.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, this is a pitch for more money.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, partly, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, so, but what will we see in the future of beta voltaics? I mean, I love the idea of using them to trickle charge batteries. I think that's promising. And that would be useful for things potentially, like for EVs that are mostly idle. And you could just have it trickle charge at night in over 10, 12 hours. Like, oh boy, we got got a little juice out of this that you didn't have to plug it in for. And I love though, that when it comes to the worst case scenario, like you've got a dead battery, but if you had this trickle charge idea, you know, you wait a little bit. I'm not sure how long you'd have to wait to get a reasonable charge.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But at least you wouldn't be dead in the water.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Right, you're not dead in the water. And "eventually" you'd be able to just drive home. And of course, of course, trickle charging would be awesome in the apocalypse. Obviously. Now in the future, then when the zombies are roaming the countryside and you could say like Robin in the Batmobile, right Evan? Atomic batteries to power, you could say that. And then of course you'll have to wait a while for your beta voltaic atomic battery to slowly trickle charge your zombie resistant EV. And then you're going, then you're good. So maybe we'll see that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I think it'd be more than like for an electric vehicle, it's just, I think it's too little electricity. But for, you don't wanna drag around an atomic battery, that would be big enough to produce enough electricity that it would matter. But for your cell phone, you can, if you had even one that was producing again, like a 10th of a watt, let's say, or even a 100th of a watt, but it could extend the duration that you could go without charging your battery significantly, right? Because you're not using your phone all the time. It is idling most of the time. So let's say like you're going on a trip and you're gonna be away from chargers for three or four days. This could extend the life of your phone battery that long. I just say by trickle charging it 24 seven, whether when you're using it or not using it, or again, if you are in an emergency situation, you're never dead in the water. You always have a little juice. You just have to wait some time.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, if I were going out in nature for days on end, first off, I wouldn't do that. Secondly, I would bring a little solar panel with me.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Then it's overcast. No, but you're right, you're right. But yeah, but that's what they're finding with a lot of the deep space probes that relying upon aligning those panels with the sun is not a great thing. And nuclear batteries are really good. The European Space Agency, who previously said no nuclear batteries were gonna do all solar, they're like, maybe we should, maybe we gotta relent. So they reversed themselves because-<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Do you know why they reversed themselves?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Because they had a big fail.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' They sent a probe onto a comet. Their probe landed on the comet and then bounced into the shade. And then because it was in the shade, its batteries, which were solar-based, died in three days. So here's millions of dollars sitting in the shade, unusable, bricked, because they didn't have an atomic battery. So that story just cracks me up. So now they're like, okay, yeah, we're gonna do atomic batteries now. They were famously against them. Now they aren't, which was a funny story.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So like a lot of technologies, the technology is what it is, and a lot of it depends on being clever and being creative about how to implement it. Like what is the use where it's gonna be valuable? It's not gonna be like big drones that fly forever and all the crap that the press is saying about it. That's never gonna happen. But as a trickle charger or for super low-energy devices, this technology could be really, really helpful.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, yeah. The allure of a battery that can last for years, a conventional portable battery that can last for years, this is so high that people are just kind of like losing their shit over this and trying to extrapolate away from the science. For me, it's not so much beta voltaics, but for me, it's the RTGs. I wanna have these like chained, connected RTGs buried in my backyard that could power my entire house for decades. That's what I'm looking for.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, but the final point is like for your phone, like for trickle charging your phone, you don't want a 50-year battery in your phone. Your phone's only gonna last two or three years. You want a two or three-year battery, right? You want it to last as long as the phone.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That would be epic.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, then you don't need, you know.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, but it gets you more power. It gives you more power over the shorter period of time, over the lifetime of that phone. So there is a niche in there that could actually be very, very functional if the price works out, right? Would you add another 50 bucks to your phone to have something, an alternate source of power, a backup source of power and extend? Like now you only have to recharge it once every three days or four days instead of every night.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Well, those products exist, Steve. I mean, I have a battery that's a magnet battery that attaches to my phone, right? It's very easy to just put it there. It stays there. And it gives me like another half a day of juice if I need it. It's very, very convenient. And it fits in your pocket and everything. It's very easy. So, I mean, there are products out there like that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, I know. This would be another option. There would definitely be advantages to it because it's just there. It's producing energy all the time. But it's not, but the hype was ridiculous.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh yeah, it was silly.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Silly, silly.<br />
<br />
=== Moon Landing Delayed <small>(23:38)</small> ===<br />
{{shownotes<br />
|weblink = https://apnews.com/article/nasa-moon-landings-artemis-delay-23e425d490c0c9e65ae774ec2e00f090<!-- must begin with http:// --><br />
|article_title = More delays for NASA’s astronaut moonshots, with crew landing off until 2026<!-- please replace ALL CAPS with Title Case or Sentence case --><br />
|publication = APNews<!-- enter nn for Neurologica :-) --><br />
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'''S:''' All right, Jay. I understand that the Artemis program is going swimmingly. Give us an update.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oops.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Don't be look, we expected this, right?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Unfortunately.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So NASA's Artemis program, give you a quick refresher. It's aimed at returning humans to the moon. It's also very heavily, big part of this mission is that we are paving the way for future Mars missions. You know, we need to develop a lot of technology that's gonna allow us to get there, but they have been facing significant challenges that have led them to reschedule some of these timelines, which this information came out about a week ago. So the Artemis 2 mission, right? Artemis 1 successfully launched. It went around the moon, did everything that we wanted it to. We got a ton of data off of that mission, but now we move on to Artemis 2. Now, originally, if we go way back, it was originally slated to be, as you know, the first crewed test flight of the Orion spacecraft, but it's been delayed many times. Not, this isn't like the first delay or even the second delay. The first launch dates were said that they wanted to launch between 2019 and 2021. Now keep in mind, Artemis 2, not 1. Artemis 2, 2019, 2021. Then it was moved to 2023 and then November, 2024. And now they moved it to September, 2025. They are saying no earlier than that, which kind of implies it could be later, right?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's for Artemis 2.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That's Artemis 2.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, so one of my predictions has already failed.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh no.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That's all right, Steve. Oh no, somebody die. So the delays are due largely to crew safety concerns. So let me get into some of the details here. NASA is always, they're just continuously conducting testing of critical systems, environmental control, life support. And they have found during their testing, they've found problems that include battery issues with the Orion spacecraft regarding abort scenarios. There's also a, there are challenges with the air ventilation and temperature control circuitry components, which these are all mission critical components. And bottom line here is, of course, it's good to know NASA is taking all these precautions. They're taking it very seriously. You know, this isn't like a let's launch it and test it and see how it goes. Like they fully plan on bringing every single astronaut back to earth. So they are trying to resolve all of these issues, but it sucks to wait longer, but you know, we're just a consumer here, right? Like I'm looking at this like, come on, launch it. I want to see it. I want to be a part of all that. But yeah, ultimately we want it to be successful. We want the people to come back. So of course, any delays with Artemis 2 means that it'll impact the launch dates of the Artemis 3 mission, which has now been pushed for 2026. This delay allows NASA to give them time. They don't want to like do Artemis 2 and then immediately do Artemis 3. They want time to make a lot of alterations and incorporate lessons that they learned from Artemis 2 so they can make Artemis 3 better, right? You know, hey, we had a problem with this thing and that thing, like they want to fix all of those things. But there's also problems with the partners that NASA is working with to develop, that are developing their own technologies. So there's a couple of names here you'll definitely recognize. SpaceX, as a good example, they're responsible for the human landing system. You know, they have to demonstrate that their starship can successfully dock. It also needs to be able to refuel with other tanker starships in orbit. These are not easy things to do at all. And this capability is essential for transporting astronauts beyond Earth's orbit. Getting the ship refueled and being able to do what it needs to do in and around the moon is going to be something that could take place frequently. And these tasks, like I said, are challenging and straight up, they're just not ready yet. They don't have the technology. And I'm sure that the timelines and the dates that they're giving, everything is a, we hope that it's this, but it's never like it will be done on this date. Like they're not, that's not where they're operating. They don't work that way. Axiom Space, you might remember, they're making the next generation spacesuits. No, they still need to solve some heavy duty requirements that NASA put on them. Like one of the big ones is that the spacesuit itself, standalone, needs to have an emergency oxygen supply system. So this will enable the spacesuit to supply oxygen for an hour with no attached gear, right? Just the spacesuit itself has an hour of air in it. So they're also having supply chain issues, which I was a little surprised to hear, but they're having problems getting materials that they need to make the spacesuits. And they also have, they're working with outdated components that need to meet the latest NASA requirements. I couldn't get any more details about these components. Like I don't, I suspect that they may have been borrowing from earlier spacesuits, certain systems and things like that. But NASA has been ramping up their requirements and they're having a hard time meeting it. Now, this means that they're likely to have to redesign parts of the current design that we've already seen. And this issue with the supply chain is definitely impacting the development of the spacesuit components. So lots of moving parts here. Now, NASA is also dealing with its own financial issues. They haven't presented an official cost estimate for Artemis III. And there is a group in the government whose job it is to get this information, right? And they need to give it and it needs to be assessed and it takes time. Now, keep in mind, the Artemis program is not just about returning to the moon, but it's also laying the groundwork for human exploration to Mars. So there's a lot of complexity here and there's a lot of weight on every single thing that they do. And these price tags the costs are phenomenally high. The Artemis missions, they include development and integration of a lot of different systems here. You know, think of it this way. We have the Space Launch System, the SLS rocket. That alone is very complicated because there's lots of different versions of that rocket that they're gonna be custom building for each and every mission. Then they have the Exploration Ground System. They have the Orion spacecraft itself. They have the Human Landing System. They have the Next Generation Spacesuits. They have the Gateway Lunar Space Station and all of the future rovers and equipment, scientific equipment that needs to go. Like there is a mountain of things that have not been created yet that need to be designed and crafted and deployed. So it's exciting because there's a lot of awesome stuff ahead of us. And I'm not surprised that they're pushing the dates out, but man, it's disappointing because I thought something incredible was gonna happen this year.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, it's unfortunate, but you know, they're just going back to the timeline that they originally had. You know, they were pressured to move up the timeline. Right, was it 2026 or 2028?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' 2028.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, 2028 originally, yeah. So even if they push back to 2026, they're still two years ahead of their original schedule. And that was really just for political reasons that that was moved up.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Before we switch off to space topic, let me give you guys a quick update on the Peregrine Moon Lander. Remember last week we talked about this. Okay, so real quick summary. This Moon Lander was developed by a company called Astrobotic. Seven hours into the mission, they became aware of a fuel leak that was changing the telemetry of the ship. Bob was very concerned. They didn't know what to do. They didn't really understand what was going on. And then everyone dove in. They started to really figure out what was happening. So the planned lunar landing had to be canceled because they just weren't gonna be able to position the ship and get the engines to do what they needed them to do that would enable it to land. So the ship basically goes out approximately the distance of the Moon, right? 183,000 miles or 294 kilometers. It gets out there. Then it gets pulled back to Earth. It didn't, the Lander didn't actually transit or orbit the Moon. So I didn't see its flight path, and I'd like to see it because I'm not crystal clear on what it was, but it did get pulled back by the Earth. And they have currently set it on a trajectory back to Earth where they fully expect it to completely disintegrate upon reentry. This is gonna happen on January 18th. So as you listen to this, it'll have been, it happened a few days ago. You know, Peregrine was part of NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Service Program, and that's it. It's gonna come back, all this stuff on there, the human remains, the messages from Japan, a few weird things that are on there. It's all gonna get burned up in the atmosphere. So it's sad, it's sad, but it happens. And we learn from these things. And again, this is a perfect example of why NASA, when people are involved, meaning like we're sending people into outer space, they don't have failures like this, right? Like they won't stand for failures like this. Everything has to be massively tested. So we gotta wait a little longer, guys.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yep.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' None of it's canceled, which is fantastic.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, thanks, Jay.<br />
<br />
=== Cloned Monkeys for Research <small>(32:57)</small> ===<br />
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'''S:''' Cara, tell us about these cloned monkeys.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, so some of you may have seen there's quite a lot of trending articles right now that are based on a new study that was just published in Nature Communications. I'm gonna read the title of the study. It's a bit techie. Reprogramming Mechanism Dissection and Trophoblast Replacement Application in Monkey Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer. So based on that title, you may not know, but what Chinese researchers have done or what they claim is now happening is that they now have the longest lasting cloned monkeys, cloned primates, really. There's a monkey, he is a rhesus monkey named Retro. And my guess, even though it doesn't say it in any of the coverage that I read, my guess is that the name Retro, because they capitalize the T in Retro, comes from reprogrammed trophoblast. I think that's where they got his name, Retro. And so really what this story is about is a new technique for trying to clone primates that works a teeny tiny bit better than previous techniques. And the big sort of payoff here is this monkey is now coming on three years old. So you may ask, haven't we been cloning animals for a while?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Dolly the sheep, right?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Dolly the sheep, right. So this is the same technique. I should say it's the same general technique with some really important changes as Dolly the sheep. So Dolly the sheep lived for six and a half years after she was cloned. Mice, rabbits, dogs, goats, pigs, cows, lots of different mammals have been cloned over the years. Even other monkeys have been cloned over the years, but the difference is that they've been incredibly short-lived. So generally speaking, when we talk about cloning mammals specifically, it's super hard to do. About one to 3% of clones result in live birth. It's a very, very low percentage. So as it is, it's hard just to get viable embryos when cloning mammals. And then even if you get a viable embryo, it's hard to have a live birth. There were some monkeys in 1998 who I think were the most long-lived or the most kind of the biggest success story as of that point, but I still think that they only lived for a few months. And so Retro coming up on three years is sort of being hailed as a triumph by the media, but let's talk about what the difference was here. So all of these animals that I'm describing here have been cloned using a very specific technique. And that technique is called somatic cell nuclear transfer. In simple terms, as we know, we talk about the difference between somatic and germ cells. Somatic cells are like body cells, right? Everything but eggs and sperm. So a somatic cell is actually put into, so you're transferring the nucleus from a donor cell, but a somatic donor cell, like a skin, let's say like a skin cell into an egg cell. And then that donor DNA, which is now kind of closed up in the egg is sort of programmed to start developing embryonically. So here's one thing that I think is an important point here that not a lot of coverage that I'm seeing makes. These are still embryonic clones. None of these are clones that are coming from an adult organism. So when you start to see kind of the fear-mongering coverage around, does this mean we can clone humans? Does this mean we can clone humans? First of all, nobody has successfully been cloning mammals from adult cells. Does that make sense? Almost all of them are pulled from embryonic cells and some of them are even just pulled from split embryonic cells. So even though technically you could call it a clone, it's like a twin, if that makes sense. But this specific approach that's been used, which all of these, like I said, have been this thing, somatic cell nuclear transfer is where we run into some hiccups. So what ends up happening is that the cells of that embryos trophoblast layer, which is sort of the outermost layer that provides a lot of nutrients and also actually forms a big chunk of the placenta after it's implanted are very problematic in almost every case. And scientists think that this is because of epigenetic factors. So there are these markers that are present, right? That turn genes on or off. So it's not changing the actual genes that are there, but it's changing their expression, whether they turn on or off. When you put this cell, this clone cell into an empty egg, the egg kind of DNA or the epigenes, the epigenetic factors within that egg affect the DNA of the implanted embryo and all sorts of havoc is wreaked. And really scientists hadn't been able to figure out how to get these embryos to become viable. They're usually all sorts of terrible mutations. They often don't even make it to live birth. And if they do make it to live birth, they often die within hours, days, weeks, or in very lucky cases, months. And so what the scientists did in this case, and this is sort of the new bit, is a trophoblast replacement. So they inject that inner cell mass from the cloned embryo into a non-cloned embryo. So the embryo cell mass is going inside of a non-cloned embryo that they made through in vitro fertilization. So they're basically forming like a hybrid embryo and the trophoblast portion belongs to the non-clone, which seems to be less likely to kick in all of these epigenetic factors that seem to be harmful to the developing embryo. And so the scientists are claiming that this is like rescuing the development of the embryos. But to be fair, we're still talking about an attempt of like hundreds of potential cloned embryos and only still like a handful of them sticking and then only one of them actually being successful. So it's not like this case is any more efficient. It's not like this specific kind of success story with Retro, the first ever rhesus monkey that's lived for longer than a day. And actually he's coming up on like three years. It's not like their approach made a bunch of them. It's they still only, it was very scattershot and they only got one successful outcome. It's just that their successful outcome has been more successful than any other primate in the past. And so the argument that the Chinese scientists are making here is, if we can do this more, this could be very, very good for biomedical research. Because like we do all the time with cloned mice, you can give a drug to one clone and a different drug or no drug or placebo to the other clone. And you can see exactly how well it works because they have the exact same DNA.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So it's a good way to control for variables.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yes, it reduces all sorts of variability. But of course, this is an ethical conundrum. And a lot of people are saying like, should we be doing this to monkeys? Should we be doing this to primates at all? And look at how many failures we have before we have a success. And look at how much suffering is happening to these animals until we get to that point. And is it going to, like, what is the payoff and how much is it going to improve our biomedical science, our pharmaceutical science? Is the sort of return worth the risk? That's another question. Now, this is perfectly legal in China. So the way that they're approaching this, it's passed all their review boards and it's a perfectly legal practice, unlike some of the historical stories that we've talked about. Do you remember when we talked about the CRISPR, the rogue CRISPR story?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Oh, yeah, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Like that was not legal.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' The Raelians.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' This is. But I think some people are saying, wait, if they were able to do this with the rhesus monkey, are they going to clone humans next? No, we're nowhere close to that. A, because we can't clone adult cells at all. These are still embryonic cells. And B, it's still hard as shit. It's no easier and it's no more efficient to clone this. It was no easier or no more efficient to clone this rhesus monkey than any of the attempts in the past. It's just that this one hiccup, it was surmounted in this case. Can it be surmounted again though? I don't know. Was it lucky that they happened to get this one just right? I guess we will see.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We'll see, yeah. I mean, it seems like a good incremental advance.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It does.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, and which is, again, that's par for the course, right, for science, right? Breakthroughs are rare, incremental advances are the rule. And this is, it seems like a solid one. But I still want to know, when can I make a clone of myself so I can harvest its organs? <br />
<br />
'''C:''' Nowhere close. Yeah, it's going to be a long time. The funny thing though, which I did discover in doing this research, is that there's a Korean company that has made 1,500 dog clones at this point.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, how long do they live?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Like, they're long-lived. Apparently, they're perfectly healthy dogs. And so it's pretty interesting that just, okay, it's way harder to clone mammals, but some mammal species are easier to clone than others.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, well, thanks, Cara. This is definitely a technology that we'd want to keep an eye on.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And actually, I will add to this, and I think this is important. One of the arguments is that this could also have implications for conventional IVF. Because sometimes you do see this trophoblast problem even in conventional IVF. And so this could be at least a new way to look at improving outcomes in conventional IVF for people. So there's that.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' So not that acupuncture I talked about last week.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Probably, yeah. Probably this would be more helpful to researchers. Yeah, I think so.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, thanks, Cara.<br />
<br />
=== Converting {{co2}} into Carbon Nanofibers <small>(44:23)</small> ===<br />
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|article_title = Catalytic combo converts CO2 to solid carbon nanofibers<!-- please replace ALL CAPS with Title Case or Sentence case --><br />
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'''S:''' So I'm going to do another news item that's a little bit also of hype, more than reality. The headline is, scientists develop a process for converting atmospheric CO2 into carbon nanofibers.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Ooh.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Ooh, that sounds-<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Solves two problems at once, right?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Exactly, right? It sounds really, really good. But let's dig into it a little bit. So obviously, carbon capture is something that we're looking into. Researchers are studying various ways of either taking CO2 directly out of the air or capturing it at the source, near coal fire plants or natural gas fire plants or whatever. And then putting that CO2, taking the carbon out of it and getting it into a form that is solid, right? So that it could be buried or utilized in some way, but it would be permanently, or at least for on the order of magnitude of 50 or 100 years, giving us enough time to sort out this whole green energy thing, ully convert over to low carbon economy and energy infrastructure. If we could bind up that carbon for 50 or 100 years, that could go a long way to mitigating climate change. And the experts who have crunched all the numbers said, we're not going to get to our goals without some kind of carbon capture along the way. Although they're mainly figuring like after 2050, like between now and 2050, we really need to focus on reducing our carbon footprint. And then after that, that we, carbon capture has to really start kicking in to some serious degree to turn that line back down again, you know? So is this kind of technology going to be the pathway? Now, carbon nanotubes or carbon nanofibers are a great solid form of carbon to turn atmospheric CO2 into because we've talked about carbon nanofibers. You know, this is a two-dimensional material. They have a lot of interesting physical properties. You know, they're very, very strong and they're highly conductive, highly both thermally and electrically, et cetera. And even if you just make very, very short nanofibers, so they're not long cables of it, but just very, very tiny ones, it could, it's still a great filler, right? You could still like, for example, you can add it to cement to make it much stronger. And that would be a good way to bind it up. You know, just imagine if all the cement were laying around the world, it had billions of tons of carbon in it. That was then now long-term sequestered. So that would be, that's like one of the most obvious sort of uses of this kind of carbon nanofibers. So what's the innovation here? So essentially they said, well, one of our innovations is we broke it down into a two-step process, right? We didn't want to try to get all the way from carbon dioxide to carbon nanotubes, carbon nanofibers in one step. So we broke it down into two steps. The first step is to turn carbon dioxide and water into carbon monoxide and hydrogen. And when I read that, I'm like, oh, you mean like we've been doing for years, right? I mean, that's not anything that's new. And that's kind of always the first step, you know what I mean? Because the problem with carbon dioxide is that it's a very low energy, very stable molecule, right? So it takes energy to convert it into anything else. Carbon monoxide and H2-hydrogen, are very high energy molecules. They are good feeders for lots of industrial chemical reactions, right? If you have hydrogen, you can do tons of stuff with that. We've spoken about this quite a bit. And if you have carbon monoxide, you can make all kinds of carbon-based molecules out of it. These are good, highly reactive, high energy molecules. So yeah, that's the key, is getting from CO2 to CO and H2, that's always the tough part. And they're basically saying, so we're gonna do that using basically existing methods. It's like, okay, so there's no innovation in the hard part. The real, right? It's like, okay, that's old news. The real new bit is that they develop a catalytic process to go from carbon monoxide to carbon nanofibers. It's like, okay, that's interesting. You know, that sounds reasonable. So they basically proved that they could do that. You know, they use cobalt as a catalyst, and which isn't great because cobalt is one of those elements that are sourced from parts of the world that are not stable. And we're trying to reduce our reliance on cobalt. And so developing a process that uses more cobalt, not great. It's an iron-cobalt system that they're using. Now it's gonna come down to two things, right? So they did a proof of concept. You could break this down to a two-step process where you go from carbon dioxide to carbon monoxide, and then carbon monoxide to carbon nanotubes. It works, but two questions, or actually, there's three questions. One is, can you do it on an industrial scale? Because unless you could do billions of tons of this stuff, it's not gonna matter, right? Second is, how cost-effective is it? And third is, how energy-effective is it, right? So if you have to burn a lot of energy to do the process, then it doesn't really get you anywhere.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Don't do it, right.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So they do say that the processes work at relatively low temperature and at atmospheric pressure, at ambient pressure. That's good. So that's a good sign that this has the potential to be energy-efficient. And then they also say, and this is always that gratuitous thing, if you fuel it, right? If you fuel this process with renewable energy, it could be carbon-neutral. Of course, if anything you fuel with renewable energy, it's gonna be carbon-neutral.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's like part of this healthy breakfast, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Right, part of this healthy breakfast. But fair enough. So you could theoretically power this with solar panels or wind turbines or nuclear power, which is what you'd have to do. You'd need some massive energy source. But again, in the short term, if we're gonna build a renewable energy source, you're gonna reuse that to replace fossil fuel energy sources. You're not gonna use it to capture the carbon from the fossil fuel, because that's adding another step and that's inefficient. So this kind of process isn't, and this is what I was saying at the beginning, it's not gonna be relevant until after we decarbonize the energy infrastructure, right? Only once you've replaced all the fossil fuel with carbon-neutral energy sources, does it then make sense to add even more carbon-neutral energy sources in order to pull some of the carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere that you've already released, right? Until then, if you build a nuclear power plant, for example, just connect it to the grid. Don't use it to pull carbon out of the air that you put in by burning coal, right? Shut down the coal plant and power the grid with the nuclear power. But there's a sort of a good news to that fact is that we don't have to really perfect this technology for 30 years. This is the kind of thing that we need to have ready to go in 2050. Like if we get to 2050 and we've mostly decarbonized our energy infrastructure and some more industrial energy structure, that's what we really need to start ramping up carbon capture. And that's when these kinds of technologies are gonna be useful. So we do have a couple of decades to perfect it. So it's good that we're at the proof of concept stage now because it could take 20 years to get to the industrial stage where we're doing it. But it is-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Is it possible or reasonable that it would scale up like that?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, again, that's a big question mark. And we've been here a hundred times where something looks great at the proof of concept stage and then we never hear about it again because it just failed to scale, right? It wasn't the kind of thing that you could scale up. And with carbon capture, that is one of the big hurdles. Does it scale? Can you get this to function at industrial, massive industrial scales? Because it's not worth it if you can't. And then the other thing, again, is how energy efficient is it? Because if it's energy inefficient and then it becomes part of the problem, right? It's not helping. It's just another energy sink. This has potential. And I do think carbon nanofibers as the end product is a great idea. Because again, we could just dump it in cement and put it on or under the ground or whatever, put it in our foundations. So, and it makes it stronger. It increases the longevity of the cement. And cement is an important source of CO2 also. So anything that makes that industry more efficient is good. So there's kind of a double benefit. So I like all of that. But looking past the hype, this is something where we're at the proof of concept stage. This may be an interesting technology 20 years from now. So let's keep working on it. But this isn't like the answer to climate change, right? This is something we're gonna have to be plugging in in 20 years or so.<br />
<br />
=== Feng Shui <small>(54:04)</small> ===<br />
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'''S:''' All right, Evan, I understand that people are doing feng shui wrong. What are the consequences of this?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' My gosh, how are we ever gonna get past this obstacle? It's not every week that the news-consuming public gets advice about feng shui. But this week, we're fortunate not to have one but two articles warning us about feng shui mistakes that are all around us. And I know people pronounce this differently. I've heard feng shui, feng shui, feng shui.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I also think some of the differences- I think some of them come from whether you're saying it in Mandarin or Cantonese.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I suppose so, I suppose so. Well, maybe there are some people who are not familiar with what feng shui is. What is it? You know what I did? I decided, I'm gonna look up the definition. I'm gonna go to fengshui.com to find out. I don't know what's there. Here's what happens real quick when you get there. There's this big, so it's a blank screen with all except for a big blurry dot. And then the blurry dot will start to pull in opposite directions, forming two circles, touching at a point like a figure eight on its side, or the infinity sign, basically. And there's no text or anything. That's all there is. And the only thing you can do is click on the dot. And that dot takes you to the next page, which is a entirely black background page, no text again. And it slowly starts to transition to a gray scale. It dissolves eventually to a white background in about 10 seconds. And then an octagon appears. And then within the octagon, there are lines that appear interconnecting the non-neighboring sides of the octagon. And if you click on that, it brings you back to the blurry dot. So to tell you the truth, and that cycle repeats, to tell you the truth, I think that's the most cogent explanation of feng shui I've ever seen. You know, oh boy, this is wild. Oh, it's an ancient Chinese traditional practice which claims to use energy forces to harmonize individuals with their surrounding environment. The term feng shui means literally wind water. And from ancient times, landscapes and bodies of water were thought to direct the flow of universal qi, the cosmic current, all energy, through places and structures, and in some cases, people. Now, here is the first article. Four feng shui plants to avoid. These are gonna disturb the qi in your home, warns experts. That's how the headline reads. Oh my gosh, this is a warning. And where was this? Yahoo.com picked this up as part of their lifestyle news, and they pulled it from the website called Living Etc. So when it comes to the best plants for good feng shui, there are a few you should bring home, and some you should completely avoid. And they're gonna help you right now pick out the ones to avoid, because they are experts. Yep, yep, they consulted experts for this, and I hope that-<br />
<br />
'''S:''' [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enfe44s0ivo You have a degree in boloney].<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I hope they met legitimate scientists, botanists, chemists, right? Maybe they got on board, but here's what they said. Feng shui master Jane Langhoff. It's essential to consider the type of energy plants you bring into your spaces. Oh well, so much for hearing from scientists.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' What's an energy plant?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, energy plant. Type-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' What's that?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Consider the type of energy plants bring into our spaces. So it's not energy plants, but actually I'll get to that. I'll get to that, Cara. There's actually, there are actually some things, and I will eventually get there. So you weren't totally wrong. Here's what else she says. I don't believe that specific plants will necessarily cause bad luck. However, there are certain plants that can represent negative elements or bring inauspicious energy to a space. Generally, it's advisable to avoid excessively thorny and spiky plants that can cause injury. Oh boy, thank goodness we have a person with a master's certificate and a gold star on it that warns us that thorny and spiky plants can cause an injury. Another one, Feng Shui consultant and educator Laura Morris. As a general rule, you want to be mindful about where you place a spiky or pointy leaf plant. Try to avoid placing them next to your bed or in the partnership area of your home, whatever the partnership area is, wherever people partner up. I don't know.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's where the people get busy? I mean, what are they talking about?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' But you want, so here are the four, okay? Here are the four plants in order and do this like David Letterman's top 10 list, but it's a top four list. Number four, the yuccas, Y-U-C-C-A-S.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I love yuccas.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yuccas, yuccas, yeah. Got to avoid them. They're kind of prickly. They're kind of what, they have sword-like features to them, I guess. You know, long kind of bladed, pointy leaves. They say don't bring those in the home. Number three, cacti. I think we know what cactus and cacti are. Number two, dried flowers and dying plants. You know why? Because don't have those in your house because they represent stagnant energy. Best to leave those outside because if you bring them inside, they could restrict the flow of chi. And the number one plant you should not have in your house, and I have them, quite a few of them in my house, artificial plants. Yep, you know why? Because they block, well, they block energy. They're inauthentic, Steve. They're pretending to be something they're not. This is right directly from the article, which can affect energy in a space negatively. If you love artificial plants, they must be also kept clean of dust and grime. Wow, this is good stuff. Now, Cara, as far as the, what do we call them?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Energy plants?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Energy plants. They list some plants. So here's some plants that are associated with good luck and include, I'm not gonna give you their taxonomical names, but I'll give you their more common names. The treasure fern, the happy plant, the lucky bamboo, the jade plant, the money plant, and peace lilies.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And this doesn't sound at all like something she just made up.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I mean, totally.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' To sell the plants that she has in her shop.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' This is some fatal level thinking right here. You know, I mean, how more basic does it get than that? You know, I mean, yeah. Lucky bamboo and the treasure fern. But it gets better because there's the other article. Here's the headline. Small entryway feng shui mistakes, five things the pros always avoid. So again, like right on the heels of this other one came this article. Oh my gosh, pearls of wisdom coming our way again. Number one, don't have any dead or dying plants. They kind of referred to that in the first article because dead or dying plants create negative energy and represent decay. That's not something you want to welcome in your welcoming part of your home, which is your entryway. Number two, poor maintenance of the door space. For example, blocking the area behind the front door will make moving through the space difficult. You think so? If you kind of put something behind a door and try to open it, that's gonna, you know. We need an expert to tell us this though. Also, don't let your front door get dirty and grimy. You know, it'll stop the positive energy from flowing in that door. The next, the three of five, beware your mirror placement. You don't want to place a mirror face on because you open the door and you're looking in the mirror, oh my gosh, you might get scared or something. You want to hang that mirror on a wall facing away to a doorway to your next room because what it does is it sends opportunities and prosperities into your home. It kind of brings the energy in and reflects it into the center of the home, which apparently needs it. Number four is clutter. Get rid of don't come in and throw your keys down and fling your mail on the little table there and take off your shoes and throw your coat down. You know, everything has a place. Put your stuff away, basically. And number five, this is the most important and the one I'll wrap up on. We ignore the elements at our own peril. You must incorporate the five elements of earth, fire, water, metal, and wood into your entryway, which kind of, I think, goes maybe against the clutter part of all this, right? But they said the balance between these elements creates good feng shui energy and will create a harmonious balance in your entryway. So there it is. Of all the hard science that we've touched on this week, perhaps this will eclipse it all and be the most beneficial to us all.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Like, feng shui is one of those ones that amazes me because it's just pure magic, you know?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, it's nothing.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So you believe in magic, and I've said that to people, and the kind of answer you get is, well, science doesn't know everything. It's like, yeah, but we know magic isn't real.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Not everybody can say that, Steve.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, and it's like, what I love about it is it's magic mixed with, like, a dose of common sense. It's sort of like all the things you were saying, Evan, because then you have these true believers that are like, yeah, but I had an expert come in, and they helped me with my feng shui, and I feel better. It's like, yeah, probably because you're not bumping into shit all the time.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Right, because they cleaned your house and put your crap away.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Here's your problem. You've got a cactus right in your entryway here.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Cactus behind your door. You can't open your door all the way.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's feng shui.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So stupid.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, okay, fine. If you're gonna do it in your own home, whatever. But I mean, and what we talked about before, and it's not the article this week, but when governments start hiring feng shui people, bring them in for architectural design and stuff, they are, oh my gosh.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's driving me nuts.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Wasting all our money and driving us nuts.<br />
<br />
[AD]<br />
<br />
{{anchor|futureWTN}} <!-- keep right above the following sub-section. this is the anchor used by the "wtnAnswer" template, which links the previous "new noisy" segment to its future WTN, here.<br />
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<br />
== Who's That Noisy? <small>(1:05:06)</small> ==<br />
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'''S:''' All right, Jay, it's Who's That Noisy time.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' All right, guys, last week I played this noisy. [plays Noisy] Now, I should have known that that kind of sound was gonna make a lot of people send me a lot of like funny entries into Who's That Noisy, things like they absolutely know that that is not it. They're just trying to make me laugh. And a few people did make me laugh, but I did get some serious entries this week, and we have a listener named Tim Lyft that said, "Hi, Jay, my daughter, age nine, thinks this week's noisy is somebody playing one of those snake charmer flute thingies, but badly" which I thought was a wonderful guess. And her cousin, who's seven years old, guessed "a lot of farm animals".<br />
<br />
'''S:''' A cacophony of farm animals.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I think these are two wonderful guesses. And Tim himself guessed some kind of bird. You can't send me an answer of some kind of bird. You have to be absolutely specific. But thank you for sending those in. Those are great. Visto Tutti always answers. He always comes up with something. He said, "it sounds like peacocks calling during the mating season. They like to start the annoying screeching way before sunrise, which makes the humans in the neighborhood wonder what roast peacock tastes like". So I heard this and I'm like, I read his email like, oh, peacocks, I don't know. I never heard the sounds that they make. And then I proceeded to get about, I think six or seven more emails where people were saying peacocks. So perhaps peacocks sound like that, which is a horrible noise for a bird to make, especially if they live around you. Another listener named Harley Hunt wrote in, said, good day. My guess for this week is a peacock. Okay, I put that in. I don't know why.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I'm sensing a theme here.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, there's a theme. All right, so there was a bunch of people that guessed peacock. Another listener here named Adam Pesch said, "Jay, first time emailer, long time listener. Today, I was awakened from a deep sleep by this week's noisy. You did warn us. I never have a guess and probably am way off, but this week reminded me of a shofar horn that I've heard in synagogue trying to mimic an electric guitar riff. Thanks for everything you guys do." I could not find anything on that, so I have no idea what that sounds like, but I do appreciate those guesses. Unfortunately, nobody guessed it. And you know, this one was a hard one. I just thought it was a provocative noise that I wanted to play for you guys. And I will explain this one to you. So again, this was sent in by a listener named Curtis Grant. And Curtis said, I have a really cool noise I heard at work as an elevator fitter or installer. In this case, we use a temporary hoist that lifts the finished lift cabin, right, which is basically the elevator itself, up and down the shaft. We use this to hoist or install our equipment, which are the rail brackets and et cetera, from the top of the finished lift car, as it is more efficient than building a temporary platform to install from. So as these cars are heavy, they have temporary nylon guide shoes that rub against the rails and cause this noise. So basically, like during the installation of an elevator, this is a common noise that someone would hear if they were doing the install. Very, very hard noise to hear. Let me just play briefly again. [plays Noisy] Wow, imagine that like resonating inside the shaft, right? Wow, imagine that like resonating inside the shaft, right? Ugh, forget about it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's haunting.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, definitely. <br />
<br />
{{anchor|previousWTN}} <!-- keep right above the following sub-section ... this is the anchor used by wtnHiddenAnswer, which will link the next hidden answer to this episode's new noisy (so, to that episode's "previousWTN") --><br />
=== New Noisy <small>(1:08:36)</small> ===<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Guys, I have a new noisy this week, sent in by a listener named Chris Kelly. And here it is.<br />
<br />
[Zipper-like zings, and a clack]<br />
<br />
I'll play it again. It's very short. [plays Noisy] Very strange. If you think you know {{wtnAnswer|968|what this week's Noisy is}}, or you heard something really cool, please do send it to me, because it helps make the show good. WTN@theskepticsguide.org.<br />
<br />
== Announcements <small>(1:09:03)</small> ==<br />
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'''J:''' Real quick, Steve, I'll go down a few things here. Guys, if you enjoyed the show, we would appreciate you considering becoming a patron of ours to help us keep going. All you have to do is go to [https://www.patreon.com/SkepticsGuide patreon.com/SkepticsGuide], and you can consider helping us continue to do the work that we do. Every little bit counts. So thank you very much, and thank you to all our patrons out there. We really appreciate it. One thing we started doing a few weeks ago, about a month ago, is we came up with the SGU weekly email. This email essentially gives you every piece of content that we created the previous week. We send it out on Monday or Tuesdays. So it'll have the show that just came out the previous Saturday, any YouTube videos, any TikTok videos, any blogs that Steve wrote, anything that we feel you need to see, it's going to be in that email. Also, we'll put in some messages here and there about things, like for example, an important message to tell you guys. So Google is changing its podcast player. And the new podcast player that they have actually is not something that we want to work with because there's a few things, without getting into all the details, the big humps for us that we couldn't get over was one, we couldn't integrate this automatically. So it won't automatically update to our RSS. We'd have to do everything manually.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' What?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, that's crazy. It doesn't integrate with our media host and that's it. So that right there is a pretty much a deal breaker for us because we can't be doing everything manually. That's number one. Number two, and sadly, they auto-insert ads and the pay is terrible. And we would have no control over the ads. So that's it, it's a game breaker. We're not going to do it. We are not going to integrate with Google's new podcast platform until and if they ever change or whatever, if I'll keep an eye on it, but.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Hey, it should be able to turn ads off if you don't opt out of that.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, I mean, I haven't seen-<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And like not automatically updating the RSS. I mean, come on.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, I know.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, like nobody's going to ever, nobody's going to use this.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, I don't think they will. So if, unfortunately, if you have recently found out that you no longer are getting our RSS on the Google podcast platform, this changeover happened over, I guess, the last few weeks or whatever, we're very sorry, but we have to, we can't engage in things that aren't good for us and that's it. So we're just not going to do it. And feel free to email me if you want to give me more information about it, or if you know, like, hey, either it's going to change or whatever. I can't find anything. But I admit, I didn't look that deeply into trying to figure out where they might be in the future. I just know where they are right now. Anyway, guys, there's an eclipse happening, and we decided let's do something fun around the eclipse because this is probably going to be the last one that any of us are going to see, especially one that's going to be close. And as Cara and Evan have been talking about, this is a big one. This is a long one. This is really one you really want to see. So wherever you are try to get yourself to a location where you're going to have totality. You know, bring the kids, definitely get the eye protection that you need, but this is going to be a big deal. So what we decided is we're going to go to a place where Bob's horrible feng shui of creating clouds.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Right?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Whenever an astronomical event is happening, we don't think that Bob's powers will work in Texas. So we're going to Dallas. We're going to be doing an extravaganza on April 6th, and we will be doing an SGU private show, a private show plus, actually, and we'll be doing that on the 7th of April of this year. All of these things will be in and around Dallas. So we really hope that if you're local or you're going to be traveling there for the eclipse, please do consider joining us. Ticket sales are going very well. So move quickly if you're interested because I can see things filling up very quickly. Other than that, guys.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' The clouds will follow me.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, if they do, Bob, if they do. We will take it out on you. We're going to make you buy us an expensive dinner, I guess, or something.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Of course you will.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, but I'm looking forward to Cara's barbecue.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Ooh.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That's the only reason why I'm going.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' You guys are going to be so good. Barbecue and Tex-Mex.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I'm going to diet before I go just so I can overeat when we're there, you know?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, you're going to go hard in Texas. You can't not go hard. Oh, it's the best.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Deep in the heart of Texas, right?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yep. Stars at night are big and bright.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I know that because of Pee-Wee's Big Adventure, right?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Of course.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. Thank you, Jay.<br />
<br />
== Quickie: TikTok recap <small>(1:13:37)</small> ==<br />
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'''S:''' Very quickly, I'm going to do an entry from TikTok. As you know, we do TikTok videos every week. One of the videos I did today, we record, we also livestream if you're interested, but we recorded one on the jellyfish UFO. Have you guys seen this?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Oh, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I have seen it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, the jellyfish UFO. So yeah, the TikTok video that I was responding to was by Jeremy Corbel, who's a gullible UFO guy, right? And it's a really this is a great example, a great contrast between a gullible analysis of a piece of information, this video, versus Mick West, who does a really great technical, like skeptical analysis of the same video. So essentially, this is over a military base, a US military base, and there's a balloon, a monitoring balloon, a couple of miles away. It's like tethered to the ground. So you get sort of a bird's eye view of the base, and it's tracking this thing that's flying across the base, right? Now, it's called the jellyfish UFO because it kind of looks vaguely like a jellyfish. There's a blob on top and streamers below, right? So there's a couple of, so again, Corbel's going on just gullibly about all this, oh, what could this be? I'm trying to like mystery monger it, and pointing out anomalies, apparent anomalies. But here's the bottom line, very, very quick. And if you can, the deep, Mick West goes into the technical details very well. The thing is drifting in the direction and speed of the wind, right? This is something floating in the wind. And the 99%-er here is that this is some balloons. This is a clump of balloons and streamers floating in the wind. Now, we can't see it with sufficient detail to say 100% that's what it is. It could be something unexpected, but that's basically what it is, right? If it's not literally balloons, it's something very similar. But it's something lightweight that's floating, that's drifting in the wind. It's not a machine it's not a spacecraft.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' A life form.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Not a life form. You know, it's just, it's not moving, right? At first, I'm like, is that like a smudge on the lens? But like, no, it's kind of moving with respect to the lens itself. But it is again, Mick West shows quite convincingly that it's moving in the direction of the wind, it's moving at the speed of the wind, given the likely altitude that it has. He does all the angles and everything. It's like, come on, guys, it's a freaking clump of balloons.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Maybe that's the secret of alien spaceship propulsion. You let the wind do all the work.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, that's how they hide, right? They just float along like the balloons.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So they're literally paper airplanes.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' What's the difference between alien balloons acting like Earth-bound, Earth-created balloons?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And Earth-created balloons?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' There's no, right?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The difference is Occam's Razor, that's the difference. All right, guys, we have a great interview coming up with Robert Sapolsky about free will. This one's gonna blow your mind. If you're not familiar with the free will debate, you will be after this interview. So let's go to that interview now.<br />
<br />
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== Interview with Robert Sapolsky <small>(1:17:01)</small> ==<br />
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* "{{w| Robert Sapolsky|Robert Morris Sapolsky}} is an American neuroendocrinology researcher and author. He is a professor of biology, neurology, neurological sciences, and neurosurgery at Stanford University. In addition, he is a research associate at the National Museums of Kenya." - Wikipedia<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Joining us now is Robert Sapolsky. Robert, welcome to The Skeptic's Guide.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Well, thanks for having me on.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And you are a professor of biology, neurology, and neurosurgery at Stanford University. And you have written a lot about free will and other related topics. And that was primarily what we wanted to start our discussion with about tonight, because you take a pretty hard position that there is no free will. How would you state your position?<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' I would say probably the fairest thing is that I'm way out on the lunatic fringe.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' In that my stance is not just, wow, there's much less free will than people used to think. We've got to rethink some things in society. I think there's no free will whatsoever. And I try to be convincing about this.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay, well, convince us. Tell us why you think there's no free will.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' I think when you look at what goes into making each of us who we are, all we are is the outcome of the biological luck, good or bad, that we have no control over, and its interactions with the environmental luck, good or bad, which we also have no control over. How is it that any of us became who we are at this moment is because of what happened a second ago and what happened a minute ago and what happened a century ago. And when you put all those pieces together, there's simply no place to fit in the notion that every now and then your brain could do stuff that's independent of what we know about science.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So, yeah, that is, I think, the standard position of the no free will. Our brains are deterministic, right? We can't break the laws of physics and control what happens inside our head. Our brains are machines. But why, then, is there such a powerful illusion that we do have free will? And how do you square that, like the notion that we do make decisions? Or do you think we don't really make decisions? Is the decision-making level of this itself an illusion?<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Great. I think that's exactly where we all get suckered into, including me, into feeling a sense of agency. Because the reality is there's points where we choose. We choose something. We choose what flavor ice cream we want. We choose whether or not to push someone off the cliff. We have all those sorts of things. We make a choice. We form an intent. And then we act on it. And that seems wonderfully agentive, wonderfully me. There's a me that just made this decision. I was conscious of having an intent. I had a pretty good idea what the consequence was gonna be of acting on it. And I knew I wasn't being forced. I had alternatives. I could choose to do otherwise. And that intentness, the strength with which you were just in that moment, is what most of us, then, intuitively feel like counts as free will. And the problem with that is, when you're assessing that, it's like you're trying to assess a book by only reading the last page of it. Because you don't get anywhere near the only question you can ask. So how did you turn out to be that sort of person who would form that intent? How did you become that person? And that's the stuff we had no control over.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay, I see that. So you have no control over the person that you are, all of the things that went into influencing your decision-making. But does that add up to, though, that you're not actually making decisions? Or I guess another, when I try to wrestle with this, the other thing that really bothers me is not only the sense of decision-making, but of what we call metacognition. I could think about my own thought processes. So what's happening there?<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Yep. You're in some psych experiment where, like, if you had a warthog, and signed up for the experiment, they would do some manipulation psychologically, and the warthog would fall for it and all of that. But because we're human, and we've got this metacognition stuff, we can go in there and say, oh, these psychologists, I bet they're up to something. So whatever I think I'm gonna say, I'm gonna say the opposite so that I'm not being some, like, rube falling for their manipulation. Whoa, I've just exercised free will thanks to my metacognition. How'd you become the sort of person who would go in there and be skeptical? How did you become the sort of person who would reflect on the circumstance metacognitively, et cetera, et cetera? In both of those cases, whether you did exactly what the warthog did, or if you, just out of proving some sort of point to yourself, did exactly the opposite, in both cases, it's the same issue. How did you become that person? And you had no control over that part.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So you also talk about the fact that if you take that view of humanity, that we are deterministic and free will is an illusion, that should influence policy or how we approach certain questions. So what do you think are the biggest policy implications for the realization that we don't really have free will?<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Well, people immediately freak out along a number of lines if you try to insist to them that there's no free will. The first one is, oh my God, people are just gonna run amok. If you can't be held responsible for your actions, people will just be completely disinhibited or will be chaos. And sort of the most extreme extension of that is, and they'll just be murderers running around on the streets. And that won't be the case. And the thing is, if you take the notion that we have no free will, we're just biological machines, blah, blah. If you take it to its logical extreme, blame and punishment never make any sense whatsoever. No one deserves to be punished. Retribution can never be a virtue in and of itself. Oh, so you throw out the entire criminal justice system, forget reforming it. It makes no sense at all. It's like having a witch justice system for deciding which ones you burn at the stake in 1600. You need to come up with a system that completely bypasses that. And at the same time, hold up a mirror to that and praise and reward make no sense either. And thus meritocracies have to be tossed out as well.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So then what are we left with?<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Well, we're left with something that seems totally unimaginable. How are you supposed to function? But then you reflect and we actually function all the time in circumstances where we have subtracted free will out of the occasion and we can protect society from dangerous individuals. Nonetheless, let me give you an example. There's a setting where there's a human who's dangerous. They can damage innocent people around them and this would be a terrible thing. And what happens if this is your child and they're sneezing and they have a nose cold? The kindergarten has this rule saying, please, if your child has a nose cold, keep them home until they're feeling better. Whoa, you constrain your child's behavior. You will lock them up at home. No, you don't lock them up at home because it does not come with moralizing. You don't say you're a kid. Ah, because you were sneezing, you can't play with your toys. You don't preach to them. You constrain them just enough so that they are no longer dangerous and not an inch more. And as long as you're at it, you do some research as to what causes nose colds in the first place. And we have a world in which it's so obvious that we have subtracted free will out of that that we don't even notice it. Yeah, there's all sorts of realms in which we can reach the conclusion this person wasn't actually responsible for their actions. And nonetheless, we could make a world that is safe from any inadvertent damage that they might do.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That still sounds like at the end of the day, there are still consequences to your actions, right? So if you demonstrate that you're a dangerous person by committing a crime, then you have to be isolated from society until you're no longer the kind of person who would commit a crime.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Or you have to be isolated exactly enough, the minimum needed to make sure you can't be dangerous in that way anymore. And we have all sorts of contingent constraints in society. You, if you have proven that you were dangerous to society because you keep driving drunk, they don't let you drive. They take your license away. You're still allowed to walk around and go into the supermarket and such. They don't need to put you in jail. If you have a certain type of sexual pedophilia, there's rules. You can't go within this distance of a school, of a playground or something. We have all these ways in which we can constrain people from the ways in which they are damaging and not do any more so. And the key thing in that latter point is we don't sermonize to them. There's a reason why you wind up being dangerous. So we are gonna keep you from doing that. And it's not because you have a crappy soul.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, I get that. But at the end of the day, in a practical sense, it could be very same to the criminal justice system we have now, just minus a lot of the judgment and the punishment is not punitive. It's not because you deserve to be punished. It's just because there needs to be a moral consequence to your actions.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Well, I would differ there because the word moral is irrelevant. The word moral is irrelevant to your car's brakes that have stopped working. Oh my God, it's gonna kill somebody. You can't drive it. You need to constrain it. You need to put it in the garage. But that's not a moral act. You don't feel like you should go in each morning with a sledgehammer and smash the car on the hood because of how dangerous it is to society. You don't preach to it. Morality is completely independent of it. You are trying to do a quarantine model. And the people who think about this the most use public health models for this. And you are not a bad person if you get an infectious disease. And you're not a bad person if circumstances has made you someone who's damaging to those around you. But yeah, make sure people are not damaged by you but don't preach to you in the process.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, you could substitute the word ethical, I guess, for moral. It's just a philosophical calculation without any kind of spiritual judgment.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Good, okay.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's kind of what I meant. The point is that if you're saying, well, we're just, our brains are calculating machines and part of those calculations are moral judgments or ethical judgments or whatever, right? Because we evolved, and we're going to get to that in a minute, a sense of justice. And you have to leverage that in order to influence people's behavior. Otherwise, you have the moral hazard of not having consequences for your actions, right? So we're not in control of our decision-making, but there are influences on that decision-making and society needs to influence people's decision-makings by presenting concrete consequences to their actions. If you do this, you're going to go to jail. Nothing personal, but we have to do it. Otherwise there will be significant increase in crime or whatever you want to call it. Is that a fair way to look at it?<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Yeah, it's okay to have punishment as part of the whole picture in a purely instrumental sense, in the same way that you can have rewarding people for stuff that they've done, but again, purely instrumental. And then you say, okay, so if we ran the prison system on that, there's no such thing as retribution. There's no such thing as somebody deserves to be constrained. There's no such thing as justice being done. And you put in those factors in there and you have an unrecognizably different approach to, we protect the society from people who sneeze and we protect society from people who have such poor impulse control that they do impulsive, horrible, damaging things when they're emotionally worked up. But there's no retribution. Justice is not being served. They don't deserve anything. They have not earned their punishment. You are just containing a car whose brakes are broken. And if that sounds like, oh my God, turning people into machines, that's so dehumanizing, that's a hell of a lot better than demonizing them into being sinners.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, it's actually a very humanistic approach to criminal justice.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Because it does lack that sort of punitive angle that can be injust in a lot of ways, right? You're taking somebody who is in a much more profound sense than we even may realize a victim of circumstance and punishing them for that, right?<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Is there anything beyond criminal justice system that has implications from your philosophy on no free will?<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Well, meritocracies go out the window also because it's this bi-directional thing. We run the world where some people are treated way worse than average for reasons they have no control over and then some people are treated way better than average for reasons they have no control over. They have the sort of brain, so they get good SAT scores or the sort of brain that makes them self-disciplined and so now they've got a great job, now they've got the corner office, now they have whatever and they did not earn it any more than someone who commits a crime earned it. Both of those systems are bankrupt. But then you have the same problem. The people then say, oh my God, if you do that, you're gonna have murderers running around the streets, not necessarily, but now flip to the meritocracy half, you would say, oh my God, you turn out to have a brain tumor and you're just gonna pick a random person off the street to do your brain surgery. No, of course not that either. We need to protect society from people who are damaging and we need to ensure society that competent people are doing difficult things, but you can do it without a realm of this being laden in virtue and moral worth. Just because somebody turns out to have enough dexterity to do surgery, they should not have a society that reifies them thinking that they are intrinsically a better human any more than someone in jail should be thinking that they are an intrinsically worse human. Both are mere outcomes of their circumstances.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Robert, can I ask you a couple of questions coming from someone who isn't a neurologist? First off, define for me what free will would be if we had it.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Okay, this is one that completely pisses off philosophers who argue for free will. Just to orient people, 90% of philosophers these days would be called compatibilists, which is they admit the world is made out of stuff like atoms and molecules and we've got cells inside our heads and all of that science-y stuff is going on. They concede that, they accept that, but somehow, nonetheless, that is compatible with there still being free will in there. And as such, I would fall into the tiny percentage of people who count as free will incompatibilists. You can't have what we know about how the brain works and free will going hand in hand. So what would count as free will? So somebody does something and you say, well, why did they do that? And it's because these neurons did something half a second before. But it's also because something in the environment in the previous minutes triggered those neurons to do that. And because hormone levels this morning in your bloodstream made this or that part of your brain more or less sensitive to those stimuli. And because in the previous decade, you went through trauma or you found God and that will change the way your brain works. And before you know it, you're back to adolescence and childhood and fetal life, which is an amazingly important period of sharing environment with your mother and then genes. And then even stuff like what your ancestors invented as a culture, because that's going to have majorly influenced the way your mother mothered you within minutes of birth. So if you want to find free will, if you want to like prove it's there, take a brain, take a person that just did something and show that that brain did that completely independently of this morning's breakfast and last year's trauma and all the values and conditioning and stuff that went on in adolescence and what your mom's hormone levels were in your bloodstream when you were a fetus and your genes and culture, show that if you change all of those factors, you still get the exact same behavior. You've just proven free will and it can't be done.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Are you saying like we have zero free will or is there a little bit of it mixed in? You know what I mean? Like, is it so black and white or could there be shades of gray here?<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' There's simply no mechanism in there by which you can have a brain doing stuff completely independent of its history, independent of what came before. It is not possible for a brain to be an uncaused cause. And taken to its logical extreme, the only conclusion is, yeah, there's no free will whatsoever.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Aren't we still thinking things over? Like, I think that when I do something that I really don't wanna do, that if I'm ever expressing free will, it's in those moments, right? Like, doesn't that make sense in a way? Like, if I'm gonna force myself to do something that everything about me-<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's just one part of your brain arguing with another part of your brain though, right?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' But isn't that kind of an expression of free will? If you are having an internal debate and there are pros and cons and pluses and minuses and all the stuff that it takes for us to make a decision.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Not necessarily if you see it from a neurological point of view of, yeah, that's just your executive function and your frontal lobe fighting with your limbic system.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Exactly.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Right?<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It doesn't rescue you from it being all caused neurologically.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' I mean, today is January 17th and thus we're probably 17 days into the vast majority of people who made New Year's resolutions to have already like given them up. And everyone went into it with the same, I'm gonna do this differently this year. And some people do and some people don't. And how did somebody become the sort of person who would have the self-discipline to do that? How would someone become the sort of person who first time they were tempted, they went flying off the rails. How did we all differ in that regard also? And it's exactly the part of the brain. You mentioned just now the frontal cortex. That's this incredibly interesting part of the brain that makes you do the hard thing when it's the right thing to do. And beginning in your fetal life, every bit of thing that happens around you is influencing how strong of a frontal cortex you're gonna have come January 1st and you're vowing to exercise every day.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' So is there an evolutionary advantage to believing in free will?<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Yeah, I think there's an enormous one. And what you can see is in the fact that 90% of philosophers and probably more than 90% of folks out there in general believe there's free will because it's like kind of an unsettling drag to contemplate that we're biological machines. It's very unsettling. And people like to have a sense of agency. People like to think of themselves as captains of their fate. And this plugs into like a very distinctive thing about humans. We're the only species that's smart enough to know that everybody you know and love and you included are going to die someday. We're the only species that knows that someday the sun is gonna go dark. We're the only species that knows that because your neurons in your frontal cortex just did this or that, you carried out this behavior. We're the only species that's capable of having those realities floating around. And some evolutionary biologists have speculated, I think very convincingly, that if you're gonna have a species that is as smart as we are, we have to have evolved an enormous capacity for self-deception, for rationalizing away reality. And we're the species that's smart enough that we better be able to deny reality a lot of the time. And in that regard, major depression, clinical depression, one of the greatest ways of informally defining it is depression is a disease of someone who is pathologically unable to rationalize away reality. It's very protective psychologically.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And like cycling back a little bit to like the meritocracy thing, because where I tend to come down is I have to admit like, yeah, there's no metaphysical free will. You know, it is, we are, there is no uncaused cause. You know, we are just the neurons acting out what they do. But don't we have to act as if there is free will to a large extent because, again, of that moral hazard of thinking that there's no consequences? And even when, like with meritocracy, you were focusing on talent, but what about hard work? We do want people to be rewarded for hard work so that they'll do it. You know, people will do productive work. If there was no reward for it, we kind of know what those societies look like. It's not one I'd wanna live in. Would you accept that notion that even if you think metaphysically, philosophically, there's no free will, we still have to kind of pretend that there is?<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Again, in an instrumental sense, you can reward somebody if that's gonna make them more likely to do the good thing again, if that's gonna make them more likely to plug away, but you need to do it purely in an instrumental way. A colleague of mine at Stanford, Carol Dweck in psychology, has done wonderful work showing, okay, you've got a kid and your kid has just gotten a great, wonderful grade on some exam or something. And do you say, wow, what a wonderful job you did. You must be so smart. Or do you say, wow, wonderful, wonderful job you did. You must've worked so hard. And what she shows is you do the latter and every neurotic parent knows that by now. Yeah, sometimes you use sort of positive praise, reward for displays of self-discipline because that makes that part of the brain stronger, all of that, but you don't go about making somebody who is better at resisting temptation than somebody else think that it has something to do with they are an intrinsically better human. They just wound up with that sort of frontal cortex.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Let's talk a little bit more about evolutionary psychology. I mean, it seems like you're largely in support of that, but you tell me, what do you think about it? Because I know that is something where you can't deny that our brains evolved and that has a huge influence. So what do you think about the discipline of evolutionary psychology and specifically, how would you answer its critics?<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Its starting point makes absolutely perfect sense. And historically, take one step further back from it and you get this field called sociobiology, which I was sort of raised in, which is you can't think about human behavior outside the context of evolution. And then it's one step further and you've got evolutionary psych. You can't think about the human psyche outside the context of evolution. That makes perfect sense, wonderful sense. The trouble is in both of those disciplines, there's way too much possibility for sort of post hoc, just so stories. There's way too much individual differences. Anytime you see a human who like leaps into a river to save the drowning child and dies in the process and basic sociobiological models, basic models of how you optimize copies of your genes can't explain stuff like that. By the time you're looking at like vaguely complicated mammals, you get individualistic behaviors that violate what some of the models predict. So it's part of the story. It's interesting evolutionary psychology. One finding in there that I find to be very, very impressive is that we are far, far more attuned to the sort of norm violations that go in the direction of you getting treated worse than you expected to be, than you being treated better. We have all sorts of detection things in our brain that are better at spotting that bastard they were supposed to give me that reward and they didn't versus, whoa, they just gave me this gigantic reward out of nowhere. And that makes sense evolutionarily. And some of those building blocks were just fine. As with a lot of these relatively new disciplines, don't get a little overconfident and try to explain everything.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I kind of landed in the same place. From a philosophical point of view, of course, there's evolutionary psychology, but in practice, I do think it can fall into just-so stories too easily. So it's a kind of a weakness in the field. All right, well, Robert, this has all been very fascinating. Thank you so much for giving us your time. Anything coming up that you want to plug? Do you have any works that you're doing?<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' No, I got this new book out, which I guess is sort of useful if people know about it. Came out in October, Penguin. It's called Determined, A Science of Life Without Free Will, where I basically lay out all these arguments and as far as I can tell so far, infuriate a lot of people.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's good work. You know that you're accomplishing something useful if you piss off a lot of people.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Oh, good, because I seem to be. That's nice to know.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, thanks again. Take care.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Good, thanks for having me on.<br />
<br />
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== Science or Fiction <small>(1:44:27)</small> ==<br />
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|item1 = A recently discovered species of deep-sea fish in the Antarctic ocean has been found to have transparent blood, due to a complete lack of hemoglobin.<br />
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|item2 = Researchers have developed a type of biodegradable plastic that decomposes completely in just one week when exposed to sunlight and air.<br />
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|item3 = Researchers have successfully trained a group of goldfish to drive a small, water-filled vehicle on land, demonstrating their ability to navigate in a terrestrial environment and challenging long-held views on fish spatial awareness.<br />
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''Voice-over: It's time for Science or Fiction.''<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Each week, I come up with three science news items or facts, two real and one fake, and I challenge my panelists to tell me which one is the fake. We have a theme this week. It's a mystery theme.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' You can tell us.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I will reveal the theme after you guys all give your answers. Now, we'll see if you can figure it out along the way, but it's not gonna be obvious. Okay, here we go. Item number one, a recently discovered species of deep sea fish in the Antarctic Ocean has been found to have transparent blood due to a complete lack of hemoglobin. Item number two, researchers have developed a type of biodegradable plastic that decomposes completely in just one week when exposed to sunlight and air. And item number three, researchers have successfully trained a group of goldfish to drive a small, water-filled vehicle on land, demonstrating their ability to navigate in a terrestrial environment and challenging long-held views on fish spatial awareness. All right, Cara, go first.<br />
<br />
<big>'''Cara's Response'''</big><br />
<br />
'''C:''' I don't like them.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Is that the theme that you're picking up?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Things Cara does not like.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, things I don't like. Deep sea fish in the Antarctic Ocean. There's an Antarctic Ocean?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well the waters around the Antarctic, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But is that called the Antarctic Ocean? I didn't know that, the Arctic. Anyway.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's the Southern Ocean, also known as the Antarctic Ocean.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Okay, I'm not mad at that. That one, okay, so this fish is lacking hemoglobin, which, okay, that's crazy weird, but maybe there's some sort of other compound that is like serving a similar purpose. Would it make the blood transparent? Maybe? Is the only reason blood has the color it is because of hemoglobin? Because of the heme? It might be. I know the heme does make the blood quite red, but I don't know what it would look like with no heme. Would it be clear? I don't know, but a lot of our liquids in our bodies are clear, so maybe. The biodegradable plastic that decomposes completely in just one week, I don't buy that for a second. When exposed to sunlight and air, like what's the catch? It's like, it also melts the second it touches water, like it's not firm like plastic. I just, I do not buy that one. How, I wish that would be revolutionary. But also, a goldfish drove a car? Okay, here's the thing about this one. I have a very fun, but very weird friend who clicker-trained one of her fish to swim through a hoop. And it was a goldfish, and she claims it was very, very smart. I never quite believed her, but maybe, maybe a goldfish could drive a little goldfish car. I want that one to be science, so I'm gonna say plastic's the fiction.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay, Evan.<br />
<br />
<big>'''Evan's Response'''</big><br />
<br />
'''E:''' These all seem like fiction, don't they?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Mm-hmm.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's why you don't like this.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I don't like them.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I agree, I'm with Cara. I will go with Cara and say I don't like them either. Next. Oh, I mean, right. For kind of the same reasons, though. I mean, if you take the hemoglobin out of blood, are you left with something that's transparent? Aren't there other things in the blood that would make it at least opaque, right? Not transparent, though. I mean, what? Right, there's something else floating around there. It's so strange. So that would be the catch on that one, I think. And yes, there is a fifth ocean. It is called the Southern/Antarctic Ocean. The second one about the biodegradable plastic. My question about this one is why would you make this if it's gonna decompose in a week if you can't expose it to sun and air, which is kind of everywhere? So what's the practicality of this? Where would you use this? Underground, okay, where there's no sunlight. And in a non-air environment, what? Water for underneath, but then, I don't know. That's tricky. I mean, maybe they developed it, but it has no practical industrial use. And then the last one, okay, training a group. A group of goldfish would be a school of goldfish. They went to driving school, apparently, to drive this water-filled vehicle. On land, demonstrating their ability to navigate. So how does that work? They don't, that's not how to do it. So when we say drive, are we talking steer? I guess, it's only steer, it would be. So just directional, so.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yes, they have to be able to control which direction it's going in, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No, they use the clutch.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Well I mean, driving is a set of things more than steering, but it's steering something around, kind of.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And they have to go, brr brr.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Remember that video, that's hilarious. Ah! Shoot, all these are wrong, so I don't know. Cara and I are gonna sink or swim together on this one about the plastic, because I just don't see why that would be the case in any purpose.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay, Bob.<br />
<br />
<big>'''Bob's Response'''</big><br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, transparent blood, it seems somewhat plausible without the hemoglobin, that it would be kind of, I mean, I think it would be still kind of opaque, but I guess I could see it being somewhat transparent. The goldfish, the driving goldfish is just too awesome. I just wanna will that into existence. The plastic just seems silly, right? I mean, just like, oh boy, I took the bag out of the packaging, I've gotta use it quick or anything that's, if you forget about the bag and you put stuff in it and put the bag somewhere, and then next week it's gonna be gone, and then the contents are gonna spill. I don't know, it just seems a little goofy in some ways and just not very practical. And like, oh, how long has this bag been out? How much time do I have? It's only a day left. I don't know, it just seems a little silly and impractical, so I'll say that's fiction as well.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And Jay.<br />
<br />
<big>'''Jay's Response'''</big><br />
<br />
'''J:''' So they all are saying that it's the plastic.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's correct. That's what they are saying.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, no.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I would imagine that they didn't develop the plastic to specifically only last a week, that they were working on a biodegradable plastic and that's what they ended up, that this is something that they made. Doesn't necessarily mean-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, that seems reasonable, damn it.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, right? But the key thing here is that it's biodegradable, you know, like legitimately, which, I don't know. I mean, again I trust your guys' judgment as well. You know, the first one about the deep sea fish, it's very odd to think that there's transparent blood, but I have seen many pictures of like that fish you could see through its head and I don't remember seeing blood there, so I think that's science. And then the third one here about the goldfish driving a water field vehicle. I mean, that is so wacky that it's gotta be true. Damn. This is such a hard one, Steve. All right, I'm trying to think of the theme too. I don't see the theme. Okay, I'm gonna go with everybody else. How could I not? I mean, there's something wrong about that one week decomposition, decomposing plastic. Something's not right there.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Hidden Theme ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay, so anyone has a guess on the theme? It's very meta.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I don't like it.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Water.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's very meta. No. The theme is-<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Things in water.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Nope. This-<br />
<br />
'''J:''' The fish eat the plastic.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Science or fiction has been brought to you by Chat GPT.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Oh.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Ah, geez.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Which version?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Four. So I typed in first, are you familiar with the Skeptic's Guide to the Universe podcast? And it said, yes, I'm familiar, and it gave a pretty good description of our podcast.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It better be.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' One of the paragraphs reads, the Skeptic's Guide to the Universe is known for its approachable style, blending educational content with humor and informal discussions. It's aimed at a general audience and is designed to make science and skepticism accessible to people without a scientific background. That's a pretty good description of the show.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I love that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Then I said, can you design for me a science or fiction segment similar to what they have in the show every week? And it did. Now, I had to do it three times and select from among those three, not because they weren't good, but because they were things that we've talked about before. Can't use that one. Yeah, because we've talked about that recently. So I had to find ones that wouldn't be too obvious. And one of these, it gave us a fiction, but I found it's actually true.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Right, you had to double check everything.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #1 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I had to check everything. I couldn't trust it. All right, so let's take these in order. Number one, a recently discovered species of deep sea fish in the Antarctic Ocean has been found to have transparent blood due to a complete lack of hemoglobin. This one is science. So you guys are all safe so far. This is the oscillated ice fish. It's a family of fish. Lives in very cold waters off Antarctica.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Goes back and forth.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And it has transparent hemoglobin-free blood. This is the first, I think, in any vertebrate. And there are some species that have like yellow blood because they have very little hemoglobin, but this one is like fully transparent, zero hemoglobin. And they don't have some other molecule. They just have plasma.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Whoa.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' So plasma, yeah, plasma would be.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' How does that work, though?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, so they've adapted to basically just having oxygen dissolve in plasma and they make it work by, they have low metabolic rate, for example. But it also makes the blood less viscous, so it circulates much more vigorously, I guess. So that compensates for a little bit. They have larger gills, scaleless skin that can contribute more to gas exchange. So they have much more surface area to exchange gas.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Ew, wait. It's a fish with scaleless skin?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That is horrifying sounding.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Like one of those cats that has no fur?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' They have bigger capillaries and they have a large blood volume and cardiac output. So they have all these compensatory mechanisms for not having hemoglobin to bind a lot of oxygen and they make it work. Yeah, so that one is true. So let's go on.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #2 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Number two, researchers have developed a type of biodegradable plastic that decomposes completely in just one week when exposed to sunlight and air. You guys all think this one is the fiction and this one is science.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No, I led you astray. The goldfish.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Interestingly, this one, ChatGPT gave me as a fiction. So I looked it up. I'm like, dang, there it is. This is actually true. This is published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society in 2021. Yeah, they created a plastic that when exposed to air and sunlight will completely break down in one week, leaving no microplastics behind at all. It degrades into succinic acid, which is a small non-toxic molecule. So obviously it limits the applications because it can't be exposed to sunlight or air.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But if it took a year, it'd be great.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Right. So that one actually turned out to be true.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #3 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Which means that researchers have successfully trained a group of goldfish to drive a small water-filled vehicle on land, demonstrating their ability to navigate in a terrestrial environment and challenging long-held views on fish spatial awareness. Is the fiction.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Clearly.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' ChatGPT just made this one up at a whole cloth. Made it up.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Not fair.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Made which one up, Steve?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The goldfish one.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's not related to anything real?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, they just said this one, they said psychologists kind of do weird things, but not this. So they made this one up. That was it.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh my gosh. It was like plausibly awkward.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Israeli researchers say they have successfully taught a goldfish to drive a small robotic car.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Science.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' The team said the fish showed its ability to navigate toward a target in order to receive a food reward. For the experiment, the researchers built what they call the fish-operated vehicle, an FOV.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Can only drive in the FOV lane, though.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Jay, where are you reading that? Is that another ChatGPT?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I just searched. Here, hold on.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' What search?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' This is insane.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Oh yeah, you're right. I didn't see that.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Well, that's, I mean, I don't know if you wanna get, how technically you wanna get. The question was about a small, a group of goldfish as opposed to a fish.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, you'd have to look and see. There's probably a lot of things wrong in it, even if goldfish did drive a car, and what?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, but ChatGPT apparently is not good at making up fake ones, because it just keeps repurposing real news items.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Hmm. I wonder if it swears at people in traffic, like in fish language.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' This is so dumb.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Gives people the fin?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, the middle fin.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' So what does this mean?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Also, how does this work?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, I think this, science or fiction, is a ChatGPT mulligan.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Wow. So we're gonna have a no contest, a no score on it this week.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, no score from this week.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Has that ever happened before?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I don't think so.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I bet you it's still fiction.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' We're witnessing skeptic's guide history right now at this moment?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, I'll take it.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh my gosh, for the first time in approaching 19 full years.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Damn you, ChatGPT.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' And we have been failed by artificial intelligence at the highest level.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So ChatGPT failed at science or fiction.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Never again, yes. ChatGPT is zero.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' All right, well put it down as like, zero wins and one loss for the year.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' If this experiment has succeeded, I was gonna do this from now on, just have ChatGPT be science or fiction.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, yeah, of course.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' You can have the good ones and you just make up the fake one.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' This actually took me just as long because I had to do it multiple times, I had to check every one, you know?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' What you need is a program, Steve, that's optimized for performing the science or fiction function.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's right, I need a science or fiction GPT.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Narrow AI. AI to help you with this, Steve. Do you think someone out there could do that?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Probably.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' A listener on their spare time? Put in 5,000 hours of work.<br />
<br />
{{anchor|qow}} <!-- leave anchor(s) directly above the corresponding section that follows --><br />
<br />
== Skeptical Quote of the Week <small>(1:59:26)</small> ==<br />
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{{qow<br />
|text = Every great idea is a creative idea: The fact that you're using paint or you're using guitar strings or you're using equations, they're not really very different things. Getting that spirit into the education process … being curious about the world, that is a gift we would love to share.<br />
|author = {{w|Damian Kulash}}<br />
|lived = 1975-present<br />
|desc = American musician, best known for being the lead singer and guitarist of the American rock band {{w|OK Go}}<br />
}}<br />
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<br />
'''S:''' All right, Evan, give us a quote.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' "Every great idea is a creative idea. The fact that you're using paint or you're using guitar strings or you're using equations, they're not really very different things. Getting that spirit into the education process, being curious about the world, that is a gift we would love to share." Damien Kulash, lead singer of OK Go.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I love OK Go.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I love OK Go. I'm on a big OK Go kick lately.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' They're rock, but they're like very happy pop rock. I don't know how to describe it.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' They started out as kind of pop punk alternative and they they're treadmill videos.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' What country are they from?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' The United States.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' They're American. Not just the treadmill video, they did a parabolic space flight video.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' They did, yes.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' They shot an entire video in zero gravity. Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, it's amazing.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That video is amazing. It's an amazing accomplishment.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Watching the behind the scenes of it is even funnier.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yes, there's a whole documentary about it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, like one of the band members was like near, like he was just constantly vomiting or about to vomit. So the whole time he's like sitting down. One of them was scared out of his mind the whole time. It's amazing. It's so good.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' But this is, these artists, and I call them artists as much as they are musicians. They're visual artists, obviously, for what they do. They're so well known for their videos. But obviously they're also using a lot of engineering, a lot of science, a lot of math in the production of the videos. You know, they consult with a lot of people and teams of experts to come in and help them put these amazing ideas into the visual medium that is just so captivating. And the music's great too. So they're very pro-science and I love Damien Kulash and everyone at OK Go.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, well, thank you all for joining me this week.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Thanks Steve.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Thanks Steve.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Thank you Steve.<br />
<br />
== Signoff == <br />
'''S:''' —and until next week, this is your {{SGU}}. <!-- typically this is the last thing before the Outro --> <br />
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}}</div>Hearmepurrhttps://www.sgutranscripts.org/w/index.php?title=SGU_Episode_967&diff=19207SGU Episode 9672024-02-19T12:01:09Z<p>Hearmepurr: links added</p>
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|episodeIcon = File:967 Betavolt.jpg<br />
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|caption = China-based Betavolt New Energy Technology has successfully developed a nuclear energy battery, which integrates {{w| Isotopes of nickel|nickel-63}} nuclear isotope decay technology and China’s first diamond semiconductor module.&nbsp;<ref>[https://www.greencarcongress.com/2024/01/20240114-betavolt.html Green Car Congress: China-based Betavolt develops nuclear battery for commercial applications]</ref><br />
|bob =y<br />
|cara =y<br />
|jay =y<br />
|Evan =y<br />
|guest1 =RS: {{w| Robert Sapolsky}}, American neuroendocrinology researcher<br />
<br />
|qowText = Every great idea is a creative idea: The fact that you're using paint or you're using guitar strings or you're using equations, they're not really very different things. Getting that spirit into the education process … being curious about the world, that is a gift we would love to share.<br />
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== Introduction, winter weather preparations ==<br />
''Voice-over: You're listening to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.''<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Hello and welcome to the {{SGU|link=y}}. Today is Wednesday, January 17<sup>th</sup>, 2024, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella... <br />
<br />
'''B:''' Hey, everybody!<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Cara Santa Maria... <br />
<br />
'''C:''' Howdy. <br />
<br />
'''S:''' Jay Novella... <br />
<br />
'''J:''' Hey guys. <br />
<br />
'''S:''' ...and Evan Bernstein. <br />
<br />
'''E:''' Good evening, everyone, or good morning, wherever you might be.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Good evening. How is everyone?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Good.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's late.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Doing good.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' My bronchitis is finally, basically gone. Just a little.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, that's good.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That crap.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Bronchitis.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That's forever.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I know. It only took months.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It was a hell of a gut workout, I'll tell you that much. My stomach muscles are way stronger now than they were.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, but coughing is not good for you. You know what I mean? It's not like you're, oh, yeah, I'm getting this coughing workout. Coughing is bad for your back. People who cough a lot get disc herniations and bad backs and back strain and everything. So, yeah, I hate it when I have a prolonged cough. I always get back pain when I have a prolonged cough.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Really?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Cara, you are in another continent.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It is true. It is also another continent. It's a funny way to put it. Yeah, I've been in Scotland for a week and a half. I think I'll be here another week. And so it is two in the morning. It was beautiful here, though. I've been spending a bit of time outside. We had a really, really nice snow yesterday and the day before, so it's quite white outside. How is it looking in the Northeast? I know there were horrible snowstorms all over the country.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' There were other parts of the country that got smacked super hard.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, we had some snow. Not horrible.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Usually, we're snowy here. But we had two light snowstorms.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It's definitely colder.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, it's cold here too.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, we're getting the remnants of the Arctic blast. What the, what do they call it?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Vortex or something? Yeah, I think it's pretty bad in parts of Canada.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' And the Midwest of the United States got it very badly.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But so far, I mean, it's early. There's nothing winter so far by New England standards.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' True.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You never know. February's really like, we can get hammered in February.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, boy.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I know it's gonna be cold and we're gonna get precipitation, but it always depends on the timing of those two things. Like, do we get the precipitation when it's cold or is it, do we get rain, you know what I mean? Because if it's all snow, it could be profound.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' But any time an ice storm happens by, that's dangerous. I mean, that is when the power goes out. That is when all the tree limbs come down. We've had some nightmare ice storms in prior years. Not very recently, but I can remember a few.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Tell me about it with the hard freeze. I've been talking to some of my friends who live up in the Pacific Northwest where they had freezing rain, I think, for two days, but not snow, up in Oregon. And trees are down all over the place. People don't have power. It's been pretty brutal up there just because of the heaviness of that ice on everything.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' And they tend to not get ice storms, if I recall correctly.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, yeah, never. Like, they're just, yeah, the whole city. You know how it is. Anytime a city gets hit by something that's not typical weather for that city, they just don't know what to do with it.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It freezes, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It breaks everything.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, yeah, I remember I was in Phoenix. They had, like, an inch of rain, and it paralyzed the city.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It happens every time it rains in LA. We don't know what to do.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Las Vegas has a similar problem.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And everybody's house floods. We're like, oh.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And I was in DC, and they had, like, a pretty mild snowfall from Connecticut standards, and the city was paralyzed. They just didn't have the infrastructure for it, you know? And, of course, with the kind of snowstorms that would paralyze Connecticut, Canadians are like, you lowlanders, you know?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' We get 10 feet, and Toronto's like, big deal.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' We've actually we've been talking a lot out here in Scotland about the fact that they ice, or, sorry, that they salt the roads here, and it's quite destructive on the cars. Like, it's really, really corrosive, and probably cause millions of pounds of damage every year to the cars that are having to constantly clean this ice off of their. Undercarriage, yeah, and the engine damage and stuff. And we've been really talking about, like, why do they use salt?<br />
<br />
'''J''' It's totally inexpensive.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But sand.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Up to a temperature, it works, right?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Sand is cheaper, and it's not quite as efficient, but it's still efficient.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It has to do with the temperature, though.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It causes a lot less damage.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Sand has to be cleaned up, though. Like, salt just goes into the water.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Sand can just go into the dirt.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Plus, the melting effect of salt is pretty dramatic, isn't it?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, sand has no de-icing effect. That just temporarily adds friction to the road, whereas the ice, or de-icing chemicals, as they call them, actually melt the ice. But it depends on how much there is and what the temperature is. So there are some situations where the de-icing chemicals won't work, and you gotta use sand. But again, it's only, like, adding temporary friction. And they all have different environmental effects, so that there's no perfect solution.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It is superior. But the question would be, do we really need a superior melting effect if you have so much sort of negative side effects?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' They don't always use salt. They use sand sometimes, too.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I think out here, they only use salt, and it's quite infuriating to the people.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, you have to have the undercarriage of your car coated against that.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' They do. They do, but you still have to constantly clean it out. And it's just, yeah, it's pretty bad. Anyway.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I've never cleaned the bottom of my car.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Go to a car wash?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' If you go to a car wash, they will drive it through. It has an undercarriage.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's why you go to a car wash.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' They still have those?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Car washes? Last time I checked.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' They do. They're quite nice.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' They don't exist. They went the way of drive-in movies.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Drive-in movies, soda fountain counters, and pinball machines. They're all gone.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I went to a drive-in movie not that long ago. There's still a couple of them around. They're definitely very retro.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, that became kind of a thing again during COVID.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, I remember that.<br />
<br />
== News Items ==<br />
<br />
{{anchor|news#}} <!-- leave news items anchors directly above the news item section that follows each anchor --><br />
=== Betavolt 50-Year Battery <small>(6:28)</small> ===<br />
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'''S:''' All right, Bob, you're going to get us started with a talk. There's been a lot of discussion about this. This is really catching a lot of people's imagination, not in a very scientific way often. But tell us about this 50-year battery. What's going on?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah. Chinese firm called Betavolt Technology claims it's created a new nuclear battery that can power devices for 50 years. There's a lot of silly clickbait surrounding this stuff. Here's one press release from the Business Standard. Their article was titled, China Develops Radioactive Battery to Keep Your Phone Charged for 50 Years. Like, ah.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Sure they did.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh my God. Such annoying clickbait. Now, nuclear batteries, though, are fascinating. They are distinct, of course, from everyday electrochemical batteries that we use all the time, from AA's to the lithium-ion batteries in our phones and EVs. Nuclear batteries are also called atomic batteries, which I kind of like, or probably more accurately, radioisotope generators.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Didn't Batman's vehicle have atomic batteries or something?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yes. Yes.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh my gosh.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' And they essentially take nuclear energy and convert it to electricity at its most, top of the onion layer there. One layer down, more specifically, it takes the byproducts of the decay of radioactive particles and converts that into electricity. So are these batteries? You know, yes and no, in my mind. Nuclear batteries are atomic batteries. They can power devices for sure. So in that sense, they are batteries. But they do not recharge, and they don't turn off. The nuclear batteries do not turn off. So for those reasons, and especially the not-turning-off one, they are often referred to as generators. But hey, it's language. Many people use the word battery for them, and so that's fine. Atomic batteries are generally classified by how they convert the energy. And it kind of boils down to either they take advantage of large temperature differences, or they don't. The former, these are thermal-based atomic batteries. And they have one side of the device is very hot from the radioactive decay, and the other side is cold. And that's the key there, that differential. So using thermocouples, that temperature gradient can be used to take advantage of the Seebeck effect, look it up, to generate electricity. That's basically how it works. Now, the iconic, classic atomic battery that does this is an RTG, radioisotope thermoelectric generator. There's that generator word. These devices go back to the 50s and 60s. And I think the principle was proved, I think it was like 1913. So it goes back to the 50s and 60s. The most advanced devices today can generate tens of watts, up to 110 watts, for NASA's top-of-the-line RTG. And they can supply power literally for years and years and years. RTGs are heavy. They're big devices compared to our portable batteries. But they are amazing for remote locations and places with poor sunlight. The Voyager probes, more than 15 billion kilometers from the Earth and the sun, are powered by RTGs. Mars Rovers, too, and countless other systems and platforms and probes, NASA and our knowledge of the solar system would be greatly diminished if it did not have access to these wonderful devices. But if you want really small, portable atomic batteries, though, you then want this non-thermal kind. These extract energy from the emitted particles themselves, kind of like before it degrades into heat, directly tapping into and using the particles. The semiconductors in these devices use these particles to create a voltage. And typically, these types of batteries have efficiencies, from 1% to even up to 9%. And they go by various names depending on the emitted particles that they are using. So they're called alpha voltaics if it converts alpha particle radiation, which is essentially just two neutrons and two protons. It's called gamma photovoltaics if it converts energetic photons like gamma rays. The real standout, though, of this type of atomic battery is called beta voltaics. This converts emitted electrons or positrons to electricity. And it's popular because beta decay can more easily be converted into usable electrical power, much more so than alpha particles or photons. Beta voltaics are not theoretical. These are being used right now, right now, in countless sensors and other devices that require very low power for very long periods of time. Did you know that they were used as pacemakers in the 70s? People literally had them in their bodies for decades with no ill effects. They are very safe. These are known things and they can be very useful. So that's why this Beijing startup company calls itself BetaVolt. They're taking advantage of beta voltaics and their new atomic battery is based on that. The battery itself is called BV100. It's coin-sized, about 15 by 15 by 5 millimeters. And there's a decent amount going on inside that coin. It has layers of radioactive nickel-63 in between layers of diamond semiconductors. Nickel-63 has a half-life of 100 years, which means in 100 years it'll be emitting essentially half the particles it does initially as it decays into harmless copper. Now, so saying this battery can last 50 years, I think that's reasonable, if it's got a half-life of 100 years. After 50 years, it'll be still, what, 75% as effective?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, it's not linear, but close.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' So it's still, it's a good rule of thumb to say, yeah, 50 years, you could say it'll last 50 years and perform well. So, and it's safe. These are safe. It needs minimal shielding. Sure, you'd have to inhale it if you're gonna get concerned that that will do it. You would be concerned if you inhaled it. And I wouldn't want it to leak on my skin, but no more so than I would want a AA battery to leak on my skin, you know? So it's not like this, it's radioactive, no! It's pretty damn safe. So can this get 110 watts output like the best RTG? No. No, not even close. This battery generates three volts, but only 100 microwatts. That's 100 millionths of a watt. A microwatt is a millionth of a watt. That's tiny. You would need, what, Steve? 30,000 of them to power a typical smartphone. That's really low. So let's look at 100 microwatts another way. Let's look at how many amps that is. So, all right, we got an equation here. Power in the form of watts equals voltage times current or amps, right? W equals V times A. We know the power in watts and we know the volts, so you calculate the amps. That's .000333 amps. Now an amp, amps indicates how many electrons per second pass through a point in a circuit. So .0000333 amps, super low. You know, you're not gonna be powering something big and power hungry with something like this at all. So clearly, these batteries are not meant for power hungry devices, as are all beta voltaics are not meant for that. And that's okay, because power density is not the strength of these batteries. Now power density is the rate that it can output the power for a given size. And as I've shown, it's super tiny for one of these batteries. Very low power density, but they do have energy density. That's the total energy per unit mass. In fact, nuclear batteries have 10,000 times approximately, 10,000 times the energy density of a chemical battery. That's a huge 10,000 times, that's huge. But that's spread over the lifetime of the battery, which could be years or decades or even centuries. But that's where these batteries shine. They can last for ridiculously long periods of time. Now the significance of this battery seems to me to be it's a miniaturization and not the power density that everyone no one seems to be focusing on any of the miniaturization advances that they may have made. You know, there's not too many details on that either. They also claim that these can be chained together and connected in a series. So I think we'll have to see that to happen because it looks like I'm looking at some translated article here and they claim that they can get up to multiple watts if you chain them together. I don't, I'm not seeing that anywhere else. I'd have to see that. But the real important thing here is they claim they're shooting for a one watt version of this battery by 2025. Next year, one watt.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Bullshit, it's not gonna happen.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It's not. That's an incredible improvement that no betavoltaics has ever come near. And so Steve and I apparently are very, very skeptical of that. Now, if you can connect-<br />
<br />
'''E:''' You'll not be investing, I guess, is what you're saying.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, I mean, if you can connect their batteries together as they claim and they also create if they can create a one watt version, then we would be in some interesting territory. But I don't believe that. I will wait, I'll have to wait to see if they even come close to doing that. I don't think they're gonna do that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Bob when I wrote about it, I did my calculation, like theoretically, how, what could you get to? So given a betavoltaic battery of the same size, let's say you maximize efficiency, that gives you one order of magnitude, maybe, right? So you still have two orders of magnitude to go to get to one watt. And the, I think, buried in the article about it, they say that they're looking to produce this one watt version. And they're also looking to produce versions that have a half-life of two years or one year. It's like, yeah, those two things are related. The only way you're gonna pick up another order of magnitude is if you go from a hundred year half-life to a one year half-life. But then you don't have a 50 year battery anymore. You got a one year battery.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' You can't have it both ways.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Which is still interesting.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' But you've also got a more radioactive and more expensive battery on hand, right?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Using a different isotope with a shorter half-life.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Exactly.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But even assuming they could shield it and make it safe and pick up all that radiation and everything, that's fine. It's just, you don't get a 50 year battery with that kind of power output in that kind of size. It simply does not work. The physics does not add up.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So I think it's, there's no way around the fact that this is gonna remain a niche technology for very low power devices.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, yeah. I don't see it really breaking out of that characterization. You know, and other companies have tried to go commercial with beta voltaics. Steve and I were excited about nano diamond battery a few years ago. That's the one that used radioactive waste from nuclear power plants encased in diamond that could run for millennia. I think they were saying 20,000 years. So I looked them up recently and they were charged with defrauding their investors. Right, and there's been other, and there was another company that was trying to commercialize beta voltaics. And they, if you go to their website anymore, you don't find it. Their website's like gone. So it's just like we've seen this before and we're kind of seeing it again.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, this is a pitch for more money.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, partly, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, so, but what will we see in the future of beta voltaics? I mean, I love the idea of using them to trickle charge batteries. I think that's promising. And that would be useful for things potentially, like for EVs that are mostly idle. And you could just have it trickle charge at night in over 10, 12 hours. Like, oh boy, we got got a little juice out of this that you didn't have to plug it in for. And I love though, that when it comes to the worst case scenario, like you've got a dead battery, but if you had this trickle charge idea, you know, you wait a little bit. I'm not sure how long you'd have to wait to get a reasonable charge.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But at least you wouldn't be dead in the water.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Right, you're not dead in the water. And "eventually" you'd be able to just drive home. And of course, of course, trickle charging would be awesome in the apocalypse. Obviously. Now in the future, then when the zombies are roaming the countryside and you could say like Robin in the Batmobile, right Evan? Atomic batteries to power, you could say that. And then of course you'll have to wait a while for your beta voltaic atomic battery to slowly trickle charge your zombie resistant EV. And then you're going, then you're good. So maybe we'll see that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I think it'd be more than like for an electric vehicle, it's just, I think it's too little electricity. But for, you don't wanna drag around an atomic battery, that would be big enough to produce enough electricity that it would matter. But for your cell phone, you can, if you had even one that was producing again, like a 10th of a watt, let's say, or even a 100th of a watt, but it could extend the duration that you could go without charging your battery significantly, right? Because you're not using your phone all the time. It is idling most of the time. So let's say like you're going on a trip and you're gonna be away from chargers for three or four days. This could extend the life of your phone battery that long. I just say by trickle charging it 24 seven, whether when you're using it or not using it, or again, if you are in an emergency situation, you're never dead in the water. You always have a little juice. You just have to wait some time.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, if I were going out in nature for days on end, first off, I wouldn't do that. Secondly, I would bring a little solar panel with me.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Then it's overcast. No, but you're right, you're right. But yeah, but that's what they're finding with a lot of the deep space probes that relying upon aligning those panels with the sun is not a great thing. And nuclear batteries are really good. The European Space Agency, who previously said no nuclear batteries were gonna do all solar, they're like, maybe we should, maybe we gotta relent. So they reversed themselves because-<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Do you know why they reversed themselves?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Because they had a big fail.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' They sent a probe onto a comet. Their probe landed on the comet and then bounced into the shade. And then because it was in the shade, its batteries, which were solar-based, died in three days. So here's millions of dollars sitting in the shade, unusable, bricked, because they didn't have an atomic battery. So that story just cracks me up. So now they're like, okay, yeah, we're gonna do atomic batteries now. They were famously against them. Now they aren't, which was a funny story.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So like a lot of technologies, the technology is what it is, and a lot of it depends on being clever and being creative about how to implement it. Like what is the use where it's gonna be valuable? It's not gonna be like big drones that fly forever and all the crap that the press is saying about it. That's never gonna happen. But as a trickle charger or for super low-energy devices, this technology could be really, really helpful.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, yeah. The allure of a battery that can last for years, a conventional portable battery that can last for years, this is so high that people are just kind of like losing their shit over this and trying to extrapolate away from the science. For me, it's not so much beta voltaics, but for me, it's the RTGs. I wanna have these like chained, connected RTGs buried in my backyard that could power my entire house for decades. That's what I'm looking for.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, but the final point is like for your phone, like for trickle charging your phone, you don't want a 50-year battery in your phone. Your phone's only gonna last two or three years. You want a two or three-year battery, right? You want it to last as long as the phone.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That would be epic.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, then you don't need, you know.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, but it gets you more power. It gives you more power over the shorter period of time, over the lifetime of that phone. So there is a niche in there that could actually be very, very functional if the price works out, right? Would you add another 50 bucks to your phone to have something, an alternate source of power, a backup source of power and extend? Like now you only have to recharge it once every three days or four days instead of every night.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Well, those products exist, Steve. I mean, I have a battery that's a magnet battery that attaches to my phone, right? It's very easy to just put it there. It stays there. And it gives me like another half a day of juice if I need it. It's very, very convenient. And it fits in your pocket and everything. It's very easy. So, I mean, there are products out there like that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, I know. This would be another option. There would definitely be advantages to it because it's just there. It's producing energy all the time. But it's not, but the hype was ridiculous.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh yeah, it was silly.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Silly, silly.<br />
<br />
=== Moon Landing Delayed <small>(23:38)</small> ===<br />
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|article_title = More delays for NASA’s astronaut moonshots, with crew landing off until 2026<!-- please replace ALL CAPS with Title Case or Sentence case --><br />
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'''S:''' All right, Jay. I understand that the Artemis program is going swimmingly. Give us an update.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oops.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Don't be look, we expected this, right?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Unfortunately.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So NASA's Artemis program, give you a quick refresher. It's aimed at returning humans to the moon. It's also very heavily, big part of this mission is that we are paving the way for future Mars missions. You know, we need to develop a lot of technology that's gonna allow us to get there, but they have been facing significant challenges that have led them to reschedule some of these timelines, which this information came out about a week ago. So the Artemis 2 mission, right? Artemis 1 successfully launched. It went around the moon, did everything that we wanted it to. We got a ton of data off of that mission, but now we move on to Artemis 2. Now, originally, if we go way back, it was originally slated to be, as you know, the first crewed test flight of the Orion spacecraft, but it's been delayed many times. Not, this isn't like the first delay or even the second delay. The first launch dates were said that they wanted to launch between 2019 and 2021. Now keep in mind, Artemis 2, not 1. Artemis 2, 2019, 2021. Then it was moved to 2023 and then November, 2024. And now they moved it to September, 2025. They are saying no earlier than that, which kind of implies it could be later, right?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's for Artemis 2.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That's Artemis 2.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, so one of my predictions has already failed.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh no.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That's all right, Steve. Oh no, somebody die. So the delays are due largely to crew safety concerns. So let me get into some of the details here. NASA is always, they're just continuously conducting testing of critical systems, environmental control, life support. And they have found during their testing, they've found problems that include battery issues with the Orion spacecraft regarding abort scenarios. There's also a, there are challenges with the air ventilation and temperature control circuitry components, which these are all mission critical components. And bottom line here is, of course, it's good to know NASA is taking all these precautions. They're taking it very seriously. You know, this isn't like a let's launch it and test it and see how it goes. Like they fully plan on bringing every single astronaut back to earth. So they are trying to resolve all of these issues, but it sucks to wait longer, but you know, we're just a consumer here, right? Like I'm looking at this like, come on, launch it. I want to see it. I want to be a part of all that. But yeah, ultimately we want it to be successful. We want the people to come back. So of course, any delays with Artemis 2 means that it'll impact the launch dates of the Artemis 3 mission, which has now been pushed for 2026. This delay allows NASA to give them time. They don't want to like do Artemis 2 and then immediately do Artemis 3. They want time to make a lot of alterations and incorporate lessons that they learned from Artemis 2 so they can make Artemis 3 better, right? You know, hey, we had a problem with this thing and that thing, like they want to fix all of those things. But there's also problems with the partners that NASA is working with to develop, that are developing their own technologies. So there's a couple of names here you'll definitely recognize. SpaceX, as a good example, they're responsible for the human landing system. You know, they have to demonstrate that their starship can successfully dock. It also needs to be able to refuel with other tanker starships in orbit. These are not easy things to do at all. And this capability is essential for transporting astronauts beyond Earth's orbit. Getting the ship refueled and being able to do what it needs to do in and around the moon is going to be something that could take place frequently. And these tasks, like I said, are challenging and straight up, they're just not ready yet. They don't have the technology. And I'm sure that the timelines and the dates that they're giving, everything is a, we hope that it's this, but it's never like it will be done on this date. Like they're not, that's not where they're operating. They don't work that way. Axiom Space, you might remember, they're making the next generation spacesuits. No, they still need to solve some heavy duty requirements that NASA put on them. Like one of the big ones is that the spacesuit itself, standalone, needs to have an emergency oxygen supply system. So this will enable the spacesuit to supply oxygen for an hour with no attached gear, right? Just the spacesuit itself has an hour of air in it. So they're also having supply chain issues, which I was a little surprised to hear, but they're having problems getting materials that they need to make the spacesuits. And they also have, they're working with outdated components that need to meet the latest NASA requirements. I couldn't get any more details about these components. Like I don't, I suspect that they may have been borrowing from earlier spacesuits, certain systems and things like that. But NASA has been ramping up their requirements and they're having a hard time meeting it. Now, this means that they're likely to have to redesign parts of the current design that we've already seen. And this issue with the supply chain is definitely impacting the development of the spacesuit components. So lots of moving parts here. Now, NASA is also dealing with its own financial issues. They haven't presented an official cost estimate for Artemis III. And there is a group in the government whose job it is to get this information, right? And they need to give it and it needs to be assessed and it takes time. Now, keep in mind, the Artemis program is not just about returning to the moon, but it's also laying the groundwork for human exploration to Mars. So there's a lot of complexity here and there's a lot of weight on every single thing that they do. And these price tags the costs are phenomenally high. The Artemis missions, they include development and integration of a lot of different systems here. You know, think of it this way. We have the Space Launch System, the SLS rocket. That alone is very complicated because there's lots of different versions of that rocket that they're gonna be custom building for each and every mission. Then they have the Exploration Ground System. They have the Orion spacecraft itself. They have the Human Landing System. They have the Next Generation Spacesuits. They have the Gateway Lunar Space Station and all of the future rovers and equipment, scientific equipment that needs to go. Like there is a mountain of things that have not been created yet that need to be designed and crafted and deployed. So it's exciting because there's a lot of awesome stuff ahead of us. And I'm not surprised that they're pushing the dates out, but man, it's disappointing because I thought something incredible was gonna happen this year.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, it's unfortunate, but you know, they're just going back to the timeline that they originally had. You know, they were pressured to move up the timeline. Right, was it 2026 or 2028?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' 2028.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, 2028 originally, yeah. So even if they push back to 2026, they're still two years ahead of their original schedule. And that was really just for political reasons that that was moved up.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Before we switch off to space topic, let me give you guys a quick update on the Peregrine Moon Lander. Remember last week we talked about this. Okay, so real quick summary. This Moon Lander was developed by a company called Astrobotic. Seven hours into the mission, they became aware of a fuel leak that was changing the telemetry of the ship. Bob was very concerned. They didn't know what to do. They didn't really understand what was going on. And then everyone dove in. They started to really figure out what was happening. So the planned lunar landing had to be canceled because they just weren't gonna be able to position the ship and get the engines to do what they needed them to do that would enable it to land. So the ship basically goes out approximately the distance of the Moon, right? 183,000 miles or 294 kilometers. It gets out there. Then it gets pulled back to Earth. It didn't, the Lander didn't actually transit or orbit the Moon. So I didn't see its flight path, and I'd like to see it because I'm not crystal clear on what it was, but it did get pulled back by the Earth. And they have currently set it on a trajectory back to Earth where they fully expect it to completely disintegrate upon reentry. This is gonna happen on January 18th. So as you listen to this, it'll have been, it happened a few days ago. You know, Peregrine was part of NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Service Program, and that's it. It's gonna come back, all this stuff on there, the human remains, the messages from Japan, a few weird things that are on there. It's all gonna get burned up in the atmosphere. So it's sad, it's sad, but it happens. And we learn from these things. And again, this is a perfect example of why NASA, when people are involved, meaning like we're sending people into outer space, they don't have failures like this, right? Like they won't stand for failures like this. Everything has to be massively tested. So we gotta wait a little longer, guys.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yep.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' None of it's canceled, which is fantastic.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, thanks, Jay.<br />
<br />
=== Cloned Monkeys for Research <small>(32:57)</small> ===<br />
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'''S:''' Cara, tell us about these cloned monkeys.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, so some of you may have seen there's quite a lot of trending articles right now that are based on a new study that was just published in Nature Communications. I'm gonna read the title of the study. It's a bit techie. Reprogramming Mechanism Dissection and Trophoblast Replacement Application in Monkey Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer. So based on that title, you may not know, but what Chinese researchers have done or what they claim is now happening is that they now have the longest lasting cloned monkeys, cloned primates, really. There's a monkey, he is a rhesus monkey named Retro. And my guess, even though it doesn't say it in any of the coverage that I read, my guess is that the name Retro, because they capitalize the T in Retro, comes from reprogrammed trophoblast. I think that's where they got his name, Retro. And so really what this story is about is a new technique for trying to clone primates that works a teeny tiny bit better than previous techniques. And the big sort of payoff here is this monkey is now coming on three years old. So you may ask, haven't we been cloning animals for a while?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Dolly the sheep, right?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Dolly the sheep, right. So this is the same technique. I should say it's the same general technique with some really important changes as Dolly the sheep. So Dolly the sheep lived for six and a half years after she was cloned. Mice, rabbits, dogs, goats, pigs, cows, lots of different mammals have been cloned over the years. Even other monkeys have been cloned over the years, but the difference is that they've been incredibly short-lived. So generally speaking, when we talk about cloning mammals specifically, it's super hard to do. About one to 3% of clones result in live birth. It's a very, very low percentage. So as it is, it's hard just to get viable embryos when cloning mammals. And then even if you get a viable embryo, it's hard to have a live birth. There were some monkeys in 1998 who I think were the most long-lived or the most kind of the biggest success story as of that point, but I still think that they only lived for a few months. And so Retro coming up on three years is sort of being hailed as a triumph by the media, but let's talk about what the difference was here. So all of these animals that I'm describing here have been cloned using a very specific technique. And that technique is called somatic cell nuclear transfer. In simple terms, as we know, we talk about the difference between somatic and germ cells. Somatic cells are like body cells, right? Everything but eggs and sperm. So a somatic cell is actually put into, so you're transferring the nucleus from a donor cell, but a somatic donor cell, like a skin, let's say like a skin cell into an egg cell. And then that donor DNA, which is now kind of closed up in the egg is sort of programmed to start developing embryonically. So here's one thing that I think is an important point here that not a lot of coverage that I'm seeing makes. These are still embryonic clones. None of these are clones that are coming from an adult organism. So when you start to see kind of the fear-mongering coverage around, does this mean we can clone humans? Does this mean we can clone humans? First of all, nobody has successfully been cloning mammals from adult cells. Does that make sense? Almost all of them are pulled from embryonic cells and some of them are even just pulled from split embryonic cells. So even though technically you could call it a clone, it's like a twin, if that makes sense. But this specific approach that's been used, which all of these, like I said, have been this thing, somatic cell nuclear transfer is where we run into some hiccups. So what ends up happening is that the cells of that embryos trophoblast layer, which is sort of the outermost layer that provides a lot of nutrients and also actually forms a big chunk of the placenta after it's implanted are very problematic in almost every case. And scientists think that this is because of epigenetic factors. So there are these markers that are present, right? That turn genes on or off. So it's not changing the actual genes that are there, but it's changing their expression, whether they turn on or off. When you put this cell, this clone cell into an empty egg, the egg kind of DNA or the epigenes, the epigenetic factors within that egg affect the DNA of the implanted embryo and all sorts of havoc is wreaked. And really scientists hadn't been able to figure out how to get these embryos to become viable. They're usually all sorts of terrible mutations. They often don't even make it to live birth. And if they do make it to live birth, they often die within hours, days, weeks, or in very lucky cases, months. And so what the scientists did in this case, and this is sort of the new bit, is a trophoblast replacement. So they inject that inner cell mass from the cloned embryo into a non-cloned embryo. So the embryo cell mass is going inside of a non-cloned embryo that they made through in vitro fertilization. So they're basically forming like a hybrid embryo and the trophoblast portion belongs to the non-clone, which seems to be less likely to kick in all of these epigenetic factors that seem to be harmful to the developing embryo. And so the scientists are claiming that this is like rescuing the development of the embryos. But to be fair, we're still talking about an attempt of like hundreds of potential cloned embryos and only still like a handful of them sticking and then only one of them actually being successful. So it's not like this case is any more efficient. It's not like this specific kind of success story with Retro, the first ever rhesus monkey that's lived for longer than a day. And actually he's coming up on like three years. It's not like their approach made a bunch of them. It's they still only, it was very scattershot and they only got one successful outcome. It's just that their successful outcome has been more successful than any other primate in the past. And so the argument that the Chinese scientists are making here is, if we can do this more, this could be very, very good for biomedical research. Because like we do all the time with cloned mice, you can give a drug to one clone and a different drug or no drug or placebo to the other clone. And you can see exactly how well it works because they have the exact same DNA.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So it's a good way to control for variables.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yes, it reduces all sorts of variability. But of course, this is an ethical conundrum. And a lot of people are saying like, should we be doing this to monkeys? Should we be doing this to primates at all? And look at how many failures we have before we have a success. And look at how much suffering is happening to these animals until we get to that point. And is it going to, like, what is the payoff and how much is it going to improve our biomedical science, our pharmaceutical science? Is the sort of return worth the risk? That's another question. Now, this is perfectly legal in China. So the way that they're approaching this, it's passed all their review boards and it's a perfectly legal practice, unlike some of the historical stories that we've talked about. Do you remember when we talked about the CRISPR, the rogue CRISPR story?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Oh, yeah, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Like that was not legal.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' The Raelians.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' This is. But I think some people are saying, wait, if they were able to do this with the rhesus monkey, are they going to clone humans next? No, we're nowhere close to that. A, because we can't clone adult cells at all. These are still embryonic cells. And B, it's still hard as shit. It's no easier and it's no more efficient to clone this. It was no easier or no more efficient to clone this rhesus monkey than any of the attempts in the past. It's just that this one hiccup, it was surmounted in this case. Can it be surmounted again though? I don't know. Was it lucky that they happened to get this one just right? I guess we will see.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We'll see, yeah. I mean, it seems like a good incremental advance.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It does.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, and which is, again, that's par for the course, right, for science, right? Breakthroughs are rare, incremental advances are the rule. And this is, it seems like a solid one. But I still want to know, when can I make a clone of myself so I can harvest its organs? <br />
<br />
'''C:''' Nowhere close. Yeah, it's going to be a long time. The funny thing though, which I did discover in doing this research, is that there's a Korean company that has made 1,500 dog clones at this point.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, how long do they live?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Like, they're long-lived. Apparently, they're perfectly healthy dogs. And so it's pretty interesting that just, okay, it's way harder to clone mammals, but some mammal species are easier to clone than others.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, well, thanks, Cara. This is definitely a technology that we'd want to keep an eye on.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And actually, I will add to this, and I think this is important. One of the arguments is that this could also have implications for conventional IVF. Because sometimes you do see this trophoblast problem even in conventional IVF. And so this could be at least a new way to look at improving outcomes in conventional IVF for people. So there's that.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' So not that acupuncture I talked about last week.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Probably, yeah. Probably this would be more helpful to researchers. Yeah, I think so.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, thanks, Cara.<br />
<br />
=== Converting {{co2}} into Carbon Nanofibers <small>(44:23)</small> ===<br />
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'''S:''' So I'm going to do another news item that's a little bit also of hype, more than reality. The headline is, scientists develop a process for converting atmospheric CO2 into carbon nanofibers.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Ooh.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Ooh, that sounds-<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Solves two problems at once, right?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Exactly, right? It sounds really, really good. But let's dig into it a little bit. So obviously, carbon capture is something that we're looking into. Researchers are studying various ways of either taking CO2 directly out of the air or capturing it at the source, near coal fire plants or natural gas fire plants or whatever. And then putting that CO2, taking the carbon out of it and getting it into a form that is solid, right? So that it could be buried or utilized in some way, but it would be permanently, or at least for on the order of magnitude of 50 or 100 years, giving us enough time to sort out this whole green energy thing, ully convert over to low carbon economy and energy infrastructure. If we could bind up that carbon for 50 or 100 years, that could go a long way to mitigating climate change. And the experts who have crunched all the numbers said, we're not going to get to our goals without some kind of carbon capture along the way. Although they're mainly figuring like after 2050, like between now and 2050, we really need to focus on reducing our carbon footprint. And then after that, that we, carbon capture has to really start kicking in to some serious degree to turn that line back down again, you know? So is this kind of technology going to be the pathway? Now, carbon nanotubes or carbon nanofibers are a great solid form of carbon to turn atmospheric CO2 into because we've talked about carbon nanofibers. You know, this is a two-dimensional material. They have a lot of interesting physical properties. You know, they're very, very strong and they're highly conductive, highly both thermally and electrically, et cetera. And even if you just make very, very short nanofibers, so they're not long cables of it, but just very, very tiny ones, it could, it's still a great filler, right? You could still like, for example, you can add it to cement to make it much stronger. And that would be a good way to bind it up. You know, just imagine if all the cement were laying around the world, it had billions of tons of carbon in it. That was then now long-term sequestered. So that would be, that's like one of the most obvious sort of uses of this kind of carbon nanofibers. So what's the innovation here? So essentially they said, well, one of our innovations is we broke it down into a two-step process, right? We didn't want to try to get all the way from carbon dioxide to carbon nanotubes, carbon nanofibers in one step. So we broke it down into two steps. The first step is to turn carbon dioxide and water into carbon monoxide and hydrogen. And when I read that, I'm like, oh, you mean like we've been doing for years, right? I mean, that's not anything that's new. And that's kind of always the first step, you know what I mean? Because the problem with carbon dioxide is that it's a very low energy, very stable molecule, right? So it takes energy to convert it into anything else. Carbon monoxide and H2-hydrogen, are very high energy molecules. They are good feeders for lots of industrial chemical reactions, right? If you have hydrogen, you can do tons of stuff with that. We've spoken about this quite a bit. And if you have carbon monoxide, you can make all kinds of carbon-based molecules out of it. These are good, highly reactive, high energy molecules. So yeah, that's the key, is getting from CO2 to CO and H2, that's always the tough part. And they're basically saying, so we're gonna do that using basically existing methods. It's like, okay, so there's no innovation in the hard part. The real, right? It's like, okay, that's old news. The real new bit is that they develop a catalytic process to go from carbon monoxide to carbon nanofibers. It's like, okay, that's interesting. You know, that sounds reasonable. So they basically proved that they could do that. You know, they use cobalt as a catalyst, and which isn't great because cobalt is one of those elements that are sourced from parts of the world that are not stable. And we're trying to reduce our reliance on cobalt. And so developing a process that uses more cobalt, not great. It's an iron-cobalt system that they're using. Now it's gonna come down to two things, right? So they did a proof of concept. You could break this down to a two-step process where you go from carbon dioxide to carbon monoxide, and then carbon monoxide to carbon nanotubes. It works, but two questions, or actually, there's three questions. One is, can you do it on an industrial scale? Because unless you could do billions of tons of this stuff, it's not gonna matter, right? Second is, how cost-effective is it? And third is, how energy-effective is it, right? So if you have to burn a lot of energy to do the process, then it doesn't really get you anywhere.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Don't do it, right.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So they do say that the processes work at relatively low temperature and at atmospheric pressure, at ambient pressure. That's good. So that's a good sign that this has the potential to be energy-efficient. And then they also say, and this is always that gratuitous thing, if you fuel it, right? If you fuel this process with renewable energy, it could be carbon-neutral. Of course, if anything you fuel with renewable energy, it's gonna be carbon-neutral.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's like part of this healthy breakfast, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Right, part of this healthy breakfast. But fair enough. So you could theoretically power this with solar panels or wind turbines or nuclear power, which is what you'd have to do. You'd need some massive energy source. But again, in the short term, if we're gonna build a renewable energy source, you're gonna reuse that to replace fossil fuel energy sources. You're not gonna use it to capture the carbon from the fossil fuel, because that's adding another step and that's inefficient. So this kind of process isn't, and this is what I was saying at the beginning, it's not gonna be relevant until after we decarbonize the energy infrastructure, right? Only once you've replaced all the fossil fuel with carbon-neutral energy sources, does it then make sense to add even more carbon-neutral energy sources in order to pull some of the carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere that you've already released, right? Until then, if you build a nuclear power plant, for example, just connect it to the grid. Don't use it to pull carbon out of the air that you put in by burning coal, right? Shut down the coal plant and power the grid with the nuclear power. But there's a sort of a good news to that fact is that we don't have to really perfect this technology for 30 years. This is the kind of thing that we need to have ready to go in 2050. Like if we get to 2050 and we've mostly decarbonized our energy infrastructure and some more industrial energy structure, that's what we really need to start ramping up carbon capture. And that's when these kinds of technologies are gonna be useful. So we do have a couple of decades to perfect it. So it's good that we're at the proof of concept stage now because it could take 20 years to get to the industrial stage where we're doing it. But it is-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Is it possible or reasonable that it would scale up like that?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, again, that's a big question mark. And we've been here a hundred times where something looks great at the proof of concept stage and then we never hear about it again because it just failed to scale, right? It wasn't the kind of thing that you could scale up. And with carbon capture, that is one of the big hurdles. Does it scale? Can you get this to function at industrial, massive industrial scales? Because it's not worth it if you can't. And then the other thing, again, is how energy efficient is it? Because if it's energy inefficient and then it becomes part of the problem, right? It's not helping. It's just another energy sink. This has potential. And I do think carbon nanofibers as the end product is a great idea. Because again, we could just dump it in cement and put it on or under the ground or whatever, put it in our foundations. So, and it makes it stronger. It increases the longevity of the cement. And cement is an important source of CO2 also. So anything that makes that industry more efficient is good. So there's kind of a double benefit. So I like all of that. But looking past the hype, this is something where we're at the proof of concept stage. This may be an interesting technology 20 years from now. So let's keep working on it. But this isn't like the answer to climate change, right? This is something we're gonna have to be plugging in in 20 years or so.<br />
<br />
=== Feng Shui <small>(54:04)</small> ===<br />
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'''S:''' All right, Evan, I understand that people are doing feng shui wrong. What are the consequences of this?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' My gosh, how are we ever gonna get past this obstacle? It's not every week that the news-consuming public gets advice about feng shui. But this week, we're fortunate not to have one but two articles warning us about feng shui mistakes that are all around us. And I know people pronounce this differently. I've heard feng shui, feng shui, feng shui.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I also think some of the differences- I think some of them come from whether you're saying it in Mandarin or Cantonese.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I suppose so, I suppose so. Well, maybe there are some people who are not familiar with what feng shui is. What is it? You know what I did? I decided, I'm gonna look up the definition. I'm gonna go to fengshui.com to find out. I don't know what's there. Here's what happens real quick when you get there. There's this big, so it's a blank screen with all except for a big blurry dot. And then the blurry dot will start to pull in opposite directions, forming two circles, touching at a point like a figure eight on its side, or the infinity sign, basically. And there's no text or anything. That's all there is. And the only thing you can do is click on the dot. And that dot takes you to the next page, which is a entirely black background page, no text again. And it slowly starts to transition to a gray scale. It dissolves eventually to a white background in about 10 seconds. And then an octagon appears. And then within the octagon, there are lines that appear interconnecting the non-neighboring sides of the octagon. And if you click on that, it brings you back to the blurry dot. So to tell you the truth, and that cycle repeats, to tell you the truth, I think that's the most cogent explanation of feng shui I've ever seen. You know, oh boy, this is wild. Oh, it's an ancient Chinese traditional practice which claims to use energy forces to harmonize individuals with their surrounding environment. The term feng shui means literally wind water. And from ancient times, landscapes and bodies of water were thought to direct the flow of universal qi, the cosmic current, all energy, through places and structures, and in some cases, people. Now, here is the first article. Four feng shui plants to avoid. These are gonna disturb the qi in your home, warns experts. That's how the headline reads. Oh my gosh, this is a warning. And where was this? Yahoo.com picked this up as part of their lifestyle news, and they pulled it from the website called Living Etc. So when it comes to the best plants for good feng shui, there are a few you should bring home, and some you should completely avoid. And they're gonna help you right now pick out the ones to avoid, because they are experts. Yep, yep, they consulted experts for this, and I hope that-<br />
<br />
'''S:''' [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enfe44s0ivo You have a degree in boloney].<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I hope they met legitimate scientists, botanists, chemists, right? Maybe they got on board, but here's what they said. Feng shui master Jane Langhoff. It's essential to consider the type of energy plants you bring into your spaces. Oh well, so much for hearing from scientists.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' What's an energy plant?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, energy plant. Type-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' What's that?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Consider the type of energy plants bring into our spaces. So it's not energy plants, but actually I'll get to that. I'll get to that, Cara. There's actually, there are actually some things, and I will eventually get there. So you weren't totally wrong. Here's what else she says. I don't believe that specific plants will necessarily cause bad luck. However, there are certain plants that can represent negative elements or bring inauspicious energy to a space. Generally, it's advisable to avoid excessively thorny and spiky plants that can cause injury. Oh boy, thank goodness we have a person with a master's certificate and a gold star on it that warns us that thorny and spiky plants can cause an injury. Another one, Feng Shui consultant and educator Laura Morris. As a general rule, you want to be mindful about where you place a spiky or pointy leaf plant. Try to avoid placing them next to your bed or in the partnership area of your home, whatever the partnership area is, wherever people partner up. I don't know.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's where the people get busy? I mean, what are they talking about?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' But you want, so here are the four, okay? Here are the four plants in order and do this like David Letterman's top 10 list, but it's a top four list. Number four, the yuccas, Y-U-C-C-A-S.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I love yuccas.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yuccas, yuccas, yeah. Got to avoid them. They're kind of prickly. They're kind of what, they have sword-like features to them, I guess. You know, long kind of bladed, pointy leaves. They say don't bring those in the home. Number three, cacti. I think we know what cactus and cacti are. Number two, dried flowers and dying plants. You know why? Because don't have those in your house because they represent stagnant energy. Best to leave those outside because if you bring them inside, they could restrict the flow of chi. And the number one plant you should not have in your house, and I have them, quite a few of them in my house, artificial plants. Yep, you know why? Because they block, well, they block energy. They're inauthentic, Steve. They're pretending to be something they're not. This is right directly from the article, which can affect energy in a space negatively. If you love artificial plants, they must be also kept clean of dust and grime. Wow, this is good stuff. Now, Cara, as far as the, what do we call them?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Energy plants?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Energy plants. They list some plants. So here's some plants that are associated with good luck and include, I'm not gonna give you their taxonomical names, but I'll give you their more common names. The treasure fern, the happy plant, the lucky bamboo, the jade plant, the money plant, and peace lilies.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And this doesn't sound at all like something she just made up.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I mean, totally.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' To sell the plants that she has in her shop.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' This is some fatal level thinking right here. You know, I mean, how more basic does it get than that? You know, I mean, yeah. Lucky bamboo and the treasure fern. But it gets better because there's the other article. Here's the headline. Small entryway feng shui mistakes, five things the pros always avoid. So again, like right on the heels of this other one came this article. Oh my gosh, pearls of wisdom coming our way again. Number one, don't have any dead or dying plants. They kind of referred to that in the first article because dead or dying plants create negative energy and represent decay. That's not something you want to welcome in your welcoming part of your home, which is your entryway. Number two, poor maintenance of the door space. For example, blocking the area behind the front door will make moving through the space difficult. You think so? If you kind of put something behind a door and try to open it, that's gonna, you know. We need an expert to tell us this though. Also, don't let your front door get dirty and grimy. You know, it'll stop the positive energy from flowing in that door. The next, the three of five, beware your mirror placement. You don't want to place a mirror face on because you open the door and you're looking in the mirror, oh my gosh, you might get scared or something. You want to hang that mirror on a wall facing away to a doorway to your next room because what it does is it sends opportunities and prosperities into your home. It kind of brings the energy in and reflects it into the center of the home, which apparently needs it. Number four is clutter. Get rid of don't come in and throw your keys down and fling your mail on the little table there and take off your shoes and throw your coat down. You know, everything has a place. Put your stuff away, basically. And number five, this is the most important and the one I'll wrap up on. We ignore the elements at our own peril. You must incorporate the five elements of earth, fire, water, metal, and wood into your entryway, which kind of, I think, goes maybe against the clutter part of all this, right? But they said the balance between these elements creates good feng shui energy and will create a harmonious balance in your entryway. So there it is. Of all the hard science that we've touched on this week, perhaps this will eclipse it all and be the most beneficial to us all.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Like, feng shui is one of those ones that amazes me because it's just pure magic, you know?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, it's nothing.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So you believe in magic, and I've said that to people, and the kind of answer you get is, well, science doesn't know everything. It's like, yeah, but we know magic isn't real.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Not everybody can say that, Steve.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, and it's like, what I love about it is it's magic mixed with, like, a dose of common sense. It's sort of like all the things you were saying, Evan, because then you have these true believers that are like, yeah, but I had an expert come in, and they helped me with my feng shui, and I feel better. It's like, yeah, probably because you're not bumping into shit all the time.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Right, because they cleaned your house and put your crap away.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Here's your problem. You've got a cactus right in your entryway here.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Cactus behind your door. You can't open your door all the way.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's feng shui.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So stupid.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, okay, fine. If you're gonna do it in your own home, whatever. But I mean, and what we talked about before, and it's not the article this week, but when governments start hiring feng shui people, bring them in for architectural design and stuff, they are, oh my gosh.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's driving me nuts.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Wasting all our money and driving us nuts.<br />
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[AD]<br />
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== Who's That Noisy? <small>(1:05:06)</small> ==<br />
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'''S:''' All right, Jay, it's Who's That Noisy time.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' All right, guys, last week I played this noisy. [plays Noisy] Now, I should have known that that kind of sound was gonna make a lot of people send me a lot of like funny entries into Who's That Noisy, things like they absolutely know that that is not it. They're just trying to make me laugh. And a few people did make me laugh, but I did get some serious entries this week, and we have a listener named Tim Lyft that said, "Hi, Jay, my daughter, age nine, thinks this week's noisy is somebody playing one of those snake charmer flute thingies, but badly" which I thought was a wonderful guess. And her cousin, who's seven years old, guessed "a lot of farm animals".<br />
<br />
'''S:''' A cacophony of farm animals.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I think these are two wonderful guesses. And Tim himself guessed some kind of bird. You can't send me an answer of some kind of bird. You have to be absolutely specific. But thank you for sending those in. Those are great. Visto Tutti always answers. He always comes up with something. He said, "it sounds like peacocks calling during the mating season. They like to start the annoying screeching way before sunrise, which makes the humans in the neighborhood wonder what roast peacock tastes like". So I heard this and I'm like, I read his email like, oh, peacocks, I don't know. I never heard the sounds that they make. And then I proceeded to get about, I think six or seven more emails where people were saying peacocks. So perhaps peacocks sound like that, which is a horrible noise for a bird to make, especially if they live around you. Another listener named Harley Hunt wrote in, said, good day. My guess for this week is a peacock. Okay, I put that in. I don't know why.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I'm sensing a theme here.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, there's a theme. All right, so there was a bunch of people that guessed peacock. Another listener here named Adam Pesch said, "Jay, first time emailer, long time listener. Today, I was awakened from a deep sleep by this week's noisy. You did warn us. I never have a guess and probably am way off, but this week reminded me of a shofar horn that I've heard in synagogue trying to mimic an electric guitar riff. Thanks for everything you guys do." I could not find anything on that, so I have no idea what that sounds like, but I do appreciate those guesses. Unfortunately, nobody guessed it. And you know, this one was a hard one. I just thought it was a provocative noise that I wanted to play for you guys. And I will explain this one to you. So again, this was sent in by a listener named Curtis Grant. And Curtis said, I have a really cool noise I heard at work as an elevator fitter or installer. In this case, we use a temporary hoist that lifts the finished lift cabin, right, which is basically the elevator itself, up and down the shaft. We use this to hoist or install our equipment, which are the rail brackets and et cetera, from the top of the finished lift car, as it is more efficient than building a temporary platform to install from. So as these cars are heavy, they have temporary nylon guide shoes that rub against the rails and cause this noise. So basically, like during the installation of an elevator, this is a common noise that someone would hear if they were doing the install. Very, very hard noise to hear. Let me just play briefly again. [plays Noisy] Wow, imagine that like resonating inside the shaft, right? Wow, imagine that like resonating inside the shaft, right? Ugh, forget about it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's haunting.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, definitely. <br />
<br />
{{anchor|previousWTN}} <!-- keep right above the following sub-section ... this is the anchor used by wtnHiddenAnswer, which will link the next hidden answer to this episode's new noisy (so, to that episode's "previousWTN") --><br />
=== New Noisy <small>(1:08:36)</small> ===<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Guys, I have a new noisy this week, sent in by a listener named Chris Kelly. And here it is.<br />
<br />
[Zipper-like zings, and a clack]<br />
<br />
I'll play it again. It's very short. [plays Noisy] Very strange. If you think you know {{wtnAnswer|968|what this week's Noisy is}}, or you heard something really cool, please do send it to me, because it helps make the show good. WTN@theskepticsguide.org.<br />
<br />
== Announcements <small>(1:09:03)</small> ==<br />
<br />
{{anchor|quickie}} <!-- leave anchor(s) directly above the corresponding section that follows --><br />
<br />
'''J:''' Real quick, Steve, I'll go down a few things here. Guys, if you enjoyed the show, we would appreciate you considering becoming a patron of ours to help us keep going. All you have to do is go to [https://www.patreon.com/SkepticsGuide patreon.com/SkepticsGuide], and you can consider helping us continue to do the work that we do. Every little bit counts. So thank you very much, and thank you to all our patrons out there. We really appreciate it. One thing we started doing a few weeks ago, about a month ago, is we came up with the SGU weekly email. This email essentially gives you every piece of content that we created the previous week. We send it out on Monday or Tuesdays. So it'll have the show that just came out the previous Saturday, any YouTube videos, any TikTok videos, any blogs that Steve wrote, anything that we feel you need to see, it's going to be in that email. Also, we'll put in some messages here and there about things, like for example, an important message to tell you guys. So Google is changing its podcast player. And the new podcast player that they have actually is not something that we want to work with because there's a few things, without getting into all the details, the big humps for us that we couldn't get over was one, we couldn't integrate this automatically. So it won't automatically update to our RSS. We'd have to do everything manually.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' What?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, that's crazy. It doesn't integrate with our media host and that's it. So that right there is a pretty much a deal breaker for us because we can't be doing everything manually. That's number one. Number two, and sadly, they auto-insert ads and the pay is terrible. And we would have no control over the ads. So that's it, it's a game breaker. We're not going to do it. We are not going to integrate with Google's new podcast platform until and if they ever change or whatever, if I'll keep an eye on it, but.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Hey, it should be able to turn ads off if you don't opt out of that.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, I mean, I haven't seen-<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And like not automatically updating the RSS. I mean, come on.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, I know.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, like nobody's going to ever, nobody's going to use this.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, I don't think they will. So if, unfortunately, if you have recently found out that you no longer are getting our RSS on the Google podcast platform, this changeover happened over, I guess, the last few weeks or whatever, we're very sorry, but we have to, we can't engage in things that aren't good for us and that's it. So we're just not going to do it. And feel free to email me if you want to give me more information about it, or if you know, like, hey, either it's going to change or whatever. I can't find anything. But I admit, I didn't look that deeply into trying to figure out where they might be in the future. I just know where they are right now. Anyway, guys, there's an eclipse happening, and we decided let's do something fun around the eclipse because this is probably going to be the last one that any of us are going to see, especially one that's going to be close. And as Cara and Evan have been talking about, this is a big one. This is a long one. This is really one you really want to see. So wherever you are try to get yourself to a location where you're going to have totality. You know, bring the kids, definitely get the eye protection that you need, but this is going to be a big deal. So what we decided is we're going to go to a place where Bob's horrible feng shui of creating clouds.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Right?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Whenever an astronomical event is happening, we don't think that Bob's powers will work in Texas. So we're going to Dallas. We're going to be doing an extravaganza on April 6th, and we will be doing an SGU private show, a private show plus, actually, and we'll be doing that on the 7th of April of this year. All of these things will be in and around Dallas. So we really hope that if you're local or you're going to be traveling there for the eclipse, please do consider joining us. Ticket sales are going very well. So move quickly if you're interested because I can see things filling up very quickly. Other than that, guys.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' The clouds will follow me.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, if they do, Bob, if they do. We will take it out on you. We're going to make you buy us an expensive dinner, I guess, or something.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Of course you will.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, but I'm looking forward to Cara's barbecue.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Ooh.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That's the only reason why I'm going.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' You guys are going to be so good. Barbecue and Tex-Mex.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I'm going to diet before I go just so I can overeat when we're there, you know?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, you're going to go hard in Texas. You can't not go hard. Oh, it's the best.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Deep in the heart of Texas, right?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yep. Stars at night are big and bright.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I know that because of Pee-Wee's Big Adventure, right?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Of course.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. Thank you, Jay.<br />
<br />
== Quickie: TikTok recap <small>(1:13:37)</small> ==<br />
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'''S:''' Very quickly, I'm going to do an entry from TikTok. As you know, we do TikTok videos every week. One of the videos I did today, we record, we also livestream if you're interested, but we recorded one on the jellyfish UFO. Have you guys seen this?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Oh, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I have seen it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, the jellyfish UFO. So yeah, the TikTok video that I was responding to was by Jeremy Corbel, who's a gullible UFO guy, right? And it's a really this is a great example, a great contrast between a gullible analysis of a piece of information, this video, versus Mick West, who does a really great technical, like skeptical analysis of the same video. So essentially, this is over a military base, a US military base, and there's a balloon, a monitoring balloon, a couple of miles away. It's like tethered to the ground. So you get sort of a bird's eye view of the base, and it's tracking this thing that's flying across the base, right? Now, it's called the jellyfish UFO because it kind of looks vaguely like a jellyfish. There's a blob on top and streamers below, right? So there's a couple of, so again, Corbel's going on just gullibly about all this, oh, what could this be? I'm trying to like mystery monger it, and pointing out anomalies, apparent anomalies. But here's the bottom line, very, very quick. And if you can, the deep, Mick West goes into the technical details very well. The thing is drifting in the direction and speed of the wind, right? This is something floating in the wind. And the 99%-er here is that this is some balloons. This is a clump of balloons and streamers floating in the wind. Now, we can't see it with sufficient detail to say 100% that's what it is. It could be something unexpected, but that's basically what it is, right? If it's not literally balloons, it's something very similar. But it's something lightweight that's floating, that's drifting in the wind. It's not a machine it's not a spacecraft.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' A life form.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Not a life form. You know, it's just, it's not moving, right? At first, I'm like, is that like a smudge on the lens? But like, no, it's kind of moving with respect to the lens itself. But it is again, Mick West shows quite convincingly that it's moving in the direction of the wind, it's moving at the speed of the wind, given the likely altitude that it has. He does all the angles and everything. It's like, come on, guys, it's a freaking clump of balloons.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Maybe that's the secret of alien spaceship propulsion. You let the wind do all the work.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, that's how they hide, right? They just float along like the balloons.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So they're literally paper airplanes.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' What's the difference between alien balloons acting like Earth-bound, Earth-created balloons?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And Earth-created balloons?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' There's no, right?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The difference is Occam's Razor, that's the difference. All right, guys, we have a great interview coming up with Robert Sapolsky about free will. This one's gonna blow your mind. If you're not familiar with the free will debate, you will be after this interview. So let's go to that interview now.<br />
<br />
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<br />
== Interview with Robert Sapolsky <small>(1:17:01)</small> ==<br />
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* "{{w| Robert Sapolsky|Robert Morris Sapolsky}} is an American neuroendocrinology researcher and author. He is a professor of biology, neurology, neurological sciences, and neurosurgery at Stanford University. In addition, he is a research associate at the National Museums of Kenya." - Wikipedia<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Joining us now is Robert Sapolsky. Robert, welcome to The Skeptic's Guide.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Well, thanks for having me on.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And you are a professor of biology, neurology, and neurosurgery at Stanford University. And you have written a lot about free will and other related topics. And that was primarily what we wanted to start our discussion with about tonight, because you take a pretty hard position that there is no free will. How would you state your position?<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' I would say probably the fairest thing is that I'm way out on the lunatic fringe.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' In that my stance is not just, wow, there's much less free will than people used to think. We've got to rethink some things in society. I think there's no free will whatsoever. And I try to be convincing about this.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay, well, convince us. Tell us why you think there's no free will.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' I think when you look at what goes into making each of us who we are, all we are is the outcome of the biological luck, good or bad, that we have no control over, and its interactions with the environmental luck, good or bad, which we also have no control over. How is it that any of us became who we are at this moment is because of what happened a second ago and what happened a minute ago and what happened a century ago. And when you put all those pieces together, there's simply no place to fit in the notion that every now and then your brain could do stuff that's independent of what we know about science.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So, yeah, that is, I think, the standard position of the no free will. Our brains are deterministic, right? We can't break the laws of physics and control what happens inside our head. Our brains are machines. But why, then, is there such a powerful illusion that we do have free will? And how do you square that, like the notion that we do make decisions? Or do you think we don't really make decisions? Is the decision-making level of this itself an illusion?<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Great. I think that's exactly where we all get suckered into, including me, into feeling a sense of agency. Because the reality is there's points where we choose. We choose something. We choose what flavor ice cream we want. We choose whether or not to push someone off the cliff. We have all those sorts of things. We make a choice. We form an intent. And then we act on it. And that seems wonderfully agentive, wonderfully me. There's a me that just made this decision. I was conscious of having an intent. I had a pretty good idea what the consequence was gonna be of acting on it. And I knew I wasn't being forced. I had alternatives. I could choose to do otherwise. And that intentness, the strength with which you were just in that moment, is what most of us, then, intuitively feel like counts as free will. And the problem with that is, when you're assessing that, it's like you're trying to assess a book by only reading the last page of it. Because you don't get anywhere near the only question you can ask. So how did you turn out to be that sort of person who would form that intent? How did you become that person? And that's the stuff we had no control over.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay, I see that. So you have no control over the person that you are, all of the things that went into influencing your decision-making. But does that add up to, though, that you're not actually making decisions? Or I guess another, when I try to wrestle with this, the other thing that really bothers me is not only the sense of decision-making, but of what we call metacognition. I could think about my own thought processes. So what's happening there?<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Yep. You're in some psych experiment where, like, if you had a warthog, and signed up for the experiment, they would do some manipulation psychologically, and the warthog would fall for it and all of that. But because we're human, and we've got this metacognition stuff, we can go in there and say, oh, these psychologists, I bet they're up to something. So whatever I think I'm gonna say, I'm gonna say the opposite so that I'm not being some, like, rube falling for their manipulation. Whoa, I've just exercised free will thanks to my metacognition. How'd you become the sort of person who would go in there and be skeptical? How did you become the sort of person who would reflect on the circumstance metacognitively, et cetera, et cetera? In both of those cases, whether you did exactly what the warthog did, or if you, just out of proving some sort of point to yourself, did exactly the opposite, in both cases, it's the same issue. How did you become that person? And you had no control over that part.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So you also talk about the fact that if you take that view of humanity, that we are deterministic and free will is an illusion, that should influence policy or how we approach certain questions. So what do you think are the biggest policy implications for the realization that we don't really have free will?<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Well, people immediately freak out along a number of lines if you try to insist to them that there's no free will. The first one is, oh my God, people are just gonna run amok. If you can't be held responsible for your actions, people will just be completely disinhibited or will be chaos. And sort of the most extreme extension of that is, and they'll just be murderers running around on the streets. And that won't be the case. And the thing is, if you take the notion that we have no free will, we're just biological machines, blah, blah. If you take it to its logical extreme, blame and punishment never make any sense whatsoever. No one deserves to be punished. Retribution can never be a virtue in and of itself. Oh, so you throw out the entire criminal justice system, forget reforming it. It makes no sense at all. It's like having a witch justice system for deciding which ones you burn at the stake in 1600. You need to come up with a system that completely bypasses that. And at the same time, hold up a mirror to that and praise and reward make no sense either. And thus meritocracies have to be tossed out as well.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So then what are we left with?<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Well, we're left with something that seems totally unimaginable. How are you supposed to function? But then you reflect and we actually function all the time in circumstances where we have subtracted free will out of the occasion and we can protect society from dangerous individuals. Nonetheless, let me give you an example. There's a setting where there's a human who's dangerous. They can damage innocent people around them and this would be a terrible thing. And what happens if this is your child and they're sneezing and they have a nose cold? The kindergarten has this rule saying, please, if your child has a nose cold, keep them home until they're feeling better. Whoa, you constrain your child's behavior. You will lock them up at home. No, you don't lock them up at home because it does not come with moralizing. You don't say you're a kid. Ah, because you were sneezing, you can't play with your toys. You don't preach to them. You constrain them just enough so that they are no longer dangerous and not an inch more. And as long as you're at it, you do some research as to what causes nose colds in the first place. And we have a world in which it's so obvious that we have subtracted free will out of that that we don't even notice it. Yeah, there's all sorts of realms in which we can reach the conclusion this person wasn't actually responsible for their actions. And nonetheless, we could make a world that is safe from any inadvertent damage that they might do.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That still sounds like at the end of the day, there are still consequences to your actions, right? So if you demonstrate that you're a dangerous person by committing a crime, then you have to be isolated from society until you're no longer the kind of person who would commit a crime.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Or you have to be isolated exactly enough, the minimum needed to make sure you can't be dangerous in that way anymore. And we have all sorts of contingent constraints in society. You, if you have proven that you were dangerous to society because you keep driving drunk, they don't let you drive. They take your license away. You're still allowed to walk around and go into the supermarket and such. They don't need to put you in jail. If you have a certain type of sexual pedophilia, there's rules. You can't go within this distance of a school, of a playground or something. We have all these ways in which we can constrain people from the ways in which they are damaging and not do any more so. And the key thing in that latter point is we don't sermonize to them. There's a reason why you wind up being dangerous. So we are gonna keep you from doing that. And it's not because you have a crappy soul.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, I get that. But at the end of the day, in a practical sense, it could be very same to the criminal justice system we have now, just minus a lot of the judgment and the punishment is not punitive. It's not because you deserve to be punished. It's just because there needs to be a moral consequence to your actions.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Well, I would differ there because the word moral is irrelevant. The word moral is irrelevant to your car's brakes that have stopped working. Oh my God, it's gonna kill somebody. You can't drive it. You need to constrain it. You need to put it in the garage. But that's not a moral act. You don't feel like you should go in each morning with a sledgehammer and smash the car on the hood because of how dangerous it is to society. You don't preach to it. Morality is completely independent of it. You are trying to do a quarantine model. And the people who think about this the most use public health models for this. And you are not a bad person if you get an infectious disease. And you're not a bad person if circumstances has made you someone who's damaging to those around you. But yeah, make sure people are not damaged by you but don't preach to you in the process.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, you could substitute the word ethical, I guess, for moral. It's just a philosophical calculation without any kind of spiritual judgment.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Good, okay.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's kind of what I meant. The point is that if you're saying, well, we're just, our brains are calculating machines and part of those calculations are moral judgments or ethical judgments or whatever, right? Because we evolved, and we're going to get to that in a minute, a sense of justice. And you have to leverage that in order to influence people's behavior. Otherwise, you have the moral hazard of not having consequences for your actions, right? So we're not in control of our decision-making, but there are influences on that decision-making and society needs to influence people's decision-makings by presenting concrete consequences to their actions. If you do this, you're going to go to jail. Nothing personal, but we have to do it. Otherwise there will be significant increase in crime or whatever you want to call it. Is that a fair way to look at it?<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Yeah, it's okay to have punishment as part of the whole picture in a purely instrumental sense, in the same way that you can have rewarding people for stuff that they've done, but again, purely instrumental. And then you say, okay, so if we ran the prison system on that, there's no such thing as retribution. There's no such thing as somebody deserves to be constrained. There's no such thing as justice being done. And you put in those factors in there and you have an unrecognizably different approach to, we protect the society from people who sneeze and we protect society from people who have such poor impulse control that they do impulsive, horrible, damaging things when they're emotionally worked up. But there's no retribution. Justice is not being served. They don't deserve anything. They have not earned their punishment. You are just containing a car whose brakes are broken. And if that sounds like, oh my God, turning people into machines, that's so dehumanizing, that's a hell of a lot better than demonizing them into being sinners.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, it's actually a very humanistic approach to criminal justice.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Because it does lack that sort of punitive angle that can be injust in a lot of ways, right? You're taking somebody who is in a much more profound sense than we even may realize a victim of circumstance and punishing them for that, right?<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Is there anything beyond criminal justice system that has implications from your philosophy on no free will?<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Well, meritocracies go out the window also because it's this bi-directional thing. We run the world where some people are treated way worse than average for reasons they have no control over and then some people are treated way better than average for reasons they have no control over. They have the sort of brain, so they get good SAT scores or the sort of brain that makes them self-disciplined and so now they've got a great job, now they've got the corner office, now they have whatever and they did not earn it any more than someone who commits a crime earned it. Both of those systems are bankrupt. But then you have the same problem. The people then say, oh my God, if you do that, you're gonna have murderers running around the streets, not necessarily, but now flip to the meritocracy half, you would say, oh my God, you turn out to have a brain tumor and you're just gonna pick a random person off the street to do your brain surgery. No, of course not that either. We need to protect society from people who are damaging and we need to ensure society that competent people are doing difficult things, but you can do it without a realm of this being laden in virtue and moral worth. Just because somebody turns out to have enough dexterity to do surgery, they should not have a society that reifies them thinking that they are intrinsically a better human any more than someone in jail should be thinking that they are an intrinsically worse human. Both are mere outcomes of their circumstances.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Robert, can I ask you a couple of questions coming from someone who isn't a neurologist? First off, define for me what free will would be if we had it.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Okay, this is one that completely pisses off philosophers who argue for free will. Just to orient people, 90% of philosophers these days would be called compatibilists, which is they admit the world is made out of stuff like atoms and molecules and we've got cells inside our heads and all of that science-y stuff is going on. They concede that, they accept that, but somehow, nonetheless, that is compatible with there still being free will in there. And as such, I would fall into the tiny percentage of people who count as free will incompatibilists. You can't have what we know about how the brain works and free will going hand in hand. So what would count as free will? So somebody does something and you say, well, why did they do that? And it's because these neurons did something half a second before. But it's also because something in the environment in the previous minutes triggered those neurons to do that. And because hormone levels this morning in your bloodstream made this or that part of your brain more or less sensitive to those stimuli. And because in the previous decade, you went through trauma or you found God and that will change the way your brain works. And before you know it, you're back to adolescence and childhood and fetal life, which is an amazingly important period of sharing environment with your mother and then genes. And then even stuff like what your ancestors invented as a culture, because that's going to have majorly influenced the way your mother mothered you within minutes of birth. So if you want to find free will, if you want to like prove it's there, take a brain, take a person that just did something and show that that brain did that completely independently of this morning's breakfast and last year's trauma and all the values and conditioning and stuff that went on in adolescence and what your mom's hormone levels were in your bloodstream when you were a fetus and your genes and culture, show that if you change all of those factors, you still get the exact same behavior. You've just proven free will and it can't be done.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Are you saying like we have zero free will or is there a little bit of it mixed in? You know what I mean? Like, is it so black and white or could there be shades of gray here?<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' There's simply no mechanism in there by which you can have a brain doing stuff completely independent of its history, independent of what came before. It is not possible for a brain to be an uncaused cause. And taken to its logical extreme, the only conclusion is, yeah, there's no free will whatsoever.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Aren't we still thinking things over? Like, I think that when I do something that I really don't wanna do, that if I'm ever expressing free will, it's in those moments, right? Like, doesn't that make sense in a way? Like, if I'm gonna force myself to do something that everything about me-<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's just one part of your brain arguing with another part of your brain though, right?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' But isn't that kind of an expression of free will? If you are having an internal debate and there are pros and cons and pluses and minuses and all the stuff that it takes for us to make a decision.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Not necessarily if you see it from a neurological point of view of, yeah, that's just your executive function and your frontal lobe fighting with your limbic system.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Exactly.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Right?<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It doesn't rescue you from it being all caused neurologically.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' I mean, today is January 17th and thus we're probably 17 days into the vast majority of people who made New Year's resolutions to have already like given them up. And everyone went into it with the same, I'm gonna do this differently this year. And some people do and some people don't. And how did somebody become the sort of person who would have the self-discipline to do that? How would someone become the sort of person who first time they were tempted, they went flying off the rails. How did we all differ in that regard also? And it's exactly the part of the brain. You mentioned just now the frontal cortex. That's this incredibly interesting part of the brain that makes you do the hard thing when it's the right thing to do. And beginning in your fetal life, every bit of thing that happens around you is influencing how strong of a frontal cortex you're gonna have come January 1st and you're vowing to exercise every day.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' So is there an evolutionary advantage to believing in free will?<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Yeah, I think there's an enormous one. And what you can see is in the fact that 90% of philosophers and probably more than 90% of folks out there in general believe there's free will because it's like kind of an unsettling drag to contemplate that we're biological machines. It's very unsettling. And people like to have a sense of agency. People like to think of themselves as captains of their fate. And this plugs into like a very distinctive thing about humans. We're the only species that's smart enough to know that everybody you know and love and you included are going to die someday. We're the only species that knows that someday the sun is gonna go dark. We're the only species that knows that because your neurons in your frontal cortex just did this or that, you carried out this behavior. We're the only species that's capable of having those realities floating around. And some evolutionary biologists have speculated, I think very convincingly, that if you're gonna have a species that is as smart as we are, we have to have evolved an enormous capacity for self-deception, for rationalizing away reality. And we're the species that's smart enough that we better be able to deny reality a lot of the time. And in that regard, major depression, clinical depression, one of the greatest ways of informally defining it is depression is a disease of someone who is pathologically unable to rationalize away reality. It's very protective psychologically.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And like cycling back a little bit to like the meritocracy thing, because where I tend to come down is I have to admit like, yeah, there's no metaphysical free will. You know, it is, we are, there is no uncaused cause. You know, we are just the neurons acting out what they do. But don't we have to act as if there is free will to a large extent because, again, of that moral hazard of thinking that there's no consequences? And even when, like with meritocracy, you were focusing on talent, but what about hard work? We do want people to be rewarded for hard work so that they'll do it. You know, people will do productive work. If there was no reward for it, we kind of know what those societies look like. It's not one I'd wanna live in. Would you accept that notion that even if you think metaphysically, philosophically, there's no free will, we still have to kind of pretend that there is?<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Again, in an instrumental sense, you can reward somebody if that's gonna make them more likely to do the good thing again, if that's gonna make them more likely to plug away, but you need to do it purely in an instrumental way. A colleague of mine at Stanford, Carol Dweck in psychology, has done wonderful work showing, okay, you've got a kid and your kid has just gotten a great, wonderful grade on some exam or something. And do you say, wow, what a wonderful job you did. You must be so smart. Or do you say, wow, wonderful, wonderful job you did. You must've worked so hard. And what she shows is you do the latter and every neurotic parent knows that by now. Yeah, sometimes you use sort of positive praise, reward for displays of self-discipline because that makes that part of the brain stronger, all of that, but you don't go about making somebody who is better at resisting temptation than somebody else think that it has something to do with they are an intrinsically better human. They just wound up with that sort of frontal cortex.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Let's talk a little bit more about evolutionary psychology. I mean, it seems like you're largely in support of that, but you tell me, what do you think about it? Because I know that is something where you can't deny that our brains evolved and that has a huge influence. So what do you think about the discipline of evolutionary psychology and specifically, how would you answer its critics?<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Its starting point makes absolutely perfect sense. And historically, take one step further back from it and you get this field called sociobiology, which I was sort of raised in, which is you can't think about human behavior outside the context of evolution. And then it's one step further and you've got evolutionary psych. You can't think about the human psyche outside the context of evolution. That makes perfect sense, wonderful sense. The trouble is in both of those disciplines, there's way too much possibility for sort of post hoc, just so stories. There's way too much individual differences. Anytime you see a human who like leaps into a river to save the drowning child and dies in the process and basic sociobiological models, basic models of how you optimize copies of your genes can't explain stuff like that. By the time you're looking at like vaguely complicated mammals, you get individualistic behaviors that violate what some of the models predict. So it's part of the story. It's interesting evolutionary psychology. One finding in there that I find to be very, very impressive is that we are far, far more attuned to the sort of norm violations that go in the direction of you getting treated worse than you expected to be, than you being treated better. We have all sorts of detection things in our brain that are better at spotting that bastard they were supposed to give me that reward and they didn't versus, whoa, they just gave me this gigantic reward out of nowhere. And that makes sense evolutionarily. And some of those building blocks were just fine. As with a lot of these relatively new disciplines, don't get a little overconfident and try to explain everything.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I kind of landed in the same place. From a philosophical point of view, of course, there's evolutionary psychology, but in practice, I do think it can fall into just-so stories too easily. So it's a kind of a weakness in the field. All right, well, Robert, this has all been very fascinating. Thank you so much for giving us your time. Anything coming up that you want to plug? Do you have any works that you're doing?<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' No, I got this new book out, which I guess is sort of useful if people know about it. Came out in October, Penguin. It's called Determined, A Science of Life Without Free Will, where I basically lay out all these arguments and as far as I can tell so far, infuriate a lot of people.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's good work. You know that you're accomplishing something useful if you piss off a lot of people.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Oh, good, because I seem to be. That's nice to know.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, thanks again. Take care.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Good, thanks for having me on.<br />
<br />
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== Science or Fiction <small>(1:44:27)</small> ==<br />
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|item1 = A recently discovered species of deep-sea fish in the Antarctic ocean has been found to have transparent blood, due to a complete lack of hemoglobin.<br />
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|item2 = Researchers have developed a type of biodegradable plastic that decomposes completely in just one week when exposed to sunlight and air.<br />
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|item3 = Researchers have successfully trained a group of goldfish to drive a small, water-filled vehicle on land, demonstrating their ability to navigate in a terrestrial environment and challenging long-held views on fish spatial awareness.<br />
|link3web = https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0166432821005994?dgcid=author#fig0005 <!-- delete or leave blank if none --><br />
|link3title = From fish out of water to new insights on navigation mechanisms in animals <!-- delete or leave blank if none --><br />
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''Voice-over: It's time for Science or Fiction.''<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Each week, I come up with three science news items or facts, two real and one fake, and I challenge my panelists to tell me which one is the fake. We have a theme this week. It's a mystery theme.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' You can tell us.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I will reveal the theme after you guys all give your answers. Now, we'll see if you can figure it out along the way, but it's not gonna be obvious. Okay, here we go. Item number one, a recently discovered species of deep sea fish in the Antarctic Ocean has been found to have transparent blood due to a complete lack of hemoglobin. Item number two, researchers have developed a type of biodegradable plastic that decomposes completely in just one week when exposed to sunlight and air. And item number three, researchers have successfully trained a group of goldfish to drive a small, water-filled vehicle on land, demonstrating their ability to navigate in a terrestrial environment and challenging long-held views on fish spatial awareness. All right, Cara, go first.<br />
<br />
<big>'''Cara's Response'''</big><br />
<br />
'''C:''' I don't like them.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Is that the theme that you're picking up?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Things Cara does not like.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, things I don't like. Deep sea fish in the Antarctic Ocean. There's an Antarctic Ocean?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well the waters around the Antarctic, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But is that called the Antarctic Ocean? I didn't know that, the Arctic. Anyway.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's the Southern Ocean, also known as the Antarctic Ocean.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Okay, I'm not mad at that. That one, okay, so this fish is lacking hemoglobin, which, okay, that's crazy weird, but maybe there's some sort of other compound that is like serving a similar purpose. Would it make the blood transparent? Maybe? Is the only reason blood has the color it is because of hemoglobin? Because of the heme? It might be. I know the heme does make the blood quite red, but I don't know what it would look like with no heme. Would it be clear? I don't know, but a lot of our liquids in our bodies are clear, so maybe. The biodegradable plastic that decomposes completely in just one week, I don't buy that for a second. When exposed to sunlight and air, like what's the catch? It's like, it also melts the second it touches water, like it's not firm like plastic. I just, I do not buy that one. How, I wish that would be revolutionary. But also, a goldfish drove a car? Okay, here's the thing about this one. I have a very fun, but very weird friend who clicker-trained one of her fish to swim through a hoop. And it was a goldfish, and she claims it was very, very smart. I never quite believed her, but maybe, maybe a goldfish could drive a little goldfish car. I want that one to be science, so I'm gonna say plastic's the fiction.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay, Evan.<br />
<br />
<big>'''Evan's Response'''</big><br />
<br />
'''E:''' These all seem like fiction, don't they?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Mm-hmm.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's why you don't like this.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I don't like them.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I agree, I'm with Cara. I will go with Cara and say I don't like them either. Next. Oh, I mean, right. For kind of the same reasons, though. I mean, if you take the hemoglobin out of blood, are you left with something that's transparent? Aren't there other things in the blood that would make it at least opaque, right? Not transparent, though. I mean, what? Right, there's something else floating around there. It's so strange. So that would be the catch on that one, I think. And yes, there is a fifth ocean. It is called the Southern/Antarctic Ocean. The second one about the biodegradable plastic. My question about this one is why would you make this if it's gonna decompose in a week if you can't expose it to sun and air, which is kind of everywhere? So what's the practicality of this? Where would you use this? Underground, okay, where there's no sunlight. And in a non-air environment, what? Water for underneath, but then, I don't know. That's tricky. I mean, maybe they developed it, but it has no practical industrial use. And then the last one, okay, training a group. A group of goldfish would be a school of goldfish. They went to driving school, apparently, to drive this water-filled vehicle. On land, demonstrating their ability to navigate. So how does that work? They don't, that's not how to do it. So when we say drive, are we talking steer? I guess, it's only steer, it would be. So just directional, so.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yes, they have to be able to control which direction it's going in, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No, they use the clutch.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Well I mean, driving is a set of things more than steering, but it's steering something around, kind of.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And they have to go, brr brr.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Remember that video, that's hilarious. Ah! Shoot, all these are wrong, so I don't know. Cara and I are gonna sink or swim together on this one about the plastic, because I just don't see why that would be the case in any purpose.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay, Bob.<br />
<br />
<big>'''Bob's Response'''</big><br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, transparent blood, it seems somewhat plausible without the hemoglobin, that it would be kind of, I mean, I think it would be still kind of opaque, but I guess I could see it being somewhat transparent. The goldfish, the driving goldfish is just too awesome. I just wanna will that into existence. The plastic just seems silly, right? I mean, just like, oh boy, I took the bag out of the packaging, I've gotta use it quick or anything that's, if you forget about the bag and you put stuff in it and put the bag somewhere, and then next week it's gonna be gone, and then the contents are gonna spill. I don't know, it just seems a little goofy in some ways and just not very practical. And like, oh, how long has this bag been out? How much time do I have? It's only a day left. I don't know, it just seems a little silly and impractical, so I'll say that's fiction as well.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And Jay.<br />
<br />
<big>'''Jay's Response'''</big><br />
<br />
'''J:''' So they all are saying that it's the plastic.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's correct. That's what they are saying.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, no.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I would imagine that they didn't develop the plastic to specifically only last a week, that they were working on a biodegradable plastic and that's what they ended up, that this is something that they made. Doesn't necessarily mean-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, that seems reasonable, damn it.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, right? But the key thing here is that it's biodegradable, you know, like legitimately, which, I don't know. I mean, again I trust your guys' judgment as well. You know, the first one about the deep sea fish, it's very odd to think that there's transparent blood, but I have seen many pictures of like that fish you could see through its head and I don't remember seeing blood there, so I think that's science. And then the third one here about the goldfish driving a water field vehicle. I mean, that is so wacky that it's gotta be true. Damn. This is such a hard one, Steve. All right, I'm trying to think of the theme too. I don't see the theme. Okay, I'm gonna go with everybody else. How could I not? I mean, there's something wrong about that one week decomposition, decomposing plastic. Something's not right there.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Hidden Theme ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay, so anyone has a guess on the theme? It's very meta.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I don't like it.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Water.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's very meta. No. The theme is-<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Things in water.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Nope. This-<br />
<br />
'''J:''' The fish eat the plastic.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Science or fiction has been brought to you by Chat GPT.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Oh.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Ah, geez.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Which version?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Four. So I typed in first, are you familiar with the Skeptic's Guide to the Universe podcast? And it said, yes, I'm familiar, and it gave a pretty good description of our podcast.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It better be.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' One of the paragraphs reads, the Skeptic's Guide to the Universe is known for its approachable style, blending educational content with humor and informal discussions. It's aimed at a general audience and is designed to make science and skepticism accessible to people without a scientific background. That's a pretty good description of the show.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I love that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Then I said, can you design for me a science or fiction segment similar to what they have in the show every week? And it did. Now, I had to do it three times and select from among those three, not because they weren't good, but because they were things that we've talked about before. Can't use that one. Yeah, because we've talked about that recently. So I had to find ones that wouldn't be too obvious. And one of these, it gave us a fiction, but I found it's actually true.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Right, you had to double check everything.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #1 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I had to check everything. I couldn't trust it. All right, so let's take these in order. Number one, a recently discovered species of deep sea fish in the Antarctic Ocean has been found to have transparent blood due to a complete lack of hemoglobin. This one is science. So you guys are all safe so far. This is the oscillated ice fish. It's a family of fish. Lives in very cold waters off Antarctica.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Goes back and forth.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And it has transparent hemoglobin-free blood. This is the first, I think, in any vertebrate. And there are some species that have like yellow blood because they have very little hemoglobin, but this one is like fully transparent, zero hemoglobin. And they don't have some other molecule. They just have plasma.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Whoa.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' So plasma, yeah, plasma would be.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' How does that work, though?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, so they've adapted to basically just having oxygen dissolve in plasma and they make it work by, they have low metabolic rate, for example. But it also makes the blood less viscous, so it circulates much more vigorously, I guess. So that compensates for a little bit. They have larger gills, scaleless skin that can contribute more to gas exchange. So they have much more surface area to exchange gas.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Ew, wait. It's a fish with scaleless skin?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That is horrifying sounding.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Like one of those cats that has no fur?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' They have bigger capillaries and they have a large blood volume and cardiac output. So they have all these compensatory mechanisms for not having hemoglobin to bind a lot of oxygen and they make it work. Yeah, so that one is true. So let's go on.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #2 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Number two, researchers have developed a type of biodegradable plastic that decomposes completely in just one week when exposed to sunlight and air. You guys all think this one is the fiction and this one is science.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No, I led you astray. The goldfish.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Interestingly, this one, ChatGPT gave me as a fiction. So I looked it up. I'm like, dang, there it is. This is actually true. This is published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society in 2021. Yeah, they created a plastic that when exposed to air and sunlight will completely break down in one week, leaving no microplastics behind at all. It degrades into succinic acid, which is a small non-toxic molecule. So obviously it limits the applications because it can't be exposed to sunlight or air.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But if it took a year, it'd be great.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Right. So that one actually turned out to be true.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #3 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Which means that researchers have successfully trained a group of goldfish to drive a small water-filled vehicle on land, demonstrating their ability to navigate in a terrestrial environment and challenging long-held views on fish spatial awareness. Is the fiction.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Clearly.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' ChatGPT just made this one up at a whole cloth. Made it up.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Not fair.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Made which one up, Steve?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The goldfish one.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's not related to anything real?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, they just said this one, they said psychologists kind of do weird things, but not this. So they made this one up. That was it.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh my gosh. It was like plausibly awkward.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Israeli researchers say they have successfully taught a goldfish to drive a small robotic car.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Science.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' The team said the fish showed its ability to navigate toward a target in order to receive a food reward. For the experiment, the researchers built what they call the fish-operated vehicle, an FOV.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Can only drive in the FOV lane, though.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Jay, where are you reading that? Is that another ChatGPT?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I just searched. Here, hold on.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' What search?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' This is insane.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Oh yeah, you're right. I didn't see that.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Well, that's, I mean, I don't know if you wanna get, how technically you wanna get. The question was about a small, a group of goldfish as opposed to a fish.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, you'd have to look and see. There's probably a lot of things wrong in it, even if goldfish did drive a car, and what?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, but ChatGPT apparently is not good at making up fake ones, because it just keeps repurposing real news items.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Hmm. I wonder if it swears at people in traffic, like in fish language.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' This is so dumb.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Gives people the fin?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, the middle fin.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' So what does this mean?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Also, how does this work?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, I think this, science or fiction, is a ChatGPT mulligan.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Wow. So we're gonna have a no contest, a no score on it this week.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, no score from this week.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Has that ever happened before?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I don't think so.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I bet you it's still fiction.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' We're witnessing skeptic's guide history right now at this moment?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, I'll take it.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh my gosh, for the first time in approaching 19 full years.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Damn you, ChatGPT.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' And we have been failed by artificial intelligence at the highest level.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So ChatGPT failed at science or fiction.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Never again, yes. ChatGPT is zero.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' All right, well put it down as like, zero wins and one loss for the year.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' If this experiment has succeeded, I was gonna do this from now on, just have ChatGPT be science or fiction.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, yeah, of course.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' You can have the good ones and you just make up the fake one.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' This actually took me just as long because I had to do it multiple times, I had to check every one, you know?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' What you need is a program, Steve, that's optimized for performing the science or fiction function.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's right, I need a science or fiction GPT.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Narrow AI. AI to help you with this, Steve. Do you think someone out there could do that?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Probably.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' A listener on their spare time? Put in 5,000 hours of work.<br />
<br />
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== Skeptical Quote of the Week <small>(1:59:26)</small> ==<br />
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|text = Every great idea is a creative idea: The fact that you're using paint or you're using guitar strings or you're using equations, they're not really very different things. Getting that spirit into the education process … being curious about the world, that is a gift we would love to share.<br />
|author = {{w|Damian Kulash}}<br />
|lived = 1975-present<br />
|desc = American musician, best known for being the lead singer and guitarist of the American rock band {{w|OK Go}}<br />
}}<br />
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'''S:''' All right, Evan, give us a quote.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' "Every great idea is a creative idea. The fact that you're using paint or you're using guitar strings or you're using equations, they're not really very different things. Getting that spirit into the education process, being curious about the world, that is a gift we would love to share." Damien Kulash, lead singer of OK Go.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I love OK Go.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I love OK Go. I'm on a big OK Go kick lately.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' They're rock, but they're like very happy pop rock. I don't know how to describe it.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' They started out as kind of pop punk alternative and they they're treadmill videos.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' What country are they from?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' The United States.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' They're American. Not just the treadmill video, they did a parabolic space flight video.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' They did, yes.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' They shot an entire video in zero gravity. Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, it's amazing.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That video is amazing. It's an amazing accomplishment.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Watching the behind the scenes of it is even funnier.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yes, there's a whole documentary about it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, like one of the band members was like near, like he was just constantly vomiting or about to vomit. So the whole time he's like sitting down. One of them was scared out of his mind the whole time. It's amazing. It's so good.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' But this is, these artists, and I call them artists as much as they are musicians. They're visual artists, obviously, for what they do. They're so well known for their videos. But obviously they're also using a lot of engineering, a lot of science, a lot of math in the production of the videos. You know, they consult with a lot of people and teams of experts to come in and help them put these amazing ideas into the visual medium that is just so captivating. And the music's great too. So they're very pro-science and I love Damien Kulash and everyone at OK Go.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, well, thank you all for joining me this week.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Thanks Steve.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Thanks Steve.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Thank you Steve.<br />
<br />
== Signoff == <br />
'''S:''' —and until next week, this is your {{SGU}}. <!-- typically this is the last thing before the Outro --> <br />
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}}</div>Hearmepurrhttps://www.sgutranscripts.org/w/index.php?title=SGU_Episode_967&diff=19206SGU Episode 9672024-02-19T12:00:25Z<p>Hearmepurr: links added</p>
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|caption = China-based Betavolt New Energy Technology has successfully developed a nuclear energy battery, which integrates {{w| Isotopes of nickel|nickel-63}} nuclear isotope decay technology and China’s first diamond semiconductor module.&nbsp;<ref>[https://www.greencarcongress.com/2024/01/20240114-betavolt.html Green Car Congress: China-based Betavolt develops nuclear battery for commercial applications]</ref><br />
|bob =y<br />
|cara =y<br />
|jay =y<br />
|Evan =y<br />
|guest1 =RS: {{w| Robert Sapolsky}}, American neuroendocrinology researcher<br />
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|qowText = Every great idea is a creative idea: The fact that you're using paint or you're using guitar strings or you're using equations, they're not really very different things. Getting that spirit into the education process … being curious about the world, that is a gift we would love to share.<br />
|qowAuthor = {{w| Damian Kulash}}, American musician<br />
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== Introduction, winter weather preparations ==<br />
''Voice-over: You're listening to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.''<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Hello and welcome to the {{SGU|link=y}}. Today is Wednesday, January 17<sup>th</sup>, 2024, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella... <br />
<br />
'''B:''' Hey, everybody!<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Cara Santa Maria... <br />
<br />
'''C:''' Howdy. <br />
<br />
'''S:''' Jay Novella... <br />
<br />
'''J:''' Hey guys. <br />
<br />
'''S:''' ...and Evan Bernstein. <br />
<br />
'''E:''' Good evening, everyone, or good morning, wherever you might be.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Good evening. How is everyone?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Good.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's late.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Doing good.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' My bronchitis is finally, basically gone. Just a little.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, that's good.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That crap.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Bronchitis.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That's forever.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I know. It only took months.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It was a hell of a gut workout, I'll tell you that much. My stomach muscles are way stronger now than they were.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, but coughing is not good for you. You know what I mean? It's not like you're, oh, yeah, I'm getting this coughing workout. Coughing is bad for your back. People who cough a lot get disc herniations and bad backs and back strain and everything. So, yeah, I hate it when I have a prolonged cough. I always get back pain when I have a prolonged cough.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Really?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Cara, you are in another continent.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It is true. It is also another continent. It's a funny way to put it. Yeah, I've been in Scotland for a week and a half. I think I'll be here another week. And so it is two in the morning. It was beautiful here, though. I've been spending a bit of time outside. We had a really, really nice snow yesterday and the day before, so it's quite white outside. How is it looking in the Northeast? I know there were horrible snowstorms all over the country.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' There were other parts of the country that got smacked super hard.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, we had some snow. Not horrible.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Usually, we're snowy here. But we had two light snowstorms.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It's definitely colder.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, it's cold here too.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, we're getting the remnants of the Arctic blast. What the, what do they call it?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Vortex or something? Yeah, I think it's pretty bad in parts of Canada.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' And the Midwest of the United States got it very badly.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But so far, I mean, it's early. There's nothing winter so far by New England standards.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' True.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You never know. February's really like, we can get hammered in February.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, boy.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I know it's gonna be cold and we're gonna get precipitation, but it always depends on the timing of those two things. Like, do we get the precipitation when it's cold or is it, do we get rain, you know what I mean? Because if it's all snow, it could be profound.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' But any time an ice storm happens by, that's dangerous. I mean, that is when the power goes out. That is when all the tree limbs come down. We've had some nightmare ice storms in prior years. Not very recently, but I can remember a few.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Tell me about it with the hard freeze. I've been talking to some of my friends who live up in the Pacific Northwest where they had freezing rain, I think, for two days, but not snow, up in Oregon. And trees are down all over the place. People don't have power. It's been pretty brutal up there just because of the heaviness of that ice on everything.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' And they tend to not get ice storms, if I recall correctly.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, yeah, never. Like, they're just, yeah, the whole city. You know how it is. Anytime a city gets hit by something that's not typical weather for that city, they just don't know what to do with it.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It freezes, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It breaks everything.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, yeah, I remember I was in Phoenix. They had, like, an inch of rain, and it paralyzed the city.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It happens every time it rains in LA. We don't know what to do.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Las Vegas has a similar problem.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And everybody's house floods. We're like, oh.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And I was in DC, and they had, like, a pretty mild snowfall from Connecticut standards, and the city was paralyzed. They just didn't have the infrastructure for it, you know? And, of course, with the kind of snowstorms that would paralyze Connecticut, Canadians are like, you lowlanders, you know?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' We get 10 feet, and Toronto's like, big deal.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' We've actually we've been talking a lot out here in Scotland about the fact that they ice, or, sorry, that they salt the roads here, and it's quite destructive on the cars. Like, it's really, really corrosive, and probably cause millions of pounds of damage every year to the cars that are having to constantly clean this ice off of their. Undercarriage, yeah, and the engine damage and stuff. And we've been really talking about, like, why do they use salt?<br />
<br />
'''J''' It's totally inexpensive.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But sand.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Up to a temperature, it works, right?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Sand is cheaper, and it's not quite as efficient, but it's still efficient.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It has to do with the temperature, though.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It causes a lot less damage.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Sand has to be cleaned up, though. Like, salt just goes into the water.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Sand can just go into the dirt.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Plus, the melting effect of salt is pretty dramatic, isn't it?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, sand has no de-icing effect. That just temporarily adds friction to the road, whereas the ice, or de-icing chemicals, as they call them, actually melt the ice. But it depends on how much there is and what the temperature is. So there are some situations where the de-icing chemicals won't work, and you gotta use sand. But again, it's only, like, adding temporary friction. And they all have different environmental effects, so that there's no perfect solution.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It is superior. But the question would be, do we really need a superior melting effect if you have so much sort of negative side effects?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' They don't always use salt. They use sand sometimes, too.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I think out here, they only use salt, and it's quite infuriating to the people.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, you have to have the undercarriage of your car coated against that.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' They do. They do, but you still have to constantly clean it out. And it's just, yeah, it's pretty bad. Anyway.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I've never cleaned the bottom of my car.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Go to a car wash?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' If you go to a car wash, they will drive it through. It has an undercarriage.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's why you go to a car wash.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' They still have those?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Car washes? Last time I checked.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' They do. They're quite nice.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' They don't exist. They went the way of drive-in movies.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Drive-in movies, soda fountain counters, and pinball machines. They're all gone.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I went to a drive-in movie not that long ago. There's still a couple of them around. They're definitely very retro.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, that became kind of a thing again during COVID.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, I remember that.<br />
<br />
== News Items ==<br />
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{{anchor|news#}} <!-- leave news items anchors directly above the news item section that follows each anchor --><br />
=== Betavolt 50-Year Battery <small>(6:28)</small> ===<br />
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'''S:''' All right, Bob, you're going to get us started with a talk. There's been a lot of discussion about this. This is really catching a lot of people's imagination, not in a very scientific way often. But tell us about this 50-year battery. What's going on?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah. Chinese firm called Betavolt Technology claims it's created a new nuclear battery that can power devices for 50 years. There's a lot of silly clickbait surrounding this stuff. Here's one press release from the Business Standard. Their article was titled, China Develops Radioactive Battery to Keep Your Phone Charged for 50 Years. Like, ah.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Sure they did.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh my God. Such annoying clickbait. Now, nuclear batteries, though, are fascinating. They are distinct, of course, from everyday electrochemical batteries that we use all the time, from AA's to the lithium-ion batteries in our phones and EVs. Nuclear batteries are also called atomic batteries, which I kind of like, or probably more accurately, radioisotope generators.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Didn't Batman's vehicle have atomic batteries or something?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yes. Yes.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh my gosh.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' And they essentially take nuclear energy and convert it to electricity at its most, top of the onion layer there. One layer down, more specifically, it takes the byproducts of the decay of radioactive particles and converts that into electricity. So are these batteries? You know, yes and no, in my mind. Nuclear batteries are atomic batteries. They can power devices for sure. So in that sense, they are batteries. But they do not recharge, and they don't turn off. The nuclear batteries do not turn off. So for those reasons, and especially the not-turning-off one, they are often referred to as generators. But hey, it's language. Many people use the word battery for them, and so that's fine. Atomic batteries are generally classified by how they convert the energy. And it kind of boils down to either they take advantage of large temperature differences, or they don't. The former, these are thermal-based atomic batteries. And they have one side of the device is very hot from the radioactive decay, and the other side is cold. And that's the key there, that differential. So using thermocouples, that temperature gradient can be used to take advantage of the Seebeck effect, look it up, to generate electricity. That's basically how it works. Now, the iconic, classic atomic battery that does this is an RTG, radioisotope thermoelectric generator. There's that generator word. These devices go back to the 50s and 60s. And I think the principle was proved, I think it was like 1913. So it goes back to the 50s and 60s. The most advanced devices today can generate tens of watts, up to 110 watts, for NASA's top-of-the-line RTG. And they can supply power literally for years and years and years. RTGs are heavy. They're big devices compared to our portable batteries. But they are amazing for remote locations and places with poor sunlight. The Voyager probes, more than 15 billion kilometers from the Earth and the sun, are powered by RTGs. Mars Rovers, too, and countless other systems and platforms and probes, NASA and our knowledge of the solar system would be greatly diminished if it did not have access to these wonderful devices. But if you want really small, portable atomic batteries, though, you then want this non-thermal kind. These extract energy from the emitted particles themselves, kind of like before it degrades into heat, directly tapping into and using the particles. The semiconductors in these devices use these particles to create a voltage. And typically, these types of batteries have efficiencies, from 1% to even up to 9%. And they go by various names depending on the emitted particles that they are using. So they're called alpha voltaics if it converts alpha particle radiation, which is essentially just two neutrons and two protons. It's called gamma photovoltaics if it converts energetic photons like gamma rays. The real standout, though, of this type of atomic battery is called beta voltaics. This converts emitted electrons or positrons to electricity. And it's popular because beta decay can more easily be converted into usable electrical power, much more so than alpha particles or photons. Beta voltaics are not theoretical. These are being used right now, right now, in countless sensors and other devices that require very low power for very long periods of time. Did you know that they were used as pacemakers in the 70s? People literally had them in their bodies for decades with no ill effects. They are very safe. These are known things and they can be very useful. So that's why this Beijing startup company calls itself BetaVolt. They're taking advantage of beta voltaics and their new atomic battery is based on that. The battery itself is called BV100. It's coin-sized, about 15 by 15 by 5 millimeters. And there's a decent amount going on inside that coin. It has layers of radioactive nickel-63 in between layers of diamond semiconductors. Nickel-63 has a half-life of 100 years, which means in 100 years it'll be emitting essentially half the particles it does initially as it decays into harmless copper. Now, so saying this battery can last 50 years, I think that's reasonable, if it's got a half-life of 100 years. After 50 years, it'll be still, what, 75% as effective?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, it's not linear, but close.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' So it's still, it's a good rule of thumb to say, yeah, 50 years, you could say it'll last 50 years and perform well. So, and it's safe. These are safe. It needs minimal shielding. Sure, you'd have to inhale it if you're gonna get concerned that that will do it. You would be concerned if you inhaled it. And I wouldn't want it to leak on my skin, but no more so than I would want a AA battery to leak on my skin, you know? So it's not like this, it's radioactive, no! It's pretty damn safe. So can this get 110 watts output like the best RTG? No. No, not even close. This battery generates three volts, but only 100 microwatts. That's 100 millionths of a watt. A microwatt is a millionth of a watt. That's tiny. You would need, what, Steve? 30,000 of them to power a typical smartphone. That's really low. So let's look at 100 microwatts another way. Let's look at how many amps that is. So, all right, we got an equation here. Power in the form of watts equals voltage times current or amps, right? W equals V times A. We know the power in watts and we know the volts, so you calculate the amps. That's .000333 amps. Now an amp, amps indicates how many electrons per second pass through a point in a circuit. So .0000333 amps, super low. You know, you're not gonna be powering something big and power hungry with something like this at all. So clearly, these batteries are not meant for power hungry devices, as are all beta voltaics are not meant for that. And that's okay, because power density is not the strength of these batteries. Now power density is the rate that it can output the power for a given size. And as I've shown, it's super tiny for one of these batteries. Very low power density, but they do have energy density. That's the total energy per unit mass. In fact, nuclear batteries have 10,000 times approximately, 10,000 times the energy density of a chemical battery. That's a huge 10,000 times, that's huge. But that's spread over the lifetime of the battery, which could be years or decades or even centuries. But that's where these batteries shine. They can last for ridiculously long periods of time. Now the significance of this battery seems to me to be it's a miniaturization and not the power density that everyone no one seems to be focusing on any of the miniaturization advances that they may have made. You know, there's not too many details on that either. They also claim that these can be chained together and connected in a series. So I think we'll have to see that to happen because it looks like I'm looking at some translated article here and they claim that they can get up to multiple watts if you chain them together. I don't, I'm not seeing that anywhere else. I'd have to see that. But the real important thing here is they claim they're shooting for a one watt version of this battery by 2025. Next year, one watt.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Bullshit, it's not gonna happen.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It's not. That's an incredible improvement that no betavoltaics has ever come near. And so Steve and I apparently are very, very skeptical of that. Now, if you can connect-<br />
<br />
'''E:''' You'll not be investing, I guess, is what you're saying.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, I mean, if you can connect their batteries together as they claim and they also create if they can create a one watt version, then we would be in some interesting territory. But I don't believe that. I will wait, I'll have to wait to see if they even come close to doing that. I don't think they're gonna do that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Bob when I wrote about it, I did my calculation, like theoretically, how, what could you get to? So given a betavoltaic battery of the same size, let's say you maximize efficiency, that gives you one order of magnitude, maybe, right? So you still have two orders of magnitude to go to get to one watt. And the, I think, buried in the article about it, they say that they're looking to produce this one watt version. And they're also looking to produce versions that have a half-life of two years or one year. It's like, yeah, those two things are related. The only way you're gonna pick up another order of magnitude is if you go from a hundred year half-life to a one year half-life. But then you don't have a 50 year battery anymore. You got a one year battery.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' You can't have it both ways.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Which is still interesting.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' But you've also got a more radioactive and more expensive battery on hand, right?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Using a different isotope with a shorter half-life.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Exactly.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But even assuming they could shield it and make it safe and pick up all that radiation and everything, that's fine. It's just, you don't get a 50 year battery with that kind of power output in that kind of size. It simply does not work. The physics does not add up.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So I think it's, there's no way around the fact that this is gonna remain a niche technology for very low power devices.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, yeah. I don't see it really breaking out of that characterization. You know, and other companies have tried to go commercial with beta voltaics. Steve and I were excited about nano diamond battery a few years ago. That's the one that used radioactive waste from nuclear power plants encased in diamond that could run for millennia. I think they were saying 20,000 years. So I looked them up recently and they were charged with defrauding their investors. Right, and there's been other, and there was another company that was trying to commercialize beta voltaics. And they, if you go to their website anymore, you don't find it. Their website's like gone. So it's just like we've seen this before and we're kind of seeing it again.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, this is a pitch for more money.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, partly, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, so, but what will we see in the future of beta voltaics? I mean, I love the idea of using them to trickle charge batteries. I think that's promising. And that would be useful for things potentially, like for EVs that are mostly idle. And you could just have it trickle charge at night in over 10, 12 hours. Like, oh boy, we got got a little juice out of this that you didn't have to plug it in for. And I love though, that when it comes to the worst case scenario, like you've got a dead battery, but if you had this trickle charge idea, you know, you wait a little bit. I'm not sure how long you'd have to wait to get a reasonable charge.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But at least you wouldn't be dead in the water.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Right, you're not dead in the water. And "eventually" you'd be able to just drive home. And of course, of course, trickle charging would be awesome in the apocalypse. Obviously. Now in the future, then when the zombies are roaming the countryside and you could say like Robin in the Batmobile, right Evan? Atomic batteries to power, you could say that. And then of course you'll have to wait a while for your beta voltaic atomic battery to slowly trickle charge your zombie resistant EV. And then you're going, then you're good. So maybe we'll see that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I think it'd be more than like for an electric vehicle, it's just, I think it's too little electricity. But for, you don't wanna drag around an atomic battery, that would be big enough to produce enough electricity that it would matter. But for your cell phone, you can, if you had even one that was producing again, like a 10th of a watt, let's say, or even a 100th of a watt, but it could extend the duration that you could go without charging your battery significantly, right? Because you're not using your phone all the time. It is idling most of the time. So let's say like you're going on a trip and you're gonna be away from chargers for three or four days. This could extend the life of your phone battery that long. I just say by trickle charging it 24 seven, whether when you're using it or not using it, or again, if you are in an emergency situation, you're never dead in the water. You always have a little juice. You just have to wait some time.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, if I were going out in nature for days on end, first off, I wouldn't do that. Secondly, I would bring a little solar panel with me.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Then it's overcast. No, but you're right, you're right. But yeah, but that's what they're finding with a lot of the deep space probes that relying upon aligning those panels with the sun is not a great thing. And nuclear batteries are really good. The European Space Agency, who previously said no nuclear batteries were gonna do all solar, they're like, maybe we should, maybe we gotta relent. So they reversed themselves because-<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Do you know why they reversed themselves?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Because they had a big fail.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' They sent a probe onto a comet. Their probe landed on the comet and then bounced into the shade. And then because it was in the shade, its batteries, which were solar-based, died in three days. So here's millions of dollars sitting in the shade, unusable, bricked, because they didn't have an atomic battery. So that story just cracks me up. So now they're like, okay, yeah, we're gonna do atomic batteries now. They were famously against them. Now they aren't, which was a funny story.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So like a lot of technologies, the technology is what it is, and a lot of it depends on being clever and being creative about how to implement it. Like what is the use where it's gonna be valuable? It's not gonna be like big drones that fly forever and all the crap that the press is saying about it. That's never gonna happen. But as a trickle charger or for super low-energy devices, this technology could be really, really helpful.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, yeah. The allure of a battery that can last for years, a conventional portable battery that can last for years, this is so high that people are just kind of like losing their shit over this and trying to extrapolate away from the science. For me, it's not so much beta voltaics, but for me, it's the RTGs. I wanna have these like chained, connected RTGs buried in my backyard that could power my entire house for decades. That's what I'm looking for.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, but the final point is like for your phone, like for trickle charging your phone, you don't want a 50-year battery in your phone. Your phone's only gonna last two or three years. You want a two or three-year battery, right? You want it to last as long as the phone.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That would be epic.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, then you don't need, you know.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, but it gets you more power. It gives you more power over the shorter period of time, over the lifetime of that phone. So there is a niche in there that could actually be very, very functional if the price works out, right? Would you add another 50 bucks to your phone to have something, an alternate source of power, a backup source of power and extend? Like now you only have to recharge it once every three days or four days instead of every night.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Well, those products exist, Steve. I mean, I have a battery that's a magnet battery that attaches to my phone, right? It's very easy to just put it there. It stays there. And it gives me like another half a day of juice if I need it. It's very, very convenient. And it fits in your pocket and everything. It's very easy. So, I mean, there are products out there like that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, I know. This would be another option. There would definitely be advantages to it because it's just there. It's producing energy all the time. But it's not, but the hype was ridiculous.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh yeah, it was silly.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Silly, silly.<br />
<br />
=== Moon Landing Delayed <small>(23:38)</small> ===<br />
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'''S:''' All right, Jay. I understand that the Artemis program is going swimmingly. Give us an update.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oops.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Don't be look, we expected this, right?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Unfortunately.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So NASA's Artemis program, give you a quick refresher. It's aimed at returning humans to the moon. It's also very heavily, big part of this mission is that we are paving the way for future Mars missions. You know, we need to develop a lot of technology that's gonna allow us to get there, but they have been facing significant challenges that have led them to reschedule some of these timelines, which this information came out about a week ago. So the Artemis 2 mission, right? Artemis 1 successfully launched. It went around the moon, did everything that we wanted it to. We got a ton of data off of that mission, but now we move on to Artemis 2. Now, originally, if we go way back, it was originally slated to be, as you know, the first crewed test flight of the Orion spacecraft, but it's been delayed many times. Not, this isn't like the first delay or even the second delay. The first launch dates were said that they wanted to launch between 2019 and 2021. Now keep in mind, Artemis 2, not 1. Artemis 2, 2019, 2021. Then it was moved to 2023 and then November, 2024. And now they moved it to September, 2025. They are saying no earlier than that, which kind of implies it could be later, right?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's for Artemis 2.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That's Artemis 2.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, so one of my predictions has already failed.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh no.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That's all right, Steve. Oh no, somebody die. So the delays are due largely to crew safety concerns. So let me get into some of the details here. NASA is always, they're just continuously conducting testing of critical systems, environmental control, life support. And they have found during their testing, they've found problems that include battery issues with the Orion spacecraft regarding abort scenarios. There's also a, there are challenges with the air ventilation and temperature control circuitry components, which these are all mission critical components. And bottom line here is, of course, it's good to know NASA is taking all these precautions. They're taking it very seriously. You know, this isn't like a let's launch it and test it and see how it goes. Like they fully plan on bringing every single astronaut back to earth. So they are trying to resolve all of these issues, but it sucks to wait longer, but you know, we're just a consumer here, right? Like I'm looking at this like, come on, launch it. I want to see it. I want to be a part of all that. But yeah, ultimately we want it to be successful. We want the people to come back. So of course, any delays with Artemis 2 means that it'll impact the launch dates of the Artemis 3 mission, which has now been pushed for 2026. This delay allows NASA to give them time. They don't want to like do Artemis 2 and then immediately do Artemis 3. They want time to make a lot of alterations and incorporate lessons that they learned from Artemis 2 so they can make Artemis 3 better, right? You know, hey, we had a problem with this thing and that thing, like they want to fix all of those things. But there's also problems with the partners that NASA is working with to develop, that are developing their own technologies. So there's a couple of names here you'll definitely recognize. SpaceX, as a good example, they're responsible for the human landing system. You know, they have to demonstrate that their starship can successfully dock. It also needs to be able to refuel with other tanker starships in orbit. These are not easy things to do at all. And this capability is essential for transporting astronauts beyond Earth's orbit. Getting the ship refueled and being able to do what it needs to do in and around the moon is going to be something that could take place frequently. And these tasks, like I said, are challenging and straight up, they're just not ready yet. They don't have the technology. And I'm sure that the timelines and the dates that they're giving, everything is a, we hope that it's this, but it's never like it will be done on this date. Like they're not, that's not where they're operating. They don't work that way. Axiom Space, you might remember, they're making the next generation spacesuits. No, they still need to solve some heavy duty requirements that NASA put on them. Like one of the big ones is that the spacesuit itself, standalone, needs to have an emergency oxygen supply system. So this will enable the spacesuit to supply oxygen for an hour with no attached gear, right? Just the spacesuit itself has an hour of air in it. So they're also having supply chain issues, which I was a little surprised to hear, but they're having problems getting materials that they need to make the spacesuits. And they also have, they're working with outdated components that need to meet the latest NASA requirements. I couldn't get any more details about these components. Like I don't, I suspect that they may have been borrowing from earlier spacesuits, certain systems and things like that. But NASA has been ramping up their requirements and they're having a hard time meeting it. Now, this means that they're likely to have to redesign parts of the current design that we've already seen. And this issue with the supply chain is definitely impacting the development of the spacesuit components. So lots of moving parts here. Now, NASA is also dealing with its own financial issues. They haven't presented an official cost estimate for Artemis III. And there is a group in the government whose job it is to get this information, right? And they need to give it and it needs to be assessed and it takes time. Now, keep in mind, the Artemis program is not just about returning to the moon, but it's also laying the groundwork for human exploration to Mars. So there's a lot of complexity here and there's a lot of weight on every single thing that they do. And these price tags the costs are phenomenally high. The Artemis missions, they include development and integration of a lot of different systems here. You know, think of it this way. We have the Space Launch System, the SLS rocket. That alone is very complicated because there's lots of different versions of that rocket that they're gonna be custom building for each and every mission. Then they have the Exploration Ground System. They have the Orion spacecraft itself. They have the Human Landing System. They have the Next Generation Spacesuits. They have the Gateway Lunar Space Station and all of the future rovers and equipment, scientific equipment that needs to go. Like there is a mountain of things that have not been created yet that need to be designed and crafted and deployed. So it's exciting because there's a lot of awesome stuff ahead of us. And I'm not surprised that they're pushing the dates out, but man, it's disappointing because I thought something incredible was gonna happen this year.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, it's unfortunate, but you know, they're just going back to the timeline that they originally had. You know, they were pressured to move up the timeline. Right, was it 2026 or 2028?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' 2028.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, 2028 originally, yeah. So even if they push back to 2026, they're still two years ahead of their original schedule. And that was really just for political reasons that that was moved up.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Before we switch off to space topic, let me give you guys a quick update on the Peregrine Moon Lander. Remember last week we talked about this. Okay, so real quick summary. This Moon Lander was developed by a company called Astrobotic. Seven hours into the mission, they became aware of a fuel leak that was changing the telemetry of the ship. Bob was very concerned. They didn't know what to do. They didn't really understand what was going on. And then everyone dove in. They started to really figure out what was happening. So the planned lunar landing had to be canceled because they just weren't gonna be able to position the ship and get the engines to do what they needed them to do that would enable it to land. So the ship basically goes out approximately the distance of the Moon, right? 183,000 miles or 294 kilometers. It gets out there. Then it gets pulled back to Earth. It didn't, the Lander didn't actually transit or orbit the Moon. So I didn't see its flight path, and I'd like to see it because I'm not crystal clear on what it was, but it did get pulled back by the Earth. And they have currently set it on a trajectory back to Earth where they fully expect it to completely disintegrate upon reentry. This is gonna happen on January 18th. So as you listen to this, it'll have been, it happened a few days ago. You know, Peregrine was part of NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Service Program, and that's it. It's gonna come back, all this stuff on there, the human remains, the messages from Japan, a few weird things that are on there. It's all gonna get burned up in the atmosphere. So it's sad, it's sad, but it happens. And we learn from these things. And again, this is a perfect example of why NASA, when people are involved, meaning like we're sending people into outer space, they don't have failures like this, right? Like they won't stand for failures like this. Everything has to be massively tested. So we gotta wait a little longer, guys.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yep.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' None of it's canceled, which is fantastic.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, thanks, Jay.<br />
<br />
=== Cloned Monkeys for Research <small>(32:57)</small> ===<br />
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'''S:''' Cara, tell us about these cloned monkeys.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, so some of you may have seen there's quite a lot of trending articles right now that are based on a new study that was just published in Nature Communications. I'm gonna read the title of the study. It's a bit techie. Reprogramming Mechanism Dissection and Trophoblast Replacement Application in Monkey Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer. So based on that title, you may not know, but what Chinese researchers have done or what they claim is now happening is that they now have the longest lasting cloned monkeys, cloned primates, really. There's a monkey, he is a rhesus monkey named Retro. And my guess, even though it doesn't say it in any of the coverage that I read, my guess is that the name Retro, because they capitalize the T in Retro, comes from reprogrammed trophoblast. I think that's where they got his name, Retro. And so really what this story is about is a new technique for trying to clone primates that works a teeny tiny bit better than previous techniques. And the big sort of payoff here is this monkey is now coming on three years old. So you may ask, haven't we been cloning animals for a while?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Dolly the sheep, right?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Dolly the sheep, right. So this is the same technique. I should say it's the same general technique with some really important changes as Dolly the sheep. So Dolly the sheep lived for six and a half years after she was cloned. Mice, rabbits, dogs, goats, pigs, cows, lots of different mammals have been cloned over the years. Even other monkeys have been cloned over the years, but the difference is that they've been incredibly short-lived. So generally speaking, when we talk about cloning mammals specifically, it's super hard to do. About one to 3% of clones result in live birth. It's a very, very low percentage. So as it is, it's hard just to get viable embryos when cloning mammals. And then even if you get a viable embryo, it's hard to have a live birth. There were some monkeys in 1998 who I think were the most long-lived or the most kind of the biggest success story as of that point, but I still think that they only lived for a few months. And so Retro coming up on three years is sort of being hailed as a triumph by the media, but let's talk about what the difference was here. So all of these animals that I'm describing here have been cloned using a very specific technique. And that technique is called somatic cell nuclear transfer. In simple terms, as we know, we talk about the difference between somatic and germ cells. Somatic cells are like body cells, right? Everything but eggs and sperm. So a somatic cell is actually put into, so you're transferring the nucleus from a donor cell, but a somatic donor cell, like a skin, let's say like a skin cell into an egg cell. And then that donor DNA, which is now kind of closed up in the egg is sort of programmed to start developing embryonically. So here's one thing that I think is an important point here that not a lot of coverage that I'm seeing makes. These are still embryonic clones. None of these are clones that are coming from an adult organism. So when you start to see kind of the fear-mongering coverage around, does this mean we can clone humans? Does this mean we can clone humans? First of all, nobody has successfully been cloning mammals from adult cells. Does that make sense? Almost all of them are pulled from embryonic cells and some of them are even just pulled from split embryonic cells. So even though technically you could call it a clone, it's like a twin, if that makes sense. But this specific approach that's been used, which all of these, like I said, have been this thing, somatic cell nuclear transfer is where we run into some hiccups. So what ends up happening is that the cells of that embryos trophoblast layer, which is sort of the outermost layer that provides a lot of nutrients and also actually forms a big chunk of the placenta after it's implanted are very problematic in almost every case. And scientists think that this is because of epigenetic factors. So there are these markers that are present, right? That turn genes on or off. So it's not changing the actual genes that are there, but it's changing their expression, whether they turn on or off. When you put this cell, this clone cell into an empty egg, the egg kind of DNA or the epigenes, the epigenetic factors within that egg affect the DNA of the implanted embryo and all sorts of havoc is wreaked. And really scientists hadn't been able to figure out how to get these embryos to become viable. They're usually all sorts of terrible mutations. They often don't even make it to live birth. And if they do make it to live birth, they often die within hours, days, weeks, or in very lucky cases, months. And so what the scientists did in this case, and this is sort of the new bit, is a trophoblast replacement. So they inject that inner cell mass from the cloned embryo into a non-cloned embryo. So the embryo cell mass is going inside of a non-cloned embryo that they made through in vitro fertilization. So they're basically forming like a hybrid embryo and the trophoblast portion belongs to the non-clone, which seems to be less likely to kick in all of these epigenetic factors that seem to be harmful to the developing embryo. And so the scientists are claiming that this is like rescuing the development of the embryos. But to be fair, we're still talking about an attempt of like hundreds of potential cloned embryos and only still like a handful of them sticking and then only one of them actually being successful. So it's not like this case is any more efficient. It's not like this specific kind of success story with Retro, the first ever rhesus monkey that's lived for longer than a day. And actually he's coming up on like three years. It's not like their approach made a bunch of them. It's they still only, it was very scattershot and they only got one successful outcome. It's just that their successful outcome has been more successful than any other primate in the past. And so the argument that the Chinese scientists are making here is, if we can do this more, this could be very, very good for biomedical research. Because like we do all the time with cloned mice, you can give a drug to one clone and a different drug or no drug or placebo to the other clone. And you can see exactly how well it works because they have the exact same DNA.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So it's a good way to control for variables.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yes, it reduces all sorts of variability. But of course, this is an ethical conundrum. And a lot of people are saying like, should we be doing this to monkeys? Should we be doing this to primates at all? And look at how many failures we have before we have a success. And look at how much suffering is happening to these animals until we get to that point. And is it going to, like, what is the payoff and how much is it going to improve our biomedical science, our pharmaceutical science? Is the sort of return worth the risk? That's another question. Now, this is perfectly legal in China. So the way that they're approaching this, it's passed all their review boards and it's a perfectly legal practice, unlike some of the historical stories that we've talked about. Do you remember when we talked about the CRISPR, the rogue CRISPR story?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Oh, yeah, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Like that was not legal.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' The Raelians.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' This is. But I think some people are saying, wait, if they were able to do this with the rhesus monkey, are they going to clone humans next? No, we're nowhere close to that. A, because we can't clone adult cells at all. These are still embryonic cells. And B, it's still hard as shit. It's no easier and it's no more efficient to clone this. It was no easier or no more efficient to clone this rhesus monkey than any of the attempts in the past. It's just that this one hiccup, it was surmounted in this case. Can it be surmounted again though? I don't know. Was it lucky that they happened to get this one just right? I guess we will see.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We'll see, yeah. I mean, it seems like a good incremental advance.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It does.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, and which is, again, that's par for the course, right, for science, right? Breakthroughs are rare, incremental advances are the rule. And this is, it seems like a solid one. But I still want to know, when can I make a clone of myself so I can harvest its organs? <br />
<br />
'''C:''' Nowhere close. Yeah, it's going to be a long time. The funny thing though, which I did discover in doing this research, is that there's a Korean company that has made 1,500 dog clones at this point.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, how long do they live?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Like, they're long-lived. Apparently, they're perfectly healthy dogs. And so it's pretty interesting that just, okay, it's way harder to clone mammals, but some mammal species are easier to clone than others.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, well, thanks, Cara. This is definitely a technology that we'd want to keep an eye on.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And actually, I will add to this, and I think this is important. One of the arguments is that this could also have implications for conventional IVF. Because sometimes you do see this trophoblast problem even in conventional IVF. And so this could be at least a new way to look at improving outcomes in conventional IVF for people. So there's that.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' So not that acupuncture I talked about last week.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Probably, yeah. Probably this would be more helpful to researchers. Yeah, I think so.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, thanks, Cara.<br />
<br />
=== Converting {{co2}} into Carbon Nanofibers <small>(44:23)</small> ===<br />
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'''S:''' So I'm going to do another news item that's a little bit also of hype, more than reality. The headline is, scientists develop a process for converting atmospheric CO2 into carbon nanofibers.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Ooh.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Ooh, that sounds-<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Solves two problems at once, right?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Exactly, right? It sounds really, really good. But let's dig into it a little bit. So obviously, carbon capture is something that we're looking into. Researchers are studying various ways of either taking CO2 directly out of the air or capturing it at the source, near coal fire plants or natural gas fire plants or whatever. And then putting that CO2, taking the carbon out of it and getting it into a form that is solid, right? So that it could be buried or utilized in some way, but it would be permanently, or at least for on the order of magnitude of 50 or 100 years, giving us enough time to sort out this whole green energy thing, ully convert over to low carbon economy and energy infrastructure. If we could bind up that carbon for 50 or 100 years, that could go a long way to mitigating climate change. And the experts who have crunched all the numbers said, we're not going to get to our goals without some kind of carbon capture along the way. Although they're mainly figuring like after 2050, like between now and 2050, we really need to focus on reducing our carbon footprint. And then after that, that we, carbon capture has to really start kicking in to some serious degree to turn that line back down again, you know? So is this kind of technology going to be the pathway? Now, carbon nanotubes or carbon nanofibers are a great solid form of carbon to turn atmospheric CO2 into because we've talked about carbon nanofibers. You know, this is a two-dimensional material. They have a lot of interesting physical properties. You know, they're very, very strong and they're highly conductive, highly both thermally and electrically, et cetera. And even if you just make very, very short nanofibers, so they're not long cables of it, but just very, very tiny ones, it could, it's still a great filler, right? You could still like, for example, you can add it to cement to make it much stronger. And that would be a good way to bind it up. You know, just imagine if all the cement were laying around the world, it had billions of tons of carbon in it. That was then now long-term sequestered. So that would be, that's like one of the most obvious sort of uses of this kind of carbon nanofibers. So what's the innovation here? So essentially they said, well, one of our innovations is we broke it down into a two-step process, right? We didn't want to try to get all the way from carbon dioxide to carbon nanotubes, carbon nanofibers in one step. So we broke it down into two steps. The first step is to turn carbon dioxide and water into carbon monoxide and hydrogen. And when I read that, I'm like, oh, you mean like we've been doing for years, right? I mean, that's not anything that's new. And that's kind of always the first step, you know what I mean? Because the problem with carbon dioxide is that it's a very low energy, very stable molecule, right? So it takes energy to convert it into anything else. Carbon monoxide and H2-hydrogen, are very high energy molecules. They are good feeders for lots of industrial chemical reactions, right? If you have hydrogen, you can do tons of stuff with that. We've spoken about this quite a bit. And if you have carbon monoxide, you can make all kinds of carbon-based molecules out of it. These are good, highly reactive, high energy molecules. So yeah, that's the key, is getting from CO2 to CO and H2, that's always the tough part. And they're basically saying, so we're gonna do that using basically existing methods. It's like, okay, so there's no innovation in the hard part. The real, right? It's like, okay, that's old news. The real new bit is that they develop a catalytic process to go from carbon monoxide to carbon nanofibers. It's like, okay, that's interesting. You know, that sounds reasonable. So they basically proved that they could do that. You know, they use cobalt as a catalyst, and which isn't great because cobalt is one of those elements that are sourced from parts of the world that are not stable. And we're trying to reduce our reliance on cobalt. And so developing a process that uses more cobalt, not great. It's an iron-cobalt system that they're using. Now it's gonna come down to two things, right? So they did a proof of concept. You could break this down to a two-step process where you go from carbon dioxide to carbon monoxide, and then carbon monoxide to carbon nanotubes. It works, but two questions, or actually, there's three questions. One is, can you do it on an industrial scale? Because unless you could do billions of tons of this stuff, it's not gonna matter, right? Second is, how cost-effective is it? And third is, how energy-effective is it, right? So if you have to burn a lot of energy to do the process, then it doesn't really get you anywhere.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Don't do it, right.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So they do say that the processes work at relatively low temperature and at atmospheric pressure, at ambient pressure. That's good. So that's a good sign that this has the potential to be energy-efficient. And then they also say, and this is always that gratuitous thing, if you fuel it, right? If you fuel this process with renewable energy, it could be carbon-neutral. Of course, if anything you fuel with renewable energy, it's gonna be carbon-neutral.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's like part of this healthy breakfast, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Right, part of this healthy breakfast. But fair enough. So you could theoretically power this with solar panels or wind turbines or nuclear power, which is what you'd have to do. You'd need some massive energy source. But again, in the short term, if we're gonna build a renewable energy source, you're gonna reuse that to replace fossil fuel energy sources. You're not gonna use it to capture the carbon from the fossil fuel, because that's adding another step and that's inefficient. So this kind of process isn't, and this is what I was saying at the beginning, it's not gonna be relevant until after we decarbonize the energy infrastructure, right? Only once you've replaced all the fossil fuel with carbon-neutral energy sources, does it then make sense to add even more carbon-neutral energy sources in order to pull some of the carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere that you've already released, right? Until then, if you build a nuclear power plant, for example, just connect it to the grid. Don't use it to pull carbon out of the air that you put in by burning coal, right? Shut down the coal plant and power the grid with the nuclear power. But there's a sort of a good news to that fact is that we don't have to really perfect this technology for 30 years. This is the kind of thing that we need to have ready to go in 2050. Like if we get to 2050 and we've mostly decarbonized our energy infrastructure and some more industrial energy structure, that's what we really need to start ramping up carbon capture. And that's when these kinds of technologies are gonna be useful. So we do have a couple of decades to perfect it. So it's good that we're at the proof of concept stage now because it could take 20 years to get to the industrial stage where we're doing it. But it is-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Is it possible or reasonable that it would scale up like that?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, again, that's a big question mark. And we've been here a hundred times where something looks great at the proof of concept stage and then we never hear about it again because it just failed to scale, right? It wasn't the kind of thing that you could scale up. And with carbon capture, that is one of the big hurdles. Does it scale? Can you get this to function at industrial, massive industrial scales? Because it's not worth it if you can't. And then the other thing, again, is how energy efficient is it? Because if it's energy inefficient and then it becomes part of the problem, right? It's not helping. It's just another energy sink. This has potential. And I do think carbon nanofibers as the end product is a great idea. Because again, we could just dump it in cement and put it on or under the ground or whatever, put it in our foundations. So, and it makes it stronger. It increases the longevity of the cement. And cement is an important source of CO2 also. So anything that makes that industry more efficient is good. So there's kind of a double benefit. So I like all of that. But looking past the hype, this is something where we're at the proof of concept stage. This may be an interesting technology 20 years from now. So let's keep working on it. But this isn't like the answer to climate change, right? This is something we're gonna have to be plugging in in 20 years or so.<br />
<br />
=== Feng Shui <small>(54:04)</small> ===<br />
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'''S:''' All right, Evan, I understand that people are doing feng shui wrong. What are the consequences of this?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' My gosh, how are we ever gonna get past this obstacle? It's not every week that the news-consuming public gets advice about feng shui. But this week, we're fortunate not to have one but two articles warning us about feng shui mistakes that are all around us. And I know people pronounce this differently. I've heard feng shui, feng shui, feng shui.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I also think some of the differences- I think some of them come from whether you're saying it in Mandarin or Cantonese.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I suppose so, I suppose so. Well, maybe there are some people who are not familiar with what feng shui is. What is it? You know what I did? I decided, I'm gonna look up the definition. I'm gonna go to fengshui.com to find out. I don't know what's there. Here's what happens real quick when you get there. There's this big, so it's a blank screen with all except for a big blurry dot. And then the blurry dot will start to pull in opposite directions, forming two circles, touching at a point like a figure eight on its side, or the infinity sign, basically. And there's no text or anything. That's all there is. And the only thing you can do is click on the dot. And that dot takes you to the next page, which is a entirely black background page, no text again. And it slowly starts to transition to a gray scale. It dissolves eventually to a white background in about 10 seconds. And then an octagon appears. And then within the octagon, there are lines that appear interconnecting the non-neighboring sides of the octagon. And if you click on that, it brings you back to the blurry dot. So to tell you the truth, and that cycle repeats, to tell you the truth, I think that's the most cogent explanation of feng shui I've ever seen. You know, oh boy, this is wild. Oh, it's an ancient Chinese traditional practice which claims to use energy forces to harmonize individuals with their surrounding environment. The term feng shui means literally wind water. And from ancient times, landscapes and bodies of water were thought to direct the flow of universal qi, the cosmic current, all energy, through places and structures, and in some cases, people. Now, here is the first article. Four feng shui plants to avoid. These are gonna disturb the qi in your home, warns experts. That's how the headline reads. Oh my gosh, this is a warning. And where was this? Yahoo.com picked this up as part of their lifestyle news, and they pulled it from the website called Living Etc. So when it comes to the best plants for good feng shui, there are a few you should bring home, and some you should completely avoid. And they're gonna help you right now pick out the ones to avoid, because they are experts. Yep, yep, they consulted experts for this, and I hope that-<br />
<br />
'''S:''' [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enfe44s0ivo You have a degree in boloney].<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I hope they met legitimate scientists, botanists, chemists, right? Maybe they got on board, but here's what they said. Feng shui master Jane Langhoff. It's essential to consider the type of energy plants you bring into your spaces. Oh well, so much for hearing from scientists.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' What's an energy plant?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, energy plant. Type-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' What's that?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Consider the type of energy plants bring into our spaces. So it's not energy plants, but actually I'll get to that. I'll get to that, Cara. There's actually, there are actually some things, and I will eventually get there. So you weren't totally wrong. Here's what else she says. I don't believe that specific plants will necessarily cause bad luck. However, there are certain plants that can represent negative elements or bring inauspicious energy to a space. Generally, it's advisable to avoid excessively thorny and spiky plants that can cause injury. Oh boy, thank goodness we have a person with a master's certificate and a gold star on it that warns us that thorny and spiky plants can cause an injury. Another one, Feng Shui consultant and educator Laura Morris. As a general rule, you want to be mindful about where you place a spiky or pointy leaf plant. Try to avoid placing them next to your bed or in the partnership area of your home, whatever the partnership area is, wherever people partner up. I don't know.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's where the people get busy? I mean, what are they talking about?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' But you want, so here are the four, okay? Here are the four plants in order and do this like David Letterman's top 10 list, but it's a top four list. Number four, the yuccas, Y-U-C-C-A-S.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I love yuccas.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yuccas, yuccas, yeah. Got to avoid them. They're kind of prickly. They're kind of what, they have sword-like features to them, I guess. You know, long kind of bladed, pointy leaves. They say don't bring those in the home. Number three, cacti. I think we know what cactus and cacti are. Number two, dried flowers and dying plants. You know why? Because don't have those in your house because they represent stagnant energy. Best to leave those outside because if you bring them inside, they could restrict the flow of chi. And the number one plant you should not have in your house, and I have them, quite a few of them in my house, artificial plants. Yep, you know why? Because they block, well, they block energy. They're inauthentic, Steve. They're pretending to be something they're not. This is right directly from the article, which can affect energy in a space negatively. If you love artificial plants, they must be also kept clean of dust and grime. Wow, this is good stuff. Now, Cara, as far as the, what do we call them?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Energy plants?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Energy plants. They list some plants. So here's some plants that are associated with good luck and include, I'm not gonna give you their taxonomical names, but I'll give you their more common names. The treasure fern, the happy plant, the lucky bamboo, the jade plant, the money plant, and peace lilies.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And this doesn't sound at all like something she just made up.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I mean, totally.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' To sell the plants that she has in her shop.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' This is some fatal level thinking right here. You know, I mean, how more basic does it get than that? You know, I mean, yeah. Lucky bamboo and the treasure fern. But it gets better because there's the other article. Here's the headline. Small entryway feng shui mistakes, five things the pros always avoid. So again, like right on the heels of this other one came this article. Oh my gosh, pearls of wisdom coming our way again. Number one, don't have any dead or dying plants. They kind of referred to that in the first article because dead or dying plants create negative energy and represent decay. That's not something you want to welcome in your welcoming part of your home, which is your entryway. Number two, poor maintenance of the door space. For example, blocking the area behind the front door will make moving through the space difficult. You think so? If you kind of put something behind a door and try to open it, that's gonna, you know. We need an expert to tell us this though. Also, don't let your front door get dirty and grimy. You know, it'll stop the positive energy from flowing in that door. The next, the three of five, beware your mirror placement. You don't want to place a mirror face on because you open the door and you're looking in the mirror, oh my gosh, you might get scared or something. You want to hang that mirror on a wall facing away to a doorway to your next room because what it does is it sends opportunities and prosperities into your home. It kind of brings the energy in and reflects it into the center of the home, which apparently needs it. Number four is clutter. Get rid of don't come in and throw your keys down and fling your mail on the little table there and take off your shoes and throw your coat down. You know, everything has a place. Put your stuff away, basically. And number five, this is the most important and the one I'll wrap up on. We ignore the elements at our own peril. You must incorporate the five elements of earth, fire, water, metal, and wood into your entryway, which kind of, I think, goes maybe against the clutter part of all this, right? But they said the balance between these elements creates good feng shui energy and will create a harmonious balance in your entryway. So there it is. Of all the hard science that we've touched on this week, perhaps this will eclipse it all and be the most beneficial to us all.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Like, feng shui is one of those ones that amazes me because it's just pure magic, you know?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, it's nothing.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So you believe in magic, and I've said that to people, and the kind of answer you get is, well, science doesn't know everything. It's like, yeah, but we know magic isn't real.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Not everybody can say that, Steve.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, and it's like, what I love about it is it's magic mixed with, like, a dose of common sense. It's sort of like all the things you were saying, Evan, because then you have these true believers that are like, yeah, but I had an expert come in, and they helped me with my feng shui, and I feel better. It's like, yeah, probably because you're not bumping into shit all the time.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Right, because they cleaned your house and put your crap away.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Here's your problem. You've got a cactus right in your entryway here.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Cactus behind your door. You can't open your door all the way.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's feng shui.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So stupid.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, okay, fine. If you're gonna do it in your own home, whatever. But I mean, and what we talked about before, and it's not the article this week, but when governments start hiring feng shui people, bring them in for architectural design and stuff, they are, oh my gosh.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's driving me nuts.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Wasting all our money and driving us nuts.<br />
<br />
[AD]<br />
<br />
{{anchor|futureWTN}} <!-- keep right above the following sub-section. this is the anchor used by the "wtnAnswer" template, which links the previous "new noisy" segment to its future WTN, here.<br />
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== Who's That Noisy? <small>(1:05:06)</small> ==<br />
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'''S:''' All right, Jay, it's Who's That Noisy time.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' All right, guys, last week I played this noisy. [plays Noisy] Now, I should have known that that kind of sound was gonna make a lot of people send me a lot of like funny entries into Who's That Noisy, things like they absolutely know that that is not it. They're just trying to make me laugh. And a few people did make me laugh, but I did get some serious entries this week, and we have a listener named Tim Lyft that said, "Hi, Jay, my daughter, age nine, thinks this week's noisy is somebody playing one of those snake charmer flute thingies, but badly" which I thought was a wonderful guess. And her cousin, who's seven years old, guessed "a lot of farm animals".<br />
<br />
'''S:''' A cacophony of farm animals.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I think these are two wonderful guesses. And Tim himself guessed some kind of bird. You can't send me an answer of some kind of bird. You have to be absolutely specific. But thank you for sending those in. Those are great. Visto Tutti always answers. He always comes up with something. He said, "it sounds like peacocks calling during the mating season. They like to start the annoying screeching way before sunrise, which makes the humans in the neighborhood wonder what roast peacock tastes like". So I heard this and I'm like, I read his email like, oh, peacocks, I don't know. I never heard the sounds that they make. And then I proceeded to get about, I think six or seven more emails where people were saying peacocks. So perhaps peacocks sound like that, which is a horrible noise for a bird to make, especially if they live around you. Another listener named Harley Hunt wrote in, said, good day. My guess for this week is a peacock. Okay, I put that in. I don't know why.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I'm sensing a theme here.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, there's a theme. All right, so there was a bunch of people that guessed peacock. Another listener here named Adam Pesch said, "Jay, first time emailer, long time listener. Today, I was awakened from a deep sleep by this week's noisy. You did warn us. I never have a guess and probably am way off, but this week reminded me of a shofar horn that I've heard in synagogue trying to mimic an electric guitar riff. Thanks for everything you guys do." I could not find anything on that, so I have no idea what that sounds like, but I do appreciate those guesses. Unfortunately, nobody guessed it. And you know, this one was a hard one. I just thought it was a provocative noise that I wanted to play for you guys. And I will explain this one to you. So again, this was sent in by a listener named Curtis Grant. And Curtis said, I have a really cool noise I heard at work as an elevator fitter or installer. In this case, we use a temporary hoist that lifts the finished lift cabin, right, which is basically the elevator itself, up and down the shaft. We use this to hoist or install our equipment, which are the rail brackets and et cetera, from the top of the finished lift car, as it is more efficient than building a temporary platform to install from. So as these cars are heavy, they have temporary nylon guide shoes that rub against the rails and cause this noise. So basically, like during the installation of an elevator, this is a common noise that someone would hear if they were doing the install. Very, very hard noise to hear. Let me just play briefly again. [plays Noisy] Wow, imagine that like resonating inside the shaft, right? Wow, imagine that like resonating inside the shaft, right? Ugh, forget about it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's haunting.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, definitely. <br />
<br />
{{anchor|previousWTN}} <!-- keep right above the following sub-section ... this is the anchor used by wtnHiddenAnswer, which will link the next hidden answer to this episode's new noisy (so, to that episode's "previousWTN") --><br />
=== New Noisy <small>(1:08:36)</small> ===<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Guys, I have a new noisy this week, sent in by a listener named Chris Kelly. And here it is.<br />
<br />
[Zipper-like zings, and a clack]<br />
<br />
I'll play it again. It's very short. [plays Noisy] Very strange. If you think you know {{wtnAnswer|968|what this week's Noisy is}}, or you heard something really cool, please do send it to me, because it helps make the show good. WTN@theskepticsguide.org.<br />
<br />
== Announcements <small>(1:09:03)</small> ==<br />
<br />
{{anchor|quickie}} <!-- leave anchor(s) directly above the corresponding section that follows --><br />
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'''J:''' Real quick, Steve, I'll go down a few things here. Guys, if you enjoyed the show, we would appreciate you considering becoming a patron of ours to help us keep going. All you have to do is go to [https://www.patreon.com/SkepticsGuide patreon.com/SkepticsGuide], and you can consider helping us continue to do the work that we do. Every little bit counts. So thank you very much, and thank you to all our patrons out there. We really appreciate it. One thing we started doing a few weeks ago, about a month ago, is we came up with the SGU weekly email. This email essentially gives you every piece of content that we created the previous week. We send it out on Monday or Tuesdays. So it'll have the show that just came out the previous Saturday, any YouTube videos, any TikTok videos, any blogs that Steve wrote, anything that we feel you need to see, it's going to be in that email. Also, we'll put in some messages here and there about things, like for example, an important message to tell you guys. So Google is changing its podcast player. And the new podcast player that they have actually is not something that we want to work with because there's a few things, without getting into all the details, the big humps for us that we couldn't get over was one, we couldn't integrate this automatically. So it won't automatically update to our RSS. We'd have to do everything manually.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' What?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, that's crazy. It doesn't integrate with our media host and that's it. So that right there is a pretty much a deal breaker for us because we can't be doing everything manually. That's number one. Number two, and sadly, they auto-insert ads and the pay is terrible. And we would have no control over the ads. So that's it, it's a game breaker. We're not going to do it. We are not going to integrate with Google's new podcast platform until and if they ever change or whatever, if I'll keep an eye on it, but.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Hey, it should be able to turn ads off if you don't opt out of that.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, I mean, I haven't seen-<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And like not automatically updating the RSS. I mean, come on.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, I know.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, like nobody's going to ever, nobody's going to use this.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, I don't think they will. So if, unfortunately, if you have recently found out that you no longer are getting our RSS on the Google podcast platform, this changeover happened over, I guess, the last few weeks or whatever, we're very sorry, but we have to, we can't engage in things that aren't good for us and that's it. So we're just not going to do it. And feel free to email me if you want to give me more information about it, or if you know, like, hey, either it's going to change or whatever. I can't find anything. But I admit, I didn't look that deeply into trying to figure out where they might be in the future. I just know where they are right now. Anyway, guys, there's an eclipse happening, and we decided let's do something fun around the eclipse because this is probably going to be the last one that any of us are going to see, especially one that's going to be close. And as Cara and Evan have been talking about, this is a big one. This is a long one. This is really one you really want to see. So wherever you are try to get yourself to a location where you're going to have totality. You know, bring the kids, definitely get the eye protection that you need, but this is going to be a big deal. So what we decided is we're going to go to a place where Bob's horrible feng shui of creating clouds.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Right?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Whenever an astronomical event is happening, we don't think that Bob's powers will work in Texas. So we're going to Dallas. We're going to be doing an extravaganza on April 6th, and we will be doing an SGU private show, a private show plus, actually, and we'll be doing that on the 7th of April of this year. All of these things will be in and around Dallas. So we really hope that if you're local or you're going to be traveling there for the eclipse, please do consider joining us. Ticket sales are going very well. So move quickly if you're interested because I can see things filling up very quickly. Other than that, guys.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' The clouds will follow me.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, if they do, Bob, if they do. We will take it out on you. We're going to make you buy us an expensive dinner, I guess, or something.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Of course you will.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, but I'm looking forward to Cara's barbecue.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Ooh.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That's the only reason why I'm going.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' You guys are going to be so good. Barbecue and Tex-Mex.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I'm going to diet before I go just so I can overeat when we're there, you know?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, you're going to go hard in Texas. You can't not go hard. Oh, it's the best.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Deep in the heart of Texas, right?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yep. Stars at night are big and bright.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I know that because of Pee-Wee's Big Adventure, right?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Of course.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. Thank you, Jay.<br />
<br />
== Quickie: TikTok recap <small>(1:13:37)</small> ==<br />
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'''S:''' Very quickly, I'm going to do an entry from TikTok. As you know, we do TikTok videos every week. One of the videos I did today, we record, we also livestream if you're interested, but we recorded one on the jellyfish UFO. Have you guys seen this?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Oh, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I have seen it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, the jellyfish UFO. So yeah, the TikTok video that I was responding to was by Jeremy Corbel, who's a gullible UFO guy, right? And it's a really this is a great example, a great contrast between a gullible analysis of a piece of information, this video, versus Mick West, who does a really great technical, like skeptical analysis of the same video. So essentially, this is over a military base, a US military base, and there's a balloon, a monitoring balloon, a couple of miles away. It's like tethered to the ground. So you get sort of a bird's eye view of the base, and it's tracking this thing that's flying across the base, right? Now, it's called the jellyfish UFO because it kind of looks vaguely like a jellyfish. There's a blob on top and streamers below, right? So there's a couple of, so again, Corbel's going on just gullibly about all this, oh, what could this be? I'm trying to like mystery monger it, and pointing out anomalies, apparent anomalies. But here's the bottom line, very, very quick. And if you can, the deep, Mick West goes into the technical details very well. The thing is drifting in the direction and speed of the wind, right? This is something floating in the wind. And the 99%-er here is that this is some balloons. This is a clump of balloons and streamers floating in the wind. Now, we can't see it with sufficient detail to say 100% that's what it is. It could be something unexpected, but that's basically what it is, right? If it's not literally balloons, it's something very similar. But it's something lightweight that's floating, that's drifting in the wind. It's not a machine it's not a spacecraft.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' A life form.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Not a life form. You know, it's just, it's not moving, right? At first, I'm like, is that like a smudge on the lens? But like, no, it's kind of moving with respect to the lens itself. But it is again, Mick West shows quite convincingly that it's moving in the direction of the wind, it's moving at the speed of the wind, given the likely altitude that it has. He does all the angles and everything. It's like, come on, guys, it's a freaking clump of balloons.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Maybe that's the secret of alien spaceship propulsion. You let the wind do all the work.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, that's how they hide, right? They just float along like the balloons.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So they're literally paper airplanes.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' What's the difference between alien balloons acting like Earth-bound, Earth-created balloons?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And Earth-created balloons?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' There's no, right?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The difference is Occam's Razor, that's the difference. All right, guys, we have a great interview coming up with Robert Sapolsky about free will. This one's gonna blow your mind. If you're not familiar with the free will debate, you will be after this interview. So let's go to that interview now.<br />
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== Interview with Robert Sapolsky <small>(1:17:01)</small> ==<br />
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* "{{w| Robert Sapolsky|Robert Morris Sapolsky}} is an American neuroendocrinology researcher and author. He is a professor of biology, neurology, neurological sciences, and neurosurgery at Stanford University. In addition, he is a research associate at the National Museums of Kenya." - Wikipedia<br />
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'''S:''' Joining us now is Robert Sapolsky. Robert, welcome to The Skeptic's Guide.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Well, thanks for having me on.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And you are a professor of biology, neurology, and neurosurgery at Stanford University. And you have written a lot about free will and other related topics. And that was primarily what we wanted to start our discussion with about tonight, because you take a pretty hard position that there is no free will. How would you state your position?<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' I would say probably the fairest thing is that I'm way out on the lunatic fringe.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' In that my stance is not just, wow, there's much less free will than people used to think. We've got to rethink some things in society. I think there's no free will whatsoever. And I try to be convincing about this.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay, well, convince us. Tell us why you think there's no free will.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' I think when you look at what goes into making each of us who we are, all we are is the outcome of the biological luck, good or bad, that we have no control over, and its interactions with the environmental luck, good or bad, which we also have no control over. How is it that any of us became who we are at this moment is because of what happened a second ago and what happened a minute ago and what happened a century ago. And when you put all those pieces together, there's simply no place to fit in the notion that every now and then your brain could do stuff that's independent of what we know about science.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So, yeah, that is, I think, the standard position of the no free will. Our brains are deterministic, right? We can't break the laws of physics and control what happens inside our head. Our brains are machines. But why, then, is there such a powerful illusion that we do have free will? And how do you square that, like the notion that we do make decisions? Or do you think we don't really make decisions? Is the decision-making level of this itself an illusion?<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Great. I think that's exactly where we all get suckered into, including me, into feeling a sense of agency. Because the reality is there's points where we choose. We choose something. We choose what flavor ice cream we want. We choose whether or not to push someone off the cliff. We have all those sorts of things. We make a choice. We form an intent. And then we act on it. And that seems wonderfully agentive, wonderfully me. There's a me that just made this decision. I was conscious of having an intent. I had a pretty good idea what the consequence was gonna be of acting on it. And I knew I wasn't being forced. I had alternatives. I could choose to do otherwise. And that intentness, the strength with which you were just in that moment, is what most of us, then, intuitively feel like counts as free will. And the problem with that is, when you're assessing that, it's like you're trying to assess a book by only reading the last page of it. Because you don't get anywhere near the only question you can ask. So how did you turn out to be that sort of person who would form that intent? How did you become that person? And that's the stuff we had no control over.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay, I see that. So you have no control over the person that you are, all of the things that went into influencing your decision-making. But does that add up to, though, that you're not actually making decisions? Or I guess another, when I try to wrestle with this, the other thing that really bothers me is not only the sense of decision-making, but of what we call metacognition. I could think about my own thought processes. So what's happening there?<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Yep. You're in some psych experiment where, like, if you had a warthog, and signed up for the experiment, they would do some manipulation psychologically, and the warthog would fall for it and all of that. But because we're human, and we've got this metacognition stuff, we can go in there and say, oh, these psychologists, I bet they're up to something. So whatever I think I'm gonna say, I'm gonna say the opposite so that I'm not being some, like, rube falling for their manipulation. Whoa, I've just exercised free will thanks to my metacognition. How'd you become the sort of person who would go in there and be skeptical? How did you become the sort of person who would reflect on the circumstance metacognitively, et cetera, et cetera? In both of those cases, whether you did exactly what the warthog did, or if you, just out of proving some sort of point to yourself, did exactly the opposite, in both cases, it's the same issue. How did you become that person? And you had no control over that part.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So you also talk about the fact that if you take that view of humanity, that we are deterministic and free will is an illusion, that should influence policy or how we approach certain questions. So what do you think are the biggest policy implications for the realization that we don't really have free will?<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Well, people immediately freak out along a number of lines if you try to insist to them that there's no free will. The first one is, oh my God, people are just gonna run amok. If you can't be held responsible for your actions, people will just be completely disinhibited or will be chaos. And sort of the most extreme extension of that is, and they'll just be murderers running around on the streets. And that won't be the case. And the thing is, if you take the notion that we have no free will, we're just biological machines, blah, blah. If you take it to its logical extreme, blame and punishment never make any sense whatsoever. No one deserves to be punished. Retribution can never be a virtue in and of itself. Oh, so you throw out the entire criminal justice system, forget reforming it. It makes no sense at all. It's like having a witch justice system for deciding which ones you burn at the stake in 1600. You need to come up with a system that completely bypasses that. And at the same time, hold up a mirror to that and praise and reward make no sense either. And thus meritocracies have to be tossed out as well.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So then what are we left with?<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Well, we're left with something that seems totally unimaginable. How are you supposed to function? But then you reflect and we actually function all the time in circumstances where we have subtracted free will out of the occasion and we can protect society from dangerous individuals. Nonetheless, let me give you an example. There's a setting where there's a human who's dangerous. They can damage innocent people around them and this would be a terrible thing. And what happens if this is your child and they're sneezing and they have a nose cold? The kindergarten has this rule saying, please, if your child has a nose cold, keep them home until they're feeling better. Whoa, you constrain your child's behavior. You will lock them up at home. No, you don't lock them up at home because it does not come with moralizing. You don't say you're a kid. Ah, because you were sneezing, you can't play with your toys. You don't preach to them. You constrain them just enough so that they are no longer dangerous and not an inch more. And as long as you're at it, you do some research as to what causes nose colds in the first place. And we have a world in which it's so obvious that we have subtracted free will out of that that we don't even notice it. Yeah, there's all sorts of realms in which we can reach the conclusion this person wasn't actually responsible for their actions. And nonetheless, we could make a world that is safe from any inadvertent damage that they might do.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That still sounds like at the end of the day, there are still consequences to your actions, right? So if you demonstrate that you're a dangerous person by committing a crime, then you have to be isolated from society until you're no longer the kind of person who would commit a crime.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Or you have to be isolated exactly enough, the minimum needed to make sure you can't be dangerous in that way anymore. And we have all sorts of contingent constraints in society. You, if you have proven that you were dangerous to society because you keep driving drunk, they don't let you drive. They take your license away. You're still allowed to walk around and go into the supermarket and such. They don't need to put you in jail. If you have a certain type of sexual pedophilia, there's rules. You can't go within this distance of a school, of a playground or something. We have all these ways in which we can constrain people from the ways in which they are damaging and not do any more so. And the key thing in that latter point is we don't sermonize to them. There's a reason why you wind up being dangerous. So we are gonna keep you from doing that. And it's not because you have a crappy soul.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, I get that. But at the end of the day, in a practical sense, it could be very same to the criminal justice system we have now, just minus a lot of the judgment and the punishment is not punitive. It's not because you deserve to be punished. It's just because there needs to be a moral consequence to your actions.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Well, I would differ there because the word moral is irrelevant. The word moral is irrelevant to your car's brakes that have stopped working. Oh my God, it's gonna kill somebody. You can't drive it. You need to constrain it. You need to put it in the garage. But that's not a moral act. You don't feel like you should go in each morning with a sledgehammer and smash the car on the hood because of how dangerous it is to society. You don't preach to it. Morality is completely independent of it. You are trying to do a quarantine model. And the people who think about this the most use public health models for this. And you are not a bad person if you get an infectious disease. And you're not a bad person if circumstances has made you someone who's damaging to those around you. But yeah, make sure people are not damaged by you but don't preach to you in the process.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, you could substitute the word ethical, I guess, for moral. It's just a philosophical calculation without any kind of spiritual judgment.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Good, okay.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's kind of what I meant. The point is that if you're saying, well, we're just, our brains are calculating machines and part of those calculations are moral judgments or ethical judgments or whatever, right? Because we evolved, and we're going to get to that in a minute, a sense of justice. And you have to leverage that in order to influence people's behavior. Otherwise, you have the moral hazard of not having consequences for your actions, right? So we're not in control of our decision-making, but there are influences on that decision-making and society needs to influence people's decision-makings by presenting concrete consequences to their actions. If you do this, you're going to go to jail. Nothing personal, but we have to do it. Otherwise there will be significant increase in crime or whatever you want to call it. Is that a fair way to look at it?<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Yeah, it's okay to have punishment as part of the whole picture in a purely instrumental sense, in the same way that you can have rewarding people for stuff that they've done, but again, purely instrumental. And then you say, okay, so if we ran the prison system on that, there's no such thing as retribution. There's no such thing as somebody deserves to be constrained. There's no such thing as justice being done. And you put in those factors in there and you have an unrecognizably different approach to, we protect the society from people who sneeze and we protect society from people who have such poor impulse control that they do impulsive, horrible, damaging things when they're emotionally worked up. But there's no retribution. Justice is not being served. They don't deserve anything. They have not earned their punishment. You are just containing a car whose brakes are broken. And if that sounds like, oh my God, turning people into machines, that's so dehumanizing, that's a hell of a lot better than demonizing them into being sinners.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, it's actually a very humanistic approach to criminal justice.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Because it does lack that sort of punitive angle that can be injust in a lot of ways, right? You're taking somebody who is in a much more profound sense than we even may realize a victim of circumstance and punishing them for that, right?<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Is there anything beyond criminal justice system that has implications from your philosophy on no free will?<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Well, meritocracies go out the window also because it's this bi-directional thing. We run the world where some people are treated way worse than average for reasons they have no control over and then some people are treated way better than average for reasons they have no control over. They have the sort of brain, so they get good SAT scores or the sort of brain that makes them self-disciplined and so now they've got a great job, now they've got the corner office, now they have whatever and they did not earn it any more than someone who commits a crime earned it. Both of those systems are bankrupt. But then you have the same problem. The people then say, oh my God, if you do that, you're gonna have murderers running around the streets, not necessarily, but now flip to the meritocracy half, you would say, oh my God, you turn out to have a brain tumor and you're just gonna pick a random person off the street to do your brain surgery. No, of course not that either. We need to protect society from people who are damaging and we need to ensure society that competent people are doing difficult things, but you can do it without a realm of this being laden in virtue and moral worth. Just because somebody turns out to have enough dexterity to do surgery, they should not have a society that reifies them thinking that they are intrinsically a better human any more than someone in jail should be thinking that they are an intrinsically worse human. Both are mere outcomes of their circumstances.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Robert, can I ask you a couple of questions coming from someone who isn't a neurologist? First off, define for me what free will would be if we had it.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Okay, this is one that completely pisses off philosophers who argue for free will. Just to orient people, 90% of philosophers these days would be called compatibilists, which is they admit the world is made out of stuff like atoms and molecules and we've got cells inside our heads and all of that science-y stuff is going on. They concede that, they accept that, but somehow, nonetheless, that is compatible with there still being free will in there. And as such, I would fall into the tiny percentage of people who count as free will incompatibilists. You can't have what we know about how the brain works and free will going hand in hand. So what would count as free will? So somebody does something and you say, well, why did they do that? And it's because these neurons did something half a second before. But it's also because something in the environment in the previous minutes triggered those neurons to do that. And because hormone levels this morning in your bloodstream made this or that part of your brain more or less sensitive to those stimuli. And because in the previous decade, you went through trauma or you found God and that will change the way your brain works. And before you know it, you're back to adolescence and childhood and fetal life, which is an amazingly important period of sharing environment with your mother and then genes. And then even stuff like what your ancestors invented as a culture, because that's going to have majorly influenced the way your mother mothered you within minutes of birth. So if you want to find free will, if you want to like prove it's there, take a brain, take a person that just did something and show that that brain did that completely independently of this morning's breakfast and last year's trauma and all the values and conditioning and stuff that went on in adolescence and what your mom's hormone levels were in your bloodstream when you were a fetus and your genes and culture, show that if you change all of those factors, you still get the exact same behavior. You've just proven free will and it can't be done.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Are you saying like we have zero free will or is there a little bit of it mixed in? You know what I mean? Like, is it so black and white or could there be shades of gray here?<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' There's simply no mechanism in there by which you can have a brain doing stuff completely independent of its history, independent of what came before. It is not possible for a brain to be an uncaused cause. And taken to its logical extreme, the only conclusion is, yeah, there's no free will whatsoever.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Aren't we still thinking things over? Like, I think that when I do something that I really don't wanna do, that if I'm ever expressing free will, it's in those moments, right? Like, doesn't that make sense in a way? Like, if I'm gonna force myself to do something that everything about me-<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's just one part of your brain arguing with another part of your brain though, right?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' But isn't that kind of an expression of free will? If you are having an internal debate and there are pros and cons and pluses and minuses and all the stuff that it takes for us to make a decision.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Not necessarily if you see it from a neurological point of view of, yeah, that's just your executive function and your frontal lobe fighting with your limbic system.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Exactly.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Right?<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It doesn't rescue you from it being all caused neurologically.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' I mean, today is January 17th and thus we're probably 17 days into the vast majority of people who made New Year's resolutions to have already like given them up. And everyone went into it with the same, I'm gonna do this differently this year. And some people do and some people don't. And how did somebody become the sort of person who would have the self-discipline to do that? How would someone become the sort of person who first time they were tempted, they went flying off the rails. How did we all differ in that regard also? And it's exactly the part of the brain. You mentioned just now the frontal cortex. That's this incredibly interesting part of the brain that makes you do the hard thing when it's the right thing to do. And beginning in your fetal life, every bit of thing that happens around you is influencing how strong of a frontal cortex you're gonna have come January 1st and you're vowing to exercise every day.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' So is there an evolutionary advantage to believing in free will?<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Yeah, I think there's an enormous one. And what you can see is in the fact that 90% of philosophers and probably more than 90% of folks out there in general believe there's free will because it's like kind of an unsettling drag to contemplate that we're biological machines. It's very unsettling. And people like to have a sense of agency. People like to think of themselves as captains of their fate. And this plugs into like a very distinctive thing about humans. We're the only species that's smart enough to know that everybody you know and love and you included are going to die someday. We're the only species that knows that someday the sun is gonna go dark. We're the only species that knows that because your neurons in your frontal cortex just did this or that, you carried out this behavior. We're the only species that's capable of having those realities floating around. And some evolutionary biologists have speculated, I think very convincingly, that if you're gonna have a species that is as smart as we are, we have to have evolved an enormous capacity for self-deception, for rationalizing away reality. And we're the species that's smart enough that we better be able to deny reality a lot of the time. And in that regard, major depression, clinical depression, one of the greatest ways of informally defining it is depression is a disease of someone who is pathologically unable to rationalize away reality. It's very protective psychologically.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And like cycling back a little bit to like the meritocracy thing, because where I tend to come down is I have to admit like, yeah, there's no metaphysical free will. You know, it is, we are, there is no uncaused cause. You know, we are just the neurons acting out what they do. But don't we have to act as if there is free will to a large extent because, again, of that moral hazard of thinking that there's no consequences? And even when, like with meritocracy, you were focusing on talent, but what about hard work? We do want people to be rewarded for hard work so that they'll do it. You know, people will do productive work. If there was no reward for it, we kind of know what those societies look like. It's not one I'd wanna live in. Would you accept that notion that even if you think metaphysically, philosophically, there's no free will, we still have to kind of pretend that there is?<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Again, in an instrumental sense, you can reward somebody if that's gonna make them more likely to do the good thing again, if that's gonna make them more likely to plug away, but you need to do it purely in an instrumental way. A colleague of mine at Stanford, Carol Dweck in psychology, has done wonderful work showing, okay, you've got a kid and your kid has just gotten a great, wonderful grade on some exam or something. And do you say, wow, what a wonderful job you did. You must be so smart. Or do you say, wow, wonderful, wonderful job you did. You must've worked so hard. And what she shows is you do the latter and every neurotic parent knows that by now. Yeah, sometimes you use sort of positive praise, reward for displays of self-discipline because that makes that part of the brain stronger, all of that, but you don't go about making somebody who is better at resisting temptation than somebody else think that it has something to do with they are an intrinsically better human. They just wound up with that sort of frontal cortex.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Let's talk a little bit more about evolutionary psychology. I mean, it seems like you're largely in support of that, but you tell me, what do you think about it? Because I know that is something where you can't deny that our brains evolved and that has a huge influence. So what do you think about the discipline of evolutionary psychology and specifically, how would you answer its critics?<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Its starting point makes absolutely perfect sense. And historically, take one step further back from it and you get this field called sociobiology, which I was sort of raised in, which is you can't think about human behavior outside the context of evolution. And then it's one step further and you've got evolutionary psych. You can't think about the human psyche outside the context of evolution. That makes perfect sense, wonderful sense. The trouble is in both of those disciplines, there's way too much possibility for sort of post hoc, just so stories. There's way too much individual differences. Anytime you see a human who like leaps into a river to save the drowning child and dies in the process and basic sociobiological models, basic models of how you optimize copies of your genes can't explain stuff like that. By the time you're looking at like vaguely complicated mammals, you get individualistic behaviors that violate what some of the models predict. So it's part of the story. It's interesting evolutionary psychology. One finding in there that I find to be very, very impressive is that we are far, far more attuned to the sort of norm violations that go in the direction of you getting treated worse than you expected to be, than you being treated better. We have all sorts of detection things in our brain that are better at spotting that bastard they were supposed to give me that reward and they didn't versus, whoa, they just gave me this gigantic reward out of nowhere. And that makes sense evolutionarily. And some of those building blocks were just fine. As with a lot of these relatively new disciplines, don't get a little overconfident and try to explain everything.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I kind of landed in the same place. From a philosophical point of view, of course, there's evolutionary psychology, but in practice, I do think it can fall into just-so stories too easily. So it's a kind of a weakness in the field. All right, well, Robert, this has all been very fascinating. Thank you so much for giving us your time. Anything coming up that you want to plug? Do you have any works that you're doing?<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' No, I got this new book out, which I guess is sort of useful if people know about it. Came out in October, Penguin. It's called Determined, A Science of Life Without Free Will, where I basically lay out all these arguments and as far as I can tell so far, infuriate a lot of people.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's good work. You know that you're accomplishing something useful if you piss off a lot of people.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Oh, good, because I seem to be. That's nice to know.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, thanks again. Take care.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Good, thanks for having me on.<br />
<br />
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== Science or Fiction <small>(1:44:27)</small> ==<br />
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|science1 = transparent blood<!-- short word or phrase representing the item --><br />
|science2 = biodegradable plastic <!-- delete or leave blank if absent --><br />
|science3 = goldfish <!-- delete or leave blank if absent --><br />
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|rogue1 = <!-- rogues in order of response --><br />
|answer1 = <!-- item guessed, using word or phrase from above --><br />
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|sweep = <!-- all the Rogues guessed wrong --><br />
|clever = <!-- each item was guessed (Steve's preferred result) --><br />
|win = <!-- at least one Rogue guessed wrong, but not them all --><br />
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''Voice-over: It's time for Science or Fiction.''<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Each week, I come up with three science news items or facts, two real and one fake, and I challenge my panelists to tell me which one is the fake. We have a theme this week. It's a mystery theme.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' You can tell us.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I will reveal the theme after you guys all give your answers. Now, we'll see if you can figure it out along the way, but it's not gonna be obvious. Okay, here we go. Item number one, a recently discovered species of deep sea fish in the Antarctic Ocean has been found to have transparent blood due to a complete lack of hemoglobin. Item number two, researchers have developed a type of biodegradable plastic that decomposes completely in just one week when exposed to sunlight and air. And item number three, researchers have successfully trained a group of goldfish to drive a small, water-filled vehicle on land, demonstrating their ability to navigate in a terrestrial environment and challenging long-held views on fish spatial awareness. All right, Cara, go first.<br />
<br />
<big>'''Cara's Response'''</big><br />
<br />
'''C:''' I don't like them.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Is that the theme that you're picking up?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Things Cara does not like.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, things I don't like. Deep sea fish in the Antarctic Ocean. There's an Antarctic Ocean?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well the waters around the Antarctic, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But is that called the Antarctic Ocean? I didn't know that, the Arctic. Anyway.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's the Southern Ocean, also known as the Antarctic Ocean.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Okay, I'm not mad at that. That one, okay, so this fish is lacking hemoglobin, which, okay, that's crazy weird, but maybe there's some sort of other compound that is like serving a similar purpose. Would it make the blood transparent? Maybe? Is the only reason blood has the color it is because of hemoglobin? Because of the heme? It might be. I know the heme does make the blood quite red, but I don't know what it would look like with no heme. Would it be clear? I don't know, but a lot of our liquids in our bodies are clear, so maybe. The biodegradable plastic that decomposes completely in just one week, I don't buy that for a second. When exposed to sunlight and air, like what's the catch? It's like, it also melts the second it touches water, like it's not firm like plastic. I just, I do not buy that one. How, I wish that would be revolutionary. But also, a goldfish drove a car? Okay, here's the thing about this one. I have a very fun, but very weird friend who clicker-trained one of her fish to swim through a hoop. And it was a goldfish, and she claims it was very, very smart. I never quite believed her, but maybe, maybe a goldfish could drive a little goldfish car. I want that one to be science, so I'm gonna say plastic's the fiction.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay, Evan.<br />
<br />
<big>'''Evan's Response'''</big><br />
<br />
'''E:''' These all seem like fiction, don't they?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Mm-hmm.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's why you don't like this.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I don't like them.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I agree, I'm with Cara. I will go with Cara and say I don't like them either. Next. Oh, I mean, right. For kind of the same reasons, though. I mean, if you take the hemoglobin out of blood, are you left with something that's transparent? Aren't there other things in the blood that would make it at least opaque, right? Not transparent, though. I mean, what? Right, there's something else floating around there. It's so strange. So that would be the catch on that one, I think. And yes, there is a fifth ocean. It is called the Southern/Antarctic Ocean. The second one about the biodegradable plastic. My question about this one is why would you make this if it's gonna decompose in a week if you can't expose it to sun and air, which is kind of everywhere? So what's the practicality of this? Where would you use this? Underground, okay, where there's no sunlight. And in a non-air environment, what? Water for underneath, but then, I don't know. That's tricky. I mean, maybe they developed it, but it has no practical industrial use. And then the last one, okay, training a group. A group of goldfish would be a school of goldfish. They went to driving school, apparently, to drive this water-filled vehicle. On land, demonstrating their ability to navigate. So how does that work? They don't, that's not how to do it. So when we say drive, are we talking steer? I guess, it's only steer, it would be. So just directional, so.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yes, they have to be able to control which direction it's going in, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No, they use the clutch.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Well I mean, driving is a set of things more than steering, but it's steering something around, kind of.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And they have to go, brr brr.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Remember that video, that's hilarious. Ah! Shoot, all these are wrong, so I don't know. Cara and I are gonna sink or swim together on this one about the plastic, because I just don't see why that would be the case in any purpose.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay, Bob.<br />
<br />
<big>'''Bob's Response'''</big><br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, transparent blood, it seems somewhat plausible without the hemoglobin, that it would be kind of, I mean, I think it would be still kind of opaque, but I guess I could see it being somewhat transparent. The goldfish, the driving goldfish is just too awesome. I just wanna will that into existence. The plastic just seems silly, right? I mean, just like, oh boy, I took the bag out of the packaging, I've gotta use it quick or anything that's, if you forget about the bag and you put stuff in it and put the bag somewhere, and then next week it's gonna be gone, and then the contents are gonna spill. I don't know, it just seems a little goofy in some ways and just not very practical. And like, oh, how long has this bag been out? How much time do I have? It's only a day left. I don't know, it just seems a little silly and impractical, so I'll say that's fiction as well.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And Jay.<br />
<br />
<big>'''Jay's Response'''</big><br />
<br />
'''J:''' So they all are saying that it's the plastic.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's correct. That's what they are saying.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, no.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I would imagine that they didn't develop the plastic to specifically only last a week, that they were working on a biodegradable plastic and that's what they ended up, that this is something that they made. Doesn't necessarily mean-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, that seems reasonable, damn it.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, right? But the key thing here is that it's biodegradable, you know, like legitimately, which, I don't know. I mean, again I trust your guys' judgment as well. You know, the first one about the deep sea fish, it's very odd to think that there's transparent blood, but I have seen many pictures of like that fish you could see through its head and I don't remember seeing blood there, so I think that's science. And then the third one here about the goldfish driving a water field vehicle. I mean, that is so wacky that it's gotta be true. Damn. This is such a hard one, Steve. All right, I'm trying to think of the theme too. I don't see the theme. Okay, I'm gonna go with everybody else. How could I not? I mean, there's something wrong about that one week decomposition, decomposing plastic. Something's not right there.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Hidden Theme ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay, so anyone has a guess on the theme? It's very meta.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I don't like it.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Water.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's very meta. No. The theme is-<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Things in water.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Nope. This-<br />
<br />
'''J:''' The fish eat the plastic.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Science or fiction has been brought to you by Chat GPT.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Oh.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Ah, geez.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Which version?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Four. So I typed in first, are you familiar with the Skeptic's Guide to the Universe podcast? And it said, yes, I'm familiar, and it gave a pretty good description of our podcast.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It better be.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' One of the paragraphs reads, the Skeptic's Guide to the Universe is known for its approachable style, blending educational content with humor and informal discussions. It's aimed at a general audience and is designed to make science and skepticism accessible to people without a scientific background. That's a pretty good description of the show.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I love that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Then I said, can you design for me a science or fiction segment similar to what they have in the show every week? And it did. Now, I had to do it three times and select from among those three, not because they weren't good, but because they were things that we've talked about before. Can't use that one. Yeah, because we've talked about that recently. So I had to find ones that wouldn't be too obvious. And one of these, it gave us a fiction, but I found it's actually true.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Right, you had to double check everything.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #1 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I had to check everything. I couldn't trust it. All right, so let's take these in order. Number one, a recently discovered species of deep sea fish in the Antarctic Ocean has been found to have transparent blood due to a complete lack of hemoglobin. This one is science. So you guys are all safe so far. This is the oscillated ice fish. It's a family of fish. Lives in very cold waters off Antarctica.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Goes back and forth.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And it has transparent hemoglobin-free blood. This is the first, I think, in any vertebrate. And there are some species that have like yellow blood because they have very little hemoglobin, but this one is like fully transparent, zero hemoglobin. And they don't have some other molecule. They just have plasma.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Whoa.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' So plasma, yeah, plasma would be.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' How does that work, though?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, so they've adapted to basically just having oxygen dissolve in plasma and they make it work by, they have low metabolic rate, for example. But it also makes the blood less viscous, so it circulates much more vigorously, I guess. So that compensates for a little bit. They have larger gills, scaleless skin that can contribute more to gas exchange. So they have much more surface area to exchange gas.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Ew, wait. It's a fish with scaleless skin?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That is horrifying sounding.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Like one of those cats that has no fur?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' They have bigger capillaries and they have a large blood volume and cardiac output. So they have all these compensatory mechanisms for not having hemoglobin to bind a lot of oxygen and they make it work. Yeah, so that one is true. So let's go on.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #2 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Number two, researchers have developed a type of biodegradable plastic that decomposes completely in just one week when exposed to sunlight and air. You guys all think this one is the fiction and this one is science.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No, I led you astray. The goldfish.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Interestingly, this one, ChatGPT gave me as a fiction. So I looked it up. I'm like, dang, there it is. This is actually true. This is published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society in 2021. Yeah, they created a plastic that when exposed to air and sunlight will completely break down in one week, leaving no microplastics behind at all. It degrades into succinic acid, which is a small non-toxic molecule. So obviously it limits the applications because it can't be exposed to sunlight or air.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But if it took a year, it'd be great.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Right. So that one actually turned out to be true.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #3 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Which means that researchers have successfully trained a group of goldfish to drive a small water-filled vehicle on land, demonstrating their ability to navigate in a terrestrial environment and challenging long-held views on fish spatial awareness. Is the fiction.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Clearly.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' ChatGPT just made this one up at a whole cloth. Made it up.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Not fair.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Made which one up, Steve?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The goldfish one.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's not related to anything real?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, they just said this one, they said psychologists kind of do weird things, but not this. So they made this one up. That was it.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh my gosh. It was like plausibly awkward.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Israeli researchers say they have successfully taught a goldfish to drive a small robotic car.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Science.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' The team said the fish showed its ability to navigate toward a target in order to receive a food reward. For the experiment, the researchers built what they call the fish-operated vehicle, an FOV.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Can only drive in the FOV lane, though.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Jay, where are you reading that? Is that another ChatGPT?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I just searched. Here, hold on.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' What search?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' This is insane.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Oh yeah, you're right. I didn't see that.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Well, that's, I mean, I don't know if you wanna get, how technically you wanna get. The question was about a small, a group of goldfish as opposed to a fish.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, you'd have to look and see. There's probably a lot of things wrong in it, even if goldfish did drive a car, and what?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, but ChatGPT apparently is not good at making up fake ones, because it just keeps repurposing real news items.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Hmm. I wonder if it swears at people in traffic, like in fish language.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' This is so dumb.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Gives people the fin?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, the middle fin.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' So what does this mean?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Also, how does this work?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, I think this, science or fiction, is a ChatGPT mulligan.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Wow. So we're gonna have a no contest, a no score on it this week.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, no score from this week.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Has that ever happened before?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I don't think so.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I bet you it's still fiction.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' We're witnessing skeptic's guide history right now at this moment?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, I'll take it.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh my gosh, for the first time in approaching 19 full years.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Damn you, ChatGPT.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' And we have been failed by artificial intelligence at the highest level.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So ChatGPT failed at science or fiction.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Never again, yes. ChatGPT is zero.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' All right, well put it down as like, zero wins and one loss for the year.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' If this experiment has succeeded, I was gonna do this from now on, just have ChatGPT be science or fiction.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, yeah, of course.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' You can have the good ones and you just make up the fake one.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' This actually took me just as long because I had to do it multiple times, I had to check every one, you know?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' What you need is a program, Steve, that's optimized for performing the science or fiction function.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's right, I need a science or fiction GPT.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Narrow AI. AI to help you with this, Steve. Do you think someone out there could do that?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Probably.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' A listener on their spare time? Put in 5,000 hours of work.<br />
<br />
{{anchor|qow}} <!-- leave anchor(s) directly above the corresponding section that follows --><br />
<br />
== Skeptical Quote of the Week <small>(1:59:26)</small> ==<br />
<!-- <br />
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{{qow<br />
|text = Every great idea is a creative idea: The fact that you're using paint or you're using guitar strings or you're using equations, they're not really very different things. Getting that spirit into the education process … being curious about the world, that is a gift we would love to share.<br />
|author = {{w|Damian Kulash}}<br />
|lived = 1975-present<br />
|desc = American musician, best known for being the lead singer and guitarist of the American rock band {{w|OK Go}}<br />
}}<br />
<!-- <br />
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<br />
'''S:''' All right, Evan, give us a quote.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' "Every great idea is a creative idea. The fact that you're using paint or you're using guitar strings or you're using equations, they're not really very different things. Getting that spirit into the education process, being curious about the world, that is a gift we would love to share." Damien Kulash, lead singer of OK Go.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I love OK Go.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I love OK Go. I'm on a big OK Go kick lately.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' They're rock, but they're like very happy pop rock. I don't know how to describe it.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' They started out as kind of pop punk alternative and they they're treadmill videos.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' What country are they from?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' The United States.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' They're American. Not just the treadmill video, they did a parabolic space flight video.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' They did, yes.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' They shot an entire video in zero gravity. Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, it's amazing.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That video is amazing. It's an amazing accomplishment.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Watching the behind the scenes of it is even funnier.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yes, there's a whole documentary about it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, like one of the band members was like near, like he was just constantly vomiting or about to vomit. So the whole time he's like sitting down. One of them was scared out of his mind the whole time. It's amazing. It's so good.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' But this is, these artists, and I call them artists as much as they are musicians. They're visual artists, obviously, for what they do. They're so well known for their videos. But obviously they're also using a lot of engineering, a lot of science, a lot of math in the production of the videos. You know, they consult with a lot of people and teams of experts to come in and help them put these amazing ideas into the visual medium that is just so captivating. And the music's great too. So they're very pro-science and I love Damien Kulash and everyone at OK Go.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, well, thank you all for joining me this week.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Thanks Steve.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Thanks Steve.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Thank you Steve.<br />
<br />
== Signoff == <br />
'''S:''' —and until next week, this is your {{SGU}}. <!-- typically this is the last thing before the Outro --> <br />
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== Today I Learned ==<br />
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}}</div>Hearmepurrhttps://www.sgutranscripts.org/w/index.php?title=SGU_Episode_967&diff=19205SGU Episode 9672024-02-19T11:59:41Z<p>Hearmepurr: links added</p>
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<div>{{Editing required<br />
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|episodeIcon = File:967 Betavolt.jpg<br />
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|caption = China-based Betavolt New Energy Technology has successfully developed a nuclear energy battery, which integrates {{w| Isotopes of nickel|nickel-63}} nuclear isotope decay technology and China’s first diamond semiconductor module.&nbsp;<ref>[https://www.greencarcongress.com/2024/01/20240114-betavolt.html Green Car Congress: China-based Betavolt develops nuclear battery for commercial applications]</ref><br />
|bob =y<br />
|cara =y<br />
|jay =y<br />
|Evan =y<br />
|guest1 =RS: {{w| Robert Sapolsky}}, American neuroendocrinology researcher<br />
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|qowText = Every great idea is a creative idea: The fact that you're using paint or you're using guitar strings or you're using equations, they're not really very different things. Getting that spirit into the education process … being curious about the world, that is a gift we would love to share.<br />
|qowAuthor = {{w| Damian Kulash}}, American musician<br />
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== Introduction, winter weather preparations ==<br />
''Voice-over: You're listening to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.''<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Hello and welcome to the {{SGU|link=y}}. Today is Wednesday, January 17<sup>th</sup>, 2024, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella... <br />
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'''B:''' Hey, everybody!<br />
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'''S:''' Cara Santa Maria... <br />
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'''C:''' Howdy. <br />
<br />
'''S:''' Jay Novella... <br />
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'''J:''' Hey guys. <br />
<br />
'''S:''' ...and Evan Bernstein. <br />
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'''E:''' Good evening, everyone, or good morning, wherever you might be.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Good evening. How is everyone?<br />
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'''J:''' Good.<br />
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'''C:''' It's late.<br />
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'''B:''' Doing good.<br />
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'''E:''' Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.<br />
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'''J:''' My bronchitis is finally, basically gone. Just a little.<br />
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'''C:''' Oh, that's good.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That crap.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Bronchitis.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That's forever.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I know. It only took months.<br />
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'''J:''' It was a hell of a gut workout, I'll tell you that much. My stomach muscles are way stronger now than they were.<br />
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'''S:''' Yeah, but coughing is not good for you. You know what I mean? It's not like you're, oh, yeah, I'm getting this coughing workout. Coughing is bad for your back. People who cough a lot get disc herniations and bad backs and back strain and everything. So, yeah, I hate it when I have a prolonged cough. I always get back pain when I have a prolonged cough.<br />
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'''B:''' Really?<br />
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'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
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'''S:''' Cara, you are in another continent.<br />
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'''C:''' It is true. It is also another continent. It's a funny way to put it. Yeah, I've been in Scotland for a week and a half. I think I'll be here another week. And so it is two in the morning. It was beautiful here, though. I've been spending a bit of time outside. We had a really, really nice snow yesterday and the day before, so it's quite white outside. How is it looking in the Northeast? I know there were horrible snowstorms all over the country.<br />
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'''J:''' There were other parts of the country that got smacked super hard.<br />
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'''S:''' Yeah, we had some snow. Not horrible.<br />
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'''J:''' Usually, we're snowy here. But we had two light snowstorms.<br />
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'''B:''' It's definitely colder.<br />
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'''S:''' Yeah, it's cold here too.<br />
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'''E:''' Yeah, we're getting the remnants of the Arctic blast. What the, what do they call it?<br />
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'''C:''' Vortex or something? Yeah, I think it's pretty bad in parts of Canada.<br />
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'''E:''' And the Midwest of the United States got it very badly.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But so far, I mean, it's early. There's nothing winter so far by New England standards.<br />
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'''B:''' Oh, yeah.<br />
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'''E:''' True.<br />
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'''S:''' You never know. February's really like, we can get hammered in February.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, boy.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I know it's gonna be cold and we're gonna get precipitation, but it always depends on the timing of those two things. Like, do we get the precipitation when it's cold or is it, do we get rain, you know what I mean? Because if it's all snow, it could be profound.<br />
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'''E:''' But any time an ice storm happens by, that's dangerous. I mean, that is when the power goes out. That is when all the tree limbs come down. We've had some nightmare ice storms in prior years. Not very recently, but I can remember a few.<br />
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'''C:''' Tell me about it with the hard freeze. I've been talking to some of my friends who live up in the Pacific Northwest where they had freezing rain, I think, for two days, but not snow, up in Oregon. And trees are down all over the place. People don't have power. It's been pretty brutal up there just because of the heaviness of that ice on everything.<br />
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'''E:''' And they tend to not get ice storms, if I recall correctly.<br />
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'''C:''' Oh, yeah, never. Like, they're just, yeah, the whole city. You know how it is. Anytime a city gets hit by something that's not typical weather for that city, they just don't know what to do with it.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It freezes, yeah.<br />
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'''C:''' It breaks everything.<br />
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'''S:''' No, yeah, I remember I was in Phoenix. They had, like, an inch of rain, and it paralyzed the city.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It happens every time it rains in LA. We don't know what to do.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Las Vegas has a similar problem.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And everybody's house floods. We're like, oh.<br />
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'''S:''' And I was in DC, and they had, like, a pretty mild snowfall from Connecticut standards, and the city was paralyzed. They just didn't have the infrastructure for it, you know? And, of course, with the kind of snowstorms that would paralyze Connecticut, Canadians are like, you lowlanders, you know?<br />
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'''B:''' We get 10 feet, and Toronto's like, big deal.<br />
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'''C:''' We've actually we've been talking a lot out here in Scotland about the fact that they ice, or, sorry, that they salt the roads here, and it's quite destructive on the cars. Like, it's really, really corrosive, and probably cause millions of pounds of damage every year to the cars that are having to constantly clean this ice off of their. Undercarriage, yeah, and the engine damage and stuff. And we've been really talking about, like, why do they use salt?<br />
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'''J''' It's totally inexpensive.<br />
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'''C:''' But sand.<br />
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'''E:''' Up to a temperature, it works, right?<br />
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'''C:''' Sand is cheaper, and it's not quite as efficient, but it's still efficient.<br />
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'''E:''' It has to do with the temperature, though.<br />
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'''C:''' It causes a lot less damage.<br />
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'''J:''' Sand has to be cleaned up, though. Like, salt just goes into the water.<br />
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'''C:''' Sand can just go into the dirt.<br />
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'''B:''' Plus, the melting effect of salt is pretty dramatic, isn't it?<br />
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'''S:''' Well, sand has no de-icing effect. That just temporarily adds friction to the road, whereas the ice, or de-icing chemicals, as they call them, actually melt the ice. But it depends on how much there is and what the temperature is. So there are some situations where the de-icing chemicals won't work, and you gotta use sand. But again, it's only, like, adding temporary friction. And they all have different environmental effects, so that there's no perfect solution.<br />
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'''C:''' It is superior. But the question would be, do we really need a superior melting effect if you have so much sort of negative side effects?<br />
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'''S:''' They don't always use salt. They use sand sometimes, too.<br />
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'''C:''' I think out here, they only use salt, and it's quite infuriating to the people.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, you have to have the undercarriage of your car coated against that.<br />
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'''C:''' They do. They do, but you still have to constantly clean it out. And it's just, yeah, it's pretty bad. Anyway.<br />
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'''B:''' I've never cleaned the bottom of my car.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Go to a car wash?<br />
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'''E:''' If you go to a car wash, they will drive it through. It has an undercarriage.<br />
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'''S:''' That's why you go to a car wash.<br />
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'''B:''' They still have those?<br />
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'''S:''' Car washes? Last time I checked.<br />
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'''E:''' They do. They're quite nice.<br />
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'''B:''' They don't exist. They went the way of drive-in movies.<br />
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'''E:''' Drive-in movies, soda fountain counters, and pinball machines. They're all gone.<br />
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'''S:''' I went to a drive-in movie not that long ago. There's still a couple of them around. They're definitely very retro.<br />
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'''C:''' Yeah, that became kind of a thing again during COVID.<br />
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'''S:''' Yeah, I remember that.<br />
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== News Items ==<br />
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{{anchor|news#}} <!-- leave news items anchors directly above the news item section that follows each anchor --><br />
=== Betavolt 50-Year Battery <small>(6:28)</small> ===<br />
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'''S:''' All right, Bob, you're going to get us started with a talk. There's been a lot of discussion about this. This is really catching a lot of people's imagination, not in a very scientific way often. But tell us about this 50-year battery. What's going on?<br />
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'''B:''' Yeah. Chinese firm called Betavolt Technology claims it's created a new nuclear battery that can power devices for 50 years. There's a lot of silly clickbait surrounding this stuff. Here's one press release from the Business Standard. Their article was titled, China Develops Radioactive Battery to Keep Your Phone Charged for 50 Years. Like, ah.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Sure they did.<br />
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'''B:''' Oh my God. Such annoying clickbait. Now, nuclear batteries, though, are fascinating. They are distinct, of course, from everyday electrochemical batteries that we use all the time, from AA's to the lithium-ion batteries in our phones and EVs. Nuclear batteries are also called atomic batteries, which I kind of like, or probably more accurately, radioisotope generators.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Didn't Batman's vehicle have atomic batteries or something?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yes. Yes.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh my gosh.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' And they essentially take nuclear energy and convert it to electricity at its most, top of the onion layer there. One layer down, more specifically, it takes the byproducts of the decay of radioactive particles and converts that into electricity. So are these batteries? You know, yes and no, in my mind. Nuclear batteries are atomic batteries. They can power devices for sure. So in that sense, they are batteries. But they do not recharge, and they don't turn off. The nuclear batteries do not turn off. So for those reasons, and especially the not-turning-off one, they are often referred to as generators. But hey, it's language. Many people use the word battery for them, and so that's fine. Atomic batteries are generally classified by how they convert the energy. And it kind of boils down to either they take advantage of large temperature differences, or they don't. The former, these are thermal-based atomic batteries. And they have one side of the device is very hot from the radioactive decay, and the other side is cold. And that's the key there, that differential. So using thermocouples, that temperature gradient can be used to take advantage of the Seebeck effect, look it up, to generate electricity. That's basically how it works. Now, the iconic, classic atomic battery that does this is an RTG, radioisotope thermoelectric generator. There's that generator word. These devices go back to the 50s and 60s. And I think the principle was proved, I think it was like 1913. So it goes back to the 50s and 60s. The most advanced devices today can generate tens of watts, up to 110 watts, for NASA's top-of-the-line RTG. And they can supply power literally for years and years and years. RTGs are heavy. They're big devices compared to our portable batteries. But they are amazing for remote locations and places with poor sunlight. The Voyager probes, more than 15 billion kilometers from the Earth and the sun, are powered by RTGs. Mars Rovers, too, and countless other systems and platforms and probes, NASA and our knowledge of the solar system would be greatly diminished if it did not have access to these wonderful devices. But if you want really small, portable atomic batteries, though, you then want this non-thermal kind. These extract energy from the emitted particles themselves, kind of like before it degrades into heat, directly tapping into and using the particles. The semiconductors in these devices use these particles to create a voltage. And typically, these types of batteries have efficiencies, from 1% to even up to 9%. And they go by various names depending on the emitted particles that they are using. So they're called alpha voltaics if it converts alpha particle radiation, which is essentially just two neutrons and two protons. It's called gamma photovoltaics if it converts energetic photons like gamma rays. The real standout, though, of this type of atomic battery is called beta voltaics. This converts emitted electrons or positrons to electricity. And it's popular because beta decay can more easily be converted into usable electrical power, much more so than alpha particles or photons. Beta voltaics are not theoretical. These are being used right now, right now, in countless sensors and other devices that require very low power for very long periods of time. Did you know that they were used as pacemakers in the 70s? People literally had them in their bodies for decades with no ill effects. They are very safe. These are known things and they can be very useful. So that's why this Beijing startup company calls itself BetaVolt. They're taking advantage of beta voltaics and their new atomic battery is based on that. The battery itself is called BV100. It's coin-sized, about 15 by 15 by 5 millimeters. And there's a decent amount going on inside that coin. It has layers of radioactive nickel-63 in between layers of diamond semiconductors. Nickel-63 has a half-life of 100 years, which means in 100 years it'll be emitting essentially half the particles it does initially as it decays into harmless copper. Now, so saying this battery can last 50 years, I think that's reasonable, if it's got a half-life of 100 years. After 50 years, it'll be still, what, 75% as effective?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, it's not linear, but close.<br />
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'''B:''' So it's still, it's a good rule of thumb to say, yeah, 50 years, you could say it'll last 50 years and perform well. So, and it's safe. These are safe. It needs minimal shielding. Sure, you'd have to inhale it if you're gonna get concerned that that will do it. You would be concerned if you inhaled it. And I wouldn't want it to leak on my skin, but no more so than I would want a AA battery to leak on my skin, you know? So it's not like this, it's radioactive, no! It's pretty damn safe. So can this get 110 watts output like the best RTG? No. No, not even close. This battery generates three volts, but only 100 microwatts. That's 100 millionths of a watt. A microwatt is a millionth of a watt. That's tiny. You would need, what, Steve? 30,000 of them to power a typical smartphone. That's really low. So let's look at 100 microwatts another way. Let's look at how many amps that is. So, all right, we got an equation here. Power in the form of watts equals voltage times current or amps, right? W equals V times A. We know the power in watts and we know the volts, so you calculate the amps. That's .000333 amps. Now an amp, amps indicates how many electrons per second pass through a point in a circuit. So .0000333 amps, super low. You know, you're not gonna be powering something big and power hungry with something like this at all. So clearly, these batteries are not meant for power hungry devices, as are all beta voltaics are not meant for that. And that's okay, because power density is not the strength of these batteries. Now power density is the rate that it can output the power for a given size. And as I've shown, it's super tiny for one of these batteries. Very low power density, but they do have energy density. That's the total energy per unit mass. In fact, nuclear batteries have 10,000 times approximately, 10,000 times the energy density of a chemical battery. That's a huge 10,000 times, that's huge. But that's spread over the lifetime of the battery, which could be years or decades or even centuries. But that's where these batteries shine. They can last for ridiculously long periods of time. Now the significance of this battery seems to me to be it's a miniaturization and not the power density that everyone no one seems to be focusing on any of the miniaturization advances that they may have made. You know, there's not too many details on that either. They also claim that these can be chained together and connected in a series. So I think we'll have to see that to happen because it looks like I'm looking at some translated article here and they claim that they can get up to multiple watts if you chain them together. I don't, I'm not seeing that anywhere else. I'd have to see that. But the real important thing here is they claim they're shooting for a one watt version of this battery by 2025. Next year, one watt.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Bullshit, it's not gonna happen.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It's not. That's an incredible improvement that no betavoltaics has ever come near. And so Steve and I apparently are very, very skeptical of that. Now, if you can connect-<br />
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'''E:''' You'll not be investing, I guess, is what you're saying.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, I mean, if you can connect their batteries together as they claim and they also create if they can create a one watt version, then we would be in some interesting territory. But I don't believe that. I will wait, I'll have to wait to see if they even come close to doing that. I don't think they're gonna do that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Bob when I wrote about it, I did my calculation, like theoretically, how, what could you get to? So given a betavoltaic battery of the same size, let's say you maximize efficiency, that gives you one order of magnitude, maybe, right? So you still have two orders of magnitude to go to get to one watt. And the, I think, buried in the article about it, they say that they're looking to produce this one watt version. And they're also looking to produce versions that have a half-life of two years or one year. It's like, yeah, those two things are related. The only way you're gonna pick up another order of magnitude is if you go from a hundred year half-life to a one year half-life. But then you don't have a 50 year battery anymore. You got a one year battery.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' You can't have it both ways.<br />
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'''S:''' Which is still interesting.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' But you've also got a more radioactive and more expensive battery on hand, right?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Using a different isotope with a shorter half-life.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Exactly.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But even assuming they could shield it and make it safe and pick up all that radiation and everything, that's fine. It's just, you don't get a 50 year battery with that kind of power output in that kind of size. It simply does not work. The physics does not add up.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So I think it's, there's no way around the fact that this is gonna remain a niche technology for very low power devices.<br />
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'''B:''' Yeah, yeah. I don't see it really breaking out of that characterization. You know, and other companies have tried to go commercial with beta voltaics. Steve and I were excited about nano diamond battery a few years ago. That's the one that used radioactive waste from nuclear power plants encased in diamond that could run for millennia. I think they were saying 20,000 years. So I looked them up recently and they were charged with defrauding their investors. Right, and there's been other, and there was another company that was trying to commercialize beta voltaics. And they, if you go to their website anymore, you don't find it. Their website's like gone. So it's just like we've seen this before and we're kind of seeing it again.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, this is a pitch for more money.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, partly, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, so, but what will we see in the future of beta voltaics? I mean, I love the idea of using them to trickle charge batteries. I think that's promising. And that would be useful for things potentially, like for EVs that are mostly idle. And you could just have it trickle charge at night in over 10, 12 hours. Like, oh boy, we got got a little juice out of this that you didn't have to plug it in for. And I love though, that when it comes to the worst case scenario, like you've got a dead battery, but if you had this trickle charge idea, you know, you wait a little bit. I'm not sure how long you'd have to wait to get a reasonable charge.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But at least you wouldn't be dead in the water.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Right, you're not dead in the water. And "eventually" you'd be able to just drive home. And of course, of course, trickle charging would be awesome in the apocalypse. Obviously. Now in the future, then when the zombies are roaming the countryside and you could say like Robin in the Batmobile, right Evan? Atomic batteries to power, you could say that. And then of course you'll have to wait a while for your beta voltaic atomic battery to slowly trickle charge your zombie resistant EV. And then you're going, then you're good. So maybe we'll see that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I think it'd be more than like for an electric vehicle, it's just, I think it's too little electricity. But for, you don't wanna drag around an atomic battery, that would be big enough to produce enough electricity that it would matter. But for your cell phone, you can, if you had even one that was producing again, like a 10th of a watt, let's say, or even a 100th of a watt, but it could extend the duration that you could go without charging your battery significantly, right? Because you're not using your phone all the time. It is idling most of the time. So let's say like you're going on a trip and you're gonna be away from chargers for three or four days. This could extend the life of your phone battery that long. I just say by trickle charging it 24 seven, whether when you're using it or not using it, or again, if you are in an emergency situation, you're never dead in the water. You always have a little juice. You just have to wait some time.<br />
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'''B:''' Yeah, if I were going out in nature for days on end, first off, I wouldn't do that. Secondly, I would bring a little solar panel with me.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Then it's overcast. No, but you're right, you're right. But yeah, but that's what they're finding with a lot of the deep space probes that relying upon aligning those panels with the sun is not a great thing. And nuclear batteries are really good. The European Space Agency, who previously said no nuclear batteries were gonna do all solar, they're like, maybe we should, maybe we gotta relent. So they reversed themselves because-<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Do you know why they reversed themselves?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Because they had a big fail.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' They sent a probe onto a comet. Their probe landed on the comet and then bounced into the shade. And then because it was in the shade, its batteries, which were solar-based, died in three days. So here's millions of dollars sitting in the shade, unusable, bricked, because they didn't have an atomic battery. So that story just cracks me up. So now they're like, okay, yeah, we're gonna do atomic batteries now. They were famously against them. Now they aren't, which was a funny story.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So like a lot of technologies, the technology is what it is, and a lot of it depends on being clever and being creative about how to implement it. Like what is the use where it's gonna be valuable? It's not gonna be like big drones that fly forever and all the crap that the press is saying about it. That's never gonna happen. But as a trickle charger or for super low-energy devices, this technology could be really, really helpful.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, yeah. The allure of a battery that can last for years, a conventional portable battery that can last for years, this is so high that people are just kind of like losing their shit over this and trying to extrapolate away from the science. For me, it's not so much beta voltaics, but for me, it's the RTGs. I wanna have these like chained, connected RTGs buried in my backyard that could power my entire house for decades. That's what I'm looking for.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, but the final point is like for your phone, like for trickle charging your phone, you don't want a 50-year battery in your phone. Your phone's only gonna last two or three years. You want a two or three-year battery, right? You want it to last as long as the phone.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That would be epic.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, then you don't need, you know.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, but it gets you more power. It gives you more power over the shorter period of time, over the lifetime of that phone. So there is a niche in there that could actually be very, very functional if the price works out, right? Would you add another 50 bucks to your phone to have something, an alternate source of power, a backup source of power and extend? Like now you only have to recharge it once every three days or four days instead of every night.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Well, those products exist, Steve. I mean, I have a battery that's a magnet battery that attaches to my phone, right? It's very easy to just put it there. It stays there. And it gives me like another half a day of juice if I need it. It's very, very convenient. And it fits in your pocket and everything. It's very easy. So, I mean, there are products out there like that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, I know. This would be another option. There would definitely be advantages to it because it's just there. It's producing energy all the time. But it's not, but the hype was ridiculous.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh yeah, it was silly.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Silly, silly.<br />
<br />
=== Moon Landing Delayed <small>(23:38)</small> ===<br />
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'''S:''' All right, Jay. I understand that the Artemis program is going swimmingly. Give us an update.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oops.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Don't be look, we expected this, right?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Unfortunately.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So NASA's Artemis program, give you a quick refresher. It's aimed at returning humans to the moon. It's also very heavily, big part of this mission is that we are paving the way for future Mars missions. You know, we need to develop a lot of technology that's gonna allow us to get there, but they have been facing significant challenges that have led them to reschedule some of these timelines, which this information came out about a week ago. So the Artemis 2 mission, right? Artemis 1 successfully launched. It went around the moon, did everything that we wanted it to. We got a ton of data off of that mission, but now we move on to Artemis 2. Now, originally, if we go way back, it was originally slated to be, as you know, the first crewed test flight of the Orion spacecraft, but it's been delayed many times. Not, this isn't like the first delay or even the second delay. The first launch dates were said that they wanted to launch between 2019 and 2021. Now keep in mind, Artemis 2, not 1. Artemis 2, 2019, 2021. Then it was moved to 2023 and then November, 2024. And now they moved it to September, 2025. They are saying no earlier than that, which kind of implies it could be later, right?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's for Artemis 2.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That's Artemis 2.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, so one of my predictions has already failed.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh no.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That's all right, Steve. Oh no, somebody die. So the delays are due largely to crew safety concerns. So let me get into some of the details here. NASA is always, they're just continuously conducting testing of critical systems, environmental control, life support. And they have found during their testing, they've found problems that include battery issues with the Orion spacecraft regarding abort scenarios. There's also a, there are challenges with the air ventilation and temperature control circuitry components, which these are all mission critical components. And bottom line here is, of course, it's good to know NASA is taking all these precautions. They're taking it very seriously. You know, this isn't like a let's launch it and test it and see how it goes. Like they fully plan on bringing every single astronaut back to earth. So they are trying to resolve all of these issues, but it sucks to wait longer, but you know, we're just a consumer here, right? Like I'm looking at this like, come on, launch it. I want to see it. I want to be a part of all that. But yeah, ultimately we want it to be successful. We want the people to come back. So of course, any delays with Artemis 2 means that it'll impact the launch dates of the Artemis 3 mission, which has now been pushed for 2026. This delay allows NASA to give them time. They don't want to like do Artemis 2 and then immediately do Artemis 3. They want time to make a lot of alterations and incorporate lessons that they learned from Artemis 2 so they can make Artemis 3 better, right? You know, hey, we had a problem with this thing and that thing, like they want to fix all of those things. But there's also problems with the partners that NASA is working with to develop, that are developing their own technologies. So there's a couple of names here you'll definitely recognize. SpaceX, as a good example, they're responsible for the human landing system. You know, they have to demonstrate that their starship can successfully dock. It also needs to be able to refuel with other tanker starships in orbit. These are not easy things to do at all. And this capability is essential for transporting astronauts beyond Earth's orbit. Getting the ship refueled and being able to do what it needs to do in and around the moon is going to be something that could take place frequently. And these tasks, like I said, are challenging and straight up, they're just not ready yet. They don't have the technology. And I'm sure that the timelines and the dates that they're giving, everything is a, we hope that it's this, but it's never like it will be done on this date. Like they're not, that's not where they're operating. They don't work that way. Axiom Space, you might remember, they're making the next generation spacesuits. No, they still need to solve some heavy duty requirements that NASA put on them. Like one of the big ones is that the spacesuit itself, standalone, needs to have an emergency oxygen supply system. So this will enable the spacesuit to supply oxygen for an hour with no attached gear, right? Just the spacesuit itself has an hour of air in it. So they're also having supply chain issues, which I was a little surprised to hear, but they're having problems getting materials that they need to make the spacesuits. And they also have, they're working with outdated components that need to meet the latest NASA requirements. I couldn't get any more details about these components. Like I don't, I suspect that they may have been borrowing from earlier spacesuits, certain systems and things like that. But NASA has been ramping up their requirements and they're having a hard time meeting it. Now, this means that they're likely to have to redesign parts of the current design that we've already seen. And this issue with the supply chain is definitely impacting the development of the spacesuit components. So lots of moving parts here. Now, NASA is also dealing with its own financial issues. They haven't presented an official cost estimate for Artemis III. And there is a group in the government whose job it is to get this information, right? And they need to give it and it needs to be assessed and it takes time. Now, keep in mind, the Artemis program is not just about returning to the moon, but it's also laying the groundwork for human exploration to Mars. So there's a lot of complexity here and there's a lot of weight on every single thing that they do. And these price tags the costs are phenomenally high. The Artemis missions, they include development and integration of a lot of different systems here. You know, think of it this way. We have the Space Launch System, the SLS rocket. That alone is very complicated because there's lots of different versions of that rocket that they're gonna be custom building for each and every mission. Then they have the Exploration Ground System. They have the Orion spacecraft itself. They have the Human Landing System. They have the Next Generation Spacesuits. They have the Gateway Lunar Space Station and all of the future rovers and equipment, scientific equipment that needs to go. Like there is a mountain of things that have not been created yet that need to be designed and crafted and deployed. So it's exciting because there's a lot of awesome stuff ahead of us. And I'm not surprised that they're pushing the dates out, but man, it's disappointing because I thought something incredible was gonna happen this year.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, it's unfortunate, but you know, they're just going back to the timeline that they originally had. You know, they were pressured to move up the timeline. Right, was it 2026 or 2028?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' 2028.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, 2028 originally, yeah. So even if they push back to 2026, they're still two years ahead of their original schedule. And that was really just for political reasons that that was moved up.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Before we switch off to space topic, let me give you guys a quick update on the Peregrine Moon Lander. Remember last week we talked about this. Okay, so real quick summary. This Moon Lander was developed by a company called Astrobotic. Seven hours into the mission, they became aware of a fuel leak that was changing the telemetry of the ship. Bob was very concerned. They didn't know what to do. They didn't really understand what was going on. And then everyone dove in. They started to really figure out what was happening. So the planned lunar landing had to be canceled because they just weren't gonna be able to position the ship and get the engines to do what they needed them to do that would enable it to land. So the ship basically goes out approximately the distance of the Moon, right? 183,000 miles or 294 kilometers. It gets out there. Then it gets pulled back to Earth. It didn't, the Lander didn't actually transit or orbit the Moon. So I didn't see its flight path, and I'd like to see it because I'm not crystal clear on what it was, but it did get pulled back by the Earth. And they have currently set it on a trajectory back to Earth where they fully expect it to completely disintegrate upon reentry. This is gonna happen on January 18th. So as you listen to this, it'll have been, it happened a few days ago. You know, Peregrine was part of NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Service Program, and that's it. It's gonna come back, all this stuff on there, the human remains, the messages from Japan, a few weird things that are on there. It's all gonna get burned up in the atmosphere. So it's sad, it's sad, but it happens. And we learn from these things. And again, this is a perfect example of why NASA, when people are involved, meaning like we're sending people into outer space, they don't have failures like this, right? Like they won't stand for failures like this. Everything has to be massively tested. So we gotta wait a little longer, guys.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yep.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' None of it's canceled, which is fantastic.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, thanks, Jay.<br />
<br />
=== Cloned Monkeys for Research <small>(32:57)</small> ===<br />
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'''S:''' Cara, tell us about these cloned monkeys.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, so some of you may have seen there's quite a lot of trending articles right now that are based on a new study that was just published in Nature Communications. I'm gonna read the title of the study. It's a bit techie. Reprogramming Mechanism Dissection and Trophoblast Replacement Application in Monkey Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer. So based on that title, you may not know, but what Chinese researchers have done or what they claim is now happening is that they now have the longest lasting cloned monkeys, cloned primates, really. There's a monkey, he is a rhesus monkey named Retro. And my guess, even though it doesn't say it in any of the coverage that I read, my guess is that the name Retro, because they capitalize the T in Retro, comes from reprogrammed trophoblast. I think that's where they got his name, Retro. And so really what this story is about is a new technique for trying to clone primates that works a teeny tiny bit better than previous techniques. And the big sort of payoff here is this monkey is now coming on three years old. So you may ask, haven't we been cloning animals for a while?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Dolly the sheep, right?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Dolly the sheep, right. So this is the same technique. I should say it's the same general technique with some really important changes as Dolly the sheep. So Dolly the sheep lived for six and a half years after she was cloned. Mice, rabbits, dogs, goats, pigs, cows, lots of different mammals have been cloned over the years. Even other monkeys have been cloned over the years, but the difference is that they've been incredibly short-lived. So generally speaking, when we talk about cloning mammals specifically, it's super hard to do. About one to 3% of clones result in live birth. It's a very, very low percentage. So as it is, it's hard just to get viable embryos when cloning mammals. And then even if you get a viable embryo, it's hard to have a live birth. There were some monkeys in 1998 who I think were the most long-lived or the most kind of the biggest success story as of that point, but I still think that they only lived for a few months. And so Retro coming up on three years is sort of being hailed as a triumph by the media, but let's talk about what the difference was here. So all of these animals that I'm describing here have been cloned using a very specific technique. And that technique is called somatic cell nuclear transfer. In simple terms, as we know, we talk about the difference between somatic and germ cells. Somatic cells are like body cells, right? Everything but eggs and sperm. So a somatic cell is actually put into, so you're transferring the nucleus from a donor cell, but a somatic donor cell, like a skin, let's say like a skin cell into an egg cell. And then that donor DNA, which is now kind of closed up in the egg is sort of programmed to start developing embryonically. So here's one thing that I think is an important point here that not a lot of coverage that I'm seeing makes. These are still embryonic clones. None of these are clones that are coming from an adult organism. So when you start to see kind of the fear-mongering coverage around, does this mean we can clone humans? Does this mean we can clone humans? First of all, nobody has successfully been cloning mammals from adult cells. Does that make sense? Almost all of them are pulled from embryonic cells and some of them are even just pulled from split embryonic cells. So even though technically you could call it a clone, it's like a twin, if that makes sense. But this specific approach that's been used, which all of these, like I said, have been this thing, somatic cell nuclear transfer is where we run into some hiccups. So what ends up happening is that the cells of that embryos trophoblast layer, which is sort of the outermost layer that provides a lot of nutrients and also actually forms a big chunk of the placenta after it's implanted are very problematic in almost every case. And scientists think that this is because of epigenetic factors. So there are these markers that are present, right? That turn genes on or off. So it's not changing the actual genes that are there, but it's changing their expression, whether they turn on or off. When you put this cell, this clone cell into an empty egg, the egg kind of DNA or the epigenes, the epigenetic factors within that egg affect the DNA of the implanted embryo and all sorts of havoc is wreaked. And really scientists hadn't been able to figure out how to get these embryos to become viable. They're usually all sorts of terrible mutations. They often don't even make it to live birth. And if they do make it to live birth, they often die within hours, days, weeks, or in very lucky cases, months. And so what the scientists did in this case, and this is sort of the new bit, is a trophoblast replacement. So they inject that inner cell mass from the cloned embryo into a non-cloned embryo. So the embryo cell mass is going inside of a non-cloned embryo that they made through in vitro fertilization. So they're basically forming like a hybrid embryo and the trophoblast portion belongs to the non-clone, which seems to be less likely to kick in all of these epigenetic factors that seem to be harmful to the developing embryo. And so the scientists are claiming that this is like rescuing the development of the embryos. But to be fair, we're still talking about an attempt of like hundreds of potential cloned embryos and only still like a handful of them sticking and then only one of them actually being successful. So it's not like this case is any more efficient. It's not like this specific kind of success story with Retro, the first ever rhesus monkey that's lived for longer than a day. And actually he's coming up on like three years. It's not like their approach made a bunch of them. It's they still only, it was very scattershot and they only got one successful outcome. It's just that their successful outcome has been more successful than any other primate in the past. And so the argument that the Chinese scientists are making here is, if we can do this more, this could be very, very good for biomedical research. Because like we do all the time with cloned mice, you can give a drug to one clone and a different drug or no drug or placebo to the other clone. And you can see exactly how well it works because they have the exact same DNA.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So it's a good way to control for variables.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yes, it reduces all sorts of variability. But of course, this is an ethical conundrum. And a lot of people are saying like, should we be doing this to monkeys? Should we be doing this to primates at all? And look at how many failures we have before we have a success. And look at how much suffering is happening to these animals until we get to that point. And is it going to, like, what is the payoff and how much is it going to improve our biomedical science, our pharmaceutical science? Is the sort of return worth the risk? That's another question. Now, this is perfectly legal in China. So the way that they're approaching this, it's passed all their review boards and it's a perfectly legal practice, unlike some of the historical stories that we've talked about. Do you remember when we talked about the CRISPR, the rogue CRISPR story?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Oh, yeah, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Like that was not legal.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' The Raelians.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' This is. But I think some people are saying, wait, if they were able to do this with the rhesus monkey, are they going to clone humans next? No, we're nowhere close to that. A, because we can't clone adult cells at all. These are still embryonic cells. And B, it's still hard as shit. It's no easier and it's no more efficient to clone this. It was no easier or no more efficient to clone this rhesus monkey than any of the attempts in the past. It's just that this one hiccup, it was surmounted in this case. Can it be surmounted again though? I don't know. Was it lucky that they happened to get this one just right? I guess we will see.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We'll see, yeah. I mean, it seems like a good incremental advance.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It does.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, and which is, again, that's par for the course, right, for science, right? Breakthroughs are rare, incremental advances are the rule. And this is, it seems like a solid one. But I still want to know, when can I make a clone of myself so I can harvest its organs? <br />
<br />
'''C:''' Nowhere close. Yeah, it's going to be a long time. The funny thing though, which I did discover in doing this research, is that there's a Korean company that has made 1,500 dog clones at this point.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, how long do they live?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Like, they're long-lived. Apparently, they're perfectly healthy dogs. And so it's pretty interesting that just, okay, it's way harder to clone mammals, but some mammal species are easier to clone than others.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, well, thanks, Cara. This is definitely a technology that we'd want to keep an eye on.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And actually, I will add to this, and I think this is important. One of the arguments is that this could also have implications for conventional IVF. Because sometimes you do see this trophoblast problem even in conventional IVF. And so this could be at least a new way to look at improving outcomes in conventional IVF for people. So there's that.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' So not that acupuncture I talked about last week.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Probably, yeah. Probably this would be more helpful to researchers. Yeah, I think so.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, thanks, Cara.<br />
<br />
=== Converting {{co2}} into Carbon Nanofibers <small>(44:23)</small> ===<br />
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'''S:''' So I'm going to do another news item that's a little bit also of hype, more than reality. The headline is, scientists develop a process for converting atmospheric CO2 into carbon nanofibers.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Ooh.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Ooh, that sounds-<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Solves two problems at once, right?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Exactly, right? It sounds really, really good. But let's dig into it a little bit. So obviously, carbon capture is something that we're looking into. Researchers are studying various ways of either taking CO2 directly out of the air or capturing it at the source, near coal fire plants or natural gas fire plants or whatever. And then putting that CO2, taking the carbon out of it and getting it into a form that is solid, right? So that it could be buried or utilized in some way, but it would be permanently, or at least for on the order of magnitude of 50 or 100 years, giving us enough time to sort out this whole green energy thing, ully convert over to low carbon economy and energy infrastructure. If we could bind up that carbon for 50 or 100 years, that could go a long way to mitigating climate change. And the experts who have crunched all the numbers said, we're not going to get to our goals without some kind of carbon capture along the way. Although they're mainly figuring like after 2050, like between now and 2050, we really need to focus on reducing our carbon footprint. And then after that, that we, carbon capture has to really start kicking in to some serious degree to turn that line back down again, you know? So is this kind of technology going to be the pathway? Now, carbon nanotubes or carbon nanofibers are a great solid form of carbon to turn atmospheric CO2 into because we've talked about carbon nanofibers. You know, this is a two-dimensional material. They have a lot of interesting physical properties. You know, they're very, very strong and they're highly conductive, highly both thermally and electrically, et cetera. And even if you just make very, very short nanofibers, so they're not long cables of it, but just very, very tiny ones, it could, it's still a great filler, right? You could still like, for example, you can add it to cement to make it much stronger. And that would be a good way to bind it up. You know, just imagine if all the cement were laying around the world, it had billions of tons of carbon in it. That was then now long-term sequestered. So that would be, that's like one of the most obvious sort of uses of this kind of carbon nanofibers. So what's the innovation here? So essentially they said, well, one of our innovations is we broke it down into a two-step process, right? We didn't want to try to get all the way from carbon dioxide to carbon nanotubes, carbon nanofibers in one step. So we broke it down into two steps. The first step is to turn carbon dioxide and water into carbon monoxide and hydrogen. And when I read that, I'm like, oh, you mean like we've been doing for years, right? I mean, that's not anything that's new. And that's kind of always the first step, you know what I mean? Because the problem with carbon dioxide is that it's a very low energy, very stable molecule, right? So it takes energy to convert it into anything else. Carbon monoxide and H2-hydrogen, are very high energy molecules. They are good feeders for lots of industrial chemical reactions, right? If you have hydrogen, you can do tons of stuff with that. We've spoken about this quite a bit. And if you have carbon monoxide, you can make all kinds of carbon-based molecules out of it. These are good, highly reactive, high energy molecules. So yeah, that's the key, is getting from CO2 to CO and H2, that's always the tough part. And they're basically saying, so we're gonna do that using basically existing methods. It's like, okay, so there's no innovation in the hard part. The real, right? It's like, okay, that's old news. The real new bit is that they develop a catalytic process to go from carbon monoxide to carbon nanofibers. It's like, okay, that's interesting. You know, that sounds reasonable. So they basically proved that they could do that. You know, they use cobalt as a catalyst, and which isn't great because cobalt is one of those elements that are sourced from parts of the world that are not stable. And we're trying to reduce our reliance on cobalt. And so developing a process that uses more cobalt, not great. It's an iron-cobalt system that they're using. Now it's gonna come down to two things, right? So they did a proof of concept. You could break this down to a two-step process where you go from carbon dioxide to carbon monoxide, and then carbon monoxide to carbon nanotubes. It works, but two questions, or actually, there's three questions. One is, can you do it on an industrial scale? Because unless you could do billions of tons of this stuff, it's not gonna matter, right? Second is, how cost-effective is it? And third is, how energy-effective is it, right? So if you have to burn a lot of energy to do the process, then it doesn't really get you anywhere.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Don't do it, right.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So they do say that the processes work at relatively low temperature and at atmospheric pressure, at ambient pressure. That's good. So that's a good sign that this has the potential to be energy-efficient. And then they also say, and this is always that gratuitous thing, if you fuel it, right? If you fuel this process with renewable energy, it could be carbon-neutral. Of course, if anything you fuel with renewable energy, it's gonna be carbon-neutral.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's like part of this healthy breakfast, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Right, part of this healthy breakfast. But fair enough. So you could theoretically power this with solar panels or wind turbines or nuclear power, which is what you'd have to do. You'd need some massive energy source. But again, in the short term, if we're gonna build a renewable energy source, you're gonna reuse that to replace fossil fuel energy sources. You're not gonna use it to capture the carbon from the fossil fuel, because that's adding another step and that's inefficient. So this kind of process isn't, and this is what I was saying at the beginning, it's not gonna be relevant until after we decarbonize the energy infrastructure, right? Only once you've replaced all the fossil fuel with carbon-neutral energy sources, does it then make sense to add even more carbon-neutral energy sources in order to pull some of the carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere that you've already released, right? Until then, if you build a nuclear power plant, for example, just connect it to the grid. Don't use it to pull carbon out of the air that you put in by burning coal, right? Shut down the coal plant and power the grid with the nuclear power. But there's a sort of a good news to that fact is that we don't have to really perfect this technology for 30 years. This is the kind of thing that we need to have ready to go in 2050. Like if we get to 2050 and we've mostly decarbonized our energy infrastructure and some more industrial energy structure, that's what we really need to start ramping up carbon capture. And that's when these kinds of technologies are gonna be useful. So we do have a couple of decades to perfect it. So it's good that we're at the proof of concept stage now because it could take 20 years to get to the industrial stage where we're doing it. But it is-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Is it possible or reasonable that it would scale up like that?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, again, that's a big question mark. And we've been here a hundred times where something looks great at the proof of concept stage and then we never hear about it again because it just failed to scale, right? It wasn't the kind of thing that you could scale up. And with carbon capture, that is one of the big hurdles. Does it scale? Can you get this to function at industrial, massive industrial scales? Because it's not worth it if you can't. And then the other thing, again, is how energy efficient is it? Because if it's energy inefficient and then it becomes part of the problem, right? It's not helping. It's just another energy sink. This has potential. And I do think carbon nanofibers as the end product is a great idea. Because again, we could just dump it in cement and put it on or under the ground or whatever, put it in our foundations. So, and it makes it stronger. It increases the longevity of the cement. And cement is an important source of CO2 also. So anything that makes that industry more efficient is good. So there's kind of a double benefit. So I like all of that. But looking past the hype, this is something where we're at the proof of concept stage. This may be an interesting technology 20 years from now. So let's keep working on it. But this isn't like the answer to climate change, right? This is something we're gonna have to be plugging in in 20 years or so.<br />
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=== Feng Shui <small>(54:04)</small> ===<br />
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'''S:''' All right, Evan, I understand that people are doing feng shui wrong. What are the consequences of this?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' My gosh, how are we ever gonna get past this obstacle? It's not every week that the news-consuming public gets advice about feng shui. But this week, we're fortunate not to have one but two articles warning us about feng shui mistakes that are all around us. And I know people pronounce this differently. I've heard feng shui, feng shui, feng shui.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I also think some of the differences- I think some of them come from whether you're saying it in Mandarin or Cantonese.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I suppose so, I suppose so. Well, maybe there are some people who are not familiar with what feng shui is. What is it? You know what I did? I decided, I'm gonna look up the definition. I'm gonna go to fengshui.com to find out. I don't know what's there. Here's what happens real quick when you get there. There's this big, so it's a blank screen with all except for a big blurry dot. And then the blurry dot will start to pull in opposite directions, forming two circles, touching at a point like a figure eight on its side, or the infinity sign, basically. And there's no text or anything. That's all there is. And the only thing you can do is click on the dot. And that dot takes you to the next page, which is a entirely black background page, no text again. And it slowly starts to transition to a gray scale. It dissolves eventually to a white background in about 10 seconds. And then an octagon appears. And then within the octagon, there are lines that appear interconnecting the non-neighboring sides of the octagon. And if you click on that, it brings you back to the blurry dot. So to tell you the truth, and that cycle repeats, to tell you the truth, I think that's the most cogent explanation of feng shui I've ever seen. You know, oh boy, this is wild. Oh, it's an ancient Chinese traditional practice which claims to use energy forces to harmonize individuals with their surrounding environment. The term feng shui means literally wind water. And from ancient times, landscapes and bodies of water were thought to direct the flow of universal qi, the cosmic current, all energy, through places and structures, and in some cases, people. Now, here is the first article. Four feng shui plants to avoid. These are gonna disturb the qi in your home, warns experts. That's how the headline reads. Oh my gosh, this is a warning. And where was this? Yahoo.com picked this up as part of their lifestyle news, and they pulled it from the website called Living Etc. So when it comes to the best plants for good feng shui, there are a few you should bring home, and some you should completely avoid. And they're gonna help you right now pick out the ones to avoid, because they are experts. Yep, yep, they consulted experts for this, and I hope that-<br />
<br />
'''S:''' [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enfe44s0ivo You have a degree in boloney].<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I hope they met legitimate scientists, botanists, chemists, right? Maybe they got on board, but here's what they said. Feng shui master Jane Langhoff. It's essential to consider the type of energy plants you bring into your spaces. Oh well, so much for hearing from scientists.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' What's an energy plant?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, energy plant. Type-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' What's that?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Consider the type of energy plants bring into our spaces. So it's not energy plants, but actually I'll get to that. I'll get to that, Cara. There's actually, there are actually some things, and I will eventually get there. So you weren't totally wrong. Here's what else she says. I don't believe that specific plants will necessarily cause bad luck. However, there are certain plants that can represent negative elements or bring inauspicious energy to a space. Generally, it's advisable to avoid excessively thorny and spiky plants that can cause injury. Oh boy, thank goodness we have a person with a master's certificate and a gold star on it that warns us that thorny and spiky plants can cause an injury. Another one, Feng Shui consultant and educator Laura Morris. As a general rule, you want to be mindful about where you place a spiky or pointy leaf plant. Try to avoid placing them next to your bed or in the partnership area of your home, whatever the partnership area is, wherever people partner up. I don't know.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's where the people get busy? I mean, what are they talking about?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' But you want, so here are the four, okay? Here are the four plants in order and do this like David Letterman's top 10 list, but it's a top four list. Number four, the yuccas, Y-U-C-C-A-S.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I love yuccas.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yuccas, yuccas, yeah. Got to avoid them. They're kind of prickly. They're kind of what, they have sword-like features to them, I guess. You know, long kind of bladed, pointy leaves. They say don't bring those in the home. Number three, cacti. I think we know what cactus and cacti are. Number two, dried flowers and dying plants. You know why? Because don't have those in your house because they represent stagnant energy. Best to leave those outside because if you bring them inside, they could restrict the flow of chi. And the number one plant you should not have in your house, and I have them, quite a few of them in my house, artificial plants. Yep, you know why? Because they block, well, they block energy. They're inauthentic, Steve. They're pretending to be something they're not. This is right directly from the article, which can affect energy in a space negatively. If you love artificial plants, they must be also kept clean of dust and grime. Wow, this is good stuff. Now, Cara, as far as the, what do we call them?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Energy plants?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Energy plants. They list some plants. So here's some plants that are associated with good luck and include, I'm not gonna give you their taxonomical names, but I'll give you their more common names. The treasure fern, the happy plant, the lucky bamboo, the jade plant, the money plant, and peace lilies.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And this doesn't sound at all like something she just made up.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I mean, totally.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' To sell the plants that she has in her shop.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' This is some fatal level thinking right here. You know, I mean, how more basic does it get than that? You know, I mean, yeah. Lucky bamboo and the treasure fern. But it gets better because there's the other article. Here's the headline. Small entryway feng shui mistakes, five things the pros always avoid. So again, like right on the heels of this other one came this article. Oh my gosh, pearls of wisdom coming our way again. Number one, don't have any dead or dying plants. They kind of referred to that in the first article because dead or dying plants create negative energy and represent decay. That's not something you want to welcome in your welcoming part of your home, which is your entryway. Number two, poor maintenance of the door space. For example, blocking the area behind the front door will make moving through the space difficult. You think so? If you kind of put something behind a door and try to open it, that's gonna, you know. We need an expert to tell us this though. Also, don't let your front door get dirty and grimy. You know, it'll stop the positive energy from flowing in that door. The next, the three of five, beware your mirror placement. You don't want to place a mirror face on because you open the door and you're looking in the mirror, oh my gosh, you might get scared or something. You want to hang that mirror on a wall facing away to a doorway to your next room because what it does is it sends opportunities and prosperities into your home. It kind of brings the energy in and reflects it into the center of the home, which apparently needs it. Number four is clutter. Get rid of don't come in and throw your keys down and fling your mail on the little table there and take off your shoes and throw your coat down. You know, everything has a place. Put your stuff away, basically. And number five, this is the most important and the one I'll wrap up on. We ignore the elements at our own peril. You must incorporate the five elements of earth, fire, water, metal, and wood into your entryway, which kind of, I think, goes maybe against the clutter part of all this, right? But they said the balance between these elements creates good feng shui energy and will create a harmonious balance in your entryway. So there it is. Of all the hard science that we've touched on this week, perhaps this will eclipse it all and be the most beneficial to us all.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Like, feng shui is one of those ones that amazes me because it's just pure magic, you know?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, it's nothing.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So you believe in magic, and I've said that to people, and the kind of answer you get is, well, science doesn't know everything. It's like, yeah, but we know magic isn't real.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Not everybody can say that, Steve.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, and it's like, what I love about it is it's magic mixed with, like, a dose of common sense. It's sort of like all the things you were saying, Evan, because then you have these true believers that are like, yeah, but I had an expert come in, and they helped me with my feng shui, and I feel better. It's like, yeah, probably because you're not bumping into shit all the time.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Right, because they cleaned your house and put your crap away.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Here's your problem. You've got a cactus right in your entryway here.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Cactus behind your door. You can't open your door all the way.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's feng shui.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So stupid.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, okay, fine. If you're gonna do it in your own home, whatever. But I mean, and what we talked about before, and it's not the article this week, but when governments start hiring feng shui people, bring them in for architectural design and stuff, they are, oh my gosh.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's driving me nuts.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Wasting all our money and driving us nuts.<br />
<br />
[AD]<br />
<br />
{{anchor|futureWTN}} <!-- keep right above the following sub-section. this is the anchor used by the "wtnAnswer" template, which links the previous "new noisy" segment to its future WTN, here.<br />
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== Who's That Noisy? <small>(1:05:06)</small> ==<br />
{{wtnHiddenAnswer<br />
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|answer = _brief_description_of_answer_ _perhaps_with_a_link_<br />
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'''S:''' All right, Jay, it's Who's That Noisy time.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' All right, guys, last week I played this noisy. [plays Noisy] Now, I should have known that that kind of sound was gonna make a lot of people send me a lot of like funny entries into Who's That Noisy, things like they absolutely know that that is not it. They're just trying to make me laugh. And a few people did make me laugh, but I did get some serious entries this week, and we have a listener named Tim Lyft that said, "Hi, Jay, my daughter, age nine, thinks this week's noisy is somebody playing one of those snake charmer flute thingies, but badly" which I thought was a wonderful guess. And her cousin, who's seven years old, guessed "a lot of farm animals".<br />
<br />
'''S:''' A cacophony of farm animals.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I think these are two wonderful guesses. And Tim himself guessed some kind of bird. You can't send me an answer of some kind of bird. You have to be absolutely specific. But thank you for sending those in. Those are great. Visto Tutti always answers. He always comes up with something. He said, "it sounds like peacocks calling during the mating season. They like to start the annoying screeching way before sunrise, which makes the humans in the neighborhood wonder what roast peacock tastes like". So I heard this and I'm like, I read his email like, oh, peacocks, I don't know. I never heard the sounds that they make. And then I proceeded to get about, I think six or seven more emails where people were saying peacocks. So perhaps peacocks sound like that, which is a horrible noise for a bird to make, especially if they live around you. Another listener named Harley Hunt wrote in, said, good day. My guess for this week is a peacock. Okay, I put that in. I don't know why.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I'm sensing a theme here.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, there's a theme. All right, so there was a bunch of people that guessed peacock. Another listener here named Adam Pesch said, "Jay, first time emailer, long time listener. Today, I was awakened from a deep sleep by this week's noisy. You did warn us. I never have a guess and probably am way off, but this week reminded me of a shofar horn that I've heard in synagogue trying to mimic an electric guitar riff. Thanks for everything you guys do." I could not find anything on that, so I have no idea what that sounds like, but I do appreciate those guesses. Unfortunately, nobody guessed it. And you know, this one was a hard one. I just thought it was a provocative noise that I wanted to play for you guys. And I will explain this one to you. So again, this was sent in by a listener named Curtis Grant. And Curtis said, I have a really cool noise I heard at work as an elevator fitter or installer. In this case, we use a temporary hoist that lifts the finished lift cabin, right, which is basically the elevator itself, up and down the shaft. We use this to hoist or install our equipment, which are the rail brackets and et cetera, from the top of the finished lift car, as it is more efficient than building a temporary platform to install from. So as these cars are heavy, they have temporary nylon guide shoes that rub against the rails and cause this noise. So basically, like during the installation of an elevator, this is a common noise that someone would hear if they were doing the install. Very, very hard noise to hear. Let me just play briefly again. [plays Noisy] Wow, imagine that like resonating inside the shaft, right? Wow, imagine that like resonating inside the shaft, right? Ugh, forget about it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's haunting.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, definitely. <br />
<br />
{{anchor|previousWTN}} <!-- keep right above the following sub-section ... this is the anchor used by wtnHiddenAnswer, which will link the next hidden answer to this episode's new noisy (so, to that episode's "previousWTN") --><br />
=== New Noisy <small>(1:08:36)</small> ===<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Guys, I have a new noisy this week, sent in by a listener named Chris Kelly. And here it is.<br />
<br />
[Zipper-like zings, and a clack]<br />
<br />
I'll play it again. It's very short. [plays Noisy] Very strange. If you think you know {{wtnAnswer|968|what this week's Noisy is}}, or you heard something really cool, please do send it to me, because it helps make the show good. WTN@theskepticsguide.org.<br />
<br />
== Announcements <small>(1:09:03)</small> ==<br />
<br />
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'''J:''' Real quick, Steve, I'll go down a few things here. Guys, if you enjoyed the show, we would appreciate you considering becoming a patron of ours to help us keep going. All you have to do is go to [https://www.patreon.com/SkepticsGuide patreon.com/SkepticsGuide], and you can consider helping us continue to do the work that we do. Every little bit counts. So thank you very much, and thank you to all our patrons out there. We really appreciate it. One thing we started doing a few weeks ago, about a month ago, is we came up with the SGU weekly email. This email essentially gives you every piece of content that we created the previous week. We send it out on Monday or Tuesdays. So it'll have the show that just came out the previous Saturday, any YouTube videos, any TikTok videos, any blogs that Steve wrote, anything that we feel you need to see, it's going to be in that email. Also, we'll put in some messages here and there about things, like for example, an important message to tell you guys. So Google is changing its podcast player. And the new podcast player that they have actually is not something that we want to work with because there's a few things, without getting into all the details, the big humps for us that we couldn't get over was one, we couldn't integrate this automatically. So it won't automatically update to our RSS. We'd have to do everything manually.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' What?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, that's crazy. It doesn't integrate with our media host and that's it. So that right there is a pretty much a deal breaker for us because we can't be doing everything manually. That's number one. Number two, and sadly, they auto-insert ads and the pay is terrible. And we would have no control over the ads. So that's it, it's a game breaker. We're not going to do it. We are not going to integrate with Google's new podcast platform until and if they ever change or whatever, if I'll keep an eye on it, but.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Hey, it should be able to turn ads off if you don't opt out of that.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, I mean, I haven't seen-<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And like not automatically updating the RSS. I mean, come on.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, I know.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, like nobody's going to ever, nobody's going to use this.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, I don't think they will. So if, unfortunately, if you have recently found out that you no longer are getting our RSS on the Google podcast platform, this changeover happened over, I guess, the last few weeks or whatever, we're very sorry, but we have to, we can't engage in things that aren't good for us and that's it. So we're just not going to do it. And feel free to email me if you want to give me more information about it, or if you know, like, hey, either it's going to change or whatever. I can't find anything. But I admit, I didn't look that deeply into trying to figure out where they might be in the future. I just know where they are right now. Anyway, guys, there's an eclipse happening, and we decided let's do something fun around the eclipse because this is probably going to be the last one that any of us are going to see, especially one that's going to be close. And as Cara and Evan have been talking about, this is a big one. This is a long one. This is really one you really want to see. So wherever you are try to get yourself to a location where you're going to have totality. You know, bring the kids, definitely get the eye protection that you need, but this is going to be a big deal. So what we decided is we're going to go to a place where Bob's horrible feng shui of creating clouds.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Right?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Whenever an astronomical event is happening, we don't think that Bob's powers will work in Texas. So we're going to Dallas. We're going to be doing an extravaganza on April 6th, and we will be doing an SGU private show, a private show plus, actually, and we'll be doing that on the 7th of April of this year. All of these things will be in and around Dallas. So we really hope that if you're local or you're going to be traveling there for the eclipse, please do consider joining us. Ticket sales are going very well. So move quickly if you're interested because I can see things filling up very quickly. Other than that, guys.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' The clouds will follow me.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, if they do, Bob, if they do. We will take it out on you. We're going to make you buy us an expensive dinner, I guess, or something.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Of course you will.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, but I'm looking forward to Cara's barbecue.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Ooh.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That's the only reason why I'm going.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' You guys are going to be so good. Barbecue and Tex-Mex.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I'm going to diet before I go just so I can overeat when we're there, you know?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, you're going to go hard in Texas. You can't not go hard. Oh, it's the best.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Deep in the heart of Texas, right?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yep. Stars at night are big and bright.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I know that because of Pee-Wee's Big Adventure, right?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Of course.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. Thank you, Jay.<br />
<br />
== Quickie: TikTok recap <small>(1:13:37)</small> ==<br />
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'''S:''' Very quickly, I'm going to do an entry from TikTok. As you know, we do TikTok videos every week. One of the videos I did today, we record, we also livestream if you're interested, but we recorded one on the jellyfish UFO. Have you guys seen this?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Oh, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I have seen it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, the jellyfish UFO. So yeah, the TikTok video that I was responding to was by Jeremy Corbel, who's a gullible UFO guy, right? And it's a really this is a great example, a great contrast between a gullible analysis of a piece of information, this video, versus Mick West, who does a really great technical, like skeptical analysis of the same video. So essentially, this is over a military base, a US military base, and there's a balloon, a monitoring balloon, a couple of miles away. It's like tethered to the ground. So you get sort of a bird's eye view of the base, and it's tracking this thing that's flying across the base, right? Now, it's called the jellyfish UFO because it kind of looks vaguely like a jellyfish. There's a blob on top and streamers below, right? So there's a couple of, so again, Corbel's going on just gullibly about all this, oh, what could this be? I'm trying to like mystery monger it, and pointing out anomalies, apparent anomalies. But here's the bottom line, very, very quick. And if you can, the deep, Mick West goes into the technical details very well. The thing is drifting in the direction and speed of the wind, right? This is something floating in the wind. And the 99%-er here is that this is some balloons. This is a clump of balloons and streamers floating in the wind. Now, we can't see it with sufficient detail to say 100% that's what it is. It could be something unexpected, but that's basically what it is, right? If it's not literally balloons, it's something very similar. But it's something lightweight that's floating, that's drifting in the wind. It's not a machine it's not a spacecraft.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' A life form.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Not a life form. You know, it's just, it's not moving, right? At first, I'm like, is that like a smudge on the lens? But like, no, it's kind of moving with respect to the lens itself. But it is again, Mick West shows quite convincingly that it's moving in the direction of the wind, it's moving at the speed of the wind, given the likely altitude that it has. He does all the angles and everything. It's like, come on, guys, it's a freaking clump of balloons.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Maybe that's the secret of alien spaceship propulsion. You let the wind do all the work.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, that's how they hide, right? They just float along like the balloons.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So they're literally paper airplanes.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' What's the difference between alien balloons acting like Earth-bound, Earth-created balloons?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And Earth-created balloons?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' There's no, right?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The difference is Occam's Razor, that's the difference. All right, guys, we have a great interview coming up with Robert Sapolsky about free will. This one's gonna blow your mind. If you're not familiar with the free will debate, you will be after this interview. So let's go to that interview now.<br />
<br />
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<br />
== Interview with Robert Sapolsky <small>(1:17:01)</small> ==<br />
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* "{{w| Robert Sapolsky|Robert Morris Sapolsky}} is an American neuroendocrinology researcher and author. He is a professor of biology, neurology, neurological sciences, and neurosurgery at Stanford University. In addition, he is a research associate at the National Museums of Kenya." - Wikipedia<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Joining us now is Robert Sapolsky. Robert, welcome to The Skeptic's Guide.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Well, thanks for having me on.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And you are a professor of biology, neurology, and neurosurgery at Stanford University. And you have written a lot about free will and other related topics. And that was primarily what we wanted to start our discussion with about tonight, because you take a pretty hard position that there is no free will. How would you state your position?<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' I would say probably the fairest thing is that I'm way out on the lunatic fringe.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' In that my stance is not just, wow, there's much less free will than people used to think. We've got to rethink some things in society. I think there's no free will whatsoever. And I try to be convincing about this.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay, well, convince us. Tell us why you think there's no free will.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' I think when you look at what goes into making each of us who we are, all we are is the outcome of the biological luck, good or bad, that we have no control over, and its interactions with the environmental luck, good or bad, which we also have no control over. How is it that any of us became who we are at this moment is because of what happened a second ago and what happened a minute ago and what happened a century ago. And when you put all those pieces together, there's simply no place to fit in the notion that every now and then your brain could do stuff that's independent of what we know about science.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So, yeah, that is, I think, the standard position of the no free will. Our brains are deterministic, right? We can't break the laws of physics and control what happens inside our head. Our brains are machines. But why, then, is there such a powerful illusion that we do have free will? And how do you square that, like the notion that we do make decisions? Or do you think we don't really make decisions? Is the decision-making level of this itself an illusion?<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Great. I think that's exactly where we all get suckered into, including me, into feeling a sense of agency. Because the reality is there's points where we choose. We choose something. We choose what flavor ice cream we want. We choose whether or not to push someone off the cliff. We have all those sorts of things. We make a choice. We form an intent. And then we act on it. And that seems wonderfully agentive, wonderfully me. There's a me that just made this decision. I was conscious of having an intent. I had a pretty good idea what the consequence was gonna be of acting on it. And I knew I wasn't being forced. I had alternatives. I could choose to do otherwise. And that intentness, the strength with which you were just in that moment, is what most of us, then, intuitively feel like counts as free will. And the problem with that is, when you're assessing that, it's like you're trying to assess a book by only reading the last page of it. Because you don't get anywhere near the only question you can ask. So how did you turn out to be that sort of person who would form that intent? How did you become that person? And that's the stuff we had no control over.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay, I see that. So you have no control over the person that you are, all of the things that went into influencing your decision-making. But does that add up to, though, that you're not actually making decisions? Or I guess another, when I try to wrestle with this, the other thing that really bothers me is not only the sense of decision-making, but of what we call metacognition. I could think about my own thought processes. So what's happening there?<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Yep. You're in some psych experiment where, like, if you had a warthog, and signed up for the experiment, they would do some manipulation psychologically, and the warthog would fall for it and all of that. But because we're human, and we've got this metacognition stuff, we can go in there and say, oh, these psychologists, I bet they're up to something. So whatever I think I'm gonna say, I'm gonna say the opposite so that I'm not being some, like, rube falling for their manipulation. Whoa, I've just exercised free will thanks to my metacognition. How'd you become the sort of person who would go in there and be skeptical? How did you become the sort of person who would reflect on the circumstance metacognitively, et cetera, et cetera? In both of those cases, whether you did exactly what the warthog did, or if you, just out of proving some sort of point to yourself, did exactly the opposite, in both cases, it's the same issue. How did you become that person? And you had no control over that part.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So you also talk about the fact that if you take that view of humanity, that we are deterministic and free will is an illusion, that should influence policy or how we approach certain questions. So what do you think are the biggest policy implications for the realization that we don't really have free will?<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Well, people immediately freak out along a number of lines if you try to insist to them that there's no free will. The first one is, oh my God, people are just gonna run amok. If you can't be held responsible for your actions, people will just be completely disinhibited or will be chaos. And sort of the most extreme extension of that is, and they'll just be murderers running around on the streets. And that won't be the case. And the thing is, if you take the notion that we have no free will, we're just biological machines, blah, blah. If you take it to its logical extreme, blame and punishment never make any sense whatsoever. No one deserves to be punished. Retribution can never be a virtue in and of itself. Oh, so you throw out the entire criminal justice system, forget reforming it. It makes no sense at all. It's like having a witch justice system for deciding which ones you burn at the stake in 1600. You need to come up with a system that completely bypasses that. And at the same time, hold up a mirror to that and praise and reward make no sense either. And thus meritocracies have to be tossed out as well.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So then what are we left with?<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Well, we're left with something that seems totally unimaginable. How are you supposed to function? But then you reflect and we actually function all the time in circumstances where we have subtracted free will out of the occasion and we can protect society from dangerous individuals. Nonetheless, let me give you an example. There's a setting where there's a human who's dangerous. They can damage innocent people around them and this would be a terrible thing. And what happens if this is your child and they're sneezing and they have a nose cold? The kindergarten has this rule saying, please, if your child has a nose cold, keep them home until they're feeling better. Whoa, you constrain your child's behavior. You will lock them up at home. No, you don't lock them up at home because it does not come with moralizing. You don't say you're a kid. Ah, because you were sneezing, you can't play with your toys. You don't preach to them. You constrain them just enough so that they are no longer dangerous and not an inch more. And as long as you're at it, you do some research as to what causes nose colds in the first place. And we have a world in which it's so obvious that we have subtracted free will out of that that we don't even notice it. Yeah, there's all sorts of realms in which we can reach the conclusion this person wasn't actually responsible for their actions. And nonetheless, we could make a world that is safe from any inadvertent damage that they might do.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That still sounds like at the end of the day, there are still consequences to your actions, right? So if you demonstrate that you're a dangerous person by committing a crime, then you have to be isolated from society until you're no longer the kind of person who would commit a crime.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Or you have to be isolated exactly enough, the minimum needed to make sure you can't be dangerous in that way anymore. And we have all sorts of contingent constraints in society. You, if you have proven that you were dangerous to society because you keep driving drunk, they don't let you drive. They take your license away. You're still allowed to walk around and go into the supermarket and such. They don't need to put you in jail. If you have a certain type of sexual pedophilia, there's rules. You can't go within this distance of a school, of a playground or something. We have all these ways in which we can constrain people from the ways in which they are damaging and not do any more so. And the key thing in that latter point is we don't sermonize to them. There's a reason why you wind up being dangerous. So we are gonna keep you from doing that. And it's not because you have a crappy soul.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, I get that. But at the end of the day, in a practical sense, it could be very same to the criminal justice system we have now, just minus a lot of the judgment and the punishment is not punitive. It's not because you deserve to be punished. It's just because there needs to be a moral consequence to your actions.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Well, I would differ there because the word moral is irrelevant. The word moral is irrelevant to your car's brakes that have stopped working. Oh my God, it's gonna kill somebody. You can't drive it. You need to constrain it. You need to put it in the garage. But that's not a moral act. You don't feel like you should go in each morning with a sledgehammer and smash the car on the hood because of how dangerous it is to society. You don't preach to it. Morality is completely independent of it. You are trying to do a quarantine model. And the people who think about this the most use public health models for this. And you are not a bad person if you get an infectious disease. And you're not a bad person if circumstances has made you someone who's damaging to those around you. But yeah, make sure people are not damaged by you but don't preach to you in the process.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, you could substitute the word ethical, I guess, for moral. It's just a philosophical calculation without any kind of spiritual judgment.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Good, okay.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's kind of what I meant. The point is that if you're saying, well, we're just, our brains are calculating machines and part of those calculations are moral judgments or ethical judgments or whatever, right? Because we evolved, and we're going to get to that in a minute, a sense of justice. And you have to leverage that in order to influence people's behavior. Otherwise, you have the moral hazard of not having consequences for your actions, right? So we're not in control of our decision-making, but there are influences on that decision-making and society needs to influence people's decision-makings by presenting concrete consequences to their actions. If you do this, you're going to go to jail. Nothing personal, but we have to do it. Otherwise there will be significant increase in crime or whatever you want to call it. Is that a fair way to look at it?<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Yeah, it's okay to have punishment as part of the whole picture in a purely instrumental sense, in the same way that you can have rewarding people for stuff that they've done, but again, purely instrumental. And then you say, okay, so if we ran the prison system on that, there's no such thing as retribution. There's no such thing as somebody deserves to be constrained. There's no such thing as justice being done. And you put in those factors in there and you have an unrecognizably different approach to, we protect the society from people who sneeze and we protect society from people who have such poor impulse control that they do impulsive, horrible, damaging things when they're emotionally worked up. But there's no retribution. Justice is not being served. They don't deserve anything. They have not earned their punishment. You are just containing a car whose brakes are broken. And if that sounds like, oh my God, turning people into machines, that's so dehumanizing, that's a hell of a lot better than demonizing them into being sinners.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, it's actually a very humanistic approach to criminal justice.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Because it does lack that sort of punitive angle that can be injust in a lot of ways, right? You're taking somebody who is in a much more profound sense than we even may realize a victim of circumstance and punishing them for that, right?<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Is there anything beyond criminal justice system that has implications from your philosophy on no free will?<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Well, meritocracies go out the window also because it's this bi-directional thing. We run the world where some people are treated way worse than average for reasons they have no control over and then some people are treated way better than average for reasons they have no control over. They have the sort of brain, so they get good SAT scores or the sort of brain that makes them self-disciplined and so now they've got a great job, now they've got the corner office, now they have whatever and they did not earn it any more than someone who commits a crime earned it. Both of those systems are bankrupt. But then you have the same problem. The people then say, oh my God, if you do that, you're gonna have murderers running around the streets, not necessarily, but now flip to the meritocracy half, you would say, oh my God, you turn out to have a brain tumor and you're just gonna pick a random person off the street to do your brain surgery. No, of course not that either. We need to protect society from people who are damaging and we need to ensure society that competent people are doing difficult things, but you can do it without a realm of this being laden in virtue and moral worth. Just because somebody turns out to have enough dexterity to do surgery, they should not have a society that reifies them thinking that they are intrinsically a better human any more than someone in jail should be thinking that they are an intrinsically worse human. Both are mere outcomes of their circumstances.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Robert, can I ask you a couple of questions coming from someone who isn't a neurologist? First off, define for me what free will would be if we had it.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Okay, this is one that completely pisses off philosophers who argue for free will. Just to orient people, 90% of philosophers these days would be called compatibilists, which is they admit the world is made out of stuff like atoms and molecules and we've got cells inside our heads and all of that science-y stuff is going on. They concede that, they accept that, but somehow, nonetheless, that is compatible with there still being free will in there. And as such, I would fall into the tiny percentage of people who count as free will incompatibilists. You can't have what we know about how the brain works and free will going hand in hand. So what would count as free will? So somebody does something and you say, well, why did they do that? And it's because these neurons did something half a second before. But it's also because something in the environment in the previous minutes triggered those neurons to do that. And because hormone levels this morning in your bloodstream made this or that part of your brain more or less sensitive to those stimuli. And because in the previous decade, you went through trauma or you found God and that will change the way your brain works. And before you know it, you're back to adolescence and childhood and fetal life, which is an amazingly important period of sharing environment with your mother and then genes. And then even stuff like what your ancestors invented as a culture, because that's going to have majorly influenced the way your mother mothered you within minutes of birth. So if you want to find free will, if you want to like prove it's there, take a brain, take a person that just did something and show that that brain did that completely independently of this morning's breakfast and last year's trauma and all the values and conditioning and stuff that went on in adolescence and what your mom's hormone levels were in your bloodstream when you were a fetus and your genes and culture, show that if you change all of those factors, you still get the exact same behavior. You've just proven free will and it can't be done.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Are you saying like we have zero free will or is there a little bit of it mixed in? You know what I mean? Like, is it so black and white or could there be shades of gray here?<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' There's simply no mechanism in there by which you can have a brain doing stuff completely independent of its history, independent of what came before. It is not possible for a brain to be an uncaused cause. And taken to its logical extreme, the only conclusion is, yeah, there's no free will whatsoever.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Aren't we still thinking things over? Like, I think that when I do something that I really don't wanna do, that if I'm ever expressing free will, it's in those moments, right? Like, doesn't that make sense in a way? Like, if I'm gonna force myself to do something that everything about me-<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's just one part of your brain arguing with another part of your brain though, right?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' But isn't that kind of an expression of free will? If you are having an internal debate and there are pros and cons and pluses and minuses and all the stuff that it takes for us to make a decision.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Not necessarily if you see it from a neurological point of view of, yeah, that's just your executive function and your frontal lobe fighting with your limbic system.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Exactly.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Right?<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It doesn't rescue you from it being all caused neurologically.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' I mean, today is January 17th and thus we're probably 17 days into the vast majority of people who made New Year's resolutions to have already like given them up. And everyone went into it with the same, I'm gonna do this differently this year. And some people do and some people don't. And how did somebody become the sort of person who would have the self-discipline to do that? How would someone become the sort of person who first time they were tempted, they went flying off the rails. How did we all differ in that regard also? And it's exactly the part of the brain. You mentioned just now the frontal cortex. That's this incredibly interesting part of the brain that makes you do the hard thing when it's the right thing to do. And beginning in your fetal life, every bit of thing that happens around you is influencing how strong of a frontal cortex you're gonna have come January 1st and you're vowing to exercise every day.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' So is there an evolutionary advantage to believing in free will?<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Yeah, I think there's an enormous one. And what you can see is in the fact that 90% of philosophers and probably more than 90% of folks out there in general believe there's free will because it's like kind of an unsettling drag to contemplate that we're biological machines. It's very unsettling. And people like to have a sense of agency. People like to think of themselves as captains of their fate. And this plugs into like a very distinctive thing about humans. We're the only species that's smart enough to know that everybody you know and love and you included are going to die someday. We're the only species that knows that someday the sun is gonna go dark. We're the only species that knows that because your neurons in your frontal cortex just did this or that, you carried out this behavior. We're the only species that's capable of having those realities floating around. And some evolutionary biologists have speculated, I think very convincingly, that if you're gonna have a species that is as smart as we are, we have to have evolved an enormous capacity for self-deception, for rationalizing away reality. And we're the species that's smart enough that we better be able to deny reality a lot of the time. And in that regard, major depression, clinical depression, one of the greatest ways of informally defining it is depression is a disease of someone who is pathologically unable to rationalize away reality. It's very protective psychologically.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And like cycling back a little bit to like the meritocracy thing, because where I tend to come down is I have to admit like, yeah, there's no metaphysical free will. You know, it is, we are, there is no uncaused cause. You know, we are just the neurons acting out what they do. But don't we have to act as if there is free will to a large extent because, again, of that moral hazard of thinking that there's no consequences? And even when, like with meritocracy, you were focusing on talent, but what about hard work? We do want people to be rewarded for hard work so that they'll do it. You know, people will do productive work. If there was no reward for it, we kind of know what those societies look like. It's not one I'd wanna live in. Would you accept that notion that even if you think metaphysically, philosophically, there's no free will, we still have to kind of pretend that there is?<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Again, in an instrumental sense, you can reward somebody if that's gonna make them more likely to do the good thing again, if that's gonna make them more likely to plug away, but you need to do it purely in an instrumental way. A colleague of mine at Stanford, Carol Dweck in psychology, has done wonderful work showing, okay, you've got a kid and your kid has just gotten a great, wonderful grade on some exam or something. And do you say, wow, what a wonderful job you did. You must be so smart. Or do you say, wow, wonderful, wonderful job you did. You must've worked so hard. And what she shows is you do the latter and every neurotic parent knows that by now. Yeah, sometimes you use sort of positive praise, reward for displays of self-discipline because that makes that part of the brain stronger, all of that, but you don't go about making somebody who is better at resisting temptation than somebody else think that it has something to do with they are an intrinsically better human. They just wound up with that sort of frontal cortex.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Let's talk a little bit more about evolutionary psychology. I mean, it seems like you're largely in support of that, but you tell me, what do you think about it? Because I know that is something where you can't deny that our brains evolved and that has a huge influence. So what do you think about the discipline of evolutionary psychology and specifically, how would you answer its critics?<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Its starting point makes absolutely perfect sense. And historically, take one step further back from it and you get this field called sociobiology, which I was sort of raised in, which is you can't think about human behavior outside the context of evolution. And then it's one step further and you've got evolutionary psych. You can't think about the human psyche outside the context of evolution. That makes perfect sense, wonderful sense. The trouble is in both of those disciplines, there's way too much possibility for sort of post hoc, just so stories. There's way too much individual differences. Anytime you see a human who like leaps into a river to save the drowning child and dies in the process and basic sociobiological models, basic models of how you optimize copies of your genes can't explain stuff like that. By the time you're looking at like vaguely complicated mammals, you get individualistic behaviors that violate what some of the models predict. So it's part of the story. It's interesting evolutionary psychology. One finding in there that I find to be very, very impressive is that we are far, far more attuned to the sort of norm violations that go in the direction of you getting treated worse than you expected to be, than you being treated better. We have all sorts of detection things in our brain that are better at spotting that bastard they were supposed to give me that reward and they didn't versus, whoa, they just gave me this gigantic reward out of nowhere. And that makes sense evolutionarily. And some of those building blocks were just fine. As with a lot of these relatively new disciplines, don't get a little overconfident and try to explain everything.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I kind of landed in the same place. From a philosophical point of view, of course, there's evolutionary psychology, but in practice, I do think it can fall into just-so stories too easily. So it's a kind of a weakness in the field. All right, well, Robert, this has all been very fascinating. Thank you so much for giving us your time. Anything coming up that you want to plug? Do you have any works that you're doing?<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' No, I got this new book out, which I guess is sort of useful if people know about it. Came out in October, Penguin. It's called Determined, A Science of Life Without Free Will, where I basically lay out all these arguments and as far as I can tell so far, infuriate a lot of people.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's good work. You know that you're accomplishing something useful if you piss off a lot of people.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Oh, good, because I seem to be. That's nice to know.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, thanks again. Take care.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Good, thanks for having me on.<br />
<br />
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== Science or Fiction <small>(1:44:27)</small> ==<br />
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|item1 = A recently discovered species of deep-sea fish in the Antarctic ocean has been found to have transparent blood, due to a complete lack of hemoglobin.<br />
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|item3 = Researchers have successfully trained a group of goldfish to drive a small, water-filled vehicle on land, demonstrating their ability to navigate in a terrestrial environment and challenging long-held views on fish spatial awareness.<br />
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''Voice-over: It's time for Science or Fiction.''<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Each week, I come up with three science news items or facts, two real and one fake, and I challenge my panelists to tell me which one is the fake. We have a theme this week. It's a mystery theme.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' You can tell us.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I will reveal the theme after you guys all give your answers. Now, we'll see if you can figure it out along the way, but it's not gonna be obvious. Okay, here we go. Item number one, a recently discovered species of deep sea fish in the Antarctic Ocean has been found to have transparent blood due to a complete lack of hemoglobin. Item number two, researchers have developed a type of biodegradable plastic that decomposes completely in just one week when exposed to sunlight and air. And item number three, researchers have successfully trained a group of goldfish to drive a small, water-filled vehicle on land, demonstrating their ability to navigate in a terrestrial environment and challenging long-held views on fish spatial awareness. All right, Cara, go first.<br />
<br />
<big>'''Cara's Response'''</big><br />
<br />
'''C:''' I don't like them.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Is that the theme that you're picking up?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Things Cara does not like.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, things I don't like. Deep sea fish in the Antarctic Ocean. There's an Antarctic Ocean?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well the waters around the Antarctic, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But is that called the Antarctic Ocean? I didn't know that, the Arctic. Anyway.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's the Southern Ocean, also known as the Antarctic Ocean.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Okay, I'm not mad at that. That one, okay, so this fish is lacking hemoglobin, which, okay, that's crazy weird, but maybe there's some sort of other compound that is like serving a similar purpose. Would it make the blood transparent? Maybe? Is the only reason blood has the color it is because of hemoglobin? Because of the heme? It might be. I know the heme does make the blood quite red, but I don't know what it would look like with no heme. Would it be clear? I don't know, but a lot of our liquids in our bodies are clear, so maybe. The biodegradable plastic that decomposes completely in just one week, I don't buy that for a second. When exposed to sunlight and air, like what's the catch? It's like, it also melts the second it touches water, like it's not firm like plastic. I just, I do not buy that one. How, I wish that would be revolutionary. But also, a goldfish drove a car? Okay, here's the thing about this one. I have a very fun, but very weird friend who clicker-trained one of her fish to swim through a hoop. And it was a goldfish, and she claims it was very, very smart. I never quite believed her, but maybe, maybe a goldfish could drive a little goldfish car. I want that one to be science, so I'm gonna say plastic's the fiction.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay, Evan.<br />
<br />
<big>'''Evan's Response'''</big><br />
<br />
'''E:''' These all seem like fiction, don't they?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Mm-hmm.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's why you don't like this.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I don't like them.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I agree, I'm with Cara. I will go with Cara and say I don't like them either. Next. Oh, I mean, right. For kind of the same reasons, though. I mean, if you take the hemoglobin out of blood, are you left with something that's transparent? Aren't there other things in the blood that would make it at least opaque, right? Not transparent, though. I mean, what? Right, there's something else floating around there. It's so strange. So that would be the catch on that one, I think. And yes, there is a fifth ocean. It is called the Southern/Antarctic Ocean. The second one about the biodegradable plastic. My question about this one is why would you make this if it's gonna decompose in a week if you can't expose it to sun and air, which is kind of everywhere? So what's the practicality of this? Where would you use this? Underground, okay, where there's no sunlight. And in a non-air environment, what? Water for underneath, but then, I don't know. That's tricky. I mean, maybe they developed it, but it has no practical industrial use. And then the last one, okay, training a group. A group of goldfish would be a school of goldfish. They went to driving school, apparently, to drive this water-filled vehicle. On land, demonstrating their ability to navigate. So how does that work? They don't, that's not how to do it. So when we say drive, are we talking steer? I guess, it's only steer, it would be. So just directional, so.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yes, they have to be able to control which direction it's going in, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No, they use the clutch.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Well I mean, driving is a set of things more than steering, but it's steering something around, kind of.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And they have to go, brr brr.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Remember that video, that's hilarious. Ah! Shoot, all these are wrong, so I don't know. Cara and I are gonna sink or swim together on this one about the plastic, because I just don't see why that would be the case in any purpose.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay, Bob.<br />
<br />
<big>'''Bob's Response'''</big><br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, transparent blood, it seems somewhat plausible without the hemoglobin, that it would be kind of, I mean, I think it would be still kind of opaque, but I guess I could see it being somewhat transparent. The goldfish, the driving goldfish is just too awesome. I just wanna will that into existence. The plastic just seems silly, right? I mean, just like, oh boy, I took the bag out of the packaging, I've gotta use it quick or anything that's, if you forget about the bag and you put stuff in it and put the bag somewhere, and then next week it's gonna be gone, and then the contents are gonna spill. I don't know, it just seems a little goofy in some ways and just not very practical. And like, oh, how long has this bag been out? How much time do I have? It's only a day left. I don't know, it just seems a little silly and impractical, so I'll say that's fiction as well.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And Jay.<br />
<br />
<big>'''Jay's Response'''</big><br />
<br />
'''J:''' So they all are saying that it's the plastic.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's correct. That's what they are saying.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, no.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I would imagine that they didn't develop the plastic to specifically only last a week, that they were working on a biodegradable plastic and that's what they ended up, that this is something that they made. Doesn't necessarily mean-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, that seems reasonable, damn it.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, right? But the key thing here is that it's biodegradable, you know, like legitimately, which, I don't know. I mean, again I trust your guys' judgment as well. You know, the first one about the deep sea fish, it's very odd to think that there's transparent blood, but I have seen many pictures of like that fish you could see through its head and I don't remember seeing blood there, so I think that's science. And then the third one here about the goldfish driving a water field vehicle. I mean, that is so wacky that it's gotta be true. Damn. This is such a hard one, Steve. All right, I'm trying to think of the theme too. I don't see the theme. Okay, I'm gonna go with everybody else. How could I not? I mean, there's something wrong about that one week decomposition, decomposing plastic. Something's not right there.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Hidden Theme ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay, so anyone has a guess on the theme? It's very meta.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I don't like it.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Water.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's very meta. No. The theme is-<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Things in water.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Nope. This-<br />
<br />
'''J:''' The fish eat the plastic.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Science or fiction has been brought to you by Chat GPT.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Oh.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Ah, geez.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Which version?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Four. So I typed in first, are you familiar with the Skeptic's Guide to the Universe podcast? And it said, yes, I'm familiar, and it gave a pretty good description of our podcast.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It better be.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' One of the paragraphs reads, the Skeptic's Guide to the Universe is known for its approachable style, blending educational content with humor and informal discussions. It's aimed at a general audience and is designed to make science and skepticism accessible to people without a scientific background. That's a pretty good description of the show.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I love that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Then I said, can you design for me a science or fiction segment similar to what they have in the show every week? And it did. Now, I had to do it three times and select from among those three, not because they weren't good, but because they were things that we've talked about before. Can't use that one. Yeah, because we've talked about that recently. So I had to find ones that wouldn't be too obvious. And one of these, it gave us a fiction, but I found it's actually true.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Right, you had to double check everything.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #1 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I had to check everything. I couldn't trust it. All right, so let's take these in order. Number one, a recently discovered species of deep sea fish in the Antarctic Ocean has been found to have transparent blood due to a complete lack of hemoglobin. This one is science. So you guys are all safe so far. This is the oscillated ice fish. It's a family of fish. Lives in very cold waters off Antarctica.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Goes back and forth.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And it has transparent hemoglobin-free blood. This is the first, I think, in any vertebrate. And there are some species that have like yellow blood because they have very little hemoglobin, but this one is like fully transparent, zero hemoglobin. And they don't have some other molecule. They just have plasma.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Whoa.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' So plasma, yeah, plasma would be.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' How does that work, though?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, so they've adapted to basically just having oxygen dissolve in plasma and they make it work by, they have low metabolic rate, for example. But it also makes the blood less viscous, so it circulates much more vigorously, I guess. So that compensates for a little bit. They have larger gills, scaleless skin that can contribute more to gas exchange. So they have much more surface area to exchange gas.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Ew, wait. It's a fish with scaleless skin?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That is horrifying sounding.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Like one of those cats that has no fur?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' They have bigger capillaries and they have a large blood volume and cardiac output. So they have all these compensatory mechanisms for not having hemoglobin to bind a lot of oxygen and they make it work. Yeah, so that one is true. So let's go on.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #2 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Number two, researchers have developed a type of biodegradable plastic that decomposes completely in just one week when exposed to sunlight and air. You guys all think this one is the fiction and this one is science.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No, I led you astray. The goldfish.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Interestingly, this one, ChatGPT gave me as a fiction. So I looked it up. I'm like, dang, there it is. This is actually true. This is published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society in 2021. Yeah, they created a plastic that when exposed to air and sunlight will completely break down in one week, leaving no microplastics behind at all. It degrades into succinic acid, which is a small non-toxic molecule. So obviously it limits the applications because it can't be exposed to sunlight or air.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But if it took a year, it'd be great.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Right. So that one actually turned out to be true.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #3 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Which means that researchers have successfully trained a group of goldfish to drive a small water-filled vehicle on land, demonstrating their ability to navigate in a terrestrial environment and challenging long-held views on fish spatial awareness. Is the fiction.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Clearly.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' ChatGPT just made this one up at a whole cloth. Made it up.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Not fair.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Made which one up, Steve?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The goldfish one.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's not related to anything real?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, they just said this one, they said psychologists kind of do weird things, but not this. So they made this one up. That was it.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh my gosh. It was like plausibly awkward.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Israeli researchers say they have successfully taught a goldfish to drive a small robotic car.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Science.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' The team said the fish showed its ability to navigate toward a target in order to receive a food reward. For the experiment, the researchers built what they call the fish-operated vehicle, an FOV.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Can only drive in the FOV lane, though.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Jay, where are you reading that? Is that another ChatGPT?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I just searched. Here, hold on.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' What search?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' This is insane.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Oh yeah, you're right. I didn't see that.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Well, that's, I mean, I don't know if you wanna get, how technically you wanna get. The question was about a small, a group of goldfish as opposed to a fish.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, you'd have to look and see. There's probably a lot of things wrong in it, even if goldfish did drive a car, and what?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, but ChatGPT apparently is not good at making up fake ones, because it just keeps repurposing real news items.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Hmm. I wonder if it swears at people in traffic, like in fish language.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' This is so dumb.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Gives people the fin?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, the middle fin.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' So what does this mean?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Also, how does this work?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, I think this, science or fiction, is a ChatGPT mulligan.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Wow. So we're gonna have a no contest, a no score on it this week.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, no score from this week.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Has that ever happened before?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I don't think so.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I bet you it's still fiction.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' We're witnessing skeptic's guide history right now at this moment?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, I'll take it.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh my gosh, for the first time in approaching 19 full years.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Damn you, ChatGPT.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' And we have been failed by artificial intelligence at the highest level.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So ChatGPT failed at science or fiction.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Never again, yes. ChatGPT is zero.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' All right, well put it down as like, zero wins and one loss for the year.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' If this experiment has succeeded, I was gonna do this from now on, just have ChatGPT be science or fiction.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, yeah, of course.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' You can have the good ones and you just make up the fake one.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' This actually took me just as long because I had to do it multiple times, I had to check every one, you know?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' What you need is a program, Steve, that's optimized for performing the science or fiction function.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's right, I need a science or fiction GPT.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Narrow AI. AI to help you with this, Steve. Do you think someone out there could do that?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Probably.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' A listener on their spare time? Put in 5,000 hours of work.<br />
<br />
{{anchor|qow}} <!-- leave anchor(s) directly above the corresponding section that follows --><br />
<br />
== Skeptical Quote of the Week <small>(1:59:26)</small> ==<br />
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|text = Every great idea is a creative idea: The fact that you're using paint or you're using guitar strings or you're using equations, they're not really very different things. Getting that spirit into the education process … being curious about the world, that is a gift we would love to share.<br />
|author = {{w|Damian Kulash}}<br />
|lived = 1975-present<br />
|desc = American musician, best known for being the lead singer and guitarist of the American rock band {{w|OK Go}}<br />
}}<br />
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'''S:''' All right, Evan, give us a quote.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' "Every great idea is a creative idea. The fact that you're using paint or you're using guitar strings or you're using equations, they're not really very different things. Getting that spirit into the education process, being curious about the world, that is a gift we would love to share." Damien Kulash, lead singer of OK Go.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I love OK Go.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I love OK Go. I'm on a big OK Go kick lately.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' They're rock, but they're like very happy pop rock. I don't know how to describe it.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' They started out as kind of pop punk alternative and they they're treadmill videos.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' What country are they from?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' The United States.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' They're American. Not just the treadmill video, they did a parabolic space flight video.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' They did, yes.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' They shot an entire video in zero gravity. Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, it's amazing.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That video is amazing. It's an amazing accomplishment.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Watching the behind the scenes of it is even funnier.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yes, there's a whole documentary about it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, like one of the band members was like near, like he was just constantly vomiting or about to vomit. So the whole time he's like sitting down. One of them was scared out of his mind the whole time. It's amazing. It's so good.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' But this is, these artists, and I call them artists as much as they are musicians. They're visual artists, obviously, for what they do. They're so well known for their videos. But obviously they're also using a lot of engineering, a lot of science, a lot of math in the production of the videos. You know, they consult with a lot of people and teams of experts to come in and help them put these amazing ideas into the visual medium that is just so captivating. And the music's great too. So they're very pro-science and I love Damien Kulash and everyone at OK Go.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, well, thank you all for joining me this week.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Thanks Steve.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Thanks Steve.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Thank you Steve.<br />
<br />
== Signoff == <br />
'''S:''' —and until next week, this is your {{SGU}}. <!-- typically this is the last thing before the Outro --> <br />
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}}</div>Hearmepurrhttps://www.sgutranscripts.org/w/index.php?title=SGU_Episode_967&diff=19204SGU Episode 9672024-02-19T11:55:13Z<p>Hearmepurr: ups</p>
<hr />
<div>{{Editing required<br />
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|episodeIcon = File:967 Betavolt.jpg<br />
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|caption = China-based Betavolt New Energy Technology has successfully developed a nuclear energy battery, which integrates {{w| Isotopes of nickel|nickel-63}} nuclear isotope decay technology and China’s first diamond semiconductor module.&nbsp;<ref>[https://www.greencarcongress.com/2024/01/20240114-betavolt.html Green Car Congress: China-based Betavolt develops nuclear battery for commercial applications]</ref><br />
|bob =y<br />
|cara =y<br />
|jay =y<br />
|Evan =y<br />
|guest1 =RS: {{w| Robert Sapolsky}}, American neuroendocrinology researcher<br />
<br />
|qowText = Every great idea is a creative idea: The fact that you're using paint or you're using guitar strings or you're using equations, they're not really very different things. Getting that spirit into the education process … being curious about the world, that is a gift we would love to share.<br />
|qowAuthor = {{w| Damian Kulash}}, American musician<br />
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|forumLinktopic = 55304.0 <!-- now all you need to enter here is the #####.# from the TOPIC=#####.# at the end of the sguforums.org URL for the forum discussion page for this episode --><br />
|}}<br />
== Introduction, winter weather preparations ==<br />
''Voice-over: You're listening to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.''<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Hello and welcome to the {{SGU|link=y}}. Today is Wednesday, January 17<sup>th</sup>, 2024, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella... <br />
<br />
'''B:''' Hey, everybody!<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Cara Santa Maria... <br />
<br />
'''C:''' Howdy. <br />
<br />
'''S:''' Jay Novella... <br />
<br />
'''J:''' Hey guys. <br />
<br />
'''S:''' ...and Evan Bernstein. <br />
<br />
'''E:''' Good evening, everyone, or good morning, wherever you might be.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Good evening. How is everyone?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Good.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's late.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Doing good.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' My bronchitis is finally, basically gone. Just a little.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, that's good.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That crap.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Bronchitis.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That's forever.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I know. It only took months.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It was a hell of a gut workout, I'll tell you that much. My stomach muscles are way stronger now than they were.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, but coughing is not good for you. You know what I mean? It's not like you're, oh, yeah, I'm getting this coughing workout. Coughing is bad for your back. People who cough a lot get disc herniations and bad backs and back strain and everything. So, yeah, I hate it when I have a prolonged cough. I always get back pain when I have a prolonged cough.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Really?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Cara, you are in another continent.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It is true. It is also another continent. It's a funny way to put it. Yeah, I've been in Scotland for a week and a half. I think I'll be here another week. And so it is two in the morning. It was beautiful here, though. I've been spending a bit of time outside. We had a really, really nice snow yesterday and the day before, so it's quite white outside. How is it looking in the Northeast? I know there were horrible snowstorms all over the country.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' There were other parts of the country that got smacked super hard.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, we had some snow. Not horrible.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Usually, we're snowy here. But we had two light snowstorms.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It's definitely colder.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, it's cold here too.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, we're getting the remnants of the Arctic blast. What the, what do they call it?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Vortex or something? Yeah, I think it's pretty bad in parts of Canada.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' And the Midwest of the United States got it very badly.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But so far, I mean, it's early. There's nothing winter so far by New England standards.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' True.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You never know. February's really like, we can get hammered in February.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, boy.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I know it's gonna be cold and we're gonna get precipitation, but it always depends on the timing of those two things. Like, do we get the precipitation when it's cold or is it, do we get rain, you know what I mean? Because if it's all snow, it could be profound.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' But any time an ice storm happens by, that's dangerous. I mean, that is when the power goes out. That is when all the tree limbs come down. We've had some nightmare ice storms in prior years. Not very recently, but I can remember a few.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Tell me about it with the hard freeze. I've been talking to some of my friends who live up in the Pacific Northwest where they had freezing rain, I think, for two days, but not snow, up in Oregon. And trees are down all over the place. People don't have power. It's been pretty brutal up there just because of the heaviness of that ice on everything.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' And they tend to not get ice storms, if I recall correctly.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, yeah, never. Like, they're just, yeah, the whole city. You know how it is. Anytime a city gets hit by something that's not typical weather for that city, they just don't know what to do with it.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It freezes, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It breaks everything.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, yeah, I remember I was in Phoenix. They had, like, an inch of rain, and it paralyzed the city.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It happens every time it rains in LA. We don't know what to do.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Las Vegas has a similar problem.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And everybody's house floods. We're like, oh.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And I was in DC, and they had, like, a pretty mild snowfall from Connecticut standards, and the city was paralyzed. They just didn't have the infrastructure for it, you know? And, of course, with the kind of snowstorms that would paralyze Connecticut, Canadians are like, you lowlanders, you know?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' We get 10 feet, and Toronto's like, big deal.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' We've actually we've been talking a lot out here in Scotland about the fact that they ice, or, sorry, that they salt the roads here, and it's quite destructive on the cars. Like, it's really, really corrosive, and probably cause millions of pounds of damage every year to the cars that are having to constantly clean this ice off of their. Undercarriage, yeah, and the engine damage and stuff. And we've been really talking about, like, why do they use salt?<br />
<br />
'''J''' It's totally inexpensive.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But sand.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Up to a temperature, it works, right?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Sand is cheaper, and it's not quite as efficient, but it's still efficient.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It has to do with the temperature, though.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It causes a lot less damage.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Sand has to be cleaned up, though. Like, salt just goes into the water.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Sand can just go into the dirt.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Plus, the melting effect of salt is pretty dramatic, isn't it?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, sand has no de-icing effect. That just temporarily adds friction to the road, whereas the ice, or de-icing chemicals, as they call them, actually melt the ice. But it depends on how much there is and what the temperature is. So there are some situations where the de-icing chemicals won't work, and you gotta use sand. But again, it's only, like, adding temporary friction. And they all have different environmental effects, so that there's no perfect solution.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It is superior. But the question would be, do we really need a superior melting effect if you have so much sort of negative side effects?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' They don't always use salt. They use sand sometimes, too.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I think out here, they only use salt, and it's quite infuriating to the people.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, you have to have the undercarriage of your car coated against that.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' They do. They do, but you still have to constantly clean it out. And it's just, yeah, it's pretty bad. Anyway.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I've never cleaned the bottom of my car.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Go to a car wash?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' If you go to a car wash, they will drive it through. It has an undercarriage.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's why you go to a car wash.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' They still have those?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Car washes? Last time I checked.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' They do. They're quite nice.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' They don't exist. They went the way of drive-in movies.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Drive-in movies, soda fountain counters, and pinball machines. They're all gone.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I went to a drive-in movie not that long ago. There's still a couple of them around. They're definitely very retro.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, that became kind of a thing again during COVID.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, I remember that.<br />
<br />
== News Items ==<br />
<br />
{{anchor|news#}} <!-- leave news items anchors directly above the news item section that follows each anchor --><br />
=== Betavolt 50-Year Battery <small>(6:28)</small> ===<br />
{{shownotes<br />
|weblink = https://theness.com/neurologicablog/betavoltaic-batteries/<!-- must begin with http:// --><br />
|article_title = Betavoltaic Batteries<!-- please replace ALL CAPS with Title Case or Sentence case --><br />
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'''S:''' All right, Bob, you're going to get us started with a talk. There's been a lot of discussion about this. This is really catching a lot of people's imagination, not in a very scientific way often. But tell us about this 50-year battery. What's going on?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah. Chinese firm called Betavolt Technology claims it's created a new nuclear battery that can power devices for 50 years. There's a lot of silly clickbait surrounding this stuff. Here's one press release from the Business Standard. Their article was titled, China Develops Radioactive Battery to Keep Your Phone Charged for 50 Years. Like, ah.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Sure they did.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh my God. Such annoying clickbait. Now, nuclear batteries, though, are fascinating. They are distinct, of course, from everyday electrochemical batteries that we use all the time, from AA's to the lithium-ion batteries in our phones and EVs. Nuclear batteries are also called atomic batteries, which I kind of like, or probably more accurately, radioisotope generators.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Didn't Batman's vehicle have atomic batteries or something?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yes. Yes.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh my gosh.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' And they essentially take nuclear energy and convert it to electricity at its most, top of the onion layer there. One layer down, more specifically, it takes the byproducts of the decay of radioactive particles and converts that into electricity. So are these batteries? You know, yes and no, in my mind. Nuclear batteries are atomic batteries. They can power devices for sure. So in that sense, they are batteries. But they do not recharge, and they don't turn off. The nuclear batteries do not turn off. So for those reasons, and especially the not-turning-off one, they are often referred to as generators. But hey, it's language. Many people use the word battery for them, and so that's fine. Atomic batteries are generally classified by how they convert the energy. And it kind of boils down to either they take advantage of large temperature differences, or they don't. The former, these are thermal-based atomic batteries. And they have one side of the device is very hot from the radioactive decay, and the other side is cold. And that's the key there, that differential. So using thermocouples, that temperature gradient can be used to take advantage of the Seebeck effect, look it up, to generate electricity. That's basically how it works. Now, the iconic, classic atomic battery that does this is an RTG, radioisotope thermoelectric generator. There's that generator word. These devices go back to the 50s and 60s. And I think the principle was proved, I think it was like 1913. So it goes back to the 50s and 60s. The most advanced devices today can generate tens of watts, up to 110 watts, for NASA's top-of-the-line RTG. And they can supply power literally for years and years and years. RTGs are heavy. They're big devices compared to our portable batteries. But they are amazing for remote locations and places with poor sunlight. The Voyager probes, more than 15 billion kilometers from the Earth and the sun, are powered by RTGs. Mars Rovers, too, and countless other systems and platforms and probes, NASA and our knowledge of the solar system would be greatly diminished if it did not have access to these wonderful devices. But if you want really small, portable atomic batteries, though, you then want this non-thermal kind. These extract energy from the emitted particles themselves, kind of like before it degrades into heat, directly tapping into and using the particles. The semiconductors in these devices use these particles to create a voltage. And typically, these types of batteries have efficiencies, from 1% to even up to 9%. And they go by various names depending on the emitted particles that they are using. So they're called alpha voltaics if it converts alpha particle radiation, which is essentially just two neutrons and two protons. It's called gamma photovoltaics if it converts energetic photons like gamma rays. The real standout, though, of this type of atomic battery is called beta voltaics. This converts emitted electrons or positrons to electricity. And it's popular because beta decay can more easily be converted into usable electrical power, much more so than alpha particles or photons. Beta voltaics are not theoretical. These are being used right now, right now, in countless sensors and other devices that require very low power for very long periods of time. Did you know that they were used as pacemakers in the 70s? People literally had them in their bodies for decades with no ill effects. They are very safe. These are known things and they can be very useful. So that's why this Beijing startup company calls itself BetaVolt. They're taking advantage of beta voltaics and their new atomic battery is based on that. The battery itself is called BV100. It's coin-sized, about 15 by 15 by 5 millimeters. And there's a decent amount going on inside that coin. It has layers of radioactive nickel-63 in between layers of diamond semiconductors. Nickel-63 has a half-life of 100 years, which means in 100 years it'll be emitting essentially half the particles it does initially as it decays into harmless copper. Now, so saying this battery can last 50 years, I think that's reasonable, if it's got a half-life of 100 years. After 50 years, it'll be still, what, 75% as effective?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, it's not linear, but close.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' So it's still, it's a good rule of thumb to say, yeah, 50 years, you could say it'll last 50 years and perform well. So, and it's safe. These are safe. It needs minimal shielding. Sure, you'd have to inhale it if you're gonna get concerned that that will do it. You would be concerned if you inhaled it. And I wouldn't want it to leak on my skin, but no more so than I would want a AA battery to leak on my skin, you know? So it's not like this, it's radioactive, no! It's pretty damn safe. So can this get 110 watts output like the best RTG? No. No, not even close. This battery generates three volts, but only 100 microwatts. That's 100 millionths of a watt. A microwatt is a millionth of a watt. That's tiny. You would need, what, Steve? 30,000 of them to power a typical smartphone. That's really low. So let's look at 100 microwatts another way. Let's look at how many amps that is. So, all right, we got an equation here. Power in the form of watts equals voltage times current or amps, right? W equals V times A. We know the power in watts and we know the volts, so you calculate the amps. That's .000333 amps. Now an amp, amps indicates how many electrons per second pass through a point in a circuit. So .0000333 amps, super low. You know, you're not gonna be powering something big and power hungry with something like this at all. So clearly, these batteries are not meant for power hungry devices, as are all beta voltaics are not meant for that. And that's okay, because power density is not the strength of these batteries. Now power density is the rate that it can output the power for a given size. And as I've shown, it's super tiny for one of these batteries. Very low power density, but they do have energy density. That's the total energy per unit mass. In fact, nuclear batteries have 10,000 times approximately, 10,000 times the energy density of a chemical battery. That's a huge 10,000 times, that's huge. But that's spread over the lifetime of the battery, which could be years or decades or even centuries. But that's where these batteries shine. They can last for ridiculously long periods of time. Now the significance of this battery seems to me to be it's a miniaturization and not the power density that everyone no one seems to be focusing on any of the miniaturization advances that they may have made. You know, there's not too many details on that either. They also claim that these can be chained together and connected in a series. So I think we'll have to see that to happen because it looks like I'm looking at some translated article here and they claim that they can get up to multiple watts if you chain them together. I don't, I'm not seeing that anywhere else. I'd have to see that. But the real important thing here is they claim they're shooting for a one watt version of this battery by 2025. Next year, one watt.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Bullshit, it's not gonna happen.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It's not. That's an incredible improvement that no betavoltaics has ever come near. And so Steve and I apparently are very, very skeptical of that. Now, if you can connect-<br />
<br />
'''E:''' You'll not be investing, I guess, is what you're saying.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, I mean, if you can connect their batteries together as they claim and they also create if they can create a one watt version, then we would be in some interesting territory. But I don't believe that. I will wait, I'll have to wait to see if they even come close to doing that. I don't think they're gonna do that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Bob when I wrote about it, I did my calculation, like theoretically, how, what could you get to? So given a betavoltaic battery of the same size, let's say you maximize efficiency, that gives you one order of magnitude, maybe, right? So you still have two orders of magnitude to go to get to one watt. And the, I think, buried in the article about it, they say that they're looking to produce this one watt version. And they're also looking to produce versions that have a half-life of two years or one year. It's like, yeah, those two things are related. The only way you're gonna pick up another order of magnitude is if you go from a hundred year half-life to a one year half-life. But then you don't have a 50 year battery anymore. You got a one year battery.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' You can't have it both ways.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Which is still interesting.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' But you've also got a more radioactive and more expensive battery on hand, right?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Using a different isotope with a shorter half-life.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Exactly.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But even assuming they could shield it and make it safe and pick up all that radiation and everything, that's fine. It's just, you don't get a 50 year battery with that kind of power output in that kind of size. It simply does not work. The physics does not add up.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So I think it's, there's no way around the fact that this is gonna remain a niche technology for very low power devices.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, yeah. I don't see it really breaking out of that characterization. You know, and other companies have tried to go commercial with beta voltaics. Steve and I were excited about nano diamond battery a few years ago. That's the one that used radioactive waste from nuclear power plants encased in diamond that could run for millennia. I think they were saying 20,000 years. So I looked them up recently and they were charged with defrauding their investors. Right, and there's been other, and there was another company that was trying to commercialize beta voltaics. And they, if you go to their website anymore, you don't find it. Their website's like gone. So it's just like we've seen this before and we're kind of seeing it again.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, this is a pitch for more money.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, partly, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, so, but what will we see in the future of beta voltaics? I mean, I love the idea of using them to trickle charge batteries. I think that's promising. And that would be useful for things potentially, like for EVs that are mostly idle. And you could just have it trickle charge at night in over 10, 12 hours. Like, oh boy, we got got a little juice out of this that you didn't have to plug it in for. And I love though, that when it comes to the worst case scenario, like you've got a dead battery, but if you had this trickle charge idea, you know, you wait a little bit. I'm not sure how long you'd have to wait to get a reasonable charge.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But at least you wouldn't be dead in the water.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Right, you're not dead in the water. And "eventually" you'd be able to just drive home. And of course, of course, trickle charging would be awesome in the apocalypse. Obviously. Now in the future, then when the zombies are roaming the countryside and you could say like Robin in the Batmobile, right Evan? Atomic batteries to power, you could say that. And then of course you'll have to wait a while for your beta voltaic atomic battery to slowly trickle charge your zombie resistant EV. And then you're going, then you're good. So maybe we'll see that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I think it'd be more than like for an electric vehicle, it's just, I think it's too little electricity. But for, you don't wanna drag around an atomic battery, that would be big enough to produce enough electricity that it would matter. But for your cell phone, you can, if you had even one that was producing again, like a 10th of a watt, let's say, or even a 100th of a watt, but it could extend the duration that you could go without charging your battery significantly, right? Because you're not using your phone all the time. It is idling most of the time. So let's say like you're going on a trip and you're gonna be away from chargers for three or four days. This could extend the life of your phone battery that long. I just say by trickle charging it 24 seven, whether when you're using it or not using it, or again, if you are in an emergency situation, you're never dead in the water. You always have a little juice. You just have to wait some time.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, if I were going out in nature for days on end, first off, I wouldn't do that. Secondly, I would bring a little solar panel with me.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Then it's overcast. No, but you're right, you're right. But yeah, but that's what they're finding with a lot of the deep space probes that relying upon aligning those panels with the sun is not a great thing. And nuclear batteries are really good. The European Space Agency, who previously said no nuclear batteries were gonna do all solar, they're like, maybe we should, maybe we gotta relent. So they reversed themselves because-<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Do you know why they reversed themselves?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Because they had a big fail.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' They sent a probe onto a comet. Their probe landed on the comet and then bounced into the shade. And then because it was in the shade, its batteries, which were solar-based, died in three days. So here's millions of dollars sitting in the shade, unusable, bricked, because they didn't have an atomic battery. So that story just cracks me up. So now they're like, okay, yeah, we're gonna do atomic batteries now. They were famously against them. Now they aren't, which was a funny story.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So like a lot of technologies, the technology is what it is, and a lot of it depends on being clever and being creative about how to implement it. Like what is the use where it's gonna be valuable? It's not gonna be like big drones that fly forever and all the crap that the press is saying about it. That's never gonna happen. But as a trickle charger or for super low-energy devices, this technology could be really, really helpful.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, yeah. The allure of a battery that can last for years, a conventional portable battery that can last for years, this is so high that people are just kind of like losing their shit over this and trying to extrapolate away from the science. For me, it's not so much beta voltaics, but for me, it's the RTGs. I wanna have these like chained, connected RTGs buried in my backyard that could power my entire house for decades. That's what I'm looking for.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, but the final point is like for your phone, like for trickle charging your phone, you don't want a 50-year battery in your phone. Your phone's only gonna last two or three years. You want a two or three-year battery, right? You want it to last as long as the phone.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That would be epic.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, then you don't need, you know.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, but it gets you more power. It gives you more power over the shorter period of time, over the lifetime of that phone. So there is a niche in there that could actually be very, very functional if the price works out, right? Would you add another 50 bucks to your phone to have something, an alternate source of power, a backup source of power and extend? Like now you only have to recharge it once every three days or four days instead of every night.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Well, those products exist, Steve. I mean, I have a battery that's a magnet battery that attaches to my phone, right? It's very easy to just put it there. It stays there. And it gives me like another half a day of juice if I need it. It's very, very convenient. And it fits in your pocket and everything. It's very easy. So, I mean, there are products out there like that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, I know. This would be another option. There would definitely be advantages to it because it's just there. It's producing energy all the time. But it's not, but the hype was ridiculous.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh yeah, it was silly.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Silly, silly.<br />
<br />
=== Moon Landing Delayed <small>(23:38)</small> ===<br />
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'''S:''' All right, Jay. I understand that the Artemis program is going swimmingly. Give us an update.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oops.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Don't be look, we expected this, right?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Unfortunately.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So NASA's Artemis program, give you a quick refresher. It's aimed at returning humans to the moon. It's also very heavily, big part of this mission is that we are paving the way for future Mars missions. You know, we need to develop a lot of technology that's gonna allow us to get there, but they have been facing significant challenges that have led them to reschedule some of these timelines, which this information came out about a week ago. So the Artemis 2 mission, right? Artemis 1 successfully launched. It went around the moon, did everything that we wanted it to. We got a ton of data off of that mission, but now we move on to Artemis 2. Now, originally, if we go way back, it was originally slated to be, as you know, the first crewed test flight of the Orion spacecraft, but it's been delayed many times. Not, this isn't like the first delay or even the second delay. The first launch dates were said that they wanted to launch between 2019 and 2021. Now keep in mind, Artemis 2, not 1. Artemis 2, 2019, 2021. Then it was moved to 2023 and then November, 2024. And now they moved it to September, 2025. They are saying no earlier than that, which kind of implies it could be later, right?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's for Artemis 2.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That's Artemis 2.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, so one of my predictions has already failed.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh no.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That's all right, Steve. Oh no, somebody die. So the delays are due largely to crew safety concerns. So let me get into some of the details here. NASA is always, they're just continuously conducting testing of critical systems, environmental control, life support. And they have found during their testing, they've found problems that include battery issues with the Orion spacecraft regarding abort scenarios. There's also a, there are challenges with the air ventilation and temperature control circuitry components, which these are all mission critical components. And bottom line here is, of course, it's good to know NASA is taking all these precautions. They're taking it very seriously. You know, this isn't like a let's launch it and test it and see how it goes. Like they fully plan on bringing every single astronaut back to earth. So they are trying to resolve all of these issues, but it sucks to wait longer, but you know, we're just a consumer here, right? Like I'm looking at this like, come on, launch it. I want to see it. I want to be a part of all that. But yeah, ultimately we want it to be successful. We want the people to come back. So of course, any delays with Artemis 2 means that it'll impact the launch dates of the Artemis 3 mission, which has now been pushed for 2026. This delay allows NASA to give them time. They don't want to like do Artemis 2 and then immediately do Artemis 3. They want time to make a lot of alterations and incorporate lessons that they learned from Artemis 2 so they can make Artemis 3 better, right? You know, hey, we had a problem with this thing and that thing, like they want to fix all of those things. But there's also problems with the partners that NASA is working with to develop, that are developing their own technologies. So there's a couple of names here you'll definitely recognize. SpaceX, as a good example, they're responsible for the human landing system. You know, they have to demonstrate that their starship can successfully dock. It also needs to be able to refuel with other tanker starships in orbit. These are not easy things to do at all. And this capability is essential for transporting astronauts beyond Earth's orbit. Getting the ship refueled and being able to do what it needs to do in and around the moon is going to be something that could take place frequently. And these tasks, like I said, are challenging and straight up, they're just not ready yet. They don't have the technology. And I'm sure that the timelines and the dates that they're giving, everything is a, we hope that it's this, but it's never like it will be done on this date. Like they're not, that's not where they're operating. They don't work that way. Axiom Space, you might remember, they're making the next generation spacesuits. No, they still need to solve some heavy duty requirements that NASA put on them. Like one of the big ones is that the spacesuit itself, standalone, needs to have an emergency oxygen supply system. So this will enable the spacesuit to supply oxygen for an hour with no attached gear, right? Just the spacesuit itself has an hour of air in it. So they're also having supply chain issues, which I was a little surprised to hear, but they're having problems getting materials that they need to make the spacesuits. And they also have, they're working with outdated components that need to meet the latest NASA requirements. I couldn't get any more details about these components. Like I don't, I suspect that they may have been borrowing from earlier spacesuits, certain systems and things like that. But NASA has been ramping up their requirements and they're having a hard time meeting it. Now, this means that they're likely to have to redesign parts of the current design that we've already seen. And this issue with the supply chain is definitely impacting the development of the spacesuit components. So lots of moving parts here. Now, NASA is also dealing with its own financial issues. They haven't presented an official cost estimate for Artemis III. And there is a group in the government whose job it is to get this information, right? And they need to give it and it needs to be assessed and it takes time. Now, keep in mind, the Artemis program is not just about returning to the moon, but it's also laying the groundwork for human exploration to Mars. So there's a lot of complexity here and there's a lot of weight on every single thing that they do. And these price tags the costs are phenomenally high. The Artemis missions, they include development and integration of a lot of different systems here. You know, think of it this way. We have the Space Launch System, the SLS rocket. That alone is very complicated because there's lots of different versions of that rocket that they're gonna be custom building for each and every mission. Then they have the Exploration Ground System. They have the Orion spacecraft itself. They have the Human Landing System. They have the Next Generation Spacesuits. They have the Gateway Lunar Space Station and all of the future rovers and equipment, scientific equipment that needs to go. Like there is a mountain of things that have not been created yet that need to be designed and crafted and deployed. So it's exciting because there's a lot of awesome stuff ahead of us. And I'm not surprised that they're pushing the dates out, but man, it's disappointing because I thought something incredible was gonna happen this year.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, it's unfortunate, but you know, they're just going back to the timeline that they originally had. You know, they were pressured to move up the timeline. Right, was it 2026 or 2028?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' 2028.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, 2028 originally, yeah. So even if they push back to 2026, they're still two years ahead of their original schedule. And that was really just for political reasons that that was moved up.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Before we switch off to space topic, let me give you guys a quick update on the Peregrine Moon Lander. Remember last week we talked about this. Okay, so real quick summary. This Moon Lander was developed by a company called Astrobotic. Seven hours into the mission, they became aware of a fuel leak that was changing the telemetry of the ship. Bob was very concerned. They didn't know what to do. They didn't really understand what was going on. And then everyone dove in. They started to really figure out what was happening. So the planned lunar landing had to be canceled because they just weren't gonna be able to position the ship and get the engines to do what they needed them to do that would enable it to land. So the ship basically goes out approximately the distance of the Moon, right? 183,000 miles or 294 kilometers. It gets out there. Then it gets pulled back to Earth. It didn't, the Lander didn't actually transit or orbit the Moon. So I didn't see its flight path, and I'd like to see it because I'm not crystal clear on what it was, but it did get pulled back by the Earth. And they have currently set it on a trajectory back to Earth where they fully expect it to completely disintegrate upon reentry. This is gonna happen on January 18th. So as you listen to this, it'll have been, it happened a few days ago. You know, Peregrine was part of NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Service Program, and that's it. It's gonna come back, all this stuff on there, the human remains, the messages from Japan, a few weird things that are on there. It's all gonna get burned up in the atmosphere. So it's sad, it's sad, but it happens. And we learn from these things. And again, this is a perfect example of why NASA, when people are involved, meaning like we're sending people into outer space, they don't have failures like this, right? Like they won't stand for failures like this. Everything has to be massively tested. So we gotta wait a little longer, guys.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yep.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' None of it's canceled, which is fantastic.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, thanks, Jay.<br />
<br />
=== Cloned Monkeys for Research <small>(32:57)</small> ===<br />
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'''S:''' Cara, tell us about these cloned monkeys.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, so some of you may have seen there's quite a lot of trending articles right now that are based on a new study that was just published in Nature Communications. I'm gonna read the title of the study. It's a bit techie. Reprogramming Mechanism Dissection and Trophoblast Replacement Application in Monkey Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer. So based on that title, you may not know, but what Chinese researchers have done or what they claim is now happening is that they now have the longest lasting cloned monkeys, cloned primates, really. There's a monkey, he is a rhesus monkey named Retro. And my guess, even though it doesn't say it in any of the coverage that I read, my guess is that the name Retro, because they capitalize the T in Retro, comes from reprogrammed trophoblast. I think that's where they got his name, Retro. And so really what this story is about is a new technique for trying to clone primates that works a teeny tiny bit better than previous techniques. And the big sort of payoff here is this monkey is now coming on three years old. So you may ask, haven't we been cloning animals for a while?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Dolly the sheep, right?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Dolly the sheep, right. So this is the same technique. I should say it's the same general technique with some really important changes as Dolly the sheep. So Dolly the sheep lived for six and a half years after she was cloned. Mice, rabbits, dogs, goats, pigs, cows, lots of different mammals have been cloned over the years. Even other monkeys have been cloned over the years, but the difference is that they've been incredibly short-lived. So generally speaking, when we talk about cloning mammals specifically, it's super hard to do. About one to 3% of clones result in live birth. It's a very, very low percentage. So as it is, it's hard just to get viable embryos when cloning mammals. And then even if you get a viable embryo, it's hard to have a live birth. There were some monkeys in 1998 who I think were the most long-lived or the most kind of the biggest success story as of that point, but I still think that they only lived for a few months. And so Retro coming up on three years is sort of being hailed as a triumph by the media, but let's talk about what the difference was here. So all of these animals that I'm describing here have been cloned using a very specific technique. And that technique is called somatic cell nuclear transfer. In simple terms, as we know, we talk about the difference between somatic and germ cells. Somatic cells are like body cells, right? Everything but eggs and sperm. So a somatic cell is actually put into, so you're transferring the nucleus from a donor cell, but a somatic donor cell, like a skin, let's say like a skin cell into an egg cell. And then that donor DNA, which is now kind of closed up in the egg is sort of programmed to start developing embryonically. So here's one thing that I think is an important point here that not a lot of coverage that I'm seeing makes. These are still embryonic clones. None of these are clones that are coming from an adult organism. So when you start to see kind of the fear-mongering coverage around, does this mean we can clone humans? Does this mean we can clone humans? First of all, nobody has successfully been cloning mammals from adult cells. Does that make sense? Almost all of them are pulled from embryonic cells and some of them are even just pulled from split embryonic cells. So even though technically you could call it a clone, it's like a twin, if that makes sense. But this specific approach that's been used, which all of these, like I said, have been this thing, somatic cell nuclear transfer is where we run into some hiccups. So what ends up happening is that the cells of that embryos trophoblast layer, which is sort of the outermost layer that provides a lot of nutrients and also actually forms a big chunk of the placenta after it's implanted are very problematic in almost every case. And scientists think that this is because of epigenetic factors. So there are these markers that are present, right? That turn genes on or off. So it's not changing the actual genes that are there, but it's changing their expression, whether they turn on or off. When you put this cell, this clone cell into an empty egg, the egg kind of DNA or the epigenes, the epigenetic factors within that egg affect the DNA of the implanted embryo and all sorts of havoc is wreaked. And really scientists hadn't been able to figure out how to get these embryos to become viable. They're usually all sorts of terrible mutations. They often don't even make it to live birth. And if they do make it to live birth, they often die within hours, days, weeks, or in very lucky cases, months. And so what the scientists did in this case, and this is sort of the new bit, is a trophoblast replacement. So they inject that inner cell mass from the cloned embryo into a non-cloned embryo. So the embryo cell mass is going inside of a non-cloned embryo that they made through in vitro fertilization. So they're basically forming like a hybrid embryo and the trophoblast portion belongs to the non-clone, which seems to be less likely to kick in all of these epigenetic factors that seem to be harmful to the developing embryo. And so the scientists are claiming that this is like rescuing the development of the embryos. But to be fair, we're still talking about an attempt of like hundreds of potential cloned embryos and only still like a handful of them sticking and then only one of them actually being successful. So it's not like this case is any more efficient. It's not like this specific kind of success story with Retro, the first ever rhesus monkey that's lived for longer than a day. And actually he's coming up on like three years. It's not like their approach made a bunch of them. It's they still only, it was very scattershot and they only got one successful outcome. It's just that their successful outcome has been more successful than any other primate in the past. And so the argument that the Chinese scientists are making here is, if we can do this more, this could be very, very good for biomedical research. Because like we do all the time with cloned mice, you can give a drug to one clone and a different drug or no drug or placebo to the other clone. And you can see exactly how well it works because they have the exact same DNA.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So it's a good way to control for variables.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yes, it reduces all sorts of variability. But of course, this is an ethical conundrum. And a lot of people are saying like, should we be doing this to monkeys? Should we be doing this to primates at all? And look at how many failures we have before we have a success. And look at how much suffering is happening to these animals until we get to that point. And is it going to, like, what is the payoff and how much is it going to improve our biomedical science, our pharmaceutical science? Is the sort of return worth the risk? That's another question. Now, this is perfectly legal in China. So the way that they're approaching this, it's passed all their review boards and it's a perfectly legal practice, unlike some of the historical stories that we've talked about. Do you remember when we talked about the CRISPR, the rogue CRISPR story?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Oh, yeah, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Like that was not legal.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' The Raelians.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' This is. But I think some people are saying, wait, if they were able to do this with the rhesus monkey, are they going to clone humans next? No, we're nowhere close to that. A, because we can't clone adult cells at all. These are still embryonic cells. And B, it's still hard as shit. It's no easier and it's no more efficient to clone this. It was no easier or no more efficient to clone this rhesus monkey than any of the attempts in the past. It's just that this one hiccup, it was surmounted in this case. Can it be surmounted again though? I don't know. Was it lucky that they happened to get this one just right? I guess we will see.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We'll see, yeah. I mean, it seems like a good incremental advance.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It does.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, and which is, again, that's par for the course, right, for science, right? Breakthroughs are rare, incremental advances are the rule. And this is, it seems like a solid one. But I still want to know, when can I make a clone of myself so I can harvest its organs? <br />
<br />
'''C:''' Nowhere close. Yeah, it's going to be a long time. The funny thing though, which I did discover in doing this research, is that there's a Korean company that has made 1,500 dog clones at this point.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, how long do they live?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Like, they're long-lived. Apparently, they're perfectly healthy dogs. And so it's pretty interesting that just, okay, it's way harder to clone mammals, but some mammal species are easier to clone than others.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, well, thanks, Cara. This is definitely a technology that we'd want to keep an eye on.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And actually, I will add to this, and I think this is important. One of the arguments is that this could also have implications for conventional IVF. Because sometimes you do see this trophoblast problem even in conventional IVF. And so this could be at least a new way to look at improving outcomes in conventional IVF for people. So there's that.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' So not that acupuncture I talked about last week.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Probably, yeah. Probably this would be more helpful to researchers. Yeah, I think so.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, thanks, Cara.<br />
<br />
=== Converting {{co2}} into Carbon Nanofibers <small>(44:23)</small> ===<br />
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'''S:''' So I'm going to do another news item that's a little bit also of hype, more than reality. The headline is, scientists develop a process for converting atmospheric CO2 into carbon nanofibers.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Ooh.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Ooh, that sounds-<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Solves two problems at once, right?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Exactly, right? It sounds really, really good. But let's dig into it a little bit. So obviously, carbon capture is something that we're looking into. Researchers are studying various ways of either taking CO2 directly out of the air or capturing it at the source, near coal fire plants or natural gas fire plants or whatever. And then putting that CO2, taking the carbon out of it and getting it into a form that is solid, right? So that it could be buried or utilized in some way, but it would be permanently, or at least for on the order of magnitude of 50 or 100 years, giving us enough time to sort out this whole green energy thing, ully convert over to low carbon economy and energy infrastructure. If we could bind up that carbon for 50 or 100 years, that could go a long way to mitigating climate change. And the experts who have crunched all the numbers said, we're not going to get to our goals without some kind of carbon capture along the way. Although they're mainly figuring like after 2050, like between now and 2050, we really need to focus on reducing our carbon footprint. And then after that, that we, carbon capture has to really start kicking in to some serious degree to turn that line back down again, you know? So is this kind of technology going to be the pathway? Now, carbon nanotubes or carbon nanofibers are a great solid form of carbon to turn atmospheric CO2 into because we've talked about carbon nanofibers. You know, this is a two-dimensional material. They have a lot of interesting physical properties. You know, they're very, very strong and they're highly conductive, highly both thermally and electrically, et cetera. And even if you just make very, very short nanofibers, so they're not long cables of it, but just very, very tiny ones, it could, it's still a great filler, right? You could still like, for example, you can add it to cement to make it much stronger. And that would be a good way to bind it up. You know, just imagine if all the cement were laying around the world, it had billions of tons of carbon in it. That was then now long-term sequestered. So that would be, that's like one of the most obvious sort of uses of this kind of carbon nanofibers. So what's the innovation here? So essentially they said, well, one of our innovations is we broke it down into a two-step process, right? We didn't want to try to get all the way from carbon dioxide to carbon nanotubes, carbon nanofibers in one step. So we broke it down into two steps. The first step is to turn carbon dioxide and water into carbon monoxide and hydrogen. And when I read that, I'm like, oh, you mean like we've been doing for years, right? I mean, that's not anything that's new. And that's kind of always the first step, you know what I mean? Because the problem with carbon dioxide is that it's a very low energy, very stable molecule, right? So it takes energy to convert it into anything else. Carbon monoxide and H2-hydrogen, are very high energy molecules. They are good feeders for lots of industrial chemical reactions, right? If you have hydrogen, you can do tons of stuff with that. We've spoken about this quite a bit. And if you have carbon monoxide, you can make all kinds of carbon-based molecules out of it. These are good, highly reactive, high energy molecules. So yeah, that's the key, is getting from CO2 to CO and H2, that's always the tough part. And they're basically saying, so we're gonna do that using basically existing methods. It's like, okay, so there's no innovation in the hard part. The real, right? It's like, okay, that's old news. The real new bit is that they develop a catalytic process to go from carbon monoxide to carbon nanofibers. It's like, okay, that's interesting. You know, that sounds reasonable. So they basically proved that they could do that. You know, they use cobalt as a catalyst, and which isn't great because cobalt is one of those elements that are sourced from parts of the world that are not stable. And we're trying to reduce our reliance on cobalt. And so developing a process that uses more cobalt, not great. It's an iron-cobalt system that they're using. Now it's gonna come down to two things, right? So they did a proof of concept. You could break this down to a two-step process where you go from carbon dioxide to carbon monoxide, and then carbon monoxide to carbon nanotubes. It works, but two questions, or actually, there's three questions. One is, can you do it on an industrial scale? Because unless you could do billions of tons of this stuff, it's not gonna matter, right? Second is, how cost-effective is it? And third is, how energy-effective is it, right? So if you have to burn a lot of energy to do the process, then it doesn't really get you anywhere.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Don't do it, right.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So they do say that the processes work at relatively low temperature and at atmospheric pressure, at ambient pressure. That's good. So that's a good sign that this has the potential to be energy-efficient. And then they also say, and this is always that gratuitous thing, if you fuel it, right? If you fuel this process with renewable energy, it could be carbon-neutral. Of course, if anything you fuel with renewable energy, it's gonna be carbon-neutral.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's like part of this healthy breakfast, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Right, part of this healthy breakfast. But fair enough. So you could theoretically power this with solar panels or wind turbines or nuclear power, which is what you'd have to do. You'd need some massive energy source. But again, in the short term, if we're gonna build a renewable energy source, you're gonna reuse that to replace fossil fuel energy sources. You're not gonna use it to capture the carbon from the fossil fuel, because that's adding another step and that's inefficient. So this kind of process isn't, and this is what I was saying at the beginning, it's not gonna be relevant until after we decarbonize the energy infrastructure, right? Only once you've replaced all the fossil fuel with carbon-neutral energy sources, does it then make sense to add even more carbon-neutral energy sources in order to pull some of the carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere that you've already released, right? Until then, if you build a nuclear power plant, for example, just connect it to the grid. Don't use it to pull carbon out of the air that you put in by burning coal, right? Shut down the coal plant and power the grid with the nuclear power. But there's a sort of a good news to that fact is that we don't have to really perfect this technology for 30 years. This is the kind of thing that we need to have ready to go in 2050. Like if we get to 2050 and we've mostly decarbonized our energy infrastructure and some more industrial energy structure, that's what we really need to start ramping up carbon capture. And that's when these kinds of technologies are gonna be useful. So we do have a couple of decades to perfect it. So it's good that we're at the proof of concept stage now because it could take 20 years to get to the industrial stage where we're doing it. But it is-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Is it possible or reasonable that it would scale up like that?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, again, that's a big question mark. And we've been here a hundred times where something looks great at the proof of concept stage and then we never hear about it again because it just failed to scale, right? It wasn't the kind of thing that you could scale up. And with carbon capture, that is one of the big hurdles. Does it scale? Can you get this to function at industrial, massive industrial scales? Because it's not worth it if you can't. And then the other thing, again, is how energy efficient is it? Because if it's energy inefficient and then it becomes part of the problem, right? It's not helping. It's just another energy sink. This has potential. And I do think carbon nanofibers as the end product is a great idea. Because again, we could just dump it in cement and put it on or under the ground or whatever, put it in our foundations. So, and it makes it stronger. It increases the longevity of the cement. And cement is an important source of CO2 also. So anything that makes that industry more efficient is good. So there's kind of a double benefit. So I like all of that. But looking past the hype, this is something where we're at the proof of concept stage. This may be an interesting technology 20 years from now. So let's keep working on it. But this isn't like the answer to climate change, right? This is something we're gonna have to be plugging in in 20 years or so.<br />
<br />
=== Feng Shui <small>(54:04)</small> ===<br />
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'''S:''' All right, Evan, I understand that people are doing feng shui wrong. What are the consequences of this?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' My gosh, how are we ever gonna get past this obstacle? It's not every week that the news-consuming public gets advice about feng shui. But this week, we're fortunate not to have one but two articles warning us about feng shui mistakes that are all around us. And I know people pronounce this differently. I've heard feng shui, feng shui, feng shui.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I also think some of the differences- I think some of them come from whether you're saying it in Mandarin or Cantonese.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I suppose so, I suppose so. Well, maybe there are some people who are not familiar with what feng shui is. What is it? You know what I did? I decided, I'm gonna look up the definition. I'm gonna go to fengshui.com to find out. I don't know what's there. Here's what happens real quick when you get there. There's this big, so it's a blank screen with all except for a big blurry dot. And then the blurry dot will start to pull in opposite directions, forming two circles, touching at a point like a figure eight on its side, or the infinity sign, basically. And there's no text or anything. That's all there is. And the only thing you can do is click on the dot. And that dot takes you to the next page, which is a entirely black background page, no text again. And it slowly starts to transition to a gray scale. It dissolves eventually to a white background in about 10 seconds. And then an octagon appears. And then within the octagon, there are lines that appear interconnecting the non-neighboring sides of the octagon. And if you click on that, it brings you back to the blurry dot. So to tell you the truth, and that cycle repeats, to tell you the truth, I think that's the most cogent explanation of feng shui I've ever seen. You know, oh boy, this is wild. Oh, it's an ancient Chinese traditional practice which claims to use energy forces to harmonize individuals with their surrounding environment. The term feng shui means literally wind water. And from ancient times, landscapes and bodies of water were thought to direct the flow of universal qi, the cosmic current, all energy, through places and structures, and in some cases, people. Now, here is the first article. Four feng shui plants to avoid. These are gonna disturb the qi in your home, warns experts. That's how the headline reads. Oh my gosh, this is a warning. And where was this? Yahoo.com picked this up as part of their lifestyle news, and they pulled it from the website called Living Etc. So when it comes to the best plants for good feng shui, there are a few you should bring home, and some you should completely avoid. And they're gonna help you right now pick out the ones to avoid, because they are experts. Yep, yep, they consulted experts for this, and I hope that-<br />
<br />
'''S:''' [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enfe44s0ivo You have a degree in boloney].<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I hope they met legitimate scientists, botanists, chemists, right? Maybe they got on board, but here's what they said. Feng shui master Jane Langhoff. It's essential to consider the type of energy plants you bring into your spaces. Oh well, so much for hearing from scientists.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' What's an energy plant?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, energy plant. Type-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' What's that?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Consider the type of energy plants bring into our spaces. So it's not energy plants, but actually I'll get to that. I'll get to that, Cara. There's actually, there are actually some things, and I will eventually get there. So you weren't totally wrong. Here's what else she says. I don't believe that specific plants will necessarily cause bad luck. However, there are certain plants that can represent negative elements or bring inauspicious energy to a space. Generally, it's advisable to avoid excessively thorny and spiky plants that can cause injury. Oh boy, thank goodness we have a person with a master's certificate and a gold star on it that warns us that thorny and spiky plants can cause an injury. Another one, Feng Shui consultant and educator Laura Morris. As a general rule, you want to be mindful about where you place a spiky or pointy leaf plant. Try to avoid placing them next to your bed or in the partnership area of your home, whatever the partnership area is, wherever people partner up. I don't know.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's where the people get busy? I mean, what are they talking about?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' But you want, so here are the four, okay? Here are the four plants in order and do this like David Letterman's top 10 list, but it's a top four list. Number four, the yuccas, Y-U-C-C-A-S.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I love yuccas.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yuccas, yuccas, yeah. Got to avoid them. They're kind of prickly. They're kind of what, they have sword-like features to them, I guess. You know, long kind of bladed, pointy leaves. They say don't bring those in the home. Number three, cacti. I think we know what cactus and cacti are. Number two, dried flowers and dying plants. You know why? Because don't have those in your house because they represent stagnant energy. Best to leave those outside because if you bring them inside, they could restrict the flow of chi. And the number one plant you should not have in your house, and I have them, quite a few of them in my house, artificial plants. Yep, you know why? Because they block, well, they block energy. They're inauthentic, Steve. They're pretending to be something they're not. This is right directly from the article, which can affect energy in a space negatively. If you love artificial plants, they must be also kept clean of dust and grime. Wow, this is good stuff. Now, Cara, as far as the, what do we call them?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Energy plants?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Energy plants. They list some plants. So here's some plants that are associated with good luck and include, I'm not gonna give you their taxonomical names, but I'll give you their more common names. The treasure fern, the happy plant, the lucky bamboo, the jade plant, the money plant, and peace lilies.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And this doesn't sound at all like something she just made up.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I mean, totally.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' To sell the plants that she has in her shop.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' This is some fatal level thinking right here. You know, I mean, how more basic does it get than that? You know, I mean, yeah. Lucky bamboo and the treasure fern. But it gets better because there's the other article. Here's the headline. Small entryway feng shui mistakes, five things the pros always avoid. So again, like right on the heels of this other one came this article. Oh my gosh, pearls of wisdom coming our way again. Number one, don't have any dead or dying plants. They kind of referred to that in the first article because dead or dying plants create negative energy and represent decay. That's not something you want to welcome in your welcoming part of your home, which is your entryway. Number two, poor maintenance of the door space. For example, blocking the area behind the front door will make moving through the space difficult. You think so? If you kind of put something behind a door and try to open it, that's gonna, you know. We need an expert to tell us this though. Also, don't let your front door get dirty and grimy. You know, it'll stop the positive energy from flowing in that door. The next, the three of five, beware your mirror placement. You don't want to place a mirror face on because you open the door and you're looking in the mirror, oh my gosh, you might get scared or something. You want to hang that mirror on a wall facing away to a doorway to your next room because what it does is it sends opportunities and prosperities into your home. It kind of brings the energy in and reflects it into the center of the home, which apparently needs it. Number four is clutter. Get rid of don't come in and throw your keys down and fling your mail on the little table there and take off your shoes and throw your coat down. You know, everything has a place. Put your stuff away, basically. And number five, this is the most important and the one I'll wrap up on. We ignore the elements at our own peril. You must incorporate the five elements of earth, fire, water, metal, and wood into your entryway, which kind of, I think, goes maybe against the clutter part of all this, right? But they said the balance between these elements creates good feng shui energy and will create a harmonious balance in your entryway. So there it is. Of all the hard science that we've touched on this week, perhaps this will eclipse it all and be the most beneficial to us all.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Like, feng shui is one of those ones that amazes me because it's just pure magic, you know?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, it's nothing.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So you believe in magic, and I've said that to people, and the kind of answer you get is, well, science doesn't know everything. It's like, yeah, but we know magic isn't real.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Not everybody can say that, Steve.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, and it's like, what I love about it is it's magic mixed with, like, a dose of common sense. It's sort of like all the things you were saying, Evan, because then you have these true believers that are like, yeah, but I had an expert come in, and they helped me with my feng shui, and I feel better. It's like, yeah, probably because you're not bumping into shit all the time.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Right, because they cleaned your house and put your crap away.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Here's your problem. You've got a cactus right in your entryway here.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Cactus behind your door. You can't open your door all the way.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's feng shui.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So stupid.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, okay, fine. If you're gonna do it in your own home, whatever. But I mean, and what we talked about before, and it's not the article this week, but when governments start hiring feng shui people, bring them in for architectural design and stuff, they are, oh my gosh.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's driving me nuts.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Wasting all our money and driving us nuts.<br />
<br />
[AD]<br />
<br />
{{anchor|futureWTN}} <!-- keep right above the following sub-section. this is the anchor used by the "wtnAnswer" template, which links the previous "new noisy" segment to its future WTN, here.<br />
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== Who's That Noisy? <small>(1:05:06)</small> ==<br />
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'''S:''' All right, Jay, it's Who's That Noisy time.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' All right, guys, last week I played this noisy. [plays Noisy] Now, I should have known that that kind of sound was gonna make a lot of people send me a lot of like funny entries into Who's That Noisy, things like they absolutely know that that is not it. They're just trying to make me laugh. And a few people did make me laugh, but I did get some serious entries this week, and we have a listener named Tim Lyft that said, "Hi, Jay, my daughter, age nine, thinks this week's noisy is somebody playing one of those snake charmer flute thingies, but badly" which I thought was a wonderful guess. And her cousin, who's seven years old, guessed "a lot of farm animals".<br />
<br />
'''S:''' A cacophony of farm animals.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I think these are two wonderful guesses. And Tim himself guessed some kind of bird. You can't send me an answer of some kind of bird. You have to be absolutely specific. But thank you for sending those in. Those are great. Visto Tutti always answers. He always comes up with something. He said, "it sounds like peacocks calling during the mating season. They like to start the annoying screeching way before sunrise, which makes the humans in the neighborhood wonder what roast peacock tastes like". So I heard this and I'm like, I read his email like, oh, peacocks, I don't know. I never heard the sounds that they make. And then I proceeded to get about, I think six or seven more emails where people were saying peacocks. So perhaps peacocks sound like that, which is a horrible noise for a bird to make, especially if they live around you. Another listener named Harley Hunt wrote in, said, good day. My guess for this week is a peacock. Okay, I put that in. I don't know why.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I'm sensing a theme here.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, there's a theme. All right, so there was a bunch of people that guessed peacock. Another listener here named Adam Pesch said, "Jay, first time emailer, long time listener. Today, I was awakened from a deep sleep by this week's noisy. You did warn us. I never have a guess and probably am way off, but this week reminded me of a shofar horn that I've heard in synagogue trying to mimic an electric guitar riff. Thanks for everything you guys do." I could not find anything on that, so I have no idea what that sounds like, but I do appreciate those guesses. Unfortunately, nobody guessed it. And you know, this one was a hard one. I just thought it was a provocative noise that I wanted to play for you guys. And I will explain this one to you. So again, this was sent in by a listener named Curtis Grant. And Curtis said, I have a really cool noise I heard at work as an elevator fitter or installer. In this case, we use a temporary hoist that lifts the finished lift cabin, right, which is basically the elevator itself, up and down the shaft. We use this to hoist or install our equipment, which are the rail brackets and et cetera, from the top of the finished lift car, as it is more efficient than building a temporary platform to install from. So as these cars are heavy, they have temporary nylon guide shoes that rub against the rails and cause this noise. So basically, like during the installation of an elevator, this is a common noise that someone would hear if they were doing the install. Very, very hard noise to hear. Let me just play briefly again. [plays Noisy] Wow, imagine that like resonating inside the shaft, right? Wow, imagine that like resonating inside the shaft, right? Ugh, forget about it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's haunting.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, definitely. <br />
<br />
{{anchor|previousWTN}} <!-- keep right above the following sub-section ... this is the anchor used by wtnHiddenAnswer, which will link the next hidden answer to this episode's new noisy (so, to that episode's "previousWTN") --><br />
=== New Noisy <small>(1:08:36)</small> ===<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Guys, I have a new noisy this week, sent in by a listener named Chris Kelly. And here it is.<br />
<br />
[Zipper-like zings, and a clack]<br />
<br />
I'll play it again. It's very short. [plays Noisy] Very strange. If you think you know {{wtnAnswer|968|what this week's Noisy is}}, or you heard something really cool, please do send it to me, because it helps make the show good. WTN@theskepticsguide.org.<br />
<br />
== Announcements <small>(1:09:03)</small> ==<br />
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{{anchor|quickie}} <!-- leave anchor(s) directly above the corresponding section that follows --><br />
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'''J:''' Real quick, Steve, I'll go down a few things here. Guys, if you enjoyed the show, we would appreciate you considering becoming a patron of ours to help us keep going. All you have to do is go to [https://www.patreon.com/SkepticsGuide patreon.com/SkepticsGuide], and you can consider helping us continue to do the work that we do. Every little bit counts. So thank you very much, and thank you to all our patrons out there. We really appreciate it. One thing we started doing a few weeks ago, about a month ago, is we came up with the SGU weekly email. This email essentially gives you every piece of content that we created the previous week. We send it out on Monday or Tuesdays. So it'll have the show that just came out the previous Saturday, any YouTube videos, any TikTok videos, any blogs that Steve wrote, anything that we feel you need to see, it's going to be in that email. Also, we'll put in some messages here and there about things, like for example, an important message to tell you guys. So Google is changing its podcast player. And the new podcast player that they have actually is not something that we want to work with because there's a few things, without getting into all the details, the big humps for us that we couldn't get over was one, we couldn't integrate this automatically. So it won't automatically update to our RSS. We'd have to do everything manually.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' What?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, that's crazy. It doesn't integrate with our media host and that's it. So that right there is a pretty much a deal breaker for us because we can't be doing everything manually. That's number one. Number two, and sadly, they auto-insert ads and the pay is terrible. And we would have no control over the ads. So that's it, it's a game breaker. We're not going to do it. We are not going to integrate with Google's new podcast platform until and if they ever change or whatever, if I'll keep an eye on it, but.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Hey, it should be able to turn ads off if you don't opt out of that.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, I mean, I haven't seen-<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And like not automatically updating the RSS. I mean, come on.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, I know.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, like nobody's going to ever, nobody's going to use this.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, I don't think they will. So if, unfortunately, if you have recently found out that you no longer are getting our RSS on the Google podcast platform, this changeover happened over, I guess, the last few weeks or whatever, we're very sorry, but we have to, we can't engage in things that aren't good for us and that's it. So we're just not going to do it. And feel free to email me if you want to give me more information about it, or if you know, like, hey, either it's going to change or whatever. I can't find anything. But I admit, I didn't look that deeply into trying to figure out where they might be in the future. I just know where they are right now. Anyway, guys, there's an eclipse happening, and we decided let's do something fun around the eclipse because this is probably going to be the last one that any of us are going to see, especially one that's going to be close. And as Cara and Evan have been talking about, this is a big one. This is a long one. This is really one you really want to see. So wherever you are try to get yourself to a location where you're going to have totality. You know, bring the kids, definitely get the eye protection that you need, but this is going to be a big deal. So what we decided is we're going to go to a place where Bob's horrible feng shui of creating clouds.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Right?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Whenever an astronomical event is happening, we don't think that Bob's powers will work in Texas. So we're going to Dallas. We're going to be doing an extravaganza on April 6th, and we will be doing an SGU private show, a private show plus, actually, and we'll be doing that on the 7th of April of this year. All of these things will be in and around Dallas. So we really hope that if you're local or you're going to be traveling there for the eclipse, please do consider joining us. Ticket sales are going very well. So move quickly if you're interested because I can see things filling up very quickly. Other than that, guys.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' The clouds will follow me.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, if they do, Bob, if they do. We will take it out on you. We're going to make you buy us an expensive dinner, I guess, or something.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Of course you will.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, but I'm looking forward to Cara's barbecue.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Ooh.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That's the only reason why I'm going.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' You guys are going to be so good. Barbecue and Tex-Mex.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I'm going to diet before I go just so I can overeat when we're there, you know?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, you're going to go hard in Texas. You can't not go hard. Oh, it's the best.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Deep in the heart of Texas, right?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yep. Stars at night are big and bright.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I know that because of Pee-Wee's Big Adventure, right?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Of course.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. Thank you, Jay.<br />
<br />
== Quickie: TikTok recap <small>(1:13:37)</small> ==<br />
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'''S:''' Very quickly, I'm going to do an entry from TikTok. As you know, we do TikTok videos every week. One of the videos I did today, we record, we also livestream if you're interested, but we recorded one on the jellyfish UFO. Have you guys seen this?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Oh, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I have seen it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, the jellyfish UFO. So yeah, the TikTok video that I was responding to was by Jeremy Corbel, who's a gullible UFO guy, right? And it's a really this is a great example, a great contrast between a gullible analysis of a piece of information, this video, versus Mick West, who does a really great technical, like skeptical analysis of the same video. So essentially, this is over a military base, a US military base, and there's a balloon, a monitoring balloon, a couple of miles away. It's like tethered to the ground. So you get sort of a bird's eye view of the base, and it's tracking this thing that's flying across the base, right? Now, it's called the jellyfish UFO because it kind of looks vaguely like a jellyfish. There's a blob on top and streamers below, right? So there's a couple of, so again, Corbel's going on just gullibly about all this, oh, what could this be? I'm trying to like mystery monger it, and pointing out anomalies, apparent anomalies. But here's the bottom line, very, very quick. And if you can, the deep, Mick West goes into the technical details very well. The thing is drifting in the direction and speed of the wind, right? This is something floating in the wind. And the 99%-er here is that this is some balloons. This is a clump of balloons and streamers floating in the wind. Now, we can't see it with sufficient detail to say 100% that's what it is. It could be something unexpected, but that's basically what it is, right? If it's not literally balloons, it's something very similar. But it's something lightweight that's floating, that's drifting in the wind. It's not a machine it's not a spacecraft.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' A life form.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Not a life form. You know, it's just, it's not moving, right? At first, I'm like, is that like a smudge on the lens? But like, no, it's kind of moving with respect to the lens itself. But it is again, Mick West shows quite convincingly that it's moving in the direction of the wind, it's moving at the speed of the wind, given the likely altitude that it has. He does all the angles and everything. It's like, come on, guys, it's a freaking clump of balloons.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Maybe that's the secret of alien spaceship propulsion. You let the wind do all the work.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, that's how they hide, right? They just float along like the balloons.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So they're literally paper airplanes.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' What's the difference between alien balloons acting like Earth-bound, Earth-created balloons?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And Earth-created balloons?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' There's no, right?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The difference is Occam's Razor, that's the difference. All right, guys, we have a great interview coming up with Robert Sapolsky about free will. This one's gonna blow your mind. If you're not familiar with the free will debate, you will be after this interview. So let's go to that interview now.<br />
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== Interview with Robert Sapolsky <small>(1:17:01)</small> ==<br />
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* "{{w| Robert Sapolsky|Robert Morris Sapolsky}} is an American neuroendocrinology researcher and author. He is a professor of biology, neurology, neurological sciences, and neurosurgery at Stanford University. In addition, he is a research associate at the National Museums of Kenya." - Wikipedia<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Joining us now is Robert Sapolsky. Robert, welcome to The Skeptic's Guide.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Well, thanks for having me on.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And you are a professor of biology, neurology, and neurosurgery at Stanford University. And you have written a lot about free will and other related topics. And that was primarily what we wanted to start our discussion with about tonight, because you take a pretty hard position that there is no free will. How would you state your position?<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' I would say probably the fairest thing is that I'm way out on the lunatic fringe.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' In that my stance is not just, wow, there's much less free will than people used to think. We've got to rethink some things in society. I think there's no free will whatsoever. And I try to be convincing about this.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay, well, convince us. Tell us why you think there's no free will.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' I think when you look at what goes into making each of us who we are, all we are is the outcome of the biological luck, good or bad, that we have no control over, and its interactions with the environmental luck, good or bad, which we also have no control over. How is it that any of us became who we are at this moment is because of what happened a second ago and what happened a minute ago and what happened a century ago. And when you put all those pieces together, there's simply no place to fit in the notion that every now and then your brain could do stuff that's independent of what we know about science.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So, yeah, that is, I think, the standard position of the no free will. Our brains are deterministic, right? We can't break the laws of physics and control what happens inside our head. Our brains are machines. But why, then, is there such a powerful illusion that we do have free will? And how do you square that, like the notion that we do make decisions? Or do you think we don't really make decisions? Is the decision-making level of this itself an illusion?<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Great. I think that's exactly where we all get suckered into, including me, into feeling a sense of agency. Because the reality is there's points where we choose. We choose something. We choose what flavor ice cream we want. We choose whether or not to push someone off the cliff. We have all those sorts of things. We make a choice. We form an intent. And then we act on it. And that seems wonderfully agentive, wonderfully me. There's a me that just made this decision. I was conscious of having an intent. I had a pretty good idea what the consequence was gonna be of acting on it. And I knew I wasn't being forced. I had alternatives. I could choose to do otherwise. And that intentness, the strength with which you were just in that moment, is what most of us, then, intuitively feel like counts as free will. And the problem with that is, when you're assessing that, it's like you're trying to assess a book by only reading the last page of it. Because you don't get anywhere near the only question you can ask. So how did you turn out to be that sort of person who would form that intent? How did you become that person? And that's the stuff we had no control over.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay, I see that. So you have no control over the person that you are, all of the things that went into influencing your decision-making. But does that add up to, though, that you're not actually making decisions? Or I guess another, when I try to wrestle with this, the other thing that really bothers me is not only the sense of decision-making, but of what we call metacognition. I could think about my own thought processes. So what's happening there?<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Yep. You're in some psych experiment where, like, if you had a warthog, and signed up for the experiment, they would do some manipulation psychologically, and the warthog would fall for it and all of that. But because we're human, and we've got this metacognition stuff, we can go in there and say, oh, these psychologists, I bet they're up to something. So whatever I think I'm gonna say, I'm gonna say the opposite so that I'm not being some, like, rube falling for their manipulation. Whoa, I've just exercised free will thanks to my metacognition. How'd you become the sort of person who would go in there and be skeptical? How did you become the sort of person who would reflect on the circumstance metacognitively, et cetera, et cetera? In both of those cases, whether you did exactly what the warthog did, or if you, just out of proving some sort of point to yourself, did exactly the opposite, in both cases, it's the same issue. How did you become that person? And you had no control over that part.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So you also talk about the fact that if you take that view of humanity, that we are deterministic and free will is an illusion, that should influence policy or how we approach certain questions. So what do you think are the biggest policy implications for the realization that we don't really have free will?<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Well, people immediately freak out along a number of lines if you try to insist to them that there's no free will. The first one is, oh my God, people are just gonna run amok. If you can't be held responsible for your actions, people will just be completely disinhibited or will be chaos. And sort of the most extreme extension of that is, and they'll just be murderers running around on the streets. And that won't be the case. And the thing is, if you take the notion that we have no free will, we're just biological machines, blah, blah. If you take it to its logical extreme, blame and punishment never make any sense whatsoever. No one deserves to be punished. Retribution can never be a virtue in and of itself. Oh, so you throw out the entire criminal justice system, forget reforming it. It makes no sense at all. It's like having a witch justice system for deciding which ones you burn at the stake in 1600. You need to come up with a system that completely bypasses that. And at the same time, hold up a mirror to that and praise and reward make no sense either. And thus meritocracies have to be tossed out as well.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So then what are we left with?<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Well, we're left with something that seems totally unimaginable. How are you supposed to function? But then you reflect and we actually function all the time in circumstances where we have subtracted free will out of the occasion and we can protect society from dangerous individuals. Nonetheless, let me give you an example. There's a setting where there's a human who's dangerous. They can damage innocent people around them and this would be a terrible thing. And what happens if this is your child and they're sneezing and they have a nose cold? The kindergarten has this rule saying, please, if your child has a nose cold, keep them home until they're feeling better. Whoa, you constrain your child's behavior. You will lock them up at home. No, you don't lock them up at home because it does not come with moralizing. You don't say you're a kid. Ah, because you were sneezing, you can't play with your toys. You don't preach to them. You constrain them just enough so that they are no longer dangerous and not an inch more. And as long as you're at it, you do some research as to what causes nose colds in the first place. And we have a world in which it's so obvious that we have subtracted free will out of that that we don't even notice it. Yeah, there's all sorts of realms in which we can reach the conclusion this person wasn't actually responsible for their actions. And nonetheless, we could make a world that is safe from any inadvertent damage that they might do.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That still sounds like at the end of the day, there are still consequences to your actions, right? So if you demonstrate that you're a dangerous person by committing a crime, then you have to be isolated from society until you're no longer the kind of person who would commit a crime.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Or you have to be isolated exactly enough, the minimum needed to make sure you can't be dangerous in that way anymore. And we have all sorts of contingent constraints in society. You, if you have proven that you were dangerous to society because you keep driving drunk, they don't let you drive. They take your license away. You're still allowed to walk around and go into the supermarket and such. They don't need to put you in jail. If you have a certain type of sexual pedophilia, there's rules. You can't go within this distance of a school, of a playground or something. We have all these ways in which we can constrain people from the ways in which they are damaging and not do any more so. And the key thing in that latter point is we don't sermonize to them. There's a reason why you wind up being dangerous. So we are gonna keep you from doing that. And it's not because you have a crappy soul.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, I get that. But at the end of the day, in a practical sense, it could be very same to the criminal justice system we have now, just minus a lot of the judgment and the punishment is not punitive. It's not because you deserve to be punished. It's just because there needs to be a moral consequence to your actions.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Well, I would differ there because the word moral is irrelevant. The word moral is irrelevant to your car's brakes that have stopped working. Oh my God, it's gonna kill somebody. You can't drive it. You need to constrain it. You need to put it in the garage. But that's not a moral act. You don't feel like you should go in each morning with a sledgehammer and smash the car on the hood because of how dangerous it is to society. You don't preach to it. Morality is completely independent of it. You are trying to do a quarantine model. And the people who think about this the most use public health models for this. And you are not a bad person if you get an infectious disease. And you're not a bad person if circumstances has made you someone who's damaging to those around you. But yeah, make sure people are not damaged by you but don't preach to you in the process.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, you could substitute the word ethical, I guess, for moral. It's just a philosophical calculation without any kind of spiritual judgment.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Good, okay.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's kind of what I meant. The point is that if you're saying, well, we're just, our brains are calculating machines and part of those calculations are moral judgments or ethical judgments or whatever, right? Because we evolved, and we're going to get to that in a minute, a sense of justice. And you have to leverage that in order to influence people's behavior. Otherwise, you have the moral hazard of not having consequences for your actions, right? So we're not in control of our decision-making, but there are influences on that decision-making and society needs to influence people's decision-makings by presenting concrete consequences to their actions. If you do this, you're going to go to jail. Nothing personal, but we have to do it. Otherwise there will be significant increase in crime or whatever you want to call it. Is that a fair way to look at it?<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Yeah, it's okay to have punishment as part of the whole picture in a purely instrumental sense, in the same way that you can have rewarding people for stuff that they've done, but again, purely instrumental. And then you say, okay, so if we ran the prison system on that, there's no such thing as retribution. There's no such thing as somebody deserves to be constrained. There's no such thing as justice being done. And you put in those factors in there and you have an unrecognizably different approach to, we protect the society from people who sneeze and we protect society from people who have such poor impulse control that they do impulsive, horrible, damaging things when they're emotionally worked up. But there's no retribution. Justice is not being served. They don't deserve anything. They have not earned their punishment. You are just containing a car whose brakes are broken. And if that sounds like, oh my God, turning people into machines, that's so dehumanizing, that's a hell of a lot better than demonizing them into being sinners.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, it's actually a very humanistic approach to criminal justice.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Because it does lack that sort of punitive angle that can be injust in a lot of ways, right? You're taking somebody who is in a much more profound sense than we even may realize a victim of circumstance and punishing them for that, right?<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Is there anything beyond criminal justice system that has implications from your philosophy on no free will?<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Well, meritocracies go out the window also because it's this bi-directional thing. We run the world where some people are treated way worse than average for reasons they have no control over and then some people are treated way better than average for reasons they have no control over. They have the sort of brain, so they get good SAT scores or the sort of brain that makes them self-disciplined and so now they've got a great job, now they've got the corner office, now they have whatever and they did not earn it any more than someone who commits a crime earned it. Both of those systems are bankrupt. But then you have the same problem. The people then say, oh my God, if you do that, you're gonna have murderers running around the streets, not necessarily, but now flip to the meritocracy half, you would say, oh my God, you turn out to have a brain tumor and you're just gonna pick a random person off the street to do your brain surgery. No, of course not that either. We need to protect society from people who are damaging and we need to ensure society that competent people are doing difficult things, but you can do it without a realm of this being laden in virtue and moral worth. Just because somebody turns out to have enough dexterity to do surgery, they should not have a society that reifies them thinking that they are intrinsically a better human any more than someone in jail should be thinking that they are an intrinsically worse human. Both are mere outcomes of their circumstances.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Robert, can I ask you a couple of questions coming from someone who isn't a neurologist? First off, define for me what free will would be if we had it.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Okay, this is one that completely pisses off philosophers who argue for free will. Just to orient people, 90% of philosophers these days would be called compatibilists, which is they admit the world is made out of stuff like atoms and molecules and we've got cells inside our heads and all of that science-y stuff is going on. They concede that, they accept that, but somehow, nonetheless, that is compatible with there still being free will in there. And as such, I would fall into the tiny percentage of people who count as free will incompatibilists. You can't have what we know about how the brain works and free will going hand in hand. So what would count as free will? So somebody does something and you say, well, why did they do that? And it's because these neurons did something half a second before. But it's also because something in the environment in the previous minutes triggered those neurons to do that. And because hormone levels this morning in your bloodstream made this or that part of your brain more or less sensitive to those stimuli. And because in the previous decade, you went through trauma or you found God and that will change the way your brain works. And before you know it, you're back to adolescence and childhood and fetal life, which is an amazingly important period of sharing environment with your mother and then genes. And then even stuff like what your ancestors invented as a culture, because that's going to have majorly influenced the way your mother mothered you within minutes of birth. So if you want to find free will, if you want to like prove it's there, take a brain, take a person that just did something and show that that brain did that completely independently of this morning's breakfast and last year's trauma and all the values and conditioning and stuff that went on in adolescence and what your mom's hormone levels were in your bloodstream when you were a fetus and your genes and culture, show that if you change all of those factors, you still get the exact same behavior. You've just proven free will and it can't be done.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Are you saying like we have zero free will or is there a little bit of it mixed in? You know what I mean? Like, is it so black and white or could there be shades of gray here?<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' There's simply no mechanism in there by which you can have a brain doing stuff completely independent of its history, independent of what came before. It is not possible for a brain to be an uncaused cause. And taken to its logical extreme, the only conclusion is, yeah, there's no free will whatsoever.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Aren't we still thinking things over? Like, I think that when I do something that I really don't wanna do, that if I'm ever expressing free will, it's in those moments, right? Like, doesn't that make sense in a way? Like, if I'm gonna force myself to do something that everything about me-<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's just one part of your brain arguing with another part of your brain though, right?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' But isn't that kind of an expression of free will? If you are having an internal debate and there are pros and cons and pluses and minuses and all the stuff that it takes for us to make a decision.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Not necessarily if you see it from a neurological point of view of, yeah, that's just your executive function and your frontal lobe fighting with your limbic system.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Exactly.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Right?<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It doesn't rescue you from it being all caused neurologically.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' I mean, today is January 17th and thus we're probably 17 days into the vast majority of people who made New Year's resolutions to have already like given them up. And everyone went into it with the same, I'm gonna do this differently this year. And some people do and some people don't. And how did somebody become the sort of person who would have the self-discipline to do that? How would someone become the sort of person who first time they were tempted, they went flying off the rails. How did we all differ in that regard also? And it's exactly the part of the brain. You mentioned just now the frontal cortex. That's this incredibly interesting part of the brain that makes you do the hard thing when it's the right thing to do. And beginning in your fetal life, every bit of thing that happens around you is influencing how strong of a frontal cortex you're gonna have come January 1st and you're vowing to exercise every day.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' So is there an evolutionary advantage to believing in free will?<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Yeah, I think there's an enormous one. And what you can see is in the fact that 90% of philosophers and probably more than 90% of folks out there in general believe there's free will because it's like kind of an unsettling drag to contemplate that we're biological machines. It's very unsettling. And people like to have a sense of agency. People like to think of themselves as captains of their fate. And this plugs into like a very distinctive thing about humans. We're the only species that's smart enough to know that everybody you know and love and you included are going to die someday. We're the only species that knows that someday the sun is gonna go dark. We're the only species that knows that because your neurons in your frontal cortex just did this or that, you carried out this behavior. We're the only species that's capable of having those realities floating around. And some evolutionary biologists have speculated, I think very convincingly, that if you're gonna have a species that is as smart as we are, we have to have evolved an enormous capacity for self-deception, for rationalizing away reality. And we're the species that's smart enough that we better be able to deny reality a lot of the time. And in that regard, major depression, clinical depression, one of the greatest ways of informally defining it is depression is a disease of someone who is pathologically unable to rationalize away reality. It's very protective psychologically.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And like cycling back a little bit to like the meritocracy thing, because where I tend to come down is I have to admit like, yeah, there's no metaphysical free will. You know, it is, we are, there is no uncaused cause. You know, we are just the neurons acting out what they do. But don't we have to act as if there is free will to a large extent because, again, of that moral hazard of thinking that there's no consequences? And even when, like with meritocracy, you were focusing on talent, but what about hard work? We do want people to be rewarded for hard work so that they'll do it. You know, people will do productive work. If there was no reward for it, we kind of know what those societies look like. It's not one I'd wanna live in. Would you accept that notion that even if you think metaphysically, philosophically, there's no free will, we still have to kind of pretend that there is?<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Again, in an instrumental sense, you can reward somebody if that's gonna make them more likely to do the good thing again, if that's gonna make them more likely to plug away, but you need to do it purely in an instrumental way. A colleague of mine at Stanford, Carol Dweck in psychology, has done wonderful work showing, okay, you've got a kid and your kid has just gotten a great, wonderful grade on some exam or something. And do you say, wow, what a wonderful job you did. You must be so smart. Or do you say, wow, wonderful, wonderful job you did. You must've worked so hard. And what she shows is you do the latter and every neurotic parent knows that by now. Yeah, sometimes you use sort of positive praise, reward for displays of self-discipline because that makes that part of the brain stronger, all of that, but you don't go about making somebody who is better at resisting temptation than somebody else think that it has something to do with they are an intrinsically better human. They just wound up with that sort of frontal cortex.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Let's talk a little bit more about evolutionary psychology. I mean, it seems like you're largely in support of that, but you tell me, what do you think about it? Because I know that is something where you can't deny that our brains evolved and that has a huge influence. So what do you think about the discipline of evolutionary psychology and specifically, how would you answer its critics?<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Its starting point makes absolutely perfect sense. And historically, take one step further back from it and you get this field called sociobiology, which I was sort of raised in, which is you can't think about human behavior outside the context of evolution. And then it's one step further and you've got evolutionary psych. You can't think about the human psyche outside the context of evolution. That makes perfect sense, wonderful sense. The trouble is in both of those disciplines, there's way too much possibility for sort of post hoc, just so stories. There's way too much individual differences. Anytime you see a human who like leaps into a river to save the drowning child and dies in the process and basic sociobiological models, basic models of how you optimize copies of your genes can't explain stuff like that. By the time you're looking at like vaguely complicated mammals, you get individualistic behaviors that violate what some of the models predict. So it's part of the story. It's interesting evolutionary psychology. One finding in there that I find to be very, very impressive is that we are far, far more attuned to the sort of norm violations that go in the direction of you getting treated worse than you expected to be, than you being treated better. We have all sorts of detection things in our brain that are better at spotting that bastard they were supposed to give me that reward and they didn't versus, whoa, they just gave me this gigantic reward out of nowhere. And that makes sense evolutionarily. And some of those building blocks were just fine. As with a lot of these relatively new disciplines, don't get a little overconfident and try to explain everything.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I kind of landed in the same place. From a philosophical point of view, of course, there's evolutionary psychology, but in practice, I do think it can fall into just-so stories too easily. So it's a kind of a weakness in the field. All right, well, Robert, this has all been very fascinating. Thank you so much for giving us your time. Anything coming up that you want to plug? Do you have any works that you're doing?<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' No, I got this new book out, which I guess is sort of useful if people know about it. Came out in October, Penguin. It's called Determined, A Science of Life Without Free Will, where I basically lay out all these arguments and as far as I can tell so far, infuriate a lot of people.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's good work. You know that you're accomplishing something useful if you piss off a lot of people.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Oh, good, because I seem to be. That's nice to know.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, thanks again. Take care.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Good, thanks for having me on.<br />
<br />
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== Science or Fiction <small>(1:44:27)</small> ==<br />
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|item1 = A recently discovered species of deep-sea fish in the Antarctic ocean has been found to have transparent blood, due to a complete lack of hemoglobin.<br />
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|item2 = Researchers have developed a type of biodegradable plastic that decomposes completely in just one week when exposed to sunlight and air.<br />
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|item3 = Researchers have successfully trained a group of goldfish to drive a small, water-filled vehicle on land, demonstrating their ability to navigate in a terrestrial environment and challenging long-held views on fish spatial awareness.<br />
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''Voice-over: It's time for Science or Fiction.''<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Each week, I come up with three science news items or facts, two real and one fake, and I challenge my panelists to tell me which one is the fake. We have a theme this week. It's a mystery theme.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' You can tell us.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I will reveal the theme after you guys all give your answers. Now, we'll see if you can figure it out along the way, but it's not gonna be obvious. Okay, here we go. Item number one, a recently discovered species of deep sea fish in the Antarctic Ocean has been found to have transparent blood due to a complete lack of hemoglobin. Item number two, researchers have developed a type of biodegradable plastic that decomposes completely in just one week when exposed to sunlight and air. And item number three, researchers have successfully trained a group of goldfish to drive a small, water-filled vehicle on land, demonstrating their ability to navigate in a terrestrial environment and challenging long-held views on fish spatial awareness. All right, Cara, go first.<br />
<br />
<big>'''Cara's Response'''</big><br />
<br />
'''C:''' I don't like them.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Is that the theme that you're picking up?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Things Cara does not like.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, things I don't like. Deep sea fish in the Antarctic Ocean. There's an Antarctic Ocean?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well the waters around the Antarctic, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But is that called the Antarctic Ocean? I didn't know that, the Arctic. Anyway.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's the Southern Ocean, also known as the Antarctic Ocean.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Okay, I'm not mad at that. That one, okay, so this fish is lacking hemoglobin, which, okay, that's crazy weird, but maybe there's some sort of other compound that is like serving a similar purpose. Would it make the blood transparent? Maybe? Is the only reason blood has the color it is because of hemoglobin? Because of the heme? It might be. I know the heme does make the blood quite red, but I don't know what it would look like with no heme. Would it be clear? I don't know, but a lot of our liquids in our bodies are clear, so maybe. The biodegradable plastic that decomposes completely in just one week, I don't buy that for a second. When exposed to sunlight and air, like what's the catch? It's like, it also melts the second it touches water, like it's not firm like plastic. I just, I do not buy that one. How, I wish that would be revolutionary. But also, a goldfish drove a car? Okay, here's the thing about this one. I have a very fun, but very weird friend who clicker-trained one of her fish to swim through a hoop. And it was a goldfish, and she claims it was very, very smart. I never quite believed her, but maybe, maybe a goldfish could drive a little goldfish car. I want that one to be science, so I'm gonna say plastic's the fiction.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay, Evan.<br />
<br />
<big>'''Evan's Response'''</big><br />
<br />
'''E:''' These all seem like fiction, don't they?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Mm-hmm.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's why you don't like this.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I don't like them.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I agree, I'm with Cara. I will go with Cara and say I don't like them either. Next. Oh, I mean, right. For kind of the same reasons, though. I mean, if you take the hemoglobin out of blood, are you left with something that's transparent? Aren't there other things in the blood that would make it at least opaque, right? Not transparent, though. I mean, what? Right, there's something else floating around there. It's so strange. So that would be the catch on that one, I think. And yes, there is a fifth ocean. It is called the Southern/Antarctic Ocean. The second one about the biodegradable plastic. My question about this one is why would you make this if it's gonna decompose in a week if you can't expose it to sun and air, which is kind of everywhere? So what's the practicality of this? Where would you use this? Underground, okay, where there's no sunlight. And in a non-air environment, what? Water for underneath, but then, I don't know. That's tricky. I mean, maybe they developed it, but it has no practical industrial use. And then the last one, okay, training a group. A group of goldfish would be a school of goldfish. They went to driving school, apparently, to drive this water-filled vehicle. On land, demonstrating their ability to navigate. So how does that work? They don't, that's not how to do it. So when we say drive, are we talking steer? I guess, it's only steer, it would be. So just directional, so.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yes, they have to be able to control which direction it's going in, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No, they use the clutch.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Well I mean, driving is a set of things more than steering, but it's steering something around, kind of.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And they have to go, brr brr.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Remember that video, that's hilarious. Ah! Shoot, all these are wrong, so I don't know. Cara and I are gonna sink or swim together on this one about the plastic, because I just don't see why that would be the case in any purpose.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay, Bob.<br />
<br />
<big>'''Bob's Response'''</big><br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, transparent blood, it seems somewhat plausible without the hemoglobin, that it would be kind of, I mean, I think it would be still kind of opaque, but I guess I could see it being somewhat transparent. The goldfish, the driving goldfish is just too awesome. I just wanna will that into existence. The plastic just seems silly, right? I mean, just like, oh boy, I took the bag out of the packaging, I've gotta use it quick or anything that's, if you forget about the bag and you put stuff in it and put the bag somewhere, and then next week it's gonna be gone, and then the contents are gonna spill. I don't know, it just seems a little goofy in some ways and just not very practical. And like, oh, how long has this bag been out? How much time do I have? It's only a day left. I don't know, it just seems a little silly and impractical, so I'll say that's fiction as well.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And Jay.<br />
<br />
<big>'''Jay's Response'''</big><br />
<br />
'''J:''' So they all are saying that it's the plastic.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's correct. That's what they are saying.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, no.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I would imagine that they didn't develop the plastic to specifically only last a week, that they were working on a biodegradable plastic and that's what they ended up, that this is something that they made. Doesn't necessarily mean-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, that seems reasonable, damn it.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, right? But the key thing here is that it's biodegradable, you know, like legitimately, which, I don't know. I mean, again I trust your guys' judgment as well. You know, the first one about the deep sea fish, it's very odd to think that there's transparent blood, but I have seen many pictures of like that fish you could see through its head and I don't remember seeing blood there, so I think that's science. And then the third one here about the goldfish driving a water field vehicle. I mean, that is so wacky that it's gotta be true. Damn. This is such a hard one, Steve. All right, I'm trying to think of the theme too. I don't see the theme. Okay, I'm gonna go with everybody else. How could I not? I mean, there's something wrong about that one week decomposition, decomposing plastic. Something's not right there.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Hidden Theme ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay, so anyone has a guess on the theme? It's very meta.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I don't like it.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Water.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's very meta. No. The theme is-<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Things in water.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Nope. This-<br />
<br />
'''J:''' The fish eat the plastic.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Science or fiction has been brought to you by Chat GPT.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Oh.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Ah, geez.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Which version?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Four. So I typed in first, are you familiar with the Skeptic's Guide to the Universe podcast? And it said, yes, I'm familiar, and it gave a pretty good description of our podcast.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It better be.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' One of the paragraphs reads, the Skeptic's Guide to the Universe is known for its approachable style, blending educational content with humor and informal discussions. It's aimed at a general audience and is designed to make science and skepticism accessible to people without a scientific background. That's a pretty good description of the show.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I love that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Then I said, can you design for me a science or fiction segment similar to what they have in the show every week? And it did. Now, I had to do it three times and select from among those three, not because they weren't good, but because they were things that we've talked about before. Can't use that one. Yeah, because we've talked about that recently. So I had to find ones that wouldn't be too obvious. And one of these, it gave us a fiction, but I found it's actually true.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Right, you had to double check everything.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #1 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I had to check everything. I couldn't trust it. All right, so let's take these in order. Number one, a recently discovered species of deep sea fish in the Antarctic Ocean has been found to have transparent blood due to a complete lack of hemoglobin. This one is science. So you guys are all safe so far. This is the oscillated ice fish. It's a family of fish. Lives in very cold waters off Antarctica.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Goes back and forth.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And it has transparent hemoglobin-free blood. This is the first, I think, in any vertebrate. And there are some species that have like yellow blood because they have very little hemoglobin, but this one is like fully transparent, zero hemoglobin. And they don't have some other molecule. They just have plasma.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Whoa.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' So plasma, yeah, plasma would be.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' How does that work, though?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, so they've adapted to basically just having oxygen dissolve in plasma and they make it work by, they have low metabolic rate, for example. But it also makes the blood less viscous, so it circulates much more vigorously, I guess. So that compensates for a little bit. They have larger gills, scaleless skin that can contribute more to gas exchange. So they have much more surface area to exchange gas.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Ew, wait. It's a fish with scaleless skin?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That is horrifying sounding.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Like one of those cats that has no fur?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' They have bigger capillaries and they have a large blood volume and cardiac output. So they have all these compensatory mechanisms for not having hemoglobin to bind a lot of oxygen and they make it work. Yeah, so that one is true. So let's go on.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #2 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Number two, researchers have developed a type of biodegradable plastic that decomposes completely in just one week when exposed to sunlight and air. You guys all think this one is the fiction and this one is science.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No, I led you astray. The goldfish.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Interestingly, this one, ChatGPT gave me as a fiction. So I looked it up. I'm like, dang, there it is. This is actually true. This is published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society in 2021. Yeah, they created a plastic that when exposed to air and sunlight will completely break down in one week, leaving no microplastics behind at all. It degrades into succinic acid, which is a small non-toxic molecule. So obviously it limits the applications because it can't be exposed to sunlight or air.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But if it took a year, it'd be great.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Right. So that one actually turned out to be true.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #3 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Which means that researchers have successfully trained a group of goldfish to drive a small water-filled vehicle on land, demonstrating their ability to navigate in a terrestrial environment and challenging long-held views on fish spatial awareness. Is the fiction.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Clearly.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' ChatGPT just made this one up at a whole cloth. Made it up.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Not fair.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Made which one up, Steve?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The goldfish one.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's not related to anything real?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, they just said this one, they said psychologists kind of do weird things, but not this. So they made this one up. That was it.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh my gosh. It was like plausibly awkward.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Israeli researchers say they have successfully taught a goldfish to drive a small robotic car.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Science.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' The team said the fish showed its ability to navigate toward a target in order to receive a food reward. For the experiment, the researchers built what they call the fish-operated vehicle, an FOV.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Can only drive in the FOV lane, though.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Jay, where are you reading that? Is that another ChatGPT?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I just searched. Here, hold on.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' What search?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' This is insane.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Oh yeah, you're right. I didn't see that.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Well, that's, I mean, I don't know if you wanna get, how technically you wanna get. The question was about a small, a group of goldfish as opposed to a fish.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, you'd have to look and see. There's probably a lot of things wrong in it, even if goldfish did drive a car, and what?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, but ChatGPT apparently is not good at making up fake ones, because it just keeps repurposing real news items.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Hmm. I wonder if it swears at people in traffic, like in fish language.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' This is so dumb.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Gives people the fin?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, the middle fin.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' So what does this mean?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Also, how does this work?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, I think this, science or fiction, is a ChatGPT mulligan.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Wow. So we're gonna have a no contest, a no score on it this week.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, no score from this week.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Has that ever happened before?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I don't think so.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I bet you it's still fiction.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' We're witnessing skeptic's guide history right now at this moment?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, I'll take it.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh my gosh, for the first time in approaching 19 full years.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Damn you, ChatGPT.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' And we have been failed by artificial intelligence at the highest level.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So ChatGPT failed at science or fiction.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Never again, yes. ChatGPT is zero.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' All right, well put it down as like, zero wins and one loss for the year.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' If this experiment has succeeded, I was gonna do this from now on, just have ChatGPT be science or fiction.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, yeah, of course.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' You can have the good ones and you just make up the fake one.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' This actually took me just as long because I had to do it multiple times, I had to check every one, you know?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' What you need is a program, Steve, that's optimized for performing the science or fiction function.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's right, I need a science or fiction GPT.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Narrow AI. AI to help you with this, Steve. Do you think someone out there could do that?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Probably.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' A listener on their spare time? Put in 5,000 hours of work.<br />
<br />
{{anchor|qow}} <!-- leave anchor(s) directly above the corresponding section that follows --><br />
<br />
== Skeptical Quote of the Week <small>(1:59:26)</small> ==<br />
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|author = {{w|Damian Kulash}}<br />
|lived = 1975-present<br />
|desc = American musician, best known for being the lead singer and guitarist of the American rock band {{w|OK Go}}<br />
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<br />
'''S:''' All right, Evan, give us a quote.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' "Every great idea is a creative idea. The fact that you're using paint or you're using guitar strings or you're using equations, they're not really very different things. Getting that spirit into the education process, being curious about the world, that is a gift we would love to share." Damien Kulash, lead singer of OK Go.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I love OK Go.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I love OK Go. I'm on a big OK Go kick lately.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' They're rock, but they're like very happy pop rock. I don't know how to describe it.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' They started out as kind of pop punk alternative and they they're treadmill videos.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' What country are they from?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' The United States.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' They're American. Not just the treadmill video, they did a parabolic space flight video.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' They did, yes.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' They shot an entire video in zero gravity. Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, it's amazing.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That video is amazing. It's an amazing accomplishment.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Watching the behind the scenes of it is even funnier.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yes, there's a whole documentary about it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, like one of the band members was like near, like he was just constantly vomiting or about to vomit. So the whole time he's like sitting down. One of them was scared out of his mind the whole time. It's amazing. It's so good.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' But this is, these artists, and I call them artists as much as they are musicians. They're visual artists, obviously, for what they do. They're so well known for their videos. But obviously they're also using a lot of engineering, a lot of science, a lot of math in the production of the videos. You know, they consult with a lot of people and teams of experts to come in and help them put these amazing ideas into the visual medium that is just so captivating. And the music's great too. So they're very pro-science and I love Damien Kulash and everyone at OK Go.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, well, thank you all for joining me this week.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Thanks Steve.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Thanks Steve.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Thank you Steve.<br />
<br />
== Signoff == <br />
'''S:''' —and until next week, this is your {{SGU}}. <!-- typically this is the last thing before the Outro --> <br />
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{{Outro664}}{{top}} <!-- for previous episodes, use the appropriate outro, found here: https://www.sgutranscripts.org/wiki/Category:Outro_templates --> <br />
== Today I Learned ==<br />
* Fact/Description, possibly with an article reference<ref>[url_for_TIL publication: title]</ref> <!-- add this format to include a referenced article, maintaining spaces: <ref>[URL publication: title]</ref> --> <br />
* Fact/Description<br />
* Fact/Description<br />
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== Notes ==<br />
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== References ==<br />
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}}</div>Hearmepurrhttps://www.sgutranscripts.org/w/index.php?title=SGU_Episode_967&diff=19203SGU Episode 9672024-02-19T11:54:36Z<p>Hearmepurr: links added</p>
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|caption = China-based Betavolt New Energy Technology has successfully developed a nuclear energy battery, which integrates {{w| Isotopes of nickel|nickel-63}} nuclear isotope decay technology and China’s first diamond semiconductor module.&nbsp;<ref>[https://www.greencarcongress.com/2024/01/20240114-betavolt.html Green Car Congress: China-based Betavolt develops nuclear battery for commercial applications]</ref><br />
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|guest1 =RS: {{w| Robert Sapolsky}}, American neuroendocrinology researcher<br />
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|qowText = Every great idea is a creative idea: The fact that you're using paint or you're using guitar strings or you're using equations, they're not really very different things. Getting that spirit into the education process … being curious about the world, that is a gift we would love to share.<br />
|qowAuthor = {{w| Damian Kulash}}, American musician<br />
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== Introduction, winter weather preparations ==<br />
''Voice-over: You're listening to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.''<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Hello and welcome to the {{SGU|link=y}}. Today is Wednesday, January 17<sup>th</sup>, 2024, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella... <br />
<br />
'''B:''' Hey, everybody!<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Cara Santa Maria... <br />
<br />
'''C:''' Howdy. <br />
<br />
'''S:''' Jay Novella... <br />
<br />
'''J:''' Hey guys. <br />
<br />
'''S:''' ...and Evan Bernstein. <br />
<br />
'''E:''' Good evening, everyone, or good morning, wherever you might be.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Good evening. How is everyone?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Good.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's late.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Doing good.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' My bronchitis is finally, basically gone. Just a little.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, that's good.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That crap.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Bronchitis.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That's forever.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I know. It only took months.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It was a hell of a gut workout, I'll tell you that much. My stomach muscles are way stronger now than they were.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, but coughing is not good for you. You know what I mean? It's not like you're, oh, yeah, I'm getting this coughing workout. Coughing is bad for your back. People who cough a lot get disc herniations and bad backs and back strain and everything. So, yeah, I hate it when I have a prolonged cough. I always get back pain when I have a prolonged cough.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Really?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Cara, you are in another continent.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It is true. It is also another continent. It's a funny way to put it. Yeah, I've been in Scotland for a week and a half. I think I'll be here another week. And so it is two in the morning. It was beautiful here, though. I've been spending a bit of time outside. We had a really, really nice snow yesterday and the day before, so it's quite white outside. How is it looking in the Northeast? I know there were horrible snowstorms all over the country.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' There were other parts of the country that got smacked super hard.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, we had some snow. Not horrible.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Usually, we're snowy here. But we had two light snowstorms.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It's definitely colder.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, it's cold here too.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, we're getting the remnants of the Arctic blast. What the, what do they call it?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Vortex or something? Yeah, I think it's pretty bad in parts of Canada.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' And the Midwest of the United States got it very badly.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But so far, I mean, it's early. There's nothing winter so far by New England standards.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' True.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You never know. February's really like, we can get hammered in February.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, boy.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I know it's gonna be cold and we're gonna get precipitation, but it always depends on the timing of those two things. Like, do we get the precipitation when it's cold or is it, do we get rain, you know what I mean? Because if it's all snow, it could be profound.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' But any time an ice storm happens by, that's dangerous. I mean, that is when the power goes out. That is when all the tree limbs come down. We've had some nightmare ice storms in prior years. Not very recently, but I can remember a few.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Tell me about it with the hard freeze. I've been talking to some of my friends who live up in the Pacific Northwest where they had freezing rain, I think, for two days, but not snow, up in Oregon. And trees are down all over the place. People don't have power. It's been pretty brutal up there just because of the heaviness of that ice on everything.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' And they tend to not get ice storms, if I recall correctly.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, yeah, never. Like, they're just, yeah, the whole city. You know how it is. Anytime a city gets hit by something that's not typical weather for that city, they just don't know what to do with it.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It freezes, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It breaks everything.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, yeah, I remember I was in Phoenix. They had, like, an inch of rain, and it paralyzed the city.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It happens every time it rains in LA. We don't know what to do.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Las Vegas has a similar problem.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And everybody's house floods. We're like, oh.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And I was in DC, and they had, like, a pretty mild snowfall from Connecticut standards, and the city was paralyzed. They just didn't have the infrastructure for it, you know? And, of course, with the kind of snowstorms that would paralyze Connecticut, Canadians are like, you lowlanders, you know?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' We get 10 feet, and Toronto's like, big deal.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' We've actually we've been talking a lot out here in Scotland about the fact that they ice, or, sorry, that they salt the roads here, and it's quite destructive on the cars. Like, it's really, really corrosive, and probably cause millions of pounds of damage every year to the cars that are having to constantly clean this ice off of their. Undercarriage, yeah, and the engine damage and stuff. And we've been really talking about, like, why do they use salt?<br />
<br />
'''J''' It's totally inexpensive.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But sand.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Up to a temperature, it works, right?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Sand is cheaper, and it's not quite as efficient, but it's still efficient.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It has to do with the temperature, though.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It causes a lot less damage.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Sand has to be cleaned up, though. Like, salt just goes into the water.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Sand can just go into the dirt.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Plus, the melting effect of salt is pretty dramatic, isn't it?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, sand has no de-icing effect. That just temporarily adds friction to the road, whereas the ice, or de-icing chemicals, as they call them, actually melt the ice. But it depends on how much there is and what the temperature is. So there are some situations where the de-icing chemicals won't work, and you gotta use sand. But again, it's only, like, adding temporary friction. And they all have different environmental effects, so that there's no perfect solution.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It is superior. But the question would be, do we really need a superior melting effect if you have so much sort of negative side effects?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' They don't always use salt. They use sand sometimes, too.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I think out here, they only use salt, and it's quite infuriating to the people.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, you have to have the undercarriage of your car coated against that.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' They do. They do, but you still have to constantly clean it out. And it's just, yeah, it's pretty bad. Anyway.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I've never cleaned the bottom of my car.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Go to a car wash?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' If you go to a car wash, they will drive it through. It has an undercarriage.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's why you go to a car wash.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' They still have those?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Car washes? Last time I checked.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' They do. They're quite nice.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' They don't exist. They went the way of drive-in movies.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Drive-in movies, soda fountain counters, and pinball machines. They're all gone.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I went to a drive-in movie not that long ago. There's still a couple of them around. They're definitely very retro.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, that became kind of a thing again during COVID.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, I remember that.<br />
<br />
== News Items ==<br />
<br />
{{anchor|news#}} <!-- leave news items anchors directly above the news item section that follows each anchor --><br />
=== Betavolt 50-Year Battery <small>(6:28)</small> ===<br />
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'''S:''' All right, Bob, you're going to get us started with a talk. There's been a lot of discussion about this. This is really catching a lot of people's imagination, not in a very scientific way often. But tell us about this 50-year battery. What's going on?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah. Chinese firm called Betavolt Technology claims it's created a new nuclear battery that can power devices for 50 years. There's a lot of silly clickbait surrounding this stuff. Here's one press release from the Business Standard. Their article was titled, China Develops Radioactive Battery to Keep Your Phone Charged for 50 Years. Like, ah.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Sure they did.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh my God. Such annoying clickbait. Now, nuclear batteries, though, are fascinating. They are distinct, of course, from everyday electrochemical batteries that we use all the time, from AA's to the lithium-ion batteries in our phones and EVs. Nuclear batteries are also called atomic batteries, which I kind of like, or probably more accurately, radioisotope generators.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Didn't Batman's vehicle have atomic batteries or something?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yes. Yes.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh my gosh.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' And they essentially take nuclear energy and convert it to electricity at its most, top of the onion layer there. One layer down, more specifically, it takes the byproducts of the decay of radioactive particles and converts that into electricity. So are these batteries? You know, yes and no, in my mind. Nuclear batteries are atomic batteries. They can power devices for sure. So in that sense, they are batteries. But they do not recharge, and they don't turn off. The nuclear batteries do not turn off. So for those reasons, and especially the not-turning-off one, they are often referred to as generators. But hey, it's language. Many people use the word battery for them, and so that's fine. Atomic batteries are generally classified by how they convert the energy. And it kind of boils down to either they take advantage of large temperature differences, or they don't. The former, these are thermal-based atomic batteries. And they have one side of the device is very hot from the radioactive decay, and the other side is cold. And that's the key there, that differential. So using thermocouples, that temperature gradient can be used to take advantage of the Seebeck effect, look it up, to generate electricity. That's basically how it works. Now, the iconic, classic atomic battery that does this is an RTG, radioisotope thermoelectric generator. There's that generator word. These devices go back to the 50s and 60s. And I think the principle was proved, I think it was like 1913. So it goes back to the 50s and 60s. The most advanced devices today can generate tens of watts, up to 110 watts, for NASA's top-of-the-line RTG. And they can supply power literally for years and years and years. RTGs are heavy. They're big devices compared to our portable batteries. But they are amazing for remote locations and places with poor sunlight. The Voyager probes, more than 15 billion kilometers from the Earth and the sun, are powered by RTGs. Mars Rovers, too, and countless other systems and platforms and probes, NASA and our knowledge of the solar system would be greatly diminished if it did not have access to these wonderful devices. But if you want really small, portable atomic batteries, though, you then want this non-thermal kind. These extract energy from the emitted particles themselves, kind of like before it degrades into heat, directly tapping into and using the particles. The semiconductors in these devices use these particles to create a voltage. And typically, these types of batteries have efficiencies, from 1% to even up to 9%. And they go by various names depending on the emitted particles that they are using. So they're called alpha voltaics if it converts alpha particle radiation, which is essentially just two neutrons and two protons. It's called gamma photovoltaics if it converts energetic photons like gamma rays. The real standout, though, of this type of atomic battery is called beta voltaics. This converts emitted electrons or positrons to electricity. And it's popular because beta decay can more easily be converted into usable electrical power, much more so than alpha particles or photons. Beta voltaics are not theoretical. These are being used right now, right now, in countless sensors and other devices that require very low power for very long periods of time. Did you know that they were used as pacemakers in the 70s? People literally had them in their bodies for decades with no ill effects. They are very safe. These are known things and they can be very useful. So that's why this Beijing startup company calls itself BetaVolt. They're taking advantage of beta voltaics and their new atomic battery is based on that. The battery itself is called BV100. It's coin-sized, about 15 by 15 by 5 millimeters. And there's a decent amount going on inside that coin. It has layers of radioactive nickel-63 in between layers of diamond semiconductors. Nickel-63 has a half-life of 100 years, which means in 100 years it'll be emitting essentially half the particles it does initially as it decays into harmless copper. Now, so saying this battery can last 50 years, I think that's reasonable, if it's got a half-life of 100 years. After 50 years, it'll be still, what, 75% as effective?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, it's not linear, but close.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' So it's still, it's a good rule of thumb to say, yeah, 50 years, you could say it'll last 50 years and perform well. So, and it's safe. These are safe. It needs minimal shielding. Sure, you'd have to inhale it if you're gonna get concerned that that will do it. You would be concerned if you inhaled it. And I wouldn't want it to leak on my skin, but no more so than I would want a AA battery to leak on my skin, you know? So it's not like this, it's radioactive, no! It's pretty damn safe. So can this get 110 watts output like the best RTG? No. No, not even close. This battery generates three volts, but only 100 microwatts. That's 100 millionths of a watt. A microwatt is a millionth of a watt. That's tiny. You would need, what, Steve? 30,000 of them to power a typical smartphone. That's really low. So let's look at 100 microwatts another way. Let's look at how many amps that is. So, all right, we got an equation here. Power in the form of watts equals voltage times current or amps, right? W equals V times A. We know the power in watts and we know the volts, so you calculate the amps. That's .000333 amps. Now an amp, amps indicates how many electrons per second pass through a point in a circuit. So .0000333 amps, super low. You know, you're not gonna be powering something big and power hungry with something like this at all. So clearly, these batteries are not meant for power hungry devices, as are all beta voltaics are not meant for that. And that's okay, because power density is not the strength of these batteries. Now power density is the rate that it can output the power for a given size. And as I've shown, it's super tiny for one of these batteries. Very low power density, but they do have energy density. That's the total energy per unit mass. In fact, nuclear batteries have 10,000 times approximately, 10,000 times the energy density of a chemical battery. That's a huge 10,000 times, that's huge. But that's spread over the lifetime of the battery, which could be years or decades or even centuries. But that's where these batteries shine. They can last for ridiculously long periods of time. Now the significance of this battery seems to me to be it's a miniaturization and not the power density that everyone no one seems to be focusing on any of the miniaturization advances that they may have made. You know, there's not too many details on that either. They also claim that these can be chained together and connected in a series. So I think we'll have to see that to happen because it looks like I'm looking at some translated article here and they claim that they can get up to multiple watts if you chain them together. I don't, I'm not seeing that anywhere else. I'd have to see that. But the real important thing here is they claim they're shooting for a one watt version of this battery by 2025. Next year, one watt.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Bullshit, it's not gonna happen.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It's not. That's an incredible improvement that no betavoltaics has ever come near. And so Steve and I apparently are very, very skeptical of that. Now, if you can connect-<br />
<br />
'''E:''' You'll not be investing, I guess, is what you're saying.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, I mean, if you can connect their batteries together as they claim and they also create if they can create a one watt version, then we would be in some interesting territory. But I don't believe that. I will wait, I'll have to wait to see if they even come close to doing that. I don't think they're gonna do that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Bob when I wrote about it, I did my calculation, like theoretically, how, what could you get to? So given a betavoltaic battery of the same size, let's say you maximize efficiency, that gives you one order of magnitude, maybe, right? So you still have two orders of magnitude to go to get to one watt. And the, I think, buried in the article about it, they say that they're looking to produce this one watt version. And they're also looking to produce versions that have a half-life of two years or one year. It's like, yeah, those two things are related. The only way you're gonna pick up another order of magnitude is if you go from a hundred year half-life to a one year half-life. But then you don't have a 50 year battery anymore. You got a one year battery.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' You can't have it both ways.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Which is still interesting.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' But you've also got a more radioactive and more expensive battery on hand, right?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Using a different isotope with a shorter half-life.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Exactly.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But even assuming they could shield it and make it safe and pick up all that radiation and everything, that's fine. It's just, you don't get a 50 year battery with that kind of power output in that kind of size. It simply does not work. The physics does not add up.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So I think it's, there's no way around the fact that this is gonna remain a niche technology for very low power devices.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, yeah. I don't see it really breaking out of that characterization. You know, and other companies have tried to go commercial with beta voltaics. Steve and I were excited about nano diamond battery a few years ago. That's the one that used radioactive waste from nuclear power plants encased in diamond that could run for millennia. I think they were saying 20,000 years. So I looked them up recently and they were charged with defrauding their investors. Right, and there's been other, and there was another company that was trying to commercialize beta voltaics. And they, if you go to their website anymore, you don't find it. Their website's like gone. So it's just like we've seen this before and we're kind of seeing it again.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, this is a pitch for more money.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, partly, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, so, but what will we see in the future of beta voltaics? I mean, I love the idea of using them to trickle charge batteries. I think that's promising. And that would be useful for things potentially, like for EVs that are mostly idle. And you could just have it trickle charge at night in over 10, 12 hours. Like, oh boy, we got got a little juice out of this that you didn't have to plug it in for. And I love though, that when it comes to the worst case scenario, like you've got a dead battery, but if you had this trickle charge idea, you know, you wait a little bit. I'm not sure how long you'd have to wait to get a reasonable charge.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But at least you wouldn't be dead in the water.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Right, you're not dead in the water. And "eventually" you'd be able to just drive home. And of course, of course, trickle charging would be awesome in the apocalypse. Obviously. Now in the future, then when the zombies are roaming the countryside and you could say like Robin in the Batmobile, right Evan? Atomic batteries to power, you could say that. And then of course you'll have to wait a while for your beta voltaic atomic battery to slowly trickle charge your zombie resistant EV. And then you're going, then you're good. So maybe we'll see that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I think it'd be more than like for an electric vehicle, it's just, I think it's too little electricity. But for, you don't wanna drag around an atomic battery, that would be big enough to produce enough electricity that it would matter. But for your cell phone, you can, if you had even one that was producing again, like a 10th of a watt, let's say, or even a 100th of a watt, but it could extend the duration that you could go without charging your battery significantly, right? Because you're not using your phone all the time. It is idling most of the time. So let's say like you're going on a trip and you're gonna be away from chargers for three or four days. This could extend the life of your phone battery that long. I just say by trickle charging it 24 seven, whether when you're using it or not using it, or again, if you are in an emergency situation, you're never dead in the water. You always have a little juice. You just have to wait some time.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, if I were going out in nature for days on end, first off, I wouldn't do that. Secondly, I would bring a little solar panel with me.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Then it's overcast. No, but you're right, you're right. But yeah, but that's what they're finding with a lot of the deep space probes that relying upon aligning those panels with the sun is not a great thing. And nuclear batteries are really good. The European Space Agency, who previously said no nuclear batteries were gonna do all solar, they're like, maybe we should, maybe we gotta relent. So they reversed themselves because-<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Do you know why they reversed themselves?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Because they had a big fail.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' They sent a probe onto a comet. Their probe landed on the comet and then bounced into the shade. And then because it was in the shade, its batteries, which were solar-based, died in three days. So here's millions of dollars sitting in the shade, unusable, bricked, because they didn't have an atomic battery. So that story just cracks me up. So now they're like, okay, yeah, we're gonna do atomic batteries now. They were famously against them. Now they aren't, which was a funny story.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So like a lot of technologies, the technology is what it is, and a lot of it depends on being clever and being creative about how to implement it. Like what is the use where it's gonna be valuable? It's not gonna be like big drones that fly forever and all the crap that the press is saying about it. That's never gonna happen. But as a trickle charger or for super low-energy devices, this technology could be really, really helpful.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, yeah. The allure of a battery that can last for years, a conventional portable battery that can last for years, this is so high that people are just kind of like losing their shit over this and trying to extrapolate away from the science. For me, it's not so much beta voltaics, but for me, it's the RTGs. I wanna have these like chained, connected RTGs buried in my backyard that could power my entire house for decades. That's what I'm looking for.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, but the final point is like for your phone, like for trickle charging your phone, you don't want a 50-year battery in your phone. Your phone's only gonna last two or three years. You want a two or three-year battery, right? You want it to last as long as the phone.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That would be epic.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, then you don't need, you know.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, but it gets you more power. It gives you more power over the shorter period of time, over the lifetime of that phone. So there is a niche in there that could actually be very, very functional if the price works out, right? Would you add another 50 bucks to your phone to have something, an alternate source of power, a backup source of power and extend? Like now you only have to recharge it once every three days or four days instead of every night.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Well, those products exist, Steve. I mean, I have a battery that's a magnet battery that attaches to my phone, right? It's very easy to just put it there. It stays there. And it gives me like another half a day of juice if I need it. It's very, very convenient. And it fits in your pocket and everything. It's very easy. So, I mean, there are products out there like that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, I know. This would be another option. There would definitely be advantages to it because it's just there. It's producing energy all the time. But it's not, but the hype was ridiculous.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh yeah, it was silly.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Silly, silly.<br />
<br />
=== Moon Landing Delayed <small>(23:38)</small> ===<br />
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'''S:''' All right, Jay. I understand that the Artemis program is going swimmingly. Give us an update.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oops.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Don't be look, we expected this, right?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Unfortunately.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So NASA's Artemis program, give you a quick refresher. It's aimed at returning humans to the moon. It's also very heavily, big part of this mission is that we are paving the way for future Mars missions. You know, we need to develop a lot of technology that's gonna allow us to get there, but they have been facing significant challenges that have led them to reschedule some of these timelines, which this information came out about a week ago. So the Artemis 2 mission, right? Artemis 1 successfully launched. It went around the moon, did everything that we wanted it to. We got a ton of data off of that mission, but now we move on to Artemis 2. Now, originally, if we go way back, it was originally slated to be, as you know, the first crewed test flight of the Orion spacecraft, but it's been delayed many times. Not, this isn't like the first delay or even the second delay. The first launch dates were said that they wanted to launch between 2019 and 2021. Now keep in mind, Artemis 2, not 1. Artemis 2, 2019, 2021. Then it was moved to 2023 and then November, 2024. And now they moved it to September, 2025. They are saying no earlier than that, which kind of implies it could be later, right?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's for Artemis 2.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That's Artemis 2.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, so one of my predictions has already failed.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh no.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That's all right, Steve. Oh no, somebody die. So the delays are due largely to crew safety concerns. So let me get into some of the details here. NASA is always, they're just continuously conducting testing of critical systems, environmental control, life support. And they have found during their testing, they've found problems that include battery issues with the Orion spacecraft regarding abort scenarios. There's also a, there are challenges with the air ventilation and temperature control circuitry components, which these are all mission critical components. And bottom line here is, of course, it's good to know NASA is taking all these precautions. They're taking it very seriously. You know, this isn't like a let's launch it and test it and see how it goes. Like they fully plan on bringing every single astronaut back to earth. So they are trying to resolve all of these issues, but it sucks to wait longer, but you know, we're just a consumer here, right? Like I'm looking at this like, come on, launch it. I want to see it. I want to be a part of all that. But yeah, ultimately we want it to be successful. We want the people to come back. So of course, any delays with Artemis 2 means that it'll impact the launch dates of the Artemis 3 mission, which has now been pushed for 2026. This delay allows NASA to give them time. They don't want to like do Artemis 2 and then immediately do Artemis 3. They want time to make a lot of alterations and incorporate lessons that they learned from Artemis 2 so they can make Artemis 3 better, right? You know, hey, we had a problem with this thing and that thing, like they want to fix all of those things. But there's also problems with the partners that NASA is working with to develop, that are developing their own technologies. So there's a couple of names here you'll definitely recognize. SpaceX, as a good example, they're responsible for the human landing system. You know, they have to demonstrate that their starship can successfully dock. It also needs to be able to refuel with other tanker starships in orbit. These are not easy things to do at all. And this capability is essential for transporting astronauts beyond Earth's orbit. Getting the ship refueled and being able to do what it needs to do in and around the moon is going to be something that could take place frequently. And these tasks, like I said, are challenging and straight up, they're just not ready yet. They don't have the technology. And I'm sure that the timelines and the dates that they're giving, everything is a, we hope that it's this, but it's never like it will be done on this date. Like they're not, that's not where they're operating. They don't work that way. Axiom Space, you might remember, they're making the next generation spacesuits. No, they still need to solve some heavy duty requirements that NASA put on them. Like one of the big ones is that the spacesuit itself, standalone, needs to have an emergency oxygen supply system. So this will enable the spacesuit to supply oxygen for an hour with no attached gear, right? Just the spacesuit itself has an hour of air in it. So they're also having supply chain issues, which I was a little surprised to hear, but they're having problems getting materials that they need to make the spacesuits. And they also have, they're working with outdated components that need to meet the latest NASA requirements. I couldn't get any more details about these components. Like I don't, I suspect that they may have been borrowing from earlier spacesuits, certain systems and things like that. But NASA has been ramping up their requirements and they're having a hard time meeting it. Now, this means that they're likely to have to redesign parts of the current design that we've already seen. And this issue with the supply chain is definitely impacting the development of the spacesuit components. So lots of moving parts here. Now, NASA is also dealing with its own financial issues. They haven't presented an official cost estimate for Artemis III. And there is a group in the government whose job it is to get this information, right? And they need to give it and it needs to be assessed and it takes time. Now, keep in mind, the Artemis program is not just about returning to the moon, but it's also laying the groundwork for human exploration to Mars. So there's a lot of complexity here and there's a lot of weight on every single thing that they do. And these price tags the costs are phenomenally high. The Artemis missions, they include development and integration of a lot of different systems here. You know, think of it this way. We have the Space Launch System, the SLS rocket. That alone is very complicated because there's lots of different versions of that rocket that they're gonna be custom building for each and every mission. Then they have the Exploration Ground System. They have the Orion spacecraft itself. They have the Human Landing System. They have the Next Generation Spacesuits. They have the Gateway Lunar Space Station and all of the future rovers and equipment, scientific equipment that needs to go. Like there is a mountain of things that have not been created yet that need to be designed and crafted and deployed. So it's exciting because there's a lot of awesome stuff ahead of us. And I'm not surprised that they're pushing the dates out, but man, it's disappointing because I thought something incredible was gonna happen this year.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, it's unfortunate, but you know, they're just going back to the timeline that they originally had. You know, they were pressured to move up the timeline. Right, was it 2026 or 2028?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' 2028.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, 2028 originally, yeah. So even if they push back to 2026, they're still two years ahead of their original schedule. And that was really just for political reasons that that was moved up.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Before we switch off to space topic, let me give you guys a quick update on the Peregrine Moon Lander. Remember last week we talked about this. Okay, so real quick summary. This Moon Lander was developed by a company called Astrobotic. Seven hours into the mission, they became aware of a fuel leak that was changing the telemetry of the ship. Bob was very concerned. They didn't know what to do. They didn't really understand what was going on. And then everyone dove in. They started to really figure out what was happening. So the planned lunar landing had to be canceled because they just weren't gonna be able to position the ship and get the engines to do what they needed them to do that would enable it to land. So the ship basically goes out approximately the distance of the Moon, right? 183,000 miles or 294 kilometers. It gets out there. Then it gets pulled back to Earth. It didn't, the Lander didn't actually transit or orbit the Moon. So I didn't see its flight path, and I'd like to see it because I'm not crystal clear on what it was, but it did get pulled back by the Earth. And they have currently set it on a trajectory back to Earth where they fully expect it to completely disintegrate upon reentry. This is gonna happen on January 18th. So as you listen to this, it'll have been, it happened a few days ago. You know, Peregrine was part of NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Service Program, and that's it. It's gonna come back, all this stuff on there, the human remains, the messages from Japan, a few weird things that are on there. It's all gonna get burned up in the atmosphere. So it's sad, it's sad, but it happens. And we learn from these things. And again, this is a perfect example of why NASA, when people are involved, meaning like we're sending people into outer space, they don't have failures like this, right? Like they won't stand for failures like this. Everything has to be massively tested. So we gotta wait a little longer, guys.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yep.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' None of it's canceled, which is fantastic.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, thanks, Jay.<br />
<br />
=== Cloned Monkeys for Research <small>(32:57)</small> ===<br />
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'''S:''' Cara, tell us about these cloned monkeys.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, so some of you may have seen there's quite a lot of trending articles right now that are based on a new study that was just published in Nature Communications. I'm gonna read the title of the study. It's a bit techie. Reprogramming Mechanism Dissection and Trophoblast Replacement Application in Monkey Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer. So based on that title, you may not know, but what Chinese researchers have done or what they claim is now happening is that they now have the longest lasting cloned monkeys, cloned primates, really. There's a monkey, he is a rhesus monkey named Retro. And my guess, even though it doesn't say it in any of the coverage that I read, my guess is that the name Retro, because they capitalize the T in Retro, comes from reprogrammed trophoblast. I think that's where they got his name, Retro. And so really what this story is about is a new technique for trying to clone primates that works a teeny tiny bit better than previous techniques. And the big sort of payoff here is this monkey is now coming on three years old. So you may ask, haven't we been cloning animals for a while?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Dolly the sheep, right?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Dolly the sheep, right. So this is the same technique. I should say it's the same general technique with some really important changes as Dolly the sheep. So Dolly the sheep lived for six and a half years after she was cloned. Mice, rabbits, dogs, goats, pigs, cows, lots of different mammals have been cloned over the years. Even other monkeys have been cloned over the years, but the difference is that they've been incredibly short-lived. So generally speaking, when we talk about cloning mammals specifically, it's super hard to do. About one to 3% of clones result in live birth. It's a very, very low percentage. So as it is, it's hard just to get viable embryos when cloning mammals. And then even if you get a viable embryo, it's hard to have a live birth. There were some monkeys in 1998 who I think were the most long-lived or the most kind of the biggest success story as of that point, but I still think that they only lived for a few months. And so Retro coming up on three years is sort of being hailed as a triumph by the media, but let's talk about what the difference was here. So all of these animals that I'm describing here have been cloned using a very specific technique. And that technique is called somatic cell nuclear transfer. In simple terms, as we know, we talk about the difference between somatic and germ cells. Somatic cells are like body cells, right? Everything but eggs and sperm. So a somatic cell is actually put into, so you're transferring the nucleus from a donor cell, but a somatic donor cell, like a skin, let's say like a skin cell into an egg cell. And then that donor DNA, which is now kind of closed up in the egg is sort of programmed to start developing embryonically. So here's one thing that I think is an important point here that not a lot of coverage that I'm seeing makes. These are still embryonic clones. None of these are clones that are coming from an adult organism. So when you start to see kind of the fear-mongering coverage around, does this mean we can clone humans? Does this mean we can clone humans? First of all, nobody has successfully been cloning mammals from adult cells. Does that make sense? Almost all of them are pulled from embryonic cells and some of them are even just pulled from split embryonic cells. So even though technically you could call it a clone, it's like a twin, if that makes sense. But this specific approach that's been used, which all of these, like I said, have been this thing, somatic cell nuclear transfer is where we run into some hiccups. So what ends up happening is that the cells of that embryos trophoblast layer, which is sort of the outermost layer that provides a lot of nutrients and also actually forms a big chunk of the placenta after it's implanted are very problematic in almost every case. And scientists think that this is because of epigenetic factors. So there are these markers that are present, right? That turn genes on or off. So it's not changing the actual genes that are there, but it's changing their expression, whether they turn on or off. When you put this cell, this clone cell into an empty egg, the egg kind of DNA or the epigenes, the epigenetic factors within that egg affect the DNA of the implanted embryo and all sorts of havoc is wreaked. And really scientists hadn't been able to figure out how to get these embryos to become viable. They're usually all sorts of terrible mutations. They often don't even make it to live birth. And if they do make it to live birth, they often die within hours, days, weeks, or in very lucky cases, months. And so what the scientists did in this case, and this is sort of the new bit, is a trophoblast replacement. So they inject that inner cell mass from the cloned embryo into a non-cloned embryo. So the embryo cell mass is going inside of a non-cloned embryo that they made through in vitro fertilization. So they're basically forming like a hybrid embryo and the trophoblast portion belongs to the non-clone, which seems to be less likely to kick in all of these epigenetic factors that seem to be harmful to the developing embryo. And so the scientists are claiming that this is like rescuing the development of the embryos. But to be fair, we're still talking about an attempt of like hundreds of potential cloned embryos and only still like a handful of them sticking and then only one of them actually being successful. So it's not like this case is any more efficient. It's not like this specific kind of success story with Retro, the first ever rhesus monkey that's lived for longer than a day. And actually he's coming up on like three years. It's not like their approach made a bunch of them. It's they still only, it was very scattershot and they only got one successful outcome. It's just that their successful outcome has been more successful than any other primate in the past. And so the argument that the Chinese scientists are making here is, if we can do this more, this could be very, very good for biomedical research. Because like we do all the time with cloned mice, you can give a drug to one clone and a different drug or no drug or placebo to the other clone. And you can see exactly how well it works because they have the exact same DNA.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So it's a good way to control for variables.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yes, it reduces all sorts of variability. But of course, this is an ethical conundrum. And a lot of people are saying like, should we be doing this to monkeys? Should we be doing this to primates at all? And look at how many failures we have before we have a success. And look at how much suffering is happening to these animals until we get to that point. And is it going to, like, what is the payoff and how much is it going to improve our biomedical science, our pharmaceutical science? Is the sort of return worth the risk? That's another question. Now, this is perfectly legal in China. So the way that they're approaching this, it's passed all their review boards and it's a perfectly legal practice, unlike some of the historical stories that we've talked about. Do you remember when we talked about the CRISPR, the rogue CRISPR story?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Oh, yeah, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Like that was not legal.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' The Raelians.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' This is. But I think some people are saying, wait, if they were able to do this with the rhesus monkey, are they going to clone humans next? No, we're nowhere close to that. A, because we can't clone adult cells at all. These are still embryonic cells. And B, it's still hard as shit. It's no easier and it's no more efficient to clone this. It was no easier or no more efficient to clone this rhesus monkey than any of the attempts in the past. It's just that this one hiccup, it was surmounted in this case. Can it be surmounted again though? I don't know. Was it lucky that they happened to get this one just right? I guess we will see.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We'll see, yeah. I mean, it seems like a good incremental advance.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It does.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, and which is, again, that's par for the course, right, for science, right? Breakthroughs are rare, incremental advances are the rule. And this is, it seems like a solid one. But I still want to know, when can I make a clone of myself so I can harvest its organs? <br />
<br />
'''C:''' Nowhere close. Yeah, it's going to be a long time. The funny thing though, which I did discover in doing this research, is that there's a Korean company that has made 1,500 dog clones at this point.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, how long do they live?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Like, they're long-lived. Apparently, they're perfectly healthy dogs. And so it's pretty interesting that just, okay, it's way harder to clone mammals, but some mammal species are easier to clone than others.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, well, thanks, Cara. This is definitely a technology that we'd want to keep an eye on.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And actually, I will add to this, and I think this is important. One of the arguments is that this could also have implications for conventional IVF. Because sometimes you do see this trophoblast problem even in conventional IVF. And so this could be at least a new way to look at improving outcomes in conventional IVF for people. So there's that.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' So not that acupuncture I talked about last week.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Probably, yeah. Probably this would be more helpful to researchers. Yeah, I think so.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, thanks, Cara.<br />
<br />
=== Converting {{co2}} into Carbon Nanofibers <small>(44:23)</small> ===<br />
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'''S:''' So I'm going to do another news item that's a little bit also of hype, more than reality. The headline is, scientists develop a process for converting atmospheric CO2 into carbon nanofibers.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Ooh.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Ooh, that sounds-<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Solves two problems at once, right?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Exactly, right? It sounds really, really good. But let's dig into it a little bit. So obviously, carbon capture is something that we're looking into. Researchers are studying various ways of either taking CO2 directly out of the air or capturing it at the source, near coal fire plants or natural gas fire plants or whatever. And then putting that CO2, taking the carbon out of it and getting it into a form that is solid, right? So that it could be buried or utilized in some way, but it would be permanently, or at least for on the order of magnitude of 50 or 100 years, giving us enough time to sort out this whole green energy thing, ully convert over to low carbon economy and energy infrastructure. If we could bind up that carbon for 50 or 100 years, that could go a long way to mitigating climate change. And the experts who have crunched all the numbers said, we're not going to get to our goals without some kind of carbon capture along the way. Although they're mainly figuring like after 2050, like between now and 2050, we really need to focus on reducing our carbon footprint. And then after that, that we, carbon capture has to really start kicking in to some serious degree to turn that line back down again, you know? So is this kind of technology going to be the pathway? Now, carbon nanotubes or carbon nanofibers are a great solid form of carbon to turn atmospheric CO2 into because we've talked about carbon nanofibers. You know, this is a two-dimensional material. They have a lot of interesting physical properties. You know, they're very, very strong and they're highly conductive, highly both thermally and electrically, et cetera. And even if you just make very, very short nanofibers, so they're not long cables of it, but just very, very tiny ones, it could, it's still a great filler, right? You could still like, for example, you can add it to cement to make it much stronger. And that would be a good way to bind it up. You know, just imagine if all the cement were laying around the world, it had billions of tons of carbon in it. That was then now long-term sequestered. So that would be, that's like one of the most obvious sort of uses of this kind of carbon nanofibers. So what's the innovation here? So essentially they said, well, one of our innovations is we broke it down into a two-step process, right? We didn't want to try to get all the way from carbon dioxide to carbon nanotubes, carbon nanofibers in one step. So we broke it down into two steps. The first step is to turn carbon dioxide and water into carbon monoxide and hydrogen. And when I read that, I'm like, oh, you mean like we've been doing for years, right? I mean, that's not anything that's new. And that's kind of always the first step, you know what I mean? Because the problem with carbon dioxide is that it's a very low energy, very stable molecule, right? So it takes energy to convert it into anything else. Carbon monoxide and H2-hydrogen, are very high energy molecules. They are good feeders for lots of industrial chemical reactions, right? If you have hydrogen, you can do tons of stuff with that. We've spoken about this quite a bit. And if you have carbon monoxide, you can make all kinds of carbon-based molecules out of it. These are good, highly reactive, high energy molecules. So yeah, that's the key, is getting from CO2 to CO and H2, that's always the tough part. And they're basically saying, so we're gonna do that using basically existing methods. It's like, okay, so there's no innovation in the hard part. The real, right? It's like, okay, that's old news. The real new bit is that they develop a catalytic process to go from carbon monoxide to carbon nanofibers. It's like, okay, that's interesting. You know, that sounds reasonable. So they basically proved that they could do that. You know, they use cobalt as a catalyst, and which isn't great because cobalt is one of those elements that are sourced from parts of the world that are not stable. And we're trying to reduce our reliance on cobalt. And so developing a process that uses more cobalt, not great. It's an iron-cobalt system that they're using. Now it's gonna come down to two things, right? So they did a proof of concept. You could break this down to a two-step process where you go from carbon dioxide to carbon monoxide, and then carbon monoxide to carbon nanotubes. It works, but two questions, or actually, there's three questions. One is, can you do it on an industrial scale? Because unless you could do billions of tons of this stuff, it's not gonna matter, right? Second is, how cost-effective is it? And third is, how energy-effective is it, right? So if you have to burn a lot of energy to do the process, then it doesn't really get you anywhere.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Don't do it, right.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So they do say that the processes work at relatively low temperature and at atmospheric pressure, at ambient pressure. That's good. So that's a good sign that this has the potential to be energy-efficient. And then they also say, and this is always that gratuitous thing, if you fuel it, right? If you fuel this process with renewable energy, it could be carbon-neutral. Of course, if anything you fuel with renewable energy, it's gonna be carbon-neutral.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's like part of this healthy breakfast, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Right, part of this healthy breakfast. But fair enough. So you could theoretically power this with solar panels or wind turbines or nuclear power, which is what you'd have to do. You'd need some massive energy source. But again, in the short term, if we're gonna build a renewable energy source, you're gonna reuse that to replace fossil fuel energy sources. You're not gonna use it to capture the carbon from the fossil fuel, because that's adding another step and that's inefficient. So this kind of process isn't, and this is what I was saying at the beginning, it's not gonna be relevant until after we decarbonize the energy infrastructure, right? Only once you've replaced all the fossil fuel with carbon-neutral energy sources, does it then make sense to add even more carbon-neutral energy sources in order to pull some of the carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere that you've already released, right? Until then, if you build a nuclear power plant, for example, just connect it to the grid. Don't use it to pull carbon out of the air that you put in by burning coal, right? Shut down the coal plant and power the grid with the nuclear power. But there's a sort of a good news to that fact is that we don't have to really perfect this technology for 30 years. This is the kind of thing that we need to have ready to go in 2050. Like if we get to 2050 and we've mostly decarbonized our energy infrastructure and some more industrial energy structure, that's what we really need to start ramping up carbon capture. And that's when these kinds of technologies are gonna be useful. So we do have a couple of decades to perfect it. So it's good that we're at the proof of concept stage now because it could take 20 years to get to the industrial stage where we're doing it. But it is-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Is it possible or reasonable that it would scale up like that?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, again, that's a big question mark. And we've been here a hundred times where something looks great at the proof of concept stage and then we never hear about it again because it just failed to scale, right? It wasn't the kind of thing that you could scale up. And with carbon capture, that is one of the big hurdles. Does it scale? Can you get this to function at industrial, massive industrial scales? Because it's not worth it if you can't. And then the other thing, again, is how energy efficient is it? Because if it's energy inefficient and then it becomes part of the problem, right? It's not helping. It's just another energy sink. This has potential. And I do think carbon nanofibers as the end product is a great idea. Because again, we could just dump it in cement and put it on or under the ground or whatever, put it in our foundations. So, and it makes it stronger. It increases the longevity of the cement. And cement is an important source of CO2 also. So anything that makes that industry more efficient is good. So there's kind of a double benefit. So I like all of that. But looking past the hype, this is something where we're at the proof of concept stage. This may be an interesting technology 20 years from now. So let's keep working on it. But this isn't like the answer to climate change, right? This is something we're gonna have to be plugging in in 20 years or so.<br />
<br />
=== Feng Shui <small>(54:04)</small> ===<br />
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'''S:''' All right, Evan, I understand that people are doing feng shui wrong. What are the consequences of this?<br />
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'''E:''' My gosh, how are we ever gonna get past this obstacle? It's not every week that the news-consuming public gets advice about feng shui. But this week, we're fortunate not to have one but two articles warning us about feng shui mistakes that are all around us. And I know people pronounce this differently. I've heard feng shui, feng shui, feng shui.<br />
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'''C:''' I also think some of the differences- I think some of them come from whether you're saying it in Mandarin or Cantonese.<br />
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'''E:''' I suppose so, I suppose so. Well, maybe there are some people who are not familiar with what feng shui is. What is it? You know what I did? I decided, I'm gonna look up the definition. I'm gonna go to fengshui.com to find out. I don't know what's there. Here's what happens real quick when you get there. There's this big, so it's a blank screen with all except for a big blurry dot. And then the blurry dot will start to pull in opposite directions, forming two circles, touching at a point like a figure eight on its side, or the infinity sign, basically. And there's no text or anything. That's all there is. And the only thing you can do is click on the dot. And that dot takes you to the next page, which is a entirely black background page, no text again. And it slowly starts to transition to a gray scale. It dissolves eventually to a white background in about 10 seconds. And then an octagon appears. And then within the octagon, there are lines that appear interconnecting the non-neighboring sides of the octagon. And if you click on that, it brings you back to the blurry dot. So to tell you the truth, and that cycle repeats, to tell you the truth, I think that's the most cogent explanation of feng shui I've ever seen. You know, oh boy, this is wild. Oh, it's an ancient Chinese traditional practice which claims to use energy forces to harmonize individuals with their surrounding environment. The term feng shui means literally wind water. And from ancient times, landscapes and bodies of water were thought to direct the flow of universal qi, the cosmic current, all energy, through places and structures, and in some cases, people. Now, here is the first article. Four feng shui plants to avoid. These are gonna disturb the qi in your home, warns experts. That's how the headline reads. Oh my gosh, this is a warning. And where was this? Yahoo.com picked this up as part of their lifestyle news, and they pulled it from the website called Living Etc. So when it comes to the best plants for good feng shui, there are a few you should bring home, and some you should completely avoid. And they're gonna help you right now pick out the ones to avoid, because they are experts. Yep, yep, they consulted experts for this, and I hope that-<br />
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'''S:''' [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enfe44s0ivo You have a degree in boloney].<br />
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'''E:''' I hope they met legitimate scientists, botanists, chemists, right? Maybe they got on board, but here's what they said. Feng shui master Jane Langhoff. It's essential to consider the type of energy plants you bring into your spaces. Oh well, so much for hearing from scientists.<br />
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'''C:''' What's an energy plant?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, energy plant. Type-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' What's that?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Consider the type of energy plants bring into our spaces. So it's not energy plants, but actually I'll get to that. I'll get to that, Cara. There's actually, there are actually some things, and I will eventually get there. So you weren't totally wrong. Here's what else she says. I don't believe that specific plants will necessarily cause bad luck. However, there are certain plants that can represent negative elements or bring inauspicious energy to a space. Generally, it's advisable to avoid excessively thorny and spiky plants that can cause injury. Oh boy, thank goodness we have a person with a master's certificate and a gold star on it that warns us that thorny and spiky plants can cause an injury. Another one, Feng Shui consultant and educator Laura Morris. As a general rule, you want to be mindful about where you place a spiky or pointy leaf plant. Try to avoid placing them next to your bed or in the partnership area of your home, whatever the partnership area is, wherever people partner up. I don't know.<br />
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'''S:''' It's where the people get busy? I mean, what are they talking about?<br />
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'''E:''' But you want, so here are the four, okay? Here are the four plants in order and do this like David Letterman's top 10 list, but it's a top four list. Number four, the yuccas, Y-U-C-C-A-S.<br />
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'''C:''' I love yuccas.<br />
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'''E:''' Yuccas, yuccas, yeah. Got to avoid them. They're kind of prickly. They're kind of what, they have sword-like features to them, I guess. You know, long kind of bladed, pointy leaves. They say don't bring those in the home. Number three, cacti. I think we know what cactus and cacti are. Number two, dried flowers and dying plants. You know why? Because don't have those in your house because they represent stagnant energy. Best to leave those outside because if you bring them inside, they could restrict the flow of chi. And the number one plant you should not have in your house, and I have them, quite a few of them in my house, artificial plants. Yep, you know why? Because they block, well, they block energy. They're inauthentic, Steve. They're pretending to be something they're not. This is right directly from the article, which can affect energy in a space negatively. If you love artificial plants, they must be also kept clean of dust and grime. Wow, this is good stuff. Now, Cara, as far as the, what do we call them?<br />
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'''C:''' Energy plants?<br />
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'''E:''' Energy plants. They list some plants. So here's some plants that are associated with good luck and include, I'm not gonna give you their taxonomical names, but I'll give you their more common names. The treasure fern, the happy plant, the lucky bamboo, the jade plant, the money plant, and peace lilies.<br />
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'''S:''' And this doesn't sound at all like something she just made up.<br />
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'''E:''' I mean, totally.<br />
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'''C:''' To sell the plants that she has in her shop.<br />
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'''E:''' This is some fatal level thinking right here. You know, I mean, how more basic does it get than that? You know, I mean, yeah. Lucky bamboo and the treasure fern. But it gets better because there's the other article. Here's the headline. Small entryway feng shui mistakes, five things the pros always avoid. So again, like right on the heels of this other one came this article. Oh my gosh, pearls of wisdom coming our way again. Number one, don't have any dead or dying plants. They kind of referred to that in the first article because dead or dying plants create negative energy and represent decay. That's not something you want to welcome in your welcoming part of your home, which is your entryway. Number two, poor maintenance of the door space. For example, blocking the area behind the front door will make moving through the space difficult. You think so? If you kind of put something behind a door and try to open it, that's gonna, you know. We need an expert to tell us this though. Also, don't let your front door get dirty and grimy. You know, it'll stop the positive energy from flowing in that door. The next, the three of five, beware your mirror placement. You don't want to place a mirror face on because you open the door and you're looking in the mirror, oh my gosh, you might get scared or something. You want to hang that mirror on a wall facing away to a doorway to your next room because what it does is it sends opportunities and prosperities into your home. It kind of brings the energy in and reflects it into the center of the home, which apparently needs it. Number four is clutter. Get rid of don't come in and throw your keys down and fling your mail on the little table there and take off your shoes and throw your coat down. You know, everything has a place. Put your stuff away, basically. And number five, this is the most important and the one I'll wrap up on. We ignore the elements at our own peril. You must incorporate the five elements of earth, fire, water, metal, and wood into your entryway, which kind of, I think, goes maybe against the clutter part of all this, right? But they said the balance between these elements creates good feng shui energy and will create a harmonious balance in your entryway. So there it is. Of all the hard science that we've touched on this week, perhaps this will eclipse it all and be the most beneficial to us all.<br />
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'''S:''' Like, feng shui is one of those ones that amazes me because it's just pure magic, you know?<br />
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'''C:''' Yeah, it's nothing.<br />
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'''S:''' So you believe in magic, and I've said that to people, and the kind of answer you get is, well, science doesn't know everything. It's like, yeah, but we know magic isn't real.<br />
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'''J:''' Not everybody can say that, Steve.<br />
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'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
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'''C:''' Well, and it's like, what I love about it is it's magic mixed with, like, a dose of common sense. It's sort of like all the things you were saying, Evan, because then you have these true believers that are like, yeah, but I had an expert come in, and they helped me with my feng shui, and I feel better. It's like, yeah, probably because you're not bumping into shit all the time.<br />
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'''E:''' Right, because they cleaned your house and put your crap away.<br />
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'''S:''' Here's your problem. You've got a cactus right in your entryway here.<br />
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'''C:''' Cactus behind your door. You can't open your door all the way.<br />
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'''S:''' That's feng shui.<br />
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'''C:''' So stupid.<br />
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'''E:''' Yeah, okay, fine. If you're gonna do it in your own home, whatever. But I mean, and what we talked about before, and it's not the article this week, but when governments start hiring feng shui people, bring them in for architectural design and stuff, they are, oh my gosh.<br />
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'''S:''' It's driving me nuts.<br />
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'''E:''' Wasting all our money and driving us nuts.<br />
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[AD]<br />
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{{anchor|futureWTN}} <!-- keep right above the following sub-section. this is the anchor used by the "wtnAnswer" template, which links the previous "new noisy" segment to its future WTN, here.<br />
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== Who's That Noisy? <small>(1:05:06)</small> ==<br />
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'''S:''' All right, Jay, it's Who's That Noisy time.<br />
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'''J:''' All right, guys, last week I played this noisy. [plays Noisy] Now, I should have known that that kind of sound was gonna make a lot of people send me a lot of like funny entries into Who's That Noisy, things like they absolutely know that that is not it. They're just trying to make me laugh. And a few people did make me laugh, but I did get some serious entries this week, and we have a listener named Tim Lyft that said, "Hi, Jay, my daughter, age nine, thinks this week's noisy is somebody playing one of those snake charmer flute thingies, but badly" which I thought was a wonderful guess. And her cousin, who's seven years old, guessed "a lot of farm animals".<br />
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'''S:''' A cacophony of farm animals.<br />
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'''J:''' I think these are two wonderful guesses. And Tim himself guessed some kind of bird. You can't send me an answer of some kind of bird. You have to be absolutely specific. But thank you for sending those in. Those are great. Visto Tutti always answers. He always comes up with something. He said, "it sounds like peacocks calling during the mating season. They like to start the annoying screeching way before sunrise, which makes the humans in the neighborhood wonder what roast peacock tastes like". So I heard this and I'm like, I read his email like, oh, peacocks, I don't know. I never heard the sounds that they make. And then I proceeded to get about, I think six or seven more emails where people were saying peacocks. So perhaps peacocks sound like that, which is a horrible noise for a bird to make, especially if they live around you. Another listener named Harley Hunt wrote in, said, good day. My guess for this week is a peacock. Okay, I put that in. I don't know why.<br />
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'''S:''' I'm sensing a theme here.<br />
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'''J:''' Yeah, there's a theme. All right, so there was a bunch of people that guessed peacock. Another listener here named Adam Pesch said, "Jay, first time emailer, long time listener. Today, I was awakened from a deep sleep by this week's noisy. You did warn us. I never have a guess and probably am way off, but this week reminded me of a shofar horn that I've heard in synagogue trying to mimic an electric guitar riff. Thanks for everything you guys do." I could not find anything on that, so I have no idea what that sounds like, but I do appreciate those guesses. Unfortunately, nobody guessed it. And you know, this one was a hard one. I just thought it was a provocative noise that I wanted to play for you guys. And I will explain this one to you. So again, this was sent in by a listener named Curtis Grant. And Curtis said, I have a really cool noise I heard at work as an elevator fitter or installer. In this case, we use a temporary hoist that lifts the finished lift cabin, right, which is basically the elevator itself, up and down the shaft. We use this to hoist or install our equipment, which are the rail brackets and et cetera, from the top of the finished lift car, as it is more efficient than building a temporary platform to install from. So as these cars are heavy, they have temporary nylon guide shoes that rub against the rails and cause this noise. So basically, like during the installation of an elevator, this is a common noise that someone would hear if they were doing the install. Very, very hard noise to hear. Let me just play briefly again. [plays Noisy] Wow, imagine that like resonating inside the shaft, right? Wow, imagine that like resonating inside the shaft, right? Ugh, forget about it.<br />
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'''C:''' That's haunting.<br />
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'''J:''' Yeah, definitely. <br />
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{{anchor|previousWTN}} <!-- keep right above the following sub-section ... this is the anchor used by wtnHiddenAnswer, which will link the next hidden answer to this episode's new noisy (so, to that episode's "previousWTN") --><br />
=== New Noisy <small>(1:08:36)</small> ===<br />
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'''J:''' Guys, I have a new noisy this week, sent in by a listener named Chris Kelly. And here it is.<br />
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[Zipper-like zings, and a clack]<br />
<br />
I'll play it again. It's very short. [plays Noisy] Very strange. If you think you know {{wtnAnswer|968|what this week's Noisy is}}, or you heard something really cool, please do send it to me, because it helps make the show good. WTN@theskepticsguide.org.<br />
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== Announcements <small>(1:09:03)</small> ==<br />
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'''J:''' Real quick, Steve, I'll go down a few things here. Guys, if you enjoyed the show, we would appreciate you considering becoming a patron of ours to help us keep going. All you have to do is go to [https://www.patreon.com/SkepticsGuide patreon.com/SkepticsGuide], and you can consider helping us continue to do the work that we do. Every little bit counts. So thank you very much, and thank you to all our patrons out there. We really appreciate it. One thing we started doing a few weeks ago, about a month ago, is we came up with the SGU weekly email. This email essentially gives you every piece of content that we created the previous week. We send it out on Monday or Tuesdays. So it'll have the show that just came out the previous Saturday, any YouTube videos, any TikTok videos, any blogs that Steve wrote, anything that we feel you need to see, it's going to be in that email. Also, we'll put in some messages here and there about things, like for example, an important message to tell you guys. So Google is changing its podcast player. And the new podcast player that they have actually is not something that we want to work with because there's a few things, without getting into all the details, the big humps for us that we couldn't get over was one, we couldn't integrate this automatically. So it won't automatically update to our RSS. We'd have to do everything manually.<br />
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'''C:''' What?<br />
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'''J:''' Yeah, that's crazy. It doesn't integrate with our media host and that's it. So that right there is a pretty much a deal breaker for us because we can't be doing everything manually. That's number one. Number two, and sadly, they auto-insert ads and the pay is terrible. And we would have no control over the ads. So that's it, it's a game breaker. We're not going to do it. We are not going to integrate with Google's new podcast platform until and if they ever change or whatever, if I'll keep an eye on it, but.<br />
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'''S:''' Hey, it should be able to turn ads off if you don't opt out of that.<br />
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'''J:''' Yeah, I mean, I haven't seen-<br />
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'''S:''' And like not automatically updating the RSS. I mean, come on.<br />
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'''J:''' Yeah, I know.<br />
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'''C:''' Yeah, like nobody's going to ever, nobody's going to use this.<br />
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'''J:''' Yeah, I don't think they will. So if, unfortunately, if you have recently found out that you no longer are getting our RSS on the Google podcast platform, this changeover happened over, I guess, the last few weeks or whatever, we're very sorry, but we have to, we can't engage in things that aren't good for us and that's it. So we're just not going to do it. And feel free to email me if you want to give me more information about it, or if you know, like, hey, either it's going to change or whatever. I can't find anything. But I admit, I didn't look that deeply into trying to figure out where they might be in the future. I just know where they are right now. Anyway, guys, there's an eclipse happening, and we decided let's do something fun around the eclipse because this is probably going to be the last one that any of us are going to see, especially one that's going to be close. And as Cara and Evan have been talking about, this is a big one. This is a long one. This is really one you really want to see. So wherever you are try to get yourself to a location where you're going to have totality. You know, bring the kids, definitely get the eye protection that you need, but this is going to be a big deal. So what we decided is we're going to go to a place where Bob's horrible feng shui of creating clouds.<br />
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'''E:''' Right?<br />
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'''J:''' Whenever an astronomical event is happening, we don't think that Bob's powers will work in Texas. So we're going to Dallas. We're going to be doing an extravaganza on April 6th, and we will be doing an SGU private show, a private show plus, actually, and we'll be doing that on the 7th of April of this year. All of these things will be in and around Dallas. So we really hope that if you're local or you're going to be traveling there for the eclipse, please do consider joining us. Ticket sales are going very well. So move quickly if you're interested because I can see things filling up very quickly. Other than that, guys.<br />
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'''B:''' The clouds will follow me.<br />
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'''J:''' Yeah, if they do, Bob, if they do. We will take it out on you. We're going to make you buy us an expensive dinner, I guess, or something.<br />
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'''B:''' Of course you will.<br />
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'''J:''' Yeah, but I'm looking forward to Cara's barbecue.<br />
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'''C:''' Yeah.<br />
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'''E:''' Ooh.<br />
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'''B:''' That's the only reason why I'm going.<br />
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'''C:''' You guys are going to be so good. Barbecue and Tex-Mex.<br />
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'''J:''' I'm going to diet before I go just so I can overeat when we're there, you know?<br />
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'''C:''' Oh, you're going to go hard in Texas. You can't not go hard. Oh, it's the best.<br />
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'''J:''' Deep in the heart of Texas, right?<br />
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'''C:''' Yep. Stars at night are big and bright.<br />
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'''J:''' I know that because of Pee-Wee's Big Adventure, right?<br />
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'''E:''' Of course.<br />
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'''S:''' All right. Thank you, Jay.<br />
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== Quickie: TikTok recap <small>(1:13:37)</small> ==<br />
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'''S:''' Very quickly, I'm going to do an entry from TikTok. As you know, we do TikTok videos every week. One of the videos I did today, we record, we also livestream if you're interested, but we recorded one on the jellyfish UFO. Have you guys seen this?<br />
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'''J:''' Oh, yeah.<br />
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'''E:''' I have seen it.<br />
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'''S:''' Yeah, the jellyfish UFO. So yeah, the TikTok video that I was responding to was by Jeremy Corbel, who's a gullible UFO guy, right? And it's a really this is a great example, a great contrast between a gullible analysis of a piece of information, this video, versus Mick West, who does a really great technical, like skeptical analysis of the same video. So essentially, this is over a military base, a US military base, and there's a balloon, a monitoring balloon, a couple of miles away. It's like tethered to the ground. So you get sort of a bird's eye view of the base, and it's tracking this thing that's flying across the base, right? Now, it's called the jellyfish UFO because it kind of looks vaguely like a jellyfish. There's a blob on top and streamers below, right? So there's a couple of, so again, Corbel's going on just gullibly about all this, oh, what could this be? I'm trying to like mystery monger it, and pointing out anomalies, apparent anomalies. But here's the bottom line, very, very quick. And if you can, the deep, Mick West goes into the technical details very well. The thing is drifting in the direction and speed of the wind, right? This is something floating in the wind. And the 99%-er here is that this is some balloons. This is a clump of balloons and streamers floating in the wind. Now, we can't see it with sufficient detail to say 100% that's what it is. It could be something unexpected, but that's basically what it is, right? If it's not literally balloons, it's something very similar. But it's something lightweight that's floating, that's drifting in the wind. It's not a machine it's not a spacecraft.<br />
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'''E:''' A life form.<br />
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'''S:''' Not a life form. You know, it's just, it's not moving, right? At first, I'm like, is that like a smudge on the lens? But like, no, it's kind of moving with respect to the lens itself. But it is again, Mick West shows quite convincingly that it's moving in the direction of the wind, it's moving at the speed of the wind, given the likely altitude that it has. He does all the angles and everything. It's like, come on, guys, it's a freaking clump of balloons.<br />
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'''B:''' Maybe that's the secret of alien spaceship propulsion. You let the wind do all the work.<br />
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'''S:''' Yeah, that's how they hide, right? They just float along like the balloons.<br />
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'''C:''' So they're literally paper airplanes.<br />
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'''E:''' What's the difference between alien balloons acting like Earth-bound, Earth-created balloons?<br />
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'''S:''' And Earth-created balloons?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' There's no, right?<br />
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'''S:''' The difference is Occam's Razor, that's the difference. All right, guys, we have a great interview coming up with Robert Sapolsky about free will. This one's gonna blow your mind. If you're not familiar with the free will debate, you will be after this interview. So let's go to that interview now.<br />
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== Interview with Robert Sapolsky <small>(1:17:01)</small> ==<br />
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* "{{w| Robert Sapolsky|Robert Morris Sapolsky}} is an American neuroendocrinology researcher and author. He is a professor of biology, neurology, neurological sciences, and neurosurgery at Stanford University. In addition, he is a research associate at the National Museums of Kenya." - Wikipedia<br />
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'''S:''' Joining us now is Robert Sapolsky. Robert, welcome to The Skeptic's Guide.<br />
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'''RS:''' Well, thanks for having me on.<br />
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'''S:''' And you are a professor of biology, neurology, and neurosurgery at Stanford University. And you have written a lot about free will and other related topics. And that was primarily what we wanted to start our discussion with about tonight, because you take a pretty hard position that there is no free will. How would you state your position?<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' I would say probably the fairest thing is that I'm way out on the lunatic fringe.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' In that my stance is not just, wow, there's much less free will than people used to think. We've got to rethink some things in society. I think there's no free will whatsoever. And I try to be convincing about this.<br />
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'''S:''' Okay, well, convince us. Tell us why you think there's no free will.<br />
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'''RS:''' I think when you look at what goes into making each of us who we are, all we are is the outcome of the biological luck, good or bad, that we have no control over, and its interactions with the environmental luck, good or bad, which we also have no control over. How is it that any of us became who we are at this moment is because of what happened a second ago and what happened a minute ago and what happened a century ago. And when you put all those pieces together, there's simply no place to fit in the notion that every now and then your brain could do stuff that's independent of what we know about science.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So, yeah, that is, I think, the standard position of the no free will. Our brains are deterministic, right? We can't break the laws of physics and control what happens inside our head. Our brains are machines. But why, then, is there such a powerful illusion that we do have free will? And how do you square that, like the notion that we do make decisions? Or do you think we don't really make decisions? Is the decision-making level of this itself an illusion?<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Great. I think that's exactly where we all get suckered into, including me, into feeling a sense of agency. Because the reality is there's points where we choose. We choose something. We choose what flavor ice cream we want. We choose whether or not to push someone off the cliff. We have all those sorts of things. We make a choice. We form an intent. And then we act on it. And that seems wonderfully agentive, wonderfully me. There's a me that just made this decision. I was conscious of having an intent. I had a pretty good idea what the consequence was gonna be of acting on it. And I knew I wasn't being forced. I had alternatives. I could choose to do otherwise. And that intentness, the strength with which you were just in that moment, is what most of us, then, intuitively feel like counts as free will. And the problem with that is, when you're assessing that, it's like you're trying to assess a book by only reading the last page of it. Because you don't get anywhere near the only question you can ask. So how did you turn out to be that sort of person who would form that intent? How did you become that person? And that's the stuff we had no control over.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay, I see that. So you have no control over the person that you are, all of the things that went into influencing your decision-making. But does that add up to, though, that you're not actually making decisions? Or I guess another, when I try to wrestle with this, the other thing that really bothers me is not only the sense of decision-making, but of what we call metacognition. I could think about my own thought processes. So what's happening there?<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Yep. You're in some psych experiment where, like, if you had a warthog, and signed up for the experiment, they would do some manipulation psychologically, and the warthog would fall for it and all of that. But because we're human, and we've got this metacognition stuff, we can go in there and say, oh, these psychologists, I bet they're up to something. So whatever I think I'm gonna say, I'm gonna say the opposite so that I'm not being some, like, rube falling for their manipulation. Whoa, I've just exercised free will thanks to my metacognition. How'd you become the sort of person who would go in there and be skeptical? How did you become the sort of person who would reflect on the circumstance metacognitively, et cetera, et cetera? In both of those cases, whether you did exactly what the warthog did, or if you, just out of proving some sort of point to yourself, did exactly the opposite, in both cases, it's the same issue. How did you become that person? And you had no control over that part.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So you also talk about the fact that if you take that view of humanity, that we are deterministic and free will is an illusion, that should influence policy or how we approach certain questions. So what do you think are the biggest policy implications for the realization that we don't really have free will?<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Well, people immediately freak out along a number of lines if you try to insist to them that there's no free will. The first one is, oh my God, people are just gonna run amok. If you can't be held responsible for your actions, people will just be completely disinhibited or will be chaos. And sort of the most extreme extension of that is, and they'll just be murderers running around on the streets. And that won't be the case. And the thing is, if you take the notion that we have no free will, we're just biological machines, blah, blah. If you take it to its logical extreme, blame and punishment never make any sense whatsoever. No one deserves to be punished. Retribution can never be a virtue in and of itself. Oh, so you throw out the entire criminal justice system, forget reforming it. It makes no sense at all. It's like having a witch justice system for deciding which ones you burn at the stake in 1600. You need to come up with a system that completely bypasses that. And at the same time, hold up a mirror to that and praise and reward make no sense either. And thus meritocracies have to be tossed out as well.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So then what are we left with?<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Well, we're left with something that seems totally unimaginable. How are you supposed to function? But then you reflect and we actually function all the time in circumstances where we have subtracted free will out of the occasion and we can protect society from dangerous individuals. Nonetheless, let me give you an example. There's a setting where there's a human who's dangerous. They can damage innocent people around them and this would be a terrible thing. And what happens if this is your child and they're sneezing and they have a nose cold? The kindergarten has this rule saying, please, if your child has a nose cold, keep them home until they're feeling better. Whoa, you constrain your child's behavior. You will lock them up at home. No, you don't lock them up at home because it does not come with moralizing. You don't say you're a kid. Ah, because you were sneezing, you can't play with your toys. You don't preach to them. You constrain them just enough so that they are no longer dangerous and not an inch more. And as long as you're at it, you do some research as to what causes nose colds in the first place. And we have a world in which it's so obvious that we have subtracted free will out of that that we don't even notice it. Yeah, there's all sorts of realms in which we can reach the conclusion this person wasn't actually responsible for their actions. And nonetheless, we could make a world that is safe from any inadvertent damage that they might do.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That still sounds like at the end of the day, there are still consequences to your actions, right? So if you demonstrate that you're a dangerous person by committing a crime, then you have to be isolated from society until you're no longer the kind of person who would commit a crime.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Or you have to be isolated exactly enough, the minimum needed to make sure you can't be dangerous in that way anymore. And we have all sorts of contingent constraints in society. You, if you have proven that you were dangerous to society because you keep driving drunk, they don't let you drive. They take your license away. You're still allowed to walk around and go into the supermarket and such. They don't need to put you in jail. If you have a certain type of sexual pedophilia, there's rules. You can't go within this distance of a school, of a playground or something. We have all these ways in which we can constrain people from the ways in which they are damaging and not do any more so. And the key thing in that latter point is we don't sermonize to them. There's a reason why you wind up being dangerous. So we are gonna keep you from doing that. And it's not because you have a crappy soul.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, I get that. But at the end of the day, in a practical sense, it could be very same to the criminal justice system we have now, just minus a lot of the judgment and the punishment is not punitive. It's not because you deserve to be punished. It's just because there needs to be a moral consequence to your actions.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Well, I would differ there because the word moral is irrelevant. The word moral is irrelevant to your car's brakes that have stopped working. Oh my God, it's gonna kill somebody. You can't drive it. You need to constrain it. You need to put it in the garage. But that's not a moral act. You don't feel like you should go in each morning with a sledgehammer and smash the car on the hood because of how dangerous it is to society. You don't preach to it. Morality is completely independent of it. You are trying to do a quarantine model. And the people who think about this the most use public health models for this. And you are not a bad person if you get an infectious disease. And you're not a bad person if circumstances has made you someone who's damaging to those around you. But yeah, make sure people are not damaged by you but don't preach to you in the process.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, you could substitute the word ethical, I guess, for moral. It's just a philosophical calculation without any kind of spiritual judgment.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Good, okay.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's kind of what I meant. The point is that if you're saying, well, we're just, our brains are calculating machines and part of those calculations are moral judgments or ethical judgments or whatever, right? Because we evolved, and we're going to get to that in a minute, a sense of justice. And you have to leverage that in order to influence people's behavior. Otherwise, you have the moral hazard of not having consequences for your actions, right? So we're not in control of our decision-making, but there are influences on that decision-making and society needs to influence people's decision-makings by presenting concrete consequences to their actions. If you do this, you're going to go to jail. Nothing personal, but we have to do it. Otherwise there will be significant increase in crime or whatever you want to call it. Is that a fair way to look at it?<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Yeah, it's okay to have punishment as part of the whole picture in a purely instrumental sense, in the same way that you can have rewarding people for stuff that they've done, but again, purely instrumental. And then you say, okay, so if we ran the prison system on that, there's no such thing as retribution. There's no such thing as somebody deserves to be constrained. There's no such thing as justice being done. And you put in those factors in there and you have an unrecognizably different approach to, we protect the society from people who sneeze and we protect society from people who have such poor impulse control that they do impulsive, horrible, damaging things when they're emotionally worked up. But there's no retribution. Justice is not being served. They don't deserve anything. They have not earned their punishment. You are just containing a car whose brakes are broken. And if that sounds like, oh my God, turning people into machines, that's so dehumanizing, that's a hell of a lot better than demonizing them into being sinners.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, it's actually a very humanistic approach to criminal justice.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Because it does lack that sort of punitive angle that can be injust in a lot of ways, right? You're taking somebody who is in a much more profound sense than we even may realize a victim of circumstance and punishing them for that, right?<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Is there anything beyond criminal justice system that has implications from your philosophy on no free will?<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Well, meritocracies go out the window also because it's this bi-directional thing. We run the world where some people are treated way worse than average for reasons they have no control over and then some people are treated way better than average for reasons they have no control over. They have the sort of brain, so they get good SAT scores or the sort of brain that makes them self-disciplined and so now they've got a great job, now they've got the corner office, now they have whatever and they did not earn it any more than someone who commits a crime earned it. Both of those systems are bankrupt. But then you have the same problem. The people then say, oh my God, if you do that, you're gonna have murderers running around the streets, not necessarily, but now flip to the meritocracy half, you would say, oh my God, you turn out to have a brain tumor and you're just gonna pick a random person off the street to do your brain surgery. No, of course not that either. We need to protect society from people who are damaging and we need to ensure society that competent people are doing difficult things, but you can do it without a realm of this being laden in virtue and moral worth. Just because somebody turns out to have enough dexterity to do surgery, they should not have a society that reifies them thinking that they are intrinsically a better human any more than someone in jail should be thinking that they are an intrinsically worse human. Both are mere outcomes of their circumstances.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Robert, can I ask you a couple of questions coming from someone who isn't a neurologist? First off, define for me what free will would be if we had it.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Okay, this is one that completely pisses off philosophers who argue for free will. Just to orient people, 90% of philosophers these days would be called compatibilists, which is they admit the world is made out of stuff like atoms and molecules and we've got cells inside our heads and all of that science-y stuff is going on. They concede that, they accept that, but somehow, nonetheless, that is compatible with there still being free will in there. And as such, I would fall into the tiny percentage of people who count as free will incompatibilists. You can't have what we know about how the brain works and free will going hand in hand. So what would count as free will? So somebody does something and you say, well, why did they do that? And it's because these neurons did something half a second before. But it's also because something in the environment in the previous minutes triggered those neurons to do that. And because hormone levels this morning in your bloodstream made this or that part of your brain more or less sensitive to those stimuli. And because in the previous decade, you went through trauma or you found God and that will change the way your brain works. And before you know it, you're back to adolescence and childhood and fetal life, which is an amazingly important period of sharing environment with your mother and then genes. And then even stuff like what your ancestors invented as a culture, because that's going to have majorly influenced the way your mother mothered you within minutes of birth. So if you want to find free will, if you want to like prove it's there, take a brain, take a person that just did something and show that that brain did that completely independently of this morning's breakfast and last year's trauma and all the values and conditioning and stuff that went on in adolescence and what your mom's hormone levels were in your bloodstream when you were a fetus and your genes and culture, show that if you change all of those factors, you still get the exact same behavior. You've just proven free will and it can't be done.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Are you saying like we have zero free will or is there a little bit of it mixed in? You know what I mean? Like, is it so black and white or could there be shades of gray here?<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' There's simply no mechanism in there by which you can have a brain doing stuff completely independent of its history, independent of what came before. It is not possible for a brain to be an uncaused cause. And taken to its logical extreme, the only conclusion is, yeah, there's no free will whatsoever.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Aren't we still thinking things over? Like, I think that when I do something that I really don't wanna do, that if I'm ever expressing free will, it's in those moments, right? Like, doesn't that make sense in a way? Like, if I'm gonna force myself to do something that everything about me-<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's just one part of your brain arguing with another part of your brain though, right?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' But isn't that kind of an expression of free will? If you are having an internal debate and there are pros and cons and pluses and minuses and all the stuff that it takes for us to make a decision.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Not necessarily if you see it from a neurological point of view of, yeah, that's just your executive function and your frontal lobe fighting with your limbic system.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Exactly.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Right?<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It doesn't rescue you from it being all caused neurologically.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' I mean, today is January 17th and thus we're probably 17 days into the vast majority of people who made New Year's resolutions to have already like given them up. And everyone went into it with the same, I'm gonna do this differently this year. And some people do and some people don't. And how did somebody become the sort of person who would have the self-discipline to do that? How would someone become the sort of person who first time they were tempted, they went flying off the rails. How did we all differ in that regard also? And it's exactly the part of the brain. You mentioned just now the frontal cortex. That's this incredibly interesting part of the brain that makes you do the hard thing when it's the right thing to do. And beginning in your fetal life, every bit of thing that happens around you is influencing how strong of a frontal cortex you're gonna have come January 1st and you're vowing to exercise every day.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' So is there an evolutionary advantage to believing in free will?<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Yeah, I think there's an enormous one. And what you can see is in the fact that 90% of philosophers and probably more than 90% of folks out there in general believe there's free will because it's like kind of an unsettling drag to contemplate that we're biological machines. It's very unsettling. And people like to have a sense of agency. People like to think of themselves as captains of their fate. And this plugs into like a very distinctive thing about humans. We're the only species that's smart enough to know that everybody you know and love and you included are going to die someday. We're the only species that knows that someday the sun is gonna go dark. We're the only species that knows that because your neurons in your frontal cortex just did this or that, you carried out this behavior. We're the only species that's capable of having those realities floating around. And some evolutionary biologists have speculated, I think very convincingly, that if you're gonna have a species that is as smart as we are, we have to have evolved an enormous capacity for self-deception, for rationalizing away reality. And we're the species that's smart enough that we better be able to deny reality a lot of the time. And in that regard, major depression, clinical depression, one of the greatest ways of informally defining it is depression is a disease of someone who is pathologically unable to rationalize away reality. It's very protective psychologically.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And like cycling back a little bit to like the meritocracy thing, because where I tend to come down is I have to admit like, yeah, there's no metaphysical free will. You know, it is, we are, there is no uncaused cause. You know, we are just the neurons acting out what they do. But don't we have to act as if there is free will to a large extent because, again, of that moral hazard of thinking that there's no consequences? And even when, like with meritocracy, you were focusing on talent, but what about hard work? We do want people to be rewarded for hard work so that they'll do it. You know, people will do productive work. If there was no reward for it, we kind of know what those societies look like. It's not one I'd wanna live in. Would you accept that notion that even if you think metaphysically, philosophically, there's no free will, we still have to kind of pretend that there is?<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Again, in an instrumental sense, you can reward somebody if that's gonna make them more likely to do the good thing again, if that's gonna make them more likely to plug away, but you need to do it purely in an instrumental way. A colleague of mine at Stanford, Carol Dweck in psychology, has done wonderful work showing, okay, you've got a kid and your kid has just gotten a great, wonderful grade on some exam or something. And do you say, wow, what a wonderful job you did. You must be so smart. Or do you say, wow, wonderful, wonderful job you did. You must've worked so hard. And what she shows is you do the latter and every neurotic parent knows that by now. Yeah, sometimes you use sort of positive praise, reward for displays of self-discipline because that makes that part of the brain stronger, all of that, but you don't go about making somebody who is better at resisting temptation than somebody else think that it has something to do with they are an intrinsically better human. They just wound up with that sort of frontal cortex.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Let's talk a little bit more about evolutionary psychology. I mean, it seems like you're largely in support of that, but you tell me, what do you think about it? Because I know that is something where you can't deny that our brains evolved and that has a huge influence. So what do you think about the discipline of evolutionary psychology and specifically, how would you answer its critics?<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Its starting point makes absolutely perfect sense. And historically, take one step further back from it and you get this field called sociobiology, which I was sort of raised in, which is you can't think about human behavior outside the context of evolution. And then it's one step further and you've got evolutionary psych. You can't think about the human psyche outside the context of evolution. That makes perfect sense, wonderful sense. The trouble is in both of those disciplines, there's way too much possibility for sort of post hoc, just so stories. There's way too much individual differences. Anytime you see a human who like leaps into a river to save the drowning child and dies in the process and basic sociobiological models, basic models of how you optimize copies of your genes can't explain stuff like that. By the time you're looking at like vaguely complicated mammals, you get individualistic behaviors that violate what some of the models predict. So it's part of the story. It's interesting evolutionary psychology. One finding in there that I find to be very, very impressive is that we are far, far more attuned to the sort of norm violations that go in the direction of you getting treated worse than you expected to be, than you being treated better. We have all sorts of detection things in our brain that are better at spotting that bastard they were supposed to give me that reward and they didn't versus, whoa, they just gave me this gigantic reward out of nowhere. And that makes sense evolutionarily. And some of those building blocks were just fine. As with a lot of these relatively new disciplines, don't get a little overconfident and try to explain everything.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I kind of landed in the same place. From a philosophical point of view, of course, there's evolutionary psychology, but in practice, I do think it can fall into just-so stories too easily. So it's a kind of a weakness in the field. All right, well, Robert, this has all been very fascinating. Thank you so much for giving us your time. Anything coming up that you want to plug? Do you have any works that you're doing?<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' No, I got this new book out, which I guess is sort of useful if people know about it. Came out in October, Penguin. It's called Determined, A Science of Life Without Free Will, where I basically lay out all these arguments and as far as I can tell so far, infuriate a lot of people.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's good work. You know that you're accomplishing something useful if you piss off a lot of people.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Oh, good, because I seem to be. That's nice to know.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, thanks again. Take care.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Good, thanks for having me on.<br />
<br />
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== Science or Fiction <small>(1:44:27)</small> ==<br />
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|item1 = A recently discovered species of deep-sea fish in the Antarctic ocean has been found to have transparent blood, due to a complete lack of hemoglobin.<br />
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|item2 = Researchers have developed a type of biodegradable plastic that decomposes completely in just one week when exposed to sunlight and air.<br />
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|item3 = Researchers have successfully trained a group of goldfish to drive a small, water-filled vehicle on land, demonstrating their ability to navigate in a terrestrial environment and challenging long-held views on fish spatial awareness.<br />
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''Voice-over: It's time for Science or Fiction.''<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Each week, I come up with three science news items or facts, two real and one fake, and I challenge my panelists to tell me which one is the fake. We have a theme this week. It's a mystery theme.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' You can tell us.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I will reveal the theme after you guys all give your answers. Now, we'll see if you can figure it out along the way, but it's not gonna be obvious. Okay, here we go. Item number one, a recently discovered species of deep sea fish in the Antarctic Ocean has been found to have transparent blood due to a complete lack of hemoglobin. Item number two, researchers have developed a type of biodegradable plastic that decomposes completely in just one week when exposed to sunlight and air. And item number three, researchers have successfully trained a group of goldfish to drive a small, water-filled vehicle on land, demonstrating their ability to navigate in a terrestrial environment and challenging long-held views on fish spatial awareness. All right, Cara, go first.<br />
<br />
<big>'''Cara's Response'''</big><br />
<br />
'''C:''' I don't like them.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Is that the theme that you're picking up?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Things Cara does not like.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, things I don't like. Deep sea fish in the Antarctic Ocean. There's an Antarctic Ocean?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well the waters around the Antarctic, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But is that called the Antarctic Ocean? I didn't know that, the Arctic. Anyway.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's the Southern Ocean, also known as the Antarctic Ocean.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Okay, I'm not mad at that. That one, okay, so this fish is lacking hemoglobin, which, okay, that's crazy weird, but maybe there's some sort of other compound that is like serving a similar purpose. Would it make the blood transparent? Maybe? Is the only reason blood has the color it is because of hemoglobin? Because of the heme? It might be. I know the heme does make the blood quite red, but I don't know what it would look like with no heme. Would it be clear? I don't know, but a lot of our liquids in our bodies are clear, so maybe. The biodegradable plastic that decomposes completely in just one week, I don't buy that for a second. When exposed to sunlight and air, like what's the catch? It's like, it also melts the second it touches water, like it's not firm like plastic. I just, I do not buy that one. How, I wish that would be revolutionary. But also, a goldfish drove a car? Okay, here's the thing about this one. I have a very fun, but very weird friend who clicker-trained one of her fish to swim through a hoop. And it was a goldfish, and she claims it was very, very smart. I never quite believed her, but maybe, maybe a goldfish could drive a little goldfish car. I want that one to be science, so I'm gonna say plastic's the fiction.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay, Evan.<br />
<br />
<big>'''Evan's Response'''</big><br />
<br />
'''E:''' These all seem like fiction, don't they?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Mm-hmm.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's why you don't like this.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I don't like them.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I agree, I'm with Cara. I will go with Cara and say I don't like them either. Next. Oh, I mean, right. For kind of the same reasons, though. I mean, if you take the hemoglobin out of blood, are you left with something that's transparent? Aren't there other things in the blood that would make it at least opaque, right? Not transparent, though. I mean, what? Right, there's something else floating around there. It's so strange. So that would be the catch on that one, I think. And yes, there is a fifth ocean. It is called the Southern/Antarctic Ocean. The second one about the biodegradable plastic. My question about this one is why would you make this if it's gonna decompose in a week if you can't expose it to sun and air, which is kind of everywhere? So what's the practicality of this? Where would you use this? Underground, okay, where there's no sunlight. And in a non-air environment, what? Water for underneath, but then, I don't know. That's tricky. I mean, maybe they developed it, but it has no practical industrial use. And then the last one, okay, training a group. A group of goldfish would be a school of goldfish. They went to driving school, apparently, to drive this water-filled vehicle. On land, demonstrating their ability to navigate. So how does that work? They don't, that's not how to do it. So when we say drive, are we talking steer? I guess, it's only steer, it would be. So just directional, so.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yes, they have to be able to control which direction it's going in, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No, they use the clutch.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Well I mean, driving is a set of things more than steering, but it's steering something around, kind of.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And they have to go, brr brr.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Remember that video, that's hilarious. Ah! Shoot, all these are wrong, so I don't know. Cara and I are gonna sink or swim together on this one about the plastic, because I just don't see why that would be the case in any purpose.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay, Bob.<br />
<br />
<big>'''Bob's Response'''</big><br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, transparent blood, it seems somewhat plausible without the hemoglobin, that it would be kind of, I mean, I think it would be still kind of opaque, but I guess I could see it being somewhat transparent. The goldfish, the driving goldfish is just too awesome. I just wanna will that into existence. The plastic just seems silly, right? I mean, just like, oh boy, I took the bag out of the packaging, I've gotta use it quick or anything that's, if you forget about the bag and you put stuff in it and put the bag somewhere, and then next week it's gonna be gone, and then the contents are gonna spill. I don't know, it just seems a little goofy in some ways and just not very practical. And like, oh, how long has this bag been out? How much time do I have? It's only a day left. I don't know, it just seems a little silly and impractical, so I'll say that's fiction as well.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And Jay.<br />
<br />
<big>'''Jay's Response'''</big><br />
<br />
'''J:''' So they all are saying that it's the plastic.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's correct. That's what they are saying.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, no.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I would imagine that they didn't develop the plastic to specifically only last a week, that they were working on a biodegradable plastic and that's what they ended up, that this is something that they made. Doesn't necessarily mean-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, that seems reasonable, damn it.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, right? But the key thing here is that it's biodegradable, you know, like legitimately, which, I don't know. I mean, again I trust your guys' judgment as well. You know, the first one about the deep sea fish, it's very odd to think that there's transparent blood, but I have seen many pictures of like that fish you could see through its head and I don't remember seeing blood there, so I think that's science. And then the third one here about the goldfish driving a water field vehicle. I mean, that is so wacky that it's gotta be true. Damn. This is such a hard one, Steve. All right, I'm trying to think of the theme too. I don't see the theme. Okay, I'm gonna go with everybody else. How could I not? I mean, there's something wrong about that one week decomposition, decomposing plastic. Something's not right there.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Hidden Theme ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay, so anyone has a guess on the theme? It's very meta.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I don't like it.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Water.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's very meta. No. The theme is-<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Things in water.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Nope. This-<br />
<br />
'''J:''' The fish eat the plastic.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Science or fiction has been brought to you by Chat GPT.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Oh.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Ah, geez.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Which version?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Four. So I typed in first, are you familiar with the Skeptic's Guide to the Universe podcast? And it said, yes, I'm familiar, and it gave a pretty good description of our podcast.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It better be.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' One of the paragraphs reads, the Skeptic's Guide to the Universe is known for its approachable style, blending educational content with humor and informal discussions. It's aimed at a general audience and is designed to make science and skepticism accessible to people without a scientific background. That's a pretty good description of the show.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I love that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Then I said, can you design for me a science or fiction segment similar to what they have in the show every week? And it did. Now, I had to do it three times and select from among those three, not because they weren't good, but because they were things that we've talked about before. Can't use that one. Yeah, because we've talked about that recently. So I had to find ones that wouldn't be too obvious. And one of these, it gave us a fiction, but I found it's actually true.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Right, you had to double check everything.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #1 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I had to check everything. I couldn't trust it. All right, so let's take these in order. Number one, a recently discovered species of deep sea fish in the Antarctic Ocean has been found to have transparent blood due to a complete lack of hemoglobin. This one is science. So you guys are all safe so far. This is the oscillated ice fish. It's a family of fish. Lives in very cold waters off Antarctica.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Goes back and forth.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And it has transparent hemoglobin-free blood. This is the first, I think, in any vertebrate. And there are some species that have like yellow blood because they have very little hemoglobin, but this one is like fully transparent, zero hemoglobin. And they don't have some other molecule. They just have plasma.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Whoa.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' So plasma, yeah, plasma would be.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' How does that work, though?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, so they've adapted to basically just having oxygen dissolve in plasma and they make it work by, they have low metabolic rate, for example. But it also makes the blood less viscous, so it circulates much more vigorously, I guess. So that compensates for a little bit. They have larger gills, scaleless skin that can contribute more to gas exchange. So they have much more surface area to exchange gas.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Ew, wait. It's a fish with scaleless skin?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That is horrifying sounding.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Like one of those cats that has no fur?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' They have bigger capillaries and they have a large blood volume and cardiac output. So they have all these compensatory mechanisms for not having hemoglobin to bind a lot of oxygen and they make it work. Yeah, so that one is true. So let's go on.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #2 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Number two, researchers have developed a type of biodegradable plastic that decomposes completely in just one week when exposed to sunlight and air. You guys all think this one is the fiction and this one is science.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No, I led you astray. The goldfish.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Interestingly, this one, ChatGPT gave me as a fiction. So I looked it up. I'm like, dang, there it is. This is actually true. This is published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society in 2021. Yeah, they created a plastic that when exposed to air and sunlight will completely break down in one week, leaving no microplastics behind at all. It degrades into succinic acid, which is a small non-toxic molecule. So obviously it limits the applications because it can't be exposed to sunlight or air.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But if it took a year, it'd be great.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Right. So that one actually turned out to be true.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #3 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Which means that researchers have successfully trained a group of goldfish to drive a small water-filled vehicle on land, demonstrating their ability to navigate in a terrestrial environment and challenging long-held views on fish spatial awareness. Is the fiction.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Clearly.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' ChatGPT just made this one up at a whole cloth. Made it up.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Not fair.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Made which one up, Steve?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The goldfish one.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's not related to anything real?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, they just said this one, they said psychologists kind of do weird things, but not this. So they made this one up. That was it.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh my gosh. It was like plausibly awkward.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Israeli researchers say they have successfully taught a goldfish to drive a small robotic car.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Science.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' The team said the fish showed its ability to navigate toward a target in order to receive a food reward. For the experiment, the researchers built what they call the fish-operated vehicle, an FOV.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Can only drive in the FOV lane, though.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Jay, where are you reading that? Is that another ChatGPT?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I just searched. Here, hold on.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' What search?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' This is insane.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Oh yeah, you're right. I didn't see that.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Well, that's, I mean, I don't know if you wanna get, how technically you wanna get. The question was about a small, a group of goldfish as opposed to a fish.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, you'd have to look and see. There's probably a lot of things wrong in it, even if goldfish did drive a car, and what?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, but ChatGPT apparently is not good at making up fake ones, because it just keeps repurposing real news items.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Hmm. I wonder if it swears at people in traffic, like in fish language.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' This is so dumb.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Gives people the fin?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, the middle fin.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' So what does this mean?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Also, how does this work?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, I think this, science or fiction, is a ChatGPT mulligan.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Wow. So we're gonna have a no contest, a no score on it this week.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, no score from this week.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Has that ever happened before?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I don't think so.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I bet you it's still fiction.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' We're witnessing skeptic's guide history right now at this moment?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, I'll take it.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh my gosh, for the first time in approaching 19 full years.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Damn you, ChatGPT.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' And we have been failed by artificial intelligence at the highest level.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So ChatGPT failed at science or fiction.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Never again, yes. ChatGPT is zero.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' All right, well put it down as like, zero wins and one loss for the year.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' If this experiment has succeeded, I was gonna do this from now on, just have ChatGPT be science or fiction.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, yeah, of course.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' You can have the good ones and you just make up the fake one.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' This actually took me just as long because I had to do it multiple times, I had to check every one, you know?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' What you need is a program, Steve, that's optimized for performing the science or fiction function.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's right, I need a science or fiction GPT.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Narrow AI. AI to help you with this, Steve. Do you think someone out there could do that?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Probably.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' A listener on their spare time? Put in 5,000 hours of work.<br />
<br />
{{anchor|qow}} <!-- leave anchor(s) directly above the corresponding section that follows --><br />
<br />
== Skeptical Quote of the Week <small>(1:59:26)</small> ==<br />
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{{qow<br />
|text = Every great idea is a creative idea: The fact that you're using paint or you're using guitar strings or you're using equations, they're not really very different things. Getting that spirit into the education process … being curious about the world, that is a gift we would love to share.<br />
|author = {{w|Damian Kulash}}<br />
|lived = 1975-present<br />
|desc = American musician, best known for being the lead singer and guitarist of the American rock band {{w|OK Go}}<br />
}}<br />
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<br />
'''S:''' All right, Evan, give us a quote.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' "Every great idea is a creative idea. The fact that you're using paint or you're using guitar strings or you're using equations, they're not really very different things. Getting that spirit into the education process, being curious about the world, that is a gift we would love to share." Damien Kulash, lead singer of OK Go.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I love OK Go.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I love OK Go. I'm on a big OK Go kick lately.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' They're rock, but they're like very happy pop rock. I don't know how to describe it.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' They started out as kind of pop punk alternative and they they're treadmill videos.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' What country are they from?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' The United States.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' They're American. Not just the treadmill video, they did a parabolic space flight video.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' They did, yes.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' They shot an entire video in zero gravity. Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, it's amazing.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That video is amazing. It's an amazing accomplishment.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Watching the behind the scenes of it is even funnier.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yes, there's a whole documentary about it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, like one of the band members was like near, like he was just constantly vomiting or about to vomit. So the whole time he's like sitting down. One of them was scared out of his mind the whole time. It's amazing. It's so good.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' But this is, these artists, and I call them artists as much as they are musicians. They're visual artists, obviously, for what they do. They're so well known for their videos. But obviously they're also using a lot of engineering, a lot of science, a lot of math in the production of the videos. You know, they consult with a lot of people and teams of experts to come in and help them put these amazing ideas into the visual medium that is just so captivating. And the music's great too. So they're very pro-science and I love Damien Kulash and everyone at OK Go.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, well, thank you all for joining me this week.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Thanks Steve.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Thanks Steve.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Thank you Steve.<br />
<br />
== Signoff == <br />
'''S:''' —and until next week, this is your {{SGU}}. <!-- typically this is the last thing before the Outro --> <br />
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}}</div>Hearmepurrhttps://www.sgutranscripts.org/w/index.php?title=SGU_Episode_967&diff=19202SGU Episode 9672024-02-19T11:51:12Z<p>Hearmepurr: episode done</p>
<hr />
<div>{{Editing required<br />
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|episodeIcon = File:967 Betavolt.jpg<br />
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|caption = China-based Betavolt New Energy Technology has successfully developed a nuclear energy battery, which integrates {{w| Isotopes of nickel|nickel-63}} nuclear isotope decay technology and China’s first diamond semiconductor module.&nbsp;<ref>[https://www.greencarcongress.com/2024/01/20240114-betavolt.html Green Car Congress: China-based Betavolt develops nuclear battery for commercial applications]</ref><br />
|bob =y<br />
|cara =y<br />
|jay =y<br />
|Evan =y<br />
|guest1 =RS: {{w| Robert Sapolsky}}, American neuroendocrinology researcher<br />
<br />
|qowText = Every great idea is a creative idea: The fact that you're using paint or you're using guitar strings or you're using equations, they're not really very different things. Getting that spirit into the education process … being curious about the world, that is a gift we would love to share.<br />
|qowAuthor = {{w| Damian Kulash}}, American musician<br />
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|forumLinktopic = 55304.0 <!-- now all you need to enter here is the #####.# from the TOPIC=#####.# at the end of the sguforums.org URL for the forum discussion page for this episode --><br />
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== Introduction, winter weather preparations ==<br />
''Voice-over: You're listening to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.''<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Hello and welcome to the {{SGU|link=y}}. Today is Wednesday, January 17<sup>th</sup>, 2024, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella... <br />
<br />
'''B:''' Hey, everybody!<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Cara Santa Maria... <br />
<br />
'''C:''' Howdy. <br />
<br />
'''S:''' Jay Novella... <br />
<br />
'''J:''' Hey guys. <br />
<br />
'''S:''' ...and Evan Bernstein. <br />
<br />
'''E:''' Good evening, everyone, or good morning, wherever you might be.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Good evening. How is everyone?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Good.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's late.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Doing good.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' My bronchitis is finally, basically gone. Just a little.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, that's good.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That crap.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Bronchitis.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That's forever.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I know. It only took months.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It was a hell of a gut workout, I'll tell you that much. My stomach muscles are way stronger now than they were.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, but coughing is not good for you. You know what I mean? It's not like you're, oh, yeah, I'm getting this coughing workout. Coughing is bad for your back. People who cough a lot get disc herniations and bad backs and back strain and everything. So, yeah, I hate it when I have a prolonged cough. I always get back pain when I have a prolonged cough.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Really?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Cara, you are in another continent.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It is true. It is also another continent. It's a funny way to put it. Yeah, I've been in Scotland for a week and a half. I think I'll be here another week. And so it is two in the morning. It was beautiful here, though. I've been spending a bit of time outside. We had a really, really nice snow yesterday and the day before, so it's quite white outside. How is it looking in the Northeast? I know there were horrible snowstorms all over the country.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' There were other parts of the country that got smacked super hard.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, we had some snow. Not horrible.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Usually, we're snowy here. But we had two light snowstorms.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It's definitely colder.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, it's cold here too.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, we're getting the remnants of the Arctic blast. What the, what do they call it?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Vortex or something? Yeah, I think it's pretty bad in parts of Canada.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' And the Midwest of the United States got it very badly.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But so far, I mean, it's early. There's nothing winter so far by New England standards.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' True.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You never know. February's really like, we can get hammered in February.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, boy.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I know it's gonna be cold and we're gonna get precipitation, but it always depends on the timing of those two things. Like, do we get the precipitation when it's cold or is it, do we get rain, you know what I mean? Because if it's all snow, it could be profound.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' But any time an ice storm happens by, that's dangerous. I mean, that is when the power goes out. That is when all the tree limbs come down. We've had some nightmare ice storms in prior years. Not very recently, but I can remember a few.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Tell me about it with the hard freeze. I've been talking to some of my friends who live up in the Pacific Northwest where they had freezing rain, I think, for two days, but not snow, up in Oregon. And trees are down all over the place. People don't have power. It's been pretty brutal up there just because of the heaviness of that ice on everything.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' And they tend to not get ice storms, if I recall correctly.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, yeah, never. Like, they're just, yeah, the whole city. You know how it is. Anytime a city gets hit by something that's not typical weather for that city, they just don't know what to do with it.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It freezes, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It breaks everything.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, yeah, I remember I was in Phoenix. They had, like, an inch of rain, and it paralyzed the city.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It happens every time it rains in LA. We don't know what to do.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Las Vegas has a similar problem.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And everybody's house floods. We're like, oh.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And I was in DC, and they had, like, a pretty mild snowfall from Connecticut standards, and the city was paralyzed. They just didn't have the infrastructure for it, you know? And, of course, with the kind of snowstorms that would paralyze Connecticut, Canadians are like, you lowlanders, you know?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' We get 10 feet, and Toronto's like, big deal.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' We've actually we've been talking a lot out here in Scotland about the fact that they ice, or, sorry, that they salt the roads here, and it's quite destructive on the cars. Like, it's really, really corrosive, and probably cause millions of pounds of damage every year to the cars that are having to constantly clean this ice off of their. Undercarriage, yeah, and the engine damage and stuff. And we've been really talking about, like, why do they use salt?<br />
<br />
'''J''' It's totally inexpensive.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But sand.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Up to a temperature, it works, right?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Sand is cheaper, and it's not quite as efficient, but it's still efficient.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It has to do with the temperature, though.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It causes a lot less damage.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Sand has to be cleaned up, though. Like, salt just goes into the water.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Sand can just go into the dirt.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Plus, the melting effect of salt is pretty dramatic, isn't it?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, sand has no de-icing effect. That just temporarily adds friction to the road, whereas the ice, or de-icing chemicals, as they call them, actually melt the ice. But it depends on how much there is and what the temperature is. So there are some situations where the de-icing chemicals won't work, and you gotta use sand. But again, it's only, like, adding temporary friction. And they all have different environmental effects, so that there's no perfect solution.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It is superior. But the question would be, do we really need a superior melting effect if you have so much sort of negative side effects?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' They don't always use salt. They use sand sometimes, too.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I think out here, they only use salt, and it's quite infuriating to the people.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, you have to have the undercarriage of your car coated against that.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' They do. They do, but you still have to constantly clean it out. And it's just, yeah, it's pretty bad. Anyway.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I've never cleaned the bottom of my car.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Go to a car wash?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' If you go to a car wash, they will drive it through. It has an undercarriage.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's why you go to a car wash.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' They still have those?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Car washes? Last time I checked.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' They do. They're quite nice.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' They don't exist. They went the way of drive-in movies.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Drive-in movies, soda fountain counters, and pinball machines. They're all gone.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I went to a drive-in movie not that long ago. There's still a couple of them around. They're definitely very retro.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, that became kind of a thing again during COVID.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, I remember that.<br />
<br />
== News Items ==<br />
<br />
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=== Betavolt 50-Year Battery <small>(6:28)</small> ===<br />
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'''S:''' All right, Bob, you're going to get us started with a talk. There's been a lot of discussion about this. This is really catching a lot of people's imagination, not in a very scientific way often. But tell us about this 50-year battery. What's going on?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah. Chinese firm called Betavolt Technology claims it's created a new nuclear battery that can power devices for 50 years. There's a lot of silly clickbait surrounding this stuff. Here's one press release from the Business Standard. Their article was titled, China Develops Radioactive Battery to Keep Your Phone Charged for 50 Years. Like, ah.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Sure they did.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh my God. Such annoying clickbait. Now, nuclear batteries, though, are fascinating. They are distinct, of course, from everyday electrochemical batteries that we use all the time, from AA's to the lithium-ion batteries in our phones and EVs. Nuclear batteries are also called atomic batteries, which I kind of like, or probably more accurately, radioisotope generators.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Didn't Batman's vehicle have atomic batteries or something?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yes. Yes.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh my gosh.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' And they essentially take nuclear energy and convert it to electricity at its most, top of the onion layer there. One layer down, more specifically, it takes the byproducts of the decay of radioactive particles and converts that into electricity. So are these batteries? You know, yes and no, in my mind. Nuclear batteries are atomic batteries. They can power devices for sure. So in that sense, they are batteries. But they do not recharge, and they don't turn off. The nuclear batteries do not turn off. So for those reasons, and especially the not-turning-off one, they are often referred to as generators. But hey, it's language. Many people use the word battery for them, and so that's fine. Atomic batteries are generally classified by how they convert the energy. And it kind of boils down to either they take advantage of large temperature differences, or they don't. The former, these are thermal-based atomic batteries. And they have one side of the device is very hot from the radioactive decay, and the other side is cold. And that's the key there, that differential. So using thermocouples, that temperature gradient can be used to take advantage of the Seebeck effect, look it up, to generate electricity. That's basically how it works. Now, the iconic, classic atomic battery that does this is an RTG, radioisotope thermoelectric generator. There's that generator word. These devices go back to the 50s and 60s. And I think the principle was proved, I think it was like 1913. So it goes back to the 50s and 60s. The most advanced devices today can generate tens of watts, up to 110 watts, for NASA's top-of-the-line RTG. And they can supply power literally for years and years and years. RTGs are heavy. They're big devices compared to our portable batteries. But they are amazing for remote locations and places with poor sunlight. The Voyager probes, more than 15 billion kilometers from the Earth and the sun, are powered by RTGs. Mars Rovers, too, and countless other systems and platforms and probes, NASA and our knowledge of the solar system would be greatly diminished if it did not have access to these wonderful devices. But if you want really small, portable atomic batteries, though, you then want this non-thermal kind. These extract energy from the emitted particles themselves, kind of like before it degrades into heat, directly tapping into and using the particles. The semiconductors in these devices use these particles to create a voltage. And typically, these types of batteries have efficiencies, from 1% to even up to 9%. And they go by various names depending on the emitted particles that they are using. So they're called alpha voltaics if it converts alpha particle radiation, which is essentially just two neutrons and two protons. It's called gamma photovoltaics if it converts energetic photons like gamma rays. The real standout, though, of this type of atomic battery is called beta voltaics. This converts emitted electrons or positrons to electricity. And it's popular because beta decay can more easily be converted into usable electrical power, much more so than alpha particles or photons. Beta voltaics are not theoretical. These are being used right now, right now, in countless sensors and other devices that require very low power for very long periods of time. Did you know that they were used as pacemakers in the 70s? People literally had them in their bodies for decades with no ill effects. They are very safe. These are known things and they can be very useful. So that's why this Beijing startup company calls itself BetaVolt. They're taking advantage of beta voltaics and their new atomic battery is based on that. The battery itself is called BV100. It's coin-sized, about 15 by 15 by 5 millimeters. And there's a decent amount going on inside that coin. It has layers of radioactive nickel-63 in between layers of diamond semiconductors. Nickel-63 has a half-life of 100 years, which means in 100 years it'll be emitting essentially half the particles it does initially as it decays into harmless copper. Now, so saying this battery can last 50 years, I think that's reasonable, if it's got a half-life of 100 years. After 50 years, it'll be still, what, 75% as effective?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, it's not linear, but close.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' So it's still, it's a good rule of thumb to say, yeah, 50 years, you could say it'll last 50 years and perform well. So, and it's safe. These are safe. It needs minimal shielding. Sure, you'd have to inhale it if you're gonna get concerned that that will do it. You would be concerned if you inhaled it. And I wouldn't want it to leak on my skin, but no more so than I would want a AA battery to leak on my skin, you know? So it's not like this, it's radioactive, no! It's pretty damn safe. So can this get 110 watts output like the best RTG? No. No, not even close. This battery generates three volts, but only 100 microwatts. That's 100 millionths of a watt. A microwatt is a millionth of a watt. That's tiny. You would need, what, Steve? 30,000 of them to power a typical smartphone. That's really low. So let's look at 100 microwatts another way. Let's look at how many amps that is. So, all right, we got an equation here. Power in the form of watts equals voltage times current or amps, right? W equals V times A. We know the power in watts and we know the volts, so you calculate the amps. That's .000333 amps. Now an amp, amps indicates how many electrons per second pass through a point in a circuit. So .0000333 amps, super low. You know, you're not gonna be powering something big and power hungry with something like this at all. So clearly, these batteries are not meant for power hungry devices, as are all beta voltaics are not meant for that. And that's okay, because power density is not the strength of these batteries. Now power density is the rate that it can output the power for a given size. And as I've shown, it's super tiny for one of these batteries. Very low power density, but they do have energy density. That's the total energy per unit mass. In fact, nuclear batteries have 10,000 times approximately, 10,000 times the energy density of a chemical battery. That's a huge 10,000 times, that's huge. But that's spread over the lifetime of the battery, which could be years or decades or even centuries. But that's where these batteries shine. They can last for ridiculously long periods of time. Now the significance of this battery seems to me to be it's a miniaturization and not the power density that everyone no one seems to be focusing on any of the miniaturization advances that they may have made. You know, there's not too many details on that either. They also claim that these can be chained together and connected in a series. So I think we'll have to see that to happen because it looks like I'm looking at some translated article here and they claim that they can get up to multiple watts if you chain them together. I don't, I'm not seeing that anywhere else. I'd have to see that. But the real important thing here is they claim they're shooting for a one watt version of this battery by 2025. Next year, one watt.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Bullshit, it's not gonna happen.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It's not. That's an incredible improvement that no betavoltaics has ever come near. And so Steve and I apparently are very, very skeptical of that. Now, if you can connect-<br />
<br />
'''E:''' You'll not be investing, I guess, is what you're saying.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, I mean, if you can connect their batteries together as they claim and they also create if they can create a one watt version, then we would be in some interesting territory. But I don't believe that. I will wait, I'll have to wait to see if they even come close to doing that. I don't think they're gonna do that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Bob when I wrote about it, I did my calculation, like theoretically, how, what could you get to? So given a betavoltaic battery of the same size, let's say you maximize efficiency, that gives you one order of magnitude, maybe, right? So you still have two orders of magnitude to go to get to one watt. And the, I think, buried in the article about it, they say that they're looking to produce this one watt version. And they're also looking to produce versions that have a half-life of two years or one year. It's like, yeah, those two things are related. The only way you're gonna pick up another order of magnitude is if you go from a hundred year half-life to a one year half-life. But then you don't have a 50 year battery anymore. You got a one year battery.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' You can't have it both ways.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Which is still interesting.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' But you've also got a more radioactive and more expensive battery on hand, right?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Using a different isotope with a shorter half-life.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Exactly.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But even assuming they could shield it and make it safe and pick up all that radiation and everything, that's fine. It's just, you don't get a 50 year battery with that kind of power output in that kind of size. It simply does not work. The physics does not add up.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So I think it's, there's no way around the fact that this is gonna remain a niche technology for very low power devices.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, yeah. I don't see it really breaking out of that characterization. You know, and other companies have tried to go commercial with beta voltaics. Steve and I were excited about nano diamond battery a few years ago. That's the one that used radioactive waste from nuclear power plants encased in diamond that could run for millennia. I think they were saying 20,000 years. So I looked them up recently and they were charged with defrauding their investors. Right, and there's been other, and there was another company that was trying to commercialize beta voltaics. And they, if you go to their website anymore, you don't find it. Their website's like gone. So it's just like we've seen this before and we're kind of seeing it again.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, this is a pitch for more money.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, partly, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, so, but what will we see in the future of beta voltaics? I mean, I love the idea of using them to trickle charge batteries. I think that's promising. And that would be useful for things potentially, like for EVs that are mostly idle. And you could just have it trickle charge at night in over 10, 12 hours. Like, oh boy, we got got a little juice out of this that you didn't have to plug it in for. And I love though, that when it comes to the worst case scenario, like you've got a dead battery, but if you had this trickle charge idea, you know, you wait a little bit. I'm not sure how long you'd have to wait to get a reasonable charge.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But at least you wouldn't be dead in the water.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Right, you're not dead in the water. And "eventually" you'd be able to just drive home. And of course, of course, trickle charging would be awesome in the apocalypse. Obviously. Now in the future, then when the zombies are roaming the countryside and you could say like Robin in the Batmobile, right Evan? Atomic batteries to power, you could say that. And then of course you'll have to wait a while for your beta voltaic atomic battery to slowly trickle charge your zombie resistant EV. And then you're going, then you're good. So maybe we'll see that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I think it'd be more than like for an electric vehicle, it's just, I think it's too little electricity. But for, you don't wanna drag around an atomic battery, that would be big enough to produce enough electricity that it would matter. But for your cell phone, you can, if you had even one that was producing again, like a 10th of a watt, let's say, or even a 100th of a watt, but it could extend the duration that you could go without charging your battery significantly, right? Because you're not using your phone all the time. It is idling most of the time. So let's say like you're going on a trip and you're gonna be away from chargers for three or four days. This could extend the life of your phone battery that long. I just say by trickle charging it 24 seven, whether when you're using it or not using it, or again, if you are in an emergency situation, you're never dead in the water. You always have a little juice. You just have to wait some time.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, if I were going out in nature for days on end, first off, I wouldn't do that. Secondly, I would bring a little solar panel with me.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Then it's overcast. No, but you're right, you're right. But yeah, but that's what they're finding with a lot of the deep space probes that relying upon aligning those panels with the sun is not a great thing. And nuclear batteries are really good. The European Space Agency, who previously said no nuclear batteries were gonna do all solar, they're like, maybe we should, maybe we gotta relent. So they reversed themselves because-<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Do you know why they reversed themselves?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Because they had a big fail.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' They sent a probe onto a comet. Their probe landed on the comet and then bounced into the shade. And then because it was in the shade, its batteries, which were solar-based, died in three days. So here's millions of dollars sitting in the shade, unusable, bricked, because they didn't have an atomic battery. So that story just cracks me up. So now they're like, okay, yeah, we're gonna do atomic batteries now. They were famously against them. Now they aren't, which was a funny story.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So like a lot of technologies, the technology is what it is, and a lot of it depends on being clever and being creative about how to implement it. Like what is the use where it's gonna be valuable? It's not gonna be like big drones that fly forever and all the crap that the press is saying about it. That's never gonna happen. But as a trickle charger or for super low-energy devices, this technology could be really, really helpful.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, yeah. The allure of a battery that can last for years, a conventional portable battery that can last for years, this is so high that people are just kind of like losing their shit over this and trying to extrapolate away from the science. For me, it's not so much beta voltaics, but for me, it's the RTGs. I wanna have these like chained, connected RTGs buried in my backyard that could power my entire house for decades. That's what I'm looking for.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, but the final point is like for your phone, like for trickle charging your phone, you don't want a 50-year battery in your phone. Your phone's only gonna last two or three years. You want a two or three-year battery, right? You want it to last as long as the phone.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That would be epic.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, then you don't need, you know.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, but it gets you more power. It gives you more power over the shorter period of time, over the lifetime of that phone. So there is a niche in there that could actually be very, very functional if the price works out, right? Would you add another 50 bucks to your phone to have something, an alternate source of power, a backup source of power and extend? Like now you only have to recharge it once every three days or four days instead of every night.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Well, those products exist, Steve. I mean, I have a battery that's a magnet battery that attaches to my phone, right? It's very easy to just put it there. It stays there. And it gives me like another half a day of juice if I need it. It's very, very convenient. And it fits in your pocket and everything. It's very easy. So, I mean, there are products out there like that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, I know. This would be another option. There would definitely be advantages to it because it's just there. It's producing energy all the time. But it's not, but the hype was ridiculous.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh yeah, it was silly.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Silly, silly.<br />
<br />
=== Moon Landing Delayed <small>(23:38)</small> ===<br />
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'''S:''' All right, Jay. I understand that the Artemis program is going swimmingly. Give us an update.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oops.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Don't be look, we expected this, right?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Unfortunately.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So NASA's Artemis program, give you a quick refresher. It's aimed at returning humans to the moon. It's also very heavily, big part of this mission is that we are paving the way for future Mars missions. You know, we need to develop a lot of technology that's gonna allow us to get there, but they have been facing significant challenges that have led them to reschedule some of these timelines, which this information came out about a week ago. So the Artemis 2 mission, right? Artemis 1 successfully launched. It went around the moon, did everything that we wanted it to. We got a ton of data off of that mission, but now we move on to Artemis 2. Now, originally, if we go way back, it was originally slated to be, as you know, the first crewed test flight of the Orion spacecraft, but it's been delayed many times. Not, this isn't like the first delay or even the second delay. The first launch dates were said that they wanted to launch between 2019 and 2021. Now keep in mind, Artemis 2, not 1. Artemis 2, 2019, 2021. Then it was moved to 2023 and then November, 2024. And now they moved it to September, 2025. They are saying no earlier than that, which kind of implies it could be later, right?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's for Artemis 2.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That's Artemis 2.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, so one of my predictions has already failed.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh no.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That's all right, Steve. Oh no, somebody die. So the delays are due largely to crew safety concerns. So let me get into some of the details here. NASA is always, they're just continuously conducting testing of critical systems, environmental control, life support. And they have found during their testing, they've found problems that include battery issues with the Orion spacecraft regarding abort scenarios. There's also a, there are challenges with the air ventilation and temperature control circuitry components, which these are all mission critical components. And bottom line here is, of course, it's good to know NASA is taking all these precautions. They're taking it very seriously. You know, this isn't like a let's launch it and test it and see how it goes. Like they fully plan on bringing every single astronaut back to earth. So they are trying to resolve all of these issues, but it sucks to wait longer, but you know, we're just a consumer here, right? Like I'm looking at this like, come on, launch it. I want to see it. I want to be a part of all that. But yeah, ultimately we want it to be successful. We want the people to come back. So of course, any delays with Artemis 2 means that it'll impact the launch dates of the Artemis 3 mission, which has now been pushed for 2026. This delay allows NASA to give them time. They don't want to like do Artemis 2 and then immediately do Artemis 3. They want time to make a lot of alterations and incorporate lessons that they learned from Artemis 2 so they can make Artemis 3 better, right? You know, hey, we had a problem with this thing and that thing, like they want to fix all of those things. But there's also problems with the partners that NASA is working with to develop, that are developing their own technologies. So there's a couple of names here you'll definitely recognize. SpaceX, as a good example, they're responsible for the human landing system. You know, they have to demonstrate that their starship can successfully dock. It also needs to be able to refuel with other tanker starships in orbit. These are not easy things to do at all. And this capability is essential for transporting astronauts beyond Earth's orbit. Getting the ship refueled and being able to do what it needs to do in and around the moon is going to be something that could take place frequently. And these tasks, like I said, are challenging and straight up, they're just not ready yet. They don't have the technology. And I'm sure that the timelines and the dates that they're giving, everything is a, we hope that it's this, but it's never like it will be done on this date. Like they're not, that's not where they're operating. They don't work that way. Axiom Space, you might remember, they're making the next generation spacesuits. No, they still need to solve some heavy duty requirements that NASA put on them. Like one of the big ones is that the spacesuit itself, standalone, needs to have an emergency oxygen supply system. So this will enable the spacesuit to supply oxygen for an hour with no attached gear, right? Just the spacesuit itself has an hour of air in it. So they're also having supply chain issues, which I was a little surprised to hear, but they're having problems getting materials that they need to make the spacesuits. And they also have, they're working with outdated components that need to meet the latest NASA requirements. I couldn't get any more details about these components. Like I don't, I suspect that they may have been borrowing from earlier spacesuits, certain systems and things like that. But NASA has been ramping up their requirements and they're having a hard time meeting it. Now, this means that they're likely to have to redesign parts of the current design that we've already seen. And this issue with the supply chain is definitely impacting the development of the spacesuit components. So lots of moving parts here. Now, NASA is also dealing with its own financial issues. They haven't presented an official cost estimate for Artemis III. And there is a group in the government whose job it is to get this information, right? And they need to give it and it needs to be assessed and it takes time. Now, keep in mind, the Artemis program is not just about returning to the moon, but it's also laying the groundwork for human exploration to Mars. So there's a lot of complexity here and there's a lot of weight on every single thing that they do. And these price tags the costs are phenomenally high. The Artemis missions, they include development and integration of a lot of different systems here. You know, think of it this way. We have the Space Launch System, the SLS rocket. That alone is very complicated because there's lots of different versions of that rocket that they're gonna be custom building for each and every mission. Then they have the Exploration Ground System. They have the Orion spacecraft itself. They have the Human Landing System. They have the Next Generation Spacesuits. They have the Gateway Lunar Space Station and all of the future rovers and equipment, scientific equipment that needs to go. Like there is a mountain of things that have not been created yet that need to be designed and crafted and deployed. So it's exciting because there's a lot of awesome stuff ahead of us. And I'm not surprised that they're pushing the dates out, but man, it's disappointing because I thought something incredible was gonna happen this year.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, it's unfortunate, but you know, they're just going back to the timeline that they originally had. You know, they were pressured to move up the timeline. Right, was it 2026 or 2028?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' 2028.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, 2028 originally, yeah. So even if they push back to 2026, they're still two years ahead of their original schedule. And that was really just for political reasons that that was moved up.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Before we switch off to space topic, let me give you guys a quick update on the Peregrine Moon Lander. Remember last week we talked about this. Okay, so real quick summary. This Moon Lander was developed by a company called Astrobotic. Seven hours into the mission, they became aware of a fuel leak that was changing the telemetry of the ship. Bob was very concerned. They didn't know what to do. They didn't really understand what was going on. And then everyone dove in. They started to really figure out what was happening. So the planned lunar landing had to be canceled because they just weren't gonna be able to position the ship and get the engines to do what they needed them to do that would enable it to land. So the ship basically goes out approximately the distance of the Moon, right? 183,000 miles or 294 kilometers. It gets out there. Then it gets pulled back to Earth. It didn't, the Lander didn't actually transit or orbit the Moon. So I didn't see its flight path, and I'd like to see it because I'm not crystal clear on what it was, but it did get pulled back by the Earth. And they have currently set it on a trajectory back to Earth where they fully expect it to completely disintegrate upon reentry. This is gonna happen on January 18th. So as you listen to this, it'll have been, it happened a few days ago. You know, Peregrine was part of NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Service Program, and that's it. It's gonna come back, all this stuff on there, the human remains, the messages from Japan, a few weird things that are on there. It's all gonna get burned up in the atmosphere. So it's sad, it's sad, but it happens. And we learn from these things. And again, this is a perfect example of why NASA, when people are involved, meaning like we're sending people into outer space, they don't have failures like this, right? Like they won't stand for failures like this. Everything has to be massively tested. So we gotta wait a little longer, guys.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yep.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' None of it's canceled, which is fantastic.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, thanks, Jay.<br />
<br />
=== Cloned Monkeys for Research <small>(32:57)</small> ===<br />
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'''S:''' Cara, tell us about these cloned monkeys.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, so some of you may have seen there's quite a lot of trending articles right now that are based on a new study that was just published in Nature Communications. I'm gonna read the title of the study. It's a bit techie. Reprogramming Mechanism Dissection and Trophoblast Replacement Application in Monkey Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer. So based on that title, you may not know, but what Chinese researchers have done or what they claim is now happening is that they now have the longest lasting cloned monkeys, cloned primates, really. There's a monkey, he is a rhesus monkey named Retro. And my guess, even though it doesn't say it in any of the coverage that I read, my guess is that the name Retro, because they capitalize the T in Retro, comes from reprogrammed trophoblast. I think that's where they got his name, Retro. And so really what this story is about is a new technique for trying to clone primates that works a teeny tiny bit better than previous techniques. And the big sort of payoff here is this monkey is now coming on three years old. So you may ask, haven't we been cloning animals for a while?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Dolly the sheep, right?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Dolly the sheep, right. So this is the same technique. I should say it's the same general technique with some really important changes as Dolly the sheep. So Dolly the sheep lived for six and a half years after she was cloned. Mice, rabbits, dogs, goats, pigs, cows, lots of different mammals have been cloned over the years. Even other monkeys have been cloned over the years, but the difference is that they've been incredibly short-lived. So generally speaking, when we talk about cloning mammals specifically, it's super hard to do. About one to 3% of clones result in live birth. It's a very, very low percentage. So as it is, it's hard just to get viable embryos when cloning mammals. And then even if you get a viable embryo, it's hard to have a live birth. There were some monkeys in 1998 who I think were the most long-lived or the most kind of the biggest success story as of that point, but I still think that they only lived for a few months. And so Retro coming up on three years is sort of being hailed as a triumph by the media, but let's talk about what the difference was here. So all of these animals that I'm describing here have been cloned using a very specific technique. And that technique is called somatic cell nuclear transfer. In simple terms, as we know, we talk about the difference between somatic and germ cells. Somatic cells are like body cells, right? Everything but eggs and sperm. So a somatic cell is actually put into, so you're transferring the nucleus from a donor cell, but a somatic donor cell, like a skin, let's say like a skin cell into an egg cell. And then that donor DNA, which is now kind of closed up in the egg is sort of programmed to start developing embryonically. So here's one thing that I think is an important point here that not a lot of coverage that I'm seeing makes. These are still embryonic clones. None of these are clones that are coming from an adult organism. So when you start to see kind of the fear-mongering coverage around, does this mean we can clone humans? Does this mean we can clone humans? First of all, nobody has successfully been cloning mammals from adult cells. Does that make sense? Almost all of them are pulled from embryonic cells and some of them are even just pulled from split embryonic cells. So even though technically you could call it a clone, it's like a twin, if that makes sense. But this specific approach that's been used, which all of these, like I said, have been this thing, somatic cell nuclear transfer is where we run into some hiccups. So what ends up happening is that the cells of that embryos trophoblast layer, which is sort of the outermost layer that provides a lot of nutrients and also actually forms a big chunk of the placenta after it's implanted are very problematic in almost every case. And scientists think that this is because of epigenetic factors. So there are these markers that are present, right? That turn genes on or off. So it's not changing the actual genes that are there, but it's changing their expression, whether they turn on or off. When you put this cell, this clone cell into an empty egg, the egg kind of DNA or the epigenes, the epigenetic factors within that egg affect the DNA of the implanted embryo and all sorts of havoc is wreaked. And really scientists hadn't been able to figure out how to get these embryos to become viable. They're usually all sorts of terrible mutations. They often don't even make it to live birth. And if they do make it to live birth, they often die within hours, days, weeks, or in very lucky cases, months. And so what the scientists did in this case, and this is sort of the new bit, is a trophoblast replacement. So they inject that inner cell mass from the cloned embryo into a non-cloned embryo. So the embryo cell mass is going inside of a non-cloned embryo that they made through in vitro fertilization. So they're basically forming like a hybrid embryo and the trophoblast portion belongs to the non-clone, which seems to be less likely to kick in all of these epigenetic factors that seem to be harmful to the developing embryo. And so the scientists are claiming that this is like rescuing the development of the embryos. But to be fair, we're still talking about an attempt of like hundreds of potential cloned embryos and only still like a handful of them sticking and then only one of them actually being successful. So it's not like this case is any more efficient. It's not like this specific kind of success story with Retro, the first ever rhesus monkey that's lived for longer than a day. And actually he's coming up on like three years. It's not like their approach made a bunch of them. It's they still only, it was very scattershot and they only got one successful outcome. It's just that their successful outcome has been more successful than any other primate in the past. And so the argument that the Chinese scientists are making here is, if we can do this more, this could be very, very good for biomedical research. Because like we do all the time with cloned mice, you can give a drug to one clone and a different drug or no drug or placebo to the other clone. And you can see exactly how well it works because they have the exact same DNA.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So it's a good way to control for variables.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yes, it reduces all sorts of variability. But of course, this is an ethical conundrum. And a lot of people are saying like, should we be doing this to monkeys? Should we be doing this to primates at all? And look at how many failures we have before we have a success. And look at how much suffering is happening to these animals until we get to that point. And is it going to, like, what is the payoff and how much is it going to improve our biomedical science, our pharmaceutical science? Is the sort of return worth the risk? That's another question. Now, this is perfectly legal in China. So the way that they're approaching this, it's passed all their review boards and it's a perfectly legal practice, unlike some of the historical stories that we've talked about. Do you remember when we talked about the CRISPR, the rogue CRISPR story?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Oh, yeah, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Like that was not legal.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' The Raelians.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' This is. But I think some people are saying, wait, if they were able to do this with the rhesus monkey, are they going to clone humans next? No, we're nowhere close to that. A, because we can't clone adult cells at all. These are still embryonic cells. And B, it's still hard as shit. It's no easier and it's no more efficient to clone this. It was no easier or no more efficient to clone this rhesus monkey than any of the attempts in the past. It's just that this one hiccup, it was surmounted in this case. Can it be surmounted again though? I don't know. Was it lucky that they happened to get this one just right? I guess we will see.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We'll see, yeah. I mean, it seems like a good incremental advance.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It does.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, and which is, again, that's par for the course, right, for science, right? Breakthroughs are rare, incremental advances are the rule. And this is, it seems like a solid one. But I still want to know, when can I make a clone of myself so I can harvest its organs? <br />
<br />
'''C:''' Nowhere close. Yeah, it's going to be a long time. The funny thing though, which I did discover in doing this research, is that there's a Korean company that has made 1,500 dog clones at this point.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, how long do they live?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Like, they're long-lived. Apparently, they're perfectly healthy dogs. And so it's pretty interesting that just, okay, it's way harder to clone mammals, but some mammal species are easier to clone than others.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, well, thanks, Cara. This is definitely a technology that we'd want to keep an eye on.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And actually, I will add to this, and I think this is important. One of the arguments is that this could also have implications for conventional IVF. Because sometimes you do see this trophoblast problem even in conventional IVF. And so this could be at least a new way to look at improving outcomes in conventional IVF for people. So there's that.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' So not that acupuncture I talked about last week.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Probably, yeah. Probably this would be more helpful to researchers. Yeah, I think so.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, thanks, Cara.<br />
<br />
=== Converting {{co2}} into Carbon Nanofibers <small>(44:23)</small> ===<br />
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'''S:''' So I'm going to do another news item that's a little bit also of hype, more than reality. The headline is, scientists develop a process for converting atmospheric CO2 into carbon nanofibers.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Ooh.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Ooh, that sounds-<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Solves two problems at once, right?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Exactly, right? It sounds really, really good. But let's dig into it a little bit. So obviously, carbon capture is something that we're looking into. Researchers are studying various ways of either taking CO2 directly out of the air or capturing it at the source, near coal fire plants or natural gas fire plants or whatever. And then putting that CO2, taking the carbon out of it and getting it into a form that is solid, right? So that it could be buried or utilized in some way, but it would be permanently, or at least for on the order of magnitude of 50 or 100 years, giving us enough time to sort out this whole green energy thing, ully convert over to low carbon economy and energy infrastructure. If we could bind up that carbon for 50 or 100 years, that could go a long way to mitigating climate change. And the experts who have crunched all the numbers said, we're not going to get to our goals without some kind of carbon capture along the way. Although they're mainly figuring like after 2050, like between now and 2050, we really need to focus on reducing our carbon footprint. And then after that, that we, carbon capture has to really start kicking in to some serious degree to turn that line back down again, you know? So is this kind of technology going to be the pathway? Now, carbon nanotubes or carbon nanofibers are a great solid form of carbon to turn atmospheric CO2 into because we've talked about carbon nanofibers. You know, this is a two-dimensional material. They have a lot of interesting physical properties. You know, they're very, very strong and they're highly conductive, highly both thermally and electrically, et cetera. And even if you just make very, very short nanofibers, so they're not long cables of it, but just very, very tiny ones, it could, it's still a great filler, right? You could still like, for example, you can add it to cement to make it much stronger. And that would be a good way to bind it up. You know, just imagine if all the cement were laying around the world, it had billions of tons of carbon in it. That was then now long-term sequestered. So that would be, that's like one of the most obvious sort of uses of this kind of carbon nanofibers. So what's the innovation here? So essentially they said, well, one of our innovations is we broke it down into a two-step process, right? We didn't want to try to get all the way from carbon dioxide to carbon nanotubes, carbon nanofibers in one step. So we broke it down into two steps. The first step is to turn carbon dioxide and water into carbon monoxide and hydrogen. And when I read that, I'm like, oh, you mean like we've been doing for years, right? I mean, that's not anything that's new. And that's kind of always the first step, you know what I mean? Because the problem with carbon dioxide is that it's a very low energy, very stable molecule, right? So it takes energy to convert it into anything else. Carbon monoxide and H2-hydrogen, are very high energy molecules. They are good feeders for lots of industrial chemical reactions, right? If you have hydrogen, you can do tons of stuff with that. We've spoken about this quite a bit. And if you have carbon monoxide, you can make all kinds of carbon-based molecules out of it. These are good, highly reactive, high energy molecules. So yeah, that's the key, is getting from CO2 to CO and H2, that's always the tough part. And they're basically saying, so we're gonna do that using basically existing methods. It's like, okay, so there's no innovation in the hard part. The real, right? It's like, okay, that's old news. The real new bit is that they develop a catalytic process to go from carbon monoxide to carbon nanofibers. It's like, okay, that's interesting. You know, that sounds reasonable. So they basically proved that they could do that. You know, they use cobalt as a catalyst, and which isn't great because cobalt is one of those elements that are sourced from parts of the world that are not stable. And we're trying to reduce our reliance on cobalt. And so developing a process that uses more cobalt, not great. It's an iron-cobalt system that they're using. Now it's gonna come down to two things, right? So they did a proof of concept. You could break this down to a two-step process where you go from carbon dioxide to carbon monoxide, and then carbon monoxide to carbon nanotubes. It works, but two questions, or actually, there's three questions. One is, can you do it on an industrial scale? Because unless you could do billions of tons of this stuff, it's not gonna matter, right? Second is, how cost-effective is it? And third is, how energy-effective is it, right? So if you have to burn a lot of energy to do the process, then it doesn't really get you anywhere.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Don't do it, right.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So they do say that the processes work at relatively low temperature and at atmospheric pressure, at ambient pressure. That's good. So that's a good sign that this has the potential to be energy-efficient. And then they also say, and this is always that gratuitous thing, if you fuel it, right? If you fuel this process with renewable energy, it could be carbon-neutral. Of course, if anything you fuel with renewable energy, it's gonna be carbon-neutral.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's like part of this healthy breakfast, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Right, part of this healthy breakfast. But fair enough. So you could theoretically power this with solar panels or wind turbines or nuclear power, which is what you'd have to do. You'd need some massive energy source. But again, in the short term, if we're gonna build a renewable energy source, you're gonna reuse that to replace fossil fuel energy sources. You're not gonna use it to capture the carbon from the fossil fuel, because that's adding another step and that's inefficient. So this kind of process isn't, and this is what I was saying at the beginning, it's not gonna be relevant until after we decarbonize the energy infrastructure, right? Only once you've replaced all the fossil fuel with carbon-neutral energy sources, does it then make sense to add even more carbon-neutral energy sources in order to pull some of the carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere that you've already released, right? Until then, if you build a nuclear power plant, for example, just connect it to the grid. Don't use it to pull carbon out of the air that you put in by burning coal, right? Shut down the coal plant and power the grid with the nuclear power. But there's a sort of a good news to that fact is that we don't have to really perfect this technology for 30 years. This is the kind of thing that we need to have ready to go in 2050. Like if we get to 2050 and we've mostly decarbonized our energy infrastructure and some more industrial energy structure, that's what we really need to start ramping up carbon capture. And that's when these kinds of technologies are gonna be useful. So we do have a couple of decades to perfect it. So it's good that we're at the proof of concept stage now because it could take 20 years to get to the industrial stage where we're doing it. But it is-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Is it possible or reasonable that it would scale up like that?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, again, that's a big question mark. And we've been here a hundred times where something looks great at the proof of concept stage and then we never hear about it again because it just failed to scale, right? It wasn't the kind of thing that you could scale up. And with carbon capture, that is one of the big hurdles. Does it scale? Can you get this to function at industrial, massive industrial scales? Because it's not worth it if you can't. And then the other thing, again, is how energy efficient is it? Because if it's energy inefficient and then it becomes part of the problem, right? It's not helping. It's just another energy sink. This has potential. And I do think carbon nanofibers as the end product is a great idea. Because again, we could just dump it in cement and put it on or under the ground or whatever, put it in our foundations. So, and it makes it stronger. It increases the longevity of the cement. And cement is an important source of CO2 also. So anything that makes that industry more efficient is good. So there's kind of a double benefit. So I like all of that. But looking past the hype, this is something where we're at the proof of concept stage. This may be an interesting technology 20 years from now. So let's keep working on it. But this isn't like the answer to climate change, right? This is something we're gonna have to be plugging in in 20 years or so.<br />
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=== Feng Shui <small>(54:04)</small> ===<br />
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'''S:''' All right, Evan, I understand that people are doing feng shui wrong. What are the consequences of this?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' My gosh, how are we ever gonna get past this obstacle? It's not every week that the news-consuming public gets advice about feng shui. But this week, we're fortunate not to have one but two articles warning us about feng shui mistakes that are all around us. And I know people pronounce this differently. I've heard feng shui, feng shui, feng shui.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I also think some of the differences- I think some of them come from whether you're saying it in Mandarin or Cantonese.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I suppose so, I suppose so. Well, maybe there are some people who are not familiar with what feng shui is. What is it? You know what I did? I decided, I'm gonna look up the definition. I'm gonna go to fengshui.com to find out. I don't know what's there. Here's what happens real quick when you get there. There's this big, so it's a blank screen with all except for a big blurry dot. And then the blurry dot will start to pull in opposite directions, forming two circles, touching at a point like a figure eight on its side, or the infinity sign, basically. And there's no text or anything. That's all there is. And the only thing you can do is click on the dot. And that dot takes you to the next page, which is a entirely black background page, no text again. And it slowly starts to transition to a gray scale. It dissolves eventually to a white background in about 10 seconds. And then an octagon appears. And then within the octagon, there are lines that appear interconnecting the non-neighboring sides of the octagon. And if you click on that, it brings you back to the blurry dot. So to tell you the truth, and that cycle repeats, to tell you the truth, I think that's the most cogent explanation of feng shui I've ever seen. You know, oh boy, this is wild. Oh, it's an ancient Chinese traditional practice which claims to use energy forces to harmonize individuals with their surrounding environment. The term feng shui means literally wind water. And from ancient times, landscapes and bodies of water were thought to direct the flow of universal qi, the cosmic current, all energy, through places and structures, and in some cases, people. Now, here is the first article. Four feng shui plants to avoid. These are gonna disturb the qi in your home, warns experts. That's how the headline reads. Oh my gosh, this is a warning. And where was this? Yahoo.com picked this up as part of their lifestyle news, and they pulled it from the website called Living Etc. So when it comes to the best plants for good feng shui, there are a few you should bring home, and some you should completely avoid. And they're gonna help you right now pick out the ones to avoid, because they are experts. Yep, yep, they consulted experts for this, and I hope that-<br />
<br />
'''S:''' [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enfe44s0ivo You have a degree in boloney].<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I hope they met legitimate scientists, botanists, chemists, right? Maybe they got on board, but here's what they said. Feng shui master Jane Langhoff. It's essential to consider the type of energy plants you bring into your spaces. Oh well, so much for hearing from scientists.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' What's an energy plant?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, energy plant. Type-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' What's that?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Consider the type of energy plants bring into our spaces. So it's not energy plants, but actually I'll get to that. I'll get to that, Cara. There's actually, there are actually some things, and I will eventually get there. So you weren't totally wrong. Here's what else she says. I don't believe that specific plants will necessarily cause bad luck. However, there are certain plants that can represent negative elements or bring inauspicious energy to a space. Generally, it's advisable to avoid excessively thorny and spiky plants that can cause injury. Oh boy, thank goodness we have a person with a master's certificate and a gold star on it that warns us that thorny and spiky plants can cause an injury. Another one, Feng Shui consultant and educator Laura Morris. As a general rule, you want to be mindful about where you place a spiky or pointy leaf plant. Try to avoid placing them next to your bed or in the partnership area of your home, whatever the partnership area is, wherever people partner up. I don't know.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's where the people get busy? I mean, what are they talking about?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' But you want, so here are the four, okay? Here are the four plants in order and do this like David Letterman's top 10 list, but it's a top four list. Number four, the yuccas, Y-U-C-C-A-S.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I love yuccas.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yuccas, yuccas, yeah. Got to avoid them. They're kind of prickly. They're kind of what, they have sword-like features to them, I guess. You know, long kind of bladed, pointy leaves. They say don't bring those in the home. Number three, cacti. I think we know what cactus and cacti are. Number two, dried flowers and dying plants. You know why? Because don't have those in your house because they represent stagnant energy. Best to leave those outside because if you bring them inside, they could restrict the flow of chi. And the number one plant you should not have in your house, and I have them, quite a few of them in my house, artificial plants. Yep, you know why? Because they block, well, they block energy. They're inauthentic, Steve. They're pretending to be something they're not. This is right directly from the article, which can affect energy in a space negatively. If you love artificial plants, they must be also kept clean of dust and grime. Wow, this is good stuff. Now, Cara, as far as the, what do we call them?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Energy plants?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Energy plants. They list some plants. So here's some plants that are associated with good luck and include, I'm not gonna give you their taxonomical names, but I'll give you their more common names. The treasure fern, the happy plant, the lucky bamboo, the jade plant, the money plant, and peace lilies.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And this doesn't sound at all like something she just made up.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I mean, totally.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' To sell the plants that she has in her shop.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' This is some fatal level thinking right here. You know, I mean, how more basic does it get than that? You know, I mean, yeah. Lucky bamboo and the treasure fern. But it gets better because there's the other article. Here's the headline. Small entryway feng shui mistakes, five things the pros always avoid. So again, like right on the heels of this other one came this article. Oh my gosh, pearls of wisdom coming our way again. Number one, don't have any dead or dying plants. They kind of referred to that in the first article because dead or dying plants create negative energy and represent decay. That's not something you want to welcome in your welcoming part of your home, which is your entryway. Number two, poor maintenance of the door space. For example, blocking the area behind the front door will make moving through the space difficult. You think so? If you kind of put something behind a door and try to open it, that's gonna, you know. We need an expert to tell us this though. Also, don't let your front door get dirty and grimy. You know, it'll stop the positive energy from flowing in that door. The next, the three of five, beware your mirror placement. You don't want to place a mirror face on because you open the door and you're looking in the mirror, oh my gosh, you might get scared or something. You want to hang that mirror on a wall facing away to a doorway to your next room because what it does is it sends opportunities and prosperities into your home. It kind of brings the energy in and reflects it into the center of the home, which apparently needs it. Number four is clutter. Get rid of don't come in and throw your keys down and fling your mail on the little table there and take off your shoes and throw your coat down. You know, everything has a place. Put your stuff away, basically. And number five, this is the most important and the one I'll wrap up on. We ignore the elements at our own peril. You must incorporate the five elements of earth, fire, water, metal, and wood into your entryway, which kind of, I think, goes maybe against the clutter part of all this, right? But they said the balance between these elements creates good feng shui energy and will create a harmonious balance in your entryway. So there it is. Of all the hard science that we've touched on this week, perhaps this will eclipse it all and be the most beneficial to us all.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Like, feng shui is one of those ones that amazes me because it's just pure magic, you know?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, it's nothing.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So you believe in magic, and I've said that to people, and the kind of answer you get is, well, science doesn't know everything. It's like, yeah, but we know magic isn't real.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Not everybody can say that, Steve.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, and it's like, what I love about it is it's magic mixed with, like, a dose of common sense. It's sort of like all the things you were saying, Evan, because then you have these true believers that are like, yeah, but I had an expert come in, and they helped me with my feng shui, and I feel better. It's like, yeah, probably because you're not bumping into shit all the time.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Right, because they cleaned your house and put your crap away.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Here's your problem. You've got a cactus right in your entryway here.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Cactus behind your door. You can't open your door all the way.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's feng shui.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So stupid.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, okay, fine. If you're gonna do it in your own home, whatever. But I mean, and what we talked about before, and it's not the article this week, but when governments start hiring feng shui people, bring them in for architectural design and stuff, they are, oh my gosh.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's driving me nuts.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Wasting all our money and driving us nuts.<br />
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== Who's That Noisy? <small>(1:05:06)</small> ==<br />
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'''S:''' All right, Jay, it's Who's That Noisy time.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' All right, guys, last week I played this noisy. [plays Noisy] Now, I should have known that that kind of sound was gonna make a lot of people send me a lot of like funny entries into Who's That Noisy, things like they absolutely know that that is not it. They're just trying to make me laugh. And a few people did make me laugh, but I did get some serious entries this week, and we have a listener named Tim Lyft that said, "Hi, Jay, my daughter, age nine, thinks this week's noisy is somebody playing one of those snake charmer flute thingies, but badly" which I thought was a wonderful guess. And her cousin, who's seven years old, guessed "a lot of farm animals".<br />
<br />
'''S:''' A cacophony of farm animals.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I think these are two wonderful guesses. And Tim himself guessed some kind of bird. You can't send me an answer of some kind of bird. You have to be absolutely specific. But thank you for sending those in. Those are great. Visto Tutti always answers. He always comes up with something. He said, "it sounds like peacocks calling during the mating season. They like to start the annoying screeching way before sunrise, which makes the humans in the neighborhood wonder what roast peacock tastes like". So I heard this and I'm like, I read his email like, oh, peacocks, I don't know. I never heard the sounds that they make. And then I proceeded to get about, I think six or seven more emails where people were saying peacocks. So perhaps peacocks sound like that, which is a horrible noise for a bird to make, especially if they live around you. Another listener named Harley Hunt wrote in, said, good day. My guess for this week is a peacock. Okay, I put that in. I don't know why.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I'm sensing a theme here.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, there's a theme. All right, so there was a bunch of people that guessed peacock. Another listener here named Adam Pesch said, "Jay, first time emailer, long time listener. Today, I was awakened from a deep sleep by this week's noisy. You did warn us. I never have a guess and probably am way off, but this week reminded me of a shofar horn that I've heard in synagogue trying to mimic an electric guitar riff. Thanks for everything you guys do." I could not find anything on that, so I have no idea what that sounds like, but I do appreciate those guesses. Unfortunately, nobody guessed it. And you know, this one was a hard one. I just thought it was a provocative noise that I wanted to play for you guys. And I will explain this one to you. So again, this was sent in by a listener named Curtis Grant. And Curtis said, I have a really cool noise I heard at work as an elevator fitter or installer. In this case, we use a temporary hoist that lifts the finished lift cabin, right, which is basically the elevator itself, up and down the shaft. We use this to hoist or install our equipment, which are the rail brackets and et cetera, from the top of the finished lift car, as it is more efficient than building a temporary platform to install from. So as these cars are heavy, they have temporary nylon guide shoes that rub against the rails and cause this noise. So basically, like during the installation of an elevator, this is a common noise that someone would hear if they were doing the install. Very, very hard noise to hear. Let me just play briefly again. [plays Noisy] Wow, imagine that like resonating inside the shaft, right? Wow, imagine that like resonating inside the shaft, right? Ugh, forget about it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's haunting.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, definitely. <br />
<br />
{{anchor|previousWTN}} <!-- keep right above the following sub-section ... this is the anchor used by wtnHiddenAnswer, which will link the next hidden answer to this episode's new noisy (so, to that episode's "previousWTN") --><br />
=== New Noisy <small>(1:08:36)</small> ===<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Guys, I have a new noisy this week, sent in by a listener named Chris Kelly. And here it is.<br />
<br />
[Zipper-like zings, and a clack]<br />
<br />
I'll play it again. It's very short. [plays Noisy] Very strange. If you think you know {{wtnAnswer|968|what this week's Noisy is}}, or you heard something really cool, please do send it to me, because it helps make the show good. WTN@theskepticsguide.org.<br />
<br />
== Announcements <small>(1:09:03)</small> ==<br />
<br />
{{anchor|quickie}} <!-- leave anchor(s) directly above the corresponding section that follows --><br />
<br />
'''J:''' Real quick, Steve, I'll go down a few things here. Guys, if you enjoyed the show, we would appreciate you considering becoming a patron of ours to help us keep going. All you have to do is go to [https://www.patreon.com/SkepticsGuide patreon.com/SkepticsGuide], and you can consider helping us continue to do the work that we do. Every little bit counts. So thank you very much, and thank you to all our patrons out there. We really appreciate it. One thing we started doing a few weeks ago, about a month ago, is we came up with the SGU weekly email. This email essentially gives you every piece of content that we created the previous week. We send it out on Monday or Tuesdays. So it'll have the show that just came out the previous Saturday, any YouTube videos, any TikTok videos, any blogs that Steve wrote, anything that we feel you need to see, it's going to be in that email. Also, we'll put in some messages here and there about things, like for example, an important message to tell you guys. So Google is changing its podcast player. And the new podcast player that they have actually is not something that we want to work with because there's a few things, without getting into all the details, the big humps for us that we couldn't get over was one, we couldn't integrate this automatically. So it won't automatically update to our RSS. We'd have to do everything manually.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' What?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, that's crazy. It doesn't integrate with our media host and that's it. So that right there is a pretty much a deal breaker for us because we can't be doing everything manually. That's number one. Number two, and sadly, they auto-insert ads and the pay is terrible. And we would have no control over the ads. So that's it, it's a game breaker. We're not going to do it. We are not going to integrate with Google's new podcast platform until and if they ever change or whatever, if I'll keep an eye on it, but.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Hey, it should be able to turn ads off if you don't opt out of that.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, I mean, I haven't seen-<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And like not automatically updating the RSS. I mean, come on.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, I know.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, like nobody's going to ever, nobody's going to use this.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, I don't think they will. So if, unfortunately, if you have recently found out that you no longer are getting our RSS on the Google podcast platform, this changeover happened over, I guess, the last few weeks or whatever, we're very sorry, but we have to, we can't engage in things that aren't good for us and that's it. So we're just not going to do it. And feel free to email me if you want to give me more information about it, or if you know, like, hey, either it's going to change or whatever. I can't find anything. But I admit, I didn't look that deeply into trying to figure out where they might be in the future. I just know where they are right now. Anyway, guys, there's an eclipse happening, and we decided let's do something fun around the eclipse because this is probably going to be the last one that any of us are going to see, especially one that's going to be close. And as Cara and Evan have been talking about, this is a big one. This is a long one. This is really one you really want to see. So wherever you are try to get yourself to a location where you're going to have totality. You know, bring the kids, definitely get the eye protection that you need, but this is going to be a big deal. So what we decided is we're going to go to a place where Bob's horrible feng shui of creating clouds.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Right?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Whenever an astronomical event is happening, we don't think that Bob's powers will work in Texas. So we're going to Dallas. We're going to be doing an extravaganza on April 6th, and we will be doing an SGU private show, a private show plus, actually, and we'll be doing that on the 7th of April of this year. All of these things will be in and around Dallas. So we really hope that if you're local or you're going to be traveling there for the eclipse, please do consider joining us. Ticket sales are going very well. So move quickly if you're interested because I can see things filling up very quickly. Other than that, guys.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' The clouds will follow me.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, if they do, Bob, if they do. We will take it out on you. We're going to make you buy us an expensive dinner, I guess, or something.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Of course you will.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, but I'm looking forward to Cara's barbecue.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Ooh.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That's the only reason why I'm going.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' You guys are going to be so good. Barbecue and Tex-Mex.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I'm going to diet before I go just so I can overeat when we're there, you know?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, you're going to go hard in Texas. You can't not go hard. Oh, it's the best.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Deep in the heart of Texas, right?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yep. Stars at night are big and bright.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I know that because of Pee-Wee's Big Adventure, right?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Of course.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. Thank you, Jay.<br />
<br />
== Quickie: TikTok recap <small>(1:13:37)</small> ==<br />
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'''S:''' Very quickly, I'm going to do an entry from TikTok. As you know, we do TikTok videos every week. One of the videos I did today, we record, we also livestream if you're interested, but we recorded one on the jellyfish UFO. Have you guys seen this?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Oh, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I have seen it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, the jellyfish UFO. So yeah, the TikTok video that I was responding to was by Jeremy Corbel, who's a gullible UFO guy, right? And it's a really this is a great example, a great contrast between a gullible analysis of a piece of information, this video, versus Mick West, who does a really great technical, like skeptical analysis of the same video. So essentially, this is over a military base, a US military base, and there's a balloon, a monitoring balloon, a couple of miles away. It's like tethered to the ground. So you get sort of a bird's eye view of the base, and it's tracking this thing that's flying across the base, right? Now, it's called the jellyfish UFO because it kind of looks vaguely like a jellyfish. There's a blob on top and streamers below, right? So there's a couple of, so again, Corbel's going on just gullibly about all this, oh, what could this be? I'm trying to like mystery monger it, and pointing out anomalies, apparent anomalies. But here's the bottom line, very, very quick. And if you can, the deep, Mick West goes into the technical details very well. The thing is drifting in the direction and speed of the wind, right? This is something floating in the wind. And the 99%-er here is that this is some balloons. This is a clump of balloons and streamers floating in the wind. Now, we can't see it with sufficient detail to say 100% that's what it is. It could be something unexpected, but that's basically what it is, right? If it's not literally balloons, it's something very similar. But it's something lightweight that's floating, that's drifting in the wind. It's not a machine it's not a spacecraft.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' A life form.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Not a life form. You know, it's just, it's not moving, right? At first, I'm like, is that like a smudge on the lens? But like, no, it's kind of moving with respect to the lens itself. But it is again, Mick West shows quite convincingly that it's moving in the direction of the wind, it's moving at the speed of the wind, given the likely altitude that it has. He does all the angles and everything. It's like, come on, guys, it's a freaking clump of balloons.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Maybe that's the secret of alien spaceship propulsion. You let the wind do all the work.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, that's how they hide, right? They just float along like the balloons.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So they're literally paper airplanes.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' What's the difference between alien balloons acting like Earth-bound, Earth-created balloons?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And Earth-created balloons?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' There's no, right?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The difference is Occam's Razor, that's the difference. All right, guys, we have a great interview coming up with Robert Sapolsky about free will. This one's gonna blow your mind. If you're not familiar with the free will debate, you will be after this interview. So let's go to that interview now.<br />
<br />
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<br />
== Interview with Robert Sapolsky <small>(1:17:01)</small> ==<br />
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* "{{w| Robert Sapolsky|Robert Morris Sapolsky}} is an American neuroendocrinology researcher and author. He is a professor of biology, neurology, neurological sciences, and neurosurgery at Stanford University. In addition, he is a research associate at the National Museums of Kenya." - Wikipedia<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Joining us now is Robert Sapolsky. Robert, welcome to The Skeptic's Guide.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Well, thanks for having me on.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And you are a professor of biology, neurology, and neurosurgery at Stanford University. And you have written a lot about free will and other related topics. And that was primarily what we wanted to start our discussion with about tonight, because you take a pretty hard position that there is no free will. How would you state your position?<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' I would say probably the fairest thing is that I'm way out on the lunatic fringe.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' In that my stance is not just, wow, there's much less free will than people used to think. We've got to rethink some things in society. I think there's no free will whatsoever. And I try to be convincing about this.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay, well, convince us. Tell us why you think there's no free will.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' I think when you look at what goes into making each of us who we are, all we are is the outcome of the biological luck, good or bad, that we have no control over, and its interactions with the environmental luck, good or bad, which we also have no control over. How is it that any of us became who we are at this moment is because of what happened a second ago and what happened a minute ago and what happened a century ago. And when you put all those pieces together, there's simply no place to fit in the notion that every now and then your brain could do stuff that's independent of what we know about science.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So, yeah, that is, I think, the standard position of the no free will. Our brains are deterministic, right? We can't break the laws of physics and control what happens inside our head. Our brains are machines. But why, then, is there such a powerful illusion that we do have free will? And how do you square that, like the notion that we do make decisions? Or do you think we don't really make decisions? Is the decision-making level of this itself an illusion?<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Great. I think that's exactly where we all get suckered into, including me, into feeling a sense of agency. Because the reality is there's points where we choose. We choose something. We choose what flavor ice cream we want. We choose whether or not to push someone off the cliff. We have all those sorts of things. We make a choice. We form an intent. And then we act on it. And that seems wonderfully agentive, wonderfully me. There's a me that just made this decision. I was conscious of having an intent. I had a pretty good idea what the consequence was gonna be of acting on it. And I knew I wasn't being forced. I had alternatives. I could choose to do otherwise. And that intentness, the strength with which you were just in that moment, is what most of us, then, intuitively feel like counts as free will. And the problem with that is, when you're assessing that, it's like you're trying to assess a book by only reading the last page of it. Because you don't get anywhere near the only question you can ask. So how did you turn out to be that sort of person who would form that intent? How did you become that person? And that's the stuff we had no control over.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay, I see that. So you have no control over the person that you are, all of the things that went into influencing your decision-making. But does that add up to, though, that you're not actually making decisions? Or I guess another, when I try to wrestle with this, the other thing that really bothers me is not only the sense of decision-making, but of what we call metacognition. I could think about my own thought processes. So what's happening there?<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Yep. You're in some psych experiment where, like, if you had a warthog, and signed up for the experiment, they would do some manipulation psychologically, and the warthog would fall for it and all of that. But because we're human, and we've got this metacognition stuff, we can go in there and say, oh, these psychologists, I bet they're up to something. So whatever I think I'm gonna say, I'm gonna say the opposite so that I'm not being some, like, rube falling for their manipulation. Whoa, I've just exercised free will thanks to my metacognition. How'd you become the sort of person who would go in there and be skeptical? How did you become the sort of person who would reflect on the circumstance metacognitively, et cetera, et cetera? In both of those cases, whether you did exactly what the warthog did, or if you, just out of proving some sort of point to yourself, did exactly the opposite, in both cases, it's the same issue. How did you become that person? And you had no control over that part.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So you also talk about the fact that if you take that view of humanity, that we are deterministic and free will is an illusion, that should influence policy or how we approach certain questions. So what do you think are the biggest policy implications for the realization that we don't really have free will?<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Well, people immediately freak out along a number of lines if you try to insist to them that there's no free will. The first one is, oh my God, people are just gonna run amok. If you can't be held responsible for your actions, people will just be completely disinhibited or will be chaos. And sort of the most extreme extension of that is, and they'll just be murderers running around on the streets. And that won't be the case. And the thing is, if you take the notion that we have no free will, we're just biological machines, blah, blah. If you take it to its logical extreme, blame and punishment never make any sense whatsoever. No one deserves to be punished. Retribution can never be a virtue in and of itself. Oh, so you throw out the entire criminal justice system, forget reforming it. It makes no sense at all. It's like having a witch justice system for deciding which ones you burn at the stake in 1600. You need to come up with a system that completely bypasses that. And at the same time, hold up a mirror to that and praise and reward make no sense either. And thus meritocracies have to be tossed out as well.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So then what are we left with?<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Well, we're left with something that seems totally unimaginable. How are you supposed to function? But then you reflect and we actually function all the time in circumstances where we have subtracted free will out of the occasion and we can protect society from dangerous individuals. Nonetheless, let me give you an example. There's a setting where there's a human who's dangerous. They can damage innocent people around them and this would be a terrible thing. And what happens if this is your child and they're sneezing and they have a nose cold? The kindergarten has this rule saying, please, if your child has a nose cold, keep them home until they're feeling better. Whoa, you constrain your child's behavior. You will lock them up at home. No, you don't lock them up at home because it does not come with moralizing. You don't say you're a kid. Ah, because you were sneezing, you can't play with your toys. You don't preach to them. You constrain them just enough so that they are no longer dangerous and not an inch more. And as long as you're at it, you do some research as to what causes nose colds in the first place. And we have a world in which it's so obvious that we have subtracted free will out of that that we don't even notice it. Yeah, there's all sorts of realms in which we can reach the conclusion this person wasn't actually responsible for their actions. And nonetheless, we could make a world that is safe from any inadvertent damage that they might do.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That still sounds like at the end of the day, there are still consequences to your actions, right? So if you demonstrate that you're a dangerous person by committing a crime, then you have to be isolated from society until you're no longer the kind of person who would commit a crime.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Or you have to be isolated exactly enough, the minimum needed to make sure you can't be dangerous in that way anymore. And we have all sorts of contingent constraints in society. You, if you have proven that you were dangerous to society because you keep driving drunk, they don't let you drive. They take your license away. You're still allowed to walk around and go into the supermarket and such. They don't need to put you in jail. If you have a certain type of sexual pedophilia, there's rules. You can't go within this distance of a school, of a playground or something. We have all these ways in which we can constrain people from the ways in which they are damaging and not do any more so. And the key thing in that latter point is we don't sermonize to them. There's a reason why you wind up being dangerous. So we are gonna keep you from doing that. And it's not because you have a crappy soul.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, I get that. But at the end of the day, in a practical sense, it could be very same to the criminal justice system we have now, just minus a lot of the judgment and the punishment is not punitive. It's not because you deserve to be punished. It's just because there needs to be a moral consequence to your actions.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Well, I would differ there because the word moral is irrelevant. The word moral is irrelevant to your car's brakes that have stopped working. Oh my God, it's gonna kill somebody. You can't drive it. You need to constrain it. You need to put it in the garage. But that's not a moral act. You don't feel like you should go in each morning with a sledgehammer and smash the car on the hood because of how dangerous it is to society. You don't preach to it. Morality is completely independent of it. You are trying to do a quarantine model. And the people who think about this the most use public health models for this. And you are not a bad person if you get an infectious disease. And you're not a bad person if circumstances has made you someone who's damaging to those around you. But yeah, make sure people are not damaged by you but don't preach to you in the process.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, you could substitute the word ethical, I guess, for moral. It's just a philosophical calculation without any kind of spiritual judgment.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Good, okay.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's kind of what I meant. The point is that if you're saying, well, we're just, our brains are calculating machines and part of those calculations are moral judgments or ethical judgments or whatever, right? Because we evolved, and we're going to get to that in a minute, a sense of justice. And you have to leverage that in order to influence people's behavior. Otherwise, you have the moral hazard of not having consequences for your actions, right? So we're not in control of our decision-making, but there are influences on that decision-making and society needs to influence people's decision-makings by presenting concrete consequences to their actions. If you do this, you're going to go to jail. Nothing personal, but we have to do it. Otherwise there will be significant increase in crime or whatever you want to call it. Is that a fair way to look at it?<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Yeah, it's okay to have punishment as part of the whole picture in a purely instrumental sense, in the same way that you can have rewarding people for stuff that they've done, but again, purely instrumental. And then you say, okay, so if we ran the prison system on that, there's no such thing as retribution. There's no such thing as somebody deserves to be constrained. There's no such thing as justice being done. And you put in those factors in there and you have an unrecognizably different approach to, we protect the society from people who sneeze and we protect society from people who have such poor impulse control that they do impulsive, horrible, damaging things when they're emotionally worked up. But there's no retribution. Justice is not being served. They don't deserve anything. They have not earned their punishment. You are just containing a car whose brakes are broken. And if that sounds like, oh my God, turning people into machines, that's so dehumanizing, that's a hell of a lot better than demonizing them into being sinners.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, it's actually a very humanistic approach to criminal justice.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Because it does lack that sort of punitive angle that can be injust in a lot of ways, right? You're taking somebody who is in a much more profound sense than we even may realize a victim of circumstance and punishing them for that, right?<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Is there anything beyond criminal justice system that has implications from your philosophy on no free will?<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Well, meritocracies go out the window also because it's this bi-directional thing. We run the world where some people are treated way worse than average for reasons they have no control over and then some people are treated way better than average for reasons they have no control over. They have the sort of brain, so they get good SAT scores or the sort of brain that makes them self-disciplined and so now they've got a great job, now they've got the corner office, now they have whatever and they did not earn it any more than someone who commits a crime earned it. Both of those systems are bankrupt. But then you have the same problem. The people then say, oh my God, if you do that, you're gonna have murderers running around the streets, not necessarily, but now flip to the meritocracy half, you would say, oh my God, you turn out to have a brain tumor and you're just gonna pick a random person off the street to do your brain surgery. No, of course not that either. We need to protect society from people who are damaging and we need to ensure society that competent people are doing difficult things, but you can do it without a realm of this being laden in virtue and moral worth. Just because somebody turns out to have enough dexterity to do surgery, they should not have a society that reifies them thinking that they are intrinsically a better human any more than someone in jail should be thinking that they are an intrinsically worse human. Both are mere outcomes of their circumstances.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Robert, can I ask you a couple of questions coming from someone who isn't a neurologist? First off, define for me what free will would be if we had it.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Okay, this is one that completely pisses off philosophers who argue for free will. Just to orient people, 90% of philosophers these days would be called compatibilists, which is they admit the world is made out of stuff like atoms and molecules and we've got cells inside our heads and all of that science-y stuff is going on. They concede that, they accept that, but somehow, nonetheless, that is compatible with there still being free will in there. And as such, I would fall into the tiny percentage of people who count as free will incompatibilists. You can't have what we know about how the brain works and free will going hand in hand. So what would count as free will? So somebody does something and you say, well, why did they do that? And it's because these neurons did something half a second before. But it's also because something in the environment in the previous minutes triggered those neurons to do that. And because hormone levels this morning in your bloodstream made this or that part of your brain more or less sensitive to those stimuli. And because in the previous decade, you went through trauma or you found God and that will change the way your brain works. And before you know it, you're back to adolescence and childhood and fetal life, which is an amazingly important period of sharing environment with your mother and then genes. And then even stuff like what your ancestors invented as a culture, because that's going to have majorly influenced the way your mother mothered you within minutes of birth. So if you want to find free will, if you want to like prove it's there, take a brain, take a person that just did something and show that that brain did that completely independently of this morning's breakfast and last year's trauma and all the values and conditioning and stuff that went on in adolescence and what your mom's hormone levels were in your bloodstream when you were a fetus and your genes and culture, show that if you change all of those factors, you still get the exact same behavior. You've just proven free will and it can't be done.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Are you saying like we have zero free will or is there a little bit of it mixed in? You know what I mean? Like, is it so black and white or could there be shades of gray here?<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' There's simply no mechanism in there by which you can have a brain doing stuff completely independent of its history, independent of what came before. It is not possible for a brain to be an uncaused cause. And taken to its logical extreme, the only conclusion is, yeah, there's no free will whatsoever.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Aren't we still thinking things over? Like, I think that when I do something that I really don't wanna do, that if I'm ever expressing free will, it's in those moments, right? Like, doesn't that make sense in a way? Like, if I'm gonna force myself to do something that everything about me-<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's just one part of your brain arguing with another part of your brain though, right?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' But isn't that kind of an expression of free will? If you are having an internal debate and there are pros and cons and pluses and minuses and all the stuff that it takes for us to make a decision.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Not necessarily if you see it from a neurological point of view of, yeah, that's just your executive function and your frontal lobe fighting with your limbic system.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Exactly.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Right?<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It doesn't rescue you from it being all caused neurologically.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' I mean, today is January 17th and thus we're probably 17 days into the vast majority of people who made New Year's resolutions to have already like given them up. And everyone went into it with the same, I'm gonna do this differently this year. And some people do and some people don't. And how did somebody become the sort of person who would have the self-discipline to do that? How would someone become the sort of person who first time they were tempted, they went flying off the rails. How did we all differ in that regard also? And it's exactly the part of the brain. You mentioned just now the frontal cortex. That's this incredibly interesting part of the brain that makes you do the hard thing when it's the right thing to do. And beginning in your fetal life, every bit of thing that happens around you is influencing how strong of a frontal cortex you're gonna have come January 1st and you're vowing to exercise every day.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' So is there an evolutionary advantage to believing in free will?<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Yeah, I think there's an enormous one. And what you can see is in the fact that 90% of philosophers and probably more than 90% of folks out there in general believe there's free will because it's like kind of an unsettling drag to contemplate that we're biological machines. It's very unsettling. And people like to have a sense of agency. People like to think of themselves as captains of their fate. And this plugs into like a very distinctive thing about humans. We're the only species that's smart enough to know that everybody you know and love and you included are going to die someday. We're the only species that knows that someday the sun is gonna go dark. We're the only species that knows that because your neurons in your frontal cortex just did this or that, you carried out this behavior. We're the only species that's capable of having those realities floating around. And some evolutionary biologists have speculated, I think very convincingly, that if you're gonna have a species that is as smart as we are, we have to have evolved an enormous capacity for self-deception, for rationalizing away reality. And we're the species that's smart enough that we better be able to deny reality a lot of the time. And in that regard, major depression, clinical depression, one of the greatest ways of informally defining it is depression is a disease of someone who is pathologically unable to rationalize away reality. It's very protective psychologically.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And like cycling back a little bit to like the meritocracy thing, because where I tend to come down is I have to admit like, yeah, there's no metaphysical free will. You know, it is, we are, there is no uncaused cause. You know, we are just the neurons acting out what they do. But don't we have to act as if there is free will to a large extent because, again, of that moral hazard of thinking that there's no consequences? And even when, like with meritocracy, you were focusing on talent, but what about hard work? We do want people to be rewarded for hard work so that they'll do it. You know, people will do productive work. If there was no reward for it, we kind of know what those societies look like. It's not one I'd wanna live in. Would you accept that notion that even if you think metaphysically, philosophically, there's no free will, we still have to kind of pretend that there is?<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Again, in an instrumental sense, you can reward somebody if that's gonna make them more likely to do the good thing again, if that's gonna make them more likely to plug away, but you need to do it purely in an instrumental way. A colleague of mine at Stanford, Carol Dweck in psychology, has done wonderful work showing, okay, you've got a kid and your kid has just gotten a great, wonderful grade on some exam or something. And do you say, wow, what a wonderful job you did. You must be so smart. Or do you say, wow, wonderful, wonderful job you did. You must've worked so hard. And what she shows is you do the latter and every neurotic parent knows that by now. Yeah, sometimes you use sort of positive praise, reward for displays of self-discipline because that makes that part of the brain stronger, all of that, but you don't go about making somebody who is better at resisting temptation than somebody else think that it has something to do with they are an intrinsically better human. They just wound up with that sort of frontal cortex.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Let's talk a little bit more about evolutionary psychology. I mean, it seems like you're largely in support of that, but you tell me, what do you think about it? Because I know that is something where you can't deny that our brains evolved and that has a huge influence. So what do you think about the discipline of evolutionary psychology and specifically, how would you answer its critics?<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Its starting point makes absolutely perfect sense. And historically, take one step further back from it and you get this field called sociobiology, which I was sort of raised in, which is you can't think about human behavior outside the context of evolution. And then it's one step further and you've got evolutionary psych. You can't think about the human psyche outside the context of evolution. That makes perfect sense, wonderful sense. The trouble is in both of those disciplines, there's way too much possibility for sort of post hoc, just so stories. There's way too much individual differences. Anytime you see a human who like leaps into a river to save the drowning child and dies in the process and basic sociobiological models, basic models of how you optimize copies of your genes can't explain stuff like that. By the time you're looking at like vaguely complicated mammals, you get individualistic behaviors that violate what some of the models predict. So it's part of the story. It's interesting evolutionary psychology. One finding in there that I find to be very, very impressive is that we are far, far more attuned to the sort of norm violations that go in the direction of you getting treated worse than you expected to be, than you being treated better. We have all sorts of detection things in our brain that are better at spotting that bastard they were supposed to give me that reward and they didn't versus, whoa, they just gave me this gigantic reward out of nowhere. And that makes sense evolutionarily. And some of those building blocks were just fine. As with a lot of these relatively new disciplines, don't get a little overconfident and try to explain everything.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I kind of landed in the same place. From a philosophical point of view, of course, there's evolutionary psychology, but in practice, I do think it can fall into just-so stories too easily. So it's a kind of a weakness in the field. All right, well, Robert, this has all been very fascinating. Thank you so much for giving us your time. Anything coming up that you want to plug? Do you have any works that you're doing?<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' No, I got this new book out, which I guess is sort of useful if people know about it. Came out in October, Penguin. It's called Determined, A Science of Life Without Free Will, where I basically lay out all these arguments and as far as I can tell so far, infuriate a lot of people.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's good work. You know that you're accomplishing something useful if you piss off a lot of people.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Oh, good, because I seem to be. That's nice to know.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, thanks again. Take care.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Good, thanks for having me on.<br />
<br />
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== Science or Fiction <small>(1:44:27)</small> ==<br />
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|item1 = A recently discovered species of deep-sea fish in the Antarctic ocean has been found to have transparent blood, due to a complete lack of hemoglobin.<br />
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|item2 = Researchers have developed a type of biodegradable plastic that decomposes completely in just one week when exposed to sunlight and air.<br />
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|item3 = Researchers have successfully trained a group of goldfish to drive a small, water-filled vehicle on land, demonstrating their ability to navigate in a terrestrial environment and challenging long-held views on fish spatial awareness.<br />
|link3web = https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0166432821005994?dgcid=author#fig0005 <!-- delete or leave blank if none --><br />
|link3title = From fish out of water to new insights on navigation mechanisms in animals <!-- delete or leave blank if none --><br />
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''Voice-over: It's time for Science or Fiction.''<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Each week, I come up with three science news items or facts, two real and one fake, and I challenge my panelists to tell me which one is the fake. We have a theme this week. It's a mystery theme.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' You can tell us.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I will reveal the theme after you guys all give your answers. Now, we'll see if you can figure it out along the way, but it's not gonna be obvious. Okay, here we go. Item number one, a recently discovered species of deep sea fish in the Antarctic Ocean has been found to have transparent blood due to a complete lack of hemoglobin. Item number two, researchers have developed a type of biodegradable plastic that decomposes completely in just one week when exposed to sunlight and air. And item number three, researchers have successfully trained a group of goldfish to drive a small, water-filled vehicle on land, demonstrating their ability to navigate in a terrestrial environment and challenging long-held views on fish spatial awareness. All right, Cara, go first.<br />
<br />
<big>'''Cara's Response'''</big><br />
<br />
'''C:''' I don't like them.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Is that the theme that you're picking up?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Things Cara does not like.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, things I don't like. Deep sea fish in the Antarctic Ocean. There's an Antarctic Ocean?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well the waters around the Antarctic, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But is that called the Antarctic Ocean? I didn't know that, the Arctic. Anyway.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's the Southern Ocean, also known as the Antarctic Ocean.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Okay, I'm not mad at that. That one, okay, so this fish is lacking hemoglobin, which, okay, that's crazy weird, but maybe there's some sort of other compound that is like serving a similar purpose. Would it make the blood transparent? Maybe? Is the only reason blood has the color it is because of hemoglobin? Because of the heme? It might be. I know the heme does make the blood quite red, but I don't know what it would look like with no heme. Would it be clear? I don't know, but a lot of our liquids in our bodies are clear, so maybe. The biodegradable plastic that decomposes completely in just one week, I don't buy that for a second. When exposed to sunlight and air, like what's the catch? It's like, it also melts the second it touches water, like it's not firm like plastic. I just, I do not buy that one. How, I wish that would be revolutionary. But also, a goldfish drove a car? Okay, here's the thing about this one. I have a very fun, but very weird friend who clicker-trained one of her fish to swim through a hoop. And it was a goldfish, and she claims it was very, very smart. I never quite believed her, but maybe, maybe a goldfish could drive a little goldfish car. I want that one to be science, so I'm gonna say plastic's the fiction.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay, Evan.<br />
<br />
<big>'''Evan's Response'''</big><br />
<br />
'''E:''' These all seem like fiction, don't they?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Mm-hmm.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's why you don't like this.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I don't like them.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I agree, I'm with Cara. I will go with Cara and say I don't like them either. Next. Oh, I mean, right. For kind of the same reasons, though. I mean, if you take the hemoglobin out of blood, are you left with something that's transparent? Aren't there other things in the blood that would make it at least opaque, right? Not transparent, though. I mean, what? Right, there's something else floating around there. It's so strange. So that would be the catch on that one, I think. And yes, there is a fifth ocean. It is called the Southern/Antarctic Ocean. The second one about the biodegradable plastic. My question about this one is why would you make this if it's gonna decompose in a week if you can't expose it to sun and air, which is kind of everywhere? So what's the practicality of this? Where would you use this? Underground, okay, where there's no sunlight. And in a non-air environment, what? Water for underneath, but then, I don't know. That's tricky. I mean, maybe they developed it, but it has no practical industrial use. And then the last one, okay, training a group. A group of goldfish would be a school of goldfish. They went to driving school, apparently, to drive this water-filled vehicle. On land, demonstrating their ability to navigate. So how does that work? They don't, that's not how to do it. So when we say drive, are we talking steer? I guess, it's only steer, it would be. So just directional, so.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yes, they have to be able to control which direction it's going in, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No, they use the clutch.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Well I mean, driving is a set of things more than steering, but it's steering something around, kind of.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And they have to go, brr brr.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Remember that video, that's hilarious. Ah! Shoot, all these are wrong, so I don't know. Cara and I are gonna sink or swim together on this one about the plastic, because I just don't see why that would be the case in any purpose.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay, Bob.<br />
<br />
<big>'''Bob's Response'''</big><br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, transparent blood, it seems somewhat plausible without the hemoglobin, that it would be kind of, I mean, I think it would be still kind of opaque, but I guess I could see it being somewhat transparent. The goldfish, the driving goldfish is just too awesome. I just wanna will that into existence. The plastic just seems silly, right? I mean, just like, oh boy, I took the bag out of the packaging, I've gotta use it quick or anything that's, if you forget about the bag and you put stuff in it and put the bag somewhere, and then next week it's gonna be gone, and then the contents are gonna spill. I don't know, it just seems a little goofy in some ways and just not very practical. And like, oh, how long has this bag been out? How much time do I have? It's only a day left. I don't know, it just seems a little silly and impractical, so I'll say that's fiction as well.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And Jay.<br />
<br />
<big>'''Jay's Response'''</big><br />
<br />
'''J:''' So they all are saying that it's the plastic.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's correct. That's what they are saying.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, no.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I would imagine that they didn't develop the plastic to specifically only last a week, that they were working on a biodegradable plastic and that's what they ended up, that this is something that they made. Doesn't necessarily mean-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, that seems reasonable, damn it.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, right? But the key thing here is that it's biodegradable, you know, like legitimately, which, I don't know. I mean, again I trust your guys' judgment as well. You know, the first one about the deep sea fish, it's very odd to think that there's transparent blood, but I have seen many pictures of like that fish you could see through its head and I don't remember seeing blood there, so I think that's science. And then the third one here about the goldfish driving a water field vehicle. I mean, that is so wacky that it's gotta be true. Damn. This is such a hard one, Steve. All right, I'm trying to think of the theme too. I don't see the theme. Okay, I'm gonna go with everybody else. How could I not? I mean, there's something wrong about that one week decomposition, decomposing plastic. Something's not right there.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Hidden Theme ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay, so anyone has a guess on the theme? It's very meta.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I don't like it.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Water.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's very meta. No. The theme is-<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Things in water.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Nope. This-<br />
<br />
'''J:''' The fish eat the plastic.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Science or fiction has been brought to you by Chat GPT.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Oh.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Ah, geez.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Which version?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Four. So I typed in first, are you familiar with the Skeptic's Guide to the Universe podcast? And it said, yes, I'm familiar, and it gave a pretty good description of our podcast.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It better be.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' One of the paragraphs reads, the Skeptic's Guide to the Universe is known for its approachable style, blending educational content with humor and informal discussions. It's aimed at a general audience and is designed to make science and skepticism accessible to people without a scientific background. That's a pretty good description of the show.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I love that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Then I said, can you design for me a science or fiction segment similar to what they have in the show every week? And it did. Now, I had to do it three times and select from among those three, not because they weren't good, but because they were things that we've talked about before. Can't use that one. Yeah, because we've talked about that recently. So I had to find ones that wouldn't be too obvious. And one of these, it gave us a fiction, but I found it's actually true.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Right, you had to double check everything.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #1 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I had to check everything. I couldn't trust it. All right, so let's take these in order. Number one, a recently discovered species of deep sea fish in the Antarctic Ocean has been found to have transparent blood due to a complete lack of hemoglobin. This one is science. So you guys are all safe so far. This is the oscillated ice fish. It's a family of fish. Lives in very cold waters off Antarctica.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Goes back and forth.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And it has transparent hemoglobin-free blood. This is the first, I think, in any vertebrate. And there are some species that have like yellow blood because they have very little hemoglobin, but this one is like fully transparent, zero hemoglobin. And they don't have some other molecule. They just have plasma.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Whoa.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' So plasma, yeah, plasma would be.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' How does that work, though?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, so they've adapted to basically just having oxygen dissolve in plasma and they make it work by, they have low metabolic rate, for example. But it also makes the blood less viscous, so it circulates much more vigorously, I guess. So that compensates for a little bit. They have larger gills, scaleless skin that can contribute more to gas exchange. So they have much more surface area to exchange gas.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Ew, wait. It's a fish with scaleless skin?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That is horrifying sounding.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Like one of those cats that has no fur?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' They have bigger capillaries and they have a large blood volume and cardiac output. So they have all these compensatory mechanisms for not having hemoglobin to bind a lot of oxygen and they make it work. Yeah, so that one is true. So let's go on.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #2 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Number two, researchers have developed a type of biodegradable plastic that decomposes completely in just one week when exposed to sunlight and air. You guys all think this one is the fiction and this one is science.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No, I led you astray. The goldfish.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Interestingly, this one, ChatGPT gave me as a fiction. So I looked it up. I'm like, dang, there it is. This is actually true. This is published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society in 2021. Yeah, they created a plastic that when exposed to air and sunlight will completely break down in one week, leaving no microplastics behind at all. It degrades into succinic acid, which is a small non-toxic molecule. So obviously it limits the applications because it can't be exposed to sunlight or air.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But if it took a year, it'd be great.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Right. So that one actually turned out to be true.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #3 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Which means that researchers have successfully trained a group of goldfish to drive a small water-filled vehicle on land, demonstrating their ability to navigate in a terrestrial environment and challenging long-held views on fish spatial awareness. Is the fiction.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Clearly.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' ChatGPT just made this one up at a whole cloth. Made it up.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Not fair.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Made which one up, Steve?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The goldfish one.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's not related to anything real?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, they just said this one, they said psychologists kind of do weird things, but not this. So they made this one up. That was it.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh my gosh. It was like plausibly awkward.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Israeli researchers say they have successfully taught a goldfish to drive a small robotic car.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Science.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' The team said the fish showed its ability to navigate toward a target in order to receive a food reward. For the experiment, the researchers built what they call the fish-operated vehicle, an FOV.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Can only drive in the FOV lane, though.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Jay, where are you reading that? Is that another ChatGPT?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I just searched. Here, hold on.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' What search?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' This is insane.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Oh yeah, you're right. I didn't see that.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Well, that's, I mean, I don't know if you wanna get, how technically you wanna get. The question was about a small, a group of goldfish as opposed to a fish.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, you'd have to look and see. There's probably a lot of things wrong in it, even if goldfish did drive a car, and what?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, but ChatGPT apparently is not good at making up fake ones, because it just keeps repurposing real news items.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Hmm. I wonder if it swears at people in traffic, like in fish language.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' This is so dumb.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Gives people the fin?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, the middle fin.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' So what does this mean?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Also, how does this work?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, I think this, science or fiction, is a ChatGPT mulligan.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Wow. So we're gonna have a no contest, a no score on it this week.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, no score from this week.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Has that ever happened before?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I don't think so.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I bet you it's still fiction.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' We're witnessing skeptic's guide history right now at this moment?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, I'll take it.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh my gosh, for the first time in approaching 19 full years.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Damn you, ChatGPT.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' And we have been failed by artificial intelligence at the highest level.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So ChatGPT failed at science or fiction.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Never again, yes. ChatGPT is zero.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' All right, well put it down as like, zero wins and one loss for the year.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' If this experiment has succeeded, I was gonna do this from now on, just have ChatGPT be science or fiction.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, yeah, of course.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' You can have the good ones and you just make up the fake one.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' This actually took me just as long because I had to do it multiple times, I had to check every one, you know?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' What you need is a program, Steve, that's optimized for performing the science or fiction function.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's right, I need a science or fiction GPT.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Narrow AI. AI to help you with this, Steve. Do you think someone out there could do that?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Probably.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' A listener on their spare time? Put in 5,000 hours of work.<br />
<br />
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== Skeptical Quote of the Week <small>(1:59:26)</small> ==<br />
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{{qow<br />
|text = Every great idea is a creative idea: The fact that you're using paint or you're using guitar strings or you're using equations, they're not really very different things. Getting that spirit into the education process … being curious about the world, that is a gift we would love to share.<br />
|author = {{w|Damian Kulash}}<br />
|lived = 1975-present<br />
|desc = American musician, best known for being the lead singer and guitarist of the American rock band {{w|OK Go}}<br />
}}<br />
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'''S:''' All right, Evan, give us a quote.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' "Every great idea is a creative idea. The fact that you're using paint or you're using guitar strings or you're using equations, they're not really very different things. Getting that spirit into the education process, being curious about the world, that is a gift we would love to share." Damien Kulash, lead singer of OK Go.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I love OK Go.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I love OK Go. I'm on a big OK Go kick lately.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' They're rock, but they're like very happy pop rock. I don't know how to describe it.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' They started out as kind of pop punk alternative and they they're treadmill videos.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' What country are they from?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' The United States.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' They're American. Not just the treadmill video, they did a parabolic space flight video.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' They did, yes.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' They shot an entire video in zero gravity. Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, it's amazing.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That video is amazing. It's an amazing accomplishment.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Watching the behind the scenes of it is even funnier.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yes, there's a whole documentary about it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, like one of the band members was like near, like he was just constantly vomiting or about to vomit. So the whole time he's like sitting down. One of them was scared out of his mind the whole time. It's amazing. It's so good.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' But this is, these artists, and I call them artists as much as they are musicians. They're visual artists, obviously, for what they do. They're so well known for their videos. But obviously they're also using a lot of engineering, a lot of science, a lot of math in the production of the videos. You know, they consult with a lot of people and teams of experts to come in and help them put these amazing ideas into the visual medium that is just so captivating. And the music's great too. So they're very pro-science and I love Damien Kulash and everyone at OK Go.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, well, thank you all for joining me this week.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Thanks Steve.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Thanks Steve.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Thank you Steve.<br />
<br />
== Signoff == <br />
'''S:''' —and until next week, this is your {{SGU}}. <!-- typically this is the last thing before the Outro --> <br />
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}}</div>Hearmepurrhttps://www.sgutranscripts.org/w/index.php?title=SGU_Episode_964&diff=19176SGU Episode 9642024-02-03T09:31:57Z<p>Hearmepurr: episode done</p>
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|guest1 = IC: Ian Callanan, SGU tech-guru<br />
|qowText = For last year's words belong to last year's language and next year's words await another voice. And to make an end is to make a beginning.<br />
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== Introduction, growing old, family changes ==<br />
<br />
''Voice-over: You're listening to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.'' <br />
<br />
'''S:''' Hello and welcome to the {{SGU|link=y}}. Today is Wednesday, December 20<sup>th</sup>, 2023, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella... <br />
<br />
'''B:''' Hey, everybody!<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Cara Santa Maria... <br />
<br />
'''C:''' Howdy. <br />
<br />
'''S:''' Jay Novella... <br />
<br />
'''J:''' Hey guys. <br />
<br />
'''S:''' Evan Bernstein...<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Hello everyone.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' ...and our special guest, Ian Callanan. Ian, welcome back to the show.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Ian.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' Gum-gum punch.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Ian.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' I'm trying a new intro. All my anime fans out there will know what I said, so I'm just going to leave it at that. Anyway, hi. Thank you for inviting me, I guess, or maybe the last time, but thank you.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Ian is the disembodied voice that is always in the background running all of our live events and streaming stuff and everything.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' That's true.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And now he's a disembodied voice on the podcast, like the rest of us.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' Forever. Immortalized.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' This is our new tradition. Ian joins us for the year-end wrap-up show. What is this? Your third or fourth one? How many have you done so far?<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' Third, I think.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Cool.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It's a good tradition.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' I think the first one, I succeeded in science or fiction, and the second one, I failed. So rolling the dice this time. Totally going to make it. Luckily, I'm not part of the stats, right? I don't think I'm included in that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, you will be after we do science or fiction today.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' Great.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's right.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You did not appear on the stats I don't think so far. But we'll get there.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Perfect. Perfect score.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So this is the last show we will be recording in 2023. Our next show will be the first show of 2024. And we're recording this before the next show that comes out, which was the live show. So this is the last show. The last week's show was a live show that we recorded at NOTACON. That was a lot of fun.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' As I've gotten older, my perception of time is that each year seems to move more quickly.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. I think that's pretty universal, right?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' And nobody told me that when I was 8 or 10 or 12.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' And that would have been some useful information maybe to me back then.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I feel like I'm constantly warned of that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Certainly, I remember like into our teens, our parents would complain about all that, you know? Our parents were very vociferous about all of the negative aspects of growing old. So we have been amply warned about every single thing that we will encounter as we get older.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' The physical breakdown.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. Everything.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' The time dilation. The whole shebang.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Now, I remember like my memory of my own childhood, it seemed like forever. Like, you know what I mean?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Like the first 18 years of your life. My memory of my child, my children's childhood flew by.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, my God yes.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Not even comparable.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It's ridiculous.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's amazing that those are the same durations.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It's ridiculous.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, it's ridiculous.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But you know why that is or why people think that is?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Well, no, I don't. You have a neurological explanation for this?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. Just that, well, more of a mathematical one. Just that the percentage of time you're alive when you're young, it's 100% of the time that you're alive, right? When you've only been around for five years, one year is one-fifth of your life. And the longer you're around, the smaller the percentage becomes. And so it, compared to all the rest of your memories, all the rest of your experiences, literally takes up less space. And so it feels shorter.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I don't think it's just that.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I think that's a huge part of it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I think that's part of it. I think that's part of it.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' What's the other part?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I would guess that there's also has to do with the fact that when you're a child, your brain is still developing and growing. You're changing over that time. You know what I mean?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. But I think I, 25 still felt longer than 40.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Mm-hmm.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And my brain wasn't changing much at 25. Not any more than it does now.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's a combination of things.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But childhood feels way longer. But even in my 30s, time is going by so fast compared to my childhood.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But I think that there is, it's almost an exponential change, or at least it's non-linear. The older that you get, the more you feel that way. And I feel more at 40 than I did at 30, definitely. Also, I think COVID has fucked everything up. And so our perception of time is also weirdly twisted ever since COVID. People are like, oh, yeah, last year. And then they realize they're talking about 2020.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Although that is a well-established phenomenon. It's called telescoping. People compress their memory of thing in the past. So rule of thumb, when I'm taking a history from somebody, you double or triple however long in the past they say something was.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Interesting.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And that's probably closer to the truth. So this happened about a year ago. I guarantee you it was two or three years ago.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, yeah. Our mom does that big time.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Oh, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' She's just saying, oh, this has only been for a couple of months. Like, ma, it's been three years, a couple of months. What are you talking about?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah. The person who's answering that, it's not like they're deliberately lying about something.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No, no, no.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's their perception.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That is their memory.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But I think that means all of us.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Unless they anchor, right? So either they will telescope or they'll say, yeah, that happened when I had my surgery. It's like, well, maybe not.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, you tie it to something else.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But you've anchored it to that event. And then your memory brings them together.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And I think the problem with COVID was that it reduced most people's anchors.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's all a blur.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So unless you experienced big flashpoints, yeah, all those years just melded together. And so the telescoping phenomenon became just that much more salient. And people still struggle with it. It's like, OK, it's about to be 2024. Think about that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Oh, yeah. It's amazing.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right? COVID feels like it just happened.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' As someone with a newborn at home, it doesn't feel like time is flying. I will tell you. It seems like I had a baby crying in my ear for the last six weeks, which is about how old she is.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Enjoy every moment of it, Ian. Enjoy every moment of it.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' Yeah. It's pretty cute. But it's trying.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. I'm sure all older parents tell all younger parents, enjoy them while they're young. And it's true. I look at pictures of my daughters when they were in that maximally cute age, 4, 5, 6, or whatever. You absolutely, totally miss them at that age. Obviously, you love them as the people they are at any moment in time. But when you think about it, it is like there is somebody that I used to love very much that doesn't really exist anymore. That little girl is not in my life anymore.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Why do you think that is? This is a very interesting psychological phenomenon to me.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Why do we feel that way?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I mean, because that's the reality. Even though it's slow.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Because it's a gradual change.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No, that's not what I'm asking you. I'm asking you why is it that that thing about the little girl is what you miss so much? Why was that maximally loving or cute?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It wasn't maximally loving. I said they're maximally adorable because they were so cute.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, but you also said there's a child that you love that you don't even know anymore or have anymore.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, they don't exist anymore. But they've been replaced by an adult that I love. And I love them even more because they're— When they're fully developed. We have a much more intense relationship and mature relationship. They're more whatever. But it's still that I look at a picture of my five-year-old. I miss that person that doesn't exist anymore.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' Or at least the time surrounding when they existed at five.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It is also my life at that time.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I have a feeling it's also the type of relationship that most parents have with young kids.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's completely different.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' They're 100% dependent on them. They're, I think, very good for your sense of self or your sense of ego, for all of those things. When you're a young parent.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' They believe everything you say.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, totally. Like this is, I think—<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' Do they? I don't know. Mine is not believing for three or four years.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, this is early.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' Yeah. Great. I should have put her in bed.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' See, that's what grandkids are for then, right? You get to that point where you're like, oh, I really miss having little kids around. And you get to have grandkids.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, there also comes a time in life as you get older where you do spend a lot more time being sentimental and reminiscing about times that have gone by. Because we've had so many different times in our lives and events that have happened and everything. And there's a lot more to ponder about the past than the future.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Mm-hmm. Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's true. When you're young, you're just thinking about how great it's going to be when. I can't wait until—<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's all the future.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, right.<br />
<br />
== Best Science News of the Year <small>(9:02)</small> ==<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So for our last show of the year, we always do a year in review. So we're going to look back over the SGU in 2023, all the things that happened. And we're going to start, as we always do, with the best science or our favorite science or whatever we thought was the most impactful science news stories of 2023. We each have our own picks. We got some picks from our listeners who wrote in. Does anybody want to start off with what they thought was the most impactful science news of the year?<br />
<br />
=== Generative AI ===<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I'll jump in. For me, the science news of 2023—and it took me a while to realize this—was generative AI in all its crazy manifestations throughout the entire year. It's not like this one day or this one week, this one news item came out. It was thousands of news items. And generative AI is AI that can create new content, images, text, video, audio, that stuff. There was so much of it. It was almost like it became static in the background, like a constant buzz of AI news, and it's easy to miss stuff. But there were a lot of milestones, like Microsoft unleashed Bing Chat. Remember that? And initially, it would attack users or fall in love with them. It would do crazy shit because it was kind of pre-launch GPT-4. And now it's better now, of course. They've reined it in. Now it's called MS Copilot. There was also increasing restrictions in 2023 on copywriting AI images, like from MidJourney. And now, in the United States at least, pure AI art is in the public domain. You cannot copyright it. You would have to have a significant kind of human in the loop in order to even attempt to copyright something like that. Now I don't know how they determine that. What's the extent? How much input does a human need to get a copyright? I don't know.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's substantial.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Right? Mid-year, there was the release of Llama. You may have heard of Llama. What the hell is Llama? Llama from Meta was like the first idea of LLM, large language models, like open source AI models. And they could be tweaked by anyone, and then you could run them locally without a data center. That was a real change, between ChatGPT. And then, of course, in March, OpenAI released GPT-4. That was really one of the big AI events of the year. And remember, it displayed impressive human-level performance on a whole bunch of these benchmarks, those academic tests. Really amazing results. And then that started, I think, this whole silly idea that people were talking about mid-year, like pausing AI research for six months. And then we saw like this whole range of pronouncements really kind of, I think, started then where people would say one of two things, really. The AI was going to make me immortal very soon, or AI will destroy the world before years end or whatever, five years or whatever. More so than I've ever seen in my life. And it has died down a bit, but still I see those comments quite, quite often. I mean, even the president of the United States was talking about AI risks at that time. And we also saw – how about all the regulations of AI that people were talking about? It became a huge talking point this year. It was discussed in the Senate and even the G7. I found this out today. The Council of Europe recently finished its provisional agreement on artificial intelligence. It's called the Artificial Intelligence Act to ensure AI systems are used in the EU that are safe and respect values and rights. This was just recently finalized, at least the provisional agreement was. That just recently happened. What about the whole soap opera of open AI firing and then rehiring its CEO, Sam Altman?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, that was crazy.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Is this the company at the bleeding edge of such a disruptive technology as AI? I mean it was like a soap opera. Like you didn't know what the hell was going to happen. When was that? In November? I don't know. And that's just a tiny sampling of the generative AI news in 2023. How many articles have you guys seen about AI hallucinations, alignments, artificial superintelligence? I mean it was all over the place.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Next to the cell phone and the internet, this might be the most disruptive technology we've seen as well because it's had a massive impact on school and education in general.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Healthcare, healthcare. Steve talked about it a few weeks ago.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' The doctors, that's right.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It's had a huge impact on communications within healthcare and also medical advice and all that stuff.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, it potentially will. I mean it certainly can perform really well but I don't think its use is being dramatically incorporated yet. But I do think that it can.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yes, but it's being incorporated in a lot of things now and it has – it's been incorporated in some things. And to me, once I thought about it, I was like, yeah, this really is one of the biggest science news items of the year.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Definitely. It's definitely on my list of like the big categories of news items, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' And I don't even know what to predict in 2024. Is GPT-5 going to come out next year? What's that going to be about? But I think we're going to see a lot of advancement like we just saw this year. But who knows how impactful it's going to be. It's going to be dramatic, whatever it is. Some interesting, crazy shit is going to happen next year. I can pretty much guarantee that at least.<br />
<br />
=== Medical breakthroughs ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Another category of science news that I thought was huge this year was medical progress. And there's a couple of things.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That's broad.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Even more than that, just like genetic engineering.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, just in general, I thought like medical breakthroughs, we had an above average year. There's a couple of big ones. The first one is the monoclonal antibodies in general. But specifically the three that are in various states of approval for Alzheimer's disease. The first disease-modifying drugs for any neurodegenerative disease. That is huge, huge news. And then it also shows the power of these monoclonal antibodies because they succeeded pretty much looking at a similar target where 30, 40 drugs failed. And some of the experts are saying, yeah, they're just more powerful. And so this may be opening up a lot of options for interventions for diseases that just chemical drugs weren't going to get us there. But also we talked recently about CRISPR curing sickle cell disease. It was huge. Suddenly the explosion of weight loss drugs that actually work, that are incredibly effective.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, wow. Yeah, that was huge.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Diabetes as well.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. They're really diabetes drugs, but yeah, they're weight loss drugs. These are futuristic, high-tech medical interventions that now are becoming—they're getting approved. You got approval for sickle cell disease, got approval for Alzheimer's disease. Think about that. If a year ago we said, hey, next year we're going to cure Alzheimer's and sickle cell. We didn't cure them, but you know what I mean. We're going to have an effective treatment for Alzheimer's disease and we're going to basically cure sickle cell disease. That's massive for that to happen in one year.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I would piggyback that to say, too, even beyond specific medical advancements for humans, just sort of general public health improvements, especially with these, as we think of them, these kind of like high-tech sort of genetic engineering or CRISPR kind of anchored improvements. Because we also talked this year about CRISPR making chickens resistant to the flu. And we talked about genetic engineering to reduce the incidence of malaria. So different kind of preventive approaches using very similar techniques that can have massive improvements in public health, but not necessarily pharmaceuticals or therapeutics.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' These technologies are starting to pay off big time.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' A hundred percent. On a more personal note, there were two news items that I really enjoyed talking about, mostly because they were near and dear to my heart and because there was a lot of really important feedback that I think. Like they had more of a social impact from my perspective. And that was the conversation about basically the lack of or the minimal regret around gender-affirming care. And also the end-of-life conversation that we had. Both of those were recommended by listeners in their own year-end reviews as being impactful for them personally. And I really enjoyed being able to dive deep into those topics that I spent a lot of time professionally thinking about.<br />
<br />
=== Global warming ===<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Steve, I think the global warming news of this year was huge, depressing, incredibly impactful, affecting an incredible amount of people worldwide. It was the first year where I think I really felt like that's it. It's not going to be like it was. My wife and I were recently discussing the fact that we're in Connecticut. We're probably not going to get much snow ever again.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, we wouldn't go that far. But the world seems to have changed. Again, hottest year on record, no doubt. 2023 is going to be the hottest year on record. We had the Canada fires over the summer. Antarctic ice reached a record low this year. And so there does seem to be more of a sense of urgency. But at the same time, I thought COP28 was a flop.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, that's the part of the problem is these big, organized, we're just losing faith in leadership, I think, at this point.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah. Well, they're not doing it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' At this point, they agree, these vague agreements without any teeth, without any specifics. So they're basically saying that the political class is essentially irrelevant, almost. It makes you feel that way. Although, I think this was two years ago or last year, the Inflation Reduction Act is working out really well. The climate change provisions in there, these things are slowly happening in the background. We are building new nuclear and replacing coal-fired plants. And part of that is because there's money in there to do that. Private companies in the U.S. are investing a lot of money because they know that their loans are going to be guaranteed. And this is the all-carrot approach that that legislation took. And thankfully, it's working out really well. Is it enough? No. It's not even close to being enough. But at least there's that one positive thing that happened. It's a model for what we can do to really accelerate the turnover to the green economy. But the fact that the world leaders get together and they just can't get their shit together was so disappointing.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, and it sort of goes back to that really intense conversation that we had. I don't remember if it was this year or last because telescoping. But we sort of had like a healthy debate about this idea of incentive and of like whether or not something should hurt, you know? And my position, this just reinforces for me the points that I was obviously trying to make and that I think ultimately we fundamentally agreed on most points across the board. But that like we're just not willing to do the hard things unless we feel like there's some sort of monetary carrot or somehow we're going to be rewarded for our efforts. But the truth is the ultimate outcome is absolute devastation. And we're simply not willing to take a little bit of a hit right now to prevent absolute devastation. And that's so sad.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' When you think about it, what we're doing, what we are 100% doing in a lot of ways is we're saying we're going to make our grandchildren pay a huge price because we are unwilling to pay a moderate price now.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' They're going to hate us.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We're going to increase our quality of life and our standard of living on the backs of future generations. We're not going to make any sacrifice. We'll just let them make all the sacrifices. That's essentially what we're saying.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Because young people today, right, like young people today, like I'm a millennial, but even the next generation, these kids today, they get it. They're literally like boomers, you screwed it up for us. But I think there's still a sliver of like they kind of knew, but they didn't know. But like we have no excuse. We know. And we're still doing it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We collectively. It's not like we're all doing it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No, no. Like, yeah, that's the royal we or whatever.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's the royal we, yeah, collectively. I know because we're politically dysfunctional. We don't want to get into this, but I think that's the bottom line.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It's hard to get billions of people to move in one direction.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It is, yeah, in the best of times.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Arguably impossible. Arguably impossible.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, so I do think it felt like a turning point for global warming in terms of like, yeah, we're going to blow past 1.5. There's just no doubt about that. And it's just now it's just a matter of how bad is it going to get, you know?<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' So you're saying I should return the snow tube I just bought?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, yes.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' All right, well.<br />
<br />
=== Space news ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I mean, we're still putting out more CO2 every year. We haven't even stopped increasing the amount of CO2 that we're putting out every year. That's how bad it is. You know, so for categories I'll throw out there, there's a lot of good space news.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, tons of space.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Tons of space news.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' NASA had a huge year for many things. I mean, OSIRIS-REx.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' OSIRIS-REx. Huge win.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Was the number one. A seven-year culmination of a mission in which they launched it to go pick up samples from an asteroid and successfully return them to Earth. With who knows how many points of failure on that particular mission.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Including what I just found out today as I was reading up on this. Did you know that one of the parachutes did not open as it was coming into the atmosphere?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, I read that.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, yep. And there was a chance that thing without the – what is it called? The draft parachute or the – because that one didn't deploy. There was a wiring malfunction that occurred. That thing was hurtling at a much faster speed and didn't deploy its main chute until about 9,000 feet above the ground. That thing could have just disintegrated and really hit the Earth.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' But the main chute did it.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Litho breaking.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' The main chute did its job. Thank goodness. And compensated and it did wind up landing intact. But just, hey, one of the many things that definitely could have gone wrong with that mission. And, my gosh, that's an amazing accomplishment.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It was.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Just incredible. Incredible feat.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. And India's moon landing was very successful this year as well. I think those are the two big – biggest Space News items of the year.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Definitely. Chandrayaan-3. Yep. Yeah. And I was reading up on that a little bit today as well. They learned a lot of – because Chandrayaan-2, the one prior to that, which was deemed a failure, but they learned so much from it. They gleaned so much information from that, "failure mission" that they were able to send three up there knowing what pitfalls to avoid and then wound up getting the perfect landing near the south pole of the moon, which is something that's never been accomplished before. And India now, welcome to the moon. Beautiful.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' I'm going to let you finish, but Taylor Swift had one of the most ground-shaking concerts of all time. That's my science news.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I thought I felt something.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Person of the year.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' Person of the year. That's right. Do you remember the 2.3 magnitude earthquake, I think it was, that happened in – was it LA? I forget where it was, actually. But, I mean, that's pretty awesome.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' We don't remember 2.3 magnitudes in LA.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' I guess that's a fair point. That was pretty cool. I think they called it a Swiftquake. That's cute. But, I mean, good for her. And since this podcast is dedicated as a Swifty podcast, I figured we needed to do that.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Is it? Will she be on the show next year?<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' Yes.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Are you working on that?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Get Taylor Swift on the show next year. That's your job.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' I'm working on it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Small request.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Everything I hear about her is just like, wow, that is awesome.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' Well, I do have a connection.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That's what I invariably say.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' I do have a connection to Scooter Braun, although I think that bridge has been burned severely.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I think so. Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' So, that might not work.<br />
<br />
=== COVID endemic now ===<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Well, how about this? Just as a little throw, May 5th of this year, World Health Organization announced that COVID-19 was no longer considered a global health emergency.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' So, we-<br />
<br />
'''S:''' COVID officially ended this year.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Closed a chapter, in a sense, in that regard on COVID.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Not that it's gone, but-<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, we moved from pandemic to endemic.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Okay.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Did everybody get their COVID booster this year?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, I'm good.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah. Of course.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's going to be an annual thing, as predicted.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' When are we going to combine them? I want just one shot.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, that'd be nice.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Oh, it's not that big a deal.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No, it's not, but-<br />
<br />
=== Successful cryopreserved transplant ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So, there was one news item I came across when reviewing news this year. I wondered how we missed it, like one of those.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, a lot of those I came across.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I know. There's a ton of those. It's the first successful transplant of a cryopreserved rat kidney.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Whoa.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, they took a kidney from one rat. They cryopreserved it, right? They froze it, basically, and then they thawed it out and transplanted it into another rat, and it functioned. That's the key. It was the first functional organ transplant cryopreserved.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That opens up possibilities. Wow.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That opens up a lot of possibilities, right?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Damn.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The ability to really preserve organs until they're needed, and I think it was 100 days. They cryopreserved it for 100 days.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Wow.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's good.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That's a big deal.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' If we translate that to.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' What was the breakthrough, though?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, they had cryopreservatives in the kidney. Things that kept it from being damaged by cooling.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, yeah. We've had those before-<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Whatever, it worked. So, again, that might be one of those things where we look back, and it's one of those other huge medical breakthroughs that happened, you know? Yeah, but that could go a long way to expanding and extending organ donation, and you could hold on to one until you find a really, really good match. You know what I mean? Like, you don't have to use it right away. Yeah, that could be huge.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' One day, we'll just print them.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. I don't think we're anywhere near that, though. I think that's going to be a long way away. The whole printing thing, like you have to use a scaffold. Basically, all of the connective tissue from an organ, you denude it of cells, and you print the cells on it. It's kind of a laborious thing. You don't really get an organ-like structure. You know what I mean? Like, you don't actually get the organ. I don't know that that's going to be the path to making organs. I think growing them is going to be. I think either growing them or genetically engineering animal for donation.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Well, at least we have more than one potential path, you know?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That sounds good.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Making organs is a grind.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Oh, boy. All right. Moving on.<br />
<br />
== Favorite SGU Moments <small>(28:17)</small> ==<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. What about favorite SGU moments?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, I was going to say the North Pole thing. Was it the North Pole? But that wasn't this year.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That was last year?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, I think it was last year. I couldn't find it.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' The telescoping.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The time zone thing.<br />
<br />
=== NotACon ===<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, exactly. Telescoping. I mean, there's the group one and the personal one. The group one was definitely NOTACON. I think that was – you know, I've missed you guys. And so it was just really nice to all get together.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' NOTACON was special.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And that was a good show, that episode.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yes, I know. You guys just heard it last week.<br />
<br />
=== Cara's PhD ===<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, yeah. So it's funny because it feels like it was a while ago now just because so much has happened. I also got my PhD and got the fuck out of Florida this year.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' You did.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' For me, it was a moment. These are very important things.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' So awesome.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That is quite an accomplishment.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' The Florida one.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, exactly.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' To survive Florida.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Steve, are we talking best episode now or what would it be?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Favorite moments.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' No, favorite episode.<br />
<br />
=== Live shows, including Tucson & guest C. Hubicki ===<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I have an odd favorite moment. Episode 947. This happened in Tucson, Arizona.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Tucson.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' The quick backstory. And this is why it was one of my favorite moments of the year. So this episode stands out for me because it was a live show, first of all, which is always great to be with you guys. But it also happened to be 50 degrees that day during a live show. And the meeting room that I rented at the hotel, it didn't have any heat. Remember this, guys? So it was a total clusterfuck. We told the hotel that there was no heat. They had some jackass come out with a screwdriver. Right? He couldn't do anything. You want to know why that guy couldn't do anything, guys?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It wasn't even a sonic screwdriver.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Because that hotel knew that the heat was broken.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' They knew from the beginning and they never told us.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Are you saying it was HVAC theatre, Jay? Is that what you're saying?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So we tell the audience hey, guys, the heat's broken in here. I know you're all cold. We're cold, too. And I love the audience because they just decided to stick with us. They laughed it off. We turned it into a feature, not a bug. You know, it was really awesome. The hotel couldn't get out of their freaking way. They didn't offer us another room. So the second half of this story is arguably my favorite part. So I end up talking to corporate. I called Steve right after this phone call because of how ridiculous it was. So keep in mind, I'm talking to someone at corporate of this massive hotel chain, not the local salespeople. And I'll never forget this conversation. So I told her it was 50 degrees in the room. And instead of them simply offering me a refund right out of the gate, she argued with me for 20 minutes. And it was really a horrible experience because I just realized the corporate greed here was absurd. And her worst comment that she said, you remember what it was, Steve?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' ''Oh, yeah?''<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I forget.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It was that she said, yeah, but the room must have gotten eventually warm because of human body heat.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Oh, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I'm like, lady, this room was huge.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Lady.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' You would need to be shoulder to shoulder to feel human body heat. You know what I mean? Like it was just crazy. So anyway, I wanted to thank anybody who made it out to that show, who left along with us and just we had a great time in spite of ourselves.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And I love the photos from that day because everybody is wearing like beanies and scarves and gloves inside. But we're all happy.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I remember when I asked everyone, I'm going to send this picture to corporate. So look as cold as you possibly can.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, that's right.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So the whole audience was like it was really a great time.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I think all the live shows this year were great. And I really agree. The live shows are special. There's a totally different energy. You know what I mean? It's just we're all physically in the same space. We feed off of each other and they feed off the audience so much more. Those shows are always special. And one of the live shows that we did, we had two live shows actually where we had Christian Hubicki with us.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' At Dragon Con.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' At Dragon Con. Two episodes were recorded at Dragon Con. He's a Survivor star. He's such a nice guy.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' He was awesome.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Awesome. Super funny.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Hey, Christian, if you're listening.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' He said the one thing that was like one of my funniest moments of the year. And there's a little back story here. But during one of the events, I think he was giving a talk at Dragon Con. And Jay had made a comment to him about something. It wasn't a question. It was like Jay, you were telling him maybe how to troubleshoot something he was having trouble with. And his response to Jay was, that's a great question, Jay. And the back story is we had told him the story of an interview we did where we're chatting to each other while the interview is going on. Because we were on Skype. And the person we were interviewing, I asked him a question. He said, that's a great question. And then Bob asked him a question. He said, that's a great question. And then Jay chats to us. I'm going to get him to tell me that I asked a great question. And so Jay asked him a question. And his response was, I don't understand the question. ''(laughter)'' So we told this to Christian. So the next time Jay said anything, he said, that's a great question, Jay.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' What a sweet guy, man.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I picked Christian as my favorite interview because we actually worked with him twice that weekend at DragonCon. We did two different shows with him. And then we also got to hang out with him. We had dinner with him.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I agree. I agree, Jay.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' We met his wife. And then we all spent some time with him. And it turns out Christian is, first off, it was fascinating to hear him talk about being a roboticist. And he was the very first source of information about robotics where I learned that it's going to take a really long time. And he was very honest with us about that.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It's supposed to pie in the sky immediately.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' And I think he was perfectly aware that the media is getting it completely wrong. It's moving slowly. It's moving, but it's moving slowly. And it's not going to be like we're not going to have Android robots walking around in 10 years. That's not going to happen. But anyway, he was a pleasure to be with. And he was also on Survivor, the TV show. And he told us all about the behind the scenes stuff about that as well.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That was great.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It was a ton of fun. So I'm going to make something happen where we can work with him again.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yep. Do it. Do it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Ian, as the non-regular rogue here on the show, what are your favorite moments from the STU this year?<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' I mean, yeah, I'm super partial to anything live, especially since I'm usually so involved with it. So NOTACON is definitely top tier in my opinion.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' What a tour de force of awesomeness that was.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' Yeah, and the fact that we threw it together. I mean, we planned it out carefully and had everything secured beforehand and weren't winging it in a way.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Very few fail points.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That event wasn't winged at all.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' There were a lot of potential fail points, but they all stuck together with the duct tape that we applied.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Ian and I kept having these meetings six weeks out, five weeks out. What are we forgetting? What's going to break? Where's the failure point? Like we kept trying to figure out, like, where is it going to go wrong?<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' And so where was the fuckening, Steve? Did we have one?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. They didn't cancel my schedule.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Ah, that was it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I had to work.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' Forgot about that.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, because he's a doctor.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' Yeah, doctor.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So to get even with Steve, we made fun of him mercilessly on Friday when he missed part of the conference.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' That was fun. I got to say also Jay's rant about, or not rant, but like his explanation of the customer service issue in Tucson. Basically every week or biweekly, meaning twice a week, I would get that phone call from Jay about something before NOTACON. Like with just any random thing that he wanted to.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' To troubleshoot.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' To troubleshoot or dump on.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, I mean, Ian, I needed you to not only complain to.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' I know.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' But to double check because we need another pair of eyes on things.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' Yeah, I know. It is the nature of it. But I love that stuff. You know, I kind of love the stress of it. So it's fun.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, definitely.<br />
<br />
=== Discussion on end-of-life care ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, we'll have more interviews to talk about. But just finishing up with just the SGU moments, we had a listener, Cara, who wanted to give you props for your discussion. Here's the quote that had a really big impact on them. You're talking about aggressive medical care at the end of life. And you said, "But I think more often the reason that aggressive medical care happens is because there is a culture of, well, we have to do everything we can. Otherwise, we didn't love you enough. Otherwise, we didn't try hard enough. Otherwise, we didn't do our job so well enough. And there's this really intense sense of failure and shame around not doing everything." So this was from a listener who their mother was dying of cancer. And he was saying how, his father, he usually only like half listens to the show, listened very intensely to this whole exchange. And it was very impactful to them that you have a loved one who's dying. It's not your fault. And you don't have to feel guilty about not doing absolutely everything.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, and that sometimes death is a kindness. And even if it's not death, sometimes doing less is a kindness as well. We just got that email like just this week when we were asking people for their favorite moments. And that was, yeah, that was pretty meaningful for me. So I appreciate that a lot.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Before we start talking about interviews specifically, does anybody have any other best moments?<br />
<br />
=== "Dr. Novela goes to Washington" ===<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I do. Mr. Novella goes to – or Dr. Novella goes to Washington. Do you remember that, Steve?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Of course I do.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That was cool. So you got called in, like, last second. Hey, come on down to Washington and participate in this discussion.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' About what? By the Health Care Education Committee, something like that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' The Senate committee.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' One of the Senate health committees. And it was about a potential initiative to spend money on wellness care. But it really was a thinly veiled attempt at just promoting alternative medicine. I was the only one there who was not pro-alternative medicine. Only one. Only one.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's great that they found – that somebody found you, basically, to come be a part of that discussion. How many discussions like that take place in which there is no representation of a science-based approach to this?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I mean, it was – yeah, you see how easy it is to do a hit job like that, right? Just by – you get to cherry pick who you invite to speak. And it creates the narrative, right? In the guise of doing a fact-finding sort of committee exploration where you're getting interviews from experts, it's a predetermined outcome, you know? Yeah, I wrote about it on Science-Based Medicine, if you want all the nitty-gritty details. But it really shows where the narrative is these days. And it's basically – the whole narrative was that preventative care is alternative medicine. Like, those two things are the same thing. They just absolutely equated those two.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Wow.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yikes. What?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Blurring the lines. Yep.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And that weird narrative that somehow mainstream medicine doesn't care about preventing disease.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, it's crazy.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Ugh.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Nonsense.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Well, my favorite episode was 960.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' What happened on that episode, Bob?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Cara was doing her talk on – called Bitter Revenge. And I got my biggest laugh of the year. So therefore, it's my favorite episode.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' What was the laugh?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' What was it? Remind us.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Go listen to it. That was the one you were talking about how it's people who get revenge and they wait a while. It's psychologically worse. That period of wait is not good for you. So I'm like – so my takeaway here is that you should exact your revenge as soon as possible. It was like – it was funny.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So the thing you laughed at the most was your own joke is what you're saying.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' No, I'm not saying I laughed the most.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' He got the biggest laugh.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I'm saying it got the biggest laugh of all you punks. So therefore, I enjoyed it.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' I'm going to say best episode is this one because I'm on it.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yes, I agree.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' Ha-ha. But it's also, yeah, backhanded compliment to myself. Sort of. What?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' This is a fun episode every year.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' This will be episode 964, by the way, if you can count.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' Before the Swifties come after me, the thing was in Seattle. I need to fact check myself before they were like, it's not a label. Although we probably got plenty of emails already.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I see.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, even before the show airs.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' Yeah, that's true.<br />
<br />
== Favorite SGU Interviews <small>(40:59)</small> ==<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. What about favorite interview?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I enjoyed the interview with Derek Muller from Veritasium.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's on my list.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Mostly I'm biased because he's like one of my closest friends. But it was really cool having him on the show. And he's brilliant. He's very good at what he does. And I also really enjoyed the interview with Dan and Jordan from Knowledge Fight for a lot of reasons.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, my God. Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' They were funny guys. They were really funny.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' They're funny. But it was also just there was something very jarring about that interview because it was so out of step with a typical SGU interview. And I really liked having these kind of two worlds colliding in a pretty, I don't know, fantastic way. So that was really fun.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Well, the Blake Lemoine interview.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' Yeah, I was going to say Blake too.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That was memorable.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That one stood out because of the content, because of what the subject was about. And Blake was the Google employee who was fired, right? He was fired.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Because of his controversial opinion that they're developing AI that is all but sentient.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, sentient. He thinks that the Google AI is sentient. Not all but sentient.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, not all but sentient.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Sentient.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' He believed it was sentient.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' He believed it is sentient.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' And still does to this day.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And still does.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' If you read the follow up, he's obviously gone to a lot of places to speak about it. And his opinion has not changed. So we were not able to convince him.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, which is unfortunate. I mean, again, I think that's one of my favorite interviews as well. Because it was confrontational but in a very friendly way. And I do think that we really dug down deep to the bottom of that issue. I also think that we definitively demonstrated that it's not sentient. And I wrote a follow up blog post on Neurologica as well, if you're interested. You know what I mean? So he's just using bad logic. And he's mistaken.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' The key was, I mean, he compares it to other people. And other people are sapient/sentient. But he dismissed that key thing that you – these other people that you don't know what's in their mind. But they have the same structure, the same type of brain that you have. So it seems pretty likely that if you're sapient, that they are too. But AI is completely different. The architecture is completely different. You can't use that argument. It's not a specious argument.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It also seemed like one of the core of his arguments was sort of moving the goalpost a little bit. It was a bit of a straw man that we all kind of agreed with him on, which was, for all intents – it was a very Turing test. Like he was trying to say, well, it's the same thing as being sapient or sentient if it seems that way to us. You know what I mean? Like if we can't tell the difference, then that means it probably is. And it's like, no, no. Those are two very different things. And it's important that for all intents and purposes, we do understand that something may be acting sentient and that may raise concerns. But that doesn't mean that fundamentally it is conscious or whatever you want to call it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That was a solipsism argument.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. It was very-<br />
<br />
'''S:''' If it acts sentient, we have to assume that it is because I don't think you're sentient. That's what Bob was saying.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right. Yeah. They kind of were two sides. But I did enjoy the interview because it was so – like we got to go there philosophically.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah. Yeah. It was fascinating.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It was a deep question. Yeah. I liked it.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It was fascinating.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' As technology progresses and very likely that people are going to be living in VR realities more and more as the technology gets better and better, people are going to be interacting with virtual people that really are just software. And they're going to develop relationships with them.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' They already are. They already are. I mean the chatbots, that's the thing. It's not sentient but these large language models are really good chatbots. And they're really good at being good listeners. And people form emotional attachments to them, that you don't have to be that realistic in order for people to make that emotional connection. That's just the way our brains work.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' I don't think you have to be realistic at all. People form attachments with so many video game characters all the time.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' And when you put it into a humanoid looking thing, it will become even that more emotional. You'll become even that more emotionally attached to it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I think it will become less before it becomes more because there will be that weird uncanny valley, which is interesting too.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' People marry their sex dolls. They don't even talk yet.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, but that's also not everybody does that.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' No, but people do it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Some people do that, yes.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' But the thing at the point is that once they can actually have a conversation with you, it will be more common.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' But how many uncanny valleys will there be? Because it seems like they progress and it gets better and you kind of allow it and then it might turn the corner and be like, and then get better.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's cyclical.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' It's like the uncanny valley of the gaps or something. I don't know.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I agree. Yeah, it's cyclical.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It fits and starts, right?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, the thing is there's a sweet spot before you get to the uncanny valley where you look a little maybe cartoonish, but that's okay. You don't have to go for that hyper realism.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That's why Pixar is all exaggerated character faces.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, they tried it with the Polar Express. Whoever made Polar Express learned their lesson.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That was smack dab in the middle of the uncanny valley.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Animated corpses.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It was. It's like, what's this?<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' It's not terrible. It's pretty good for the time it was.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It was too good. That's the problem.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' Yeah, that's true.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, it was too good. We don't want to see cartoon Tom Hanks. It's creepy and weird. It was too real.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' My favorite interview, though, my single favorite interview was the one.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' James Burke.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It was James Burke. I was on that interview alone, so you guys didn't get to experience it in real time.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Sorry about that.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I wanted to.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But you could listen to it, but it was fantastic. I mean, James, that's like one of those situations where I got to interview somebody who is like an intellectual hero of mine since the 70s.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, right?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I know. How many of them are left?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' A lifelong science communication hero. The thing I was most amazed about, because this guy is like, I think he's 90 or he's pushing 90, and he talks like he's 30. He's just doing what he's doing. He's planning for the future. The newest season of Connections, there's more of him in front of a green screen than climbing the steps of the pyramid or whatever. I had assumed that that was because he can't do the physical stuff anymore. He was very physical in the early seasons, but it has nothing to do with that. He'd be perfectly willing to do all of that. It was purely budget.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, wow.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The only reason why he's in front of a green screen is they don't have the budget to send him around the world. Otherwise, he'd be doing it.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Well, same with Neil deGrasse Tyson at Cosmos.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Amazing. Absolutely amazing. Yeah, but the fact that he's doing that at his age like it's nothing was just – I was really impressed.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Makes me hope.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But yeah, just what a career that guy had. It was so fascinating to talk with him.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, and a hat tip to the Richard Wiseman interview, just because he's Richard Wiseman.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yes.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' He's always great.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Have we ever had a bad interview with Richard Wiseman? Never.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' He's awesome.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Ever.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I could listen to him all day.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Exactly. You never tire of him. So let's get him on next year as well.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All our interviews were good this year. I'm happy with all of them, but yeah, there's a couple that stand out.<br />
<br />
== Skeptical Heroes <small>(48:47)</small> ==<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. Let's move on to the skeptical hero of the year. So this is the year when each of us points out somebody, some group or some individual who they felt stood out this year as really representing the ideals of critical thinking and skepticism. Who wants to tell us about their skeptical hero first?<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' I'm going to jump ahead of it because all the listeners said it. Dr. Cara Santamaria. How about that?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, wow.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' I know.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Absolutely.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' Absolutely.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That was mine too.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' Yeah. See, I know.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Mine too.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' I mean, that's an incredible amount of work. So I think all the listeners are very proud of you.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, wow.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' I think we are too. So congratulations.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's sweet.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' It's really great.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Cara, it was so hard for you that I got tired.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. I'm telling you. It was exhausting. Yeah. It was a lot. Oh, that's so sweet. And it's so funny because I didn't even think anybody would say that. I was literally like, I hope you don't pick mine. But I picked three because I always do that. And the first one we've already talked about so we don't have to get too deep into. And also I kind of stole this from QED when I was there earlier this year because they chose Dan and Jordan from Knowledge Fight to win their award this year because of all of the really, really hard work that they did. Basically pouring through hours of Alex Jones's recordings.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, my gosh.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That's amazing.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's hazardous work.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, it is.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's good work.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And they ended up, it's so much important work. They ended up basically giving their expertise to some of the prosecutors in the case and were involved in some of the depositions because they had done so much work. They were really invaluable to the lawsuit that ultimately saw Alex paying money to the parents of the Sandy Hook children whose lives were lost. So that was, I think, just super important. But I also nominated two people that I interviewed on Talk Nerdy this year, two different, not just writers, but people who also happen to write books, Angela Saini and M. Chris Fabricant. So I've talked about Angela Saini before on the show. She wrote a book about "race science" and also about how women have often been minimized medically. But she has a new book that came out this year called The Patriarchs, the Origins of Inequality. And she does a really good job of sort of debunking the narrative that patriarchy has always existed and that patrilineal societies have always been. And that's just kind of normative. And she points to examples of matrilineal societies and places where patriarchy really came up sort of in lockstep with trade and capitalism. And it's a really fascinating read that blows a lot of preconceived notions out of the water based on very good journalism. And then the other person that I nominated, M. Chris Fabricant, is the director of strategic litigation for the Innocence Project. And he wrote a great book this year called Junk Science and the American Criminal Justice System. And he basically talks about how forensic pseudoscience is – there's so much of it is bunk. And so much of it perpetuates a system that results in wrongful convictions. And so that was, I just think, a really important deep dive. And I think that these three groups are doing really, really important work.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Good choices. Good choices.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' I had actually a second one. Not that I was thinking of anybody else. But outside of the SGU –<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Outside of the smoke blowing.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' Yes, right. Thank you. Outside of that, I was thinking Dr. Hotez. Now, this might be a lie who I picked for my skeptical jackasses. But Dr. Peter Hotez kind of stepped into the fire a little bit on Twitter. And subsequently, I think, got some death threats and all kinds of other stuff for daring to go against Joe Rogan and RFK in terms of the vaccines and their anti-vaccine nonsense. So, shoutouts to him.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, that's a lot.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' Yeah, it's a lot.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Because they have armies.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' Certainly. I mean, he's one of the – if not the biggest podcast, I think, still, even behind the paywall. So, it's pretty wild.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Evan?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I've got – I'll do what Cara did. I've got three. I'll start with this. Each year, I try to – we are a podcast, obviously. There are other good skeptic podcasts out there that people should be listening to. And I like to bring up at least one of them when we do the review. And I'd like to throw out props to Science for the People podcast. That's Rachel Saunders, Bethany Brookshiring, Carolyn Wilkie. They do a nice job with their podcast. They're based out of Canada. This is the podcast, you guys. Do you remember? I think we had Desiree Schell on the show a long time ago. She's no longer a host of that. But this podcast has legs, and it continues. And they continue to have really fascinating topics and people. And the fact that more women in science are kind of leading the way here in the world of podcasting, definitely props have to go out to them. So continue the great work over there. I'm also going to give a shout-out to Brian Dunning who released a movie this year called [https://www.imdb.com/title/tt21439392/ The UFO Movie They Don't Want You to See]. Brian is also one of these people who has been kind of in the podcasting game for obviously a very long time, almost as long as we have. And he just keeps chugging along and continually working hard and putting out material. And this movie is pretty well received with high critique ratings, with some awards that it won. And UFOs was definitely a big subject also throughout 2023. I know we touched on it quite a bit on the show, the congressional hearings. And when we get to the jackass stuff, I'll bring up another one there. So I think this movie that Brian did hit at the right time and had some very good people involved with that production and interviewed some very good people and really collectively put it together. A very nice job.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, I had Brian on my shortlist too because Brian's been through some challenges and he basically decided he's just going to pick himself up and just ignore the trolls and everything and just do good skeptical work and let the work speak for itself. And he did that. It takes a lot of bravery, I think, to get back in the game after having a major event happen. And he's tireless. He's putting out a ton of content. It's all very good quality. So, yeah, Brian's doing good skeptical work.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' And my third one is, and I'm like one of the people who generally don't like TikTok. I'll say that. It's probably my age. Whatever. It's just I'm not a TikTok person. And there's lots of things about TikTok I do not like. But in spite of that, there are people out there who are having a good impact on what's happening over at TikTok. And I want to mention three names. Morgan Johnston, a PhD student researching female neurophysiology. She does a really nice job with her. What do you call it? Channel over there at TikTok? Page? What do they call it?<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' It's a channel.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Channel?<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' I mean-<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Hubble.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' You can see her work at Ask a Neuroscientist. Anna Blakney, whom we had on the show. Yeah, we interviewed her. Yeah, that was a really nice, good interview that she came on. Professor of bioengineering at the University of British Columbia using TikTok to tackle vaccine misinformation. Bravo. Bravo. Much more of that @Anna.Blakney. And I'll also mention a name, Justin Cottle, C-O-T-T-L-E. 8.8 million followers and 84 million likes. He's doing something right over there. Uses cadaver examination and dissection to give short but fascinating insights into the structure and inner workings of the human body. So he's making progress over at TikTok in the world of science as well. And you find him at At Institute of Human Anatomy. So great job to the science TikTokers out there. And continue to do that work because that's very important work going forward.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' Including @SkepticsGuide.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Absolutely. Yes. I mean, I'm not here to toot our own horn. We're doing what we're going to.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' I will.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Okay, good.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Steve, do you guys know who Jennifer Doudna is?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So to make sure everybody knows that she's a very famous biochemist. And of course, she's best known for her co-development of CRISPR-Cas9, which, as we've seen this year, is doing incredible things. And it's only going to explode with how many things it can do and how many people it's going to help. I mean, it's going to transform. I think it's going to transform human health. The ability to manipulate genetics, advancements to molecular biology. It's going to be fantastic. And her work has been just absolutely influential and a huge part of the success of what we're seeing with CRISPR-Cas9 right now. So I'd like to really thank her for her work and thank anybody who's doing work on that level that's having that level of impact on humanity. I mean, we need people doing this work.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' You know that she's only one of eight women who have won a Nobel Prize in chemistry?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I did know that.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Wow.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It's ridiculous.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That will change as the years go on.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, hopefully.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It hasn't yet.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That should get better.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Hopefully by a wide margin because they've got a long way to go.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's true of a lot of things.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I mean, good or better than anybody else.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's why several of them made my list for heroes this year, definitely.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, eight out of 191 is not enough. It's better than seven. It's better than six, but we've got to, yeah, it's got to move faster than that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's a very tiny percentage, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yes. And it's not representative of the percentage of scientists who are making an impact. That's the thing.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It in no way represents the actual work that's being done by women.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I had two skeptical heroes. One is Bruce Press, who's a friend of ours who died this year. And really happy that we got to see him before he died. But he really incredibly impressed me the way he – because he got a – you know, he was hit the year before with – out of the blue with a horrible diagnosis. He had pancreatic cancer. He knew that his life expectancy was like six months, nine months. That chemotherapy was a long shot. But basically this is not one of the cancers that we can cure. And he faced that whole situation with such amazing calm and maturity.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Incredible.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And just acceptance and perspective. Yeah, just really inspiring. Like the – you know, exactly how I think anyone, especially somebody who has a non-paranormal, non-supernatural worldview would face that situation. He really modeled that. I don't think he was trying to model it, but he did. You know, he – and it was – it really was amazing.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' You know, and not just looking at him through the lens of how he handled his death, which was incredible. But we've all gotten to know Bruce over the years. And he legitimately was one of the best people I've ever met in my life.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, he was a super guy.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I mean just generous beyond generous. You know, I mean I – you remember calling him up to talk to him about bread making. And he just – there was no limit to our conversation. He was going to keep talking to me until I was satisfied, which it lasted a long time. You know, like he just was generous that way. You know, go to a gig, he'd show up. Hey, guys, what are you doing? Next thing you know, he's like building sets with us, you know.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Right.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And the other one is all of my colleagues at Science Based Medicine who I don't think I give enough props to. And I like to sometimes recognize people who, yes, who did like one dramatic thing or who somehow peaked up over everyone else. But also I like to recognize people who are just doing day in, day out hard skeptical work.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' The grind.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, the grind.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And so I have a lot of – you know, Science Based Medicine wouldn't exist without all of my colleagues who have been working for free just giving their professional time on this project and cranking out a post every week and facing all of the pushback that we get and everything. So I just wanted to use this opportunity to like really thank everyone at Science Based Medicine. We also lost one of our members this year, Harriet Hall. You know, other people stepped up and to replace those slots for articles and everything. And I have to specifically mention David Gorski who's the managing editor who does a ton of work. Yeah, he pulls it all together, does a ton of work to keep that site humming even when he himself is like facing tremendous professional pressure and also sometimes other personal stuff that interferes with things. Regardless, he keeps the ship going and they definitely deserve props for doing that. So that's sort of that daily grind of skeptical work that has to get done. Even when you know like you're not going to get any huge accolades for it. You're just doing it anyway because you want to fight the good fight. You know, those people need to be recognized too.<br />
<br />
== Skeptical Jackasses <small>(1:02:49)</small> ==<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay. Let's click over to skeptical jackass of the year. I'm going to go first because I don't want anybody to steal my person. ''(laughter)'' Unequivocally, number one skeptical jackass of the year for me, like order of magnitude more than anybody else, RFK Jr. That guy annoyed me so much this year. So because he's running for president, which itself is annoying. He's obviously been in getting a lot of interviews, been in in the media a lot. And he is pushing his anti-vaccine, his anti-science narrative really hard and he does it so smugly. You know what I mean? So self-righteously. It's really, really is disgusting to watch. We were watching one video of his on TikTok that somebody put there that we responded to where he's like, oh, yeah, I got the solution for our rising health care costs. So first he says that we know health care in America is not working because we pay two times as much for the same outcomes as European countries. And that's not true. It has nothing to do with the effectiveness or the efficiency or anything of American medicine. It's 100% entirely that we just charge more for stuff. That's it. We pay more for our drugs. We charge more for our services. That's it. That's 100% the reason why the cost is elevated. And that is something that is easy to find out. The evidence is there. And if you're going to make something like that a talking point on the campaign trail and yet he doesn't care the slightest to do the five minutes of research it would take to actually find that there's a definitive evidence-based answer to that question. But, of course more.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' He probably knows.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's the other thing. He doesn't care. He doesn't care because that's not a talking point for him. His solution, by the way, is to prevent disease. Oh, that's a good idea. No one ever thought about it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right. We're not trying to do that now?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' If only.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Really health prevention. We've got to give that a try. Brilliant. But, yeah, his like, oh, I'm not anti-vaccine. I'm pro-safe vaccine. Go screw yourself. You're an anti-vaxxer through and through. And then he denies saying things. And then, like, the interview is like, well, here we have a clip of you saying it. He just denies saying it.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That's great when you fact check the lie. I love it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Total jackass.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I got one. Mike Johnson, U.S. Speaker of the House. He recently was interviewed by Ken Ham. You know, this is the guy who built the Arc Theme Park Museum. Who Bill Nye had a debate with.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Creationist.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So, Mike Johnson, he recently said that we could limit the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court so that it could not rule on issues of marriage. Because he wants to get rid of any marriage that has anything to do outside of a man and a woman getting married.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Are we still on that?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' He promotes gay conversion therapy.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Conversion therapy still?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yes.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Wow.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' He's also argued against the concept of separation of church and state. Church and state.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' Old is new again.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Go to any country who doesn't have a separation of church and state and just tell me how they're doing. How are they doing? This idiot wants a theocracy and he wants the goddamn Handmaid's Tale to happen. That's what he wants. He's a young Earth creationist. And he's a complete moron.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I want to nominate somebody for skeptical jackass that I don't want to say it's easy to, but a choice is to look and see who is leading a massive anti-science movement. And another choice is to look within somebody who ostensibly was supposed to be on our team and notice the failures. And so I am going to nominate, this is probably like the third year running, Elon Musk to be the skeptical jackass of the year.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Somebody had to do it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Who in July 2023 changed Twitter to X. And proved once again.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' It's Twitter to me.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, he completely de-democratized Twitter by once again proving that you need regulation. And that when you kind of take this laissez-faire approach, all it does is leave huge gaping holes for authoritarians or anyone who feels that greed is good to come in and take advantage of people. And conspiracy theorists and hate speech and just so many terrible things. And I don't know if you guys saw, but very recently he was, I guess he was kind of like a panelist or he was giving like, it wasn't so much a talk as an interview where he said, I disagree with the idea of unions. I just don't like anything which creates a lords and peasants sort of thing. Which the mental gymnastics that Elon Musk often uses to make very twisted points about reality. And the kind of like when we think of like the Rogan tribe, right? Just the massive following that this man has of individuals who are just ride or die. It scares me.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' The Musketeers.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' The Musketeers, it scares me.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Did any of you guys see John Oliver's piece on Elon Musk, his last piece of the year?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' No, no. Was it good?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It was excellent. And I thought he did a great job of showing the dichotomy of Elon Musk. And he said after doing the investigation for this piece, that he does have more of this dichotomous view. Like on the one hand, you have to admire the guy for what he genuinely accomplished with Tesla and SpaceX and Starlink and some of his ventures. But he clearly has descended into billionaire messiah complex crankery at the same time. And like what do we make of this? But whatever you make of it, it's amazing how much control this guy has.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's the part that scares me the most. Like the fact that he has been so successful and accomplished so much is, like you said, it's both awe-inspiring and it makes all of it so much scarier.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Because it breeds this following that is basically blind to-<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Culty.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yes, it's culty.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's little culty.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Thank you. And it's super scary.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It is scary. I disagree with people who have to have it all one way or the other. Because we get email. And we will get emails after this episode. Absolutely.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Of course.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' There's the Musk lovers who will brook no criticism. And then there's the Musk haters who won't give him credit for anything. It's like the truth is complicated because reality is more complicated. People are very complicated. People are not only one thing. You have to give the devil his due. He does get credit for the things that he did, but he also has to take responsibility for the horrible things that he's doing. And then those two things exist in the same man. And that's just the way it is.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And I think that that's often the way it is with this sort of like cult of personality, authoritarian sort of mentality is that usually it's the people who have accomplished something really incredible who find themselves in those positions of power.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. Right.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And then there's the people who don't recover, which I think is really problematic.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Plus there's also the corrupting power of being surrounded by yes men and thinking that you are a master of the universe. Eventually you start to believe your own hype and you get disconnected from reality.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But I also think some people go in that way. And obviously it's impossible to know. But this is not a self-made person. And I think that's important to remember as well.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' And if he is a net positive, how much do we put up with?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I don't think he's a net positive person.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' I know. But that was the argument, I think, from John Oliver that he may be a net positive.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. Like how much are we willing to put up with?<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' Potentially.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Stop buying his product. I mean, what? Is that the answer?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, that's the thing, though. We don't necessarily buy his products. Tesla? Yes. Some people buy Teslas. You're right. And some people use Starlink. But most of the people who are funding his ventures are governments. And we have to remember that. This is not an individual end user decision to make. We are funding the shit out of him through our tax dollars. And we don't have any control over that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Anyone else?<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' I think I already said it. But at the risk of being labeled a Joe Rogan derangement syndrome. Yeah, I think Joe Rogan in the RFK hole situation. And I guess Elon essentially facilitating it. So it comes full circle.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, there you go.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' With Dr. Hotez. That was a whole kerfuffle.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' You can't deny.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Unholy cabal.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Joe Rogan has straight up pseudoscience on his show. Frequently. That's it.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, gosh.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' You can't deny that. That's happening.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, he's a variety show.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's a good way to put it.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' I like when he tries to pull his comedian friends into the crazy conspiracy thing. Because they're all like, what are you talking about, Joe? And like, please leave me out of this.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Here's the bottom line with that. You go on the show because he's got the 100 million listeners. And all you're doing is you're hoping that some of those listeners will download your product after you're gone.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' That's true.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's all that is.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' He's the gatekeeper.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. And the truth is, there's actually been a platform for some very. I mean, I say this as somebody who's been on his show like three times. And granted, this was a very long time ago. Talk about like a decade ago.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' 2014.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And also in 2014, it was not like it is now. Let's all be honest about that. It has definitely gotten worse.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Cara's pining for 2014.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No, not at all. But I think that some people do go on to those kinds of platforms. And it's a hard decision to make. But they go on to those kinds of platforms to make sure that they are a voice of reason when they can be. And you're putting yourself in the line of fire. It is not easy to do. I wouldn't do it now. But back then I did. But I also think it was a different show. And Joe is a different person.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' And there's a reason why he won't have Steve on the show.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Exactly.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Sometimes you've got to go into the lines then.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Sometimes you do. Yeah. But it's a calculated risk you have to take.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, absolutely.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And you've got to do the calculations in advance.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I narrowed mine down to two people. Jaime Maussan, journalist, longtime UFO enthusiast, in which he showed politicians in Mexico the corpses of extraterrestrials which were basically bodies stolen from Peru back in 2017. And he said, oh, here's a quote. "I think there's a clear demonstration that we are dealing with non-human specimens that are not related to any other species in our world and that all possibilities are open for any scientific institution to investigate it." Yeah. So this guy has a long history of making all kinds of wacko claims having to do with creatures from other planets, among other things. And he had the gall to bring mummies up to the Mexican authorities or Mexican Congress and make a total display out of it. And just horrible. Absolutely one of the low points of the year. So he continues to be jackass of the year. And also I'm going to throw out Avi Loeb in there because he continues to also get it wrong. Oh, the tiny sphere, the spheres that they found, that they collected from the floor of the Pacific Ocean. My gosh. They can only be of extraterrestrial origin.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Of course.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, no. Wait. And then what? Last month? Independent analysis found this. Yeah. It's coal ash.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We talked about that in the NOTACON episode.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' But then you go to look. Okay. Then where's the what does he have to say about this? Is he changing his tune? Is he adjusting to the new evidence? Nope. Nothing. Silence.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' Oh, silence. Okay. I thought he responded.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Continuing to effectively, for all intents and purposes, stand by his original claims.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Evan, if you're going to name those two, we have to complete the UFO trifecta with David Grush. This guy is annoying. This is the whistleblower, right?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, whistleblower.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Who has this crazy nonsense dispute. Like, I heard from this other guy.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's right.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And then insert totally batshit crazy conspiracy theory here. It's all hearsay. But the guy is sitting in front of Congress spouting this. And then, again, talk about smug. When he finished giving his testimony it was really just disgusting. Meanwhile, it's like crazy time stuff. You know what I mean? It's not just like, oh, yeah, they got aliens hiding somewhere. It's all like the extradimensional kind of – that's how we're reversing engineering time travel. Like all this really utter nonsense.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Right. Yeah, yeah. Oh, this tech exists. You know, we're hiding it. You know, the whole – every level of conspiracy is involved with his arguments. And you're right. And he got a platform. He sure got a lot of news over the summer. That's for certain. So, yeah, UFO world went crazy in 2023. Crazy.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' They're all trying to take Stephen Greer's job, right? Are they trying to get his gig, whatever it is? He's been around for decades, right? Stephen Greer has been around for decades, right?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Oh, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' I mean that's his main shtick, I guess.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah. And the evidence they're presenting has also been around for decades.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. Meanwhile, they're just peddling the same old tired stuff we've already debunked a hundred times.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It is. It's the same turd repolished.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's the same nonsense.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' It's shiny.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, it's shiny.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Nothing.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah. And the media loves it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' They love it. I was just reading a couple of days ago on the Washington Post, although it was a reasonable, it was a semi-reasonable post where the writer was giving way too much credence to the whole thing. But his point was, all right, it's time to put up or shut up now. Like, all right, we've had all the hype and all the testimony and everything like that. Either somebody's got to come out with the smoking gun of aliens or just stop. And we've been saying that, of course, for years. Put up or shut up.<br />
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'''E:''' Decades.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. But if there was, and he made the point, the same points that we made, that we have whistleblowers who leaked the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times. Everything has been leaked. Everything has been exposed. And his main reason for thinking that this is maybe not true was that the government is not competent enough to hide something at this level for this long.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No. 100% not.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. There's no way. There's so many counterexamples.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Right. But even competent people couldn't hide it that long.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's the point, right? It's like, not only have we had intentional, politically motivated leaks, but we've had these like, I just watched the Frontline documentary about the Discord leaks. We've had these sort of like, maybe they were motivated, maybe they weren't, but just like young, stupid person who wants to get famous for having a leak.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Right.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' You know? Like, something would get out there.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I know. There would be video on TikTok already. I mean, come on.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yes. That's just the way our world is these days.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I mean, it goes against human psychology at its most basic level. Yeah, look, you could be rich and lionized as the person who outed whatever, the flat earth, the UFO, whatever you want to talk about. And people, that's how people behave. That's how people would have behaved over the course of decades to get some fame and money.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But then they say, but Bob, they're afraid because they know they'll be killed. You mean like, Grush was killed? Oh, but I guess he's a false flag. Right?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, yeah, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's just a full circle conspiracy theory because none of it makes internal sense, you know?<br />
<br />
'''c:''' No. Just keep moving the goalposts. Just keep going around in circles.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Bob, you got anybody?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah. Well, Craig Good sent an email. He recommended we look into Steve Kirsch, and I looked into him. I'm like, oh, boy. A little reminiscent of RFK, Steve. So Steve Kirsch is a tech entrepreneur. I think he was one of the key developers of optical mice, which is really cool. And early in the pandemic, he funded research in off-patent drugs to see if they were effective. And that sounds unsuperficially like that's a potential useful use of his money, especially at the beginning of a pandemic when we had nothing. Maybe there's drugs out there already that could help because lots of drugs have lots of potential uses. I mean, look at that weight loss drug for diabetes. Like, oh, my god. It's like a major weight loss drug. So, yeah. So that seems like a potential good idea. But he basically evolved fairly quickly into a major vaccine misinformation super spreader. Oh, my god. And he's much more pernicious than some of the other skeptical jackasses because he will look at real data, but it's basically his conclusions by looking at his horrible analysis that really is the downfall here. He went to MIT. He was speaking recently, I think just in November at MIT. And he said data from the New Zealand Ministry of Health shows that the COVID vaccines have killed over 10 million people worldwide.<br />
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'''C:''' What?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Earlier this year, he said Medicare data shows that COVID vaccines increase your risk of dying. Like, yeah. Medicare data shows that. And then one of my favorite quotes of his, COVID-19 vaccines have killed 676,000 Americans. And like I said, the problem with this guy is that, in my opinion, he's just not, in a lot of people's opinions, he's not a good data analyst. That's just not his specialty at all. When real experts and fact checkers look at his conclusions, they say things like this. They say these words, factually inaccurate. They say he misrepresents a complex reality. And the CDC described some of his pronouncements as scientifically inaccurate, misleading, and irresponsible. So this guy is definitely one of my skeptical jackasses of 2003.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, that's a good one.<br />
<br />
{{anchor|memoriam}} <!-- leave this anchor directly above the corresponding section that follows --><br />
== In Memoriam <small>(1:21:12)</small> ==<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, let's move on to In Memoriam, where we recognize the people of import that we lost this year, focusing on scientists and skeptics. I already mentioned Bruce Press and Harriet Hall as the skeptics we lost this year. There were a few politicians, all seemed to happen fairly recently. Sandra Day O'Connor, Supreme Court Justice. Henry Kissinger, love him or hate him. He was a very influential person in American history. Dianne Feinstein and Rosalind Carter all died this year. There were quite a few scientists. I'll say the name. You can tell me if you know who they were. You're not going to recognize this one. Dr. Gao Youji, 95 years old, is a medical researcher exposed in HIV epidemic in China against the Chinese government's attempt to suppress that information. So she really went out of her to put herself at risk to do that. Dr. William P. Murphy died at 100 years old. Love it when those images are really up there.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Nice.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' He invented the blood bag. Remember, you ever watch like MASH?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And they have like those glass bottles that are the IVs are in glass bottles. Remember? Do you remember that?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I think I do.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, during the Korean War. But that was the standard also any time before that. Well, this was during the Korean War when they were using these glass bottles for fluid, for IVs. He invented a vinyl blood bag which collapses when the fluid comes out and it's more sterile and they don't break, you know. Especially in a war situation, that was very, very useful. And that became the standard until now from that point forward. Endel Tulving, 96, an influential memory researcher. M.S. Swaminathan, 98, Indian crop scientist and geneticist. Basically, he was responsible for the Green Revolution in India.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, nice.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Ian Wilmut, 79. Anybody recognize that name? Ian Wilmut.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Ian Wilmut. No.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Sounds a little familiar.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Wilmut.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' Just the Ian part.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, the Ian part.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So you'll recognize this name, Dolly the Sheep.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Dolly's dead?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' First cloned sheep.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' First cloned sheep.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' There's more where she came from.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We talked about artificial intelligence this year. This was another one, another scientist from last year, Douglas Lenat, 72, AI researcher. One of his contributions was he did a lot of research in AI. He tried to give AI, "common sense". That was sort of his goal.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's important.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' What was the name?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Douglas L-E-N-A-T, Lenat.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, yeah. I remember reading about him.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' This was the guy that was explicitly programming into an early AI system all of the common sense knowledge that the context that an AI would need to understand even very simple sentences. He would take a sentence and plug it in, and then he would put in all the information that you would need to know that makes that sentence make sense. I remember thinking that was a really great idea. I think the AI system was Encyc, I think, for Encyclopedia. I thought that was a great idea, but he just reached a point, I think, where diminishing returns of effectiveness, and it didn't really pan out.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. John Warnock, 82.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I regonize that name.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Developed the PDF.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No way.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, but he pronounced it B-D-I-F.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' Oh, no. Not this.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Sleeman Benzmay, 49, was young. We talked about their work. So neuroscientists developed prosthetics with sensation that could sense temperature and pressure. All right, this is a name you may remember. W. Jason Morgan, died at 87, came up with the theory of plate tectonics.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Nice.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Wow.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That person was still alive?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, I know, that's one of those-<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Was that in the 50s?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, I think so.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That was a great example of a true paradigm shift.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' Seismic shift.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' And it was tough. He had to fight the old guard. It was tough, but eventually the evidence was overwhelming.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It just seems so late for that to, you know? We've only really believed that for 80 years?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, right.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' What did they think before? Turtles or something?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, there was catastrophism was a big theory before. You know, the Earth was shaped by catastrophes. But specifically with the continents, we thought they were fixed, that they were fixed in place, that they weren't moving.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's amazing.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' Wow.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Gee whiz. We're so human.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Virginia Norwood, 96. Female scientists especially live to be really old.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, women especially live to be older.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, that's true. Technology for mapping Earth and space. So she was involved in basically doing what we're doing now, mapping Earth from satellites. That was her thing. William Wolfe, 83. Computer scientist who basically developed the internet. This was the guy. He was involved with-<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' It was Al Gore. How dare you.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I know. Who was involved in basically adapting, was it ARPANET? The first, like the-<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, that's right.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' To go from that to the internet. This is one of the guys who did that. This is a name, Cara, you may recognize this name, Paul Berg.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Berg, oh.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' B-E-R-G, 96.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Did he discover icebergs?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Nope.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' No. The Hinderberg.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' He basically was the first person to do genetic engineering. First recombinant DNA.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No way.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Damn.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Really the first, like the first.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. Yeah. That was it. All right. This is somebody, the next person, somebody we talked about on the show not that long ago, John B. Goodenough.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' He died at 100. He invented the lithium ion battery.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, nice.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' He was still active, even very recently, which is why we talked to him, I think, last year or the year before. He's still working.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's a great name.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. I know.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' Goodenough.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' John B. Goodenough. Okay. You may recognize this name, Gordon E. Moore.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yes. Absolutely know him.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Moore's Law?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Moore's Law. Yeah. Moore's Law. David Etnier, who discovered the snail dart, one of our listeners wanted to make sure that he got mentioned.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But he was a very, he was an influential biologist. He did a lot of big work, but that was like his big thing was discovering the snail darter, the snail darter. Okay. And then there were some non-scientists that just were somebody that I wanted to recognize. Two astronauts, Frank Borman.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Frank Borman. Apollo 8.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Apollo 8. And Walter Cunningham, first crew to Apollo mission 7. So Apollo 7 and Apollo 8. Frank Borman was 95. Walter Cunningham was 90. Because that's how old you have to be if you were in the Apollo mission. Mark Goddard. Anybody recognize that name?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Goddard Space Center?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, you would think, but no. He was a movie star. He was a television star. He was the number two guy in Lost in Space.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, yes. Mark Goddard. Oh, yes.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' With Dr. Smith?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Not Dr. Smith.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Not Dr. Smith, no. But he was the first officer or something?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah. The second in command.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' The Riker position. Okay.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Major Don West. Remember him? Major Don West. Okay.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Absolutely.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The Robinsons were the family. He was Don. And then there was Michael Gambon.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah. Dumbledore.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Dumbledore. 82.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Among other, he was great.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I mean, a lot of things, but yeah, but he's Dumbledore.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' He is awesome.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Bob Barker.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, geez. How old was he?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' 99.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, man.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Incredible.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That's so frustrating. I hope I get to 99, but man, I'll be pushing for that final goddamn triple, that first triple digit.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Reminded America every day to get your pet spayed or neutered. I learned about that at a very young age.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Paul Rubens.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yes.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, Pee-wee.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That sucked hard.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' 71.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's relevant, because one of Jay's favorite movies is {[w|Pee-wee's Big Adventure}}.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah. I mean, back when it came out, that movie, like, oh my God, it was so stupid and funny.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It was stupid funny. That's right.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' He was awesome.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' He was one of those people who were basically put on a kid's show that was funny for adults to watch.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Totally.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, totally. Tony Bennett, 96.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh wow, he finally died.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I included him, because I saw him like 10 years ago, and he was awesome. So he was in his 80s, right? Still performing. His voice was incredible. He had not lost his voice at all.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Incredible.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's great.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Just an amazing, amazing entertainer. Raquel Welch at 82, at one time the sexiest woman alive. All right, who recognizes this name? This is definitely Cara, not you, but I bet you. One or more of the guys will recognize this name. Al Jaffe.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yes. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. But that's Spy Versus Spy and more, right?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. Mad Magazine. Guess how old he was. He's the one, he invented the infolds. Remember when you would have a picture, and then you would fold it in, and it would be a different picture?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's right. Crease halves are so weird.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That was him. He was 102.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Woo.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Good for him, man.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Good for him. That's it. That's my list. Not everybody. Obviously, there's a much, much longer list of stars, and sports stars, and a lot of people, but these are just the ones who... The scientists, skeptics, and people who caught my attention that I wanted to mention. All right, guys, you know what time it is?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' What time is it?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's time for Science or Fiction.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Ian's favorite game.<br />
<br />
{{top}}{{anchor|sof}}<br />
{{anchor|theme}} <!-- leave these anchors directly above the corresponding section that follows --><br />
== Science or Fiction <small>(1:31:11)</small> ==<br />
<!-- <br />
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|SoF with a Theme = <!-- <br />
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{{SOFinfo<br />
|theme = News items from past episodes<br />
|item1 = In 2008 we reported on a new theory that disease spread by insects might have caused the extinction of the dinosaurs. Since then a 2016 study found that malaria dates back to the time of the dinosaurs and infected reptiles.<br />
|link1web = https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/01/080103090702.htm<br />
|link1pub = Oregon State University<br />
|link1title = Insect Attack May Have Finished Off Dinosaurs<br />
|link1web2 = https://indianapublicmedia.org/amomentofscience/ancient-malaria.php<br />
|link1pub2 = Indiana Public Media<br />
|link1title2 = Insects May Have Killed Dinosaurs<br />
<br />
|item2 = In 2009 we reported that Honda had developed a brain-machine interface that allows a driver to steer a car with mind control alone. They are still developing the technology, without any commercial applications so far.<br />
|link2web = https://www.theguardian.com/science/2009/mar/31/mind-control-helmet-honda-asimo<br />
|link2pub = The Guardian<br />
|link2title = Honda unveils helmet that lets wearer control a robot by thought alone<br />
|link2web2 = n<br />
<br />
|item3 = In 2008 we reported on new bionic eyes, involving artificial retinas that allow previously blind patients to see shapes and lights. The company, Second Sight, has since gone bankrupt, abandoning patients with the implants.<br />
|link3web = https://www.theguardian.com/science/2008/apr/22/medicalresearch.news<br />
|link3pub = The Guardian<br />
|link3title = 'Bionic' eye gives blind people some sight<br />
|link3web2 = https://spectrum.ieee.org/bionic-eye-obsolete<br />
|link3pub2 = IEEE Spectrum<br />
|link3title2 = Their bionic eyes are now obsolete and unsupported<br />
<br />
|}}<br />
{{SOFResults<br />
|fiction = Brain-machine interface<br />
|science1 = Disease killed dinosaurs<br />
|science2 = Bionic eyes, artificial retinae<br />
<br />
|rogue1 = cara<br />
|answer1 = Brain-machine interface<br />
<br />
|rogue2 =Evan<br />
|answer2 =Brain-machine interface<br />
<br />
|rogue3 =jay<br />
|answer3 =Disease killed dinosaurs<br />
<br />
|rogue4 = bob<br />
|answer4 = Brain-machine interface<br />
<br />
|rogue5 = Ian<br />
|answer5 = Brain-machine interface<br />
<br />
|host =steve<br />
<!-- for the result options below, <br />
only put a 'y' next to one. --><br />
|sweep = <!-- all the Rogues guessed wrong --><br />
|clever = <!-- each item was guessed (Steve's preferred result) --><br />
|win =y <!-- at least one Rogue guessed wrong, but not them all --><br />
|swept = <!-- all the Rogues guessed right --><br />
}}<br />
''Voice-over: It's time for Science or Fiction.''<br />
<br />
=== 2023 SOF statistics ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Each week, I come up with three science news items or facts, two real and one fake, and I challenge my panel of skeptics to tell me which one is the fake. As we always do, since this is the last Science or Fiction of the year, I'm going to give the stats for 2023. These are up to date, just not including, obviously, the one in this episode, but this is up to date. I'd like to thank Alan Turner who compiled these for us. Thanks a lot, Alan. This saves us a lot of work. We really appreciate it. I just had to add in one episode that hasn't aired as of our recording. It will have by the time you're listening to this. All right, so here we go. Let's give the individual stats. First in fourth place was Bob with 20 wins and 29 losses, 40.8%.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' The hell, man.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You're in the 40s. That's right, 40.8%.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' Recount.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Next is Jay at 21 wins and 26 losses, 44.6%. Then there was Evan at 26 wins and 22 losses or 54.1%.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' No way. That's better than I thought.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, you broke 50%, 54.1%. And then Cara at 30 wins and 13 losses, 69.7%.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' What?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Once again.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You had a good year, Cara. You had to know that. Don't play coy.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I think it's because you don't make me go first that often.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I try to balance it, but partly that's true. But even when I do make you go first, you still, I think, win the same amount of times.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Sometimes.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You did participate in fewer, and you missed a lot of sweeps. So you got lucky.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, interesting. So I just happened to not be on the show on sweep weeks.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But you still had more wins than anybody else. It wasn't just that you had fewer losses.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right, but that is interesting. I managed to duck out of the hardest episode.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So here's an interesting stat. So there are 10 science or fiction games where we had a guest play 10 times. Guess what their collective record is out of those 10?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Seven and three.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I'm going to say-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Probably one if they were a row collectively.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, I'm saying of those 10, how many did the guests win? How many did the guests lose?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I think they did well.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' They probably did better than-<br />
<br />
'''J:''' 75% of the time.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Zero out of 10.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' There's my memory going down the toilet.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' They lost all 10.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's hard. Science or fiction is hard.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Ian goes first today, right?<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' Oh, come on.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So Ian, if you win on this one, you will be the only guest to win in 2023.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' No pressure.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' You can save the whole community.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No way.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. How many times did the rogues sweep me?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Three times.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Seven times.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Five?<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' Once.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Six. Six times. How many times did I sweep you guys?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Six times.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I wasn't there.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So I swept you eight times. You swept me six times.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Wow. That's impressive.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, but if you multiply our six sweeps times four-<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Which you don't, so that's all right.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But I do think that this-<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I do.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' There is an important point to make here, which is that science or fiction is hard for us, the rogues, when we're playing. It's hard. Which one's science? Which is, oh, I don't know. Blah, blah, blah. And lots of times we're throwing a dart at a dart board. It is way harder for Steve-<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's very hard for me.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' To comb through. And to craft these statements in such a way that the answer isn't obvious, that there aren't any giveaways.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It's tough. It's not easy to pull that together.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' And to research it for thoroughness.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' There's always onion layers.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I spend more time researching science fiction than any other part of the show each week. And what I've definitely learned is I've gotten really good at fooling Bob.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' As the results absolutely show.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, I do think... And remember, I know the answer and I get to listen to your reasoning. And Bob goes right down the path that I played for you. Like he-<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, no.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And sometimes it's true. And sometimes the rest of you don't know enough to get it wrong. And it's so frustrating.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yes.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And you blow past the answer that should be blaring red. And you're like, oh, that's probably true. I'm like, no, that's not probably true. What are you saying?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That is crazy talk. Don't you know it's crazy talk?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Like, I don't know.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It is frustrating. I could just hear Steve giggling almost every week. But I got to give kudos to Cara. She has an amazing wealth of background knowledge that she applies and an instinct that's amazing.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' She's got a good nose.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Absolutely.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Usually, Cara, you do come up with a solid reason for why something is fiction.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's good. But sometimes I'm right for the wrong reason.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Sometimes you're right for the wrong reason. That's always frustrating. Sometimes you straight up guess.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. And sometimes I straight up guess. And sometimes I just listen to- I'm last, so I get to use everybody else's insights to my advantage. We all have that kind of privilege. But it's funny what you were just talking about. It reminds me of when you're playing poker with somebody who doesn't know how to play poker.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yes.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And they suck out on you, like, on the ribs. Why are you in that hand?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' What are you doing?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. Right. Right. Okay. So I have a theme this week. I think this is the first time I've done this. But this is similar to a theme that I do for the year-end show. But these are news items from SGU's past. It's not science or fiction from the past. It's news items from the past.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' How past?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Nice.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, you'll see.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, gosh. 19 years of this.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Here we go. Item number one. In 2008-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Cara goes first.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We reported on a new theory that disease spread by insects might have caused the extinction of the dinosaurs. Since then, a 2016 study found that malaria dates back to the time of the dinosaurs and infected reptiles. Both parts have to be true in order for the item to be true. So I'm giving you something you reported on and an update, basically, in each of these items.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Ah, okay.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Item number two. In 2009, we reported that Honda had developed a brain-machine interface that allows a driver to steer a car with mind control alone. They are still developing the technology without any commercial applications so far. And item number three. In 2008, we reported on new bionic eyes involving artificial retinas that allow previously blind patients to see shapes and lights. The company, Second Sight, has since gone bankrupt, abandoning patients with the implants.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Wow.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' How much do you remember about our own show in the past? So we are going to take this in reverse order from most wins to lowest wins. So Cara, you go first.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, no way. Ian's not going first?<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' Ha!<br />
<br />
'''E:''' He has zero wins.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' His rank is zero at the current time.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' This sucks. No. Okay. Okay. I was just like waiting.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' You wouldn't want my justification.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Also, I feel like we should take this in the order of people who were on the show when these things were reported.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, because we all remember this, Cara.<br />
<br />
=== Cara's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Fine. Okay. Gosh. The one that makes me the saddest is the Second Sight one. So that's the one that I hope is the fiction. I know that bionic eyes have been like an interesting thing and there was, I feel like, a lot of trend around this time, like a lot of hope and promise around bionic eyes, artificial retinas, but I'm not sure how many patients would have actually – like I don't think that would have been an FDA-approved thing. It would have only been experimental. So maybe that one's getting my spidey senses tingling and also just abandoning them. There's got to be somebody still, I don't know, offering medical support. I don't know. And then let's see. Disease spread by insects might have caused the extinction and then later we found that actually malaria might have been around for that long. I mean we know that in early humans, but we're talking hundreds of thousands of years, we see evidence of all sorts of diseases that we thought were old and I think there's even evidence of cancer going back to some of these fossils. I don't know. Viruses are old as shit. Like why wouldn't there be malaria back then? I don't know. And then the brain-machine interface. Honda developed it. Allows the driver to see your car with mind control and they're still developing it. The problem is we have that technology. Maybe not to drive a car well, but we have the technology now to play a video game with your brain, but usually it has to be more hardwired. So I don't know. That one's bugging me the most. I don't think it would have been Honda. I think it would have been, obviously these are things that are happening in research labs and universities and it just seems, I don't know. That one seems obvious but silly to me, so I'm going to call the Honda one the fiction. Who knows?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay, Evan?<br />
<br />
=== Evan's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Well, I think I'm going to agree with Cara. I mean I'm not really recalling this, so I'm sorry. No advantage there. I just think that 2009 and the brain-machine interface, I mean my gosh, that was a long time ago technologically speaking and that they're still developing the technology without any commercial application so far. Really? Why would they really go this long? Would a company allow that to happen to this extent and see no light at the end of the tunnel, no profit motive, no really? Kind of just this lingering thing for all this time that doesn't seem likely I think that a company like Honda would do that. So that's why I think that one's fiction.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay, Jay?<br />
<br />
=== Jay's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''J:''' All right, the last one about the bionic eyes and the former patients being left in a lurch, I think that one is absolutely science. And then the Honda brain-interface machine, the brain-machine interface, I mean shit, I think that happened too. I kind of remember that. And let me see. This one in 2008 that basically disease spread by insects could have killed the dinosaurs. I think that one's a fiction.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And Bob?<br />
<br />
=== Bob's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I'm just going by just the gut memory which is probably almost 100% unreliable. So some of these can spark the tiniest bit of memory. The one that doesn't though, and the one that doesn't make a lot of sense is the Honda brain-machine interface driving a car. So I'm going to say that one's fiction.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And Ian?<br />
<br />
=== Ian's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' Thank God I listened to all your ranting how you were parsing through it. Okay, I have questions. The insect spread, does that mean that it had to be, the extinction was caused by the insect spread or just the idea of the insect spread was potentially?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That disease spread by insects caused the extinction of the dinosaurs.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' So that had to be true? Or just that you reported it?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, just that we reported on that. That claim doesn't have to be true, just that we reported on it has to be true.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' Right, okay. The Honda is...<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's obviously not true.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' Yeah, I mean it's like the Honda is a car but how much of the car are they controlling? Like just moving forward and back? I feel like that's pretty easy. Or is that... I can't ask that question, okay. Okay, so previously blind implant. I mean that seems very capitalism to me to leave people on the hook with an implant in your head. Although they probably got it removed somewhere, maybe not by the company that went under, but like somebody probably removed it. I feel like I remember the Honda brain-machine thing, but I don't remember it being a car. I remember people sitting in this like four-wheeler little chair thing and they were moving it around with their thoughts, but that might be more recent. But what I do remember is like that robot that Honda made back in the day, that cute robot.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' ASIMO.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' ASIMO, yes. And did they control that with the brain interface thing? I mean but also moving a car just like a little bit with your brain, I feel like it's not that hard.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Things we say in 2023.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' I know, right. Yeah, exactly. That's a fair point. I think the insect thing is science because it seems like that could be reported on and a potential finding. I mean the implant thing seems just like so corporate America, so we're going to say that's science, so I'm going to say the brain-machine interface is the fiction.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #3 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay, so you all agree on the third one, so we'll start there. In 2008, we reported on new bionic eyes involving artificial retinas that allow previously blind patients to see shapes and lights. The company's second site has since gone bankrupt, abandoning patients with the implants. You're all very happy that this one is science. And this one is science. Yes, this is what happened. So yeah, they reported on their "bionic eyes" where they have a little implant on the retina that does communicate to the brain through the optic nerve, and then there's a camera in the glasses. And they were not able to read or anything, but they could see lights and shapes, and that could help them navigate and help them interact with their world a little bit. But then they had all kinds of projections about how fantastic this was going to be as they refined the technology, and they basically went bankrupt. And they did completely abandon patients with the implants. They were no longer giving them service. They weren't giving them firm updates. They weren't maintaining them.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Firmware?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, they had to do firmware updates. So they weren't supporting anymore. They were orphaned, which happens a lot in technology, but it sucks when the technology is implanted in your body. That is a serious problem.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' Did they get it removed? I mean, like are they blinder now?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, I think in some people it's still working, and I think in others they have to have it removed or it just doesn't work. They were blind to begin with.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #2 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, let's go back to number two. In 2009, we reported that Honda had developed a brain-machine interface that allows a driver to steer a car with mind control alone. They are still developing the technology without any commercial applications so far. Jay, you think this one is science. Everyone else thinks this one is fiction. Ian, you definitely remembered the most about this news item.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' Incorrectly the most.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' They were the ones who made ASIMO, the robot, and they are developing robot technology and brain-machine interface technology. But the question is, was this to steer a car? And the answer is no, because this one is fiction.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' Oh, yes.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The news item was that Honda developed a brain-machine interface that could control ASIMO.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' Oh, it was ASIMO.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So you were exactly correct, Ian. I wrote about it at the time. We talked about it on the show, and I wrote about it, and it was how chumpy their technology was. First of all, even for then, it was like years obsolete. And it was like the control was, they could make it do four things. You could raise your left arm, raise your right arm, and I don't know, two other things. But they were, it was terrible. It was terrible. And they basically never went anywhere with it. I tried to find if they were doing anything else. I couldn't find any reports of Honda doing any brain-machine interface research, or at least achieving anything, since 2009. All the reporting dates back to 2009. The recent reports, Ian, I also found what you were looking at. They do have now a chair, a wheelchair, but it's not controlled with your mind. It operates like the Segway.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' Oh, so it's a little shift.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It still functions with shifting your weight.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' I thought they were wearing something.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It appears that they abandoned the mind-control technology, and they're now working on other technology. The reason why I did the steer-the-car thing is because at the time, the reporting said, one day, this could help you steer your car with your mind. And I wrote about how stupid that was, and how far away we were from that level of control. Why would you do that anyway when you have two arms, and you're sitting right there? It's like we don't do things in a harder way just because we can.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' So you can crochet while you drive with your mind.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' Maybe some nice billionaire can start implementing that into his cars.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Right. So that one was fiction.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #1 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Which means that in 2008, we reported a new theory that disease spread by insects might have caused the extinction of the dinosaurs. Since then, a 2016 study found that malaria dates back to the time of the dinosaurs and infected reptiles. That is science. Yeah, that was kind of a fringe theory at the time. I don't think we thought much of it. And it's really gone nowhere. The only thing I found that relates to it was the malaria thing, which doesn't mean they went extinct because of malaria. It's just, yeah, they may have been...<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' Oh, malaria was back.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I was really questioning myself on that one. I almost said it. Malaria is that old?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' That's wild.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And I was like, does malaria actually infect...<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' Reptiles?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' You know, you think of it as a human disease, but animals must also be vectors for it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, and there were no mosquitoes at the time, so they had to be spread by other insects. I think they mentioned the midge or something as a potential spreader.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Midges are horrible.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And of course, it wouldn't be the same species that's around today, but it would be like the same, you know...<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, it's not even the same species that infects humans as infects like any other animal.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Right, right. Maybe the same family or genus or something, but it would still be considered, "malaria". But yeah, that one was science. That was interesting. Yeah, it was fun going through really old news items and seeing how they panned out, you know? We do have that segment we do every now and then, like the five- to ten-year updates. This was a little bit more than five to ten years, but yeah. Because the whole, like, how technology develops over time and predicting what's going to work out and what isn't going to work out is often tricky. I think we correctly sort of poo-pooed the Honda news item at the time. But the Bionic Eyes one, I think we were pretty positive about that, and it was very disappointing when that company went bust. Now, that technology is not dead. It's still actively being researched, just not by that company. But it is still very modest in terms of the amount of resolution that these eye implants can produce. We're not at Geordie LaForge level yet.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' You know, we need companies to invest in these things and develop technologies. I mean, that's where a lot of technology comes from.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, totally. So, Ian, you broke the spell.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' Oh, my gosh.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And you're at 100%.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yes.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Ian wins.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' For this year, I guess. Two out of three.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And I think this is the first year, at least in a long time, where I didn't play any science or fiction. I did every one.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, wow.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' Oh, you did all of them.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I didn't play once this year.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That means you didn't miss an episode.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, I never miss an episode.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's true.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But sometimes I have other people, like if we're doing like two episodes over a weekend, I'll have somebody else do it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' True, or like in a live show sometimes.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I don't think we did any double headers this year, though. I think that may be why.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' Does this mean I'm your favorite guest?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You're the most winningest guest this year.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' Thank you so much.<br />
<br />
{{anchor|qow}} <!-- leave this anchor directly above the corresponding section that follows --><br />
== Skeptical Quote of the Week <small>(1:51:43)</small> ==<br />
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{{qow<br />
|text = For last year's words belong to last year's language and next year's words await another voice. And to make an end is to make a beginning.<br />
|author = {{w|T. S. Eliot}}<br />
|lived = 1888-1965<br />
|desc = British poet, essayist, publisher, playwright, literary critic and editor<br />
}}<br />
'''S:''' All right, Evan, take us home with a quote.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' "For last year's words belong to last year's language, and next year's words await another voice, and to make an end is to make a beginning." T.S. Eliot.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Very poetic.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Rightfully so. T.S. Eliot, considered to be one of the 20th century's greatest poets.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, I like that.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Perfect for the end of the year.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, guys, it's been another great year. Thank you for working with me again on another year.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Sure, man.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Of course Steve.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Are we done now? We're good, right?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' 2023, yeah.<br />
<br />
== Worst Pseudoscience/Announcements <small>(1:52:08)</small> == <br />
<br />
'''IC:''' I was told we were supposed to pick the worst pseudoscience of the year, and I did not say it. But anyway, that's okay.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' What is it?<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' I'm going to be a little Marshall McLuhan-esque and say TikTok is the worst pseudoscience.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Nice.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It surely houses the worst pseudoscience.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' Yes, but the medium is the message kind of mythology, you know. The UI is addictive. The tracking is like Orwellian or whatever, and the algorithm is evil or Mephistophelian, if you will.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' My biggest concern about TikTok is that China is influencing the algorithm to promote their propaganda.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Sure.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And think about how subtle and how effective that can be.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Especially in young minds, average age, what, 14?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' They choose the narratives that they want to tell.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' I don't know what they're telling me with North Sea TikTok. Have you guys seen any of this?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' No.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' Where it's like the frightening like 100-foot waves, and it's like it plays that yo-ho-ho.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I saw one of those, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' And it's so frightening. I don't know why my feed did just that.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It's creepy as shit.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' It's so creepy.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Because if you get scared, then you make poorer decisions on TikTok, I think.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' Oh, my God. Then I move to China?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's all priming.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' Okay. All right.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, boy.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Hey, guys. It was a great year. Pleasure working with all of you.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It was an excellent year.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Me too, Jay.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, working with everybody. Looking forward to – oh, my gosh. There's so much stuff coming up in 2024. It's going to be, it's going to be fun.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' Like a celestial event is happening, right?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's right.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, yes.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The eclipse in April.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' The sun's going to be blocked out.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It's going to be the cloudiest day in Texas history.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Bob, stop it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Bob, what are you doing?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Bob, you are forbidden to talk about until after the eclipse.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' That's true.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' We're going to not let you come if you keep saying things like that.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I'm just preparing everybody. This is my cosmological curse.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' This is a witch.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' This is the shape of reality. So I'm just getting you guys ready to cry in Texas.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Come to Texas and see us live. The SGU without Bob.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I don't want to forget to mention we have two shows coming up. We've got the extravaganza on April 6th, and we've got the SGU private show on April 7th. These are in Dallas, Texas. We have a secret special guest on the private show that we're not going to announce just now.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' No, we're not going to announce that.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' This is someone we've never worked with before or is it more than one person, Evan?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' To be determined. To be determined. We will see how this transpires.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' One or more people. Now 2024 is going to be a fun year in terms of our SGU activity.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' And our 1,000th.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I will not vouch for anything else that's going to happen in 2021.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' 1,000th episode.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Our 1,000th episode is coming up in the September-ish. We have to calculate the actual date.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Holy crap.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' August, early September.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That's nuts.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' 1,000th.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' Congrats to you guys for that.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Joe Rogan, eat your heart out.<br />
<br />
== Signoff <small>(1:55:12)</small> == <br />
'''S:''' —and until next week, this is your {{SGU}}. <!-- typically this is the last thing before the Outro --> <br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. Well, thank you all for joining me this week and this year.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' You're welcome.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Thanks, Steve.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Ian, thanks for all your hard work.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Thanks, Ian.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Behind the scenes.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' My pleasure.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Ian, you rock, dude.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Great job, Ian.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' My pleasure. And links to the shows are on the website, by the way.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Thank you.<br />
<br />
{{Outro664}}{{top}} <!-- for previous episodes, use the appropriate outro, found here: https://www.sgutranscripts.org/wiki/Category:Outro_templates --> <br />
== Today I Learned ==<br />
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}}</div>Hearmepurrhttps://www.sgutranscripts.org/w/index.php?title=SGU_Episode_841&diff=19175SGU Episode 8412024-02-03T09:12:29Z<p>Hearmepurr: episode done</p>
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|episodeDate = {{month|8}} {{date|21}} 2021 <!-- broadcast date --><br />
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|qowText = The goal of science is to make the wonderful and complex understandable and simple – but not less wonderful.<br />
|qowAuthor = {{w|Herbert A. Simon}}, American economist, political scientist and cognitive psychologist <br />
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}}<!-- <br />
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--><br />
== Introduction ==<br />
<br />
''Voice-over: You're listening to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.'' <br />
<br />
'''S:''' Hello and welcome to the {{SGU|link=y}}. Today is Wednesday, August 18<sup>th</sup>, 2021, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella... <br />
<br />
'''B:''' Hey, everybody!<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Cara Santa Maria... <br />
<br />
'''C:''' Howdy. <br />
<br />
'''S:''' Jay Novella... <br />
<br />
'''J:''' Hey guys. <br />
<br />
'''S:''' ...and Evan Bernstein. <br />
<br />
'''E:''' Good evening, folks.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So, we have some news about the SGU going to DragonCon. The news is we're not going to DragonCon. Unfortunately, I know, it's bad. We've been tracking this very, very closely. You know, we had a meeting and we sort of talked about is there any way we can go? Like, what could we do? We could put plexiglass and we have double masking. I bought some N95s. But at the end of the day…<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Even N96s.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' N100s.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, you could do the N99s. But at the end of the day, it's just going to be too risky. Like, we have too many vulnerable people in our bubbles. And I can't afford to be quarantined and miss two weeks of work. And I work in a hospital. So, of course, first and foremost, everyone needs to be safe. And we have to also practice what we preach in terms of COVID safety. It was a painful decision. It really was because we have two paid events. We have a whole bunch of stuff scheduled. We were looking forward to getting together and doing it. But we just couldn't, in good faith, do it this year. So, we're coordinating with Derek from The Skeptic Track about what we're going to do. We're happy to stream something, stream a live show. We may be doing something for – Obviously, people will get refunded if you bought any kind of ticket. And we may do something special for you as well. We haven't had time yet to schedule out exactly what we're going to do. But we'll do what we can. Just everything will be streaming rather than live. And we're really hoping that this spike that we're seeing, which is– To put things into perspective, there are more cases now than there were at DragonCon last year when we didn't go.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, my gosh.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's worse.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, my gosh. Really?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Oh, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Like nationwide or just in Atlanta?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, nationwide. In terms of new cases per day, absolutely. If you look at the seven-day average, we're higher than at any point other than the winter spike that we just had. But we're heading there. Things are going up.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But what feels so different this time versus back then is that it's so heterogeneous. Like before, it was kind of like across the country. I mean, we're probably talking about country averages right now. But across the United States, on average, that was a good approximation of anywhere people live. But now it's like there are hot spots.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' What scared me was when we were talking about this and Steve said, it's not like we're coming over the hump and it's starting to go down. It's still going up at a very steep trajectory. So the scary thing is in two weeks, it could be a lot worse than it is right now.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, unfortunately. We need a certain amount of lead time to make the decision. I was waiting for it to turn around and it just kept going up. So we got to that point where we had to make a decision. So we're sorry to anyone who's inconvenienced by this. And as we always said, we may have to react to events on the ground. And that's what we had to do. And you're right, Cara, it is very heterogeneous. It's because the hot spots are where people are not vaccinated or where governors are taking an anti-masking stance or are fighting against public common sense public health measures. It's all about the public health measures now. It's very clear that that's happening. And the bottom line, too, is that the Delta variant, which, by the way, the Delta variant is 99.8% of new cases. It's basically that that's it, that COVID is now the Delta variant.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, boy.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's more infectious. And we're getting to waning immunity on our vaccines. I was vaccinated early. So even if, I mean, the vaccines are great at preventing people from getting really sick and getting into the hospital and dying, but it may not be doing as good a job with the Delta variant of preventing spread. And the Delta variant is much more contagious.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, and you and I, Steve, for example, I feel like I have to be even more vigilant than I was two months ago because I got my second dose in January.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, so we're six going on to seven months into getting vaccinated.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And boosters aren't available yet. You know, there's new guidance about that that I think we're going to talk about. But, like, I can't go get one tomorrow, so I need to be careful if my own immunity is waning.<br />
<br />
== COVID-19 Update <small>(4:54)</small> == <br />
<br />
'''S:''' So we can slide into that. So the COVID update for this week, we're not giving one every week. I know people are sick of talking about COVID. We're sick of talking about COVID. But this is an important update I thought we'd give. We talked about the open question of if and when boosters are going to be recommended for the vaccines. And so the Biden administration recently announced that they were going to recommend vaccines, boosters, at the, like, eight-month period for people who got the mRNA vaccines. The J&J vaccine started later, so they're still tracking that data. And now today, as we record this, a joint statement from pretty much everybody, Centers for Disease Control, the FDA, National Institutes of Health Fauci, David Kessler, who's the chief science officer for COVID-19 response, et cetera, et cetera, announced that everyone basically is recommending boosters for the Pfizer and Moderna mRNA vaccines. Starting in September and starting with vulnerable populations, but then opening it up to everybody. So they're still also, they're very clear about the fact that we're still pushing everyone to get their first vaccine. Like we need to get as many people as vaccinated as possible. But because of evidence of waning immunity, and because the Delta variant is more contagious, we think that the best way to, like, really our best chance of shutting down this pandemic is if we give boosters, to people who had those two vaccines. And they'll continue to track the J&J to see if that requires boosters as well.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I don't think this is something that I'm saying we here on the SGU need to have some sort of conversation about, because this is more of a moral question than anything else, that the WHO has come out and said, I don't think these rich countries should be talking about boosters while so many countries across the globe don't even have access to first doses.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I know that's a big deal.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. So it's like there's this issue where in the U.S. the mentality has grown among people who are looking at the evidence. The mentality has been, this is a a human induced disaster. COVID is not human induced, but the fact that we are seeing people still dying right now is because people are not getting vaccinated when they have ample access to vaccine. Whereas in other countries, it's not. People are dying because they can't get vaccinated because they can't get their hands on the vaccine. And so sort of what is the interplay there? It's something to think about. I don't think it should prevent any of us from if I go get my booster shot tomorrow, I don't think I'm in, unfortunately, a position where I could have taken that vax, put it in an envelope and mailed it across the globe and said, somebody else take this.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Take it if you can get it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Exactly.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's why in the same statement that they closed by saying, we will also continue to expand our efforts to increase the supply of vaccines for other countries, building further on the more than 600 million doses we have already committed to donate globally. So they recognize that and that's sort of their answer to the who. Don't worry. We're going to continue to give a lot of vaccines globally. We're going to donate them, but we also, it's like when you're on the plane, they say, parents put your own mask on before you put the one on yourself. Put your own mask on before you put the one on your child. It's like, we have to sort of take care of our economy and our country and our people. And yes, we will also give we will donate hundreds of millions, hopefully billions of vaccines to poor countries as well. And there's Russia, China, they can do that too.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And they are.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's not like it's only the US vaccines.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, for sure. For sure. And also even our vaccines are Pfizer is not, or Moderna, or are they both? They're combined with other countries. They were co-developed across nations. These are multinational companies. I think the frustrating part is that, yeah, we have the doses ready. They're in the pharmacy. Like as soon as we decided to get our act together, we got our act together here in the US and you can literally walk to the pharmacy and get your jab for free in most jurisdictions or in many jurisdictions. Yet people go, no, I'm not gonna.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh yeah. I mean, I went to, I went to the mall. They had an amazing setup there. There's seven, eight lines of, of traffic of areas where you can go in your car. You don't even get out of your car. It was so convenient in and out, like in 40 minutes. So easy and free.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And free. Yeah. I have to say my favorite messages are the ones that are coming in. I just got a direct message on Instagram. I'm not going to obviously list any names to protect privacy, but they wrote, hi, I'm about to get vaccinated. I've listened to you in the SGU talk about them, but have had, but have been all mixed up. I'm getting one now. Thank you so much.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, that's wonderful.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's like, those are the, those are the messages. Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We also talked over the last year and a half about what is the level of herd immunity for COVID? And of course we didn't, we don't know until we know, but the thing is, it seems pretty clear that the level of, of herd immunity, which is the number, the percentage of the population that needs to be vaccinated or resistant. So that the virus can't spread basically. And that number is different for different strains. And the fear is that for the Delta variant, it might be 95%. Like until we get 95% of the people vaccinated, we're not shutting this down.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' This not going to happen. No.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, I mean, it can't happen if we do mandates.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Of course it can.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, we do mandates.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' 95%. We have a 95% vaccination rate for school kids because it's mandated.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Right. Right.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Do you feel Steve, I mean, and this is like, it's, it's almost impossible for us to know. So we're prognosticating a little bit, but do you have a pretty sinking gut suspicion that this is just going to be our life now? COVID is going to be around, we're going to have variant, like a seasonal flu vaccine. Yeah. And there's going to be this weird thing where people either get sick, they die or they gain immunity. The people who choose not to get vaccinated and they're just walking around at risk because eventually we have to get back to being able to drink a coffee in public. We have to get back to being able to live a life that doesn't feel so restricted, but we're never going to get there until we get over this hump.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I mean, I've been tracking this question very closely. Again, I wrote earlier in the year that we probably have until this summer to shut own the the pandemic by get by having really high vaccination rates and we didn't do it. We just, we just flat out didn't do it. The variants beat us in the race. And now I think I'm not going to say there's no chance, but the now I'm reading more and more experts are saying, yeah, we probably missed our window. And I think this is going to be endemic now. It might be endemic largely among children because of school, et cetera. And we're just going to get like every year we get the flu vaccine, we're probably going to be getting a booster every year or whatever. And it's just going to be one more disease that we got to deal with.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yep. Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So-called endemic.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' You know, it's a really unknown situation because we don't know what the long-term effects are of a child getting COVID that's unvaccinated.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's true. But we do know that a lot of the mRNA vaccines at least, and maybe the others as well are actively in trials on young children right now.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I know, we got to get kids vaccinated.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. Like this, we dragged our heels for way too long on the question of whether or not kids can get vaccinated. And so like we need the answer and we need to get that going. Scary.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Absolutely.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Kids are getting sick. And not just that kids are getting sick, but they're spreading this thing like wildfire.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Of course, like kids do.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, exactly. Like kids do.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's what they do.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' One of my friends lives in Texas and his son went to school like day one, first day he went to school, he got a message from the school saying your child was exposed to someone that has COVID.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, of course. Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh my God.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' They probably had that message ready to fire off, ready to go. And just, they just had to confirm one case and they knew it was coming and boom, that was it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, we've seen jurisdictions have to shut down their track and trace efforts here in the state. We see they work so well in, in like Australia, New Zealand, you hear these amazing things on the story where there's like a case. And so we're, we're going into red alert and blah, blah, blah. And now we've tracked 11 people from that one case. So guys, we're back to not wearing or to not leaving our houses. But here you've seen jurisdictions be like, we can't track, like we have to shut down track and trace because literally everybody in the community is getting the alerts. Everybody's exposed all the time to someone who's had COVID because it's so rampant.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, let's move on to the news items.<br />
<br />
== News Items ==<br />
<br />
=== Philippines Approves Golden Rice <small>(13:21)</small> ===<br />
* [https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/philippines-approves-golden-rice/ Philippines Approves Golden Rice]<ref>[https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/philippines-approves-golden-rice/ Science-Based Medicine: Philippines Approves Golden Rice]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' And actually I'm going to start off with a news item that is very similar to what we were just talking about in that we have a science-based answer to a public health crisis that we're just, we don't have the political will to implement. And I'm talking in this case about golden rice. And we've talked about this on the show before. The good news is that the Philippines just gave approval for farmers to plant golden rice. So last year, January of 2020, the Philippines gave a regulatory approval to golden rice as safe. They said, okay, it's safe. People can eat it, but they didn't give the approval for farmers to plant it. So now they have, although it's a generic approval for golden rice, they still then have to give approval to specific cultivars with the golden rice GR2 gene, so there's still some steps before farmers are going to actually be planting it.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Red tape, you mean?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, it's all regulatory red tape at this point. I mean, the other thing that's not red tape is that someone has to actually produce the seed to give to farmers, but, and they may want to continue to develop local cultivars. Like, cause you can breed it with, with any, with lots of types of rice and breed the golden rice trait into other strains. And so we're going to want to like have it into as many local strains as possible because farmers are going to want to plant the best rice for their region and their market. And if golden rice is a cultivar, that's not the best for their region, then they might not want to plant it. It's got, we have to breed it with the ones they want to plant. I'm a little distant, in terms of my information network. And so it is one of those issues where there's a bit of a dichotomy, you're reading two different camps about like how good golden rice is and how, and how likely it is to get planted. But let me back up a little bit and just to give a quick, quick, quick review about what golden rice is. So golden rice was first developed in 1999 as a proof of concept. You know, we said, hey, these are the genes that would, we would have to put into rice in order to give them beta carotene, which is a precursor to vitamin A. And theoretically we can do this, get beta carotene into a staple crop as a way of treating vitamin A deficiency. Vitamin A deficiency is responsible for about a half of a million children a year going blind, 500,000 children a year. And half of them will be dead within a year of developing blindness from vitamin A deficiency.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So it's worse than just blindness.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. Oh yeah, yeah. So blindness is the big thing, but it also compromises the immune system so that they're more susceptible to other diseases. It's bad in a lot of ways. And then again, half of them actually die, within a year. Now there are already efforts underway to treat vitamin A deficiency with many methods. Probably the biggest effort is just direct supplementation, just distribute vitamin A supplements. And that has cut rates in half from what they were previously. Also trying to get farmers in different locations to plant crops that naturally have vitamin A in them. Plant sweet potatoes, so that's happening as well. But the numbers I gave you are with all of these efforts already fully underway, right? So the idea that we'll just keep doing that, it's like we aren't doing it and it's still a problem. It always reminds me, like there's so many analogies to other things, people who are anti-fluoridation will say, just brush with fluoride toothpaste. Like, well, we kind of already are doing that and that's already part of it.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, that's saturated.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's not as if people can't brush with fluoride toothpaste.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' With vitamin A.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So it's like, yeah, we're doing it. We're doing it. And it's not an, they always try to make it into an either or, but I'm getting a little bit ahead of myself. So for 20 years, what's been happening? Now, neither of the simplistic narratives are true. So some scientists, I think overstated the case by saying like golden rice was ready to go in 2002. And it's been a 20 year delay because of anti GMO nonsense. It's like, okay, that's only partly true. It's not the whole picture. It really wasn't ready to go in 2002. It was only version one was there. It wasn't really, didn't have enough beta carotene in it. They needed to develop version two. They needed to breed it with local cultivars, et cetera. There's a lot of stuff that had to happen. They had to go through the regulatory process. The question was like, how slowed was this whole process, which had to happen by all of the anti GMO activism. And that's a hard number to put, but from everything that I've read, I think it was significant. I don't think I can't put a number of years on it, but it's certainly significant. Significantly delayed the whole process. So like, you can't do things like trash field trials of golden rice as part of your anti GMO activism, and then say that that has nothing to do with the slow pace of progress. They slowed it at every turn. They possibly could tying it up in regulatory nonsense, opposing the research you're fighting, doing everything they can to, to move public opinion against it. Getting a band wherever they can. They did everything they could to frustrate the process. So it absolutely had an effect. If we were like full core press for this without all this nonsense, where would we be now? It's hard to say, but there's no reason scientifically why we couldn't be growing it right now. Let me just say that. Reading the backlash against the Philippines decision is like reading an anti-vaxxer, kind of a pushback. It is really all either logical fallacy, written spin, or it's factual lying, or even if they're not directly lying, they're giving a very specific implication that's not true. So for example, and most famously Greenpeace remains vehemently opposed to golden rice. This has been very controversial for them. Even like former members of Greenpeace have accused them of murdering children. You know, like it gets really bad. Not that there isn't some truth to that in my opinion. I think Greenpeace is just ideologically opposed and they make every bad argument there is against it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Which is a bummer because it undoes good work that Greenpeace does.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It totally does.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It really muddies the waters.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. Yeah. All right. So for example, they say that, that approving this GMO crop, right, they have to always-<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Of course.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' -emphasize that. Drag farmers down. Okay. Why is that going to happen? Yeah, how?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Just give them more opportunities to grow something.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. Yeah. Because this is the, so one of the logical fallacies they commit is the false choice combined with the Nirvana fallacy. You guys familiar with the Nirvana fallacy? It's like this option isn't perfect. So it sucks. Right. It's terrible. We can't do it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I literally just said that when I submitted my dissertation to my committee. I was like, usually I would say the perfect is the enemy of the good. In this case, I'm going to say the perfect is the enemy of the submitted.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Right.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's where I'm at right now.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, it's exactly, it's the perfect is the enemy of the good enough or the good or say, oh, vaccines aren't a hundred percent effective. So? So what? So they say that, well, really the problem is that, a lot of populations are over-relying on staple crops and they're not getting enough of a diversified, fruits and vegetables, et cetera. Like the purpose of rice is, has always been as a staple calorie source. It's never been the purpose of rice to be a source of micronutrients, be fruits and vegetables for that. It's like, okay, so we're going to fix poverty and transform the farming communities around developing worlds.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Food culture that has established over thousands of years.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So are so you work on that. Let's do that. But in the meantime, we're going to save millions of kids from blindness and that. Is that okay? Can we do that? In the meantime? It's like, and they always use it. You know, when the term band-aid comes up that somebody is making a bad argument, it's just a bandaid on the problem. And what's your problem with band-aids?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's right. It's gonna help until we can...<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You know, it's like, oh, these kids like they fall off their bike and they get, they scrape their knee and you just put a band-aid on it. It's like, yeah, that's right. Cause they scraped their freaking knee. And now if your problem is with bike safety, you go right ahead and address that. But while kids are scraping their knees, while kids are going blind and dying from vitamin A deficiency, we should try to fix it. And and using every method that we have at our disposal. Not pick, not these false choices. Like, no, we have to do this perfect solution of fixing everything and...<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Or nothing.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And it's not like-<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Which happens all the time.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Right, but those are the empty.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Perfect solutions are easy.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Unstated major premise there is that if we like, if we reduce the level of vitamin A deficiency, that's gonna somehow keep us from improving poverty or farming infrastructure. Why is that gonna happen? Are you saying that we're removing an incentive? No, we have to keep these kids blind and dying so that we have an incentive to fix the farming infrastructure. What's your point?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I know, and if that's the case, that is disgusting.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I mean, they don't say that outright, but that's like the logical implication of what they're saying. Otherwise, it's like-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Exactly, because if we can fix this problem, trust me, there's another one that's linked to poverty that we need to move on to as well. Like, this is not, yeah, this is multi-tiered and multi-layered.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So another thing they go for is the anti-corporate rhetoric. Right, so they say, for example, this is from Greenpeace. This latest development has once again exposed the DA's rubber stamp approval process. Really, years of slow approval of rubber stamps? For corporate-controlled GM crops, please. So the implication, they're not saying that green rice is corporate-controlled, but certainly that's the implication by putting it in a letter about, a statement about why you oppose golden rice.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, but interesting, is golden rice, like, patented?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So, there is a nuanced story, which I am about to tell you. But the thing is, the thing is, even more nuanced conversations about it almost always get the facts wrong, especially when they're opposed to golden rice. So here was an article, now in The Conversation, which is generally good, but it takes a pretty anti-golden rice stance. And in one statement, they say that the promise was that golden rice would be given free to farmers, which isn't true because no one's growing the rice to give free to farmers, so that kind of misses the point. And they said that the rights, the commercialization rights were acquired by Syngenta. So again, trying to create this sense that a big corporation owns it and is gonna commercialize it. And that statement is subtly wrong, but in an important way that puts a completely different paint job on it, right? So, this is what actually happened. Like many scientific breakthroughs, golden rice was developed by researchers in universities. It was Ingo Petraeus who developed this technology to begin with. And so universities are good at doing research breakthroughs in labs. They're not good at developing commercialized products, it's not what they do. So there is frequently a collaboration between universities and corporations. That's how it works, folks, right?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, they all have offices. What are they called, like the offices of resource development or something like that?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Oh my God, there's, yeah, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' They have like a whole structure that's all about helping individual researchers find the support that they need to patent the ideas that were born out of the university.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Right, researchers doing what they're doing and then the corporations take it and do what they need to do for distribution and other things.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But also, the researchers want their credit and they should get paid for some of this stuff.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And they do.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So it's all about, yeah, so it's all about-<br />
<br />
'''S:''' They get it, they're big, the university gets their big and the corporation makes, yeah, they make their money. And sometimes the researchers will like make a startup, go out on their own. Go, good for you. But sometimes they say, we can't do this, we need a corporation to do this for us. So what happened was Syngenta didn't acquire the commercialization rights for Golden Rice. It was given to them so that they could develop it into a product. They were helping out, essentially. So what, and what Syngenta did, because it has corporate infrastructure, is it acquired, or it put together, it acquired the licenses for all of the patents, with many, many GMO patents involved here, all of the ones that were necessary for a Golden Rice product to exist. They also developed it into the GR2, which is now the current version, which is actually I think, the viable version that has enough<br />
of the beta carotene in it. However, here's the thing, and you have to know this to understand the story. Well, so Syngenta now either owns or has a license to all of the necessary patents for Golden Rice, for GR2. And if they wanted to, they're the only company who can commercialize it, meaning make money off of it, but they have chosen not to. They have no plans to commercialize Golden Rice. What they did do with it was completely give a license to all of the necessary patents to any humanitarian outlet that wants to use it. And that's, which is now like, yeah, the International Rice Research Institute, right? So they said, all right, you guys, here's all the patents, you have them completely free, and you can but for humanitarian use. You can't commercialize, you can't turn around and sell this for profit.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right, it's like the polio vaccine.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Like that's kind of, I don't know what the red tape was, but that's kind of what was decided with the polio vaccine.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' This destroys every narrative that Greenpeace and the anti-GMO people have. So basically, Syngenta retains the commercial rights with no plans to ever use it, and they've given over all of the patent licensing for free for humanitarian use. And humanitarian use means, I'll tell you exactly what that means, use in developing countries, resource-poor farmer use, technology must be introduced into public germplasm, so the seed only, so public, you can't, again, you can't sell it. No surcharge can be charged for the technologies. In other words, if you sell the seeds, you can only sell them for what the rice costs. You can't charge it premium for the golden rice trait, right? So whatever that cultivar costs on the open market, that's what you can charge for it, no more. National sales are allowed by farmers, so they can sell within their own country. That's how you get the seed into urban areas, right? And farmers can reuse the seed. They own the seed. They totally own whatever seed that they create. What you can't do is export it for profit, because they want it to be grown and availablev and used in the developing countries where people need the nutrition.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That makes sense.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Sounds pretty good, right?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, it's basically like saying, we made a thing. The thing could help people. You can use it to help people, but the minute that you greedily start to make money off of the thing I made that I technically own, you can't do that anymore.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So Greenpeace characterizes that as corporate-controlled GM crop. Come on.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh my God.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And even saying that Syngenta acquired the rights to it makes it sound predatory. Like it's all a big con game. It's all bullshit. So anyway, it's available freely for humanitarian use.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That goes even farther than I expected, Steven. It also, like it makes me very happy, first of all. Like I feel good in my moral core, but at the same time, it sort of reminds me of some of these same arguments that you hear from anti-vaxxers, which are like, oh, I don't like how these pharmaceutical companies that funded all the research and development, by the way, of these vaccines, "own them". I don't think that's fair. And it's like, first of all, you can have that argument and you can get into the weeds with that, but do you think that should prevent us from vaccinating people right now? Hell no. How about we talk about that after-<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It's like two different arguments, really.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' we nip this global pandemic in the bud.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Right, and let's talk about destroying their motivation to do the research. Let's take the fruits of your research away so that in the future, you don't spend scores of millions of dollars to develop anything like it again. Let's do that, shall we?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's a longer argument, but the other thing is that anything that develops from, like if you use the golden rice seed that you're given for humanitarian uses, you develop a new cultivar out of it or something new from it. Syngenta still owns the rights, but those are automatically available for humanitarian use, too. So this covers anything that might even derive from it automatically falls under the humanitarian use agreement. What more do you want? What more do you want, right? Now, the other thing that Greenpeace does is they, and where have we seen this before, right? So after spending decades fear-mongering and turning as many people as they can against golden rice based upon lies and misconceptions and distortions, they then say, all these people don't want it. They don't want it because you've been fear-mongering about it. It's like-<br />
<br />
'''B:''' All these people aren't sure who won the election.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, that's what I was alluding to, Bob. It's like, yeah, well, people want to feel secure about the election that we've been spreading lies about. So anyway, it's exactly the same thing. It's like an organic farming does that, too. Like you sort of fear-monger about GMOs, then you go, and they literally said, farmers will be harmed if the GMO contaminates their other products and people want to buy them because they're GMO. Right? So it's like, so yeah, there's sort of some justify-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's like, and whose fault is that?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, it's like, they're justifying fear-mongering about GMOs because they've been fear-mongering about GMOs.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' See, we were right.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Because they're doing a good job at their smear campaign.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But the thing is, I still don't know what's going to happen. Bangladesh is also on the verge of kind of approving it, which is good. And a lot of objections also come from, well, we haven't proven this safe yet. It's the precautionary principle. It's safe. It's been demonstrated adequately enough to be safe. Yes, we haven't given it to millions of people yet because we haven't done it yet. It's like saying the vaccine's not proven safe when based upon the trials until we give it to 100 million people. We can't give it to 100 million people until we give it to 100 million people, you know?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' True. But there's also no face validity in that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' None.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's a completely different argument to say I'm worried about this vaccine, which as we know, vaccines can have safety issues. We've seen it before and we know about Epstein-Barr and we know about all these issues. Yet, we have done all the work to render this safe. It's rice. I mean, rice with vitamin A?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' What do they think the risk is versus the benefit?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' They don't, they can't even say. It's just the precautionary principle. We don't know for 100% sure that it's safe. So let's just forget about it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But it's not a drug. We don't have to do double blind, randomized controlled trials on rice. Nobody in the history of humanity has had to do that. It's just rice.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Not when we're enriching it with vitamins.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's food.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I know, but Cara.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It's not like we're putting steroids into the-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I know.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It's frankenfood.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' They didn't use any kind of logic to put themselves in the position that they're in. The whole thing is illogical from the get-go.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The thing to keep in mind is that not a single animal or human being has ever been harmed by a GMO ever. There's no evidence for a single organism being harmed by a GMO.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Right, right. Do you know how many times I hurt myself eating Doritos?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, like when you need to get the cut in the corner of your mouth and the salt.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Is that when you're eating them alone in a tent, Bob? No, shit, a hammock. A hammock, damn it. I screwed up my callback.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So I hope this works out well because it's not gonna solve all the problems in the world. It's not gonna even solve all of the vitamin A deficiency, but the estimates are that one cup of golden rice has about enough vitamin A for half of what a child needs, which that's good, half is better than none. Maybe they'll eat two cups of rice, who knows?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Two cups, there you go.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But I think anything we can do to chip away at such a horrible problem that affects poor kids in developing countries. That's the thing, the narrative is so bad for Greenpeace. It's so bad. It's like they're really struggling here and I think they're gonna lose this PR battle. I think they're gonna totally lose.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, because the only difference here is that the food, it's pre-fortified. It doesn't require a factory to fortify it the way that we do with many grains and cereals that are packaged. This actually allows us to cut out all of the expense of fortifying something after the fact, which clearly we haven't been able to do sufficiently in these countries. We're just pre-fortifying the seeds. Why is that not a good thing?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And there's research to fortify rice with zinc and iron and they could stack those. So now you're gonna have multi-nutritionally enhanced crop. See that? So again, every standard narrative that they use, like oh, this is only about profits or pesticides. Nope, this is not about profits. It's not about pesticides. It's not about big giant seed companies. No one's gonna make any money off of this. This is totally humanitarian. It's to help poor people. It's nutritional enhancement. No one is charging for the patents. There's no evil corporation involved. None of your narrative BS applies. And you know what I mean? And there's no safety issue. It's just nothing. They have nothing.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Right, but even though they have nothing, Steve, they have still fought and delayed this. The hope is that once this is successful, that the next time you step it up and you have something that's not the poster boy for GMO, like golden rice, it'll be a little bit easier, even though if it'll be easier for these people to decry it and say no, this is horrible. So I just hope.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I think this story will have a happy ending. I really do. And there's also, I wanna end on another bit of good news, which is tangentially related, because this is something we learned at NECSS. We had our researcher who's developing genetically modified bananas in Africa. Because of CRISPR and other technology, genetic altering technology, there is a separate category of gene-edited crops. Gene-edited crops have had their genes altered, but no new genes inserted, right? So genetic modification means you had a gene inserted.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, it's actually transgenics. Yeah, that's why genetic modification.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, it could be cis or trans. It could be a cisgenic or transgenic, but it's all still genetic modification. But there's a separate category of genetic editing where you're just editing the genes that are already there. In many countries, the United States, and I think Australia and some other countries, gene-edited crops are not considered GMO and are not regulated like GMO.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Good, they're not gonna have that label.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' They are regulated like just any other food.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Wow.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The big region that chose, unfortunately, I don't know if we talked about this on the show, they chose to categorize gene-edited crops as gene genetically modified, is the European Union. They're really anti-GMO there. And there's some other countries that haven't decided yet. So I hope that most of the undecided countries decide not to regulate gene-edited crops like genetically modified. And that could be a really good end run around the whole anti-GMO thing, because if all the regulations they've been fighting for don't apply, then it kind of scuttles it.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' And Steve, let me amend one thing you said. You said you think this is gonna have a happy ending. I wanna say that this is gonna have a partly happy ending, because of their delays and anti-science attitudes, kids have died and gone blind. That wouldn't have. That wouldn't have. So it can't be a real happy ending.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's almost certainly true. Hard to put a number on it, but it's almost certainly true. And they're still doing it. They're still trying to encourage farmers not to grow it. And then if they don't grow it, they say, well, it failed. People didn't want it. Yeah, because you fear-mongered about it. Just terrible. Okay, we're gonna move on to a completely different news item.<br />
<br />
=== Moore’s Law Beyond Silicon <small>(38:51)</small> ===<br />
* [https://scitechdaily.com/twilight-for-silicon-end-of-moores-law-in-view-as-silicon-chip-density-nears-physical-limit/ Twilight for Silicon? End of “Moore’s Law” in View As Silicon Chip Density Nears Physical Limit]<ref>[https://scitechdaily.com/twilight-for-silicon-end-of-moores-law-in-view-as-silicon-chip-density-nears-physical-limit/ SciTech Daily: Twilight for Silicon? End of “Moore’s Law” in View As Silicon Chip Density Nears Physical Limit]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' Jay, you're gonna tell us about Moore's Law. Is it finally coming to an end? What do you think?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Well, I'm sure you guys have heard of Moore's Law. Gordon Moore, who created Moore's Law, is a co-founder of Fairchild Semiconductor and Intel, a company you may have heard of. He predicted from observation that the number of transistors on a microchip, and you can call this the transistor density, will double every two years. Right, you've heard this. And his prediction has been consistently correct since 1975, or has it? Or has it?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I was told it was correct.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Right, because it just became-<br />
<br />
'''S:''' On average.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Roughly correct, yeah, on average.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' But it did certainly sound like every two years, very predictable that the density would double, and then the cost would, they say it halves, meaning that you're getting more for less money. Because consistently, the prices kind of stay the same, but you're getting more for that same amount of money. So anyway, researchers at the Rockefeller University published a paper in a journal called PLOS One, P-L-O-S One, that clarifies the actual reality of the transistor increase over the years. So now we're going back to 1959. The researchers discovered that there were six waves of microchip improvements. Each wave lasted for about six years, and during each six-year wave, the transistor density increased at a minimum by 10, right? So it went up an order of magnitude. So then after the six years of growth during that wave, there was about three years of mostly no improvement.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' A plateau, sort of.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, it was like roughly a nine-year cycle. Somebody, an engineer comes up, group of engineers come up with some type of insight, and they say, hey, we can modify it this way and that way, increase the density, and by the time they bring it to market and everything, it takes a lot of time to do that. They don't just come up with it and they're pumping these things out. Like they literally have to retool factories and stuff to be able to do these types of things. And then as that new improvement becomes common and they proliferate the chips out, there's a period of time where there's a cool down and there isn't so much innovation going on. So it makes a lot of sense from an engineering perspective. According to this trend, we're currently now overdue for the next wave of improvements. And I'm ready, let's do it. All right, come on, don't make me wait.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Jay's ready.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So we have an incredible demand for smaller and more powerful processors. As this proliferation of computers continues, everything has got a computer chip in it, right? It's remarkable how many computers, if you want to like label something as a computer because it has a processor, we have computers all around our house. They're everywhere.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Even vaccines have chips in them.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Wow, come on.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Come on, come on.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh wait, that's a secret, sorry.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So I don't know if you guys know this, but there happens to be a global chip shortage right now. Now the chip shortage has been accelerated by the COVID pandemic, both because, why? Demand went up during the pandemic and manufacturing took a hit at the same time. So the beginning of the chip shortage can be blamed back on the automotive industry. When car sales dropped, the automotive industry buyers canceled a lot of chip orders. We go, hey, we don't need as much as we were gonna order because we think that sales are gonna be bad over the next couple of years. But the car sales didn't really go down that much. And as they anticipated, so they ended up placing back these huge orders for more chips. And the chip manufacturers were actually affected by this yo-yo because they're trying to scale their manufacturing to meet demand. You don't want to have more manufacturing than demand, and you surely don't want to have more demand than manufacturing. So every company is trying to balance these two things at the same time. So that had an effect. Now, other factors that affected chip production, as an example, like the power outages in Texas, right? Samsung's semiconductor manufacturing operations are in Austin, Texas. And when the power went out, hey, the factories got shut down because, hey, that's the way electricity works. So another major chip manufacturer called TSMC in Taiwan was having manufacturing interruptions due to a severe drought. And yet another factor is the US-China trade war. So some companies in China have been stockpiling chips and other needed components since 2020. So you add all these things up and the really scary truth here is that we have Samsung and TSMC, these two different manufacturers, they make the bulk of the processors that the world uses. And these two companies are literally, right now, they're maxed out as far as production goes. Big companies like Microsoft, Sony Nvidia that makes the graphics cards for computers, AMD and Apple rely on these chips from these suppliers to build their products. They don't make the chips themselves. People who needed to work from home, as an example, led to more computer sales because of the pandemic and more game consoles were being sold over the pandemic. And graphics cards are now, and even cell phone, the chips that go in cell phones, all of these different manufacturers in all of these products are feeling the chip shortage. And let's not forget, of course I have to mention that cryptocurrency miners who now are largely using PC graphics cards to mine new cryptocurrency, right? So they use these GPU processors because they're super powerful and they happen to be very good at running the calculations that need to be done to do crypto mining. So if you go on Amazon and look up the price of a typical graphics card for a PC, the cost could be three times that of MSRP, right? The manufacturer suggested retail price, let's say, as an example, a good high-end graphics card should cost about a thousand dollars. That's what the manufacturer says. Well, guess what? It's about three grand right now. And the SGU needs a couple right now for the studio. And Ian and I have been like, nope, we are not paying three grand for a graphics card. No way. That thing would have to like do the lawn, wash my car and do the laundry while it's running the computer, you know? So a lot of different sectors and consumers are feeling the CPU, or I'm sorry, the chip shortage. Now, building new factories seems like an obvious fix to the problem. Well, you know what? Yeah, of course, that's what they're trying to do, but this costs billions of dollars and it takes many years to create a brand new factory. Like, it's not like, hey, let's just throw up a building here. Like, we're talking about incredibly precise machinery that has to go in. It takes a long time to put one of these types of facilities together. You have to staff it. It's like these people are, it's not like there's these people falling out of the woodwork. You gotta train people to be able to even just run the machinery and do all the heavy lifting. It's a big freaking deal to build another plant that can make more chips. And they're doing it because they wanna meet the demand, but it's not gonna be a quick change in the short term. Like, we're gonna be stuck in this zone probably a couple more years. So on top of the shortage, experts are saying that the chip advancements themselves, so let's go back to talking about just the chips increasing their transistor density, right? The advancements that we want to have happen, they're saying that historically, we got about two more waves left before we hit the physical limits of miniaturization for silicon-based chips. So it'll begin to cost exponentially more money to make gains, and the gains will start to significantly decrease. So right now, they're moving at a pace and everything seems to be as normal, but we could tell by the physics of what's happening on the silicon chip that we just can't keep doing it, that it's gonna be an unfixable physical limit. There's nothing that we can do to get past it other than developing new technology. So what is that technology? Here we go. Now we're getting into technologies that don't really exist yet, but we are working on. Companies are working on it. Probably billions of dollars are being dumped into these ideas, like nanotransistors, right? Nano means at a certain microscopic scale. Nanotransistor is incredibly small. I also read about atom transistors, atomic transistors, which are probably using the bare minimum number of atoms to create a transistor, like an electrical transistor, amazing. And then we have quantum computing. Now don't get me freaking started. Bob, Steve, and I have done an incredibly deep dive on quantum computing for our book that's coming out.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Which, by the way, is completely written and sent off to my agent.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Wo-hoo!<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No way.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' All right.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Very soon, the first draft is totally done, coming out probably first quarter in 2023.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Quantum computing isn't gonna be like this thing that replaces your PC. A quantum computer is gonna be like a super, super, super, super computer that you rent a very small amount of time to use to do your processing. And then another company will rent it for another short amount of time. But there's not gonna be like millions of these quantum computers all over the world. They have to actually have almost absolute zero in a component inside of it just to, whatever, don't even. I can't even. I could say everything that they say about it. I don't understand it. That's how complicated it is.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Your OS is not gonna be on a quantum computer. It's not just, certain things it's very, very good at that you don't do normally. So researchers will love it.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' We might have nanotransistors in some future CPU. But right now, we don't know what's gonna happen. We literally don't know. Like we have, again, we have a certain number of years that we could predict that we're gonna be able to continue the same progress. But Moore's law is gonna end when we hit the physical limit and it's gonna be in most of our lifetimes, we're gonna see that limit get hit. And then luckily, hopefully, there'll be this elegant transition to a new technology to keep the pace. But you know what? It might not happen.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' At some point, the physics has limits. You can only get so hot and so fast until you create a computer that's so dense and hot that you create a black hole. I mean, there's limits. There are limits, but I think we're pretty far away from limits. But I mean, I think if memory serves, I think some of the fastest computations that could potentially be done, I mean, they're talking like 10 to the 50 computations, calculations per second, something like that. I could be off by a little bit, but that's, so there are limits, but we're not near there. But eventually, we will hit the limits. And knowing what those limits are, I think is fascinating.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Well, Bob, when they say there's two more waves, just following the pattern that we've had in the past, the waves there's six years of progress and growth and three years of kind of stagnation. So that's we're talking 18 years. We're due for a wave right now, following the pattern. So we right now, and then go forward nine years, and then we have another wave, and then we're kind of at the end.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But here's the thing though, Jay, is that while technological advancements is not linear, problems are also not linear. And I think we were talking about this before. You were pointing out the fact that getting more and more transistors onto a computer chip is harder and harder to do. It's a nonlinear problem. That means it takes an incredible amount of more work and research and development to make the same amount of advance as you go forward. And we're just getting to the sort of steep part of the curve where it's really hard to push forward. And also that nonlinear aspect of the problems themselves is also not evenly distributed because you reach bottlenecks or hurdles that you need to get over. And so what you're saying is we're getting to a hurdle where it's just linear advancements, incremental advancements, not going to do it. We need a new paradigm. And nobody knows what that is until we know what it is. And sometimes it doesn't happen, you know? The coming hydrogen economy never came because we never got over the hurdles. And will we do it in the future? Who knows? You can't predict those things.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Does this invalidate Moore's law because we're running up against this hurdle?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' No, I mean, Moore's law is works with-<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It's more of a guideline.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' You know, yeah, it is a guideline and it was never meant to be infallible forever. And the transition from one paradigm to the next, who knows what the next paradigm is? We've been lucky to relatively easily go from one paradigm to the next. But at some point, who knows, after silicon, we could potentially go for a couple of decades or more without something that really allows us to pace again and keep going. I mean, we're really approaching some fundamental limits with silicon and it can't tweak that forever. And some people thought that it would have ended, even before today, but we're getting near to the end and hopefully there's another paradigm coming.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Well, the good news is that human ingenuity is incredibly powerful. You know, we have people all over the world. And again, these companies are spending billions of dollars doing R&D and that's what we need. That's why a healthy economy is so powerful because it allows companies to invest money into these technologies, like the mRNA platform. Like we were lucky that the money was there for these companies to put the time and energy into developing that platform because we needed it. You know what I mean? Like there came a time when we really needed it. Computer processing, the more powerful computers we have, the more we can do and the more incredible things that we can get hardware and software to do for us in our lives. So the need is there, the money is there. It's just, we just got to hope that the ingenuity is there to make it happen.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We just need the nerds.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yep.<br />
<br />
=== Brain Organoids with Eyes <small>()</small> ===<br />
* [https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-used-stem-cells-to-make-mini-brains-they-grew-rudimentary-eyes Scientists Grew Stem Cell 'Mini Brains'. Then, The Brains Sort-of Developed Eyes]<ref>[https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-used-stem-cells-to-make-mini-brains-they-grew-rudimentary-eyes Science Alert: Scientists Grew Stem Cell 'Mini Brains'. Then, The Brains Sort-of Developed Eyes]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' Cara, so you sent me this news on it, but I had already seen it. It's very cool. I mean, I couldn't resist brain organoids with little eye cups.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Tell them what's going on.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's really cool. Okay, they really look like, let me describe what they look like first. They look like little egg yolks. Yeah. They're not egg yolks, because they're clumps of cells, they're brain organoids. And they've got these little brownish, blackish, almost like a snowman with coal eyes. That's what it looks like, except it's under the microscope. So now that you can envision that, hold that image in your head while we talk about this. This is based on a study that was published in Cell Stem Cell. The name of the study, which kind of has a lot of weight to it, is human brain organoids assemble functionally integrated bilateral optic vesicles. What does that mean? Let's break that down. We've talked before about organoids, right? They're these little brain-like things that can be grown in vitro, outside of the animal, from induced pluripotent stem cells. So let's break that down. We know what stem cells are. They're cells that can become things. They're precursor cells that aren't the things that they're going to become yet. Pluripotent means they can become lots of different things. They're not dedicated to becoming one thing. Induced pluripotent stem cells mean that we've backward engineered adult, or not adult, but older cells to be able to go back to that kind of primordial form to then be able to become whatever we induce them to become. So these are induced pluripotent stem cells that were utilized to derive human brain organoids. Okay, so this is not new, brain organoids, but it's really cool. And so any study where they did something cool with brain organoids is already interesting, but this one has eye spots. You know, sometimes they refer to them as optic cups. Sometimes they're calling them optic vesicles. I think the issue here is that this isn't a real brain. It's a blob outside of the organism that was grown into brain-like tissue. So because it is an organoid, they're also not eyes. They're eye-like things.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' They're eyeoids.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, they're eyeoids, opticoids. So in the study, they refer to them over and over again as optic vesicles, but in all the write-ups, they refer to them as optic cups. And I think that's because when you look at the actual anatomics of what an optic cup is, it's the little disc-like shape where the retina would eventually sit in and grow from. So-<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Is it concave?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, yeah, it's like a little cup.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It's like a primitive, it's like a very primitive eye, then, that's what primitive eyes were like that.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' A good way to put this is that it is kind of like a primitive eye. I mean, it's sort of that ontogeny and phylogeny, you know, question, right? We're here talking about development. We're not talking about evolutionary change, but you do see that it's not a perfect metaphor, but that some of the things that happen developmentally also happen when we talk about evolutionary development. And you're right, there are organisms, or historically, there were organisms that had very simple eye spots. These brain organoids grew these very simple eye spots. But here's the coolest thing about it. This is the first time it's ever been done out of the brain organoid. So other researchers have grown primitive eye-like things, optic vesicles. Other researchers have grown brain organoids. These researchers grew brain organoids, and then they were like, hmm, I wonder what would happen if we add some of the factors that are necessary for these eye spot things to grow. I wonder how they would grow in conjunction with these cells. And so they tried it out, and it worked. And it worked in something like 73% of the 300-some-odd attempts that they made. So it's reproducible.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I don't find that surprising at all, because, I mean, aren't your eyes essentially like pieces of your brain?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Extensions of your brain.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, so eyes-<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It's really what they are.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I wouldn't call it brain, but it is definitely central nervous system.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's central nervous system.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, so because your eyes do have nerve cells in them, right, and they're central nervous system cells, so there's a lot of different types of cells in your retina. In this case, they were looking a lot at retinal, thought they were looking at retinal ganglion cells, but they're also looking a lot at the pigment epithelia. And the cool thing about these eye spots is as they started to learn more about them, they started to see a lot of things that are reminiscent or that tap into more mature, organized eyes. So first things first, around day 30 of these little brain organoids growing, they started to see the optic vesicles being assembled. And then by day 60, they were visible structures. So they could see them kind of at the cellular level by day 30. By day 60, they were like, holy crap, that looks kind of like an eye, which is really cool. And when they looked at these kind of the structures and what was going on cellularly within these optic vesicle containing brain organoids, they found corneal epithelial cells. They found cells that look like lens cells. They found retinal pigment epithelia. They found progenitor cells. So things that would eventually grow into retina. They found little projections that look like the axons of these neurons. They even found that they were electrically active. So here's a cool thing. If they turned on the lights or turn them off, they would respond. So they were photosensitive. They were able to photo bleach them and reset their photosensitivity. So it wasn't just a one-time thing. They were continuously working and able to detect light. And all of this happened in a self-organized way. Like that's the really cool thing. So they're putting off certain factors that you only will see in eyes. Like they're putting off myelinated neurons. They even developed microglia, like things that are always gonna be developing within brain and within these eye structures. And it did it in a kind of self-assembling way. So I always find that's a really cool thing. It's like if you give it all the ingredients, it starts to do what it has learned to do throughout human evolution.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Self-organization. Cara, when I talked about organoids, I mentioned that the stem cells were reprogrammed. Was there any?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, these are too. That's the difference between induced pluripotent and pluripotent cells that are maybe taken out of embryonic tissue early enough on in development. So they're induced to go back to their pluripotent stem cell state. So they haven't been organized into anything.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, so that's what they meant by reprogrammed.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that's probably what they referred to when they said they were reprogrammed.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, it makes sense.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, so of course they can become anything. They're inducing them to become brain-like by giving them the types of factors, the types of like proteins and different signals to grow into brain. And so in this case, they said let's do the same thing but with eye, but let's do it in the brain or the organoid of the brain and see what happens. And it was like, sure, we'll make eyes. And the other cool thing is the eyes were bilateral and they were symmetrical.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, that's interesting. Why not one? Why didn't it develop just one eye or eyeoid?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It must be that these instructions, these ingredients are, I mean, because remember, these have DNA. These are pluripotent stem cells, but they still have all of the blueprints to make life. And so even though in the lab, researchers can say, you guys can become whatever you're gonna become. Let's give you a couple little indicators of to what you should become based on like the food that we give you, based on the molecules that we're putting within your cellular environment. And then they start to grow into brain or they start to grow into liver or they start to grow into whatever they're inducing them to grow into. In this case, brain/eye or first brain, then eye. But our DNA tells our eyes how to develop. Our DNA tells our body. It is a blueprint for what "should happen". And when I say should, I mean, what is viable. Our DNA has done a lot of trial and error. And our DNA says, let's make two eyes. The interesting thing is, do we know exactly how that works? I don't know.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Just to put a 64,000 foot view on this. When you think about it from one perspective, the brain itself, a fully developed brain contains orders of magnitude more information than the genes that code for the brain.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So where does all that extra information come from? That's because the genes are not a blueprint. The genes don't say put a neuron here, connect it to this neuron with these. It doesn't do that. It's just a set of rules for this self-organization. And then the brain self-organizes it based upon its environment, its connections, and its feedback. So part of it is what we call-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And all that happens chemically and electrically.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So it's putting off these different factors. It's firing in certain patterns. And the cells around it are going, that's interesting. I might go to there. Or I want to now fire just like you fired. And eventually, yeah, we do start to see structures form. And we start to see pathways, like actual circuits being formed. Yeah, anatomy and physiology.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, and that's where all this extra information comes from, the developmental process itself. So with the organoid, you're just getting a clump of cells that's not in the right environment. It's not connected to the rest of the body. It's not getting the sensory feedback and all that stuff that it would normally get. Survive longer, because normally they would-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, these are tiny. But you don't really need a blood supply if you can give it everything that it needs. Like if it's small enough-<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, it'd have to be very small.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That you can feed it medium. So if you're growing stuff in vitro, usually you're growing it in a dish that has liquid around it. And you're-<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's its energy source.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, you're feeding it medium, yeah. So like when I used to grow monolayer nerve cell networks, that was all of my research at my master's level. They weren't organoids. There was no such thing as an organoid back then. But they were flat nerve cell networks that would self-organize. You would just kind of stick some cells in the middle, and they would start to grow into a network on their own, because they had everything they needed to do that. But they lived in dishes, in incubators. And every two days, I would have to take off liquid and put in fresh liquid. And that liquid had all sorts of things, growth factors, it had sugars, it had vitamin C, it had all the nutritional components to keep the cells alive.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Right, that's great for flat cells. But when you've got like a million cell clump of organoid tissue, the ones that I talked about a couple of years ago, they would die after just three days without a blood supply.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I could see that if they were big, I mean, these are still microscopic. They're small. So if they're floating in this liquid, I think that they're getting what they need. But you're right. It's probably gonna limit the size until you can start to deliver vasculature, or some sort of, what would you call it? Like a PICC line, or some sort of a stint, a shunt? A tube to get to the innermost layers. Otherwise, you're right, it would die because the middle wouldn't be fed.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' You'd feed them golden rice.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, but these are small. So yeah, I think that's an interesting question, Bob. Like eventually, if you want to start modeling like different areas of the brain or different structure, this is so simple. I don't wanna say it's homogenous because it's probably not homogenous. I have no idea if there's any kind of self-organization happening within this glob of cells, but it seems to be the fact that they sort of developed the way they were gonna develop, and then they didn't want to, they used the same protocols they had been using to make organoids before. It looks like it's a four-brain organoid. And then they added retinol acetate to the medium after it had started to develop in order to aid eye development.<br />
<br />
=== Fusion Advance <small>(1:04:58)</small> ===<br />
* [https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/17/lawrence-livermore-lab-makes-significant-achievement-in-fusion.html A national lab just achieved a ‘Wright Brothers moment’ in nuclear fusion]<ref>[https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/17/lawrence-livermore-lab-makes-significant-achievement-in-fusion.html CNBC: A national lab just achieved a ‘Wright Brothers moment’ in nuclear fusion]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, Bob, tell us about the latest advance in fusion energy.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, fusion news this week. The United States National Ignition Facility, which we've talked about, claims an important milestone recently in fusion power research that one researcher dared to call a Wright Brothers moment. So what happened? Is it really a Wright Brothers moment? Yeah, I totally get it, Steve. We will talk about that. I may have to slightly disagree, but all right. So fusion power research is, of course, considered one of the holy grails of energy research. You know, the fuel is essentially limitless, virtually zero carbon emissions without most of the downsides of fission. This is just such an amazing thing that I've been waiting most of my life for. So fusion very simply, very, very simply combines elements to create a new element plus a little bit of energy. That's probably the simplest explanation of fusion I could think of. So in my opinion, though, there's four types of fusion that people should know about. Assuming that the word fusion doesn't make your eyes glaze over, much the way the words DragonCon and NCC-1701 makes Cara's eyes glaze over. So number one, there's stellar fusion, which occurs in our sun and all stars for that matter, all stars, and it's kind of important. It's the main reason why there's such a massive local decrease in entropy around us, allowing our life to exist. Next, there's thermonuclear fusion. That's a fusion that occurs at the heart of a thermonuclear or a so-called hydrogen bomb explosion, right? Did you know that fusion actually is happening there? Of course, we need fission to make that fusion happen, but you know, it doesn't matter. The next two types of fusion, though, are mediated by technology, and we've been researching them as power sources for decades. There's two primary branches of fusion energy research, magnetic confinement fusion, which essentially uses magnetic fields to combine the fusion fuel in the form of a plasma. Tokamaks are magnetic confinement. There's also a stellarator, and there's also a z-pinch options as well, and you may have heard of ITER and SPARC, MIT SPARC. Those are tokamaks, those are toruses, donut-shaped. So today's news item is about the second branch of mainstream fusion energy research, and this is inertial confinement fusion. This technique is laser-based, which makes it very cool, and it essentially uses many converging laser beams to force a symmetrical implosion that can compress isotopes of hydrogen that can force, then, fusion to occur. So this is the technique that NIF uses, and they hit a dramatic milestone this past August 8th, a few days before Jay's birthday. So imagine a pea-sized capsule filled with hydrogen isotopes, and that's suspended in a small container. That container is called a horcrux. No, sorry, it's called a holdrum. It's a holdrum.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I don't get it. It's okay.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Harry Potter.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Go ahead, go ahead.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' So they hit it with 192 separate ultraviolet laser beams, packing a wallop of 1.9 million joules, megajoules. This bombards the capsule with X-rays that compresses the fuel to something like, get this, 100 times the density of lead, making it hotter than the center of the sun, 100 million degrees. So this creates a tiny piece of plasma. When I say tiny, I mean, this little hotspot is so tiny. Imagine a sphere with the width of a human hair. Within that area, we're talking within 100 trillionths of a second, they ignited, essentially, 10 quadrillion watts of fusion power. Amazing. Now, of course, it's for a very, very, very tiny speck of time, but it's still, that's a lot of fusion power and very encouraging. So now this record-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Can they capture it?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I mean, they, it's, well, they captured it for 100 trillionths of a second. It was there.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But I think what Cara's asking, Bob, is were they able to use that heat constructively?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, what can we do?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, can we harness it?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' No, I mean, it's not-<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, they haven't figured out how to do that yet.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' They used it to measure it. Like, how much, how much is there? Okay, got it. That's all that matters at this point. So now, this is dramatic. This is very impressive. It's actually impressing pretty much everyone, even diehard skeptics. Now, keep in mind, before I go any further, these results have not been peer reviewed, but the researchers claim that their experiment released 1.3 megajoules of energy, which is about five times the 250 kilojoules that were absorbed by the capsule. That's, if you think about that, that's pretty solid. So let's go, let's look at it this way. So in terms of improvement, one year ago, their best yield was 52,000 joules. Six months ago, it was 170,000 joules. Last week, it was 1.35 million joules. So this is where they've gone in one year. So that's eight times more than six months ago, and 25 times more yield than last year.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' How far can we go, or they go?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Well, yeah, well, you shall find out. So that's 70% of the energy delivered to the hydrogen capsule, and that's important because it shows two things. All right, pay attention. One, the NIF scientists believe they've reached a milestone called burning plasma. Wasn't, I really hadn't heard about this one before. So this means that the fusion reactions are providing enough heat for more fusion to happen. Think about that. There was enough heat so that more fusion was happening. Burning plasma means that the reactions themselves provide the heat for more fusion to happen. And it also means that for the first time, we are now seeing the beginnings of a self-sustaining reaction, fusion reaction, the very beginnings of that happening. So now reaching that milestone is important, not only because you could do new types of research on this type of plasma, but it also means that we are on the cusp of the holy grail of fusion power, one of the holy grails, the ignition point, ignition. Now, ignition point means that a nuclear fusion reaction has become truly self-sustaining. It doesn't just quickly peter out. It just keeps going and going. Well, I mean, whatever fuel's there is gonna burn, so make sure your fuel is kept away from the kids. So now, ignition happens when the heat from fusion overwhelms any of the cooling mechanisms that are trying to spoil our fun. And I was gonna-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' God, that sounds really scary.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's a controlled hydrogen bomb, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Right, exactly. And there's a real nice tangent I can go on into here, but that would take too much time. So now external heat, external energy is no longer needed to bring the fuel to fusion temperatures so that you could turn off the lasers and let the fusion do its thing. So now once we've reached that point, that's a Nobel Prize right there, and there'll be a lot of drunk scientists when you see in the paper that ignition point has been reached. So we haven't reached break-even or ignition yet at the NIF, but the dramatic improvements of the past year are not only encouraging, but have brought us to the cusp of ignition, to the ignition point. In fact, Stephen Bodner, who's a retired plasma physicist and critic of NIF, said, I'm surprised they have come close enough to their goal of ignition and break-even to call it a success. He's basically saying that this is essentially a success of their mission, which was to hit ignition. They're so close to ignition, in his opinion, that they may as well call it a success. Stephen Bodner also said that this demonstrates to the world that there's no fundamental reason why laser fusion can't work. And if anything, that might be the big takeaway here, that this really shows that we're so close that it essentially proves that laser fusion works. So let's go to the quote, and this is the quote from Omar A. Hurricane. He's Chief Scientist for the Inertial Confinement Fusion Program at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. He said, our result is a significant step forward in understanding what's required for it to work. To me, this is a Wright Brothers moment. So, okay, Wright Brothers moment. So yeah, this is definitely a statement designed to make headlines and get clicks. If we had reached the ignition point, I'd have no qualms at all about that statement. But yeah, so it's a little bit much, but I will say this. The comparison he's making is not complete horse hockey, as Colonel Sherman T. Potter used to say. It's not. The Wright Brothers showed that powered flight is possible, right? That's basically what the Wright Brothers did. Look it, powered flight is a thing.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, but they actually flew, though. This is like saying that their plane design worked in an air tunnel.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, but didn't they only fly at the beginning for like three seconds?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' No, Steve, I'm conceding that they did not hit ignition. But my point is, I believe you can certainly argue that these results, if verified, show that inertial confinement is very likely a viable method of fusion. Like I said, they are so close to ignition that you could, at this point, and some scientists are agreeing, they're saying that we're basically there at this point. There's really nothing in our way to get to ignition. Now, it doesn't mean that this will be a practical power source on a large scale. Not at all. It just means that we could hit the ignition point. Just like Kitty Hawk didn't necessarily prove that hypersonic jet fighters were inevitable. They did not prove that. This may not be a viable method. It may turn out that this type of inertial confinement won't work, and that the more direct method of inertial confinement, which I didn't get into, maybe that's the one that will work, and some scientists believe that. Or maybe inertial confinement will never be practical, and we need to use a tokamak. So nothing's inevitable here, but they are so close to that goal of ignition that it basically proves, because a lot of people were skeptical about inertial confinement, that they would never get there. And I think this kind of shows that no, they are so close. They are pretty much there in some sense. But, so I'll end with Professor Jeremy Chittenden, who is co-director of the Center for Inertial Confusion Studies at Imperial College London, who said it best, I think, with literally no exaggeration. He said, the pace of improvement in energy output has been rapid, suggesting we may soon reach more energy milestones, such as exceeding the energy input from the lasers used to kickstart the process, essentially ignition. So yeah, he put it in the most realistic way, that their progress has been so rapid that it suggests that we can, we may soon reach that other, that next milestone of ignition for inertial confinement. So here's to the potential death of that 50-year-old joke, which is a dig at fusion, that fusion is 50 years away and always will be. I think that joke is gonna have to die or be severely modified at some point. Because the progress we've been making, even with other methods of fusion, I think they're making such, I mean, it's incremental, for sure, it's incremental, but at some point you have enough incrementals where you're you could say that this looks like it's gonna happen, for sure, at some point in the near future. And they're essentially at the cusp. I wouldn't be surprised if they hit ignition in two or three years.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So I will, I think that's all reasonable, Bob. Again, my one caution-<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Good, I've achieved my goal, then.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Is that, and this has been true of the-<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yes, that last little bit, right? That last 5%, right?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's problems are nonlinear. It takes more and more and more energy to get the plasma contained at higher temperatures and densities. And it's not a linear problem. It's like every incremental improvement is twice as hard as the previous incremental improvement. And that's why 70 years ago, they thought it was right around the corner because they were extrapolating from linear progress that they were making early on. Then they were like, oh no, this is getting, every little step we take is getting twice as hard. And so it took a lot longer than they thought. So while we might be technically close, we don't know how difficult that next step is gonna be. And that's why until we make it, I'm not ready to pop the quarks.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, I'm not popping them either. I hear you.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Bob, am I to take from this, because I understood 30% of the words you used, is am I to take from this that we may not even be close, but we now know it's actually possible?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' No, I mean, we are close. I mean, they're basically 70% of the energy was returned.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Okay, so we're close, but we also know now we have a very solid proof of concept that we didn't have before.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yes, a very solid proof of concept.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Okay, which is a big deal.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Right, yeah. So basically they went from 3% to 70% in a couple years. I mean, this is such a dramatic increase. They're clearly on the right path here. But Steve, yeah, Steve, you're right. Typically in a lot of these situations, that last 5% takes 1,000 times the effort it took you to get to 95%, right? And that can certainly happen. They may find that that sphere needs to be so perfect that they can't get it perfect enough to make the implosion perfectly symmetrical. And there's always gonna be like plasma squeaking out somewhere because of an asymmetry, like I was talking about with the neutron stars. That's certainly possible. But a lot of these scientists are so happy and they think that they're so close that it's almost a proof of concept of inertial fusion itself, inertial confinement.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' You forgot the fifth fusion, cold fusion.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, that has entered my mind a couple times this afternoon, so I'm not gonna talk about it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, the fifth fusion, the one that doesn't exist.<br />
<br />
== Who's That Noisy? <small>(1:18:25)</small> ==<br />
{{anchor|futureWTN}} <!-- this is the anchor used by "wtnAnswer", which links the previous "new noisy" segment to this "future" WTN --><br />
<br />
{{wtnHiddenAnswer<br />
|episodeNum =840 <!-- episode number for previous Noisy --><br />
|answer =Wood carving <!-- brief description of answer, perhaps with a link --><br />
|}}<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay, all right, Jay, it's who's that noisy time.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' All right, guys, last week I played this noisy. [plays Noisy] Man, I was so sure that somebody was gonna guess this one, but nobody guessed it, so let's look at what we got sent. I don't know, you guys have any guesses about this?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Sounds like something rotating.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I'm so bad at this game. Sounds like something screaming.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Something trying to start up, like a crank.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Well, we had a guest from Shane Hillier, and he said, hi, Jay, for today's who's that noisy, I definitely hear ice cracking. That makes me think it's a guy ice skating on thin ice, but the noisy sounds too aggressive for the sound of skates, so I'm going to guess a guy sawing through ice on a lake. So this is kind of like the beginning of the movie Frozen, but that's not-<br />
<br />
'''E:''' No, I didn't see it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I've never seen that movie.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Oh, God, it's so cute. I have kids.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I don't have children.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So that's not correct. I've never heard anybody saw ice, so I have to go on YouTube and check that out, so I don't know how close you are, but I still don't think it's a bad guess. I think that there's something icy about that, without a doubt. I have another guest from a listener named Greg, who says this week's noisy sounds like a liquid pump, possibly on a high-pressure liquid chromatography instrument. I work for a company that manufactures them and travel around Western Canada performing installs, repairs, and qualifications on them. Interesting, so a liquid pump. I totally can hear like an air pressure type of thing, or like some type of pressurized thing in that sound. You're not correct, but again, I still think that there are some telltale sounds in there that would sound like that. I have another guess from a listener named Susanna Erickson. She says, hi, I was just adding photos from a 2002 Australia Great Barrier Reef boat trip to my teenage photo album when you played this week's noisy. It's definitely the sound you hear when you're snorkeling and using a snorkel tube to breathe underwater while floating. Now, a lot of people guessed snorkeling on this one, and it's not correct. And again, though, not a bad guess. I've done quite a bit of snorkeling in my time, and I've done some scuba diving, and it does have almost like an underwater air sound. I'm not disagreeing with the guess at all. All right, so I have one more guess. This was the closest that I got. This is from Lydia Parsons, and she says, hello, my guess for this week's who's that noisy is a metal blade of some sort, machete? being ground sharpened on a rotating stone. Thanks, wonderful episode. Okay, so this is what she got correct. My guess for this week's who's that noisy is a metal blade of some sort. Yes, this is a metal blade. A metal blade is involved with this. What's actually happening is that this is a curved metal blade being used to do what? Being used to shave wood.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Sounds like a lathe.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' No, no, imagine if the piece of wood was facing away from you, like let's say it's a long piece of wood, and it's pointing away from you, and you take this curved blade, you extend your arms, you put it down on the wood, then you pull the blade towards you.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Right? So here, listen to it again. [plays Noisy] See that? So it's like a wood carving, wood shaving type of deal. Really interesting because again, I say this from time to time, there's just so many sounds without the context of seeing what's going on. You just don't know what the hell it is. Like everything is so contextual.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's why foley works in movies.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's why when somebody punches somebody in the face, you can literally crack celery, and it sounds the same.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah. Do you ever see that one where, I forget the name of it, it's an audio pareidolia type thing where the person is saying, there's the same exact mouth movement, but they overdub different words, and it looks like he's saying the two different words. It just depends on what word you're reading.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh yeah, it's the {{w|McGurk effect}}.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' McGurk effect.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's really cool.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Man, I mean, talk about reality being created in your brain right before your eyes.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, that's why we hear like Satan when we play Led Zeppelin backwards and stuff.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Is that what you hear? Satan, oh my God.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I like the cookie monster one. That's a good one, look it up.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' You know which one I love? Do you ever see the one with the count from-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yes, with all the bleeps.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, and they bleep them out, and they bleep it out at the right time, and it sounds like he's swearing like crazy.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, that's the cookie monster one.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' They bleep out every time he says the word count, so he's like, I like to beep.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I like to beep on the wall and beep on the camera.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's amazing.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It's awesome.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yep, use your brain, fill in the blank.<br />
<br />
{{anchor|previousWTN}} <!-- keep right above the following sub-section ... this is the anchor used by wtnHiddenAnswer, which will link the next hidden answer to this episode's new noisy (so, to that episode's "previousWTN") --><br />
=== New Noisy <small>(1:23:22)</small> ===<br />
<br />
'''J:''' All right, I have a new noisy for you guys this week, and this noisy was sent in by a listener named Dennis Kiefer.<br />
<br />
[_short_vague_description_of_Noisy]<br />
<br />
So, this isn't the same action being done three times.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I know what that is.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Do you, wanna tell me?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It's that carnival game where you have the gun, and you're shooting the red star. You know those little pellets come out.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Oh, I used to love doing that.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, those are fun.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I remember reading a website that tells you how to beat that game, but that game is almost impossible to beat.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, very tough. The star is just big enough that, and they don't give you just enough pellets to knock the whole star out. It's rude.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I thought it was the pinball thingy-<br />
<br />
'''B:''' The boing.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' -like the little thing that you pull back when you play the pinball.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, the plunger, what do they call it?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Well, {{wtnAnswer|842|whatever your guess is}}, if you have one, email it to me at WTN@theskepticsguide.org, and also, please do, send me in your noisies. I need to hear them.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, thanks, Jay.<br />
<br />
== Questions/Emails/Corrections/Follow-ups <small>(1:24:24)</small> ==<br />
<br />
<blockquote><p style="line-height:115%"> _consider_using_block_quotes_for_emails_read_aloud_in_this_segment_ with_reduced_spacing_for_long_chunks –</p></blockquote><br />
<br />
=== Email #1: Animals that Cook ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' One quick email, this comes from, well, actually, this comes from a bunch of people. So at the Science Fiction last week, one of them was that humans are the only animal that cooks, and as I mentioned at the time, it's hard to prove a negative, right, that there's no animal out there that cooks their food. So all I could do is either search for examples or listen to what I consider to be reliable sources who make that positive statement, humans are the only animals that cook. So several listeners emailed what they thought were counterexamples, but I don't think any of them are legitimate. So a couple of people emailed me, for example, about Kanzi, who's a bonobo, and Kanzi will start a fire and roast marshmallows. That's pretty cool.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Start a fire with a cigarette lighter or with, like, two sticks?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, with matches that were supplied to him.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Matches, all right.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' The marshmallow's not its food, though. It was given that food.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So are the matches, yeah, the whole thing. Of course you can teach a great ape to cook over fire. You could teach a great ape to do a lot of cool shit.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I can have him use my computer, too.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Right, but it doesn't count. He was given the matches, he was taught the behavior. It doesn't occur in nature. It's not a behavior that they engage in. There was another experiment, though, when I was researching about that, that I came across, which is interesting. They did a study. They wanted to know if you could teach chimps to cook food, right? So they created a magic box, which was like an oven. But the way it was, because they didn't want to give the chimps actual fire, just for safety reasons. So they created this setup that, like, if the chimpanzees put food in a box for a few minutes, then they would replace it with cooked food, so then they would take cooked food out of the box. And so the chimps eventually learned.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's mean.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, they learned that if they put food in that box, then it cooks the food, right? Because the food then comes out cooked. It was a black box to them, right? So literally, they didn't know what was happening. And they wanted to see if the behavior would generalize, you know? And it did. So they were able to, when acquiring other food that they weren't trained on, at some point, like, hey, what if I put this food in the box? Will they get cooked, quote-unquote, cooked? And also, they definitely preferred the cooked food. Like, they liked to eat the cooked food. Because why not? It's cooked, yeah. But again, this doesn't mean that chimps cook their food. They don't. It was just, yeah, experimental paradigm. Someone suggested there are macaques in, I think it's Japan, that will wash their potatoes in the salt water, and they may like the salty taste that it gives them, but that's not really cooking. But there was an article about it.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It's seasoning.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, they called it seasoning. They called it cooking in quotes. Like, yeah, the cooking in quotes, I'm not buying that. They weren't applying heat in order to denature proteins. Right? Like, they weren't cooking the food.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Changing the chemicals.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, they just maybe like the way it tastes when you get the salt water on it.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It's like a condiment, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, yeah, whatever. And another one gave example of birds that, like, if a fire occurs naturally, they will use the, they will, like, pick up a stick on fire and do something with it. But again, it was an example of cooking. So there are, I like crowdsourcing these kinds of things because some people might have some, like, have come across some very obscure, fact somewhere<br />
that didn't come up with my internet searching that happens every now and then. But not in this case. I think at least so far, no example, no counter examples of non-human animals actually cooking their food.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That chimp with the box that they gave to cook the food, they opened a restaurant called the Chimperiani's.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' What's in the box?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Well, that made me laugh.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Let's go on with science or fiction.<br />
<br />
== Science or Fiction <small>(1:29:37)</small> ==<br />
{{SOFResults<br />
|fiction = Saturn has a rocky core<!-- short word or phrase representing the item --><br />
|fiction2 = <!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
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|science1 = auditory cortex's process<!-- short word or phrase representing the item --><br />
|science2 = covid college drinking<!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
|science3 = <!-- leave blank if absent --> <br />
<br />
|rogue1 = jay<!-- rogues in order of response --><br />
|answer1 = Saturn has a rocky core<!-- item guessed, using word or phrase from above --><br />
<br />
|rogue2 =bob<br />
|answer2 =auditory cortex's process<br />
<br />
|rogue3 =Evan<br />
|answer3 =Saturn has a rocky core<br />
<br />
|rogue4 =Cara <!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
|answer4 =Saturn has a rocky core<!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
<br />
|rogue5 = <!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
|answer5 = <!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
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|host = Steve<!-- asker of the questions --><br />
<!-- for the result options below, <br />
only put a 'y' next to one. --><br />
|sweep = <!-- all the Rogues guessed wrong --><br />
|clever = <!-- each item was guessed (Steve's preferred result) --><br />
|win = y<!-- at least one Rogue guessed wrong, but not them all --><br />
|swept = <!-- all the Rogues guessed right --><br />
}}<br />
''Voice-over: It's time for Science or Fiction.''<br />
<br />
<blockquote>'''Item #1:''' Neuroscientists find that the auditory cortex processes linguistic and non-linguistic sound in parallel, rather than serial hierarchical processing as previously believed.<ref>[url_from_SoF_show_notes publication: title]</ref><br>'''Item #2:''' A study of seismic activity within Saturn that ripples through its gas layers indicates that Saturn has a large, mostly solid rocky core.<ref>[url_from_SoF_show_notes publication: title]</ref><br>'''Item #3:''' A new survey finds that alcohol drinking among college students actually decreased during the COVID pandemic.<ref>[url_from_SoF_show_notes publication: title]</ref></blockquote><br />
<br />
'''S:''' Each week, I come up with three science news items or facts, two real, one fake, and then I challenge my panelists to tell me which one is the fake. You guys ready for just three regular news items? Okay, here we go. Item number one, neuroscientists find that the auditory cortex processes linguistic and non-linguistic sound in parallel rather than serial hierarchical processing as previously believed. I'll explain that one to you, don't panic. Item number two, a study of seismic activity within Saturn that ripples through its gas layers indicates that Saturn has a large, mostly solid rocky core. And item number three, a new survey finds that alcohol drinking among college students actually decreased during the COVID pandemic. Jay, go first.<br />
<br />
=== Jay's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''J:''' All right, this first one here, neuroscientists, Steve, you know about these guys, right? A little bit? They find that auditory cortex processes linguistic and non-linguistic sounds in parallel rather than serial hierarchical processing as previously believed.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I'm happy to explain that to you.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I think I got it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So basically the auditory cortex, which is the part of your brain that processes incoming sound, whether it's language or non-language sounds, it can interpret them at the same time rather than having to interpret them one at a time. So if you have multiple sounds hitting your ears, your brain can hear them and dissect what they are at the same time, is that it?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Sort of, you're kind of missing the key point here. So that's why it was hard for me to explain this in one sentence. I just wanted to back up a little bit. So the classic view was that when your auditory information went from your ears to your auditory cortex, first it would decide if it was language or not. And then if it decided this is language, it would then go to a deeper level of processing of just language, right? So that's a serial hierarchical processing. You have these like multiple steps. First you decide if it's language or not, then you decide like if it is language, what words are being said. But what the new study found was that's not what happens, that linguistic sound is just parallel, is processed on its own pathway and not in a serial pathway. And it's-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And so is non-linguistic sound?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And non-linguistic sound is on a separate parallel pathway.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right, but they're not parallel. They're on their own parallel pathways.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yes, right.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Where's the determination though, whether it's linguistic or not?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's a separate question. We won't get into that.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I see no reason why that isn't science. I mean a neuroscience. I would love to hear what your guess would have been if you heard this question, Steve, but I have no reason to doubt that. The second one here about the study of seismic activity within Saturn that ripples through its gas layers indicate that Saturn has a large, mostly solid rocky core. Saturn has a large, mostly solid rocky core. I don't know. I'm not sure about that one. I have something tickling the back of my brain that says that there's like ice and slushy shit mixed inside there too. Let me move on to the last one. A new survey finds that alcohol drinking among college students actually decreased during the COVID pandemic. I mean, Jesus Christ. Can that possibly be true? All right, well, maybe it is because they were home alone. That makes perfect sense. If they were remote learning, they weren't hanging out with their friends. So that one's definitely science. I think the one about the hierarchical processing is science. So the Saturn one is the fake.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay, Bob.<br />
<br />
=== Bob's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Now, when you say solid rocky core, what do you mean? Does that mean non, like what? Could it be metallic hydrogen? Or do you mean like rock or what? What do you mean?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' When I say rock, I mean rock. I mean, I'm not sure what you're asking.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' He doesn't mean paper or scissors.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I just think throwing the word rocky in there is just-<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, rock.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Not right.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Like the earth, you know?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' We don't have a rocky core either. But it's just an annoying term for the center. Yeah, I guess I do. I do. It's just like the implication of it being rocky and not. I mean, can you imagine the pressure and density? I mean, whatever it is, it's got- I mean, last I heard they're thinking Jupiter had like a metallic hydrogen or some form of metallic hydrogen or something like that. I haven't looked at that in a while. I'm not sure what the latest thinking is, but it's something like that incredibly dense. So Saturn is not nearly as massive, pretty damn massive though. I just think it's just so ambiguous. I mean, whatever's there, it's gonna be solid because of all the pressure. Well, sometimes the heat is so extreme. Oh, there's so many possibilities here, Jesus. All right, let's see. Flummoxed. All right, let's go to the COVID one. Yeah, like Jade, my first thought is you gotta be kidding. Second thought, well, wait, they're not with their bad influence friends. Like let's go drinking for the eighth night in a row, no. My two college buddies, my two roommates in college, their record was 21 days in a row, by the way. That sticks in my head. Of course, I did not partake in that. 21 days, that's nuts. So that kind of makes sense. I can have that make sense in my head. The serial hierarchical processing. Sure, I mean, but like I said, how does it know, right? How does it know whether it's a linguistic or not? To me, that's step one. And then depending on where it is, it goes to the proper pathway. So I'm not sure how that would be any different than what you're saying here or what they used to think. Screw it, I'm going with hierarchical processing is fiction.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay, Evan.<br />
<br />
=== Evan's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''B:''' See, you didn't sound happy when I said that. I think I got it.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, Bob.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I know, I know.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' You're convincing me. All these little subtle hints and things. I have no idea about the auditory cortex processes whatsoever. So I did not know it was believed to be one way and then according to this turned out to be something else. No idea, I have no frame of reference for this. So I'm lost. Saturn, a large, mostly solid rocky core. Yeah, what would that solid matter be? What, I mean, iron, liquid iron, iron?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Rock.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Well, rocky, yeah, rocky core. Right, but wouldn't, how could that be? Wouldn't rock get crushed down into something?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It says, yo, Adrian.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I never use them.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, I don't know about that one. The alcohol one with COVID. Yeah, so no drinking buddies, less alcohol consumed, less of that peer pressure effect on alcohol. I totally believe that. The auditory cortex one sounds very impressive. I think that one's gonna wind up being the science. I'll have to go with the Saturn one is the fiction. I'm not left with any other choice.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And Cara.<br />
<br />
=== Cara's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I think I'm gonna go with Evan and Jay. I think that we all have the same response to the college one. Honestly, I think that if a kid is drinking regularly all by themselves, like somebody who's in that age range, that's probably a bad sign of alcohol abuse or substance abuse. I think when kids are young and they're over drinking, it usually is a social pressure, not pressure, but it's a social experience. I think that historically, I thought that this processing was both, like that it's not binary, that there is parallel processing, but then there is some hierarchical processing also. But the way that this is written sort of like, it's this rather than what we used to think it was makes it a bit binary. And perhaps it's more this than what we thought. So that one kind of works for me too. But Saturn being based on exactly what, but this makes me nervous is Bob didn't pick this one. And Bob is Mr. Spice. He loves spice.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Outer spice.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Talk about that Saturn spice. Okay. But I don't know. Yeah, I kind of agree. This is a gas giant. It's really, really, really, really, really, really, really dense. That there would be something liquid because of that, that it wouldn't be able to maintain its solid structure. So I'm gonna go with the two guys and hope that Bob didn't just sweep us.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #3 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay. So let's start with number three, since you all agree on that one. A new survey finds that alcohol drinking among college students actually decreased during the COVID pandemic. You guys all think this one is science. And this one is.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Say it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Science.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Science.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I'll drink to that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And the researchers went into this not knowing because there was two trends that were in opposite directions. Was the increased stress of the pandemic lead to more drinking? Or was the decreased socialization leading to less drinking? So it really could have gone either way. But what they found was that while there may have been an increase in stress drinking, it was more than offset by the decrease in socialization. So this is a survey data, the data based on college students in North Carolina. And this was first year college students. So the drinking went from 54.2% before the pandemic to 46% mid pandemic. The prevalence of binge drinking dropped from 35.5% to 24.6%. Not dramatic.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Not a huge drop.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Not a huge drop. 20% of students reported using alcohol or other drugs to cope with the pandemic. So there was some stress drinking, but that probably masked the effect a little bit. But yeah, but it went down and that was not necessarily predicted.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #1 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Let's go back to number one. Neuroscientists find that the auditory cortex processes linguistic and non-linguistic sound in parallel rather than serial hierarchical processing as previously believed. Bob, you think this one is the fiction. Everyone else thinks this one is science. And this one is science. Sorry, Bob.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Whatever. Answer my question. When is the determination made?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' This study doesn't necessarily answer that question, but what the study did show-<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Great.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So it was based upon like 20 year study, looking at patients who were having brain surgery that needed to have electrodes placed over the auditory cortex, over that part of the brain. So we had a series of subjects with very high resolution brain surface, EEG. And they agreed to participate in the study where they were given different sounds and we looked at how their brain processed it. And the expectation was that they would be, like with the visual cortex, it's absolutely serial hierarchical processing. There's the primary visual cortex and there's layers of secondary processing. And then it gets divided into two streams based on whether or not you're looking at something that's alive or not, et cetera. So they thought, well, the auditory cortex probably operates the same way. And a little bit harder to study because it's deeper. It's a little bit harder to get to than the occipital cortex where the visual processing is. So it really had to wait for this like opportunistic study like this where we had very high resolution data because they were surgical patients. And they found that, oh, look at that. It's just not operating the way that we thought. These streams seem to be operating in parallel and to be completely independent of each other. Also, they were able to demonstrate, Cara, that it's not just that it's not both, at least in the way they looked at it in the study because they actually tried to interfere with language processing by using auditory stimulation or interfering with that pathway. And it didn't. It did not interfere with the speech at all.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, interesting.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, so what they say is like the functional dissociation was also observed where stimulation of the primary auditory cortex evokes auditory hallucination but does not distort or interfere with speech perception. So they were able to continue their speech processing even when the other the non-linguistic auditory cortex was being totally effed with with stimulation. You know, and they were having auditory hallucinations because they were shocking that part of the brain, but they were still able to do language processing. But as soon as you stimulated the language pathway, they stopped, they couldn't speak. Yeah, there were sort of several different lines of evidence, both positive and negative, all pointing towards these sort of independent parallel networks rather than one network sort of operating in series, which is interesting that's organized that way. It's not what I would have expected either, but that's sort of biased by what we know about other parts of the brain, but they don't have to operate the same way. But yes, Bob, that does open a good question. So there must be some other way, or at what point in this pathway does the brain decide this is speech, versus not speech? Yeah, that's a good question.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, it'd be interesting to see if other language, you know, if there's no meaning encoded in the speech, because it's symbolic to you only, like it's a language you don't understand at all, if that is processed the same way.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And interestingly, when they were effing with the language cortex, what the subjects reported was that they could hear that somebody was speaking, they knew it was speech, which is very interesting, but it was all garbled up, like all the phonemes and everything was mixed up. So they couldn't make any sense of it, but they still knew it was speech, which is interesting.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #2 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, all this means that a study of seismic activity within Saturn that ripples through its gas layers indicates that Saturn has a largely, mostly solid rocky core, that is the fiction. So this was a recent study, what they found was a couple of interesting things. One is that these ripples actually extended to the ring system, which is fascinating, must be because it was causing-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, the seismic ripples.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, these ripples were not only going through the gas layers, but also through the ring system.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Well, how does that happen? It's like vacuum between-<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It must have been causing fluctuations, must have been causing fluctuations in the gravity, I guess.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, that's crazy.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But what they found was that the core is a mix of ice, rock, and metallic fluids, and it's very fuzzy, it's not solid at all.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Well, it's like Jupiter's core then.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But it's lighter, but remember, the thing I thought nobody brought up, and this is the thing that probably I would have used to say this is a fiction, Saturn's the only planet that would float in water, you guys remember that? It's lighter than water.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, I didn't remember that.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' So what?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, which kind of goes against it, having a dense rocky core.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' A dense core compared to the vast expanse of Saturn itself, I mean, that could still bring it below.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's why I said large, I said a large, solid rocky core.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That would have done it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I did say large, I said large.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' No, I know, but so what, that's what I'm saying. I mean, a large core is still a core, and Saturn's gargantuan. I mean, my point is that wouldn't put me over that it couldn't float.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I know, it was a suggestion, it was a hint, it was like I figured somebody might say, would it still be the lightest planet if it had a large, solid rocky core? It would have made you at least think about that, but anyway.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' But I'm sure it's still dense. I'm sure it's still dense, Steve. Just because it's liquid doesn't mean it's not like liquid metallic hydrogen down there.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, yeah, it's metallic fluids.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, like metallic hydrogen.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, I know.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' So that's, yeah, it's some dense stuff.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, but they described it as fuzzy, the core is fuzzy.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Fuzzy.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's a diffuse soup of ice, rock, and metallic fluids.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yum.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I almost made that one the science about the rippling through the rings, but whatever.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, no, that would have been cool, too.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, all right, well, good job, everyone.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Thank you.<br />
<br />
<br />
== Skeptical Quote of the Week <small>(1:44:41)</small> ==<br />
<br />
<!-- ** For the quote display, use block quote with no marks around quote followed by a long dash and the speaker's name, possibly with a reference. For the QoW that's read aloud, use quotation marks for when the Rogue actually reads the quote.<br />
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<blockquote>The goal of science is to make the wonderful and complex understandable and simple – but not less wonderful.<br>– {{w|Herbert A. Simon}} (1916-2001), American economist, political scientist and cognitive psychologist </blockquote><br />
<br />
'''S:''' Evan, give me a quote.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' This week's quote was suggested by a listener, Vigo from Norway. Thank you so much for this. He said, I found this quote while reading Simon's book, he's saying Herbert A. Simon, about his book, The Science of the Artificial, and he found it a quite beautiful quote. "The goal of science is to make the wonderful and complex understandable and simple, but not less wonderful."<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yep.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Herbert A. Simon.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That is a poetic description of science communication.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I agree with that, definitely. Can't take the wonder out of it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, not simple, but not too simple. That's always the trick. Yeah, we were talking about that before the show, actually. It can be tricky to explain things where it's correct as far as it goes, but you're not writing a textbook with a technically dense treatise on the topic, even though it really requires that to fully understand. Like, we were talking about quantum computers. We're not gonna give you an understanding of quantum computers on the show. You know, even in the book, in the book chapter about it, I'm trying, like, all right, what level do we get to? Bob and I, we're talking about this the whole time. How deep do we go? Like, how, just enough so you have an idea of what they can do, and like, kind of how they can work. It's like a technical, of course, we can't do it. You know, obviously, there's many layers of complexity beyond our understanding, but even to the degree that we do understand it, it's like, we can't cram that into a book chapter, you know? So anyway, it's always-<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Beyond the scope of our book, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, it's just beyond the scope, so you're always making those choices with science communication, but yeah, but you wanna keep the wonder and the fascination and make it understandable and at least not be wrong, at least at the level that you're describing.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, don't do science a disservice by your description.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, right. It's hard.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Some crazy beliefs, yeah. <br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, it's hard, and-<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, it is.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You know, a lot of our friends and colleagues are science communicators. We obviously read and interview and everything, a lot of science communicators, so we're kind of connoisseurs, if you will, of science communication. So we talk a lot about the nuances of the choices that different people make and how they work. Are they hyping that too much? Was that a good metaphor? Was that, you know what I mean? It's like, there's a lot of, you could just debate endlessly about how to do it. All right, guys, well, thank you all for joining me this week.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Sure, man.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' You got it.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Thank you, Steve.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Thanks Steve.<br />
<br />
== Signoff/Announcements == <br />
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'''S:''' —and until next week, this is your {{SGU}}. <!-- typically this is the last thing before the Outro --> <br />
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}}</div>Hearmepurrhttps://www.sgutranscripts.org/w/index.php?title=SGU_Episode_822&diff=19132SGU Episode 8222024-01-28T10:15:26Z<p>Hearmepurr: episode done</p>
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|qowText = If history and science have taught us anything, it is that passion and desire are not the same as truth. The human mind evolved to believe in the gods. It did not evolve to believe in biology.<br />
|qowAuthor = {{w|Edward O. Wilson}}, an American biologist, naturalist, ecologist, and entomologist known for developing the field of sociobiology.<br />
|downloadLink = {{DownloadLink|2021-04-10}} <br />
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<br />
== Introduction ==<br />
<br />
''Voice-over: You're listening to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.''<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Hello and welcome to the {{SGU|link=y}}. Today is Wednesday, April 7<sup>th</sup>, 2021, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella... <br />
<br />
'''B:''' Hey, everybody!<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Cara Santa Maria... <br />
<br />
'''C:''' Howdy. <br />
<br />
'''S:''' Jay Novella... <br />
<br />
'''J:''' Hey guys. <br />
<br />
'''S:''' ...and Evan Bernstein. <br />
<br />
'''E:''' Good evening, folks.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' There's a little confusion about last week's episode. No confusion.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' There's no confusion whatsoever.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Who's that noisy?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Perfectly cromulent episode.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I heard very good things about you, Bob.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh yeah?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah. I've got emails like people really, really like the way you handled the whole thing and I agree.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh good. I'm glad.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It's not easy to just slip into that role and make it go so seamless. So well done.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It definitely took some extra work for sure.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' And my God, like my big takeaway is that Cara completely can do, can like pretend to be me in that.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, you helped me out so much too.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I couldn't believe it. I was like, oh my God, she nailed me.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We have a little bit of experience with each other. Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Just a bit of familiarity.<br />
<br />
== COVID-19 Update <small>(1:11)</small> == <br />
<br />
'''S:''' So quick update. I spoke three weeks ago on the podcast, three weeks ago about the concern that there was blood clots occurring in people getting the AstraZeneca vaccine, COVID vaccine. To make sure there's no confusion, the AstraZeneca vaccine is being given mainly in Europe. It's not one of the approved vaccines for the United States. There was case reports of blood clots in the week or two weeks following getting the vaccine. The initial review of the data by the World Health Organization, by the UK, by the European Medicines Agency concluded that these were not above the background rate and there was no proof that there was a link to the vaccine. However, there was one concerning aspect and that was a few cases in young people, mostly women of cerebral venous sinus thrombosis, which is basically a blood clot in the vein, one of the veins that drains blood from the brain. This is a, yeah, this is a potentially serious blood clot and there were a couple of deaths. So it's been three weeks. This data has been followed very, very closely and actually just today, the European Medicines Agency changed their ultimate conclusion from, we don't know, to there's probably a link to the vaccine.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, shit.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. So obviously there's been more cases. They're tracking it. The numbers are still very low in terms of absolute numbers. And the difficulty has been the, there's a pretty wide range of uncertainty in terms of what the background rate is. And it's possible the background rate is higher during the pandemic because COVID can cause this too.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, interesting.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. And so that's what took so long. And now they're saying, okay, there's there's been enough cases that I think we have to say that there could be an association here. But it seems to be limited to people under 55 and mostly women. So not older people. The other thing is that the, again, the risk is extremely low. They say that worldwide, if you look at every case, it comes down to around one in a hundred thousand risk of getting the blood clot, less than that in terms of dying. Like only a small percentage of them are dying. And so even if every single blood clot is still the case of all the blood clots, worst case scenario due to the vaccine, the vaccine would still save many more lives than would be caused by the side effect. So you might think, well, why don't they just give the other vaccines? But the problem is that this vaccine is necessary for the, the strategy of getting everybody vaccinated as quickly as possible. So it would delay vaccination in order to, if they, if they took this out of the rotation. Also it doesn't need the cold chain distribution. So it's cheaper and really convenient, especially for the poorer countries. So this was a huge part of the strategy to vaccinate poorer countries. So it'd be huge to take it completely out of circulation. And Europe is surging now with these variants, with these newer variants are really, things are turning around. So it's not just terrible timing. So what are they going to do? It's not really clear. Some countries have resumed giving the vaccine. Others have continued to pause it and others have said, all right, we're going to just not give it to people under 55, which seems like a reasonable compromise, although even then the numbers...<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. If it's not that risky for older people, then...<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Definitely you should, you should give it to people over 55 preferentially to minimize whatever risk there is from it. It's just, it's like one of those things where there's probably, like if this were a drug, it would either get a black box, what we call a black box warning, wouldn't necessarily be taken off the market. If it was like the only drug in that was fulfilling this particular need and it was saving more lives than it was harming, what we like in the United States, what the FDA would do is put a black box warning on it, like be very concerned in this population, keep a close eye on them. But if there's multiple options, they can say, well, we're just not going to use this. We'll just use the other options. But we just, that's just not on the table in the middle of a worsening pandemic. And so maybe eventually this will get replaced by the other vaccines. But for now, if you're playing the numbers game it's still going to save more lives than it will cost if you use it. But it's hard.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, I mean, there's a chance, right, Steve, that after this first round, like once kind of the world gets vaccinated, that we're going to have to get revaccinated. We're going to have to get boosters. And it's probably going to be a completely different vaccine anyway, because it will have been, the new variants will have been researched.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' They'll be reformulated. Yeah, they'll be reformulated. There'll be more data with all the vaccines, that some of the vaccines may be taken out of rotation, some will be changed to minimize risk, whatever, they'll be better, they'll be version 2.0. We're kind of forced now to do version 1.0, because the COVID pandemic is killing so many people, these vaccines work and just the numbers are just still in favour of using it while we even while we're working out the kinks. But of course, that's a hard sell to the public. And a lot of people are just not turning up or they're canceling their appointments for the vaccine, which is contributing to this next wave that we're getting, which is unfortunate.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's disappointing. It's unfortunate, especially if, let's say an older man has a vaccine appointment and hears the rhetoric or sees the stuff circulating online and just is like, well, better safe than sorry, I just won't do it. And it's like, no, that's not better safe than sorry, that's better sorry than safe.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, that's the thing. But we are not wired, as it were, to properly assess active versus passive risk. We are much more willing, this is the trolley experiment, right? We're much more willing to allow bad things to happen through inaction than directly cause them through action, even when it's the same outcome. In fact, we're willing to let more harm come by through inaction to avoid lesser harm through direct action.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right. And then that piggybacks on the, what's it called? The appeal to nature fallacy? That this idea that, oh, well, nature is just going to take its course. And that's somehow better.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. Dying of a disease is better than dying from a vaccine. You're still dead at the end of the day.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Exactly.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The dead only know one thing. It's better to be alive.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right. And the odds of the death are so much higher if you get COVID.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Even if you just consider the two week period, but forget about calculating all the downstream, your risk over the next year, and the risk of giving it to somebody else, and the risk of new variants occurring, and the risk of allowing the pandemic to continue to simmer for another six months, or whatever. If you calculate it all out, it could be orders of magnitude more harm from not doing the vaccine than doing it. But still, it's just not in us. Just feels wrong to take the risk.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And of course, we are consuming so much misinformation online. Steve, I came across this really interesting study about, it came out of McGill University, which is really famous, a really well-respected university in Canada. And they were looking at kind of why some Canadians are vaccine hesitant, where is this coming from, conspiracy theories, bad medical misadvice. These researchers were like, what's going on here? It's weird, because when you look at the news in Canada, it's really balanced. It's actually very bipartisan, right? Everybody's like, let's get vaccinated. It doesn't seem to be polarized there the way it is in our political arena. And so researchers were like, what's going on? They looked at the top 200,000 most active Canadian Twitter users, and they found that where are they getting most of their information? America! America! Yeah, so they tend to be, Canadians who are active on social media tend to get more US news-based outlets than they tend to get local news. And so because of that, there's sort of a mismatch between what they're learning. And Canadians are very active on social media. Apparently one in two Canadians, so half of Canadians are on Instagram, five out of six are on Facebook, and two out of five are on Twitter. Canadians are very active on social media.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It's a lot. It's a high ratio.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, and they're getting fed a lot of American news. So even though their local news is really balanced, and even though they're not seeing the polarization there, they're getting the rhetoric, the highly politicized rhetoric, the conspiratorial stuff, the anti-science, the pseudoscience, and it's crossing over the border. And we've long known that American misinformation spreads around the world. The internet doesn't have borders. We would hope that there would be that buffering effect of local news. And I guess the more active Canadians are on social media, they're getting this more than even listening to their own politicians and listening to their own anchors, news anchors. So that's a bummer, right? It's a bummer. We're like invading Canada.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, but Cara, did you see the information about the dirty dozen?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Uh-oh.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And you know that 65% of that anti-vaccine misinformation is coming from 12 individual people. 65%. Some of these names might be familiar to you. Joseph Mercola, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Sherry Tenpenny. These are all anti-vaccine heavy hitters. Christiana Northrup. So, yeah, those are the 12 biggest misinformation sources. 12 people are generating 65% of the anti-vaccine content on Facebook and Twitter. Unbelievable.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's so, and it's one of these things where we sit around and we twiddle our thumbs and we talk about how this is such an intractable problem and how do we communicate more effectively and what do we do to buffer misinformation and how do we have people's bullshit detectors dialed up to 11. And it's like, the frustrating thing is like, if only we could just take their microphones away. You know what I mean? A lot of times it does come back down to like, get Mercola to shut up. And I know that that's the First Amendment issue and I know that that opens up a lot of really actually important and ethical conversations. But it is frustrating when you see the dude over there in the corner who's spouting everything off and it's like, just stop listening to him.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. Well there's a lot of talk. I'm going to preface this by saying I am a strong supporter of the First Amendment and free speech. You have to be very careful before we nibble anything away from it. But social media and this kind of spreading of really horrific misinformation, demonstrable misinformation online is really challenging the notion of how sustainable our modern society is with the ability, just how easy it is to massively spread harmful, demonstrable misinformation. And so we have to, I think, rethink the balance here. And maybe there needs to be consequences for saying things that are wrong and harmful.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It might be legal to say something or you may whatever. But if somebody is perpetually pushing harmful rhetoric that directly leads to loss of life, maybe that person should go on trial.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Right. Like I said, the First Amendment is not a suicide pact.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right. That's brilliant.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I don't know what the answer is, but we have to rethink this because like that should not be the case. It, again, just might be that we're just going to progressively and perpetually lose the fight against misinformation the way the rules are right now. So we got to change something.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, absolutely.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Is anyone talking about taking action, doing something or trying something, or is it just like...<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, things are happening. People are... I mean, you got to remember, too, these social media platforms are private company, well, they're public companies, but they're companies, right? And so there are moral and ethical conversations being had at these corporate levels. And of course, there's pressure. We see political pressure as well. And you're already seeing, we've talked about it before on the show, Twitter. If you see an article and you just go to reshare it without opening it, it'll be like, are you sure you don't want to read this first? And like, shame you. And I think we're starting to see labels on Facebook. Obviously it's not enough. Obviously, like, we need something more robust. But it's not like this isn't being worked, I don't want to say worked out, but grappled with.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. But I think that's the low-hanging fruit. And I would like to see how far we can go with that. Just reminding people...<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right, because it's still self-report.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Just reminding people that you should be skeptical about this, or this is unverified, or eyewitnesses are unreliable, or whatever, anything like that, makes them in the moment more skeptical and better able to evaluate information. And so it's like we have to build in these guardrails, even if they're just soft reminders.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' And studies bear that out?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. We've talked about this before too.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Absolutely.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Like, it makes somebody less likely to click share. And if you're less likely to click share, then downstream, you're less likely to get something shared to you.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Sure. That's right.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And some people might scream social engineering, but the thing is, we are social engineering our country. We're doing it to create QAnon believers. Think about that.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' And other countries are doing it as well.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I know.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And also, let's be honest about what these social media platforms are engineered to do. Keep you there. Keep clicking. Go down the rabbit hole. Get exposed to more advertisers. These platforms are engineered out the ass. This is not just like passive information flowing back and forth. This is a big business.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Right. And so, at the very least, these business models need to be held accountable for destroying the fabric of society because that's the consequence of what you're doing. Okay. Congratulations. You've managed to convince a million people of the most absurd and vile conspiracy theory imaginable. And it's actually destabilized our government. Good going, guys.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Good job. Idiocracy. This is our reality. Cool.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Some people just want to see the world burn.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' But that's what I mean. It's so, it's obviously so dramatic. And now we're getting warnings. Are you sure you want to share this? I mean, let's do some dramatic shit, people.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I wish. But the sad thing is it's in the hands of the Bezos and the Zuckerberg. And it's in the hands of these, like, sadly, these very, very, very powerful corporations that when it comes down to it, it's people. It's people who are holding those reins.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yep. Yeah. And do we want those guys to be in charge of these big decisions about society and our future and the stability of our democracy?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Of course not. But they kind of, in some ways, already are.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' They are.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And that's the scary part.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' They are. By default, they are in charge. And if we don't want that to be the case, we have to make big decisions collectively as a society. You know what I mean?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It's going to be too little, too late.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Probably. There's no easy answer here.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' You're so pessimistic all the time.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's like a magic wand without downsides and sacrifice.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Of course. I mean it's like we want more privacy. We're going to give up convenience. We're going to give our data away. We're going to, like, there's always a downside. So it's that, what do we call it? It's that thermostatic homeostasis.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Homeostatic.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, we're not going to fix this problem tonight.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' True.<br />
<br />
== News Items ==<br />
<br />
=== Yawning Lions <small>(16:49)</small> ===<br />
* [https://www.sciencenews.org/article/lion-yawn-contagious-synchronize-group-movement-hunt Yawning helps lions synchronize their groups’ movements]<ref>[https://www.sciencenews.org/article/lion-yawn-contagious-synchronize-group-movement-hunt Science News: Yawning helps lions synchronize their groups’ movements]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' Jay, tell me about yawning lions.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I'm so glad you picked this story, Jay.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' A big male lion with his mane giving a giant yawn showing those awesome canines.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Well, I think I need to for disclosure here, for transparency, lions have been my favorite animal since I was a kid.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yay.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' They're pretty much my favorite animal.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' They are, Steve?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Oh, yeah. So I did my first book report on lions. They've been in my top two or three since I was a young kid.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Aw.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It's like you have a lot of pride on that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Lions and whales were my two.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I think they're majestic and there's something about their look that is just captivating to me. But anyway, have you guys ever noticed that lions yawn a lot? Like scroll through your memory of lions. They typically do in what? What are they doing?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Laying in the grass.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Sleeping.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Male lions?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Sleeping and yawning. And ripping other animals to shreds.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That slow motion nat geo.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' The female lions, baby.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' They spend between 16 and 20 hours a day resting and sleeping. You know, this is obviously so they could save energy. It makes them have to eat less and all that. But lions yawn a lot. They do. And you look at pictures of lions and you'll see pictures of them yawning. That's how often they do it. So this is not exactly what you think, though, because it seems to go hand in hand with the fact that they sleep a lot. But a team of researchers has found out something pretty interesting. So Elisabetta Pellaggi, who is a research scientist and ethologist at the University of Pisa, that is in Italy if you didn't know, noticed that lions yawn a lot as well. She was studying other animals and had lions near her and just was looking at them and noticed these guys are yawning a lot. So she got curious and started to study them and then formalized a legit study that lasted about four months. You know, there's different reasons why creatures yawn. There's lots of different animals that yawn and there's lots of different things that people suspect or research that has shown or didn't show some reasons behind it. But with lions, it's pretty serious because it is also connected to a lot of other behaviors that they have. And there's a pattern to lions yawning. And it's really cool. Listen to this. Pellaggi had previously studied primates and the yawning primates in particular. So she was already well versed in it. So what ended up happening was a group of researchers monitored 19 lions at a private game reserve and they discovered that if lions saw a member of their pride yawn, they were approximately 139 times more likely to yawn themselves within three minutes.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's contagious for them too.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yes. But it goes beyond just yawning. Also if a lion caught a yawn, right, so caught a yawn from another lion, they were 11 times more likely to mirror the bodily movements of the lion that they saw yawn compared to a lion that didn't catch the yawn. How about that? As far as I know, humans don't do that. You know, we'll yawn along with somebody else, but we don't like get up and move our body the way that they're moving their bodies. But lions do this. So let's just visualize this. Imagine if you are watching lions and one of them yawns and then another one yawns, then the first lion gets up and does something and then the second lion gets up and does the same thing. That's what they observed. The researchers believe that it could help maintain the pride's social cohesion. So it is a social element. This would be beneficial in keeping all the members of the pride in sync with each other, right? So if some of the lions are noticing something and they get their bodies up and they're getting ready for maybe combat or they're just being very protective, the other lions would be more likely to do that as the result of them yawning and copying each other, right? So it's like a behavioral way of copying each other. And keep in mind here, lions live cooperatively. They hunt together. They manage their offspring together. They are very much a society and a very, very tightly knit pack where they live and pretty much do everything together. So the coordinated yawning and movements would increase the likelihood of two lions interacting with each other and also of other lions that are because multiple lions could catch the yawn, that their behavior would be similar. Now this goes into a little more detail where this has something to do with the pride having a collective vigilance under, like I said before, under the right circumstances, they would need to act as one and they commonly do if you pay attention. I've watched tons of videos. There's a lot of videos of lions saving other lions because they're aware of where the pride is and they know when one of them is missing or far enough away where they need to check on them.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Wow.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I've been interested in yawning I always read about it. Hey, somebody figured out what yawning means and then you read all these different other articles. But I have read quite a few things where it does have some type of social element to it. So it isn't just I'm tired and you yawn and you catch my yawn and now you feel a little more tired. It's not just that. There's other things going on here. And again it's ongoing research. Nothing is 100% conclusive because we're literally just observing their behavior. You know, we don't know genetics or any of that stuff at this point, but it is incredibly interesting.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It makes me wonder, and Steve, I'm interested if you're wondering the same thing, like how active a role mirror neurons play and whether lions even have them, which I don't see why they wouldn't, but I don't know if they do, and how active a role mirror neurons play in that phenomenon. It's pretty overblown, the mirror neuron thing, but I feel like yawning is one of those places where it's been like really, really established that they have an active role.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. I mean, so I think we're still learning about mirror neurons. These are neurons that will activate to replicate another person's mental activity. So it's a way of, again, socially reacting to other people in a similar way and absorbing the culture and language and everything from what's around you. But we're still, I think, figuring out, I think initially, yeah, they kind of overstated their role. They're pulling it back a little bit. Not that they don't do anything. And definitely other mammals have them. Dogs have them. You know, lions specifically, I'm not able to find anything.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Interesting. Yeah. I don't know why they wouldn't, because they're pretty sophisticated mammals. But it would be interesting to look at that behavior somehow. Who knows how you would do that experimentally in a freaking lion? You probably couldn't ever. But I'd be interested to see.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' They've definitely been found in primates and dogs, yeah, definitely.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Anybody else yawn about eight times during that talk?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Ah, you're so mean, Bob.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I did. I did. And that's not mean. It's just the topic.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Without a doubt.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' How funny.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I typically only yawn twice when Jade talks. But this is like eight times.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, and isn't it so funny that because yawning did evolve as this social cue, or at least that's how we what the evidence seems to point to, that we think of it as a way to communicate to our kin that we're safe, that we're settled, that we can, like, relax a little bit. Yet, socially, yawning, when somebody else is speaking or when you're engaging in social interaction, is considered rude.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yes.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's kind of fascinating.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, I'm boring?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, like you're boring me. Yeah, like if I'm doing therapy and I feel a yawn coming on, I have an existential crisis in my head.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' What do you do?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Like, I try to swallow it, usually.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, that is so hard. There's something wrong about that.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's uncomfortable.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And I feel like they can still tell, but I still feel like it's way less rude than, like, gaping. And it has nothing to do with being bored. It's usually because I'm really comfortable.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Do you take notes care? Do you have, like, a notepad or a notebook or something?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, I do. I take notes.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Do you ever just, like, kind of lift it up in front of your head?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, it's hard because it's teletherapy, so it's just your head, you know? It's like a big full-screen head.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. I've learned to yawn in such a way that, at least behind my mask, you can't tell.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. Yeah, you've got to have this little trick.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's unfortunate. The thing is, and there's evidence that yawning is more of a waking up signal than a I'm sleepy signal because it stretches the tendons, and it might be really activating. In fact, people yawn more when they're waking up than when they're going to sleep.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' So we're misjudging the social messaging that goes on when you're awake.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Exactly. I don't think it has anything to do with being bored, but it has become a symbol for that.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It's clearly more complicated because I'm still yawning. And I ain't waking up.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Because every time we say the word yawn, Bob yawns<br />
<br />
=== Air DNA <small>(25:55)</small> ===<br />
* [https://www.livescience.com/dna-collected-air.html Researchers can now collect and sequence DNA from the air]<ref>[https://www.livescience.com/dna-collected-air.html Live Science: Researchers can now collect and sequence DNA from the air]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, Cara, so we've talked before about scientists being able to sample water for DNA and telling like, here's everything that lives in this lake, but now they can do it from the air.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. This is really cool. Okay. So it's called eDNA, environmental DNA. And I feel like we've even, Steve, we've done stories about that on SGU, right?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. Totally.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. So just as a refresher of that, we know that there's DNA pretty much everywhere. And ecologists have started to only somewhat recently, because we now have the tools to do on the go sequencing and to do collection and we can use PCR and all of these amazing tools and nanopore sequencing in order to do this stuff in the field. But let's say we're tracking an endangered species and we want to know what its habits are like. Researchers now can they'll take samples of water. We see this a lot with aquatic species, for example, they'll take samples of water. They can see the fragments of DNA that are in it and they can say, okay, this organism, used this water, it passed through here. That seems to be the most common usage right now. We have seen some examples of it happening in soil, although it's not as common, there's been a little bit of work in there and also things like snow and rain. But these researchers, PRJ Life and Environment, they published an article about eDNA, but specifically they looked at the ability to capture DNA in the air. This is remarkable. And they did a pretty controlled experiment. They put some naked mole rats in like a device, a cage. And the cool thing is, I love this about how science is evolving in this way to be more aware and focused on public communication. You can watch a video abstract of this peer-reviewed study, which is, or pre-peer-reviewed study, which is a full text available online. So if you find this study in PRJ, you can read the entire thing and you can click on a video abstract, the authors tell the story of their research. And there's like photos and stuff. So it's really accessible. I love it. And so you get to see the setup. You get to see the little rig with the naked mole rats walking around inside with the hoses and everything. So it's like a sealed cage with naked mole rats and they're in there and they're living and they're breathing. And then they basically vacuumed out the air. And then they were able to analyse and they talk you through all the steps that they use, but kind of classic lab steps in order to understand what's going on from a DNA perspective. What DNA can we find within here? They also were able to sample the environmental air around it. And they found DNA from the naked mole rats, both within the cage and from around the cage. So it shows just how kind of pervasive and how much this DNA actually does sort of leave the body through things like coughing, through sneezing, even through your dander. And when I say you, I mean the mole rats in this case, but of course it's in their dander. So when they shake their little bodies and when they rub up against things, all of these actions release DNA into the air. So they did not know if they would be able to detect it in any sort of meaningful quantity. And they didn't know if it would need to be hermetically sealed to be able to do so. But they found no, not only is there eDNA within the cage, but we found it in the environmental air outside of it. We caught it in filters, basically almost like the same things, like HEPA filters. And it would get caught up in there and they were able to sequence it. But you know what else they found in all of their samples? Human DNA. You want to know why? Because we shed too. And so they found, obviously this opens up a really important new way to track, for example, endangered species, to learn about organisms in their habitat kind of in situ without having to remove them, bother them, stress them out by capturing them and taking samples. But also we need to be careful because of course, these samples are so readily contaminated. So we either need to work with like basically some really intense clean room clothing in order to prevent cross-contamination, or we need to expect that human contamination will be in there and kind of extract that out of the data so that we can see what organisms are living there. But how cool, in the past, this has been demonstrated one time before, or not one time, but there's a body of literature around it with plants. But they always thought it's because plants release their DNA in spores. And so like, obviously, plants put out these spores, we might be able to sample the air around them and find the DNA from those spores. They didn't know if it would work, and especially not with mammals. But this study is a really cool proof of concept that says, hey, maybe now we can go out into the environment, we can vacuum up the air within a burrow, within an area, and we can potentially detect what species were existing there. How cool is that?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, that's awesome. I especially love the implications for cryptozoology. It's like, nope, there are no dinosaurs in Loch Ness, sorry. You can't have large swimming reptiles and not leaving any traces of DNA behind.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, where's the poop, folks?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' What about, Cara, what about bacterial DNA? They must have found that. I mean, we've all got our bacterial clouds.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, I'm sure they did. But I think we've gotten so sophisticated with sampling technology now that I think you can match against these big databases. And if you look at enough of the, because remember, bacteria have different DNA than, because they're prokaryotes. And so they have the single naked strand of DNA, and eukaryotes have more complex DNA, and also there's mitochondrial DNA. And so I'm not sure, I would have to dig deeper to see if they looked at mitochondrial or if they looked at nuclear DNA. But I think that it's relatively easy to differentiate.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Makes sense.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
=== Oxygenation Events <small>(32:01)</small> ===<br />
* [https://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/the-great-oxygenation-events/ The Great Oxygenation Events]<ref>[https://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/the-great-oxygenation-events/ NeuroLogicaBlog: The Great Oxygenation Events]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' So we talked recently, Bob, you talked about the great oxygenation event, or the great oxygenation catastrophe, as you like to call it. And you were talking about the future oxygen levels in the atmosphere. But there's a new study which tweaks our understanding of the history of oxygen in our atmosphere.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, really?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's pretty cool. And it answers some questions, although it always raises more. And it'd be a good opportunity to review sort of the broad brushstrokes of the history of oxygen in the atmosphere of Earth. So as many of you probably know, the Earth formed, the current Earth formed about 4.5 billion years ago when a Mars-sized object hit the proto-Earth, forming Earth 2.0 and the Moon. Right? And that's when the clock starts ticking on. This is right now, this is geologically when the Earth began. So at that point, things were hot, but they eventually cooled down. There was liquid water on the surface. We had a mostly nitrogen atmosphere, probably other stuff in there as well. But no oxygen, right? There was basically no oxygen in the Earth's atmosphere during this first phase, what scientists call stage one in terms of the oxygenation of the Earth's atmosphere. Then came stage two, which is what we're going to be talking about in terms of the new information. Stage two, starting around 3.5 billion years ago, but definitely by 2.9 billion years ago, we have cyanobacteria and they would be breathing carbon dioxide, combining it with water and making carbohydrates, which is energy food, right? And O2 and oxygen. So oxygen is essentially being liberated from water and carbon dioxide and being free oxygen is being released into the atmosphere. Now this free oxygen did not immediately start building up because we have a planet. Oxygen is like the most reactive element on the periodic table. It will react with most of the other elements and form oxygen species. So a lot of this oxygen started immediately, not only dissolving in the water, in the oceans, but also combining with any iron in the ocean beds. So we have like this great rustification of it, geologically. This is how we know that the atmosphere was containing oxygen, was that the layers start to see increasing levels of rust, you know. And so, but during this time, oxygen levels rose only a little bit, up to about 3 to 5%. So that's stage two. Then it was pretty stable for about a billion years and archaeologists sometimes refer to this as the boring billion. Like there was...<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's so sad.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. Because just in terms of fossil evidence, I'm sure there was a ton happening at the cellular level in terms of evolution, but at the from a fossilization point of view, there was a pretty much a stable 3 to 5% oxygen in the atmosphere between 2.45 and 1.85 billion years ago, let's say. So even though it's not being, it's not building up in the atmosphere, it's building up in the oxygen sinks. And then once the oceanic oxygen sinks were full, then the land oxygen sinks started to fill up combining basically with minerals on the land. Once all the oxygen sinks in the world were basically full, like anything that oxygen had access to was already oxidized, then the oxygen started to build up in the atmosphere. This is phase four where you could see the oxygen levels shoot up and they peak at over 30% oxygen. Then they start to decrease down to the current level of about 21%. So currently our atmosphere has about 21% oxygen in them. So remember when there was 30% oxygen in the atmosphere, that's when the dinosaurs were around, the giant insects like the dragonflies, because they had the oxygen, they can get it to their tissues.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Fires everywhere.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But let's go back to that stage two, to that area. So scientists used to think that during that stage two when cyanobacteria were cranking out oxygen, that pretty much was a one-time event, right, that once that started happening, it was happening. But it turns out that that probably was not a stable unidirectional event. So here's the other thing that's very interesting that happened. So when oxygen started to build up in the atmosphere, even only to 3.5, 3 to 5%, that displaced carbon dioxide and methane. Now carbon dioxide is only 0.04%. Methane is in trace amounts. The only other significant gas in the atmosphere is argon, like I think it's around 0.9%. So it's 78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen, 0.9% argon, 0.04% carbon dioxide, trace methane, and other gases. So the carbon dioxide and the methane levels went down. And what did that do, Bob?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Carbon dioxide and methane goes down and it gets cooler?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. So that was snowball earth.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, that much cooler.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So it plunged the earth into a glaciation event where the entire earth was a giant glacier, including the oceans. This caused a mass extinction of cyanobacteria. So oxygen levels plummeted. And then once that happened, the volcanic outgassing of CO2 increased the temperature and the earth thawed. Cyanobacteria reemerged, created oxygen, killed themselves off again, knocked down the CO2, plunged the earth into another snowball earth. There were four, four snowball earth glaciation events. And they think that they all coincide with this oscillation of oxygen production and then extinction from cyanobacteria. And then once the cyanobacteria levels were decreased enough, CO2 levels were able to build back up. Because remember, they're metabolizing CO2 to produce oxygen. They were also sort of driving down the CO2 levels, driving down the greenhouse gases. But basically what they discovered was that the oxygenation events didn't really stabilize until after these four glaciation events were done. So this better aligns the cyanobacteria producing oxygen with these glaciation snowball earth events. And then the earth did not permanently emerge from its snowball state until this oscillation, this process stabilized. From that point forward, that's kind of when you have the permanent oxygenation, the boring billion years where you have just this steady buildup of oxygen in the minerals till the sinks were full and then in the atmosphere. And then the buildup of oxygen in the atmosphere coincides with the Cambrian explosion and the explosion of multicellular life, which probably required higher oxygen levels to get enough oxygen into the deep tissue, right? If you're a single-celled critter breathing oxygen, 3% might be fine. If you're a multicellular creature who's got to transport oxygen around your body, you might need more than 3%. So these things coincide as well. Very interesting, right? So we're sort of clicking into focus the chemistry of the earth, including the atmosphere and the land and the ocean and the seabeds, as well as with the chemistry of the atmosphere, as well as life, as well as the climate, and it's kind of all interacting and creating this one coherent picture of what was going on. Although we still don't really know what was going on in terms of life. We just have like really these tiny little windows into what life was doing throughout this whole period. It's like we know that there are some mats of cyanobacteria and things like that, but we don't know a lot because this is all pre-hard parts, right? So there isn't an exquisite fossil record prior to the... The Cambrian explosion was not so much an explosion of life, although it was, but it was more the innovation of fossilizable parts. And so it was sort of a flipping on of paleontology of the fossilizable hard parts. And it's like sometimes it was like literally like turning on the light. It's not like the life wasn't there. We just turned on the light. And now we could suddenly see all the life that was evolving, but they must have been evolving for hundreds of millions of years just in the dark. So we don't really know a lot about them. So pretty cool. I liked it. It's a good story. I like to have sort of this at least a general picture of stuff. Like what does the universe look like? What does the history of the earth look like? What does the history of the evolution of life on the earth look like? Just a big... These broad brushstrokes of basically where are we in space and time kind of thing is I find very cool.<br />
<br />
=== Infection Proof Implants <small>(41:44)</small> ===<br />
* [https://phys.org/news/2021-04-animal-surfaces-infection-proof-implants.html Plant, animal surfaces inspire infection-proof engineered implants]<ref>[https://phys.org/news/2021-04-animal-surfaces-infection-proof-implants.html phys.org: Plant, animal surfaces inspire infection-proof engineered implants]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, Bob. Tell me about making infection proof implants.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, nice.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' This was another cool advance against the bacterial bad boys in medical devices that kill and they still kill thousands of people every year worldwide. It's still nasty. And our researchers are now taking inspiration from insect wing evolution to create surfaces that repel or just kill bacteria after they land on it. So this is from an international interdisciplinary team of researchers. They published recently in the journal Applied Physics Reviews and it's called Bactericidal Surfaces and Emerging 21st Century Ultra Precision Manufacturing and Materials Puzzle. So it's kind of like doubly faceted here. It's got the materials and you've got this research puzzle. So I love when researchers leverage evolutionary R&D, research and development to help them make better products because evolution has been doing it for quite a long time in a lot of cases. And in this case, they're inspired by dragonfly and cicada wings, for example. Now I was thinking about it and it kind of makes sense. And I imagine that there'd be tremendous selective pressure to protect insect wings from things like bacterial infections, right, because they're just so delicate. I mean, it's like the epitome of something that is delicate, something like a dragonfly wing. I mean, yeah. I mean, if you get an infection or any damage, even if it was to one wing, I mean, you are toast, right? So it makes sense that they'd have some robust defense. So after 406 million years of insect flight evolution, they've developed a fantastic way of dealing with bacteria. The structure on the top part of the wing itself for many of these species is essentially deadly to bacteria. You don't even need chemicals, although some wings are more complex and have layers of the material that hurts bacteria and also chemicals as well. So it's kind of like even more powerful, I guess. So if you look real close, though, at some of these wings, you see tiny nanopillars on them. And depending on the species, they could be longer, they could be shorter, they could be pointier. So when a bacterium rests on it, you can imagine it stretches and pulls the bacterial membrane or it just flat out just punctures it, killing the bacteria and preventing bacterial biofilms from forming. Now these biofilms are especially nasty because biofilm on an implant can form essentially a barrier that can prevent your immune system or even antibiotics, even powerful antibiotics, from getting rid of it. And that could mean that the doctor will come to you and say, well, you've got an infection, nothing we could do to get rid of this infection. So yeah, we're going to pull this implant out of your body so we can actually get rid of the infection so we could treat it. Like, not fun. Can you imagine that? Now surfaces like this aren't new. This isn't just a new discovery. Oh, wow, look at these cicada wings. They're really cool. We've known for years that many natural surfaces lotus leaves and other types of wings are actually inimical to bacteria and for varied reasons as well. But leveraging that information, using that information into into creating commercial product to take advantage of it, that has not been really happening, hardly at all. And it turns out because creating such an exquisitely engineered surface at scale is a tremendous scientific challenge. This is not easy at all. But this challenge now potentially may be yielding to applied physics. And these new recent precision engineering techniques are fascinating. They really have had breakthroughs over the years. Some of them have really cool science fiction sounding names, like some processes called, one is twinning. Another one is dislocation nucleation. Another one was high pressure phase transformation. Look them up. Those are those are cool techniques that they've developed basically to increase the plasticity of metals. So in this specific case, though, the researchers plan on using lasers to create nano features on these medical devices that would have a similar effect to the nanopillars. And then once their plan, once they've developed this they're doing 3D models. And once they're happy with it, they plan on making a prototype and then that would then be tested. So there's Oliver Pierce from Milton Keynes University Hospital in England said that the end goal is a prosthesis that I can implant with clinical evidence that it kills bacteria and reduces the infection rate. And it turns out you really wouldn't have to kill many different types of bacteria for these types of insertable medical devices. Most infections on them are basically either a staphylococcus or a streptococcus. So if you can develop these engineered surface that are tailored to just those two types, then you would be in really good shape because those are the ones that predominate on medical implants. And they they estimate that if you could if you could deal with those two, then you could reduce implant infections by 90 percent. So so, yes, that would be huge because the implants are implants are safe. Don't be afraid of getting these implants if the doctor says you need one. They're very safe. Not many people get get infections, but percentage wise, though, because there's so many implants the world over that that's the absolute number of people that get these infections is still big. It's a big number and it's quite a drain on health care services. So if they could reduce that by 90 percent, that would be a boon, save a lot of lives. So let's hope they really can make this work and be be really dramatic.<br />
<br />
=== Aliens, Friend for Foe <small>(47:23)</small> ===<br />
* [https://www.airspacemag.com/daily-planet/science-aliens-part-i-would-they-be-friendly-or-threatening-180977432/ The Science of Aliens, Part I: Would They Be Friendly, or Threatening?]<ref>[https://www.airspacemag.com/daily-planet/science-aliens-part-i-would-they-be-friendly-or-threatening-180977432/ Air & Space: The Science of Aliens, Part I: Would They Be Friendly, or Threatening?]</ref><br />
<br />
'''E:''' All right. Evan, this is something that we've discussed previously and I've thought about a lot. What's the probability of space aliens being friendly or threatening?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Four foot one.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I mean, if you research science programs like Star Trek and Star Wars you can get a pretty good sense of that. But if you'd rather go the more scientific route. Yeah. And there was a really neat piece today that came out in Air and Space magazine online. That's airspace mag dot com. And it was written by Dirk Schulz-Makuch, who is a professor at the Technical University of Berlin.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Did you just make that up?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That's a great name.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Dirk Schulz-Makuch.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, that's awesome.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Professor at the Technical University of Berlin in Germany, of course, adjunct professor at Arizona State University and Washington State University. He's published eight books and nearly 200 scientific papers related to astrobiology and planetary habitability. So he kind of knows a few things about this. He's writing a multi-part series of articles for Air and Space magazine. And this is the first part that came out. Really neat. He's asking the question about advanced extraterrestrial life forms and would ETs be threatening or friendly. And that, like Steve said, this is something we've actually talked about quite a bit on the show. But the professor frames the question in this context, would a technologically sophisticated species share some common behavioral patterns with humans, such as social structure with predatory roots?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' We have no idea.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I don't know that we've actually talked about that angle of this on the show. And he comes out right off the bat saying that he believes that that would be the case. Right off the bat. Boom. I admire that. He's also asking a question as to how we could possibly know such an answer like this until it actually happens. And then it's too late. And then you get what you get. But what are some of the best predictions that we can make about the likely social structure of an alien race and back it with evidence rooted in science and what we know? Here are his key points. He says that any intelligent alien species would likely have predatory roots because the evolutionary trait of intelligence is promoted if you have to hunt for your food. So predators must hunt if they're going to stay alive and keep the species going. And some of the most effective ways of successful hunting is to coordinate the efforts with others in your species. And lots of evidence for that right here on our planet. Packs of wolves, packs of other mammals that hunt include chimpanzees, dolphins do it. Lions. We were talking about lions earlier. Spotted hyenas. Right, Cara?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' And even birds. Avian social predators includes the Harris's hawk. Is it Harris's hawk? Butcher birds and kookaburra species. And of course humans. You know, we're our own example of that. Cooperation is required and it relies on a certain level of communication among the individuals in the group. But hunting only gets you so far. Those species would have to find ways for more stable and long-term methods of capturing and consuming energy and bring on agriculture. That's agriculture. And with agriculture compared to hunters, you need a higher degree of communication and more sophisticated communication to create your crops, your grasses, and other things that lead to that. And those are just two of the steps sort of on the way we can get to a place where humans currently reside. You know, we go through masonry, metallurgy, seafaring. Our sophisticated tools, our machinery, our lighter-than-air ships, nuclear reactors, the silicon chip, and podcasting these are the absolute peaks of human endeavours. And communication and complex socialization allows for these advancements to take hold in the society. And he says that social structure is the key ingredient that allows for these advances to unfold over time. And it's a fine-tuned balancing act. Because we are sort of in this constant conflict with our aggressive tendencies that we've had since the days of our early evolution. But if we're too aggressive, we have a much more challenging time achieving these levels f stable socialization that are required to get to the point where we've gotten to. And he brings up our hominid ancestor as an example. Ardipithecus Remedus, a social system four million years ago in which the females chose their own partners, which led them to have reduced levels of aggression and more stable social arrangements, meaning that outsiders were more tolerated, innovations like the use of new tools were more easily accepted by the community, and these are the things that grow, allow you to grow socially as a species. And we know that human history is filled with examples of violence, barbarism, savagery, we have plenty of examples of those. But when you look at it over a long period of time, he says, the social stability was still allowed to take root because they were more dotted with these things rather than rooting in and totally collapsing the system. Over time, it works. So the collaboration prevails over competition. And without that cooperation, complex societies would be impossible. So he makes that this is the argument. You can make the same argument for technologically advanced aliens, even if their specific social structure would look very different or would be something that we would have maybe a hard time identifying that that should be the case with an advanced alien race. So that's a pretty neat way of looking at it. And I don't know that we've really talked about it in any depth along those lines.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. I mean, the question I think is, what are the developmental pathways to a technological like an advanced technological civilization? Does it have to be through some period of competition, predation, etc., or can't, even if eventually it needs to settle down into cooperation, or can it take a completely different path? Of course, we have an N of one. That's always our problem. We don't know of any other examples. We have to then speculate.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Is there too much human bias, you think, in his approach to this?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Total.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Absolutely, man.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Total. The thing is, we don't know what that bias is.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' We've got one data point. It's all mental masturbation.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. If you grew up in the culture of one nation and you didn't even know there was a world outside that nation, you wouldn't even know what defined your culture because you would have nothing to compare it to. You wouldn't even know that your people were whatever, that they tended to be more collectivist or more individualist because you wouldn't even know that that's a thing. That varies. It's just you are just what you are. We don't even know what it means to be human, and we won't until we have something to compare ourselves to, right? And then we'll be surprised. It's like, oh, I didn't realize that intelligent beings could vary in that way. This is part of what I like about science fiction, where they try to explore these issues. They try to imagine an alien species that's alien in thinking. That's the hardest thing.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, gosh. That's so hard.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Most sci-fi aliens are humans, not just physically. Even if they're not physically human, they're mentally human. And making aliens that are not mentally human, when it's done well in science fiction, it's fantastic.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Right.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's not common.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's why I loved Arrival.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' You're right. It's a great example.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's so good. It's so different.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' And that's how it would be. I'm watching Enterprise, the complete series now. It's the first time I've ever watched the whole thing. And I'm loving it. I'm loving it. But it's like, oh, my God, another alien with just a weird nose or forehead, but otherwise identical. It's so frustrating. And I understand why, but it's still like, come on.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Also, Evan, I think it's a bit of a false dichotomy. The most common answer might not be friend or foe, but indifferent. They might be not actively hostile, but not necessarily recognize or respect our rights. And just that indifference could also be threatening, even if it's not aggression as we think of it.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' So they would look at us, look at the technology that we've developed, and really kind of brush it off, potentially?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, again, we're personifying these aliens by necessity. Who knows how they might think about us and what their morality, their ethics. They might be doing things that they don't think are wrong, but we would. It's just hard to imagine. So there's so many assumptions in the question itself that it just almost becomes self-defeating.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Well, I'm curious to see where he goes with this, because it's part of a series of papers that he's going to be, or a series of articles that he's going to be releasing in the coming months. So I'm interested to follow up a little bit.<br />
<br />
== Who's That Noisy? <small>(56:41)</small> ==<br />
* Answer to last week’s Noisy: Stepper motors<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Jay, it's Who's That Noisy time.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' All right, guys. Last week I played this noisy. [plays Noisy] You guys must recognize that.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Well, it's an old arcade or video game.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Some porno I was watching yesterday.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Oh my God.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Wait, that's not Mario? Isn't that Mario?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That is. Well, you know what? It has such an unbelievable similarity to old school, like Nintendo stuff. So that's Wii. That is like the Wii background music.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, it's the Wii. You're right. You're right. That's why I'm equating it with Mario, because I played a lot of Mario Wii.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' But that's not really what the hard part of this noisy was, because if you play any of these video games, you definitely recognize that melody. But so what is creating that sound? That's the real question here.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, what's creating the sound? Ones and zeros.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' And you know what? Before I get into this whole thing, I got to tell you, it took people years to stop emailing me at Who's That Noisy, to stop emailing Evan when I took over the segment, right?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Hey, Evan.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Last week, I would say most people addressed the email to Cara.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' What?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Okay. But that was paying an homage to-<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I know, but-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's amazing.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I know.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That makes me so happy.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, I'm sure it does. Thanks a lot, guys. You know, thanks. Anyway, I'll get on with this. Okay. So Adam Hepburn, he writes, hey, Jay, hey, Cara, hey, Jarrah, Santa Novella. I've guessed correctly the past two noisies. Now you say that. This is me talking now. You say that, Adam. We don't know. You could dispute. I've got 25 of them.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's not like there's a paper trail, like you could just search your inbox or anything.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So I'm hoping for the hat trick. For episode 821, I have an idea. I have no idea what the song is, but I'm guessing that the melody was generated using a dot matrix printer. Okay. First off, shame on you for not knowing what the melody is. Second of all, dot matrix printer, not a bad guess. That's not what it happens to be. Let's move on. Listener named Joshua writes in, and he says, this week's Who's That Noisy sounds like the Wii theme played on floppy disk drives.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Interesting.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah. So you guys have probably heard songs played on floppy drives, right? And there's different ways.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, but they don't sound that good.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' No, they sound more like scratchy. They're more grindy, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That's all correct, Cara. Very, very observant of you to pick up on that nuance.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' And with sound effects, I compliment.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Totally. This is, again, not a bad guess. It just wasn't the correct thing that's creating it, but it's similar. So then we have a listener named Devin Von Taufkirchen. Not bad. Taufkirchen. I know that's correct. I can tell by the way it's spelled. He says, hi, Devin Von Taufkirchen here. I think this week's Noisy is the Mii theme played on an automaton. Have you guys ever heard of an automaton? Nobody?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' No.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So this is what an automaton actually sounds like. I got this here for you. [plays automaton] The reason why I picked this thing, this incredibly weird musical instrument, is this thing is bizarre. Okay, it looks kind of like a saxophone, but nowhere near as complicated. It's made out of plastic. It basically just has that bend to it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Saxamophone.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Saxamophone.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So at the bottom where the horn part of the saxophone is, there's this rubber-looking mouth. It looks like a cartoon mouth. It's like a line. You can open that mouth and change the timbre of the sound that comes out of the mouth. Then the stem part that you hold with your other hand, that's where you play the note. You're just basically pressing down a slider that changes depending on where you put your finger on the slider. But the cool part about this instrument is that you can open the mouth and change the way it sounds, which I found interesting. So anyway, look it up. It's weird and probably comes from Japan, I suspect. Anyway, that was incorrect, but very fun to look at. Another listener named John Tanzer wrote in, said, hi, long-time listener, first-time guesser. Is it the Me Channel theme played on a 3D printer? So you see the theme here, guys. Everyone knows. They're all dancing around it. It's not a 3D printer, but it very well could have been, but there is a correct answer. That answer comes from Joseph Nosy, and he says, to who's that noisy, this noisy is the We Shop Channel theme played on stepper motors, such as from an old printer. So if you look up a stepper motor, it looks like a square box, more flat, not perfect square. I don't even know what you would call that. What do you call that shape? If you take a square and you cut it in half, what are you left with?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' A rectangle?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' A triangle?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' No, not a triangle. If you just kind of have-<br />
<br />
'''E/B:''' Depends how you cut it.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' You cut it straight.<br />
<br />
'''C/S:''' A rectangle.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Whoa.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, but it's still- Yeah, you're right. It's a rectangle and a square. It's a square-tangle. So, okay.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' What?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, I know, but when you look at it, it still looks-<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Write that down, Cara. Square-tangle.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Whatever.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Square-tangle.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Listen, Cara, I'm talking over here. So, it's like one of those, and it has a gear on it, and then it has an arm coming out, and that's what turns your printer. That's what turns the paper, turns the wheels in your printer. But it turns out that if you rotate that engine, this electric motor, faster or slower, it makes different sounds. And people are now making music with these things, and I'm sure it's not true. But let me replay it to you now that you know what it is. These are stepper motors. [plays Noisy] Can you hear your printer in there?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Very cool. I love it. I love creative things like that. So, good job on that one, Joseph. Great guess. You were the first to get it right. Lots of people did, though. And again, this original sound was sent in by a listener named Matt Surley, and thank you for that, Matt.<br />
<br />
=== New Noisy <small>(1:03:10)</small> ===<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I'm going to play a new noisy for you this week, and here it is.<br />
<br />
[_short_vague_description_of_Noisy]<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Cool.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah. So, that's an old recording, and I would like you to identify what it is. And this was sent in by a listener named Octavio, and I believe Octavio is in Mexico City. Very cool. Thank you, Octavio, for sending that in. Very, very fun noisy. So, if you think, guys, you know what it is, or if you have any cool noisies, or you just want to say hi, you can email me at WTN@theskepticsguide.org.<br />
<br />
== Announcements <small>(1:03L57)</small> ==<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So, Steve.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yes?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I've been waiting to do that all week, Cara. I have so many things to announce. Okay. So, if you go to [https://shop.theskepticsguide.org/ theskepticsguide.org/shop], or just click the link on our website, you'll be taken to the SGU store. So, I wanted to let everybody know, we have a bunch of great t-shirts in here. We also have a tote bag and a mug. The tote bag and the mug are going to go away very soon. Also, I have two new t-shirts coming into the store. I'll let you know when they drop, but they're both SGU themed, and they're both a lot of fun.<br />
<br />
Next thing I'd like to say is that we have NECSS coming up. You can go to NECSS.org, and this will be happening August 6th and 7th. So, it'll be Friday night and all day Saturday in August. So, if you'd like to join us, go to NECSS.org. It's going to be great, and I hope we'll see you there.<br />
<br />
So, on November 18th, which is a Thursday in Denver, we will be having the very next Extravaganza. So, as you know, our tour got cut short. This is the continuation of that tour, but we will be updating the show quite a bit between now and then, just making it better, coming up with more bits. So, you can find this link on the website, of course. Just go to [https://www.theskepticsguide.org/events skepticsguide.org/events], and we also have a private show, which is on November 19th, and you'll see a link for it there as well. So, please do join us.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. Thanks. And Evan, you have something coming up.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, I do. So, as you know, I'm the co-host of another podcast called Which Game First? A Board Game Podcast. We are putting together an online virtual conference as well, which is coming up starting on May 7th, and it's called the Board Game Design Conference, in which we're inviting professionals to come and speak to talk about the design process of gaming. But it's so much more than that. You don't have to be part of a company that designs games in order to have an interest in this. They're going to be talking about a lot of different aspects of board game, what it goes into making the board game, the psychology of the board game, education, how it relates to board game, and so many other things. It's for both the player and the designer, and we're inviting everyone to join us. It's one price. It takes place over the course of three weekends. There's a total of 12 presentations that you can see, and it's only $29.95. We would love for you to join us. Go to boardgamedesignconference.com to purchase your ticket and read up on the great presenters that we're going to have, all the topics that we're going to be talking about, and of course, I'll be there along with Celeste and all of our hosts the entire way. We hope to see you there.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Sounds like fun. All right.<br />
<br />
== Name That Logical Fallacy <small>(1:06:33)</small> ==<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We have a great interview coming up. We're just going to do a quick name that logical fallacy and then go on to our interview. This is a letter that comes from Steve Hopkinson, and he writes, "Hi Rogues. I was listening to another podcast in which a proposed federal ban on menthol cigarettes was being discussed. The guest was a professor of law who was arguing against it for several reasons." So again, the professor's arguing against the ban. And then Steve continues, "one of the questions that the host asked him was if he realized that intentionally or not, his position put him in league with the tobacco companies. Putting aside whether or not I agree with the professor, I think there's an obvious fallacy in that question, but I can't put my finger on which one specifically." He thinks it might be an ad hominem logical fallacy. So what do you guys, this is actually, should be an easy one. What do you guys think about that? Saying that, yes, so he's against the ban against menthol cigarettes. And then the host says, yeah, but that position puts you in league with the tobacco companies. In other words, that your position is the same as the position that they have.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Poisoning the well?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Absolutely. It's a textbook case of poisoning the well. Yeah. So, which is again, lump or splitter kind of thing. It's kind of in the same category as ad hominem, where you're arguing against the person making the argument rather than the argument itself. But in this case, you're just trying to taint the argument or the person making the argument by associating it with something unsavory. The most common manifestation of this may be the argument ad hitlerum, which is basically saying, well, Hitler thought that too, you know.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Hitler had a dog?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Hitler was a vegetarian.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, Hitler was a vegetarian. So yeah, obviously so means nothing, but just a way of tainting the argument, tainting the position or tainting the person by associating it with something that everyone dislikes or is unsavory or is generally thought of in a negative way. So poisoning the well, that's the logical fallacy there. Okay. So we have an interview coming up with Iszi Lawrence. We're going to talk about pirates. It's awesomely fun. So take a listen now.<br />
<br />
== Interview with Iszi Lawrence <small>(1:08:51)</small> ==<br />
* [Iszi.com]<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Joining us now is Iszi Lawrence. Iszi, welcome back to the Skeptics' Guide.<br />
<br />
'''IL:''' I should be welcoming you, shouldn't I? I should be going, you're listening to Iszi Lawrence on the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe. There you go.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That sounds familiar.<br />
<br />
'''IL:''' There you go.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, if Iszi's voice sounds familiar, she intros the podcast every week and science or fiction.<br />
<br />
'''IL:''' I do. It's quite an effort, though, because every single week they get me to ring up.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You got to record it every week. There's no easier way to do it.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Right. You're so consistent, though. It's amazing.<br />
<br />
'''IL:''' Thank you. I do try.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I have to tell you, we got one email a couple of years ago from a listener who's like, who's that person on your podcast doing a fake British accent?<br />
<br />
'''IL:''' Darling, I mean, you're listening. Well, officially, I've introduced BBC podcasts because I do Radio 4 shows. And so I've had to go, thank you for downloading this podcast from the BBC. I've done all of that. So you guys were first. So you got officially that level of cred.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Awesome.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Absolutely.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Retro cred.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So the reason why we're having you on the show this week mainly because you're awesome and we need to have you on every now and then, but the reason why we're having you on now was because I was watching Netflix because that's what you do in a pandemic and I was watching the Lost Pirate Kingdom, which they're using the talking head interview style. And one of the talking heads was you.<br />
<br />
'''IL:''' It's my head.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I know that talking head.<br />
<br />
'''IL:''' Yeah. Yes. It was me. I am by trade. You see, I started doing stand up comedy and I've really gone into doing history as part of that. And as a result, I've become effectively a British BBC history presenter. So whenever you'll find making documentaries, you have these experts who come in and they refuse to say what they think without having lots of caveats in it. Well, given the information we have and so far we know, whereas an idiot like me will come along and say, well, I've read some books and I've seen some primary sources. So this definitely happened this way. And as a result, I'm quite popular because I'm prepared to not risk my academic career by people misconstruing what I mean.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, there's a very important role. I know you're being semi tongue in cheek, but for science communicators who have enough of a background in the area to understand enough of what the experts are saying that we could say in an interesting way to the public. Whereas as you say, the experts often don't necessarily have the entirely separate skill of public speaking or science communication.<br />
<br />
'''IL:''' It is a tricky thing to do. I also present a podcast called Terrible Lizards, which is about dinosaurs, which I present alongside Dr. Dave Hone. And he's an academic of paleontologist proper, has named dinosaurs and that sort of thing. And even he, when I'm speaking to him and we're chatting on a podcast, refuses to be pinned down on certain facts. And I was like, no, tell me this. Tell me what you really think. Well, I think this, but and everything has this caveat of the science can always change because that's the thing that you guys know is the science always changes. Well, so does history. People's opinions about certain people always changes. And it's often to do with the politics. And I think every historian wants to sort of kill their father. So you have to have a different opinion of the people who came before.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. Do you feel that there's a lot of that, like opinions evolving just to have something new to say rather than saying, no, they're pretty much historians about this right for the last 300 years?<br />
<br />
'''IL:''' Well, yes and no. I mean, there is. I mean, the big change is, I think, in almost all science, really, but in in archaeology and paleontology and is just and in particular archaeology, actually, it is the database and it is the fact that everybody's stuff is now online. So you have historians able to get different sources from all over the world and look at them. Like you could even get somebody to 3D print you a dinosaur fossil from across where previously you'd have had to fly out to see it and the how cheap information is now compared to just even the time investment of going to investigate something. You know, if there's a Roman mosaic in Greece that you want to go and have a look at now you can see really detailed photographs of the the objects that you're investigating and that is changing everything. And the data sets you're able to process so much more information so much faster than ever before. And that's the really exciting thing about the IT world. People think, oh, it's all about genetics and it's all about being able to like CT scan mummies and that sort of thing. It's not. It's about collecting all the information together and museums and universities across the planet working together and coming up with new theories. So yeah, there is the idea that we've got to write something new, but there is genuinely a lot more information for you to find that new thing to get hold of.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I can't imagine doing what we do, any of it without the internet.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh my God, going to go into a library. What is that?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' How would you know stuff? How did they know stuff before they could just look it up online?<br />
<br />
'''IL:''' It was.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I don't know.<br />
<br />
'''IL:''' Yeah. It seems to be an absolute nightmare. You know, the idea of, well, Dr. Dave Hone, who I do the podcast with, he was sort of telling me when he was doing his part of his PhD at Bristol University, part of it was having to sort of do get a data set. I think he was looking at like the length of jaws of Spinosaurus or something. It's usually what he does. And it's literally, he had like 5,000 data entry points or something that was going into this. And it would take a week to process do a runner multivariate statistical analysis on something would take a week for the computer to get through it. And this was like 2005. And now he can do it in an hour.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So let's, let's pivot to pirates.<br />
<br />
'''IL:''' Yes.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We want to talk about pirates.<br />
<br />
'''IL:''' Let's pirate it up.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I was really surprised, I have to say, after watching the documentary, how much of pirate lore is actually sort of true.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, right?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You know, I, because I assumed that like the Treasure Island, well Disney pirate thing was complete nonsense. And I watched Black Sails, which is an awesome series, I'm sure you've seen it. And I'm like, yeah, okay, this is like all based upon Treasure Island, and it's all fiction. And then I watched this documentary, holy shit, half of this was real.<br />
<br />
'''IL:''' Yeah. And a lot more of it is real than the historians want you to think, because it seems so silly, as well. So even very basic things like there's this, everybody says, oh, the pirates didn't really go arrr. But a lot of them were from West Country, you go down to Cornwall, to this day, I've done I've performed shows in Devon and Cornwall. And they do all go, instead of saying yes, they go arrr, arrr, there you go, all right. You know, they sound like pirates. And that is why you have the pirate accent the way you do. Yes, it was popularized in the 1950s. And that's where it sort of comes from as a joke. But that is based on fact, a lot of people like Blackbeard came from the West Country.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But I think the single most amazing fact that I learned was that the first real Caribbean pirate was Captain Hornigold. How is that possibly true?<br />
<br />
'''IL:''' What's that word? It's nominative determinism. It's this wonderful thing where you end up doing what your name says. So my favorite nominative determinism person is Professor Brain, who was the head of the magazine journal Brain. This is in like 1910, 1920, something like that. And he was replaced by Dr. Head, who replaced Brain as the head of Brain at the journal Brain. It's a beautiful little thing.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' If you told me Captain Hornigold, I would think, oh, that's what a stupid Disney name is. Couldn't they come up with something more realistic than that? But it's freaking real.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' But not only that, not only is Hornigold an awesome name, but I didn't realize just how important of a character or a person he was in the whole scheme of the Golden Age of Pirates. I mean, this is the guy. I mean, it was basically his idea to go from Jamaica to Nassau and set up this pirate kingdom. He's like the grandfather or father of these Golden Age pirates. I mean, this guy is critical.<br />
<br />
'''IL:''' Well, he was a man of necessity, though. I mean, this is the thing. They needed a place to sort of hang out and Nassau was notoriously underfunded and it was easy to take over. You just put enough men in there and there's nothing that the governor could do because you've just got loads of pirates. And then it was just like, OK, well, be good, kids. What are they going to do?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' What are they going to do?<br />
<br />
'''IL:''' Yeah, exactly. But I think the reason he was just popular was he was just a very good captain and got a lot of respect from his men. And he was able to basically command a ship and people did what he suggested, which is lovely. But he wasn't he's I think Jennings nearly took over at several different times. There was different fighting among different pirates. And who was the most popular? Who could command the respect of the men? I mean, that's the really surprising thing is all of this nonsense that you get in Pirates of the Caribbean about parlay and the pirate code is a real thing. They did have a set of standards, which is incredibly modern. I mean, if you're into a welfare state at all, I mean, these guys got pensions. If you got injured, you were given compensation, you got free health care you've got a a right to vote. I mean, what's amazing is that very few people realise the big misconception that you get is how white all the crews are. They weren't. I mean, Blackbeard's ship was about 60% African and when I say African, African Caribbean. And it is just that, it is that thing that every single person on that ship got a vote about what happened. Now, admittedly, Blackbeard is a pirate, so he ended up selling a lot of his crew, but in theory, they were free men and they could vote they should have voted him out when they had a chance, really. But he was a very successful pirate.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I remember being very disappointed with Blackbeard because I was gaining a lot of respect for him that I hadn't had just at how he was knowledgeable and educated and seemed like a cool guy besides the torturing and murders and stuff. But then when he did that, I was just like, oh, man a little disappointed Blackbeard.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But he had syphilis and he kind of went demented at the end there, right?<br />
<br />
'''IL:''' That is true.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' How plausible is that? I mean, I think it's pretty well established that he had syphilis. And if you get tertiary syphilis, you can get a kind of crazy dementia, you know. And it's how well established is that?<br />
<br />
'''IL:''' It's not established. We just simply don't know how ill he was. All we know is that he held up a town for a week and risked everything just so he could get his hands on mercury, which was the supposed cure. So I don't know if it had gone into his brain. It was certainly giving him physical discomfort. But the reason why he got syphilis isn't just because he was a party animal. It was partly because of that. There was a reason for it, which is he had a wife in each island, in each town, effectively. So he always had a defense witness. So if he was ever brought up in front of the courts, he had a woman there pleading how she needed him to look after her and everything else. So he needed to marry several different times. So you have that ability to escape the police, as it were, even though I'm using the word police incorrectly there. But you know what I mean, to escape the law.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Authorities.<br />
<br />
'''IL:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Uh-huh.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Another very interesting historical fact that came out of this was that, I mean, the British Empire basically created the pirates.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh my God, yes. Absolutely.<br />
<br />
'''IL:''' Well, to be fair, it wasn't really the British Empire. I blame Spain for having, I particularly blame Spain for just not allowing their royal family to breed outside of the royal family, because the whole reason the Spanish War of Succession happened was because Charles II's dad married his niece and Charles II is a famously disabled man. I mean, it's really quite tragic. The poor thing. He had to eat, but he could barely eat. His tongue was so large he couldn't close his mouth. He couldn't sleep on his back because he died at a very young age. He was completely unable to breed. And this left a massive crisis in Spain, where they didn't have a new leader. And the next in line to be leader was also the Holy Roman Emperor. And that would mean you'd have a sort of super state in Europe, which is very Catholic. And the Dutch and the British and a bit of France, effectively, would have been crammed in between of this. And they're quite Protestant countries, France isn't at this time, but you can see the antagonism happening. They're trying to establish colonies everywhere. So you have this massive war, for which Britain gets a load of privateers to attack as many Spanish vessels and stop them getting all their gold from the New World. And then all these privateers are just given letters of marks, saying, you keep some of the booty, just go ahead, attack all these Spanish ships. Once the Spanish War ends, you have all of these privateers who just don't have a job anymore. And the British don't do anything about it. They just say, we can't be a pirate anymore, go back to doing what you're doing. In the meantime, there's no jobs on the land because all of those are done for free by slaves. There's no ability to go back to England because that costs money. The Navy doesn't want you anymore. So what do you do? I mean, these men were absolutely desperate for work and desperate for some sorts of employment. So of course, they go and rob ships.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Didn't some of them like they've had like, what, 12, 14, 15 years of plundering these Spanish ships. I mean, didn't some of them say, all right, I got enough booty here. I'm good. I don't need to do this anymore. I mean, why? Or did they make so little that they just blew it on prostitutes and booze? I mean.<br />
<br />
'''IL:''' Well, I think you've got, you've got, well, when they're British Navy merchants, so they're basically, they're not being, they're being paid a wage at that point. And it is the British who are sort of controlling the ships. So when they're attacking the Spanish, they're doing so on behalf of the British government. The British government is getting some money. And when they're pirates, though, they can divide it up between them. So being in the Merchant Navy was pretty brutal. I mean, you were lowest of the low British officers were of a different class to the the Navy workers, people like Ben Hornigold, people like Edward Teach or Thatch or just Blackbeard's easier. But people like who Charles Vane as well. They would have been whipped. They would have been given very meagre rations, very meagre wages. And they were lucky. A lot of them had been press ganged into it as well. So a lot of them wouldn't have wanted to ever go to sea. But they were basically forced to when they were back in England. They were gotten drunk and they were just, I think, being slipped the king's shilling is what it's called. And then you, you basically get taken on a boat and then you are a sailor. And if you muck up and you've refused to work, well, they'll do, they'll whip you or they'll kill you or they'll do something absolutely atrocious to you. And that's in the official that's on the good ships. So you don't really have much of a choice. So yeah, these men were desperate for money. They didn't. It's not like when they were plundering the Spanish, they were allowed to keep it all at that point.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. So as a pirate, they had a better life, more money, right? They had a job.<br />
<br />
'''IL:''' They had a destiny.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' They were less likely, less likely to get keelhauled.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' They had a good man island.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Despite the fact that they have a reputation for being chaotic and lawless, they actually conditions are more civilized on a pirate ship than on a British naval ship at the time. Would you agree with that?<br />
<br />
'''IL:''' I think for your average sailor, yes. For the officers, possibly not. And also they had to do things which meant like on a British naval ship, there would be medical officers and there would be a correct doling out of the grog and a correct, you know, everybody would have got fed in order for the ship to work. It was much more efficient. You would have been, whereas on a pirate ship, if things were going wrong, if the captain was drunk, who knows what would have happened? I mean, you could have been you're basically dependent on how good the people are around you. So there is that. And the grog would have been, because the grog is necessary, because as you know, you can't keep water fresh, you've got to mix it with rum. And so and this was really sparingly given out on a British vessel in order to make sure the crew was sober, but on a pirate vessel, not so much. So I mean, you have like Blackbeard at the height of his reign, his best ship gets run aground just on a sandbank, presumably because they were all too drunk. A lot of historians do say that this was a tactical move by Blackbeard because he was going to get his king's pardon and he knew what he was doing. I don't think so. I don't think he would have just basically wasted his best vessel for a tactical reason that made sense later on.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Right, right, right. But yeah, so they were less disciplined. But there was more egalitarian, more democratic.<br />
<br />
'''IL:''' Much more.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So to what extent, I mean again, black sales kind of pushed this theme. And I didn't know how reasonable it was. To what extent did they really innovate democracy in North America, you know?<br />
<br />
'''IL:''' Well, in North America, I don't know, is the answer to that. I don't think, I think certainly the word got out about them and they were very romanticised. And as a result, that may have influenced. But the thing is, these ideas have been around a long time. You have to remember, this is, what, 60, 70 years after back in Britain, we'd chop the head off the king. And there's this sort of weird time where people are gathering in coffee houses, like going, oh, we could vote and decide how we do it. Oh, look at this ballot. Isn't this fun way? Do you know, if we have the ballots without other people watching, that seems like a more fair argument. And oh, isn't this a nice idea? And should we have a law protector of England for a decade? And so all of these ideas were already there. It's just that the necessity of it in the pirates basically because you couldn't pay people until you got the treasure, until you got the booty, you couldn't physically give anybody any money. So they had a higher stake in the outcome. It's a bit like I don't know if you watch like ice fishing and all the rest of it. You know, I can't remember what it's called, it's called like killer crabs or whatever it is. That American show in the Bering Strait and you have these guys. Well if that boat goes down, none of the fishermen get any money. But you know, depending on the catch depends on how much money you're paid. And in a similar way, depending on the catch, if we can get hold of these vessels, if we risk our lives together, then we'll get paid. And even though the captain is the head of the ship, the captain didn't initially buy the ship. Well, not unless he's Steve Bonnet. But most captains just stole their ships. And therefore, they didn't have that stake in them at the beginning. And so it's much more of a corporation instead of a top down, top down thing. You know, there's no big money invested. Well, there is massive money invested in a ship like the Widder. But once Sam Bellamy gets hold of it, it's not really his, it's everybody who's taken it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Right. So the situation really required that kind of model.<br />
<br />
'''IL:''' Yeah. And I think it's because you're looking at people who come from the lower classes in general, because they are ex-navies and everything else, the way that the working class is, because there is no welfare state at this point in England or in Britain in the same way. You are reliant on each other a lot more in general. If you're growing up, it's a sort of naturally, it's what people, it feels natural to people. And the idea of voting on what we do and drawing lots and that sort of thing feels more natural, certainly at the beginning. And then it's about which man ultimately you respect to be your leader. It feels more tribal, I suppose, rather than let us write the Constitution of the United States of America without knowing what America is going to do in the next 50 years or so. So, yeah, it's born out of necessity rather than idealism, I would suggest. But it is rather lovely that you do have Anne Bonny, who is a woman, got an equal vote to, if they'd been on the same ship, to Black Caesar, who'd have got an equal vote to Blackbeard. All of this, it's just, it's incredibly forward thinking in some respects, but ultimately they are trying to rob people. So they're not good guys.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, Iszi, this has been a ton of fun.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah. Loved it.<br />
<br />
'''IL:''' Arr.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Arr.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We have to get you back on the show more often.<br />
<br />
'''IL:''' It'll be cool.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' What are you working on next?<br />
<br />
'''IL:''' So I am, I've got, I'm writing kids' books, so that's my main thing. I write history books for kids. Most of them are quite English-centric, so I've got one called The Unstoppable Lettie Pegg, which is about the suffragette movement in the UK. Based all on facts, my character Lettie Pegg joins the suffragette bodyguards who all train in jiu-jitsu, which they did back in 1910, believe it or not.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Wow.<br />
<br />
'''IL:''' So that's a fun-filled little book. It's out with Bloomsbury. You can get that. I've got another one coming out in September, and that's all about the Second World War, which has Americans in it, because the American women came over, and they helped us fly our Spitfires. So you have a load, this is before the WASPs, right? They came over, and they joined the ATA, and so I've got a book called Billy Swift Takes Flight, which is out in September. You can pre-order it, and that is all about the Second World War. And yeah, I'm working on my podcast, so if you like history, I do several history podcasts, and the main ones are the British Museum Member Cast, the Z-List Deadlist, and of course, if you like dinosaurs, like pirates, yeah, listen to Terrible Lizards. But there's an awful lot there. Just go to iszi.com, I-S-Z-I.com, that is me.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's actually the most impressive thing about you, is that you have a four-letter URL.<br />
<br />
'''IL:''' I know.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, right?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That is amazing.<br />
<br />
'''IL:''' I'm so Google-able, but nobody can actually spell my name. But yeah, iszi.com. I got that when I was 15, you know? I bought that, and I thought, that's quite fun, I'll spell my name like this now, and that is probably the best bit of investment I've ever made. But nevermind.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, thank you so much for joining us.<br />
<br />
'''IL:''' Oh, thank you so much for having me, and yes, goodbye from the Skeptic's Guide to the Universe, your escape to pirates.<br />
<br />
== Science or Fiction <small>(1:31:50)</small> ==<br />
{{SOFinfo<br />
|item1 = 97% of all animal species are invertebrates.<br />
|link1 = <ref>[https://www.biologicaldiversity.org/species/invertebrates/]</ref><br />
<br />
|item2 = The longest worm in the world was measured at 55 meters (180 feet).<br />
|link2 = <ref>[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lineus_longissimus]</ref><br />
<br />
|item3 = Of the invertebrates, only insects undergo metamorphosis.<br />
|link3 = <ref>[https://www.britannica.com/science/metamorphosis]</ref><br />
<br />
|}}<br />
<br />
{{SOFResults<br />
|fiction = metamorphosis<!-- short word or phrase representing the item --><br />
|fiction2 = <!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
<br />
|science1 = 97% invertebrates<!-- short word or phrase representing the item --><br />
|science2 = longest worm<!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
|science3 = <!-- leave blank if absent --> <br />
<br />
|rogue1 =bob <!-- rogues in order of response --><br />
|answer1 =metamorphosis <!-- item guessed, using word or phrase from above --><br />
<br />
|rogue2 =jay<br />
|answer2 =metamorphosis<br />
<br />
|rogue3 =evan<br />
|answer3 =metamorphosis<br />
<br />
|rogue4 =cara <!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
|answer4 =metamorphosis <!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
<br />
|rogue5 = <!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
|answer5 = <!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
<br />
|host =steve <!-- asker of the questions --><br />
<!-- for the result options below, <br />
only put a 'y' next to one. --><br />
|sweep = <!-- all the Rogues guessed wrong --><br />
|clever = <!-- each item was guessed (Steve's preferred result) --><br />
|win = <!-- at least one Rogue guessed wrong, but not them all --><br />
|swept = y<!-- all the Rogues guessed right --><br />
}}<br />
''Voiceover: It's time for Science or Fiction.''<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Each week I come up with three science news items or facts, two real and one fake, and then I challenge my panel of skeptics to tell me which one is the fake. I have a theme this week. The theme is invertebrates. Invertebrates.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Inflammable.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Invertebrates. Ready?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yes.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Item number one, 97% of all animal species are invertebrates. Item number two, the longest worm in the world was measured at 55 meters, 180 feet. Item number three, of the invertebrates, only insects undergo metamorphosis. All right, Bob, go first.<br />
<br />
=== Bob's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Right. That's a word.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' This is totally not revenge for last week, but go ahead.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Did I make you go first?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' You made him lose.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I did make you go first, so good. Yeah, I understand. Oh, crap. I'm taking my sweet time. Let's see. 97% of all animal species are invertebrates. Okay. Shit. Let's go to two. The longest worm in the world was 55 meters. That's just too crazy to be false. Yeah. I don't think you'd make that up. That's 180, what? All right. Let's see. Maybe three is better. Of the invertebrates, only insects undergo metamorphosis. So how would you describe metamorphosis? Is that an allowed question for this one?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I mean, there's a very specific technical definition of metamorphosis. It's like caterpillars becoming butterflies, right?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That's like one of the true evolutionary puzzles. How the hell does that evolve, right? I mean, that's just metamorphosis. You only hear about that though. All right. What the hell? I'm going to say that one. I think, yeah, I'll say the metamorphosis is fiction, whatever.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay, Jay.<br />
<br />
=== Jay's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''J:''' All right. 97% of all animal species are invertebrates. I think that is science. That sounds correct, you spineless bastards. The longest worm in the world was measured at 55 meters. Oh my God, that's disgusting. That one is crazy.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' You could feed a family with one worm.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' The worm eats you, Bob. You're reversed here.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' A family of what?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I'm going to go with Bob. I'm going to say that invertebrates are not the only animals that go under metamorphosis.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay. It doesn't say only animals. <br />
<br />
'''J:''' It says only invertebrates. Of the invertebrates, only insects undergo metamorphosis. Oh, oh.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yes.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, wait. Wait, now.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I'm going to still say it's no.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay, Evan.<br />
<br />
=== Evan's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I think I'm going to agree with Jay and Bob here, Bob and Jay, I should say. That longest worm at 55 meters, that's incredible. I mean, but there are worms in our bodies and stuff that I think can get pretty long, but out in nature and who knows where or down way deep in the ocean and stuff, perhaps. So yeah, that one seems remarkable. But again, I'm convinced by Bob's and Jay's lack of specificity with the one about metamorphosis, so I'll join them. Fiction.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And Cara.<br />
<br />
=== Cara's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''C:''' GWTBs. Go with the boys. Yeah. I think worms we think of as we look at earthworms and that's like our template for a worm. But it's true. They're parasitic worms. They can be curled up. They can like pack intestines, pack stomachs of big organisms. And think about it. There's probably worms in whales and stuff. They're probably big. The invertebrate thing is the 97% is pretty bananas, but I still think it's probably true. You know, when I think about metamorphosis, it's funny because yes, of course, like caterpillars to butterflies is the first thing that come to mind. But the second thing that comes to mind is tadpoles to frogs. And of course, those are chordates. Those are vertebrates. But if they, if a lot of amphibians can do it, I bet you there are other invertebrates like because we think of insects a lot, but there are like, like mollusks, crustaceans, like shellfish, like a lot of those things are invertebrates too. And I wonder if some of them undergo metamorphosis. And we're just not aware of it because we don't, we don't look at their life cycles very often. So I don't know. I'm going to go with the guys on that too.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #1 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. So you guys are all in agreement. So I guess we'll take these in order. 97% of all animal species are invertebrates. You guys all think this one is science and this one is science.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' There's a lot of insects out there.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' There's a lot of invertebrates out there. It's one of those things where like we give a lot of attention to vertebrates like when you think of, like if I told you to think of an animal, I think 99% of the time people would think of a vertebrate, you know?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah. We have a backbone bias.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. They would actually probably think of a mammal.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Probably even, yeah, right. Unless you're a birder. Then you'd think of a bird. But yeah, so vertebrates are birds, mammals, reptiles, fish, and amphibians. And there are six categories of invertebrates and 97% of all individual species are invertebrates. Most of the animals are invertebrates by far.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And is that because of so many insects?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's the biggest group. And beetles is like the specific group.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Beetles. Oh my gosh. They dwarf all others.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. So yeah, that one is science.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #2 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Number two, the longest worm in the world was measured at 55 meters or 180 feet. You guys all think this one is science. So if this one is science, what's the worm? Which worm do you think is 55?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' The Mongolian death worm, of course.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I think it's probably parasitic.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' One that jumps out of the sand like in Dune.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Or yeah, or it's like a jungle or like a rainforest dwelling worm. I don't know. But I bet you it's parasitic.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You think it's parasitic?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I think so.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Probably.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Linnaeus longissimus.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I knew it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Longissimus.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The bootlace worm.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Ew. So it looks like a bootlace?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's a ribbon worm.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It tastes like a bootlace.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Ew. Stop it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' One of the longest animals. Yeah. This one's because this one's pretty gnarly. It secretes a mucus that is highly toxic.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh. Toxic mucus.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's like that weird tooth thing. You remember the tooth stamp, the nose tooth?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' When you handle it, and then the mucus is pungent, it smells like iron or sewage.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Like a hagfish?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Moving on.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Bleh.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I'm hungry.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' They could kill crabs with this mucus.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Damn, man.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' 1864 this specimen was washed ashore. This is in the ocean. And was measured at 55 meters.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' So it was a water creature.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Wow.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' What did that weigh, I wonder? 180 foot worm?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. Incredible.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #3 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Of the invertebrates, only insects undergo metamorphosis. That is the fiction. Cara's correct. Frogs. Tadpoles turn into frogs. So yeah. So there are vertebrate species. Fish and amphibians are the only groups of vertebrates that undergo anything like metamorphosis. Of the invertebrates, as far as I could tell from reading multiple sources, only the insects undergo complete metamorphosis.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But mollusks, crustaceans, siderians, echinoderms, and tunicates undergo a partial metamorphosis, or hemi-metabole. So there's holometabole is when it's four stages, and it's pretty much a complete change of the body anatomy. A hemi-metabole has three stages, and it's less complete. And then ametabole is no metamorphosis. It's actually not that evolutionarily mysterious, Bob, because if you think about it, it's just the different stages of growth. So like a maggot turning into a fly is the same exact process as a caterpillar turning into a butterfly. It's just that-<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Really?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. Once you get those stages are set up. So the holometabole is egg, pupa, chrysalis, adult. Hemi-metabole is egg, pupa, adult. There's no chrysalis, and the transformation is usually less dramatic. But it's essentially any rapid dramatic change in body anatomy, usually accompanied by a growth spurt. So yeah, the caterpillar to butterfly is the iconic example of it. But like the crown of thorns, sea star starts out as a blob and then turns into a sea star with spikes on all of its arms. That's hemi-metabole, or that's partial, incomplete metamorphosis.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Well, do they have any ideas on how it might have appeared earlier in its evolutionary history?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So I don't know what the evolutionary history of it is, but it's simply sequential developmental stages that have become fairly discrete. And then once you have them, they could evolve more and more differences. What happens is, in the pupal stage, you have what are called imaginal disks. You guys ever hear that term, imaginal disks? So this is essentially like clusters of genes and proteins that will make the adult. And they're just sort of dormant in the pupa stage. And then when the pupa goes into its chrysalis, then the imaginal disks basically grow in adults out of the material of the pupa. So the pupa is typically the eating phase, and the adult is the mating phase.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That's an interesting way to put it. Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So the pupa, like the caterpillars eat, and they turn into a butterfly. The butterflies mate and die, mate, lay eggs and die. Yeah. They don't eat.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Jay, when are you going to enter your mating phase?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Three more years.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Then you have to lay your eggs and die.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' He's still in his eating phase. It's a good phase.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' From where I'm from, it's called the meatball phase.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Meatball phase. Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Of course.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. So good job, guys. You know your invertebrates, at least a little bit.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah. Well enough to pass the test.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yep. I mean, I like to hit areas of knowledge that I think are underrepresented, that go against our biases.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Of course you do.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We tend to have, yeah, it's like mammalian biases, charismatic megafauna biases, animals over plants.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, right. Charismatic megafauna.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. So we're going to be hitting these themes every now and then.<br />
<br />
== Skeptical Quote of the Week <small>(1:42:47)</small> ==<br />
<br />
<blockquote>‘If history and science have taught us anything, it is that passion and desire are not the same as truth. The human mind evolved to believe in the gods. It did not evolve to believe in biology’ </blockquote><br />
– Edward O. Wilson, an American biologist, naturalist, ecologist, and entomologist known for developing the field of sociobiology<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Evan, give us a quote.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' "If history and science have taught us anything, it is that passion and desire are not the same as truth. The human mind evolved to believe in the gods. It did not evolve to believe in biology." E.O. Wilson.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's a good quote.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Apropos.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Not a dumb guy.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' No, not at all.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Those pesky emotions get in the way. Only we can become a species of pure logic.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' No, thanks.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Is that what that would be like?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Ooh.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No, that sounds dangerous.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Then we can, every seven years, we can go crazy and have sex.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' How sad. No.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Seven years, man.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Pond far, is that what?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Pond far, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, we could call it that. Instead of calling it the pond far, they should call it sex far, because that's about, because it's far away.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, no. Yeah. I do not want.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' They don't have to wait every seven years to have sex. It's a misconception.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Are you debunking a Vulcan myth, Bob? Is that what you're doing?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' He's a science fiction skeptic, Steve.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, that is definitely, you earn like a double geek points for that.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah. Well done.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. Well, thank you all for joining me this week.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Right.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Sure man.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Thanks, Steve.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We will be doing a live stream on Friday. Yeah, we'll be doing it most Fridays, only like holidays and stuff we may take off, but we will be doing it on Friday. So we'll see you all there.<br />
<br />
{{Outro664}}{{top}}<br />
<br />
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}}</div>Hearmepurrhttps://www.sgutranscripts.org/w/index.php?title=SGU_Episode_840&diff=19131SGU Episode 8402024-01-27T18:19:54Z<p>Hearmepurr: episode done</p>
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|qowText = The earth will not continue to offer its harvest, except with faithful stewardship. We cannot say we love the land and then take steps to destroy it for use by future generations.<br />
|qowAuthor = {{w|Pope John Paul II}}<br />
|downloadLink = {{DownloadLink|2021-08-13}}<br />
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|forumLink = https://sguforums.org/index.php?board=1.0 <!-- try to find the right ?TOPIC= link for each episode --><br />
}}<!-- <br />
** Note that you can put each Rogue’s infobox initials inside triple quotes to make the initials bold in the transcript. This is how the final statement from Steve is typed at the end of this transcript: '''S:''' —and until next week, this is your {{SGU}}.<br />
--><br />
== Introduction ==<br />
<br />
''Voice-over: You're listening to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.'' <br />
<br />
'''S:''' Hello and welcome to the {{SGU|link=y}}. Today is Wednesday, August 11<sup>th</sup>, 2021, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella... <br />
<br />
'''B:''' Hey, everybody!<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Cara Santa Maria... <br />
<br />
'''C:''' Howdy. <br />
<br />
'''S:''' Jay Novella... <br />
<br />
'''J:''' Hey guys. <br />
<br />
'''S:''' ...and Evan Bernstein. <br />
<br />
'''E:''' Happy birthday, Jay.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Thanks. Thank you.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' What?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, happy birthday, Jay.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Today's the actual day and Jay agreed to do a show on his birthday.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Aww.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Isn't that nice?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I would rather be with my family my kids and everything, but the show, like, Steve, 16 years, we haven't missed a week, right?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Definitely we could say now we haven't missed a week in 16 years.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' You know, and at my age, what am I doing on a Wednesday night in the middle of the week like-<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, we celebrated already. What do you want, two birthdays?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, we had a party.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It's your birth month.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It's not like it's your 50th birthday when you had two huge parties in a row.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Well, the first party was the decoy party.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, yes.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' What's the best way to surprise somebody? Throw them a fake surprise party. He was so not expecting that second one. He was, like, negatively expecting it. Like, no way we could even imagine that, oh, he's going to have another one that's even better. So let's talk about a surprise.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Misdirection.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It seems like a lot of work.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It was. It was.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' For just Jay, for me, I could see.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I just think I've never had a surprise party. I don't know. It's just it's not, like, part of my culture, I guess. Or, like, big parties on, like, at 20, 30. Well, I guess those are the only ones I've had.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I hate you right now.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' 40's coming. It's coming pretty soon.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, a couple years, right?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It's a bad one.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I thought the surprise was going to be that she was taking me to play laser tag or something. You know, like, I was like.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Ooh, I want to play laser tag. When's the last time you guys played laser tag?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I played laser tag.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, we did it a few years ago. It's always fun.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It's fun. That's fun.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I haven't done it since I was a teenager.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Oh, it's a blast.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No pun intended. Did you do it out? Was it like an indoor?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Indoor. Yeah, the next thing like that I want to do, though, is a VR suite. You know?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yes.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yes.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Do you know what that is, Cara?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Where is that?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' You go to a it's a VR studio where you are wearing the VR stuff. You're wireless, right? And what they do is they marry. No, no, it's VR. But they absolutely marry a VR environment to a real environment. So when you reach out and you see a door in front of you, there's actually a door in front of you that you're opening that matches the door in the VR environment.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And there's like there's like gravel under your feet. If it looks like there's gravel under your feet, like that kind of stuff. Yeah, that's cool.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah. So there's like a Ghostbusters one. And they give you a Ghostbusters type unit that you hold in your hand.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's awesome.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So it feels like you're holding the what were those called?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Proton accelerators?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Unlicensed accelerators. They actually loan you them. That's cool. I'm so going there.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, that sounds really cool, actually. I'd be down.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. So did you guys see that they announced the two hosts, a new host of Jeopardy?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Is it a 10 host or a full time host?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Oh, there's a full time host is Michael Richards, who is just a game show host. You know what I mean? That's a good job. And then there's a second host who's going to do specials and other Jeopardy events. And that is, who do you think?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' LeVar Burton.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Nope, no. He was the fan favorite, but they didn't pick him.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' She is a woman. Yeah. It's a Mayim Bialik.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yep.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yes.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Which I thought was an odd choice.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It is an odd choice.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah. It's not well researched, right? I don;t know how else to put it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Was she one of the rotating guest hosts that they tried out? Oh, yeah, she was. And so she must have tested well. I mean, it may seem to us like it's an odd choice, but they have lots of statistics. They have lots of focus groups that they look at.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Big Bang Theory was very popular.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' No doubt about it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' You know, they put so many people up, so.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' There's two problems I have. One is she's not an anti-vaxxer, but there were some questionable things in her history, like her kids are not fully vaccinated. And she basically said it's none of your business why that is.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. She's definitely promoted some like supplements.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And then that's the second thing. She's basically shilling for Noriva, which is a a brain supplement snake oil. So she's a snake oil salesman. You know, and she's a neuroscientist.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, totally. Degree to that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So, yeah, I'm unhappy with that. I think LaVar would have been a better choice.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yes.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So but maybe she'll reform her snake oil ways. She did say she did come out and say that she did get the she and her kids are COVID vaccinated.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' All right.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's good.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But then she says stupid things like, but no vaccines, 100%. Yeah, no, no shit. No one came to their 100%. Why do you bother saying that?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That's a straw man. That's such a straw man.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Is that news to anybody?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Tell me what is 100%.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah. So what's the implication there? What does that actually mean?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I know. Why? Why are you saying that? That's like you could say something that's true. But the fact that you feel like you have to say it is really the thing.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It's revealing. It's revealing.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, that's what's telling you. Yeah, exactly. That's like a weird dog whistle. I don't know. There's just something.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's a dog whistle. That's exactly what it is. It's like, I'm not anti-vaxxer. I'm just going to throw a little dog whistle to the anti-vaxxers just to know that a little wink and a nod. Don't worry about it. Yeah, I didn't like it.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I think they should have just CG'd me.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Alex Trebek, just CG Alex Trebek.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, they got the deep fake audios.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, yeah, the deep fake.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, you'd think. I mean, if you think about all the footage they have of Alex Trebek. And the number of words he's spoken over the years, hundreds of thousands, if not millions. All the guests and their names. You guys remember that episode of Black Mirror where they made a boyfriend just out of all of the texts and social media posts and voicemails. They could easily do that with Alex Trebek.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I mean, the training they could have done on all that video content would have been realer than real Alex.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I think today they only need like three hours. Three hours of video.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Here's 30,000 hours of Alex Trebek.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Well, I mean, yeah, Jay, I could see a few hours to do a good deep fake, audio deep fake. But with a lot of deep learning training, the more the better.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, it'd be flawless. And this is a perfect set up for it.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Within reason, of course.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' You never need him to be next to the guests. He's always in a different frame, too. So it's like even easier.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's true. He's never next to the guests.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' The thing is, though, here's one weakness. It'd have to be on the fly. That's what would make it maybe extra tough, right?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' No, it's edited.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, not really, though. It's they don't they don't retake questions. It's really important that they do everything as live as possible for the guests so that it's fair. Like they have a whole audience production team that keeps it very, very fair for the competitors.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I don't see why that'd be a challenge, though, for the computers to deal with that.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Well, it's just real time interaction with humans in a way that's I mean, that's a little bit of that's some advanced AI to have to have. It's basically the Turing test, right?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right. But early on, all he'd really have to do is go, that's incorrect. Or you've got it. That's the double.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I'll give you that because 90 like 98 percent of the interaction is pretty standard interaction that you could just pull from a database of of things that he could say. That's true. Like someone's like when they tell you their life stories in the beginning, you're like, that's interesting. Next contestant. You know, that's pretty easy.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It would be like a video game with bad AI like the same things over and over again that are increasingly out of context to the things that your characters actually do.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Right. I wonder if the Alex Trebek estate would agree as much as I love Alex Trebek.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' As much as I love Alex Trebek, I don't know. I mean, I think I'd rather have a live person there. Give someone else a go. I think LeVar Burton would have been amazing.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' A lot of people agree. A lot of people agree. But clearly, again, like probably in the grand scheme of things, they chose who they chose based on data. This is a very common way to make decisions in television.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, sure.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So we may not be representative of the core Jeopardy audience and the core Jeopardy audience may have been like, these are the people we want to see hosting the show. We like them the best.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, that's fine. I'm sure they're going to they didn't just flip a coin. But I think we're going to be seeing digital resurrections of famous actors. That's I mean, they're doing it. They're already done. But it's going to become more and more prevalent. I would like to see them go full hog on Alex Trebek CG totally just like I mean, because he is the iconic Jeopardy guy. I mean, he's this would have been a cool place to do it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, he is Jeopardy. And really, that's up to their estate. Like, there's a lot of legal implications.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, sure. They would have to agree. There's no way they would their his estate. They could do it without his estate. But I think it'd be cool. Just I just want to see it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Bob, is it full hog or whole hog?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, what did I say full?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, you did.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' All right, you know.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Get the nail on the button.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It kind of loses the alliteration there when you go full hog.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' At least it means the same.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's full Monty, but it's whole hog.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Whole hog. Yeah, absolutely correct. But you know, the hog is the operative word there. You know, the alliteration is great. But hog is such an awesome word. But yeah, you got me.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. That was my pedantic quote of the day.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yes, that's quite all right. Because I'll do the same to you soon.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Sure, go for it.<br />
<br />
== News Items ==<br />
<br />
=== IPCC Sixth Report <small>(9:49)</small> ===<br />
* [https://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/ipcc-2021-report-on-climate-change/ IPCC 2021 Report on Climate Change]<ref>[https://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/ipcc-2021-report-on-climate-change/ Neurologica: IPCC 2021 Report on Climate Change]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' Cara, the IPCC, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, just released their sixth report. So what is the state of climate change in the world today?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yes, not good. And scene. So we know about the IPCC because we cover it each, probably about every seven years. They put out a new report. Of course, this is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. And for those of you who don't know who the IPCC is or what the IPCC does, it was actually founded in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organization and also, of course, the United Nations Environmental Program. So it is a United Nations working group. It currently has 195 members. And when I say 195 members, I mean 195 countries.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Well, that's most of the planet.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, are part of the IPCC. It's made up of scientists. The scientists get nominated by these countries to be involved in these different reports. This go around, it was 234 scientists. They read over 14,000 research papers to put together this sixth report. And I'm going to cover some of the top line kind of takeaways of the report, but I'll tell you what, none of them are good. So we're just starting off this episode with a big bummer. And hopefully, did any of you do a news item that's happy? Because we're going to need a palate cleanser.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Mine's happy.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Mine's about scams.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Mine's a little disappointing, but fascinating as hell.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, that's mine. Mine fits in the disappointing, but fascinating.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Mine will remove fear and tension from your life.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Okay, because this is not just a little disappointing. This is horrible.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' And surprising? So how much of a surprise is it really?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I mean, not at all.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's not a surprise at all. And anybody who's been following any of this research knows that this is exactly what was expected.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Cara, I will give you a ray of hope at the end there.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Okay.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Awesome.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' All right, that's good.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's not 100% doom and gloom. Go ahead.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, because we could all just go into VR 100% of the time and ignore the environment.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, this is that, what was it called? The metaverse? This is really going to come in handy.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, metaverse, where are you?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So yeah, this isn't a surprise to pretty much anybody who hasn't had their head in the sand. But it might feel and does feel like a gut punch, because it makes it real when it's all laid out on paper.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, it's like 100 climate science news items all at once.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, exactly.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But we've been reporting them all along.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Absolutely. So let's talk about some of the big takeaways here. The deck this last decade, the last 10 years was hotter than any period in the last 125,000 years. Okay, so this is a big kind of major point to take.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Coincidence, you know.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, there's absolutely no way it's a coincidence. We know now that specifically due to human activity, and this is in no uncertain terms, this is unequivocal in the report, specifically due to human activity, greenhouse gases, and we're talking at the top, carbon dioxide and methane, they have elevated the global average temperature by 1.1 degrees Celsius above the 19th century average. Now, we have already done enough that it will hit 1.5 degrees Celsius, no matter what we do.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' You can slam on the brakes, it will not change.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' If it disappeared today, basically, this...<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, we're gonna hit 1.5, and it could be as early as 2030. Yeah, somewhere between 2030 and 2052, I think. It was kind of a random number in there. And 1.5 was sort of the goal that was hit by the Paris Climate Agreement. So we know we're going to hit that. We know we're going to go over it. We know we are. But we're guaranteed to hit 1.5 degrees Celsius. As I mentioned before, we can unequivocally say this is due to human activity. And when we say this, we mean all of it. We mean the increase in global temperatures. We also mean the extreme weather events. And I think historically, when we've talked about things like hurricanes, when we've talked about things like kind of focal flooding, we've had to hedge a little bit and say, we can't completely link this together. We might say that there aren't more necessarily, but maybe they're getting worse. Or maybe they're not necessarily getting worse, but this one might not have been as likely. But now we can kind of unequivocally say, based on all of the available evidence, that these terrible weather events are directly linked to anthropogenic climate change. Two of the major things that changed is, number one, our computer models have gotten way better, like way better. And most of this is done based on really, really intricate computer modeling. But number two, this report utilized so much more local data than ever before. So we weren't just talking about global averages, or historically, we've often been talking about global averages. But what this report did, which is really, really brilliant, is they looked at individual recordings from buoys in the ocean all over the world, from sensors in different countries that are rich versus poor, places where there are different socioeconomic demographics. And this becomes very important in the modeling, because historically, modeling was based on what we might want to call like physical science metrics, like it was based on things like temperature, humidity, sea level rise, acidification. And now the models are taking things into account, like socioeconomic status, poverty, food insecurity, and they're adding those models together. So it's not just about this is what it's going to look like on the planet, but this is how that's then going to affect people, especially in vulnerable places. And I think that's a really important outcome of this study.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Cara, but just to clarify one thing, though, for every specific claim they make in the report, they give a confidence interval, or they—<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, sweet.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' They do. I love that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, so, I mean, you're saying that this is unequivocal or whatever, but that's only for certain aspects of the claim, and that is for like the big ones, like it's happening and we're causing it, right?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' And we're doomed and all that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, that's in the virtually certain region.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, and when I say it's happening and we're causing it, what I mean is the temperature is increasing, weather patterns are changing. You know, those are the big ones.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, but for a lot of the effects, so they have—<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Like a hurricane, specifically.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' —virtually certain is 99 to 100 percent. Very likely is 90 to 100 percent. Likely is 66 to 100 percent. They also talk about medium confidence or high confidence. So not every subclaim is—<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No, no, no.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' -is certain, but they say next to every one, like sea level rise, this is in the high confidence range, and this specific effect is in the medium confidence range. The hurricane thing is actually towards the medium end.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But also, are you looking at the modeling claims that say in the future this is what it will look like?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, so there's two things. That's right. So there are claims about today, like this has already happened, and then there's this is what the models say are going to happen.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And that's what I was saying is unequivocal. We can now link these severe weather events that have been happening to anthropogenic climate change, when we couldn't really do that before, at least not at the level of confidence that we can. Yes, a lot of the modeling, we have to speak in terms of those confidence intervals.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, but even there, because I read through the whole, not the whole report, it's 1,300 pages, but the whole—<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, no, the summary, yeah, yeah, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So for heat waves, it's in the high confidence range. For tropical storms and stuff, it's still in the medium confidence. And the reason there is that the models predict that the intensity will increase, but not necessarily the frequency. So if you look at the number of very intense hurricanes increases, but not the total number of hurricanes. But there's also—<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, I see what you mean. I see what you mean. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The intensity of the high frequencies. Sorry, the frequencies of the high intensity.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But really, just overall intensity is increasing, not necessarily the overall frequency of all hurricanes. This creates a lot of confusion in the discussion about it, I have found. But there's also- And then some reports combine frequency, intensity, and duration into one overall measure. So that is another level of complexity in there. But in any case, there are areas where the confidence is very high, like the fact that the sea levels have risen. The fact that heat waves are happening is a very high level of confidence. The fact that droughts are increasing is a pretty high level of confidence. But yeah, you have to look through the report, and next to each specific claim, it'll tell you.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, they put it in parentheses right after, which is really nice. I mean, I think it's transparent, and it actually really helps those who already understand or have an appreciation for the scientific method. It really helps them make sense of the data. I don't want to say I worry, because I know for a fact. It also gives fuel to deniers, but deniers are going to deny.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Totally.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And yeah, and the truth is we can't kowtow to that. And I think that's what a lot of the reporting around this that I'm seeing that I'm really excited by is basically saying deniers are going to deny. We don't have time for that anymore. This is undeniable. We've got to just move past it. So, Bob, what I was going to mention is that there's a science news article that kind of summarizes some of the data in a way that's really interesting. And obviously IPCC does this as well, where they basically say, OK, today's temperature is at 1.1 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. We know we're going to hit 1.5, even if we make no changes, based on everything we've already done to this date, because there's a delay effect, right? And then there's modeling at 2 degrees Celsius, which is a very likely outcome. And 4 degrees Celsius, which is still pretty likely if we don't make any changes. 2 degrees Celsius, we hope we can get to that point or lower, and we'll talk about what that would take. 4 degrees could happen, really could happen, especially if we dry our heels. In this little summary, they show really cool things. So, like, right now, droughts. We are twice as likely to have a once-in-a-decade drought right now. But if we go up to 4 degrees Celsius, we are 5.1 times more likely to have a once-in-a-decade drought occurring.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, they got to rename those things, right?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Mm-hmm, exactly.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' No longer once-in-a-decade.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Exactly.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Once-in-a-century, even.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. So that's when we're talking about, like, frequencies and likelihoods. The idea is that there's sort of a baseline likelihood, and as we increase, those likelihoods also increase, and they're not lockstep. Sometimes they're significantly higher, like snow. We're talking about, right now, there's a 1% less — we have 1% less snow cover than we did in pre-industrial levels. If we get up to 1.5, which we will, we're talking 5% less. If we get up to 2, 9% less. If we get up to 4, 25% less.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, boy. We've talked about how that has a terrible impact on the world.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, and they have this knock-on effect that continues and continues, and then it just kind of has this runaway train problem. And some outlets have taken that information and turned it into real numbers, like saying, we can expect a terrible hurricane if it happened once in a decade. Now that means that it might happen once every five years, and now that means it's going to happen once a year and so we can sort of model in that way as well.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, one point I wanted to make is that I remember telling my mom about all of this, and she's like, one degree, two degrees, so what? And I'm like, you know —<br />
<br />
'''C:''' 'Cause we're used to changing the temperature in our house by one degree and being like, what does that matter?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, so I was trying to tell her that. It's not like, oh, my town is one degree hotter than it was last year. And the point is to recognize that a one degree, one and a half degree uptick for a global average represents so much heat that it's just hard to appreciate how much heat we're talking about to increase the worldwide average by one and a half.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's a lot of energy in the system.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' So much energy is required to go up 1.5 degrees that it just, it seems like it's hard to think of because it doesn't seem like a lot.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Absolutely. Think about how big the world is. How big the world is in all of the buffers that are in effect, all of the ways that nature has been desperately trying to prevent this from happening. And it's still happening past all of those locksteps, past all those natural buffers.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Think of your pool. To go up one degree for that, your entire Olympic-sized pool, that's a lot of heat. Now extrapolate that to the planet, to the water.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right, yeah. And so I mentioned, number one, the last decade was hotter than any period in the last 125,000 years. One thing I didn't mention, atmospheric CO2 is higher than it's been in two million years. And combining all of the greenhouse gases, we're talking methane, nitrous oxide, these different gases, at least the last 800,000 years, we're at an all-time high. We now understand better what the range is going to be for how temperatures actually respond to greenhouse gas emissions. We didn't understand it quite to the level that we do now. Basically, what that's saying is that our models have gotten much cleaner and we can make stronger predictions based on outcomes.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So that's climate sensitivity, which is essentially, if you double the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere from pre-industrial levels, and where would the climate reach its new homeostasis, right? And how much increase. And so the range used to be between 1.5 and 4.5, and now they narrowed it to 2.5 to 4. But then they're saying it's basically 3. Yeah, it's a pretty sharp bell curve around 3, but the 95% goes from 2.5 to 4. So they essentially cut off the two extremes. But what that means is the best-case scenario is a lot worse now than it was when... Because the climate change minimalists or deniers could say, well, it's possible that the climate sensitivity is only 1.5, and then that's not going to be that bad. But now, even in the best-case scenario, it's 2.5 degrees C, and that is still very, very bad.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right. And let's talk about that best-case scenario, because one thing that's important to remember here, and maybe will give us a little bit of hope, is that the minute we stop with global emissions, if we halted them, or even if we decrease them below a threshold, heating will stop. Temperatures will stabilize. Some things aren't going to change. Sea level rise, it's going to continue. But because there is that knockoff runaway effect, right, of especially the ice, the large ice sheets breaking up, and a lot of the changes that come from that. But if we were to completely stop overnight all global emissions, we would halt this rise in temperatures. And so it's really, really about our behavior. And we have the power to make changes, but governments have to act.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So, yeah, I mean, I think those are the main takeaways, Cara, but just my slight ray of sunshine gets to the, they basically said, here are five scenarios for how, what could happen between now and 2100, from we are fantastic, and we do everything we're supposed to, and we're net zero by 2050, basically, and versus we do nothing, and there's just a continued linear increase in CO2 release, and then everything in between. The good news is it's not technically too late to stop warming at 1.5 C, if in the best case of those five scenarios. But unfortunately, I think it's extremely unlikely that we're going to achieve that, personally. I don't think we have the political will.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, I think the 1.5 is impossible.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, we have to hope for somewhere in the middle, which is where I think it's going to happen, and hope that we don't get the worst case scenario. I mean, I think it would require a massive policy shift for China and India, first of all, let alone the United States.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, I mean, right there. Yeah, let alone the United States.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The three big emitters. We all would need to do that, and that's just not on the cards. I mean, China just has no plans on doing that right now. It would require a massive policy shift.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And even all of our policy that we have spoken, you know, it's crazy, because what you do is you hear our own politician saying, the world must act, we must act, and then when you look at our own policy, it's not enough.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, that's the thing. Even with like Democrat in the White House, and basically the, let's do everything we can about global warming party in power, their plans are not going to do it. They're not going to do it. They're not going to hold the warming to 1.5 C, or even are part of it, even the United States piece of that puzzle.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, it's not fast enough.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's just not fast enough. It's just not fast enough. So I think it's going to be two. It's going to be two degrees Celsius. We just better hope that that's it because it could be worse than that.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It could be worse. And I think the thing that we have to kind of, one of the takeaways that I've seen a lot of really good, like the New York Times did a really good right around all about the IPCC report. They talk about what the report says. They talk about the global reaction to the report, and then they do like a deep dive into what's going on in the ocean. And I really appreciated their reporting on the global reaction, kind of because we tend to get stuck in our Western bubble. We especially get stuck in our American bubble. And one of the things that I think we have to come to terms with is the fact that here in America, and you're right, Steve, along with China, India is in the top, but it's more that it's on deck to be one of the bigger producers.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's because of their population.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, I have a list of the top 10 kind of worst offenders, but it's definitely America. China's number one. America comes soon after. The European Union is up there. Canada's like number 10. So in between there, you've got, I think, Indonesia. You've got Brazil is in there somewhere. And so, but really, China and America are like right there at the top. And yes, we have set targets and goals, and yes, we are working to accomplish them, but they're not, A, they're not good enough, and B, what they don't take into account is the fact that what many poorer nations are basically angry about is that we have used up our portion of the climate budget.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, we've used up the carbon, it's done. We've basically used up the carbon budget.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' The carbon budget, thank you. And the sad thing is, this is like the really unjust part of the global climate system, is that the worst offenders don't feel the effects as much. So we see that the poorest countries, and especially the island countries that are only, however many feet above sea level, are dealing with the worst effects. And when we talk about not just the global climate budget, or sorry, carbon budget, meaning how much carbon we're putting in the atmosphere, but if we actually kind of translate this into dollars and cents, unfortunately, the rich countries aren't doing enough to help the poor countries. We're very often saying you're on your own.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So here's another, if you look at it a certain way, it's a positive thing, it's a ray of hope.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Ha! Yes, please enlighten me.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And that is that all of the things that we should be doing are actually worthwhile investments that will pay off in the long run. It's actually in our best economic interest. Like, even if you say, like, if we invest money in developing nations, developing renewable green energy, we will benefit financially from that, if you're looking at across a 50 to 100 year time span. But that's the problem. It's really hard to look at that. But we really need to. If any dollar we invest in mitigating climate change, we will get back 10 or 100-fold in savings.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Absolutely.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' The problem is there's no immediate political capital to do so, so there's no will.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, when it becomes an existential threat, where at what point do we stop being so glib and cynical, right? So when it becomes an — well, it already is to some extent, that's really the problem. People love to talk about tipping points. I think it's a vague term, and it's a little bit unfortunate a term, because I think it can be misused and misunderstood. But we are at a crossroads, at the very least, where some stuff isn't going to get better. Other things could get way better, but we don't have policies in place to allow that yet. So it's like we already missed the final exam, and now we're begging the teacher to let us do a retest, right? But we didn't study. Yeah, we didn't study. And so we're making up lost time here. And it's really unfortunate because who ends up suffering are the inhabitants of the Marshall Islands, the inhabitants of Bangladesh, the inhabitants of Pakistan, the inhabitants of places in the world where the temperature is unbearably high. In Pakistan, I think that the high temperature was — or the average high, something like that, was like 122 over the summer, something insane. And we're talking people being flooded out of their homes. And what is going to be a direct effect of that?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Climate refugees.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, refugees.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Millions of them.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Millions of displaced people.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It's too hot to live back home.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And it's one of these problems that we see over and over, and the conventional wisdom is so incredibly beneficial. We know that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. We know this. And unfortunately, we're talking about the worst possible cancer, where at a certain point, if we don't prevent it, there is no cure. And I think that's how we have to look at this problem. <br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, I think just politically, just overall, we need to make a clear distinction between spending money and investing money. And you can't look at an investment as if you're throwing that money away or you're spending it. And it should not be thought of. And even economists will tell you, like even going into debt, debt is not a problem if you're spending the money on investments that will pay off in the future. Like I say, even like buying electric vehicles as an investment, a little bit more money up front, but you actually save money on the life of the car. So there's a lot of things like that where, yeah, we need to, yeah, I think we should invest in Gen 4 nuclear. I think we need to upgrade the grid and we need to push renewables and we need to incentivize EVs and we need to do all of these things, everything, and then maybe we can squeak under the wire. But we're not, we're near close to doing everything. But all of these things are actually cost effective if you count the long term.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And here's the thing. They're possible.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' They're possible, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yes, this is a zero sum game. There is only so much money, but we have enough. It's all about where our priorities lie.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And we have, the science is already here. We don't need any breakthrough. It's only going to get better. The science is only going to get better. But even if it stood still, we still, it would still be fine.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No, we're like, we're like those people who are, show up to the doctor and they say, we're dealing with this thing. It's definitely something that we can beat. We have the medicine available. We've just got to go step one, step two, step three. Are you in? And then we're going, I don't know. Yeah, I think I want a 19th opinion.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, I predict that the globe won't act as they should be acting with urgency and commitment until we decide that four degrees or higher is already inevitable. Then we might say globally, oh boy, we really got to take this seriously. That's what it's going to take.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. I hope that that's not the case because I think that, I think that we are feeling the effects more and more. And I think that we are at least in this country, like you said before, Steve, we at least are dealing with a government right now that's attempting to prioritize these things. And I'm really hoping that this IPCC report, this number six report is a massive wake up call. Remember, this just came out as of this recording two days ago. My hope is that it really does light a fire.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yes. A metaphorical fire is inferiority.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, exactly.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right.<br />
<br />
=== Yellowstone Myths <small>(34:25)</small> ===<br />
* [https://eos.org/features/dont-call-it-a-supervolcano Don’t Call It a Supervolcano]<ref>[https://eos.org/features/dont-call-it-a-supervolcano Eos: Don’t Call It a Supervolcano]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' Jay, tell us about Yellowstone myths.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' All right. So I'm sure many of you have heard that Yellowstone National Park, which is located mostly in the state of Wyoming, is sitting on top of one of the world's largest volcanoes.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, a super volcano out there, right? Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, God damn it.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's what I've heard.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Cara, what do you think?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Myth?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Are you scared? Does this keep you up at night in any way?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Not at all.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So in fact, the park itself is mostly in something called the caldera. So if you don't know, a caldera is the crater that's left after a volcanic eruption. So this means the park is mostly located in the actual mouth of an old volcano.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Jay, isn't there a caldera complex? Like it's multiple calderas?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah. Well, in this instance with Yellowstone, yes, I'll get into that. There's been multiple calderas over a very long period of time.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' And they're huge.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' The geologic history of the park is really amazing. So about 16.5 million years ago, a plume of magma created a series of volcanoes. This is similar to the way that the Hawaiian Islands were formed, right? So you know that as the tectonic plates move across that magma plume, it just creates another landmass and another landmass. So North America is moving over a magma plume, right? And every once in a while in geologic years, there is some volcanic activity that creates, that changes the landmass and spews lava out onto the crust, right? So if you look at a map of the United States, the plume erupted. Now, this particular plume that we're talking about that is now underneath Yellowstone Park initially erupted 16.5 million years ago in the area that we now call Oregon. And then it moved on to Nevada, Idaho, Utah, and then into Wyoming where it is right now. Now, this series of eruptions occurred over a 750-kilometer spread. And that took 16.5 million years. So about 2.1 million years ago, the magma plume reached where the Yellowstone Park is right now. So that's when the North America tectonic plate moved. And now the magma plume is underneath where the park is. And at that time, the plume was ready to erupt. And it ended up being one of the biggest eruptions in geologic history. Now, that eruption sent ash and debris as far as Mississippi. Now, to get a sense of how far that is, I know everyone doesn't know the United States as well as the next person. To get a sense, Mississippi is almost touching Florida. And that's about half the width of the country. So if you just imagine the panhandle of Florida, Mississippi is just a little bit to the left of that. And now go halfway across the country, and that's where the volcano was. That's a huge distance. Geologists say that compared to Mount St. Helens, it was 6,000 times worse.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Whoa, 6,000 times Mount St. Helens.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yes. So since then, there have been three more eruptions. So 1.3 million years ago, we had an eruption. 630,000 years ago, we had another big eruption. And then 70,000 years ago, we had lava flow. So of course, all of these events changed the landscape into what it is today, which in a weird way have, in a sense, fashioned the park. So Native American people lived in this region going back 11,000 years. And the park was founded in 1872. So of course, Native American people have been there much longer than anybody that came here as a United States citizen. Unfortunately, one of Yellowstone's superintendents spread a myth about how the Native people were afraid of the park's land due to the volcanic thermal areas, right? So you have the hot springs and geysers and all sorts of things like that happening. And this guy is telling people that the Native people are super scared of it. And that was a lie because the Native people considered the area to be sacred. And they highly respected the place. And they did a lot of things there. It was a trading station. It was like so many things to a lot of people going back 11,000 years. And I recommend that you take a look at this. Read more about the Native American history in that area. I guarantee you, you'll find it very interesting. But that's not what this news item is about. These myths may have led to some of the modern fears, however, of the giant volcanic eruption, right? You know, all the stuff that we've heard since we were kids. It's commonly called a super volcano. And you know, it's funny. I'm happy that one of you guys said it. Evan, you said it. I used to say it all the time up until about three hours ago. But that is not a scientific definition. And you know, I didn't know. And calling it a super volcano propagates this unjustified fear. So just an FYI here, geoscientists refer to the area as Yellowstone Caldera System or Yellowstone Caldera Complex. And the fact is Yellowstone... Now, Cara, I want you to be happy because you had a really negative news item.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yes, please.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yellowstone is not due for an eruption.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Thank you.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Volcanoes simply don't operate on a schedule, right? There is no... It's due. That doesn't happen in geology. In the last 2.2 million years, there have been three catastrophic eruptions. There have also been many small lava flows. Geologists say that Yellowstone is not going to erupt any time in the near future. And when it finally does have activity, it will probably be a localized lava flow and nothing explosive.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Really?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yes. The last extreme eruption that took place, like I said before, was 630,000 years ago. Volcano eruption intensity is measured using the Volcanic Explosivity Index, VEI.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, I love that.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I love it too.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Now, using that index... And what that determines is how big of an area is the volcano's effect going to be. Now, when we use that index, it's a 0 to 8. When we're talking about the 630,000-year-ago volcano eruption, that was an 8. That was massive. But it wasn't... I heard things... Bob, I remember talking to you about this. I heard them like, lava will shoot up thousands of feet into the atmosphere, and there'll be a wall of lava going across the country. I mean, I was scared to death as a kid.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Well, yeah, I remember talking to you about that, but that wasn't for the so-called supervolcano. That's a flood basalt volcano, which is a completely different beast, and you should be extremely afraid of anything like that. That's not Yellowstone.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That's not Yellowstone. But I think, Bob, that as the years go by and people add to the story, more misinformation gets added onto it, it's become very much an American folklore, like this volcano is sitting there, and when it goes, we're all done. That's the basic sentiment with a lot of people, I'm sure, around the world, but definitely in the United States.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Okay, my understanding, tell me if this... My understanding is this, of that kind of caldera complex, is that when it goes, if it went bad, if you're nearby, if you're within, if you're in that state, you're really screwed. You're toast. The farther away you get, the less and less of the volcanic ash that will come down on you, which is bad stuff, because that goes on your roof, and then it gets wet. I mean, buildings will collapse, but the farther away you get, you're not going to be breathing in that nasty stuff, if you're on the East Coast, but globally, it's going to cover, blot out the sun. I mean, that's going to be bad.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' You're right, Bob. It's not like, oh, the volcano erupted, it was bad, and we go back to normal. It could potentially have an effect on climate and everything. So there will be volcanic activity when enough magma and pressure are built up underneath the surface. This goes for every volcano. The good news is that neither of these things are happening right now in Yellowstone. So remember I said, there's got to be enough magma and pressure at the same time in order for a volcano to emerge. The two magma chambers that are under the park right now are largely stagnant, and that means that not much is happening. So experts say that if a large explosive event were percolating below the surface, we would know years in advance. There won't be any surprises, guys. There are two magma reservoirs that are only 5% to 15% filled with molten material. That number would have to get to 50% in order for it to even start moving to the surface. So when the magma chambers start to fill up, a lot of things happen that the experts would easily detect. This isn't like it can happen and we won't know about it. We would be like, hey, we're picking up seismic activity. The ground would change shape. There'd be way more heat and gas emissions. These are some of the early signs that can happen. These early signs can happen for decades or even centuries before an eruption. So none of that's happening. So we know at the very, very, very least that it would take decades once we see all of that crazy activity happening before anything would happen. So look at decades to centuries. That's a very long time. They're not even saying it's going to happen in decades to centuries. I'm just saying that that's how long it would take once you start to see these early signs. So Yellowstone is one of the best monitored areas in the world. So let's formally put any fears that you may have about Yellowstone to bed right now. Anybody out there that has ever thought about it and been a little scared about the stories you hear, it's all BS. Even a profoundly strong earthquake would not affect the volcanic activity there. But there is one thing that could happen. If anything is going to happen in the park, it'll be a hydrothermal explosion. This is very different than anything volcanic. As the groundwater moves around, as the groundwater moves around through the hot springs and the geysers in the park, the minerals in the water can build up and clog one of these underground passageways. So that means that once a clog happens, pressure can build up and cause an explosion. Now, these events happen annually. And if they were to happen in the part of the park where people are, it could be very dangerous. But that's just for people in the park. It's not like-<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Not cataclysmic on a global scale or anything like that.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' No, because Evan, they happen every year. It's just not around where the people are, luckily. And I guess, again, that could happen. I have no idea. And I looked it up. And I don't know if they have any way of predicting when that's going to happen, because this is like a much more surface thing that's happening. There's not like- I don't think it has much to do with the indicators of when a volcano is about to form. But even still, even with that happening at the park, there's very low probability and chance of you getting hurt with that. So there is nothing to fear here. It's all smoke and mirrors.<br />
<br />
=== Going to Mars <small>(45:05)</small> ===<br />
* [https://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/going-to-mars/ Going to Mars]<ref>[https://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/going-to-mars/ Neurologica: Going to Mars]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' So I'm going to talk about something that I learned at NECSS. I had the opportunity to ask questions, Jay and I did, of the two NASA speakers that we had. And one in particular, Julie Robinson, was talking about NASA's plans on sending people to Mars, which is something that we've talked about before. So there was some added information that we haven't mentioned before on the show that we specifically asked her about. Like, so what about this? And the answer was a little disappointing, but very interesting. So yeah, one was about shielding, right? Because we've been talking for years about the fact that this is probably he single most challenging technological hurdle to getting people to Mars, is adequately shielding them from radiation outside of the protective bubble of the Earth's atmosphere and magnetic field. And this is all about time. Like how much time you're going to be in space and how adequate is the shielding? What I didn't realize is that I was really, when I was thinking about and reading about shielding, really it was mostly dealing with the solar radiation and not the far more energetic galactic cosmic rays.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yes.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. So when you're talking about solar, so those are the two types of radiation that we need to deal with. The solar radiation are energetic ionized particles, but they could be blocked by a foot of water. Water is actually a very good shielding against that type of radiation. That's largely what they use on the ISS, for example, or the equivalent, the so-called poop shield. If you want to store human waste in the outer hull, there's lots of ways that you could block out that level of radiation.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Avenue 5.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And yeah, from Avenue 5, and you're fine. But what I didn't realize is that we really have no idea how to deal with cosmic rays. So while solar radiation, the risk there is that it's very variable and it could come in a storm, right? You can get like a massive downpouring. But then hopefully you'd have enough warning to get into some highly shielded part of your moon base alpha or your orbiting station, or even your spaceship. You just get into your little lead blind cocoon or whatever and you're good. But cosmic rays are like a constant steady rain. There's no storm where you're gonna get overwhelmed with it. But these are much more energetic particles. They are powerful enough to cause their so-called ionizing radiation. They can break DNA bonds. They can cause cell damage. And if you get exposed to enough of them over months and years, it can cause permanent damage to your health. Increase your risk of cancer, cause tissue damage, et cetera. So how do you shield against them? So the disappointing part-<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Just bring a magnetic field with you along the shield.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, the answer was we can't. That was the bottom line. There really isn't anything on the drawing board. There's no defense. So you think, oh, what about just a couple inches of lead? Let's say, for example, would that do it? So she told an interesting story about the Apollo missions where they did that. They actually sealed their film in a lead canister thinking, this will do it. This will block the cosmic radiation from exposing the film. And when they looked at the film back on Earth, it was completely exposed.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oops, that ain't gonna do it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Even worse than you would think if it were unshielded.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Right, it made it worse.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The shielding made it worse.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Did it really make it worse? Or was just the radiation worse than they expected?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, it made it worse.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' How is that possible?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I'll tell you how it's possible.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It captured inside and it bounced all around?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Exactly. Imagine if I shoot you in the head with a calibre of bullet that will go through the skull and then be slowed down so it can't exit the skull. And it just bounces around inside your skull and makes mush out of your brain, right? That's worse than if it went straight through.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That's a great zombie bullet. Awesome zombie bullet.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's basically what the lead did. It was cosmic particles would be able to occasionally get inside and they would lose just enough energy that they couldn't get outside. But they were still really energetic and they would go bouncing around inside the container, completely overexposing the film, right? So yeah, so the shielding that we have the capability of having would only make it worse. You're better off just letting it go straight through rather than risking bouncing it around. And the amount of shielding that we would need to stop it would be way more massive than we could put on a ship. On a base station, sure, you go underground, right? And you're good. You know, you go into one of those lava tubes or whatever, or you build a few feet of regocrete, out of the moon surface. And that's the outside of your moon base. There you go. And even in a station you could just keep putting on shielding and shielding because you don't have to go anywhere, right? But on a ship, like a Mars transit vehicle, there's a strict weight limit that you're going to end up with. And so we just basically could not put enough shielding. So I asked, well, then what's the solution? The solution is you get there faster and we need to research medical treatments that mitigate the biological harm of radiation.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Nice solution, nice solution.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' What can we do to protect our biology?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' So disappointed.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Absorb the hits and take and repair.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But what about also like, we're not only concerned about our health and our wellness, we're also concerned about like electronics. We're concerned about other things that are affected by radiation.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, yep.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Is it our magnetic field on Earth that mostly protects us from these things otherwise?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, it's actually the atmosphere. So the magnetic field protects us from the solar rays because it's ionized.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Only the solar.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The cosmic rays will, on their way in, they're just likely to hit an air molecule. And then here's the other thing. Here's the other thing. You get daughter particle radiation. So if you use the wrong kind of shielding, you're actually going to magnify the radiation by generating a bunch of daughter particles. Yeah, so you don't want that either. But the problem is if a three-year mission to Mars, we'd be pushing the limits of radiation exposure for the crew. And I think for me, what this means is, even though NASA's like, yeah, we hope to get people to Mars in the 2030s. And I was thinking, no, that's just not going to happen. Honestly, if that's the case with the shielding-<br />
<br />
'''E:'' Robots.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' -well, that's a side point. But assuming our goal is to get people boots on Mars, I think we're going to need nuclear thermal propulsion before we can do it. We need to cut the journey time to Mars in half.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' And that right now will offer the fastest possible technological...<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, that's the next step.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, that's the next step. And we're heading there. There's been a lot of money being poured into that research. And we're definitely heading there. Finally, I could see the light at the end of the tunnel. But will that even be fast enough, Steve? There's still going to be some good exposure.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But here's the other thing very, very quickly was I asked about. So she said, yeah, so on the mission to Mars and back, it would be all in microgravity. Once the ship accelerates up to speed, and then for essentially the entire journey, you're going to be in microgravity. And so I thought, okay, I understand that that's the easiest way to do it. But how hard would it be to throw in a little bit of rotation there and get some artificial gravity going? And her answer was, yeah, no, that's not going to happen.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, you watch too many movies.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, exactly. She literally said that, you watch too many movies.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, really?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, she said, I know people think with movies that all you got to do is spin the thing. But she said, but in reality, she did. It would have to be so big, like kilometers in diameter, that we can't build a ship that big. And anything smaller, like ship size, if you tried to spin any part of a ship, it would cause way too much vertigo. And also, you couldn't turn around. You couldn't change your orientation with respect-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' You're just always going in one direction.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, literally.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Because your head would be moving too fast compared to your feet, right? Because the diameter wasn't big enough. So yeah, very uncomfortable.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But also, changing your head's orientation with respect to the axis of spin would cause massive vertigo.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Everybody's just like passing out and barfing.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Hey, I went on that Disney ride, the flight to Mars Disney ride, where they used rotation.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Me too.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I got vertigo.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I felt like I was going to lose consciousness.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Steve couldn't even handle the ride.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I couldn't handle the ride. For what was it? 20 seconds, I was done, let alone a trip to Mars.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Some people died on that ride.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Steve, you were puking. You were puking on a big cruise ship when you were six years old. You were clearly not designed to be an astronaut, just saying.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Not if rotation's going to be like that. All right, but the other thing is, she said that also, it's a massive engineering challenge. And further, you would have to basically rig the ship so that every piece of equipment operates perfectly well in zero G and under rotation, as opposed to just under zero G. And so the probability of failure goes way up. So bottom line is, it's not going to happen anytime soon for transit vehicles because the engineering risks are way too high and the ships are just not at the right scale. And so we're zero G, microgravity, to Mars and back for the foreseeable future.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I think our best bet is just older people who don't mind getting pummeled by radiation. Honestly, I mean, I hate to say that, but people are willing to take the risk.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Don't send kids.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, like older astronauts. Like, all right, I live my life.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, but you're right, babe. It's like, this will increase your cancer risk over the next 30 to 50 years. If you're 60, it's like, eh.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Exactly.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' As opposed to 20 or 30, but right.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' So do these problems also translate to the moon? I guess not. I understand that the distance is not nearly as far, but if you're going to have a base on the moon, there's no atmosphere there. So how are you going to contend with the cosmic radiation?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Lava tube.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, you got to be underground. Although she was harshing on lava tubes as well. It's like, it's really sharp down there.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' She was wrong. She was just wrong. Sorry.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You would need to do major construction. But yeah, I think that's...<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Of course.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You're going to have to be underground, whether it's lava tubes or some other thing. You're going to need feet of ground<br />
between you and cosmic rays. That's the bottom line.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It's so much better, Steve. Let me geek out on that a little bit. It's so much better in the lava tube. I mean, first off, you don't have the what? 400 degree temperature swings, from 200 above to 200 below, right? And there's no micro meteoroids that are going to devastate your environment. And the radiation is horrific. All of this is alleviated by being underground. And also, how about this? Something I read today. I never even heard of this. Do you know when a lander lands on the moon, there's no wind, there's very little gravity. The propulsion, the exhaust from the lander spews out the regolith that can go for miles and even around the moon. So not only are you dealing with everything I just mentioned, but you're also dealing with this high-speed, particulate regolith that could damage equipment and spacesuits. So even that's going to be a problem. You got to go underground. Or if you're on the surface, you're going to have to be buried to a certain extent. I mean, sure, it might be more expensive, but I'm surprised, very disappointed and surprised that she said, yeah, it's kind of craggy down there. Really? That's the big problem? I mean-<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Bob, why don't we build a space elevator on the moon?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That is actually much more feasible than one on the earth. We could much more reasonably do that on the moon than on the earth, for sure.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' You got to admit it's less romantic thinking about having to live in the tunnels or the holes of the moon rather than the surface.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Got to be underground, no question.<br />
<br />
=== Spacesuit Delay <small>(57:27)</small> ===<br />
* [https://www.theverge.com/2021/8/10/22618275/nasa-spacesuits-delay-inspector-general-report-2024-artemis NASA’s new space suits are delayed, making a 2024 Moon landing ‘not feasible’]<ref>[https://www.theverge.com/2021/8/10/22618275/nasa-spacesuits-delay-inspector-general-report-2024-artemis The Verge: NASA’s new space suits are delayed, making a 2024 Moon landing ‘not feasible’]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, Bob, we have another disappointing space news item.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, gosh.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, it was recently revealed that as unrealistic as the 2024 Artemis moon mission date is, it just got even more unrealistic as it's announced that the Artemis spacesuits cannot be ready for 2024. Just flat out can't be ready. Won't be ready. So yeah, we're all aware now of the Artemis moon mission. I found a great overview of what it is on the nasa.gov website. They say during the Artemis program, NASA will land the first woman and first person of colour on the moon. Yay, that's awesome. Using innovative technologies to explore more of the lunar surface than ever before, we will collaborate with our commercial and international partners and establish sustainable exploration for the first time. Then we will use what we learn on and around the moon to take the next giant leap, sending astronauts to Mars. Okay, sounds good. Sounds exciting. But the biggest problem with the Artemis moon mission, for me anyway, has always been the date for boots on the ground, right? 2024 just was like unrealistically silly. Right from the first time you even heard the date, you're like, whoa, 2024, not gonna happen. You know, it's like a punchline almost.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, but kind of why we've done it before and we did it with like way less time up front on like crappier computers.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' We had a nuclear race to sort of help propel it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But still, I mean, we had more motivation, but the outcome was that we could do it and we did it fast. It wasn't safe.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' For what they were planning for Artemis, 2024 just never seemed realistic to me.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Okay, so what were they planning? Not just boots on the ground?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' No, no, no, they said it's not like, yeah, step on the ground. Okay, we're going back home now. No, there's a lot of stuff, a lot of stuff that they wanted to do.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Camping?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' There's camping lava tubes, spelunking, all that awesome stuff. So, but regarding the spacesuit angle though, specifically about the development of the spacesuit, that's what I'm going to focus on obviously. So the NASA Office of Inspector General audited and wrote a report about the status of these new spacesuits. And in the audit, they say, giving these anticipated delays in spacesuit development, a lunar landing in late 2024 as NASA currently plans is not feasible. They also say that NASA's on track to spend more than $1 billion on spacesuit development, just spacesuit development, $1 billion. And by the time the first two suits are ready, which would be April 2025 at the earliest. And I think, my guess is that even that's optimistic. So, all right, so why the delay in the spacesuits? You know, if you think about it, and I'm going to mention the top reasons for these delays, they're really not that hard to predict. And one is the funding shortfalls. That happens all the time. NASA dropped what they planned $209 million budget. They dropped it by $59 million. And they did that because Congress only doled out to NASA 77% of what they requested for the spacesuit program. So that set them back three months right there. And then of course, is the closures due to COVID-19 pandemic. Hello, of course, they had intermittent closures all throughout. That added three months of delay as well. And then of course, there were technical challenges. This is not easy. You know, lots of things could go wrong. They have production issues with their display and control unit, which is what the astronauts are going to use to control the suits critical functions. Circuit boards had to be had to be reworked on. So all that added even more delays. So now despite that, they had a 12 month buffer already added in to the 2024 bud line that they threw in. Let's throw in 12 months buffer just in case. And so even that wasn't enough. They should have made it a bigger buffer apparently. Now, a lot of people have a similar reaction when they say that we have spent or NASA has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on new spacesuits. And they've been working on new spacesuits, I think since 2007 is when they really started working on it. And people will say something along the lines of, I don't get it. We had spacesuits in the frigging 60s and 70s. Let's just make them again. We still have all the designs and schematics. It worked on the moon. Let's just do it again. And that might seem kind of reasonable. Like, yeah, why not? But consider the following. The Apollo spacesuits were not meant for long duration missions. Now you read stories about these spacesuits. They come back to earth. The spacesuits are torn. They're filled with grit. And this is just after three days of moonwalks and like something like on the order of 21 hours and that's it, they're done. And that's mainly because the regolith is brutal. It's essentially powdered glass that clings to everything. And so if you imagine, you've got all these shards of rocks all over the place, making up the regolith and there's no water and there's no air to erode all those little knives that are all over the place.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You know what, Bob?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' They keep an edge forever. What?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I hate regolith. It gets everywhere. It's really annoying. It's irritating.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yes, very good. Very good throw out there to that punk from Star Wars. So if you didn't do it, Steve, I would have done it later. So bravo to you. So all those little micro cuts on spacesuits, they add up and they take their toll on those old suits. Most of them or many of them literally would not have survived one more moonwalk. That was it. They were done. But that's okay because they did their job. It was a three-day mission. But Artemis spacesuits, they need to work for not three days missions. They need to work for weeks or months or longer. So clearly the Apollo spacesuits are not, are not anything that you want to design them after. Secondly, we may have the designs for the old Apollo spacesuits, but so what? We don't have the materials. We don't have the technology. We don't have the expertise. We don't have the companies that, because they've gone belly up. You know, they don't last forever. Some of those companies are gone. So we don't have any of that for a lot of these critical Apollo spacesuit components. And that's something that you can generalize to almost any technology. You could ask the question, why don't we just rebuild the Saturn V rocket? Same thing. We just don't have, we don't have all the critical things that we would need to make Saturn V. We could not make the Saturn V today because all those supply lines and materials and technology, the expertise, it's just not there. You'd have to recreate them and rebuild them. So it's just not going to happen. It's not easy that that's why the army, the United States army will have, they'll keep a tank construction company in business. We have plenty of tanks. We've got plenty of spare parts, but the army will continue to make orders so that the technology and the expertise stays fresh in case they really do, really do need them. So they'll kind of like support these companies that we don't really need right now, but we may need. And you don't want that technology to disappear. Otherwise you'll never be able to make the stuff that you want to make. Okay.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' There's an important generalized point there, Bob.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yes, I just made it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' There is- I just wanted to generalize it. There is institutional memory. There's institutional memory. And that goes away if the institution goes away. And it's not easily recreated. It's not like, oh, but it's written down somewhere. It's like, no, no, it's not good enough.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' You're trying to build a space shuttle.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You need the people with the actual experience.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Right.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And yeah, when that goes away, you have to recreate it. It's gone.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, it really is. And then the last reason, the final reason I have for why we just don't want those Apollo spacesuits is because, of course, the technology. We have better communications, computers, life support. Nobody wants to recreate that old Apollo tech for any of the new spacesuits. We've got to use the new technology.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Can you imagine like the headsets are coming in on like old kind of like, what are they like nine pin connectors?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, yeah. Right.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' There's like a tape deck in there.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' So you might say now that, okay, what about the astronauts in the International Space Station, they've got spacesuits. Right. And that's true. They have more modern spacesuits, but not that much more modern. I mean, they're still they're still pretty old. Some one source said they were decades old. So they're not they're not new either. And also they're designed. Think about this. They're designed for zero gravity near a space station. They're not designed for a zero gravity. Well, they're not designed for the moon. So you really can't even walk in those spacesuits. They're not designed for walking on the moon. You would not want to walk in those. They're way too restricting. You know, they're meant for like floating outside and not walking for sure.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh you can't walk in them. I wear a spacesuit once for a TV show. It was a mock up. It was like a model of a new one, but it was meant for the space station. And I could take a few steps in it, but they had me get down and like try to do push ups. And then I couldn't stand back up in it because it's basically an inflated bag around your body. Like you've got physical, like I was trying to do stuff with my hands, but the gloves are inflated. And so you have such limited range of motion.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, yeah. Yeah, the range of motion is horrible. There's also this problem. How about this one? If you want a spacesuit to fit different size people, then you're just not going to get it because they are not meant to fit a broad range of people. Basically they have very limited options when it comes to that. So do you guys remember how long ago was it? Not too long ago when they tried to have an all woman spacewalk on the ISS, they postponed it. Why? Because the spacesuit sizes, as well as the availability was just not there. And that's just so embarrassing. So how about what is this new suit then? What are they going to do to solve all of these problems? The new suit is called the Exploration Extravehicular Mobility Unit, or XEMU, X-E-M-U. think that's how it's pronounced, but I like it. I'm going to stick with XEMU. So recently NASA showed it off. They showed off a prototype to show how flexible it was. And you could twist and you could bend at the waist, which suits in the past could not do. It's like bending at the waist? No, you can't really do that. The legs, the suit's legs are pliable. They're meant to be comfortably worn and walked in on the moon. So they're definitely far better than anything on the ISS. And it's all about mobility. I think one of the key things about this new suit, the XEMU, is the mobility. It's got full rotation of the arm from the shoulder to the wrist. They've got special joint bearings so that you can bend and rotate at the hips. Let's see, there's increased bending at the knees. I mean, it's really all about giving you as much mobility as possible. And when you get a suit, they 3D map your body so that they can design, so that they can give you the best pieces to put together for a suit that's maximally comfortable for you and gives you maximal mobility. And yes, it will fit most humans. Amy Ross, a spacesuit designer at NASA, said that we can fit anywhere from the first percentile female to the 99th percentile male. So they can fit pretty much anybody into this new design. And about the regolith. What about the regolith? Because that was getting everywhere, destroying the old Apollo suits. XEMU won't have any zippers or cables. And all of its main components will be sealed within the suit. So the dust knives on the moon can't get in and wreak havoc. So they took that. And of course, it's going to protect you from extreme temperatures from 250 plus and 250 minus Fahrenheit. Huge, huge range of temperature. My God, 500 degrees. And this one was really cool. It's going to be modular. So it's going to have basically a common core system that will be for any environment. But depending on where you are, are you on the space station? Are you on the moon? Or are you on, how about Mars? It will give you different outer systems, outer components to be optimized for wherever you are, whether it has a gravity or no gravity, or even a different atmosphere like the Mars. It will be able to handle the different atmosphere that you find on Mars and the no atmosphere on the moon, obviously. And here's the last one that really surprised me. It's going to have a rear hatch. A rear hatch so you can climb in from the back of the suit.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I thought you were going to say so you can poop.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' No, oh no. I didn't research pooping. I'm sure it's pretty advanced. But you can actually get in from the back. And that actually makes it better. The shoulder assemblage can be a lot smaller if you can get in from the back. It's better.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So wait, before you summarize, what do the helmets look like?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I do know that the helmets do not have this. Remember the Snoopy cap? They called it the Snoopy cap. It was that white cloth thing. And the headset was in there. And they called it the Snoopy cap. But it got sweaty and nasty. That's gone. So now they're going to have the audio system. It's going to have this multiple voice-activated microphones inside the upper torso. So you can more easily and very efficiently communicate with the suit itself or with other astronauts.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Did I tell you my favorite part of wearing a spacesuit?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' You could pee in it?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' The little two-bump spongy assemblage that's inside the helmet. Because, of course, you have all these pressure changes. And you have to pop your ears. But you can't touch your face because you're in an inflated suit. Yeah. There's a little spongy bit that's mounted inside the helmet. And you lean forward. And it fits your two nostrils perfectly so that you can blow down.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That's awesome.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And pop your ears.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Talk about ergonomics.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' What a cool idea. What a cool idea.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, that's my favorite part.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I want that in my car while I'm driving.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' So the XEMU spacesuit sounds pretty wicked. And we will see it, just not in 2024. Maybe 2025. But I doubt that.<br />
<br />
=== Scamming Teens <small>(1:11:19)</small> ===<br />
* [https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/10/tech-savvy-teens-falling-prey-to-online-scams-faster-than-their-grandparents.html Tech-savvy teens falling prey to online scams faster than their grandparents]<ref>[https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/10/tech-savvy-teens-falling-prey-to-online-scams-faster-than-their-grandparents.html CNBC: Tech-savvy teens falling prey to online scams faster than their grandparents]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, Evan, finish up the news items telling us about tech-savvy teens still getting conned online.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah. Well, CNBC put out an article just yesterday titled Tech-Savvy Teens Falling Prey to Online Scams Faster Than Their Grandparents. Hmm.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, no.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' OK. So the article links to a report presented by a website called Social Catfish. Has anyone heard of that website before?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' No.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I hadn't. Apparently, it's a service for finding people, a person search, put in this data and they'll tell you apparently where they are. But they do other things as well. And from their website, they say that this mission of Social Catfish is to help eradicate internet scams, which is a tall mission, eradicating internet scams. I mean decrease, minimize, OK. But I don't know how they're going to stop it entirely. But that's that's another story. Anyways, their report is titled Methodology of the State of Internet Scams 2021. And they said the purpose of the study is to equip people with the knowledge required to avoid becoming a victim. They give some statistics. A record $4.2 billion was lost by Americans to online scams in 2020. Victims losing their life savings and as a result, doing damage themselves, taking their own lives. So it's very, very sad. It accounts for well, basically, if you add up the three prior years, 2017 to 2019, online scams, $7.6 billion. So in one year, you've had this significant jump 2020 over the prior, compared to the prior three years. They analysed data that they compiled from the Internet Crime Complaint Center, also known as the IC3, which is a division of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, FBI. And they also examined data available from the Federal Trade Commission. And they brought in a professional detective as well. And they put together a whole bunch of data for us. So total money reported lost in 2020, $4.2 billion, as we said. And of the 722 people that they polled, 73% of those victims were too ashamed to file a report for the online scams. So what that means is that the $4.2 billion is the amount of reported money that people were scammed out of. But almost three quarters of the people who were victims of scams never reported it. So they think that $4.2 billion number is way low, but that's all the data they have to go with. They can't really know what the actual number is. 20-year-olds and younger had the fastest growth rate of victims. So in 2017, there were just over 9,000 victims who made reports. But in 2020, 23,000, over 23,000 people in that age group reported being victims. So that's a pretty good jump there.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But we don't know if that's an increase in scams or an increase in reporting.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Right. Yes, exactly.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Or what the relative contribution of each is.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' So what's happening? What are the scams that are happening? Well, there's something called spoofing. $216 million lost in 2020 compared to 2017, in which they said $0 was lost in spoofing.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Wait, really? It's not that new.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, it's not that new.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's what they're saying. Or at least these are the reports. Maybe nobody in 2017 reported it. And they put it into the classification of spoofing. And spoofing allows scammers to make their phone number appear as if it belongs to, say, your bank or credit card company or any other company with whom you do business.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It is true. I've noticed it. I mean, tell me if I'm wrong. This is totally anecdotal. But within the last two, three years, the number of spam telephone calls I get...<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Don't even get me started.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Well, yeah, I mean, we all have anecdotes about that. That's definitely how it seems.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It's disgusting. The 80% of my calls, I just ignore them because it's just bullshit.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, and it's true. In 2017, I don't think that was the case. But I think Bob and I were confused because spoofing is also done via email accounts. And that's been happening for ages. But the specific telephone calls, that might be new.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It could be, yeah. I'm not at all surprised. I mean, I know a lot of people who said that there's every day multiple, multiple phone calls that are scam. It's probably scams, but some sort of attempt to gather your information in one way or the other. So where are these people getting scammed? Basically, what are the top five platforms? All right. So of the 726 people that responded to their poll for this question, most of them said it was Facebook. 152 of them. Then Google Hangouts, Instagram, WhatsApp. And number five, POF, which I had to look up. Does that make me old that I had to look that up?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I don't know. What's POF?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Right. Thank you, Cara. Oh, my gosh. I was so hoping you were going to say that. Plenty of fish.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, plenty of fish. Oh, dating app.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Right.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, I remember that. Oh, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I'm like, no way.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's actually like an old dating app.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, it's almost 20 years old. It turns out. Who knew? So then when they spoke to law enforcement about this, they say that there's a major problem in stopping the online scams. Guess what it is. It's that they're international. They're outside the jurisdiction of the countries in which they are committing these crimes. It's still extremely difficult. I know I've spoken about this before when I've done scam reports, is that it takes a lot of effort and a lot of cooperation among nations to bring these criminals in and actually have them extradited to the country in which they're being accused of these crimes. So that continues to be a major, major problem in getting these people to stop effectively or to crack down on them. Just becomes so hard. And the technology behind the scams. They talked to the cyber security experts who said that it's about how people are basically using their technology. They're just not being careful enough using your same password over and over again for multiple accounts so that if someone gets ahold of one of your passwords, they just start plugging it into all the other data that they've collected on you and they can look into several of your accounts at that point. But they are trying to use artificial intelligence technology to help determine the scam emails and also to a certain extent, the scam phone calls. And they're trying more research in those areas. And that'd be a great use of AI, frankly, is to cut down on the scammers this way. The take home here was that or at least what they felt was most surprising it's that the 20 year olds and younger are being scammed at the faster rate than, say, the seniors. We usually look at the seniors as the most vulnerable group to being scammed for lots of different reasons. You know, they're more trusting general in an overall sense. They have more money to be scammed out of generally, generally speaking. And the effects of older age makes definitely makes them more more of a victim group.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But to be clear, it is the rate of increase in the 20 year old and younger group that is the fastest, not the absolute amount. The amount, the absolute amount for 20 and younger was only reported, of course, was only 71 million a year in the 60 year old group was 966 million, more than an order of magnitude greater, almost a billion dollars. So it's still it's still the old with increasing age, the the the amount of that people are being scammed goes up incredibly. 20 and younger is still tiny compared to every other age group. I think mainly because they don't have that much money, you know, comparatively.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Correct. That seems to be the main factor. You can get more money from people who have saved more money over the course of their lifetime.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. But I thought that I was the headline made it seem like they're getting scammed more than their grandparents, but it's a magnitude less. It's just that the rate of increase of reporting, whatever that means, was has increased more quickly.<br />
<br />
== Who's That Noisy? <small>(1:19:30)</small> ==<br />
{{anchor|futureWTN}} <!-- this is the anchor used by "wtnAnswer", which links the previous "new noisy" segment to this "future" WTN --><br />
<br />
{{wtnHiddenAnswer<br />
|episodeNum = 839 <!-- episode number for previous Noisy --><br />
|answer = Sand<!-- brief description of answer, perhaps with a link --><br />
|}}<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, Jay, it's who's that noisy time.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' All right, guys. Last time I played this noisy.<br />
<br />
[plays Noisy]<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Something with a mouth making a noise through its mouth. Is that a winner?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So Chris Kearney wrote in and said, sound like the old sprinkles that would rhythmically tap the water stream as the rotate with kids preparing to run through in the backyard.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Those are fun.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yep. Remember those like that? That is not it. But funnily, oddly, however you put that, I got a lot of people wrote that guess. And so it definitely reminded people of that sound. Another listener wrote in named Brian Shiffner, and he said, Hey Jay, it sound like a large bird, like a raven flying overhead. I don't know why their wings make that noise. Not a crazy guess. I mean, if you've ever heard the sound of different birds, wings flapping and the noises that they make, there are there are quite a large variety of different noises that birds make while flapping their wings. It could be their wings. It could be a noise that the birds making at the same time. So not as crazy as a guess as you might think. So that's not a bad guess. That's also not correct, though. Then we have a listener named William Steele. He said, Hi Jay, is this week's noisy somebody walking in the snow? You may want something more specific. So I will say they are wearing snowshoes. Thanks for all your excellent work. So this is the closest guess in the close guest category that the walking part. This is not somebody walking in the snow, but you were not as far away as you think. And we've had that as a noisy on the show before. But Gary Sturman wrote in the correct answer. And before I say it, a lot of people guess this one correctly. Apparently, a lot of people had access to making this noise. So he said, Hi Jay, I'm pretty sur eI know this noise, I hear waves, kids and the main noise that sounds a lot like footsteps, so I'm guessing it is someone walking through sand. The beach near me make the exact sound when the sand is dry. So Gary is the winner for this week. That is correct. So let me tell you what's happening here. So you're hearing now that this info was sent to me by Andrew Hughes, who sent in the noise. And he said that the particular squeaking noise or whistle is made when the dry sand near spherical grains is walked on and the escaping air between the grains of sand tries to escape, emitting a whistling or squeaking sound. Admittedly, I don't know the exact science, but Wikipedia states the following. And this is what I found as well. Certain conditions have to come together to create the singing sand. The sand grains have to be round and between 0.1 and 0.5 millimeters in diameter. The sand has to contain silica. The sand needs to be at a certain humidity. And the most common frequency emitted seems to be close to 450 Hertz. So it is a phenomenon that happens when the sand is compressed onto itself.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You know what, Jay?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I hate sand. It gets everywhere.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It's coarse, it gets everywhere.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So I have experienced this. I've experienced the snow crunching noise while wearing boots under certain snow conditions. You hear that that snow crunch noise. But this is a sand crunch noise. And again, like I said, tons of people like grew up near on beaches and they said that oh, yeah, it's from this beach and that beach and all that. Well, apparently it happens all around the world. Just need certain conditions and you're going to hear that. So thank you everyone who sent in something this week.<br />
<br />
{{anchor|previousWTN}} <!-- keep right above the following sub-section ... this is the anchor used by wtnHiddenAnswer, which will link the next hidden answer to this episode's new noisy (so, to that episode's "previousWTN") --><br />
=== New Noisy <small>(1:23:04)</small> ===<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Now, I have a new noisy for you guys this week. This was sent in by a listener named Ron Brown. And let's check it out.<br />
<br />
[_short_vague_description_of_Noisy]<br />
<br />
What is that? What is that noise? I will let you know next week. I know you guys are dying to know {{wtnAnswer|841|if you think you know}} that that noisy for this week or and this is important. If you heard something cool and you think that I should consider it for who's that noisy. All you got to do is email me at WTN@theskepticsguide.org.<br />
<br />
== Announcements <small>(1:23:48)</small> ==<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Now, Steve, you might think that NECSS is over.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It is over.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It is. You're absolutely right. But it does live on because for those who registered or if anybody wants to see the conference, you can still register for the conference and it'll be online for at least a month. So you know, you can look at the, 10 plus hours of content that we created for the next 30 plus days. And all you got to do is go to NECSS.org, N-E-C-S-S dot O-R-G. And you can find out all the details there about how to register and see the conference we did. So we had a great time doing our Boomer versus Zoomer game show on Friday night that was on the 6th. I thought that show went great. That was the best version of the show, right? The show really, we've evolved that show quite a bit. We're finally at a point now where we're ready to to launch that show into reality. I think we're going to we're going to start talking about how to launch it very soon. So keep your eyes and ears peeled for that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. Thanks, Jay.<br />
<br />
== Questions/Emails/Corrections/Follow-ups <small>(1:24:48)</small> ==<br />
<br />
=== Question #1: Meat-eating Dinosaurs ===<br />
<br />
<blockquote><p style="line-height:115%"> Hi, Firstly: thank you for the most awesomest podcast! Every Monday I get up extra early (~3:00) in the morning so that I can listen to the new episodes while getting ready for work! Best morning of the week! Now for the question: My son, Måns, who just turned 3, is a huge dinosaur geek and knows species not even known to me (and I try to keep up and learn the names). Anyhow, he has lots of dino books that we read together almost every night. I usually ask him to tell me what kind of dinosaur this and that is. The other night I asked him to tell me if the different dinosaurs were grass- or meat-eaters (which he of course knew and happily told me). I went on to ask him HOW he knew (or thought) what they were eating. His answer was that they have pointy teeth (a quite “easy” conclusion) but also that the meat-eaters walk on two legs! I got a bit dumbstruck when I began thinking of it and couldn’t come up with a single meat-loving tetrapod, except perhaps {{w|''Dimetrodon''}} (which his books taught me are, in fact, NOT "real" dinosaurs). So, instead of consulting Google, I figured I could ask you guys first, and I told my son that I "know of some experts that I will ask!" 😁 Have a nice day and thanks again for the weekly entertainment! <br><br>– Best regards, <br>Emma, Sweden </p></blockquote><br />
<br />
'''S:''' We got one email this week. This email comes from Emma from Sweden.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Emma.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Emma writes, "Dinosaur question from a curious three year old."<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Cool.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' "Firstly, thank you for the most awesomest podcast." I didn't know there were hobbits in Sweden. "Every Monday, I get up extra early in the morning so that I can listen to the new episodes while getting ready for work. Best morning of the week. Now for my question, my son Mons," and I did look up the pronunciation of that, "who just turned three, is a huge dinosaur geek and knows species not even known to me. Anyhow, he has lots of dino books and we read them together every night. I usually ask him to tell me what kind of dinosaur this that is. The other night I asked him to tell me if the different dinosaurs were grass or meat eaters, which he, of course, knew and happily told me. I went on to ask him how he knew what they were eating. His answer was that they have pointy teeth, but also that the meat eaters walk on two legs." Those are actually very good deductions. "I got a bit dumbstruck when I began thinking of it and couldn't come up with a single meat loving tetrapod, except perhaps Dimetrodon, which his books taught me are in fact not real dinosaurs."<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, mammal-like reptile.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' They are synapsids, that's correct. "So instead of consulting Google, I figured I could ask you guys first and told my son that I know some experts that I will ask. Have a nice day and thanks again for the weekly entertainment." Now, I don't want to encourage people to use us like Google.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, because I'm just going to Google this.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, because you can't Google it. But I just thought this was a fun question. And how could I ignore a question from a curious three-year-old? So Mons, you are correct. There are no confirmed four-legged meat-eating dinosaurs.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Cool.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But...<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Except for a couple of exceptions. Go ahead, Cara.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I was going to say, but there are plenty of non-meat-eating two-legged dinosaurs.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yes.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And I think that's where the logic sadly falls apart.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yes, there are two-legged herbivores.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Lots of them.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Here are the two exceptions. So first Dimetrodon is not one of them because Dimetrodon is a synapsid, not a dinosaur. But there's Spinosaurus. But Spinosaurus, which is a huge meat-eating dinosaur.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But it's facultative, right? It's a facultative biped. It can still walk on its fours.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But we don't really know. But it's controversial. It's probably a biped that sometimes walked on its knuckles too, kind of like a gorilla. But we don't really know for sure. And if you look at it, yeah, it kind of looks like it wants to go down on all four there. But the reconstruction that we're saying is it's not a confirmed quadruped. And at most, it's both a biped and a quadruped. However, there is also a four-legged carnivorous dinosaur. But it's actually omnivorous. So it's not strictly carnivorous. It's omnivorous, they think. So it did eat meat, but probably not exclusively. It's a non-theropod dinosaur. It's...<br />
<br />
'''C:''' What?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Loungosaurus paradoxus. It's a dwarf ankylosaurus that ate fish. It looks like a tiny turtle. It looks like a turtle. It's a turtle-like ornithischian that supposedly ate fish. So that's the closest you get.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh my gosh, and they think it could swim. This is such a cool creature.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It is, it is. So that's the closest we get to a four-legged carnivore dinosaur.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But yeah, that's super rare. It's kind of like, it looks like it's like the platypus of its day. It's just weird.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, it's a weird outlier.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's just a weird one.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Basically, all the carnivores are theropods and are two-legged, walked on two legs.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That is a... Wow, that is a really amazing heuristic for a three-year-old.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh my gosh.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Totally. And the pointy teeth. They got the... Inferring it from their dentition. That's pretty darn good.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I know some 53-year-olds who can't even ask that question.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. Thank you for that question, Mons. All right, everyone. Let's go on with science or fiction.<br />
<br />
== Science or Fiction <small>(1:29:05)</small> ==<br />
{{SOFResults<br />
|fiction = social interactions<!-- short word or phrase representing the item --><br />
|fiction2 = <!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
<br />
|science1 = theory of mind<!-- short word or phrase representing the item --><br />
|science2 = only humans cook food<!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
|science3 = <!-- leave blank if absent --> <br />
<br />
|rogue1 =Cara <!-- rogues in order of response --><br />
|answer1 = theory of mind<!-- item guessed, using word or phrase from above --><br />
<br />
|rogue2 =Bob<br />
|answer2 =social interactions<br />
<br />
|rogue3 =evan<br />
|answer3 =social interactions<br />
<br />
|rogue4 =jay <!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
|answer4 = social interactions<!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
<br />
|rogue5 = <!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
|answer5 = <!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
<br />
|host =Steve <!-- asker of the questions --><br />
<!-- for the result options below, <br />
only put a 'y' next to one. --><br />
|sweep = <!-- all the Rogues guessed wrong --><br />
|clever = <!-- each item was guessed (Steve's preferred result) --><br />
|win = y<!-- at least one Rogue guessed wrong, but not them all --><br />
|swept = <!-- all the Rogues guessed right --><br />
}}<br />
''Voice-over: It's time for Science or Fiction.''<br />
{{Page categories<br />
|SoF with a Theme = <!-- <br />
<br />
search for "THEME (nnnn)" to create a redirect page, then edit that page with: <br />
<br />
#REDIRECT <br />
[[SGU_Episode_NNNN#insert_specific_SOF_section_address_here]] <br />
[[Category:SoF with a Theme]] --><br />
}}<br />
<blockquote>'''Theme: Animals vs Humans''' <!-- <br />
<br />
** If there is a theme, make sure you suggest a redirect title next to the "SoF with a theme" category in the category list at the end. If no theme, remove "Theme" and the <br> before "Item #1" <br />
<br />
--><br>'''Item #1:''' Humans are the only animals who have a process for starting or stopping a social interaction.<ref>[https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/apes-durham-university-b950212.html Evening Standard: Apes communicate to start and end social interactions, study suggests]</ref><br>'''Item #2:''' To date there is no convincing evidence that animals have a theory of mind about what other animals believe.<ref>[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2346530/ Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences: On the lack of evidence that non-human animals possess anything remotely resembling a ‘theory of mind’]</ref><br>'''Item #3:''' Humans are the only animals that cook their food.<ref>[https://www.sciencefocus.com/nature/are-there-any-animals-that-prepare-or-cook-their-food/ Science Focus: Are there any animals that prepare or cook their food?]</ref></blockquote><br />
<br />
'''S:''' Each week, I come up with three science news items or facts, two genuine and one fiction. Then I challenge my panel of skeptics to tell me which one is the fakerooney. We have a theme this week. The theme is animals versus humans. This is all about things that humans can do that animals can't do or can they?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Even though we are animals.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You know what I mean, non-human animals. Are you ready?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Here they are. Item number one, humans are the only animals who have a process for starting or stopping a social interaction. Item number two, to date, there is no convincing evidence that animals have a theory of mind about what other animals believe. And item number three, humans are the only animals that cook their food. Cara gets to go first because of that snarky remark.<br />
<br />
=== Cara' Response ===<br />
<br />
'''C:''' All right. Starting or stopping a social interaction. When we know that there are animals that have societies, we know that there are different cetacean societies, dolphins, orcas. When you say starting or stopping an interaction, what do you mean? Like going, hey, you.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Exactly. So, yeah. Okay, then goodbye. Doing something that initiates the social interaction or that ends the social interaction.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, I have a feeling that these organisms who engage in social interactions have a way to signal that one is starting or one is ending. Like the polite, like, I'm done with this conversation. I'm moving on over to that pod over there. So, yeah. I would guess that this has been observed in cetaceans, especially, and probably in other great apes. So, I think it's between the theory of mind and...<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So, I've got to remind you, Cara, because I'm a nice guy, that you're supposed to tell me which one is the fiction.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Thank you. So, that one, I think, is science. Oh, wait.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, you just explained to me why you think that one is the fiction.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, you mentioned the great apes.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Dang it, I always do this. Humans are the only animals and that would be fiction.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Steve, just take the training wheels off. Just let her make her mistakes.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I'm just...<br />
<br />
'''C:''' You're so right. I do this all the time.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I didn't have the heart.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I hear you.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So, I think that that one might be the fiction, but let me look at the other two.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's what I say with all of them.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Do animals have theory of mind? So, this would say there's no convincing evidence that they have theory of mind. I think there is convincing evidence. So, I think that one's the fiction, too.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Okay.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Whoa, this is screwing with me now. Yeah, I think that definitely like bonobos and chimpanzees have... They don't just pass the mirror test. They think about what other animals are thinking. I think that they can do things like preempt their actions. They comfort them when they appear to be sad. And so, I think that that shows some amount of theory of mind. And then lastly, humans are the only animals that cook their food. I think that's science. I do think that only humans cook their food. So, now I'm torn. Okay. There's no convincing evidence that animals have a theory of mind. I think there is convincing evidence. And humans are the only animals to have a process for starting or stopping a social interaction. I think we're not. Steve, what do I do?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You put your nickel down.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' The theory of mind one. That's the fiction.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay, Bob?<br />
<br />
=== Bob's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, I see what Cara means. I agree that one and two, I mean, I think they're both fiction. So, animals like humans are the only ones that cook food. Oh, man. But I'm going to go with, yeah, the no convincing evidence, I think is what is the asymmetry between the social interaction and theory of mind. So, maybe the evidence that I thought we had for theory of mind in other animals, this isn't as convincing as I thought, but still maybe somewhat compelling, but it's not like you can ask them and say, hey, what are you thinking about? So, I'm going to go with the starting or stopping a social interaction. I don't think humans are the only ones. It's just such a simple thing. And we do know other animals can communicate.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay, Evan?<br />
<br />
=== Evan's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''E:''I think I'm going to agree with Bob, although I-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I agree with Bob too, damn it.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yes, you do.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I agree with myself and Bob.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Right, I know. That's why this one's tough. I'm curious to see how this goes.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Because I don't think- I try to think about why the human would be the only animal that would have that capability. I don't think it's such a complex function, and I think that's why I'm going that direction.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And Jay, for your birthday, I'll let you go last, Jay.<br />
<br />
=== Jay's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Thank you, Steve. I think that-<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Happy birthday.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Humans are the only people that- the only animals that cook food.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Meatballs. Meatballs, Jay.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I totally agree. That's true. I mean no other species is rolling meatballs here. To date, there's no convincing evidence that animals have a theory of mind. Yeah, I mean, I agree with what Cara said, but the one that's really bothering me here is the first one. Humans are the only animals who have a process for starting or stopping social interaction. I mean, I just can't see that being true, so I'm going to have to take that one as the fiction.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #3 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay, so Cara's by her lonesome with number two about the theory of mind. The guys all think that the social interaction is the fiction. But you all agree that humans are the only animals that cook their food. That does seem like the easy one, but wouldn't that be a kicker if this were the fiction?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' This one is-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's not, though.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' How confident are you? This one is-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I'm pretty confident.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Science. This is science. Yeah, this is my easy one. This is like my curveball. Like hoping to suck somebody's thing. It's like, oh, this is so obvious. It has to be the fiction. Yeah, animals. Because fire, etc. So animals are the only animals that cook their food. I even looked it up just to be sure. It's always hard to prove a negative, you know what I mean? How do I- how much research do I need to do before I can make sure I haven't- there's no report of any animal out there doing anything that could be interpreted as using heat to modify their food. But I-<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Toasting crickets or something.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Multiple sources, yeah. Multiple sources said no. So I'm pretty confident with that.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #2 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. I guess we'll go in reverse order here. To date, there is no convincing evidence that animals have a theory of mind about what other animals believe. Cara, you think this one is a fiction. The guys think this one is science. And this one is science. Sorry, Cara.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I disagree with your assessment.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Explain this, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:'' So I don't like this. I think convincing is a value judgement. And this is a massive area of research. And a lot of people are convinced that animals have a theory of mind.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You are correct. That is all correct.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Then how am I wrong?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Because you neglected to focus on the word believe. That's the problem with this statement.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, but we've talked about how the word believe is problematic before on the show.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's why he used it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' What?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' With the research. So first of all, it's more controversial than I thought when I was doing a deep dive on this in preparation for this. So certainly there are people who think there is convincing evidence. There are other researchers who do not. And the ones that do not think that it's all behavioral, that they're just responding to behavioral cues. And we cannot confidently infer that they actually have a theory of mind. But even if we put that alternate hypothesis aside, this is focusing on the difference between what animals know, what animals feel, and what animals believe. And as you know, Cara, there are paradigms, there are research paradigms. And the research paradigms do attempt to distinguish these things. And so far, what the research has shown is that a chimpanzee, for example, can have a theory about what another chimpanzee knows. But it can't, it doesn't have a way of thinking about that another chimpanzee believes something that's wrong, right? So I know it's parsing a lot.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So just so you know where I'm coming from.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I know exactly where you're coming from.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' The word theory of mind implies something. Theory of mind is a construct.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I know. But that's why I said about what other animals believe. They say, yes.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I get that. But that should be like theory of mind includes much more than belief.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, but it's not redundant. It's not redundant because researchers and philosophers do parse out the different components of a theory of mind. And just because you have a one component doesn't mean you have all of them. And it really does seem, at least so far, that humans are the only ones who have the abstraction combined with the theory of mind to think about the beliefs of other people, rather than just more concrete things about do they know this fact or not? You know?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Interesting. I wonder if even the idea of having beliefs is specific to humans.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Exactly. And of course, that's part of it. They don't have the abstraction of separating belief from knowledge. So I get it. This was kind of unfair to you. This was tricky. This is very, very tricky. And you didn't really even look at the belief part of it.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' And you went first.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That's fine. He does plenty of stuff that's unfair to me.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #1 ===<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Because it is clear that number one is obvious. How could an animal have a social interaction without starting or stopping?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But here's the thing. A week ago, this would have been true.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' What?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So humans are the only animals who have a process for starting or stopping a social interaction. That was true until a study that was just published, which provides the first evidence of a non-human animal showing that they have cues for when they're starting and stopping a social interaction.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' What animal is it?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It is primates. It is chimpanzees and gorillas.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I thought maybe dolphins.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Gorillas too, really?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, and bonobos. So what they found was that, at least chimpanzees, bonobos and gorillas, they will observe specifically for this. They looked at them. They looked at when they engaged in social interactions. And they tried to see, was there anything<br />
that was not a communication itself, right? It wasn't communicating information or serving any purpose, but was kind of a standardized way that they would begin an interaction or end an interaction.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Start comment, end comment.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, exactly. And they found that for bonobos, it was more. So for bonobos, it was 90% of the time for starting and for chimps, it was 69%. And then for ending, it was more. It was 92% for bonobos and 86% for chimpanzees. And so they would do things like stare into each other's eyes or put their foreheads together. Like when the conversation was over, they'd bump foreheads and then leave, right?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Wow.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So instead of saying hi and bye, they like fist bump.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Jay, let's start doing that, Jay.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Like football players.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Jay, you and I start doing that. Forehead bumps.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But this is the first published evidence that this is happening. Before then, it was uniquely human. So it's not so obvious.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, they're dropping all the time.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I know, I know. They're dropping like flies. It is funny, the notion that everything we think of as being uniquely human actually does have some analog in the animal world. And not, you know.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right, because we're just, we're apes. Yeah, like that's the thing. Like how could we have that much that's unique to us? We're apes.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' We're just well-endowed hairless apes.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Often apes, but not exclusively. I mean, sometimes like birds like Corvids.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh yeah, they're amazing.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And cetaceans. Cetaceans are a lot of cool stuff.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' And don't forget the octopus.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Octopus.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And the elephants.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' They're smarter than some people I know.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yes, there are some highly encephalized vertebrate species out there. Yeah. Right, I thought that was interesting though. All right, but yeah, this was a tricky one.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Dammit.<br />
<br />
== Skeptical Quote of the Week <small>(1:41:15)</small> ==<br />
<br />
<!-- ** For the quote display, use block quote with no marks around quote followed by a long dash and the speaker's name, possibly with a reference. For the QoW that's read aloud, use quotation marks for when the Rogue actually reads the quote.--> <br />
<br />
<blockquote>The earth will not continue to offer its harvest, except with faithful stewardship. We cannot say we love the land and then take steps to destroy it for use by future generations.<br>– {{w|Pope John Paul II}} (1920-2005)</blockquote><br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, Evan, give us a quote.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' "The earth will not continue to offer its harvest except with faithful stewardship. We cannot say we love the land and then take steps to destroy it for use by future generations." No, not some great environmentalist that we've all heard of. Pope John Paul II said that in 1988.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' There's some things that, yeah, that are just universal.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, they transcend worldview ideology in many ways.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Right. You have to be so blind to not see what's happening to our planet and want to be a part of the correction.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, it's always been for me, like I've always considered myself an environmentalist, even though I don't go in for a lot of the Greenpeace level stuff. But like their anti-GMO stance, I think they're actually too ideological. But to me, it's so obvious that like, yeah, this is our one planet. The rest of the universe is a hellscape to humans. As far as we know, this is the only little, again, like the pale blue dot against the vastness.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right, there is no planet B.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And nature's awesome. Why wouldn't we want to protect nature, maximize it? Do we really want to kill off all of our charismatic megafauna and destroy the wilderness and everything? It's, even if we look at it selfishly.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Or even the ugly mini fauna.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, sure, you gotta love ugly mini fauna as well.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Did you guys see, there was a cartoon in The New Yorker a few days ago. I shared it on social media. That's like kids, three kids sitting around a campfire with an older guy. And it's like a barren wasteland and everybody's clothes are like gray. And the older guy says, yes, the planet got destroyed. But for a beautiful moment in time, we created a lot of value for the shareholders.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Wow, yes.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And that's so encapsulates that short-term thinking.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh boy, yeah, I like it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I know, I know. And obviously like the last few days, especially since the IPCC report dropped, I've been engaged online with a lot of discussion with a lot of climate change deniers. And there is a lot of that going on. It's like, do you want to pay more for your electricity? It's like, you know what? I'll pay more for my electricity. And I know I'm privileged and I have the privilege of saying that. But yeah, we privileged individuals should pay a little bit more for our electricity if it means, saving the planet from climate change.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, how about this? I'll pay more for my electricity and I'll pay more to offset the cost of the people who can't afford to pay more for their electricity. I want to do that. That's where I'm at.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So, and again, it's also, it's not as if we're asking for massive sacrifice. That's the other thing that they always come back with. Do we really want to destroy the economy? Nobody wants to destroy the economy. It's not about that. It's about investing in a certain way.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Right.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Also, it won't destroy the economy.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, we want to build tomorrow's economy and shut down the 17th century economy of coal burning. That's what we want to do. We just want to do a little bit faster than it would happen normally. Anyway, it's frustrating. Just the lack of perspective to me is mind blowing. It's just completely mind blowing. And again, all we're really asking is that let's make some smart investments and some smart choices and nobody will have to sacrifice anything. We could get there.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, and let's care a little bit about our grandkids and great grandkids' futures.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Right, yeah. Let's be a little less selfish in that regard.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, it's like investing, right? It's like your kid's born, you open up a college fund. You know, that's investing. That's not, it's like, oh, what do you want to divert some of your income to investing in a college fund? Yeah, yes, I do. I do want to do that because it's responsible. Investing long term is responsible. And as you know, our generation has to invest in the future. And this is the way we're going to do it. It's not, anyway.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, it's hard for me. It's hard for me to wrap my head around people who have children who think this way. I don't have kids and I think this way. It blows my mind. And I have no intention of having children. I could very selfishly say, I'm it for me, and I don't care about anybody else. But when people actually have progeny and they still don't think about creating, not just a world that's not worse, like not just a world that's better, because we might be beyond that, but a world that's not literally on fire for their children. Like what?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, I think people in the future are going to look back at the boomers and Gen Xers and be like, you guys screwed us bad.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But again, the sliver of sunshine is that there's still a tiny chance that we can get to that, keep to that 1.5 degree C goal if we start to start to be smart. We're not doing it now. And I don't think we are. But the more we do, the less bad it will be.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, even it too. It's still habitable. We could still survive it. We could mitigate those changes if we work together globally to make sure that the climate refugees have a place to go, to make sure that the places that are still comfortable remain that way. But it gets any more than that, none of us are going to be okay.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, yeah, I mean, even at the worst, worst case scenario, six degrees before it all is said and done, the world will still be habitable. It'll just increasingly suck, is the problem.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, there will just be a lot of death.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' A lot of misery, right?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' A lot of misery, a lot of die off.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, we're not just talking, you know, suffering. We're talking death.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's going to be massively disruptive.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's part of the equation.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' All right.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' On that happy note.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So thank you all for joining me this week.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' You got it, brother.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Sure man.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yes, yes. And a happy birthday, Jay, again.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' And happy birthday, Jay.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Thanks Guys.<br />
<br />
== Signoff/Announcements == <br />
<!-- ** if the signoff/announcements don't immediately follow the QoW or if the QoW comments take a few minutes, it would be appropriate to include a timestamp for when this part starts --><br />
<br />
'''S:''' —and until next week, this is your {{SGU}}. <!-- typically this is the last thing before the Outro --> <br />
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}}</div>Hearmepurrhttps://www.sgutranscripts.org/w/index.php?title=SGU_Episode_806&diff=19130SGU Episode 8062024-01-26T16:55:35Z<p>Hearmepurr: episode done</p>
<hr />
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|qowText = The need to reduce dissonance is a universal mental mechanism, but that doesn’t mean we are doomed to be controlled by it. Human beings may not be eager to change, but we have the ability to change, and the fact that many of our self-protective delusions and blind spots are built into the way the brain works is no justification for not trying.<br />
|qowAuthor = ''{{w|Mistakes Were Made (but Not by Me)}}'' by Carol Tavris & Elliot Aronson<br />
|downloadLink = {{DownloadLink|2020-12-19}}<br />
|forumLink = https://sguforums.org/index.php?topic=53110.0<br />
}}<br />
<br />
== Introduction ==<br />
<br />
''Voice-over: You're listening to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.'' <br />
<br />
'''S:''' Hello and welcome to the {{SGU|link=y}}. Today is Wednesday, December 16<sup>th</sup>, 2020, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella... <br />
<br />
'''B:''' Hey, everybody!<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Cara Santa Maria... <br />
<br />
'''C:''' Howdy. <br />
<br />
'''S:''' Jay Novella... <br />
<br />
'''J:''' Hey guys. <br />
<br />
'''S:''' ...and Evan Bernstein. <br />
<br />
'''E:''' Good evening, folks.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So what have we got, two episodes left in 2020?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And one regular episode, that'll be next week, and then we're doing the Year in Review. So if you haven't done it yet, please go to our website and give us your feedback on what you want us to talk about during the Year in Review your favorite segment, your favorite guest, biggest news item, skeptical hero, skeptical jackass, all of the usual stuff. Give it to us and we'll put that together for our Year in Review show. So if you want to do that, go to our homepage and then just put in slash wrap up 2020. And that'll take you to the form, which you can fill out. And we'd really appreciate it.<br />
<br />
== COVID-19 Update <small>(1:05)</small> == <br />
* Vaccine and Home Testing<br />
<br />
'''S:''' A couple of quick COVID news items or mentions before we go on to the full news items. So the vaccine's being rolled out, the Pfizer vaccine, and it didn't take long. A healthcare worker in Alaska had a serious allergic reaction to the vaccine, to the Pfizer vaccine.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' What kind? Like what happens?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Anaphylaxis.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, like a bee sting reaction?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' He okay though?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' She's okay. Yep.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, she. Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' But shouldn't she have never gotten the vaccine because that could have been totally predicted based on previous?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No. No.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Here's why. So two people in the UK who started getting the vaccine before the US.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That's what I'm talking about.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' They had a history of allergic reactions, but they had a history of allergic reactions. This woman did not have a history of allergic reactions. So this was a serious allergic reaction in somebody without a prior history. So that's new. And that's not a good thing.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' And bad.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' How likely is that owed to a vaccine? And how likely is that owed to just like the fact that we develop allergies throughout the lifespan?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So any vaccine has this potential and people are allergic to components in vaccines. It's just like any drug. You basically have to think of it like a drug and you're going to give a drug to millions of people. A certain percentage of them are going to have allergic reactions. This is a new vaccine. You know, it's not like, I don't know how much overlap there is in adjuvants or whatever between this vaccine and previous ones. My understanding was not much because this is the mRNA vaccine and it's really different. You know, it's not like there's egg products or other things like that where you get an older and other vaccines. So in any case, again, this is not surprising. It's good that the patient did well, she got observed overnight. This is not going to change anything. They're still rolling out the vaccine. It's just the recommendations are that people, and this was already the recommendation, that people get observed for 15, 20 minutes after they get their shot just to make sure they're not going to be someone who gets a reaction. And then, and you just observe longer if somebody has a known allergy. But here's the other thing is that in the clinical trial, they excluded people who had known allergic reactions. And so, which is typical, you do that in clinical trial, you don't, you want to see like how are healthy subjects going to respond. And you may exclude somebody who has, would put them in a high risk group. We've talked about this in the context of clinical trials in general. Their strength of a like double blind placebo controlled trial is that you control all the variables so you could isolate the variables of interest. That goes hand in hand with a weakness, which is the more you control those variables, the less the outcome is generalizable to a general population. So this is a perfect example of that. 40,000 people got the vaccine without an allergic reaction, but none of them had any history of prior allergic reactions. Now, of course, this person did-<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Right. You take a sample of people and you're going to have people who have allergies to things. I mean, that's just normal.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And also people with like really serious other medical conditions, people with-<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Pregnant women.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Pregnant women. But yeah, it's often that you remove all of those people from your sample to reduce the risk. And then with COVID, it's such a tough thing, right? Because the people who need it most are the people who have certain types of sicknesses. I'm wondering how broad their clinical sample was with this vaccine.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So there's definitely going to be side effects cropping up again, when you go from 40,000 to millions, and then eventually to hundreds of millions, and then eventually to billions, maybe, whatever. You're going to, obviously, statistically, more things are going to crop up. But still, as I mentioned, I believe, last week, the risk of this happening, the risk of you being one of those people who gets a serious allergic reaction, is still less than the risk of you getting the coronavirus and having a serious complication. And again, she's fine. She had one night in the hospital, they treated her, and she's fine. I'm sure probably one in a million people or something is probably going to have a serious... That's about the rate of serious reactions to vaccines.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' We could see thousands of people like her then.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, that's the case. That's why we have a vaccine court. That's why we have mitigation effects for this, because drugs have side effects, and sometimes people get sick. But again, this is a public health issue.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But I promise you, though, 300,000 people are not going to die from this vaccine, right?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right, exactly.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's the point that we have to emphasize, or get sick, or get hospitalized, or whatever.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Or anywhere near it, exactly.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' There's also a bit of good news, although we have to see how this plays out.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Moderna.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, Moderna is going to get approved by the FDA this week. But the FDA approved an instant at-home test for COVID.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, very cool.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Like a paper test, like the pregnancy test, like at-home test.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Still not where we need it to be, but it's a nice first step for the home testing, because it's $30, which is going to be too expensive for a lot of people.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Maybe their insurance will help cover that, you know.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' But what we need to aim for is something so quick, and easy, and inexpensive that we could do it every day, barely even thinking about it.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Like a smartphone app.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Like when you're brushing your teeth, bam, do a test.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Or even once a week.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Every day.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' How fast is it?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's within minutes, like instantaneous kind of test.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' And Steve, is that like a pre-test telling you if it comes up positive, you go get another test to verify?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Definitely. Yes.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, for sure. You should do that with any at-home test.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, basically. If it's positive, then you go get the real test.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Okay.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But I mean, I agree with you, Bob, to some extent. That would be amazing, like in a perfect world. But also, if that were the case, we wouldn't be in the predicament we're in, having a rapid test at home.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Other countries have done it. Other countries have done massive testing beyond anything we've done.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So that's the difference.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' And their numbers are much better.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But even before we have a test that we can keep in large stock in our own homes, it's a function of, can they use this in schools? Can they use this for public transit? Think about the cases where people are in direct contact. And in those cases, having a rapid test is going to be a game changer. But for me, sitting at home, not going into work, I don't need to use those resources. <br />
<br />
'''B:''' No, but it certainly would have changed the way this winter is turning out to be.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Absolutely.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' This should have been one of the big, big priorities months and months ago. Imagine if we had this six months ago.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Imagine a lot of things we could have done differently six months ago.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' And this is just one that's in the news because the FDA okayed one for the home. So yeah, this is just another failure.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So it's exciting. I mean, it's an advancement for sure.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Hopefully, yeah, it'll be one more tool that we have that will hopefully help get this pandemic under control.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, especially for folks who aren't aren't front line workers, don't have pre-existing conditions like there's going to be a slog. There's a there's a time delay between when most people are going to be able to get the vaccine.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So yeah. But again, when you think about it, though, because generally, I think people are being very lax. If anything, the test might motivate some people not to get together when they would have otherwise done it. You know what I mean? And probably less likely to give somebody a false sense of security that they otherwise wouldn't have had.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Gosh, I hope so. I hope it's not seen as like a green light to just go do whatever the hell you want, because that would be really dangerous.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, right. That is always the the the false sense of security is always a risk, you know. All right. Let's move on to some full news items.<br />
<br />
== News Items ==<br />
<br />
=== Arecibo Telescope <small>(8:40)</small> ===<br />
* [https://www.sciencenews.org/article/arecibo-telescope-collapse-astronomy-discoveries Here are 10 of Arecibo’s coolest achievements]<ref>[https://www.sciencenews.org/article/arecibo-telescope-collapse-astronomy-discoveries ScienceNews: Here are 10 of Arecibo’s coolest achievements]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' Bob, you're going to start by telling us about all the wonderful things that the Arecibo telescope has done for us.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, Steve, the iconic Arecibo Observatory is no more after a series of events leading to its collapse early in this December. I thought it'd be a good idea just to go over what it was, what it what it has done and just interesting facts about it and some of its amazing accomplishments. The Arecibo Observatory, also known as the National Astronomy and Ionosphere Center and AIC, is in Puerto Rico, Arecibo, Puerto Rico. And it's owned by the National Science Foundation, NSF. It was created the year that I was born, over a half a century ago. But luckily, I'm nowhere near collapsing yet. The business end of Arecibo, I'm going to refer to the Arecibo Observatory as just Arecibo. The business end of Arecibo was a 305 meter or 1,000 foot spherical reflector dish. This was created using a natural sinkhole. Actually, it was a karst sinkhole, which basically means most sinkholes are karst sinkholes. That just means that the underlying rocks are soluble and there's fissures allowing drainage often into caves and stuff. And don't look into this because it's a rabbit hole, which is a fascinating thing that I spent way too much time looking into. So making up the dish was almost 39,000 1 by 2 meter aluminum panels and they were all supported by crisscrossing steel cables. And underneath that, on the ground, was vegetation that didn't mind being in the shade so much. I guess they specifically planted that there or they just grew because if you don't care about the shade that much, then I guess you would naturally grow there anyway. But above all of that then, of course, was and hung on cables was a steerable receiver and radar transmitters. And that's about 150 meters or 500 feet above the dish. Wow, it's really way up there. I was actually I thought I knew something about Arecibo. There was a lot I didn't know and it's made even more amazing discoveries than I realized. Did you know that astronomers used to think that pulsars could be created by white dwarfs? I did not think that they that white dwarfs were in contention to explain them early on in the late 60s. That was until though Arecibo spotted a pulsar in the Crab Nebula rotating every 33 milliseconds. Now, that's important, though, because white dwarfs can't do that, which means that the argument that pulsars were actually neutron stars got a huge boost and which, of course, we soon found out that pulsars were in fact rotating neutron stars. So I guess it has to do with the mass of the white dwarf and it just can't it couldn't rotate that much mass. It's not dense enough to rotate that fast, I assume. So that was interesting. Thank you, Arecibo. Did you know that Arecibo's observations of the planet Mercury in the 90s suggested that ice might be in permanently shadowed craters at the poles? NASA's Messenger spacecraft later confirmed that. And you might be thinking of our moon right now. And if so, brava to you. This discovery on Mercury raised the possibility that such crater ice is on the moon. And as you lunafiles already know, it certainly does. It is there. IT is confirmed that ice is definitely there in permanently shadowed parts of many different types of craters. So thank you, Arecibo, for that as well. Did you know that the Arecibo Observatory sent the first message meant for aliens in 1970?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I did know that.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Right? Not surprised Steve. They sent it to globular star cluster M13 in 1974. It is said to be the most powerful signal ever sent from Earth. And it wasn't really like, oh, let's try to talk to aliens. It was more of like a techno demo of the observatory's new high power radio transmitter than anything else. But still, that's really cool. M13 contains 300,000 stars and is about 25,000 light years away. The message itself was 1679 bits of information. And it was in binary code trying to give some information about the chemicals in our DNA. It had a stick figure sketch of a human. If you put the information into a certain arrangement, you'd see the stick figure. It had a layout of our solar system, et cetera. So yeah, that signal was sent in 74, which means that it is 18 ten thousandths of the way there because we're 46 years into the 25,000 year trip. So a long way to go. But thank you for that, Arecibo. Did you know, I did not know this, that Arecibo detected the first indirect evidence of gravitational waves in 1974?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That I did not know.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' The first indirect evidence.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' What's the indirect evidence?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yes, indirect evidence. Because we had nowhere near the technology needed to detect them directly back then. But they found a pulsar orbiting another star. And as the star and the dead star spiraled closer and closer to each other, the energy that was lost during their changing orbits matched what would be expected if that loss were due to gravitational waves emanating away. It matched up nicely. So that was a really, really good argument for the existence of gravitational waves without having to detect, without having to have the insane accuracy that LIGO has today. They pretty much show that, yep, it looks pretty damn good that gravitational waves actually exist. So and how about this, Steve? Did you know that this discovery of indirect evidence won the Nobel Prize in 1993 in physics? I did not remember that either. So thank you for that, Arecibo. And finally, let's see, did you know that Arecibo detected the first exoplanets? I think I knew that and then I forgot it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' How do you know you knew something and then forgot it?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Because it sounds like something that I absolutely would have known briefly and then forgotten. So of course, we've discovered many thousands, well over 4,000 exoplanets by now. But the first one was discovered accidentally in the early 90s by Arecibo. The observatory was being repaired, causing it to be kind of frozen in one position. Now generally the Arecibo dish was kind of frozen, right? But the receiver can move a little bit, so you can move it a little bit. But because it was being repaired, it was not moving a millimeter at all, except maybe by the wind. I don't know if wind would even do that. But it wasn't moving and that caused a specific pulsar to swing into view as the Earth rotated. And so they were looking at it, might as well look at what it's looking at anyway. And they saw tiny millisecond fluctuations in the radio waves coming from the pulsar, which indicated, of course, that there's probably massive bodies close to the pulsar gravitationally tugging the pulsar to and fro.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Is that called the wobble?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yes. And that's, yep, it caused a wobble of the pulsar caused by these planets tugging it. So these were the first exoplanets tugging it. And so that made them think that, hey maybe there's exoplanets everywhere if we found them accidentally. But it's ironic though that these types of pulsar planets are pretty rare. They're not common at all. But still, the fact remains that Arecibo detected the first exoplanets, confirmed, I mean, detected and confirmed. So thank you for that as well, Arecibo. So really, the only thing left is to talk about its unfortunate and recent demise. Actually, you could track it starting kind of around 2006 when the National Science Foundation's funding for the observatory dropped was starting to drop. More and more of the funds that the National Science Foundation had earmarked for Arecibo went to newer observatories. And then making it worse after that was the fact that there were a bunch of hurricanes that damaged Arecibo. And that took away even more of the budget. So that was kind of like the beginning of the beginning of the end, I guess maybe you could say. But then, of course, stuff really got real in August 2020 and November 2020 when the cable break started happening. Those events turned out to be the last straw because in November 2020, the NSF decided that it was better to just decommission the telescope instead of repairing it. And so that's what they were going to do. From what I read, that it was just going to be too dangerous to really repair that, you know, imagine you're repairing that and somebody dies. It's like, oh boy, that wouldn't have been good, which was a real risk. And then, of course, the big collapse happened. I think it was on December 1st, yeah, December 1st, 7:56. A.M. local time. The platform fell into the dish, collapsing the telescope. So yeah, that was a big exclamation point. Yes, this is done. The observatory will remain open because there's other things going on there still. But I really kind of bummed that I never got over to Arecibo, Puerto Rico to actually see it in all its glory. It is it is such an iconic observatory. So it will it will be missed. And it's just amazing to consider all of the amazing discoveries that Arecibo made that I wasn't aware of. So that's that's great.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. That's always that's an iconic telescope. It really was sad to see it collapse like that. I think people don't, unless you're interested in astronomy, you may not be aware of how much you know, how we look at the universe with through the radio frequency, you know.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, God. Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Because it doesn't give you the pretty pictures like the Hubble does. But the science, though, is incredible.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But also you can't visit Hubble.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But you can visit like Mauna Kea or other ground based telescopes. OK.<br />
<br />
=== AI Predicting Weather <small>(18:21)</small> ===<br />
* [https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/12/201215142218.htm AI model shows promise to generate faster, more accurate weather forecasts]<ref>[https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/12/201215142218.htm ScienceDaily: AI model shows promise to generate faster, more accurate weather forecasts]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' Jays, is artificial intelligence going to finally be able to predict the weather?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Well, I mean, first off, nothing truly predicts the weather. We just get an idea of what's going on. So it's not 100 percent.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' But yeah, people predict all the time. We just get it wrong.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah. We need a word for like inaccurate predictions like this one word would be nice.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Bullshit.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So the yeah, we'll get into the artificial intelligence. You know, there are some researchers have been working on it and it's a different way of forecasting the weather. I took the opportunity when a weather news item came up just to talk about, like, how do we predict the weather and give you a 30,000 foot view on what takes place and how hard is it? So the first modern daily weather forecast happened when? When do you guys think we got the one more time?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' The first modern daily?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Modern?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' When did people start getting a daily update on what the weather is going to be?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, are we not? Didn't almanacs used to predict weather for each day of the year?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I'm not talking about, I'm not talking about- I'm not talking about that. I'm talking more about like using some type of, some type of science, some type of legitimacy.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Well, the question is, are you talking, is it post-satellite or pre-satellite era?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Pre.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I would think pre. I would think pre for sure. But yeah, we've got weather stations, you can use ships to go out into the ocean and radio in what kind of weather they're experiencing.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's true.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' So that's probably how the first ones, I don't know if it was every day.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So when would that be? Like 40s, 30s?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Well, let me tell you, because it's a little complicated. First people were predicting the weather by observation for a very long time. You know, they could look at what's on the horizon just seeing clouds coming in and the ancient Chinese had weather prediction. So it wasn't really uncommon, but when I, the key word here was a modern daily forecast. It was actually published in the Times on August 1st, 1861.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' 1861?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Wow.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I know, right?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' New York Times? Is that what you said?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It said the Times.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It might be the Times of London.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, Times of London.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I think it is London. Yeah, I think it is London because of what I'm about to tell you.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' So how did the, how would they text that information to everybody back then?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, right?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So was it just like, it's going to be foggy today, every day, is that?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' They used to send out tweets using pigeons, you know.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, nice. Nice.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So the first weather maps were produced later in the same year, and now we click forward to 1911. So they began issuing the first marine weather forecast via radio transmission, which is cool. These include gales, storm warnings for the areas around Great Britain. So it seems like Great Britain kind of got the first weather reporting happening where people were able to gain access to it on a regular basis. The first televised weather forecast using weather maps, 1936, the BBC did a test broadcast of showing people what the weather is in 1936.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' How many people had TVs in 1936?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I don't, I don't know.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Test broadcast for the test TVs.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Seven.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, right. Exactly.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' They only had that one channel.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' So six of them were at the Buckingham Palace or something.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So as most of you guys know, I can tell by the sass in all your voices that historically weather, weather predicting has been unreliable. It's not, it hasn't been that reliable. So as computers advanced and weather satellites deployed, weather prediction has steadily become better and better. So there's still, of course, a limit to how far into the future we can accurately predict the weather, right?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yes.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I know Bob loves to say this. So the experts-<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I'm waiting for Bob to say chaos.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It's interesting, you bastard.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I know, but to Bob, it's like one of those things where he'll get mad. He gets mad if you say like, it's 11 days, Bob's like, 10! It's 10 days!<br />
<br />
'''C:''' What was he talking about? 12 PM and 12 AM?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, that's, save it for the 12 hour show.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' They're speaking gibberish, Cara.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' January 23rd.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Gibberish, I tell you.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' All right. So the experts are actually saying it's between 10 and 14 days. I found a news article that straight up said it's 10 days, anything past 10 days and it's just not, not going to be accurate enough, but it's, it's less than two weeks. Let's say that. So even still, as you know, predictions-<br />
<br />
'''B:''' And that's because, do we know why though? Do you want to know why that's happening?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yes, of course I know why, Bob. I'm talking about the weather.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' He's not getting, Jay, he's not getting mad. He's passionate.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I love that we sometimes do this on the show, that if one person has knowledge about something, we get so excited. We're like, wait, but make sure.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, I know.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Did you know? And it's like, yeah, I did prepare this. Why don't you give me time to say it?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So what Bob was trying to say was weather is, is, is unpredictable because of gremlins. It's the gremlins.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Ah, I see. Not many people know that.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Cloud gremlins.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Excellent.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' They're unpredictable.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Well, I'll get into it. I'll get into it.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' After midnight.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So over the last 30 years, the accuracy of weather predictions has dramatically improved. Everyone agrees. It's a, we've seen weather forecasts go, in my lifetime, I've seen weather forecasting go from meh to pretty damn good. So today's meteorologists use incredibly powerful computers, right? They run these huge numbers of calculations to predict the weather. The weather prediction, however, is not really in real time because we have to wait for the computers to chug through the latest batch of information that they give them. So for accurate but short-term predictions, we use a technique called Nowcast.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You look outside the window?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Pretty much. I mean, that's part of it because meteorologists actually will do that and read old school barometers and gather measurements and all that stuff. And also like local newscasters know their locale, right? So they can get the data from the computer and then they can tweak it a little bit because they have a human brain that can see the big picture in a way that a physics calculation in a computer can't see. So they'll take these measurements and they can give a very highly accurate prediction that can go about two hours into the future. So this is great for like when is the, when is the hurricane going to hit? When is the snow going to start falling? You know, that's how they get these super accurate predictions because they're using very local data. They're not using national weather data. They're just getting multiple, multiple data inputs from tons of different things locally. It could be radar, it could be weather balloons, satellite imagery and what's the big weather, the big weather radar thing that they use, what do you call that?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Doppler.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Doppler radar. Yeah. That's actually really important. But longer forecasts use different ways to interpret the data because a lot more atmosphere has to be included in the model, right? So if you want to do a longer forecast, you can't just look at the weather within 10 miles of you. You have to look at the weather that is a continent away from you because that's how fast the weather moves. So that makes things a lot more complicated. And to Bob's point, we can't really predict the weather past, say, 10 days simply because of just how chaotic the atmosphere is. So the atmosphere and the movement of weather is basically the distribution of heat, right? So you get cold fronts touching warmer air and the air's shift and everything and you get to a point where you really can't forecast what the air is going to do and where the heat's coming from to such a degree that you could go past 10 days because you would start, you would need to have unbelievably small units of data, meaning you would need to know like the temperature and the wind speed and the pressure and the humidity of way too many data points. And we don't collect data on that small. If you think of like, if you split the world up into giant 3D grid, like a big Rubik's cube with tiny little cubes in it, you would need to collect data all over the surface of the earth in these tiny little cubes in order to be able to really predict farther than what we do today. And we just don't have that level of data collection or that ability to number crunch. That's a big...<br />
<br />
'''C:''' When you go to a website where it has like the next 14 days, are they just hoping you kind of don't look at those last few? Like, where do they get those numbers from?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Do they really expect people to think that 14 days out, like this is a 79 or 80% chance of being accurate?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No, but I mean, the question though is, is it just that the accuracy goes way, way down or is that it's literally not predictable at that time?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Well, the error bars, the error bars go way up as you go farther in the future and Jay, it's even worse than you're saying, because it's not just a matter of like, oh, we don't have enough, say weather stations but really it's inherently impossible by its very nature to predict an arbitrary amount of distance into the future. And that's because of, like you said, it's chaotic, it's nonlinear dynamics and it exhibits the sensitive dependence to initial conditions. So every measurement that you've mentioned, Jay, is an average. So if you have an average of like the temperature and the pressure and the humidity for a parcel of the atmosphere, say a mile by a mile and over the entire atmosphere, you would have a certain level of accuracy, but that's an average. And even if you got the parcel of atmosphere down to a cubic millimeter, that would still be an average. And because it's an average, there's going to be some errors in there and those errors multiply, they get bigger and bigger. As the days progress, those errors eventually swamp out the entire signal. So you would need actually perfect accuracy of every point, of everything in the atmosphere to do the prediction as far in the future as you want, which of course is inherently impossible because of quantum mechanics, Heisenberg uncertainty and all that. It is inherently impossible. So even if you had a sextillion little nanobots in the atmosphere telling you everything about the weather, it would still error out after a couple of weeks or so. Technology is irrelevant. It's inherently impossible. Bob, if we had-<br />
<br />
'''E:''' You can never do it. It's an impossible feat to accomplish, is what you're saying.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' In principle.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' But Bob, if we had all those nanobots, why wouldn't we just have them change the weather? You know what I'm saying?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' There you go. Right. When you're talking about technology like that, then yeah, you could actually try to nudge the... But the thing is that you couldn't perfectly predict what effect you were going to have in the future anyway, but you can make short-term little adjustments. Hey, I mean, I think weather control like that is something...<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It wasn't a joke. It wasn't a joke.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I know, right? Oh, my God.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' No, that's actually an interesting point.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I mean, Bob, breathe. Breathe, Bob.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Instead of predicting two weeks, you nudge it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' You guys, this is our life. This is what we do every Wednesday.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' This is fascinating. This is interesting shit. Oh, boy.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I knew Bob was going to have to scratch that itch before I decided to say it.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Oh, of course. Oh, he loves it. There is something wonderful about seeing somebody geek out on a topic that they love and they know a lot about.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I know. I love it. I really do.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I do, too.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I love it. I just thought that was like the extreme... Evan and I are giggling in the background. Because you're like, well, why don't you? And he's like, well, here is why.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' But I have a general question about this. I don't know if it's a silly question or not.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' There's no silly question.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Aren't some places just a lot more predictable than other places?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You mean like the desert?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Right.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's going to be hot and dry.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' So don't you have to kind of compartmentalize it into a geographic range at some point?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' No, you're right, Evan. And that actually is a good thing to kind of segue into the next part of my news item here. So let's talk about artificial intelligence and using artificial intelligence. So the University of Washington is developing a different approach to weather forecasting. So they're collaborating with Microsoft Research to use artificial intelligence. And what they're doing is they're analysing historical weather patterns. So this is what Evan is saying. We know that San Francisco has this kind of weather and it doesn't change as often as it does in New England, which is every 15 minutes. So they take the historical weather patterns to help predict future weather events. They take 40 years. And we have a good solid 40 years of decent weather data. And it's different than using a highly detailed physics calculation to figure out what the weather is going to do. So artificial intelligence comes at the thing from a completely different angle. So the AI system at its core is doing pattern recognition. It compares current weather patterns to 40 years of weather patterns and figures out how the current pattern, like the current pattern of the weather as it is right now, typically evolves.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, it's a probability.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It's a probability engine.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's not modeling the weather. It's just using past data for, as you say, pattern recognition.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Right. So as a really loose example. So when the air in the desert is this hot, which is 10 miles to the north, and when the high altitude winds are coming in at this angle, and this relative humidity at this time of year, typically this is what the weather does in this square 20 mile radius. And that's what the AI is doing. But it's pretty, it's pretty cool. Like, so check this out. So right now the predict, the AI's prediction ability is a little less accurate than most modern ways that we, that we use computers to predict the weather. However, the AI version uses 7,000 times less computing power to produce that forecast. So for the same number of locations around the globe, when you think about it, the AI can predict, let's say 20,000 weather locations around the world. And you know, you add up the fact that it's using 7,000 times less computational power and all of those calculations, that's an amazing amount of workload off of the computer systems that we use. And the systems that we use to calculate weather are monsters. These are not desktop computers.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' They're generally supercomputers, right?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' They are supercomputers. So that much less computing power means what? It means that we can get results faster from the AI because it doesn't have to do as much computation. And the researchers say that because they have so much computing, computer processing power at their fingertips, they can run more models at the same time using slight changes in the starting conditions. So you know, what that means is, isn't that cool? So what they'll do is they can, it's like a shotgun prediction of the weather. They'll say, all right, AI, here's what we got right now. Give me the predictions on the actual what's happening right now. And then give me a prediction on 200 variations, slight variations on what the weather is right now. And let's see what we get. And it's pretty cool because when you have that less of computational needs, you could do a whole suite of other things. So check this out. They call it ensemble forecasting, which is so cool. So the AI will produce a spectrum of potential weather outcomes. So unlike today's number crunching of incredible amounts of weather-related data, the AI will come up with relationships between different patterns of weather. And this kind of calculation, it just can't be done by physics-based models. A physics-based model can't do this because the artificial intelligence, because it's an artificial intelligence, it can make comparisons in a way that straight-up physics programming just can't do. So in time, the scientists believe that they'll increase the accuracy of their technique. So they'll just make it better. And also, they said, as the years go by, we'll just continue to collect more data. And it just will sharpen itself automatically because it's just getting more data. And also, when it makes mistakes, it's sharpening its data. You follow that? <br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, yeah. Sure.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' How about this though Jay, if the climate is changing, though, is the old data going to be less and less accurate?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Well, that's a Steve, that's a great question. I mean, think about it. You know, the rules are changing.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, I wonder if the time horizon for past experience predicting future behavior is going to shrink.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah. Or it might just be-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Or is there just an algorithmic, like add-on to that? Like you adjust for those times.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It's how you compensate.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I'd like to know. That's a fantastic point you bring up.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All this kind of reminds me of the technique that was used by some of the forecasting for the recent election, presidential election in the U.S. We all know how that turned out, right? That was a couple of standard deviations off of what they were saying was going to happen. Still within the range, but-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But yeah, the last two were not great in terms of prediction. But I guess when you're dealing with massive anomalies, that's when things start to get really hard for an AI to predict.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, I think voters are less predictable than the weather. I think that's what that means.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' You can't predict how they're going to vote 10 days out from an election.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Right. No, seriously.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I love that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But yeah, I think this sounds like it's going to be a cool new tool. And I do like the fact that its strength is not that it's more accurate. It's just that it's 7,000 times less calculations that need to be done to get to a prediction and even if it's a little bit less accurate at the end, it could do it with-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's more efficient.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' More quickly, more efficiently. Therefore, you could do more of it.<br />
<br />
=== Manipulated by Robots <small>(35:41)</small> ===<br />
* [https://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/being-manipulated-by-robots/ Being Manipulated by Robots]<ref>[https://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/being-manipulated-by-robots/ Neurologica: Being Manipulated by Robots]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' So guys, there's an interesting study I wrote about yesterday about being manipulated by robots.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Uh-oh. Are they starting to do this already?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Every day.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' This sounds good so far.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' This is a pretty straightforward psychological study. Nothing new. But just the element of the robots is interesting. So they were looking at risk-taking, like how willing people were to take risks and they used an already established, validated paradigm of risk-taking. It's a computer game in which you hit the space bar and every time you hit the space bar, a virtual balloon blows up. It gets bigger.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, yeah. I've done this one.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Oh, yeah? And then at any point, you can cash in and the bigger the balloon gets, the more money you get.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But it's going to pop.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So at some random point, it will pop and you get nothing. And so the question is how-<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Random?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, they can mess with that too, depending on the experimental paradigm.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I mean, if you do it several times, it will happen at different points.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's totally unpredictable. So it's unpredictable.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' You're not timing it to a certain point.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And it's not necessarily more likely to pop as it gets bigger. It's just that there's more opportunities for it to pop. And so eventually, it's going to pop. And so the question is, do you cash in early and take a bird in the hand or do you push it? How far do you push it? So we did this test on subjects, probably students, with three conditions. So one condition was just with nothing, just playing the game. The second was with the presence of a robot that would give them instructions on how to play the game and then remain silent. And the third was a robot that would give them instructions on how to play the game and then would give them little nudges of encouragement throughout the game. Like, keep going.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Don't be a wimp. Keep pushing the space bar.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. Basically I don't think they used shaming, but they just used like little bits of encouragement. And the students who got the encouragement from the robot took significantly more risks.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I'm sure.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So the other thing that's interesting is that the group that, the robot encouragement group that took the most risks made the most money, which indicates that the other two groups were overly risk-averse to be optimal. And what they found was that people became really risk-averse after a balloon popped. Like once a balloon popped, then they would like really chicken out and cash in early. But that wasn't optimal for moneymaking. So they were overly risk-averse. They didn't maximize their money. The robot encouraged group actually made more money because they were willing to take more risks, more chances, with a little bit of support from basically as a robot, it's like a plastic, very minimally humanoid robot with a computer screen on it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right. And that's really like not even the point. The point is that there was a figure. The point is that there was a voice.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah. That's my question. What if it were a human or like a devil?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. It's the same thing.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I think it would be the same. Although when I wrote about it, I'm like, I really would have loved for there to be a fourth group with a human encouraging them just to see if there would be any separation between the robot and the human. So Cara's right. I mean, there's multiple layers here, right? There's the whole risk-averse thing we could talk about, like why are people so risk-averse? Why were people overly risk-averse rather than you would think evolution would optimize that, right? What I suspect is that when the stakes get higher, it makes sense to be more risk-averse. Like evolution doesn't care so much about how many pennies you make on a computer game, but they do care if you get eaten, you know? So in life or death situations, it probably makes more sense to be risk-averse and we just carry that heuristic through our lives even when-<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Should have come with a little shock in their finger, unethical?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. So the other layer here is that our behavior is so easily manipulated by even little nudges like this, little psychological nudges.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' We are so easy to-<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Modifiable.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. I mean, it's like it reminds me of those classic studies where you were asked to bisect a line and say which side is bigger and then they would put the plants in the room and they would be like the left side when it was clearly the right side, but people would still go with whatever the plant said. That was a very, very classic psychological study. And there's even, I remember, I didn't participate in it, but back in the day when I was a guest host on Brain Games before the latest iteration, we did an episode called The God Brain. And one of the things that I did was it was like we told a story about the fact that somebody died in the room. We were in like an old university library and we told a story about the fact that somebody died in that room and their ghost still haunts it and don't sit in that chair because that's where they usually sit. And the chair happened to face where they were doing this like exercise. And like the presence of the idea of a spirit in the room tended to influence people's behavior.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Wow.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It was fascinating because it was a study about honesty. Like they did something with nobody watching and then they had to tell us how many mistakes they made. And people were like way more honest when they thought there was like a ghost watching them.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's amazing.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh boy.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And then the other layer here is that we are social creatures as well. So that our socialization is important and it affects our behavior. We are evolved to respond to social cues very, very acutely.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So easily influenced by other people.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But then the other layer here is the fact that—<br />
<br />
'''B:''' More layers?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. Well, it doesn't matter. It's like an onion, Bob. You keep peeling it away. It doesn't matter. We're so social that the agent of social cues doesn't even have to be a person and doesn't even have to be alive. And this gets back to—and I know I've mentioned this before on the show—the fact that our brains have an algorithm for determining if something has agency or not. Our brains actually aren't concerned with whether or not something in our environment is "alive". Just whether or not it has agency. And agency is the evolutionary marker for being alive. And the marker for agency is—do you guys remember what this is? How does our brain determine if something has agency?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' If it moves on its own.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yes. Practically speaking, if it moves in a non-inertial frame. So if it moves in such a way that cannot be completely accounted for by external forces such as gravity or wind or whatever.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I love that. So Steve, you could design a study where you had like a plant that has a lot of motor movement. You know, a plant.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's already been done, though. Yeah, it's already been done.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, okay. And see if people respond more emotionally to it or whatever.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah. Or you hook up an evil clown to a motor and set it loose in the room.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh my god.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, the research has already gone to its logical conclusion of stripping down the elements until all you have left is literally a two-dimensional shape that's moving in a non-inertial frame and we impose agency onto it. There's this famous video of like a circle, a triangle, and a square moving around the screen and people come up with a story like that's the daddy and that's threatening the child and the mother's protecting it. And it's just these shapes moving around the screen.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It even happens in non-human animals. I have a friend whose doctoral dissertation was with chickens and they were looking at theory of mind in chickens and they would get their chickens in their—they raised them in virtual reality cages so the walls were screens and they could get their chickens to imprint on like red dots and like follow their behavior and yeah, it's fascinating.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So that's why cartoons can make you cry, right? It doesn't matter if it's a two-dimensional drawing. If it's acting in a way that is—it's moving in a way that it appears to have agency, our brains process it as if it's an entity, a person. And what that means neurologically is once our brains identify what the thing is, it then connects to our emotional center and attaches emotion to it. So there's literally a connection that's being made because it's been categorized neurologically as something with agency. And it could be a rock. If that rock is moving around in a way that it looks like it's moving under its own power, our brains slot it as that's something with agency and therefore I have feelings about it, right? That then connects to your limbic system. Whereas everything else gets slotted as not agency, no emotional connection to it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right. Those feelings don't have to be positive, Evan.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It could be fear.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It can be disgust. It can be anything.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Fear.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. Or fear.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, I think just from a survival point of view, the things we need to worry about in our environment are things that could act on their own accord with their own purpose. We don't have to worry about things that are moving passively in the environment. So in any case—<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Because they're predictable.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. In any case, what this means from a practical point of view, and I think what this research is highlighting is that things with agency can include robots.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Of course.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Absolutely.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' They could also include virtual things like AI. It could be a voice. It doesn't even have to be a physical thing because there are other ways to trigger the emotions in us. And so this then let—I'm leading down this thought process of—and this is already happening, of course. So to what extent are we going to be manipulated by robots in the future as part just of the background? So I think this is already happening in that by some estimates, for example, half of Twitter accounts are bots.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Wow.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Right? That's basically AI.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. And those are agenda-driven bots that really do drive human behavior.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. Attempting to manipulate human behavior, and it's agenda-driven. There's somebody behind them. We're not even talking about general AI, like not an artificial intelligence deciding what to do, just as a tool of people who have an agenda.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Of social influence. Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Now think about corporations who want to influence your shopping behavior.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Well, yeah. I mean, this all comes to advertising and marketing. It's huge. Huge.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Or politicians, you know—<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Sure. That's another form of it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Want to influence your voting behavior. Or imagine a totalitarian government wanted to control all of your behavior, you know? And imagine the cage that can be built around people that is kind of invisible and in the background but manipulating every decision that we make.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. Go to North Korea.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I mean, this is the stuff of science fiction books that I used to read.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But it's also happening all the time.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. So that's the—<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It already happens.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. It's already happening in totalitarian countries. So that's the maximally dystopian view of where this will lead. The maximally utopian view is that a benign government would use this to encourage pro-social behavior, positive behavior.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Encourage getting vaccinated, for example.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Discourage criminal behavior, whatever.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah. Like if we had a real AI running our society, it could do cool stuff like that.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Oh, God. Bob loves that.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No thank you.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Or you might consider the ultimate utopian outcome to be this gets completely banned and nothing is influencing our behavior without our explicit knowledge and consent.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah. That's gonna happen.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It's unrealistic.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But we have to decide, though. We have to create our own future. We have to think about this. We shouldn't just—so here's the thing. I don't think that we should just let it happen organically. Like whatever happens, happens, because that's definitely not going to be what we want to happen. I don't know what it's going to be, but it's probably not going to be anything close to what we actually want to have happen.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Also, Steve, there's no such thing as it happening organically. It's being driven by human decisions behind the scenes, left and right.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I know that, but that's what I mean by that.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' But there's a push and pull.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No, but it's people with—generally speaking, people with who stand to gain monetarily who are making these kinds of decisions.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's exactly what I mean, though, by organically, meaning individual corporations, entities, individual people are making decisions in their own interest, and that's—in the aggregate, that's our decision. As opposed to let's have a conversation as a society and come up with a collective decision about where we want to go with this rather than just letting people do whatever they want to do.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's the only way for it to be egalitarian. I mean, otherwise, yeah, it's always going to privilege certain people and really screw other people over.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We're just not dystopian, right? The thing is, this is so powerful, and—you know what I mean? We're already dealing with this, again, with you go online, you're reading news online, you're reading Facebook posts and Twitter feeds. You are being manipulated by bots.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' So how do you—how do you compensate for this?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Regulation.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Well, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's the conversation we need to have, right?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' But how do you fight the psychological aspects of this?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' You live in a cave.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It's still going to happen, isn't it?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, I think individually, individually you just need to be aware that this is—and your awareness of it gives you a certain—it doesn't make you proof from it, but it gives you a certain level of control. Right? At least you're not going to be completely at the mercy of being manipulated if you're aware. That's why everyone should take a social psychology course or read a book or whatever, because if not, you're at the mercy of people who will use that social psychology technology to manipulate you. But I do think we need regulations.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But I do believe, like, the onus isn't on the individual either.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's just like with plastic pollution, right? It can't just be about reduce, reuse, recycle. That's not how we're going to get rid of the problem. We have to see pressure on people in power.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Oh, yeah. I agree. I agree. I just always think—it's like, yes, the system should be set up so that you don't have to protect yourself, but protect yourself, right?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Exactly.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's like, yes, you're right. Somebody shouldn't be able to defraud you, but this is how you don't get defrauded because the system is not perfect and—<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Absolutely.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' And you've got to be a realist.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' In many, many ways. Yeah, you've got to be a realist. So, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' So you're saying if you give people a minimum amount of tools, that gets them—that gives them enough defense or it will help enough people to make a difference?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Oh, I think it will make a difference, but it won't be enough. It's just like—<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, it's like getting hacked, right? Like, you might be as secure as possible, but there's always going to be a new hacker who's going to dupe you in a way that you're never going to be sophisticated enough to see coming.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, like there's good online hygiene where you can minimize the chance of you getting phished or your identity stolen or whatever, but that's not going to protect everybody and you can't guarantee that you won't get exploited. But if it's built into the system, there are protections and laws and whatever, and that minimizes the chance even further. So I wouldn't tell people, don't bother to protect yourself because it's not—it really shouldn't be on you. But I would just say, here's how you protect yourself, but we have to think about, how regulations and laws could protect the maximal amount of people. The idea that we are—I mean, the technology and society is getting so complicated. The idea that you could entirely protect yourself from any way that somebody might exploit you is just unrealistic. It's absurd, you know?<br />
<br />
=== Genetically Engineered Pigs <small>(51:06)</small> ===<br />
* [https://www.theverge.com/2020/12/14/22175060/fda-approval-genetically-engineered-pigs FDA approves genetically engineered pigs]<ref>[https://www.theverge.com/2020/12/14/22175060/fda-approval-genetically-engineered-pigs The Verge: FDA approves genetically engineered pigs]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, Cara, what I want to know is, does Jay have 10 pounds of genetically engineered bacon in his future?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' If he wants to. It'll probably cost a lot more than—<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Does this go back to an inside joke that predates Cara? I think it does.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, I don't know this.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It does.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, the bacon.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yes, it does.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Wait, tell me about the bacon.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Something about meat.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It was the fish oil bacon.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yes, omega-3 fat bacon. If they ever came out with bacon that was omega-3 fatty acids instead of horrible animal fat, then I would eat 10 pounds of it in one sitting.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, right. Instead of having to, like, take the fish oil pills or eat all that fish.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' No, it's eating 10 pounds of bacon that won't kill me. That's really what it's about.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, that sounds awesome. Now, this one won't help you with that, though. It's not going to be healthier for you, but it might not kill you if you have an allergy. And that's really the big takeaway here. We just still don't know if it'll kill you if you have an allergy, but we'll probably know soon. So, okay, two days ago, as of this recording, December 14, 2020, the FDA put out a news release that they have approved a first-of-its-kind intentional genomic alteration. That is a term that they use a lot, intentional genomic alteration. I think it's their way to say GMO without freaking people out.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, boy.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' In a line of domestic pigs for both human food and for potential therapeutic uses. Now, this sounds like, holy crap, wait, what? GMO pigs and we can eat them and we can make drugs out of them and it is pretty awesome. But just to err for a second, what we may not know or remember is that there are already GMO animal proteins for food and there are already GMO animal sources for therapeutic uses. Did you guys know this?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Sure.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Okay. So you might not remember, but in 2015, towards the end, salmon was named the first GM animal that was safe to eat. And I think this might've been the same salmon that I studied when I worked for Al Jazeera. We did a story about, yeah, this Chinook salmon gene that went into the Atlantic salmon that made it grow really fast. I think I was looking at one with an ocean pout because it was in Canada, but similar thing. It was basically a gene that was inserted that made them grow super fast so you could, their life cycles were shortened so you had bigger turnover. We also had in 2015 a GM chicken that was approved for medical use. So we don't have any GM chicken to eat, but the egg whites from this chicken were used to make drugs. We've also seen GM goats that make a drug out of their milk that helps reduce blood clots. And actually one of the potential uses I think for this new GM pig could be that as well. So I think we often forget that although we are very biotechnologically advanced in many aspects of biomedical science, there's still a fair amount of drugs that require the utilization of animal products. You know, the fair amount of drugs where we have to do not just experimentation on animals, but we need animal reservoirs to produce the drugs themselves. And so let's talk about this GM pig, or as they're saying, this IGA pig. Steve, have you heard this? IGA? Intentional Genomic Alteration?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. From what I gather, I feel like honestly this is just good marketing from the FDA.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, yeah. I approve.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I think that's exactly what this is. And I love the name of these pigs. They're called GAL-SAFE. So let's see where does that GAL-SAFE come from. It comes from alpha-gal syndrome. This also ties back to a story that I'm sure we covered on the SGU several years ago about meat allergies. Do you guys remember covering the story about, yeah, people get bit by a Lone Star tick. They have an immune reaction where they, basically there's a surface sugar. It's called galactose alpha-1,3-galactose. And for short, it's called alpha-gal. And alpha-gal, when certain people are bit by this Lone Star tick, will have like an intense immunoglobulin reaction because of that carbohydrate. It induces this reaction. And unfortunately, in some of those people, later when they try to eat meat, they'll have an allergic reaction to that because of that immune system response. Now alpha-gal is found on all mammals. The only mammals that don't have alpha-gal, weirdly, are apes, humans, and old world monkeys. So our genetic lineage doesn't have alpha-gal, but every other mammal does. And so if you want alpha-gal-safe food, it means that you can't eat mammalian meat products. So people with an alpha-gal allergy aren't completely allergic to meat. They can still eat poultry. They can still eat fish. And weirdly, in some cases, they can eat super lean meats like venison. Apparently, I guess the alpha-gal load is just very low in those meats, and it doesn't trigger a reaction. But in some people, they can't even eat those ungulates. And I mean, it sucks, right? Like can you imagine you get bit by a tick and all of a sudden you can't eat meat? I mean, maybe it's a good way to go meat-free, like for the environment and for all those other purposes.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I can't think of a scenario where it would ever be beneficial to be bit by a tick.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right, yeah. I guess if you've like really, really were like, man, I want to go vegan or veg, it's just been a goal of mine my whole life. And every time I try that, bacon just comes to call in, and then you get bit by the tick. But honestly, like not to make light, it's a serious reaction for some people. o kind of standard allergic reaction, it runs the gamut. Everything from hives, itchy skin swelling in the mouth, wheezing, shortness of breath, all the way to anaphylaxis, right? Like potential death. Researchers at Revivacor Inc. have sought FDA approval and received it for their gal-safe pigs. So these pigs are just the same as the pigs that they came from, except that they have been genetically modified not to include this gal surface sugar. And so because they don't include alpha-gal, they can't induce alpha-gal syndrome, or at least that's the thought. So the research so far that has led to FDA approval does not have anything to do with whether or not alpha-gal syndrome is induced. It's only about whether or not these pigs are safe environmentally and safe as a food source for the general population. So obviously there's more research to be done. Kind of the downstream hope with these pigs is that they can be used as an alpha-gal safe food source, that they can also be used as an alpha-gal safe medical source. But before those types of studies need FDA approval, or before those types of studies can translate into products that are available on the market, they need to seek separate FDA approval. So this is the first step. The first step is we've done the research and we've shown that these alpha-gal safe pigs can be eaten and have no negative health consequences. For all intents and purposes, it's the exact same as eating any other pig meat. And also there are no downstream environmental effects of these alpha-gal safe pigs. If anything, they're actually much more expensive to keep, I think just because they're genetically modified pigs. So the source material costs more. So they're probably actually kept in better conditions, and you see actually environmental positives downstream. But the next steps are really interesting, right? The food source might be basically a meatless allergy meat, which is pretty cool, or a meat allergy-less meat, I said that weird. And also there's an idea for potentially using them to grow tissues and organs that could address the problems in xenotransplants. So it's not uncommon that we have to use animal tissues for transplanted products in medical intervention. And unfortunately, it does seem to be that alpha-gal sugars are one of the causes of rejection in certain patients. And so if we can utilize these pigs that don't have alpha-gal, then maybe we're going to have a potential breakthrough in the ability to do tissue transplantation with them. Finally, the FDA evaluation also showed that after multiple generations, the gal-safe pigs still don't have the alpha-gal sugars. So it's a line that can be utilized again and again and again for research and eventually perhaps for commercial uses. So you know, the headlines are always like, first of its kind, and it's like, yes, it is technically the first of its kind, because it's technically the first animal product that is both approved for therapeutic uses and as human food. But we already have human food approved GM, we already have therapeutic approved animal GM. It's the first that does both. We also still don't know yet if it is going to completely not induce an allergic reaction in alpha-gal patients. But there's good reason to believe that because there's nothing within the pig to induce the allergic reaction. And we don't know what the future holds in terms of the types of medications or the types of therapeutics that could be developed with this. But it's a really interesting new source for a lot of future research. <br />
<br />
'''E:''' Alpha-gal sounds like a superhero name.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I know. Alpha-gal cracks me up every time I hear it. I'm like, whoever named that is very creative, and I love it. Alpha-gal.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. I know they're kind of working on... The other one I've been following is trying to develop genetically modified allergy-free peanuts.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. Yeah. I've been seeing a lot of that. Gosh, that would be amazing.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' They haven't cracked that nut yet.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' They haven't cracked that nut? But they're close, right?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, yeah. I mean, just like reading like in 2015, it's like, oh, we're close. You know, but...<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It just hasn't... They haven't crossed the finish line yet. And they may have zeroed in on some proteins that are making it hypoallergenic, but you could still get an allergic reaction to it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And it has so much to do with like how complicated is the allergy. Like the cool thing about the alpha-gal syndrome is that we know exactly what's inducing it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:'' It's this one sugar. You knock out the sugar, all of a sudden you're not going to have the allergy. So here's hoping that it actually turns out to be true. I'm so hoping that it actually turns out to really improve the lives of the people who are affected by it, both in terms of being able to receive therapeutics but also to be able to get that bacon.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yep. Absolutely.<br />
<br />
=== Asteroid Sample Return <small>(1:02:07)</small> ===<br />
* [https://www.zmescience.com/science/japanese-researchers-open-up-the-hayabusa-2-capsule-and-its-full-of-asteroid-samples/ Japanese researchers open up the Hayabusa 2 capsule — and it’s full of asteroid samples]<ref>[https://www.zmescience.com/science/japanese-researchers-open-up-the-hayabusa-2-capsule-and-its-full-of-asteroid-samples/ ZME Science: Japanese researchers open up the Hayabusa 2 capsule — and it’s full of asteroid samples]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay, Evan, this is a quick one. You're just going to give... Tell us what happened when Hayabusa... Hayabusa or Hayabusa?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Hayabusa2.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Hayabusa2 came back. Did it have samples from the asteroid or not?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yes, it did.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' There you go. News item over. All right. This past Monday, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, JAXA, JAXA, they made an extraordinary announcement. They successfully collected samples of gases and dust harvested from an asteroid and brought them safely back to Earth. This is the world's first sample return of a material in the gas state from deep space. Whoa.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Cool.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It sounds sort of basic in a way, but at the same time, it fiercely complicated and an amazing, incredible achievement that, that took place here. So it was the Hayabusa2 and it was launched December 3rd, 2014. And it met up with its target in June of 2018. That's asteroid 162173 Ryugu. R-Y-U-G-U. Ryugu?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. I used to love playing him in Street Fighter.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' This is a near earth asteroid. It surveyed the asteroid for a year and a half and took the samples. Now, how did it collect the samples? Well, it fired an impactor, boom, into the asteroid. That took place in February of 2019. It created an artificial crater and that allowed the spacecraft to collect a sample from beneath the surface of the asteroid. Very, very cool. So after that, it took Lee, it collected the sample. After a little more time, it took leave of the asteroid. That was in November of 2019. But before the mission went on to continue into space, while it was doing a near earth flyby, it jettisoned the container of samples and it fell to earth on December 5th and it came to rest in the Australian desert, fully intact, thank goodness. And they collected it soon afterwards and they already started doing tests on it. And it's been tested. There are two laboratories that have done tests on it. The first laboratory on December 7th suggested that the gas differed from the atmospheric composition of the earth. That way, basically their way of saying that the gas it collected was not contaminated and they went for additional confirmation of this. It was performed on December 10th and 11th and that led to the same conclusion. So they released their press release the other day explaining that this was the result. And there's also some bits in there, little bits, little particles, which they didn't have too much to say yet about that. It's obviously all still new. They're still doing analysis, but they're saying what they have here is definitely gas from deep space. Very cool.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Cool. Yeah. So mission accomplished. Now they just have to do the analysis to see what it is. That could take months before we see anything published or announced.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, it could take a while. And they also are going to be distributing some of this material to various space organizations around the world. Yep. And they'll run tests. So we're going to be learning. It'll unfold over the next several months, I'm certain, if not years.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yep. Okay.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' And yep, it came on the heels of OSIRIS-REx. Remember we talked about that a couple months ago in which the US were going to have those samples back in 2023. And we'll be sharing some of those samples with Japan, sort of in exchange for the samples that they're going to share with NASA. So that's a nice exchange there.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. And China just returned samples from the moon back from the Chenge 5.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Sweet. Yep. So we can do it. And you know, the more you think about it, I think it lends more credence to the fact that when we start exploring places like Mars, it's really going to be robots and collectors and these sorts of technology is definitely going to lead the way. More so, I think, than humans. And now that they have these successful missions, why wouldn't you go that direction?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. We definitely robots are going to be leading the way anywhere we go in space. No question.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Absolutely.<br />
<br />
== Who's That Noisy? <small>(1:06:22)</small> ==<br />
* Answer to last week’s Noisy: _brief_description_perhaps_with_link_<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, Jay, it's who's that noisy time.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' All right, Steve, last week I played this noisy.<br />
<br />
[_short_vague_description_of_Noisy]<br />
<br />
What do you guys think it is?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It could be the window rolled down as you're driving down the highway. Who knows?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Jay, it's a game we had when we were a kid where it had a helicopter attached to a, like a piece of plastic, an arm that would go around in a circle and you could pick up stuff. That's what it was.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Not even close. Not even close.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' No, I'm right. I'm right.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I like the guess. I think it's creative.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' All right. So we had, I got so many guesses. I got so many different guesses. Like I just can't list them all, but like, let me just cruise through some of them here. So a listener named Rob Cook wrote in and said, hi Jay, it sounds like wind. So based on your hint, I'm going to guess someone recording themselves skydiving. And I can actually see where Rob's coming from with that. It's not correct. And you know, I've heard people actually I've heard audio from that and it's a lot more like windy, you know what I mean? I don't, I don't want to, this, this is more of a crunchy noise. Or scrunching kind of compacting noise.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Scrunching.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Scrunchy. Crunchy covers it.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Write that down.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Another guess from a listener named Chris Wassmer, who is the husband of a former coworker of mine who happened to be a listener of the show and he emailed me, I thought it was really cool. He said, Jay, I think the noisy is an anemometer for measuring wind speed, spinning up in a strong gale or hurricane force wind. Love the show. Thanks for providing two hours of sane news and thought-provoking content every week. Cheers, Chris. You guys know what an anemometer is?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Is that wind speed?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Anemometer. It's probably an anemometer.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Anemometer.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Is that wind speed, Jay?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It's a wind. It measures wind speed. It's one of those things that spins like it has like like cups or whatever, and they spin around and tells you how fast the wind's blowing. Typically they're paired with something that tells you the direction of the wind.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Like, like a rooster?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yes. Oh, a weather vane.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Exactly.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That is incorrect. And I liked it because I learned something, which is always good, but that one is not correct. I actually tried to find the sound of one of these devices and I couldn't, so I can't tell Chris how right or wrong he was. But Chris, if you have a recording of one email me and so I can hear it because I want to hear what that sounds like. Another one. Here's the last one before the reveal. Visto Tutti, of course, he wrote in. Now remember Visto said that he was going to try to answer every single who's that noisy this year. And I think he did.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, cool.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So far, yes.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Awesome.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, he's one away. So he's done great this year. Visto said, sounds like ice calving, calving, right? Calving from a glacier. Quite possibly from a Ford designed by Slarty Barfast. Bob, who is Slarty Barfast?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Come on, Douglas Adams. He designed, he designed all the coastlines. He's very good at fjords.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh my God, that name.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Slarty Barfast was it, I think?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, Slarty Barfast. If I remember correctly, didn't they find his signature in a glacier?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, I think. Yeah. But yeah, he's won awards.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So anyway, that is not correct. That is not correct. Another good guess. Here is the person who did not win, but came the closest. All right. There is no winner this week, but he came the closest. Gary Record said, Ricard actually said, hi Jay. I'm quite sure someone else has probably already nailed this one, but this noisy sounds like a recording made while riding a sled down a snowy hill. How about them apples, love Gary. He came very close. This is not the sound of a sled scrunching snow underneath it. This is the sound of car tires scrunching snow while driving over fresh snow. Listen again. All of you that live in the North, you should know this. [plays Noisy] Do you hear it? Every single person that has driven in fresh snow has heard that noise. You have no excuse, Northerners.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Or Southerners, Jay. You're having a Northern hemisphere bias there.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I know. Yeah, come on. All snow comes from the North pole. Everybody knows that. So I picked this one because it's a winter related item. And because Christmas coming and all it's the holiday season. I figured people would have snow on the brain. We are getting 15 inches tonight. Some of us in more ways than one. Thank you, Bob.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's snowing right now.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Three times.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, weird.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I put the stakes around my driveway and then my dog pulled them all out and then I put them down again.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Well, that's why you put steak down and you don't expect a dog to go and eat the steak?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, no, the stakes the markers from where the edge of the driveway is. And then he also, I got it. Whatever.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Of course.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' My dog also likes to eat every package that gets dropped off in the front of the house. So we got a delivery box that nobody uses. They deliver-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, you told us.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's a whole extra step for them.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So tonight they delivered something I ordered for my wife and my daughters for Christmas, a little like stocking stuffer type gift. I got them those little like rape alarms. It's like a little fob that you carry with you. And all you have to do is pull the pin and it gets like a flashy, bright light and a loud siren.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' So how many decibels?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, it's 130. I think it's.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Whoa. Nice.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's pretty severe.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' We live in a world where people buy other people, rape alarms for stocking.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Whatever. So it was, uh, of course they didn't drop it in the mailbox or in the delivery box. They dropped it on the front, on the front step and, and my dog ripped it to shreds. But he accidentally pulled one of the pins.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' So your dog was getting raped. What happened, man?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Scared the crap out of him, which is great. And then of course we're inside the house. Like, what is that noise? My wife was like, what is that noise? Is that, it sounds like an alarm. And then, uh, then it hits me. Like the whole scenario instantly hit me. It's like, I ordered them. They got delivered and Sagan ripped him, ripped him over.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Oh my God. When did this happen?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Just tonight.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Oh my God. Steve, did, oh, did you, did it blew the surprise, I guess?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, of course. I had to pick them up off the front lawn.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Steve, remember when I ordered something for the SGU, those plastic clips?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yes.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' And they mysteriously, the package never showed up. And then, and then we found them strewn across, across the lawn. Some of them were half eaten. I mean, Steve's dog just goes for it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' He, anything that gets dropped off at the front of the house, it's just his toy. That's what, the people are delivering toys to him. That's what he does.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Aw.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' He loves them.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's so cute.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, ''cute''.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' He is an awesome dog though. He is awesome. He, his dog and my dog are best friends.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, totally.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Steve's new camera.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, he destroyed a camera that I ordered.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh gosh, it really did. I didn't know that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Oh, it was, it was a lens for my phone, but yeah, it was like, yeah, probably the camera on my phone.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Everything we name, he destroyed. <br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
=== New Noisy <small>(1:13:45)</small> ===<br />
<br />
'''J:''' All right. So I got a new noisy this week. This was sent in by a listener named Ray Ort.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Like Ort Cloud?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' O-R-T, baby.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Oh, one O, okay.<br />
<br />
[_short_vague_description_of_Noisy]<br />
<br />
So ignore all the other noises in the background, like the wind and the guys, there's some guy there. It's just that moaning type of noise. I want you to tell me what it is. If you heard anything cool this week, you can email me at the same address that you should email me. If you know what that sound is.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I know what it is. It's a guy in the wind.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' With something else going on.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That is Steve's rape alarm in the front yard as Sagan rips the pin out of it. What is like, I always think of a grenade when you say rip the pin out.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's what it's like. It's like a grenade pin. It pull it out and the alarm goes off.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It's a rape grenade. I mean, oh my God, the world.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Rape grenade.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Email me at WTN@theskepticsguide.org.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But Jay, Jay, they have multiple uses. One of the uses is you could make a trip wire in front of your door, connected to the pin, and then people trip it as they try to go through.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Nice. I like that.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That's true. As you play Fallout four, you know what trip wires are all about.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Totally.<br />
<br />
== Questions/Emails/Corrections/Follow-ups <small>(1:15:08)</small> ==<br />
<br />
=== Email #1: Historicity of Jesus ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. We're going to do one, one email this week. This is a collective email. This is the most emailed topic I think we've gotten over the last couple of weeks. A couple of weeks ago, we were talking about the news item about the archaeologist who claims to have found Jesus's house. And the primary argument that it was the house of the biblical Jesus was that the stonework was pretty good and Jesus's father was supposed to have been a craftsman and there you go. So I thought that was a pretty, pretty weak, pretty thin argument. And I, and, and sort of as an aside, I said, it's hard to claim that you've discovered the house of someone that we don't even know if they actually existed or not. And I just briefly mentioned the arguments there. The reason why I was, I thought I could just very quickly touch on that topic is because we've already done a deep dive on it in the past. I don't expect everyone listening to the show to know our entire catalog. You know, we're over 800. As I said, I would mention if that we did do a deeper dive on that, but I have been doing a lot of reading on this. I've been engaged with a lot of email conversations with people emailed me, but I do want to, to sort of update this topic a bit. So the question is, what is the evidence for the historicity of the Jesus of the new Testament? I want to say a couple of things about that. First of all, if you have not done significant reading on this question, you have no idea. This is a very deep topic. It really is. And I just don't just, I'm just, I'm just advocating for a little bit of humility in that this is, you don't think you can read a quick one-off about it and you have any idea what's going on. It's also a fascinating topic from a skeptical point of view. It's really extremely interesting. And many of the scholars involved in this discussion are using a lot of logic and techniques, Bayesian analysis, a lot of things that we talk about as skeptics. There is a lot of skepticism in this topic. I recommend, if you're interested in it, to find some good sources and read about it. But let me give you some, address some of the feedback that we were getting. So the claim often is that if you look at just historians, right, so not theologians, but historians looking at the historical question, was Jesus a historical figure, that there is a strong consensus that the answer is almost definitely yes. And so we could just take that as a given. And again, the point I was making two weeks ago, which is still my position, is that we cannot take that as a given. And I'm going to explain to you a little bit more detail why that is. First of all, I will push back on the notion that there is anything approaching a solid consensus on that question. But first, you have to recognize that there are a lot of theological historians in the mix here. And so you really do have to consider them separately and, and really only need to consider, if you consider secular historians who are not coming at this from a strictly religious faith point of view, which doesn't mean that they're atheists and, and et cetera. I'll also say that this question is completely irrelevant to, to the position of atheism. It's not like atheists need for Jesus to not have been a historical figure. It doesn't matter either way, really. And you'll understand more why that's the case in a moment. But there isn't really a strong consensus. There is, in fact, a strong debate going on on this question among the secular historians. And the question comes, there's a couple of ways to frame this question. So first of all, some of the scholars have said that the question of whether or not Jesus was a historical figure is not really even the question that they're trying to answer. It's really just one sort of side question. The real question they're trying to answer with the records that we have is, what is the origin of Christianity? Where did Christianity come from, right? ne possibility is that Christianity came from a guy named Jesus who had a ministry, and he was the founder of Christianity. So the real question is, was a historical Jesus the founder of Christianity versus some—because if there wasn't a historical Jesus, then he wasn't the founder of Christianity. Therefore, it must have some other origin, right? And then if you think there are other origins of the religion of Christianity that are plausible or consistent with the historical record, then the question is, is the character of Jesus, is that a mythologized historical figure or a historicized mythological figure? So those are the two questions. What's the origin of Christianity, and did the incarnation the narrative literary incarnation of Jesus, did that start as a historical person that then got mythologized, or did it start as a mythological concept that then got historicized? Both of those things happen throughout history, so we know that both of those processes have occurred. One of the people that I've been reading—and I've read this guy a long time ago, but I just read some more of his recent writings—is Richard Carrier. Richard Carrier is on the most mythicist end of the spectrum, that Jesus started as a mythological creature and then was historicized. I really like the way this guy argues. His writing, I find, to be very humble, very skeptical, very logical. He does not overstate his claims or his case. You know, and basically he's saying we don't know. That's really what he's saying, is that if you take an honest look at the evidence we actually have and what we can say with confidence, you cannot conclude, cannot conclude, that Jesus was probably a historical figure. At best, you can conclude that we really don't know, that we're really uncertain. But there are—and he says here are the best arguments for, here are the best arguments against. He acknowledges which arguments for the historicity of Jesus are valid or legitimate, when they may be true or may not be true, etc. But there's a in sort of rereading a lot of this recently, sort of I learned some new things or reminded me of some things which are important. So to show you how much we don't know, right? So first of all, like you addressed the question, how do we know if a character from from legend is historical or not? One question that you ask is, are there any contemporary documents, right? Is there any contemporary reference to the character from the time period that they were supposed to have been alive? And do you guys know what the answer is for Jesus?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Probably no.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, you don't know? Or the answer is no?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I think the answer is no.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The answer is no. There is not a single reference to Jesus that is contemporary. There's not a single eyewitness of Jesus that wrote contemporarily. And Jesus wrote nothing, right? We have no writings of Jesus.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Well, they did describe him writing in the sand in one of the gospels, I believe.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, but we have no writings. So one of the arguments against the historicity of Jesus is the argument from silence. We have a lot of records from that time. If this is somebody who started a religion, you would think there might have been some mention of him. It's not a slam dunk, but it is one notch on the, he probably you could argue that he may not have existed because there was no contemporary mention of him. Do any of you guys know what the first, the oldest documents referring to Jesus are? So what are the oldest Christian documents that we have?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, gosh. I don't know.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Is this 200 years later?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So do you know what they are? So what are the writings?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' The gospels?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The gospels were the second. That was basically a generation later. Before the gospels.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I thought those would, so there's something before that.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' The pre-gospels.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Nope, they're the letters of Paul. The letters of Paul are the first the historically oldest actual references we have to Jesus. And so if you read Paul, that is perhaps the best, we could argue, the best window we have into the origins of Christianity. Again, remember, that's really the question here. How did this whole religion begin? And so Paul never met Jesus while he was alive, right? Makes no mention of it. So how does Paul portray Jesus if we look only at his writings? He entirely refers to Jesus as a spiritual being. Entirely. He makes, not only did he not know him when he was alive, he doesn't make any reference to the living Jesus. Not a single reference. Jesus is 100% a spiritual being in Paul's writings. So that's the first generation after the time period of the that where Jesus was supposed to be alive. It's not until the gospels, which is a full generation later, that there are stories which talk about Jesus as a living being. How did Paul get his, what was Paul's source of information about the spiritual Jesus?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' LSD?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, that's a good guess, Bob, that's a really good guess.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Gold plates buried in, oh, no, wrong.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's entirely, it's entirely through revelation, through visions.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, okay, so I'm not that wrong.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, it's entirely through visions. So that no—<br />
<br />
'''B:''' The guy's like a medium.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, the guy's like a medium speaking to a mythological spiritual being, and that's it. There's no mention of him ever being alive. Now there are some sort of phrases that Paul uses that people use to argue, he wouldn't have said that if Jesus was never alive. But they're all problematic. None of them are a slam dunk. So Carrier uses a lot of logic, that's Bayesian, he says, all right, if we look at all of the people throughout history, including religions, all of the figures, right, that have the same kind of characteristics that Jesus has, they were said to be divine, they were said to have risen from the dead, blah, blah, blah, that fits sort of the narrative role that Jesus does. How many of them were mythological and how many of them were historical? And almost all of them are mythological. And so he says, just from a, out of the gate, from just a higher probability, figures like Jesus are mythological, almost always. And so that's not a bad starting point. And is there anything that reverses that, that would say there's enough evidence to conclude that he was actually a living person? And there really, really isn't. You can't rule out that there wasn't a Jesus figure that started the Christian faith, although it's not necessary, because you can make a reasonable argument it was started by Peter, James, and John. They were the ones who started Christianity. Paul then, he was basically on a mission to craft it into a certain philosophy. There were many Christian sects at the same time. Essentially, it started as a Jewish sect. Paul is the one that made it a non-Jewish sect. And then, but there were many other Christian sects at the same time. Then what happened around 200 years, like AD, right, when the Catholic Christian church was gaining power, they are the first ones to really decide that every Christian sect other than them was heresy. And they started wiping out all of the references that were not canonical. And then when the Roman Empire adopted their form of Christianity as their official religion, they had the power of law to decide that everything else was heresy and destroy it systematically. And so we basically have a very sanitized record of just this one sect of Christianity. And in fact, some scholars argue that the original sect of Christianity, which was Jewish, died out. And that this one, this Paul's version survived, while 30 other ones survived as well. But they were all then systematically eradicated. However, we have some recovered evidence from it. This is the Gnostic Gospels. Remember, we talked about that. The gospel according to, remember, the gospel according to Judas. The gospel according to Ruth is another one. And these paint completely different pictures of who Jesus was and what happened. So the versions of the person Jesus that we have are completely different and contradictory. There are completely different mythological conceptions of what Jesus was. There are some very Eastern conceptions, some very Jewish conceptions, and then the one that ended up being the canonical Christian conception. Even the very fundamental things, like was he divine? You know, all the fundamental questions. There's many different permutations were floating around at that time. We kind of have hindsight bias that we think of "Christianity" as the one sect that won survived and declared all others heresy. The other main line of argument, and I got pushback for not bringing this up, so I'll bring it up quickly here, is that there are secular references to Jesus as a person, like Josephus and Tacitus are the two big ones. But what the scholars argue is that these were completely unreliable sources. They were not contemporary. They were not eyewitness. And they were basically hearsay after Christianity already existed as a sect, and essentially they were just reporting what those Christians were saying. And so they are of zero historical value in terms of addressing this question. Yes, there are different interpretations of all this. It's horrifically complicated. Again, I'm not saying this is what we know or this is absolutely true. It's possible that that's somebody named Jesus walking around 2000 years ago, but it's also possible that there wasn't. And we really don't know. And there isn't this consensus that people refer to. It really is just a way of trying to shut down debate, in my opinion.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's what it sounds like to me, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But guys, this is such a fascinating story.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It really is.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Just try to reconstruct this. We can analogize the formation of the Christian religion with the formation of the Mormon religion, right? And in that analogy, Paul is Joseph Smith, and Jesus is Moroni. And nobody thinks that Moroni is a historical living person. It's clearly a mythological being. But that relationship is actually almost identical to the relationship between Paul and Jesus, who saw him in visions and never referred to him as an actual living, breathing person. But it could work both ways. The point is you could make it work both ways. The other point that multiple scholars make at either end of the spectrum, whether you're at the historicist end or the mythologist end, they both say what we're talking about here has nothing to do with the gospel Jesus, right? The gospel Jesus, meaning the person who was born of virgin birth, who had a ministry, who did miracles, who was crucified, right? No secular historian is saying that that gospel Jesus existed. That's not even up for debate. That's not the question from a historical point of view. It's just more just the founder of the Christianity. Was the founder of Christianity the person Jesus who had a ministry, or was it Peter, James, and John, and then Paul? Were they the founders of this Christian sect? Again, keeping in mind there were many other Christian sects. So there is no historical, evidence-based, logical argument you could make for the gospel Jesus having existed or being a historical figure.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, that's an important point.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's not even on the table. And again, I always like to emphasize this has nothing to do with faith, right? You could believe whatever you want to believe. We're not attacking anybody's faith. I'm addressing the premise that from a secular historical point of view, that people say there's a consensus that Jesus was a historical figure, and I'm saying that's not true. There isn't a consensus, and quite honestly, I find the arguments at the other end of the spectrum far more logical and compelling than the ones at the extreme historicist end of the spectrum. Although I'm willing to admit it's all possible, and we don't know.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Scratch that itch good, Steve?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Oh, yeah. I scratched that itch real good, real deep. All right, let's go on with science or fiction.<br />
<br />
== Science or Fiction <small>(1:32:39)</small> ==<br />
{{SOFResults<br />
|fiction = code like language<!-- short word or phrase representing the item --><br />
|fiction2 = <!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
<br />
|science1 = older galaxies exist<!-- short word or phrase representing the item --><br />
|science2 = exoplanet radio signal<!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
|science3 = <!-- leave blank if absent --> <br />
<br />
|rogue1 = jay<!-- rogues in order of response --><br />
|answer1 = older galaxies exist<!-- item guessed, using word or phrase from above --><br />
<br />
|rogue2 =cara<br />
|answer2 =code like language<br />
<br />
|rogue3 =Evan<br />
|answer3 =code like language<br />
<br />
|rogue4 =bob <!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
|answer4 =code like language <!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
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|rogue5 = <!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
|answer5 = <!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
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|host = Steve<!-- asker of the questions --><br />
<!-- for the result options below, <br />
only put a 'y' next to one. --><br />
|sweep = <!-- all the Rogues guessed wrong --><br />
|clever = <!-- each item was guessed (Steve's preferred result) --><br />
|win = y<!-- at least one Rogue guessed wrong, but not them all --><br />
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}}<br />
''Voiceover: It's time for Science or Fiction.''<br />
<br />
<blockquote>'''Item #1:''' Neuroscientists find that reading computer code heavily involves language processing areas of the brain, and is therefore similar to a language.<ref>[https://news.mit.edu/2020/brain-reading-computer-code-1215 MIT News: To the brain, reading computer code is not the same as reading language]</ref><br>'''Item #2:''' A study of the most distant known object in the universe, galaxy GN-z11, which is 13.4 billion light years from Earth, contains heavier elements, which means there are older galaxies still.<ref>[https://carnegiescience.edu/news/most-distant-galaxy-helps-elucidate-early-universe Carnegie Science: Most-Distant Galaxy Helps Elucidate The Early Universe]</ref><br>'''Item #3:''' Astronomers report the first possible radio signal coming from an exoplanet. <ref>[https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/12/201216134701.htm ScienceDaily: Astronomers detect possible radio emission from exoplanet]</ref></blockquote><br />
<br />
'''S:''' Each week I come up with three science news items or facts, two real and one fake, and then I challenge my panel of skeptics to tell me which one is the fake. Just three news items this week. Are you guys ready?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yes.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, here we go. Item number one, neuroscientists find that reading computer code heavily involves language processing areas of the brain and is therefore similar to a language. Item number two, a study of the most distant known object in the universe, galaxy GNZ11, which is 13.4 billion light years from Earth, contains heavier elements, which means there are older galaxies still. And item number three, astronomers report the first possible radio signal coming from an exoplanet. Jay, go first.<br />
<br />
=== Jay's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''J:''' All right, Steve, this first one, neuroscientists find that reading computer code heavily involves language processing areas of the brain. So they're saying it's similar to language. The thing is, coming from a software background it's, I wish I knew other languages other than English because I could well, but I do know that the way that we string the thoughts together, even though that order can change, computer language does have a way of stringing things together. However, it's very different, I think, than language. Man, that's a tough one. I mean, it is a way of communication that has a repeat very repetitive like languages, and there's lots of similar elements. I mean, yeah, I could see that there's something to it. I'd say that one is a definite maybe, not on my hot list. Next one, a study of the most distant known object in the universe, which is galaxy GN-Z11, which is 13.4 billion light years from Earth, contains heavier elements, which means there are older galaxies still.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Do you understand that? So in other words, as old as this thing is, it must be things even older because this can't be the first galaxy or the stars and it cannot be the first stars because it contains heavier elements from older stars.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Aha, understood. Yeah, that makes sense. I thought we did find the oldest galaxy, though, and the farthest.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' We did. This is it, GN-Z11.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Okay, that one's on my probably fiction list. Let's go to the last one. Astronomers report the first possible radio signal coming from an exoplanet, a radio signal. I don't think that that's that crazy. You know, for a planet, some type of thing that is sending a radio signal, it's basically just the spectrum of light. So it doesn't mean that some device created it. It could be a phenomenon that created it. That's, I think, more likely. I think the second one here about the GN-Z11, that's the fake.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay, Cara?<br />
<br />
=== Cara's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, gosh. Okay, so. Okay, so Jay, you think that it's not weird for a radio signal to come from an exoplanet, and I have no idea, so I'm going to say okay. So it's going to be between the other two. So basically, you're saying with this, the farthest away object, which is this galaxy, based on its composition, it makes us believe there's probably things that are even older than it, even though that's the farthest away that we've detected. So there could be farther away things that are older, or there could be older things that are closer, for reasons I do not understand. But it seems possible. I feel like a lot of things are very possible with cosmology. Reading computer code involves language processing areas and is therefore similar to language. It involves them? I know you didn't write the word, but do you mean like mostly or heavily?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It says heavily. It says heavily involves language processing.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, you're right. You're right. I didn't even see it. Okay, cool. It heavily involves language. I don't know, man. I think computer code is processed more like math than language. I don't know. It's like all the things we know about neurolinguistics, like everything that we learned over so long about how we process language and inherent rules of language and how we develop them and iterate them from the time we're really young. Computer code just doesn't fit any of those concepts. I know we use the word language when we talk about computer languages, but I think that's the most similar thing to it. It just doesn't have all the same syntactical rules. So I don't know. This one sits weird with me. So I think I'm going to have to say that this one's a fiction. Who freaking knows if the galaxy one is science or not? But this one's, I don't like this one. So neuroscience, the language code is the fiction for me.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay, Evan.<br />
<br />
=== Evan's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Okay, Bob.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' You're right, that'll work.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It was worth a shot. I guess I'll go in reverse order because, okay. The first possible radio signal coming from an exoplanet, that means what? It hasn't yet to be confirmed.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, there hasn't been follow-up confirmation, but yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I think that opens this one up to being science because they're still working it out to figure out or get it validated. And yeah, I think radio signals do happen in nature. So I don't think that one's... That's cool. I'm glad they're able to detect it because we want the transmission of I love Lucy from whatever planet or the equivalent. That was a Futurama episode, by the way, about television signals and faraway planets. But I digress. I digress. The second one about the most distant known object. Okay, 13.4 billion. My last understanding is that the universe, the best guess is what? 13.73 billion years old. So that means you got about 300,000 years there between Big Bang and this object, which means that a galaxy would have had to what? Come into existence and explode to make the... And go supernova?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It's 300 million, right? 300 million?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Within... Is it 300 million? Oh, I'm sorry. You're right. Thanks, Bob. Hey, that helps a lot. That makes this a thousand times more plausible. Actually, when I do that math. And so, yeah. Okay, yeah. 300,000, I was going to say no, but 300 million, sure.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Shouldn't have said anything.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I think that one works. That means it leaves the one I know nothing about. I don't know about computer language, computer code. None of it. Processing areas of the brain. I was kind of thinking what Cara was thinking. It was math. So that was kind of all I was hanging my head on. Math more than language. I guess I'll go that route and say that the language processing areas of the brain, that one's fiction.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And Bob.<br />
<br />
=== Bob's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''B:''' All right. Start with three. At first blush, a radio signal from an exoplanet is crazy exciting. But then I think, yeah, it could be natural. I mean, it's an exoplanet. It's not a star. But I think there's almost definitely natural ways to produce it rather than some technology from some creatures, which would be amazing. But probably not. Let's see the second one here. Yeah. The the most distant galaxy that we know of 13.4 billion years. Yeah. I just don't know why this galaxy could not be old enough to have already had multiple generations of stars that created the heavier elements and and bombarded the newer stars helped create the newer stars or help see them. I mean, after all, a supernova stars that are big enough to go supernova. They don't live that long. I mean, on the order of hundreds of millions of years. So I don't know why that wouldn't be. But yeah, I there's no way I don't think we're quite ready to say like this is the first galaxy. So I could also have be not the first galaxy at all. So so that would make sense from multiple angles. Yeah. The first one. Yeah, I agree with with Cara and Evan. This is more like a logical progression rather than a language. I mean, coding just does not you know, I've done some coding and it definitely does not strike me as a as a language language. So I'll say that one's fiction.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #3 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. So we'll start with the third one, since you all agree on that one. Astronomers report the first possible radio signal coming from an exoplanet. You all think this one is science. And I guess the question is, is it the first?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, shit.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That there's a radio signal coming from an exoplanet. But this is the first time we've discovered that?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I've never heard about it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' This one is science. This is science.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I never heard of that before.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. So this is coming from the system in Tau Bootes.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, booties.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's not booties. It's Bootes.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I don't know. One of my dear friends did her entire dissertation on it. She called it Tau Bootes.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Maybe that's an astronomer's joke.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's an astronomy pronunciation guide. It's pronounced Bootes, not boots, and not booties. They specifically say it's not Bootes.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Interesting. She was Tau Bootes B.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' What kind of planet, Steve? What kind of exoplanet?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's a good question. What do you think? What would your guess be?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Well, my hope would be that it would be a rocky Earth-like planet. But it's probably like a gas giant.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' M class 1G.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's a hot Jupiter. It's a hot Jupiter.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Cool.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Ooh, he's so hot, Jupiter.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So it probably has its own magnetic field that's strong enough that it's generating the radio signal. It's not far away. It's like 51 light years. So it's pretty close.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Damn.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's the first one. I was a little surprised that that was the first. But yeah, I guess it's not common for exoplanets to be radio sources themselves. And I have to say possible because they haven't fully confirmed it. And it's not that they haven't confirmed that they're picking up a radio signal. What they have to confirm is that it's not coming from the star. There's two stars in the system. That it's coming from the planet and not one of the two stars.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Or the microwave oven in the cafeteria.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, exactly.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Or the radio.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #2 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Let's go back to number two, a study of the most distant known object in the universe, galaxy GNZ 11, which is 13.4 billion light years from Earth. Contains heavier elements, which means there are older galaxies still. Jay, you think this one is a fiction. Everyone else thinks this one is science. So did you say how old the galaxy is?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Me?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I mean the universe. The universe is how old?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' 13.73.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' 13.77 is what I just read.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Seven.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Ooh, 77.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Ooh, upgrade.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So that would mean this was existing 3.7 or 370 million years after the formation of the universe. And it's the oldest thing that we've seen. So the question is, is it the oldest thing that we've seen because it is the oldest. Or is there something even older that we're not seeing?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Probably.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So what they did was they did spectrographic analysis of the light coming from this distant galaxy, and they found heavier elements. So this one is science.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' A lot of population two stars.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. So it's a population two stars.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' This was tricky.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' This can't be the oldest thing out there. It's got to be something even a little bit old. I see about like 100 million years older or something. And so this study, the point of it was to learn more about the very, very early universe so that we know at 370 million years after the Big Bang, there already was second generation stars. That tells us something about how long it took for the very first stars to form. And this analysis was done using observations from the Keck 1 telescope in Mauna Kea in Hawaii.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #1 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. Let's go back to number one. Neuroscientists find that reading computer code heavily involves language processing areas of the brain and is therefore similar to language. Jay, you thought this one was the science. You thought this one was science, but this one is the fiction. And Cara basically nailed it.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Math. Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yes. How?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's math. Yeah. It does not... In fact, what the study showed is that there was almost no activation of language areas. <br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, wow.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's not language processing at all, but it uses...<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I'm surprised.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' ...parts of the brain that are involved with math and problem solving. Math and problem solving.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But I'm actually surprised, like, no language, just simply for the visual of it the characters.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No involvement, but it was very little. You know, it wasn't involving language processing to any significant degree.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But that one could have been tricky because, yeah, we call them computer languages.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, I know. So Jay kind of went through the logic. I was sort of hoping that it's like, well, yeah, it's kind of like you're reading a language. And it was tricky when you think about it. Like, if you ask that question, is it... Are you using language processing to read computer code or using math? You know, it's an interesting question. That's why they did the study, right? They were trying to... They didn't know the answer. They were trying to figure it out. But it clearly showed that it's, yeah, it's math and problem solving, not actual language.<br />
<br />
== Skeptical Quote of the Week <small>(1:45:53)</small> ==<br />
<br />
<blockquote><p style="line-height:125%">The need to reduce dissonance is a universal mental mechanism, but that doesn’t mean we are doomed to be controlled by it. Human beings may not be eager to change, but we have the ability to change, and the fact that many of our self-protective delusions and blind spots are built into the way the brain works is no justification for not trying.</p>– ''{{w|Mistakes Were Made (but Not by Me)}}'' (2007) by social psychologists Carol Tavris & Elliot Aronson</blockquote><br />
<br />
'''S:''' So Evan.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yes.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You there?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yes.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Hello.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I'm here.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Hi.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Hi.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Quote time.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Quote time. Okay, here we go. "The need to reduce dissonance is a universal mental mechanism, but that does not mean we are doomed to be controlled by it. Human beings may not be eager to change, but we have the ability to change. And the fact that many of our self-protective delusions and blind spots are built into the way the brain works is no justification for not trying." Carol Tavris from her book, Mistakes Were Made, But Not By Me. Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yep. Carol Tavris is awesome.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah. Yeah. She writes very well.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So this is the last episode that will come out before Christmas.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' What with Christmas coming and all.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' There you go, Cara.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' There you go. Next week's episode will come out on December 26th, the day after Christmas. That will be our year-end review episode.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, boy.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And we will not be doing a Friday live stream on the 25th. Yeah, we'll be busy. We will be doing a Friday live stream on January 1st, however. So just miss that one week. All right, guys. Well, thank you all for joining me this week.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Sure, man.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Thanks Steve.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Thank you Steve.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Thank you brother.<br />
<br />
== Signoff/Announcements == <!-- if the signoff/announcements don't immediately follow the QoW or if the QoW comments take a few minutes, it would be appropriate to include a timestamp for when this part starts --><br />
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'''S:''' —and until next week, this is your {{SGU}}. <!-- typically this is the last thing before the Outro --> <br />
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}}</div>Hearmepurrhttps://www.sgutranscripts.org/w/index.php?title=SGU_Episode_798&diff=19129SGU Episode 7982024-01-25T20:05:49Z<p>Hearmepurr: episode done</p>
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|episodeNum = 798<br />
|episodeDate = {{month|10}} {{date|24}} 2020 <!-- broadcast date --><br />
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|caption = {{w|James Randi}}, Canadian-American stage magician, author and scientific skeptic, 8/7/1928 - 10/20/2020 <br />
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|qowText = Science is best defined as a careful, disciplined, logical search for knowledge about any and all aspects of the universe, obtained by examination of the best available evidence and always subject to correction and improvement upon discovery of better evidence. What's left is magic. And it doesn't work.<br />
|qowAuthor = {{w|James Randi}}, Canadian-American co-founder of {{w|Committee for Skeptical Inquiry|CSI}}<br />
|downloadLink = {{DownloadLink|2020-10-24}}<br />
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|forumLink = https://sguforums.org/index.php?topic=52961.0<br />
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** Note that you can put the Rogue's infobox initials inside triple quotes to make the initials bold in the transcript. This is how the final statement from Steve is typed at the end of this transcript: '''S:''' —and until next week, this is your {{SGU}}.<br />
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== Introduction, James Randi passes ==<br />
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''Voice-over: You're listening to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.'' <br />
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'''S:''' Hello and welcome to the {{SGU|link=y}}. Today is Wednesday, October 21<sup>st</sup>, 2020, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella... <br />
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'''B:''' Hey, everybody!<br />
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'''S:''' Cara Santa Maria... <br />
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'''C:''' Howdy. <br />
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'''S:''' Jay Novella... <br />
<br />
'''J:''' Hey guys. <br />
<br />
'''S:''' ...and Evan Bernstein. <br />
<br />
'''E:''' Good evening, folks.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Unfortunately, we have to start the show with some very sad news. We just heard right before we started recording, pretty much. We heard that James the Amazing Randy has died. He was 92. This was announced by the James Randy Educational Foundation. They're not releasing details. News is just hitting us. Haven't had time to find out any more information. But we knew that Randy had survived colon cancer. He had survived heart attacks before. And again, of course, he was 92. So we knew this day was coming. But it's still sad. He was a giant, an absolute giant in the skeptical movement. You can't overestimate his influence on the SGU, his inspiration to all of us as activists, skeptics. He basically was our mentor and the iconic skeptic when we were just getting started in all of this.<br />
<br />
== Special Segment: James Randi memories <small>(1:30)</small> ==<br />
* {{w|James Randi}}, Canadian-American stage magician, author and scientific skeptic, 8/7/1928 - 10/20/2020 <br />
<br />
'''J:''' My earliest memory of Randy, we had him speak at MIT, right? Remember that? And we got to have a dinner with him and Davey and a couple of other people. And I was pretty watching this guy growing up and knowing so much about him. And at that point, I'm pretty sure I had already read one of his books. But we got to know Randy over the last 20 years or more. It's more like 30 years at this point. We got to know him and had done dozens of conferences with him and had just a lot of time to hang out. And when I think about I worried about losing Randy because he was always much older. In the sense of he really was a mentor and I felt like he's one of the last people from that generation that really remembers exactly what happened. I remember him telling us all of these details about the skeptical movement back in the day and all the drama and every twist and turn. And I remember throughout, Randy's sentiment was just like, what a waste of time. We just have this job to do. And he wanted to do that job, which was promote critical thinking and skepticism. And people got in the way. And I remember that frustrating Randy a lot. Not just in the books that he did, but all the in-person appearances and all the people that he spent time with. I mean, he was so unbelievably generous with his time. If you went to the amazing meeting, you could sit down and talk to him. That was as simple as that.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right. That's how I met him. I mean, I really only knew him the last 10 years or less. And I remember being invited to speak at TAM. That's where I met you guys. That's how our relationship really started. And I've been lucky enough just in this last chapter of his life to have learned from him, to have sat on panels with him, had conversations with him. And I think the thing that resonates with me the most, and maybe this is because I have the perspective that's probably similar to a lot of our listeners, or at least a certain percentage of our listeners, of sort of coming to this movement after a lot of that drama, right? And after a lot of the major players kind of had established themselves, is that it was, yes, about the magic and yes, about the skepticism. But what resonated so deeply for me from Randy was like his humanism. And sitting with him and hearing the way that he talked about people and the way that he talked about communicating with people and being empathic and trying to understand where people were coming from, that always meant an awful lot to me.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, he definitely rolled a natural 18 when it comes to charisma.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Well said.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I was talking to Bob earlier and I was saying like, he has been such an amazing ally. And then it occurred to me, I'm like, yeah. And man, were you in trouble if Randy decided to focus his critical eye on you, if he had a legitimate reason. Because his knife was incredibly sharp when it needed to be. What an intellect on him. And my God, he held it. He held on to his intellect for the whole ride.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Master debunker.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, but he didn't like being called a debunker. He wanted to be—he was an investigator.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' There you go. Yeah, yeah, that's true.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' He was concerned that calling it debunking means you, like, know it's bunk going in. He's like, I'm not a debunker. I'm an investigator. I have an open mind. I just haven't found any evidence of the paranormal. After 50 years or whatever, after a life of looking, I have not found any.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' And how cool would it be if we did? I mean, that's not something that we would like, oh, boy, we've got to hide this guy. Scoop this under the rug. This goes against our worldview. No. If we found credible evidence, we would be right there with it. And, of course, we were tested to the nth degree. But we just haven't seen it. And it becomes increasingly improbable that anything like that is going to ever exist or be discovered. You know, you could pretty much—you could safely conclude, no, not there.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' He bridged a lot of different industries. It was obviously the entertainment industry through his skills as a magician early on in his life. Certainly the science industry, if you want to call it that, or the world of science. Community. Skepticism, no doubt about it, being one of the founders of PSYCOP one of the most influential organizations of skepticism that was ever founded. And his humanist work. So he brought all of these together in a package that few others can claim that they've had a hand in.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Absolutely. And there's a beautiful documentary about him. I wonder if you can still access it on Netflix. But if any of you are listening right now and you don't know who he was, which I can't imagine, but maybe you're very new to the movement, I do recommend it because it tells his story in a really, really kind of meaningful way.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Is that the one that came out in 2015?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' An Honest Liar.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' An Honest Liar.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' An Honest Liar. Yeah, that's what it's called.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Well, we certainly got to know Randy and watch him work in different capacity. And I've seen him do magic hundreds of times. You know, he used to do it at dinner. He would be entertaining one person at dinner just for fun. Like, he would just do a quick magic trick. I'll never forget, like, the simplest magic trick the dice rolling, when you roll a die on your finger, you can make it look like you're changing the numbers. You know, I mean, Randy was just having fun and he did it. But he did everything that he did was so meticulously flawless. His close-up magic, his magic was fantastic. He could be sitting right next to you and be doing just amazing close-up magic, sleight of hand, everything. He was just truly talented. But my memory of Randy is just always that he was such a sweet, honest, legitimate hard-fighting person.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Genuinely caring. I mean, he cared.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I don't think I ever saw him raise a voice or be angry or cross with anyone in all the years that I've known him. And, Jay, you mentioned his talents. And one of the talents that I really truly admired about Randy was that his ability to cut to the bone in terms of, lie, testing a claim. You know, with his million-dollar challenge, he would devise methods, like, to very simply and very easily. Nothing elaborate, just very simple, very easy way to completely blow anyone's claim out of the water if it were false. And like he had one guy who was doing a telekinesis. And this is for...<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Johnny Carson.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Johnny Carson. And I remember one specifically where Johnny Carson was hosting some telekinetic guy who claimed to be telekinetic. And I think Randy was involved or suggested or even might have even been there. But he said, put the packing popcorn all around on the table. And if there's any wind because he thought he was using some, like, subtle wind being produced from his mouth. Yeah, just basically blowing. And when he saw those popcorn things there, he couldn't do anything.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Of course.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Completely powerless. Such a simple thing.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Power vanished.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah. Actually, Randy was at that. Randy came out and prepared for each one of the guy's stunts. And he foiled everybody on that show.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah. The guy who said he was metallic and had spoons stick to his body. Went over there, put a little powder on his skin. OK, now do it. Nah, gone. Next. Right?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I've got a magnetic field detector. No, just put powder on his face and you're done.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, that was the beauty. Like, he was a magician, you know.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yes.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So you kind of know how the details of how these things work. You also know how to foil them, right? Because magicians also have to learn how to have their tricks not fail, which gives you the knowledge of how to make them fail, you know.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' And then Randy did Project Alpha. This was I think in the 70s. And he showed that you could fool world-class scientists with simple parlor tricks. And it perfectly illustrated critical thinking because just because you're a scientist, just because you're intelligent or skilled at any one thing, whatever that one thing is, doesn't mean that you have skill across the board. And that is a huge problem with people who are highly educated is that they can easily fall into the trap of thinking, well, I'm smart. So, therefore I can't be fooled by a teenager. You know, these were teenagers you put in front of them. That's Banachek was one of the two people that were pretending to have psychic powers. And they totally bamboozled the scientists.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, using things and tricks that they thought were not only unimpressive. They said there was – they didn't even think that these scientists would fall for them. That's how simple, effectively, they thought they were. Yet, it still happened.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But also Randy told them if they ever ask you if you are connected to James Randy, tell them yes. If they ask you are you doing tricks, say yes. Never lie. Any question they ask you, answer completely honestly. And they never asked. They just simply never asked.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Ugh.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Years. Years.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' What an experiment in psychology, that is, I tell you.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' But he had the insight to do those things. He was able to organize and make those things happen. I mean, one of the biggest stunts that he did was he created a psychic. You know, he created a fake psychic and a holy man.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' The persona.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, the persona.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' The mythology around him.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' He fooled a nation. He fooled an entire nation. And it was a big deal. So Randy knew how to pack a punch when it came to delivering his message in clever ways like that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, so we're just hearing about this. And this is just our off-the-cuff reaction to the news. But we will have time to come up with something for next week, something more formal. So we'll definitely – I just can't deal with this in one episode. So we'll be talking more about Randy next week. But for now, let's go on with the rest of the episode. We're going to continue with the episode that we planned on doing. We're going to start with some news items.<br />
<br />
== News Items ==<br />
<br />
=== Mapping the Proteome <small>(11:49)</small> ===<br />
* [https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-10-scientists-human-proteome.html Scientists map the human proteome]<ref>[https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-10-scientists-human-proteome.html Medical Xpress: Scientists map the human proteome]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' And, Bob, we're starting with you, a news item about scientists mapping the proteome.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yes, yes.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Where's the proteome?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' The proteome project has released its first draft, and you should be happy about this. You should be happy. Listen and find out why. See if you agree with me. This news comes from an international research team, including Professor Chris Overall from the University of British Columbia. And it was published October 16th in Nature Communications. Check it out. So you all remember the Human Genome Project, right, from 20 years ago? That was an exploration of sorts, right? It was an exploration, every bit as important and potentially more so than anything Magellan or Columbus ever did, in my opinion. It mapped the entire sequence of human genes, the recipe for a person, if you will. All well and good, but the genome project was never meant to be the be-all, end-all, right? It was just really a first step. The next logical step, one of them anyway, was to look at the most important discrete bits that our genomic recipe codes for, all the proteins critical to life that our genome has instructions to create. That is the proteome. That's exactly what the proteome is. Now, for a loose analogy, if the genome project was a meatball recipe, say, or a list of ingredients, maybe more accurately, then the proteome is meson plus. For you culinary philistines, of which I was one an hour ago, thank you, Liz, that's the preparation and creation of the crucial subcomponents that work together to make the final product. That final product is, of course, these proteins. If there's one biological component that epitomizes life, I think it's safe to say that it's probably proteins very easily. These strings of hundreds or even thousands of amino acids are among, if not the most abundant biological molecule. With a diversified range of functions unmatched by any macromolecule, I mean, they can be used for so many different things. They could be structural or protective. They could be used for transport or storage as membranes or enzymes or even toxins, all of those things and more. I would say that evolved Earth life is, in many ways, interacting proteins. Identifying all those proteins, all of them, every last one, is what the proteome project is all about. It started in 2010. That's 10 years after the Human Genome Project finished, so now it's been 20 years since the end of the Genome Project. Now, after 10 years, they've got most of this proteome mapped. Now, I found this interesting. I wasn't aware of this. Researchers identified five levels of supporting evidence for protein existence. So when you look at any protein, of all the thousands of proteins that they basically mapped or described, they have a number. Each one has a number, 1 to 5, basically, and it's called a protein existence, PE. So PE1, that's the gold standard. If you have a protein that's PE1, then that level indicates that you have clear experimental evidence for its existence. It's really, there's essentially no doubt that that protein does, in fact, exist. But then when you go down the line of PE2, it's a little bit less conclusive. PE3 and 4, even less so. And then when you finally get to, oh wait, these PE2, 3, and 4, those are called, they're called missing proteins, colloquially, missing proteins. PE5, basically, that coding evidence is very doubtful. It's probably a mistake. Like, for example, if somebody did a very poor translation of a non-coding element from the genome, that's probably PE5. That probably doesn't exist. But 2, 3, and 4 could exist, especially 2. And the goal is to basically get them all down to PE1s. So this first draft release of the proteome contains PE1 level evidence, then, for 90.4% of the predicted human proteome. So 90%, over 90% of these proteins were at PE1. They are solid. So that's 17,874 proteins that they have described. Back in 2011, they only had 13,588 PE1 proteins. So they've discovered thousands of these proteins with a confidence level of PE1, you could say. So the team's goal, then, is to find PE1 evidence for at least all the current PE2 level proteins. If they could do that, then I think they'll be even closer. Who knows? Maybe 94%, 95% of all potential proteins mapped. So that's what they did. So now we come to the benefits. What kind of benefits are we talking about? Wow, okay, we've got a proteome that's 90% complete. Big deal. Some have argued that, well, the Human Genome Project was 20 years ago. What have we done? We don't have any miracle cures now. First, I would disagree. We've made amazing strides. But like I said, the Genome Project, the Human Genome Project, was just step one. There's lots of other oms that we need to deal with to really get a handle on what's going on. The proteome may be one of the biggest, but there's also the bacteriome and all sorts of ohms out there. So yeah, so I think if you look at the benefits of what's possible here, I think they could be quite extraordinary. Professor Chris Overall describes this draft as a significant milestone in our overall understanding of human life. This is because once we know all the proteins, now think of this. Once we know all of these proteins and 90% is a solid start, once we get up to even higher, then we can more fully understand how they interact not only with each other, but with the body and the environment as well. And that could revolutionize medicine by giving insights into disease prevention and truly individualized medicine. I think we could see some amazing things when this really starts rolling. And don't forget, there's also some COVID-9 possibilities as well. Because think about it, with COVID-19, what do you have there? You have two proteomes that are interacting, right? You've got the SARS-CoV-2 virus and the infected cell. So these are two proteomes that are interacting and modifying each other and messing with each other. And the more we know about our proteome, the better chances we have of dealing with COVID-19. Professor Overall said, understanding this relationship can shed light on why some cells and individuals are more resilient to COVID-19 and others more vulnerable, providing essential functional information about the human body that genomics alone cannot answer. So congratulations to everyone throughout the world, really, who participated in this proteome, this first draft release of the proteome project. And good luck getting those PE2s down to PE1s and getting even closer to all 100% of all the predicted proteins that the human body has and uses. <br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, it's quite a scientific accomplishment. And of course, we have to talk about what the effects are going to be of this. But that takes years, even decades, to be felt. But this is an incredible resource for scientists, for researchers. If any researcher could just basically look up any protein in the body that they need to work with or that they need to consider or whatever, and there it is. There's the amino acid sequence. It's an incredibly useful resource and will help accelerate progress in medical science. What this will actually lead to, who knows? But it's also kind of like the same thing happened with the genome project. They promised all kinds of things. It's like, yeah, that's true, but it's going to take 20, 30 years. Don't expect these things to happen tomorrow just because we have the genome. This is now a tool for science, but it takes time for those benefits to sort of work their way through the system.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, and I think it's pretty clear that there are going to be amazing benefits. But like you said, specifically, what kind of benefits, hard to say. But the fact that there will be benefits, I think, essentially, there's no doubt. There's no doubt. This can't not help. It cannot help.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, it'll be a powerful research tool. Absolutely.<br />
<br />
=== Room Temperature Superconductivity <small>(19:53)</small> ===<br />
* [https://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/room-temperature-superconductor/ Room Temperature Superconductor]<ref>[https://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/room-temperature-superconductor/ Neurologica: Room Temperature Superconductor]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, Jay, let me ask you a question.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Have they finally cracked room temperature superconductivity?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, God. Oh, boy. Don't tease me. Don't tease me.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I guess the answer is yes, but no.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' No, but.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yes, but.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, there is a big but because, sure, yeah, the temperature threshold, they've been able to mitigate that problem, but something else happened. So first I want to say the people who write headlines, they just need to relax.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's not their job, Jay.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I know, but I really do believe that the headline writers around the world are part of the information problem that we have because they always have to insert a little bit of drama thinking, oh, this will get more readers. Yeah, but you're essentially borderline lying with the way that these headlines come out. I mean, this was on the BBC and they said superconductors, material raises hope of energy revolution. And the headline implies that a recent advancement. No, but this is, I would say, a very light version of what you typically read because I'm sure that people are going to be putting headlines out saying that.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, true.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' There now is a energy revolution because of this study that happened. But the headline is kind of saying that superconductor technology can usher in this new energy revolution that's going to happen very soon. So, of course, that's not reality because the fact of the matter is that this was an incremental move that just happened. So let me just give you a little background on superconductors. A superconductor is in everyday circumstances, as an example, wiring and all the electronic devices in your house. They're not superconductors, right? This means that when a current is passed through the wire that you have in your house, that wire has a certain level of resistance. And to put this simply, you can think of resistance as friction that happens between the electrons and the wire material, whatever that wire. If it's a copper wire, the electrons are banging around and they cause some friction, which causes heat.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's right, copper.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That's right, copper. So the benefit of a true superconductor is that you don't lose any of the electricity as it gets changed into heat. You know, nothing gets converted into heat. It's all of the electricity that goes through the wire makes it to the other end. So theoretically, a superconductor would be able to have electricity passing through it with zero resistance, zero loss. And if you had electricity in a circular superconducting wire, let's say you just have a wire that's in a circle and you feed it a current, the electricity would be able to pass around that circle and that wire forever. Theoretically, right? So we have achieved superconductivity in other materials other than things that we use in our house. But the temperature had to be incredibly low, right? So the warmest temperature we achieved was minus 135 degrees Celsius or minus 211 degrees Fahrenheit. So not warm, not by a long shot, very, very cold. But that minus 135 is a lot more accessible than it used to be a lot lower than that, you know. So that you could do a lot more science at minus 135 degrees versus if you had to go to minus 200 degrees. Yeah, Jay, and that was because you would, for the lower, for the much lower temperature that there used to be before the breakthroughs of decades ago, it was like liquid hydrogen scale stuff.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah Jay, and that was because for the much lower temperature it used to be before the breakthroughs of decades ago. It was like liquid hydrogen scale stuff. You know, it was very expensive to deal with something that cold and that expensive. Whereas when they had the breakthrough into the low 100s, that was more of like liquid nitrogen realm, which is like, I remember an article from decades ago saying that's as cheap as milk.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Milk. I remember that.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' So that was a huge breakthrough in terms of spreading it. Even though it was still incredibly cold, it was much cheaper and easier to deal with than the other, than the really low temperatures. So that was big.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So in this study, the researchers are using a carbon-based sulphur hydride compound with a temperature of 15 degrees Celsius or 59 degrees Fahrenheit.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That's a cold room, man. Chilly room.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, but still, that's nothing.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I'll take it.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That's so achievable.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Underground. If you dig underground, it's 58 degrees. You could put it underground with no cooling and it would work.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Cool.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So the way that they were able to make it become a superconductor is by dramatically increasing the pressure, right? So they measured the pressure. This is going to blow your mind.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' How many millions was it of atmospheres?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' 267 billion Pascals.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Crap. Forget this. Next news item. Next news item.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So to put that into perspective, this is about a million times more pressure than a typical car tire.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' So no room temperature superconducting wire. No, it's not going to happen. It's got to be all these Pascals crap.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' In theory, it's nice.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' All right. So this is funny because, and Steve made this observation. So they swapped out super low temperatures for incredibly high pressure. Like what do we gain here? It's actually easier to get to the low temperature than it is to get to the super high pressure.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' A little bit of liquid helium.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Okay. So was this really supposed to be more of a proof of concept than anything else? That's what that sounds like to me.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah. But it's also, Evan.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Because it's advancing our understanding-<br />
<br />
'''B:''' True.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' -of superconductivity. But this isn't necessarily moving us closer to like superconducting wire.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah. They're not going to scale this up and nothing is coming out of it. But guys, the beautiful thing about this too, with what Steve just said, but it also is a great little microcosm again of science because this isn't a waste of time and energy. Science needs to do things like this. They need to do this, make mistakes, do more research. Then they get some success somewhere. It might be unusable, but it will inspire other people to try different things and it kind of spills out from there. So I think we shouldn't look down on this. I'm only looking down on ridiculous headlines when it comes to this research because nobody should be thinking anything fantastic other than, cool, they got superconductivity in a completely different way. That's good. So if we really did achieve superconductivity though, it would and hopefully someday it will have an incredible positive impact on the world. So every single wire that carries electricity is losing energy right now. And a percentage of it, like I said, is being converted to heat. So if you add up all those wires and every electrified device in the world and all the amount of heat and energy loss that is the result of those wires not being superconductors, I mean, have you ever had your cell phone get crazy hot in your pocket for no reason or you don't know what's going on?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, because the screen activated or something.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So your battery is dumping a lot of charge on whatever. Yeah, like you're right, Evan. Your skin activates through your clothes somehow. It's touching it and something's going on. It gets crazy hot. And all of a sudden you realize, wow, man, it could cook an egg on my phone right now. That's a lot of energy being dumped for no reason. That's very similar to what's going on in all the wiring. So an interesting way to look at this is that think about all the data centers around the world. Data centers are gigantic rooms filled with servers. And there is wiring everywhere, through the floor, in every single tower. It's everywhere. And one interesting thing about data centers is that they all have these incredibly complicated and very expensive and intricate cooling systems. Like Google has its new version of its data centers are underground. And they have like this water evaporation process that they use to remove heat from the data center because the cooling of it is incredibly expensive. So you have these big companies like Google.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You can't just have one dust fan going in the corner.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' No, no. They build in the cooling into everything. It's not just like I'm sure that they have all sorts of water cooling systems and incredible amounts of air conditioning. And as a matter of fact, if you ever talk to someone that is in a high-end data center, they'll say it's cold in those data centers because they're fighting the heat so much. So my point here is think about the amount of energy it takes to cool those buildings because of all the lost energy. Imagine if you only had to air condition those environments just so people are comfortable, not to get rid of all this lost heat due to friction from all that energy. That could increase our efficiency. It would really be an incredible boon.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And it's only going to get worse. Our civilization is increasingly run off of massive amounts of data. And it is using up an increasing amount of the energy that we produce.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' More bitcoins.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, absolutely.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, right. Exactly. And yeah, so superconductivity is not trivial. This would dramatically reduce the amount of energy that we need to run our civilization and increasingly so moving forward.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' The first time I heard about superconductivity, I believe it was the 80s. And I remember that metal disk floating kind of crooked with this super cold thing and they're showing like it's just floating there. And I was sold the dream. This is why the headlines kind of ticked me off because I was sold on this. Oh, man, we're close. It's going to be 10 years. We're going to have superconductivity, superconducting everything, toothbrushes, whatever the hell you got. And here we are.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' 30 years ago.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I mean, 35 years ago.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' 30 years later.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah. Science, what have you done for me lately?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, that is the iconic story of false hype that we were sold. And I think that that has had an effect on us. Everything now gets looked at through the lens of the false promises of superconductivity that we were sold in the 1980s. You know what I mean? It really jaded us towards any claim to new technology. Totally.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah. And there's so many news items. But it's like new battery tech. You're like, yeah, what do you got now? Yeah, tell me about it. Yeah, talk to me when you make a real leap, a real something that's not a maybe, but like fairly solid. And remember, Jay, you said so many Pascals. Let's convert that. I mean, wave your hand in the air, right, everybody? Wave your hand.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I'm waving.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' You feel the atmospheric pressure? Well, no, you don't feel it because you're acclimated to it. But multiply that times 2.6 million, and that's the pressure we're talking about. And also, so that's like such crazy pressure. And also, they don't know the exact composition of the material or how the atoms are arranged. So I hope that that's the next step is to find out, okay what is the exact composition of this stuff? Because that's critical. Because knowing that you've got 59 room temperature superconductivity, these pressures is cool, but you really haven't learned anything or you've learned very little if you don't know what the composition is. So then you can start forming theories as to, all right, why is this composition producing room temperature superconductivity? And what can we do to get rid of the pressure but still have the superconductive effect? I hope that's the next thing on their plate. And it probably is. I'm not sure how hard it would be to find out. I guess there's some reason why they couldn't tell what it's made of and how the atoms are arranged. But hopefully they can in the near future.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. Thanks, Jay.<br />
<br />
=== Biodiversity <small>(31:24)</small> ===<br />
* [https://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/biodiversity-matters/ Biodiversity Matters]<ref>[https://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/biodiversity-matters/ Neurologica: Biodiversity Matters]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' Guys, we're going to talk next about biodiversity. Does somebody, Cara, give me your definition of what is biodiversity.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, gosh. Well, it's an ecological concept, generally speaking. I guess that would be a good way to contextualize it. And it has to do with the, maybe not the number of species, but the productivity of a region. So how many different organisms are thriving within this region? Maybe that's a good way to put it. Different. I think different might be the key there.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Different. So the number of organisms within a defined group or species is a good proxy for biodiversity. <br />
<br />
'''B:''' Genomic diversity? Genomic distance?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, you need genetic. It definitely incorporates the concept of genetic diversity. And I believe it was actually Stephen Jay Gould that introduced the term disparity as another concept. So disparity is the amount of difference. Whereas diversity is the number of variations on a theme. So the more two different organisms look different from each other, the more disparity they have. For example, if all mammals died and then dogs evolved to fill every niche that current mammals exist in, we might eventually get as much biodiversity within mammals as we have now, but the disparity would be markedly narrowed. Everything would be dog-like.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah. Once you cross some genetic evolutionary lines, you're not going back.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You can't reverse it.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' You really can't reverse it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. So biodiversity is there's been some recent studies looking at the decrease in biodiversity over the last hundred years, and it's pretty alarming. So just to give some figures on it. So between 1970 and 2016, a recent review found that global populations of mammals, birds, fish, amphibians, and reptiles, so vertebrates, right? Global populations of vertebrates have decreased by what amount, would you guess?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Since when?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Probably something ridiculous.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' 110%.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, right. Yeah, there you go.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I know that amphibians are going extinct at 30,000 times the background extinction rate.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yikes.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So it's like it's not good.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's 68%.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' What?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' 68%.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yes.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' How much? Oh.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's horrible.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' 68%.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, my God.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Over how many years, Steve?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Between 1970 and 2016.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' My lifetime? Oh, my gosh.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' 40 years, that's it?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, 46 years.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' We are so good at destroying things, it's scary.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Mm-hmm.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Goddamn. I was thinking maybe 20%.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The biggest driver of population loss is habitat loss, right? <br />
<br />
'''E:''' And that's us.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So if you look at the ice-free land on the earth, right? Land that is not covered with glaciers and ice. Only 25% can be considered wilderness, meaning that it has not been significantly altered by people, by modern civilization. Only 25%. The other 75% has either been converted to farmland or living space or recreational space or whatever.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Wow.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' People have been significantly altered.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' We're including deserts and everything else in there, Steve?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, that includes deserts.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, and most of that wilderness, by the way, is actively managed.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Mm-hmm.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's not just like it's untouched, pristine. It's like scientists are tracking the organisms. The apex predators have been named. Some of them are tagged. We're seeing flow of genes.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's not untouched. That doesn't mean untouched.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. There's no kind of, "wild spaces" in the sense that people don't have some sort of connection to them anywhere on the planet.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. I mean, there's probably some. I mean, I think like the deep jungles of Malaysia or something, there's still some areas that we've never explored. But also, in most of the world, this wilderness is increasingly isolated, right? This isn't one big contiguous wilderness. These are now increasingly cut off and isolated patches of wilderness. <br />
<br />
'''E:''' Islands.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, islands of wilderness, which is bad because it limits the ability of populations to migrate and to move around.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And to breed with other populations in order to increase genetic diversity.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Increase genetic diversity. Exactly. And not only that, but what is the number one response of species to a change in their environment?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Death. No.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's not death. So you might think it could be, you might think someone could die.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Migration. Migration?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' They could evolve or they could migrate.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right. They're going to try and get away from there first and look for food.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' They habitat track. They move to another environment that they're better adapted to. That's the most common response. They don't evolve or go extinct. They just might. They just habitat track.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Move to the friendliest climates, right.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But of course, there's not a lot of opportunity to do that. So, if you consider the loss of genetic diversity that is represented in the loss of the number of individuals, that they're increasingly isolated and their ability to habitat track is also significantly limited, what does this mean for the long-term survivability of the species that are still extant in the world today?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Got to go way down.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Some biologists think that a large number of species are already doomed for extinction.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' The die is cast.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Irreversibly doomed for extinction.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Irreversibly?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, if you're looking at like a thousand-year timeframe, which is nothing. That's a blink of an eye. The average lifespan of a species is about two million years. A thousand years is nothing. And so, even though we may be saving endangered species, but we're still creating all these genetic bottlenecks with very few numbers of individuals. We're dramatically reducing genetic biodiversity. And by limiting habitat, we're almost guaranteeing that many of these species are going to go extinct on the geological short-term. A hundred years, 500 years, a thousand years, something like that. Yeah, and it may already be too late. Now, of course you never know with technology. Technological advancement and whatever. You don't know what the world's going to look like in 500 years and if we're going to be able to make significant changes.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Build an artificial continent, float it out there, and put a whole bunch of things out there.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's not a good idea.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I could do a lot better than that.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Also, in terms of policy changes, I mean, obviously these are small things. We would have to have radical, drastic shifts in the way that we approach conservation. But if we actually gave a shit enough to build wildlife passageways, to rewild large swaths of the planet to do things, they would have to be drastic. And so probably a lot of those models are based on the fact that politically that just doesn't seem feasible.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Wouldn't you be asking whole populations, basically of people at that point, to shift and move and get out and leave areas?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Not necessarily. You'd be maybe asking them to stop doing certain industries. You'd be asking them to stop logging.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Sure, like deforestation in Brazil.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But most people live in cities.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's true.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Like, we have to remember that. And so there's a lot of places on the globe where animals could live, not just animals, like all organisms could biodiversity could increase. But because of things we do, massive we cut down all their trees, we poison their water, and then there's all these horrible downstream effects, like the fires that are raging right now in the southern hemisphere.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, climate change isn't helping either.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' No, that goes everywhere.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But even a lot of those fires are due to direct deforestation problems. So, like, there's just—<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Forest management as well as increased temperature. Yeah, it's not good. But so just the last word on biodiversity, then we could maybe shift a little bit to, like, what can we do about it, is we have to think about genetic biodiversity as a limited resource. It takes thousands of years, tens of thousands of years, even millions of years to build up genetic biodiversity over time. Mutations only happen at a certain background rate, and most of them or many of them are going to be harmful. Some will be neutral in a way, or some will be silent, in which case they don't really do anything. And some of them increase the amount of variability within a species without harming them. They just make them different. So that genetic drift or adaptation to a range of environments is what gives a species the ability to survive long term. Because when—the other thing that happens when habitat change is enough, you might have a dozen subpopulations, and one of them is adapted to a local environment, which is now the norm. And so they're the ones that then—they provide the genetic material for the species to survive, because now they're best adapted to the changing conditions. But if you dramatically reduce biodiversity, they're basically setting them up to fail. You're setting them up to not be able to adapt to changing environment. Also, the less genetic biodiversity there is within a population or within a species, the more susceptible they are to things like infection. Because a virus that is adapted—<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Like a monoculture.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, to infect one individual is going to be well adapted to infect the entire population. There won't be—genetic diversity also gives—creates the probability that some individuals will be more resistant or just won't be as susceptible to an infection, for example. So it's—yeah, it's a setup for extinction. It's just a total setup for extinction. And again, because it takes thousands to millions of years, somewhere along that timeframe, to really replace it, then it's it's not the kind of thing that we can fix. You know, we could be losing hundreds of thousands of years of genetic diversity that is not going to come back quickly. Again, you'd have to anticipate that we're going to use our technology to do it. But—<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Well, yeah, that's—I think that—but that's a—you know, I'm glad you mentioned that. I mean, it sounds a little bit dismissive, but when you're talking on the timescale of centuries, I think it's very valid to consider what technologies could be available to us, not now, and maybe in a hundred years, but that still would be—could be plenty of time to save a lot of this.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, but the thing is, Bob, we could save them now and we're not.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, we're not.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So I don't think some sort of technology is going to solve this. It's a willpower problem.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I'm looking at technology because we're not going to do it. We're not going to do it unless it's easy.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Why would you think we would get off our ass in the future?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Exactly.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Because it would be easy with the technology. That's why.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's easy now.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Here's my fear.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Then we'll do it. Then we'll do it. It's easy. We'll do it then.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It is easy.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' But we're not going to effing do it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But my—here's my concern.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I guarantee you we're not going to do it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Is that each generation—it's like when you get into an abusive relationship, it's by increments. You don't go immediately to getting beat up every night, right?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' The frog in the boiling water.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It happens slowly. You give in little bit by little bit. I think as a species, we're sort of adapting to a more and more shitty earth, a shitty environment. We sort of—each generation gets used to it being one notch worse than what it was before. Then by the—you know what I mean? Then they die off. Then the new generations never knew what it was like before. It reminds me of that Soylent Green movie. You guys remember Soylent Green?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Of course.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, yes.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' They show him the video, the film of nature beforehand. He was like, I never imagined it was like this. Our future generation is just not going to know how shitty they have it because they've never experienced—<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, WALL-E was the same theme 700 years in the future.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I think yes and no. But I also think the thing that we sometimes forget is that, like you said, this shift that you specifically—the literature that you're citing pointed to—was only 45 years.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I know. But even—<br />
<br />
'''C:''' These are not massive generational changes. So, like, we have grandparents potentially that were around during the Industrial Revolution. So, like, these drastic, drastic changes, you're right. They're on a short generational time span, which I think kind of the counterpoint to your point, although I do agree there are going to be generations who are like, what was it like when you could see the stars?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But the counterpoint to that is that I see more environmentalism in young people now than my parents' generation ever had.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, but we don't know if that's just age-related or generationally related.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' True.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But you're right. Here's the thing. This is what I think—what I would like to see happen, right? I don't think we need to de-industrialize our civilization or do anything dramatic or horrible, right? Like, all of the right-wing nightmares about what they think the left-wing wants to do, right? I'm not saying that—<br />
<br />
'''C:''' We don't have to give up energy.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, we don't have to give up anything, really. So, what are the things that we need to do? I think it's pretty reasonable to talk about population because that is one of the things that ultimately drives this. But, and again, I'm literally in the middle of arguing on my blog with somebody who thinks that the practical solution is to basically starve a lot of people to death. But that's ridiculous.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' What?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yep. Yep.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, just don't send those people in Africa food. That's the solution.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' We've heard people say that out loud in public.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So, no. How about this? How about the evidence shows that the more you lift people out of poverty and the more rights that women get, the fewer children they have.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' There you go.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And so the best way to control, like, to level off and even sort of decrease the human population and reach an equilibrium point at a lower level is just to focus on lifting people out of poverty and human rights.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, but who wants to do that?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right. And education. Yeah. Because they're huge.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, education. Absolutely. So, the biggest and biggest driver of loss of biodiversity is habitat loss. So, what do we do there? We need to be able to grow more calories on less land. Come on. That's GMOs.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' How many times have we talked about that?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Not just GMO, but just agricultural technology. All agricultural technology. It doesn't have to be GMO.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And honestly, just thoughtfulness in sustainable choices. I think that's a huge part of it. Like, it's not about de-industrializing. It's about, just like we talked about last week, Bob. I think it was last week when we were talking about space junk. Before you put the satellite up there, you need to have a plan for how it's going to come back down. Before you plant this grove or before you clear-cut this, you have to figure out what is that going to do to the land. Is there a way to replace? Is there a way to make this a sustainable decision? Because it's just something we didn't always think about in the past, and then it became habitual.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And people cut down forests to plant, to farm, to plant crops because they're desperate.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Of course.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Or because they're poor. They don't have any other option. It's consumer, but it's also government and industry. Absolutely. So I think, yeah. So I think we should pick the low-hanging fruit. We should do things smarter. We have to do a risk versus benefit assessment whenever we do anything that will impact our environment. When I wrote about this, the point I made, the Earth is our only home. And as much as we love science fiction, we love the idea of going to other planets and terraforming everything, the bottom line is on no reasonable timescale are we going to have any other world to inhabit. This is it. This is the only world—<br />
<br />
'''C:''' We don't even have to terraform Earth. It's already ready for us.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I know.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. Like, we can just live here.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Like, there's no other planet in the solar system that wouldn't absolutely suck as a home. And that would only be after thousands and thousands of years of trying really hard to terraform it. We'd get a shitty version of Earth.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah. Like a terrible life raft.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Or we just preserve the planet that we have, right? And the other thing is that—<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I agree.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's become a cliche, but it is so important. We have one global environment, and we need to protect—we do need to think globally. So, those poor people in the rainforest cutting down the forest to grow food, they are our problem, because that's our environment that they're cutting down.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And ultimately, they're not the main problem.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' The main problem is, like, massive corporations who are serving—<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Or corrupt governments.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, and corrupt governments and all of that. Like, when we're talking about the massive impact, we're not talking about indigenous peoples clear-cutting forests around them. I mean sure, there are some unsustainable practices that are happening, and sure, we all need to step it up. But when we're talking about scale—<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, it's mainly—<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's the problem.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. No, no, absolutely. And so— But if we just can somehow, like, as a species, get to this attitude of, like, okay there's almost 8 billion of us now. We're one species. This is our one planet. Let's reasonably work together to try to preserve our world as best as possible. And I also just— The last I'll say about it is I feel firmly that it needs to be evidence-based. Whatever we do needs to be informed by the best science. And we can't— And this is why I get super, super annoyed when pseudoscience creeps into environmentalism, because it's so counterproductive. Tat what makes me really feel pessimistic is when you have like with global warming, you have the deniers on one side, and then on the other side, you have people who accept the problem but are looking to pseudoscientific solutions. And there isn't much room in the middle for somebody who will acknowledge the problem and be rigorously science-based in their approach to it. But that's where the answers will be, you know?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. Well, they'll be in the evidence-based policy. I think part of the problem is that interest groups fill in those gaps, because we're lacking the political will to follow evidence-based policy. So instead, we're following interest-group-based policy. And just like you have corporate interests, you also have environmentalist interests that are very specific to their own plight. We have to have a more global perspective. And that's why, I gotta be honest, Steve, I am scared shitless, for example, of the American sitting president wanting to pull out, let's say, of the World Health Organization.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Oh, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' This is a perfect example of doing the opposite of what needs to be done in these scenarios. It's so scary.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Oh, absolutely. That's a good example. Yeah, like, what more proof is there that we have to think globally, that we are all in the same boat, than a pandemic, a worldwide pandemic? Obviously, what happens in China does affect us. It's what happened in one little wet market in China has impacted the entire world.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Earth is one big cruise ship.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's one big petri dish. Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, we are. We are literally, we are living figuratively, we are living on a cruise ship floating in the universe, and there's no other ship in sight, you know?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, but what about the 800-pound gorilla? Guys, seriously, give me a probability that we're going to do what's right here. Come on, give me a serious answer. What's the probability?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I think it depends.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' For me, maybe I'm the most pessimistic, but it's so small, I need an atomic force microscope to see the probability.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I disagree. I think it depends on who's in power.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' In power around the world.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It depends on the political will.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Not one country, not two countries, around the world. Let's get the right person in power around the entire world.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It doesn't take the right person.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' What are the odds of that happening?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, but Bob, listen, listen. It doesn't take the right person. It just takes not the wrong person.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' But lots of them.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' This is a majority opinion.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' But lots of not the wrong people.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, I agree.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Bob, Bob.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Come on, no one's answering my question.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I would say, I'm actually optimistic.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Ha!<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But first of all, first of all, optimism and pessimism, I think, are self-fulfilling prophecies in areas like this.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Then we're really screwed.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' If we think we can't do it, we probably won't. If we think we can roll up our sleeves and work together.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' No, no. That's wrong.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Then we at least have a chance. Bob, but the thing is, there's countless examples where we did do it. The World Health Organization is itself a great example with many countries around the world got together and developed standards and practices and resources to protect the world.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Absolutely, it can be done. I'm not denying it can be done.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I think, and also the UN.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' You're Pollyannish.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Another example would be the asteroid detection and prevention system that's now in place. It's a worldwide effort to protect the Earth from asteroids that might impact us.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' What about the ISS? We've managed to work with Russia and co-habitate this thing through the Cold War. There are times where science-based diplomacy seems to somehow transcend geopolitical conflict. I mean, there are countless examples of that happening.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Sure. Russians and Americans work hand-in-hand in the space station. That's great. It does happen, but still, I mean, in 20 years, if we're still doing this podcast, or 30 years, and we're talking about biodiversity, it's going to be far worse than 60%.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It probably will be. I think you're right.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That's all I'm saying. That's all I'm saying.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But the truth of the matter is, if we maintain a cynical attitude, it definitely will be.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I can't help it. I can't help it. No one gives a shit about my cynical attitude.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But, Bob, it all matters.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, but you are speaking to 150,000 people on this podcast. I mean, that's something we have to accept.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' And you guys are disagreeing with me, so I'm the minority here. So it's balancing out.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Here's the thing, Bob. It's not just optimism. I think it's important to project an attitude that nothing less is acceptable. And my problem with pessimism is that it normalizes that kind of cynicism, that it normalizes the bad stuff. By saying, well, of course, that's how people are. That's the way it's going to be. No, it's not how it has to be. It's not how it's necessarily going to be. It's not acceptable. It's no longer acceptable.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' A lot of shit is not acceptable. A lot of stuff is not acceptable.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I know.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' And if the last half decade has shown us anything, it's that it's still acceptable by enough people.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But that gets back to what I was saying about that incrementalism. That's the abusive relationship. You are on the wrong end of an abusive relationship where you're just like, well, this is the way it is. I'm going to get beat up every now and then. That's just the way it is. It's like, no, stop it. You have to rage against that shit. You can't accept it. Otherwise, you fall into it. We cannot accept that governments are going to be corrupt, that industry is going to be self-interested, that we're not going to be able to work together to do the things that we need to do to save our planet and to make life better and to prevent pandemics.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right, Bob. You voted, right?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We should not accept it. Go down raging against that.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I will vote on Connecticut's one day that I could vote in person. That's when I vote. One day.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And I think those incremental changes, Steve, that you talk about going bad can also start going in the opposite direction. I think the thing is if you tap into people's humanity in a very particular way, if you use marketing and social psychology to your advantage, you can change minds and you can get people to care about this shit.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Okay, Steve, I don't disagree with you. We have to fight as if this is completely unacceptable because even if there's a 0.1% chance that we will succeed, it's worth it because of the return on the investment. Absolutely. But right now, I'm in a little bit of a pity party. Man, I'm thinking 15, 20% loss in diversity and you hit me with 60%. That is just so mind-numbing.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' 68.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, yo, great. But yes, you got to fight. You got to fight. But right now, my hope levels are so low I can't even see them right now.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I hear you, Bob.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Still got to fight.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I completely understand your cynicism and pessimism. But what I'm saying is psychologically, and this has been studied, this is evidence-based, is that there's something called social norming, right? And when you want to change things for the better, you can't just rant about how awful things are because that normalizes it. What you have to do is say what you want to have happen has to be the norm. You want to normalize and promote the good things that you want to have happen. And so we have to be careful as skeptics because this is so much of what we do not to empower or normalize the bad stuff when we talk about it or when we deal with it. We always have to be focusing on the positive, what we can do to save our planet, to improve our environment, to work together, to have science-based policy, what we should be doing. And we can't because that cynicism is death. We really have to work against it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And a lot of people already equate skeptics with being cynics. And I think that's a – yeah, it's kind of a perception that we ourselves can work really hard to change.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, absolutely.<br />
<br />
{{anchor|futureWTN}} <!-- keep right above the following sub-section. this is the anchor used by the "wtnAnswer" template, which links the previous "new noisy" segment to its future WTN, here.<br />
--><br />
== Who's That Noisy? <small>(57:13)</small> ==<br />
{{wtnHiddenAnswer<br />
|episodeNum = 797<br />
|answer = {{w|Paraponera clavata|Bullet Ant}} on a microphone<br />
|}}<br />
'''S:''' Jay, you know what time it is?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I do.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's who's that noisy time.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Noisy.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Noisy.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' All right, guys. Last week I played this noisy.<br />
<br />
[background hiss, foreground squeaking/squelching]<br />
<br />
So what do you think, guys?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Now that is definitely an animalcule.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yes, it is. You are correct, my friend, but you are not fully correct.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Correct as far as I go.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Is it something that I can snuggle?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' No.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Damn.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' But he didn't say what it was. I mean, you could say it's an animal.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's a teeny tiny animal.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But it sounds snuggly.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I know it does.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It depends on scale.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' All right. Here we go. Michael Greasier Johns. You should have just left your middle name out because there was no way I was going to pronounce it right. He said, hi there. Absolutely love the show. Steve, this is a correction from last week.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' All right. Just a little correction on something you mentioned when revealing last week's Who's That Noisy. The healthy coral reef from a longtime scuba diver. A couple of you mentioned hearing the water after listening to it and after the reveal. This is not correct. As it's underwater, you cannot hear audible sound of water. What I think you're referring to is the roaring background white noise. This is actually even cooler than water noises. This is the sound of millions of hard-beaked fish, such as a parrotfish, scraping at and feeding on the coral.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, cool.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' They're saying it's a key signifier that it's a healthy reef because it tells you that there's millions of fish feeding on it. That wasn't water flowing. That was fish chewing. Now, let's move right into this week's noisy. David B. Finney said, my skeptical 15-year-old daughter thinks it's a baby bird calling for food or a bat. And then he went on to list like three or four guesses of his own. None of these guesses are correct. But the baby bird calling for food is actually a very good guess because I've heard that sound from multiple different types of birds. And it does kind of sound like that. So she had a good ear there. The next guesser is Rich Peterson. He said, hi, Jay. Sounds like it could be a gecko chirping. Nope, it's not. I've never heard a gecko chirp. I didn't know geckos even made noise. So that's interesting to hear. But that's not correct. Justin Porteous said, episode 797 noisy sounds to me like the sound of rats laughing as they are being tickled.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, I remember that story. Yeah, there's a journal article about that, like maybe five years ago.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, I had a lot of people email me this sound over the last five or six years. That is not correct. He also pointed out that you can't actually hear it. The wavelength has to be changed so you can hear it because it's inaudible. But that's not the correct answer, though it's not a bad one. Marcel Janssens, Janssens, Janssens. If you saw what I'm reading, you'd understand why I had to say it. Janssens. The noisy of this week is two guinea pigs mating on a hot summer night. You wanted the guess to be specific, so I'll say on July 28, 2020.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Chicka wow wow.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I thought that was funny. Sure. I could hear two guinea pigs making that noise. That is not correct, though. And then here's the last one I'm going to throw out at you that wasn't the correct guess. This one was by Marcus Noble, and he said, I've made a few past guesses all wrong. I hope my luck has changed. Years ago, I had a colony of bats living behind my chimney. So he thinks it's a colony of bats or a squeak noise coming from a mama bat to tell them to leave, someone to leave their babies alone. Now, here is as close to a winner as we can get. This winner has guessed. This is Johan De Beer, and he said, Dear SGU crew, my name is Johan De Beer, and I am a postgraduate entomology student at the University of Pretoria. Evan, wasn't that a zone in City of Heroes?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yes, Pretoria is very much that.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Very close.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' City of Heroes in South Africa?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Just saying.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' City of Heroes, the online game.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' This sounds like a squeaking moth that does not like being harassed. It could potentially be a death's head hawk moth or similar species. Love the podcast. Okay, so the closest guess I got was that, yes, this is an insect, but it's not a moth. So I give him a half win on that. So the original person who wrote this is Simon, and I pronounced his name wrong last week. Remember when I said it was Tooth Hill? It's not. He actually wrote to me, Jay, it's Toot Hill.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, right, the T-H. That gets confusing sometimes.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, and I did confuse it, even though he told me how to pronounce his name. Simon, I'm sorry. I'm a very busy man. So anyway, this is actually the sound, Cara.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yes?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It's an ant species.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I could snuggle with ants.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It's a bullet ant.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No, don't snuggle with a bullet ant.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' No, you do not want to snuggle with them. Now listen to it again, now that you know that it's a very, very small bullet ant who is very, you know.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Wait, bullet ants are pretty freaking huge.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, but you know what I mean. This thing is like smaller than a lavalier microphone, which was the microphone that it was recorded on. It's crawling up onto the microphone. [plays Noisy]<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Bullet ants are not smaller than lavs. That's really cute.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So they squeak when they walk. I love it. I thought that was so freaking adorable, and it just goes right up on the mic, which is great because you could really hear it very well when it does that. So that was a fun noisy. I guess you're right because now that I think about the video, it was bigger than the mic, but it could have been a baby. You never know.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, cute. But yeah, don't try that at home, people.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, you don't want to mess with bullet ants.<br />
<br />
{{anchor|previousWTN}} <!-- keep right above the following sub-section ... this is the anchor used by wtnHiddenAnswer, which will link the next hidden answer to this episode's new noisy (so, to that episode's "previousWTN") --><br />
=== New Noisy <small>(1:03:14)</small> ===<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I have a new noisy. This came in from a listener named Grace Holland, and here is the noisy.<br />
<br />
[background hiss, foreground baby animal-like squealing/bleating]<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Please identify the source of that sound. If you think you know {{wtnAnswer|799|what this week's Noisy is}}, if you have a Noisy that you heard--I have a lot of fun Noisies from people. I can't use so many of them because reasons, right? It has to be the certain volume. It has to be identifiable like blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, send them to me because you never know, and I love it because I learn a lot, and I have a lot of fun answering some e-mails and everything. So send all of that to me, please, at WTN@theskepticsguide.org.<br />
<br />
== Announcements <small>(1:04:05)</small> ==<br />
* 12-hour live stream<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Guys, I'm really sad about Randy. I cannot stop thinking about him. I was looking up pictures of him, pictures of us with him throughout the year. I mean, I have hundreds of pictures of Randy throughout all the TAMs and events and Nexus conferences, you know.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Jay, I know what will cheer you up.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' What?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' A 12-hour live streaming SGU event.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, sure.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Jay is very tired. I don't know if that's going to cheer him up right now.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I think because Cara is so knowledgeable about production work, she knows how much production work that's going to take me. Oh, my God. I have been thinking about it a lot, Steve.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Good. I'm glad because you need to be thinking about it a lot. So January 23rd, Saturday, January 23rd from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. Eastern Time. That's going to be the official time. We will be doing a 12-hour live streaming SGU event. It's going to be amazing. And this is a thank you to all of our listeners, especially our members and our patrons because we made our goal. Our goal was 4,000 patrons, and we broke through that. We're at 4,271. So thank everyone who has supported the SGU. We really appreciate it. It helps us do what we do, helps us keep the lights on, as we say. It's been very, very critically important this year especially, so we really do appreciate it. And you know what, guys? At 5,500, you know what our goal, our reward is when we get to 5,500? A 24-hour show.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, great. Great.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We're actually not that far from a 24-hour show.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' When do we agree to that?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I don't.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' And no, Cara, you don't get credit for having done the 12-hour show.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, it doesn't take 12 hours off.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But anyway, we're looking forward to the 12-hour show. It's going to be good. Send us your suggestions or things that you'd like to see us do or like to have happen. It's going to be a lot of fun.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Tasteful, please. Remain tasteful.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So, Steve, we are going to be. So Alpha Quadrant 6, which is me, Bob, and Steve, we started the science fiction review show. We will be on a live streaming conference called Outpost Con, or it's called Outpost 2020. The website is OutpostCon.com. You can go check it out. So this is a conference that is all about convergence of science and science fiction and a lot of just fun, really interesting and diverse topics that you'll go. It's kind of – it reminds me a little bit of Dragon Con, what they're trying to do online. So it's definitely something worth at least going and perusing and seeing if there's any speakers on there you're interested in. Definitely go check out the website. That's OutpostCon.com. And we will be on this weekend doing an AQ6 episode. All right. So, Steve, we will be on Saturday, October 24th. We are going to be – we are in the 6 to 7 p.m. slot. That is Eastern Standard Time New York City time. But the conference will be going on for three days, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So, guys, we have a great interview coming up with Richard Wiseman about a paper he just published. I think you're going to like it. So let's go to that interview now.<br />
<br />
{{top}}{{anchor|interview}} <!-- leave this anchor directly above the corresponding section that follows --><br />
== Interview with Richard Wiseman <small>(1:07:16)</small> ==<br />
{{Page categories<br />
|Interview = <!-- redirect created for Richard Wiseman interview: Parapsychology (798) --><br />
}}<br />
* [https://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/daryl-bem-psi-research-and-fixing-science/ Daryl Bem, Psi Research, and Fixing Science]<ref>[https://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/daryl-bem-psi-research-and-fixing-science/ Neurologica: Daryl Bem, Psi Research, and Fixing Science]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' Joining us now is Richard Wiseman. Richard, welcome back to the Skeptic's Guide.<br />
<br />
'''RW:''' Always a pleasure. Always a pleasure. Are you all right?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, we're surviving over here in COVID land. Yeah, absolutely. You've been on the show many times. But for those who may not be aware, you are a professor of the public understanding of psychology at the University of Hertfordshire in the United Kingdom. And you are a skeptic, a fellow skeptic, a magician. And you sort of bring all of that together to promote critical thinking and understanding of human cognition. And you've published many. Your Wikipedia says several. Several.<br />
<br />
'''RW:''' Twelve. I'm on my 12th commercial book. Some would say 12 too many. But, yes, far too many books.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Oh, excellent.<br />
<br />
'''RW:''' I've run out of words. After writing this one, I realize I have no words left. I've used all the words in the previous book. If anyone has any spare words, please send them to me.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So I wanted to get you back talking about something specific. We love chatting with you about anything. But you did write a recent blog post talking about a recent study that you published that is something I've been tracking also for years. And I thought it would be great to just chat with you directly about it. This has to do with parapsychology and how the world of parapsychology may have actually positively impacted psychological research. Tell us about this.<br />
<br />
'''RW:''' Well, you see, the thing is, so I got into magic young. And then I got into psychology. And then at the end of my psychology degree, I wanted to do a PhD. And I actually went to the Kerstler Chair of Parapsychology at the University of Edinburgh and did some work on deception and eyewitness testimony. But because of that, I met a lot of parapsychologists, some of my closest friends. And when you speak to them, what they often say is that these are all the believers. They think that parapsychology is going to change science and change the world. And it's turned out that actually they're correct in many ways, but not in the way that they intended that statement to be true in the sense that we haven't found evidence for psychic functioning. But by looking for evidence for psychic functioning, something else has come out. There's now having a radical effect on at least psychology. And in fact, my understanding is science across the board. And that's what we're going to talk about. We can talk about sort of bad quality science and how it can lead to better quality science and a radical re-understanding of effects that are out there. So this has its roots in Darrell Bem, who's a parapsychologist. And he published a paper in a mainstream journal saying there's nine experiments where people could allegedly look into the future as evidence for precognition. So I teamed up with Chris French and Stuart Ritchie, the two other British psychologists. We tried to replicate Darrell's work and we couldn't. And then other people waded in and looked at Darrell's work and said, hold on a second. It suffers from various problems. He perhaps isn't reporting all of the data. There may be some studies in there which have been dropped out. Maybe there's multiple analyses. Maybe some hypotheses were made up after the fact and so on. And that has happened many, many times before where parapsychologists have published something and the critics have come along and criticized it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And by the way, we call that p-hacking. We've spoken about this on the show several times before. When you do those sorts of things, do multiple analysis, decide what your hypothesis is after you look at the data, etc., that's p-hacking. And yes, parapsychologists are infamous for that, but it's also pretty widespread in just science.<br />
<br />
'''RW:''' This is the thing. This is the interesting bit. So it's p-hacking. It's file draw. It's what's called harking, which is where you come up with a hypothesis afterwards and so on. And together they've been known as questionable research practices. But the really interesting thing is that this time something else happened, which is some psychologists turned around when it was all right criticizing the parapsychologists. But I think that's true of a lot of psychology. And so if the parapsychologists, in a sense, they're doing us a favor because if you don't believe in psychic functioning, they're the ultimate control condition. They tell you what evidence you get for something when that effect doesn't actually exist. And so if in psychology or indeed in science you get that same level of evidence using those same questionable research practices, then maybe your effect doesn't exist. And so to prevent that, there's really sort of two ways, and both of them involve saying in advance what you're going to do. And one of them is you pre-register a study. You say this is how many participants we're going to have. This is the analysis we're going to do and so on. And the other way, which is a bit more robust, is called registered reports, which is essentially you submit the paper prior to collecting the data. And it's refereed. You write your introduction, you write your method, and referees look at it. And if they're happy with all of that, then you go when you collect your data. And you're pretty much guaranteed publication because you've already been through the peer review process. But prior to doing any data collection, and that stops many of those questionable research practices in their tracks. So that's where we're at. 2012, 2013, psychology journals start to use that procedure. And everyone starts to realize that some of the classic effects in psychology are more than a little bit shaky. And my sort of interest in all of this is that I like obscure and quirky science. I like just going back in time and seeing what people were doing quite a long time ago. And I knew that in the 1970s, this fairly obscure parapsychology journal, the European Journal of Parapsychology, was doing precisely that. That they realized there was a problem and so they started doing a version of registered reports all of those years ago, which is kind of amazing. I mean they're way ahead of the game basically in terms of methodology. So I thought, hold on a second. Those reports are sitting there. When it is a registered report, it's flagged up in the journal. So we've got registered reports. We've got non-registered reports. We've got about 15, 16 years of them. I could go back and see whether you get more significance, more effects in the non-registered reports. So I did that. We went through, a couple of the colleagues went through all those journals, picked out all the analyses. And it was amazing. If it was a non-registered report, that is to say they did not say in advance what they were going to do, around about 24, 25 percent of the analyses were significant. You would think there was an effect. When it was a registered report, that collapsed to around about 8 percent. We'd expect 5 percent by chance. So what you see is this very simple procedure having a huge kind of dampening effect. It's taking away bad quality research and one by one, those effects are dropping away. And it looks like that procedure is now going to be used in psychology and possibly beyond. It's already being used a little bit in medicine and so on. And in doing so, we're starting to find out that a lot of the effects in mainstream psychology are dropping away. So in a sense, parapsychologists have changed the world, but as I say, not entirely as they intended.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Right. And this is a fantastic story. I know at the time, I essentially wrote the same thing. Like either what Darrell Blam proved, either that ESP is real or science is broken. And it's clearly that – no, not that – you know, saying that quote-unquote science is broken is massively overstating it. But that clearly there's a systemic problem in the way some research is done and reported, etc. And this is not isolated to psychology, as you're saying. This has parallels in medicine.Right. This is basically why we are advocating for science-based medicine. Science-based medicine is essentially – part of it anyway – is fixing all of these things that evidence-based medicine – well, it's as good as far as it goes. It has a lot of the same problems. And so it's producing all these spurious false positive results. And we could make them go away by simply introducing some things like pre-registering. And now pre-registering clinical trials is now a thing in medicine. It needs to be more thorough, more ubiquitous, but it's definitely coming in vogue. And it does eliminate specifically p-hacking because p-hacking is basically making decisions about methodology after you look at data. And if you make all the decisions before you look at data, then you can't do that. But it still opens the door for other things. It leaves the door open, rather, for other things. For example, not doing internal replications. So I don't know if that's also hitting the psychological literature. Rather than just doing a one-off and publishing it, basically rolling those dice. Because then you get publication bias and other things are involved. But if you replicate your own effect before you publish it, that also brings the false positive rate way down. Is that something you've encountered as well? Like really pushing for internal replications?<br />
<br />
'''RW:''' Yeah, absolutely. So all these things. As I say, in medicine, there was a study a few years ago looking at pre-registration on cardiovascular well-being. And again, the success rate for the studies went from about 60%. Down to, once you had pre-registration, I think it was again about 7% or 8%. It was a massive drop down. So what you're seeing is that a lot of those studies with a lot of those effects simply vanish as soon as you say in advance what it is you're going to do. So who cares whether or not people are psychic or can look into the future. But when it goes over to medicine and some sorts of psychology, boy, does it really matter. Particularly those that are influencing public policy. And as you say, these very simple techniques can have a big impact. A registered report, as I say, takes it to the next level because you actually peer-reviewed. And what's great is the referee's feedback before you've done the study. There's nothing worse than writing up a study. You send it in to be assessed. Referee comes back and you go, oh my goodness, I wish I thought of that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, you should have done this. Yeah, it's too late.<br />
<br />
'''RW:''' That's right. You should have done that. And you go, actually, you're right. I should have done. But I've collected all my data now. But what's great about the registered report is you get that feedback prior to that. So you can actually change things and drop the study and so on. But I just find it amazing that this thing, which we're now just opening our eyes to, actually was being done in the 70s. And Sebo Skouten, who's one of the two parapsychologists involved, I knew very well. And it just shows how some of those people were really pushing on the methodological front. You know, often we characterize parapsychologists as these kind of wide-eyed believers. But actually, there were people in there that were methodologically quite sophisticated and really trying to push that side of things.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, I agree. I mean, that's what I've encountered as well, just reading the literature, that there are those who are sincere and are really trying to prove it with – OK, if we're going to convince the mainstream scientists, we have to be really rigorous. The problem is when they're really rigorous, their effect goes away. And so those people tend to do one of two things. You tell me if you agree with this. They either say, OK, well, I guess it's not real, and they go on with their life. Or they figure out more subtle ways to fix the data so that they go back to p-hacking because that's the only way they get positive results.<br />
<br />
'''RW:''' Yeah, there is a third way, which I think lots of them adopt, which is they change the paradigm. So that you might do a whole lot of telepathy studies, and then as you tighten up the controls, the effect goes away. And instead of concluding that psi doesn't exist, what you do is jump to remote viewing. And then you jump to psychokinesis. So you keep changing the paradigm, which actually the field does as a whole. So a few years ago, this thing called the Ganzfeld technique was very big, a kind of telepathy experiment, remote viewing before that with a CIA and so on. And then it was that people could mentally influence random number generators. And so each time it's sort of embracing a new paradigm. You keep going for a few years until that one fades away, and then you jump ship again. So it's kind of interesting because it gets back to that fundamental thing that science is being conducted by humans. And we don't like to be told there's nothing to it. There's nothing to our beliefs. We don't like disconfirming evidence pretty much in any sphere, including science.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So there's another thing that happens in medicine. I suspect it probably happens in psychological, in parapsychology as well. But in alternative medicine, right, when you do the preliminary crappy study with p-hacking and all that and you get spurious positive results, then skeptics like me say, nope, I'm not convinced. Do more rigorous studies. They do more rigorous studies and the effect vanishes every time. So then what they do is it's kind of a switching the paradigm thing, but they might go. They stop doing efficacy studies and they start doing pragmatic studies. So they basically they do research, but not research that is designed to tell whether or not the phenomenon exists, but rather just to tell about the phenomenon. Like, you know what I mean? Like, how do people like it and how does it get incorporated into practice? And but not not as they stop. Just stop asking the fundamental question of if the phenomenon is real. Do you encounter that as well?<br />
<br />
'''RW:''' Well, it's not quite the same within parapsychology, but there is a difference between the proof oriented study, which is proving the thing exists and a process one, which is under what circumstances is it best or most effective. And so I guess that's sort of similar. I think what you're saying is that they might shift to sort of softer metrics in terms of was this good for you? How do you find it helpful? All those sorts of things, rather than that fundamental question of does it actually have any impact? Because people will tell you all sorts of things. And so, yeah, it's fascinating. I want to say what sits at the base of it, I think, is you can see if you spent your whole life looking at a particular phenomenon or we don't choose these things randomly. Normally, it's because they have some sort of personal significance for us. And suddenly the dice don't roll in your favour. You know, you like to think, well, OK, just give me a few more goes with those dice and see how it can go. And if not, I'll try and turn things around a little bit and keep hold of these beliefs. They're like possessions. We don't really want to let them go. They're ours. And we want to hold on to them.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Since you started this story with Daryl Bem, I think I've mentioned this before on the show, but it's such a fantastic story. And I'm sure you know about it, that in the summer of 2016, he and other researchers did like a really rigorous replication of his own field of future studies. And they were dead negative, of course, because, as you say, once you introduce rigorous controls, the effect goes away. And then they published or they presented those results at a meeting of the Parapsychological Association. But then in the conference abstract, they reanalysed the data ex post facto and managed to squeeze out some, quote, unquote, significant results. So they went back and they repeated it after the fact. So they couldn't they couldn't just sit with the negative results.<br />
<br />
'''RW:''' Yeah, I think that's right. They started to look at I think it was participants that spoke English as a first language versus others or something like that. There was a process oriented one in there. And I think the problem with parapsychology, which makes it slightly different, actually, to most other fields, is that I mean, some of my other work looks at the psychology of lying. Now, if it turns out my theory about lying is not true, well, we still know that people lie to one another. I still got a job in the morning. I still got research to do. My particular theory might not be true, but we know the phenomenon is true. The problem with parapsychology is that if it turns out that people aren't psychic, well, that's that you just pack your bags and go home. Well, at least in medicine well, people are still getting ill from whatever we've got a problem here to solve.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yes. But along those lines that's why if you are like a physician who will just do whatever works. Yes, you are correct. But if you're an acupuncturist, you're like a parapsychologist. You have to believe that acupuncture works. And if studies prove that acupuncture itself doesn't work again, you have to pack up and go home. You need a new career. So that's the problem with having health professions dedicated to one conclusion that may not even be true.<br />
<br />
'''RW:''' Absolutely. So, yes, that parallel is very nice. And that's an interesting one, I think, because then all the kind of psychological pressures are so much stronger because it turns out that this thing isn't true. And this practice doesn't work. And all these people are going to be out of a job. And my sense of identity is now being threatened because I was really into homeopathy or whatever it is. That's nice to go to parties and tell people homeopath. And now I can't do that because it isn't true. Well, you can see the psychological pressure. It's way more than me going, I had a theory about lying. Turns out it isn't true. I've still got people still lie. And I think that's a fundamental difference that isn't spoken about very much in the literature.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I agree. I agree. It's not like, yeah, you're going to discover that psychology doesn't exist because your study failed.<br />
<br />
'''RW:''' How great would that be, though?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I proved that there is no psychology.<br />
<br />
'''RW:''' It doesn't exist.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. Well, Richard, this has been fantastic, as always. Take care.<br />
<br />
'''RW:''' Okay. Take care. Lovely to speak to you.<br />
<br />
== Science or Fiction <small>(1:25:21)</small> ==<br />
<!-- <br />
** begin transcription below the following templates, including host reading the items **<br />
--><br />
{{SOFinfo<br />
|item1 = Researchers have developed a motion-capture system that requires only a single chest-mounted camera, not multiple cameras, sensors, or a dedicated studio.<br />
|link1web = https://www.titech.ac.jp/english/news/2020/048084.html<br />
|link1title = MonoEye: A human motion capture system using a single wearable camera<br />
|link1pub = Tokyo Tech<br />
<br />
|item2 = A study of the last 125 years of chess tournaments reveals that people are retaining peak cognitive ability about a decade longer than a century ago.<br />
|link2web = https://www.pnas.org/content/117/44/27255<br />
|link2title = Life cycle patterns of cognitive performance over the long run<br />
|link2pub = PNAS<br />
<br />
|item3 = Scientists have discovered how pit vipers can seen prey in the dark – by seeing heat with a special pyroelectric organ.<br />
|link3web = https://phys.org/news/2010-03-scientists-reveal-snakes-night.html<br />
|link3title = Scientists reveal how snakes 'see' at night<br />
|link3pub = Phys.org<br />
<br />
|}}<br />
{{SOFResults<br />
|fiction = chess & cognitive ability<br />
|science1 = motion capture camera<br />
|science2 = pyroelectric organ<br />
<br />
|rogue1 = evan<br />
|answer1 = chess & cognitive ability<br />
<br />
|rogue2 =jay<br />
|answer2 =motion capture camera<br />
<br />
|rogue3 =bob<br />
|answer3 =chess & cognitive ability<br />
<br />
|rogue4 = cara<br />
|answer4 = chess & cognitive ability<br />
<br />
|host = steve<br />
<!-- for the result options below, <br />
only put a 'y' next to one. --><br />
|sweep = <!-- all the Rogues guessed wrong --><br />
|clever = <!-- each item was guessed (Steve's preferred result) --><br />
|win = y<!-- at least one Rogue guessed wrong, but not them all --><br />
|swept = <!-- all the Rogues guessed right --><br />
}}<br />
''Voice-over: It's time for Science or Fiction.''<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Each week I come up with three science news items or facts, two real and one fake. And then I challenge my panel of skeptics to tell me which one they think is the fake. Got three regular news items, no theme. You guys ready?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I think so.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, here we go. Item number one, researchers have developed a motion capture system that requires only a single chest-mounted camera, not multiple cameras, sensors, or a dedicated studio. And item number two, a study of the last 125 years of chess tournaments reveals that people are retaining peak cognitive ability about a decade longer than a century ago. And item number three, scientists have discovered how pit vipers can see prey in the dark by seeing heat with a special pyroelectric organ. Evan, go first. <br />
<br />
=== Evan's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yes.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' All right. That's true. I haven't gone first in a while. So here's a motion capture system that requires only a single chest-mounted camera, not multiple cameras, sensors, or a dedicated studio. Okay, so they shrunk it all down to the size of a single camera, which you can wear around your neck, apparently, hang on your chest, you look like Flava Flav. I don't know how they did it, but it doesn't seem unreasonable that they have done this. Camera technology, video capture technology does march along at a pretty amazing pace. So I think that one's science. The next one, about 125 years of chess tournaments, that's a lot of chess tournaments. They reveal that people are retaining peak cognitive ability about a decade longer than a century ago. So they're making a general statement about everyone based on studying 125 years of chess tournaments?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, but I'll just say that part is not what would make it fiction. You know what I'm saying? That's just, yes, they're using chess players as the representative sample, but in other words, from studying that cohort, that's the result that they found.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Okay. All right. Good. That puts it in more perspective. Well, I mean, I'm a chess player myself. Retaining peak cognitive ability a decade longer. Boy, I don't know about this one. It seems like something's wrong. I still feel like something is missing here, and that's kind of a leap in a sense. So I'm not feeling it with that one. Last one about pit vipers can see prey in the dark by seeing heat with a special pyroelectric organ that they didn't know about before. You'd think they would know most things about pit vipers and other snakes and things. They only realize what this did now. Maybe they thought it was a nostril or some sort of olfactory sensor, but it turned out to be something more specific here. Why do I think that? That one's probably science, although it's just a little strange that they only realized that recently. So that's maybe the only strange thing about that one. So I'm not putting it together with the chess and the retaining peak cognitive ability one. I can't put my finger on it, but I think that one's the fiction.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay, Jay.<br />
<br />
=== Jay's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''J:''' All right. This first one here about researchers have developed a motion capture system that requires only a single chest mounted camera. So the thing that confuses me about this, Steve, you're saying it's a motion capture system.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So it's capturing the motion of the person wearing the camera.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Right. So typically what they have to do is they have to put stickers on their face or they have some type of thing that delineates the different parts of a person's face. You have seen it a million times, and they've been getting much, much more streamlined and smaller and smaller throughout the years. So now you're saying they can make one that doesn't need anything. Now, this I mean, I know a lot about motion capture, and I'm not bragging. I just happen to be a big fan of it. So I read a lot about these types of technology. I have heard nothing about this, and I would find it very difficult to believe that they can do it seamlessly. But there's probably a tricky thing in here, like maybe they use a special kind of makeup on them or something that the camera can see. Or maybe I don't know, maybe it's using heat to see their face. I don't know. Interesting. I'm on the fence about that one. Second one, a study of the last 125 years of chess tournaments reveals that people are retaining peak cognitive ability about a decade longer than a century ago. Wow. Now, why would that be? Is that lifestyle changes, medicine, the upgrade of health care, the fact that we know how to take better care of ourselves now than we did a century ago? That's a huge factor right there, just the fact that we know how to take better care of ourselves. Okay. I'm thinking that one is probably science. And the last one, scientists have discovered how pit vipers can see prey in the dark by seeing heat with a special pyroelectric organ. I think, Steve, that they're using the pit vipers as the chest-mounted cameras.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That play chess.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' A mocap.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yes, and they play chess when they're off. They play chess, yeah. At the set, when they're bored, Evan, they play chess between shots.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' They're using a chess-playing pit viper as a motion-capture device.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yes.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Wow.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Thank you.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I thought there was no theme here. Okay.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I would never say that something like a pyroelectric organ doesn't exist because the natural world is amazing. Sure, yeah, I could see a snake being able to read heat signatures in the dark. That's science. I'm going to say that the cognitive thing is science, and I'm going to say that the chess camera is the fiction.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay, Bob.<br />
<br />
=== Bob's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Motion capture, one camera. So Jay seemed to be assuming that this is face, facial capture. What about full body capture? I've seen cameras mounted on the chest that capture facial movement and expressions, but the face also had the reflective dots. So you could see how the relationship between the dots changes over time while the person's emoting. So what is it? Capturing a face with a chest-mounted camera is doable, I guess, but a full body, I'm not sure how that would work. Because if it's on the chest, once your arm moves beyond the plane of your torso, then the camera can't see it. So what's the arm doing? It wouldn't know. So I don't know what to think about that one. Go to three here. Pit vipers seeing using a pyroelectric organ. Yeah, everyone agrees with me in that what took so long to find that. I mean, give me a break. So you like how I said that? It's so cynical. But still, I'm not going to make the – I won't choose that as fiction. I'm going to choose the chess one. I'm not buying that peak cognitive ability as now 10 years later. I mean, I don't even – with modern nutrition and diets, I don't think that it would make it be an entire decade. I'm saying that one's fiction.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And Cara?<br />
<br />
=== Cara's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. So, I mean, I think I'm going to go with Evan and Bob on this one and just like as a quick explainer. I could see mocap getting that good. And also, I like that Jay was like, oh, I just don't see it being seamless. And I'm like, you didn't write that it was seamless. You just wrote that they developed it. So it could be horrible. Like it doesn't matter, but they did develop it.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Well, that's not fair though, right? If it doesn't work, that's why not.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, but it might just not work that well. Who knows? It's in beta. And then –<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We'll fix it in post.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I could definitely see scientists discovering a new organ. I mean, I just read an article that like we discovered a new organ in people. It was like new salivary glands.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Oh, I knew about those.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. This stuff happens – Jay was aware. So I think the thing that's getting me on the chess one is – I mean, at first I think you got me on this because I was like, oh, well, the Flynn effect and like we are getting smarter, although that might be an artifact. You know, there's a lot of argument about that in terms of like the average IQ going up. But heat cognitive ability about a decade longer, meaning that like if we're at our most sharp at 25, now it's 35. Or if we're our most sharp at 15, now it's 25. That I don't buy because I feel like evolution, she's a cruel bitch. And I don't think that we would be able to change something like that just with medicine or nutrition. Maybe, but to me that seems like it's something that's a little bit more like encoded. So, yeah, I'm going to go with the boys on that one.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #3 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Interesting. All right. So you all agree on the third one. So we'll start there. Scientists have discovered how pit vipers can see prey in the dark by seeing heat with a special pyroelectric organ. You all think that one is science. And that one is science.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, baby.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' A pyroelectric organ.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, that's the key. The key word that they – the key discovery was the pyroelectric organ. So does anybody know why pit vipers are called pit vipers?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Because they're in the dark.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Because of the pits. They thought that the heat was sensed by the pits on their skull and their face.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, they have pits.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Bob is correct. That's what I thought when I was a child. That's because I lived in pits.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' A pit viper.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, I know.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But, yeah, Bob is correct. It's because they have pits between their eyes and their nose. And those little divots are heat-sensing organs. So we've known for a while that certain snakes, the pit snakes, can see in complete 100% darkness. They can still sense their prey.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It's an advantage.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And they are picking them up by heat. That much we know. That much we know. And we know they're not seeing them with their eyes. The eyes are not seeing the electromagnetic spectrum of the heat signature. But we didn't know how they were sensing the heat. And we didn't know how –<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Wait. How did they rule out their eyes weren't seeing an infrared?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' They could probably just closed their eyes.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yes. They'd patch their eyes and they could still see.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' They blinded them. Okay. Good test.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So, yeah. So they knew it was with their pit organ, which is what that's called, the pit organ. But they didn't know how the pit organ was sensing the heat. So this is the new discovery was that they discovered – and here's the problem they were having is that there's no known pyroelectric substance that is analogous to what the snake has in their pit organ. So they didn't think that that could work.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No way.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So pyroelectric means it turns heat into electrical signals. Because that's what you ultimately need for any kind of sensing organ is it's got to be converted to electrical signals in the nervous system, right? So we know that there are mechanocenters that mechanically disrupt the cell and that can generate an electrical current, for example. But there's no known pyroelectric organ in biology. So what they discovered was that in the pit organ that the protein there can act as a pyroelectric organ.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Protein, baby. It's all about the proteins.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Wow.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' They're actually – they're not seeing the electromagnetic spectrum of the heat. They are sensing the warmth itself. They are sensing the heat and that is – they're seeing the heat itself.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That's awesome.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Love this.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. That was the discovery. Yeah. It's cool. All right. Let's go back.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #2 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Let's just keep going backwards, I guess. So a study of the last 125 years of chess tournaments reveals that people are retaining about a decade longer than a century ago. Jay, you think this one is science. Everyone else thinks this one is the fiction. And this one is the fiction. Good job, guys. Sorry, Jay.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Bastards.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I mean, Cara, you basically sussed it out. But let me back up a little bit. So this was a massive study. They looked at 125 years because chess games – chess tournaments are usually recorded move by move.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Absolutely they are.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So that is a massive database that they have. They looked at more than 24,000 games over this time. Like every move of 24,000 different games over 125 years. And they used AI, of course, to analyse – the analysis they did was how close was each move to a theoretically optimal strategic move.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' How the hell do you figure that out?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Whatever. Because we have computers. What would a chess-playing computer do in that situation? And what did the person do? Was the person playing as well as a computer or not?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Okay.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Right? So the more you played as well as the best computer chess player that we have, the more cognitively optimal your performance was. And so you could see an individual player get better and better and better as they get older, right? Because you're following them throughout their career. And then you could see when they start to fall off when they're – they are no longer at peak cognitive ability. So what they found is basically two things. I mean they found – there's more details in there, but the two broad brushstrokes that they found, one was that people are getting smarter. Like the Flynn effect. Like over the course of years, of decades, not just individual people get smarter as they get better at chess, but each generation is better than the generation before. That their peak was higher. And again, the question was, is this an artifact? Is it that people are getting smarter or is it that they're just getting better at the culture of chess is advancing?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, right.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's the same thing with IQ tests. It's like, are they getting better at taking IQ tests?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And so that's – you really can't resolve that with this data. But that peak was getting higher, but they found no difference in when they reached the peak. It's basically 35. And people are peaking at –<br />
<br />
'''C:''' 35.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' People are peaking at 35 today.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Happy birthday, Cara.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' They were peaking at 35 125 years ago.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I just turned 37 on Monday.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You're past your peak.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's it. Welcome to the other side of the hill.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I didn't even feel it when my peak happened.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I didn't notice. I was too busy looking good.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Enter the dragon quote, people.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. So that was – yeah. So that was interesting. That was interesting. Kind of encouraging on one end and depressing on the other. <br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right. Yeah.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #1 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All of this means that researchers have developed a motion capture system that requires only a single chest-mounted camera, not multiple cameras, sensors, or a dedicated studio is science. This may be a little bit more impressive even than that summary reveal. So yeah. It's just you have – the person that you're capturing is wearing a camera on their chest and that's it. That and, of course, software. But you don't have to be looking at them with multiple cameras. They don't have to be wearing any special sensors of any kind at all.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' What are you capturing? Face or body or both?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Whole body.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Whole body.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So how do you think it works? This is called the MonoEye. The MonoEye.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' How big is the camera? I mean is it like a real wide angle kind of wraparound?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's not physically big but you are getting to the key feature. It is an ultra-wide fisheye lens.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So even though it's only like a small camera strapped to the chest, it is looking 280-degree field of view.<br />
<br />
'''E/B:''' Nice.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' 280-degree field of view. So that's how they're doing it. So it does have a little blind spot straight in the back obviously but it can – so it partly works through extrapolation with a database of what people's bodies look like when they move, right?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's kind of what our brains do.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. So it's inferring the body pose, the head pose based upon the data that it does have. And so it actually uses three deep neural networks. So it's estimating again the 3D body pose and head pose based on the information that it's getting. And they said that it basically works but it will get better as they continue to feed more and more data into the system.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Now I wonder – I mean there's also an advance here. If you don't need those reflective dots, typically you put them on like your joints, right? So if you know what your joints are doing, then you could create like a skeletal schematic of the movement and really make lifelike movements. So without that, I wonder – I'd like to read about the technology that doesn't need the dots.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. This is the software. But then keep in mind that part of the challenge is it's not just like capturing a stick figure. This software is trying to create photorealistic 3D renderings including clothes, actions, background, and lighting.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' There you go.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's why it needs this massive database so it can recreate all of those things from the data that it has.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Wow. Talk about the future of gaming. Holy crap.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Right. So it's not like they're going to take your movements and map it to like a seven-foot alien, bipedal alien that looks completely different. They could completely recreate you in CG. Then they could take you and then make you like a digital stuntman version of yourself like it's blown up or falls 100 feet smack into the ground without risking any stuntman.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But they might be able to map you to an alien.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. But you can totally see this being the future of –<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Well, that too. But they're extending that ability.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Of virtual reality, right? You don't need to have the cameras mounted on your walls or anything. It's a little. It's a little, little harness with not that big camera in the middle of your chest. If you have that and for some games, you might not even need game controllers. It just knows where you are.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right. And now your avatar is you.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Your avatar is you. Your whole body.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's pretty cool.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. Right now, like if you play virtual reality games, like if you have the controls in your hands and you're wearing the thing on your head. So it basically knows where your head is and where your hands are. And it basically interpolates everything else. And so your legs do all kinds of funky things. It is trying to figure out where your legs are supposed to be. I know the newer versions have like you could put things on your ankles. And so then it also can –<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Somebody at NECSS had that, Steve. It was really cool. They could do stuff with their feet.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Technology is getting better all the time.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. But this is – Yeah. I think Cara is right. This is in beta. There's actual like products on the market. But it's always good to see where the technology is headed.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Cool.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. Cool.<br />
<br />
== Skeptical Quote of the Week <small>(1:44:52)</small> ==<br />
<!-- <br />
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|text = Science is best defined as a careful, disciplined, logical search for knowledge about any and all aspects of the universe, obtained by examination of the best available evidence and always subject to correction and improvement upon discovery of better evidence. What's left is magic. And it doesn't work.<br />
|author = {{w|James Randi}}<br />
|lived = 1928-2020<br />
|desc = Canadian-American stage magician, author, scientific skeptic, and co-founder of {{w|Committee for Skeptical Inquiry}} (CSI)<br />
}}<br />
'''S:''' All right. Evan, give us a quote.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Well, there's only one quote today. As usual. But there's only one person it could come from. "Science is best defined as a careful, disciplined, logical search for knowledge about any and all aspects of the universe obtained by examination of the best available evidence and always subject to correction and improvement upon discovery of better evidence. What's left is magic and it doesn't work." James Randi.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' James, the amazing Randi. Absolutely. He will be missed. He was a massive influence on all of us on the movement and on our culture. He was absolutely a cultural icon.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' We are all better for having Randi in our lives, all of us.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. I'm definitely happy that we were able to get to know him and work with him and be friends with him. That was definitely one of the really great things to come out of our skeptical activism.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' The thing is, Randi believed in this and he inspired a lot of people and we wouldn't be here. I don't think the SGU would be here if Randi didn't. There was a lot that he did very early on, too. A lot of inspirations that came our way.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The ripple effect is huge. Absolutely.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, it is huge.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I think sometimes that we forget, especially for everybody who's listening right now, when somebody has been so influential as to become iconic, we often forget that in the end, they're people. Obviously, our thoughts right now are with his dearest friends, with his family, of course with his husband. It must be a really, really tough time for a lot of people, so sending love their way from us.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Definitely.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, and often you hear the quote, don't meet your heroes, because often, far too often, it's a major disappointment. But Randi is one of the exceptions.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' He was the exception, absolutely.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Absolutely. He's a guy that if you did meet him, you were never disappointed and always an unforgettable experience.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Because he cared. He cared about your experience in meeting him. He did.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. Well, thank you all for joining me this week.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Thanks Steve.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Thanks Steve.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I will see you on the Friday live stream, for those of you who can make it.<br />
== Signoff <small>(1:47:06)</small> ==<br />
<br />
'''S:''' —and until next week, this is your {{SGU}}. <!-- typically this is the last thing before the Outro --> <br />
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}}</div>Hearmepurrhttps://www.sgutranscripts.org/w/index.php?title=SGU_Episode_785&diff=19128SGU Episode 7852024-01-24T18:12:57Z<p>Hearmepurr: episode done</p>
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{{InfoBox <br />
|episodeNum = 785<br />
|episodeDate = July 25<sup>th</sup> 2020<br />
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|qowText = Nothing limits intelligence more than ignorance; nothing fosters ignorance more than one's own opinions; nothing strengthens opinions more than refusing to look at reality.<br />
|qowAuthor = {{w|Sheri S. Tepper}}, American novelist <!-- use a {{w|wikilink}} or use <ref name=[author]>publication: [url title]</ref>, description [use a first reference to an article attached to the quote. The second reference is in the QoW section] --><br />
|downloadLink = https://media.libsyn.com/media/skepticsguide/skepticastskepticast2020-07-25.mp3<br />
|forumLink = https://sguforums.org/index.php?topic=52805.0 <!-- try to find the right link for each episode --> <br />
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<!-- note that you can put the Rogue’s infobox initial into triple quotes to make that letter bold in the transcript. This is how the final statement from Steve is typed at the end of this transcript: '''S:''' —and until next week, this is your {{SGU}}.--> <br />
<br />
== Introduction ==<br />
<br />
''Voice-over: You're listening to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.'' <br />
<br />
'''S:''' Hello and welcome to the {{SGU|link=y}}. Today is Wednesday, July 22<sup>nd</sup>, 2020, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella... <br />
<br />
'''B:''' Hey, everybody!<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Cara Santa Maria... <br />
<br />
'''C:''' Howdy. <br />
<br />
'''S:''' Jay Novella... <br />
<br />
'''J:''' Hey guys. <br />
<br />
'''S:''' ...and Evan Bernstein. <br />
<br />
'''E:''' Good evening, folks.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Cara, you're all the way in Scotland right now.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I am. I'm in the land of Scott.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The Highlands. You're enjoying your haggis and your bagpipes?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I refuse the haggis. Won't do the haggis.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Haggis is good. I had haggis in Scotland. It was good.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Do you know what I realized?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Was it real haggis?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. Yeah. We had haggis at the bar. I tasted it. Did you know that haggis is illegal in the US? You can't import it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Oh, really?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. You want to know why?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, of course.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Because USDA does not consider lung to be fit for human consumption.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, no Scottish food, no UK food is fit for human consumption.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, no.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' He went there.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' There's some very good food.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Of course.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So far, though, we did make biscuits and gravy for breakfast, which is a decidedly not Scottish dish.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. They did import good food from around the world, like chicken tikka masala.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, yeah. Indian food is big here. You're right. Indian food is very big. I've been adjusting to my jet lag. The flight was interesting. Flying during a global pandemic, I don't recommend it. Only do it if you have to. Yeah. It was very strange. I double masked. It was really cute. I got all these comments, people saying, like, you can double mask? I thought that would render them ineffective. And I was like, no, you're thinking of condoms. You can't really rub a friction hole in a mask. Yeah. And I just washed my hands a lot. The flight here was quite good. They did very good social distancing. So there's actually nobody in my whole row. And I'm talking two by the window, three in the middle, two by the other window. There's no one in my whole row. But the weird thing was, of course, there's somebody directly in front of me and directly behind me. It's like, OK.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Just don't cough away.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Just don't move over two seats.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But I did find that the flight, the little connector flight from Heathrow to Edinburgh was horrible. It was a completely full flight. I was lucky enough that there just happened to be nobody in the middle seat between me and the gentleman. There were all the middle seats were full otherwise. It was only an hour plus flight. But this is the part I don't get. They go to all these great lengths to disinfect everything. It's always about the disinfectants and the wipes and the sprays. And we're not going to give you a pillow. We're not going to give you a blanket. But on our international flight, they did give us sanitized pillows and blankets, which was nice. And then they serve food at the exact same time to every person on the plane. So everyone takes their mask off at the same time.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, right.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Like nobody thought about that. So while everybody else is like risking their livelihood in order to eat some salt and vinegar flavoured chips, crisps, apologies. I kept my mask on. The guy next to me eats, eats, drinks and immediately falls asleep. Like mid-chew. So his mask is hanging off his ear. And I'm like, cool. So I just kind of like held my blanket up like a little barrier. I don't know if that works. In between until he woke up and put his mask back on. Because that's the part that freaks me out. I don't know.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Your dinner tray doubles as a COVID shield, Cara.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Exactly.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Hold that up.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I think it's that thing where like if I were the owner of a restaurant, but even then I think they feel guilty and horrible when people break mask etiquette. It's like, Steve, like you can be the enforcer because you're a doctor. And so when people are at the hospital and they do something wrong, you can be like, as a doctor, I need to inform you that your mask is not going to help you if it's below your chin.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. I mean, you still got to be a dick about it, though, is the bottom line. You still have to be there's no way to do it without being like little finger wagging like you really should have that over your nose. When I feel like I need to do that, I usually like address the room like rather than pointing and shaming one person. It's like, so the policy is everyone needs to have their mouth, their face mask fully on at all times, just so that we're all aware of that. And like the one person with a below their nose knows I'm talking to them.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Exactly. Exactly. But it's so hard when you're like on an airplane or in an airport, you have no authority. You don't know if that person is going to lose their mind and punch you in the throat. You know, it's like tensions are high anyway. And you just want everybody to be cool. It's like, be cool, man. Be cool. I'm not trying to be a dick. So instead, you do what probably most people do, which is just shrink down in the corner, face away and do what you can to protect yourself, which bums me out. I just wish I did find that there were more mask-holes when I came to Heathrow than there were at LAX. Maybe it was a function of population. LAX is very shut down. There's nothing happening. All the restaurants are closed. There are very few people flying. So you could sit an entire gate away from the next person if you wanted to. Whereas at Heathrow, it was bustling. The shops were open. All the restaurants were open. So literally, nobody was wearing their mask correctly. Everybody had it below their nose or just around their chin. It's like, why do you even have that on? Yeah. So that was a little scary and frustrating. I know we're the assholes because we're the Americans and we're the ones who aren't allowed in any countries right now. But it scared me a little bit to see how few people were truly concerned. Maybe it's because we've seen the worst of it in the US.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, I think it's definitely region-specific.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And especially in the Northeast, since we've already been through the Ring of Fire, people are pretty good about it. There's still occasional, as you say, mask-holes. But generally speaking, people are pretty good. But I know elsewhere, you watch pictures of gatherings in states that have yet to really get fully hit or are just getting to their peak now. No one's wearing a mask.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I think the stories that tend to trend, and unfortunately, being here in the UK, my Twitter turns to UK-centric stuff. I'm getting the UK ads. Every time I log into a website, it goes to the UK version. And so you kind of see how the news, the American news, makes its way here, like what is sort of big enough or interesting enough to cross the pond and what's too specific or regional to really make it. And so what I'm seeing, sadly, are the stories about a woman in Walmart refuses to wear a mask. And when they yell at her, she pees on the floor. You know, like all the crazy stuff that's happening.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' She got nervous.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' She was a little excited.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Putting our best foot forward.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's so embarrassing. It's like, I promise we're not all like that.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' We're kind of used to that by now, right?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You know, I'm back on inpatient service again this week and starting to see some patients. I'm consulting, right? I've consulted on patients who had COVID back in April and they're still in the hospital and just wrecked. That virus is nasty.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, this chronic... So they're still actively sick, right? This isn't even like the kind of chronic syndrome that I've been reading about more and more lately.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I mean, they're over the COVID itself.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Okay. They are.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Now they're dealing with just the rehab and all the downstream complications of having had very severe COVID, you know?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So what does that look like, Steve? Give me details on the different things that you're seeing.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You know, patients, for example, can have multiple organ failure from this. They get then complications they can have multiple pneumonias on top of it. We know that it can cause strokes and heart attacks, you know? You know, it's mainly just that like when you're somebody who's really sick from the virus, first of all, you get like a double whammy. There's the viral infection itself, which is not just a respiratory virus. We know it can cause a lot of organ system problems. But then some people get the immune activation the cytokine storm kind of a thing where their immune system then starts wreaking havoc on them. And if they survive, like if that happens to you, like it's like toying costs whether or not you're going to survive. But if you do, you're like going to be in months and months of recovery.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Will they fully recover? Will they fully recover?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Probably not. They probably won't ever get to where they were before they ever were sick.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Because of the damage to the actual organs.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Lung damage.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I've also seen that there are people who like didn't even have particularly severe COVID. Like they weren't ventilated. They didn't make it to the ICU, but maybe it was one hospital visit or they had a really bad fever for multiple days who, I mean, there are like support groups online about this just like chronically feeling crappy. Like they just never quite felt, feel better. And I'm wondering if there's going to be some really interesting kind of post COVID syndrome stuff that we're going to be learning about, not just medically, but also psychologically.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, some patients like we're talking about their current medical condition. And the question is, is this COVID? And we have to say, we don't know. We don't know what this virus is capable of doing. We don't know what happens. And with other diseases that have been around for decades, we can say, oh yeah, 23% of patients get this complication. You know what I mean? You have some guidance as to what can and cannot happen. And now obviously we know a lot more than we did a few months ago. But now in terms of late stage complications, we really just have no idea. This is just- We're seeing this for the first time.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And I think that's the thing a lot of people don't think about, Steve, is that sometimes when you hear the politicization of the way we're handling the virus, people love to just cite the mortality rate or they say the X deaths. And if they're not dying, we don't have to be as concerned about X, Y, Z. And it's like, there's a big difference between not getting sick at all and dying. And I think we're starting to see that the not quite dying, but getting brutally sick is just debilitating for so many people.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Well, from the start, it takes up a ton of resources, right? I mean, that's why I always find it ridiculous when people are focusing on the deaths. It's like, well, sure, people are losing their lives, but then there could be people that are hospitalized for weeks to months, which is the primary resource drain.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And like Steve said, some of these people may never get all the way better. Their lives are now changed forever because of the virus.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. We talk about morbidity and mortality, right? It's not just mortality. Morbidity is all of the health problems that you get due to an illness. So we don't know what the full morbidity of this virus is. And this notion that it's a bad flu is just ridiculous. The flu doesn't do this to people. You may, if you get obviously respiratory failure, you can die from the flu, but it just doesn't wreck their body the way that this virus appears to in the most severe cases. This is definitely a different animal. The numbers for the world, again, this is always outdated by the time the show comes out, but we're over 14.5 million worldwide cases, over 600,000 deaths, 3.8 million in the U.S., over 140,000 deaths in the U.S. Numbers are still going up. Deaths are starting to now go up in the U.S. There was a lag, but again, as we keep saying, not only is it not over, we're still in the middle of this. It's still increasing.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' How hopeful are you about some of the-<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Not at all.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The vaccine news?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, it seems really promising.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's all, as good as it could be at this stage of things, where the preliminary basic science research is promising, the animal data's good, the early clinical data is good, and now we're starting to get, again, there's probably 20, 30, 40 vaccines in development out there. We're getting to the point with the ones that are at the leading edge of this to large clinical trials. So that will be a few months. And then if it all works out, we could start manufacturing by the end of the year. And then the question is, who's first? If one company's the first one to get over the finish line with a working vaccine, are they going to make eight billion doses? You know what I mean? How much are they going to be able to do?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I'm already seeing contracts, right? The US government has already agreed to purchase X number from this manufacturer, and so and so is-<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Pfizer.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' We're going to grab Pfizer's, and yeah, these other European companies already have contracts in place. So-<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I know, I know. One company was saying, we're hoping we could produce two billion doses in the next two years.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Wow.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's ambitious.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But think about that. That's quarter of the world in two years, though, I mean, that's a long time.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But that's only one company, Steve.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And that's one company. So we almost need multiple companies to-<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Absolutely. I would think so.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' To come up with their own vaccines just so we could spread it out. Or they need to license their vaccine to multiple companies for manufacturing. But that's including massively ramping up their production. So we just don't know, but there's definitely going to be this period, which could be months to a year or two, where it's going to be a scramble to see who gets the vaccine. Typically, the high risk people do get it first.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's my hope. My hope is that it's affordable and that it goes to the elderly, it goes to the people with pre-existing conditions, all that good stuff.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Not only that, but their caregivers. And frontline workers.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Frontline workers absolutely first, right?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' So Steve will get it before us, and then I'll get it before you, Cara.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But even people in the grocery store, the essential workers who get exposed, they need...<br />
<br />
'''C:''' The problem is in this country, we don't treat those people with often that kind of... Now I'm saying this country isn't America.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You know, the people that everyone's calling heroes, give the heroes the freaking vaccine first.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Exactly.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It would be a PR disaster if they didn't. I mean, how could they be...<br />
<br />
'''C:''' We love PR disasters in this country. I disagree. You guys sound way more hopeful.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I don't put it past them, but...<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It's been days since we've had a good one. Let's get another one.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I don't know, man. I'm just a little cynical about that at this point. I do agree frontline workers will probably get it first. But I think without some sort of from the top mandate, we're not going to see these going to the right people. And right now I think...<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Think about it, Cara. The vaccine will probably be available after January 20th, just to pick a random date in the future. So we'll see. It's a big variable out there.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' True.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' But imagine people, a lot of people haven't really internalized it yet, but the vaccine will be out and will be effective and people will still wait a long time before they see it. A lot of people will be waiting a long time.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Bob, there's going to be millions of people who will refuse... How many tens of millions of people are going to refuse it?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I hope it's not tens of millions.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Won't it be tens of millions?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' In the short term, it's not going to be a problem.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I hope not.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. But the thing is, even if everyone doesn't get the vaccine, if you give it to the people who are most likely to contract and spread the virus, that will massively shut down the spread of this virus, this pandemic. So it's not just that we're protecting the people most at risk. By doing that, we're also protecting everybody the most with the vaccine that we have. Right? We're reducing the spread the most. So it makes sense for everybody, for the most high-risk people, in terms of spreaders, to get the vaccine.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' No argument from me. I'll wait in line. I don't care.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. And what about everybody else? You guys have seen Contagion, right? We talked about it a few weeks ago on the show. They do a lottery in Contagion, where the frontline workers get it first, and then everybody else, it's based on their birthday or something like that. They draw for birthdays. And then they line up and they get it, and everybody wears a little ID bracelet to prove whether they're vaccinated until the end of the full course.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I think people who actually have a birthday on a holiday should be prioritized.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah. Yeah. And those with neat collections of things. Yeah.<br />
<br />
== News Items ==<br />
<br />
=== Human Curiosity <small>(16:53)</small> ===<br />
* [https://www.livescience.com/why-are-humans-curious.html Live Science: Why are humans so curious?]<ref>[https://www.livescience.com/why-are-humans-curious.html Live Science: Why are humans so curious?]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. We've got some interesting news items to chat about today. So Jay, you're going to start us off telling us about human curiosity.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah. So the question is, that I put to all of you guys, is why are humans and other animals so damn curious? Where is it coming from? I think we can clearly see that children are curious. And even though there is noticeable drop off in the level of curiosity as some of us get older, a lot of adults have an amazing amount of curiosity. And we do lots of different things with this curiosity. But what is it, and why do we have it, and what is it for, right? What purpose does it serve?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' The survival advantage?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That's absolutely obvious, and I think a great way to start the conversation. So what does it do, Bob? It motivates us, right? It influences a lot of our behavior.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's also developmental, right? It's how we learn to speak and walk and, you know.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, exactly. As Cara was saying, a baby's curiosity encourages them to explore the world, figure out how things work. Babies also have to learn an enormous amount of information, and curiosity is what keeps them learning. Studies on infants have shown that they get bored. They have a toy, they use it for a little while, they get bored, and they want to move on to a new one. That's not them being a jerk, right? It's them exercising their curiosity.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Although some of them are jerks.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That's true, but that is also another talk. I could talk about that next week. Now there is another side to that coin. Curiosity can also be deadly.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Kill the cat.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yes, absolutely. There's a lot of reasons and things that people have died from being curious and you can see a lot of that on Reddit if you want to. So does science have a way to explain and quantify what human curiosity is? So this is, the answer is kind of. What we do know is that curiosity is part of our DNA. It's not one simple behavior. It's connected to how we interact with our environment. But there isn't a single accepted definition of it. In general, scientists agree that at its core, it's information gathering, right? It's a neat way to kind of just boil it down to its essence. Researchers have identified changes to a gene known as DRD4, and this gene and mutations of this gene are connected to a person's likeliness to seek out new experiences. And that's important because that is a part of curiosity as well. So a person's desire to find new things, this is called perceptual curiosity, and it's what motivates us to seek out new life and new civilizations, right? To boldly go where no man has gone before, Cara, or woman. This is Star Trek I'm quoting from the 60s, so don't get mad at me.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I like that catch though, Jay. That was nice.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, but it really is. I mean, even you go back to science fiction has a lot of curiosity built into it because that's exploration. So the fact is we get bored with things, the more we get exposed to them, right, guys? Let's think about all the ways this shows up in our lives, food, clothes, hobbies you can get bored of anything that you do. You love a video game, you play it, you get bored with it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' TV shows.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Absolutely. And you know how it takes time to kind of be able to go back to something because your brain like detunes the memories and you don't remember it exactly anymore. And then it kind of turns into something new again, and then you can get reinvigorated about it. Except I think humanity largely agrees that pizza is the thing that none of us would ever get bored of.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, I don't like pizza.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Nevermind.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' What?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Not my favorite food.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So I want you to remember perceptual curiosity, right? Babies experiment with making noises, and this is how they eventually learn how to talk. And in the beginning, they're just trying out what kinds of sounds that they can make. But then later on, they realize that they can make similar sounds or vocalizations that their parents do, and then they start to key in on that. They start to remember that, and they start to do it. But curiosity is definitely behind the babbling that comes out of most kids' mouths. They're just listening to the sounds that they're making, and it pleases them, and that's part of curiosity.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Jay, I think baby babble is probably one of my favorite developmental things in the entire world. Baby babble is the best.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' And it seems to be universally adorable.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right. It's so cool, and it's so fun to try and figure out what they're trying to say, and sort of try and interpret it. Sometimes that frustrates them, you can tell.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Oh, without a doubt.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But other times, they get excited when you figure out what it is they're saying. Ugh, it just warms my heart.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Jay, I miss Olivia's babble. Can you teach her to babble again?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I was just going to say that. So my daughter Olivia, when she was, from the moment she started vocalizing, she had developed her own, like, it was like her own little language. She wasn't repeating things, but she would be talking to you, trying to communicate something, and making noises like adults do, thinking that she's talking, and she probably was feeling something that was kind of going along with it, but it was adorable. So anyway, crows, I want to talk about crows now, because crows are another creature that has this perceptual curiosity. They're constantly trying out new things, and this leads them to creating simple tools that helps them do, like, lots of little tasks and stuff.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Like crow bars.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yep. That's right. They go to the bars, and they tell each other, like, the latest tool that they figured out. You know, crows have also been seen dropping nuts on the road, so cars will drive over them to crack open the nuts that they can't open.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' They also bring people gifts.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That's right. They do. They can bring you sparkly things, which is really adorable. But another kind of curiosity is called, now get this. Ready? Epistematic?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Epistemic?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Epistemic. It's like, you'd figure maybe one out of ten times I would accidentally say it correctly. Epistematic curiosity.<br />
<br />
'''C/B:''' Epistemic.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Forget it. Forget it. It's a word before the word curiosity. This is only found in humans, this particular kind of curiosity. It's very much like science, right? Just think about how cool this is. It's about the search for knowledge and the elimination of uncertainty. Right? Now, this kind of curiosity develops later in life, and the researchers suspect that it requires complex language skills. But I just want to take a sidestep here. If we have curiosity baked into our DNA, and a kind of curiosity is, and I quote, the search for knowledge and the elimination of uncertainty, then we have science cooked into our DNA.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' You're saying that maybe if we had evolved separately, we might also have developed something akin to our scientific method.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It's just that curiosity happens to be amazingly, it's an amazingly powerful thing, mindset, whatever.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And a nuanced version of just basic curiosity is that, and again, it's in our DNA. We have it when we're born. It's there from the beginning. Of course, we could teach it, but science is an expression of curiosity. So I like to think like human beings are scientific creatures. That's just part of us.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, okay. So just to expound on that a little bit, though, I partly agree with that. I think that curiosity is a necessary, but sort of insufficient criterion for science, and we had this argument or this discussion about Carl Sagan, because he also sort of made that point, Jay, that you're making that sort of young kids are sort of born scientists, but others take a different view, which I agree with that. Science goes beyond curiosity because it has a systematic institutionalized way of addressing that curiosity. It's not just the curiosity. It's also the methods that we use in order to satisfy it. And those methods are not inherent. They are not in our DNA. They are very much a cultural, very much a cultural thing.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. And Steve, a big part of that is that it's counter to bias. It's counter to assumption. Whereas like the curiosity makes us go, oh, everything's so interesting. And then what we learn about the science makes us go, oh, don't trust that first instinct.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, right.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I mean, I think we're saying the same thing, Steve. Curiosity is cooked into us, but it is an intellectual gesture that is part of science and it's required. It's required for science because if we didn't have the drive to do it, science wouldn't happen.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Right?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Our curiosity allowed human beings to populate the entire planet and have amazing advancement. And modern science, as an example, truly is an extension of our curiosity and necessity. But Cara is the mother of?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Invention.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' There it is.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, it is. From an evolutionary point of view, it's interesting to think about that because it's got to be a risk benefit kind of thing, right? You need curiosity but caution at the same time. If you're all curious and no caution, you'd get eaten by every predator out there, you know?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right. But that's why we often, I think, when we think about classical Darwinian evolution, we forget about the most important, not maybe the most important, but one very important aspect of evolution and of human psychology, which is interpersonal evolution. We did not evolve alone. And so there's the kinship evolution. And maybe that's why different people have these different, maybe you could call them personality types or however you want to define it, where you've got those brave and kind of out there people and then you've got the much more cautious people and they play off of each other.<br />
<br />
=== Twitter Bans QAnon <small>(26:50)</small> ===<br />
* [https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/twitter-bans-7-000-qanon-accounts-limits-150-000-others-n1234541 NBC News: Twitter bans 7,000 QAnon accounts, limits 150,000 others as part of broad crackdown]<ref>[https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/twitter-bans-7-000-qanon-accounts-limits-150-000-others-n1234541 NBC News: Twitter bans 7,000 QAnon accounts, limits 150,000 others as part of broad crackdown]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' So we've never spoken about QAnon, I think, on this show.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' No, we haven't.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I don't think so.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No. We've talked about it offline before.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, I mean, it's a conspiracy theory.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, I thought it was a character in Star Trek. Geez.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Sounds like one.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But it's a very politically oriented one. And it also is so out there, like not really much to say about it except how nutty it is. But anyway.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Except that people are getting elected who are like QAnon people.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's kind of to some extent entering the mainstream. So maybe we should talk about it. But the thing that's triggering my discussion now is the fact that Twitter decided to, I don't know if it's adequate, if it's accurate to say they banned QAnon, but they functionally are limiting it. So they did ban 7,000 QAnon accounts and they limited access to 150,000 others. Not because of what they believe, but because of their behavior, which is, I think, always a good way to approach things like that. They banned them because they were having coordinated harassment of other users. And that's against the rules. Or they were breaking their rules in terms of having multiple sock puppet accounts. Or they broke the rules because they were evading previous rules that were–<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah. Can't work around.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' They were doing workarounds.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Wait. I thought some of it was because of spreading misinformation. Isn't it tied to that?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' But isn't that part of the rules?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's part of it. But it's not that they specifically cited what I said, though. When they say they justified it because – they might have said that in describing like how pernicious the group is. But they said because – the banning, though, was because – you know, mainly it was because they're doing targeted harassment and threatening of people. They're swarming, right? Which is –<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And that's one of their, yeah, right straight up. It's a massive violation.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So what is QAnon? Just for those of you who may not – who may be blissfully unaware of what it is. It is considered a far-right conspiracy theory. The essence of it is that there is a deep state conspiracy against President Trump because – and the reason for this is because Trump, his real secret agenda while he's been in the White House for the last three and a half years, has been to root out and bring to justice this secret cabal that is running the world.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Aren't they also child molesters?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, of course. So they're running a child sex trafficking ring while they control the world.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Pizzagate.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And that's, yeah, that's George Soros.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yes, and of course, yeah, who's doing this? It's a – it's Democrats, right? So it's a –<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Their political enemies.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Basically, famous Democrats are secretly running child sex rings. And Trump knows about it and he's been plotting this whole time. And in fact, the whole – he faked his Russia connections in order to enlist Robert Mueller in this effort. Right? So Mueller's secretly working with Trump to root out –<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Hmm.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Huh?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You know, it's just really a fantasy story it's just amazing.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's a convoluted pretzel, that is. Wow.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It sounds like something Mueller would do.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The name comes from the – you know, a person on 4chan who says he's an insider who's now sending, under the name Q, sending information out to the world.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah. Believe that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But it's all demonstrably false accusations. And there's it's – many people have called the whole QAnon thing evidence-free and baseless, which I think is being charitable.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Bananas.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It is kind of – it's a conspiracy cult. I think it's definitely a conspiracy cult evolving into like a fringe religion kind of thing, you know. A conspiracy-based religion. But it's it's very pernicious because there's a lot of – if you think, like, the world's being run by a secret ring of sex traffickers paedophilia sex traffickers, that justifies a lot of action on your part. You know, that's –<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Sure.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right. Because you're the good guy.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And there's been at least one murder attributed to QAnon.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' What? I didn't know that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Oh, yeah. But, of course, all their predictions are wrong, you know. Everything they've predicted so far has been wrong when they do make predictions. By now we were supposed to have the storm where all of the Democrats get arrested and sent to Guantanamo Bay.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Whoa. There's, like, a Democratic rapture in this whole thing?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yes. Basically. And then once that happens, then Trump will usher in utopia, you know.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Maybe that's, like, the rounding up of people on the streets in Portland. Maybe this is the beginning of QAnon.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You could see everything. They look at everything through the QAnon lens. Like, once you believe in this cuckoo bananas conspiracy theory, then everything becomes consistent with it. The thing that's really scary is there's, like, a number of Republicans running for the House of Representatives are allied with QAnon.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Some of them, like, oh, maybe they haven't won yet. You're right. But they won their, like, primary or something.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. They won their primary.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Ugh. So scary.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's another lizard, man. People running the world. But in this case, and by the way if you're talking about, like, it's the Bilderberg group or.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Right. The Rothschilds. The Vanderbilts. Oh, the Pentaverit.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The Illuminati. The lizard people. The deep state. These are all code for the Jews. You guys know that, right?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Totally. That's a big part of it.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, boy. Don't get me started.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Of course. This is all super anti-Soros.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. Right. It's like, why George Soros versus any other billionaire? Because. Yeah. I mean, so that's what this is.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And they use, like, white supremacist, like, hashtags and weird stuff. And these, these ones that have been winning their primaries have, like, said these, like, phrases in interviews and, like, flashed things and, like, used hashtags on their Twitter. And, like, people know they're, they're QAnon people because they're, like, saying in so many words. Yeah, QAnon.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Or they just have, like, a their, their logo, like, the Q.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, yeah. There's all sorts of weird symbols in their names.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' They also think that the Democrats are engaged in a satanic cult. Not only, not only a child molesting paedophilia ring, but also you have to throw Satan in there.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, so are they, like, evangelical Christians, too?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' There's a lot of overlap there, you know. Absolutely. So, it's, again, it's, there's a lot of overlap with extreme right-wing politics, with evangelical believers, with world conspiracy theorists New World Order kind of conspiracy. There's kind of a mixing a lot of things in there.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So, obviously, there's something about their, the rhetoric and something about the lore within QAnon that's, like, really appealing to certain people, right? Because this is, like, we think of it as being super fringe, but it doesn't seem like it's all that fringe anymore.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Well, that Cara, but that's the thing as I'm listening to Steve, I'm really thinking about how fringe is it, right? I mean, how many people are saying, I belong to this organization, this loose organization that's joining the current U.S. president and defeating X people? I mean.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But there's also a difference, right, Jay, kind of between, let's think about, like, I think a good backdrop would be white supremacy as a function and as a back, like, as a kind of passive worldview and white supremacy as an organized movement, like people who are neo-Nazis or part of white supremacist groups, like avowed members. Obviously, you've got your fringe avowed members, but the message still reaches larger people and they kind of agree with some of it or most of it or, yeah, I could buy that. I'm not a member, but why not? And that's the scary thing.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I guess it's really impossible to know how many of them have drunk the Kool-Aid deeply. But I think listening to Steve you're hearing telltale signs of some of these key words and some of these phrases and some of the accusations. So it might, they might not even know it, but they might be reiterating the rhetoric.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, exactly. Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's how people go down rabbit holes, right? There's something that's interesting to them and then they follow that thread, not realizing that it's leading all the way down the rabbit hole of a deep conspiracy theory that's been, been fulminating now for several years. And we've talked also before about the fact like, yeah, what is, as Cara says, what is the appeal of the conspiracy theory? And it's clearly there's a, I think there's a little conspiracy theorist in all of us. It sort of speaks to us on some level. It's like, here's, it's, it offers an illusion of control and illusion of understanding. You're on the inside. You're the army of light who sees what's actually going on, where the sheeple don't know. It also insulates itself from self, from your, from a reputation. So it completely is a closed in belief system. So anything that you say, anything that happens or doesn't happen, nothing could ever, even in theory, refute the conspiracy theory because it just sort of accommodates all evidence, all facts or lack thereof.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It reinforces it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. It's like you could turn anything into a reinforcement of the conspiracy itself. And so it really is a trap. It's like a mental trap that people are vulnerable to. And I think that social media really has put that on steroids, right? Because now the pathway is just so short now and almost, it's like automated. The path down the conspiracy rabbit hole is automated on social media. It happens very quickly. It can happen very inadvertently. And I I've spoken to people all on all different parts of that pathway, like people who are not conspiracy theorists, but are just like, oh, I've read this thing. I'm curious about it, right? Just it's interesting. I wonder what's going on here versus, and then a little bit farther, a little bit farther, you can almost see the progress towards being a full-blown conspiracy theorist where you're ready to go shoot up pizza parlors because you think there's a child sex trafficking ring in the basement.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' A basement that doesn't have existence.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. It doesn't exist.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. Right. Like before, Steve, you're right. If somebody has a nugget or a kernel, they can read about that nugget or kernel and then they're maybe going to be lucky enough historically to like, lucky enough in quotes, to like meet somebody else or to read another little breadcrumb. But usually that kernel is sort of in and of itself, but this is, it's all laid out for them. If you find the right chat room.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And this is why I think the, yeah, but the Twitter move I think is important, right? Because we're under no obligation to upvote dangerous misinformation, especially if the people who are spreading it are also breaking our rules, you know? So we're going to aggressively enforce our rules against non-harassment, et cetera. You know, especially spending our resources focusing on groups that, that are spreading dangerous misinformation, right? I think that that's, it's justified.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I think, I think it's, yeah, it's absolutely justified, Steve. I mean, just look the past couple of years, the way misinformation and conspiracy theories have gripped the nation and the extremes that people will go to, to support their beliefs based entirely on unfounded conspiracies and, and misinformation and just not no skepticism or critical thinking. I mean, it's gotten so worse that I'm actually afraid of what could happen with misinformation run wild, because it is an effective, fast tool to cause all sorts of havoc and chaos.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' In a way, Twitter's kind of "lucky" in that these conspiracy theorists specifically, the QAnon group also happens to be inciting violence and happens to be bullying and like, using hate speech. So they don't even have to rest on that kind of seemingly problematic first amendment argument about misinformation. They can even cut before that and say, no, these people are violating our terms of use. We're just going to block them because they're spreading hate.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, that's why if they were more intelligent and more subtle and pernicious, they'd be even more dangerous than they are now.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But, but honestly-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Like the Russian bots.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' They'll probably just adapt and will become more nuanced and subtle.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yes. Yep.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Right. So the thing not to catastrophize it, I'm not saying this is the case, but when you really think about it and read a lot about it there's this question that comes up is like, has social media broken democracy basically? Has it made it impossible to, to run a functioning democracy given how siloed people are in their bubbles of ideological information? Where we, we, we don't even have shared facts anymore.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's always been the case.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Without shared facts.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Not like this.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, it's always a matter of degree though.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's just worse.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's like saying everyone lies. Yeah. Oh yes. There's a big difference between that and a pathological liar. So yes, there's always been misinformation, but there's always been ideological information, but it's not a, there's, I think a different order of magnitude now.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But it's also brought more information to people than ever before.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Absolutely.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' We're drowning in it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' We're drowning in it. Sure. But I, that means that I also have access. And I think that that's two sides of a similar coin, like to say, is social media breaking a functional democracy? In a way it's also making the democracy more functional than it ever was because people have access to more information. So individual actors have more of a voice than they ever had. Like a functional democracy in the past was still something of an oligarchy. We know that. More people, people who were disenfranchised, they didn't really have a voice. Social media gives more people a voice and yes, that means it also elevates the crazy. And so that's really, and, and people become more siloed, which is problematic, but conspiracy theories always existed and people always were believing within their worldview. I mean, that's why racism is so pernicious, guys. Racism is a conspiracy theory.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' A few years ago, maybe five years ago, I would have completely agreed with what you just said. But I think we have to totally look at the fact that most of the social media outlets there are not managing their platforms well. They're not incorporating safety measures of people's personal information. As a matter of fact the personal information thing is a joke. We're being sucked dry of our personal information. But the really important thing is like I'm going to focus on Facebook here because I think they're the worst, is that they are letting horrible and obviously wrong information proliferate like crazy and they're profiting from it. And they are absolutely not, they're decisively not doing anything about it.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, right. Decisively.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, intentionally not doing it. Yeah, you're right.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So here's the thing. You know, first of all, Cara, I agree with everything you said. I've written everything that you said before. And the thing is, they're both true at the same time.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Exactly.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Is that social media is great and it's terrible at the same time. But here's the thing, and I've wrestled with this a lot myself. I think that what happens is it magnifies the media divide, the media savvy divide, the scientific literacy divide, and the critical thinking divide. And so that if you are somebody who is media savvy, media literate, scientifically literate, and has reasonable critical thinking, social media and the internet is just this utopia of information. And it absolutely facilitates everything you're talking about. It facilitates participation, connection, democracy, all of those things. Transparency, it's fantastic. But for people who struggle with media literacy or scientific literacy or critical thinking or who fall down these rabbit holes of conspiracy theories, they get pushed into a different extreme. And so the gulf is widening. And that's what we're seeing is that our society is kind of broken because you have now these different groups that are irreconcilable because they have a completely different view on reality, all on the internet, all on social media, but it still doesn't matter. It's like we're just now broken into different realities. And how do we bridge that gap? And Jay's right. Part of the issue is the social media experiment kind of started with maximal freedom and minimal regulation. And again, I agree in principle with—obviously, I'm a total defender of the First Amendment. I have relied on it myself in the past. And these are critical freedoms, and I'm against the oligarchy controlling what information we get. But there's got to be a middle ground where we have access and freedom, but there's some layer of quality control in there so that the social media algorithms are not being exploited and weaponized by the worst elements of our society and the worst purveyors of misinformation and pathological thinking, because that's what we have now. We demonstrably have that now, and it's not working for us. It is not working for us.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I also think a lot of that kind of goes back not just to social media. I think this is an obvious outcropping and product of the sort of dissolving of those same regulations that used to exist for media as a whole, for the actual kind of fourth estate. I think historically, media was not—there was no profit motive behind television news, even newspapers. There was just a different way that the ethics of journalism existed. And it sort of was heavily dismantled in the 70s, and then it continued to become profit-driven. And then that sort of facilitated or exacerbated this social media movement. So it's not just about freedom of speech, of course. It's about monetizing that speech in a way that has perverse incentives for, yeah, for information.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And not only monetizing it, but then weaponizing it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yes, exactly.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And weaponizing it to profit, to make profit off it. The worst example of that is Alex Jones, where he, in my opinion—and I think this is supported by publicly available information—who has just weaponized misinformation and conspiracy theories in order to hock supplements and snake oil. You know, it's just the two things are together. You know what I mean? It's not either or. It's both.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, if you're not willing to hold up the gentleman's agreement and all bets are off, then all bets are off, which, like, that's the really hard thing. That's why regulation exists.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Mm-hmm. Yeah, exactly.<br />
<br />
=== Uncuttable Material <small>(46:25)</small> ===<br />
* [https://scitechdaily.com/proteus-technology-new-material-is-strong-light-and-non-cuttable/ SciTechDaily: Proteus Technology: New Material Is Strong, Light and Non-Cuttable]<ref>[https://scitechdaily.com/proteus-technology-new-material-is-strong-light-and-non-cuttable/ SciTechDaily: Proteus Technology: New Material Is Strong, Light and Non-Cuttable]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, Bob. So what am I hearing about this uncuttable material? That sounds like an extraordinary claim.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Quite extraordinary. Researchers say that they've created a new material inspired by grapefruits and abalone shells that they claim is uncuttable.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I've cut grapefruit often. What are they talking about?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Uncuttable, huh? So I will neither confirm nor deny that my first thought upon reading this was me creating some kind of Iron Man suit. So this research is from an international research team led by Durham University, UK and Fraunhofer Institute for Machine Tools and Forming Technology in Chemnitz, Germany. I love material science whenever we cover it on the show, so this news item totally sucked me in. So this material is called Proteus, after the shape-changing mythical god, and the aptness of that name will become even more clear. Like many new cool materials derived from nature, in this case specifically grapefruit, and the fracture-resistant shells of mollusks. So in this example, abalone, consider abalone. Their shells consist of aragonite tiles, which is a crystal, and it's mainly there to resist other creatures that want to break in and eat all the nice little juice inside. The researchers noticed, though, that they had a specific hierarchical arrangement of these tiles, and what it created was a fracture resistance that was 3,000 times higher than that of a single aragonite crystal. So something about this hierarchical arrangement. So this new material then was inspired by evolution with its millions of years of R&D that led them to make this new material, which they describe in their paper as a new metallic ceramic hierarchical structure. More specifically, it consists of industrial ceramic spheres within an aluminium metallic foam matrix. So what can a weird material like this do? I mean, okay, it sounds unusual, but what can it do? All right, I'll give you the bottom line. The material was tested and shown to be essentially, effectively, functionally immune to being significantly cut by angle grinders, drills, or even high-pressure water jets. Basically, when they did the test, it cut the surface a little bit, but could not go any deeper, no matter how long they tried. So how does that work?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Wow. Water jets can cut everything, Bob. That's awesome.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, that one's interesting, although it's a little bit different than the grinder and the drill, but it still was essentially immune. So it works because the material just doesn't sit there and take it when you try to cut into it. It actually has a reaction. There's a change. So when a spinning blade, like from an edge grinder, hits one of the ceramic spheres inside, it puts a localized load on the rim of the rotating disc, which leads to high-frequency vibrations. And that's a good chunk of why this is almost, or essentially, uncuttable. So here's a quote from the paper. The new material system is dynamic with an evolving internal structure that creates high-speed motion where it interacts with the cutting tools. The dynamic response is more akin to living structures. The interaction between the disc and ceramic spheres creates an interlocking vibrational connection that resists the cutting tool indefinitely. So that was an interesting quote, indefinitely. It's to sit there forever and you will not be able to cut it with that tool. So this interaction between the cutting tool and the material actually erodes the cutting blade, eventually making it useless as the energy of the disc is turned back on itself. So its own attack, if you will, the attack from the drill or the grinder, its own attack destroys it. So of course, I couldn't help thinking of this. For Trek fans, this is like Kirk's bluff in the Corbermite Maneuver. Remember that episode? That's the one with that little alien kid, the kid that drinks Tranya. So Kirk says that an attack from the alien ship, the Viserys, will turn back on itself and destroy the Viserys. So of course he was bluffing, but this is kind of like that material. It's like whatever energy you put in it to cut into it is going to come back in the form of vibrations and a couple other little things that will just destroy your attempt. So that's of course where I had my little epiphany. I think this material should not be called Proteus. It should be called Corbermite. I mean, I just think it's so obvious. Okay.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, they really missed an opportunity.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, they really did. Back to reality. And that's not the only defense technique this awesome Corbermite material can deploy. Any ceramic that is worn away turns to dust, which fills the cells of the aluminium foam, making it even harder to cut. So it just gets even harder as you make, if you make any progress at all, it just gets even harder. The tests show that Corbermite works against not only, yes, I'm calling it Corbermite. It works against not only grinders and drills, but also water jets, Cara. And this is different. The convex shape of the ceramic actually reduces the force of the water jet by two orders of magnitude. So a hundred times and making it essentially not effective, but it kind of in a different way than the other methods. So it seems like an amazing material and it sounds superficially counterintuitive, right? They have a material that resists attacks, not based on its hardness, but the vibrations of the ceramic components inside, which induce damaging vibrations in the cutting tools themselves. Okay. So now the future, what are some realistic extrapolations here? So some of these are obvious as hell, security, health, safety industries, imagine a bike lock made of this or lightweight armour, or how about this? What if you have a job that actually consists of you using cutting tools, then you could have protective armour on, that's just like a no brainer, right? Like these tools that will cut through almost anything, will not hurt you. That's fantastic. And of course, the researchers talk about working with industry partners to create products for the marketplace. That's something that should be done for a lot of new material science, because some of these are just can be such a milestone material that can have untold impact that we can't even really imagine at this point. Okay. Here's an interesting quote from the paper addressing perhaps further in the future. They say, shifting the design paradigm from static resistance to dynamic interactions between the material phases and the applied load could inspire novel metamorphic materials with pre-programmed mechanisms across different length scales. Think of all the possible permutations because you could take this material that I described to you with the ceramic spheres, with the aluminium foam, and then you could change it. You could tweak it. You could change the base material. You can tune the foam porosity. You could change the sphere size. You could change the way they're packed. And they even mentioned Mediterranean possibilities, which I find especially fascinating. Imagine if you're working at the nanoscale with this kind of hierarchical structures and having who knows what kind of metamaterials you can make with this material. I mean, there's just so many unknowns here, and they've already, I think, these tests were fascinating. Steve, I think I'll end with the actual cutting test that they did. You might find this interesting. So when they did the cutting test, they used a grinder with cutting discs and a sapphire finish, and they cut these panel samples made of the material out of this corbermite material. So the angle grinder achieved only a partial incision and subsequently experienced high wear. So if you look at the external diameter of the cutting tool, it reduced within less than about a minute. It reduced from 115 millimetres to 44 millimetres. It just totally wore it away. And this was in a minute, 60 to 65 seconds. And at that point, the cutting disc became completely ineffective. So the control was this, Steve. They used the best existing armour materials, rolled homogeneous armour steel. This was distributed under a Mars 220 trademark, if that means anything to anybody. The steel is quenched and tempered at temperatures below 200 C to give it a 440 Brinell hardness. So I will suspect that that's a very high hardness level, 440 Brinell. So the angle grinder completely penetrated the 10 millimetre plate in 45 seconds, completely penetrated through the whole thing. Whereas with the new corbermite material, it just made a little bit of an incision and then it stopped dead and couldn't get any deeper. So-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Everybody's going to be Googling corbermite now when they're trying to reference your story.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Good. Absolutely. We need more trick fans. Corbermite or Proteus. Proteus is cool too, but the parallels with corbermite was just too interesting.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Bob, I was wondering how hard it is to work with this material. Meaning it's not something that gets shaped after you make it. You have to cast it, right?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Jay, it's totally indestructible, but you can't put it in the washing machine, otherwise it will fall.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Right. Oh my God.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' You have to dry clean it.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh my God. The Jetsons. Nice one, Steve. I didn't even see that connection. But it makes you think. What can't it survive? And apparently the material had some good deformation qualities, meaning that it could be deformed by some other type of attack, if you will. But yeah, it's not going to survive bombs or lasers or stuff.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, so you could maybe laser cut it?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah. I think basically you're-<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You'd mold it.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah. It's like a mold. Yeah. You're not going to be carving it. That's for sure. So yeah, some type of mold. I don't know if they did the detail of actually how they made it, but they did make it. And they're obviously not carving it. They're probably just some kind of mold.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' If you invent a universal solvent, what do you store it in?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right. Exactly.<br />
<br />
=== Bunny "Ebola" <small>(56:12)</small> ===<br />
* [https://www.popsci.com/story/animals/bunny-ebola-rabbit-hemorrhagic-disease/ Popular Science: What to know about ‘Bunny Ebola,’ the rabbit virus sweeping the Southwest US]<ref>[https://www.popsci.com/story/animals/bunny-ebola-rabbit-hemorrhagic-disease/ Popular Science: What to know about ‘Bunny Ebola,’ the rabbit virus sweeping the Southwest US]</ref><br />
<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, Cara, tell us about bunny Ebola.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yes.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh no.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I know, right? It's like the saddest sounding story.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Tell us about this horrible disease destroying these cute little bunny rabbits.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Why did I pitch this story, Steve?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh my gosh.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Okay. So the first thing that I will kind of push back against, and not your fault, everybody calls it bunny Ebola. All of the headlines are calling it bunny Ebola. And it really is a kind of, I shouldn't say pet name, but a common name that people who keep bunnies, who have experienced this disease before, or have come across it, have called it that. And that's because it is a hemorrhagic disease. It's actually called rabbit hemorrhagic disease, or RHD. But just so that you know, it's a lagavirus. But it's in the family Caliceviridae, so it's not a filovirus, which is the class of viruses that like hentavirus, Ebola, and the different kind of human hemorrhagic fevers that we're used to wearing.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Nasty stuff.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Nasty stuff. This is also very nasty, rabbit hemorrhagic disease. But of course, because it's a hemorrhagic disease, I think that people who keep rabbits have taken to calling it rabbit Ebola, because our point of reference is Ebola, if that makes sense. Totally different virus, though. So from here on out, I'm going to call it RHD, or rabbit hemorrhagic disease, because I don't want to perpetuate the rabbit Ebola myth. So let's talk a little bit about RHD, what's going on, why this is a relevant news story. RHD has been around since the 80s that we've known about it. It originated in China. There's some confusion as to whether it originated in China from German rabbits, or whether it actually formed in China. And the original RHDV, so the rabbit hemorrhagic disease is the disease. So that's like COVID-19, I guess we could say, if we're using analogies. Whereas RHDV, rabbit hemorrhagic disease virus, is the virus that causes. That's more like SARS-CoV-2. Make sense? Yeah. Okay. So RHDV actually causes two different viruses. The original one, RHD, anybody listening to the show from Europe who knows about European rabbit die-offs is probably pretty familiar with RHD, because this decimated rabbit populations in Europe, also Australia, also across parts of Africa. But again, like I said, it started in China. Now there was a very small outbreak of RHDV1, so the original RHDV, in the US as well, but it was quickly contained and neutralized. It also tended to only be able to affect adult European rabbits. Adult European rabbits just happened to be the rabbit kind of species. So Oryctolagus cuniculus, maybe that's how you say it. That just happens to be the rabbit that most people were importing for meat, or were keeping as pets, or were raising for fur. Kind of across Asia, Europe, Australia, and a few other places. So this virus happened to wreak havoc in just these rabbits, but then it caused a lot of damage because those rabbits were pretty much everywhere. Then we saw in 2010, RHDV2 pop up. Now this is also causing a similar syndrome in the rabbits, but it's a different virus. It turns out that this virus is way more widespread, so it actually can be carried by a lot more species. So we saw it in not just European rabbits, but we also saw it in hares. Now in the United States, there's a new outbreak that we're seeing spread across the Southwestern United States, and it's actually affecting a lot of different rabbit species, like everywhere from our cottontail rabbits, our hares, mountain cottontails, desert cottontails, antelope jackrabbits, black-tailed jackrabbits. So we're seeing a lot of different species that are getting affected by this. It looks like the mortality rate isn't quite as high, but there's a lot of things that are really problematic with the RHDV2 virus. One of them is that it actually kills younger rabbits. So historically, the first RHDV would only infect adult rabbits, and the very, very young seem to be unaffected altogether, and adolescent rabbits seem to have a lesser disease from them. But unfortunately, RHDV2 also occurs in young rabbits, and it kills them very quickly. So we're talking between one and five days of an incubation period, and then rabbits have a tendency to look very, very well until they die. This is a common kind of rabbit thing, regardless of their disease state. But specifically also with RHDV, yeah, they classify it as sort of like, it's like the opposite of what we think of when we think of thanatosis. So you know how some animals will play dead? So rabbits tend to play healthy. They tend to play healthy until they're so sick that they can't kind of carry on, and so that's why you see these very sudden deaths where you think almost nothing was wrong. With RHDV2 though, there is some symptomatology if you keep your eye out, like you might see lethargy, and you might see a high fever and a little bit of a loss of appetite. But very quickly before they die, they get bloated, they'll have weight loss or diarrhoea, they become heavily jaundiced, and then oftentimes it's a sudden death. So maybe you didn't see any symptoms, and you just find them dead, and they might have blood around their nose, their eyes, their mouth, or their rectum. And that's because the way that this virus works is that it actually induces apoptosis in the liver. So this is a hepatic hemorrhagic virus. It causes necrotizing hepatitis, which is really brutal. I mean, it sounds like it's pretty painful. Basically that liver just has massive haemorrhaging. There's also some problems with clotting factors, and they, yeah, they bleed out. It's also very, very infectious and incredibly fatal. We're talking sometimes upwards of 90% fatality. Sometimes it's 100% has been measured in close quarters. Yeah, it spreads like wildfire. It's a very dangerous virus. And so animals, there's a really cool New Yorker article, I don't have time to get into it. I've read like 10 different articles about this to try and bone up on it. A lot of people, a lot of news outlets are writing about it, unfortunately, a good search term would be bunny Ebola. But maybe if you search for rabbit hemorrhagic virus, you'll see there's a great article in Science, a great article in POPSCI, kind of American Veterinary Medical Association is writing about it. But there's a New Yorker article that does a lot of great, really detailed background. And they actually talk a lot about the way that the USDA has always kind of qualified rabbits. It's weird. They're not subject to any of the same humane laws that dogs and cats are, even though they're the third most popular pet in America, more than birds, super weird, right? And they're also not subject to the same humane slaughter laws that livestock are subject to, although they are a very common food source. And rabbits are also grown for fur, and they also are grown as like 4-H projects a lot of times. So they're in this weird kind of netherland between being a really beloved pet and being a source of food, which is quite rare in Western culture. And so the way that they are regulated, the way that they are dealt with is quite complicated. Now it turns out that there are vaccines for this, which is great. There are vaccines for both RHDV-1 or RHDV-A and this newer form that is just like brutalizing America right now, RHDV-2. The problem is these are injectable vaccines, at least the RHDV-2 ones, which means that they're a good idea if you have pet rabbits. Like if you're concerned, it's actually been recommended that you get your pet rabbits vaccinated. The problem is your state veterinarian has to approve the importation because it's not USDA approved, because it never was a problem before. We had one small local outbreak, remember? And so the USDA regulation, I don't think has caught up yet, but apparently you can get this vaccine. You just have to get your state veterinarian. I didn't know there was a state veterinarian, but that's a thing. And you have to get your state veterinarian to approve it. They also say frequent hand-washing, disinfecting equipment, keeping your rabbitry closed if you have lots of rabbits, preventing indirect contact. And here's the really scary part. You have to limit wild sources because this can run rampant in both wild populations and pet populations. So vaccinating wild populations is not feasible. I mean, there's so many rabbits and there's no way you can inject them. And even if you did, from some of the sources that I read, the capture and injection is so traumatic that that often kills the rabbits in and of itself. So it's just not feasible. But there are some countries in Europe that are trying to develop an oral vaccine, which means then you could actually bait the rabbits with it. So you could do more widespread efforts. Another problem is, get this, it's so scary. Like fomites love this, or I should say this virus loves fomites. And the more I dug into it, the more I was like, wow, this is brutal. Transmission usually occurs in either live infected animals, dead infected animals, body fluids and hair, but also clothing, food, cages, bedding, feeders, flies, fleas, mosquitoes, predators and scavengers. And they can survive, the virus can survive freezing. It can persist in meat for months and it can live in decomposing carcasses for months. I read a journal article that said it could exist on paper, like non-porous paper or something like that for like weeks. Like it's a super virulent little bugger. And you might think, okay, well, there's lots of rabbits, why is that a problem? But let's be real, we don't really understand, the more I've dug into it, the more I've realized we don't really understand what our rabbit population numbers are like, at least in the US. We do know that there are critically endangered rabbit species, or at least heavily threatened species like Washington's pygmy rabbits. We also know that pika are closely related enough to rabbits that they can likely get rabbit hemorrhagic disease and they are a threatened species. And we know from previous outbreaks in Europe that even if the rabbits were in large numbers and this die off we didn't think of as being that ecologically detrimental. Of course, we also know that ecology is a web. And so because the rabbits died, we also saw that the Iberian lynx died and that certain birds died because they needed the rabbits as food sources. So we've got to remember that everything is in balance. So when we have a really, really brutal pandemic, that's wiping out specific species, it actually is going to potentially lead to a lot of negative downstream consequences. I wouldn't call it rabbit Ebola, but if somebody references it, at least you know they're talking about RHDV. If you yourself keep rabbits as pets, be really wary because this is a real risk and it's a very new risk that just started popping up within the last few months here in the US. If you live in Europe or Australia, you may have been aware of this for quite some time or parts of Africa and other parts of Asia. There are a lot of references online where you can read about outbreaks and what you can do. A lot of great infographics about how to protect your rabbits. And also I would say be wary if you tend to eat rabbit. Now might be the time to limit because imported meat can actually spread to live rabbits. And they think that that's how a lot of these spillover events or these outbreaks have occurred historically is that meat was imported. And then let's say you chopped vegetables near the meat and then you fed those vegetables to other rabbits and then those rabbits caught the virus from the rabbit meat. So you've got to be really, really careful about those events.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh wow.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. Yeah. So interesting.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah. Maybe they should call it Corbomite Ebola.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But even within the United States, I don't think I fully realized how sort of central to a lot of people's lives rabbits are. I always thought of them as those cute things you sometimes see on the lawn.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's the third most popular pet, right?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We had rabbits growing up.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I did too. And the thing is, historically we had a rabbit in like one of those outdoor little cages that had like an outdoor section and an indoor bedding section. So it's protected from the elements. And it always lived in that thing. We would let it hop around our yard. But a lot of people have indoor rabbits, like the floppy-eared breeds that are much larger. That's a very common indoor pet because you can train them to use the litter box.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Really?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. Apparently they make amazing pets.<br />
<br />
== Who's That Noisy? <small>(1:10:42)</small> ==<br />
* Answer to last week’s Noisy: {{w|Yoshi}} vocalizations<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Jay, it's Who's That Noisy time.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' All right, guys. Last week I played this noisy.<br />
<br />
[brief, vague description of Noisy]<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, tell me that's someone making their dog. Yeah, the funny noises. La, la, la.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' La, la, la. Evan, I just watched that a couple of days ago.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's so good.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' All right. So guys, this is crazy, right? But it is something. And people sent in guesses. iPuppy wrote in, iPuppy writes in a lot. He says, hey, Jay, for this week's eminently repeatable noisy, I'm going to say that it is a library of computer generated sounds to be used in creating artificial speech. I guess that it's from a library used for an Asian language, but not sure which. That is a very good guess. And that is what I probably would have guessed. And that's what I thought people were going to guess. But that is not correct. But I will give you a star for what I think is a very good guess. Teddy B wrote in, hi guys, I'm going to guess that that was the updated Siri on iOS 13. You tell Siri to change your nickname to variations of hi, hi, et cetera. The natural language voice processing now smooths out the pronunciation, which means Siri tries its hardest to make a nonsensical string of letters sound like it's saying something meaningful. And he says this is very funny and I wish I could try it. So anyway, that's not it. But I would have to hear it to hear how close you got to the sound. Everybody knows Visto Tutti. Visto wrote in and said, sounds like the phonetics of a Mandarin language sounding out of the permutations of the tones, sounding out the permutations of the tones. That is also not correct. We have a winner from last week. Harry Stewart wrote in and said, hey Jay, I actually know this one for sure. Hopefully I'm getting it fast enough. This is the sound for, wait a second, I'll play you what it is. Let's see if you can guess it when you hear it correctly. [plays Noisy] So that is Yoshi, the character, the Mario Brothers character, Mario Brothers character. Yoshi.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Mario.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I know, Mario, Mario. I don't even know what's reality anymore.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's me, Mario. It's always in the game.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' You're right. So Yoshi is, he appears in a few things. I mean, I know him from Mario Kart and he also, I believe, is something that Mario rides at one point and he sticks his tongue out. So I just find it absolutely amazing that at some point somebody did this. Right? He's in the recording booth. The director is there. You know, this is a big business. You know, this is a billion dollar business. These characters are just as popular as any famous movie star today. Everybody knows these characters. And the director is like, can you say that again, but with a little more, oh, whoa, whoa, you know? Like, of course this is happening. This is the world we live in and I love it. So anyway, thank you so much. That was sent in by Gwen and Ollie Wagner. It's a great noisy. I got the sense that they said it was a silly noisy. I don't think they thought I would use it. I loved it. I used it.<br />
<br />
=== New Noisy <small>(1:14:28)</small> ===<br />
<br />
'''J:''' All right. I have a new noisy for this week, guys. This was sent in by a listener named Daniel Goodale Porter. And here it is.<br />
<br />
[brief, vague description of Noisy]<br />
<br />
Very, very specific noisy. There is one point where you hear the sound punctuate, and that is what I want you to tell me. What is that? What is going on with this? So if you think you have the answer or if you heard a cool noisy this week, you can email me at WTN@theskepticsguide.org.<br />
<br />
== Announcements <small>(1:15:18)</small> ==<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Now Steve.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' We are at when people hear this, we will very likely be less than a week away from NECSS by the time this podcast comes out.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's correct.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I would like everyone to know that the website is complete. Everything all the information that you need is on there. The schedule is complete. We have a wonderful, wonderful and absolutely awesome conference this year. The thing that just happened today, which I was able to finally secure. So Ann Druyen is our keynote speaker and is a director, a producer. She was one of the creators of Cosmos. Ann will be speaking at the conference, but she will be talking directly with Bill Nye the entire time, and they will be discussing a few things that are going on in Anne's life right now. And of course, the conversation will go in pretty much any direction that they wanted to.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' He's basically going to be interviewing her for her spot. Yeah. For her keynote.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yes. And Bill and Anne are friends. They know each other very well. They were both very excited when I finally was able to let them both know that I wanted the other person involved. They both were like, okay, absolutely. Yes. And it all locked in today. So it's very cool. So Bill is really excited about that. If you're a registered attendee, you can watch the conference for a month. So please join us. We'll see you there. I can't wait. There's only one more show that's going to happen, one more SGU show, and we're recording that when? Monday of next week, Steve?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, but it's not going to come out until the day of.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So this is basically it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' This is the last show before the conference.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' This is the one. When you hear this, if you're interested, go register because you will probably miss it if you wait another week.<br />
<br />
== Questions/Emails/Corrections/Follow-ups <small>(1:16:57)</small> ==<br />
<br />
=== Question #1: Shellenberger Letter ===<br />
* [https://www.theepochtimes.com/environmentalist-issues-apology-for-misleading-climate-alarmism_3407349.html Epoch Times: Environmentalist Issues Apology for Misleading 'Climate Alarmism']<ref>[https://www.theepochtimes.com/environmentalist-issues-apology-for-misleading-climate-alarmism_3407349.html Epoch Times: Environmentalist Issues Apology for Misleading 'Climate Alarmism']</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. We have one email. I've been trying to get to this email for weeks where we keep running out of time. Doing it this week, damn it. Because we keep getting emails. We get people asking us, hey, what do you think about that environmentalist who wrote an open letter apologizing on behalf of other environmentalists? So yeah, I do have some thoughts about that. So the environmentalist in question is Michael Schellenberger, and he wrote sort of an op-ed, which was like an open letter apology. So apologizing on behalf of environmentalists for, "climate alarmism". So this is a little bit complicated, but this is—and at some point we might want to just get him on the show or somebody from his group and just ask him what the hell he's—what was he thinking of? But this is how I put it all together. So first of all, I mean, the whole shtick of apologizing on behalf of environmentalists, come on, dude. I mean, that was just—that was not cool. Not up to you to apologize on behalf of everyone in the environmental movement. And it was—in my opinion, it was a horrible piece of science communication. Because the thing is, I—this guy, Schellenberger, is not like a climate change denier. And he is an environmentalist.His colleagues who are kind of on his side of the fence in terms of their approach to environmentalism are, "perplexed" by his opinion piece. Like, I don't know what he was talking about there, but it's not—that's not the Schellenberger that we know, you know. And he's got a book coming out, Apocalypse Never. And so the—one way to look at this is he's just shilling for his book, and it was kind of a publicity stunt, which in that case, it worked, sort of. But I just think it was just a horrible piece of science communication, and here's why I think that. So Schellenberger and others are a member of a self-proclaimed group called Eco-Modernism. I don't know if we've ever talked about Eco-Modernism on this show before.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It doesn't ring a bell.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. They published the Eco-Modernist Manifesto in 2015. Here's the thing. Much of their position I completely agree with. You know, within the realm of environmentalism, this is probably the closest to my personal views. The only problem I have is it kind of turns an approach into an ideology, you know what I mean? Like a rule of thumb or a guiding principle into an ism, you know what I mean? Which I think is a little bit of a problem, but that's kind of a soft criticism. So their basic approach to environmentalism, and the reason why they call it Eco-Modernism, is they believe that there's two principles. One is that we should do everything we can to shrink the impact of human civilization on the environment to make more room for nature, right? So that's a pretty vanilla environmentalist kind of position. But they say that they reject the other longstanding environmental ideals, specifically that human societies must harmonize with nature to avoid economic and ecological collapse. So they're saying that traditional environmentalists have sort of these two pillars. One is we need to preserve nature. The other one is in order to do that, we need to harmonize with nature to reduce our footprint, et cetera. They're saying we agree with the first part, but not the second part. We think rather that we should leverage human technology in order to decouple our dependence on like our, to decouple our civilization from dependence on the environment for sustenance and resources and well-being. And the more that we can do that, the more that we can decouple our civilization from reliance on the environment, the better the environment will be. So in other words, we don't want to go back to a more primitive state. We want to go push through, go forward and leverage our technology. So like one obvious example of this would be if we advanced our technology to all renewable energy, that would be a good thing for the environment, right? We don't want to go back to a low energy civilization. We want to go through to a high energy civilization, but one where we have completely sustainable green technology, right? So yeah, I mean, who doesn't, I mean, I get that people do disagree with that, but I completely agree with that. And probably the one issue where they disagree most with their traditional environmentalist colleagues is over what? What would you guess if you don't already know?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Nuclear.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Nuclear. Nuclear power.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, of course.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So they are totally pro-nuclear, which of course you know I am if you listen to my talking about this topic before and saying that, hey, nuclear, if you want to get away from carbon releasing dirty energy technology, nuclear is the way to go. And then from that we want to go to renewables. So they are saying there is this progress, like the higher tech we get, the better it is for the environment. The problem with coal is that it is an old dirty technology. Now one thing that they say that I think is a little controversial is they think that coal is better than wood burning. And I am not sure that I am convinced about that, but I get there why they say that. And this gets to, this cuts to the heart of Schellenberg's apology his open statement is that he is saying not only are environmentalists often pointing at the wrong thing, that they are, and it is not that climate change isn't real, it is that it is not our biggest problem right now. It is not the greatest threat to the environment. What is the greatest threat to the environment is land use, which I also agree with. Because that is, I think the evidence clearly shows that. And that actually, there is a lot of evidence to back that up. And that is why he thinks that coal is better than wood, because in order to have a wood-based energy infrastructure, you need a lot of land. You basically have to grow trees as a crop on land and not have a natural ecosystem, whereas coal has a much smaller footprint when it comes to land use, even though it has a bigger impact in terms of CO2 release. So I don't, I kind of disagree with that. I think that if you're maybe short term, there is a point there, but long term, the problem is the carbon we release from the coal is kind of, we are releasing long sequestered carbon and it's going to have an effect for 1,000 years, you know. But anyway, that's kind of a side issue. But I have to agree with a lot of the points that, yeah, we should not eschew nuclear if our goal is really to decarbonize our infrastructure. Yes, we should leverage technology, absolutely. GM food, absolutely. Organic is not the way to go. GM farming is. We want to farm more on less land. Land use, absolutely. Do some environmentalists say irresponsible things that set them up for legitimate criticism? Absolutely. So there's I think that there is room in the environmentalist movement for a strictly evidence-based, science-based voice. And I think that the eco-modernists tried to set themselves up as that. And as far as that goes, I kind of agree with them. I'm not necessarily, I don't know enough about every little recommendation and opinion that they have to say that I completely agree with them. I think that I may disagree with them on certain details. But if that was his goal, Schellenberger, in writing this op-ed was to promote that approach, I think he utterly failed. The framing of his apology, what he did was drive a wedge between the eco-modernists and the traditional environmentalists and gave comfort and aid to the science deniers who are just drooling over this, absolutely drooling over his apology. It was it was almost malpractice what he did.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, I mean, I read it as straight up like, sorry, we were alarmists.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And that's how we framed it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, isn't as bad as we made it out to be. Like that's how I read it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, that's how it reads. And it's ridiculous. He just provided red meat to the climate change deniers. He probably pissed off most of the environmentalist movement. He confused the public. You know, that is a science communication failure.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And do you think his book like turns back, do you think it's one of those like crappy things where the headline is basically like, is everything you know about X wrong? And then the first line of the article is, no, no, it's not. <br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, no, no. I think he's a sincere environmentalist who's trying to be science-based. He has this sort of approach that I described. You can read the Eco-Modernist Manifesto if you want to get all the details. And he's probably frustrated with the fact that and I'm frustrated the same thing. And this is maybe a manifestation of that frustration. I don't know. Like what I'm frustrated about is you have two groups, basically. You have, at least in the United States, like we have two political groups. One is embracing pseudoscience and science denial. And the other is embracing the science of climate change, but rejecting the science of agriculture and the science of energy and rejecting the scientific consensus on probably the two most important ways that we have to fight climate change. And so no matter who's in power, we're not going to succeed. We are going to fail when we try to avoid the worst outcomes of climate change. Unless there's a wake-up call. This was not the wake-up call. This was piss off everybody with a confusing, poorly framed stunt, in my opinion. You know, and again, I think maybe you're being charitable by saying he's just trying to shill for his book. But you know, this is not where we need to be, right? We need to bring the environmentalists over to GM food and nuclear power, convince them that organic farming is a loser because it uses up more land. You know, convince them that again, we need nuclear power if we're going to decarbonize and they're going to have to get over their decades of demonizing it and just get, you know. And again, it's like move away from the ideology towards evidence. Whatever works. Whatever works. Rather than saying this is our philosophy, so we're only going to operate within the paradigm of our philosophy and not just consider whatever works. Maybe sometimes the low-tech way is the way to go. You know what I mean? Whatever the evidence supports I promote evidence-based environmentalism. So eco-modernism has a lot of valid points, but I think maybe it's become too much of an ideology. And then, of course, once you have a label like that, then political groups do kind of like either own it or distance themselves from it. It becomes politicized. It was almost like an invitation to become politicized. So again, now I'm triply frustrated. You know what I mean? We've got to get our head and our ass wired together and solve this problem because this kind of stuff is going on, you know. And that's what people are emailing us is like saying what's going on here? Like they're confused by what his, when you were confused, right, by what his point was. Terrible.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Muddy the waters.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. Just muddies the waters further. And then, and the science deniers are doing a victory lap. Just terrible. I don't know what else to say. Very frustrating. Very frustrating. Anyway, let's go on with science or fiction.<br />
<br />
== Science or Fiction <small>(1:29:01)</small> ==<br />
{{SOFResults<br />
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|fiction= goosebumps <!--- short word or phrase representing the item ---><br />
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|science1 = mammal brains<!-- short word or phrase representing the item --><br />
|science2 = rock shape<!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
|science3 = <!-- leave blank if absent --> <br />
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|rogue1= cara <!--- rogues in order of response ---><br />
|answer1= goosebumps <!--- short word or phrase representing the guess ---><br />
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|rogue2=bob<br />
|answer2=rock shape<br />
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|rogue3=jay<br />
|answer3=goosebumps<br />
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|rogue4= evan <!-- delete/leave blank if absent --><br />
|answer4= goosebumps <!-- delete/leave blank if absent --><br />
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|rogue5= <!-- delete/leave blank if absent --><br />
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|host= steve <!--- asker of the questions ---><br />
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|sweep= <!-- all the Rogues guessed wrong --><br />
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''Voice-over: It's time for Science or Fiction.''<br />
<br />
<blockquote>'''Item #1:''' A new analysis of 130 mammalian species finds that brain overall connectivity and connection efficiency are conserved across all species tested.<ref>[https://www.nature.com/articles/s41593-020-0641-7 Nature: Conservation of brain connectivity and wiring across the mammalian class]</ref><br>'''Item #2:''' Scientists have discovered that goosebumps are conserved in humans because they protect the skin from frostbite.<ref>[https://hscrb.harvard.edu/news/the-real-reason-behind-goosebumps/ HSCRB: The real reason behind goosebumps]</ref><br>'''Item #3:''' Researchers have found that the average shape of natural rock fragments is a cube.<ref>[https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2020/07/16/2001037117 PNAS: Plato’s cube and the natural geometry of fragmentation]</ref></blockquote><br />
<br />
'''S:''' Each week I come up with three science news items or facts, two real and one fake. Then I challenge my panel of skeptics to tell me which one they think is the fake. And you know what? You at home can play along if you so choose. Are you guys ready for this week's news items?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yes.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yes.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, here we go. No theme, just cool news items. Item number one, a new analysis of 130 mammalian species finds that brain, overall connectivity, and connection efficiency are conserved across all species tested. Item number two, scientists have discovered that goose bumps are conserved in humans because they protect the skin from frostbite. And item number three, researchers have found that the average shape of natural rock fragments is a cube.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' What?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Cara, you seem interested. Why don't you go first?<br />
<br />
=== Cara's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Okay. I will take them in order. 130 mammalian species, brain, overall connectivity, and connection efficiency are conserved. You say overall, so it's like, what?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, the patterns are not the same, but the overall connectivity is the same.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right. Overall. Because that's kind of weird because some mammals have like whole parts of the brain that are different. Well, no, that's not true. I'm thinking of birds. Birds are not mammals. It's one in the morning here. Oh, man.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Cara, you're going to be okay.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' What about those lizards?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Power through. Power through.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Those feathered mammals.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Now for those arachnids.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Derp. But yeah, some mammals have smaller or larger frontal lobes. But yeah, overall connectivity and connection efficiency, this is a double whammy, are conserved.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I'll explain to you what that means. That means the connection efficiency is the number of synapses necessary to complete a single circuit. So if you want to get a signal from point A to point B, it passes X number of synapses. That efficiency is the same for all 130 mammalian species they tested.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So it's kind of like that least number holds across species. Okay. Scientists have discovered that goosebumps are conserved in humans because they protect the skin from frostbite. What? Researchers have found that the average shape of natural rock fragments is a cube. When you say natural rock fragments, you mean like what we think of as rocks?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. Rocks.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I don't buy that. I mean, minerals. Yeah. I've never seen a square. Well, that's not true. I've seen square rocks. I don't know. Okay. Maybe. Because then they get rounded by things like erosion and like wind and yeah, water. I always learned that, what are they? The erector pili?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Pili or something.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Muscles that give you goosebumps and like that puff out your hair are, I always thought that they were leftover from either sort of like making yourself look bigger to scare other animals or to like warm yourself when you're cold from back when we were covered in hair. I don't know how that would prevent frostbite in any way, shape or form. So I think I'm going to have to say the goosebumps one is the fiction.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay, Bob.<br />
<br />
=== Bob's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''B:''' The first one, the brain connectivity and conservation. Yeah, that makes sense. I can't think of a reason to shoot that down. The second one, the frostbite protection from the hair. I can buy that because that means that you've got these little muscles. I'm assuming that there's these little muscles that are making the hair stick up and a lot. So that's a, for every hair, you've got like, I guess a ring of muscle or whatever muscle and all that muscle right there may be enough to somehow generate heat to offer some protection from frostbite, bringing some heat. You know, a muscle that's being used is a little bit warmer, I would say. So maybe it can make your skin a little bit more, a little bit warmer by bringing the heat from the interior. So it could protect you a little bit. I don't think it's going to be a lot. I can make some kind of tortuous kind of connection there. That kind of makes sense. The rock fragments. I mean, yeah, that one just seems obvious. Like, sure. That's the one that we're going to just like say baloney. So I'm hesitant to even pick that one, but I can come up with reasons for the first two. So what the hell? I'll say rock fragments are cubes and on average is fiction.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, Jay.<br />
<br />
=== Jay's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''J:''' The first one about the analysis of 130 mammalian species. So basically we're saying here that the overall connectivity is similar, right, Steve?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Mm-hmm.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' And I would think that that is science. I think that mammalian brains are very, very similar in tons of ways. So moving on to the last one. Researchers have found the average shape of a natural rock fragment is a cube. Yeah. So I'm sure that they studied the rocks and how they shear and how they crumble and break and then they were able to suss out what was the average shape that would come out of those natural processes. There has to be something that is the most common and it's not a stretch to think that the cube was it. This last one about goosebumps protecting from frostbite. I would say that this is why I'm picking this one as a fiction. There's no way that goosebumps protect from frostbite. I think that goosebumps have everything to do with hair and making the hair stand up and there's other things that the activation of goosebumps do that have to do with hair and hair growth. So that one is the fiction.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And Evan?<br />
<br />
=== Evan's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Well, I think I'm on with Cara and Jay on this one. I think talking about goosebumps in the context of frostbite might sound convincing. But I think there are lots of reasons why you get goosebumps and cold-related stuff might be one of them but it's probably a whole bunch of different things, emotions among other things. So I'll say that one is the fiction.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #1 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So you guys all agree on the first one. A new analysis of 130 million species finds that brain overall connectivity and connection efficiency are conserved across all species tested. What if I said that included humans?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, I think I was including humans.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Well, I figured, yeah. I guess I figured they were in there too.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay. So including humans, this one is science. And this was a surprising result. You know, this was not what they were expecting to find.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Really?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I remember we spoke previously about the study which showed that neuronal density does vary considerably.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yes. Those two words came into my head. It's like, oh, how does that relate to neuronal density? But I already put my dime down. So I was like, all right, I made my decision.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. So that was my question. And I was like, okay, is connectivity and neuronal density related? But it's different. And I think you would think of this more as efficiency of design. Essentially what they're saying is that the mammalian brain sort of generically has evolved towards a certain optimization which exists among all mammals. And so that connection efficiency, like the number of synapses to get from A to B, absolutely conserved. And they said like the patterns of connections could be very different. And they were specifically looking at intra and interhemispheric connectivity, like the right hemisphere connecting to itself versus connecting to the left hemisphere. That could be very variable in some species and in some individuals within a species. There could be marked differences in like how much of the connections are on one side versus both sides. But if you look at the overall connections, like as per volume of brain, they were the same. They were surprisingly conserved.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's interesting.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. Really interesting.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Cool.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #2 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. Let's go to number two. Scientists have discovered that goosebumps are conserved in humans because they protect the skin from frostbite. So Cara's right there, the notion that goosebumps exist in order to raise the fur on animals for display or for heat. Right. And humans don't have fur. So why do we still get goosebumps? It's a vestigial kind of effect.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, so it's not a wives' tale. Okay. Cool.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. But the question is why do we still have them? Why do humans still have them when there's no functionality that we know of?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Doesn't need functionality, right?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. So it may not need it. It could just be that it is truly vestigial and just a holdover. Or it could be that it's still serving some benefit and that's what it's for. And the researchers did find a function for the goosebumps.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' But not frostbite, is it?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But not frostbite.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Crap.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So this one's a fiction. Sorry, Bob.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Sorry, Bob.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So that bit about the frostbite I made up, the real reason, the "real reason".<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I know the answer.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You do? What is it?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That it can help hair growth.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And did you read that or how did you know that?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I read that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, you read it. That's correct. That is correct. So it's not that it helps hair growth. It's already essential in the basic anatomy that is important for hair growth. So essentially think about it this way. So the muscle cells that currently are responsible for goosebumps, they connect the autonomic nervous system to the hair follicles and are responsible for stimulating hair growth. Now, at some point along the way, they evolved this secondary function of creating goosebumps, of raising up the fur. So even when the benefit of that was lost, the goosebump muscles continued because they need to continue to do their original function, which is critical in hair follicle growth. So that's why we still have them, because we still need them.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Don't you see some sort of, Steve, some sort of weird pseudoscience where people like have their heads, have like cold air blown on their heads in order to get goosebumps and regrow their hair?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Right. Well, that doesn't do it. But it's the notion that, yeah, so we retain them for their original function and this derived function of raising the fur is no longer relevant to us, but it doesn't matter. So a very interesting sort of evolutionary sort of pathway there. But it makes sense.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item # ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All this means that researchers have found that the average shape of natural rock fragments is a cube, is science.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Borg.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And of course, all the reporting on it is relating it to Plato. You know why?<br />
<br />
'''J:'' Yes. Because he called it. He said it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' He said it. So Plato, he had the idea that the universe is made of five things, right? Air, water, earth, and fire, and cosmos. And the fifth element, which is the cosmos. And he assigned a shape to each of those. And the shape that he assigned to the earth matter was a cube. So basically, the earth is made of cubes. It turns out that that's, from a certain perspective, that's true. Though it had nothing to do with Plato didn't call anything. It was a coincidence, basically. But, yeah, so what they did was they used kind of technical terminology here. But they did a, they said, I'm just going to read it. Let me read it. I'm just going to say, we apply the theory of convex mosaics to show that the average geometry of natural two-dimensional fragments from mud cracks to earth's tectonic plates has two attractors, platonic quadrangles and Voronoi hexagons. In three dimensions, the platonic attractor is dominant. Remarkably, the average shape of natural rock fragments is cuboid. So, yeah, attractors just means, like, what does it tend towards when you average it out? And it turns out, so there's the cuboid and the hexagons, but the cuboid is dominant in three dimensions. In two dimensions, it's both. But in three dimensions, it's cube. So the earth is made of cubes, or the average shape of rocks is cubes is another way to put it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's interesting. Because I often feel like, you know how when you go to the gem part of a museum of natural history and you look at all the different minerals and gems, a lot of them are cuboid, like a lot, a lot. And so that was what stuck out for me for this one to be science. But, yeah, it's counter-intuitive because we always see round rocks.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, but if you really look carefully, and I do, and I'm sure Jay has now as well, if you ever, like, are in – spent any time selecting rocks because you want to use them for some kind of building purpose, like I've used natural rock to rim my garden. And I was specifically looking for rocks that have two flat edges on them, right? And there's a ton. There's a lot of rocks with flat edges. It's not hard. Most rocks have one or more pretty flat edges on them. So that cartoon of a round rock is not really accurate. It's not accurate.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, one thing that I thought about that helped me pick that as fiction, though, was like, all right, well, the weathering kind of skews things. But then I was like, all right, where could I look where there's no weathering? How about the moon? There's no real weathering there.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' There is, though.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' What?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' There is, though, by micrometeorites.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Right. Yeah, there is. But it's not like on the earth. I mean, stuff there stays pristine, pretty pristine, for much longer than the earth. So if you want to look at a better example, then the moon is better than the earth. And that didn't help me think that they were cuboid either.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I don't know if I agree with that because the surface of the moon, the regolith is dust pounded into dust by micrometeorites.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, but I've seen plenty of pictures, though, of moon rocks and some of the hill mountain-like structures there.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, but that's the cosmos material. It's not the earth material. So, of course, it's not cuboid.<br />
<br />
== Skeptical Quote of the Week <small>(1:43:20)</small> ==<br />
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<!-- For the quote display, use block quote with no marks around quote followed by a long dash and the speaker's name, possibly with a reference. For the QoW in the recording, use quotation marks for when the Rogue actually reads the quote. --> <br />
<br />
<blockquote>Nothing limits intelligence more than ignorance; nothing fosters ignorance more than one's own opinions; nothing strengthens opinions more than refusing to look at reality. <br>– {{w|Sheri S. Tepper}} (1929-2016), American novelist</blockquote><br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, Evan, before we go on to your quote, I forgot to mention at the top of the show, and I wanted to squeeze this in there, Kevin Folta, our friend of the show, reminded me of this. The day this show comes out, July 25th, is Rosalind Franklin's 100th birthday.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Wow.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' 100.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, my gosh.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And just to remind you, Rosalind L.C. Franklin, born July 25th, 1920, died April 16th, 1958. So she was an English chemist who came up with an X-ray crystallographer who first identified the double helix structure of DNA.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But got no credit.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Working in collaboration with Watson and Crick. Watson and Crick ended up getting all the credit and the Nobel Prize. But in this case, it was because she died before that was granted. However, it wasn't a rule at the time not to give a Nobel posthumously, but it was kind of a rule of thumb. It wasn't a strict rule.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But, really, it wasn't just that she didn't get a Nobel.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I know.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' The attitudes were horrible.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' She was, like, shit on.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Absolutely.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' But don't forget, another angle, though, is that she's not all just about the DNA. She had an amazing record and legacy in biology, chemistry, and physics. She advanced the science of coal and carbon. You know, whoever heard of that?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And viruses.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' And viruses. And, I mean, the researchers that are today studying SARS-CoV-2, they're using tools like DNA sequencers and X-ray crystallography. And they can do that today because of her, because of Franklin, and her colleagues and their successors.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Seriously.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' And critical scientists for the things that we're even doing today. So, huzzah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' So important.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. I know. And she was only 38 when she died. Think about that.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, wow. Jeez, that makes me feel lazy. I'm 38. I'm 38 next year. I know.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' What sciences have you innovated, Cara?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Come on, Cara.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Dang.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' We're almost done with the podcast. I'm going to sit on the couch and eat some ice cream.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Good for you. Proud of you. But, again, the sad truth is that Watson and Crick are household names, and Rosalind Franklin is not, and she should be, and she should be.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And Watson wasn't very nice about her. You can read some of his writings about her.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, right. She's a household name in my household.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:'' This broadcast, definitely.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, Evan, give us a quote.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' All right. And this quote was suggested by our good friend, listener Craig Good. Hey, Craig, thank you so much.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Hey, Craig.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I like this quote. "Nothing limits intelligence more than ignorance. Nothing fosters ignorance more than one's own opinions. Nothing strengthens opinions more than refusing to look at reality." Damn right. Sherry S. Tepper, novelist, born 1929, died 2016. She was a science fiction writer. She also wrote horror stories and mystery novels.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Mm-hmm.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yep. I have not actually read any of her works, but now I know, and I will be.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' A lot of science fiction writers are skeptical. A lot aren't, but there's some that you can kind of tell, but there's some, like, you read Frank Herbert's Dune series, and that's from a skeptical point of view. Like, dang, this guy got it.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, Dune.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Epistemology all over the place. All right. Right, Jay? He was very epistemic.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Absolutely. I'm agreeing with you.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, thank you all for joining me for this episode.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Thank you.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Sure man.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Thanks, Steve.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Thanks, Steve.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I look forward to seeing you on Friday at the live stream.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' There will not be a live stream the following week, because the following week is NECSS.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' NECSS!<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The game show Friday night and then the full-day conference on Saturday.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Going to be awesome.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So we'll see you guys in a couple of days.<br />
<br />
== Signoff/Announcements == <!-- if the signoff/announcements don't immediately follow the QoW or if the QoW comments take a few minutes, it would be appropriate to include a timestamp for when this part starts --><br />
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'''S:''' —and until next week, this is your {{SGU}}. <!-- typically this is the last thing before the Outro --> <br />
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}}</div>Hearmepurrhttps://www.sgutranscripts.org/w/index.php?title=SGU_Episode_703&diff=19127SGU Episode 7032024-01-24T12:47:14Z<p>Hearmepurr: episode done</p>
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|episodeNum = 703<br />
|episodeDate = {{month|12}} {{date|28}} 2019 <!-- broadcast date --><br />
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|qowText = I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes. Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You’re doing things you’ve never done before, and more importantly, you’re doing something.<br />
|qowAuthor = {{w|Neil Gaiman}} <!-- use a {{w|wikilink}} or use <ref name=author>[url publication: title]</ref>, description [use a first reference to an article attached to the quote. The second reference is in the QoW section] --><br />
|downloadLink = https://media.libsyn.com/media/skepticsguide/skepticast2019-12-28.mp3<br />
|forumLink = https://sguforums.org/index.php?topic=51671.0<br />
}}<br />
<!-- note that you can put the Rogue’s infobox initials inside triple quotes to make the initials bold in the transcript. This is how the final statement from Steve is typed at the end of this transcript: '''S:''' —and until next week, this is your {{SGU}}.--> <br />
<br />
== Introduction ==<br />
<br />
''Voice-over: You're listening to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.'' <br />
<br />
'''S:''' Hello and welcome to the {{SGU|link=y}}. Today is Wednesday, December 19<sup>th</sup>, 2018, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella... <br />
<br />
'''B:''' Hey, everybody!<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Cara Santa Maria... <br />
<br />
'''C:''' Howdy. <br />
<br />
'''S:''' Jay Novella... <br />
<br />
'''J:''' Hey guys. <br />
<br />
'''S:''' ...and Evan Bernstein. <br />
<br />
'''E:''' Should old acquaintance be forgotten?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Not yet.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Why do they say that?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Because it's in the song.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Well, I get that, but why do you have to forget them? I don't...<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Isn't it Scottish? Weren't they talking about that a lot when we were in Scotland? And they love that song, remember?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yes. They sing it at weddings. It's the parting song at weddings, or the last dance, bride and groom.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Something like that.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It's horribly sad.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I think our tour bus guide told us something about...<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It's a story about the characters, there's two brothers who like it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No, that's a different song.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's The High Road and The Low Road.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, High Road, Low Road.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. That's Loch Lomond.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Loch Lomond, yeah. Which I enjoy that song a lot more now that I know the actual story behind it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's so pretty.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The high road is being alive and walking over land, and taking the low road is being dead and going through the spirit world, which gets you back to Scotland a lot faster than having to actually walk through like, mountains and stuff. It's a sad, it's a very sad song.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' The guy that took, so one of the two, I guess, had to die. And the guy that chose to die, sacrificed himself so his friend could go back and be with the woman.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. Well, in one version, it's his friend. The other version, it's his brother.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. But either way, he like leaves the note. He like leaves in the middle of the night and leaves the note, and he wakes up in the morning and sees it. It's quite sad. It's a very strange song to play at weddings, but I appreciate it. But I think they also said that they play what we consider to be a New Year's Eve song at like regular events. It's also like a pride and joy of Scotland is, how do you even pronounce it?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Auld Lang Syne.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Auld Lang Syne.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah. It's interesting. But of course, this time of year, those sorts of thoughts come to mind. And you know, my point is, I don't want to forget my acquaintances. I like many of my acquaintances.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, maybe you have to start fresh sometimes.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Auld Lang Syne, by the way, Auld Lang Syne is a Scots language poem by Robert Burns written in 1788. So that's what they were talking about.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' There you go.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So we play it on New Year's Eve. They play it at weddings, apparently.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But it makes sense. I mean, if you think about it, for many people, the holidays and then the new year are joyous. You know, we make resolutions. We start fresh. But for a lot of people, this is a hard time for them. People who have experienced loss or trauma, it's like is re-traumatizing and stuff. And I think that it's an ambivalent time for a lot of people. There's a lot of warmth and family and love, but there's also difficulty getting through the holidays because most of us have gone through some amount of loss and that can be hard. So I could see a bittersweet song making sense there.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' With a little bit of research, I found out why Auld Lang Syne starts with the question, should old acquaintance be forgot?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Ah.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It's a rhetorical question because-<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. It's not a recommendation.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' The point is basically saying, no, we should not forget the past and should not forget longstanding friendships.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I like that.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, there you go.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I like that. Thank you, Jay. I feel better now.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Happy New Year to you too, my friend.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Likewise.<br />
<br />
== Year in Review <small>(3:31)</small> ==<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. Talking about remembering the past, this is our year in review show. This is the last show we're recording for the year. So the show that's coming out on the 22nd, December 22nd, is the show that we recorded in London back in October. And this show that we're recording tonight is being released on December 29th. It's the last show of the year. And it's been our tradition for the last 13 years to do a year-end review show where we talk about the good and the bad in science and skepticism in the SGU over the previous year. Maybe take a little bit of a look ahead as to what's coming up. So we're going to start off with just a review of the SGU in 2018. This is actually a big year for us, guys. We had-<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Huge.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. Our book came out and that was awesome. And then we had a book tour basically around the book release. We went to the UK, Scotland, did a lot of local events here. Cara basically hung out with us for two weeks. It was a lot of fun.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, it was awesome. So much fun. I love spending time in Connecticut, in New York, in DC. Oh my gosh, I love spending time at the Smithsonian. But obviously, Manchester, London, and Edinburgh. I mean, that was awesome.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' What was your favorite part of the trip?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I think for me, it was the trip to the Highlands.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' For me, it was the Wren Library. I mean, first of all, Cambridge is gorgeous. It's like a story of a medieval town. And then you're being in that library, just standing and looking at a book that is 900 years old, 800 years old.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh my gosh.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Pretty crazy.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Or reading Isaac Newton's own handwriting. His copy of the Principia.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That was magical. To me, that was a high- That's like a top two.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I got goosebumps.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Nothing could top that. I'm sorry.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh my gosh.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It was really cool.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' They also had a handwritten poetry book by Lord Tennyson, who happens to have written my favorite poem. That was intense. Like actually seeing his poor handwriting. It wasn't very clean. And similarly, I'm left-handed, and I don't write a lot nowadays because of the computers. But it was just awesome to be in front of these artefacts, and these are human artefacts that have actual. It's not just an old bone. This is like a representation of somebody's work and their life. The air molecules that they breathe, they're in that room.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, they're everywhere, right? As we discussed.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' True. True. But the oils of their fingers were on those pages.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's right.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, I think it's what it represents. Obviously, there's no essence or anything magical there, but it represents the intellectual and cultural continuity between these giants of our species all the way down to the modern day. This is a first edition of Charles Darwin's Origin of the Species, and written in the margin are criticisms by one of his contemporary critics who didn't believe in evolution.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, that's pretty cool.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' His snarky comments. It's amazing that that exists. One of the things that's fantastic about universities is that they do represent this sort of cultural intellectual continuity. There's institutional knowledge that gets carried forward, and that's just a physical representation of it, but it's amazing.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's also, I think, a hallmark of really good teachers and professors is giving you that kind of rich context when you learn about- Let's say you're taking a science class. Instead of just learning a bunch of things we know now, really learning why we know them and how some people kind of disagreed with those things, and then this dude came along and did this, and then this woman came along and was a heretic. It's so cool to then go see it, but I think most of us were lucky enough that we had really good teachers and we read really good books that inspired us with that. I hope that young people get that opportunity too, because it really does make it all come alive.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, I agree. That's the thing that's amazing about it is because we do, when we think back to these giant figures in scientific history like Newton or Einstein or Darwin or whoever, they're mythical figures now. They're not real people. Then when you are looking at a book that they held and wrote in, you see that they were just a guy. It was just a person.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. Like you said, Jay. Like he's got bad handwriting, Lord Tennis. It's like amazing.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' But Steve, it's still interesting to think that, sure, you can kind of separate yourself from it and think, there is nothing really magical about these items, but if they could duplicate that book that Newton had jotted down in his Principia and with his handwriting, if they duplicated that atom to atom and put it next to it, I would still- It would be different. It would still be different. This is holdover in my brain that makes it just the tiniest bit magical, even though it's not.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It would be worth a hell of a lot less money too.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Sure, but you'd never be able to prove it. If you would take my premise, you'd never be able to prove it. But the thing is though-<br />
<br />
'''E:''' We're cloning books now.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It's interesting. I mean, it's a thought experiment.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, can I go back to Cara's point about the Scottish Highlands for a moment? Which was a wonderful day. And the first stop we made in the Highlands, besides that little rest area to go to the bathroom, was a place called-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Which was still stunning.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Was a place called Castle Dune. And I had no idea that was on the itinerary for the day, and I had no idea the significance of that castle until essentially you pull up to it, and oh my gosh, it's the castle from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, along with probably 18 other things that I've seen on TV or in the movies that I can't remember. But it was just, the moment hit me. I was stunned. I was so pleased.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, what was interesting was how many different locations in the movie was filmed at that castle. They just would change the camera angle, dress it up a different way, you know what I mean? So it was, half the movie was filmed at that castle. It's amazing.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It was all around there. And I'm watching recently on Netflix, The Outlaw King. I don't know if anyone else has seen that. Guess what castle appears in that show as well? And I'm like, okay, now that's it. Forever burned in my brain. I will always know Castle Dune from now on every time I see it on a big screen.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. I mean, we had a lot of trips this year. We did NECSS, Dragon Con, QED, and then we had our special shows in London and Cambridge and then the Smithsonian. And the best thing about that always is just getting to hang out with a lot of our fellow skeptics, to interface with the community. That is always, I think, really energizing for us. You know?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Sure.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' The UK people were really awesome. I know we've said it before, but it really, it's funny because I grew up in the New York City area and people in New England, especially in and around New York, it's a rough crowd. People aren't super friendly. It's just the vibe. That's part of the reason that gives it its own charm, right? That is a New York, very much a New York vibe. But you know, the people in London and throughout all of the UK were incredibly friendly and incredibly funny, legitimately funny people like the dry humor that they have is like a backbone, I think, of the way that they think and the way that they talk. That's why I've always loved British humor.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So another thing that was new for the SGU this year is this year we started our Patreon page and that's been extremely successful. That allowed us to access to all of their features, including the Discord, which has been now a vibrant community that's in addition to our SGU it's great.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Great work on that, Jay. Jay put in a ton of amazingly hard work.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' He's anchoring that. Yep.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Absolutely.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Fantastic job, Jay.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It's funny to think-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And big thanks to Ian too.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Ooh, Ian Callahan. Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Callanan.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' He says everybody makes that mistake. Ian Callanan. I remember the six weeks it took to come up with all the content to post the actual Patreon page, there's a lot of copy a lot of writing and decisions we had to make. You know, we really were trying to be aggressive. We wanted to make the introductory video, like the welcome video, but I look back on it now, it's funny before Cara was saying, like, she doesn't remember, like, the years kind of blend into each other. It seems-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' This oddly seems like we just did it last week to me. It doesn't seem like 10 months ago to me already. It just seems like we just ran that project not too long ago, but we had a lot of fun making the video that night. I had to throw myself on the floor, I don't know how many times, a dozen times, Steve? How many times we shoot that just to get it all right? And I actually kind of hurt myself after that. I remember for a few days, like, tweaked my back. Because I was taking a real hit there.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We have to update the copy too, because now we're over 700 episodes. Our patrons right now, as we record this episode, are at 2921. We are 79 patrons away from hitting our goal of 3000 when Jay can officially work full-time for the SGU. And then we'll be on our way to the later goals. I'm excited about the 4000 one, where we have a 12-hour live show, 12-hour live SGU marathon. And we may try to do that one from the bridge of the Enterprise.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' We've talked about this on the show. I found that since Steve mentioned this on the show, we know we talk about a lot of stuff, but if Steve says it on the show, of course, it's written in gold. And since that went gold, I've been subtly, slowly, and secretively buying myself Star Trek props and stuff that I'm going to want if we happen to do the show. You know what I mean? My costume has to be awesome. Everything has to be awesome. So my God, that would be an amazing goal.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We'll be ready.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' At its heart, even all the fun stuff, I mean, of course, me working for the SGU is going to move the needle quite a bit. And I would appreciate it and love it more than anything. But if you really believe that what we're doing is a positive thing, then consider becoming a patron of ours. You could get onto our Discord server if you become a patron. At the $8 level, you will get an ad-free version of the show and all of our premium content. We have a ton of premium content at this point.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I think it's 109 different pieces so far, but we increase that all the time.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' So what kind of premium content are we talking about, guys? What is that stuff? I never even looked at it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's a lot of extra segments. I might put together one, two, or three, depending on how long they are, segments that didn't make it to the show just for time. We always over-record. I basically over-record like one episode each week, and then I just put that up as premium content. But then there's some special things that we do just for premium content, like videos, interviews. Sometimes I'll just answer emails, and that's the premium content for that week. And we're open to suggestions too, whatever kind of content you want. It's just extra stuff specifically for our listeners.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' And also, we do a monthly live stream that is for patrons only, where they can ask us questions. It's high in interactivity, and it's a lot of fun. We've been having a blast. We're going to probably do an open show very soon to the public, just to let everybody see what these live streams are like. You could go to [https://www.patreon.com/SkepticsGuide patreon.com/SkepticsGuide], and you could read all about what you get when you become an SGU member.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. So there's something else that happened to us this year that we haven't spoken about yet on the show. And this is-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' What's that?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Do we have clearance?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' This is the most interesting thing I think that happened to us this year.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Do we have clearance, clearance?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' There we go. Here we go.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We were invited to have a sit down at the CIA.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' The Central Intelligence Agency.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's right. And it was as interesting as you think it was. So everything that we saw, we got the public tour, right? And everything that we were exposed to is in the public domain, right? We obviously-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But to be clear, they don't give public tours. We just got a special tour that happened to not be redacted.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, it was in their museum. It was in the part of the CIA where the public is allowed to go.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But apparently you can't just show up at the CIA and ask for a tour.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, no, no.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Right, right.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' You have to be invited.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Still an invitation, which we were. We were invited.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It was essentially by the part of the CIA, their outreach program, right? So what's interesting is, and what we talked about, is the dilemma, the difficulty in being a secretive organization that's working for the public, right? So how do they have transparency and accountability at the same time that they have secrecy and intelligence? And that's what they're struggling with. So for example, people may make claims about what the CIA did or whatever, and they can't respond to it because it's all classified. So they're sort of struggling with this idea of how do we at least confront myths about the CIA, which is why I think they contacted us. Like, oh, these guys bust myths. Let's talk to them about it. And explain to the public what it is that they do, exactly how they operate, at least the parts that we could know about. And so I think to their credit, because they acknowledge they are public servants, right? What they are doing is in the public interest, and they want to make sure that the public knows as much as we can about what the CIA does. So that was kind of the purpose for the visit. But still, you could tell that organizationally, this is not in their wheelhouse, right? This is not their strong suit.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, God, no. Yeah. I mean, they said themselves, they used this phrase, like, we're professional liars. We're paid to, like, some of the people we talked to were like, yeah, my parents don't know I work here. Like, I use a fake name. I'm completely sure.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We had no last names. We were given no last names.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, it's just letters.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's right.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's really interesting. And so, yeah, I mean, in an effort to do their job effectively, sometimes they have to literally lie. Like, it's sanctioned lying in order to do it. So it is tough to then turn around and say, oh, but when I'm telling you the truth, when I say I'm telling you the truth, I am.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So here's the thing. They said to us that they are not allowed, it's illegal, they are not allowed to tell a lie to a direct question from an American citizen.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's true. It's a different jurisdiction.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But they're not, they're just simply not allowed to do that. So that was the origin of the phrase, I can neither confirm nor deny that X, because that's the way they have to answer those questions because they can't lie. So they just say, I can neither confirm or deny that this is happening or whatever.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' They also do everything within their power to never have to be subpoenaed, right? To never have to go on the stand. Like they were saying, because this is something I did not know this about the CIA. I'm revealing my utter ignorance right now. And maybe people listening those that aren't from the US or maybe some like me who grew up here and just didn't know this. The CIA, even though it's called the Central Intelligence Agency, only investigates foreign intelligence.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Non-domestic.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Non-domestic. If, in some sort of investigation, a player turns up that's an American citizen, they have to pass that portion off to the FBI. They are not allowed to investigate American citizens. It's not in their mandate or their charter.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That is a big paradigm shift once you really understand what that means. They don't walk around and do things in the United States, which you would think, you know, the CIA is probably all over that. Or they're working hand-in-hand with the FBI. We pick up so much from TV and movies, and this was the big eye-opener for me. When we first got there, our host said to us, hey, just tell me a bunch of things that you think about the CIA, like preconceptions when you walk in here before we take you on the tour.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' One-word adjectives.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So one thing I said was that they're packing heat that they're going to be carrying guns. I thought they carried guns. Well, I was wrong. They don't carry guns.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's the FBI. They're not the police, right? The FBI—<br />
<br />
'''E:''' They're not law enforcement.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The FBI is law enforcement.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' They're not agents either. They're officers.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' There's no CIA agents. They're CIA officers and analysts and tech specialists. I asked them a bunch of questions about their process of data analysis. I wanted to know, do you guys do a lot of data mining? And do you red team your—in other words, do you specifically appoint a devil's advocate in order to try to shoot down any hypotheses that you have? I wanted to see how much of the critical thinking they incorporate into their process. And they have—I have to say, I was impressed. They had good answers for all my questions.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, they did.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And you could tell. Like, I could tell if someone, like, really knows what they're talking about when it comes to, like, this basic nuts and bolts critical thinking type stuff. And they knew what they were talking about. So they—it sounds like they have a good skeptical process when they're analysing intelligence. The tricky part, of course, which they really tried hard to steer clear of in their interactions with us, is they—it's not their job to get involved in politics, right? So it's like we just—we put together the intelligence, and they were clear, intelligence is not data. Intelligence is data that has been analysed, right? And then they pass that off to the decision makers, right? And then that's it. It's out of their hand. Whatever happens to it at that point is not their job.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So my takeaway from that was very—I was surprised to find out that they don't really make decisions in the way that you would normally think an agency like that would be operating. Because I've seen, like, even FBI shows where it seems like the FBI is making all the decisions on what the FBI is doing. And I think I just kind of—what would you call it? I just overlaid the same kind of thinking with the CIA, but they said they prepare information. They give it to the higher ups, which is usually the president or the president's cabinet in his offices. And the president tells them what to do.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, they cannot make policy recommendations. And so the thing that was really interesting to me, I actually applied it recently to some work in my practicum where I'm working with individuals who have some very specific struggles. And there was one point in time where one of the clients had a struggle. And I realized that is not my job, nor is it appropriate or ethical for me to try and steer this person into any specific course of action, even though my value systems would tell me, oh, my God, please do this thing. If you don't, you're going to ruin your life. So I really took a page out of what the CIA was saying, where they said, listen, we do an analysis and we have to put probabilities and percentiles on things. So we have to say we are 72% sure that if X happens, Y will follow. And then in scenario B, we are X percent sure that if X happens, Y will follow. And all they can do is say, this is scenario A, this is scenario B, this is scenario C. Now, a thinking person might be able to look at those things and say, obviously, scenario A is the best scenario, but they cannot say that. All they can do is say, this is scenario A, this is scenario B, this is scenario C. It is up to you to use this intelligence how you see fit. And I really, I utilized that in my own practice. It was kind of a cool thing.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, I was really impressed with one of the officers, a woman who's also studying artificial intelligence for the CIA, which I wanted to talk with her for hours, but she was talking about how her process of removing bias when she's like sending reports up, and it was really impressive. It's so baked in. It's so baked into the process to remove bias on so many levels with other people, other eyes looking at it and the kind of things that you do day to day. That was impressive.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah. Just about everyone we spoke with mentioned bias control in some fashion. It's constantly, constantly part of their initial layer of thinking, which is good.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Now, this doesn't mean that the CIA hasn't made mistakes, that they haven't done some shady things over the years. We're getting like the 2018 version, where it does seem like they have learned from these past mistakes that were things where they stepped over the line, which is something that I have read, actually, which is why I asked those questions. When the Bay of Pigs fiasco happened, the conventional wisdom is that they learned that, wow, you really need to red team these decisions. You can't have everybody on the same side.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, and they were pretty transparent about Bay of Pigs, I think.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' They were.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' The historian was like, but it's probably because nobody there was actually working with the people we talked to, at least, when that happened. I asked about honey trapping, and they were like, oh, we're not going to answer that question. I was like, well, okay.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I felt, too, like being in a room full of people that are trained in skill sets that you're not exposed to a lot, there was a very poignant vibe in the air. One of the people that impressed me was the analyst that they brought in, that lead analyst.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' He was such a nerd.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, he's the one who really described the process.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, they're nerds. Most of the people we met were nerds.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Absolutely.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' A lot of them had PhDs.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' But that guy really impressed me. He was talking, and he was explaining their process and how they go through the jigs and jags of figuring out if a piece of data is valuable and worthwhile and legitimate. I was enraptured by that. It was really complicated and very recursive.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' They know what they're doing, was the impression I walked away with, which is reassuring in a way. There's a couple of cool things. One, again, we were meeting primarily with their outreach program, and they do produce a podcast, we learned. It's an internal podcast that's classified. It's only for other people at the CIA.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' So cool.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Isn't that amazing? They also have a classified journal that we can't read. Like a peer-reviewed journal.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' They're interested. They're looking into creating a podcast for the public so that the public has an idea of what the CIA does, and they actually were asking us to consult with them on their podcast. How cool would that be?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' And they also wanted us to interview us on their classified podcast, I thought, right?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yes. Which we would never even get to hear.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Damn cool.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We couldn't hear it.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' We could not confirm or deny that we ever participated in that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But I think the coolest thing while we were there, though, I have to say, they had a model of Osama bin Laden's compound, where he eventually –<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, that was pretty cool.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And it was actually the one that the SEALs trained on, and they gave us a walk-through of the whole mission, from soup to nuts.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That was cool.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And I didn't realize that they were on their fifth or sixth plan. Plan A failed. Plan B failed. Plan C failed. They were down to like G or H or something.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Steve, they were one plan away from the runaway and scream plan.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It came to a point where they were banging on the front door, and luckily somebody was around the other side and let them in.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It was one of their men. It was one of the other team. What was impressive was how many contingencies. They had a contingency all the way down, and it mattered because they actually got to their fifth or sixth contingency. Primarily, the big problem was that one of the helicopters – and this is how detailed they have to get. It was a little hotter or something that they figured when they were practising. And because of the heat, it affected the aerodynamics of the helicopter, and the helicopter lost control and had to crash land.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Well, it didn't lose control. It was losing altitude because there was a vortex that got created by the heat. So there's a couple of points, I think, to help our audience understand better. We were looking at a model that was like five feet by five feet, right?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, it was like a tabletop model.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That model was taken from satellite imagery, and then they recreated – what did he say? About 70% of this in full size, full scale.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' In an undisclosed location.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That was at the same altitude, same temperature, and the moon – for some reason, he said the moon had to be in the same position in the sky.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Probably for the brightness, how well they could see.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yep. And so they practices with real helicopters in a real setting to run this mission. And I think that's where they come up with the contingency, Steve. They probably think, if this fails, what do we do? If this fails, what do we do? And I have a couple more details, if you don't mind, because this was so incredible. So they're describing how one of the helicopter pilots figured out what was happening in a matter of seconds. So he tells us all this stuff, and he said – and that was about two to three seconds of time for the pilot to figure out that he's got to crash land in the next area. So he brings the chopper down. And then he said – so they had another chopper as a backup that they had to bring in. And then it occurs to me – I'm like what are these choppers? I mean, wouldn't Osama bin Laden hear them? You know, you have three choppers flying in now? And he goes, not these helicopters. Oh my god. It was so cool. You know, when you're like – We have silent helicopters. Oh my god. It was so cool. So then he tells the whole story, which is riveting, and it'll make you angry. You'll get pissed if you hear what this scumbag Osama bin Laden did. You know, he's using his wives and his children as body shields. And he was shooting at them. And then he goes – yeah, and there's his rifle that he had right there, and it was in a case hanging on the wall. I mean, that's the rifle he shot at our soldiers at our agents.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It was on his bed. Yep.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Not agents. Right? We don't call – CIA, you're not –<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, but these were SEALs. These were SEALs.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, those were Navy SEALs.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' This was military. This was a military operation.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah. The agency just collected all of the information for it.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' You get the idea after going through the museum that – you hear all these stories. You know that the tip of the iceberg are the field agents.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Field officers.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Everything else, field officers.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, yeah. Well, this is the cool thing that I thought was really neat. OK. First of all, they gave us swag. They gave us CIA swag, which is like, come on. This is ridiculous. I love it. I'm drinking my coffee out of a CIA cup. But then they also gave us these – like basically these brochures. And I didn't – I kind of contextually gathered some of the organization of the agency by how they were talking. But not until I went home and I looked at this brochure that talks about the mission and the overview of the CIA did I really understand how it's divided. So there are multiple directorates. There's a directorate of operations, a directorate of analysis, a directorate of science and technology, a directorate of digital innovation, and a directorate of support. So it's only really the directorate of operations where we're talking about clandestine collection. They actually say this in the brochure. The DO clandestinely collects foreign intelligence through human sources. So these are like the people that we think of as being Jason Bourne, and we met some of them, which is really cool. But the vast majority of people who work for the CIA work at the CIA. They don't like – yeah, they don't like leave the country on a regular basis.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' They have desk jobs. They're working in an office.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Analysts – and it's a really cool job that they do. I mean they're all processing this super important intelligence on a regular basis.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And they were very clear that the operations officers support the analysts as much as the analysts support the officers or it's a team effort. Because I guess they fall into the perception that the officers in the field are the superstars and everyone is just working to support them. Like no, that's not the way it is. Everyone is basically supporting each other in one collective endeavour. It just depends on your point of view, right? The analyst might say, I need this piece of information and then the operations officer has to go get it. And the operations officer says, well, we need this doodad to make this happen. And then the science and technology guy says, OK, here's your doodad.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And one thing that's actually kind of funny – so at one point I had to pee and so I asked permission to get up from the conference table where we were sitting and the publicist, I guess you could call her, that walked me to the bathroom because you can't just like walk around the CIA all by yourself. Who would have thought? So there was a movie we were talking about. Did you guys ever see the movie Spy? Is that what it was called?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' With Melissa McCarthy?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yes, with Melissa McCarthy. And she was saying she actually kind of liked that movie. Like obviously a lot of stuff in it was really, really wrong. But there was a handful of things that they did really right in that movie. And one of the things was that they showed that people who work in different directorates often switch jobs, that like somebody has a certain amount of expertise for something so they may go out in the field even though they hadn't been in the field before. Or somebody might have been working in science and technology and now they've developed something and they want to go utilize it in the directorate of analysis. And she was like, that's kind of how it actually is. It's like, that's pretty cool. And they expanded on that a little more broadly in that Hollywood and other movie and television making shows and agencies and studios generally get things wrong.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's true of everything. Anything you're an expert in, Hollywood gets wrong, right? That's just the way it is.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I get that. But what other point of reference do the majority of people have other than that? And that is also why the CIA becomes sort of the perfect scapegoat for so many things and conspiracy theories and other-<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Sure.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Of course. Yeah. That said, there's still a part of me that doesn't believe anything they told me. I have to be honest.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That gets back to the core dilemma of how do you have transparency for a secret organization?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. And how do you say like, oh, but what I tell you is true. You'll know in 50 years once that all becomes declassified if I'm telling you the truth right now. It's tough.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Right, right. But we'll keep you apprised if anything else comes of it, like if they do invite us down to help them with their podcast or interview us for it or whatever, we'll- I mean, we're not- what do they call that? We're not assets of the CIA, right? We're just- As cool as that would be. We're not-<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Well, that might not apply to all of us.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Oh, that's true.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh. I can neither confirm nor deny this.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's our story. We have to stick with it.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Before we move away, though, I do want to thank all the people that we met. I don't want to just start naming names because-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' We can't name names.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, Daniel-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' They're not real anyway.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' They're not their real names anyway.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Our main contact was Daniel, and he was very nice. He was sort of our host for the day, but that's all we got is a first name, which may or may not be his real first name.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I don't think it is.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, we don't know.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' He was a cool dude, and the other people we met all had something unique and cool about them, too. I just really appreciate that time that we had there. It was a wonderful window into a huge mystery. You think you know the CIA, but you've heard it a million times. You've seen the logo a million times. I know a lot more now than I did, and I have a much more healthy respect for them now.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, absolutely. There's a part of me that was like, ooh, how do I get a job here? No. No, I don't think they want me.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Hey, this is Steve breaking in. Just a quick update. We did get invited back down, since we recorded the show, down to visit the CIA again to work with them on a podcast, so again, we'll keep you updated as that proceeds. Also, just listening back over the segment, I wanted to clarify a couple of things. Our job, our role in meeting with the CIA was to just discuss their process of data analysis and things like that. None of this is a political commentary on the history of the CIA, things that they've done in the past. We may have come off sounding a little bit gushing. That's just because the experience was very interesting, but really, we're just trying to understand how they function, and we understand that we're being told what we're being told. This is the, as we said upfront, this is just the publicly available information, but none of this should be interpreted in any way as any kind of political statement on the CIA, or things that they've done in the past, or may have done. This is just conveying information. With that said, let's go on with the rest of our review show.<br />
<br />
== Best and Worst of 2018 <small>(36:27)</small> ==<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We're going to do the best and worst of 2018. We'll start with segments of the show itself, so guys, what was your favorite part of the show? Jay, you've been monitoring the forums and the Discord server for our listeners' feedback too. Anything stand out? What was something that listeners mentioned that was cool about this year?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, so people that are on our Discord server are patrons. They're given access when they become patrons, and we have a dialogue with them all the time. I created a channel on there where they could just talk about the year-end stuff. Bill on the board, on Discord, was saying that he thought the best thing that we did was the interview with Devin Bray, who is an actual patron as well. One thing I read on there was really cool. What's fun about reading Discord is I get to kind of read what people that listen to the show think. It's a little anonymous, and I kind of can jump in and just read different conversations. So they were saying there's a lot of people that listen to the SGU that have expertise in something, and they've suggested to us that we seriously consider interviewing people who listen to the show, like real listeners that understand the show, understand the audience, and have an expertise. It's a really great idea. I never really put it together that way. I know that we always looked to our audience to help give us corrections whenever their expertise comes up, but I never took it to like the, hey, let's look at them as a resource for great interviews, because that interview with Devin was fantastic.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, he was, yeah, he was fastball down the middle, so interesting. Obviously, what he studies, what he does for a living is basically a huge Venn diagram with what we do, but he does it academically.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I think my favorite interview of the year was with, Mark Alanis was the reporter who was initially anti-GMO and then changed, flipped, once he looked at the evidence, he became pro-science, right? He realized that the anti-GMO movement was completely anti-science and built on a house of cards. Very, as much as I thought I understood it, I gave me, he gave me additional insight into that world, the hyper-greeny world, if you will, which I thought was interesting. So that's why I love interviews where, I always, obviously, we know a lot about these topics, but when you get that sort of extra insight that you didn't know you didn't have, that's always fascinating.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah. For me, the best interview was, my favorite interview was with Adam Becker, author of What is Real, Quantum Mechanics, and I did my homework for that interview, and I think it's probably the only interview in 700-plus episodes where I actually talked more than Steve.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' At least for part of the interview. That was so much fun to talk to somebody who really knows what they're talking about with something that's such a complicated, nasty little topic. So that was one of the high points for me. Yeah, Sean Carroll did an interview, and that would have been probably one of my favorites if I didn't miss the whole damn thing, but it was funny. I got there, I got online just when it ended, and I threw out a couple questions to him, but it wasn't but I was like, damn, I missed that interview, so that would have been great. Maybe next time.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Our friend Richard Wiseman, yes, in one of our earlier interviews here, we had recorded that at PsyCon the year prior, but it aired in 2018, and we were sitting, oh my gosh, he always comes up, I laugh, I don't know, I just laugh throughout the whole interview, it's so freaking funny, and he tells us he was six years old, and the big Santa Claus head suddenly appeared in front of him, and he wound up having a bit of an accident there. You know, that's just how he starts the interview, and it goes it becomes even more hilarious from there. And then we interviewed Jennifer Ouellette, who was also our keynote speaker at NECSS this year, and she was talking about the concept of criticality, which I had not heard of before or really thought much about before, and she gave me a lot of interesting ideas there to think about.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. Oh my gosh. Jen's the best. She's the absolute best. I think that one of my favorite, and maybe it's just because it's so fresh in my mind, was the just incredible amount of fun that we got to have when we were in Manchester doing the QED conference, and the interviews that we did there, along with the live show that we got to do, having Marsh on the show, and getting to play all sorts of fun new games with Marsh. I mean, that's always so much fun to kind of have this, I don't know, this collision sort of, of the groups that there's these groups of skeptical activists around the world, and it's so fun when those worlds collide, and we get to learn from one another, and see the kind of cultural differences, but then the things that really unite us, and I don't know. I just loved it. It was good times all round.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, the rest of the segments that I like kind of focus around, like the best science news and the worst pseudoscience news of the year. So why don't we go to that? Any science news items stand out for you guys this year?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Absolutely.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So many. Where do we start? I mean, CRISPR was like CRISPR was sort of an umbrella.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Genetic engineering is, as we predicted, getting more impactful, and of course, culminating in the Chinese researcher who CRISPRed the two baby girls, apparently, that we talked about recently. But yeah, it just shows that, yep, we are heading into the age of genetic manipulation.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, I saw that story as like the reverse tip of an iceberg pointing, going into the future. People are going to look back. In 20 years, they're going to look back, and this news item, and perhaps even this year, will be seen as one of the milestone years where, man, yeah, it really started picking up that year. Remember that? Boy, did those people have no idea what was really going to be coming down the pike. But man, so yeah, this is just, we're going to be hearing about this every year. I'm just so excited about this technology, more than almost any new technology in the past decade.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' There was a few news items that came out that were health-related that really caught my eye. So the spinal cord repair that they did, and I really needed to ask you a question about this, Steve. So they said in these studies that they actually restored people's, they healed their nerve, and they were no longer paralyzed.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, if you remember, we talked about it at the time, that I think that those claims were overhyped.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, right? Because from my understanding, if the nerve, say you're paralysed, right? And you can't move your arms, or let's say you can't move your legs. If the muscles don't get any nerve stimulation, they literally go away. Like, your muscles completely atrophy to nothing, correct?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' To smallness.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' If they're not getting any innervation, they actually go away completely.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Really? Like, you just lose your entire muscle?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The muscle fibers die. Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Jelly, right?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So that was a little bit of a hype. But I mean, it did make some headway with electrical stimulation to helping the nerves reconnect. You know, that's a big one. I mean, imagine, you could just scroll through history, and there's a lot of people that get these kind of injuries, and they become paralysed, they can't walk anymore. I mean, someday they might be able to just not have it be literally a crippling experience.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, but the bottom line is that that was not a turning point, and that was not a huge breakthrough. That was a baby step in a sequence of baby steps, and yes, we are making some slow, steady progress in figuring out how to treat spinal cord injury, but we still have a long way to go.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Well, here's a big one. So they transplanted a womb out of, I guess, some woman, you know...<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It's a uterus, right?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, it's a uterus.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, womb.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It was taken from somebody who was willing to donate their organs. You know, something happened, and they literally took the uterus out of her and put it into another woman, and they just had a healthy baby.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, that's amazing.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, a cadaver, a uterus from a cadaver basically gave birth, like housed a growing infant, and a woman was able to give birth to a healthy baby. That's amazing.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's amazing that a person's body can accept something like that and not have a negative reaction.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Especially, I mean, this is one of the most complex organs in the body. I mean the brain, I guess, would be safe to say that that's pretty complex, but this is an endocrine organ. I mean, there's so much going on with a uterus. There's stuff we still do not understand about the uterus, and you're right, Evan, that it could successfully transplant and then function in a healthy way. I mean, it's one thing to get a kidney, but Steve, when you get a kidney, for example, which we've been doing for a long time, or you get a piece of liver, because we know liver can grow, is it like 100% functional, or is it that it kind of sort of helps, but that some of the organ is not really up to par?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, like you can't innervate it, for example. So you can hook up the plumbing to it and blood supply, but not nerves, generally speaking.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But not nerves. And think about all of the things that have to happen for a uterus, like it stretches and it squeezes, and then all of the necessary hormones, and I'm sure she was taking hormone therapy, and there were other things involved, but like, how cool is that?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Just that her body didn't reject it is amazing.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And the baby didn't reject it didn't reject the baby, and they didn't, I mean, gosh, incredible.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' There's a ton of space news this year. I think the one that sticks out for me is the possible discovery of what liquid water on Mars. This was under the surface, under the ice, and it's probably extremely salty in order for it to, it's probably like a slushy brine, because it should be like negative 68 degrees Celsius there, but just the possibility that there's actually liquid water anywhere on Mars is amazing.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Didn't we also find, and I say we as if I had anything to do with this, find...<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The collective scientific we.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. Like some building blocks, like some early...<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yes, that was on Europa, some of the, a lot of organic, evidence for organic molecules.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, and what about Parker, the solar probe that we shot to the sun? How freaking cool is that?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh yeah, Parker.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh man, we're going to get, we're already getting beautiful photos.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, but the news, the space news that really got me going, all those are great, but the one that really got me going was the unveiling of the plans that we're going to have an orbital base around the moon in 10 years.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Moon presence.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That's huge. That is huge. It finally showed a serious commitment for an idea that we've talked about a lot and people have been talking about, and lots of countries are talking about, but the idea of going to the moon first and then Mars and not the other way around, and it just makes so much sense. And I was so happy to hear a solid commitment and some really good plans to make that happen. You know, suss out, work out all of our stuff in moon orbit, learn more about the moon, how to live in space like that, and then we could talk about going to Mars and not before. So that's great.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's been a reoccurring topic on SGU since we started, I think.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And a point of contention for sure. And I get why it's super exciting to you, Bob, but I have to say, I'm so much less interested in the crewed missions, and I'm so much more interested in the robotic missions. We have a new rover, and this rover can dig! That's cool.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, it's not going to rove around too much, but it is going to go down and search the depths. Insight is going to explore the planet Mars like never before.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yay! We have so many robots on Mars. That's freaking awesome.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Our presence, I mean, what's next? A Starbucks? I mean, we are on Mars. I mean in lots of different ways.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And Insight took a selfie, and we're getting so much data all the time. This is the cool thing about having a space agency that works for us, right? This is a public space agency where they're able to use our tax dollars and actually, commission private companies, but also utilize all of the different NASA locations around the country. And you can log on any time and look at the data that's being brought back from all of these missions. I love that. You can look at photos. You can learn stuff.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Here's one we haven't talked about yet because it's happening right now.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' What?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' New Horizons. New Horizons was the probe that flew past Pluto. It's just about to do a flyby of what's probably a dwarf planet way out in the Kuiper Belt.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Cool.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' What the hell? Which dwarf planet?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Ultima Thule? Is that how you say that? Ultima Thule?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Ultima Thule, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Cool. New Year's Day.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, the New Year's Day. So they were looking for stuff in the general direction of the New Horizons, right? They found this and they were able to tweak the path so that it was able to fly by it. Then they were concerned that there might be too much debris around this world and they would have to go a little bit farther out. So they said that as they get closer, they're not encountering more debris. So they're going to go really close to this—we're going to get close-up images of this world.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's—<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, my gosh.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I mean, talk about a lucky break. It's incredible.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Get this.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, what the hell else is the probe going to do? Of course. Send it there.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Wow. Bob, its current trajectory, we'll put it at 2,200 miles from—<br />
<br />
'''E:''' From the object.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' This Kuiper Belt object.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That's fantastic.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's real close.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Right. Bonus material. It's like unlocking an Easter egg. It's so cool.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, guys, there was a lot of pseudoscience this year as well.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' A lot of pseudoscience every year.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, there is. But I think—so what—I try to think, like, what surprised me this year? And I think part of it was the return of some classic pseudosciences.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Definitely.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Astrology is on the rise again. Millennials like astrology. That is surprising. And also, I did a major debunking of Atlantis, right? Atlantis is still a thing, you know?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' How did that come back?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's a guy made a YouTube video with some new crank crackpot theory about where Atlantis is. That was fun. It's fun to tear them down. I mean, it's to do like a really careful analysis of exactly why their claims are wrong. The classic pseudosciences are great for that. It really is a good topic to cut your skeptical teeth on. It is amazing that we're still talking about Atlantis and astrology and Bigfoot and these things.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I know. It's ridiculous.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' The trend over the last couple of years, Steve, we've noticed, and I think the polls that we've been looking at at Pew and other places have backed this up, is that as the generation's religious sort of tendencies and beliefs start to wane in our societies, they're filling it instead with these sorts of things, which they feel are spiritual, such as the old astrology and crystals and so many other different kinds of pseudoscience. And the younger generation is paying more attention to that maybe than has been in prior years.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' You know, a pseudoscience thing that sticks out to me is the guy, or I shouldn't say the guy, but he was kind of the architect of it, but he had multiple authors. You remember the space octopus paper?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. Oh yeah. That was a fun one.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It was fun, but it was also like extra annoying because it was like a peer-reviewed academic paper.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Oh, it was extra. It was very extra.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It was definitely extra.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So this was about panspermia. And again, this is a classic, what I consider to be a pseudoscience. And this is one, this is like the naked ape theory or the aquatic ape theory where it's like it's really-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' We were talking about that last week.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, it's really in that gray zone where, okay, it's not an unreasonable-ish hypothesis, but it's just a hypothesis. It's not really a full-blown theory. And the proponents of it are really just pulling a lot of circumstantial evidence, but they don't really have evidence to support it and they don't really have a good testable hypothesis. So with panspermia, the thing is their arguments are just really not compelling. And what these panspermia proponents were saying was that the octopus is evidence of panspermia because it's so out there and bizarre. It's something that didn't evolve on earth. It was sort of introduced somehow. That's why it's so bizarre or different. But I think that's a terrible-<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It's almost a God of the Gaps argument.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. It's just a terrible argument. But that, we got a lot of pushback on that. Because people are like, what are you saying? Panspermia is not real science. It's like, well, it's not. I'm sorry. So what we're saying is the people who are promoting it are using a lot of terrible arguments and this is why they're terrible. But it's really good in that gray zone example of pseudoscience, like it really is trying to be scientific. But it is pseudoscience. A little bit more towards the pseudoscientific end of the spectrum was the thing we very recently discussed was the release active drugs, which is basically homeopathy. That's the kind of pseudoscience where you're taking a pure pseudoscience, like pure magic, like homeopathy, and just dressing it up in scientific jargon. And of course, every year, every year, alternative medicine is huge. And this year had not just that, but also anti-vaxxers and we saw a return of measles, especially in Europe. More cancer quackery. Just at the end of 2017, actually, there was a study came out that said that if you use alternative medicine and you have cancer, you die more quickly. Alternative medicine literally is killing people.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' You're twice as likely to die if you opted for the alternative treatments.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' You know, it pissed me off a little bit, Steve. And you wrote about this. This is a California Superior Court judge, Elihu Burl, who ruled that this was in accordance to Proposition 65. Is it 55 or 60? 65. It's like coffee is a carcinogen and requires a warning label. And that's just like, oh my God. Now I expect people, laymen, to be confused by things like, wait, you're confusing hazard with risk type of thing. But a Superior Court judge that is going to be judging the safety of something like this, and it all boils down to the roasting process apparently creates minute amounts of this chemical, acrylamide, but these are mostly like animal and in vitro studies and there's no clinical evidence of risk and they're pretty much saying that you slap a warning label on coffee and it's just like, wow, that just shows you how high up scientific illiteracy can go with people that really should be a little bit more scientifically literate, I think. Right.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Also, he's failing to consider the intention to warn. So in other words, if you set your threshold for warning labels that low, people are going to start to ignore all warning labels.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yes.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's what I was going to say. It's almost a backfire effect. Isn't it funny? Everything in California, there's a sign that says it causes cancer, so nobody worries about anything.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Right. Everything causes cancer.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Walking outside causes cancer I mean, crazy.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I was buying something on Amazon and an alert came up that said like California blah, blah, blah, something about like the thing I wanted to buy could cause cancer because of the plastic they were using. And it was like a handheld object. It wasn't consumable.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No. Yeah. Everything causes cancer here. It's literally posted outside of like every building, like this building contains chemicals known to the state of California to cause cancer. But wasn't there a recent study, Steve? Tell me if you remember this because I want to say you're the one who presented it on the show. But of course, all my years blur together about GMO labeling in like Vermont and how it actually made people, like more people bought GMOs.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. There's conflicting data on that. So it depends on how you ask the question, who you ask or whatever, but it's not clear what the net effect is, that it might have actually made people a little bit more accepting of GMOs but it's not clear. I would just say that that's not clear.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' In California, I'm like, give me my cancer.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' But there's one thing about GMOs. And on the other hand, this is cancer. So people have just the C word is red alarms go off in people's heads anytime they hear that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' On my list for the year also is the anti-GMO movement still. It's still the biggest disconnect between scientists and the public and they're relentless. They're absolutely relentless. Whereas the evidence shows that, yeah, the GMOs that are on the market are actually perfectly safe, but it has not stopped the organic lobby and anti-GMO activists from basically lying, lying about the science, cherry picking, they're still harping about Seralini's terrible pseudoscientific study. And engaging in conspiracy mongering, et cetera, et cetera. When I asked on my blog about like, what's the worst pseudoscience of the year? That was the most common answer was the anti-GMO crowd is still top of the list.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It just feels like it doesn't stop. What I found interesting is that you remember when we were in the UK and we were visiting Cambridge, I had to duck out of our lunch because I had an interview scheduled with Lord Martin Rees. Affectionately, we called him Star Lord because he's the Astronomer Royal. And we talked a lot about what was the biggest thing facing humanity, sort of eschatological threats. And he said that one of the things that he, because he was a little bit like here in the UK, we have our issues in the US, we see a lot of bad stuff happening with your administration. I'm really stressed out about climate change he's very woke, he's very modern, whatever. But one of the things that he said was like, one place where we are failing in the UK, where you guys have been more ahead of the curve is with GMOs. At least for the most part, your administration has always kind of gotten it. And that's true. We're on the other side of the curve. We're just trying to convince like cranks in the US, but at least our laws are not...<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So far.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, so far. Exactly. But they're chipping away at that for sure.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh yeah, the lobbies are active.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Also just like looking back at like what have I blogged about over the year, there are certain themes that come up. One theme is there have been multiple studies now which show that the biggest concern for the environment is land use. That's it. That's like the number one. And whether you're talking about just environment in general or specifically climate change, it was just a recent study I wrote about where it said, yeah we have to use land optimally in terms of its food production as well as carbon sequestration. And like one of the worst things we could do is use land inefficiently. So growing organic on land, which has about 20% less productivity than if you use whatever method you want to use, is a horrible way to use land, right? So organic farming is actually bad for the environment and it's bad for global warming.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, and it's almost baked into the label organic or whatever it takes to get that label slapped on your food. But basically, very little technological advancement can occur for something to still be organic. And we know that making more with less requires technology in many ways. It's not just GM technology. It's like technology with lights and with technology with-<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Irradiating food so it doesn't spoil.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, all these different things. But none of those things are organic, so we're not allowed to do them. It's crazy.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So they talk about food waste. Like, yeah, but how do you keep food from spoiling? One way, if it's appropriate, is irradiation. But that's not natural, you know? So yeah, it's all about process, not the end result, and they don't want any technological process, which we can't afford that anymore. That's the bottom line.<br />
<br />
== Skeptical Heroes <small>(1:00:48)</small> ==<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, so guys, let's talk about our skeptical heroes and the skeptical jackass of the year. Let's start with hero, and I'll go first. I'm going to, although this is a little close to home, and I acknowledge that, for my skeptical hero, I'm going to name Brit Hermes.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, yay.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yes, definitely.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And all of my science-based medicine colleagues, because they really have been tireless. They work very hard for really nothing for literally nothing. But also, they get very little accolades. They get a lot of crap for what they do, a lot of pushback. And everyone I just mentioned has been sued for doing what they do.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It's true.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Brit Hermes is embroiled in a lawsuit. All of SBM is embroiled in our second lawsuit now. So we deal with a lot in order to thanklessly promote science and medicine, something you wouldn't think would need promotion. But it's still a massively uphill battle. And the other thing is you have to realize about everyone is that they know that we're fighting a losing uphill battle, and they do it anyway, because it's the right thing to do, and because they care about their patients, and they care about society. So they're like almost always perpetually my skeptical hero of the year. I think that they especially deserve to get mentioned this year.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, I think I'd have to second that, especially on Brit. I mean, she's become a good friend over the years, and I've really had an opportunity to both interview her in a recording, but also just hang out with her and talk to her kind of off the record. You know, she's young. She's a new mom.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yep, just had a baby.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, just had a baby. She literally lives in another country partially because her husband is getting his PhD there, but partially because it's the only way that she can go to school to start her life over again. She sunk so much money and so much effort into becoming a naturopath because she was duped that she is basically screwed. She's in so much debt. She could never get a good education back in the U.S. because she's maxed out her student loans, and she really worries that she'd never be able to pay them back. And that's all because she was taken advantage of. And now she's getting sued just for speaking out about that, just for speaking literally the truth. I mean, it's a really big deal, and she's super brave for doing this. Like I said, she's quite young, and she has a lot going on.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I'll throw out two names. Now, they don't run in skeptical circles, really, but these people caught my attention this year, and they each wrote a book about vaccinations. The first one is Michael Kinch, K-I-N-C-H. His book is called Between Hope and Fear, A History of Vaccines and Human Immunity. So he's telling the story, basically, of the history of vaccines, which is fascinating and kind of essential, really, to understand in the entire context of the anti-vax movement. And there was also another book, Peter Hotez, Dr. Peter Hotez, who wrote the book Vaccines Did Not Cause Rachel's Autism. And he traces the roots of the problem back to 1998, Andrew Wakefield, and does a really good job of sort of properly pinning a lot, if not all of this, back to this guy and making sure that this is in correct historical context as we close the 20th year anniversary of Wakefield and his article that was published in that journal. So that's it. So I think they just—and they each—so these books each came out in 2018. Thank goodness there are people putting out more books about vaccinations and the truth about the anti-vax movement. We need more.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So when Stephen Hawking came out with A Brief History of Time, I remember Bob just handed me that book and said, read this. You know, it was one of those things that would happen quite often, like Steve and Bob would always be—you know, I would be breaking into their closets and basically stealing their stuff as well, right, Steve? Stephen Hawking has had an impact on me in most of my adult life in one way or the other. And I was very sad when he died this year. I was also happy for him for doing what he was able to do to overcome his illness and still be amazing.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. He was an amazing science communicator and it's very difficult for him to communicate, you know what I mean? But he didn't stand in his way.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' As another quick mention, the scientific community has been struggling a lot with the current administration in the United States. I just want to say that even though we're talking about skeptics here I have a massive respect for scientists and people that are dedicating their time to push the ball forward and to improve humanity by increasing our knowledge and technology. And I think because things have been so hard, I mean, people have been losing their jobs and funding has dried up and it's been very hard to be a scientist the last two years, if not longer. But I think they deserve a nod.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh yeah. Especially EPA scientists, NIH scientists, individuals who basically their jobs are at the whim of the administration. And you know, to be able to keep your head down and keep working, even in times when basically your work, according to the people that have the purse strings, according to them, they call it, I don't know, irresponsible. They might call it not valuable. They might call it a hoax. Can you imagine? It must be really hard to be a climate scientist right now, especially one that works for the government.<br />
<br />
== Skeptical Jackass <small>(1:06:24)</small> ==<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, that gets me to the skeptical jackass of the year segment. My pick for that, after all of the things that have happened this year and the reports that have come out, is anyone who is still denying climate change.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yes.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Right? Everyone and anyone who still thinks that anthropogenic global warming is not a thing that we need to worry about or do something about. I mean, please.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I mean, it's especially appropriate this year. It really is because it was really driven home this year that this is not only is it a thing, but that humans are actually doing this. I mean, this was the first year that research explicitly attributed some of the extreme weather events that we've been experiencing to human-caused climate change. I mean, they really didn't do that before this year. They say, well, it's hard to say how much climate change is making these storms really difficult. But this year, they explicitly said, yep, this is legit, right from-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' The thing that's frustrating is that this is almost, I have to say almost first because I know it's not exclusively, but this is almost exclusively an American problem. And that really bothers me. It really bothers me that the rest of the world gets it, the rest of the leadership of the world and the rest of the voting public of the world. Yet in America, there's this denialism that runs so deep. It's infuriating.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It's disgusting.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I do think we may be turning a corner a little bit in that-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's hard to deny?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, the harder it becomes to deny, you start to see the people towards the moderate end of the spectrum peel off, right? So I think we're starting to see that peel off. So like for example, the writers of South Park were ridiculing Al Gore for his alarmism 15-<br />
<br />
'''E:''' ManBearPig.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' 20 years ago. And now they did a few brilliant episodes where they were basically their apology tour for Al Gore.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Multiple episodes?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. It was like several episodes. And they were making fun of the denialists, I mean, beautifully. While ManBearPig is mauling people behind them, they're denying it or saying, I think, yeah, we're ready to begin to talk about possibly examining whether or not we should think about it. I mean, it's like the delaying tactics. Some conservative writers have said, yeah, I got to admit I was wrong about climate change, like Max Boot wrote an article essentially saying that. So we're starting to see that, like the moderates are peeling off. And so on that end of the political spectrum, we'll be divided on this issue.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. Even the deniers, they can't deny it's happening anymore. All they can do is say, it's not our fault. <br />
<br />
'''S:''' Or they say, well, if it's not our fault, it's not going to be that bad. Or even if it's going to be that bad, there's nothing we can do about it. Or what about China? China's not doing anything about it. Whatever. Just as long as the end result is they don't have to do anything. That's the desired conclusion. And they will backfill any excuse that they need to. And they will also just shift around as needed. As long as the final conclusion is we don't need to do anything. Let's wait and see what happens.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Let's wait and see how quickly we die.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Let's see how bad it gets before we go. Oops, you were right. Too late.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Right. But there was like the IPCC reported about, yeah it's still going to be bad even if we limit it to 1.5, but 2.0 is going to be really bad. The US government report came out saying that, yep, this is going to cost a lot of money. It's really going to be cost effective to prevent this from happening right now. The data is just getting stronger.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. And of course, this is not new. But hey, guess what? Hottest year on record.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Ask England how their season was this year, their summer. Insane. Hot, hot, hot, hot.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' We had nice weather in London and Scotland.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. I don't think it was supposed to be that nice that time of year.<br />
<br />
== SGU Word Inventions <small>(1:10:19)</small> ==<br />
<br />
'''S:''' To finish off on reviewing the SGU for the year, so Cara, you keep track of funny words that we make up accidentally when we're recording the show.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' She's like, uh-huh.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Uh-huh. Uh-huh. So the one thing I don't do, and I'm going to start right now, is I don't delineate when. I just have a running list. So I have 26 words that we've made up, but many of them are very old, like geothermical or infectious. Both yours, Jay. But so I'm just going to count backward, and maybe you guys can tell me once I get to what sounds like 2017. So most recent, Jay made up a wonderful word, comoroid. That's a comet and an asteroid gray zone object. I like that.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I like it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' A comoroid.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I got a lot of emails on that one, too. People really liked it. They identified with that.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' The next, actually, I have more words lately, probably because you guys give me so much shit that I actually ended up writing them down. I didn't do that early on. I was talking about a medical examiner, and I instead called him an examinator. Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' The examinator.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' The examinator. Also, Bob, this one's for you.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I did one?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Lay on your rug.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, you did one. We'll get there. But this was me again, but it was something that I think is really relevant to you. I was talking about decorating for Halloween, and I called it deckerine. It's one of Bob's favorite things to do, deckerine. Jay mentioned fraudulating data.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Fraudulating?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I love it. Both Steve and Evan both said the word fictitious.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That's a Simpsons play on words.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's a Simpsons thing, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Gotcha, gotcha. There we go. Okay. Jay talked about the wee centipede quite a few times. Steve, you did another one, which was fictitious. You made it that much worse.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Wow, Steve.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Bob, here's a good one that you did. You were trying to think of the word mosquito net. And you were like those fly curtains.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' No way.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So Homer Simpson of you. The garage. Sorry, car hole. Let's see. Whatever. Jay called science squients at one point.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Squients.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Squients. Oh, and Evan talked a bit about republiclins, republiclands.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Republiclands. I think it's accurate.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And then here are just a couple more. I think we're getting back into 2017, but they're too funny, so I have to say them again. Bob, she hit the nail on the button. Everyone loves that one.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Really?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Mixed metaphor.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Steve talked about a couple things being co-orbitable. Which I think we need. Yeah, we need to enter that. Co-orbitable. And Evan discussed some different academic papers, I suppose being citated.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yes, they were and still are.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' What was the dinosaur I couldn't say?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Parasaurolophus.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Parasaurolophus. I wrote down that you called it Parasophilus.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Parasophilus.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. And also senescent instead of senescent. And lastly, my favorite, although I don't know if it's from this year, it reminds me a bit of Bob's fly curtains, is Evan's lung clams.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' When we were talking about tonsil stones or something.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Tonsil stones. You were like, one of those things, those lung clams.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Lung clams. It's just more ew.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That sounds horrible.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It does sound awful.<br />
<br />
== Favourite Who's That Noisy <small>(1:13:58)</small> ==<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And Jay, you wanted to tell us your favorite Who's That Noisy for the year.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah. So I picked a handful of noisies. So this one I know you guys loved. [plays Noisy] Remember this one?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' The Boston Terrier.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yes. Now here it is with a little music. [plays Noisy]<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh my God.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That is genius. That is totally genius.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I love the woman.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Futuristic opera.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' You're embarrassing me. Stop.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' This one was, I think, my favorite. The most provocative. [plays Noisy] Remember what it was?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No. Was it something celestial?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' An imperial probe droid.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That was a seal making its underwater noise outside of the water.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh yeah. That's crazy.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' One confused seal.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I just thought that was so freaking cool. Do you guys remember? This one was really funny too. I thought this one was very odd. [plays Noisy]<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Is that the parrot?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah. So that's Oscar the parrot. But then there was another one where, oh no, here's Max the bird. This is what I was looking for. Max the bird. [plays Noisy]<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I don't like it.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' No, I know it sounds demonic a little bit, but that's the bird. If you listen to the guy's voice.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I don't like the guy's voice.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I know, but that's what's creepy about it is the bird is mimicking his voice.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. We got two more sections to go through.<br />
<br />
== In Memoriam <small>(1:16:00)</small> ==<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We're going to do an in memoriam like we do every year and then science or fiction and then we're done for the year. So we always review the scientists and notable celebrities, notable to us, that we lost during the previous year. So lots of places put out lists of scientists who died. Cara, you sent me one that I thought was the most complete of the ones that I've seen.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Worked hard on that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The number one is Coco the gorilla.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. Coco died June 19th, 2018.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Been hearing about Coco for decades.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, my whole life.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' She was born July 4th, 1971.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' My birthday. Wow. Holy crap.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. So she was.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Not the 1971 part yet, right?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' She was 46 when she died. I love it on her Wikipedia. It says what she was known for. You know, there's always like in the box what somebody's known for. Use of sign language and pet keeping. Aw. Remember she had the kitten. Multiple kittens, I think.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Oh, we also lost Paul Allen.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' You guys know Paul Allen. October 15th, actually, 2018. Co-founder of Microsoft, of course. Philanthropist.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yep. Founder of the Allen Institute for Brain Science, the Institute for Artificial Intelligence, Institute for Cell Science.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Wow.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Didn't he also like donate money for radio telescope array, the Allen Array?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, yeah. And he also was the co-founder of the Mojave Aerospace Ventures. Yeah, did a lot. Really, really, I mean, massive philanthropist and also very into science and tech and changing the world for the better through those uses.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We talked about Stephen Hawking already. Leon Letterman stands out for me as well. American experimental physicist.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Nobel Prize in 88.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Worked at the Fermi Lab. Yeah. Nobel Laureate. Became known in 1993 for his book, The God Particle.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, boy, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Talking about his boson.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, Bob, you hate that.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Lots of people hate that.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Goddamn particle. More like it.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Exactly.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Also, by the way, 96 years old. Ripe old age of 96.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, good run.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's a good life. Oh, Walter Mischel really stands out to me. Walter Mischel is a name that most people who have studied psychology would recognize because Walter Mischel was famed for the marshmallow test. You remember the famed marshmallow test?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Of course.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That was his experiment. Died at the age of 88. Gosh, there's so many interesting people here.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' There are two astronauts.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Two astronauts.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' John Young and Alan Bean. Yeah, Alan Bean was the fourth person to walk on the moon. And John Young was the ninth person to walk on the moon. Also, Australian obstetrician William McBride, who discovered the teratogenicity of thalidomide.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, saved so many lives.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Teratogenicity?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, teratogenic means it causes mutations.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Monster forming. That's what the word literally translates to. Also, a researcher named Dorothy Chaney, who's a primatologist, a professor of biology at the University of Pennsylvania, and she studied cognition, communication, and social behavior in wild primates. She was quite young. She died at the age of 68. Gosh, there's so many really interesting people who there's like a bunch of laureates who passed away. Yeah. A lot of interesting engineers. Oh, here's an interesting I got to give my shout out to my ladies. Jimmy C. Holland was the founder of the field of psycho-oncology. So she established a full-time psychiatric service at Sloan Kettering and really brought psychology into cancer biology and cancer care, which was really important. And it's actually ultimately a field that I'm really influenced by and will probably end up going into. So that's a big deal. Oh, this one, Adel Mahmoud, who is an Egyptian-born American doctor. He is credited with developing the Gardasil HPV vaccine and also the rotavirus vaccine.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, boy. Important.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Hugely important.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' A few non-scientists make our list because of their cultural influence. So Stan Lee, of course, recently passed away. We spoke about that. Douglas Raine. Douglas Raine did the voice of Hal, the Hal 9000 in 2001. An iconic, iconic voice.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, my gosh.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Gary Kurtz. Gary Kurtz, one of the producers of Star Wars.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yep. He was one of the people that made it what it was, that first movie. Very important.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yep. Yep. Absolutely. And Harlan Ellison, we talked about on the show. Very influential science fiction writer. And Evan, you and I mourn the loss of R. Lee Ermey, who played the gunnery sergeant.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Gunnery sergeant Hartman.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' On Full Metal Jacket. I mean, he basically created that archetype of the hard-ass drill sergeant. I mean, he made it his own.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, the drill sergeant?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, the drill sergeant. He made it his own and has been replicated multiple, multiple times since then.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, it became iconic.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, it was iconic. Absolutely.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' And I have more than one friend who tell me that the first half of Full Metal Jacket is the best movie making they've ever seen in their lives.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's amazing.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' In no small part due to the acting of R. Lee Ermey.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, I love that movie.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, he made the whole first act of that movie be amazing.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It's mesmerizing.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Mm-hmm. All right, guys, are you ready for the final science or fiction for the year?<br />
<br />
== Science or Fiction <small>(1:21:50)</small> ==<br />
{{SOFinfo<br />
|item1 = A newly published paper reveals pterosaur fossils covered with feather-like filaments, indicating that feathers may predate not only birds, but dinosaurs.<br />
|link1 = <ref>[https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-018-0728-7]</ref><br />
<br />
|item2 = A published analysis finds that ocean worlds like Europa probably do not contain enough life-essential elements to support significant life as we know it.<br />
|link2 = <ref>[https://phys.org/news/2018-06-chemicals-icy-worlds-life.html]</ref><br />
<br />
|item3 = In a survey of ecologists and evolutionary biologists, 64% admit to committing scientific misconduct at least once in their own research.<br />
|link3 = <ref>[https://phys.org/news/2018-04-survey-ecologists-biologists.html]</ref><br />
<br />
|}}<br />
<br />
{{SOFResults<br />
|fiction = scientific misconduct<!-- short word or phrase representing the item --><br />
|fiction2 = <!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
<br />
|science1 = pterosaur fossils<!-- short word or phrase representing the item --><br />
|science2 = ocean worlds<!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
|science3 = <!-- leave blank if absent --> <br />
<br />
|rogue1 = evan<!-- rogues in order of response --><br />
|answer1 = scientific misconduct<!-- item guessed, using word or phrase from above --><br />
<br />
|rogue2 =bob<br />
|answer2 =pterosaur fossils<br />
<br />
|rogue3 =cara<br />
|answer3 =ocean worlds<br />
<br />
|rogue4 =jay <!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
|answer4 =ocean worlds <!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
<br />
|rogue5 = <!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
|answer5 = <!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
<br />
|host = Steve<!-- asker of the questions --><br />
<!-- for the result options below, <br />
only put a 'y' next to one. --><br />
|sweep = <!-- all the Rogues guessed wrong --><br />
|clever = y<!-- each item was guessed (Steve's preferred result) --><br />
|win = <!-- at least one Rogue guessed wrong, but not them all --><br />
|swept = <!-- all the Rogues guessed right --><br />
}}<br />
''Voice-over: It's time for Science or Fiction.''<br />
<br />
=== Science or Fiction Stats for 2018 <small>(1:22:03)</small> ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' For the first 50 episodes this year, so not including the last two episodes, I'm in last place with 0%. I lost both the games that I played, but Bob ran and I lost them.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Go, Bob.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, baby.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Followed by Jay at 60.4%, 29 out of 48.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Wow, that's still really good.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That is. And then Cara at 60.5%, 26 out of 43.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Almost identical.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Basically identical. And Bob very close behind, 61.7%, 29 out of 47. And the winner is Evan at 68.1%, 32 out of 47.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Wait, so we can't even beat Evan now.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yes, Bob, it's becoming Evan-ized.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So Evan, you're still going to be the winner regardless of how we do over the next few weeks.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yes, that's true. He's uncatchable. You can break down the stats a lot of different ways, but the other one I want to mention other than the overall record is just the record for lone rogues, the lone rogue stats. So in other words, when you were by yourself, how did you do? And there, Bob did the worst when he's by himself. So Bob was alone eight times and was only correct one time out of eight. So one solo win for Bob out of eight attempts or seven solo losses.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' But it depends. I think it depends if you go first or last. That would skew the impact of that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, absolutely.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But that's pretty random, right?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' This is just looking at when you were alone.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, I got you.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Jay was two out of 12, 16% of the time.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Still shitty, Jay.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Cara was the lone winner two times out of eight. So lone winner twice, lone loser six times or 25%. And again, Evan is on top, 38%. Five times Evan was the lone winner.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I remember those times.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Out of 13 total, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, I went the most. I made the most solo attempts for the year.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It paid off.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Right, yeah. You got to be bold, gamble big, and win big.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And that was your margin of victory for the year. Those are the times when you went against the crowd.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' So there's a strategy there that seems to sort of work. Well, let's see what happens in 2019.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We'll see.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' We will see.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' More data.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But I have a new science or fiction for you this week. Are you ready?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Make Evan go first.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I have a feeling I'm going first, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' These are news items from throughout the year that we somehow missed.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' We missed. So these aren't just news items you already put in science or fiction.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' You've done that to us before and we still lost.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Impossible to prep.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I know. But these are not ones I've used before. These are just news items that just flew below our radar for the year.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Cara, I think I prefer this to ones that we already did because – you know, the way human memory is. It's like, wait, are you remembering what you guessed or what was the truth or what was the fiction? You're all messed up. So the news stuff is better, I think.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, yeah. Because it's always – the science or fiction that are fiction are still pseudo. It's like there's a kernel of truth in all of them.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So we'll see how you do with the new ones this week. Ready?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yes.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Item number one, a newly published paper reveals pterosaur fossils covered with feather-like filaments, indicating that feathers may predate not only birds but dinosaurs. Item number two, a published analysis finds that ocean worlds like Europa probably do not contain enough life-essential elements to support significant life as we know it. And item number three, in a survey of ecologists and evolutionary biologists, 64% admit to committing scientific misconduct at least once in their own research. Evan, go first.<br />
<br />
=== Evan's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''E:''' OK. Wow. Feathers before dinosaurs?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So just – I'll give you a little bit more information here. So pterosaurs are closely related to dinosaurs but they're not dinosaurs. So it basically means that the common ancestor of pterosaurs and dinosaurs may have had feathers. Therefore, it predates dinosaurs.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I see.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I see. I see. Well, that is just fascinating. I wouldn't be surprised if they were able to detect that, come up with that discovery. It is fascinating. I'm leaning towards this one being science. The next one, Europa probably – so this particular analysis says that Europa probably does not contain enough life-essential elements to support significant life as we know it. Well, I don't doubt that there is an analysis out there. Does – this one sounds like science as well. I imagine there are also analysis that say just the opposite. So it's not unusual to have these sort of conflicting things especially for a world that we know relatively so little about. So I think that one is right. So maybe this last one, let's take a close look at it in regards to the survey of ecologists and evolutionary biologists. 64% admit to committing scientific misconduct at least once in their own research. That seems high. That seems a high level of admission to me. I think maybe it's more along the lines of 64% maybe realize that they publish something turned out to be wrong upon later examination. But admitting to misconduct at least once in their own research? I mean to willingly know that you're doing that and put it in there among those groups of scientists? I don't know. Something there is not quite right. Not hitting me correct. I think that one is the fiction.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. We're going to go in reverse order of how well you did this year. So Bob, you're next.<br />
<br />
=== Bob's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''B:''' The pterosaur, feather-like filaments. Yeah, I'm skeptical of that one. I think Steve would have jumped on that. And it's just so unappealing to think that feather-like filaments arose before dinosaurs. It kind of takes away from everything we've been talking about, about feathered dinosaurs for decades now. Let's go to the second one anyway. The Europa. Yeah, the key word there is significant life as we know it. And also I find interesting that it does not contain enough life-essential elements. Well, do we – I mean I'm sure we could be confident about what life-essential elements are. But I think we still have a lot to learn about what elements are really life-essential. And then the last one here. Let's see. The 64% admit committing scientific fraud. God, I remember we covered that at some point.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Well, misconduct, not fraud.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, misconduct. Yeah, misconduct. If it were fraud, then I think I probably wouldn't believe it. So I'm going to go with that one because I remember something about that and it was really – and it was surprisingly high. But the one that seems most likely to be fiction is the feather one. So yeah, I'm going to go with that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's the fiction?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That's fiction, yes.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, Cara.<br />
<br />
=== Cara's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, Steve is not going to sweep us because I think I'm going to go with the other one. So let's go through them. I'm really confused about this – the first one about pterosaur fossils covered with feather-like filaments. This is one of those ones where I'm like, did I read this? Did I only read the headline? But the thing that bothers me is indicating that feathers may predate not only birds but dinosaurs. I thought pterosaurs and dinosaurs existed at the same time.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, but they're not in the same group. So if they both have it, then they're common ancestors. If it's homologous, it's obviously a homologous versus analogous thing but whatever.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' OK. But that makes more sense. So you're not saying that pterosaurs before dinosaurs had feathers and then later dinosaurs – OK. So that one – I think that might be science. Ocean worlds like Europa. The thing that bugs me – OK. Let me go to the one that I also think is true. I am not surprised that 64 percent of scientists, evolutionary biologists, ecologists would admit to committing scientific misconduct at least once in their own research. I would not be surprised at all because scientific misconduct is broad and vague. Like it could be filling in the data when some data is missing or it could be not crossing their Is or dotting their Ts in their statistical analysis or it could be – I bet you most scientists do that. So I am a little surprised that 64 percent would admit to it. But I think, again, that's one of those polling things and there's not enough information in how Steve wrote this because it just depends on how the survey was worded. If they downplayed it and they were like, yeah, maybe you did this. People would be like, yeah, OK. I probably did that. So I'm not surprised.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So I'll just say – I mean even though you're the third person going, I'll just say that the scientific misconduct you could put in quotes, right? That's the phrase that they're admitting to.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That they're using. Interesting. Oh, OK. And so whether it's explained or not, that kind of changes it. OK. The thing that bugs me about the Europa one, which I'm like, hello, I think I would have heard this. But also you're like a published analysis. How many freaking published analyses are there? You get me all the time with this shit where you're like a study says that – I'm like has it been replicated? Is it peer-reviewed? Like anybody could say whatever they want. I'm sure somebody out there said that there's probably not enough essential life elements. But the people that I know that are like pro-Europa are so diehard and like they're still unflappable. And I don't think that if this actually had any sort of legs that NASA would still be trying to go there and do a flyby and get a probe and all this stuff and get the geyser water. So I don't know. I just – this one rubs me the wrong way. Even though you said a published analysis and maybe you're screwing me on that. I'm still going to say that's the fiction.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, Jay. They're all over the place. So it's up to you.<br />
<br />
=== Jay's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Oh, boy. I can't even keep track of who said what now.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' They're evenly divided.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' All right. Crap. Well, I've had plenty of time to think about this, Steve. I'm going to tell you. I don't like it. This first one about the feathers, I think that's science just because there's really no reason to – I haven't seen the fossil record. But sure, feathers are so unbelievably useful in lots of different ways. I can see them predating "dinosaurs", which means they just go way back. Okay, that's fine. The next one about – this one about Europa and the life essential elements. I really agreed with what Bob was saying about how life essential elements for our type of life. But in a different environment, there could be a whole set of other elements that are needed. This also kind of rains on my parade a little bit because I really would like there to be life on Europa. The last one about the ecologists and the evolutionary biologists. I was agreeing with what Cara was saying there about 64 percent said they committed scientific misconduct. I'm not 100 percent sure of the scope of what scientific misconduct actually means. It probably means a lot of different things. It could mean anything from like not having full efficacy in their protocols or finding out that they could have done something better or that it wasn't really adhering to what they needed to do, that type of thing, and they just kept the data anyway. I'm just going to go out and say I think that Europa, the Europa one is the fiction.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So I'm with you.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yes, me and you, Cara.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' All right, against the world.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Let's do it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But so is Bob.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #1 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. Evan's by himself again.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' And I went first.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Hey, before we go on to the reveal of this week's answers, a listener, Alex Garner, took the liberty of putting together a montage. We like to play montages of stuff from the previous year. This is a montage of the rogues' reactions to the science or fiction reveals, and it's pretty funny. Take a quick listen to that, and then we'll go on to this week's reveals.<br />
<br />
[plays the montage]<br />
<br />
All right. Let's take this in order since you guys are all spread out. A newly published paper reveals pterosaur fossils covered with feather-like filaments indicating the feathers may predate not only birds but dinosaurs. Bob, you think this one is the fiction because pterosaurs with feathers? Come on. And this one is science.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I like your bold choice, though Bob, it was bold.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And this a new item. This is actually a very, very recent item.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Really? Well, that's interesting little factoid you didn't tell me.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I said it could be from any time. I said it could be any time over the year.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's one of the things we didn't do.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That's right, Bob.<br />
<br />
'''S''' Pterosaur integumentary structures with complex feather-like branching. And it's not just like, oh, it looks kind of like feathers. It has the signature of feathers like on theropod dinosaurs. So they think that they're homologous, that this means that feathers as an integumentary specialization might have occurred in the common ancestor of pterosaurs and dinosaurs. It may predate dinosaurs in general, not just the theropod dinosaurs.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Bob!<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Did you say integumentary? I thought it was a skin thing.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's incredible. That is mind-blowing. That's like, I agree. We talk about these things that come up that change the way your mental image of the world. I've already had to re-imagine all the theropod dinosaurs with feathers, like even T-Rex, and now pterosaurs, they have feathers.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But I think that's why it was less mind-blowing to me, because we're just systematically seeing more and more visions of our childhood being changed. And I'm like, yeah, throw them on the pie.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I know, I know. But still, there's a disturbance of the force.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Bob, I'm sorry, man. It sucks, dude. Sorry, Bob.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Wow, Jay.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Jay, don't talk smack until we find out if we've won.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It's my last chance. This is the last moment I may have this year to talk smack.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Jay, there's more salt in the cupboard if you want to keep adding to the wound.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #2 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We'll go to number two. A published analysis finds that ocean worlds like Europa probably do not contain enough life-essential elements to support significant life as we know it. Jay and Cara think this is a fiction. Evan, you think this one is science. Evan is all alone, thinking that the scientific misconduct one is the fiction. So Jay and Cara, if you guys are correct, I think you'll leapfrog Bob.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Also, this has consequences.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But we'll still be secondary to Evan.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But if you're wrong, then you sink even further into fourth and fifth place.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, we sink the same amount as Bob. Evan just gets assaulted even more.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And this one is science.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, my gosh.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Evan takes an even stronger, more commanding lead. Another solo win for Evan.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Went first. Thanks, Bob.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' What is wrong with us? How do we not learn from our mistakes?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Here's what you got to do. You have to start producing a game podcast because it helps hone your skills in game playing a little bit more.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So two researchers from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics modeled just Europa, and not just Europa, but the icy worlds out there to say, all right, what's like Ceres, Ganymede, Enceladus, Titan, Dione, Triton, and maybe even Pluto, and said, all right, so given what we know about these worlds, where is the sulfur and the nitrogen and oxygen, and is there enough to sustain? Now, of course, life as we know it that's in there, as you guys said, it could be life that uses whatever ratio of elements those worlds have, but not Earth life. And I said significant because if there's a little bit, well, you could have a little bit of life, but you couldn't have a thriving ecosystem. There wouldn't be enough. There wouldn't be enough to go around. But again, the models are only as good as the models, right? So we don't really know how accurate they're going to be.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And this is only one study.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, but it was a pretty robust study. And whenever I say a study, it's always peer-reviewed. I'm not going to throw some non-peer-reviewed study at you.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' But the journal Crank said, blah, blah, blah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Right, right, right. Yeah, it has to be believable to me, like a reasonable – of course, it's never definitive. It's only one study, but they also were modeling trace elements like molybdenum because that's–<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Ooh, molybdenum.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's one of my favorites.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Iron. Iron. Have you had your iron today?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It's in me blood.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So yeah, so it is unfortunate if this pans out, if that analysis is correct. It could limit the prospects for life on Europa and similar worlds. But I agree, this is just life as we know it, and it's more a limit on the amount of life, not whether or not there could be any life. Even one organism would be amazing.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh my gosh.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's also very hard for us to know what's beneath that ice.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, absolutely.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #3 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All of this means that in a survey of ecologists and evolutionary biologists, 64% admitted to committing scientific misconduct at least once in their own research. This is the fiction. And Evan, your analysis was spot on.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Thank you.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That, in fact, it was 64% admitted to doing things in the gray zone, but not "misconduct". So what they admitted to was questionable research practices. But 97.9% said they never committed scientific misconduct. So very few. Only 2% said they did it once or twice.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Was it blinded?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' 0% said they did it, yeah, said they did it often.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' You mean like it was an anonymous survey?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, anonymous survey. So what falls under questionable research practices, however, and this is what I found very interesting about this article, to me, that's scientific misconduct.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Ah, that's where I was confused.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' 64% of surveyed researchers reported that at least once they failed to report results because they were not statistically significant. 42% said that they collected more data after inspecting whether results were significant or not. That's p-hacking. So 42% admitted to blatant p-hacking. 51%—<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, that's misconduct.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, yeah. But that's why I said, yeah, put that in quotes. That's the phrase they were—<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Admitting, right, right, self-reporting.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' As opposed to questionable research practices. That's the distinction that they're making.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's not questionable. That's been questioned. That's not okay.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I'm with you. I'm with you. 51% reported harking. Do you know what harking is, Cara?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Harking? No, I've never even heard that term.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Hypothesizing after results are known.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Ew, that's so bad.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, they say that an unexpected finding of the research, well, that's what we were looking for all along.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's f-ed up. Why don't you just report that? It's also so stupid because it's unnecessary.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It's like anti-science.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We hypothesized that this was going to happen. No, you didn't. That was an unexpected finding. Just say it, right.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, just say it. That's even cooler.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' 51% admitted to that. So yeah, so it's clustering around half, admit to these "questionable practices". But I think that they should be upgraded to scientific misconduct, especially the p-hacking. That's just, you can't do it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. Also, I feel like that number's probably low because even though it's anonymous, any computer scientist, anybody who's like, somebody's going to be able to figure out I answered these questions is probably downplaying a little. Evan-<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Interesting.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I'm disinviting you from my poker table.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, Cara. Damn it.<br />
<br />
== Skeptical Quote of the Week <small>(1:46:13)</small> ==<br />
<br />
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<blockquote><p style="line-height:125%">The need to reduce dissonance is a universal mental mechanism, but that doesn’t mean we are doomed to be controlled by it. Human beings may not be eager to change, but we have the ability to change, and the fact that many of our self-protective delusions and blind spots are built into the way the brain works is no justification for not trying.</p>– ''{{w|Mistakes Were Made (but Not by Me)}}'' (2007) by social psychologists Carol Tavris & Elliot Aronson</blockquote><br />
<br />
'''S:''' Evan, bring us home for the year with your final quote.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes. Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You're doing things you've never done before. And more importantly, you're doing something. And that was from Neil Gaiman, G-A-I-M-A-N, who's an English author of short fiction novels, comic books, graphic novels, audio theater, and films. His works include the comic book series The Sandman, which I hear is very good, and novels Stardust, American Gods, Coraline, and The Graveyard Book.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Coraline.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Coraline is awesome. Coraline is awesome. And I watched the first season of American Gods. It's interesting. I think it's interesting.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, it makes you think a little bit.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I recently listened to the book. I enjoyed it.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' How was it?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I enjoyed it.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Good, good, good. And it's a good sentiment.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Guys, thank you all for another exciting year of the SGU. I appreciate all the work that you do for the show.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, it was all right.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Thanks, Steve.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Thanks Steve.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Thanks for being the captain of the boat. And it was a great success this year.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It is my honour. Yes, my honour to host all of you guys.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' What's in the boat?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Skepticism.<br />
<br />
== Signoff/Announcements == <!-- if the signoff/announcements don't immediately follow the QoW or if the QoW comments take a few minutes, it would be appropriate to include a timestamp for when this part starts --><br />
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'''S:''' —and until next week, and next year, this is your {{SGU}}. <!-- typically this is the last thing before the Outro --> <br />
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}}</div>Hearmepurrhttps://www.sgutranscripts.org/w/index.php?title=SGU_Episode_807&diff=19126SGU Episode 8072024-01-24T07:17:44Z<p>Hearmepurr: episode done</p>
<hr />
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|episodeDate = {{month|12}} {{date|26}} 2020 <!-- broadcast date --><br />
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|qowText = Persistence in scientific research leads to what I call instinct for truth.<br />
|qowAuthor = {{w|Louis Pasteur}}, French chemist and microbiologist<br />
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|downloadLink = {{DownloadLink|2020-12-26}}<br />
|forumLink = https://sguforums.org/index.php?topic=53120.0<br />
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== Introduction ==<br />
''Voice-over: You're listening to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.'' <br />
<br />
'''S:''' Hello and welcome to the {{SGU|link=y}}. Today is Tuesday, December 22<sup>nd</sup>, 2020, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella... <br />
<br />
'''B:''' Hey, everybody!<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Cara Santa Maria... <br />
<br />
'''C:''' Howdy. <br />
<br />
'''S:''' Jay Novella... <br />
<br />
'''J:''' Hey guys. <br />
<br />
'''S:''' Evan Bernstein...<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Good evening, folks.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' ...and making his SGU debut, Ian Callanan. Ian, welcome to the Skeptics Guide, man.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' Sup. I need a cool intro. I don't have one.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I know.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Sup.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That's your intro. I need a cool one. I don't have one.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' They're developed, Ian. It just has to come. It'll come to you.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' Oh. Okay. Sorry.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So there is an SGU holiday tradition that when we do our end of the year wrap-up show, for a number of years, we had on Mike LaSalle, who worked for the SGU for years, is a great friend of ours. Unfortunately, we lost him a number of years ago because of heart failure due to a congenital heart defect. And what occurred to me, it's like, Ian works for the show, and we should resurrect this tradition because it's fun.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Hear, hear.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So Ian-<br />
<br />
'''B:''' We tried to resurrect Mike, but that didn't work.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I mean, it is Christmas.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Jesus Christ.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' What with the resurrection and all. Oh, that's Easter.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Wow. You guys are lame.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' And edit that out too.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And this is, of course, our year-end review show where we talk about all the wonderful stuff that happened in the previous year.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It was uneventful.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' This is 2020. We've been looking forward-<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That's it. Thank you, guys. The show is over.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We've been looking forward to the 2020 wrap-up for a long time.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' People will never remember 2020 for anything.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Now, Ian, in case there are people out there who don't know who you are, you are often the disembodied voice that manifests when we're doing live streaming events like the Friday live streams, and you have been a valued asset to the SGU in everything we do. You basically make all the technical stuff happen.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' You have to say that because I'm here, though. But yeah, okay. I agree.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I thought you'd have to say it because it's true.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' Oh, okay. Sorry.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Well, he doesn't do it all alone. I mean, it's not like I just stand there and point my finger around, you know?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I actually thought that was exactly what you did, Jay. Just tell Ian to do stuff.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' Yeah. He's good at finger pointing.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But Ian has made himself indispensable, which is great, but it's also like Jay and I occasionally like, God, if Ian weren't here, we would have no idea what we were doing.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' My plan is working.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' You're still sending out newsletters, huh?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I mean, when Ian came aboard, he enabled the SGU to dramatically increase our quality and our output. You know, Ian is a heavy, heavy lifter when it comes to technical stuff. It's amazing. I love watching his brain work.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. As an example, the 12-hour show. See, I want it to be a 24-hour show. The 12-hour show-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Why? What is wrong with you, Steve?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' -in January, January 23rd, is going to be all green screen, and that's only possible because Ian is going to manage the whole green screen thing for us.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' True. We'll do some fun, weird things. I mean, the practical set, it was beautiful, and I hate that I'm partially responsible for destroying it, but the green screen is just going to make the world of difference with all types of weird tech stuff that we'll do.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We haven't destroyed our practical set. We can't bring ourselves to do it quite yet.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' Yes. Not formally. It's hidden behind green screen.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. It's just behind the green screen.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' And as I told Jay, if it comes down to it, and say the green screen just rocks so hard that we're like, we're never going to do anything else except, unless we get a volume, but we'll stick with the green screen forever, let's get rid of the practical Star Trek console set. I said, we're never going to destroy that. At the very least, we'll sell it. Have somebody, hey, you come pick it up, dismantle it, pick it up, and it's yours, and of course pay us. I mean, right? We'd sell that. We wouldn't want to just destroy that.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' We could donate it.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That would be against the law.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That would be against the law.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Getting a little ahead of ourselves here. All right. So let's get into some of the categories that we'd like to talk about for our review show.<br />
<br />
== Science News Items of the Year==<br />
<br />
=== COVID-19 <small>(4:18)</small> ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We're going to start with the science of the year, science news items of the year. What was the science news that had the greatest impact, either on us personally, on the skeptical movement, on the world? And the thing is, there's one giant big news story this year.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Giant.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Pretty big.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Murder hornets.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It sucked all the scientific oxygen out of the room, and murder hornets got a lot of votes, by the way.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It did get a lot of votes.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It did.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But come on. This was the year of COVID-19. This is the year of COVID.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' And the vaccine.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' And for me, yeah, it was the vaccine.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. It's sequencing SARS-CoV-2. It's learning everything that we could learn about it so quickly and developing this mRNA vaccine.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah. I took a good look at this, just trying to see, all right, what did they actually do? How dramatic was it? And it's quite dramatic. I mean, most, as you probably heard, most vaccines take 10 to 15 years to make. I mean, that's a good average. Some of them are even longer, like the influenza virus, several strains took 28 years to develop. Oh, no, chickenpox took 28 years to develop. And then 15 years for the papillomavirus and rotavirus, 15 years to develop that. And up until now, the fastest that I could find for a vaccine development was for the mumps, which took four years. If that took four years now, I mean, that would, oh, my God, my pandemic care would be so horrible.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And do you remember, did I mention this on the show? How long did it take to develop the mRNA vaccine for COVID? Do you remember?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, it was really short, like insanely short. You mean to, once we had COVID fully sequenced and we understand it, how to like adapt it?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' But it depends. But the other foundation technologies were already, that were in development for years before that, right?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, of course. They had the platform. They had the foundational technology. But from the moment that Moderna, let's say, got their hands on the sequence of the SARS-CoV-2 virus from the Chinese, how long did it take them to develop the vaccine?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I think it was days.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Two days. Two days.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That's unbelievable.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' So that's where we are now, huh?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' But here's why. Now, here's why. I looked at it specifically, why was it so fast? Some of it, one of the reasons is because we're just simply better. We're leveraging our recent successes and we have accumulated knowledge that played in. We also, phases two and three were combined for expediency, as was demonstrated in the current trials. So instead of phase one, two, and three, one is safety, two efficacy, three comparison, they combined two and three. That sped things up.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But all of that was after the two-day thing we're talking about.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' No, but I'm talking about, you have the code and now it's being distributed. I'm talking the full Monty, the whole thing. And also, large-scale manufacturing can begin when the vaccine is still in the trials. And that cuts a ton of time off. So that's the why why was it so fast? We're better reason. The other reason though why it's so fast is it's purely, I think, because of mRNA. The advantages inherent with mRNA. Pfizer and Moderna mRNA vaccines were developed so fast, partly because they don't need companies to really to produce like the protein or the weakened pathogen for the vaccine like we used to. Basically, you're making the mRNA in a lab and that could take months or even years off of the process. So that, the fact, I think, the fact that it was an mRNA and not this like weakened mRNA and not this weakened version or segment of protein from the virus, that I think was a dramatic increase in the speed. And another factor that you don't really hear too much about is that they were exceptionally swift at recruiting patients for clinical trials. They got them together much faster. So I think, so all of that kind of...<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It makes it really easy to recruit patients when there's a pandemic. You know what I mean? When there's literally-<br />
<br />
'''B:''' There you go.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Hundreds of thousands of people coming down with the illness that you're studying. But also, but keep in mind though, Bob, yeah. So part of it was, the whole feature of mRNA vaccines is they're fast. They're not necessarily better in terms of efficacy or even safety. They're good.<br />
<br />
'''B:'''' In fact, notwithstanding, I mean...<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But some regular vaccines are 95% effective. But the advantage is we're really good at making genetic material and RNA, DNA, et cetera. And so if we can... If the vaccine production process is just a matter of sequencing a gene or a protein and then making an mRNA, that's it. It literally takes days to do that. All the other time was testing. But Bob, we have to point out though that AstraZeneca made a viral-based vaccine, a more traditional all-thirds virus vaccine. And they also took them about a year. So from February to...<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's really fast though.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's really fast. So it wasn't just the mRNA. I think it was, as you say, doing basically all three phases simultaneously rather than sequentially and starting production before the end was done. Doing everything basically all at once was key.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And also SARS-CoV-2 was sequenced before we even really knew that we were dealing with a pandemic. So back when it was local, epidemiologists, virologists were able to start this next generation sequencing process. It's just a game changer that we can sequence the genome of a virus so quickly.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That's absolutely key to this entire thing is being able to quickly decode the genome of a virus or a bacterium quickly. And that's key. And China released that, didn't they? They released it worldwide and said, hey, you guys all have at it. They definitely should have done things differently than they did. They could have really nipped this in the bud if they handled things differently. But the fact that they did that was good.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. The fact that one year ago, this was simmering in China. And a year later, we identified the virus, we sequenced the genome. We've learned a ton about the pathophysiology of COVID-19. We've explored multiple therapeutics. We learned about the natural course of the disease. We learned how to care for these patients better. And a year later, we have multiple vaccines around the world ready get going in people's arms. That is a massive science success story. Just massive.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' In the face of resistance. And that's the other thing that's so incredible. It's like there were a lot of mechanisms in place to lubricate these wheels. There were a lot of mechanisms in place to bring the money and to kind of streamline the regulations so that this massive scientific endeavor that's a multinational collaborative scientific endeavor could take place. But there were also massive mechanisms in place to kind of prevent progress. And yet this still happened in such a very short timeline. I think it really speaks to the power of science as a method. And it also speaks to the power of scientists and all of the different supportive people working in those supportive vocations out there as kind of a humanitarian effort.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. And also this COVID was also the source of the biggest pseudoscience of the year, as you're alluding to Cara. So for example, I mean, hydroxychloroquine has got to be the big pseudoscience story.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Wait.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' The drug itself.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. But who promoted it? But I feel like I have to say, Steve, just to interject before we get into hydroxychloroquine as a whole. Do you guys remember this quote? I looked up the exact quote. I didn't want to paraphrase. "Suppose that we hit the body with a tremendous, whether it's ultraviolet or just a very powerful light. Supposing you brought the light inside the body, which you can do either through the skin or some other way."<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yep. The musings of one Donald Trump. We'll get to that a little bit later, I'm sure.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's why you listen to scientists and not politicians.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside or almost like a cleaning? It sounds interesting to me. So we'll see. The whole concept of the light, the way it kills in just one minute. That's pretty powerful.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah. They like he turned his head and he's looking at a couple of medical professionals and the looks on their faces were like, what do I do? How do we handle this one, you know?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I know.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It's unbelievable. Steve, you think the hydroxychloroquine was the pseudoscience of the year?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, I mean, I think it was certainly one of the biggest pseudoscientific stories of the year. I mean, hydroxychloroquine is a real drug it has its indications mainly for autoimmune disease. And there is some real reason to think that it might have been effective against coronavirus, but it became an unnecessarily pseudoscientific story because of the way it was politicized. And people are still promoting it, still.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. In the face of overwhelming evidence that this is not good for everybody's health.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Just to close this, I just wanted to see what was the most up-to-date thing. So there was a November 13th systematic review looking at all the studies this year on chloroquine, hydroxychloroquine and COVID-19, basically showing no benefit.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And what a nightmare that we have to do multiple meta-analyses at this point.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I mean, that's fine. It's fine that it was studied. It was fine that we then put all the data together.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Of course it was fine that it was studied. But at a certain point you go, okay, the onus is not on this anymore. Like why are we putting considerable resources into continuing to study this?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Some of it was driven by politics, I agree, not the science. But here's the thing. And then the holdouts say, well, you need to give zinc with the hydroxychloroquine, otherwise it doesn't work. So guess what? That's been studied too now. The biggest study of zinc plus hydroxychloroquine showed no difference, no benefit. So it just didn't work. Again, the pseudoscience is in continuing to promote it despite the evidence.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah. I mean, hydroxy definitely has a huge brand name recognition this year in terms of pseudoscience. But in terms of like actual damage, I put at the top in my list here, mask denialism.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Or just straight up virus hoaxism, right? Which goes along with the mask denialism. Just this idea that it's not that bad. It's like the flu or you're taking away my liberty.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Or the whole thing's a hoax.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' The whole thing is a hoax. Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' But to me, the mask denialism has the highest body count.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right. I think it all feeds into each other.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Even more than those other terms.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's like though, it's the same people who maybe aren't washing their hands and all those things contribute to the spread of a deadly virus.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah. But if everyone just wore masks and didn't even wash their hands, then we would see much lower numbers.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's so depressing.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Something so simple.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. In the U.S., we're over 300,000 dead at this point, arguably. But at least tens of thousands of people are dead due to some flavor of COVID denialism. And it could be as many as one, 200,000 of those 300,000 people. We don't know. We can't replay it. But like best case scenario, if we were really good about containing this pandemic, we might have kept the deaths under 100,000. That's plausible.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It could have been flu. It could have been similar to a bad flu year. And I mean, think about that. Think about those numbers. That's some dense pseudoscience death right there in one year. What even comes close in the past century?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, that's true. We often talk about hoaxes. We talk about pseudoscientific quack cures. And one of the common questions we have to answer doing what we do is the sort of what's the harm question.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' There you go.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And we talk a lot about harm, but often it's true. It's sort of on the fringes. Or often it's sort of like it's harm psychologically. And yes, it's harm physiologically. Yes, it's harm in terms of actual life and death. But often the numbers are nowhere near what we're dealing with this year.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That's why you need a foundation of critical thinking, skepticism, and being able to assess evidence to get people in a position where they don't jump into something like mass denialism that has a huge body count.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' And you have to know the right people to listen to, the right sources to read. You go to the experts. You don't go to the amateurs to figure out what's going on.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That's all part of it.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Look at how science got breached or the belief in and trust of science was breached. I mean it wasn't just Donald Trump, I know. But he was really leading the charge of first off I believe personally that he started the or was a huge contributor to the non-mask wearing craze.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' He refused to in front of in all of his speeches early on when Fauci and Birx were saying, we need to mask up and we need to be vigilant about this. He was saying, yeah, they say that, but I'm not going to.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, he just persisted. It just kept going on and on. I think I saw him wearing a mask twice in the last 10 months. You know, I mean, everything that all of his negative contributions to this whole situation, I think were adding to the the lack of belief in basic science. The thing that's scary, though is just how easily so many people were pushed into not believing in science. It didn't take that much of a push. It wasn't like that long drawn out conspiracy against science. It was just a politician.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, Jay, the the COVID concept played out everything that we talk about in the skeptical movement, right. All of it came to a head with COVID. It was conspiracy theories, science denialism, the war on expertise, the politicization of scientific topics. It was all there. And obviously, scientists were pushing back. We were pushing back. Skeptics were pushing back. But it became a culture war. The science and the response to COVID became a culture war. And once that happens, you lose. You know, it was the spread of information on social media, of misinformation. You know, all of the things were at play, all the scientific skepticism, activism that we do. And again, that culminating in the what's the harm argument? Well, there it is. And it's not as if scientists didn't know what was going to happen. Some of our listeners pointed out that about 10 years ago, we had Mark Chrislip on the show. And we asked him, what's the next pandemic going to be like? You know, what's really what could it be like? And he pretty much laid out, the COVID pandemic. What he described, oh you're going to have lockdowns. People will be at home, he said. I think he even said stock up on toilet paper. You know, it was he pretty much called what would happen. Yeah, it was it was uncanny. So it's not like the experts didn't know that this was this was inevitable.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But there was also a kind of I continue to run up against this kind of like naive outlook that I see among experts who might be dialed into the science, but not necessarily into the social psychology or like, say, the skeptical kind of viewpoint, where I just had someone on my podcast this past week who I struggled with, because although he is very well versed in Andrew Wakefield and fraud, and I talk about this on the show, there's this sort of like bring the people the information and they will make the best decision.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. The knowledge deficit.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' We know that. Yet you continue to see it is it's so naive, yet you continue to see it voiced by individuals in oftentimes positions of scientific authority where it's like, let's just keep following, towing the line saying once people see once they see, they're going to change their behavior once they see they're going to want to get vaccinated. <br />
<br />
'''B:''' Have you seen you have met humans, right?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, let's talk about some non COVID stuff.<br />
<br />
=== Return to Space <small>(20:57)</small> ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So what other science? I mean, it's hard to get past it. But there was other science happening.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Absolutely.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, yeah. The dragon capsule.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, exactly. I was gonna say list that as my as like the big positive thing that happened this year. This is really felt like the year that like we're back into space. Yeah, we you know, we have a successful launch of the dragon capsule with people delivering people to the ISS. And really seems like this is happening this whole going back to the moon Artemis project we're really the 2020s is going to be an incredible decade in terms of space travel.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Absolutely.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' We launched three across the globe, three different Mars missions in July of this year. China launched Tianwen-1. We launched Perseverance, the rover. There was also a United Arab Emirates launch. As you guys I mean, we we freaking scooped rocks off of an asteroid this year.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Two asteroids and the moon.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' And brought him back.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It brought it back. You're right. It's just amazing.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' China went to the moon. Israel went to the moon. India went to the moon as well. Just incredible stuff.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' And we're also seeing we're seeing historical levels of investment in one of my favorite things, nuclear thermal rockets for cislunar activities between Earth and moon orbit, which then with those engine designs will then can then be used as a foundation for the bigger versions to go to Mars. I mean, it really looks promising now. They're really starting to see that we need to step away at some point from chemical engines and really start looking at these nuclear engines. I mean, they're just imagine going to Mars and half the time, half the time, that's a huge chunk you're knocking off there. And so, yeah, so that made me very happy.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' But you can feel it building up all these events. People took an interest again in space, I think, to a degree that they hadn't felt in a long time. And I think a lot of that had to do with the with the success of the Dragon capsule and the return of U.S. astronauts back into space and merging with the ISS. That was very celebrated. Millions of people watched the the event on television, even the first part that was scrubbed and then had to get pushed a couple of days for the relaunch. You know, people people followed that intently. There was a ton of attention and people were genuinely, genuinely interested. It's like a renaissance almost coming.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I also I think it's important to point out that 2020 really was a watershed year for spotlighting inequity across America specifically, but also that that that Black Lives Matter movement spread across the globe as well. So not just a conversation about police brutality, although that's sort of how it started. And that was kind of the nucleation site for this year.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's good to point out, too, that there's a science at the core of this. Like we're not just this is not just how we feel about things. There's a science of the differential treatment in many contexts, in many, many the medical context, certainly in policing, definitely in many, many outcomes. And so that science is informing this entire discussion. And as it should, as it should be again, the like what we do about it is more of a political question, but there's no serious scientific doubt about the data itself. The disparity is absolutely there.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' For sure.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Before we move off the science news part, Jay or Ian, do you guys have any science news stories that stick out for you?<br />
<br />
=== Folding Protein <small>(24:37)</small> ===<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I didn't hear anybody mention the folding protein.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah. Tell me about this, Jay. Alpha fold. Definitely one of the biggest of the year for me. For sure.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' After you covered that, Bob. I did more reading about it just because it takes a while for that type of science to sink in. Like I need to read it over and over again to really understand it because you usually pack so much information into your news items, like I can't absorb all of it. And it gave me I got a legit chill go down my spine when it hit me when I really got it. I'm like, oh, I totally get why this is profound now. And it was it really got me. I really think that that is an amazing, an amazing achievement. And the thing that thrills me is it's going to stay it's going to be just like CRISPR. Like we're just going to continue to hear about it. It's not going to go away.<br />
<br />
=== Life on Venus <small>(25:26)</small> ===<br />
<br />
'''J:''' The other one was the possibility of life on Venus.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, that was huge.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah. That was cool.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' We're all like, oh, yeah, maybe. Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Not cool enough for you guys?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' No, it's super cool. That made my list.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I think we should prioritize a mission to check that out because that sounds I mean they've knocked down every other possibility that that doesn't have to do with life. So it's like, well what else could it be that that doesn't that's not proof that it's life, but it's compelling.<br />
<br />
=== CRISPR Cancer Treatement <small>(25:54)</small> ===<br />
<br />
'''B:''' And Jay, it's funny. You mentioned CRISPR. I have to do a shout out to something we didn't I don't think we covered in depth. We did mention as an aside on one show, the CRISPR cancer treatment they that they that they came up with to destroy cancer cells. And they did it in mice without damaging other other cells. This looked Steve, Steve, I remember you were pretty impressed with it, too. They took two of the most aggressive forms of cancer, glioblastoma and metastatic metastatic ovarian cancer. They treated it with CRISPR. They doubled life expectancy. 30 percent higher survival rates in mice. Amazing outcomes in mice that I think I mean I think that's probably going to translate pretty well.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' When you say they treated it with CRISPR, they treated it with a drug that they developed utilizing CRISPR?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Using CRISPR-Cas9.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' What did they do?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' They used a vector to get CRISPR into the actual cells. You know, they didn't get to every cell, but they took a lot of the cells that may have been affected. And the CRISPR targeted a DNA change that makes the cancer cells cancerous and basically stopped them from reproducing. So they would just die.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That's their, that's their, their shtick. That's their, their mojo. They they're, they're immortal cells, right? You stop that. Well, that's the thing.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Cancers, almost by definition, have genetic changes. So we could target the genetic changes that make them cancerous with CRISPR and make changes that will either stop them from growing or kill them outright force them to undergo apoptosis. Basically, cell death. Then...<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Kill the cancer cells. No, they actually said in quotes, no side effects, which is amazing, right?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. It's not chemotherapy.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. Because it's targeted. We have incredible mind-blowing targeted treatments for cancer now, but they often do have side effects, even though they're targeted because there's a molecular marker on the cell or it's a hormone positive type of cancer. There's still all sorts of off kind of target problems.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Right. And you often see incremental advances. And when we've come a long way with incremental advances for over years.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Those were not incremental though. Once those were developed, that was a game changer for cancer patients. I would not call that incremental.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Okay. That, yeah, that, that's fair. That's what you're seeing here. I mean, when you're seeing doubling of a life expectancy and a 30%, not a 30% survival rate, but a 30% higher survival rate, that those are, those are game changers as well. And I think it's just going to get better.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It also opens up an avenue for prevention. It opens up an avenue for targeting oncogenes, for example, or pre-cancerous cells, being able to find places where there's a chance that if more genetic variation occurs, cancer could become rampant. Let's stop it in its tracks before it's even cancer. That's amazing.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Ian, do you have any votes for science?<br />
<br />
=== Arecibo <small>(28:42)</small> ===<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' Well, this is about two minutes too late, but when you said vector, I did want to say, what's your vector? Wait, wait. Well, I said a badly.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Roger. Roger.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' We can cut it back two minutes ago, man.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' Can we cut that in? Okay.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' No, that was good. Even a little late. That's funny.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' No problem. I didn't know that the science news needed to be happy, but I thought of the Arecibo radio telescope collapse as actually being kind of, I mean, uber important. And then maybe it spurns the desire to look into maybe we need to build more telescopes or maybe we need to consider how this "ancient technology" that's been around, what, how many decades, four decades now, was it built in the 60s? I can't remember. Actually, that's more than that. That's six decades. How important that is for astronomy.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, that's six now. Geez, Ian.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' It's crazy.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Sixtis is six decades ago. Oh my gosh.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' We've talked about telescope construction quite a bit on the show over the years, mostly having to do with the appropriate places they should be and in context of making sure that, places like Hawaii are preserved properly and cultures are appropriately, involved in the process among other things. So it's not that we can just go plopping down telescopes wherever we want, even if tere's an ultimate perfect spot to do so. There's a ton, ton of considerations. It's very complicated and I think we've done a pretty good job of delving into some of those issues.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah. And for a little teaser, if you want to talk about telescopes, stay, watch our 12 hour show at the end of January and I will probably be talking about the best telescope you will ever hear about ever, ever.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' James Webb?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' No.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's almost a running joke.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' James Webb is a…<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It's almost become a running joke.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Is a 10 power little, little glass, little lens compared, no, I won't say anymore. Best ever, ever.<br />
<br />
=== Climate Change <small>(30:44)</small> ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I think a stealthy, sort of in the background, but big science news item, not one thing, any one thing, but sort of lurking in the background this year is climate change because really we are getting…<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Took a bit of a backseat, right?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Because of the pandemic.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Isn't it like the hottest year on record?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But yeah, but 2020 is on track to being, if not the hottest year on record, it'll be just barely behind 2016, which was an El Nino year, so it's kind of has an unfair advantage. But I wrote about the fact that like in 2010, the climate change deniers were still saying, oh, there hasn't been any warming for 16 years and it's all fake and everything. And so I said, okay, well, you're wrong. You're statistically wrong. But assuming that the increases in temperatures that we've seen so far are just random, then we would expect a regression to the mean or there wouldn't be any particular reason to think that the 2010 to 2020 decade is going to be warmer still. But if global warming is happening, the next decade is going to be the warmest decade. Let's see who's true, who was correct in that prediction. Here we are in 2020. The last decade has been the warmest decade on record. Something like nine of the last of the 10 warmest years are in this decade.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Couldn't get them all, though, could they?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And then we'll put the next decade is going to be the warmest decade on record, too. Yeah. So it's just beyond.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' But at this point, though, at this point, are they still saying that it's not getting hotter or have they kind of segued to, yeah, but we're not doing it?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, yes. They're doing all of that.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It's a mixed bag of stuff.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's a Mott and Bailey, remember, fallacy where they'll there's some at times will marshal arguments that it's not really happening, but then many will say, OK, it's happening, but we're not doing it or it's happening and we're doing it, but there's nothing we could do about it or it'll be cheaper just to adapt to it or whatever. Anything other than not burning fossil fuel. Right? That's the goal. The goal is to continue to burn fossil fuel. And so they every argument has that conclusion that we can continue to burn fossil fuel. And we are sort of approaching this point of no return where we're not already able to just yeah, yeah, we might be-<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Some have argued we're past that tipping point.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, again, there's not one tipping point. There's multiple tipping points. And we still have a little bit of a carbon budget left to prevent the worst outcomes of climate change. But we're getting awfully close. You know, we really are. We're basically out of time to for big initiatives to do things that will reverse this trend.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Does that include nuclear building up our nuclear reactors?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, some argue that that that's the case. Again, I'm not my position is not that that's absolutely necessary. It's that we need we absolutely need to maximize renewables. And then we need either grid storage or nuclear. I think we should do both to hedge our bets. That's my position. But we don't need nuclear if grid storage works out fine and dandy. But we don't have the technology right now to have all the grid storage that we would need. And so if we can't we can't figure out 10 years from now that we read the wrong choice. This is it. This next decade is pretty much our last chance. And if in 2030 we can't say, oh, we should have done this 10 years ago. There's no room for course corrections. We've got to do it all. And we've got to do it now. You know what I mean? That's where we are. We've left we've frittered away all of our buffer. We have no more room to maneuver. Either we really have a concerted effort right now to dial down our carbon footprint or, the worst case scenario is inevitable. It may take hundreds of years before we get there in terms of the consequences, but we'll lose the ability to stop it. It'll be inevitable.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' You know, at the very least, we can pretty much guarantee that the United States will be kind of back on course with that for the next four years. But the question is, is that going to even make a difference? I mean, because you got the rest of the countries at least at least they're all in the Paris Accord, except what? One other country? And us?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And us? Yeah, that's the thing. It's so frustrating for people listening to us talk about this, who live in countries that have a progressive outlook on this and are actually working really hard to, because we're always like, we've just got to have a concerted effort. And everybody's going, yeah, you guys are the assholes who aren't in the concerted effort.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, we get it. We totally agree.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I know, it's so frustrating.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's not just us. Australia is not doing well, either their politics or our food bar and climate change.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Sure, sure. But we actually have so much influence.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You know, we will do nothing if China and India aren't on board as well, but we need to lead by example. We need to also listen, this technology is coming. We can either be buying this technology from China or whatever, or we could be innovating it and having our economy benefit from it. The thing that's super frustrating is that this is often framed as the false choice between climate versus the economy. Wrong. It's just like the false choice between the pandemic or the economy.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, that's a political angle right there.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That is a false choice. It's a false framing. It's one of the other flows. The best thing for our economy, and economists have said this, that the best thing we could do for our economy is to mitigate climate change, is to prevent it from happening, not deal with the after effects. It'll be orders of magnitude more expensive to try to deal with the after effects. And there's tons of money to be made in the new technologies that will mitigate it. There's tons of opportunity here. We're throwing away opportunities, jobs, and money after...<br />
<br />
'''E:''' And our planet.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' What? Yeah, not to mention all the disruptions and deaths that it already is causing.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' And the real good news, Disney World won't be flooded. Come on.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' The oceans are taking it on the chin, though. I mean, just the news we read this year about how horribly it impacted our oceans, our coral reefs and everything in there. It's dying at an incredible rate, and it is so scary to read.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But I think like every year, just to sort of wrap up the science part, there's a lot... We did continue to make incremental advances in all the areas that I think are really transforming the world. We're making incremental advances in battery technology, in solar technology, perovskites and organic solar power, for example, in two-dimensional materials, in quantum computing.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Artificial intelligence, deep learning.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, artificial intelligence. Yeah, just massive gains this year. So all that's sort of continuing to chug along in the background. We like to talk about it from time to time, but it's like there's no one big breakthrough. It's just that this incremental advantage to continue to pile up, and they are changing the world right from under our feet.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Thank goodness.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. Let's shift gears a little bit.<br />
<br />
== Favourite SGU Moments of the Year <small>(37:44)</small> ==<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Ian, maybe you could set us off with this topic. We're going to talk about the favorite SGU moments of the year. And this could be on the show, during live events, during the Friday live stream. Is there anything that sticks out for you?<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' I don't know if it's technically SGU, but NECSS, I mean tangentially related was pretty fun for us, I think, in all of the setup. I mean, it was just an epic collaboration of like all the guests and then all of the crazy tech stuff, which, of course, I am a fan of. But I think it went really well. So that was in this world where we can't meet. And we were like, last minute, kind of, we're like, how do we do this and make it work? It seemed like.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, I agree. It wasn't, it was technically a New England Skeptical Society event, but it was basically the SGU running it and sponsoring it. And so, in fact, that my vote was for not just all of NECSS, but specifically the interview of Bill Nye and Ann Druyan, which was just magical. And you know, a lot of people also voted for that, for that. A lot of our listeners, I think that was the best single thing that we did this year. I know we have that on YouTube, although we've kept it private. How would somebody listen to that interview right now if they wanted to?<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' Well, they could go still to the same link for, I believe it's the [https://necss.org/home-page-necss-2020/ theskepticsguide.org/NECSS 2020]. And that will lead them to where they can sign up for the conference, because it's still actually available, the whole thing.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. As a digital conference.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' As a digital conference. And we are thinking about re-streaming it again later.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah. We've talked about that.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' So stay tuned for that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It would be a good idea if we could schedule it. But I do like, I love the fact that, and I guess we did back into it a little bit because we were going to do a meatspace conference and the pandemic squashed that. But I think we really rose to the opportunity because we didn't just say, all right, let's do a digital conference. We said, all right, we have an opportunity to reimagine what a digital skeptical conference, science conference can be. And we rebuilt it from the ground up in terms of the pacing of the events, the kind of events that we were going to do, the kind of interaction with the audience. And I think it was a success. I think we did a really good job I must say, of not just having a in-person conference online, but crafting a digital conference. And in fact, honestly, I think that's what we should just do going forward. Not because we have to, but because it's better. And not that we won't do any in-person events, we are, but I think a digital conference in a lot of ways was just a superior experience for everyone involved. <br />
<br />
'''J:''' I think the in-person thing because of COVID is going to be a little weird for a couple of years anyway. And we put in an incredible amount of time, like in the R&D part of this, right? We talked about it over and over and over again. And then when we started to really get into the technical side of it, until the edges were pushed, we didn't know where they really were. And we found out that we had a lot of technological room to grow and to do a lot more. We're still doing it right now. So I think I agree with you, Steve. I'm not 100% sure that I don't want to have an in-person conference again, just because...<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Oh, we will. We'll do in-person events. But I think we're still, this is still a moving target. I think...<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I miss meatspace.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, we're going to do meatspace events, but I think we'll do a meatspace events that are optimized for meatspace events, and we'll do digital events that are optimized for digital events.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' So meat-optimized.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Is what I'm saying. Yeah. But I think just having like a conference where we're imparting information, that's better digitally, to be honest with you. And if we're going to be in person, we'll do stuff that's more social interacting, entertaining. You know what I mean? I think those are better for physical things. If we're just having lectures and stuff like that, I would do it digitally. That's my sense, but we're still working this out.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Well, that's what we learned in classrooms, right, Steve? You know, the lecture, just make that digital. You don't need to be there.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, it depends on what you're doing. Is it didactic? Is it just a lecture? Or is it engaging?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Well, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And I think that that's is it interactive?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' If we go to the listener responses, I think the number one vote for favorite SGU episode of the year was our live episode that we did, our live show, where we pretended it was 2035.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, the one that we recorded in Melbourne just at the end of 2019.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But we aired it. We aired it in 2020.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' So it counts as 2020.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It counts as a 2020 episode.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It's really good to hear that the experiment that we did, which was a total left turn from our typical content, because it was science fiction it was fiction. It was definitely an extrapolation on known things. But it really was a work of fiction that all of us heavily contributed to. And the fact that people really got into it and appreciated it and felt a connection to it was really inspiring for me because Steve, I was really worried about that show.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I know.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That was the hardest show.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' We were there with you.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' We came up with that whole thing like over breakfast.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That was the hardest show I ever worked on. That was tough.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It's because we had to create the entire backstory for – we had to set the whole thing up. There was a lot of prep work involved with putting that episode together. We spent many days on it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Everybody was so stressed. And I was like, just yes and this shit.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It was improv and role-playing. And it was basically – once we came up with like the interim history, like what's going to happen over the next 15 years and we all were on the same page, then all we had to do was play out that information that we all had in our heads. And Cara's right. It's just a yes and. Just don't contradict anybody else. Just agree with them and build on it. But it wasn't just for entertainment. The purpose of it – and it's always good to have a purpose, right? The purpose of it was to say if we try to extrapolate out not only science and technology for 15 years but skepticism for 15 years, culturally, what do we think things are going to be like then? What kind of news items might we be discussing in 15 years? And so it wasn't formative in that way, although it was this element of speculation. And for every item, we sort of gave the real history up to 2020 and then kept going to 2035. So there was a lot of real information in there. It wasn't pure fiction. But yeah, I know often Jay gets worried about things and you have to learn to trust me, brother.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' No, I do. I do. I guess part of it is I'm not trying to even play devil's advocate. Like I think it through as a co-producer of all of our content. I'm constantly trying to find holes in things and think it through. And typically what I do is I can easily trust technology, but I don't completely trust how well we're going to pull something off as human beings. You know what I mean? Just because when it comes down to it, we're all a group of friends here. We're friends and family here. And I know that we have skills. But it is sometimes a lot to ask for a group of people to just try something completely new that they've never done before. We really have never done that before.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And I love how many people, Jay, like didn't get it right away.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah. Oh yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Like they got it eventually, but they were like, did I like hit my head and wake up in the wrong year? Like people were legit confused until they found themselves in it. But like we got so many emails after that aired.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh my gosh. So many.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So many.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It was a mix of emails.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Positive and negative.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I didn't know what year it was.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Some people were like, please don't ever do that again.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Pulled a prank on me. As part of that-<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It was mostly positive. Just a couple.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' No, yeah. It was mostly positive. As part of that episode, I did a skeptical quote, as I do for all the episodes. And I quoted someone named Alyssa Carson, who's a space enthusiast. She's the youngest person to have ever attended all of the NASA pre-events, basically working her way up. She's going to be an astronaut someday. She's working on it. So I pictured her being on the moon and giving a quote about being a first astronaut to live on the moon. So afterwards, I got an email from her father asking, do you guys remember this? We got an email saying, hi, I'm Burt Carson, I'm Alyssa's father. I got a link. It showed up in my, I guess, Google alerts, came up. Anytime her name, I guess, is mentioned, he gets a Google alert. So because we used it as a quote in this fictional episode, it showed up. And he's like, can you explain to me what this is and what's going on? So I did. I replied to him and had to explain it. I just thought that was kind of the coolest thing to come out of that episode. Really, really special.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Well, Evan, you never told us that. And that, to me, is so, like, I totally get, as a dad, like he's searching for his kids' names as a Google alert, just to make sure nothing weird's going on, whatever. That's his job. But he got hit with a very weird, unique situation, right? Because we visualized his daughter as a successful astronaut on the moon in the future.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Right. So he's like, you need to explain to me what this is and what's going on. So I had the pleasure of replying to him on that one. We had a nice little conversation about it. Very cool. Great episode all around. One of my all-time favorites. All time.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' Did y'all buy stock in the Aug yet?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' The Aug! It's coming, man. It's coming.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' It's happening.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I really loved the interview with Ann Druyen. I really loved the interview with Angela Saney. I think that we had some pretty kick-ass interviews this year.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Kevin Peterhant and Gerald Gossner.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, yeah, Kevin! So many great people on the show.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' I think a viewer favorite, sorry, Jay, a viewer favorite is the live streams on Friday.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That, yeah. We gotta give a shout out. That's just, like, such an awesome thing.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Another thing got, was birthed out of COVID, in a sense.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So let me explain what that is. So we decided that, like, this was during the shutdown, like, we were all at home, hey, let's just do a live stream on Friday for something to do and to entertain our listeners. And you know, it turned into a lot of fun for everybody, so we continued to do it. Cara, real life, intervened with the PhD thing that she's doing. So she's not able to make them regularly now, but we've continued to do them. And Ian has turned them into an audio podcast format, which you can get if you are a patron of the SGU, even at the lowest $5 level. So they're all there. Yeah, so that was just, that was something that came positive that came out of the pandemic. I don't think we would have done that otherwise.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I look at it like it's the dark side of the SGU, like the light side is this podcast, and the, and when I say dark side, the front, I mean-<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Unfiltered.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, it's unfiltered. So there's really no editorial policy, like, we're trying not to swear, whatever.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' There's editorial policy, there just isn't an editorial filter, because it's locked.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, enforcement.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' There's no delay button or anything like that.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' We talk about pretty much whatever we want, there's, it doesn't have to be science. It's not really SGU content as much as it's, it's, again, it's friends and family talking about their lives and what's going on. I mean, and of course, this year with the pandemic and all the insanity, the absolute political insanity that we all have lived through and are continuing to live through, like, it was a really good outlet. Like I kept, Cara and I kept talking about mental health on the, on the live stream. And a lot of people emailed and sent me a lot of private messages thanking us for having the nerve to go there. Cara and I mutually both agree that we've got to de-stigmatize mental health issues. And we've been using the live stream to do it. And you know, Cara, I forgot to tell you, I got an email from someone where they heard us on the live stream and they were like, you know what, I think you really helped me because I've been struggling. And I just, after hearing you guys talk about it so openly and so honestly and so non-weirdly about it, like it didn't have like the stigma of weirdness, it was just, yep like I broke my foot or I have mental problems. There's really not that much of a difference.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I take my pills every day. Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Me too. And like they said you just helped me kind of get over their hurdle and I can't tell you like how much I appreciate it, like unexpectedly from a group of people that do a podcast. So I feel great about that just because our personal experiences, we're able to help some people and but the point is that the live stream, really guys, it's just letting hot air out. It's just a good, it's the community is fantastic. My God, the chats, I attend the live stream just to read what the audience is chatting about because it's ridiculously funny.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's my favorite part is reading the thread of all the comments by far.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I have a favorite bit though, Steve.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Go ahead, Jay.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It's a silly thing, but it was out of, of course, Who's That Noisy? It was the listener that emailed us slowed down talking and we all sounded drunk.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. That's awesome.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That was another thing I got. I get a lot of Who's That Noisy emails, like a lot. Like it takes me an hour to go through the emails every week. It literally just like following up on people's links and all the noises. And the two weeks after that, people like emailed me, were just like, oh my God, I can't tell you. Like I was driving when I heard that and I started laughing so hard that I couldn't see the road. Like I have a lot of those emails of people that really got off on that. So I just think it's awesome. People keep quoting Cara going, and he was just so really wonderful, like Cara was just so total, like loaded. It was awesome.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That was funny. All right, it's time to move on to the skeptical heroes.<br />
<br />
== Skeptical Heroes <small>(52:22)</small> ==<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We got a lot of votes from our listeners. Thanks to everyone who filled out the form. And let me just say thank you to all of our listeners who voted for the SGU or for one of the rogues as their skeptical hero of the year. We appreciate that, but we're not going to discuss ourselves.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I didn't see my name on it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The only one non-rogue that got the votes there was Dr. Fauci, and I agree. He talked about somebody who was in a no-win, horrible scenario. So first of all, it's hard enough calling a pandemic, right? So this guy, he doesn't know any more than the rest of us, in terms of the real-time information. He's an expert, so he knows how to put it into context, et cetera. But he's going on the same information that we are, pretty much. And he has to make sense of this in real time and not only advise policymaking, but communicate what's happening to the public and make specific recommendations. And that's a tough job.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And also not lose his job in the process.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Right, but he had to do that in a pretty hostile environment, all things considered. He was able to stay professional, do his job. He got things wrong. He just picked himself up and said, sorry about that. We're changing. This is what we're doing now. And just this calm, rational voice throughout the pandemic. I think we all owe Dr. Fauci a huge thank you for his hard work. He really is, I think, the hero of the year, so I agree with that.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' And he's loved and trusted, loved and trusted by so many people.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Also, by the way, this man in two days, as of this recording, is turning 80 years old. 80 years old on December 24th. He's about to, I think he's accepted, right, a new position in office under Joe Biden. So not only has he just really kind of steered this ship amongst very tumultuous waters, the fact that he ain't going to get a break, he's just going to keep on going.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Thank goodness for public servants like him. Thank goodness. They're a special breed of people.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' He managed to find that sweet spot where he was depoliticizing the pandemic, rather than kowtowing to the politicization of the pandemic. You know what I mean? And a lot of other experts didn't find that sweet spot, and they got chewed up as a result.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Remember, he's been serving in a public capacity for the American public for 50, over 50 years.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' He's dedicated his life to it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' He made massive contributions during the AIDS pandemic, which is still ongoing, during Ebola. He's protected so many people. He's ultimately saved so many lives.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' He came out of retirement, too, to help.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Incredible.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' And now he's just on. He just is not quitting, which I find to be amazing. I mean, at his age, there's a lot of other things I'm sure he would rather be doing. Yeah, I'm sure you are. He's an amazing brand.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' How many scientists nowadays are household names? Not enough.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' True. Living scientists.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Not enough. Correct.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. You're right. And the fact that he is, like, I don't want to say unscathed, because he's for sure got some bumps and bruises and scars from living through this administration, but he kept his job. And he's like one of few who managed to stand up in the face of these overwhelming odds and say, it's about telling truth to power. It's very important that I say what needs to be said, regardless of the pressure to say it or not say it. And somehow, because he was so indispensable, he managed to keep his job.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. But now, not to be too American-centric, we did get one listener point out that Jacinda Ardern, Ashley Bloomfield, and Susie Wiles were their votes for helping to eliminate COVID-19 in New Zealand by being excellent science communicators. So yeah. So other countries all had their Fauci. They all had somebody who had to be the face of the scientific side of dealing with the pandemic. And some of them did a fantastic job, and they should be recognized as well.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Absolutely.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' And we know Susie. We've been to multiple conferences with her, twice in New Zealand, and she's just a wonderful person to begin with. And then her work, and then me reading about her and her being reported on early on in all of this was really, really satisfying. And also Jacinda and Ashley as well for their work. Can't be understated. Cannot be understated.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, I mean, Jacinda Ardern, to lead a country, I mean, I think this is what's so incredibly important is that we're seeing, we see Trump, and we see Boris Johnson, and we see these comical examples of failures. And sometimes we forget that the Prime Minister of New Zealand is making evidence-based policy decisions left and right. She's leading through strength of character. She is elevating the science communicators and the scientists within her country. And she's kind of a perfect example of the epitome of that. But there are many societies across the globe who did this thing right. They did it right.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, I agree.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' They had strong leadership, and they were interested in following the experts. And so, yeah, tip of the hat to them. Sometimes we obviously get kind of up our own asses because we're dealing so much with such like catastrophic failure here in the U.S. But I mean, it's amazing to see places that do that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, and I'll say, again, just to pull like a Time magazine kind of a maneuver, where I'll say I think that the skeptical activists worldwide in general and science communicators and any scientists who had to be the face of science during this pandemic, this is a tough year. And I think this was a year where there was an opportunity for science, the scientific institution, institutionally to say, all right we're going to step forward and we're going to help us get through this pandemic. And it totally did so I just think every health care worker who had to treat COVID patients, every scientist who had to deal with the pandemic, every science communicator who had to push back against conspiracy theories and misinformation and pseudoscience, it was kind of a group effort. And I think everybody needs to get mentioned. This was really, there was a bit of a culture war going on here. And it was expertise and science and scientists and reason against tribalism and conspiracy thinking and nonsense and this is not going to go away. But this year really brought things to a head for sure.<br />
<br />
== Skeptical Jackasses <small>(59:21)</small> ==<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Now the flip side of the skeptical heroes is the skeptical jackasses of the year. Now, I'm sure you could guess who the vast majority of the people who responded on our forum voted for. And that is the person who was the face of the pandemic denialism, continued a pre-existing, campaign of climate denialism, of anti-science, of anti-expertise, and who pretty much single-handedly manufactured a massive conspiracy theory that is undermining democracy in the United States, as well as giving aid and comfort to other absolutely batshit crazy conspiracy theories. And that is Donald Trump. You know, yes, he's a political figure, but just putting that aside, he is a conspiracy theorist and a pseudoscientist extraordinaire. And he absolutely is the beginning and end of our skeptical jackass of the year.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Absolutely. I mean, nobody else even holds a candle to him.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. I mean, there's a couple other honorable mentions we could throw in there, like, did he...<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But they're absolutely honorable mentions.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. The scientist whose paper started the whole hydroxychloroquine thing that had to get retracted. It was just scientifically so awful. Definitely gets a mention. Gwyneth Paltrow gets a an honorable mention. If it weren't for the pandemic, she might have been in the running because of her goop nonsense.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' What about Jade Amulet guy?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But that was the same guy. That was the magnetism is manufacturing COVID from your own DNA. And if you wear a jade amulet, they'll protect you from it. Oh, my God, his paper got retracted, of course, but the purest nonsense of the year. Absolutely. Just dangerous, pure nonsense.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. And then I would just say, like, the COVIDiots, like the the hoaxers, the people who perpetuate, and to be fair, not people who are swept into this, not people who have had the wool pulled over their eyes, who have been unfortunately for so long consuming the type of content that feeds this, but individuals who are perpetuating, individuals who can see the evidence right in front of their faces and denying it, ignoring it. And I think kind of one way to add to that would be like QAnon, this was a big year for QAnon.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Totally. That's what I was referring to. You know, you definitely give aid and comfort to that crazy conspiracy theory and manufactured the whole, that the election was stolen from him, which is now probably the biggest conspiracy theory in our country that is directly undermining democracy. Just really horrific. You know, just as general, just generally lowering the tenor of conversation, lowering respect for institutions, for process, for expertise, he really does stand for, promote, and embody everything we are fighting against as scientific skeptics. Pretty much everything. Again, whatever your political stripe, this is not about conservative, liberal, Republican, Democrat. This is not about that at all. It transcends all of that. This is about science, logic, reason, expertise. You know, that's what it's about, critical thinking. And yeah, he's done more harm to that in this country than anyone in recent memory. No doubt. Okay. Let's move on.<br />
<br />
== In Memoriam <small>(1:02:58)</small> ==<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So we're going to move on to the In Memoriam segment. And this may sound strange, but I enjoy this segment because it's an opportunity to remember and celebrate people who meant something to you and meant something to us collectively, to the movement. And it is remembering them at the end of their journey. But still, it's a great sometimes people you haven't thought of in a while, you're like, oh, I really appreciated what they did. And it's good to take the opportunity. So we're going to start at the top with the people who were the most, I think, central to science and skepticism. And of course, the person at the top of that list is James Randi, who we lost earlier this year. James was a good personal friend of ours, a good friend of the show, was part of the show for a while. You know, he really did so much not only for us, but for the skeptical movement, with TAM just as like things were getting started and the social media was really moving things along. He provided the biggest single venue for skeptics to get together. And he had a huge impact. And of course, this was at the end of a lifelong career of promoting science and reason and pushing back against fraud and pseudoscience and magical thinking. So just we all know, we all know James Randi. You know what he did, but it's just we have to take this opportunity. And of course, he got the most votes for the the biggest loss of the year. And a lot of people, a lot of people voted for him as their Skeptical Hero of the Year, but just as a way, I think, of honoring just his his lifelong career as a skeptic.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' You know, Randi was first an inspiration for us growing up. And a lot of people that were science enthusiasts remember seeing Randi when they were young, watching him on TV he lived an incredibly busy life fighting pseudoscience. You know, as soon as he got on that path, he never went off of it until the day he died. That was it. That was his calling. +He really was an exceptional, exceptional human being. And he was an exceptional thinker. His mind was amazing. And he deserves to be remembered and he deserves for his the legacy that he helped build. And I feel like we're a small part of that, but we it lives on and it moves forward with him in mind.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Another person who this was a surprise was Grant Imahara. So you know, Grant was on the Mythbusters. He was a great science communicator, really everyone involved with the Mythbusters did so much to promote not only just enthusiasm towards science and technology, but also scientific thinking they really did a lot to model scientific thinking and Grant was part of that. He was, he died unexpectedly at only 49 years old of a brain aneurysm, which is very tragic. And it's it's different. Like Randi was 92 and it was like you have to celebrate that he had a long, happy life and fulfilling. And Grant was taken from us in his prime, which adds another layer of sadness there. I'm sure he had many great things ahead of him that he now won't have a chance to do. But still, it's great to recognize and celebrate what he did do in the time that he had.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, he's just a genuinely nice guy, like just genuinely giving open, kind of no Hollywood bullshit about him. Just very kind of like, hey, I think what you're doing is really cool. And you know, I'm all about it. And you ever want to chat about that, like, I'm here for you. And you know, he was like the best kind of nerd. Like he was the way that we would often talk about Wil Wheaton. I don't know if you guys remember that video where Wil Wheaton is standing up. I think it's at a Comic Con. And he's defining what it means to be a nerd to just be like, earnestly into what you're into in a really authentic way. And I mean, that was Grant. And also, you guys might not know this, but he was like a huge LARPer.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Oh, really? No, I didn't know that.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Was he a LARPer? I know he's big into board games.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No, he was a LARPer too.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We talked recently about Chuck Yeager, who died not too long ago. You know, a real pioneer, very courageous critically important to the space program. Again, the kind of person that we can celebrate for just being dedicated to excellence. Again, that sort of competency porn thing that is so important. Somebody who just very no-nonsense kind of guy who just did the work and moved things forward, you know. Also on the list, we lost Katherine Johnson this year. You guys remember who she is?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, absolutely.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' From Hidden Figures.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That was this year? What month was that?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Early in the year.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. Wow.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Was she 100?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' She was, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' 99 or something? 100? Yeah, she was. She was the mathematician who worked at NASA during the Apollo space program and was, working behind the scenes to land the astronauts on the moon, but didn't get the credit at the time that she deserved and was didn't really become a household name until the recent movie, Hidden Figures.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And, like, this is a woman who is working against just insane racism.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Like, in an era where the work that she did as a mathematician, as a – was she a calculator, a computer?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. You know, doing these, like, really sophisticated calculations was just – it just blows my mind when you look at how these women were treated separate bathrooms, separate, facilities, unable to share in the same coffee pot. Like, it's amazing that the disconnect in the American mindset that said, this person is valuable enough that will use their brilliant mind to help us achieve the – what before we thought was unachievable, but not so valuable that will give them any sort of human dignity. And the fact that she, in spite of that, served her country in this way, and in spite of that, worked tirelessly to make a better place for all of us, I mean, it's just – I just burst thinking about it. It's, like, an overwhelming feeling for me. It's just been such an inspiration to so, so many young women and so many women of color.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Mm-hmm. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. That always strikes me. It's, like, in the face of incredible indignity to just persevere, and, like, you wonder how you would respond in a situation like that. You'd just be so angry, you know?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Exactly. And, like, it'd be so easy to just kind of walk away from it and say, I'm not – I can't – I'm not standing for this anymore. But she knew what she was doing really mattered.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So a number of scientists caught my eye as losing this year. These are not household names, but it's funny to think about, like, people who are responsible for things that you take for granted, like maybe in your day-to-day life or just part of your the scientific background. Arnold Spielberg was instrumental in developing personal computers, and he was, in fact, the father of Steven Spielberg, the director. Helped develop personal computers. Frances Allen, the first woman to win the Turing Prize, died this year. William English. William English built something you guys use every day of your lives. You're probably using it right now.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' A chair.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' A mouse.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Computer mouse. Yeah, computer mouse.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, okay.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Nice.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Joan Feynman. A little bit of a relationship to the other Feynman. Did the foundational research on the aurora borealis what caused it. William Dement did, it was foundational research on sleep, and he came up with the term rapid eye movement or REM sleep, REM sleep. Floyd Zeger did a tremendous amount of work in agriculture and specifically in making fruit cultivars. He developed the pluot.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, cool.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, which is a plum and an apricot.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Plum, apricot. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, you guys say apricot. Ian, what do you say?<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' Oh my gosh, I really thought I was listening to the podcast for a second, I'm sorry. Kind of daydreaming. Apricot. Apricot.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' You do? Okay. Yeah. So, and were you born and raised Connecticut too?<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' Yeah. Yeah. It's that Connecticut Italian thing.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' No, no, we don't say apricot. We say apricot.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I say apricot.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Apricot.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' No, I never even heard of apricot.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' Apricot? That's not right.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Now I can't possibly know because it's in my head.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I think it's one of those things where you don't know how you say it because it's...<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Jay, what do you say?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I say apricot.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. All right. Do you guys say pecan or pecan?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Both.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Both. Yeah, pecan. It's pecan pie. All right, John.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Sorry. Sorry to keep railing.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 for his work with climate science. Larry Tesler. This is an interesting one. Larry Tesler came up with the whole software for cut, copy, and paste technology.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, my gosh. That's life-saving.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I love it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, right?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That is awesome.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Bob Freeman Dyson. Died this year.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Dyson. The Dyson sphere?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yep.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Dyson swarm. Dyson sphere is unstable. Dyson swarm.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' But the idea still is the Dyson sphere. Thanks, Bob.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Mary Fowkes. F-O-W-K-E-S. A neuropathologist who worked all year on COVID-19 pathology was responsible for a lot of the discoveries, a lot of things that we know about how COVID-19 affects the different organ systems in the body, and she died this year. There's a few politicians that I think are worth mentioning. The big one, yeah, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, of course. And John Lewis died this year. Also, I mean, I include the journalist in this category, Jim Lehrer, of the used to be the McNeil-Lehrer News Hour, but which I was my go-to news source for a long time. So Jim Lehrer, yeah, he died this year. And then there's so many actors and famous people, we can't name them all. It's not really central to the show.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Several Star Wars-related names on that list, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But yeah, but there are some people who are just personally meaningful to us that I wanted to name. I don't know if you guys have anybody on your list, but I think most of the ones that you're going to care about are going to be on my list. So I'm just going down this in no particular order, Chadwick Boseman the Black Panther.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' What a great actor.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' What the hell, man.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Great actor.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Great actor, yeah, died very young. He knew he was sick. He knew he was dying, didn't tell anybody, just filmed the Black Panther. It's so sad to learn. You lost both Sean Connery and Alex Trebek, which for some reason I have to mention together.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I know, for some reason.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Steve, what's the first thing that Alex Trebek heard when he went to heaven?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The game is on foot, Trebek.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Sean Connery.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Kirk Douglas.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Paths to Glory.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, Paths to Glory and many things. Ian Holm from Alien.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, of course. Bilbo Baggins. Oh, my gosh. So many roles.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Terry Jones from Monty Python.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Monty Python. More sadness.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yep. David Prouse, who played the Darth Vader.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oof. Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That's a big one.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Diana Rigg from The Avengers. Guys, remember Diana Rigg? She was also on Game of Thrones. She also on Game of Thrones. She had a very long, long career.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah. She, um. She was excellent.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Bob, one of the stars of Enter the Dragon, John Saxon.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh yeah. That sucked.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And one of my favorite actors, Max von Sydow.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh!<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Ming the Merciless.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I forgot.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So many roles.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, my God.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Like 100 roles?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' He was great. Damn.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I have to mention mainly for George Hrab, Neil Peart from Rush.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, yeah. Absolutely. And me, too. Thank you.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' And what about Van Halen?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Eddie Van Halen.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Right. Oh, man. I forgot about a lot of these deaths. Damn it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's why I said it's good to review it. You know, just remember the people.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' We're talking about famous people, but I do want to mention the 300,000 Americans that died from COVID, which I believe 250,000 of them were not didn't have to happen.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That's right, Jay.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay. Are we ready to go on to science or fiction?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yes.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, boy.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yes.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right.<br />
<br />
== Science or Fiction <small>(1:16:07)</small> ==<br />
<br />
{{SOFResults<br />
|fiction = common gene ancestor<!-- short word or phrase representing the item --><br />
|fiction2 = <!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
<br />
|science1 = water on pluto<!-- short word or phrase representing the item --><br />
|science2 = targeting nanoparticle<!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
|science3 = <!-- leave blank if absent --> <br />
<br />
|rogue1 = Ian<!-- rogues in order of response --><br />
|answer1 = water on pluto<!-- item guessed, using word or phrase from above --><br />
<br />
|rogue2 =Evan<br />
|answer2 =targeting nanoparticle<br />
<br />
|rogue3 =cara<br />
|answer3 =water on pluto<br />
<br />
|rogue4 = Jay<!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
|answer4 = common gene ancestor<!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
<br />
|rogue5 =bob <!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
|answer5 = common gene ancestor<!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
<br />
|host = Steve <!-- asker of the questions --><br />
<!-- for the result options below, <br />
only put a 'y' next to one. --><br />
|sweep = <!-- all the Rogues guessed wrong --><br />
|clever = y<!-- each item was guessed (Steve's preferred result) --><br />
|win = <!-- at least one Rogue guessed wrong, but not them all --><br />
|swept = <!-- all the Rogues guessed right --><br />
}}<br />
''Voiceover: It's time for Science or Fiction.''<br />
{{Page categories<br />
|SoF with a Theme = <!-- redirect(s) created for 2020 News Items (807) --><br />
}}<br />
<blockquote>'''Theme: 2020 News Items'''<br>'''Item #1:''' A review of the evidence supports the conclusion that when Pluto formed it was hot enough to contain liquid water, some of which likely still exists as subsurface liquid water.<ref>[https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/06/200622132959.htm ScienceDaily: Evidence supports 'hot start' scenario and early ocean formation on Pluto]</ref><br>'''Item #2:''' An extensive analysis finds that all vertebrate genes analyzed so far share a common, if remote, gene ancestor.<ref>[https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/02/200218104740.htm ScienceDaily: Genes from scratch: Far more common and important than we thought]</ref><br>'''Item #3:''' Scientists developed a nanoparticle that can target atherosclerotic plaques in arteries, triggering the destruction of cellular debris and stabilizing the plaque, which would potentially reduce the risk of heart attacks.<ref>[https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/01/200128114720.htm ScienceDaily: Nanoparticle chomps away plaques that cause heart attacks]</ref></blockquote><br />
<br />
'''S:''' Each week, I come up with three science news items or facts, two genuine and one fictitious, and I challenge my panel of skeptics to tell me which one is the fake. But before we play the last science or fiction of the year, I'm going to review the stats for the year so far. So who do you think had the highest percentage correct this year?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Steve.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Cara.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' George.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Steve, what was your percentage?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I got two out of three correct, apparently.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Wow.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So I know it's not really fair to have me in the mix.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's that whole small sample size.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, it's a small sample size. Sometimes I had 0% one year. I had 100% another year. But it's usually in there. But I just want to point out, take this opportunity to point out, it's a lot more challenging for me to play Science or Fiction for a number of reasons. One, I don't get that much practice at it. Two, I don't get that much exposure to you guys running Science or Fiction. And also, you guys don't do it enough to like really dial in the balance. And you know what I mean? So whereas- I have a very, I mean as much as I try to be unpredictable, I definitely fall into certain patterns, mainly to make sure that I'm keeping things clear and fair. But you guys are getting, every year, you're getting a little bit better figuring out how I would make something a fiction or whatever. So of the rogues, the second place was Cara at 66%, so just behind me.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Wow.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's high. That's a good year for me.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. You had a good year.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Evan at 57.5%.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, that's high, too.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's pretty good for me. Darn good for me.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Then Jay at 55.1%. And then Bob at 50%.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I just want to say, I just want to say that if you really look at the stats properly and you consider only non-themed Science or Fictions, Cara and I tie for 74%. I will say no more.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Non-themed. Interesting.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, I like diving a little deeper.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So clearly, I need to do more themed Science or Fiction.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No, clearly.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I'm just trying to find the gold nugget in there, and that's the only one I can find.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' My gold nugget is that I got higher than Bob. I just can't believe that.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That's a good nugget, Jay. Enjoy it while it lasts.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Cara had the most solo wins at three. Cara also had the longest consecutive win streak at seven.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Was it eight? Seven?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, I remember that. That was fire.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Cara tied with Bob for the longest consecutive losing streak at five.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I am a multi-faceted. I contain multitudes, you guys.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' You are a multitude.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The panel performs best when who answers first?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Cara.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Bob or Cara.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Me or Jay?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Jay. Jay answers first. 63% correct guess is when Jay goes first.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Why?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Jay, you're a trailblazer.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Because I think, Jay, when you're confident, you're confident, and when you're not confident, you're an easy read. So I think it's... We know.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' And you talk your way through the items pretty well.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So I give you credit.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Or it could be just random.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Or it could be random. Jay and Bob were asked to answer first 13 times, Cara 11, Evan 9.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' You got to randomize that better, my friend.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Don't feel like you have to make up for that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I'm just going on memory.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's pretty close, though.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's pretty good for just going on memory.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Well, stop it.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Flawed memory.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Cara did the best of anybody when answering first. She had 55% correct when she was the first one to respond.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, wow. That's hard.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That's good. Yeah, it is hard.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So I swept you guys seven times this year.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's good.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Wow, that's really good.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You guys swept me 10 times.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's even better.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's even better. Yeah. So these stats were provided by Wayne. So thank you, Wayne, for crunching those numbers for us.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Thanks Wayne.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Awesome job, man.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I told Wayne that I want at least four recounts before we accept this.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' And certification.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You want a machine recount and a hand recount, and you still reject the results. Okay. But there's one more. There's one more science or fiction, and this has a theme. And the theme is, it's just science news items from 2020. So I had the whole year to use as a resource. I think these are not covered previously. I'm not going to promise that because I didn't check. I just didn't recognize them. So I may have used them and forgot. So don't hold me to that. But they're just three science news items from throughout, scattered around the year.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, boy.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay. Here we go. Item number one, a review of the evidence supports the conclusion that when Pluto formed, it was hot enough to contain liquid water, some of which likely still exists as subsurface liquid water. Item number two, an extensive analysis finds that all vertebrate genes analyzed so far share a common, if remote, gene ancestor. And item number three, scientists developed a nanoparticle that can target atherosclerotic plaques and arteries, triggering the destruction of cellular debris and stabilizing the plaque, which would potentially reduce the risk of heart attacks.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Great.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, Ian, as our guest, you do have the privilege of going first.<br />
<br />
=== Ian's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' I like that word, privilege, in this case. Okay. A review of evidence, blah, blah, blah, Pluto, blah, blah, water.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' See, you're getting the hang of it already.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' Maybe. Wait. Okay. When it was formed, it was hot enough to contain liquid water. I don't like this. Some of which likely still exists as subsurface liquid. I mean, I guess, but I don't, is Pluto big enough to have that much heat in the center of it? Because it just seems like it would be far out. It's cold. Okay. I'm going to skip on that one. An extensive analysis finds that all vertebrate genes analyzed so far share a common, if remote, gene ancestor. That makes, I guess, sense. Right? Yeah. Right? There's a common evolution, maybe. Okay. I'm going to say that is science. Moving on. Scientists developed a nanoparticle that can target atherosclerotic plaques in arteries, triggering the destruction of cellular debris and stabilizing the plaque, which would potentially reduce the risk of heart attacks. Man, I just plug in cables. I don't know. It's like... A nanoparticle that can target... Sure. I mean, scientists, they're smart. They got stuff to do. They're all at home. They can just figure this out. Okay. I'm going to say that the water one on Pluto is the fiction. I just don't think... Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay. Evan, clearly you need to go towards the front of the order.<br />
<br />
=== Evan's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Right. Somewhere near the front of the order.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Wait. Why?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Because I only went first nine times? Okay. Pluto formed... I think... Hmm. Pluto, when it formed, I wish I could remember exactly. In reading about it in the prior years with the flyby with Pluto, and this must be the data that they collected on it, hot enough to contain liquid water at its formation, but some of it still exists on the subsurface as liquid water. Yeah. What kind of chemical reactions can take place that would otherwise take something that should by all rights be frozen solid and turn it into water? Now, obviously heat, but maybe there's another chemical reaction occurring, something else that I'm not quite aware of that could be doing that. That's interesting. The second one about vertebrate genes sharing a common remote gene ancestor. And by the way, I don't recognize any of these. So I'm not... That's very neat that they were able to find that. And I have a feeling that that one's going to be science. The fact that it is remote is the key word here and gives it weight. Then the last one about the nanoparticle targeting the plaques and the arteries. Boy, reducing the risk of heart attacks. This is one of these items in which you say to yourself, why didn't I recognize this when this was reported? This would have been pretty big. And how did we miss it on the show? Especially being a nanoparticle, Bob, how'd that get through your safety net? So that's unusual.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' 50%, my friend. Don't listen to me.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' But here's why it could be science. Because they could have developed the nanoparticle itself with the idea that it does these things. But it's maybe theory or it just hasn't been tested out yet to satisfaction because it says potentially, the word's potentially in here. It's either that or Pluto. All right. I guess I'll go with my gut. I think it's the one about the nanoparticle because I don't think we would have glossed over it had we known about it at the time. We just collectively missed it, though.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' OK. Cara?<br />
<br />
=== Cara's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I mean, the one that seems the least practical is Pluto having liquid water because it's so cold out there.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' Don't use my logic. It's probably wrong.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But let's see. OK. So maybe when it formed, it was hot. Sure. Maybe. If it still exists as subsurface liquid water, I mean, is that like a stretch, that word you're using, subsurface? You mean like real subsurface, right? Like kind of near the core where it might be still hot? Because there's no way. It's like just under the surface of the ocean like Europa.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I'll just say it's described as subsurface liquid water. Take that for what it is.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's just the word that's used. OK. Review supports the conclusion that this is the key. that this happened. Not this could have happened. But the way you wrote this. Review of the evidence supports the conclusion that when Pluto formed it was hot. Hot enough to contain liquid water. Some of it likely still exists. Not like it could or perhaps this is a meybe thing. But we're pretty sure this is the case. I don't know man, that one is bananas. All vertibrate genes analised so far share a common, if remote, gene ancestor is totally plausible to me. All vertibrate genes meaning every single gene ina avertibrate body or every gene that encodes for being a vertibrate?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Every gene that a vertibrate has.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, but there were inveribrates, we have invertibrate genes.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, but that doesn't matter to the point here. They're still all related to each other.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, that's true. Becasue there would be a common ancestor to that as well. OK, cool, it would just be an earlier common ancestor. Yeah, that seems totally plausible to me. It was a branch, it split off. The vertibrates, the cordates, whatever, they split off and they proliferated. Scientists developed a nanoparticle that can target atherosclerotic plaques, OK, that's cool. Triggering the destruction of cellular debris and stabilizing the plaque, which would potentially reduce the risk of heart attacks. So stabilizing the plaque meaning like encapsulating it somehow or like getting it to stick to the wall so it's not going to unstick. Stabilising. Preventing it from braking up into smaller pieces.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Not that it matters for this item, but waht that means is, this is not so much that the plaque would brake off is that it won't ulcerate and form trombis. You're eating up the debris that would trigger a clot formation that would cause a heart attack.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Got it, OK, cool, cool. Yeah, I can see that happening. Because it doesn't say that it's not mice, it doesn't say that it's not model. It just says they developed one that could do this. So to me it's like, yeah. If it said in humans and has gone through trials and people are not benefiting from it that might be a different story. So I think I may go with Ian.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' Oh God. I'm sorry, you may be dead.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, so I think Pluto is the fiction here.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, Jay.<br />
<br />
=== Jay's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So I will be summoning Perry helping me with the third one here about the nanoparticle. And I remember Perry saying something like if it has anything to do with nanotechnology it's science. But if anything is going to do what this item describes, getting rid of arteriosclerosis. Being able to clear out debris, stabilizing plaque. It's going to be a nanoparticle. That is the only thing to do other that surgery where they literally blow up a ballon and then pull it out. Pull all the crap out with it. So I think this one is science, and then I'll skip to the first one. So as you guys are talking, I'm like well what makes- When is a planet hot? And I always had this thing in my head like well planets are hot when they're forming, but I realize I don't know that. Because for some reason when you go back and you keep going back it's like, It's hotter. It's hotter. It's medieval. It's crazy.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Medieval.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Whatever. You know what I mean. So what would make it hot? I don't know. But I do know that pretty much every planet except the gas giants have liquid water at some point. So I don't think it's that weird for a planet or planetoid or dwarf planet to have some type of liquid water on it at some point when it may or may not have been hot. And there's other things that would make water liquefy other than heat. Isn't that true, Steve?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Don't think he can answer that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, I think I'll leave that one alone.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' All right. So that means that I think when we talk about analysing genes from vertebrates, I don't think this one is the science. I think that at some point everything had to come from one thing. But when we talk about sharing a common, having all share a common gene ancestor, I think the tree branches get so prolific that the answer to this could be no. And because I personally don't like genes and chromosomes, I'm going to say this one is the fiction.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' You don't like them?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I don't. I really, I hate them both.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, well.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' You need to love to learn your genes, Jay.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Bob, you get to give the last science or fiction answer for 2020.<br />
<br />
=== Bob's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, whatever. So yeah, Pluto, yeah, it's not a mystery how planets get hot. You know, you're going to be hot. You know, the distance from the sun isn't that important. It's more of like radioactive decay creating heat or tidal forces creating heat. So tidal forces, I don't think are going to be that prominent on Pluto. There are a lot of moons, but I don't think there's enough tidal forces going on to really create heat. Is there radioactive decay? It's pretty damn small. I would say maybe not. Wait. Is it solid? But I don't know. I do remember, though, I do have tickling memories in the back of my head of something about water and Pluto. So I may just have to rely on that for some stupid reason. I'm going to jump to the third one, the nanoparticle. That one as well is triggering this vague memory from earlier in the year. And these damn memories have they're like, God, it really makes me think that this one is science as well. And there's nothing implausible about it. The only one that sounded implausible to me was the vertebrate gene analysis showing a common ancestor for all the genes. Regarding, Cara made some comments about this. You know, knowing that all the genes had an ancestor is one thing. We know that's true because of evolution. It has to. <br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's how it works.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' But knowing it is a completely different story. And you know, de-evolving genes to see what they must have been like before they entered their present state. It's a thing. They do that. But doing that, I think it's very hard. And I think doing that for all the genes in vertebrates, to me, it just seems like no way. They didn't do it. They didn't analyse every gene and do that analysis on every gene because that information is it's hard to figure out I think. Maybe they found something that they had in common that the gene ancestor had to have possibly. But I don't, that just seems the least likely option to me. So, I'm going to say that the gene analysis one is fiction.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Your answer is locked in, Bob, but let's point out it says vertebrate genes analysed so far. It didn't say we analysed.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I know. I don't want to get into my thinking.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. Good.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #1 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. Here we go. So, you're all over the place. We're a good spread out. So, I'll take them in. There's no reason not to take them in order.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No sweep.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No sweep for anybody. So, we'll start with number one. A review of the evidence supports the conclusion that when Pluto formed, it was hot enough to contain liquid water, some of which likely still exist as subsurface liquid water. Ian and Cara both think this one is the fiction. And this one is science. Sorry, guys.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' Sorry, Cara.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Bob's basically right. So, when planets form, they can either form hot or they can form cold just by their formation. It depends how violently and quickly they form. And honestly, we didn't know for Pluto prior to getting a really good look at it whether or not it was one or the other because it's out there in the Kuiper belt and we don't know what's going on out there, right? So, was there enough activity to cause a hot formation or did it form cold? Bob is absolutely correct that radioactive decay is what would keep Pluto hot.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Eww.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Not chemical.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Weak force, my friend.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' There's probably, there's a lot of probably tidal forces from Charon there, but not enough to make it hot. So, it is the radioactive decay. By the way, radioactive decay is why the Earth is still hot. It's why we haven't solidified.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, absolutely.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And that's the one factor that Lord Kelvin was missing when he incorrectly calculated the age of the Earth was that there was, he didn't, we had not yet discovered radioactive materials. Okay. So, if Pluto formed cold, that would mean that it was all ice to begin with and then it heated up from radioactive decay and the water would therefore melt. And when that happened, it would shrink. So then we would see the sign, because ice is bigger than water, right? So then we would see the signs of shrinkage on the surface of Pluto. If it formed hot, then that means the water was liquid and then as it cooled from the outside it would expand and we would see expansion signs at the surface. And we could also, yeah, right, so we could also see like the, do the older parts of Pluto have shrinkage or expansion signs and do the younger parts of Pluto. It turns out that the old, the old surface of Pluto has expansion signs, which means that it formed hot and then froze. But some of that liquid would have then, some of that ice would have then melted as the, as the subsurface heated up from radioactive decay and then we would see shrinkage, the contraction. So that's what we see and that, so that indicates both that Pluto formed hot and, but probably still has some subsurface liquid melted by radioactive decay.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's bananas.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Isn't that cool?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah. That's cool.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Super cool. Was this all learned by the recent flybys?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. This is from careful analysis of the surface of Pluto because of the flyby. Okay. Let's go on.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That's cool. There's still radioactive decay going on in such a small planet.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. Yeah.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #2 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. Number two, an extensive analysis finds that all vertebrate genes analysed so far share a common, if remote to gene ancestor. Bob and Jay, you think this one is the fiction. Everyone else thinks this one is the science. So it's between Bob and Jay or Evan. So this one is the fiction.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Damn. So there were multiple evolutionary events, weren't there?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Bob.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Jay.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, let's back up a little bit. So do you guys ever hear of orphan genes?<br />
<br />
'''B/C:''' Yes.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I've heard of Orphan Black.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I've heard of Orphan Drugs.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So as you know, as not only do species evolve from each other in a branching nestled descent, but so do genes. Genes evolve from each other. Gene will split into two and then go and then evolve in different directions, take on different functions and then further split and further split. And so evolutionary biologists try to build the evolutionary tree not only of species, but of genes. And sometimes they come across a gene that they cannot connect through similar sequences to any other gene. Or maybe it's a cluster of genes. These three genes are related to each other, but we cannot connect them to the tree. We can't connect them to any other genes.Those are called orphan genes. Now the question is, are orphan genes orphans because they've just evolved so much that their connection is obscured? Or are some orphan genes orphans because they represent de novo gene creation?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right. Just like a spontaneous...<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So this is the study to say what percentage of orphan genes were formed, "from scratch" and what percentage of them are just orphaned because they just evolved too much that it's hard to know where they connect to. And this analysis in any case finds that about two thirds of them are actually de novo from scratch gene formation. So how would that work? How do we get a gene from nothing? Well, junk DNA. There's a lot of sequences in there. There's a lot of raw material. There's viral inclusions that are pseudogenes. These pseudogenes or whatever the junk DNA can through mutation become an actual functional gene. That's awesome. If it just gets...<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That's awesome. Start making proteins.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. Just start to make a protein. Now it has an evolutionary foothold. It can evolve. And in fact, species and groups of creatures that have really unique adaptations tend to... Those adaptations tend to be from orphan genes. Yeah. So it would suggest that they may be from de novo gene formation. That's why they didn't inherit it from another, from a relative. They actually developed it somewhere along their own line.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, which might be hard for conventional genes because they're kind of locked into a pathway. They can't really go devolve and change back.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So this confuses me though, because even if there were de novo mutations, are you saying they happened multiple times in the vertebrate lineage?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So that de novo gene would not come from a single...<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Common ancestor.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' ...common ancestor gene.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No, but wouldn't that de novo gene mutation become the new common ancestor?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Only if everything that derives from it, but there still wouldn't be. So this says all the genes share a common ancestor. A de novo gene would not share a common ancestor with all other genes.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No, I get that. Aren't you saying that the mutation itself is what causes it to become a vertebrate?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, that's where I was. That's where I was lost. I thought you were talking about a gene mutation that you just...<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I could have said all mammals. I could have said all animals. I could have said all life. It didn't really matter. I just arbitrarily chose a big branch just to make it seem more plausible. Yeah, but it has to be wrong if there are de novo genes, right? They can't all come from a single ancestor, no matter what branch you choose.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #3 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All this means that scientists developed a nanoparticle that can target atherosclerotic plaques in arteries, triggering the destruction of cellular debris and stabilizing the plaque, which would potentially reduce the risk of heart attacks is science, and this is pretty cool. Now, what the nanoparticle is doing is targeting macrophages and delivering a drug that activates the macrophage, and it's the macrophage that eats the plaque and stabilizes it. The nanoparticle is not eating the plaque. It's just triggering. It could target the plaque, and it triggers the destruction by delivering a drug to the macrophages. Does that make sense? That much has been demonstrated, but it wasn't tested clinically, which is why I said it potentially reduces the risk of heart attacks, because the clinical studies haven't been done. Just the proof of concept has been done. It does do that. It just doesn't... They need to do the clinical studies. This was from January, so this was from the beginning of the year, published in Nature Nanotechnology. I do remember Perry saying that, Jay. I knew you guys... At least one of you would remember it, so I thought maybe they'll think that I'm punking you because I remember that, but it's a cool news item. I do also have a vague memory of it. I don't know if we mentioned it or talked about it or whatever or if I wrote about it.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I don't either. I just had a vague memory as well.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' There's a ton of news items that we miss when I go through, like just looking at all the news items for the year.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, gosh. So many.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Some of them are like, whoa, how did I miss that one? That's pretty important.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The liquid... The Pluto subsurface water I recognized too. I don't think we covered it really, but I remember coming across that, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It rang a bell. It definitely rang a little bit of a bell there for me.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Rang a bell.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, so I have to say that with this recalculation, with this win now under my belt, I think you will determine that I won by a landslide.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' A landslide. We all know it. You all know it. You all know it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's how math works.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It's quantum math. Come on. Quantum math.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' I still got one out of three, so pretty good.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's right. Always right ones in science fiction.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's right. All right, Evan, give us the last quote of the year.<br />
<br />
== Skeptical Quote of the Week <small>(1:43:08)</small> ==<br />
<br />
<!-- For the quote display, use block quote with no marks around quote followed by a long dash and the speaker's name, possibly with a reference. For the QoW in the recording, use quotation marks for when the Rogue actually reads the quote.<br />
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<br />
<blockquote>Persistence in scientific research leads to what I call instinct for truth.<br>– {{w|Louis Pasteur}} (1822-1895), French chemist and microbiologist </blockquote><br />
<br />
'''E:''' Last quote of the year.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Decade isn't the last quote of the decade. It's when you count decades.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh my gosh.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No. No, we're not doing this again.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Save it for the 12-hour show. January 23rd. Tune in.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' After we talk about AM-PM.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, exactly.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, yes. Thank you. Please put that on the list as well. That'll take up 10 hours alone, those two conversations. This was submitted by a listener, John from New Hampshire, so thank you. It's to the point, and I liked it. "Persistence in scientific research leads to what I call instinct for truth." Louis Pasteur.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Louis.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, it's an interesting quote. You have to really think about it, too, I think, know what he's talking about. How would you interpret that, Evan?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That you have to be... Well, persistence, I think, is the key word here. In other words, not just following the process, but following it to a fault, almost, and making sure that you're always following it, being very persistent with it at all times. Of all the ways of possibly knowing things, that can lead you to what you could feel is the most truth, and I think that's why he called it an instinct for truth.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, you could also think that the more research you do, the more you start to get a feel for not only how the world works, but how information works, how we begin to... Like a metacognition kind of thing.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Totally.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' How we know what we know.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It sounds to me like he's also talking about, basically, the development of expertise.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Just the longer that you study something, the more that you see all the different types of evidence that can be produced within that field, the more that you start to be able to make inferences with fewer data points. The more that you're able to say, okay, this looks like X because I've seen X from every different angle, and I have so much data in my catalogue that now, as an expert, I can kind of cut through to the core quicker than somebody else.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, but you still have to treat that as a hypothesis and follow through the process to prove your gut instinct.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. Interesting quote. So, guys, thank you for another great year of the SGU. I appreciate you guys showing up every week and doing this with me.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Sure man.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Thanks Steve.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Thank you, Captain.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That's what we do, man.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And Ian, thanks for all your hard work for the SGU this year.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' Of course. My pleasure. You know what? I just remembered I did have a skeptical hero and skeptical jackass, but we had such prime targets for that that I figured I would save it. So if you want to hear what it is, why don't you follow and come to the live stream on January 1st of 2021, and maybe we'll talk about it. That's the next live stream.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Cool. I love teasers.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' There you go. Big teaser.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Hey, Steve.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yes, Jay.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Another great year, man. You are a hero to many people, including me, and I really appreciate the work that you do.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Oh, thank you, brother.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Sucking up to the boss again. It is. I mean I've said this before. It is a pleasure working with all of you guys. This is if I were doing this all by myself it wouldn't be even a tiny percentage as fun as it is. I like having my crew, having my peeps.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' Would it be you talking to yourself in five places?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''IC:''' Oh, okay. That's good.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, I think this is just so much more fun as a group endeavour, you know? And also just I love having people to throw ideas off of, and like the discussion is the important part of it, right? It's not just like, here's some information. It's let's talk about this and let's challenge each other and everything. That's makes it so much more, I think, compelling.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Last but absolutely not least, thank you to all of our patrons over on Patreon. You know, you guys know it. You make all of this possible and to also to our legacy members all of you are definitely contributing to what I consider to be skepticism in general is incredibly important. And we work hard every day to push the ball forward, keep people informed, and to continue to do what we do because the message is ultimately what's important here. So thank you guys very much. I can't tell you how much we appreciate your contributions.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Absolutely. We're heading into our 16th year and we wouldn't be doing that if we didn't have such wonderful listeners and supporters.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Hear, hear.<br />
<br />
== Signoff/Announcements == <br />
<!-- if the signoff/announcements don't immediately follow the QoW or if the QoW comments take a few minutes, it would be appropriate to include a timestamp for when this part starts --><br />
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'''S:''' —and until next week, and until next year, this is your {{SGU}}. <!-- typically this is the last thing before the Outro --> <br />
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{{Outro664}}{{top}}<br />
<br />
== Today I Learned ==<br />
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}}</div>Hearmepurrhttps://www.sgutranscripts.org/w/index.php?title=SGU_Episode_821&diff=19125SGU Episode 8212024-01-23T09:15:06Z<p>Hearmepurr: episode done</p>
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|episodeNum = 821 <!-- replace with correct Episode Number --><br />
|episodeDate = {{month|4}} {{date|3}} 2021 <!-- broadcast date --><br />
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|qowText = When I was a kid we’d rent Indiana Jones movies on VHS tapes. It inspired a whole generation of scholars because we saw the excitement, and the passion, and the drama. What’s amazing to me about archaeology is the stories are even better than what you see in a Hollywood movie.<br />
|qowAuthor = Sarah Parcak, an American archaeologist and Egyptologist <!-- use a {{w|wikilink}} or use <ref name=author>[url publication: title]</ref>, description [use a first reference to an article attached to the quote. The second reference is in the QoW section] --> <br />
|downloadLink = {{DownloadLink|2021-04-03}} <br />
|forumLink = https://sguforums.org/index.php?board=1.0 <!-- try to find the right ?TOPIC= link for each episode --><br />
}}<br />
<br />
== Introduction ==<br />
''Voice-over: You're listening to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.''<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Hello and welcome to the {{SGU|link=y}}. Today is Thursday April 1st 2021, and this is your hostess with the mostess Bob Novella. Joining me this week is Evan Bernstein...<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Hey everybody<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Jay Novella...<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Howdy.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Cara Santa Maria...<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Hey guys.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' ...and Steve Novella.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' How is everyone doing this evening?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Doing good. Well, yeah, Jay, I noticed your back. Where the hell were you last week, bro? What happened?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yes. So I got a virus and I didn't know if it was covert or not and it was very scary and we got tested like I had to get tested. Because why would I catch a virus while I'm quarantined at home during a pandemic? So we figured out that, my daughter got a virus in school, like some cold head cold. You know, when you feel virus symptoms coming on, you got to get the test because-<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh God yeah.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Because of COVID. You know, once we decided like we're getting the test I realized I could have COVID.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And so you have to quarantine that.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Oh, yeah. We double secret quarantined. And I got a wicked bad head cold. And as the symptoms got worse, I really, I mean, I just got scared. I got a little scared. I'm like I'm 52 years old and a lot of people, a lot younger and a lot healthier than me died. You know, like you just can't help but think about it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. You don't want to make that constitution saving throw.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, definitely not. But luckily, luckily it was it was just a head cold. And you know, we went and got COVID tested twice. You know, it was a huge swing. So as we record this five days ago, I was feeling very ill and thinking I'm going to miss my COVID appointment. And wow this would be terrible if I actually got COVID while I was at home. But so the bottom line is I ended up getting my my vaccination yesterday, which I didn't think I was going to be able to get for a couple of more months because I had a reschedule. But my wife pulled an amazing miracle and found us vaccinations like Tuesday. So it was it all turned out awesome. But I mean last week I was like, oh this could be it for me.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. We keep saying like we don't want to get sick now like the end is in sight.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We need to get a little bit more patient hunkered down.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah. So now Connecticut's on the rise, though, unfortunately. So it is a time to be extra cautious, especially around here.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' And during the live stream, I was like falling asleep while I just wanted to do the live stream. But that was not even close to as sick as I got. So just be careful, guys, like if you get a virus you have to go get tested for COVID. You don't know what virus you have.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. The hospital where I work is preparing for a possible surge another wave. The numbers are starting to go up. The hospital admissions, et cetera. And this is just when they said that the new variants like the UK variant was supposed to be peaking. They said in March. I guess it is.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Now, Steve, when the hospital's preparing, does that mean that there are a bunch of doctors in white lab coats running around with their hands up going out saying, I'm sterile, I'm sterile?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, that's exactly right. It's like it's like you've worked in the hospital before, Jay.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Or saw it on TV.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' The doctors stand around, just look at each other and go, doctor, doctor, doctor.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Everything I know about hospitals, I learned from St. Elsewhere.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' St. Elsewhere? So I always know, like when the hospital is gearing up, because one of the first things they do is put the neurologists on standby. They basically ask, so who is going to cover us when we get swamped? You know, who like who's not normally like an internal medicine doctor? So that's so that's that's happened. They can set the word down and say, all right, guys, we're getting ready for another wave. You know, we need to have you waiting in the wings when we get overwhelmed.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' So are you an external medicine doctor?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' There are like pediatric nurses working in the ER at the hospital.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, it's all hands on deck.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Oh, yeah. My sister in law, she was a she is a nurse that specializes in treating patients after open heart surgery. That comes with a ton of training. You know, that's a very, very difficult thing to do. And they walked up to her and said, you now work in the ER when COVID hit. That was it. And she's been in the ER for a year.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' During the worst times that we had in the pandemic. So, yeah, she was hit hard. Not one person on her floor got sick. Not one nurse got sick. That's amazing PPE usage.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' But here we are, guys. We're not out of the woods, man. You know, like we got about 150 million people in the United States got the vaccine. You know, there's a ton of people about to get the vaccine with the scheduling going off the rails. But it's still like it's getting worse because spring is coming and people are getting that itch and they're over it. And that's part of it.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' And states are opening just prematurely, like trying to outdo each other and how open they are. I know they want their economies to open and get money back in there. But yeah, but Jesus, not cool. All right. This week, we also have a what's the word segment, Jay, what do you have for us this week?<br />
<br />
== What’s the Word? <small>(5:19)</small> ==<br />
* phenotype<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Well, I've got a fun one for you guys today. This word is a word that you've heard before, but I don't know how well you know it. Everybody's heard the word phenotype, right?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I've heard of that.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' And I'm sure, Cara, you and Steve are probably well acquainted with it. But when I was looking for a word, I'm like, I want to find a word that I know, but I don't know. And this was one of those words. I had a very loose understanding of it, and now I have a very good understanding of it. So here it is. Here's the definition. The observable and measurable characteristics of an organism as a result of an interaction of the genes of the organism, environmental factors and random variations. So not to be confused with a trait, because a trait is actually an attribute of the organism's phenotype. So you could say the fish is blue, right, as a trait. But that's not really, that is not anywhere near as big as what the phenotype is, right? So traits are underneath phenotypes. This word was coined in 1911 by a scientist called Wilhelm Johansson. Of course, he created the word in German, Würfi. So the-<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Mark your cards, people.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' The original word is P-H-A-E-N-O-T-Y-P-U-S, and I think it's pronounced phenotypus.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, why not.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Close enough. But it is originally in German. So phenotype is actually a translation from the German. Now Wilhelm was a Danish pharmacist, a botanist. He was a plant physiologist, a geneticist. So he coined the word phenotype. He coined the word genotype. And then, oh, this other word that you probably may or may not have heard of before, the word gene. And they all came out of one book that he wrote.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Wow.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I know. Isn't that cool? So it's, please, I'm not even going to like, anybody that speaks German just does not want to hear me try to say this. But the translated German book title is Elements of the Exact Doctrine of Heredity.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, there you go.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's pretty straightforward.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' And that book became one of the founding texts of genetics, which I think is very cool. So to give you like the real, real, real origin, of course, we're going to go back to the ancient Greek. And that word was phino, P-H-A-I-N-O I probably pronounced it wrong. That means to shine, to show, to appear. And then the second part was tutak or tupos, which means mark or type. So to shine, to show, to appear, mark type. That's phenotype.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right. So it's appearance.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Right. Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' As opposed to its genetic coding.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah. Cara, that would be the genotype.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And in medicine, when we're talking about a phenotype, we're usually talking about a disease, right? So not everybody, not all genetic diseases have 100% penetrance, meaning that they don't always, if you have the gene, that doesn't mean you have the disease. And they're not always as severe. You might have a mild manifestation of it or extremely severe. So we talk about, yeah, this is your genotype, you have this specific mutation, but this is your phenotype. This is like how you manifest that you do or do not manifest the disease.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right. And we often talk about evolution and we talk about how genes can have neutral, positive or deleterious mutations. And one of the ways that we know what's going on in a mutation is that there may be a deleterious phenotype. So a gene mutates, and then now this creature has no melanin, for example, or this organism, you know, ends up with an extra set of wings that prevent it from being able to fly. Neutral mutations often make changes, but those changes might not even be observable from the outside. And so there may be something going on that we can't see. But I think one thing that's important too, to remember is that phenotype is not always just how it looks on the outside. There's a phenotypic expression under a surgical knife. There's a phenotypic expression. It just has to do with what we're observing, right?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, it's also, I think, like physiology. So whereas morphology would be entirely anatomy, what it looks like, morphology. Phenotype includes that, but also biochemistry and physiology and all the other stuff that's how does everything work? Exactly.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So it's the expression. It's the way that the gene-<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's the expression.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Right. And if you want to throw out some very geeky flattery you could throw around the word phenotype as well. Just throwing that out there. Thank you, Jay. I feel confident saying that that's the best what's the word you've ever done. ''(laughter)''<br />
<br />
== News Items ==<br />
<br />
=== Satellites and Light Polution <small>(9:58)</small> ===<br />
* [https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021/03/study-finds-nowhere-earth-safe-satellite-light-pollution Study finds nowhere on Earth is safe from satellite light pollution]<ref>[https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021/03/study-finds-nowhere-earth-safe-satellite-light-pollution Science: Study finds nowhere on Earth is safe from satellite light pollution]</ref><br />
<br />
'''B:''' Evan, I believe you're about to talk about some pesky light pollution. What have we learned?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, pesky, pesky light pollution, indeed. New news about that this week. However, first, I would like to put a little poll out there, a little question for the rogues. As of January 1st, 2021, how many artificial satellites are in orbit around the earth as of January 1st this year?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' A quintillion.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' 30,000, I think. Oh, wait, wait, wait, wait.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You mean functional and non-functional, or just-<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Artificial satellites, I believe they're counting the functional ones.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' 30,000.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' 3,000. 3,000.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Steve's pretty close. Yep.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' 3,000.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, I think there's a lot of thousands.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' 3,372.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Wow.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I got the three right.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' With more satellites comes an increase in the risk of collisions, obviously. They're concerned also about the number of licenses that are being allowed for new satellites to be launched, that it's not just this gradual increase, but rather a sharp spike that can exacerbate the potential for accidents and collisions and other satellite-related problems. They're also concerned that radio frequencies will be pushed to their practical limits throughout the next decade coming up. And they're concerned that the satellites are interfering with ground-based astronomy, which if you think about it, is something countries around the world have invested many hundreds of billions of dollars on, and it puts those investments to a certain degree at some risk. But we can add perhaps a new concern to that list, and it comes to us because of the recent published paper in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Letters, which has found that objects orbiting the Earth elevate the brightness of the night sky by at least 10% over natural light levels. And this increase in brightness is not limited to certain parts of the planet, but rather it's having a global impact. So no matter where you are, your nighttime sky observations are being impacted by not just these 3,300 or so satellites. It's in concert with the other bodies, the space junk, debris, and other things that are up there that are all reflecting the sunlight. Tens of thousands of these objects that are large enough to reflect the light are having this impact. The title of the paper is called The Proliferation of Space Objects as a Rapidly Increasing Source of Artificial Night Sky Brightness. And you only need to really point to the abstract to pick up the highlights of the story and really what they're talking about here. They say that the population of artificial satellites and space debris orbiting the Earth imposes non-negligible constraints on both space operations and ground-based optical and radio astronomy. This ongoing deployment of several satellite mega constellations, that's something we've definitely spoken about in recent episodes, and the ones that are coming up in the 2020s, this coming decade, they represent an additional threat that raises significant concerns that can no longer be ignored or just kind of brushed off. We have to put it into really the spotlight. They're reporting that a new sky glow effect produced by space objects increased night sky brightness caused by sunlight reflected and scattered by this large set of orbiting bodies whose direct radiance is a diffuse component when observed with the naked eye or with low angular resolution photometric instruments. And according to their preliminary estimates, the zenith luminance of the additional light pollution source may have already reached a 10% increase over the brightness of the night sky determined by natural sources of light. Now that 10% is important. 10% is the critical limit that was adopted in 1979 by the International Astronomical Union for the light pollution level not to be exceeded at the sites of astronomical observatories. And according to their study and their calculations, it's there and it's there right now and it's going to get worse. Dr. Miroslav Kosifaj of the Slovak Academy of Sciences and Cominius University in Slovakia, and forgive me, I mean, that's probably a terrible pronunciation of his name by me. I'm sure he's listening right now. So I apologize. He was the leader of the study and he said that our primary motivation was to estimate the potential contribution to night sky brightness from external sources such as space objects in Earth orbit. We expected the sky brightness increase would be marginal, if any, but our first theoretical estimates have proved extremely surprising and thus encouraged us to report our results promptly. What he's basically saying there is they were, when he says surprising, I believe he means alarmed. And they said, we have to make people aware of this a lot sooner than later. Their work is the first to consider the overall impact of space objects on the night sky by modeling objects' contribution to overall brightness. And their inputs for their modeling are the known distributions of the sizes and brightness of the objects. So they actually took these physical measurements, phenotypes, can I say that? Would that be accurate? These include both functioning satellites as well as the other debris and spent rocket stages and other things that are reflecting the light. Now we have John Barentine. He's the director of public policy at the International Dark Sky Association. Cara, have you interviewed him before for your show?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I haven't, but I have done a lot of research on that concept.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I could have sworn that you had some folks.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' What's his name again?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' John Barentine or Barentine.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, no, I haven't had him on, but I've definitely, I don't know, I have talked to some people about dark sky initiatives before.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' And they were involved in this study and this analysis as well. He particularly said, unlike ground-based light pollution, this kind of artificial light in the night sky can be seen across a large part of the earth's surface. As space gets more crowded, the magnitude of this effect will only be more, not less. I think he's absolutely right. You know, we've talked about the Starlink communication satellite arrays. And since 2019, SpaceX has launched more than a thousand Starlink communication satellites and obviously for use for global internet service. But how about this? Over the next 10 years, tens of thousands more, they already got the licenses for them. They're going to come from SpaceX and other companies, including Amazon. And those those are just two big companies and there are others. So you're about to see a real significant increase in this traffic.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Well, I was disappointed with SpaceX because in response to a lot of this outrage, the SpaceX engineers, they managed to actually dim the satellites that they were working on by about a quarter of the brightness, 25% of the brightness of the that was exhibited from the first prototypes. And that's great that they did that. But my reaction is that they shouldn't have had to have waited to outrage to do this. This should be part of their ethos of like, hey, we're doing all we're putting all these satellites up there. Let's do what we can to make sure it doesn't mess with the glow of the atmosphere or the impact on other astronomers. And if they could, if they could whack it back 75%, I think that should have been in their minds before people started really complaining about it.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah. Is there a reason why these satellites can't be coated with either material or a special paint or something that would absorb all that sunlight rather than reflect it? There may be practical reasons or just the material itself doesn't exist, but.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, just weight probably.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I would say weight and possibly, possibly heat, right? Because reflecting it is bouncing the energy away. And if it's absorbing all of that energy a black satellite might just get too hot.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Hmm.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I mean, just redirect it away from the earth. If that's maybe how about some metamaterials that could probably do it, but that's probably expensive.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah. But what would that do to add right to the cost? And then they'd have to increase the cost of the users and then the practicality aspects kind of go off the charts, I suppose, at that point, guys, even at the darkest possible sites on the earth the sky itself has this natural glow in the upper atmosphere. You know, you got ionized particles among other things happening up there, but on top of that background glow, the objects already in orbit add about 10% more diffuse light as per these estimates. But this impacts the work of astronomers, the ground-based astronomy equipment that is searching for the faint objects, the dim galaxies. They're relying on that delicate data for collecting and studying, getting clues about, physics of the galaxy, formation of dark matter, other things. And it puts those – it does put those things in jeopardy and there is a lot invested in that. I mentioned there's like many, many billions, in fact, tens of billions of dollars that has been invested towards these projects and it is going to put some of these things at some level of risk. The number of space objects orbiting the earth is expected to increase by more than an order of magnitude in the next decade because – and largely because of these constellation satellites. So this has to become something that comes to the forefront of the conversation. That was the purpose as to why they got this paper out in pretty quick order.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' So things are crappy for human stargazers on earth.<br />
<br />
=== Heart Size and Space Travel <small>(19:11)</small> ===<br />
* [https://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/biological-effects-of-space-travel/ Biological Effects of Space Travel]<ref>[https://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/biological-effects-of-space-travel/ NeuroLogica Blog: Biological Effects of Space Travel]</ref><br />
<br />
'''B:''' Cara, how are things for humans in space?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Not great.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Well, with all that radiation and whatnot.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right. Yeah, not awesome. Not as bad as we thought though. So there's an interesting new study that was published in the journal Circulation. I love that.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It's a journal named Circulation. I love it. That's like double – yeah, double meaning. Love it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right? And so what do we think it's about? Of course, cardiac effects of repeated weightlessness during – this is the best part – extreme duration swimming compared with space flight. So not only are we going to talk today about what space flight does to the heart, we're also going to talk about what weightlessness during extreme duration swimming does to the heart. Because you guys may remember that Benoit Lecomte actually swam over a course of 159 days attempting to break a record 2,821 kilometers. And during this time, he was mostly horizontal. He was mostly weightless in the water. And then at night, he slept in a boat, also mostly horizontal. Interestingly, we saw similar effects from Benoit Lecomte's swim to Scott Kelly's flight. Scott Kelly famously spent 340 days in space. And I know we've talked about him before, astronaut Scott Kelly, because of course he had a twin brother. So there's some really cool twin studies that could be done here. And he spent so much time in space and has been so open, of course, as part of his job, but also with being poked and prodded to really understand what is space doing to this man's body. And so we've got some new data now about what happened to his heart. And what do you guys think would happen to your heart in microgravity?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It shrunk.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, in microgravity, yeah, it shrank for sure.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yep. It shrunk. Cardiac atrophy. We saw that most of the shrinkage occurred in the left ventricle, which is kind of the powerhouse of the heart. This is where most of the muscle mass is. And the shrinkage was, I think something, let me get the exact number. 27% of its mass.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That is scary as hell.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Wait, wait, wait. 27. So that is not trivial.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That's scary, man.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So one thing that we don't usually think about is the heart is striated muscle, which is very similar in a lot of ways to skeletal muscle, unlike most of our organs, which are made of smooth muscle. And the thing about striated muscle is that it builds, it actually builds bulk with work. We know this. We know that in individuals, for example, who have gigantism, that they end up often developing an enlarged heart. We know that in individuals who have narrowed arteries through different types of cholesterol buildup, hardened arteries, different reasons that their hearts sometimes become enlarged because it's working harder. But in microgravity, it doesn't have to work as hard because it's not fighting against gravity. And interestingly, we see something similar if you're swimming for many, many hours horizontally in the weightlessness of the ocean.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' The same thing? The heart shrinks, even though this person was working out like a madman.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And that's the interesting takeaway here.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' He was not working out like a madman. That's part of the thing. I emphasize that.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Well, I mean, you're swimming for eight hours, six hours a day?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Average is 5.8 or something, a little bit less than six. But he was pacing himself. He was not swimming all out. He was swimming at a very slow, steady pace in order to be able to keep up.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Because this was a long, this was a distance situation.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' They considered that moderate exercise and what they concluded was, and here's the thing, of course Scott Kelly was exercising as vigorously as his day allowed for on the ISS, that in neither case was that amount of exercise protective.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yes, it didn't make up for it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Six hours of swimming a day was not enough to prevent that from happening because it wasn't vigorous enough or it just doesn't compensate for the fact that the heart does not have to pump against gravity.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Right. But I would still say, though, that even though he was doing moderate workouts, I would still say that five hours of moderate activity a day is a lot of effing working out.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It is. And so it is to show how much more is necessary. Because Benoit Lecomte lost 25% of his heart mass, Scott Kelly lost 27% of his heart mass. I mean, Scott Kelly lost it over 340 days in microgravity, Benoit Lecomte lost it over after only 159 days swimming. But here's an interesting takeaway that the study authors mention. More research needs to be done, but what they're starting to see that's trending in the data is that a lot of this has to do with pre-morbid functioning. So prior to going to space, prior to swimming in the ocean, if somebody is incredibly athletic, they tend to lose heart mass. But if somebody is not doing much anyway, the strain of working out or the strain of swimming may actually build them. And so the thing is, these people were healthy. They were healthy, so they needed to work harder. Whether Benoit Lecomte needed to swim more intensely to make up for the loss of heart muscle or Scott Kelly, unfortunately, six days a week doing 30 minutes a day wasn't enough. He's going to have to be prescribed a more intensive exercise regimen in space.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I'm surprised it was actually that low. My impression was that their workouts in space were far more than 30 minutes a day. I'm doing that every day. They should be working out harder than me.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And let's think about where that prescription comes from. It comes from the fact that over decades, we've been collecting data about how space affects our physiology. But that data is really a function of random happenstance. There are certain hypotheses that physiologists working for NASA have been able to come up with. Okay, I'm worried about the bones, right? Our bones work because they keep us upright and they work hard to have our muscles connected to them and to do this kind of work. And the minute that we don't have that kind of pressure, what's going to happen to our bones? We might start to see bone loss. This was a hypothesis that was expected. You know what wasn't expected? That our eyeballs would squish. Nobody saw that coming. But some people's eyeballs squish and it changes their vision. They become more farsighted in space. And they were like, what? When they first realized that. So the thing about space that's so fascinating is we did not evolve there. We evolved here on Earth with 1G.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We like 1G.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' We do. We adapted to 1G. And so we're learning slowly but surely, based on these ISS studies, exactly what microgravity does to us. And it seems to do a hell of a lot. Now the cool thing is some things can be prevented or changed or mitigated, like the muscle mass loss. It's very likely that if they exercise more and more rigorously, that muscle mass loss would be prevented. The bone loss can be prevented through certain types of exercise. But there doesn't seem to be a mitigation for things like squishy eyeballs, immunodeficiency, the disorientation that happens within your inner ear, where turning your head ever so slightly makes it feel like you're literally turning your body around in circles. And a lot of these different things come out of space travel. And so physiologists are working on trying to figure out, are there mitigation efforts? We know that, for example, what's it called, the like rotating areas that force fake gravity that we see in a lot of science fiction.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah. Like the spinning satellites, like centrifugal force and all that.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, the centrifugal force that keeps your feet on the ground. You know, it has long been thought of as a mitigation. For a while it was abandoned because it's insanely expensive. But it seems to be the case that it may actually be necessary because it might make up for some of the unknowns that could happen months and years.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' So our health is directly tied to gravity.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Our health, everything that we do on Earth, we do in this environment. All of our physiology happens at 1G. And as soon as we change that, everything goes wonky and weird. And we still don't even know what some of the things are that could go extra wonky and weird.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' So we need to seriously look at having things like rotating sections of spaceships. If we're going to have people out there for months and months and months and over a year or more, we're really going to need to consider that if we can't really get around these things that happen.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right. And that's not to mention basically unlivable conditions of space. Radiation, we talked about, the intense cold, the near vacuum.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' No Starbucks.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No Starbucks. Oh, goodness. You know, don't get me started. So obviously all of those mitigations are in research phases and very, very smart people are spending a lot of money to try and figure out how to solve these problems. There probably is a solution for all of these problems. Whether that solution is feasible financially, whether it's feasible physiologically, that is yet to be seen. Because what we're talking about here are the unknown unknowns when there's no way back to safety very readily. And we're talking about very, very, very long spans of time. And one thing that I want you guys' insight into, because I don't know this very well and I don't seem to see it in most of the coverage here, is pretty much everything we know is based on low Earth orbit. It's microgravity. But when we're talking about going to Mars, isn't it going to be even more intense?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' What do you mean? Like on the trip to Mars?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. Like the lack of gravity is even less than in microgravity?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No. No, no.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Okay. It's not.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, microgravity is just being technically correct rather than zero gravity. Because it's not like you're not surrounded by mass that's having gravity on you. But when you're drifting through space and you're in low Earth orbit, it's basically the same. It's essentially no gravity.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So I wasn't sure because if you're in low Earth orbit, you're still within an orbital plane, which means there's enough gravity.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' But you're falling.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You are falling.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. You're falling. Whereas once you get out of low Earth orbit, you're no longer falling.<br />
<br />
'''B:'' Right.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, it depends on where. You could be in higher Earth orbit. You're still falling.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right. Right. But once you get outside of Earth's orbit...<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It depends. If you're accelerating, then that's a different story.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You're falling around the sun.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' But yeah, it's essentially the same. You're yielding to gravity in orbit or you're traveling to... You're not accelerating to Mars. You're still in... You're not affected by mass.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Especially, Cara, if you're in an inertial frame. So in other words, you are just traveling without any forces acting upon you. It doesn't matter what gravity is pushing you or pulling you in one direction. The reason why we feel the 1G of gravity at Earth's surface is because the Earth is pushing up against us, right? When you're in orbit, you're falling around the Earth. There's nothing pushing up against you, so you're not feeling any gravity. Same thing would be when you're coasting through deep space would be exactly the same thing. When you said Mars, I thought you were going to a different place. So I think, yeah, spaceships, space stations, you're going to need some kind of artificial gravity, which is basically going to be rotation. It's going to be the big thing.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' And that can't be small. I mean, I looked into this.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, it's got to be big.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That can't be small. There's a lot of diameters and radii being tossed around. I found one study, though, that said that you're going to need... You can go to four revolutions per minute, and that seems like a lot. It's not what's really recommended, but you could adapt to four revolutions per minute. And that means that the diameter would have to be 336 feet.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Wow.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That's a lot.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So that's like the minimum diameter.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Well, maybe not minimum, but that's a good one. That's a good diameter. That's a lot. 336 feet. Damn.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's sizeable.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So even when you're in Earth's orbit-<br />
<br />
'''B:''' 56 meters, man.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' -you're falling, right? So you're constantly in motion because you're not only falling around the Earth, you're falling around the sun in a way, right? So our existence is basically managing falling.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, that's what walking around on the ground is, too. I mean, we've already fallen.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That's right. Controlled imbalance.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Cara, did you know that there's already a private company, Orbital Assembly Corporation, OAC, that is planning to build a station that is a rotating station in orbit?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Good. Oh, I'm glad.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And they plan on starting it in 2025. We'll see.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' The interesting thing is that really could mitigate a lot of the fundamental problems of low Earth orbit.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Totally.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' There are still the problems of radiation cosmic rays, like all these things.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Poop shield.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Poop shield. Yeah, there are definitely things that are in research phases and development phases. But one thing that I often like to think about is the fact that when we look at these human trials, these like real-life studies, so much data has been published about one guy. And I'm not saying that Scott Kelly's the only astronaut who we've studied. We've studied many astronauts. But we do not. Our N is very small. And these are people who are very fit. These are people who were trained.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Pilots. Military pilots.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, military pilots who went through years of training before they left Earth. And the amount of variability, just for example, in our susceptibility to cancer is so great. You know, you and I, if we get the right dosage of radiation, we'll both get cancer. But there is definitely an in-between where some people are going to get cancer and some people aren't.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Well, yeah. I don't know. Is anyone under the illusion that space is for everyone?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I think that's the ultimate goal, right?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Well, sure, but it's not really attainable.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You also wonder, though, how long will it take for a subpopulation of humans to evolve adaptations to living in space?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' How long would that take?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' We call them the space race.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's interesting, too, Steve, that you mention that because we're talking about like kind of classic natural selection, right, like populations. But a lot of the researchers, even the researchers of this study, mentioned that there are certain things where we may actually be able to adapt. We've just never given somebody long enough to see if they can. So we're not even talking about evolutionary adaptation genetic adaptation. There may actually be ways that our bodies start to adapt.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Just physiological adaptation.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, just physiological. The longer that we're exposed to these certain stressors. And so we still don't know if maybe there would be a rebound effect with Scott Kelly's heart if he was there long enough.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Well little footnote, Scott's heart went back to normal within, I think, months of his return to the Earth.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It went back to normal. But also, remember, Scott Kelly works out a lot.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' And we don't know of any long-term effects up to that rebound.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. Yeah. And so the interesting thing is that if somebody who is kind of like lazy and like not doing a lot of work goes to space and has this new exercise regimen that's really intense, their heart may actually grow because the exercise regimen may make up for the shrinkage. But then, of course, they may not rebound the same way either.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Like the Grinch.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I think the write-up in the New York Times actually referenced the Grinch.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Of course. Because that's one of the famous lines from that.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. They said it wasn't from love, though. It was from exercise.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' All right. Well, thank you, Cara.<br />
<br />
=== Self-Replicating Synthetic Cell <small>(35:08)</small> ===<br />
* [https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.livescience.com/amp/synthetic-cell-division.html Scientists built a perfectly self-replicating synthetic cell]<ref>[https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.livescience.com/amp/synthetic-cell-division.html Live Science: Scientists built a perfectly self-replicating synthetic cell]</ref><br />
<br />
'''B:''' I will now talk a little bit about synthetic cells and replication in the news. So yeah, there's another nicely incremental advance in synthetic cells recently. It's also a little on the milestone-y side, kind of important. Researchers have updated their minimalist synthetic cell so that it can now reproduce itself normally. So this was published March 29th in the journal Cell. The senior author was Elizabeth Strachowski, leader of the Cellular Engineering Group at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, NIST. So in 2016, some of you may remember, we talked about the creation of a synthetic cell by genome sequencing pioneer J. Craig Venter. That name is probably familiar to a lot of listeners. They wanted to create a cell with the minimum amount of genetic baggage required to be alive. That was the goal. So they started with the bacterium Mycoplasma genitalium, and I love that name. It's probably obvious, though, that this is a sexually transmitted microbe. So remember, this is still back like a decade ago when this started in 2010, they started working on this. I believe they used that microbe because it already starts with a very spare genome of only about 985 genes, which is not a lot. I believe some common microbes have somewhere in the thousands. So this is kind of spare. So back in 2010, they replaced them with 901, they reduced it by 84 genes. These are hand-engineered genes that they used, and they dubbed the result Syn1.0. So they basically took out the nucleus and then put in the basically completely hand-engineered genome. So that was like the first minimalist attempt. But 2016, though, was the bigger breakthrough, and that's what we talked about a few years ago. God, a half a decade ago? Damn. So when they brought that total way down to a measly 473 genes, that's from 901 to 473, they called that Syn3.0. Now I'm not sure what happened to Syn2.0, but it might be best if we just don't ask. So that was a nice breakthrough, and they believed that they were close to the minimal genome required to be alive, but they soon discovered a problem. Building proteins and duplicating its DNA, no problem. It did that stuff like a champ. But when it came time for this minimalist cell to divide, it did not go very well. It would not produce... Well, it should have produced these nice spheres like Borg spheres, but they were all messed up. They were different sizes. They were different shapes. Some were huge. Some were kind of skinny, like beaded necklaces, just not at all good. But like all good scientists, they looked at, first, all their processes, and they ruled out the environmental causes for these messed up kids. Since they ruled that out, the cause then was most likely that the previous removal of genes that managed reproduction itself and the resulting shapes of the daughter cells. That was probably the mistake they made. They pulled out some genes that they probably shouldn't have. Now that gets us up to modern day, and they have now produced the new champ, the new synthetic minimalist cell. It's called SYN3A, not 4, but 3A, and this contains 492 genes, a little bit more than 3.0, but that's fine, and it makes sense, of course. Crucially, seven of those genes that were added were absolutely critical for the cell to divide normally. Now the cell is great. It can divide. It creates these nice little uniform baby spheres, and they're just the right size. So it looks like they nailed it in terms of reproduction, at least. So what happened? What did they do? So in the intervening years, they discovered that two of the genes that they had previously removed for 3.0 were involved in cell division. My take was that they discovered, oh, look at this. This gene clearly is doing something involving cell division. Let's throw that into 3A. But the other five, though, there's five more genes, though, that they added back, and they were obviously needed to reproduce because they helped it to be able to reproduce perfectly, but they have no idea what those genes do. Regarding this, Strachowski said, we still don't know the mechanism by which these things divide. That blows my mind. It's one of the basic aspects of life, and it's kind of true. This kind of reproduction is kind of critical to life propagating on Earth, and they still don't have a really good handle on just the minimal amount of genes that you need to make this happen with cells. Now, of course, the scientists point out that determining what those genes do was not within the scope of the study, and it makes sense. They weren't looking to find out exactly what they do. Their goal was to create this minimalist cell that can live and reproduce, and that's what they did. That, of course, leads to the future of this work of finding out what those genes actually do is going to be obviously at the top of somebody's list because once they get a handle on those genes and exactly how they operate, then you could truly say that we know now exactly what's needed for this. But more generally, though, this is important, I think, and the scientists as well. This is important because once you have a truly minimalist cell that can live, make proteins, reproduce, maybe smoke a nice cigar or two, that then, that's the proper foundation because from there, you can build and you could add desirable properties to do truly amazingly helpful things that we're probably going to see in the future with this synthetic cell technology. What can we do? They're talking about building minuscule computers. Imagine molecular scale computation taking place inside of cells. That's just too awesome, and don't even get me started on that. They could also do things like engineer living sensors. These sensors can potentially be aware of the environment that they're embedded in, in terms of acidity, temperature, oxygen levels, et cetera. That could be incredibly helpful. You could potentially make these tiny synthetic cells be drug factories or just tiny generic factories that could produce drugs that could ... Essentially, they're talking about having them detect a disease state in part of the body. Then it could actually make the necessary therapeutics and then stop once the problem is gone. Bam. I mean, that's pretty damn convenient, but it's not just drugs they're talking about. They're talking about synthetic cells creating fuel and food itself. I think this is an amazingly promising industry, that this is going to be an amazingly advantageous industry in the not too distant future. I can't wait to see what these guys can do. Imagine. Imagine basically being able to create a custom-made microbe. Look at everything that bacteria and archaea do on a daily basis. If we could tailor, build these metabolisms and these cellular structures to create what we need, I think it has amazing potential. That's my story, and I'm sticking with it.<br />
<br />
=== Why No Lyme Vaccine <small>(42:26)</small> ===<br />
* [https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/5/7/17314716/lyme-disease-vaccine-history-effectiveness Lyme disease vaccine: the frustrating reason there isn’t one for humans]<ref>[https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/5/7/17314716/lyme-disease-vaccine-history-effectiveness Vox: Lyme disease vaccine: the frustrating reason there isn’t one for humans]</ref><br />
<br />
'''B:''' So Jay, got a question for you. You need to tell me why my dog can get a Lyme disease vaccine, but I can't. What's going on?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' You dog. So I don't know if any of you have had Lyme disease. Steve, did you ever have it?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' My goodness, no.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Nope.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I thought somebody had it that we knew, but it's bad. It could be really bad, especially if it goes untreated. So Lyme disease started in Connecticut. I remember talking about this on the show before, right? It started not too far from where me, Bob, and Steve, and Evan are right now. Cara, it's very far from you. But there is a place called Lyme, Connecticut, and I guess that was the first place that the disease was identified, and there you go. So the way people get it is by a deer tick bite, and those little bastards carry a disease and they infect as many as 300,000 people a year. Now most of those are unreported cases, but that's the estimate. We have confirmed cases averaging about 35,000 a year. So out of those cases, some people get very serious symptoms and get permanent damage because the disease, if left alone, can do very serious things to the human body. It's caused by four main species of bacteria. Like I said, the deer ticks transfer the bacteria and they love grassy and heavily wooded areas. So that ends rolling in the hay, I guess, right? Because if you're in New England, you know that you're not supposed to walk in tall grass unless you're wearing long clothing. Sometimes I'll tuck my pants inside my socks because they're so small, you really can't even feel them. And then you have to-<br />
<br />
'''E:''' We do regular tick checks on ourselves as we go out.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Tick check.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Do the tick check.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We did that with the kids all summer. Tick check.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' And that means basically get naked and let somebody look at every crevice that you have. So yeah, it's true, Cara, you would be surprised.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Don't ask me to do that anymore, Jay.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Jay, a couple of points. So that is effective because it takes about 24 hours for a tick bite to transfer the bacteria. So if you get it off in a day, you're probably good. And also the bacteria, these bacteria are called spirochetes because they look like little corkscrews, little spirals. They're related to the bacteria that causes syphilis. So Lyme is actually a very similar disease to syphilis in that not that it's not sexually transmitted, it is tick-borne, but it has a primary, a secondary, and a tertiary kind of infection. And the tertiary infections are very similar. They can chronically affect the heart or affect the nervous system. There's differences obviously, but a lot of overlap, very, very similar kinds of organisms and infections.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' And did you guys know that there are, so there's four different kinds and there are two of the bacteria are in North America and two of the other bacteria are in Europe. So it's not all the same. So to add to what Steve was saying, there are many different types of symptoms that you can get. You can get a rash. You can get fever, chills, fatigue, body aches, headache, neck stiffness, swollen lymph nodes, which are that could be very painful. And then later on, if untreated, you can get arrhythmia, migraines, joint pain, and neurological problems, which Steve would probably know a lot about, but you don't want any of this. And then the really bad stuff, heart problems, eye inflammation, irregular heartbeat, liver inflammation, severe fatigue, hepatitis, all sorts of nasty things. So what do we do? We use antibiotics to treat Lyme disease. And it works. For the most part, it works. Now, like Bob was saying, though, if you were a dog, you can get a vaccine because they have a vaccine for dogs. But did you guys know that there was a vaccine for people for Lyme disease? And not that long ago. This was back in the early 2000s, and the name of the vaccine was Lymerix, L-Y-M-E-R-I-X.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I think Lyme-rix.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Lyme-rix. Whatever. I have to say Lyme-rix because that's basically what they were going for. So it was developed and started in the late 1990s. It was up to 92% effective against infections. Several hundred thousand people got the vaccine, but this ended because of the anti-vaccine movement. So Alan Barber, who was one of the people who helped discover the cause of Lyme disease and also a co-inventor of the vaccine, said eventually, he said that even though the patent has run out on the vaccine now, because it's been quite a while since it was being formally produced, no companies are trying to sell it. And it's very unlikely that it will ever be sold. And this is because this particular vaccine had gotten not only just a lot of negative baggage attached to it from the very beginnings of the anti-vaccine movement, it probably was one of, if not the first vaccine to get completely crushed by the anti-vaccine movement. The Food and Drug Administration did approve this vaccine back in 1998 and the vaccine had three doses. They were about $50 each, which if you think about it today, like I'd get that in a heartbeat to like never have to worry about ticks again, 150 bucks. Yes. You know, I mean, it's like a daily problem. If you live in the spring, summer, and fall, you live in New England, it's a part of your life and I don't want that in my life. So I would have spent the money. So these vaccines were given over the course of a year and by all accounts, it was extremely effective against the North American strain and the bacteria. On top of that, it had little to no side effects. With all the good things that science knew about the vaccine, it was unfortunately marketed at the beginning, like I said, of the anti-vaccine movement. So of course, the anti-vaccine movement goes back a very long way. But the modern anti-vaccine movement really did come into existence in the late 90s. And of course, many of you know of the infamous Lancet publication that falsified a study about the MMR vaccine and the link to, the false link to autism. And that study was done by Andrew Wakefield, whose name, he will forever live in infamy and I'm not kidding. You know, we had it in the Lancet and it got pulled out. But the anti-vax movement was already created. And in my personal opinion, he is responsible for the death of every single person that died from a lack of these vaccines because he did it. So Wakefield had his own measles vaccine that he was trying to sell and he put down and discredited the MMR vaccine because he wanted to make money. So that's really where the anti-vax, the modern anti-vaccine movement came from. So word started to get around that there was possibly autoimmune reactions from the Lyme disease vaccine. Now, this was originally brought up by a few members of the FDA that actually approved the vaccine. There was, of course, no evidence of this. And I think that they were being very cautious because the anti-vaccine movement was happening. And it seems to me like they were trying to hedge their bets. But in the end, they gave it full approval and the clinical trials showed no sign at all of any autoimmune effect. A study published in the year 2000 found that the vaccine contributed to autoimmune arthritis in hamsters and not in humans. Then other researchers claimed that it might be possible that some people had a genetic disposition to develop the autoimmune response to the vaccine. And then people who received the vaccine started to report complaints. They filed a class action lawsuit and the vaccine was pulled from the market. And after all of that, the FDA continued to do research on all of the claims that were made. They spent four years doing it and they never, ever found any conclusive evidence that there was any connection between the vaccine and arthritis or autoimmune or anything.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' In fact, the people, the number of people who reported it, that was at the background level, right? There was, it was exactly what you would predict just from the background incidents of those, those illnesses.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So the numbers are 1.4 million doses were eventually ultimately given. And out of all of that, 59 people that got the vaccine developed arthritis. And like Steve said, this exactly matched the rate in which unvaccinated people got the virus. So any grouping of 1.4 million people that were not vaccinated, you would find about 59 people that got arthritis. So what does that mean? That means that they had no effect. It wasn't the vaccine. So of those people, 905 people reported side effects out of the 1.4 million doses given. And again, this is an incredibly small fraction of people who got who got the shots. Like there's a lot of other vaccines and medications that do a hell of a lot more damage than that. This vaccine was good and it was safe and highly, highly effective. So the media frenzy killed the vaccine. The media frenzy completely fueled the anti-vax movement.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Ugh, what a bummer.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I know, Cara right? It's disgusting. Yeah. So they, and they pulled it from the market because it wasn't making money. It went we went from like hundreds of thousands of people in one year getting vaccinated down to 10,000 people the next year.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yikes.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' And again keeping, keep this in mind, the FDA did follow up testing and they found nothing. You know what I mean? Like they cleared it. It doesn't matter though, because once marketing hits, man, forget it. So since then, partly due to climate change, Lyme disease infections have done what? They've gone up. They continue to increase in number. Many people in the medical community, of course, want an effective vaccine, right? Doctors are going, Hey, I'm getting lots of patients coming in here. What the hell? Where's the vaccine? But no pharmaceutical companies are biting because they don't want to go back to that "poisoned well", whether it was a good vaccine or not, they have to make money. So I get it. But unfortunately we don't have the Lyme disease vaccine today, which we absolutely could have. I mean, we could have another 20 years of freaking research and understanding of it. And they probably would have even modified it and made it even better. And you know, look, and I'm not kidding when I say this. And the downside is people are getting really sick and it just affects day of life here in New England. Like I have to like really think about my kids every single time they go outside. So good news. I mean, now that I've totally depressed you, let me throw some good news your way. Yes. You know, we all agree that the anti-vaccine movement has compromised public health. But there are other companies now, one particular in France that is developing a new vaccine for I think all of the different strains. Other companies are going to pick it up, but they're not going to take this existing technology. They're going to build something new and it'll be new enough where it probably won't follow the same path. I really don't think it will at all. But unfortunately this is the harm the whole question, that whole thing that we've been talking about for the last 20 years since the internet. What's the harm? The harm is that there are people walking around with permanent neurological disorders from a little bug that bites you, that passes you a bacteria. And you know, the anti-vaccine movement very happily killed that vaccine because they don't like vaccines because one man wrote a BS paper for the Lancet over 20 years ago.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. Did you know that they're doing it? They're already, the anti-vaxxers are building the same kind of bullshit story for the COVID vaccines?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Of course.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Of course. We had to predict that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Saying that, oh yeah, there's this preclinical animal study and whatever, where they get like an immune reaction to it. It's like, okay, but what about the actual clinical human trials where we did placebo-controlled studies and found that if you get vaccinated, your chances of surviving were much greater. You're talking about a theoretical problem based upon animals versus clinical data in humans.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Steve, do you want to hear like more details about that? So we've distributed about 145 million COVID vaccines in the last four months. So anyone who died after they got the vaccine and this is after exhaustive research and following up on all the patients and everything, there was absolutely no link to death so far from the COVID vaccine. That's number one. But there was also there was also this whole thing about this nurse who did a YouTube video about the vaccine saying that it causes autoimmune or potentially is giving people autoimmune problems because from her understanding of her reading of the research, she did read that one of the developers of the vaccine and a researcher that had a lot to do with it, and this was a doctor called, let me just get this because I took some notes. This was a doctor called Dr. Drew Weissman. He wrote about an earlier version of the mRNA technology. And he said, it's possible that we could see a few different side effects. And one of the things that he listed was an auto possible effect on autoimmune but that was versions ago of this technology.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, this is like, there's always going to be a phase where scientists are looking at the basic science research are saying, these are the possible things that can happen. These are the things we need to look out for when we do the clinical studies, then we do the clinical studies and we see what actually happens with large numbers of people. And then when millions of people get it, we have lots of data we could look at to see if there's any epidemiological correlations. And they're going back to this preclinical animal data that was theoretical possibilities that have already been disproven by human clinical data, because they're anti-vaxxers, right? They don't look for the truth. They're cherry picking whatever they can in order to build the case they've already decided they want to make.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' They love to talk about it as if we did studies and the studies were done. Like this idea that we're not still collecting data, that the the vaccine companies, the pharmaceutical companies, and also governments around the world are continuing to look at the data to keep an eye on how things are changing. How is it active in the real world? We're seeing a 90% effectiveness within the real world. This is huge, but there's this mentality like, oh, they didn't do enough research. It's like the research is not over. It's continuing.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, but it's cost versus benefit, right? You know, it's like, yes, of course, wouldn't it be great if we could do 30 years of testing? We can't, and the world is dying, you know?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' We'll die first. Yeah, exactly.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So we, this is what scientists and researchers are good at. They figure out here this is where we begin giving the vaccine. We've done excellent research. It's showing this. Sure, stuff can show up. But man, we'll save way more people than people that will die, right? That's the whole point.<br />
<br />
=== Origins of SARS-CoV-2 <small>(57:07)</small> ===<br />
* [https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/the-origins-of-sars-cov-2/ The Origins of SARS-CoV-2]<ref>[https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/the-origins-of-sars-cov-2/ Science-Based Medicine: The Origins of SARS-CoV-2]</ref><br />
<br />
'''B:''' Steve, I read your blog on science-based medicine about the origin of SARS-CoV-2.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Proud of you.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' What say you?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, so this, I know this has been an issue since the pandemic began, but a major new report has come out from the World Health Organization, the WHO, and Chinese researchers who collaborated for this investigation. It's actually been, this started last summer, and they've the in-person part of it happened earlier this year. They reviewed the literature, and they produced a pretty thorough report about just where did this virus come from. So SARS-CoV-2, it was a novel coronavirus, right? A new virus that has not been previously detected. So they wanted to know what is the very first evidence that this virus existed, and where, and what was the epidemiology of the spread early on, and they're trying to marshal this evidence in order to determine where it came from. There's basically four hypotheses, right, in terms of where it came from, and they were exploring all of these. One is direct zoonotic spillover, and so zoonotic means coming from animals. Spillover means it goes from the animal population to the human population. The second is introduction through an intermediate host, so it was in an animal population, and then it didn't go directly to humans, but it mutated on its way through an intermediate host and then to humans. The third is...<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Why isn't that still zoonotic? It's still an animal to human.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It is, but it's through... It is zoonotic, but it's not direct. It's through an intermediary. That's it. It's a little difference.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's about the difference in the reservoir. Did a bat bite a person if the bat was the reservoir, or did a bat spill it over to a pig?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' A pangolin, or whatever.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And then the pig got it and passed it on to the person, because then the pig's not the...<br />
<br />
'''B:''' All right, so the pig is in the reservoir.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, it's like the temporary, you know? It's not the actual natural reservoir.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' The pangolin.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And that's important, because you want to know the path that this virus took. So the third would be introduction through cold food chain products.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So stuff that's not cooked.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yes. So basically, this comes from the meat market, right? And then the fourth is introduction through a laboratory incident. So they looked at all four of those possibilities. Here's what they found. We'll break it down a little bit. So epidemiologically, they found that there was evidence that the virus was circulating in the area, in and around Wuhan, in late November, early December. They can't rule out that it wasn't going around a little bit before that, as early as October of 2019. But the peak of that probability curve is in late November, early December. Of course, it was first discovered in December. And then... But even in the... There was an outbreak in the Wuhan meat market, but that outbreak showed multiple strains. And so that outbreak wasn't the origin. It had already had time to mutate into more than one strain before that outbreak. And the other thing is...<br />
<br />
'''C:''' They thought at the time that that was the origin though, right?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. Right. Right. But they know that it had to be before that. It still could have come from the market. It just wasn't that outbreak. The other thing is, this is very cool, they calculated the most recent common ancestor of all the earliest strains. So they used basically evolution to figure out, okay, well, how much time would it have taken for these strains to have emerged? And that's also where you get that sort of November, probably sometime in November, can't rule out October sort of timeframe. So multiple lines of evidence are telling us, yeah, probably late November is when this thing broke into the human population and definitely was first spreading in Wuhan. And then after that, it was spreading to the larger province that Wuhan is part of. They also looked at just evidence for the pathway it took from animals to humans. And there's definitely... There's a huge reservoir of SARS viruses, not SARS-CoV-2, but related coronaviruses endemic to the bat populations of Southeast Asia and also the pangolin populations of Southeast Asia. However, they could not find any evidence of SARS-CoV-2 itself.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, interesting.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' In China, in any animal population, wild or domestic.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, how frustrating.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Wow.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' So the search continues.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. So, yeah, so a related virus is there the related coronavirus, but not, but not CoV-2, not SARS-CoV-2.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. So they could not find any evidence of any introduction from outside China, but they can't rule it out either because there's that possibility of the cold chain product, meaning a frozen meat from Italy found its way to that Chinese market. That's very plausible because that market gets cold chain meats from 20 different countries. So it's not just all locally sourced. So even if that was one of the part of that early pathway of the virus, it still could have come from somewhere else.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' They'd have to investigate all 20 countries then.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, which they did and they couldn't find any smoking gun, right? So frustratingly, at the end of all this, there is, as I said, there's no smoking gun. There's no like, we have discovered the origin of SARS-CoV-2. It's more probability. But here, so here's what they say. Direct zoonotic spillover is considered to be possible to likely. Introduction through an intermediate host is considered to be likely to very likely. So that is the most common pathway they think that it came about. Introduction through cold food chain is considered possible. So not likely, but possible. Introduction through a laboratory incident was considered to be extremely unlikely. So again, but they can't "can't rule it out", which is scientific speak for, well, we can't prove it wrong, but there's no evidence for it. But of course, it always gets picked up by the public and by the media as they said, they can't rule it out. So it's still a possibility. It's like, yeah, we got to put it into perspective.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Of course they can't rule it out.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's extremely unlikely.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I can't rule out that Santa Claus exists.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' There are no unicorns in Ecuador. Yeah. I can't prove that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So they also concluded that we need to do more research. So now here is where things get a little tricky because 14 countries, the United States plus 13 other countries wrote a letter to the World Health Organization, essentially complaining about the report and pointing out, what they were complaining about was that access to the data was delayed and was not complete. So they're basically complaining about China not being 100% transparent in this process. And-<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That's my biggest concern.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So that then puts that question mark next to the conclusions. And unfortunately is a big reason why the lab released or lab accident theory is not going to die with this report.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Right. Because it leaves open this question mark.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Now I just updated myself on what research has been published about just looking at the virus itself to say, does the virus have features of genetic manipulation that would indicate that it was part of laboratory research? And there are studies which say yes, and there are studies which say no. And so I don't know that there's any consensus of expert opinion on that specific question. So again, no smoking gun, but it can't be ruled out essentially is what the research is showing and what the WHO team concluded from reviewing that research, which again I look at myself just to see what it said.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Steve, you say in your blog post that some studies have concluded that the virus is incompatible with a lab origin.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yes.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' And then you say that other studies conclude that genetic manipulation cannot be ruled out. Those are not necessarily incompatible statements though, because that's just like you said-<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, yes they are. Because incompatible means you are ruling it out. And so some studies say you can rule it out and other studies say you can't rule it out. And in fact, there's some evidence that maybe it could have been lab created. So there are studies which come to incompatible conclusions. So it's technical detail about the sequence of the genes and stuff. I didn't want to get into that. But it's looking at the minutia of the organization of the genes in the virus basically. Some people point to the fact that, well, isn't it a coincidence that the Wuhan Institute of Virology is right there where the outbreak occurred? And they are the world's leader in research into coronaviruses in bats, right? So they are studying the virus that SARS-CoV-2 came from. But yeah, as I pointed out in the study, which you were alluding to, Bob, is the fact that well, yeah, the lab is there because that's where the virus is.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' In nature.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, they both could relate to that both the origin of SARS-CoV-2 and the lab could be in the same region because that's where the virus is. So yeah, you can't assume the cause and effect there. But just the fact that the lab is there still makes it plausible, which is why, again, the WHO said it's possible. It's just extremely unlikely because there's no evidence for it. And the evidence actually suggests this zoonotic pathway and the virus itself doesn't have any fingerprints of genetic manipulation.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I have a question about the intermediary one, Steve. So with this intermediary factor, how wide does that open up the possibilities? Does it make it almost infinite? Like we're going to have a real hard time figuring it out if there is an intermediary involved?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, I think that's the problem, Evan, is that there's so many possible candidates. And we haven't found that, what that path is. There's a lot of plausible pathways, animals that could have gotten it from the bat that then spread it to humans. We just don't know what the one is that did it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. We have to think, though, about what are typical animals that we use for food? What are typical animals that we interact with? Spillover events rarely happen with like super exotic animals. It's usually going to be more likely that it's an animal that's in close proximity to human beings. I'm wondering, Steve, is it likely then that the bats that have the non-SARS-CoV-2 related version of SARS are the actual carriers? So when it spilled over to the intermediate, if this is what happened, it evolved enough within the intermediate to then come?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's what they think. It combined with the virus that was in the intermediate to become SARS-CoV-2.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So it's still likely that the bat is the ultimate reservoir?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Bat's the father. You don't know what the mother was, basically.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's a good way of putting it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Gotcha.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So they contributed genes from the virus that was circulating in that population, but it was added to something else.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, boy.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. But here's what I think where there's a pretty strong consensus among scientists, among the WHO researchers, among governments, and this is really where the study winds up, and why it's important that we are spending so much time and effort trying to investigate the origins of this virus, because as terrible as the last year has been, and as hard as COVID-19 has been, this worldwide pandemic, we're still at the hopefully tail end of, this is not the worst virus out there that is capable of causing a pandemic. And there's actually thousands of them out there, and most of them are worse than SARS-CoV-2. This is probably a dress rehearsal for worse pandemics to come. And so the primary conclusion of this report is, to put it euphemistically, is we have to get our shit together. And what that means is we need international institutions, like the World Health Organization, of course. We need international cooperation. We need international treaties of transparency and collaboration and cooperation. There's got to be an international community that is in charge of this, so that there isn't a country that could hide it if they wanted to, because there's the infrastructure, the institutional infrastructure is there for experts, international worldwide experts, to be reacting to any potential new pandemic, so that this doesn't happen again, or it's minimized. You know what I mean? We are ready to pounce if a possible eruption occurs of a virus that could cause a pandemic, and the scientists swing into action, and we just have to have, worldwide, we have to have a better response next time.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, and an example of that is if, a year ago, if we, if China was more forthcoming, and they actually reacted and did what was right, even as little as three, four, five days, or maybe a week at the outset, if they reacted a week earlier, they could, this could have been nipped in the bud so much more easily. This could have this could have died a stillborn death well over a year ago if the reaction was fast enough, and it wasn't, and because of that, what's the worldwide death toll now? I mean, that, that's what that delay brought.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, and to be fair, you're right that China was a nucleation point, but let's not forget that if the United States, which is a massive global hub, had gotten our act together, and hadn't pretended like this was not a threat to us, and hadn't pretended when we had evidence that this virus was on our shores, that it wasn't actually on our shores, and that kind of overly calm rhetoric of, don't worry, Americans, this is somebody else's problem, hadn't been the case, we would not have carried such a viral load that we know ran back around the world multiple times over.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We failed. We totally failed.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' We failed massively.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, no question about that.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And we were a nucleation point for sure.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Totally.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' We could have bottlenecked this thing.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And this is not about pointing fingers, I want to say, this is not about pointing fingers or assigning blame. This is about, how can we do better next time?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Absolutely. But we need to be a leader in this.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Totally. But in medicine, we have something that's called Morbidity and Mortality Report, M&M, and where we go over all the horrible things that happened on our service over the last month or whenever. And the rule of these reports is there's no blame. No one, there's no shame.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Not the purpose.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' There's no blame. Because we want, we need people to be completely honest about what happened so that we can talk 100% about how do we keep this from happening in the future. That's it. So it's like a safe space to talk about what went wrong so that we can fix it. And that's the same thing we need here. This is not about blame or about finger pointing or about politicking. This is about, damn, we cannot let this happen again. The numbers, by the way, 129 million cases, 2.8 million deaths worldwide. That's where we are.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' And 10 years from now, the next one could go 10 times those numbers.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yes. Yeah. There are viruses out there that if the same thing happened, it could be 10 times as bad. Absolutely. It could be 100 times as bad.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Incomprehensible. It really is.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Now, I'm just so depressed. I need to feel better about all of this. I know. Evan, I want a quickie. I want a quickie with Evan.<br />
<br />
== Quickie with Evan: Atomic clocks <small>(1:13:19)</small> ==<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Well, thank you, Bob. And all right, let's talk a little bit about atomic clocks.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Ooh.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yes. Yes. Redefining the second. So a new clock comparison is the most precise yet accurate to within a quadrillionth of a percent.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Nice. I love that number.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That is. OK, so you got zero point and then 15 zeros after that decimal point. And then the one is in the 16th place. Right. OK, folks, that is also known as the Bob?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Femtosecond.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' A term we love hearing every time I bring it up in my physics news items. Emily Conover over at ScienceNews.org presented a very nice summary of the story. And she starts by reminding us that back in 2019, the unit of mass, the kilogram, was officially redefined based on a fundamental constant of nature instead of the old metal kilogram known as the IPK, the International Prototype Kilogram. And we covered that on the show. But scientists this past decade have also been focusing on overhauling the fundamental unit of time, which is the second. In order to do so, they are using atomic clocks, three of them, comparing them to one another to squeeze out the last minute bits of discrepancy as to what defines that second. But these are not just any atomic clocks. No, no, no. These are the latest and greatest atomic clocks that makes your grandfather's atomic clock look like a sundial. Since the 1960s, the second has been defined by atomic clocks made of cesium atoms. Now cesium atoms absorb and emit light at a particular frequency that determines the length of a second. Cesium atoms oscillate 9,192,631,770 times per second in their excited state. That's when they were absorbing light, right? Excited state. So from what I have read, there is no variance in this, that they are all the same. Now someone might come back and correct me on something like that. But that's what I've read. They all share this exact frequency. So it makes for a very stable means of measuring time. And of course, an example, the Global Positioning System, GPS, those satellites in orbit, they're using cesium atoms in their atomic clocks. And so since 1967, cesium has been the atomic clock champion element. But until now, cesium perhaps is no longer the undisputed lightweight champion of the atomic clocks. Meet the new atomic clock preferred elements, strontium, strontium?<br />
<br />
'''S/B:''' Strontium.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Strontium, ytterbium. So ytterbium, strontium, and an everyday favorite of people everywhere, aluminum. Yay. All right. So this comes from scientists at the Boulder Atomic Clock Optical Network. And that's Bacon, by the way, Jay, B-A-C-O-N.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Thank you.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' They compared the frequency of light using and measuring the ratios of frequencies of three new atomic clocks. So one made of ytterbium and one made of strontium atoms and one made with a single electrically charged aluminium atom. The results of the most precise clock comparisons yet with uncertainties less than a quadrillionth of a percent. And this was researched. This was reported in the March 25th edition of Nature. The three clocks were in different locations, two at the NIST and the others about 1.5 kilometres away at the Research Institute JILA. Sorry, I don't have the exact names of those, but this is a quickie. The teams compared the clocks by sending information across an optical fibre and through an open air link. So they used, again, fibre and then they used an open air link, which is basically lasers. And they found that there was essentially no difference. So they were able to run these tests. No difference when they measured through the air, right, through space or earth space, and through the fibre network. So that's a very, very good sign. So this ability to compare these distant optical atomic clocks is considered a step forward in atomic clock research and precise measurements. And you're going to use this for helping, well, better characterize Earth's gravity and search for dark matter, defining what dark matter is and testing other fundamentals of physics. So this has been your quickie with Evan. It may have been quick, but we will always have the memories.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Nice.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Until we don't.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Nice. I like it. That was good.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Thank you.<br />
<br />
== Who's That Noisy? <small>(1:18:01)</small> ==<br />
* Answer to last week’s Noisy: Furby<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Okay, Cara. It's Who's That Noisy time.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Hey, guys. Last week I played this noisy.<br />
<br />
[_short_vague_description_of_Noisy]<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I think I heard that in an episode of Twin Peaks.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yum.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Sounds like WALL-E being very high on something.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' WALL-E got into the hydraulic fluid, huh?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I mean, it sounds like, I think it's from a video game.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Sounds like it. Could be WALL-E. Could be. No. No. You're wrong. But I did get a ton of emails on this one. People out there, they know. But the question is, what is it? Well, here's our first guest, a listener named Shannon, who also happens to be a close friend.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Is this Science Yoga Shannon?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yes.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Science Yoga Shannon?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So she said, long-time listener, first-time caller, lol, is that an interactive WALL-E toy played backwards? One of you was on it. But no, sadly, that is not the case. And then this next guest is from, why do you do this to me, Tymoteusz Markowski.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Oh, my God. I mean, you get these names that are very hard to pronounce. I feel so bad for you.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Tymatus.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Tymatus. Okay. T-Y-M-O-T-E-U-S-Z.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Wow. Tim. Tim!<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That's a cool name. Tim.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Timan.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. Timan Mrakowski.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' No. It's Tim Rock.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Tim Rock. There you go. He says, it sounds like a broken number station. And in case you guys don't know what this is, a number station is a shortwave radio station characterized by broadcasts of formatted numbers, which are believed to be addressed to intelligence officers operating in four countries.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I had one of those as a noisy many, many, many years ago. It's still one of my favorites.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No way. And did this sound similar if it were broken?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' No.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No. Okay. That's why Tim Rock, sorry, not correct. We've got another guest from a listener named Evil Eye. And they said either Yum Cookie Monster doll or a Gizmo doll from Gremlins. Good guesses. I think we're getting closer.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Okay.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yum Cookie. There's really a doll called the Yum Cookie Monster doll. That makes me so happy.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I just like the sound of a yum cookie.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. All right. So onto this week's winner. Her name is Hannah Jackson and she wrote, this is without a doubt the horrifying and possessed voice of a Furby. I would recognize it anywhere. And I still remember mine mysteriously turning itself on in the middle of the night speaking from behind the closet door.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' What's a Furby?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' What!?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Seriously. You don't know what a Furby is?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Go ahead. Call him. Call him a boomer. Go ahead Cara.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Do you remember this was like the original AI or at least we thought it was. So here's a few facts about Furbies. Maybe this will jog your memory, Steve. It was first sold in 1998 by Tiger Electronics. You can say over 100 words in Furby speak. It's actually called Furbish.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It has many dialects though.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. Right. Furbies were actually banned at an NSA base in Maryland because they were able to record confidential conversations. So remember Furbies would listen and react and they would learn. This was a pretty intelligent toy for the time. I was a bit too old to have a Furby, but I knew people that got them sort of "ironically". You know what I mean?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. "Ironically".<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. Like in 98, let me think. So I graduated high school in 2001.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Wow.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So I would have been in high school when the Furby came out. So there were people who had little brothers and sisters who really wanted them. And yeah, there were some people who were like, this seems like a cool toy. I want this toy. But I can definitely imagine being in elementary school and being haunted by a Furby.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I think they must have fallen right between me and my kids. You know, like my kids were too young and I was too old for this. But apparently they're Bluetooth connected. So it's great.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, God.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' You know, you could get them on eBay like for about 30 bucks, you can get one that's in good condition. And I was like thinking about getting one at one point just to play with it, just to see what it – because I never held one.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, to play with it. Right.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' You know what I mean? I just wanted to learn about it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I know what you mean.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Jesus Christ.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I have a friend who – Jay, I have a friend who recently got a Tamagotchi off eBay.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Oh, yeah?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And was like, yeah. And was like, you know.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That was legit. That was like early crack.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That stuff, man.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, man.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But yeah, if you – it's so crazy. It is weird. We've talked about this before, Steve, where – do you remember back now I've seen jackals a ton of times in the flesh in Africa. But prior to going to Africa, somebody mentioned a jackal and I was like, I'm not sure what that is. And it was like these gaps in our knowledge. Literally when you said, what's a Furby? I was like, what? Have you been under a rock this whole time?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well the version 1.0 of this, when we were kids, was literally the pet rock. Have you heard of that, Cara?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I do. I know the pet rock.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' You sold a million of those.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, my God. A rock in a box.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And you can actually get two – you can get two pet rocks and breed them.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Would you just hit them together really hard and a little rock would fall out?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. We call them pebbles.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I mean like of all the dumb genius things that marketing came up with, like the pet rock. What are you kidding me?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, endless supply of rocks. All profit. 100% profit.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah. A jar of air. That was a popular one too.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. A jar of air.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' You still got to buy the jar. Everyone, this was by far the most accurately guessed who's that noisy of all time. The Furby. Iconic.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Wow.<br />
<br />
=== New Noisy <small>(1:24:01)</small> ===<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I've got a new noisy for you, and it was sent in by Matt Surley. Here it is.<br />
<br />
[_short_vague_description_of_Noisy] <br />
<br />
Ah. So you may recognize that melody. And obviously this noisy is deeper than that. I don't need to know where you know this melody from. I want to know what is this noisy. And if you think you know it, or if you heard something really cool that you want to send me, you can email me at WTN@theskepticsguide.org.<br />
<br />
== Announcements <small>(1:24:49)</small> ==<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So Bob.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Bob.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yes. I'm here.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' We've got some announcements this week.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, we're doing announcements. Okay.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Okay. Everyone, this is important. Coming up first on the docket, we have NECSS. This is going to be the 6th and 7th of August, and we really hope you will all join us. This is going to be an incredible event. We'll have some amazing speakers, and you can learn more about that by visiting NECSS. That's N-E-C-S-S dot org. After that, we have a rescheduled. We're so excited to get back on the road.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That's right. Can't wait. Oh, God.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. The Denver Extravaganza, and there will be a private show as well. And this is going to be in November. The Extravaganza will be on the 18th. The private show will likely be the next day. And you can learn all about it by visiting theskepticsguide.org. And don't forget that you can support the show by becoming a patron. All you've got to do is visit [https://www.patreon.com/SkepticsGuide patreon.com/SkepticsGuide]. You pledge your support, and we get a little piece that helps us pay people like Jay. It helps us make sure that we've got everything that we need to keep producing this high quality show week after week. And yeah, it's becoming a big part of our livelihood, isn't it, you guys?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Keeps the lights on.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' And as we, the more patrons we have, the farther our reach and the more stuff that we can do. And we have incredibly great things planned.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' You're right, Jay. Patreon has become a really important part of funding the SGU and for helping us to continue to do not just this amazing show and not just the ancillary events that we do, but also continue on with our skeptical activism. So thank you all so much. Make sure that you visit NECSS.org, theskepticsguide.org, and patreon.com/skepticsguide.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Thank you, Cara.<br />
<br />
== Emails ==<br />
<br />
=== Email #1: Avi Loeb <small>(1:26:45)</small> ===<br />
<br />
'''B:''' All right, we are now going to address a bunch of emails all at once excoriating us for dissing Avi Loeb. Steve!<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, so this is my news item from last week. I was talking about an update on ʻOumuamua and that some scientists came up with an alternate explanation for its odd behavior as it was accelerating away from the sun. Now Avi Loeb is a Harvard astronomer who also has recently come out with a book where he propounds his theory that ʻOumuamua might be an alien artifact and that this could be an explanation for a number of anomalies that we observe with ʻOumuamua. So the feedback from a lot of people thought we were being unfair to Avi Loeb. And I listened back to my segment just to remind myself exactly what we said. And I don't know. I think this one's kind of in the middle. So I think the criticism of us was not fair in that they were saying, you were saying that this guy was a crank. We never called this guy a crank. We never were all the things that we were accused of saying about this guy or implying or you're reading between the lines or inferring it from our tone, whatever. We didn't say it. We never said that anything that he was not a legitimate scientist. Our criticism, we also never said this was his only line of evidence. We also never said that he is saying this is absolutely true. But having said that, yes, we were, there was a little snark in our tone. I will say that, absolutely. And maybe people inferred too much from that or we could have been a little bit more balanced. So usually we do, I was very careful to say that this was one of the arguments he was putting forward. It was not the only one. But I also went back and reread a bunch of articles by Avi Loeb where he is being interviewed or where he's talking about this theory. And I thought, when you dig down to what we were actually saying, I thought we were actually totally fair. So Loeb does have a number, he does point to a number of anomalies of ʻOumuamua. The primary one, and he says this is the primary one, was its acceleration away from the sun, which has now been, I think, largely taken away, explained, or at least a plausible explanation has been offered. And his other lines of evidence also are simply anomalies. They are not anything that we could point to that say that's evidence of that this is an alien artifact. And they're not even that convincing. I didn't find, like, one of them was that the velocity of ʻOumuamua was typical of only about one star in 500. So any object, even if it's leaving a solar system, if you compare it to other things swinging around the galaxy, its velocity relative to the other things is going to be roughly the same as the star system that it comes from. And so if you look at ʻOumuamua's velocity relative to us and relative to the galaxy, it's it's coming from a star that whose velocity is only representative of about one in 500 stars. Okay, that's not such a big deal. One in 500, that's like nothing. He also said that we thought that these things should be very rare. Our models all predicted they would be very rare. And yet here we are seeing one and that would be a very, should be a very unlikely event. I think that was undone by the fact that two years later, we found yet another interstellar object. So the idea is, so again, and our criticism of his reasoning, again, he's, yes, it's perfectly legitimate to say these are hypotheses. I never said we should not consider alien technosignatures as, as the explanation. We are always happy to report on them and excited about it. I wanted Tabby's star to be a Dyson swarm as much as anybody. I think that the history is that when you base your argument on the fact that something is an anomaly we don't currently understand, yes, it's legitimate to, among all the other things to say could this be an alien artifact? But you've got to be very humble and careful about that. It's a very weak argument. And I think that Avi Loeb's arguments are falling one by one and, and hopefully they will continue to as we discover more about the universe is ʻOumuamua an alien derelict spaceship with a solar cell? I would love for that to be the case. And if there's a good reason to argue for that, fine. I also stand by my criticism of him publishing a book again, promoting this idea to the public before letting it marinate in the scientific literature for a bit longer. I think that's legitimate as well. So but yes, did he frame all of this as this is just a hypothesis? Yes, of course he did. He's a scientist and he's a legitimate scientist. We never said he was a crank or a fraud or anything. The last thing was that people were saying that one of his primary complaints was that the scientific community is being unfair to any legitimate hypothesis that happens to deal with aliens. And okay, whatever. I don't know. I don't know that that's true. Astronomers come up with this every time there's a there's a potential anomaly. They always throw on the list. Could it be aliens? And it's fine as long as you don't put too much weight on it. And as long as you're careful, here's where I think the bias is, you have to be careful in how you talk to the public and the media about it. That's because it's not just another hypothesis when you're talking about communicating it to the public. It's a special one because it's going to get all the attention. So you have to be careful. And I think that Avi Loeb is being the opposite of careful when it comes to that hypothesis. So okay, we could have been a little bit more balanced and a little bit less snarky. But I actually think that our take on the whole situation was legitimate.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' All right. Thank you, Steve. Okay, let's go on with science or fiction.<br />
<br />
== Science or Fiction <small>(1:32:35)</small> ==<br />
<br />
{{SOFinfo<br />
|item1 = April 10 1918 – Alexander M. Nicholson files a patent for the radio crystal oscillator.<br />
|link1 = <ref>[]</ref><br />
<br />
|item2 = February 23 1918 – Arthur Scherbius applies to patent the Enigma machine.<br />
|link2 = <ref>[]</ref><br />
<br />
|item3 = January 22nd 1918 – George Eastman is granted a US patent for his roll film camera, for which he registers the trademark Kodak.<br />
|link3 = <ref>[]</ref><br />
<br />
|}}<br />
<br />
{{SOFResults<br />
|fiction = roll film camera<br />
|science1 = radio crystal oscillator <br />
|science2 = Enigma machine<br />
<br />
|rogue1 =Steve<br />
|answer1 = Enigma machine<br />
<br />
|rogue2 =Cara<br />
|answer2 =roll film camera<br />
<br />
|rogue3 =Evan<br />
|answer3 =roll film camera<br />
<br />
|rogue4 =Jay<br />
|answer4 = roll film camera<br />
<br />
|host =bob<br />
<br />
|sweep = <!-- all the Rogues guessed wrong --><br />
|clever = <!-- each item was guessed (Steve's preferred result) --><br />
|win =y <!-- at least one Rogue guessed wrong, but not them all --><br />
|swept = <!-- all the Rogues guessed right --><br />
}}<br />
''Voice-over: It's time for Science or Fiction.''<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Each week, I don't come up with three science news items or facts, two real and one fake. And I challenge my panel of crack skeptics to tell me which one is the fake. There was no crack this week, so we may have a little less energy than usual. Are you ready?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Sure.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yes, Bob.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Okay. This week, there is a theme. I call it Pandemic Patents. But not the 2021 pandemic, the 1918 pandemic.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Crap.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Aha. Okay. Number one, April 10th, 1918, Alexander M. Nicholson files a patent for the radio crystal oscillator. Number two, February 23rd, 1918, Arthur Scherbius applies to patent the Enigma machine. And finally, number three, January 22nd, 1918, George Eastman is granted a U.S. patent for his roll film camera, which he registers the trademark Kodak. Okay, I'm going to roll an imaginary dice in my head. Steve, go first.<br />
<br />
=== Steve's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, I always go first.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Do you?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. So the first one, Nicholson files a patent for the radio crystal oscillator. There's a lot of that going around then. So I think that sounds plausible. I don't remember this, but that sounds very plausible. The second one, the patent for the Enigma machine. Now, I know that was World War II, right, the Enigma machine, but is 18, is that when it would have started or is that too early? And then Kodak, sure, 18, that sounds about right. So my gut is telling me the Enigma machine is the fake.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Okay. Thank you, Steve. Let's see. Cara, you're next.<br />
<br />
=== Cara's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I don't know.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' All right. Jay, all right. Let's try you. Oh, sorry.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Okay.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Okay. So the real question is, which of these would be anomalous for 1918? Unless you literally just made something up and that's extra frustrating, but my guess is that all of these patents exist, but they're not all from 1918. So we've got the radio crystal oscillator. Don't know what that is. Sounds like a turbo encabulator, but it's probably real.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It totally does.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' We've got the Enigma machine, which again is, yeah, World War, but you know what? This technology could have been developed. This is not uncommon, where the technology is developed earlier and then utilized in the next war in kind of in anticipation. And then we've got the roll film camera. So roll film, you mean like the click, click, click, click, like to actually have it in the cassette and move it across the camera. That's what roll film means.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah. It's basically, you know.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Instead of like a plate, like a photographic plate in the back. Okay. Yeah. Film. So film on a roll. It's old. Is it that old? Oh, maybe it's not that old. And it's small too. It might've been 35 millimetre, although it doesn't say. Ooh, I think back to tin types, to garo types. They're from that era. I'm going to say the roll film is the fiction.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' And let's see, Evan, you go next.<br />
<br />
=== Evan's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Okay. Radio Crystal Oscillator in 1918. Yeah, I think that one is right. As Steve alluded to, there was a lot of tinkering with early radio around that time. So sure. Not a problem there. It's one of the other two, I think. Now the Enigma Machine, 1918. So yeah, we think about Enigma Machine, World War II era, but that doesn't mean that they didn't try to patent something earlier or come up with some earlier version of it. Arthur Scherbius, that could be a Germanic name, assuming it is a German patent we're talking about. I don't know about this one. And then there's the camera one, the roll film camera. Boy, I could have sworn that Eastman grabbed patents as early as the late 1800s, 1890s. But a roll film camera, boy, that just seems... I don't think that came along until much later. Roll film? You know, it was plates. It was still plates. I mean, when they photographed the eclipse in 1919, was it Eddington?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It could have been, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' We're using plates still then. So that's why I'm thinking...<br />
<br />
'''B:''' He did the eclipse in 1919, I think.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' 1919 eclipse. That's right. Yeah. Arthur Eddington. And what was he using? Well, they were using plates. I don't really know about film, let alone roll film. So I'm having... I think Cara's right. I have a feeling this one's the fiction. I'll go with that.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Okay. Jay.<br />
<br />
=== Jay's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''J:''' The first one here about the filing patents for the Crystal Infabulator. It totally has that sound. 1918, Alexander M. Nicholson. Yeah. I mean, I'm just trying to figure from what I know about this thing, does it seem about the right time? And I'd say, sure. That seems... I couldn't say yes or no definitively, but it seems about the right time. The Enigma machine, I think that that timing works pretty good. I would think maybe it was later, but I wouldn't be shocked if it was created in the late teens, early 20s. The last one here, 1918, George Eastman with the roll film. I would say that this was earlier. 1918 seems actually kind of late for that kind of technology. So I would say that that one is the fiction.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, but you think it was earlier, not later?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I think it was earlier.<br />
<br />
=== Bob Explains Item #1 ===<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Well, let's see who's right. Let's start with the number one, since you all agree that in April 10th, 1918, Alexander M. Nicholson filed a patent for the Radio Crystal Oscillator. That is science.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yay! What's a Radio Crystal Oscillator?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I should have thrown in something else, but let's go with what I have here in my notes. The first crystal-controlled oscillator using a crystal of Rochelle salt. This was built in 1917 and patented by 1918 by Nicholson at Bell Telephone Laboratories. So this probably wasn't clear enough. I should have added something relating to quartz oscillators. I should have thrown quartz in there because the quartz oscillators, that's what takes advantage of the piezoelectric effect, and that creates very stable vibrations and have just tons of uses, and especially in timekeeping devices.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The quartz watch.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' The quartz watch, right. I mean, accurate to up to one second in 30 years, which is the most accurate time until atomic clocks appeared. It was amazing.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Until caesium came along, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It's crazy because even a really good, purely mechanical, beautifully made mechanical watch, even that could lose a few seconds a day. And so one second in 30 years is just an amazing leap. Radio stations, 1920s, 1930s, they used these quartz oscillators so that they wouldn't drift off their frequency, right? Because they had a very narrow range, like 10 kilohertz or whatever, and they couldn't really drift too far. But the quartz devices were big. They were big. It took until 1968 when Juergen Stott invented a photolithographic process for manufacturing quartz crystal oscillators that made it possible for portable watches to be made. So it's 1968. So I was kind of hoping way too much here. I was hoping that you guys would recognize that, first off, that a radio crystal oscillator was related to the quartz, but also that quartz watches didn't really appear until the 60s. So 1918, I was hoping would feel like way too early for that domino to start falling, but nobody bid on that one. So let's go then now to, let's go to number two. <br />
<br />
=== Bob Explains Item #2 ===<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Steve thought that Arthur Scherbius did not apply for a patent for the Enigma machine in 1918. And this one is science. Steve.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Bob, don't ever do that again.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I liked your answer though, Steve, because this is exactly what I was hoping for. The Enigma machine, yes, this is the famous, or should I say infamous, cipher device because it was used by the German military in World War II to encrypt countless important communications, and pre-World War II it was used as well. The fact that the Enigma's encryption was cracked, and multiple times, not just once, but many times as it evolved during the 30s and 40s, that probably led to a shorter war and maybe even to a completely different outcome, which of course is a good outcome. The Enigma machine was invented by a German engineer, Arthur Scherbius, at the end of World War I. He called this machine Enigma, which is a Greek word for riddle. Now I was hoping that you would think that Germany probably never patented such a device because why would you make a patent for something like this that could then make it less secure? Because if you're documenting something, you're going to, it's it's essentially less secure because this documentation exists. And I was also hoping maybe even more that, and I think I got Steve a little bit on this, that 1918 seemed a little bit too early to be invented because most people think, when you think Enigma, you think World War II. You know, you think World War II. You're not thinking way back in 1918 when this special type of cipher wrote a machine that ciphered like this. That was, this was the, this is the peak of encryption at the time. And it was pretty sophisticated, but not good enough. And we're very thankful that that is the case.<br />
<br />
=== Bob Explains Item #3 ===<br />
<br />
'''B:''' So this means that number three, January 22nd, 1918, George Eastman is granted a U.S. patent for his roll fail camera for which he registers a trademark, Kodak. That is fiction. But actually I was too good on this because it's fiction. First of all, it wasn't January 22nd. It was September 4th. Ha, I'm only kidding. It's fiction. <br />
<br />
'''E:''' You got me there.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It's fiction because it was, it was patented three decades earlier. Jay killed this.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Jay was right.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Whoa, no way.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' 1888.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Well, I mentioned I thought it was in the 1800s, the late 1800s.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' You did. You both did. You did, you did as well, Evan. So you both did better than Cara did on this, but you both got it because it doesn't matter.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Cara knew what a Furby was.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It doesn't matter because you both get it, you bastards.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, I don't even have to be that right, and I still get it.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' You don't, you don't, you don't have to. So the history is interesting by, by 1988, like right before in 1988, all photographers fixed images on wet plates. They were beautiful.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' 1888.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, 1888. They could be, they could be very beautiful, but it was very difficult to do. Dry plates or a glass that was coated with gelatin emulsion made things easier. Somebody, somebody thought of that in 1871, but in 1877, a bank clerk, George Eastman, experimented with his new, his new wet plate camera because he was, he bought it for vacation. The vacation was canceled. So it gave him time to experiment, which is interesting because what if that, what if that vacation wasn't canceled, what would have happened? So he was, he's poking around with his new wet plate camera, cutting edge. And over the next eight years, he invented the following. He created a coating machine that he patented in 79. He then replaced the glass support with a film made of three layers. It was a paper layer, soluble gelatin and a gelatin emulsion. And then finally in 1885, he added a convenient roll holder. And and that was it. That culminated on September 4th, 1888, when Eastman got his US patent number three, 388,850 for a small handheld, easy to use camera, all of which became almost obsolete for millions of unprofessional photographers once they got their first digital camera. And then of course the cell phone camera. But still an amazing invention that, that held sway that the broad strokes of the technology held sway for many, many decades.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' A hundred years, right.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' An amazing amount of time, an amazing advance. I mean, that was such a wonderful, I mean, Steve, remember when a dad's mom gave us our first little tiny, cheesy, little, tiny little roll film cameras. And we were like, we used them all for years, I think we use that. And they were great. So we would just pop it in, drop it off at the, at the cheesy little, little Kodak thing at the Newer Street Shopping Center and get it back like eight, nine months later. It was awesome.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' You want to hear a very quick story about film? Well, I went back to my high school, it was like the 25th reunion or whatever it was back at the high school itself. And they gave us a tour. One of the students did, current student at the time, like 16 year olds, kind of walked us around the school to kind of show us how things have changed. And we went over to the photography. What was the photography department? And I mentioned film to them. And they actually said, this 16 year old kid, what is film? No, I kid you not. They said that. And I never felt older in my life.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Wow.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh my God.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' What a punk. What a punk.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' What is film? Really?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Really?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Punk.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Awful.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Let's try to forget about that as soon as we can. All right, congratulations. Cara, Evan and Jay.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Thanks, Bob.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Steve- Sure, man.<br />
<br />
== Skeptical Quote of the Week <small>(1:45:57)</small> ==<br />
<blockquote>‘When I was a kid we’d rent Indiana Jones movies on VHS tapes. It inspired a whole generation of scholars because we saw the excitement, and the passion, and the drama. What’s amazing to me about archaeology is the stories are even better than what you see in a Hollywood movie.’ </blockquote><br />
– Sarah Parcak, space archaeologist<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Steve, I understand you have a quote for us.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yes. This quote comes from Sarah Parsak, who is a space archaeologist, I'll tell you what that is in just a minute.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Parsak or Parsec?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' P-A-R-C-A-K. Parsak.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, close.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And she said, "When I was a kid, we'd rent Indiana Jones movies on VHS tapes", know what those were Cara? "It inspired a whole generation of scholars because we saw the excitement and the passion and the drama. What's amazing to me about archaeology is the stories are even better than what you see in a Hollywood movie."<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Whoa.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yep. Real science is even more interesting than Hollywood. Sarah Parcak. So what is a space archaeologist? She also calls this up as a, this is satellite archaeology. So this is still archaeology on the earth, but it's using things based in space. So she combined the technique of high resolution imagery from satellites with thermal imaging and her work has helped find 17 pyramids, 1,000 tombs, and over 3,200 ancient settlements within a single year of work.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' What is that about?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, because in those jungle environments, it's almost impossible to find those things conventionally.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' We gotta do a whole news item on that. That's amazing.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's cool.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I've actually spoken about that before.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We should probably have her on the show to talk about this.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, even better.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' This is totally cool. Yeah, but that was a great quote. I looked into her history. I'm like, oh, wow. She's like an awesome working scientist. Her husband, they're both archaeologists. Her husband's also an Egyptologist, Greg Mumford. How great is that?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Parcak and Mumford. I mean, gee.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Parcak and Mumford, Egyptologists. How awesome is that?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That's literally like, that's a TV show right there.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, that's out of central casting, absolutely.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Great quote. Thanks, Steve. Well, all righty then. Thanks, guys, for joining me this week.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Thank you, Bob.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Anytime, Bob.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Thanks Bob.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' You got it, Bob.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' And until next week, this is Bob's and Cara's, Jay's, Steven's Evan's Skeptic's Guide to the Universe.<br />
<br />
== Signoff == <br />
<br />
{{Outro664}}{{top}}<br />
== Today I Learned ==<br />
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}}</div>Hearmepurrhttps://www.sgutranscripts.org/w/index.php?title=SGU_Episode_839&diff=19124SGU Episode 8392024-01-22T20:59:12Z<p>Hearmepurr: episode done</p>
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|qowText = Science is not a set of facts. It’s not an ideology. It’s just a system that humans created that is really, really good at uncovering truth.<br />
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** Note that you can put each Rogue’s infobox initials inside triple quotes to make the initials bold in the transcript. This is how the final statement from Steve is typed at the end of this transcript: '''S:''' —and until next week, this is your {{SGU}}.<br />
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== Introduction ==<br />
<br />
''Voice-over: You're listening to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.'' <br />
<br />
'''S:''' Hello and welcome to the {{SGU|link=y}}. Today is Monday, August 2<sup>nd</sup>, 2021, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella... <br />
<br />
'''B:''' Hey, everybody!<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Cara Santa Maria... <br />
<br />
'''C:''' Howdy. <br />
<br />
'''S:''' Jay Novella... <br />
<br />
'''J:''' Hey guys. <br />
<br />
'''S:''' ...and Evan Bernstein. <br />
<br />
'''E:''' Hello, everyone.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Gotta a rare Monday recording this week because we're preparing for NECSS, which will be this Friday and Saturday, just when the show is coming out. So if you're downloading this on Saturday, you can probably still squeeze in there and catch the end of the conference. But Jay, the whole thing is going to be streaming, right? Even if you join late, you can just watch it, the whole thing?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah. So we're going to have it up for at least a month. And yeah, you can purchase tickets even after the show has aired because it's recorded. And you know what? It's going to be the same exact quality as if you saw it the real thing because it doesn't make a difference. Yeah. Last year, actually, we kept it up longer and people were buying tickets even a couple of months later. So really cool.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So you guys know how we talked about hydroponics a few weeks ago?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yes.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' We did. Yes.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So I went ahead and I bought an indoor hydroponics garden.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, cool. So which one do you have? Because I have a little mini robot garden too.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I do.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I do? That's what yours is called? I want to look at that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's a brand name. Basically, it's a self-contained-<br />
<br />
'''B:''' You're not growing banana trees, are you?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, no. This is a self-contained unit. So it has a tray with like 12 places to put your plants in and the water basin underneath. And it's got a water circulator and then an arm holding up an overhead light with a fan. So it circulates the air. It has a grow light.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yours has a fan?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Mine doesn't have a fan. Mine's one of the ones where it's like little pods.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. There's these like little spongy pods. You put the seed in the middle. You put that down through the slot so the bottom of it's touching the water so it sucks up the nutrient water. You got to dissolve the nutrients in there.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' The nutrients is in the little sponge for me. And then they're pre-seeded, although you can buy the ones that you-<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yours sounds better to me.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's probably more expensive though.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So it's working pretty well. So I got just like an herb seed thing. So I planted like 10 different herbs in there.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, I love that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. And they're sprouting, which is always exciting. It's always like magic to me when like plants just emerge.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Magic.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Right? I mean-<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Magic.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It really is. It's like a machine, a tiny little machine that's just unfolding and growing and reproducing itself.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah. I felt the same way about Chia Pet when that came in.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, it's kind of the same. Have you guys ever done like seed quilts? Like what are they called? Microgreens?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I have not.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Those are kind of fun because you usually, you buy them, they call them seed quilts. So it's all the little seeds are in similar, I think it's like husk. And you put it in a little dish that's like just a little bit of water. And they grow so fast. So like bean sprouts or any other sort of like microgreen, you can put them on salads or on your sandwiches. They're really good for you. I don't know, like a week or two, which is great. My robot garden, I've taken to, I like to grow herbs and I like to grow flowers in it. But every time I try to grow food, it's like months of work. And then when it's time to, quote, harvest, I remember I did lettuce and mine only has three pods. And so I did lettuce and it took like three months to make like a half a bowl of salad.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' All right. So Cara, so just so it's official. I'm not going to your place during the apocalypse because you won't be able to feed me.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' All right. You're checked off. Steve, what kind of food can you grow with your hydroponics to feed me during the apocalypse?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, this is just an herb garden for now.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' All right. Yeah. All right. Well, you got two check marks because you have solar, but that's it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' You can garnish your food. I have an electric car. So if we can crank the electricity-<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I will soon. I will within a couple of months.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yes. Then, okay. But hey, LA is like much more manageable to just like live in. The temperatures are more livable here.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah. That's big. No, that's big. You can't discount that.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. You don't have to worry about it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. But I also have a fireplace and a cord of wood, so I'm good.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, man. When everything freezes over? I mean, it's good depending on the zombies you have. If the zombies freeze, that's good, assuming it's a zombie apocalypse. But cold sucks because it's cold.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But if you're going to grow like vegetable garden indoors hydroponically, you need a much bigger thing. So I'm looking at this as my starter kit. If this goes well, I might go for something bigger that you could actually grow like heads of lettuce and tomato plants and cucumbers and stuff like that. Mine's the size of an herb garden. It's not good. I'm just hoping to make fresh mint tea in the winter. That's what I want.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' All right. So we're going to seguey now to the other part of this discusison you had just mentioned about the electric car. Now, I'm in the market for a car, and I've decided on a car, but it's not electric. So now I want you guys to convince me, no, I should go electric in 2021.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Go electric.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I'm convinced.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No, but really, why would you get a gas car at this point?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Money. It's just right now, it's just like-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, yeah. Electric cars are more expensive.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I'm not spending 40 grand on a goddamn car. Sorry. I'm not doing that.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, are you buying or leasing?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Buying.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Okay. Yeah, I get it. You've convinced me.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Is it too early to have used electric cars?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No. You can find used electric cars. I don't know how they maintain their value, though.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But Bob, with the electric cars, the vehicle maintenance is much less, right? There's no oil. It's kind of all solid state.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I hear you.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' This is why I would also just lease, Bob.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You can lease.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, man.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Because then all of a sudden, you're down to a monthly payment that's lower. It's not like you're going to get equity out of a car, really.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Well, I figured I could get two or three grand at the end of its life.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Maybe.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' As a trade-in for the next one?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's really, it's the years after you've paid off the car and you drive it for another four to five years.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's where you see the return.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But the thing is, are people going to still be wanting to drive gas cars by the time you've paid off the car? Are you going to have... You're going to have to be getting smog checks? That's a whole thing. I've never... I haven't been to a gas station in 10 years. I haven't gotten a smog check.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I'll pay it off in a couple, two or three years. I'm going to put a huge down payment.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Okay. Okay.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I need an SUV for my family. Is there even a good one out there? I don't know.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Electric?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' There was a good electric SUV. It was the Kia, but then they stopped making that one. And now the car that I drive, the Bolt, they're putting out an EUV, which is like their version of an SUV, right? Sport Utility Vehicle. They're calling it an Electric Utility Vehicle. So it's basically the same car as the car that I drive, which is a really spacious hatchback, except it's just bigger.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' But now, Steve, now didn't Joss get the... She got a bigger battery, right, because she wanted all-wheel drive, so she got a bigger battery. Is that over 300 mile range? You know?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' 350.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Damn.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, that's great. Which... You guys get a Tesla?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, the Tesla Model 3. In order to get... We need all-wheel drive in Connecticut, right? That's just the way it is. And so if you get the all-wheel drive, it comes bundled with the higher mileage, so you can't get the lower mileage with the all-wheel drive. So whatever. But we did not spend 10 grand on a self-driving package, on the driver-assist package, you know?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's steep.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's a lot to drive just for that feature.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Wow.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' They're charging a lot for that. 10 grand for driver-assist?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I don't know. I have a friend who has three toddlers, and she has-<br />
<br />
'''S:''' At once?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. Three toddlers at once.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Wow.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And, I know... Well, actually, one's an infant, and two are toddlers. They had the Tesla that has the falcon wings. And it had the self-driving thing, and it was, I mean, like a godsend. Because if a baby throws a bottle in the backseat, or the kids are fighting, she can turn around for a second, at least, and make sure everything's okay, and then turn back around. Because the car... It's like between her and the car, they have it covered.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' So I think it gives you, what, a minute, and it makes you touch the wheel every minute? Is that still how it works?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I don't know if it's a minute, but yeah, it does remind you. I did a road trip with a friend once in his Tesla, and it was telling him... Yeah, it beeps at you. It's like, hello. I'm not asleep.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, so it's not like you can go in the backseat and get busy.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Steve, did you take a serious look at all the places you could charge an electric car near us? Or within, say, four or five hours?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. There's plenty, but I got the home charger, so it's like-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. Why not just install a charger? It's not that expensive.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Well, yeah. Doing it home, but I guess going to Maine. What's it like in Maine? I don't know. Maybe not that great.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But the thing is, if the only time I would need it is on a long trip, and then it's not going to be near me. It's going to be 300 miles from my house, you know?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, and they all have software, or there are a million apps to find.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' There are apps. Yeah, to find all these charging stations.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' There is an app for that.<br />
<br />
== News Items ==<br />
<br />
=== Making Hydrogen <small>(9:08)</small> ===<br />
* [https://interestingengineering.com/innovation/new-nanoscale-material-can-harvest-hydrogen-fuel-from-the-sea New Nanoscale Material Harvests Hydrogen Fuel From the Sea]<ref>[https://interestingengineering.com/innovation/new-nanoscale-material-can-harvest-hydrogen-fuel-from-the-sea Interesting Engineering: New Nanoscale Material Harvests Hydrogen Fuel From the Sea]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. Bob, you're going to start us off with a news item about making hydrogen.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Ooh.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Making hydrogen.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' This is cool. Researchers claim to have created first nanomaterial that can efficiently pull hydrogen from water. The question is, is this the breakthrough needed for hydrogen to really start contributing to our energy infrastructure? Yes. Efficiency is king, isn't it? This is from researchers at the University of Central Florida, UCF, and it was recently published in the journal Advanced Materials. Their paper was called Dual Doping and Synergism Towards High-Performance Seawater Electrolysis. Regarding the new nanomaterials, study co-author and associate professor in UCF's Nanoscience Technology Center, Yang Yang says, it will open a new window for efficiently producing clean hydrogen fuel from seawater. Okay. I usually don't talk about hydrogen much except in the context of stars. A couple of things I want to say about hydrogen to properly set the table for this one. First off, and you've heard Steve say this many times, hydrogen is not an energy source. It's an energy carrier, which is an interesting way to describe it. I like that. But seriously, I still see respectable outlets claiming it's a source of energy. So it's kind of surprising to see that still being very widespread.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Only if you have access to elemental hydrogen, which we don't.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Right. And yeah, I'll get to that in a second. But a good analogy that I like for hydrogen is that it's like a battery. It's a storage medium. It uses fuel cells. It can generate electricity or power and heat. So it's very much like a battery. And yeah, Steve, that's ironic because it's not an energy source despite being the most abundant element in the universe. And the last time I checked, the universe is 99.9885% hydrogen. So it's everywhere in the universe, but not so much for us.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But not on Earth.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It's not accessible. There's no accessible free hydrogen to Earthlings. And I say accessible because there is free hydrogen nearby. There's trace amounts in the atmosphere. There's some deep underground and of course in the sun and gas giants. But we're certainly not going to be mining them anytime soon. So it's not an energy source. But the other important point is that a hydrogen what people inevitably think about hydrogen and in the economy, there won't be hydrogen cars. They've lost. You know, except maybe for a small niche, hydrogen cars are already essentially dead. So it could be argued that they lost that battle against battery tech because we couldn't figure out how to give hydrogen at the same time, both a high specific energy and a high energy density that works for cars, which is an important caveat. So these are important terms, I think, for this kind of topic. Specific energy is the energy per mass. Hydrogen has that in spades, right? Three times the energy per mass is jet fuel. There's a lot of energy in there. But energy density is energy per volume. And natural hydrogen gas has obviously very low energy density. It's a gas. So increasing the energy density in a way that makes it safe and light and cheap for your car is very, very hard and they could not do it. And that delay, I think, is one of the most important reasons why battery tech and cars appears to have defeated hydrogen cars. Steve, you remember 20 years ago, everyone was talking about hydrogen cars. That's like basically not going to happen at this point. But that doesn't mean that hydrogen is down and out, not by a long shot. Hydrogen can have a huge role in decarbonizing, I love that word, decarbonizing our society. It could probably be most helpful in heavy industries involved in things like chemical production, steel and cement. And those industries actually account for 40% of carbon release into our environment. Huge. So those are just ripe targets. So these industries use so much power that battery technology is not really up to that task at all. Not now anyway. And hydrogen could do it, though, because heavy, expensive hydrogen tanks are fine and safe enough in a building. Who cares how heavy it is or even how expensive or relatively safe. It does not nearly as important as when you have hydrogen in a very small vehicle traveling at high speeds.<br />
That's when it gets really hard technologically to make that work. <br />
<br />
'''S:''' I think hydrogen trains will be a good idea.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Because that's it. Because that's a big thing, moving at high speeds, and you can make it much heavier. Who cares if it weighs five tons? You could move a lot of mass with a train, unlike a car. So then the hydrogen's role could be expanded greatly compared to what it is now, except there's a big problem. If we want to move away from fossil fuels, then we've got to stop making hydrogen the way that we're doing it today. Did you guys know, and I know Steve knows this, did you know that more than 95% of the hydrogen produced comes from natural gas from reactions that have a byproduct? That's carbon dioxide. I mean, that is a deal breaker. I mean, basically, you can just wipe all that out. Why would we want to pursue that in the future, given where we are with climate change and everything that science is telling us? So the question then becomes, how do we massively scale up hydrogen production for heavy industry to use so we can mitigate climate change? So this most recent research may have the answer. These researchers came up with a novel nanomaterial, and of course, they're using water electrolysis, which uses electricity to separate water into hydrogen and oxygen. That accounts for only 5% of the hydrogen we produce. So that's a great way to produce hydrogen, pulling it from water, depending, of course, where you're getting the energy from. But we only use 5%. That's minuscule. It's meaningless almost. So these UCF researchers have created a thin film material with nanostructures on the surface, and it's made of nickel selenide, and it's doped with iron and phosphor. So for some reason, this is a wonderful combination that nobody's hit on before, because in this combination, they contend, anyway, the researchers, that it solves one of the longstanding problems of electrolysis, and that's competing reactions, because there's so many competing chemical reactions going on during electrolysis, so many things that are vying for the energy that's available, that it brings the efficiency way down, and that makes it impractical. And that's one of the big problems with electrolysis, and probably why it's only 5%, right? So apparently, according to the researchers, the new material balances those competing reactions such that helium is separated from oxygen in a way that is both low cost and high performance. So that's an impressive combination, if it's true. They say that they've run tests for over 200 hours, and they say that throughout the entire test, the material retained its high performance and stability. Stability is another huge problem with electrolysis. So they seem to have overcome some of the big problems with electrolysis. Co-author Yang Yang explained, the seawater electrolysis performance achieved by the dual-doped film far surpasses those of those most recently reported state-of-the-art electrolysis catalysts and meets the demanding requirements needed for practical application in the industries. So in the near future, then, what do they say about the near future? They say that they're going to continue to improve their materials to increase efficiencies, and that they're looking for funds, oh, that's a red flag, looking for funds to speed up research and commercialize their work. So that may be one of the reasons why they're really pushing for this, because they're looking for funds. And that makes me a little skeptical, right, when people are looking for money and they're putting out these press releases. But I still, this looks promising. I hope this works. If it does, if we can come up with a way that can efficiently and cheaply, say use renewable resources to perform electrolysis in water to grab, to get hydrogen, man, that would be big. If we can supply some of our industries with lots of hydrogen so that they can move away from fossil fuels, that would be wonderful. That could take a huge chunk, a real noticeable chunk out of all these industries that are making climate change far, far worse, and it's not getting good enough, fast enough by a long shot. And this could contribute if it if all this is true. And I'm really looking forward to have other scientists talk about this and talking about the feasibility and if this study actually is what they say it is. So cross your fingers on this one.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Do you know what the number one use of hydrogen is for?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Hydrogen? Balloons? Birthday balloons?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' No, it's helium.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Helium.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Well, you use helium. I use hydrogen. All right?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's why your balloons blow up.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I don't know. It's probably, I'm assuming it's not for like science labs. What is it?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's actually for oil refineries. And then the second most common use is for ammonia for making fertilizer.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, okay.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The Bosch reaction uses hydrogen.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah. Bosch reaction, baby.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, because you add hydrogen to the nitrogen, right, to make an ammonia. So that's kind of important to our agriculture. In fact, I was I wrote a blog today about, you sent me this item, Bob, it was about farming microbes, which is just a way of growing bacteria and vats to make a lot of protein. And you could make 10 times as much protein on an acre of land than you can by growing soybeans. And so-<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Say that again now, Steve, because soybeans are probably like the poster child for like the most efficient type of-<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Plant protein, yeah. But this is a bacterial protein. Yes. But one of the inputs is you need some kind of a high energy input, right? And one of the things that you can input is just pure hydrogen, or you can input methanol, which you could make with hydrogen, or formate, which you also make with hydrogen and carbon dioxide. And so you essentially free hydrogen would be able to feed into this process. But the point is, hydrogen is an important energy carrier that could feed into a lot of processes.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yes, yes.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But it's very limited. So if you had a cheap supply of massive scale of hydrogen-<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Green hydrogen, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' There would be a lot of uses for it that would emerge out of the availability of hydrogen. Again, it's just a really good energy carrier. At the very least, it would feed into a lot, many ways, it could potentially feed into a lot of agriculture, as well as being used directly for fuel. Obviously, it could be critically important for rocketry, for rocket fuel. Sure. You know, at some point, we may be flying hydrogen planes, hydrogen buses, hydrogen trains. I think those are the more likely uses in terms of directly using it as fuel.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, just not cars.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, probably. You know, it'll be a niche for cars.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Too small.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah. So this, yeah, this really seems like one of those things that I talk about that we really should be investing a lot of money in, because that, it opens up so much.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I know. And I meant-<br />
<br />
'''B:''' There's a lot of hydrogen. It's like, damn, that's such a a game changer. If this works. I hope this new nanomaterial works, because it's really a game changer.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, totally. And I've mentioned to many people at different times, even just recently, that 95% of hydrogen comes from fossil fuels. And they were shocked. They have no idea. It's like, just think of it as a green material. It's like, really? It's basically fossil fuel? And-<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Right, right.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You know, the idea that you're driving a hydrogen car so it's green is nonsense, if it's all coming from fossil fuel.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Probably not coming from electrolysis.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, I think the idea is that it's not also putting out emissions.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But you did it already. So it's like charging an electric vehicle off of the coal plant.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It's front-loading.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, but regular cars do it on both ends.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, no, it's just burning the fuel directly, rather than burning-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, they still have to refine the oil.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, that's true. I mean, it's still better. I get, I grant you it's better.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But it's not, you're right. It's not like- You're not driving on air.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It's not what you think.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's not as green as people think, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, for sure.<br />
<br />
=== Trouble for Self-Driving Cars <small>(20:48)</small> ===<br />
* [https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg25133452-400-why-self-driving-cars-could-be-going-the-way-of-the-jetpack/ Why self-driving cars could be going the way of the jetpack]<ref>[https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg25133452-400-why-self-driving-cars-could-be-going-the-way-of-the-jetpack/ New Scientist: Why self-driving cars could be going the way of the jetpack]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' We're talking about cars, Jay. You're going to tell us about this article, casting doubt onto the future of self-driving cars.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Uh-oh, what? No. Doubt don't even.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, the question is, where are the driverless cars, right? Like, from my perception, I thought we would have them by now. What did you guys think?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, 2020s, I thought they would be coming into common use.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But they are. Like, a couple of them exist.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Cara's right. I mean, there is technology out there where I think they're working on technology for like tractor trailers and car companies are working on, like Uber and companies like that have been working on technology to have a driverless car that's like to rent type of deal. But it hasn't hit yet. And there's a lot of details in here that I think you're going to find interesting. So critics of driverless cars are saying that maybe it's too hard for today's technology to do it safely. So as an example, do you guys remember Google's self-driving car project, right? It started back in 2009. So this used to be known as Google's self-driving car project, right? It's now called Waymo. So it's called Waymo now. And this is what Cara was talking about. Like, they're working on technology more for different industries, but not for consumer yet. The project has test driven 30 million kilometres and billions of kilometers in simulation, which is cool. The vast majority of this testing was driverless. They were doing tests, of course, with the driver in the car observing at first and everything. And then I guess they started to really move into just having it be driverless. These tests have been done in 25 cities. And since 2017, Waymo has been operating with passengers in Phoenix, Arizona. So you can think of that as a test market. So all of the testing done has been adding to the data that the software needs to function, right? So every time they do a test drive, they collect that data and they use it. But as you know, none of this has been deployed to the public yet. Like, you can't buy a car that's using this technology. So other kinds of driver assist technology exist. Now, there's a difference between a fully autonomous car and a driver assist. And I'll give you all the details right now. You could buy cars that have driver assist today. And a common one, as an example, is technology that helps keep your car in lane, right? As an example, you're on the highway.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yes, my car has that.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, yeah, I have that.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' My new car might have that.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So the car...<br />
<br />
'''E:''' If I drift too far one way or the other, this wheel will automatically pull it back towards center.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And mine, like, beeps and stuff, too.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' And some cars give you an electric shock to get you, you know...<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It's only 370 volts, though.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' The car reads the lines in the road can see the lines in the road, and the software can steer the car back in line by itself. A minor drive assist like this, this is considered a one on the scale of vehicle automation. The scale goes from zero to five, zero being the least automated, five being fully autonomous. And a fully autonomous car at level five means it can drive anywhere under any weather condition and under pretty much any condition the car can drive. This scale happened to be developed by the Society of Automotive Engineers, which is today known as the SAE. There's a lot of people, for example, we were talking about Teslas, there's a lot of people buying Teslas. And a lot of times you'll find that they're saying that their car can drive themselves. And a lot of people were thinking Tesla is putting out an autonomous car. But the truth is that since 2015, Tesla has been offering a level two option called autopilot. So unlike level one, level two can change the car's speed and direction at the same time. So level one, the car is limited to changing the speed or the direction, but not at the same time. Level two, speed and direction can be handled by the computer at the same time. So Tesla tells people that the driver must be supervising what's happening with their hands on the wheel. So this is definitely not a fully autonomous car. So don't be fooled, Teslas are not selling fully autonomous cars right now.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That's a two level?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That's a two. Back in 2018, GM's Cadillac introduced something called Super Cruise. So this is also a level two automation, which lets drivers take their hands off the wheel on specific roads, like specific roads, not like a road like this. It's like this road, right? Or that road.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, like they've mapped only some roads that it can be.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Right.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Where we're going, we don't need roads.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So this is just in the United States and Canada. GM is being very cautious about this technology because what they do is they actually track the driver's eyes to make sure that they're looking at the road. That's meaningful because that's not inexpensive technology that they put in the car. They want to know, is the driver paying attention because they are not going to tune out and start crashing our cars all over the place. Starting in 2023, several other car manufacturers are going to be adding in similar level two options. Okay, level two, right?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, but what about the rumour, Jay, that you could just hang googly eyes off the ceiling and you'd be good?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' They work. Yeah. Go ahead, Bob. Let me know how that goes. But I'm like, level two, it's 2021, level two, give me a break. I'm majorly disappointed. As I go down and continue to go on here, I will get more frustrated. So earlier in 2021, Honda delivered a level three vehicle in Japan. Level three means that the driver can hand over full control to the car, but this is only under certain circumstances. So what this means with level three is that the driver can actually stop paying attention during these times. In a car, I'm sure the details here are like the car has to be on certain roads, approved roads or whatever, certain types of circumstances, but then the driver is okay to go take a nap or read a book or whatever. That's level three.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I like level three.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It's not fully autonomous because it's very specific on where and how this can happen. So don't confuse this with the next levels. So a big issue that car manufacturers are having right now is what? It's government regulation.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right. Jay, all these levels and the inability to put out level threes, is it because the science and the AI and all of the coding, the computer science isn't there, or is it literally just because it would be ridiculously unsafe to put out a handful of fully autonomous cars on the road and just let people let loose?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Or is that a false dichotomy, Cara? The other option is that they're just too afraid that some jerk is going to game it or have an accident and ruin their reputation.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, I mean, that's what I mean. So it's a risk assessment, right?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' We are not there yet. We're not above the waterline.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' We're not there yet technologically.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Technologically. And I'm going to give you all the details.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' What?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I'm going to tell you exactly why. So for example-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I thought we were.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Listen, the government regulation is a big obstacle as well. And this will give you an example, like the car companies don't just have to build their own technology, but they have to all deal with like massive government regulations that are saying like, slow your roll. We're not ready for you guys to be putting these cars on our streets yet. We're not ready because it's too complicated. So for example, in 2017, Audi was ready to market a similar level, a three level car, right? But they ended up having to deal with such harsh legalities, they scrapped it. Even though the technology might be there, local governments are not ready for this.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So that makes it sound like the tech is there.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' No, level three. They have level three right now.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Sorry, there's a level four, I assume?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' And a five.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Okay.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' The technology for level three is here. Local governments are starting to show that they don't feel comfortable with it yet. This is largely due to the fact that there have been fatalities due to driverless cars. Now, one in particular, and this is the big one, was a driverless Uber vehicle. That was a test Uber vehicle, right? The software, sadly, took too long to react to a circumstance and it killed the cyclist. And I got the impression that they felt like this was a very easily avoidable accident if a human was driving. So these types of things are happening, right? So of course, governments are like, whoa, what's happening? Your technology is not good enough and they're pumping the brakes. They don't want it to happen yet. So we're in this middle zone. Now here's a problem with level three, right? So let's say right now we're kind of at level three. Cars are starting to come out with level three cars. One issue is that at level three, drivers need to be paying attention and they have to be ready to take over the driver assist. They have to be ready to go. So the driver's sitting there and paying attention. Now what's going on, human nature, the drivers are taking too long to take over the vehicle when an incident happens or is about to happen. Now this really doesn't look well for level three automation. The problem is this, people want to let the car drive. They're excited and they want to do what they want to do and they easily can fall into habits where they're like, ah, screw it. The car's doing it. I'm doing my own thing. I mean, think about how quickly we adopted cell phones, right? Oh, driverless cars, bingo. I don't pay attention to the road anymore. That's what's happening. So people get into level three, they get kind of romanced into this idea that the car can kind of do it and they're just not paying attention. So car manufacturers have now decided, not all of them, but a lot of them are saying, we want to skip three and go right to four. They just want to get to level four. Now level four can handle the driver not paying attention at all during longer periods of time. So now we're getting into the level here where it's longer periods of time, more circumstances can be handled. The car is definitely fully driving the vehicle during those times when it can do it, when the car and I guess there's mapping and everything, everything lines up, the car can do it. You can check out. So the driver will have to get involved from time to time though. And again, it's different probably for every company and every system that they have. But level four is, it's pretty far down that road of being fully autonomous. So here's the question that I started to ask at this point during my research, right? It kind of occurred to me. So what's the holdup? Why are we only at level three kind of today? Why aren't we at level five and five plus? The core problem-<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Lack of demand?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' No, it's not that. It's not that because people, they know adoption will be extreme. The core problem-<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Regulations.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' With automation, no, is the car's ability to actually see the objects moving around. It's technology. It's the freaking technology. So during early testing with driverless cars, they were using laser based radars called, Bob?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' LiDAR.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' LiDAR was able to see everything very well, but what's the problem? It was crazy expensive. Really expensive.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Detection and ranging.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So this forced the car companies to come up with other solutions because they're like, we can't strap this thing onto the car. It's going to make the thing three times as expensive car. They can't do it. So they decided to go with camera based automation systems. Cameras have proven to have difficulty measuring distance. Measuring distance. Well, measuring speed and distance-<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Kind of important.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That is the name of the game. Measuring speed and distance is where it's all at, man. So luckily as the years passed though, LiDAR systems have dramatically dropped in price from the early days of testing autonomous vehicles. Now guys, the cost back then, and we're only going back to what, 2009 and on? The cost started at $60,000 a car.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Woof.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It's dropped-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Wait, just for the LiDAR?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Just for LiDAR. It's now- Well, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Now it's 59.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' As you all know, as soon as a lot of people, as soon as there's more of a demand and they're able to optimize things and technology gets smaller and smaller, it's down to $1,000 a unit now, which makes it affordable again, which is great.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' More than affordable.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Now, okay, great. So now LiDAR is affordable. Steve is paying $9,000 more for it than he apparently should be.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No, Steve decided not to pay-<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, Steve chose wisely. But the experts in the field are saying something else too, and this is another huge factor. They're also saying that even the best LiDAR systems today are not going to be able to perform at the level we need to, even though they can see everything, because the problem is that machine learning doesn't seem to be able to understand the physics of the world anywhere near as well as a human brain. So machine learning doesn't have the reasoning power of a human. So when you think about all the things that people can do without even having to focus their attention, right? We were just talking about this. You can walk, you can chew gum, you could do all sorts of things, and the front of your brain is not making you even conscious that you're doing it. The problem here that we're having is that software is not complicated enough to simply do these top-down things that the human brain can easily do.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' There's a really great experiment. You guys could do this at home. If you do it to one of your friends, walk with them side by side, and then ask them to do a relatively simple math problem, they will stop walking. Almost always they will stop walking, because they can't do both at the same time.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I stopped walking in my head when you said that.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, it's really funny. Like it almost always works. You can train yourself not to do it, but automatically you'll do it. But the issue is, if you're walking and trying to do a math problem, and then something starts falling out of the sky and it's going to hit you, you're going to twist your attention immediately and that's going to be the only thing that matters. And a car can't do that. It doesn't know this is more important than that.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, so they're saying that the machine learning is bottom-up, and humans do it top-down. So we have executive function, and we have parts of our brain that are incredibly good at basically controlling what becomes conscious, what's unconscious, and there's all sorts of subroutines in our brains that are, this is for walking, this is for talking, right? We have all these portions of our brain that do these things, and our brain talks to itself. It's constantly it's one big group of sections that are all intertwined with each other, all talking together at the same time. Well that's not exactly how machine learning and the software and the processing that we use, that's not how it functions. It's a different way. It's a totally different way, and they haven't figured it all out yet. It's just not at the level. So another thing that will depress you is that we're seeing car companies like Uber and Lyft, they started selling off their vehicle development groups to other companies, right? So they were like, oh man, we're all in. We're going to be going driverless in a couple of years. We're going to put a ton of time and money into this. This is a clear sign that level five autonomy wasn't as quickly achievable as everyone thought or hoped it was going to be. So when Uber and Lyft are like, and these are companies that are printing money, they're like, nah, we're selling this off. Let other companies deal with this problem. We're going to do what we do best, and we're not going to get directly involved anymore. So the short term, it's looking like driver assist is going to be what's coming next, right? So it's already here. They're going to make more driver assist, better driver assist. Our cars will help us become better drivers, but they won't be driving themselves. Bob, Christ, they won't be driving themselves anytime soon. That's where we're at.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Jay, I mean, are you saying that it's going to require something beyond even just narrow AI to be a really, really good driver, better than a person?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' No, I think it's going to take longer, and I think that it's going to take a lot more innovation. It's not like Elon Musk is sitting at a desk somewhere, and he's like, if only we could, we just have a couple more things we got to do, and I'm going to press this button, and all my cars are going to fully get it. No, that's not where we're at. The core technology, the cars can see as good as they need to now because of LiDAR, because that came into it. So the hardware is there. No problem with the hardware. It's really the brain of the car isn't there yet. And this answers so many questions that I had that I wanted to know. This makes all the sense. Why haven't they dropped yet? It's just like we're at level three now. We're into level three. Level four is an order of magnitude, and then level five is an order of magnitude above that, and we're not there yet.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, it's like a lot of things that we try to solve with AI, with narrow AI, is that, like for example, voice recognition, right? The predictions about voice recognition were a decade or more ahead of what actually happened because it turned out that it was kind of easy to get to that 95% level.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, that's like everything.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And it's an order of magnitude harder to get to that 98% level or whatever, get to that 99% level where, like if you're correcting one in 20 words, it kind of sucks, you know? But to get to that point where it works really well, you do get to that diminishing return where it's orders of magnitude harder. So I'm not surprised that that's where we are. I mean, I was hoping we weren't going to hit this hurdle, but I'm not surprised that we're hitting this hurdle where, yeah, getting to that, it's almost good enough, like we're there, but when you're talking about driving cars on the road, that's almost good enough is nowhere near good enough.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' You know what they're doing, Steve?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' The risk is too high.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' They're filling in the gaps. Like if you visualize a stretch of road that has pedestrians in this part, then it has really broken up road in this part that has really twisty roads in this part that has poor vision in this part. What they're doing is they're saying, we're not going to come out with a level five car and it's automatically going to be able to do all this. We've got to figure every single one of these jigs and jags out. So they're slowly connecting the dots between these different problems. And it's taking a lot more time, a lot more research. So driver assist is going to continue to get better. You know what, Cara, you were talking about the backup camera. Every car has got a backup camera now. That's now standard stuff. The lane technology that Evan has, that's become pretty standard now too.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Automatic braking is...<br />
<br />
'''S:'' What about just, you're correct in that being able for the car to fully drive itself on any road is really hard, but how about just on highways?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah. Well, that's part of the thing, what I was saying.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's four, right?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' You start at level three and then into level four, they're like, yeah, we've tested these highways out. The lines are good. The roads are in good condition. And we know our cars can perform at 98% on this. We're good to go.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' What about bad weather on those highways?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah. But that's a circumstance.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' What about mistaking a cloud for another car or a car for a cloud? Wasn't that one of the big Tesla stories back in the day?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, yeah. I think I remember.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, for example, like on my commute to work, like, all right, I'll drive the back roads to the highway. And then if I could turn it over to to the automatic driving for the highway segment of my commute, I could have 20 minutes where I could be checking my email or doing whatever. And then I have to take over when I have to do the last little bit and pull into the garage. That would still be hugely useful. Doesn't have to be all or nothing. But I guess every time you have to trust people to use it correctly, it introduces another variable.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Well, that's why level three was no bueno. Because you'll probably be great, Steve, because you're very fastidious. But there are people that just want it so bad, they're like, it's going fine. It's going fine. Yeah. That's why Cadillac put in that eye tracking thing, because they're like, it's not going fine. You're driving this freaking car. You know what I mean?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' So, Jay, what about, is there a lot of deep learning and AI in this? Because I would think that you get some good deep learning and you get some good training with like a billion different video computer generated variations of scenarios and train that in in the AI and the deep learning. And that would be, that could be pretty damn good. I mean, they're probably doing something like that now.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Bob, Google has had its cars drive over 30 million miles with almost no incident. Like really, really great driving record. Over 30 million real miles. They've driven billions of simulated miles, which is, simulation is really good. Like it's learning in the simulation as well. And we're still not there, dude. Billions of miles.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I think they'll crack it though. Again, it might, maybe it's going to be one of those things where it'd be another 5, 10 years, but it just might just be a matter of adding another functionality, like, oh, we needed to be doing this other thing that it's not doing now to get us the rest of the way.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah. It just, this happens to be where we are today. And I guess, like we said, like it's, it seemed like they were going to get there a lot quicker and that car companies moved from like the holy grail, let's get to five. And now they're like, let's master three and we'll get there. It's, it's inevitable. It really is. It's just, it really is a problem that, that humans are going to love to solve. And there's tons of companies doing it. Billions and billions of dollars are going into it. It's going to get solved, but it's not going to happen in the short term. It's going to be, yeah, I think Steve, we're looking at in the 10 year range probably. I hope it's a lot less though. You never know. Some, some company might, might be a breakaway and they'd be like, we got it, man. We licked it. You know, it could happen.<br />
<br />
=== Metaverse <small>(41:54)</small> ===<br />
* [https://theness.com/neurologicablog/facebook-plans-vr-metaverse/ Facebook Plans VR Metaverse]<ref>[https://theness.com/neurologicablog/facebook-plans-vr-metaverse/ Neurologica: Facebook Plans VR Metaverse]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. I want to talk about something else that's also like five to 10 years away. And it is another one of these things where we know that there's this looming technology, but when exactly are we going to cross this magical line where it's, it's going to be ready? It's like, it's like the smart, the iPhone of smartphones, right? Like when is this threshold going to be crossed? This is the metaverse. Have you guys heard about?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yes.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Facebook is all in on the metaverse.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Immersive virtual reality.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Some billionaire had to do it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, that definitely puts a different spin on the whole thing. So the bottom line is that Mark Zuckerberg has now been talking in an interview and in during events about his plans to turn Facebook from a social media company into a metaverse company.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Now what does that mean, Steve?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. So the, the, the term metaverse came from a book snowfall in the nineties, but it basically refers to, yeah, it refers to a virtual reality, complete space like Oasis in Ready Player One, but also reminded me of the set of the, uh, the Futurama Futurama is the internet in Futurama was this virtual place that you went to. So that's basically what it is. So instead of, it's not a replacement for the internet because the internet's like the hardware, but what it sounds like, although I haven't heard any of the interviews explicitly say this is like, it's a replacement for the web in a way. It's like a VR, AR mixed media version of the web where it's the place where everything is interconnected, but it's optimized for virtual reality.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah. It's like a new protocol. Be well beyond HTTP.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I haven't really read any good technical analysis of it. It's more just the vision that Zuckerberg-<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Fluffy press releases.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So let's talk about what that vision is. So you know, Mark Zuckerberg, so first of all Facebook's a trillion dollar company. So that gives, if he says, this is what we're doing-<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Wait, did they break trillion? Did they break that threshold?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's what I'm, that's what I'm reading there. I've heard some of the articles I'm reading referred to them as a trillion dollar company. Close enough. I mean, that's, that's what we're talking about. So that's a significant they've acquired Oculus Rift. So they acquired a VR hardware company and they're trying to put all the pieces together. So again, very quickly, virtual reality is when you're wearing goggles that completely obscure your vision. So you are in the virtual space and you're not interacting with the physical space unless that physical space is represented in the virtual space, which you can do. So you can't see, you can't actually see the space around you in physical space-<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Which makes it dangerous.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. You're dependent on whatever you're seeing in the virtual space, right? But it could be very compelling.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' You get there, telepresence.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, it, it totally, it totally tricks your brain into believing that you are in the virtual space. Very effective at this point for, for gaming which is I think essentially what it's being used for attempts at doing things like a virtual office have not succeeded so far, mainly because of the hardware, because nobody wants to wear the clunky headsets for eight hours a day, you know? But if you're just going to play a game for an hour, it's fine.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Have you seen the, Steve, and I know it's not VR, but somebody, Cisco, somebody has these virtual meeting rooms and they're really brilliantly designed because they do sort of what we think about as AR, which is taking real meat space and digit like-<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Overlay, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. Overlay. Thank you. And so but instead of it being classic AR, what they do is they have a life-size screen that's like basically one wall of the conference room. And then there's a half table that's shot, and then you are sitting at a half table. So you can virtually conference in with a conference table across the world. And the way the cameras are set, it feels like they're at the table with you.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That's awesome.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's really smart.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I think like the, the metaverse incorporates all of that, because it's also going to be AR augmented reality where you are still seeing the physical space, but there's digital stuff overlaid on top of it, which if you remember when we did our show from the future, we talked about the aug, and which was essentially our version of the metaverse. But we emphasize the augmented reality aspect of it, because honestly, I think that's going to take over for virtual reality in a lot of ways, just because it's easier. And it's there's a lot of reasons why I think augmented reality will be superior to virtual reality. Virtual reality probably still might be optimal for gaming. But if you're just like doing a virtual office or whatever, we're conferencing, AR might be better. We'll see. We'll see how that plays out. But the metaverse is both of them and 2D, 2D, like you, you could get into the metaverse through your desktop your regular monitor or your smartphone or whatever. It's everything together. Like so that, and that's very deliberate. So that's why it's called mixed reality and also with physical reality as well. So that's technically what mixed reality is. It's essentially everything. So you don't have to be in VR or AR, but it'll have that functionality.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Not the holodeck.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, that's like, we won't even go there. But if we think about I think the like one mature version of this as depicted in science fiction was Oasis from Ready Player One, where it was a complete world and had its own economy. It was like the biggest economy on the world was the virtual economy of Oasis. And you know, a lot of people spent a lot of their time there and the hardware was so good that you were there. Like you had to wear a full body suit and you had very comfortable glasses and you could be like in a harness on a treadmill. So you could, yeah, you could walk around and dealt with a lot of the vestibular function that did the motion sickness issues because you are physically moving. The question is, so I think the metaverse is coming, but here's the big question. Is it ready now? Is it premature to start talking about it? Or is this the time to start talking about it, knowing that it's not going to be ready for 10 years before it really crosses that threshold of like, this is now ubiquitous. This is now like the web. So like even Zuckerberg says that he, he expects to have the virtual reality hardware, the hardware at the point where people will feel comfortable using it all day in 10 years, like by 2030 time frame, which is a little disappointing. It's going to take that long, but I mean, that's what we need right now. Most of us have played with the, with the VR goggles by now, right? So you have 110 degrees of viewing angle, which is, is just enough to like really be fully immersive, but not optimal.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' But annoyingly suboptimal.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. You'd want 140 would probably be so much better. And I think the resolution's getting good enough. You know, you want to be able to comfortably read with the resolution, but I think getting the eye tracking so that it, it increases the resolution just where you're looking everywhere so that it doesn't overwhelm. It's very smart. Save a lot of processing time. You know, you can get a wireless now, although that's a little expensive and incorporated audio, that's no big deal at all, even if you're just wearing headphones or earbuds or whatever with, with the headset, but the headset's kind of bulky and I do get a little fatigue if I use it for more than a couple hours at a time, it definitely is not the kind of thing I'd want to be dependent on for my job. You know what I mean?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. That'd be tough.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Right. You need something more like just wearing glasses.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I wonder what the research budget is. I mean, he acquired Oculus. I mean, if I were him and maybe he's throwing more and more than I, than I think I'd throw a quarter billion dollars at that bastard.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Oh, I think he's putting that kind of money into it.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' $250 million into VR hardware. I hope he is. Cause that's, that to me, that's like, that's such a no brainer hardware to research and development because that's where that's what we're heading towards. I'm just waiting. You know what I'm waiting for? I'm waiting for my VR, AR sunglasses. That's it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, that's going to be a while.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That's going to be a while. That could be 20 years, maybe.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But you got to remember like for AR, you don't need that wide an angle of view. It can't just be like regular glasses because you just need to be able to superimpose digital content in a reasonable range or view. It doesn't need to be immersive because you're still seeing the physical world. So again, I don't think, I'm not trying to say that it's going to be 10 years before we see the metaverse. We already have sort of the beginnings of it now. Like you can go to virtual spaces where people have avatars. That's the other sort of piece that he wants people to have realistic avatars. Like you are there, like you are, and also to have this piece of this experience of embodiment where you feel like you're in this space. So I think we're sort of at the beginning of this process. It's going to get incrementally better. And I don't know where that transition line is, but I think but Zuckerberg is basically announcing he's trying to, he wants Facebook to dedicate itself to develop, to become the metaverse. That's what he wants the company to be and to, to get us over that line. So it'll definitely, I think, accelerate this process.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, sure.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The company decides that Facebook make this, make these plans as long as they don't bail. But I still, I do think, and I do worry a little bit that the hype will get a little bit premature. And then people will think it's a failed technology or whatever. Just like the driverless car, like it's the same thing.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Google Glass.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. You got to wait 10 years more than you thought. And then it kind of gives it a bad name. This premature hype thing is so common with so many technologies.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So my question is this, my question is we're talking about Facebook who has billions of dollars, right? It's going to take that amount of money. It's going to take that kind of tech company to dedicate huge amounts of talent and money and everything and will just having someone like Mark Zuckerberg push it to bring this thing into reality. Now meanwhile, the technology, the hardware, like the headsets and everything, it's still going to be used. It's still going to progress. It's still going to get better and better. So really what they're doing is they're just building a platform. They're building the platform.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. That's what Facebook really is. It's a platform.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' But the reason why I'm pitching it this way is because I'm thinking there's not nothing stopping other companies from building their own platform as well. And this is where the competition comes in. Mark Zuckerberg was the first person to say-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Facebook already has the users. That's the difference.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah. Absolutely.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' The users are what are worth so much money. And Facebook has the largest user base out there. Can I ask you guys a really, like, probably Luddite-y question? So bear with me. What problem does this solve?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah. What's the utility? That's what I was thinking.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Like, I just don't. Yeah. Like, why does the world need this?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's a good question. So part of it is not so much need. It's that you create an opportunity to do new functionality. So we've all now experienced, of course, gaming and porn, Cara, first of all, like, without question.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Hello.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So those are going to blaze the trail. The question is, what you're really asking is what useful functionality will come in behind porn and gaming. So we've all experienced the Zoom conference, right, which was kind of a lifesaver during the pandemic, but also kind of sucked. You know, we all sort of experienced the downside of it as well. And so imagine if that conference was a more natural, immersive, 3D, physical space, presence kind of experience. That could absolutely be useful. And that may be where we need to get to really have the online learning, classroom, lecture, workshop, whatever experience that we've all been looking for, especially now that we all know how inadequate the 2D version of it is, the Brady Bunch boxes version of it. And so that's, I think that's the first thing. Plus also how I think it's one of those things that we have to do it to really see, like, will shopping be a better experience in virtual reality when it's at that level? I don't know. We'll see. Will there be a new functionality in terms of working as well? Will we have a virtual office? Will this reduce the amount of travel that we'll actually have to do or improve our online experience in other ways? I think we, this all remains to be seen, which is why I think things like this can flop if it turns out that people don't like it. You know what I mean? Or it's just like, it's not worth it. It's just not, I'd rather sit so I like, there are some times where I just rather sit at my desk and look at my screen. Like, I don't really want to put on the VR goggles and go into VR space and all that that entails. But I would if it were a lot easier and better, you know.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' So energy intensive. I think this thing's going to be, Steve. How much energy?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I mean, it's going to be more. I mean, I think it's going to be more processing power, you know. But I don't know if it's going to be just incremental. I don't think it's necessarily going to be.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Because when I think of something like Bitcoin and the amount of energy that that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's different.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That is different.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Blockchain is completely different.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I think the thing that I can't help but go back to, which is like a little bit, again, like I don't, I don't want to sound like a Luddite. And I don't think it's that I'm like, I don't get it. I think it's that there's for me a real fear about what is it called? The metaverse?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The metaverse, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's, it's exact. It's in the name. It has a very black mirror quality to it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Oh, yeah, totally.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' There's already a problem that Facebook is too immersive for many people. There's already a problem that a lot of these platforms are taking people out of meet space into digital space to a point where they're losing touch kind of with reality for some of them. It can be a huge problem solver, right? It can connect them to people they could never be connected for. It can really help people who struggle on the autism spectrum and individuals who have a hard time meeting people who are like them. But it also, I mean, we do see that it makes it like there are actual psychological effects of the way that people present themselves online. That's like out of touch with reality of the interaction capabilities, the interpersonal skills that people develop, especially when you're born into a world where that's all you know. I can't help but go to this very black mirror place of like, what are kids who grow up in the metaverse going to do when they meet on the street? Like, I don't know. It freaks me out, man.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But I wonder if it'll be easier or harder. Is this going to bring us full cycle because it's so realistic, it actually is better than like 2D online interactions? Or is it going to be less realistic because it is so completely virtual? I mean, that'll be interesting to see. I think it could go either way. But the thing is, Cara, it's happening this is only a matter of timing.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That's my point of view. There's no stopping this.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We'll just make it happen. Maybe it'll happen faster because of him. But it's going to happen.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah. There's no stopping this.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I think it's just important to remember that the drivers of these technologies, it's not always about how can the consumer have a better life. It's about how can we make money off of the consumer.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Right. Sure.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's how Facebook became Facebook.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Exactly. You see these things where it's like, I'd rather just go camping.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' There's a flip to the whole thing. I don't disagree with you. The more technology we have and the more plugged in we get, the creepier things can be and the more weird our reality can get. Absolutely. But I could throw a similar question to you, like what about when we developed boating technology? You know, you very easily could be like, what are you going to do is go out there and tool around on the water? You know, like there will be economies that come after it's built. There will be.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, for sure. But there's a fundamental difference between a virtual world and the meatspace world. And I mean, it just, again, like anybody who doesn't watch Black Mirror, like these are cautionary tales. They're intended to be cautionary tales. They're not written to just be fun. Like, we could be in that high rise building where we're all in these weird little cubes and we're just running on our treadmills every day. Or what were they? The bikes. And we're running in order to get exercise and score points. And like this is philosophically and existentially something that really makes me anxious.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It's going to be a double edged sword. It's absolutely going to be a double and triple edged sword.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Metaverse trolling.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That's why it's good to talk about it now, to anticipate those other edges and try to ameliorate them and deal with them because it's coming, baby. And there's no stopping it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Sometimes those things are not mutually exclusive and companies make money by giving you something you need or making your life better "building a better mousetrap". But then sometimes there's the Ronco version, the guy who did that just died, which is why I'm thinking of it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Ron Popeil.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So where he, where like the company's model was to make shit you don't need and convince you that you do need it and then sell you this something which you're never going to use because you don't really need it.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I don't know, but Steve, that potato peeler.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I still use my Slap Chop.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That potato peeler, man.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Changed my life, man.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' The dehydrator.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' The Slap Chop. And then the hydrator.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I want to scramble eggs in the shell because the guy says I should want to do that.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's right. Look how easy my life will be if I do it that way.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' There's always going to be the dark side. There's going to be the dark side to capitalism, but there's also going to be the, I we have better cars now than we did before and I have better computers and there's lots of ways in which it does improve the quality of our life and give us better stuff. And I bet you, I bet you like with the metaverse, it's going to be all those things. It's like social media. There's going to be some good things. There's going to be some terrible things and it's going to we'll have to muddle through.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I don't want to live in that world. I'm just, let's just say I'm glad I was born in the eighties because there's a part of it that's like being born in the metaverse sounds, woof.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' In the metaverse age.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, I mean, I guess I'd make a lot of money in therapy.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' There is something so provocative about this because of the way that humanity will create and everything I mean, I'm sure we all will miss probably most of it. I mean, Cara, you'll probably be there for the beginning.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But it's like, it's the stuff of Bradbury. I mean, people were writing about this 70 years ago it's like, yeah, it's incredible.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Now I'm going to just say the thing that wasn't said because Steve was very polite, I guess. I don't want that guy being the guy in charge of it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's because he's not going to be in charge of it. At least what he's saying now is that this is going to be all sort of open source that where anybody can develop it. That's part of it. That's necessary for it to work. It can't be proprietary. It's got to be the kind of thing. It's like the web where anybody could make a website. If it's proprietary, where not everybody, anybody could make a functionality for it, then it's not going to be the metaverse. It's not going to be the one place where everything comes together. So by definition, this is what he's saying, right? But that this is the vision is it's got to be open source or otherwise it's not going to work. So but we'll see. But that's that's what they're saying now.<br />
<br />
=== Olympic Medals <small>(1:02:03)</small> ===<br />
* [https://cosmosmagazine.com/science/chemistry/olympic-medal-composition/ Gold, silver and brass medals]<ref>[https://cosmosmagazine.com/science/chemistry/olympic-medal-composition/ Cosmos: Gold, silver and brass medals]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, guys, we're going to finish up with a couple of Olympic news items there. Cara, you're going to start us off by telling what the Olympic medals are made from.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, yeah, I came across a little write up in Cosmos magazine is a really great Australian science outlet about gold, silver and brass medals. So this is kind of a twofer because one of them is about the fact that and this is not a new thing. But this year in Tokyo, it's the first time that the all of the medals are 100 percent made of recycled materials. So how cool is that?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's cool.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So yeah, no no virgin medals in them. They did this big push for residents to donate their used electronics and they were able to collect six point eight metric tons of circuit boards and a company called Tech Resources process them.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That's a lot of circuit boards.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, it is. Six point two one million used mobile phones. Thirty two kilograms of gold, three thousand five hundred kilograms of silver. And they're saying two thousand two hundred kilograms of bronze. But what I think they mean are copper and zinc and not tin, zinc. That's the interesting thing because they're not actually made of bronze. Also you'll notice a big difference between 32 kilograms of gold and thirty five hundred kilograms of silver. Why do you think that is?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Because the gold medals are made of silver.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. So the gold medals are silver with gold plating on the outside. I think there's actually a regulation that it has to be like a certain amount thick. The Tokyo Olympics made it thicker than what is required. A gold medal weighs five hundred fifty six grams. And oh, guess what? The difference in the market value of silver and gold.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, I don't know.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Silver is like running that right now around twenty dollars an ounce. And gold is a thousand dollars.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. So by gram, it's a dollar a gram of silver and eighty dollars per gram of gold. So yeah, a whole lot more. But we're still talking like a thousand dollars of precious metals per medal.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Nice.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Four hundred eighty dollars of gold and five hundred fifty dollars of silver. And that's just with that gold plating. So these gold medals they're not they're not worth nothing. Then again, apparently there's a history of Olympians sometimes auctioning off their medals to raise money for charities. And they've gone in the millions. So probably worth a lot more than the actual value of the medal itself.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Seriously?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. I mean, it's all about provenance. So if it came from an Olympian with a really interesting story and it went to a person or organization, yeah, you get a lot of money and to raise money for a specific charity, of course. But so, yeah. So the gold medals are not made of gold, but they are plated in gold. So I wonder if when the Olympians bite the medals, if they actually could leave tooth marks, because gold, of course, is softer and that comes obviously from like back in the day when jewelers would bite gold to see if it was real, because gold is soft and you can actually put tooth marks in it if you bite down on it. And so, of course, it's just kind of tradition now for Olympians to bite their medals. But yeah, it would be kind of sad if they left tooth marks in their medal, like, oops, why did I do that?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Depends who they are. Should be worth more.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' True, true.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Or it might add to the value.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. True, true.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Look at Suni's teeth marks on her gold medal.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So the silver medals are made of silver. They weigh 550 grams. They are pure silver. So just the one element and that is all. Now, the bronze is where things get interesting because bronze is an alloy. Bronze is usually copper and tin, just like Evan said. But the bronze medals at the Olympics are actually copper and zinc. And that is referred to as red brass. Red brass is an industrial material that's often used in plumbing and electrics, electronic, not electronics, electrical. Yeah, that's the word I was looking for. But usually red brass in industrial applications, the alloys are dirtier. So it's about 85% copper and then a whole bunch of other stuff, tin, zinc, other metals. But this specific Olympic red brass is 95% copper, 5% zinc. And I was trying to figure out why they decide to go with the zinc and not the tin. I don't know if it's a function of availability. I don't know if it's a function of it actually being stronger once you alloy the zinc into it and less brittle.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Maybe it just looks better.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It might be shinier and look better. And here's another thing. Maybe it's less likely to oxidize. Because of course, when you have 95% copper in an alloy, you might soon have a green medal. And maybe something about the zinc helps prevent that more than the tin.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Here's what's listed as sort of the properties of brass that might be why they used it. It has high corrosion resistance. It is highly castable. So it's easier to make into a very specific shape. And you know, it's more malleable and less brittle than bronze would be.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I do know that red brass is used in industrial applications more than bronze because bronze is brittle. Red brass, even though it's strong, it's brittle. And red brass is less brittle. So it makes more sense for industrial applications. And that may be where it originally came to be. But why they use a very pure form of red brass as opposed to bronze, I'm not really sure. It looks like bronze, though. And so...<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Cara, I was looking at that, too. And I found this. So from the 2000 Olympics, the bronze medals were made out of actual bronze.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Really?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It says they were 1% silver, 99% "coinage bronze", which itself is...<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Copper and tin.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' They said itself is 97% copper, 2.5% zinc, and 0.5% tin. So it's still mostly zinc as the alloy, but there is a little bit of tin in there.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's interesting because I don't think that's technically bronze.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, but they call this coinage bronze. And it actually came from Australian currency, which is no longer in circulation. So maybe they just ran out.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, interesting. So they actually melted down their pennies. We should do that when we host in LA. There's so many unused pennies.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But pennies now are copper-coated zinc, right?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, you're right. They're zinc. Yeah. And actually, I'm looking up and bronze is... I mean, technically, bronze is supposed to be mostly copper and then tin. But yeah, you can add in things like nickel, zinc, and these different additions. But technical bronze is copper and tin. And then this red brass is copper and zinc.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Maybe they couldn't recycle the tin.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. And that's the other thing, too. They have this mission in Tokyo to say, these will be the first in history to be 100% recycled, and they pulled it off. So it's really cool to think that all of these metals, and again, 32 kilograms of gold, 3,500 kilograms of silver, 2,200 kilograms of the copper and zinc that was made to make these quote bronze metals, all came from old phones and crap. How cool. What a way to pull that stuff out of the garbage cycle. Mm-hmm. Pretty neat.<br />
<br />
=== Olympic Pseudoscience <small>(1:09:25)</small> ===<br />
* [https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/olympic-pseudoscience-tokyo-edition/ Olympic Pseudoscience – Tokyo Edition]<ref>[https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/olympic-pseudoscience-tokyo-edition/ Science-Based Medicine: Olympic Pseudoscience – Tokyo Edition]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' Evan, so every Olympics has some pseudoscience in there. How are we doing this year for Olympic pseudoscience?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, well, par for the course, Steve. Don't worry. The bond between sports and pseudoscience is strong and alive and well, as it always seems to have been and probably will continue to be. And this is because athletes, when they're competing at these top, top levels of their sport, they've got this predisposition to search for every potential advantage. And unfortunately, that desire is not reined in by the borders of science. So they'll do whatever they think they need to do to get them that little extra 0.0001%. Yeah, it's what makes the Olympics one of the better displays of pseudoscience. It has this enormous global audience. I mean, hundreds of millions of people around the world are watching. They're saying to themselves, for example, hey, what are those red spots on some of the athletes' bodies? Or why do those athletes have tape stuck to their bodies the way they do all bright blue tape? Well, in those two specific instances, the red spots are the result of cupping. And we've talked about cupping before you use some glass cups and you burn some herbs to create a vacuum over the skin. And of course, you get your bruises as a result of that, little hickeys all over your body. And why do they do this? Because, well, to relieve themselves of what they perceive as pain relief mostly or discomfort. But there are other claims such as drawing out toxins and improving blood flow and all sorts of other things. There's a long list of what they say cupping can do for a person, including curing them, well, treating them for their herpes, for their acne, for cervical spondylosis. And oh, the British Cupping Society says that their therapy can treat blood disorders, fertility issues, high blood pressure, migraines, Steve, you should be aware of that, anxiety and depression, varicose veins, and bronchial congestion, among some other things. So the athletes, yep, they're using cupping and you see them mostly on the swimmers because they have a lot of skin exposed and there seems to be part of the culture there, especially since Phelps, Michael Phelps, famously many years ago, showed up with cupping marks all over his body. And hey, he did pretty well, so therefore there must be something to it. So other swimmers are going to do what Michael Phelps did, right? And what about that tape, the Kinesio tape, which is alleged to provide support, stability, and strength to athletes? Here, according to one manufacturer who is providing the tape to Olympic athletes, it works by lifting the skin, which optimizes the flow of lymphatic fluids to transport white blood cells and help remove waste products, cellular debris, and bacteria. The tape also helps with overall body awareness to heal and eventually prevent injury.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, except that it doesn't.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yes, that's right. A lot of reviews of the tape have been done over the years. In fact, pretty recently there's been a couple of systematic reviews. They looked at 18 studies, these reviews, on the effectiveness of the tape. And in these studies, they showed no significant benefits regarding long-term pain alleviation or improved strength or range of motion or any of the other claims, basically, that you would put this tape on for. The authors of the review concluded there's insufficient evidence to support the use of Kinesio tape to prevent, treat injuries, or improve any of these other functions that an athlete has, range of motion, strength, and so forth. Why do they do it? Because if you're going to define something as cheap and safe and has a strong placebo effect, I mean, if it comes to some sort of psychological advantage, then they're going to do it. And that seems to be all you can get out of the tape. Did you know there was recently, and what I mean by recently is just today, there's a hubbub now about the tape being applied to the shins of the cyclists. And they're not using it essentially for any sort of real health benefit, per se, or injury prevention.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Friction?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Aerodynamic performance.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Nice.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' And so the rules say that you can use it, and apparently they've figured out that if you put it in this direct spot right on your shins, right up to the knee, from where the sock ends to where the knee is, you can help to get that aerodynamic advantage. And they're being called into question as to whether or not, even though it's not technically against the rules, whether it is really a violation of the spirit of the rules. So that is something they're going to be taking a look at perhaps in the future. Oh, I have trivia for you guys real quick.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yes.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Now, what pseudoscience was invented in Tokyo, which is where the Olympics are taking place right now? Pseudoscience was invented in Tokyo in the 1970s, and it is now being used for many of the athletes in these Olympics.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Kinesio tape.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' No, no, not the kinesio tape. Whole body what? Cryotherapy.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, right.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Invented in Tokyo.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, boy.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' So it's the home of this, and they are using it. They are definitely using it. They're providing it for any athlete really who wants it. And yeah, again, insufficient evidence to say that cryotherapy can reduce the self-reported muscle soreness or help you with recovery after exercise.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Well, I mean, it's basically a very intense but brief cold treatment, right?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' No, but immersing yourself into these very cold, sudden temperatures. There have been cases of frostbite.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, boy.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No, we also covered this. Bob, we covered just the cold therapy on the show.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, what was the deal?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It actually does nothing to improve healing, but it can, I think, if I'm trying to remember, it can actually dull some of the sensation, which is not good for preventing further injury.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Okay. That makes sense.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But I think there's no benefit to improving healing of muscle tears.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's correct. No healing benefit. Or recovery from injury, recovery from working out.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I will quickly mention a few other pseudosciences being utilized at the Olympics. Ever heard of pulse electromagnetic therapy, PEMT? These are pads that you put on that delivers an electromagnetic pulse at the intensity and frequency, which mimics the Earth's magnetic field.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Don't have your phone nearby, but it's probably too weak for that.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' And Steve, as you once said, hey, if this device mimics the Earth's magnetic field, then why is the device necessary? Right? And just around us is the Earth's magnetic field, so that was a very good question I thought you brought up. And oh, another piece of trivia. What pseudoscience is enjoying commercial airtime at the Summer Olympics? If you haven't seen it yet, it's run several times, a commercial for chiropractic. Yeah. 30-second commercial to educate consumers about the benefits of chiropractic care and to promote healthcare career as a doctor of chiropractic, running five times on NBC networks during the Summer Olympic Games. And acupuncture supplements, Ayurvedic medicine, rolfing, and healing crystals are also part of the bag of pseudoscience that you may find at your Olympics at any given time.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, because it's all around the world, so you're going to get basically every pseudoscience from around the world.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It's true. Send your athletes and send the pseudoscience they love with it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, Chris, the one thing I noticed, because I do pay attention to it every year, is that eight years ago, the kinesio tape was all over the place, and now five years ago, actually, the cupping was all over the place, especially on the swimmers, but I don't know if that was just because you could see them they're not wearing clothes. And now there's some cupping, not as nearly as much, or some kinesio tape, not nearly as much. So I think that these things sort of, they're a fad, then they fade away, but they don't go away completely. They're just sort of always going to be there on the fringe. But I did make the observation that if any of these things actually worked, they wouldn't become a fad and go away, you know?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' No, it'd be part of the standard equipment.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, exactly. They would become standard if they actually worked. But no, it's more of a fashion it follows that kind of pattern.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah. Yeah.<br />
<br />
== Who's That Noisy? <small>(1:17:56)</small> ==<br />
{{anchor|futureWTN}} <!-- this is the anchor used by "wtnAnswer", which links the previous "new noisy" segment to this "future" WTN --><br />
<br />
{{wtnHiddenAnswer<br />
|episodeNum =838 <!-- episode number for previous Noisy --><br />
|answer = Spoonbill Stork <!-- brief description of answer, perhaps with a link --><br />
|}}<br />
'''S:''' All right, Jay, it's who's that noisy time.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' All right, guys, last week I played this noisy.<br />
<br />
[_short_vague_description_of_Noisy]<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Get some.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's what I thought. Anyone who runs.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So any guesses?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's scary.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Take that, you filthy animal.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' All right, nothing. Okay, so let me jump in here. So you guys know Visto Tutti, right?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Sure.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Of course.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' This noisy sounds like the arcade game, remember them, called Turkey Shoot, where a mini machine gun is mounted on the video console, and if you miss too many turkeys, they peck your eyes out. Game over.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Jesus.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yes, this does sound like a machine gun. Absolutely. It's not. It's not a bad guess, though.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It's a gun of some type.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I will not tell you right now, but you will know. So Michael Blaney wrote in and said, dude, WTN, WTF. That sounds like someone shooting a horse with an AK-47.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I know, it's sad.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I really hope it's not that. That is not correct, but that's a great guess. Brendon Alman wrote in, hey Jay, after 18 years in the home improvement industry, everything sounds like tools to me, a little insight into many guesses that I've never actually sent you. This week's noisy sounds like an impact wrench driving a particularly stubborn fastener. The hammering sound is the impact wrench and the cackling sound that is reminiscent of one of Bob's witch Halloween decorations is the bolt.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Nice.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I love it. It is not that. I don't even know what that sounds like, but I'm sure there's like a hammering sound of some kind. One more guess. We had a guest from Alex Freshy and he said, hey Jay, my guess for this week's noisy is a pneumatic chisel. So the pneumatic thing I get, absolutely. The screaming part, I don't know what you think the screaming part is. He says, because there are extra noises in there, I'll go ahead and guess that some kind of primate is playing with this tool. Probably not something to play with. That was a fun guess. A lot of people got this one correct. Apparently this noise has gone viral at some point. So a lot of people were familiar with it. This noise is indeed, Steve, a bird. Do you want to guess now what kind of bird it is?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' A lyrebird.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' The rapid fire lyrebreasted.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It's a shoebill stork.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Oh, okay. Shoebill stork.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' C. Ross wrote in and said, hi Jay, was the noisy this week a shoebill? Yes, it's a shoebill stork. So this is really a very dinosaur-y looking type of old world creature. It's pretty tall. It's got really spindly looking legs. And it's got a really big beak. And that machine gun noise you're hearing is the beak opening and closing really fast. So here it is again. [plays Noisy]<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Wow.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It has an echo to it.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It's inside.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So scary.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It's happening inside.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I'm looking this bad boy up.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It wasn't unhappy at all, Cara, just so you know. The shoebill stork. Very, very cool bird.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' They're scary looking.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I told you. They're old school looking, right? They come from millions of years ago. That's what they feel like.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. Ooh, I don't want my hand to get stuck. Ooh, look at their skulls.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yes, they're in Africa.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, wow. No, I've never seen one of these. I've seen something that looks very similar in southern Africa that has that crazy looking beak.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Wow. Oh, they're big. They're huge.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' But could you imagine if four or five of them were coming up to you and they all made that noise?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' You would be like, what is going on? You know, you'd be pretty alarmed.<br />
<br />
{{anchor|previousWTN}} <!-- keep right above the following sub-section ... this is the anchor used by wtnHiddenAnswer, which will link the next hidden answer to this episode's new noisy (so, to that episode's "previousWTN") --><br />
=== New Noisy <small>(1:21:31)</small> ===<br />
<br />
'''J:''' All right, so I have a new noisy for this week. This noisy was sent in by a listener named Andrew Hughes. And I'd like you to guess what this is.<br />
<br />
[_short_vague_description_of_Noisy]<br />
<br />
There's some other noises in the background. So if you think you heard something cool this week, and I know you're out there, or if you think you know the answer to {{wtnAnswer|838|this week's noisy}}, email me at WTN@theskepticsguide.org.<br />
<br />
== Announcements <small>(1:22:09)</small> ==<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We do have a quick follow up. Because we did say that we needed to get enough people to sign up for the return of the extraction. September 5th at 6 p.m. in Atlanta, Georgia. And we did. So thank you everyone for signing up. So the Atlanta extravaganza is a go. We also are doing a private show in Atlanta. This is on September 4th at 2 p.m. So still time to buy tickets for that. We've had a lot of discussion about what we're going to do because the pandemic is on an upswing at the worst possible time for DragonCon. DragonCon has instituted a bunch of new rules for everyone's safety. And, of course, for us at the SGU, pandemic safety comes absolutely first. So we are going to at this point, our plan obviously we have the facts on the ground may change. But our plan at this point is we're going to go. We're going to do the extravaganza and the private show. And we're going to avoid crowds as much as possible. We're going to do whatever we have to do to stay safe. But we should be able to do those two private events because we'll be on stage. You know, we'll be socially distancing. We'll probably be requiring masks. And we're going to avoid getting any kind of unnecessary exposure, which is obviously going to limit our DragonCon experience. But safety has to come first. And it'll be interesting because there's definitely going to be a lot fewer people there this year. And they're definitely going to limit access to hotels. They're requiring masking. They're encouraging vaccination, but they're not requiring it. But we'll be playing a little bit by ear.<br />
<br />
== Questions/Emails/Corrections/Follow-ups <small>(1:23:49)</small> ==<br />
<br />
<blockquote><p style="line-height:115%">My name is Marco and i’m a long time fan. Cant even remember how long, maybe even from the start. Apologies if my grammar or spelling is wrong. I’m from the Netherlands (Yes where Cara liked our waffles) but i will do my best. Here we go: I was in a twitch chat and somebody made the comment ‘Time was invented by humans’. I know there are a lot of trolls on the internet but the discussion got heated. There were people claiming that the measurement of time completely abstract is, and others asked ‘are you talking about the progression of time or the measurement of appeared time’. While disregarding the comments like ‘time was invented by aliens’ i was still stuck with the original statement. Thanks to you guys I’m always interested in a healthy discussion. I would like to know how you guys would approach a discussion like that? By first needing a clear definition of time? Or was the statement itself not clear enough? I didn’t even engaged in the discussion because my brain almost exploded with all the questions and comments and now I’m stuck with the feeling that by staying silenced I’m agreeing with the statement. Which I’m clearly not Just curious and hope to hear from you. Keep up the great work! Regards,</p>-Marco van ‘t Hoog</blockquote><br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. One quick email. This comes from Marco. And Marco writes, "I'm from the Netherlands. Yes, where Cara liked our waffles, but I will do my best. Here we go. I was in a Twitch chat." Twitch chat. That's a phrase that wouldn't mean anything 20 years ago. "I was in a Twitch chat and somebody made the comment, time was invented by humans. I knew there were a lot of trolls on the internet." Really? "But the discussion got heated. There were people claiming that the measurement of time completely abstract. And others asked, are you talking about progression of time or the measurement of a peer time? While disregarding the comments like time was invented by aliens, I was still struck with the original statement. So thanks, you guys. Always interested in a healthy discussion." So essentially, and we've probably talked about this before, but the question is what do we think about the statement that time is an invention of people?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' What comes to mind for me is that just this last week I had Jordan Ellenberg, who's a mathematics professor, on Talk Nerdy. And so that comes out next week. And one of the things that we talked about at the very beginning was like, is math intrinsic to nature or was it invented by people?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's a more interesting question.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And it was like, OK, so I think about time. I think about math. And his view was kind of like, to me, that's a moot point. Like I work in the world of math. So whether we invented it or we're just uncovering something that exists, we use it as a tool. And that's where I want to spend my time, which is fair. He's a mathematician. To me, it has the same philosophical underpinnings. Like there are fundamental features of the universe that seem to be dividable or that seem to have patterns. But then we have a language and a metric that we develop to be able to make sense of those things. And I think time is similar, right? Like we know that there's entropy. Time has an arrow.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Exactly.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' This is an easy one.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That's it. That's a critical piece of information right there.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The measurement of time is artificial. But time is a thing. Time is an objective aspect of the universe. It is a physical property of the universe, if you want to look at it that way. It is not an abstract concept. It's not an approximation or whatever. It actually exists as a thing. Now, we could argue about what the fundamental nature of time is. But time, in some way, actually exists as an aspect of our universe, right?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Otherwise, nothing would happen.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's not just that. It's built into the laws of physics.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It's entropy.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Time is entropy.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I think there is an arrow of time. You can't make sense of relativity of so many things without time being an actual thing. It is a—if it has a letter in an equation, you know what I mean? Then it exists, basically.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. Like the way that we subdivide it into days and weeks and minutes and hours, like that is a human construct.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's a human construct.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' For sure. Yeah. That's a construct. But time goes in one direction. And things go from more organization to less organization. And that is what time ultimately is. It's the change in—<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah. You can't get away from that.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. I guess in organization. Is that a good way to put it, Bob?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That's how I would do it. Yeah, absolutely.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Okay. Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I mean, you could talk about like psychological time and our perception of time. That's kind of a different beast in some ways. And it's kind of malleable and it depends on things. There's a lot of ways you could approach it. But I would just go right to entropy.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Is time the origin of time with the Big Bang? Or has time come prior to that? Or you don't need a Big Bang for there to be time?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well that's an unanswerable question at this point.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah. What came before the Big Bang? Hard to say at this point.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. Since the Big Bang created space time in our universe created our universe of space time, it's hard to even answer that question.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So it sounds like within the confines of our universe, time was a function of the Big Bang.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Right. So but that's like what's before the Big Bang may be a nonsensical question.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Right. But it's hard to say that there was no some – there wasn't a dimension of time beforehand whether it was another universe or whatever. But you think you would need some dimension of time for even a quantum fluctuation to happen.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' For anything to happen.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' You know, that created our universe if that's what your theory is.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But I think a more interesting question is, Bob, you brought up the perception of time. Because we all assume that all of our perception of time is the same, but we don't really know that. Especially for other animals. Like to squirrels, are we moving in slow motion?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' To house flies, we are.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' To whales, are we moving super fast?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, because of–<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Probably.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' You think because of their lifespan?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' No, because of their speed. You know, they're in water and they're not fast moving.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, see. I think it's the lifespan.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But it does relate to lifespan though. It does relate to lifespan.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' How fast is your metabolism? How fast is your heart beating?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So from one perspective, I think most animals probably have the same perception of time and this is why I think that. Because if you could perceive time more quickly, meaning that your brain is processing faster to the point where like other animals do seem to you like they're moving in slow motion, that would be a huge evolutionary advantage. So it would seem that evolutionary pressures would push at least any vertebrate to be perceiving time as quickly as they can, which is ultimately limited just by the biology of neurons and myelin and brain cells. And so we're probably all pushing up against that limit to some degree.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Except for sloths.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, even then, that's different. That's not their actual perception of time necessarily.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yes, it is.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But that could mean that, again, an alien species might perceive time very differently than we do. All right. Let's move on to science or fiction.<br />
<br />
== Science or Fiction <small>(1:29:53)</small> ==<br />
{{SOFinfo<br />
|item1 = Earth is the only world (planet, dwarf planet, or moon) in our solar system with >10% nitrogen in its atmosphere.<br />
|link1 = <ref>[]</ref><br />
<br />
|item2 = The human body is 3.3% nitrogen by mass.<br />
|link2 = <ref>[]</ref><br />
<br />
|item3 = No plant can fix its own nitrogen, but a symbiotic relationship with nitrogen-fixing bacteria has evolved many times, and also been evolutionarily lost many times.<br />
|link3 = <ref>[https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/05/plants-repeatedly-got-rid-of-their-ability-to-obtain-their-own-nitrogen/]</ref><br />
<br />
|}}<br />
{{SOFResults<br />
|fiction = nitrogen in atmosphere<!-- short word or phrase representing the item --><br />
|fiction2 = <!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
<br />
|science1 = nitrogen in human body<!-- short word or phrase representing the item --><br />
|science2 = nitrogen in plants<!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
|science3 = <!-- leave blank if absent --> <br />
<br />
|rogue1 =jay <!-- rogues in order of response --><br />
|answer1 =nitrogen in atmosphere <!-- item guessed, using word or phrase from above --><br />
<br />
|rogue2 =evan<br />
|answer2 =nitrogen in human body<br />
<br />
|rogue3 =cara<br />
|answer3 =nitrogen in atmosphere<br />
<br />
|rogue4 =bob <!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
|answer4 = nitrogen in atmosphere<!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
<br />
|rogue5 = <!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
|answer5 = <!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
<br />
|host =steve <!-- asker of the questions --><br />
<!-- for the result options below, <br />
only put a 'y' next to one. --><br />
|sweep = <!-- all the Rogues guessed wrong --><br />
|clever = <!-- each item was guessed (Steve's preferred result) --><br />
|win = <!-- at least one Rogue guessed wrong, but not them all --><br />
|swept = <!-- all the Rogues guessed right --><br />
}}<br />
''Voice-over: It's time for Science or Fiction.''<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Each week I come up with three science news items or facts, two real, one fake. Then I challenge my panel of skeptics to tell me which one they think is the fake. There's a theme this week because there hasn't really been enough time for enough news items to come out since the last time we did this. So I had to pick a theme and that theme is nitrogen. Figured since we talked about hydrogen earlier in the show, I would do science fiction on nitrogen. Okay. Three facts about nitrogen. You guys ready?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Item number one. Earth is the only world, planet, dwarf planet, or moon in our solar system with greater than 10% nitrogen in its atmosphere. Item number two. The human body is 3.3% nitrogen by mass. And item number three. No plant can fix its own nitrogen, but a symbiotic relationship with nitrogen fixing bacteria has evolved many times and also been evolutionarily lost many times. Jay, go first.<br />
<br />
=== Jay's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Okay. The first one here about the earth is the only planet, you say only world, dwarf planet or moon in our system with less than 10% nitrogen in its atmosphere.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Greater.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Greater. I'm sorry, greater than 10%. So Steve, did you put the word world here for a reason or is it just any one of the planets? Is there a difference?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So that's why in parentheses, I say planet, dwarf planet, or moon. That's why.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' He's including Pluto and Ceres.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Good. You're very inclusive.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yes.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' All right. So earth is the only world that has greater than 10% nitrogen in its atmosphere. Man, that's a good question. Now, just thinking about what I know about Mars' atmosphere. Damn you, Steve. That's a really tricky question. All right. Now, I just got to move on to the next one. The human body is 3.3% nitrogen by mass, by trade. And the next question is no plant can fix its own nitrogen. So you basically need to have a symbiotic relationship with some crazy-ass bacteria that can fix it for you. And I think that one is science because bacteria and nanotechnology, whenever they come up, they're always, yes, they can do it. Right, Bob? So between the human body being 3.3% nitrogen or the earth is the only world that has more than 10% nitrogen, I'm going to say that number one is the fiction about the planets.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay, Evan?<br />
<br />
=== Evan's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Earth, the only world in the solar system with greater than 10% nitrogen in its atmosphere. In its atmosphere. Somewhere else on the body it may have the 10% nitrogen. I don't know, sequestered in the ground or under the oceans or something like that. But in the atmosphere. I have a feeling that one's... Ugh, gosh. It seems right to me. Don't we get nitrogen in our atmosphere from carbon emissions and among other things? I'm trying to think what other planets or bodies would be capable of doing that or are doing that. I have a feeling that one's right. The human body 3.3% nitrogen by mass. Oh, gosh. That seems... Wow, that's a lot of nitrogen. See, it seems like it. But I don't know for sure. I don't know any of these for sure. And then the last one. And then the no plant can fix its own nitrogen. But if you have a relationship with nitrogen fixing bacteria. It evolved many times and has been evolutionarily lost many times. Gee whiz. That's a lot of detail in that last one you put in there, Steve. I'm trying to think. I don't have any real hard information. But just the way you're phrasing that. It sounds like science to me. I guess I'm left with the human body being 3.3% nitrogen by mass. I'll say the body. I'll say the human body one's fiction, Steve. But I really don't know.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay, Cara.<br />
<br />
=== Cara's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''C:''' The one that really kind of does stick out to me is the one that's so caveated. Which is that we're the only world with more than 10% of nitrogen and etc. I thought it was way higher than that too.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Wait. What did you think was way higher?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' The nitrogen content.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Of what?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' In our atmosphere.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It is.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, that is.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, yeah, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Way higher.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Way higher. And so the boundary there feels very low and my assumption is that some of the worlds that we think of as potentially habitable, like a few of the moons of Saturn or Jupiter maybe, could have nitrogen, a lot more nitrogen in their atmosphere. I think there's a reason you caveated this one. Maybe we are the planet with a lot of nitrogen and none of the other planets have much. But maybe, yeah, there are moons or something like that. So I'm going to go with that one as being the fiction.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay. And Bob.<br />
<br />
=== Bob's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Well, the only one I'm confident about is the nitrogen one.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' They're all about nitrogen.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' The plant fixing its own nitrogen.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' You had me there, Bob.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah. So, yeah, no plant can fix their own nitrogen and symbiotic relationship. Sure, I know that. But I don't know how absolute that is. I mean, there could be some quirky plant there. There's a few plants that they discovered that can fix their own nitrogen. And, blam, it's fiction. And you got us. And it would be a tricky one. So, yeah, it could be that. There could be some tricky plant that would wipe that out and make it fiction. So, crap, that sucks. I'm not aware of it. At the very least, I know that the vast majority of plants cannot fix their own nitrogen. So that's the most I could say about that. The other ones I'm not too sure about. The planet and the nitrogen on the plants, I just don't know. When I combine my nitrogen neurons and my solar system neurons, there's no crossover. It's just like I don't know. Except for the earth, I just don't know anything about the other planets or moons or worlds that have nitrogen. I just don't know anything about it. So it would just be a guess. And then the human body, 3.3% nitrogen. I mean it seems a little high to me. But it seems it could be reasonable. So just because of that, I'll say that the world one is fiction. Go with, I guess, what, Jay and Cara, right?<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #3 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay. So you guys all agree on number three. So we'll start there. No plant can fix its own nitrogen. But a symbiotic relationship with nitrogen-fixing bacteria has evolved many times and also been evolutionarily lost many times. So there's a lot there that could be wrong. There's a lot of details in there. You guys all think this one is science. And this one is science. This is science.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, nice.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So, yeah. So plants that, "fix their own nitrogen". And by fixing nitrogen, that means that they take nitrogen from the atmosphere.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' The broken ones and you fix them.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And you combine it with hydrogen to make ammonia, which then the plant can use as a source of nitrogen to make plant stuff.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Which means, though, if we ever get to the point where we can make plants using GMO fix their own nitrogen. That would be epic.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Absolutely. Game changer. It would be huge. Huge. So nitrogen is considered to be an inert gas, but it's really only a mostly inert gas.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Mostly dead.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. Because it exists as N2, as two nitrogen atoms with a triple bond. So it's a very strong bond. But some bacteria have evolved enzymes, nitrogenase, that can break that bond and then throw hydrogens in there to make ammonia. And then once you're in that state, you have ammonia. That's fertilizer, right? We talked about that previously, the Haber-Bosch reaction. Different kinds of plants use slightly different methods, but many of them have these little bulbs that house the bacteria. They provide food for the bacteria and the bacteria provides nitrogen for them. So it's a symbiotic relationship. And it's really energy intensive, which is why the bacteria kind of needs the plants to do this. It takes 16 moles of ATP to make one mole of ammonia from nitrogen.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Wow.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Wow. Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' 16 to 1. That's a lot of energy. A lot of energy. So in order to do it efficiently, they really need the energy from the plant. But of course, the plant gets a huge benefit. They don't have to try to get nitrogen from whatever has been recycled back into the soil from animals or whatever. They can just crank it out, get it from the atmosphere itself. And of course, that's a way of getting more nitrogen to the soil. So that's why if you do a crop rotation, one of the things you do is you plant a crop that does fix its own nitrogen, like legumes. And then you could plow that into the soil. Now you have all that nitrogen, which you can then use to fertilize some other crop that doesn't fix its own nitrogen. But Bob is right. We're studying the genetics of this because we want to be able to give the ability to form that relationship with nitrogen fixing bacteria to other crops so that we don't have to give them nitrogen fertilizer, which is one of the worst things that farming does to the environment is nitrogen runoff. So that would be huge. But what the recent study found was that this ability in plants evolved independently multiple times. But then also some of the downstream species lost the ability. And it's easy to see why that would happen. You think, well, why would you evolve to lose an ability which is so useful? And the answer is because it is so energy intensive. If you don't absolutely need to do this, then you're not going to use that energy. It's like flight. Like flight is hugely advantageous. But birds evolve flightlessness because flight is also very energy intensive. If you don't need to do it, it's better that you don't do it. So it's kind of similar that way.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, you get a hummingbird that figured out how to live without flying, it would leap at that chance.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. Right.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #2 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. I guess we'll go backwards. The body is 3.3% nitrogen by mass. This one's pretty straightforward. Evan, you think this one is fiction? Everyone else thinks this one is science. And this one is science.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yes.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yes, 3.3% is correct. Yeah, I mean the elements in the body are basically carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen. Those are like the four biggies that make up biology. So 3.3% by mass for nitrogen. That sounds about right. And it is right. Okay.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #1 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Which means that Earth is the only world, planet, dwarf planet, or moon in our solar system with greater than 10% nitrogen in its atmosphere is the fiction. So I ask you, especially you three who thought this was a fiction, what are the other worlds that have more than 10% nitrogen in their atmosphere?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I was thinking it might be one of those moons of the really big gas giants.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Is it Titan? I think it's Titan.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You are correct. Titan. Titan. It is Titan. Bob is correct. That's one of the two.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That was in my head. It was there.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Titan has a dense atmosphere, so it's one of the two moons with a dense atmosphere, and it's mostly nitrogen. It's the only moon with a significant nitrogen atmosphere. So Mars is mostly carbon dioxide, trace nitrogen.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Is it Pluto, Steve?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' What about Venus?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's Pluto. That's correct, Jay. Pluto is the second one.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Nice, Jay.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's the first thing I said when you were like, why are you saying this?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Maybe that's why I said that.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Interesting.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Pluto has a wispy atmosphere, but it's mostly nitrogen.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Why? Do we know?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It's mostly dead.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Why did it trap all that nitrogen?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' There's a lot of nitrogen ice on the surface of Pluto, so some of it sublimates into the atmosphere. Venus has very little nitrogen. Again, mostly carbon dioxide.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Methanol.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Carbon dioxide, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. The gas giants are mostly hydrogen.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Hydrogen.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Mercury basically has no atmosphere. It has a very, very, so ridiculously thin atmosphere.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Like the moon.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. So that's it. So Earth is the only planet with a nitrogen atmosphere. Of the dwarf planets, Pluto has a wispy one. We don't really know enough about the outer ones, so I don't think Ceres has much of an atmosphere. And of the moons, only Titan does. That we know of. Yeah. So I thought that was cool. One of those questions were like, even if you know a lot about astronomy and a lot about nitrogen, that's like a trivia kind of fact that it would be hard to know unless you specifically looked it up. You know what I mean? Unless you happen to remember reading about, oh, yeah, Titan having a nitrogen atmosphere or Pluto having a nitrogen atmosphere.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I did read about it and then forgot. And then you said something that triggered it just a few minutes ago.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And that 10% cutoff is so low.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But it's true, though, because Mars is—<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So much higher than that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Should I say significant nitrogen atmosphere? I'll just put a number on it just to make it hard and fast. But Earth is 78%, right? Around 78% nitrogen.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Mostly nitrogen.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And then what were Pluto and Titan again?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Titan's up there, I think.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Both of them are, "mostly nitrogen". I don't know if I read that.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, OK. So they're up there like Earth.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. Or even more so.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Cool. Yeah. And then everything else, under 10%.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Trace. Yeah. 2%, 1%, very low.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's cool.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Nitrogen is really important to Earth. There's a nitrogen cycle. You know? It's like there's a—<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Gotta have it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, the nitrogen cycle.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's important for life.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Absolutely. But essentially, it's important for life, but the name for nitrogen in French means without life. And the reason for that is because when they were going back to when they were just discovering the elements, Lavoisier and those guys, when they were experimenting with air, if you take the oxygen out of the air by burning it, you're left with basically nitrogen, which of course if you put like a mouse in a cave—<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It dies. Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' In a chamber with deoxygenated air, they die.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That stuff happens.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. So the nitrogen is the part of the atmosphere that is incompatible with life. But actually—<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's so funny.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. And they had this weird idea about phlogiston. Remember phlogiston?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yes.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Phlogiston. So like oxygen is also called deflogistinated air.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, deflogistinated. Gotta remember that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' There's like this bizarre theory that has—you know, whatever. They were trying. They were trying. They had a hypothesis about what was happening when you heated compounds up like mercury dioxide and then it released the oxygen. But it was all wrong. They had a backwards about what was happening. It took them a while to sort out how like the elements work.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, it's complicated.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. And when you think about it, we take it for granted, but if you really knew nothing and you were trying to figure from scratch like how chemistry works, it's amazing they eventually got to—<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I just find a textbook.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' —the right answer. Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I just make time go the other way. No, it is interesting how much of our language is coloured by like culture and the amount of knowledge we had at the time. And this is, of course, how my brain works. I've been working on my dissertation proposal and I'm studying medical aid in dying. And, of course, I should have just known this from etymology, but I never thought about it before. But the word euthanasia, which has such a dark connotation in modern society, literally means good death. Like you, that preface, is good or happy and thanatos, right? So euthanasia is a good death.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, wow.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' A happy death. Yeah. And that's how we use it. It's gentle. It's easy. It's going out easy.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I used to think it meant something about the young people on the other side of the planet.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right. Euthanasia. I think every kid has that when they hear it the first time. And also same with Alzheimer's. They hear old timers. It's very cute.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' And the old factory sensors.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Thick as hell anaemia.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Teal factory.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, and what's cystic fibrosis, they actually have, their foundation is called 65 Roses because that's how a lot of the little kids who have it, that's what they think it is.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Somebody told me that the kids in their kindergarten class were all getting checked for headlights.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So cute.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Nice.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Because that's the way our brain works. We find the closest match that we already know and that's what it sounds like to us. Headlights.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It works. Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Makes sense.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, Evan, give us a quote.<br />
<br />
== Skeptical Quote of the Week <small>(1:46:39)</small> ==<br />
<br />
<blockquote>Science is not a set of facts. It’s not an ideology. It’s just a system that humans created that is really, really good at uncovering truth.<br>– Hank Green </blockquote><br />
<br />
'''E:''' This quote for this week was suggested by listener Andrew Mitchell from Melbourne, Australia. Appreciate it. He writes, hi, Evan. I thought you might enjoy this quote from Hank Green, author and science communicator. "Science is not a set of facts. It is not an ideology. It's just a system that humans created that is really, really good at uncovering truth." I like that quote.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. It's a method. It's a set of methods. Absolutely. And that's how it needs to be taught. The cognitive set of methods that make up science not just here are some facts. And unfortunately, in my experience having shepherded two daughters through the public school system in the United States in a pretty good party in terms of like all things considered, Connecticut has actually a very good school system. But even still, very terrible education in terms of like actually thinking scientifically. They were just going through the motions. They never really got to conveying an understanding of how scientific reasoning works.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' You know, could be so much better.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Could be so much better. I know. Very disappointing. I had to teach them that myself, basically. Now, they get distracted by hands on learning stuff where nobody knows why they're doing what they're doing. You know what I mean?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah. Going through the motions.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. Going through the motions. All right. Thank you, guys, for joining me this week.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Thank you, Steve.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Sure, man.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Thanks Steve.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Let's get back to NECSS.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yep.<br />
<br />
== Signoff == <br />
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}}</div>Hearmepurrhttps://www.sgutranscripts.org/w/index.php?title=SGU_Episode_819&diff=19123SGU Episode 8192024-01-21T18:36:15Z<p>Hearmepurr: episode done</p>
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|qowText = One person recently, goaded into desperation by the litany of unrelieved negation, burst out ‘Don’t you believe in anything?’ Yes’, I said. ‘I believe in evidence. I believe in observation, measurement, and reasoning, confirmed by independent observers. I’ll believe anything, no matter how wild and ridiculous, if there is evidence for it. The wilder and more ridiculous something is, however, the firmer and more solid the evidence will have to be.<br />
|qowAuthor = Isaac Asimov <!-- use a {{w|wikilink}} or use <ref name=author>[url publication: title]</ref>, description [use a first reference to an article attached to the quote. The second reference is in the QoW section] --> <br />
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<br />
== Introduction ==<br />
<br />
''Voice-over: You're listening to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.'' <br />
<br />
'''S:''' Hello and welcome to the {{SGU|link=y}}. Today is Wednesday, March 17<sup>th</sup>, 2021, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella... <br />
<br />
'''B:''' Hey, everybody!<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Cara Santa Maria... <br />
<br />
'''C:''' Howdy. <br />
<br />
'''S:''' ...and Jay Novella.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Hey guys. <br />
<br />
'''S:''' Evan is hip deep in taxes, so he will not be able to join us this week, but he will be joining us again next week. So good luck with all those taxes, Evan.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, we got an extension at least, not an extension, but yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' One month extension.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Has that been confirmed?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Takes the pressure off a little bit.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' May 17th, I think.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That means one more month of putting it off, right, Bob?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' You know, this year I promise I'm not going to do it, Jay. I'm not going to put it off.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I've actually mostly done it. I took the week off. I have a week off from work. And what am I going to do for my one week off? I am working. I am working from home the whole week. It's basically just a month of weekends where I got to do all the projects, spring cleaning, taxes, all that stuff I don't have time to do normally. So like today I cleaned up most of my garage, which was pandemic filthy. It was like I always do like once or twice a year I have to clean up my garage. And of course I promise I'm never going to let it get this dirty again. And of course it does. But this was probably the worst. This was probably because it just is. Oh my God. So part of it is that like we're just ordering everything online now. And the amount of cardboard that we're collecting is greater than the capacity of my recycling bin. You know what I mean?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That happened to me too. That happened to me, Steve. I had to do a drive down to the recycling dump.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's what we did, Jay and I went yesterday. We had a car full of cardboard and other crap from this. It's also I have the studio deliveries and everything too. So I got like double cardboard.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Did you get paid?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No. Just drop it all off.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' A lot of the recycling centers in L.A., at least around L.A., you drive onto a big scale. You get a ticket. It weighs your car. You dump all the recycling.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' They weigh your car again?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And then they weigh your car again. And they pay you for how much cardboard you put in.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh my God.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. But I drove right past the scale and didn't see it. So on the way out, I was like, no, man.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So how much could you get paid for a car load? You know, what happens?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, I don't know. Like five or 10 bucks. But still. That's funny, you know?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' A couple whoppers.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's kind of cool. Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You get lunch on the way home and you're good.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And it's cash. Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Steve, there is an item that you need to mention here.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' You know, remember that death refrigerator you had, like the kind that like a murderer would have in their garage?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, like that you could fit a whole body in?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, it wasn't that. It was. So this is what happened. We had a freezer in our garage for extra freezer space. And at some point, it failed. But it's in the garage. And so we didn't notice until weeks later that the freezer was not running, you know? And so it was one of those things like, all right, at some point we're going to have to clean that out. But you know, that's going to be a big job.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. But in the meantime, just don't touch it. Don't open it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. So we didn't. And then that was two years ago.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, my God.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Here's the other thing. You know, we have the twice a year big pickup where they pick up big items. And so we have to get it ready for the town to pick up the big garbage. And then they had all these rules like we had to take the door off and everything. And then they haven't picked up in a year because of the pandemic. They didn't pick up last spring or last fall. So I haven't had an opportunity to get rid of it. So now I just have to just open that thing up and clean it out.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, gosh. So there's going to be like rotten meat in it?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It was bad in there. It was bad.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Or like desiccated now, huh?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. At least it was mostly... It was mostly smudge but it was still bad.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I keep thinking of Dirk Gently, who did that in one of his books, and he kept it shut for a long, long time. And then by the end of the book, it gave birth to a god. I don't think that's going to happen to you, though, Steve.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Steve, how bad does it smell?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, I did it when the temperature was freezing. So it was not bad. Yeah, it was frozen overnight. So it wasn't bad. It was actually just mostly frozen. Jay's like, oh, you should spray that crap down with Clorox. So I did. But I was going to hose it out, but my hoses are frozen. So now I have to wait for them to thaw so I can hose it down, take the door off, and then I have to make a second trip to the recycling center to get rid of that bad boy. But the garage is clean.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Imagine you got a phaser, set it to disintegrate.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I know. Wouldn't that be awesome? Or just... I mean, I would love to have a household nano-recycling unit where you just throw anything in there, and it breaks it down to its elemental particles or whatever stable solid...<br />
<br />
'''B:''' And that's your feedstock for whatever else you want to make.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, that'd be cool.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, that's it. Then you use that to make other stuff that you want. I want a new couch.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Just the cardboard sitch for me was such a pain. Of course, I go on a Sunday because it's like the only day that I can go. And the place I usually go is closed because I didn't bother looking online. So then I find another place online that's open, drive all the way across town there, and they're like, oh, we stopped accepting cardboard. Like, what?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's like the one thing.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I'm like, yeah, it's not worth it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, it was too many people. I mean, it's crazy.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's crazy. And so then I'm like, okay. So I found another place that was like 30 minutes away from there.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, we don't accept matter, just antimatter and dark matter.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Exactly.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No more baryon. We don't... Yeah, except baryons anymore.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Because the thing is, once your car is filled to the top with cardboard, you need to get rid of it that day.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, you can't drive around like that.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I hate the way it smells. You can't see beyond it. And it was, oh, it's infuriating. But then I vacuumed my whole garage. I cleaned everything up. So now it's just my car and my elliptical and then my one storage unit. And I think it's time to sell the elliptical. I think it might be time. I'm loving my rower, and I don't have my elliptical anymore.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' There you go.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So sell it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I'm thinking I'm going to wait until like people start to reemerge. Because if you remember early in the pandemic, there was panic buying of exercise equipment. And then everybody just like got lazy and did what they did. And I think once we reemerge into the real world, there's going to be another panic buying of exercise equipment when people realize they have to like interface with other people again. You know?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Got to lose those pandemic pounds.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Maybe I'll make a little bit more money if I wait a couple of months before I put it on Craigslist.<br />
<br />
== COVID-19 Update <small>(6:30)</small> == <br />
<br />
'''S:''' So very quickly, before we get to our regular segments, quick pandemic update. I wrote on science-based medicine today about the AstraZeneca vaccine and the concerns about it causing blood clots. Have you guys heard this?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' All over Europe, right?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So 13 different countries have suspended it because of this. Not the UK, though. They're still giving it in the UK. And this is because of reported case reports of people developing different forms of blood clot, DVT, or pulmonary embolism. And a couple of cases of sagittal venous thrombosis clotting in the veins in the brain. So what's the deal with that? And so this is what I wrote about. The fact is that the World Health Organization and various scientific organizations in Europe, including in the UK, and the company AstraZeneca have reviewed the data, and there is no evidence of any correlation with the vaccine. So this is not peaking above the background rate of blood clots that should be occurring normally. You know, there's a certain background rate. So there's no excess blood clots from what you would expect in the population. The only possible exception to that is that the two, I think, cases of the venous thrombosis in the brain were in younger people. And some people were saying that is more than we would expect by chance. But actually, if you look at all the data, it isn't. It's outdated. If you look at the updated data on the incidence of that, it's actually still like below the background rate.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Nothing to see here.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So, but isn't this going to be one of those bad examples of where you can't put the genie back in the bottle? Like, so now we know that this is a fluke. But if they start trying to vaccinate with this vaccine again in the countries where they already halted it, aren't people going to, like, it's so much harder to correct information.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, I know. It's hard. And then the countries who suspended it are getting a lot of criticism for overreacting. Like, we're in the middle of a pandemic. These are vaccines that we're rolling out. We're monitoring them. But you can't freak out every time something like this happens. Just let us take a look at the data. You know, if anything peaks up above the background, we'll let you know. And they really overreacted. And the other thing I wrote about was, if you take a risk versus benefit approach to this question, even if every single reported case of a blood clot was actually caused by the vaccine, it's still, you're still better off getting the vaccine.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right. It's still a lower risk than the risk of...<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. Because guess what else causes blood clots? COVID. You know, it's... But also it'll kill you in other ways, too. But yeah, the absolute...<br />
<br />
'''C:''' They'll disfigure you or... Yeah, yeah, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The risk versus benefit is still in favour of the vaccine, even in the worst case scenario, which is almost certainly not the case. And the best evidence we have so far suggests that this is not an actual causal relationship to the vaccine. It's just background rate. And that's it. Again, even if there was like, oh, yeah, one of these cases was triggered by the vaccine, something in the middle like that happens, it's still way, way in favour of getting the vaccine. So it wasn't a reason to pause with these low numbers.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, and I'm glad you bring up background rate, because one of the things that I often see in the kind of misinformation that's being thrown around the internet is these stories. And I'll see them sometimes first person accounts, people saying like, I posted something about vaccination on Twitter, because I share a lot of science stories, I share five science stories a day, every day. And you know, I shared something about vaccination, and I got all these comments. And one person was like my aunt died the day after she got vaccinated, and I'm never going to get vaccinated. And it's hard, because it's like, it's an individual person, obviously, the motivation to believe that that's the link is going to be really high. But of course, other people see that and they go, oh, her aunt died after and it's like, yeah, because sometimes people die on days. And when millions of people are getting vaccinated, by chance alone, some of those people are going to die on those days.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Right. And you probably saw an episode of Friends that day, too. Does that mean Friends caused it?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Exactly and so it's a really hard thing, though, because death is traumatic.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' And that's the power of those anecdotes. I mean, I know somebody who will not let their child get vaccinated because their child got sick after the vaccine, and they just she connected it in her head.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, think about all the people who say, I will never get a flu shot again, because the last time I got a flu shot, it gave me the flu, which doesn't happen. It simply doesn't happen.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Not from the flu shot.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No. Exactly. They either had a reaction to the shot, but more likely, they just already had the flu. And so the day they got the shot happened to be the day before the symptoms really got bad.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, because the incubation period is not that much.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' And which yet again shows how horrible people are with statistics.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, yeah, and how when two things happen close together in time, we have a natural tendency to link them.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well if you think about our evolutionary milieu, it probably was evolutionarily advantageous to really overhaul possible risk associations.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Absolutely.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But it just isn't anymore. We live in too complicated a technological civilization. Our monkey brains don't hold up anymore. Those algorithms, those heuristics in our brains are outdated. And that's why we need math and statistics and science and philosophy and stuff to deal with the complexity of the world.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' When are we going to get an update, man? When does that patch come in?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, we need the patch.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's so hard. You think about the perfect example of like, I ate those berries, and then I puked my guts out. I'm never going to eat those berries again.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, that's probably a good call.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But then I ate those jelly beans, and then I puked my guts out. I'm never going to eat those jelly beans. Probably not from the jelly beans, my friend.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Well, it depends on how many you ate. That's what I would say about that.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It depends on how many you ate.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So Bob, we do have the patch for that. It's called skepticism.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Well, yeah, there you go.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's called the skeptic's guide to the universe. How to know what's really real in a world increasingly full of fake.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Thinking 2.0. All right.<br />
<br />
== Your Number's Up <small>(12:30)</small> ==<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Bob, you're going to do a segment of Your Numbers Up.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yes. Yes, I am, Steve. Welcome to Bob, Your Numbers Up. In celebration of Pi Day, most recently March 14th, which is celebrated around the world, by the way, I will talk about the very cool number pi. Pi Day is especially awesome since it's a no-brainer to celebrate it with pi, P-I-E. And as we all know, any day with pi, P-I-E, is a good day. So pi is clearly, I think it's one of the most famous numbers if you define famous as how many people have heard of it, right? I mean, pi is just everywhere. Pi itself, it's a constant describing the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter. The number itself is 3.14159265358979323846 dot, dot, dot, that just keeps going forever. So I just barely scratched the surface there. Although we have computers that have scratched the surface a lot deeper, well over 50 trillion digits and beyond. It's hard to get an exact number with the latest number is surprisingly, but 50 trillion plus is good enough. Pi is an irrational and transcendental number. It'll continue infinitely without repetition or pattern. It's irrational because it can't be written as a ratio of two integers. So if you have 22 over seven, that's not bad, but it's 3.1428. It's not 3.1415. And you're not really going to get too much closer to that with two integers. So that's why it's irrational. It's transcendental because it's not an algebraic number. That means that pi is not the solution of an algebraic equation with rational number coefficients. And I'll end it there. Many have known, including the Babylonians four millennia ago, that the circle's circumference is about roughly a little bit more than three of its diameters, no matter the size. No matter the size, that will stand up. Many cultures have made estimates of the exact figure, but they didn't quite nail it. A proof was created only, I think, in 1790. There was a proof that proved that it was an irrational number. Let's see. Oh, yes. I'm going to end with Pi Day again. Physicist Larry Shaw at San Francisco's Exploratorium realized at a staff retreat in 1988 that March 14 has the first three numbers of pi. And I wonder what they were doing at that retreat, Larry. Anyway, now it's a day to celebrate math and science and eating pie, and we need more days like that in the year. This was Bob. Your number's up. I hope you enjoyed this more than when your number's up.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Thank you, Bob.<br />
<br />
'''C:'' In most of the world, though, they don't do March 14th, they do the 14th of March. So it'd be 1.43.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I think they're just rolling with it because one Pi Day is from what I can get. I didn't know how worldwide it is, but multiple sources are saying that this is like celebrated everywhere. So that's whatever.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Cara, it's American pie, baby.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's American pie.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Nice.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, no.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' On multiple levels.<br />
<br />
== News Items ==<br />
<br />
=== Landing on the Moon <small>(15:35)</small> ===<br />
* [https://phys.org/news/2021-03-optimal-human-architectures-moon.html Researchers identify optimal human landing system architectures to land on the Moon]<ref>[https://phys.org/news/2021-03-optimal-human-architectures-moon.html Phys.org: Researchers identify optimal human landing system architectures to land on the Moon]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, Jay, tell us about the science of landing on the moon.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So a paper was published in the journal Acta Astronautica by researchers from Skoltec and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology about this question, Steve. So it's very fortuitous that you just asked it. So they have done an assessment of many different ways to land on the moon, and what they try to do is they figure out what the best overall method is. And it's not just landing on the moon that they studied. They included getting the ship like back into orbit and how to use a system that will get a craft to and from the moon. And it's pretty complicated. So to go back into history a little bit. So NASA has not landed people on the moon since Apollo 17, and that was back in December of 1972. And as you probably know, NASA has been committed to landing a man and woman on the moon by 2024. Now, I think we all can agree this is probably not going to happen by 2024. It's going to happen, though. I'm guessing probably within the next six years, we might actually see a mission happen. Landing on the moon is the prime directive of NASA's Artemis program. The Lunar Gateway, this is an orbital platform that stays in the lunar orbit, and it's going to be the last way station for astronauts who land on the moon. This is a really cool advancement that we're going to make. It's going to improve the number of missions, the quality of those missions. It's going to give another level of safety, which is fantastic. Now, since the Lunar Gateway was conceived, though, it requires engineers to rethink how we should actually get people to and from the moon surface. Probably not rethinking how we get from Earth to the moon, because I think that we've already pretty much nailed that. It's more about going back and forth, back and forth, back and forth to the moon from orbit around the moon. The plan, of course, is to use reusable modules, and this is a huge money saver, as we've seen. The question is, keeping limited resources in mind, what is the optimal way to do this? That's what they tried to figure out. If we look back on the only way we ever landed on the moon, once we had a ship in orbit around the moon, the Apollo program had a two-stage system. In short, the lunar lander would separate from the command module, the lunar lander would hit the rockets, slow itself down, gravity would pull it down to the moon, and as it came close to the surface, they had to fly it in and land it, sometimes with almost no fuel left, but that's another story. And then when they were done, they would get back in the ship, and they would be in the area that was intended for the crew to be, and they would lift off from the surface of the moon, but they would leave the lander part, the legs and the whole bottom part of the lunar landing module there, right? So that is considered a two-stage system, a system that brings them down, and then a smaller ship that goes up and connects back up to the command module. That's really cool, and that's what they came up with for the Apollo mission.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But Jay, this is a bit of an aside, but how familiar are you with the story of how that system, that Apollo system, came to be?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, why don't you tell us about that?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, because that wasn't their first idea. Their first idea was called the direct ascent approach, where basically they launched a ship. It was still a multi-stage rocket, but that final rocket that goes to the moon, the entire thing would land on the moon, blast off from the moon, and return to Earth.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So one ship the whole way.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, that's right.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That's silly.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, we look back now and say, well, that's silly. But that was their first idea, and that was the one that had a lot of support.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' You know what's sillier? Shooting a cannon into the moon's eye.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That is a bit sillier. So they actually designed a rocket to do that called the Nova. It was obviously never developed. But this rocket was much bigger than even the Saturn V, and that was the big-<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Steve, they called it a Nova?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Nova.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That means no-go.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, well, it's not Spanish.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' But Jay, you know that didn't happen, right? The Nova sold very well in Spanish.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, I know. I know, but it still means no-go.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I know.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But it also means-<br />
<br />
'''B:''' New star.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' New star, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' In any case, so the Nova was a huge rocket, and that was the limitation of that plan, and they had doubts that they could finish it in the timeframe that Kennedy asked for, by the end of the decade. Another idea was the EOR, or the Earth Orbit Rendezvous. When that planned, they would launch multiple Saturn Vs into Earth orbit with the pieces of the bigger rocket that goes to the moon. They would assemble them in orbit, based out of a space station, and then take that rocket to the moon, land it, take it off, again, single stage down to and from the moon.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Wow.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' NASA liked that idea, because like, hey, we get a space station out of it. We could use that space station for other things as well. So that became the most popular idea. But this one guy, he did have a team of engineers with him, but it was a very small group of engineers led by one guy called John Houbolt, H-O-U-B-O-L-T. I don't know if I'm pronouncing that correctly. He said, you guys are crazy. We're never going to get either of those things done in the timeframe that we have. This is what we have to do. And he outlined the whole multi-stage to the moon that you just laid out, Jay. We're not going to take anything one step further than we absolutely need it. We don't need the landers. We leave them on the moon. We only land the smallest component possible on the moon, and only take off the smallest component possible from the moon. Everyone else, all the big hitters in NASA, hated that idea. They thought he was crazy. They really were.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Crazy?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. They really were mean to him. It wasn't just brushed aside. He was really criticized for that idea. But he persisted. He would not let it go. He would not let it go. And finally, he went over everybody's head and wrote a letter to the head of NASA and said, dude, I'm sorry to break protocol, but none of these other ideas are going to work. This is the only thing that's going to work. At least give it a serious hearing. And just to get him off his back, they entered that idea into serious consideration. Two months later, that idea went out, probably because at some point, Wernher von Braun flipped and supported the idea. And then that became the way he went to NASA. So even though Humboldt left NASA in 63, when Apollo 11 was landing on the moon, they invited him to the control room to see it. And von Braun said, thank you. That was a good idea. Like, he was acknowledging that we would not be standing here right now landing on the moon if it weren't for you. You pushing, not only having that idea, but pushing it against all of the heavy hitters at NASA.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' And what was his name? Humboldt?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, H-O-U-B-O-L-T, Humboldt.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Okay.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I just find it really interesting that you have one engineer that had the idea, the correct idea, the only idea that was going to work. And you have a room full of people who are incredibly skilled at what they do. And it really was, it just took him pushing it really hard to make them realize it. You would think in that story that other people would go, oh yeah, he's right, right?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But the thing is, we're looking back with 2020 hindsight, and it all seems inevitable now. Like Bob said when he first heard, really? They're going to take one giant rocket and land it on the moon? That's nuts. But yeah, but that was the idea.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right, but we hadn't done this before.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, we hadn't done it before. And so yeah, once it all works out, then it all seems inevitable. It's just that hindsight bias is so powerful. But if you go back to the point where they had no idea, they really had a blank board. It's like, how are we going to get to the moon? Let me add a little bit of one, sorry, last thing. The main reason for their opposition, the main reason for their opposition was perfectly reasonable. They were skeptical about their ability to have a two ships rendezvous in lunar orbit. Because you have the lander, after it takes off from the moon, would have to hook back up with the command module circling the moon. And they're like, that's going to be hard. And if we fail, the astronauts are dead. If we try to do that around Earth, if they fail, they come back down to Earth. But you know what I mean? You can't fail to do that in lunar orbit. So that was perfectly reasonable. The difference was that Humboldt says, we can do this. And yes, this is tricky, but not only can we do it, it's easier than the problems with your other ideas. It's easier than that Nova rocket.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So interesting. They did test that in Earth orbit, which was really cool. If you see some of those missions, read back on some of those missions, they were scared. They didn't know what was going to happen. They knew it was a tricky maneuver. All right. So to continue on here, I just thought that that story that Steve just told gives some context to the complexity of what we're doing here. I mean, this is a big deal. This is not easy stuff. The next series of lunar missions that are going to happen will be landing in a location within the lunar South Pole. They picked that area for several reasons that you can read up on your own. So the researchers took into account that the astronauts were going to be leaving from the lunar gateway. Where would it be in orbit? Where's the optimal place to leave to make a landing, to make their way down to the moon surface? They factored in a four-person crew with approximately a seven-day mission on the moon. And the amount of time you spend on the moon is important because the time that you take off from any location will dictate where you can get to, right? If you're in orbit or if you're going to take off and you want to rendezvous with something in orbit, you don't just take off whenever you want. There's windows of time that you got to make. So anyway, so they had to consider what propellant was best and also how many stages should be used. The cost involved was a huge factor. And they ended up having 39 different scenarios that they considered. And each of these scenarios that they tested had different configurations of the number of stages, different kinds of propellant used at different stages. And they used, of course, mathematical models to run through all the varieties of system architecture. So at the end, this is a very detailed process. What do you think they ended up finding is the best option?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I know because you told me already.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Well, I was wrong when we were talking, by the way, Steve.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' What you said was that the exact system that Apollo used.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Right. Now, that is partly correct.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay. It was only mostly correct, not completely correct?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah. We're reading on this, of course, because we're researching pretty much up to the last minute when we do the show. So their analysis showed that a two-stage architecture like the one used in the Apollo program, this is the best system to go with. The overall weight of the vehicles needed and the propellant was less, which would inevitably result in a lower cost per mission, which is the factor, the overarching factor here. So then, though, when they factored in using reusable vehicles, they found that a one-stage or a three-stage system was comparable to a two-stage system. And ultimately, they ended up selecting a single-stage reusable system that would run on liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen. So in their preliminary analysis, they did not factor how likely each mission's success would be overall or crew safety. And of course, this would lead them to have to do more testing.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' This was just efficiency?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, this was just efficiency. So they have to do more elaborate modeling to factor in all of the other stuff that goes into it, which is a ton of other stuff that they have to consider to get those types of answers. So this is very interesting if you think about how much they have to do, all the factoring that they have to do just to figure out what is the best way to handle bringing people down from orbit around the moon. And I find that this information is like, I don't really understand how they do all of this. I'm sure they're crunching numbers like crazy. But they still have to come up with like, okay, so how would we do this? What would one stage look like? What would two stages look like? What would three stages look like? Then they have to figure out all the different reasons why they would use different fuel at different times during all of these moments during the move from the orbit around the moon to the surface of the moon. So they have to have perfect knowledge of how heavy these materials are, how they'll burn, what they're good at doing. The fuels behave differently at different places. It's a staggering amount of things that have to be considered, and they factored it down to 39 different setups. So we have to keep in mind, though, that they selected a two-stage system because they didn't have a permanent orbiting lunar station, like Steve said. They knew that they weren't going to end up having that, so they had to go with the two-stage system. So when they left the moon during the Apollo missions, they ended up connecting back to the command module. Back then, there was zero consideration for reusability, as Steve was saying. We weren't even thinking about this stuff back then, so reusability wasn't on the table. They also discovered that without having the orbiting lunar station, using a three-stage landing system was not possible. This was the research that they just did. It just wasn't a possible scenario without the orbiting station. So reusability, in the end, is what moved them away from two-stage to either one-stage or three-stage. I don't even know what three-stage looks like. Do you, Steve?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, that's what I was going to ask. Is the station one of the stages, or no? They're saying you have the station, then you have three stages, but you're reusing all of them, one of them? The one stage makes sense. You send one ship down, it comes back up, the whole thing is reused. Whatever money you lose on fuel, you make up on not having to throw away half your lander. I get that. That makes sense. You'd have to do a little more research to find out what would the three-stage system be like and what parts would be reusable.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah. If you think about the floating platform, they're going to be sending something to and from the moon, to and from the moon, back and forth, back and forth. Now, it doesn't go through a burning atmosphere. It doesn't deal with any water, corrosiveness, or any of that stuff. It really is just the shock of turning those engines on and off if they don't have a rough landing. Those modules are going to be able to last, I bet, a pretty long time without having to worry about all the crap that they go through coming down back to Earth. It's a really good system if you think about it like, yeah, reuse it. Just keep reusing them, refuel them, and send them back down over and over again. That's the way to do it. You want as little material out there as possible.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. It seems to make sense. If you have a lunar orbital platform and you're going to be making multiple trips down to the surface, having a reusable lander makes the most sense. As long as you have the ability to not only refuel, but refurbish it in lunar orbit. It's not going to be in a hangar in NASA on the Earth. It's going to be in orbit where you're going to have to make sure it all works again. That process is probably going to be the limiting factor there.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
=== Seeing Thylacines <small>(30:41)</small> ===<br />
* [https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/10/science/thylacines-tasmanian-tigers-sightings.html Tasmanian Tigers Are Extinct. Why Do People Keep Seeing Them?]<ref>[https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/10/science/thylacines-tasmanian-tigers-sightings.html The New York Times: Tasmanian Tigers Are Extinct. Why Do People Keep Seeing Them?]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, Cara.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's me.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Tell us about sightings of Tasmanian tigers.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yes. In other words, today we'll be talking about confirmation bias. Yeah, so you guys know about the Tasmanian tiger, aka the thylacine, because it's not actually a tiger. Sometimes also referred to as a Tasmanian wolf, also not a wolf, but the thylacine is an extinct marsupial. I think it was the largest carnivorous marsupial in the world. It evolved quite a long time ago. The last known, I think it was declared extinct in like 1936. Originally, it roamed all across the continent of Australia, and also Tasmania and New Guinea. Unfortunately, when Europeans came in and started to displace both the aboriginals and also many of the animals, the thylacine was pushed out of its main kind of home range and ultimately ended up sort of being trapped only on the island of Tasmania, which is where we get the name Tasmanian tiger. I think it's related, actually, to the Tasmanian devil. There are some extant species that are related to it, like the numbat. I don't know if you guys have ever seen a numbat, but they're really cute. Yeah, I would look up the numbat, it's a cute one. And it may actually be one of the confusions when people cite Tasmanian tigers. So I don't know if people listening know, but I would be kind of surprised if they didn't, especially if you're into these kind of skeptical topics like cryptozoology. But Tasmanian tiger sightings are very common. They sort of peaked in the 1980s, there was a big push to try and find Tasmanian tigers. After they were first deemed extinct, of course, for many decades, there were legitimate scientific expeditions trying to find remaining individuals. This is not out of the realm of possibility at the time. We have found even today organisms that we thought were extinct in little pockets in places where we didn't expect to find them, like the black brown babbler, which was apparently extinct since the 1840s. Two of them were caught in Indonesia and were named and identified. There's another example of a bee called the Australian cloaked bee, which was last seen in 1923. But a tiny population of them was discovered by an entomologist. So it does happen. And of course...<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, but bees aren't large carnivores.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Bees aren't large carnivorous marsupials, yeah. And that's the other thing. Oftentimes, when we think of cryptids or cryptozoology, we think of things like Bigfoot, we think of things like Sasquatch or Loch Ness Monster or something. These organisms that never existed. What we're talking about here is something that did exist, went extinct, and has never again been seen in nature, yet undeterred, there are groups who still look for them. There's even a group called, I love this, I mean, I don't love it, it's annoying, butI kind of love it, Thylacine Awareness Group of Australia. And so just this past month, the Thylacine Awareness Group of Australia, I think led by Neil Waters. Yes, of course, led by, aka, only Neil Waters.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I suspect they don't want people to be aware that they're extinct.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, exactly.It's like, I'm not sure what that, yeah, what they're going for with that. There were some YouTube videos posted that promised conclusive photographic proof of a family of thylacines with a juvenile within their mix, and it was moving through the brush. And a bunch of people got really excited. These photographs were sent off to experts. They were quickly debunked by multiple experts. Yet, of course, this group is saying, no, no, no, no, no, this absolutely is a thylacine. It can't be anything else. I mentioned before that it very easily could be a numbat. Actually, some of the expert groups that looked at these images said, you know what, we think it's actually probably something called, and I'd never heard about this before, but they're very cute. A Tasmanian pademelon, actually, that's the American pronunciation, pademelon, I looked up how to say it out loud. The British and or Australian pronunciation, I think, is more like pademelon, like the E, pademelon. And they look sort of like a cross between a wombat and a quokka. They're adorable. But apparently they're a common looking, a common organism that's mistaken for a thylacine during these sightings. Also there are a lot of wild dogs in Tasmania, and thylacines are very dog-like. And so it's moving through the brush, you don't quite get a good image, it's a little bit blurry, you know that old joke about how Bigfoot is just blurry, and that's why you can never capture him. This is a complicated issue. So why is it that we can see something, we don't exactly know what it is, and our minds go to this extinct animal? And really, it comes down to what we were just saying is confirmation bias. We have very good evidence to support the idea that wildlife sightings are often ambiguous, right? We know that it's rare that in a camera trap, for example, an animal is going to walk right up to it and pose for you. We've all seen beautiful camera trap footage. Oftentimes that's because they're in feeding sites, or they're actually baited. And sometimes you're lucky that you get a camera trap image of a clear view of an animal. But very often, camera trap footage, and even less often, footage where an individual is out, "hunting", and they see an organism, and they try to snap a picture on their cell phone, usually we're getting ambiguous stimuli. Maybe there's an ear poking out here, maybe you see an eye, you might see a little bit of a tail, and your brain pieces together what that animal is based on the template that you have in your mind. That template comes from experience. And this is something you guys remember, like way back in the day, and maybe it's still an issue when we talk about computer vision, that one of the biggest problems with computer vision is they don't have the ability that the human mind has to fill in the gaps. We're able to do that, we do it naturally, we do it without noticing. The problem is we often do it wrongly. So we see the ears, we see the tail you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras, for those of us living here in North America. If you're living in South Africa, you might think horses or zebras or donkeys. And so oftentimes, the compulsion that we have through motivated reasoning may actually net out to be a case of mistaken identity. And if you're already in a group called the, what did I say it was called, the Thylacine Awareness?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Of Australia, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Of Australia, yeah. If you're already in a group called the Thylacine Awareness Group of Australia, you probably have a vested interest in finding thylacines. So if you see a dog-like animal, you see a pandemelon or pandemelon-like animal, and you're able to piece together these little bits and pieces, I mean, yeah, you're going to go thylacine first. Of course, then when the experts look at these images, they say, no, clearly not a thylacine. Most likely one of these other things. We see this time and time again when sea life or sea mammals more often wash up and they've had, they're missing their skin, for example, or you'll see organisms that are partially decomposed and they look not human. They look alien, or sorry, not human, but not of this earth. They look alien. And our minds can go to really wild places to try to understand what they are. But there's almost always a very rational explanation. Another thing that comes up, I think that's important to remember too, is that photographs are two-dimensional snapshots. So we have to imply things like depth from a photograph. And that's why oftentimes it's really hard to see scale. So we've all seen the perfect fake flying saucer pictures where you just threw up a hubcap or a plate and you're able to capture it just right, and it looks just like a flying saucer. And so we'll see these situations too where a cat, like a wild cat or even a domestic cat or a small dog, wandering just right in the brush actually looks like a huge carnivorous beast. And that's really because it's hard for us to recognize scale in photographs. That's why at forensic crime scenes, there are scale markers. This is why when you look at images in published paleontology papers, you'll see a dollar bill or a ruler or a coin next to the specimen, laying next to it so that you can see scale. Because out of context, we often can't. So I guess in conclusion, the thylacine is still extinct. If you hear about a thylacine sighting, yeah, unfortunately, I wish it weren't either. I mean, it's a beautiful creature. It's fascinating. Its history is really interesting. And actually the story of its extinction and the story, sadly, of basically the ethnic genocide in Tasmania around the same time period is a very sad story. But the ultimate takeaway here is that if you hear about a sighting of something that's been long extinct, you have to approach it with appropriate skepticism. Doesn't mean that once in a blue moon, something incredible might happen. But extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. And unfortunately, in this case, this evidence is just pretty thin.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And this happens with other creatures as well. We talked about the ivory-billed woodpecker. Same thing.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Totally. And what did they think it was?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' They found out it was probably pileated.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It was probably pileated.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And it always comes down to, is the evidence unambiguous? Are there field markings? Is there information that really can only be that thing? Rather than look at the glowing eyes and the ears, okay, that'd be any of 30 animals.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Absolutely.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's probably not the least likely of those animals, the one that's been extinct for 100 years.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And you think about it this way. I mean, think about when there is an abduction, like an amber alert or something of that nature, or when there is a terrible crime is committed and there's a police sketch or even a real image. Like we know who the person is and we have a photograph of them and the police decide to go public with that and say, here's our Crime Stoppers line, community, please dial in. How many calls do they get that are not that person? Way more than and of course it's helpful because then they can comb through it. But very often, because of the emotions are high, because the stakes are high, we're going to see, oh, well, that person has dark hair and dark eyes, and they're sort of around the same height. Maybe it's them. And I think it's a very similar process with these extinct animals.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. We fill in the gaps.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' The panda on the train tracks.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. The red panda. There's a red panda that escaped from a zoo in Europe, I forget the exact one. And they announced to the public, hey, our red panda has escaped. Let us know if you see it. There were sightings all over the city all day of the red panda. They found it dead on the train tracks. It never got 20 feet from the zoo.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And so they saw it all day.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Oh, yeah. Because that's what they were looking for.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. And I mean, I've never seen a red panda out in nature.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah. It's a red panda. It's not like it's not like a dog like creature. It's a red panda.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. But I could see people thinking that raccoons were red pandas for sure.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. I mean, they are trash pandas. Yeah, absolutely.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Exactly.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' What? They deliberately killed it with a train?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No, no, no. He's saying it didn't get far away. Oh, you're being funny. God damn it, Jay.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Good, Jay. Jay, you got me too on that one, dude.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Didn't get me for a moment. All right.<br />
<br />
=== Losing Yourself <small>(42:49)</small> ===<br />
* [https://theness.com/neurologicablog/lose-yourself/ Lose Yourself]<ref>[https://theness.com/neurologicablog/lose-yourself/ Neurologica: Lose Yourself]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. Let me ask you guys a question. I know you, Cara, you watch Game of Thrones?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Oh, the other guys did. I know you guys did. Was there a character that you particularly identified with?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' The dragon. No.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I mean, Jon Snow was my favorite character, but-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I was about to say Jon Snow, but that's because that's the only character I know from Game of Thrones.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. Or is there a work of popular fiction where you really identify with one of the characters? <br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, of course.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' What do you think is happening in your brain when you are watching that character on the screen or you are thinking about that character?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Empathy.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So that was a question that some neuroscientists asked.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' He's cool. He's like me. That makes me cool.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, yeah, Bob actually is the closest to what the study looked at. But specifically, they were interested in the ventral medial prefrontal cortex, of course, because that is the part of the brain that gets activated when we think about ourselves, when we engage with autobiographical information or are self-reflective. We think this is the part of the brain that enables us to reflect about ourselves, right? So the question was, how does that part of the brain also get activated when we are thinking about or when we are thinking about other people? And so they're building on existing research and that's starting from scratch here. So what the research shows is that generally, no, it does not get activated as much when you think about anyone other than yourself. It definitely gets the most activated when you are self-reflective. So it's clearly somehow involved in that process. Again, it's really hard to infer exactly what these brain regions are doing. All we know really is that they're active when subjects are doing particular tasks, but they could be involved in many ways in that task. You know what I mean?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Of course. All we know is that there's like oxygen there.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So we have to be cautious about this. So what the recent study looked at was, all right, let's look at the people thinking about themselves, thinking about really close friends, and thinking about fictional characters. And they chose six different fictional characters from the Game of Thrones, just because they think it was popular enough that they would have subjects, they could find subjects who were familiar with them. And they chose characters that were very different from Game of Thrones, just so that they could be as distinct as possible. So when thinking about very close friends, the VMPFC the medial prefrontal cortex, also became active, but not quite as active as when they're thinking about themselves. And when thinking about fictional characters, it was even less active, right? So that makes sense, and that's consistent with prior research. But here's the new bit. This is what they did in this study. They had people answer like a personality questionnaire about themselves, about their friends, and about the characters, the six characters from Game of Thrones. You know, like, do you think this guy is ambitious, or kind-hearted, or depressed, and mopey, or whatever. They then looked at the characters, they arranged the characters based on how similar they were to the subject. And the more, in a linear relationship, the more similar they were to the subject, according to the subject, right, according to the person in the study, the more that part of the brain lit up. So, again, this was their hypothesis going in. So if we personality identify with a fictional character, or the more we do so, the more we engage the part of the brain that gets active when we think about ourselves. And so that sort of supported their hypothesis that for certain fictional characters, ones that we strongly identify with, we actually start to look at their story through a first person self perspective. You know, we start to get invested in that character as if they were ourself, right? Previous research established that people can react to, like, beloved fictional characters as if they were close friends. They have the same kind of reaction to loss as they would if a close friend died, you know?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It's like they died.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And people can certainly, it could certainly alleviate loneliness. Having a "relationship" with a fictional character on your favorite TV show makes people feel less lonely.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Of course.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' They can actually feel a connection. So this is just sort of a building on that. Not only can you feel a friendship connection to a fictional character, you can identify them to such a degree that you start to neurologically at least start to think of yourself in that role. Like you actually start to merge those two things a little bit. Now anecdotally, some people certainly do that to some extent, right? And that also gets you, remember we talked about too long ago about the fantasy prone personality profile. But this is also along similar lines that people differ in their ability to become immersed in a narrative story, in a fictional story. And the more people are able to get immersed in a story, the more this phenomenon is present, right?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right. Interesting.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So then that, so the, at the fully immersive end of the spectrum, it may be that people like really fully take on the personality, the character as if it were themselves.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' We've seen that psychopathology before where individuals will fall in love with characters on television shows. And then they will reach out to the actors and become very obsessed with the idea that they're a real character. Or they will see themselves as the girlfriend in the television show or the boyfriend in the television show. And there's almost like there's a psychotic component to it on that extreme end.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yes, it can get pathological. Absolutely. But even at the sort of healthy, non-pathological end of the spectrum, it could still be profound. And we're just, this is just one tiny slice of sort of the neurological phenomenon that's going, that's underlying it. But a couple other things that I thought were related to this one study. The question then becomes, why would this be? And I think this is an epiphenomenon of just how our brains function. You know, first of all, our brains are massive parallel processors that make connections. That's how we think, we make connections among things. So that's just, I think, fundamental to how the brain works in that respect. But also, our brains are wired in a typical brain wiring to distinguish between things out in the world that have agency and things that don't have agency. We've mentioned this before as well. And our brains do this in a very quirky way. If something is acting as if it has agency, our brain assumes it does. And acting as if you have agency is just that you move in a non-inertial frame, right? So you're just moving in a way that is consistent with you moving under your own power. Like not explainable as passive motion in gravity. And so if you're moving as if you're moving of your own volition, our brain slots you as that's an agent working out there in the world. I have to be wary of them, think of them as an agent. And that attaches to the full suite of emotions. Because that's when our brains decide that something is an agent, it then connects to our limbic system and we assign emotion to it. So that's why we care about people and not rocks, right?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And it's also why we can trick ourselves with things like those car dealership sock balloon guys. And they have faces painted on them and they're dancing around. And you're like, that guy's funny, I have emotions towards him.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That little robot is happy, yeah. So that's the thing. But again, just now this is the sort of evolutionary speculation part though. If you think about, again, the vast majority of our evolution as forever up until very, very recently, over millions of years of neurological development, there was no such thing as cartoons or movies or writing or, you know what I mean? That didn't exist. And so our brain didn't have any reason to make a distinction between real and fake. It was all real. And also over-assuming, what we call hyperactive agency detection, just assuming, erring on the side of assuming something does have agency and assigning emotion to it was probably evolutionarily advantageous because that's, again, how our brains work. So enter the age of not only storytelling but the written word and then pictures and now movies and everything that we have now. Our brains just did not evolve to make a distinction between any of that and the real world. And so emotionally, we treat it all as if it's real because that's how our brains are wired.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And storytellers know that and they know how to manipulate it in such a way that it's undeniable. <br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, absolutely. This is why narratives and storytelling are so powerful to us because they can engage our full emotions and we can become fully invested in them. We could see ourselves in that story. We could see our friends in that story and we care about what happens to them. I mean, I'm sure you guys have been in this situation, I think any self-reflective person. At some point, you're watching a movie about characters and you're crying or you really care about those characters, what happens to them, good or bad or whatever. And you say, why do I care so much? This is complete fiction. This has zero effect on my life. This means nothing. It's just whatever the writers decided to have happen is what's going to happen. Why do I care so much about how this story turns out? But you can't help yourself. You do because your brain gets invested in it and doesn't make that distinction, you know?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Of course. And I think there's a layer to this, Steve, too, which is really interesting from an evolutionary perspective. I've read a couple of books recently about this phenomenon of kind of co-evolution, like kinship evolution, because we often think about individuals as existing in a vacuum and just no human in the history of time, except in the most aberrant situations, was born and developed outside of human experience. We developed in kinship relationships and we have intersubjectivity. Our sense of self and identity is dependent on other people and how we reflect upon them, how they see us, how we see them.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, we're tribal.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' All of that. Yeah, we're tribal. But our actual sense of self is not because of how we are in a mirror. It's because how other people treat us. It's because how we reflect upon other people when we communicate. And so this idea, too, of being able to identify with characters as if they are our friends, as if they are our family. The self aspect is fascinating, this kind of added layer to this study that you're talking about. But this idea to identify with them as if they're ourselves, I would be amazed if we didn't do that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, yeah. Oh, absolutely. One last layer to this, which is often why we talk about this on the show, there was also a recent study that just looked at the past 50 years of TV aimed at preteens, preens, right? And they found that the virtues, the values that were espoused in these TV shows has really shifted over time. The big one was that valuing fame has generally been very, very low, the value placed on fame. But it spiked in the 2000s and now is coming back down to its previous baseline for some reason.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, that's good.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That was sort of one bit that stuck out on the daily. Why was this huge spike in valuing fame right around the time social media hit? I don't know.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, right. Because there's also now this democratization.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. Well, then we're not going to assume cause and effect, right? We don't know. This study was not able to establish that. But I think turning this around, I do think that our dominant narrative stories that we tell each other shapes our culture and societies. It reflects our society, but it also shapes our society. And that's why we care so much, like the way scientists are presented in the media or the way believing in the paranormal is presented in the media. This actually shapes the way people think and feel and believe because narratives are powerful. We identify with them. They are emotional. They they're not just stories. And anyone who dismisses our concerns by saying, it's just stories that's not what the science shows. That's not how our brains work. They affect us dramatically. And so we have to pay close attention to the stories that we put out there in the world because it affects. It affects our culture.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Read some Jeffrey Campbell.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It affects attitudes on how minorities are presented as well, right?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, totally.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Take that, Dr. Seuss.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, well, seriously, that's why we care about, like, stereotypes and tropes and bigotry in literature and popular culture and narratives because it absolutely reinforces those stereotypes. But anyway, there's I'm sure there's a lot of variability. There's a lot of different contexts. There's neurologically, I'm sure it's just really, really complicated. This is just scratching the surface. But it is interesting to think about the bottom line, like how powerful neurologically, psychologically, culturally, narratives can be. All right, guys, let's move on.<br />
<br />
=== Reading for Fun <small>(56:36)</small> ===<br />
* [https://phys.org/news/2021-03-fun-positively-affects-abilities.html Picking up a book for fun positively affects verbal abilities: study]<ref>[https://phys.org/news/2021-03-fun-positively-affects-abilities.html Phys.org: Picking up a book for fun positively affects verbal abilities: study]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, Bob, tell us why reading is fun.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, this is a quick little news item, a little atypical, but it made me smile. A new study claims that reading fiction, even guilty pleasure reading a fiction like trashy novels, we all know what that is, actually is a predictor of better language and verbal skills more so than reading nonfiction. So I tell you, this one made me feel good because right now I happen to be in the middle of a few really good fiction books, like a hilarious and serious sci-fi novel, The Gangster by Scott Sigler. Scott's amazing. But my most guilty pleasure of all, yet another sci-fi novel by Neil Asher. It's really just weaponized sci-fi porn, basically, is what this is. I mean, there's no sex. There's no future sex. But it's just like A.I.'s, robots, and augmented humans fighting bad A.I.'s, robots, and augmented beings and spaceships and all that. And part of me is like, damn I really should get back to Sean Carroll and Katie Mack's physics books. And I will. I really will. But perhaps I don't need to feel quite so guilty if this study is true. This is published in the journal Reading and Writing. Never heard of that journal before. Sounds cool.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, cool.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Written by Sandra Martin Chang, a professor of education in the Faculty of Arts and Science and PhD student, Stephanie Kozak. The initial goal of the study was to determine what turns a young reader into an adult who loves to read, or maybe even an adult voracious reader, right? They want to know because, as they say at the very beginning of their study, the very first lines are, among the many benefits associated with leisure reading, perhaps none are more important than the advantages it affords to language and literacy. Voracious readers demonstrate superior reading and verbal abilities. So truly, they're extolling the virtues of reading, and they want to find out why, what makes somebody like that. So Martin Chang and Kozak, they looked at young adults who are in this transition period, kind of after school, I guess. They're becoming more self-directed readers. You know, they're not like, crap, I have to read this for my bio class. They just have to, like, they have to decide, all right, I'm going to have some leisure reading. I'm just going to pick whatever the hell I want. You know, what do they choose? Why do they choose? How do they choose? Everything about it. So now, the researchers consider the young adults to be a special age range because they're not typically studied in this context very much, right, because most of the studies you look at are going to be mainly for the young kids, right, because there's so many studies about reading and young kids and all that stuff, and as there should be. But this is kind of like an age range that isn't studied very much. And if it is studied, the few times that it has been studied, no one really cares about what genre are they reading. You know, it wasn't really a factor. So they wanted to make that a factor. So they used a reading scale that they developed called POLR. Now, I don't know if that's an initialism or an acronym, but I'm going to make it an acronym and call it POLR. And it stands for Predictors of Leisure Reading. And they use it, and they use POLR to elucidate the subject's reading behavior, right? It has, POLR has four subscales, the reading motivations, reading obstacles, reading attitudes, and reading interests. So they explored those very deeply with these 200 undergrads. The goal was to use POLR to see if they could predict what the language skills are for the undergrads. So the study itself had two major components. It had the 48 questions to kind of determine where they are on the POLR scale, to explore all the different things about the attitudes and the obstacles and their reading interests and trying to figure out where they are on the scale. And then they had other parts of the test had like this SAT-like section. And they call that the author recognition test for their language and verbal skills to see where they are on those scales. All right. So when it was all said and done, the analysis from the study, they said the following, we found that reading enjoyment predicts better verbal abilities. And this was often explained via exposure to fiction rather than nonfiction. In sum, it was reading enjoyment and identifying as a reader that uniquely predicted better verbal abilities in our undergraduate sample. And that kind of makes sense. I mean I mean, I love reading. I love reading nonfiction. I mean, I'm just eat up like the physics and astronomy books. But it is, it's more of a chore. It definitely is more of a chore. I mean, I'm actually like taking notes and it takes forever to get through it because I'm constantly rewinding and trying to understand some of the difficult concepts. But the nonfiction is just more of just like lay back and enjoy it. And it's just such a joy. And they're showing that that actually makes you better. It's a predictor for being better at language and verbal abilities.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I love that you said that also just identifying as a reader, like I'm a writer, I like to read.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, exactly. I love when people will say that. That's like one of the things that they say about themselves. Yes, I'm a reader. So one takeaway I take from this is to encourage reading, whatever it is, if the person enjoys it, encourage it, it doesn't matter and don't discourage anyone from reading fiction and never say to someone, damn, why are you reading such sci-fi trash? Because they may just say back to you, such terminological inexactitude is fraught with hepatitude and causes me to be markedly attristed.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' They might say that. That's true.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I took 20 minutes to put that damn sentence together and I love it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So don't shame people when they're reading their trashy fiction.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, their vampire novels.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' They probably speak better than you do.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. Thanks, Bob.<br />
<br />
== Who's That Noisy? <small>(1:02:20)</small> ==<br />
* Answer to last week’s Noisy: people<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Jay, it's Who's That Noisy time.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' All right, guys. Last week I played this noisy.<br />
<br />
[_short_vague_description_of_Noisy]<br />
<br />
All right, so it's a little long, but you need to hear all that to get the whole cacophony. So what is that, guys? What are we listening to?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Sounded like a rain stick as big as a house.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' All right, we've got a listener that wrote in. This is John Mullen, and John said, hi, Jay, very interesting sound this week. My initial thoughts were radioactivity, but I actually think this is a sound of those spa treatments where tiny fish eat the dead skin on your feet. Cara, does this exist?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yes, it does exist. I've never had it, but it definitely exists.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah. We live in a very weird world, people. All right. Next listener, Kevin Walsh wrote in and said, hi, all. My guess is in the subject line. He said, it's hail on ice. Then he says, you're all great and come visit us on the Minecraft server from Discord. Hail on ice. So that would be hail, which are little orbs of ice hitting sheets of ice.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, I could see that.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' You're not correct, but you're onto something. I will say that. Next thing, Michael Blaney said, hi, Jay. Hey, I wasn't far off with my stethoscope and breathing blockage guess last week, but you were wrong. Anyway, for the new noisy, wow, that's something else. I was listening to this with my earbuds in and it made me feel like my brain was popping one brain cell at a time. Michael, if that's happening to you, do not listen to Who's That Noisy anymore, because I don't want you. You're going to be brain dead eventually. It's not good. So with that in mind, he says, my guess is a super slow, but pitch adjusted recording of a bowl of corn popping into popcorn. That was interesting.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's a big bowl of popcorn.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I was going to slow it down, but then I realized that it was kind of at the correct pitch of what popping popcorn would sound like. It's not correct, but it did kind of track to that and I could see why he guessed that, but that one is not correct. Another listener named Garrett Spyroden said, my guess this week, frying chicken in a pan. You asked for specifics, two thighs, two legs, light coating of Pillsbury flour, salt, garlic powder, possibly McCormick, but I'm guessing store brand. And Kirkland vegetable oil fried in heirloom cast iron pan at 375-ish degrees. So yes, I asked for specifics. Frying chicken in a pan. There's these noises that keep being associated with each other and everybody has heard them many times that this is one of them. My last guess for this week came from a listener named Ruby. She said, hi Jay. My name is Ruby and I am six. I live in Ireland. This is my first guess. I think the noise is water boiling on a fire. Ruby, that's a really good guess. That's a really good guess. Water boiling on a fire. You're right because when the boiling gets more and more aggressive, it starts to pick up pace and there's more popping sounds. You're not correct, but just wait for the answer because you're not as far off as you think either because this is something that builds up and this is something that has to do with people. This has to do with people, many people, and the answer is nobody's guessing. Phillip sent in the correct answer this week. Phillip said, Jay, I believe I know the answer. It sounds like something I did in middle school choir at the start of a song to imitate rain. The conductor had the choir rub their hands together, usually starting from the stage right to the stage left. This is the start of the rain or the sprinkling. Then the conductor goes back to stage right and has the choir start to snap their fingers, working over the stage to stage left. Then starts the sound of heavier rain and bigger drops. And then I'll take over from here, that the conductor will have the people start to pat and slap their legs for the heavier rain. And then guess how they do the thunder?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' How?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' They fart?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' They jump. No, they jump. And when they land on the bleachers, when they land on the bleachers, it makes that big echo sound, right? So I'm not going to replay the whole thing from the beginning. I'll just give you sort of towards the middle. Take a listen. These are people being conducted to simulate rain. [plays Noisy] Here's the thunder.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Wow.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' How cool is that?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, that's cool.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Look it up. You can see people do it. And it's really fun to take a look at. So thank you, Philip. Great guess. Well, you knew it because you did it. You lived through it. But that's fine because your life experiences, that's where we get answers from, our life experiences. Yeah. And Ruby, thanks for sending that guess in. I want you to keep listening and keep guessing because when you do this, that's how you get smarter. You keep trying to figure things out and you will start to be able to figure things out. And I'm proud of you for sending that guess in.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Also, these are intentionally hard and very few people get them.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah. They're hard. I mean, I I engage my who's that noisies. You know, I pay very close attention to how many emails I get, the quality of the guesses and everything. And I've kind of hit my sweet spot. I know I can pretty much predict if people are going to be able to guess it after doing it for all these years. Every once in a while, like you missed it, Cara. And I did one. You said, Jay, can you please do some noisies where they are the thing? And I did it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, and I wasn't there that week.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It was the thing. What was that? Sonar, Steve?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That was it. And it was funny as Cara, it didn't sound like sonar. It sounded... Because real sonar is not movie sonar.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Exactly.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Movie sonar is fake sonar.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That's right. Fake sonar is made of people. All right.<br />
<br />
=== New Noisy <small>(1:09:18)</small> ===<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So I have a new noisy this week. This noisy was sent in by a listener named Carrie Hassan. Carrie Hassan goes way back to the old TAM days. And her twisted mind sent me this.<br />
<br />
[_short_vague_description_of_Noisy]<br />
<br />
What is that?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Sounds like E.T. a little bit.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It does sound like E.T.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Right?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. But what's he doing? He's skitzing out.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah. Oh, yeah. It's E.T. time. So what do you think that is, everybody? What is it? If you think you know or you heard something cool this week, email me at WTN@theskepticsguide.org.<br />
<br />
== Announcements <small>(1:10:05)</small> ==<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Steve, several things.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Several. I have several.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I have made promises to start a new SGU store, a shopping experience for the listeners. You can go to stores, that's s-t-o-r-e-s.custominc.com forward slash skeptics guide. I will be putting a link on our website, but that's the direct link to our store. There are several variations in there, and there are male and female targeted shirts, so they fit you better. Because I've seen my wife wear our SGU shirts many times, and they're a little big for women. So I definitely put in- There's two of them have the female cut, looks great. We have a NECSS shirt in there. We've got a couple of other swag items like an SGU tote and an SGU mug. All of these have been tested, and they are vetted. I am working on the SGU hat. I'm getting tons of emails that people want that hat, and I'm trying to get it manufactured and stored and shipped in a way that I don't have to ship it.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Of course you are.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I said it. That's right. So go to stores.custominc.com/skepticsguide. Feel free to email me at INFO@theskepticsguide.org if you have any suggestions, recommendations, whatever just to tell me you like it. I'd love to hear from you because that'll help me figure out new stuff coming up. I already have two more t-shirts coming in in the next probably two weeks or so that I'm finishing up the details on right now, and I'm really excited about both of them. So please go and take a look. Thank you.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And one other quick thing. Jay and I basically spent the entire day yesterday in the studio trying to get it ready for NECSS and other things. And one of the things that we did, it's a little sad, it's a little sad, but we broke down our Star Trek bridge-esque console that has been the centerpiece of our studio for over 10 years because we just had to make way for the green screen studio that we're working on.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Ah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I know. It's a big, huge thing. We just had to do it.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' And they didn't tell me until after it was done.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, we couldn't tell you.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I couldn't even do any of my ceremonies or anything.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You would have changed yourself to it, Bob, and would not let us take it apart. Here's the thing. We took it apart mostly non-destructively. It's actually in good shape. All the different pieces are there. It wouldn't take too much. If somebody really wants it, you can come pick it up. It's in my backyard. But you've got to get to it before it's destroyed by weather or the next time we get a garbage bin to throw out all the big stuff that we have in the studio, which is going to be fairly soon. If you want it, let us know in the next week or so, a couple of weeks. And it's all yours. You can take it away. Otherwise, it's going to the dump. So it was a good prop piece. It was really great centerpiece for the studio. But if we're going to go all green screen, we've got to go all the way. You know what I'm saying?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I can't even talk about it. It was really such a hard thing to do. I mean, we've had that for 12 years. It's been involved in pretty much every set that we've done. That thing has either been there or been behind whatever was there. You know, it's just...<br />
<br />
'''C:''' What did you do with all the props?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Well we have all the doodads.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. That's all your stuff, right? Was it like glued down?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Well, we had it bolted down to the floor so it wouldn't fall over.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No, but the stuff on the shelves wasn't like glued to the shelves.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' No, no, no. No. It's just very hard to say goodbye to that because when you walk into a green screen set, you're looking at nothing there's nothing there. It's all what you put on there and it's not as cool. You know, I would just tinker around in that set, you know. But to bigger and better things because we have so much use for green screens. We have four different projects going on in that studio right now. Which is fantastic. You know, we just love to work and it cannot hold back the expansion of the SGU because I love a big piece of wood that I painted 20 times, you know.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Let's move on to some questions and emails.<br />
<br />
== Questions/Emails/Corrections/Follow-ups ==<br />
<br />
=== Email #1: Vaccine misinformation <small>(1:13:55)</small> ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' This first one comes from Joe from Downingtown, PA, which he hopefully tells us is in the United States. And Joe writes, "I got a message from a friend of mine who I consider a right wing conspiracy nut. She normally doesn't share her BS with me, but she shared this and I can't find any good info on it either way." Now he sent the link to an article and a video by a Dr. Geert Vanden Bosch. You guys heard of this guy?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I don't remember that name.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' What kind of doctor?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' A veterinarian, but also has a PhD and did do some work in virology, right?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Okay. And a lot of veterinarians do have some of that, obviously, infectious disease knowledge.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Sure. Why not? So I read the whole letter and it is just nonsense from beginning to end. So it's bad. The problem is it's really persuasive sounding arguments.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It's the worst kind.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Pseudo-science.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's really, really bad. So, I mean just he reads, it's apocalyptic tone-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And got that fear component that makes it feel real.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. And it's also the guy's basic premise is that we're the entire world is doing the vaccine program wrong. And because of that, it's essentially going to lead to the extinction of humanity. So we all have to listen to him right now and completely change everything that we're doing about the pandemic.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Wait, what?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Sure. All right, man.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' He's so full of himself in this and it's also like, oh he starts off by saying I'm not an anti-vaxxer. And of course, whenever anyone opens up an argument by saying I'm not an anti-vaxxer, you could be pretty sure they're an anti-vaxxer.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right. I'm not racist. But...<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, I'm not racist, but... Yeah. Yeah, it's the same thing. But this critical situation forces me to spread this emergency call as an unprecedented extent of human intervention, blah, blah, blah. It's like I wouldn't do this. I wouldn't normally bypass all of the peer review and talk to other scientists if it were if the fate of the whole world weren't at stake.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But I figure the best way to get this out there is to send a chain letter.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. I mean, it's like it's in the chain letter style. It totally is. But apparently, this is a real guy. Like, I would totally believe this is a chain letter. It's just fake. This guy's fake. The whole thing is fake. That's how it reads. But apparently, the guy's real. So his argument is that I'll try to boil this down because it's a very, very long thing. It boils down to there's two parts of the immune system. There's the innate immune system and the specific immune system where you make antibodies against stuff you're exposed to.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. We talked about that on the show.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, we talked about that. The problem with the vaccine is that we're going to give antibodies against this pathogen, which is going to prevent people from getting sick, but it's not going to prevent the virus from spreading. And so the virus and it's also going to suppress the innate immune system. So then we're going to be relying upon these antibodies. But the virus is going to evolve to become resistant to the antibodies. Then we're all really in trouble because then we're going to have suppressed innate immune systems. And so we're going to be relying upon these vaccines and we're going to breed these super viruses that are going to wipe out humanity. That's his premise, right?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Wait, his premise. So his premise is that taking the vaccine actually makes our ability to fight off infection worse.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yes. Right.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And this is based on...<br />
<br />
'''S:''' In the short term, we might be able to fight off the current strains of the virus, but we're just going to force the virus.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' The variants are going to kill us. So the variants are going to kill us.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's going to not only become more infectious, but more deadly.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And it's funny because I see this Steve chatter a lot online in the anti-vax kind of lettering, which is like, I have a perfectly functional immune system. I'm not going to screw that up by getting the vaccine. And it's like, wait, what? This does not compute.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So he's wrong. He's objectively wrong about this. And the thing is, so his plan would basically be just let the pandemic rage on. And if we're going to use a vaccine, we have to use a killer cell vaccine. What's a killer cell vaccine, you might ask? Well, that stimulates a different part of the immune system. Now we don't have any killer cell vaccines, but apparently he's working on one.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Of course. It's like Wakefield all over.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. Right. Exactly. Yeah. Like, yeah, this vaccine is terrible. You should use my vaccine. So there may be that angle of it. He doesn't have any patents or anything, but who knows? He definitely is pushing his own like new way of vaccinating.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right. That he's working on in his ''lab''.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So apparent. So why he's wrong is he's got the exact opposite of what's true. First of all, one of his premises is that the vaccines do not prevent the spread of the virus or asymptomatic infection.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, boy.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We talked last week about the fact that it does, that all the emerging evidence is that it actually does prevent infection spread. And so it will get us to herd immunity. He says it won't get us to herd immunity. It will. It will work. But not only that, he says it will increase mutations. No, it won't. It will decrease the opportunity of the virus to mutate because there won't be as much of it replicating and going on.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Just letting it spread is what's increasing mutation.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Letting it spread is the worst thing you could do.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Why are we talking about this guy?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's the opposite. Because the guy wrote us a letter because Joe Joe wants to hear the answer. And this is this is this is the cutting edge now of the anti-vax misinformation is this stuff. And it is dangerously sophisticated. It is. You have to understand things about the immune system and epidemics and vaccines and why this guy's full of shit.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right. He sounds like he knows what he's talking about.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Semi-authoritative.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' But he's saying, forget vaccines. I'm making my killer cell vaccine, which nobody has ever heard of. And I'm doing this myself. I mean, that alone should set off some claxons.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right. But remember, Bob, it's all folded up. Steve's giving us the breakdown. He's not reading the language the guy's using. He sounds so sophisticated.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. I mean, yes, if you if you somebody wasn't fairly scientifically sophisticated or skeptically sophisticated, wouldn't be able to to distinguish this from, something that's legitimate. Because it all sounds good. You know, he's using jargon. He's tall, looks like he knows what he's talking about. He's describing how the immune system works, blah, blah, blah. It's just that we know that these these being he's going on several premises we know to be false. And he's also massively overstating his conclusions from those false premises.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' The premise that getting a vaccine causes the rest of our immune system to be able to not fight off infection, I know, is bananas. And that's a really dangerous false premise, because I hear that narrative over and over again. Oh, since I'm vaccinated against it, my own internal body's ability to fight it like my body forgets then how to fight infection on its own.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So he makes an analogy to antibiotics and antibiotic resistance, which there's a tiny little bit of a legitimate point there. So sure, if we used an ineffective vaccine, then that would maybe cause some selective pressure to cause the virus to evade that ineffective vaccine even better. And maybe that wouldn't be a good thing. But when you have highly effective vaccines that prevent viral replication and shedding and actually reduce the opportunity for mutation and can achieve herd immunity, no, you're wrong. It all breaks. His argument, his chain of reasoning all completely collapses.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And Steve, the irony of this argument is that what will cause herd immunity to break down, what will cause different strains to evolve is not getting vaccinated.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, it's letting this pandemic rage on.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's what's going to happen if we don't get enough people to take the highly effective vaccines out there. Because if all of us took it, or let's say even a fraction of the population couldn't take it. So we've got a vaccine that's 95% effective. Let's say there's another X percent of individuals who cannot physically take it because of some form of illness or some disability that requires that they can't be vaccinated. And we've still got a pretty high level of immunity. But if all the people who have developed an anti-vax view throughout this pandemic, added to the people who are already anti-vax, refuse vaccination, how are we ever going to get to herd immunity?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, we won't be able to.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So this guy's a dangerous crank, who is extremely irresponsible in putting this out there. And no, you are not justified in bypassing other experts, in bypassing this peer review, in letting the world's scientists review your claims before they get made to the public. You're wrong. What you're saying is wrong and harmful, and you're a completely irresponsible ass for putting this out there. That's the bottom line.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' What kind of platform does he have?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's being, well, now it's been taken up by the right wing media and by anti-vaxxers. And so now it's being spread far and wide, you know?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's so scary, too, because I find that what we don't do a good job of, like our show does this, of course, and there's obviously really hardworking people out there who are working to do this. But what we don't do a good job of at the governmental level is saying, this is pseudoscience. This is dangerous. This is misinformation. Like why, when I go to the CDC's website, is there not a page that says is this legitimate?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, right.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Why isn't there a task force that's working on debunking these things as they roll in so that individuals can go to these government sources and saying, oh, okay, that thing that got passed to me that I thought was real it's already been vetted by experts and they've deemed that it's not real. Because we can't rely on everybody to do this for themselves. It's impossible if you don't have this training.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I know, but Cara not saying that you're not right, because of course I agree with you. But it's an incredible amount of money. You know, it all comes down to money.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Of course, it's very expensive to do.<br />
<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But well worth it. First of all, it's totally within their budget.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, the ROI on that is the difference between life and death.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Massive. Yeah, massive. All right, one more.<br />
<br />
=== Follow-up #1: Batteries <small>(1:24:28)</small> === <br />
<br />
'''S:''' We got a lot of emails from people complaining about Jay's segment on batteries last week where there was some confusion between power versus energy. Now, I assure you that here at the SGU, we know the difference between power and energy. And actually a lot of what Jay said individually was correct. Some of his examples were misleading or wrong. And the problem was that we were sloppy about being consistent throughout the news item. So let me just review power versus energy and make a pledge from this point forward, the SGU will be very careful to be completely precisely accurate when it comes to referring to power versus energy. So here's the thing. Power is essentially the amount of work that it takes to do something. And energy is the total amount of work that you do, right? So let's say you have a 100 watt bulb. You know, what does that mean? A watt is an amp times voltage. So if you have 120 volts and let's say 120 amp, 120 watt bulb, just to make it easy. If you have 120 volts at one amp, that's 120 watts, right? That's how much power it needs to light that bulb. How much energy do you use lighting the bulb? Well, that depends on how long you light it for. If you light it for an hour, that's 120 watt hours, right? So just a one watt hour is a watt of power being expended over an hour.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That is a little confusing. I could see why we got some letters, but also we didn't get a lot of letters. Probably a lot of people would not have noticed the difference.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It gets more confusing because batteries use both because a battery has a power limit and an energy limit. So when Jay was talking about how much battery capacity have we installed, that's two things that we could be referring to and the examples were bouncing back and forth between these without clarifying that was the problem. So for example, if you have to install enough batteries so we could simultaneously power 100 houses, that's power, right? It has to be able to put out enough power so that if it needs a megawatt all at once, then it needs a megawatt of capacity. But if you want those batteries to run those houses for an hour, then it needs a megawatt hour of energy. So when we're referring to how much battery capacity do we have, we're talking about power capacity and energy capacity. And so you have to be clear about what you're talking about. So for example, you might have a battery that can last a really long time, but doesn't put out a lot of power. So you could light one light bulb for a year, but you're never going to be able to light more than one light bulb at a time. Or you might be able to run 1000 homes for a minute, that has a lot of power, but not a lot of energy. So obviously, when we're talking about battery capacity, we need to talk about both like how many...<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Those are good examples.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, how many homes could be run and for how long, you think about it that way. When we talk about like megawatts and megawatt hours, it's got to be clear what we're talking about. And if you're talking about like, connecting that to solar panels, I think this is really where Jay got into trouble, is those solar panels are putting out megawatts, right? But they're putting out megawatt hours over time. And you could average like how many megawatts they're putting out per hour over a year, and rate them based upon their average megawatt hour output or kilowatt hour or whatever. Right? So that gets a little confusing too. But the bottom line is, there's a power capacity for how much energy they produce at once. And you could say like at most or on average or whatever, and then how much are they putting out over time. And then that gets complicated on how that relates to batteries too, right? We need enough batteries to soak in all that power, and it will store energy, the equivalent energy that it could run whatever, so many homes for so much time. It's very easy to slip up if you're being sloppy, you're not being really careful about how you're referring to things. So we will double our effort to make sure we don't screw that up going forward. We try to be careful, but yeah, it's easy to get lazy when it comes to power and energy.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It still confuses me, but yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, if you want to make it simple, it's just watts are power, watt hours are energy. It's like over time, you throw the hour in there. All right, let's go on with science or fiction.<br />
<br />
== Science or Fiction <small>(1:29:16)</small> ==<br />
<br />
{{SOFinfo<br />
|item1 = A new study finds that exposure to conspiracy theories, whether or not we believe in them, alters our behavior but did not reduce trust, in the experimental model.<br />
|link1 = <ref>[https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2021-03/uoi-cti031721.php]</ref><br />
<br />
|item2 = A study of people who share false news online shows that more than half of them know or strongly suspect the news is fake.<br />
|link2 = <ref>[https://news.mit.edu/2021/social-media-false-news-reminders-0317]</ref><br />
<br />
|item3 = Researchers demonstrate that the anchoring bias not only works for numbers, but also for sensory modalities including sight, hearing, and touch.<br />
|link3 = <ref>[https://phys.org/news/2021-03-anchoring-biases-decisions-involving-sight.html]</ref><br />
<br />
|}}<br />
{{SOFResults<br />
|fiction = sharing false news<!-- short word or phrase representing the item --><br />
|fiction2 = <!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
<br />
|science1 = exposure to conspiracy theories <!-- short word or phrase representing the item --><br />
|science2 = anchoring bias <!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
|science3 = <!-- leave blank if absent --> <br />
<br />
|rogue1 = bob<!-- rogues in order of response --><br />
|answer1 = exposure to conspiracy theories<!-- item guessed, using word or phrase from above --><br />
<br />
|rogue2 =jay<br />
|answer2 =sharing false news<br />
<br />
|rogue3 =cara<br />
|answer3 =sharing false news<br />
<br />
|rogue4 = <!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
|answer4 = <!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
<br />
|rogue5 = <!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
|answer5 = <!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
<br />
|host =steve <!-- asker of the questions --><br />
<!-- for the result options below, <br />
only put a 'y' next to one. --><br />
|sweep = <!-- all the Rogues guessed wrong --><br />
|clever = <!-- each item was guessed (Steve's preferred result) --><br />
|win = y<!-- at least one Rogue guessed wrong, but not them all --><br />
|swept = <!-- all the Rogues guessed right --><br />
}}<br />
''Voice-over: It's time for Science or Fiction.''<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Each week I come up with three science news items or facts, two real and one fake. And then I challenge my panel of skeptics to tell me which one is the fake. So this week we have a theme, but it's news items, right? So it's a themed news items.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Let's do it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The theme is skeptical behavior. I thought it was appropriate. You'll get what I'm talking about when I read the items. All right, here we go. Item number one, a new study finds that exposure to conspiracy theories, whether or not we believe in them, alters our behavior, but did not reduce trust in the experimental model. Item number two, a study of people who share false news online shows that more than half of them know or strongly suspect the news is fake. And item number three, researchers demonstrate that the anchoring bias not only works for numbers, but also for sensory modalities, including sight, hearing, and touch. Bob, go first.<br />
<br />
=== Bob's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Can you expound on the anchor bias?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, the anchoring bias is like if you say, would you pay $100 for this? Now how much would you pay? Or would you pay $1,000 for this? Now how much would you pay? So if you anchor people to $100, they will pay less than if you anchor people to $1,000, even for the exactly same item.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' All right, so a new study finds that exposure to conspiracy theories, whether or not we believe in them, alters our behavior, but did not reduce trust in the experimental model.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I think there should be a comma after trust, just so you know. It's not that it didn't reduce trust in the model. In the model, it didn't reduce trust in other people.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That changes that completely.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I know. I realize that there should be a comma after trust.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' So you're exposed to a conspiracy theory, so your behavior might change by it, even if you don't believe it? Okay, let's look at number two, a study of people who share fake news online. More than half of them know or strongly suspect the news is fake. Yeah, I'm going to buy that one, because a lot of times people, if something fits your narrative and you might have an inkling that it might still be false, but I'm going to spread it anyway because it's for a good cause, that kind of belief system, I'm going to go with that one. Let's look at number three, this whole anchoring bias crap research, that anchoring bias not only works for numbers, but also for sensory modalities, including sight, hearing, and touch. Oh yeah, I totally believe that. I totally believe that expectation and belief can influence sense modalities, for sure. I believe that. It's been a long time since I've read about it, but I'm buying that. That means that the conspiracy theory one's got to be fake, because the other two I think are true.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay, Jay?<br />
<br />
=== Jay's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, the one that's giving me trouble here is the study that shows that people who share false news, more than half of them know or strongly suspect that it's fake. If that's the truth, that is super disturbing, if that many people are willing to spread misinformation. Oh man. But I did take a massive hit in my faith in humanity this year. That could be true.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' As opposed to any other year?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, it was doing well.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It was just of a pandemic flavor, you know.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah. All right, so let me go. So Bob says that the first one is a fake. A new study finds that exposure to conspiracy theories, whether or not we believe in them, alters our behavior, but did not reduce trust in the experimental model. I mean, I could see that being true, Bob. Yeah, I'm going to just say that the second one, the one about fake news, half of them know or strongly suspect that the news is fake. I'm going to say that one is the fake.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The fake news is fake? All right, Cara.<br />
<br />
=== Cara's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, I think I got to go with Jay on this, you know. I think about how on Twitter now, if a story comes across and you just instantly retweet it, it has a little pop-up that says, are you sure you want to share this without reading it?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Whoa, I love that.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And I think that's speaking to something. I think that's probably evidence-based, that probably people are sharing fake stuff because they actually think it's real or because they just didn't really pay attention to it. Like something about it resonates, so they move it on. But if more than half of people were actively saying, I know or I feel in my heart of hearts that this is false, but I want to sow distrust anyway, that is really scary to me. I think there's a handful, a small but vocal minority of agenda-driven people who do that, but I got to hope that most people are spreading this crap around because either they think it's true or they just didn't even bother to read it closely. And that's why I think I got to go with Jay. The other two, I could buy them. They're kind of weird, but I could buy them. But this one is like, ugh, it's really going to bum me out if it's science, not fiction.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #3 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, so you all agree on the third one, so we'll start there. Researchers demonstrate that the anchoring bias not only works for numbers, but also for sensory modalities, including sight, hearing, and touch. You all think this is science, and this one is science. Not surprising, but that's really cool that they talk about it. So yeah, the anchoring bias, whatever the opening thing is, that's why you always want to have the opening bid in any kind of negotiation because you anchor all further negotiation from that point forward.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, that's why you're in the power position when you play poker if you're after the button or if you're on the button, right? It's a very important thing to be in position.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The research has been done lots of ways. If you show people the same object, whatever it is, and say, how much do you think this is worth? And let them guess, there'll be a bell curve around that, whatever the average number is. But if you tell half the group, do you think this is worth more or less than $100? And then you say, now tell me how much you think it's worth. And you tell the second group, do you think this is worth more or less than $1,000? And then have them guess. The second group will bid much higher than the first. Like the effect is big. This is a big effect. It's not subtle. We get anchored to just the suggestion of a price. So the question for the study was, does this work for sensation as well? So for example, they might have subjects feel sandpaper of a certain grit. And then they will later have them feel sandpaper to find the one that was most similar to the one that they felt initially. So they're trying to identify the grit of the paper that they originally felt. Now you can have one group start from really fine and work their way coarser. And the other group start coarse and work their way fine. And when they do that, the coarser group gets coarse of the target. And the finer group gets as fine of the target. Does that make sense?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, they're primed.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, they're getting primed or anchored to whatever they were originally offered as the samples. But they could also do this for colour, for shade, for tone, for noise, whatever. It all works. You get anchored to whatever the thing is that you heard or saw or felt. So it all works. Now one thing that stuck out with me when I was reading the press release was one of the researchers, Jane, said, my findings offer marketing professionals another fundamental tool to guide consumer behavior by anchoring a product or message through their senses.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, this is social psychology for sure.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That's not news.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I know. But the point is, this research is being offered to marketers as a way to manipulate customers, right? To manipulate us through our senses. I just wanted to read that just to bring up the point that all of this anchoring bias, all of these stuff, it's all used. It's all used by marketers to influence our buying behavior. I just want to remind people of that.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #1 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay, let's go back to number one. A new study finds that exposure to conspiracy theories, whether or not we believe in them, alters our behavior, but did not reduce trust in the experimental model. Now, Bob, you think this one is a fiction. Jay and Cara, you think this one is science. And this one is science.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Crap.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Sorry, Bob.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yay.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yes. High five!�<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Good job. So what they found was that they had subjects watch a video about how the lunar landing was all a hoax. Then they had the control group watch a similar video, similar length, all about the shuttle program, having nothing to do one way or the other about the lunar landing, about the Apollo mission. And then they had them play these psychological games, right? In this game, it's an interesting little model that they used, which I know has been used in previous studies. So you tell subjects, you have two subjects, and you say, all right, you guys can name me, name a price. This is European, so it was in euros. Name a number of euros between zero and 15. And if you, the lower of the two people will get whatever number they say plus 10. The other person will just get the number they say. So the game is designed to have a very specific strategy, right? So obviously you want to bid low. But if the other person bids super low, you're better off, like once you get to $4, you're better off just bidding 14, because even 14 is 4 plus 10. So if they go less than 4, then you're better off just bidding 14 or 15 euros, right? If you bid 7 and the other person says 6, you get 7, they get 16, right? So what they found was that the people who were exposed to the conspiracy theory were much more strategic in their bidding than the people who weren't.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Why?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's a good question. They didn't really, they can only speculate as to why that was. But not only were they more strategic, they bid in a way that would actually make them more money. They actually played the game better.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Huh.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, so that was a significant effect. So it made them think more, they think that being exposed to conspiracy theories, even whether you believe it or not, just made them think more carefully about things, I guess.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right. Maybe it just like upped their skepticism in the moment. Like you go in, you're passively credulous or gullible. And then all of a sudden you're like, wait, I'm in an experimental paradigm. I need to actually focus.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So then they did another version of this where your player, player one, they were called players. Player one is given five euros. And they say, you can invest this, any amount of this money as you want. And it will be returned triple. But that money goes to the other guy who could then choose to share some of that with you or not. So if you say, I'm going to invest all five euros, now you have nothing. The other person gets 15 euros, which they, and they could give you some of it or they can give you none of it. Or you could say, I'm going to bid nothing. You keep the five euros. The other guy gets nothing. Right? And so that's considered a test of trust. You have to trust the other person's going to split the winnings with you. And so do you invest an amount that trust that they will, or do you invest an amount that trust that they won't split the proceeds with you, at least to some extent. And the exposure to conspiracy theories had no effect on how people played that game. So it didn't affect their trust in the other person to share the money. So again, they're always using, as Cara and I always say, they're always using these constructs, in these kinds of psychological studies. But it was just trying to answer the question, is just exposure to the conspiracy theory have an effect whether or not you believe in it? And at least in this very narrow sense, the answer appeared to be yes. Okay, let's go on.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #2 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Number two, a study of people who share false news online shows that more than half of them know or strongly suspect the news is fake. This one is the fake. And Cara, you basically nailed it. So this here's the numbers. In their study, they found that people who shared false news online, about 50% did it because they weren't paying attention and they just did it without really reading the article.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, geez. 50%?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' See, you got too much faith in people, my friend.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Another 33% were mistaken about the accuracy of the news, so 33% thought the fake news was real. And 16% knowingly spread it as false.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Punk. That's a vocal minority.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. But only 16%. So half didn't even bother reading the article.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' See, but if you had told me that 10% knew that it was false, and then you took the other 90% and divided it in half, I would think it was half-half. I cannot... Well...<br />
<br />
'''S:''' If I anchored you, is that what you're saying?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, I'm just saying that's a really big percentage of people that just shared it. It's weird because it's a proactive thing to do to share a story. It's one thing to passively receive it and go, okay, and it ends here because I'm not going to engage. It's another thing to go, hmm, headline, interesting, not going to bother to actually investigate any of it. But I shall tell other people.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Can you imagine, though? It's like, I can't even imagine doing that.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Me neither.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' If you're going to share it, you got to vet the crap out of that because you're going to get called out on it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's just bizarre to me.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' And it's just bad behavior.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I work really hard on Twitter. Like I mentioned, I pull 35 news articles a week of interesting science stories and then I share them five a day, every day, and I've been doing this for years. And I'm like, I read them and I look at the bylines and I see where they're posted from and I look at how other people are writing about it. I can't imagine... Even just compiling things is work. I do it as part of my job. Why are people doing work?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Lazy.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I get that they're lazy, like they don't want to investigate, but isn't the more lazy thing to do to just not share it? That's the part I'm confused about.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, I guess there's people in that lazy sweet spot where they have just enough energy to share the fake news.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's like, what?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' You got to keep in mind the impetus behind sharing things on social media. People are looking for some type of satisfaction from that post.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. Right.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' You're posting to share knowledge. A lot of people post to get likes and to get attention.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' And get at it, boys, at it, girls.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Feedback, that kind of dopamine part. It goes back to that documentary, Steve, that we talked about before, do you remember that Netflix documentary about manipulating people online and ugh, so gross.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But this does suggest possible things that social media companies can do to reduce the sharing of fake news, such as occasionally throwing in feeds that talk about, that draw the attention to whether or not it's true. Or as you say, Cara, just draw people's attention, like when you click share, saying, have you thought about the accuracy of this before you share that? So it's just laziness and inattention. So if you somehow draw their attention to accuracy, just the very concept of whether or not this is true or accurate, that could significantly reduce that 50%. Obviously, the 33% who think the fake news is real, they have a deeper problem. The 16% who knowingly share it, yeah, that's obviously not going to address that.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's the source of the problem. It's not the reason the problem is reverberating, but it's the source of the problem.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But half of the problem is addressable.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Absolutely. And actually, I think even that other portion, the not 16%, is also addressable. It's a deeper problem to address, but it's also addressable. But yeah, half the problem, you're right, can be fixed as simple as slow down, my friend. I'm not going to let you just do this willy-nilly. Take a beat.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Did you think about if this is true or not before clicking that button? Maybe then they'll be like, oh, I'm too lazy. That's enough.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, not worth it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Something. It'll probably decrease it, how much needs to be studied. And it's not going to obviously fix the problem, but it might reduce its magnitude. All right. Well, good job, Cara and Jay. I thought that was a fun one just for the fact that it was three sort of skeptically related news items. All right.<br />
<br />
== Skeptical Quote of the Week <small>(1:45:37)</small> ==<br />
<br />
<blockquote>One person recently, goaded into desperation by the litany of unrelieved negation, burst out ‘Don’t you believe in anything?’ Yes’, I said. ‘I believe in evidence. I believe in observation, measurement, and reasoning, confirmed by independent observers. I’ll believe anything, no matter how wild and ridiculous, if there is evidence for it. The wilder and more ridiculous something is, however, the firmer and more solid the evidence will have to be.<br>– Isaac Asimov (1920-1992), an American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University. </blockquote><br />
<br />
'''S:''' I have a quote because everyone's not here. So I filled in for the quote. And here it is. "One person recently goaded into desperation by the litany of unrelieved negation burst out. Don't you believe in anything? Yes, I said. I believe in evidence. I believe in observation, measurement and reasoning confirmed by independent observers. I'll believe anything no matter how wild and ridiculous if there is evidence for it. The wilder and more ridiculous something is, however, the firmer and more solid the evidence will have to be." And that was said by Isaac Asimov.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, man.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' One of my favorite authors. That's why he was such a great science fiction author.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That was solid, too.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Solid. That was solid. And that's he said that a while ago, and that's pretty much a core sort of philosophy of skepticism.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Wow.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And I chose it partly. That's a great quote. If we haven't used it before, we needed to, but I partly chose it because I'm very excited that the Foundation Series is coming to the Apple TV, I believe.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, my God. I can't wait.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' This fall, they're promising 80 episodes.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh!<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Eight seasons of 10 episodes. The Foundation Series is one of my favorite science fiction franchises of all time. And my whole life, I spent my whole life saying, why doesn't somebody make a movie or a series about the Foundation Series? Because it's so awesome. The source material is fabulous. Why isn't it happening? And now, 50 years later, it finally is. And I'm very excited about it.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I hope they kill it. I hope they kill it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. Kill it in a good way. Yes. I know what you mean. So the previews are very exciting. The casting looks fantastic. You know, just, I hope it holds up to my expectations.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's going to be hard. I'm setting myself high expectations.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I know. It's always so.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But I think there's a lot of, a lot of the networks now are looking for their Game of Thrones. You know what I mean? Good. You do that. You chase that gold ring, brass ring, whatever. You do it.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' And do it with science fiction. Please.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Absolutely.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' And next, and next I want to see somebody do Neil Asher's Polity Universe, the sci-fi porn.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' All right. You ran out. You said it too much.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I was done. I was done anyway.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Every time we turn around, Bob's talking about the Polity Universe.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, it's my favorite.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I feel like I read the books.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' We are sci-fi beasts. And this is my favorite sci-fi. So of course I'm going to talk about it.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' All right. You're right. You're right.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. There's so much good source material and good science fiction out there. That's why every time there's a crappy sci-fi movie or series out, it's like, why did you make this when there's so much good stuff out there?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yes. Yes.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I'm sure there's legal reasons and whatever, blah, blah, getting in the way. But I mean, if you wanted to make it happen, you can make it happen.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Polity Universe.<br />
<br />
== Signoff/Announcements <small>(1:48:19)</small> == <br />
<!-- if the signoff/announcements don't immediately follow the QoW or if the QoW comments take a few minutes, it would be appropriate to include a timestamp for when this part starts --><br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. Thank you all for joining me this week.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' You got it, Steve.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Surely.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Thanks, Steve.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So we'll see everybody on our Friday livestream.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' —and until next week, this is your {{SGU}}. <!-- typically this is the last thing before the Outro <br />
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== Today I Learned ==<br />
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=== Vocabulary ===<br />
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}}</div>Hearmepurrhttps://www.sgutranscripts.org/w/index.php?title=SGU_Episode_851&diff=19122SGU Episode 8512024-01-21T09:25:41Z<p>Hearmepurr: episode done</p>
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{{InfoBox<br />
|episodeNum = 851<br />
|episodeDate = {{month|10}} {{date|30}} 2021<br />
|verified = <!-- leave blank until verified, then put a 'y'--><br />
|hiddenIcon= File:851_parasite-fish-tongue.jpg<br />
|caption =[[Media:851_parasite-fish-tongue.jpg|<span style="color:green">'''Click to view image:'''</span><br>Creepy fish parasite]]<br />
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|bob =y<br />
|cara =y<br />
|jay =y<br />
|evan =y<br />
|perry = <!-- don’t delete from this infobox list, out of respect --><br />
|qowText = In many cases, flawed or misleading evidence is worse than no evidence at all. This is because the state of ignorance resulting from a lack of evidence is recognized as a state of ignorance, whereas the state of ignorance resulting from misleading evidence is not so recognized.<br />
|qowAuthor = Vance Berger and Sunny Alperson, biostatistician and nurse practioner, resp.<br />
|downloadLink = {{DownloadLink|2021-10-30}}<br />
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** Note that you can put each Rogue’s infobox initials inside triple quotes to make the initials bold in the transcript. This is how the final statement from Steve is typed at the end of this transcript: '''S:''' —and until next week, this is your {{SGU}}.<br />
--><br />
== Introduction ==<br />
''Voice-over: You're listening to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.''<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Hello and welcome to the {{SGU|link=y}}. Today is Wednesday, October 27<sup>th</sup>, 2021, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella... <br />
<br />
'''B:''' Hey, everybody!<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Cara Santa Maria... <br />
<br />
'''C:''' Howdy. <br />
<br />
'''S:''' Jay Novella... <br />
<br />
'''J:''' Hey guys. <br />
<br />
'''S:''' ...and Evan Bernstein. <br />
<br />
'''E:''' Good evening, folks.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So Bob, a few more days till Halloween, your favorite holiday.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh man. It's been a great month. The haunted house has been going fantastic. We've done thousands of people. My costume is the best it's ever...<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Thousands? Plural?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah. Oh yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh cool.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Well low thousands, very low thousands, but we're ahead of where we were last year. It's just so much fun freaking out everybody.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I went through it last week.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Teenagers, old ladies.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' High calibre. Very, very good.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Anybody pee their pants?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' No, but we had a lot of people that had to be escorted out or just freaked out or freaked out. Yeah. No audible confirmations of peeing in pants, but I'm sure it's happening.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. Why would they tell you if you couldn't see it?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' So yeah, it's just so much fun. And I might be on TV Friday morning for a local news station. They're going to show me jumping out of my coffin in the cemetery.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Wait, so you're in it too?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh yeah. My God, I put on my awesome zombie costume version 4.2. Oh my God, of course, but I don't stay in one spot.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I was going to say.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Most of the volunteers, they have their area and that's what they... They're a clown. They're in the meat market or whatever. But for me, I do the cemetery, I go in the crypt, then I go to the queue line. I do queue line entertainment and I freak out the people that are waiting to go in. And then I just walk through the entire haunt and freaking people out. So I just go all over the place. But I love spending time in the crypt and in the cemetery especially.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I have two things I want to say about Halloween and Bob. One of them is that one of my favorite memories, I was working the haunt with Bob one year and Bob turns to me and he goes, God, I love the screaming. And the other thing is a listener wrote in and said, Bob has more Halloween stuff than I have stuff, period.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, that's likely true for a lot of our listeners.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Quite a collection over the decades. Yeah. And it's tough to see the good stuff like die like this latex mask. It's seen its last Halloween. This is so sad. I have to throw it out. But you get new stuff.<br />
<br />
== COVID-19 Update <small>(2:35)</small> == <br />
<br />
'''S:''' So we're still in the middle of a pandemic. I wanted to just say one thing about it since they were getting into another phase of vaccines because they're starting to get approved for booster and also for young children. You know, more evidence is coming in. A recent study that was published in the New England Journal of Medicine found no increase in miscarriages in pregnant women who got vaccinated. They looked at three vaccines, Pfizer, Moderna and AstraZeneca. So that's very reassuring. There was no real reason to think that there would be an issue, but having lots of data is always a good thing.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And Steve, did you see the new information that was put out that when a study looking at vaccine side effects in Australia, who they started to look back over some of the links between Guillain-Barre and AstraZeneca, which was a big shot there, and they were fine. They when they went back over the data with a fine tooth comb, they found that there's actually, okay, now nationwide sort of 32 million adults in England revealed an increased but low risk of Guillain-Barre and Bell's palsy following a first dose. It also revealed an increased but low risk of hemorrhagic stroke. But research that was published in Nature Medicine also revealed a substantially higher risk of seven neurological outcomes, including Guillain-Barre after a positive COVID test. So here's an example. 145 excess cases versus 38 excess cases of Guillain-Barre syndrome per 10 million exposed to those who had positive SARS-CoV-2 test and the AstraZeneca vaccine, respectively. So we're still seeing significantly more cases of these negative neurological outcomes in people who contracted COVID than in people who got the vaccine.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Also, that was 3.5 cases per million people vaccinated.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, it's already a super low number.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The background rate is one to two per million. So right. Well, they're saying excess cases. So I'm assuming they accounted for that. So if you're going to worry about a one in a million side effect, then you know, you can't do anything.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Exactly. And we already know that there's a very low risk of Guillain-Barre from getting vaccinated generally, like we've seen this with other vaccines. But to really that really puts it in perspective to me when you compare that to the risk of Guillain-Barre from COVID infection.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's 10 times as much.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, it's significantly higher. So right there your risk, it just contributes to that risk benefit calculus.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And that's almost always the case because Guillain-Barre is a post infectious syndrome, right? It happens because your immune system gets activated by an infection. There's something on the virus or the bacteria that mimics a protein on your nerves. The immune system gets confused and attacks your nerves thinking it's attacking the virus or the bacteria. That's it. That's what Guillain-Barre syndrome is. Anything that provokes an immune response can theoretically cause that. But infection is way more likely to cause it because first of all, you're making there's a lot more things that you're making antibodies against, right? There's a lot more opportunities for this to happen. Whereas for vaccines, it's usually depending on the kind of vaccine, like with the mRNA vaccine, there's only you're only making antibodies against a few things. And if it's with a like a killed virus vaccine, that's more similar to that to an infection.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But it's still a controlled dose as opposed to infection, which is just like a random viral load.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' A raging infection going on for a long time. It's gonna and that's why the anti-vaxxers don't have a coherent position. They're always saying, oh, you get better immunity from the infection than the vaccine, which is not always true, by the way. But a better immunity translates to higher risk of post infectious syndromes, right? Because it's all about how activated was your immune system. Yeah, you can't have it both ways.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. And you have no idea how long that lasts either. I mean, it's yeah, there's a lot of problems with that argument.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, it's just it's just you have to go case by case vaccine by vaccine, infection by infection. And again, the whole idea is that you get the immunity from a vaccine without all the risks of an infection. The vaccine itself has risks, but it's orders of magnitude less than the illness than being sick. COVID is a nasty illness. And it's not just the death numbers. It's the you know, the long COVID there's a lot of debility and disability that results if you had a bad infection.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's just so clear that we have such a benefit. Modern medicine has given us a sense of security and a sense of separation from like pestilence in a way that is kind of hard to quantify. And so you know, you think about when people were actually asking for smallpox, what was it called variolation? They wanted to put pustules of sick people on their own skin because the concept or the risk of getting a little bit of smallpox was way less scary than the risk of dying the horrible disease that they saw their loved ones dying of like people were willing to take that risk. And now we have such safe and secure vaccines and people are afraid of them. I think because we live in a sanitized world where most of the people who are regretfully refusing to get vaccinated just haven't seen negative consequences.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' They have no perspective<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Totally. 60, 70 years ago, parents wouldn't let their kids go out and play because they were afraid they were going to get polio. And yeah, it was you know, you think about the lockdowns that we have now. It's just that yep, you cannot go out and play just you got to stay inside. You know, there's polio is happening. And parents were just scared to death of their kids catching polio, having to spend their life in an iron lung. And we didn't get our lives back until the polio vaccines came out.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And people would have paid their entire salary to get vaccinated against polio. They didn't have to luckily, but people would have broken themselves to get their hands on the polio vaccine. And now the tables have turned so much that we are paying people to get vaccinated.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And we always used to think that it's the big problem was that people aren't afraid of infectious illness anymore because of modern medicine and because of vaccines. And so they don't realize right much vaccines have changed our lives. But now that we're going through the COVID pandemic you realize that now the anti vaxxers are still going to deny that. Even in the middle of a pandemic, when the when the risk is there, obviously, there are some people that are going to sway, but the hardcore anti vaxxers, they're still going to be.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, we were naive. I remember thinking that once we go through it and see the devastation, then then we'll see some some big changes in their in their beliefs. But no, that's not how people work.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I agree. But I don't think that's a completely fair characterization, because as more and more people died, more and more people did get vaccinated, more and more people were turned towards it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, that was the vaccine hesitant.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' They are not marginalized, like I assume they would<br />
<br />
'''C:''' be right. Like you saw the vaccine hesitant people shifting. But you're right, you the entrenched anti vaxxers. I mean, the most amazing thing is when you see the videos of people in the hospital, like about to get vented going, I still wouldn't get the vaccine. And you're like, Okay, I don't what do you do with that? Yeah, like, it's one thing when you see the people in the hospital saying, This is horrible. I led you astray. I can't believe I didn't get vaccinated. Please, dear God, whatever you do, go get vaccinated, like, and a lot of people did change their tune, when they saw how devastating it was. But you're right, there is that very small kind of dug in. But it's so it's exceedingly small.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' But it's big enough that we need to that it's very worrisome. In terms of a variant, another variant coming or reaching herd immunity. I thought we'd be able to reach herd immunity. And I don't think we are. We're not going to I think that's pretty much the consensus at this point.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I don't know what the what the most kind of recent views are on herd immunity.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Well, that's I heard like, like 85 to 90% for this for this, for this.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But there are places that have not vaccination rates that high.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' They are pushing for vaccination to try to get it as high as we can get. But at the same time the the chatter is we are preparing for endemic COVID. It's never going away. That's that though that battle has been lost.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But that's really what herd immunity is. It's something that keeps an endemic infection sort of at bay. Like herd immunity means there's always going to be people pop up with infections. But like we have herd immunity against measles, mumps, rubella, because enough people are vaccinated. It's a vaccine induced herd immunity. And then you periodically get these outbreaks among unvaccinated people.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yes. Yeah. Herd immunity means you have an outbreak, but the outbreaks are limited and they don't turn into an epidemic.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But but that's what they're saying here is that this will be more like the flu, which the flu we don't have flu outbreaks. We have we are living through a continuous flu pandemic.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Right. It's always at pandemic levels, just sort of seasonally moving around the world.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' And you get used to it. You get used to the 30, 40, 50 thousand people dead a year from that<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Unlike like measles where measles when we had them under really good control because of herd immunity, there would be these tiny outbreaks. But that was it. It would never it would never break out beyond that because of herd immunity.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah. Would never even really be epidemic.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Right. Never even got to epidemic levels in countries where they had. And not only that, but measles was no longer endemic in the US, meaning.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Right. No, it was gone.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' There was no person to person spread in the US.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, it was until.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It was only coming in from the outside. So that's that's high levels of herd immunity. So we're not going to get anything like that with COVID. It's going to be like the flu. It's going to be like the flu.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But it's twofold, right? It's because A, vaccine hesitancy, vaccine denial, all those reasons like we just can't get the vaccine numbers up. But even in places where the vaccine numbers are up, we're still seeing breakthrough infections. There are characteristics of the virus itself, which mutates very quickly.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It doesn't. It doesn't mutate very quickly. It mutates a lot slower than the flu vaccine. It does mutate. It does sort of.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It does mutate. I mean, we still only have like a year and a half of evidence on this.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But what you're seeing, Cara, in terms of a lot of breakthrough infections and even in high vaccination rates, because we're in the middle of a pandemic. That's why. It's because there are so many opportunities to get infected.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, the background levels are too high.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And there's so many vaccinated people. There's millions of vaccinated people. So even a tiny percentage of them get breakthrough. It's a lot of people. The numbers are high. But if we get the pandemic under control, then the probability of having a breakthrough infection would plummet because there's just not that much of it circulating.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. I mean, we're speaking right from a very American perspective. It would be interesting to look at like, what is it like in parts of New Zealand where the vaccine rate is exceedingly high and they've managed to keep a lot of movement of people down to a minimum. Are they seeing these breakthrough infections? You're right, probably not. They're able to lift all sorts of restrictions and live more like normal lives. And then when there is a little pocket or a little outbreak, they're able to use public health measures to control it, isolate it, minimize it, which we can't do in the US. We can't do track and trace effectively. There's just too much COVID.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. I mean, if we had kept it to really low levels the whole time, then maybe we could have. But once it broke out into a massive pandemic, then you have to shift your strategy, right? Then you're just trying to do damage control. You're no longer trying to prevent it from reaching those levels.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' God, I just hope we get to a place where I don't have to get a booster every nine months because I got sick from my booster too.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Oh, God. Cara, I got my booster yesterday.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' How are you feeling?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I felt fine yesterday. Courtney, my wife and I woke up this morning. We both felt like we got hit in the arm with a baseball bat.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, yeah, there's that.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' And I can't believe how sick I felt this morning and this afternoon. I feel a little bit better right now, but I had full on headache, full on massive achy body, wicked fatigue.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I got nothing.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Now, look, I'm not complaining because you know what that means? It's the exact opposite of complaining. That means that that Moderna booster is soliciting an immune response from me big time.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Eliciting.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Oh, it's not. Yeah, you're right. It's not looking for money. Okay, yeah. But you get what I'm saying.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It all seems to just come down to some, I mean, it's like genetic, it's-<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Very individual.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, it's like whatever. Some people have that response, some don't. It doesn't mean it's not doing what it's supposed to do at the cellular level, but it sucked. I don't like it. I don't like getting my, I mean, I'm going to do it, of course. I don't want to get COVID, but I don't want to do this for the rest of my life.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Get used to it. All right.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Suck it up.<br />
<br />
{{anchor|wtw}} <!-- leave this anchor directly above the corresponding section that follows --><br />
== What's the Word? <small>(15:43)</small> ==<br />
{{Page categories<br />
|What's the Word? = <!-- redirect created for Chirality (851 WTW) --> <br />
}}<br />
* {{w|Chirality}}<ref group="v">[https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/chirality Wiktionary: Chirality]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' Cara, you're going to give us, what's the word?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' The word this week. It's actually, well, Evan, I wanted to pick back up on your story from the other week when we talked about chirality, because I feel like what we didn't do is we didn't really grapple with the word itself. And maybe it would be good to do a little deep dive, especially given that we did get some feedback in email. I think because we brought up thalidomide as an example, that he was like, don't let that one point make us think that all chirality is bad. And I think that's actually a really interesting way to look at it because chirality is neither good nor bad. Chirality just is. And let's talk about what that property of chirality is. So in chemistry, either molecule or even an ion can be called chiral when it is a mirror image. But a mirror image is not sufficient for something to be chiral because it also has to be non superimposable. So what that means is if I were to look at my left hand and I were to look at my right hand in a flat plane in space, there's no way that I could rotate my right hand to fit it on top of my left hand perfectly. Right?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Right.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yes.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So you have to flip it around completely, but there's no way to rotate it or to change it in any of the ways that like the rules of chemistry and physics allow you to do in order for it to fit on top. And that is the definition. So isomers, for example, there's a lot of words that get thrown around and I think that is what sometimes confuses folks. Okay, so isomers are just compounds, ions, molecules, whatever that have the same number of atoms, but they differ in structural arrangement. And then we've got stereo isomers, which are isomers that differ in how the atoms are spatially arranged, but not the order of their atomic connectivity. And then you've got these things called enantiomers. That's a hard one to say. Spelled E-N-A-N-T-I-O-M-E-R-S. Enantiomers are types of stereo isomers which are non superimposable. So a chiral molecule is an example of an enantiomer. Sometimes you'll hear those words interchangeably, but really chirality is a subcomponent of that. Regardless of all of these complicated chemistry words, if you think about chirality from the perspective of its etymology, right? Where does the word come from? Guess who actually coined this word?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Benjamin Franklin.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No, I'll give you a hint. It was in the year 1894 and it's a hybrid. It was coined by Lord Kelvin.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Of course.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, I say Lord Kelvin.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. So what he was trying to do was Latinize the Greek term care, which means hand. So really the word itself means handedness. If something is chiral, it is handed. If it has chirality, it has a handedness. And something that's kind of interesting that there are implications of chirality. So we've talked a little bit about thalidomide, which it was not well understood that thalidomide was a chiral molecule. So sometimes in medicine, when that's not well understood, the opposite handedness might be formed in the laboratory. And if we're not careful, it can bind differently to different receptor sites and have different downstream effects. So we have to test both versions of that molecule. Now, in the lab, if we're going to be making sugars, proteins, it's very common that like doing the basic chemistry that we're doing will make like a 50 50 soup of left handed and right handed molecules. But in life, here's the interesting thing. Pretty much all amino acids on Earth are what handed.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' They're all left handed.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, all our proteins are lefties. And equally interesting, did you know that most of our sugars are righties?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' No.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Didn't know that.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I used to know and then I forgot.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, in a living organism, and there's a lot of kind of theoretical hypotheses about why this is the case could be that in the primordial, the very early universe, glycine found itself to be chiral. And it had this downstream effect where more and more molecules that were produced, if they were one handedness, it was more likely that the other handedness stuck. It could be that kind of this early dust just lent itself to a certain chirality because stuff just fit better. It's still sort of a mystery why life on Earth tends to be or at least the proteinaceous portion of life on Earth tends to be left handed. And it doesn't really necessarily follow that life elsewhere in the galaxy or in the universe would need to be that way. That's something to that astrobiologists often think about something to kind of look for. Wouldn't it be interesting if we found alternative chirality in other portions of the universe if we if we found any building blocks of life at all? Pretty interesting. So yeah, the reason we often hear the terms left or right handedness to refer to chirality is not just because it helps us conceptually understand the concept. Wow, that was redundant. But it's also because it literally means handedness. That's how Lord Kelvin decided to to name it. And it makes perfect sense. And I think it's it's an easy way to look at it. Again, just as a review, left handed and right handed, you can't rotate your left hand to look like your right hand. It's a mirror image, but it's also not superimposable as opposed to an arrow, for example, which is not chiral. If I were to look at an arrow, yes, it's a mirror image like an arrow facing left and an arrow facing right. Yes, it's a mirror image, but I can also rotate it to look the exact same. So that's not an example of chirality. But your hands are.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, it's an important concept in biochemistry. And it's not that hard. I think you explained it well. But the news item that everyone was talking about was the chemical process where we can control the chirality of chemicals that we make so that we don't have to have a 50 50 mix.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Which is really important, like in the case of thalidomide and like in the case that I brought up of starting off on citalopram back in the day, which had both left and right handed versions and then later taking escitalopram. So that was in America. The brand names would be Celexa. And then the newer version was Lexapro, which only has one handedness. And so it tends to you tend to be able to take less of the drug for the same effect. And it has fewer side effects because it doesn't have one hand. Exactly. But you wouldn't be able to do that without the work that the Nobel Prize in Chemistry went towards.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. Thanks, Cara.<br />
<br />
== News Items ==<br />
<br />
=== Creepy Parasite <small>(22:27)</small> ===<br />
* [https://phys.org/news/2021-10-parasite-fish-tongue-caught-texas.html Parasite that replaces a fish's tongue caught at Texas state park]<ref>[https://phys.org/news/2021-10-parasite-fish-tongue-caught-texas.html Phys.org: Parasite that replaces a fish's tongue caught at Texas state park]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' Bob, you're going to start us off with the news items with a Halloween themed creepy news item.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah. Had to talk about that. So a Texas parks and wildlife employee posted a picture on Facebook recently of a fish quite nearby for the first time that had its tongue replaced by a parasite known as the tongue eating louse. So this is, as you said, a creepy Halloween theme news item, if ever there were one. So how nasty is this? As far as body horrors go, this is a top five for sure. But it kind of happens to fish and not people. But oh, boy, I'd love to see a story where this does happen to people because that would be creepy. All right. First of all, what is this tongue eating louse that I speak of? This parasite, they're isopods and isopods are an order of crustaceans that live in water, land, saltwater, freshwater, kind of all over. They've got segmented exoskeletons with antennae and many spindly legs, seven or eight, depending on where you, what your source is. And they're related to pill bugs, which I never heard of, which you may know as roly polies.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, roly polies.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Okay. I never heard of those either.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Wait, no, no, no, no, no, Bob. Come on.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' They're related. They're related to roly polies. I never heard of them.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I know, but you don't know what a roly polie is?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' No, I do now.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Do you guys also call it, what are other words for roly polie?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Pill bugs?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I know you know what it is. You just call it something different.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Okay, maybe, but I don't know. I don't know. Pill bug or roly polie, but they can be in your yard. Those things have been there, but they're related. These specific beasties are called Cimithoa exigua. And so what separates them from other isopods? Now here's the part where you got to gird your loins a little bit. The female gets into the fish's mouth through the gills. The males just kind of hang out in the gills. They stay there. That's home. From there in the mouth though, it severs the blood supply to the soft tissue of the tongue, which then necrotizes and drops off. Blam. Tongue is gone. Then the parasite attaches to the muscles on the remaining little stub tongue and takes up residence as the new fish tongue. How nasty is that? You look in the fish mouth, you see these eyes staring at you where the tongue is supposed to be. Now, so if you're anthropomorphizing the fish, you're probably thinking the fish is now in hell for the rest of its life, right? I mean, at that point, why wouldn't the fish just scream until it dies, right? That's what I would do.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Because it has no tongue.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah. Not just it has no tongue. It has a parasite, a crustacean for its tongue in its mouth kind of hanging out. And I assume-<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Tell me, Bob, do they talk to each other? Is there a community?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Is it symbiotic? What's going on?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' He took one of my jokes later on.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Does the fish get any benefit from this?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Damn you, Jay. So in fact, the parasitic tongue doesn't make that much of a difference and the fish doesn't seem to mind. And to answer that, we'll need to look at how awesome human tongues are. Our tongues are, they're just amazing and versatile as we all know. It's the most flexible muscle you have. In fact, it's made up of eight muscles, which I did not know. But I did know that the tongue does many things. It makes language as we know it and it helps us form the sounds into words. They let us whistle, taste, swallow, and of course don't forget lick. Whatever you're licking, you lick it because you have a tongue. Now a fish tongue is kind of lame compared to that. Very kind of like whatever. It's really, it's just essentially a stub of bone with some soft tissue on it. And it helps move food down and it pushes water through the gills. And that's about it. It only does really those two things, those two activities though, the parasite now can do for the fish. You know, so maybe if the fish just kind of shrugs its non-existent shoulders and says, hey, at least I have someone to talk to now. So that was Jay's joke that he stole from me. Thank you, Jay. So, but the feet though is still extraordinary. This makes the tongue eating louse the only known parasite that can totally replace an organ in another creature. And yes, it'd be kind of cool if there were others and maybe there are and we're not aware of it, but that's just so damn creepy.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You mean like brain parasites that replace your brain?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' The brain slugs.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, I like that. Yeah, some zombies. So you may think that the parasite feeds on a share of the food that the fish eats, right? That makes perfect sense. If I took up residence in a creature's mouth, I'd certainly take a share of the food because it's right there within reach every day, right? So I got, he's chewing some food. I might as well grab some. It's like the awesome, it's the ultimate awesome in laziness scenario there. But in, and I was going to compare this mouth parasite to remora. Now you guys have heard remora fish. They essentially stick to sharks for years and they eat some of the bits of food that float around it while it's eating. Or so I thought, or so I thought for years, that's what I thought. They just eat the particles of food that the that the sloppy shark just has floating around its mouth while it's eating. But that's not true. I just found out that that's actually been disproved. Remora don't eat shark food. They eat shark faeces apparently. So that there's a little remora/excrement trivia for you. So the parasite is basically a tongue, but it doesn't eat any of the fish food as you might think. Instead it eats the mucus that's in the mouth, which sounds to me only slightly better than shark excrement, just a little bit better. But Hey, who am I to judge? Maybe it tastes like butterscotch pudding to the louse, but mucus doesn't sound good. So apparently some scientists though also think that these parasites can tap into the former supply, blood supply of the tongue for some nourishment. So if that's the case, it's not, most of them eat the mucus and maybe just a tiny subset can actually tap into the blood supply and get some nourishment that way as well. So scientists say that this phenomenon is not uncommon. These, these parasites are commonly found in the mouths of sea trout and some snapper species as well. So it's more common than you might think. And it got some, some good quotes here. Jimmy Brunot, he's an evolutionary biologist and parasite expert at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. He said, you look into a fish's mouth and there's eyes staring back at you.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' What?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yes. That's yeah. Right. Cause these parasites got eyes. Yeah. Well no, they're, they're crustaceans. You know, they're actually with exoskeleton. They're not when you think parasite, you're not really thinking of something like that with an exoskeleton and something, but it's it's an, it's a parasite. Cory Evans is a fish biologist at Rice University and he has my favorite quote about this regarding looking at the parasite in the fish's mouth. He said, every time is as bad as the first time. It's like being Rick rolled. I thought that was hilarious. Every time is as bad as the first time. It's always creepy and scary and nasty no matter how many times you do it. It's like being Rick rolled. That's a hilarious quote. But uh, yeah, this is the creepiest news item I could find that is appropriate for the weekend of Halloween when this podcast is being released. So there you go. I'm done.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So Bob, I can't let this go. You don't know what a roly poly is.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' No, to me I would have thought, Oh, what is that a candy bar? I don't know. I never heard of a roly poly.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' They're in the family Armadillidiidae. Not to be confused with Armadillidae.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I love that family.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. There's Armadillidae, but then there's also Armadillidiidae.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh my goodness.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' And the day you celebrated is called what?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Armadillidiidiidae.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' They undergo something. They have a behavior called, no lie. I love this so much. Conglobation, which basically just means rolling up. They roll up into a ball. They congregate.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Getting memories now.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And they're also called in different parts of the country in the world. They're called pill bugs, roly poly, slaters, potato bugs and doodle bugs.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Potato bug.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Is that how you guys call them?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I also see wood shrimp, chicky pigs, penny sows, and cheesy bugs.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' What do you call them Jay?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Chicky pigs.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No you don't.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I do now.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I do from right now to forever.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Evan, who knew I'd be going to Evan to get a straight answer here. What do you, having grown up in Connecticut, call these things?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It's the potato bug.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Potato bug.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's probably the one I'm familiar with.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I have heard pill bug before.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Cara, now I'm looking at pictures. I haven't, I didn't look at the pictures before. So this does, this does, I do recognize this, but I have not.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' What would you call that?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I don't know. I don't know what I would. If you, if you showed me a picture yesterday before I started doing research or two days ago, whatever, I would have said, I, I've seen this before. I don't know what you would call it, but pill bug makes sense.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' This is such a cool like regional thing.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It is because I haven't seen it a lot locally on the East coast. This is not common.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' My whole childhood you played with roly polies.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' And roly polies, I never heard of that term, but I see why it would be called the roly poly.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right? Cause they-<br />
<br />
'''B:''' They look ancient.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. I suppose. They're cool.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' But that doesn't save them from predators. Why do they do that behavior?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Imagine how fast you could roll downhill. If you get trapped on top of a hill, they could just roll down. Catch me if you can.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It protects their belly. No? Cause they have a pretty intense exoskeleton.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' They're like, an armadillo or something.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. That's why they're called Armadillidiidae.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. Let's move on.<br />
<br />
=== Lab Grown Coffee <small>(31:55)</small> ===<br />
* [https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/cultured-coffee-produced-in-the-lab-passes-taste-test-180978730/ Lab-Grown Coffee Passes Taste Test]<ref>[https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/cultured-coffee-produced-in-the-lab-passes-taste-test-180978730/ Smithsonian Magazine: Lab-Grown Coffee Passes Taste Test]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' Jay, tell us about lab grown coffee. <br />
<br />
'''J:''' Steve, have you heard of Frankenstein coffee?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Franken coffee?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Franken coffee.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Franken brew?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' This is coffee that's made in the lab and you know, the coffee that we drank in the future might actually be made in a bioreactor. Now, do you remember within the last couple of episodes I was talking about-<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Molecular farming?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Molecular farming.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Basically using growing plants to replace bioreactors. Now you're going to use bioreactors to replace plants.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Right. And I thought that that was ironic, right? Because we, wait a minute, we were just working on the other stuff, but there's a reason behind all this, which I'll let you know. So the researchers at Technical Research Center VTT in Finland have brewed coffee from cultured cells taken from coffee plant leaves. Question. How were they making coffee from just the plant leaves?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' So they, no beans?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' No, there's no beans. There are no beans. So keep that in mind as I continue sharing.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Did you know that they're actually, yes, yes, there's, they're not beans or actually they're seeds. They're not really beans and it's not really a coffee plant, it's a coffee shrub. So I'm just throwing out some anal technical information there,<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Thank you, Bob. Wait, so you don't have anything else? You know that they're not using beans though?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah. So using the plant, they're using the plant cells or the shrub cells, the leaf cells. Right. The cells. But they tweaked the crap out of them though.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' So that's all you need are the cells?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, they did tweak them to, I guess, make them have properties like the actual beans, which Bob wants us to not call them seeds, but the actual answer is seeds. This is very complicated. I think we should start the whole thing over.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' No, this is great.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's how I felt with chirality.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So the lead researcher, his name is Risher, who he's the head plant biotechnologist at VTT. He said, coffee making is an art and involves iterative optimization under the supervision of specialists with dedicated equipment. Our work marks the basis for such work. And regarding the taste, the lead guy said to describe it as difficult, but for me it was in between a coffee and a black tea.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Ew.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' He went on to say, it depends really on the roasting grade and this was a very a bit of a lighter roast. So it had a little bit more of a tea like sensation. He did say that he likes the darker roast better. This is where they happen to be in their research right now. And that of course they're going to, you're going to make it so it tastes like coffee. 100%. There won't be any hints of tea in there once they hit their goal. So now this research was done in Finland and Finland happens to be the largest consumer of coffee. I didn't know that.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I didn't know it either.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Per capita?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, yeah. Per capita. And this is under kilograms per person consumed. Let me read you the list real quick. I think you'll find this interesting. Finland is the top, then Sweden, then Iceland, then Norway, then Denmark, Austria, Switzerland, Greece, Bosnia, Germany. And then at the very bottom of the list, very surprisingly, the US and the UK.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' What?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yes. And it goes down from, yeah, it goes down from like 12.2 kilograms per person. And then the US is a 2.5. I'm drinking 40. I don't know about you. Bob, you've got to be drinking 200.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Do you think it has something to do with how cold it is there?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah. You hit the nail on the head. I mean, it's a warm beverage being largely consumed in very cold places. I thought that was really fun to just wrap your head around like who's drinking the most coffee. So of course we have to ask if this technology will ever be cost effective. And at this time there is no answer because they're not far enough in their research. We don't know what it's going to be like when they scale it up. If it's even, if they can even scale it up, that's a big deal. And this is where everything that doesn't make it, it dies on the vine right there. The scaling up part of it is really the 99%. Now a more important question is why would we even do this in the first place? Right? Let's not do it just because we can. There's gotta be a reason. Well, there is. Let me tell you, let me give you a nice answer for that one. This technology comes at a good time. Why? Because the coffee industry is having a hard time keeping up with global demand. The coffee-<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It's those finish people, you know?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yes. I mean they stopped drinking. Then only we could have more. They're the problem. Actually, we should go to war with Finland over coffee is what I think is happening. So coffee is the third most consumed beverage in the world coming behind. What are the other two guys?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Water?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Tea?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Water and tea.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Correct. Right now, coffee growers are producing 22 billion, billion pounds of coffee bean per year, not seeds. Right? 22 billion pounds. I want to see how big that is. If somebody could measure the size of a coffee bean and tell me what is it, does this cover Manhattan? Like how big is 22 billion pounds of coffee beans?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Right. How many Empire State buildings would that fill?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Exactly. I would love to have someone figure that out for me. This is a huge crap that takes an ever growing amount of land to sustain that they're, they're stripping the land to build more to create more farmland for, for coffee bushes. Coffee growers are damaging the climate because of this deforestation and to kick it all off, to make it even worse, they are also using unsustainable farming methods that increased the problem. So this is a train wreck. I didn't realize that my love of coffee that Bob and I are damaging the earth because we like to drink coffee. So the researchers see that their technology could help this problem by potentially eliminating the need for more land to grow coffee. That's obvious, but using biotechnology will decrease the amount of water needed as well, which is fantastic. And also there will be less transportation of the actual coffee. Why? Because they could build a lab anywhere like the one in Finland. Doesn't matter. So they don't have to ship it as far. They don't have to ship it halfway across the planet to get you the coffee. So also all the chemicals that they need for farming are gone. And you know, I know that they need chemicals in the bioreactors, but they use them as efficiently as possible and they have exquisite control over it, which you don't out in the real world. There's a ton of evaporation and whatnot. The team says that they're about four years away from a viable product, which is good news because typically when they say five years, that means never, but right. You know that. That's right. But when they say four years, they're hedging their bet and they're going, no, this is actually going to happen. So I think it's going to happen.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. So I mean, my concern is the cost. I mean, it's not like just because they're not using up land, et cetera, it doesn't mean, I mean, bioreactors are famously massively expensive, right? This is the whole point of going the other way, trying to use plants to make things so you don't have to use a bioreactor. So it doesn't matter if it works, if it's going to be too expensive. And you're right the coffee is made from dried cellular material and then they do roast it. They had to come up with their own roasting process. So it is that certain material is roasted, but you know, they claim it tastes fine, but there you will, you have to see how much it's going to cost and what's the consumer acceptance going to be.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. Cause so much of coffee is like cultural too. It's not just a, I need this thing that tastes this way. It's a, I get my coffee, the single origin blend from this part of the world or it requires more than just here's something that's available to change people's minds and change their consumption.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Otherwise we'd all be drinking Sanka.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' People drink low end swill, but they're not going to, they're not going to pay a lot of money for it though.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. And there are also ways to buy coffee sustainably.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' True I guess. But what if, but what if you, we were comparing the cost of the bioreactor to the true cost of coffee when you factor in all this damage it's doing to the environment. Maybe it's not.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. But the question is, is there just an alternative where you could do better farming techniques for coffee rather than going all the way to using a bioreactor. It wouldn't surprise me if this never comes to fruition, even if we can technically do it just because the economics are not going to be there.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Or the will. I don't want my coffee to taste like coffee tea.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I agree, Cara, of course.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I want coffee to taste like coffee.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' You know, think about just, but just run this through the computer real quick. There are so many people out there that are coffee aficionados, like there are people that are expert roasters. There's so much demand for high quality coffee and for coffee that tastes in so many different ways that I think it's likely that they'll first start making just regular, everyday, non-critical coffee for the average person. Right?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right, like Folgers.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Average Joe.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, the average Joe stuff. And then as they become more nuanced and better and they could do all the tweaking and everything, they'll probably be able to make some specialty coffees. But you know, regular, normal, plant grown coffee, I don't think that's going anywhere in the short term.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Me neither.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Unless global warming destroys all outside crops and then you know.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, parasites, fungus, anything can take, you know.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I actually think they're better off just calling it something completely different and making it a fad like kombucha. Just don't call it coffee. Call it a whole new drink that's really sustainable.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's true.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Blah, blah, blah. I think they'd have a better marketing.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, maybe.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Because they, and they might be able to do things like really control the caffeine content and really control the tannins. And I don't know, it may be that they can dial into some things that you couldn't do with conventionally grown coffee. But yeah, sell it as something else.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' We could call it a combined word of tea and coffee. We can call it toffee. And it could taste like coffee.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, that's fucking amazing.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, let's move on.<br />
<br />
=== Organoid Research <small>(41:45)</small> ===<br />
* [https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/mini-brains-for-disease-research/ Mini-Brains for Disease Research]<ref>[https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/mini-brains-for-disease-research/ {{sbm}}: Mini-Brains for Disease Research]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' So I have my Halloween themed sort of new item. Research involving growing human brains.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Organoids.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yes, sort of. Not real full human brains, just organoids. Mini me brains. So yeah, this is a study that came out recently looking at growing an organoid of a human brain in order to do research on specific neurodegenerative diseases. So first let's back up a little bit and talk about what are organoids. So organoids are essentially three dimensional cell cultures. So you don't just have just cells growing in a mat, in a Petri dish. You actually grow the cell culture from stem cells that can become different kinds of cells. And if you grow it three dimensionally, it could actually start to acquire some of the structure of the organ that you're growing. So you could actually have like a little piece of liver that actually has some bile ducts and some structure to it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And remember, Steve, last time I talked about organoids, the article was about self-assembling eye spots.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Which is very cool.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, they're doing it with kidneys and lungs and livers and brains.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' But there was a difference.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' This study involved using human adult derived induced pluripotent stem cells. So what does all that mean? I know we've discussed this before, but just as a quick review. So stem cells are cells that can become other cells, right? They're like the progenitor cells that could turn into different specific cell types. If you have an induced stem cell, that means that it wasn't, didn't have, you increased its potential by genetically tweaking it in some way by doing something to it. So the pretty much the standard technology now is to start with something like fibroplasts, which are skin stem cells, and then all tweak them genetically so that they become either more multipotent or pluripotent. A pluripotent cell could become any kind of cell in the body.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's not totipotent. The only difference there is that totipotent cells like embryonic stem cells can become every kind of cell in the body, but also the placenta and every kind of extra embryonic cell. So everything including-<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Every cell a human could make.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yes. But pluripotent is everything in the body. So you could, so in this case, they took human fibroblasts, induced them to be pluripotent, and then coach them into forming the different types of brain cells. And you actually get a somewhat of a brain structure with neurons and astrocytes forming the layers that would typically occur in a human brain. And this gives us the ability to study in more detail the effects of, for example, different disease states, not just looking at the health of a cell. You could be looking at the health of the structures that are formed by those cells. And it mimics a living organism better because you're actually getting multiple kinds of cells interacting with each other. So it mimics a biological organism much more than just a cell culture.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' So it's kind of in between like an in vitro and in vivo. It's in between those two.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's kind of in between. There's this new category of research.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Better than one and almost as good as the other.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, wait, it's not in vivo.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' No, but it's in between.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's still in vitro.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, it's still in vitro. It's still in vitro, but it's getting closer to simulating in vivo within vitro.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, yeah. But it's just really good in vitro.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yes. That's a good way to think about it. But it's so good. How good is it? It's so good that it actually can be considered translational research in a way because you can take basic science like stuff you looked at in a petri dish just on cells and go, okay, let's see now how it affects an organoid. And so it's kind of like on the way to doing human research in the same way that animal research is. But this animal research has the advantage of being whole organism. And but you know, organoid research has the advantage of being human. But also, all right. So in the in this study, the one advance they did was they figured out that if they do, even though they're doing like this three dimensional brain structure, if they do it in thin sections, they can feed the cells better and keep them alive longer. So in the published study, normally you can only look at the cells for a few days. In this study, they kept the cells alive for 240 days. And in unpublished data, they have kept the same group has kept a brain organoids alive for 340 days. So it's so yeah, that allows for obviously a lot more research longer term research. Here's the other advantage of organoid research over like animal studies, for example. So what they were looking at are organoids made from adult derived again, induced pluripotent stem cells taken from people who have ALS, Frontal Temporal Dementia, which is a genetic form of ALS, which is a motor neuron disease. And it's a combination of the motor neurons dying, so you become weak, as with ALS, but also Frontal Temporal Dementia, which is like a form of say, Alzheimer's type dementia, but it's affecting mainly the frontal and temporal lobes. And you get those two things together. So just different kinds of neurons are dying and you get the motor neuron disease plus the dementia. And then they were this way, they could see how the brains of this disease state evolve. One thing they learned is that the cells start to accumulate toxic abnormal proteins right at the beginning, which which means that probably people who are born with this disease, even though it might not manifest until they're adults, their brain cells are abnormal at birth, which means that we may be able to diagnose it earlier and also be able to target interventions long before they start to manifest clinical symptoms. The other advantage of this research, which is why it's considered partially translational is because you now you have a model on which you can test treatments, right? So not only is it a model where you could study what's happening, just learn about the disease. You could then say, OK, let's be exposed to different drugs and see if it alters the course of this abnormal disease state. And that's what they did. They took a drug just has just a designation, letters and numbers. And that was shown to affect the buildup of the toxic proteins that they discovered in when they looked at their organoid model and it did reduce it. So it did have a potential effect. That is pretty promising. Now, obviously we don't the first organoid was made in 2013, so they haven't been around for a long time. It's not like we have decades and decades of research where we know how well organoid research predicts human clinical trials. But there's every reason to think that they will be more predictive than just cell culture. They may be more predictive than animal research because it's actually on human cells. If it turns out once we keep doing this long enough we we need to do enough research where treatments go all the way through the pipeline. Then we could say, well, how many treatments that looked promising at the organoid level of research ended up being a drug that was actually used on people in the clinic, got approved as a treatment. We don't really have that data yet. I'm very interested in seeing what that is. It may be much better than anything else we have now in terms of preclinical research, predicting clinical outcomes, because right now it's pretty bad. You know, in terms of the statistics, we have it's the preclinical research is critical. We need to do it. But things that look promising at the preclinical level, less than 1% translate into the human level. Yeah. If you're just looking across the board and that's that's looking at the most promising things like not even just the stuff that gets abandoned early but things that say, OK, this probably should work. Let's see what happens. And then it doesn't work out in clinical trials. So we'll say perhaps organoid research will will be a lot better, a lot more predictive because we're dealing with we're getting pretty close to doing research on human tissue without having to the ethical and the pragmatic issues of doing actual live person research.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Well, what about organoid rights? What if that ever becomes a thing? And of course, I'm only joking. <br />
<br />
'''C:''' But it's something that people will bring up. I mean, like at what point at some point-<br />
<br />
'''B:''' At some point they'd have to be. Yeah, they'd have to be a lot more substantive than they are now.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' You say that. But look at what's happening in Texas right now. Like there's definitely people who. <br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, I don't. Yeah. Yeah. I was thinking scientifically. I wasn't thinking crazy like like like that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But scientifically, it's a it's a continuum from an organoid to a human brain. And as they get more sophisticated, will there be a point where like, I wonder if this organoids thinking.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I think we will we will reach that point. But just so it's clear, Steve, that now the reason that that it's flat is basically for nutrient circulation, because when you had the really 3D spherical type of organoids, the centers of it would die and then it would limit the lifespan of the organ. But the reason it's flat is to is so that the nutrient dispersion is can feed all of the nutrient, all of the cells. And that's why. So my question to you then is how much is the flattening of the organoid? How is that? How much does that compromise the replication of the three dimensional structure that we're really looking forward to dealing with here?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' For the brain, not by much, because that's how the brain's organized. You know what I mean? In that kind of vertical way. And so it's still a pretty good section of a brain with all the you know, a lot of the structure is there. So I don't think, that's a good question and I'm sure researchers will exactly ask that question, explore that some more. But from a theoretical point of view, it may not affect it much at all.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That's good.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You know, it's still yeah, it's still a great model because not like again, you're getting sophisticated brain anatomy. You're just getting just like the layers, the cell layers in a cortex like just like a unit-<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Like a cortical stack? Are they like getting close like something like that's the classic subunit of the brain, right? Is those cortical stacks?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yes. Yeah, I wouldn't call it that, but you're getting close to that. But you're not. Obviously, you're not getting the networking, right? But if you make a big enough organoid with enough complexity, it might start spontaneously networking with itself and get to the point where you might have something that's like an insect level in terms of its or higher data.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, and that was I mean, that was I don't want to say it's the same thing, but the organoid story that I covered just not that many weeks ago was about the fact that if you put the right factors in, it started making eyes.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Just or it just had the sort of instructions to do that already.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Why is that so creepy?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I know. Hey, Jay, guess what? Jay, if you look at a living brain after the skull's been removed.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Don't even.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, yes. Guess what's there to do to do attached to why?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Why does it have to do that?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Pulse?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Why can't the blood just flow through it?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Because your heart beats.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Because your heart beats.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' And your brain pulses.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Why does my brain have to jiggle? Why can't it just be like my bicep? You know what I mean?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's like Jell-O. <br />
<br />
=== Conspiracies and COVID <small>(53:55)</small> ===<br />
* [https://www.sciencealert.com/people-who-believe-covid-conspiracies-are-more-likely-to-test-positive-study-shows People Who Believe COVID Conspiracies More Likely to Test Positive, Study Confirms]<ref>[https://www.sciencealert.com/people-who-believe-covid-conspiracies-are-more-likely-to-test-positive-study-shows ScienceAlert.com: People Who Believe COVID Conspiracies More Likely to Test Positive, Study Confirms]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, Cara, tell us about people who believe in conspiracies about COVID.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' We know them. We love them. Not really. They frustrate us, but we love them. So we talk about this all the time. And I think that I came across an article that very much answers the question, what's the harm? You know, this is a very common question that we have to that we're faced with as skeptics. And I think this has been a big one, right? A lot of conspiracies flying around about COVID-19. Everything from that it's a vast government conspiracy to try and affect the global economy. Like people legit thought that it had something to do with trying to get Trump reelected or not reelected. I don't even know. Lots of medical conspiracies about effects on pregnancy or about what was the one with Bill Gates?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, the microchipping?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Microchipping. Yes. They're just so ridiculous. So and there have been obviously a lot of studies published about how conspiracy beliefs affect people's behavior. But there are limits to some of those studies. One of the biggest ones is that oftentimes these studies are done in a cross sectional manner. So at one point in time a big swath of the population might be sampled. And then at a later point in time, another big swath of the population is sampled in the hopes that they sort of reflect changing attitudes. But what some researchers in the Netherlands decided to do is a longitudinal study. Over a short period of time, they decided to ask a bunch of people at the very beginning of the pandemic, I think it was in April of 2020, about their how they sort of rank on a conspiracy scale. Like, what are their beliefs about COVID? What are their beliefs about different conspiratorial thoughts? And then they decided to ask those same people again in December of that year, some questions about their behavior. So eight months later, what are they up to? And are there any sort of associations that they can see? Predictions, as it were this is not a way to measure cause and effect. Let's put that out there. This is a correlational or actually, it's a regression study. So it tells you what is maybe a little bit predictive of something else, but not that something necessarily caused something. So they, they looked at 5,745 participants in what they are calling a nationally representative sample of the Dutch population. So this took place in the Netherlands. They asked them, like I said, at the beginning, do you believe in these conspiracy theories? What do you think? They didn't call them conspiracy theories, but what do you think about COVID? Is it a bio weapon that was engineered by scientists? Is it a vast conspiracy to take away citizens' rights? Is it a cover up for the impending global economic crash? And then in December, when they surveyed them again, they asked them things like, have you been tested for COVID? If you were tested, was that test positive or negative? Do you breach COVID regulations? And in the Netherlands, there's actually like you get fined for certain things. So they asked some questions about whether or not people had been fined. Not many people had. But you know, did you go to a crowded party? Have you had a whole bunch of people over to your house? And what do you think they found?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Oh yeah, there was a correlation.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh yeah. So people who believed in COVID-19 conspiracy theories tended to not get tested for the virus. And among those who did get tested, they had higher rates of infection. This is a real world outcome. And we don't know again, if it's causal. Obviously, we don't know if not believing in conspiracy theories makes people more likely to catch the virus or if other behaviors affect both of those things or other personality traits or states affect both of those things. But obviously, there is a high relationship and they even demonstrated that it's also a high relationship between conspiratorial thinking in general, not just conspiracy thinking specifically about COVID. That that was also just as predictive.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Because people have predispositions towards all sorts of stuff.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, like people who tend to believe in conspiracies in general, were also more likely to have caught the virus. They were more likely to not get tested. But if they were tested to have had a positive test, they were more likely to have had visitors over the number that was recommended by the government at the time. And they were more likely to have visited overcrowded parties, bars or restaurants. They also looked at some of the other outcomes like pandemic outcomes that were interesting to them. They found that conspiratorial thinkers were more likely to have lost employment and income. And they were also potentially more likely to have experienced social rejection. But again, it's difficult to say is that because of their views, or did it did those losses contribute to their views? Did they reinforce their views? And you know, is this a self perpetuating cycle? But the idea here is that a this was not just A, random snapshot in time, they were actually able to longitudinally follow these individuals. And B, conspiracy beliefs was predictive of implications for public health. They also found that on measures of social well being those who endorsed higher levels of conspiratorial thinking also endorsed lower levels of well being. So there are real world effects. And like it seems reasonable, right? Nobody I think would be surprised by these results. But these results reinforce in in data, what I think a lot of people maybe assumed but we didn't know for certain, which is that the thoughts, the thought patterns, the cognitions, the beliefs, the emotional state affect behavior, that behavior affects public health, and personal medical status, right?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It also is another independent line of evidence that the public health measures that the authorities are promoting work, because you know, the the big thing is that the conspiracy theorists, people who are tend to think in that way are less likely to wear a mask, social distance, get vaccinated, get tested, just believe that there's a virus and act accordingly. And so they're more likely to catch it because it's actually is a real pandemic out there that's happening. And if it weren't, if they're if they were correct, then they would not put them at increased risk of anything. So it is, in a way, its own sort of confirmation that yep, the pandemic is real. Yeah. All right. Thanks, Cara.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yep.<br />
<br />
=== Death by Exorcism <small>(1:00:37)</small> ===<br />
* [https://www.timesofisrael.com/woman-dies-in-apparent-exorcism-sheikh-doctor-and-husband-arrested/ Woman dies in apparent exorcism; sheikh, doctor and husband arrested]<ref>[https://www.timesofisrael.com/woman-dies-in-apparent-exorcism-sheikh-doctor-and-husband-arrested/ The Times of Israel: Woman dies in apparent exorcism; sheikh, doctor and husband arrested]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' Evan, you haven't spoken about death by exorcism in quite a while. This is a good Halloween themed news item. It's unfortunately still happening. So give us the sad update on this thing.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Very sad update. In fact, Halloween being what it is finally here, a celebration of the dead. Although I wouldn't say we're going to be celebrating about this particular news item. You know, exorcism. All right. It's a religious practice. It is it hinges on the belief that people, places or objects, which means just about anyone and everything and every place can and do become possessed by spirits or ghosts or devils or demons or any fantastical entity that you choose to conjure. This is known as possession. If you are deemed to be possessed, the remedy is exorcism. Now, exorcism falls along the spectrum. There are more benign versions of exorcisms in which people basically, well, they'll pray. They'll pray to angels or gods and those of common faith and close proximity, family members living in the same household. They'll pray for the spirits to be released from you. But then there's the other end of the spectrum. These are the cases of exorcism by things like beatings and burnings and suffocation and wounding and breaking and drowning and outright death. Also at the hands of people of common faith and close proximity and family members and living in the same household. These are the patterns that have been established. So this week there was a death by exorcism in Israel where a 26 year old woman collapsed during this ceremony, as it was described, performed by a sheikh, one who practices witchcraft, and three suspects have been arrested. And the autopsy results have not yet been made public. This only happened or was reported a couple of days ago, so it's still unfolding the details. They're not even releasing the name of the victim or have not released the names of the people who have been arrested yet. That's to be coming out soon. It may come out by the time you hear this, but for now we don't have that information. Those who were arrested were, well, the sheikh, the victim's husband, and a doctor. You do a search online for death by exorcism. You come up with a lot of hits basically, but what I found is that it spans a vast swath of time. Basically you find articles on your first page, if you're going to use Google in the first and second page, of articles from 1978, 1986, 1990s. And it's not confined to any one region of the country. This is not something that only happens in places like the Middle East. This happens in America. This happens in Europe. This happens in China. This happens in South Africa. This happens all over the world. It doesn't seem to have any real cultural barriers or age groups or anything you can measure on a demographic scale. It's everywhere. The understanding of what this is so ingrained in cultures around the world, the belief of possession and exorcism. And it's been around for thousands of years. You go back in history and there are cited examples of this happening for a very long time and all over the place. So it is as common as people themselves.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I assumed exorcism was Catholic.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' No, not...<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, because you mentioned this was a sheikh, right? So this was Islamic. This was Muslim. So interesting. I didn't even realize that it's so trans-cultural.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, our modern sort of idea of it is perhaps, well, the movie The Exorcist, which certainly has the Catholicism angle to it. But it is. It's all religions have a version of this. I mean, society basically has accepted this is true, that this actually does happen. There's zero evidence showing that spirits or ghosts or demons or anything like that actually exist. Yet, here we are sort of accepting it. And there were a couple of other, if I can touch on them very quickly, Steve, other news items this week having to do with exorcisms. And I think it touches us to the argument about how it is so pervasive in the culture. ChristianToday.com So this is obviously a Christian news website. But a Catholic priest claims that the pandemic, the COVID pandemic, is behind a rise in people asking for exorcisms. And this comes from the exorcists themselves. They claim that people have been asking them more than ever now to perform exorcisms because they can't find solutions otherwise to the issues surrounding COVID-19, whether it's the disease, the virus itself or the other aspects of the virus, like the limiting social interaction, the psychological effects that it's having on people, the financial effects that it's having on people. People think that on some level there's something supernatural going on and they're going to turn to, well, exorcisms because it's pretty well accepted in so many places around the world. And certainly the Catholic Church has, I'll say it, a vested interest in in in their being things like possessions and exorcisms. It's part of their dogma. It just is. <br />
<br />
'''C:''' Do these practitioners actually call themselves exorcists.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yes.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' You would think that would be a little sullied by the movie. <br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah. The exorcist is referring to the priest, the person performing the ritual. And they run courses. In fact, that's where this particular priest or this Father Roggio runs a training course on exorcism and liberation prayer, all backed by the Vatican. They have an official department dealing with this, but they hold courses every year and they train their priests. And also for lay people, they teach it as well. And going back to how it's cultural and really ubiquitous all around the world, this year's focus is on exorcism in the context of Afro-Brazilian magical rites. So they each year they can find new themes to tap into and pulling them from various, various parts of the of the of the world enough so that they run this every, every year. And then the last thing I wanted to touch base on was something else that came up in the news because there was a show that debuted this week called obviously with Halloween here, Celebrity Exorcism.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' What?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I kid you not. Oh, my gosh. I mean, I saw that and I'm like, what is this? Really? Yep. Stars Jodie Sweetin, who was in the show Full House. You remember Full House, right?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, my God. She was the middle daughter.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I guess so. Yeah. I mean, I really never watched Full House, but. Shar Jackson from the show Moesha and Metta World Peace, who was a basketball player. I think his name used to be Ron Artest, if I'm not mistaken. So so basically they put these three celebrities in their own right together and they go out and they with an exorcist, a self-proclaimed exorcist. Her name is Rachel Stavis, S-T-A-V-I-S. Never heard of her before. And they go on to what's called Paranormal Boot Camp. And then then they go and investigate haunted places. And it's basically the Ghost Hunters pattern of show to our two hour pilot show that this was. So that's so Celebrity Exorcism. So there you go. Another example of how exorcism is. I don't want to say it's not really misunderstood, but it's just it's just accepted that, yes, this happens and there's no critical thinking. There's no analysis. There's really no rational thought that I think the society should be putting into actually what exorcism really is and stopping and thinking about it before they go ahead and use it as a marketing tool.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. Thanks, Evan. Jay, it's Who's That Noisy Time.<br />
<br />
{{anchor|futureWTN}} <!-- keep right above the following sub-section. this is the anchor used by the "wtnAnswer" template, which links the previous "new noisy" segment to its future WTN, here.<br />
--><br />
== Who's That Noisy? <small>(1:08:55)</small> ==<br />
{{wtnHiddenAnswer<br />
|episodeNum = 850<br />
|answer = {{w|Numerical_control|CNC (computer numerical control) machine}} inscribing measuring marks on sheet metal <br />
|}}<br />
<br />
'''J:''' All right, guys, last week I played this noisy.<br />
<br />
[_short_vague_description_of_Noisy] <br />
<br />
Any guesses, guys?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yes. Electric razor, razor sonata in C major.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So close.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Sort of printer situation.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' You're not you're not alone in that in that guess. Well, a listener named James Lovell said, Hey, there, I've been listening for a couple of years now and very much appreciate the work you all do. I'm hearing the episode on 10/23 and believe the noisy in this episode is either a spark gap radio operating CW Morse code or a laser engraver in use. That is incorrect. But those are good guesses. Casey Casey Dora wrote in Hi Jay, I believe this week's noisy is a dot matrix printer. Cara agrees with you. The answer to that is incorrect. It is not a dot matrix printer, although, man, does it sound like a dot matrix printer.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right. Young people, you may not know what this is.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, I mean, that's true. I have to say this now. If you're young enough where you don't know what that is, just YouTube it and you will see and hear what we used to print paper on. And you'll laugh at us.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' All the time.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Listener named Paul Levine wrote in he said, Hi, J. This week's noisy sounds like a locksmith getting their groove on while duplicating a key. The that's not correct. I can recall that sound very clearly and it has much more of a grinding shushing kind of noise.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's a way more shrill.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' And there is that much variation. But that's not a bad guess. I would definitely say that's not bad. I have a something that strikes a little chord in me. This listener named Ani Koski said sounds like the door buzzer at an old New York City apartment building.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Totally.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yes, it does. It has that tone.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' They keep hitting it. No winner again this week, guys. I'm picking hard noises. There was no winner. I was really shocked. I thought someone would get this. So let me tell you what it is. This was originally sent in by a listener named Matt Kemp and Matt wrote, Hi, Jay, I've been a listener and sometimes patron for many years and I am always keeping one ear out for noises for you. I enjoyed this short clip of a CNC machine inscribing some measuring marks on sheet metal and thought it could be a who's that noisy contender. So a CNC machine is kind of a vague term.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Sort of. I mean, it's a thing. It's a specific thing.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It is.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But something like routes out shapes.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Computer controlled.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, they could do a lot of different things, though. And they're not like just one exact tiny thing. Like they do different things. But anyway, this particular one looks like it has like a there's like a point on it that is coming in contact with a piece of metal and it's carving into metal a kind of like something that looks very similar to a ruler. So hear it again. [plays Noisy] You get the idea. Very interesting sound. Definitely something that most of us don't hear on a regular basis, especially doing that particular thing. But I thought that that was a very, very fun sound to listen to. You know, I realize, guys, a lot of these times, these noisies, I don't get to guess. I just I'm either email them and I or I find noises and I don't get to guess as many, which I'm not I'm not complaining. I'm just saying I didn't I don't get the pleasure of sitting there contemplating each one of these in the same way that you do. So we're not we're not playing the same game. You know what I mean, Evan?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Absolutely.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Absolutely.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Absolutely.<br />
<br />
{{anchor|previousWTN}} <!-- keep right above the following sub-section ... this is the anchor used by wtnHiddenAnswer, which will link the next hidden answer to this episode's new noisy (so, to that episode's "previousWTN") --><br />
=== New Noisy <small>(1:12:46)</small> ===<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Alright, guys, I have a new Noisy for this week. This was sent in by a listener named Robert House—<br />
<br />
'''E:''' —Doctor House?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' And here it is.<br />
<br />
[crackling whir in background, with animal-like squeaks and squawks, then higher-pitched whirring and hissing with pattering drops/beats]<br />
<br />
All right. What is that? What did I just play? {{wtnAnswer|852|If you have any idea}}, you can email me at WTN@theskepticsguide.org.<br />
<br />
== Announcements <small>(1:13:19)</small> == <br />
<br />
'''J:''' Steve, couple quickies. Yeah, we still have seats left at the Denver private show. This is a live podcast recording that we do in front of a live audience. And this is happening in Denver. We also have another one happening in Fort Collins. Of course, both of these locations are in the state of Colorado in the United States. These are happening on November 19th and 20. You can go to our website. You can go to the skeptics guide dot org and you can check it out and see the details. I we still have some seats, especially in Fort Collins. So if you're interested, please join us.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. Thanks, brother.<br />
<br />
{{anchor|followup}}<br />
{{anchor|correction}} <!-- leave these anchors directly above the corresponding section that follows --><br />
== Questions/Emails/Corrections/Follow-ups <small>(1:13:57)</small> ==<br />
<br />
=== Email #1: Peak Uranium ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We're going to do an email this week. This one comes from Jonathan Olson. He writes, Recently, the Swedish prime minister said it won't push for including nuclear power as part of the green taxonomy in the EU. Premature shutdown of yet another reactor and of 2020 combined with crazy high energy prices made an oil plant such south of Stockholm go online burning 140,000 litres of oil per hour. To me, nuclear energy has long been an obvious medium to long term necessity in reducing emissions of {{co2}} and the Swedish rejection of it is irrational beyond belief. Not only conserving existing reactors, but expanding them too has been my opinion for some time now. However, a new argument I had not previously considered popped up in a Twitter Twitter debate. It's related to peak uranium and the non renewableness of uranium. For instance, in this rather old article, it is claimed that uranium supply with current consumption would likely only last for around 100 years. They argue, for instance, that covering the world's energy consumption, which at that time was estimated at 15 terawatts, would require 15,000 reactors depleting all available uranium within five years. Granted, this is a straw man since virtually no one is actually arguing for replacing all energy production with nuclear. However, I think it still begs the question, how much can we really expect nuclear energy to be considered even a stopgap solution in the combat against climate change? Is considerable expansion for global reactors feasible in light of available uranium? So, I don't know if you guys remember, we've nibbled away at this question in previous episodes, but it's good to directly answer this specific question. Is there enough uranium for nuclear power to be a significant medium term, stopgap energy source until we get more renewable long term options?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I'd say definitely yes. I mean, if you just look at the uranium that's in the oceans.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, that's definitely one factor. There's two factors here that make this claim of peak uranium basically wrong. That is one. We talked about this not too long ago. There is, if you recall, 1000 times as much uranium dissolved in the world's oceans as there is in the land. A thousand times. So it's not implausible to be able to purify that to get even if you don't extract every last uranium atom out of the oceans. Even getting 1% of that will increase our uranium supplies by an order of magnitude by 10 times. So there's a lot of uranium on the world, right? The other factor is that that number of we could only we would deplete our supply within five years is based upon the current extraction of energy from uranium, which is only 3 to 5% of the energy that's potential that's in there. If we reprocessed spent nuclear fuel rather than treating it as waste, we could theoretically extract up to 97% of the energy in nuclear fuel. And if we did that, we could first of all use up all of what is currently nuclear waste becomes fuel again, and then we can use that. So one estimate that I've seen is that if we reprocessed existing just existing nuclear waste in the United States and used that in reactors and some of the Gen 4 reactors, whatever, extracted that 95 to 97% of the energy out of it, we could power the US, the entire US for 100 years, right? So that's just based on existing nuclear waste in the US, not in the world. And if we only are going to do like 20% of power, let's say, from nuclear, then obviously that would be for 500 years, or we could do 40% for 250 years. And that's with existing waste, that's without mining any more uranium. So and also doesn't include using thorium, for example, as another type of cycle. And you think about, say, if we use all the nuclear waste around the world we probably you're on the order of magnitude of producing 20 to 30 to 40% of the world's power needs for hundreds of years, right? With existing uranium stores versus plus existing waste that we would reprocess into more fuel. That's long and that's what are they talking about in terms of like the medium term, two, three, 400 years isn't long enough. I mean, the point is, we can't even look beyond I think 100 years, let alone two or 300 years in terms of what our energy production capability is going to be. The idea for those people who think we need nuclear and who promote nuclear, the idea is, we need to buy 50 years, right, or 40 years or something like that 30 to 50 years to give us time to build all those windmills there's wind turbines and solar panels and develop grid storage and update the grid and it's going to take time to build out an infrastructure of renewable energy. In the meantime, we're going to be burning fossil fuel, period. It's the only thing that's going to produce enough energy on demand to meet our needs.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Unless we have nuclear.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Unless we have nuclear, right? So geothermal and hydroelectric are fine, but they're always going to be in the 5 to 10% range just because they're, they're location limited. We may have a breakthrough there, but we can't count. This is like not counting on any breakthroughs, only incremental improvements in existing technologies. The choice is really between nuclear and fossil fuel, right? What are we going to be burning over the next 20 to 50 years while we are advancing our technology and building out our renewable infrastructure and developing our grid technology and developing grid storage? Because we are, we've basically already used up our carbon budget. At this point, we got about six years of our carbon budget left to stay below the 1.5 C goal, which everyone's pretty much given up on because it's not politically plausible. If we want to go to keep it the warming above pre-industrial levels to 2.0, the carbon budget is going to be used up, I forget the exact number, something like 20 years. So we we're not going to be a hundred percent renewable in six years or even in 20 years. It's not going to happen. And of course, if we want to at the same time change over our our car fleet to electric vehicles and the population is growing, our energy demand is going to be growing. If we don't keep our our nuclear power fleet in the 20% or so range, and I think even just expand it to 30 or 40%, if we don't do that, we're going to blow through our carbon budget. Eventually we'll get off fossil fuel, but it's going to be long after we've blown through our carbon budget and we're going to get to past the 2.0 level where we can't be confident that we're not going to hit some irreversible tipping points that are going to be impossible for us to control. And I've argued with a lot of people about this, they always count on a really unrealistic rollout of like solar and wind turbines, or they just say this system will be better. It'll be cheaper. It'll be better. So yes, but in how long? What's the timeframe? And what are we doing in the meantime? It's the path. What path are we going to take? Interestingly, I've read a lot of analyses by a lot of experts on this. And one thing that we don't talk about a lot because it doesn't sound sexy, but the number one thing we can do right now to reduce our carbon footprint in the energy production sector is what? What do you think it is?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' To have more energy efficient appliances?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, no, that's a round off error. It's not, that's not a significant factor. It's not what individuals can do. It's not, yeah, obviously you want to maximize efficiency and all that, but that's like the in the one, two, 3% range.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' What about the corporate level then?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, but what are you talking about the actual extraction?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Production of energy.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, you're talking about production of energy, not energy usage.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Production of energy.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' What is it?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Switching from coal to natural gas.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, stop the coal.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I was going to say stop drilling, but oh, stop, stop coal.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, coal is the worst. It's like 90% of the {{co2}}, 90%. We have to get rid of coal as soon as-<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Isn't China building new coal plants?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yes, they are. We've got to get rid of coal as soon as possible. And the quickest way to get rid of coal is to replace them with, with no, with natural gas.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Natural gas?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' We already have that sort of infrastructure.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And then nuclear, and then nuclear. So we need for like the next 10 years, we need natural gas, 10 to 20 years. And in that 10 to 20 years, we need to build nuclear reactors so that we can then go from natural gas to nuclear. And then they'll run for 20 years. And then at that point-<br />
<br />
'''B:''' The other renewables will be ready.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' There are places that are doing this pretty well, right?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' There are places that are failing miserably.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Not enough. Not, not China, India, or the US, which are the big threes, but-<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, the rest of them are like rounding errors.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But coal is just bad. Like there's just, it just is the responsible for the most {{co2}} output in the energy sector. It really that, that has got a, that's like the big emergency, just getting off coal as fast as we can.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' In California, it's only 3% of our energy.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. I don't know what you got to do to for like the coal mining states and the coal mining industry. Obviously there's going to, this is going to be very disruptive. We just have to come up with a plan of how we're going to deal with them.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' The fact that we're talking about that now is preposterous.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I know.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Like the fact that it's like, oh, we've got to come up with a plan. Like we've known this for so long.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Generations.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And we've allowed the, basically the coal lobbies to have so much power in this conversation.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Right now one Senator from West Virginia is completely torpedoing the United States global warming plan.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Because of the representative-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' All because of wanting to secure these jobs, which it's like, they're not even healthy jobs.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And they're going away anyway.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Like what we should be doing is not trying to protect the coal jobs, but coming up with alternative places where these workers can go.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Build a solar panel plant in West Virginia.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Something.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Figure out a pipeline that allows these workers to continue to work.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Coal is almost 20%.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That's a lot.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. Natural gas is 40%. So that's what's been killing coal for the last 20 years. It's the shift to natural gas. We just got to complete that and just get rid of that last 20-<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Rip that bandaid off.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' 20% is the same amount as nuclear. Nuclear is 20, coal is 20, natural gas is 40. We need to get rid of the rest of that coal and then start shifting natural gas over to nuclear while we increase solar and wind as fast as we can. But that's going to take decades to get that up.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Generations. Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' But you got to start. You got to start doing it.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Of course, that's the point.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. I know, but it's not like the, of course, like the Greens don't want to talk about natural gas because it's a fossil fuel and the Republicans don't want to talk about getting rid of coal because that's their constituents. And so there's no political will.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' So just all I got to say is invest in sunscreen. And air conditioning.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The New York Times published a good, it's a film about Greta Thunberg and I recommend it. She's a very smart girl. She's not just like a media darling. She actually knows what she's talking about. I love the fact that she says, she really completely disses the media and calls them out on their shenanigans. Like, why are you talking to me? I'm a teenager. Talk to a climate scientist. She was asked to give testimony before Congress. And her entire testimony said, I am going to submit the IPCC report as my entire testimony because I'm a kid and you should be listening to the scientists.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Wow.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And I think she wants just politicians should listen to the scientists. She's just- She's like adamant about not making it about her or about anything.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Holy crap, man. That's great.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Very, very, and then her summary of the situation is pretty much spot on. So I think she really has wrapped her head around this issue very, very well. I was very impressed by that. Okay. Let's move on with science or fiction.<br />
<br />
{{anchor|sof}}<br />
{{anchor|theme}} <!-- leave these anchors directly above the corresponding section that follows --><br />
== Science or Fiction <small>(1:27:07)</small> ==<br />
{{SOFResults<br />
|fiction = Gilles de Rais<br />
<br />
|science1 = Japanese spider crab<br />
|science2 = Cotard's syndrome<br />
<br />
|rogue1 =jay<br />
|answer1 = Japanese spider crab<br />
<br />
|rogue2 =evan<br />
|answer2 = Japanese spider crab<br />
<br />
|rogue3 =bob<br />
|answer3 = Japanese spider crab<br />
<br />
|rogue4 =cara<br />
|answer4 = Gilles de Rais<br />
<br />
|host = Steve<br />
<!-- for the result options below, <br />
only put a 'y' next to one. --><br />
|sweep = <!-- all the Rogues guessed wrong --><br />
|clever = <!-- each item was guessed (Steve's preferred result) --><br />
|win =y <!-- at least one Rogue guessed wrong, but not them all --><br />
|swept = <!-- all the Rogues guessed right --><br />
}}<br />
{{Page categories<br />
|SoF with a Theme = <!-- redirect created for Creepy Science (851)--><br />
}}<br />
{{SOFinfo<br />
|theme = Creepy Science<br />
|item1 = The Japanese spider crab has the largest leg span of any arthropod at over 12 feet (3.7 meters).<br />
|link1 = <ref>{{w|Japanese spider crab|Wikipedia: Japanese spider crab}}</ref><br />
|item2 = Cotard’s syndrome is a neurological disorder in which people believe they are dead and their body is rotting, they often refuse to eat and in some cases request to be taken to the morgue.<br />
|link2 = <ref>[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2695744/ Psychiatry: A Case Report of Cotard’s Syndrome]</ref><br />
|item3 = Lieutenant General Gilles de Rais, who served under General Washington during the revolutionary war, was later convicted of raping and dismembering over a hundred children (although the exact number is unknown) and was ultimately hanged for his crimes.<br />
|link3 = <ref>{{w|Gilles de Rais|Wikipedia: Gilles de Rais}}</ref><br />
|}}<br />
''Voice-over: It's time for Science or Fiction.''<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Each week I come up with three science news items or facts, two real and one fake, Then I challenge my panel of skeptics on which one is the fake. I have a theme this week. The theme is inspired by Halloween. It's not Halloween itself. It's just creepy science. Okay. You'll see. Item number one, the Japanese spider crab has the largest leg span of any arthropod at over 12 feet or 3.7 meters. Item number two, Cotard's syndrome is a neurological disorder in which people believe they are dead and their body is rotting. They often refuse to eat and in some cases request to be taken to the morgue. And item number three, Lieutenant General Gilles DeRay, who served under General Washington during the Revolutionary War, was later convicted of raping and dismembering over 100 children, although the exact number is unknown, and was ultimately hanged for his crimes. Jay go first.<br />
<br />
=== Jay's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Okay. The Japanese spider crab, it has the largest leg span of any arthropod at over 12 feet. Damn. Because of course you would think the king crab would have the largest and I've seen very large king crabs. So I'm on the fence about this because of visuals I have in my head. Let me move on to the second one. Cotard's syndrome is a neurological disorder and these poor people believe that their body is rotting. Now Steve, you're basically saying whether or not that Cotard's syndrome exists. Is that what I'm saying yes or no to here?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I don't understand the ambiguity here. Is this real or not?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Okay. I'm just seeing if I can get any other information out of you. That's all.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Don't tell him that.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I'm not lying to you. Don't lie to me. This last one. All right. Yes, I actually believe that there are people that have a neurological disorder like this because I think anything can happen neurologically to make people think anything. So I would believe pretty much anything, any thought that the brain could concoct and people would think that's reality. I would pretty much believe it. The last one, Lieutenant General, Lieutenant Steve. Cara has no idea what I just said and she's still laughing.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Because it was fun.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It is funny. The comedian who did it said it funny so I copied him. Lieutenant General Giles, Giles, Gile. He served under General Washington and the thing is, he was convicted of raping and dismembering over 100 children. Holy Christ. Oh my God. Can that possibly be true? I want to say that isn't true just on the fact that my brain is rejecting it. I'm going to say that the Japanese spider crab though is not the largest one. I think the king crab is the largest one.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay, Evan.<br />
<br />
=== Evan's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, I think I'm going to go with Jay here. I think the Japanese spider crab, although it probably is this 12 foot leg span, probably is not the largest one. I couldn't tell you which one is but crabs can get pretty large there. As far as the other two go, these are wild because I've never heard of these before. Although with Cotard's syndrome, how does a person who has it sort of come to the conclusion that they're dead and not take into account that they're alive and thinking about it? How do they think that they're dead? How do they get past that? That they're thinking about it and making decisions, refusing to eat, requesting things, yet they believe they're dead. That's the disconnect there. It doesn't mean it's wrong. And then yeah, that General Washington's, Lieutenant General, boy, this is a piece of history that I've never heard of before and probably for good reason because it's so horrific. But yeah, I think that's sadly going to wind up being true. So I'm with Jay about the crab.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay, Bob.<br />
<br />
=== Bob's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''B:''' All right. So that Lieutenant General dude, my problem with that is that I'm just surprised I've never heard of it. But that's not a reliable reason to make a decision. In a lot of cases, the Cotard's syndrome makes sense. I don't have much of a disconnect. If you have a neurological disorder that makes you think you're dead and rotting, then the fact that you're still breathing, the fact that you believe you're still breathing and don't have a reason for that doesn't bother me because there's something clearly bad going on in the brain. So it makes sense. And if it's true, I want to recruit them from my graveyard this weekend. I believe the spider crab, the spider crab is the biggest, but 12 feet sounds a little silly. That's as tall, that's as long as my skeleton is tall. I don't think so. I'll say that's fiction.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay. And Cara.<br />
<br />
=== Cara's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Wow. Everybody stacked on the spider crab? I don't, I think I'm going out on a limb. I think I'm going out on a limb. It says the largest leg span. So that's probably end to end. It's not a single leg.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Of course, of course. But 12 feet.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I know that's huge, but there's some weird ass shit in the ocean.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Crawling around.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I don't know. That doesn't surprise me at all. There's some big, have you ever seen the insects in Borneo? I would not be surprised.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Size of a human head.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, the Japanese spider crab does seem plausible. The ocean is full of big things. Cotard syndrome among many very strange neurological syndromes, walking corpse syndrome, alien hand syndrome. There's even an impostor syndrome. This does not strike me as strange. The brain can do weird stuff when we get bad bumps on our noggin. So and probably the issue on this one is not that there's a big disconnect. There may be a big disconnect, but I would assume the issue is that they literally think they're walking corpses, like zombies, not that they think that they are dead in the ground. You know, that's a thing. And the I mean, the one that's getting to me is Guy Deray, this lieutenant. I would have heard of this mofo. I'm into creepy weird stuff like that. And when I was a little girl, I remember that I had a book of like creepy weird serial killers. And this guy's I didn't I don't remember this person. Like I remember learning about Lizzie Borden and I remember learning about Pol Pot and I remember learning about like all these big people who like committed genocide all the way down to like just really fantastic murders because I was weirdly obsessed with that stuff. And I do not recognize this person's name at all. And the fact that it happened here under Washington during the Revolutionary War, I don't buy it. I don't buy this one. So I'm saying that's the fiction.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #2 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. So you all agree on the second one. So we'll start there. Cotard's syndrome is a neurological disorder in which people believe they are dead and their body is rotting. They often refuse to eat and in some cases request to be taken to the morgue. You all think this one is science and this one is science.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, I heard it this one.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, not not not difficult. Yeah, the brain can do anything. And but how can I resist people who think that they're dead? So it seems there may be this may be a heterogeneous disorder, but meaning that there might be people might have slightly different neurological deficits that lead to the same basic presentation. But the core seems to be that the part of their brain is damaged that makes them feel as if they exist. So this is a denial of existence. They think they don't exist. But another aspect of it, and this is where like different patients may have slightly different manifestations of it, is that it's not that necessarily that they think that they don't exist, is that they have no emotions and they interpret that as being dead.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, and is that similar, Steve, then to cop cross, which is the one where people think that somebody they know is not really them, that they've been like replaced by an impostor?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. But so they think that because they have no feelings towards that person.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right. OK. So it's still an emotional disturbance, but it's specific to another person, not to themselves.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So there's like there's a connection between the part of our visual system that is geared towards things that we believe are have agency. So it's like this is this is a being that has agency that then connects to the limbic system so that we have some kind of feeling about whatever that is that that person.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Good cartoons can elicit that response.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Totally. Absolutely. And obviously animals can, not just people.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Just putting googly eyes on stuff.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' If you see your your significant other and you don't have the usual feelings that you associate with that person, the thing is, you also have to understand the concept of most many neurological disorders have what's called anosagnosia, where patients don't realize that they have a deficit. They assume the problem is with the world, not with them. And so if they don't have feelings for someone that looks like their spouse or their significant other, they don't think I must have a brain lesion. They think that person's an impostor.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Because I think it even goes beyond not having feelings to this extent that, like, the familiarity is gone.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, they know it's that person. They just think. But yeah, but there's no-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, they know they look the same.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All the emotional connection is gone.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Is there any reasoning at all with maybe some of them or is it just impossible?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No, no, no.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You can always get them.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' All of these things run the gamut.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, you can. You can often. It's hard. It's difficult. But with therapy, you can get people to the higher cognitive centers of their brain to understand it right actually.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' OK, that's good.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's the case. But but it's hard.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' They might not be able to get past that emotional. It's like even though I know it's my husband, it doesn't feel it. I can imagine that in most of these cases, it still ends in the relationship ending. It's because it might be very hard to stay with somebody when you feel that way about or you no longer feel that way.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So in this case, they're like they don't have any feelings or they don't feel that they exist. And so they how do they explain that? They think, well, I must be dead. And that because that would explain this weird because it's think about it. It's something you've never experienced before.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I can't relate to it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' A normally functioning brain. Yeah, it's a you can't you basically don't have access to how it feels to have a brain that's functioning differently than your brain functions. And when you have this kind of disorder, you can't imagine how it feels. And for people who have it, they can't make sense of it. And they can't understand that it's a brain disorder because they don't even know that their brain does this thing in the first place. Your brain makes you feel as if you exist. You don't know that your brain does that. It just you don't even know that it's a thing that happens. And so when it's missing, it's just that there's something wrong with the world. I feel like I'm dead and and they go with it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's why it's sometimes called Cotard's delusion.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Delusion.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And Oliver Sacks writes about a guy who had something called alien hand syndrome. He specifically had alien leg syndrome where he was living, I think, in a facility in an institution, but he was throwing his leg out of bed every night. And of course, that means he was also falling on the ground. And the nurses couldn't figure out why, what's going on. And finally, they realized that he literally thought there was a cadaver leg in his bed, like somebody was playing a trick on him.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, I know what that's like.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, that sounds more like neglect rather than alien limb syndrome. So like alien hand syndrome. Let's the classic presentation that would be like you're walking down the street and you just start emptying your pockets onto the street, but you're not aware that you're doing it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Your hand has agency that you don't seem to have control over.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, here's the thing. You do have control over it.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Corpus callosum?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' What's missing- No, no. What's missing is the is the feedback loop that tells your brain that your body parts are doing what you want them to do so that you don't get that feedback. And so your hand does what you want it to do, but you don't get the feedback to tell you that it did. And so you think it's acting on its own. But also without that feedback, you can't really moderate what your hand does. And so it does weird shit. <br />
<br />
'''C:''' So it's almost it's almost that's interesting. It's a lack of that feedback, but it has some crossover, it seems like with proprioceptive problems, too.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Although, yeah, but this is this is a central problem, not a not a not a not a primary sensory.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So that I see. So so if you watch your hand, you can't assert control over it in this case?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, the connection is not there. It's not like you could bypass proprioception with vision.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Interesting.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' There are different pathways that are disrupted that you just can't make that connection.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. So you're right. In the case of what Oliver Sacks was talking about, it wasn't alien hand syndrome. I misspoke. It was it was a neglect. Like, he did not recognize that his leg was attached to his body, which in some ways may be sort of a form of cotards or like in that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But it's specific to the body parts. They think that, well, this doesn't feel like my leg. Therefore, it's not my leg. Therefore, it's somebody else's leg.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' This leg feels dead.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, the patients will complain of there being another patient in the bed with them, for example.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Or or this guy was saying somebody put a cadaver leg in my bed as a joke.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Typically, what we what we do to test for this type of neglect in patients is we hold up their arm and say, whose arm is this? And invariably, if they have neglect, they'll say it's your arm or that's your hand. It's clearly not theirs. So it must be yours.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Because you're the only other person in the room with them.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Let's...<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Wait, Steve.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Let's go back to. Yeah?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Can you help these people?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's again, it takes a long time. Neglect is hard because they don't know they have a problem. So it's hard to get them to work on a problem they can't perceive. It takes months. It's very difficult to rehab, but you can make progress with it.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' How does it even happen? Is it like protein folding?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, no, it's like a stroke.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Part of your brain dies.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The part of your brain that makes you feel like you own something and it's part of you and you control it. You know, these things can all be damaged.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #1 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. Let's go back to number one. The Japanese spider crab has the largest leg span of any arthropod and over 12 feet or three point seven meters. The guys, Jay, Bob and Evan, think this is the fiction. Cara thinks this one is science. So I want you guys to really imagine a 12 foot crab. This thing can walk on land.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Walk on land?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' This is science.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I've seen pictures of it. I've seen pictures.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' This thing, if this thing were walking towards you.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Then wait, why did you say it was fiction?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Because in my mind and the picture that I saw years ago, it was not 12 feet, maybe six feet.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, they could have put the little dollar bill next to it for scale.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' If you look at the biggest ones, I mean, there are pictures of different sized ones online. The biggest ones get up to 12 feet and there I've seen them.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Is it the biggest?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' 12!<br />
<br />
'''S:''' They're huge.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Japanese spider crab. I imagine that it was only in the ocean. Like there's big weird stuff in there. Ew, look at these pictures!<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's amazing.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So it's bigger than the king crab?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Oh, totally.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Is it the biggest?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' We eat king crab, don't we? I mean, we. You wouldn't want to eat this. Oh, maybe.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Well, look, Cara, let me put it to you like this. Humans eat everything.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' True. They're like, that's a lot of meat.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Even other humans.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It is pretty cool.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' All right, let's move on.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Massive, just massive. OK.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #3 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All this means that Lieutenant General Gilles DeRay, who served in General Washington during the Revolutionary War, was later convicted of raping and dismembering over 100 children, although the exact number is unknown, and was ultimately hanged for his crimes, is the fiction, but-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, there's no way you made this up because you wouldn't have made up a name you couldn't pronounce.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Sure I would. That's the believability part of it. But I mean, you also could have just borrowed a name. <br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's what I figured.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Like this is a real guy who did something different. This is a real guy who did rape and murder children. They estimate between 80 and 800. They're not, again, they don't really know. But this was not in the United States. This was not attached to General Washington. He was, however, a soldier who fought with.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Napoleon?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Who do you think? Nope, no.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Genghis Khan?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Hitler?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Genghis Khan was the end of the spectrum. Don't think somebody brutal. Joan of Arc. This guy was Joan of Arc's swordman.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' What?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Wow.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And meanwhile, he was like luring kids away and raping them and dismembering them.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So he was like hiding in plain sight.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, totally hiding in plain sight.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, using her crusade to cover his.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And had people under him that were helping him do it. Eventually he was exposed and people confessed confessed, yes, I kind of helped them capture kids. Etcetera, etcetera. And then again, this is like this is going back to the 1400s where you could just go into a village and take some peasant kids and you know, who's going to say anything about it? You know what I mean? <br />
<br />
'''C:''' Especially if you have clout.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, exactly. And so that's why he got away with it for so long. But eventually it came out and he was hanged for his crimes. But not until he had done it to hundreds of kids. It's absolutely horrific.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' How did you find out about that? Did you already know about this guy?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, I just looked up.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' You see, he made it plausible, the General Washington part of it, because obviously the US and France were allies at the time of the revolution.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yes, there were plenty.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' And there were generals that came over to help, many of them, Rochambeau and others.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yes. Washington had plenty of French officers in his retinue. And so I just substituted this guy's name in history.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, made it plausible.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, so it made it sound plausible.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Whatever.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' There's also, do you know, Cara, have you heard of Countess Bathory?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Bathory? No.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Countess Bathory lived in the 16th century, often nicknamed Countess Dracula. So she would lure young women to her castle and kill them.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Blood.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' She would often like promise them to to train them to be maidservants or, you know. So again, she just preyed on young peasant girls because she can get away with it. Evetually she started to do what they call lower level gentleman's daughters. So basically people who had, who were low level, didn't have the station to do anything about it. And she had her underlings helping her, you know. Eventually, again, exposed. But she wasn't executed. She was basically put under castle arrest and died of natural causes years later. Talk about privilege.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's just like, I'm just fascinated by the motivation.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, they're just psychopaths. They're Jeffrey Dahmers of their age, you know.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Come on, you don't think this Guyet de Ré guy was getting his rocks off too? Like he was probably gross.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Oh, totally. He was sexually abusing them.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But this Elizabeth Bathory, why is she just like going around murdering women?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Don't know.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, it's weird. I don't know.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' She bathed in their blood because she thought it would make her youthful.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Women serial killers are exceedingly rare.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Very rare.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, it's true.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I don't know, it's just interesting.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' She is the most prolific female serial killer now.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Wow. Yeah, I'm looking at her now. This is fascinating.<br />
<br />
'''S''' They may have slaughtered hundreds of young women. Well, happy Halloween, everybody.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Happy Halloween.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Thank you.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I had one zombie, one monster, and one murder.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I love it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Science fiction item.<br />
<br />
== Skeptical Quote of the Week <small>(1:47:11)</small> ==<br />
<br />
<!-- ** For the quote display, use block quote with no marks around quote followed by a long dash and the speaker's name, possibly with a reference. For the QoW that's read aloud, use quotation marks for when the Rogue actually reads the quote. --><br />
<br />
<blockquote>In many cases, flawed or misleading evidence is worse than no evidence at all. This is because the state of ignorance resulting from a lack of evidence is recognized as a state of ignorance, whereas the state of ignorance resulting from misleading evidence is not so recognized.<br><br>– Vance Berger and Sunny Alperson, biostatistician and nurse practioner, respectively, from their paper, "A General Framework for the Evaluation of Clinical Trial Quality"<ref>[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2694951/ Reviews on recent clinical trials: A General Framework for the Evaluation of Clinical Trial Quality]</ref></blockquote><br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, Evan, give us a quote.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' This quote was submitted by SGU listener David Weinberg. Thank you, David. "In many cases, flawed or misleading evidence is worse than no evidence at all. This is because the state of ignorance resulting from a lack of evidence is recognized as a state of ignorance, whereas the state of ignorance resulting from misleading evidence is not so recognized." That was written by Vance Berger and Sunny Alperson from their paper titled A General Framework for the Evaluation of Clinical Trial Quality.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, kind of a wonky, narrow technical paper, but point of general wisdom.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Absolutely, that thought was reiterated later by Dunning and Krueger saying that, yeah, the far worse than just ignorance is the illusion of knowledge, this illusion that you know something because of failures of critical thinking. Absolutely. All right. Thanks, Evan.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Thank you.<br />
<br />
== Signoff <small>(1:48:20)</small> == <br />
<!-- ** if the signoff/announcements don't immediately follow the QoW or if the QoW comments take a few minutes, it would be appropriate to include a timestamp for when this part starts --><br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, thank you all for joining me this week.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Sure, man.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Happy Halloween, everyone. Bob.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' You too, brother.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Right back at you.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Have a good Halloween.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, I will.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' —and until next week, this is your {{SGU}}. <!-- typically this is the last thing before the Outro --> <br />
[blood-curdling scream sound]<br />
{{Outro664}}{{top}}<br />
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}}</div>Hearmepurrhttps://www.sgutranscripts.org/w/index.php?title=SGU_Episode_774&diff=19121SGU Episode 7742024-01-20T20:07:58Z<p>Hearmepurr: episode done</p>
<hr />
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{{InfoBox <br />
|episodeNum = 774<br />
|episodeDate = May 9<sup>th</sup> 2020<!-- broadcast date Month ## <sup>st nd rd th</sup> #### --> <br />
|verified = <!-- leave blank until verified, then put a 'y'--><br />
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|perry = <!-- don’t delete from this infobox list, out of respect --><br />
|guest1 =RS: {{w|Richard_Saunders_(skeptic)|Richard Saunders}}<br />
|qowText = It is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.<br />
|qowAuthor = {{w|William Kingdon Clifford}}, mathematician and philosopher<br />
|downloadLink =https://media.libsyn.com/media/skepticsguide/skepticast2020-05-09.mp3<br />
|forumLink = https://sguforums.org/index.php?topic=51916.0<br />
}}<br />
<!-- note that you can put the Rogue’s infobox initials inside triple quotes to make the initials bold in the transcript. This is how the final statement from Steve is typed at the end of this transcript: '''S:''' —and until next week, this is your {{SGU}}.--> <br />
<br />
== Introduction ==<br />
<br />
''Voice-over: You're listening to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.'' <br />
<br />
'''S:''' Hello and welcome to the {{SGU|link=y}}. Today is Wednesday, May 6<sup>th</sup>, 2020, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella... <br />
<br />
'''B:''' Hey, everybody!<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Cara Santa Maria... <br />
<br />
'''C:''' Howdy. <br />
<br />
'''S:''' Jay Novella... <br />
<br />
'''J:''' Hey guys. <br />
<br />
'''S:''' Evan Bernstein...<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Good evening, folks.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And we have a special guest this week, our brother from down under, Richard Saunders.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Crikey. Hello.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Holy crap.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Crikey.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Crikey. Hi guys.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' What's up, man?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' He can say that because he's Australian.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yes.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Richard, you don't actually say that, do you? Do you actually say that?<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' About once a year when I'm on SGU. I think that's what I do.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yes. Excellent. Thank you. Thank you for perpetuating the stereotypes.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. Richard, what do Australians say when they're trying to make fun of Americans?<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' I don't know. That's a good question. What would we say?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I would guess. All right. Here's a guess. I'm going to guess. Forget about it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No, my guess is that it's like, OMG. Oh my God.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Well, the trouble-<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I think it's yippee-ki-yay.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' It's yippee-ki-yay. <br />
<br />
'''B:''' You're talking to me.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' The trouble is that so much of American culture and slang is in our culture here in Australia anyway that it's-<br />
<br />
'''E:''' We infected you. That's what you're saying.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I heard somebody from Europe, which I know is, I just I'm going back a long ways. They were doing an American accent. And what do you think that they talked about while doing their overblown American accent?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' French fries and hot dogs?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah. I was like, hey, I want some coffee.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' My God.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's actually good.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Like old school coffee, you know?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So, Richard, how is the COVID-19 pandemic in Australia doing? Well, it depends on how you look at it. Generally speaking, I would have to say really good. Australia as a country, and New Zealand too, our cousins across the ditch, as they say, are doing very well. We've had, as of time of recording, about 90-something deaths, which is pretty good. And it's not good to those terrible, grieving families out there. I'm very sorry. But we take this by and large. I think New Zealand are doing better than us. And as we record, the government are about to announce further relaxation of restrictions. More people can visit. More people sporting codes are gearing up to get something underway relatively soon. The transmission in society is very low. We had a peak in March due to various reasons, like people coming off cruise ships and things like that. But I hope in the future we can look back and say Australia was a success story in this whole drama because of restrictions put down early. Maybe not early enough.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You guys locked down early.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' We locked down relatively early, you know? Cafes shut, pubs shut, clubs shut, cinemas, everything. You couldn't you really had to stay at home unless you're going out to exercise or essential services or things like that. But it looks like that policy is-<br />
<br />
'''S:''' To get a beer, that was okay.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Oh yeah, absolutely. So the report from Australia is generally pretty good.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' What about the Australian impression on the United States in this whole mess?<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' That's an interesting question because we rely on what we get on the news media and they like to sensationalize things like all those people storming the legislatures in various state capitals, which is horrifying to us. It's like some bizarre twisted movie that that would actually happen because it's completely inconceivable in this country that armed people would storm a government building. It's bizarre. But I hope that we know that's a minority of people. It really is.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Oh yeah.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Although that doesn't detract from the fact that we're very sad and horrified by the sheer scale of the deaths, especially in New York, in your area not far from where you are, a lot of you. We've heard other states are doing well, some not so well. I'm not exactly sure how California is doing. Maybe Cara can fill us in. But generally speaking, it's not a really great impression because of the chaotic leadership, I think, and the mixed messages and just the sheer tragedy of so many people dying. I mean, people who survived Auschwitz or stormed the battlefields in World War Two, decorated soldiers now dying of this thing. You know, it's all very sad.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. The numbers, just to usually update the numbers every week. So worldwide, we have 3.8 million cases, 264,000 deaths. And in the U.S., we just topped 72,000 official deaths. And the rate is pretty stable. You know, it's plateaued, but it's pretty it's chugging along, unfortunately.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And that's not consistent across the country. Like that's an overall takeaway. But there are states where they're not even near plateauing.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So the U.S. is a little tricky because New York had a early huge peak. And if you look, so New York state is probably past its peak right now. But if you take the New York state numbers out and just look at the other 49 states, we're on the increase. We're kind of flat only because every place else is increasing and New York state is decreasing. And on average, it looks plateaued. But really, other than New York, the rest of the country is still on the upswing.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Wow.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Is that true? The whole rest of the country?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No. I mean, just in the aggregate, not every state. Not if you take every state. But if you look, if you average the other 49 states, the U.S. as a whole is still going up. If you remove just New York state from the equation, because New York is a big state with a lot of cases that's peaked early and is on the other side of the curve now.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, it's like, is it half of the U.S. cases at this point?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, something like that. It's a lot.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I mean, it accounts for like a huge percentage of the data. And you know, we have states that have like you mentioned, in Oz, Richard, we have states that lock down early, that follow the science, that are doing really well, that are sort of on the... And the funny thing is, what you're seeing is that in those states, you tend to see more caution around lifting restrictions. Like that we're talking about phasing in some essential things and being very careful about it. And in states where they've just basically completely lifted or less cautiously lifted, those are many of the states where they're nowhere near a plateau. It seems to be out of step with the science, which is really worrisome.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Yeah. And again, this is reflected here in the news reports we get in Australia, that the media loves sensational stories, and for better or for worse, multiple deaths and thousands of people dying and red lines and everything in the United States is simply making the news. And I'm sure it's making the news around the world.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Did you guys recently, I rewatched Contagion. When is the last time you guys saw that film?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Two weeks ago.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Or have you seen it?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Wait, is that the one from 94 or so?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' The Netflix one?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No, no, no, no, no. You're thinking of Dustin Hoffman.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Oh, that's an old one.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, that one's really good, too, but it's a very different premise. It's much more, it's like a filo virus. It's more like based on the hot zone. Contagion is very prescient.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Oh, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Like it's incredibly-<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Is that the one with Jude Law?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And he has the forsythia is his fake treatment.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yes, Jude Law is Alex Jones. And yeah, it's a massive cast, like Lawrence Fishburne and Matt Damon. But it's like really, the science advisors on that film are amazing. And so like explaining what the R-naught really means, explaining how lockdown really affects things. You know, social distancing is one of the first things that they talk about in order to get things under wraps. It's incredible. And then they do all the contact tracing in the film. It's actually a very good science fiction movie.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Isn't that interesting?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But it's also scary.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' But in 2016, an Australian movie called Cooped Up had the storyline of a man self-isolating from a strain of coronavirus derived from bats.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' What?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, interesting. Yeah. That's really cool. Yeah. In Contagion, it's not a coronavirus. They never actually talk about the class. They talk about it as if it's a novel virus, but it's a bat crossover pig virus. But they don't really call it a flu.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' What are these bats and pigs doing?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I know. Well, they show you. But it's pretty, I mean, the one thing that is not the same, which makes me feel kind of good about our country, is that there's a lot of looting and like societal breakdown in Contagion that doesn't that really hasn't happened here, which is amazing to see. And they do an organized rollout with a lottery once the vaccine comes about. It shows you what life might actually be like, kind of a slightly more extreme example, sort of post-corona.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Guys, this makes me think that, imagine in the next two years or so, the movies and TV shows that are going to come out and documentaries that are going to come out dealing with this period of time, right? Like what life is like and how I'm trying to make, and imagine trying to make that a good movie when you've got people that are just like basically isolated. What kind of interesting things could have happened?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' How about this, Bob? People born this year will only know a COVID or post-COVID world, they will never know a pre-COVID world.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's weird.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' I wonder if there are filmmakers around the world taking advantage of this and getting out to film in empty city streets like Paris or Rome or even here in the city.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I was just thinking about that.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, interesting. Lots of stock footage.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Stock footage is going nuts, without a doubt. It's an opportunity that they'll never have again.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' I had the opportunity.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's funny. I was just thinking about that.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' A couple of weeks ago, I gave blood I thought this is a good thing to do. I'll give some blood. So I went into the center of Sydney at the town hall, just where the blood bank is, and I spent half an hour before my appointment wandering around deserted downtown Sydney and I will never forget it. It was, I thought, I better, I'll have to do this. Here's a good excuse. I'll never see this again, I hope. And it was eerie, like I couldn't imagine.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Really? Was it actually like deserted, deserted? Because I feel like when I'm seeing a lot of these images these haunting National Geographic prize winning images of Paris with nobody on the streets, that they're actually pretty rare. Like people are grabbing those at dusk or at dawn. Like when I'm out in L.A. and I'm not going out much, there are people everywhere still. It's not as it usually is. Like the airport was strange, but it doesn't look like a ghost town by any stretch.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' A couple of weeks ago, this was mid-March. This is when it really hit Australia the most. I saw maybe 20 people in my wanderings around downtown Sydney. So to me, that's pretty well deserted, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, it's enough to digitally remove them.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' So Cara, maybe they send one person out into that street and they have them coughing really loudly.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, there you go. That's the PA's job.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' But the downside, it's a silly thing to say, but one of the downsides about this whole situation here in Australia are all the people coming out of the woodwork with their so-called coronavirus treatments all the alternative medicine brigade. And we've had quite a few. I'm quite amazed how many people, well, these people always think that their system of medicine can work. Like homeopathy, for example, one of the major movers and shakers in homeopathy in this country, an outfit called Homeopathy Plus, have reams of things dedicated to how homeopathy can help with this pandemic. Homeopathy is a big success in India and Cuba, and it goes on and on. It's quite scary.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' What makes it Homeopathy Plus, Richard? Is it like just more water? Plus. What's the plus?<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Yeah. More stirring.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Extra shaking.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Homeopathy Plus pseudoscience, I really don't know. But the anti-vaxxers are just having a field day. You can imagine the people at the Australian Vaccination Network, which is now called the Australian Vaccination Risks Network, their former leader put out a video wondering if this pandemic was real and encouraging her followers to visit hospitals to take photographs because they thought it was part of a conspiracy. And I think that was from prompting from the U.S.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, that happened here too.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It's kind of their baseline to begin with, in which everything stems from there.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' The most famous, though, is a TV chef here in Australia called Pete Evans. And he won our Bent Spoon Award a couple of years ago for his promotion of paleo diets and things like that. The Bent Spoon from Australian Skeptics, which is like our annual award for bad science and pseudoscience and things like that. He was recently on his Facebook page promoting the $15,000 biocharger, which my friends tell me looks like a Dalek and a fax machine had a baby. It's a light bulb. It flashes and whirs and things like that. And you can dial up recipes, they say on it. And he said on a video which was posted to all his followers, it has recipes in there for the Wuhan coronavirus. He's been fined $25,000 by the government for making this outrageous claim. And to us, this is great and should set a great precedent for all the other quacks out there promoting their nonsense cures in the worst possible time.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, they're coming out of the woodwork. And also the anti-vaxxers are already gearing up to oppose a vaccine which doesn't exist yet.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Of course.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That happens in Contagion. That's Jude Law.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Are you kidding, Steve? They're getting ready for that? I got to think that the enthusiasm is going to be a little bit weak, even for the true believers.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I hope so. But boy-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' They'll be out marching and then secretly like waiting in the vaccine line. Like just in case.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You're not going to inject us with your experimental poisons and then keep us from traveling if we don't do it.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Well, if they don't believe there's a pandemic and it's all a conspiracy anyway, that wouldn't surprise me.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, there's nothing so stupid that there aren't lots of people who believe in it. We all know that to be true.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Skepticism 101.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Especially people who are scared.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, fear feeds it. No doubt. Oxygen to the fire. Oh my gosh.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. Well, we're going to try to burn through some news items here.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, clever, Steve.<br />
<br />
== News Items ==<br />
<br />
=== Wandering Magnetic North Pole <small>(15:30)</small> ===<br />
* [https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-52550973 BBC News: Scientists explain magnetic pole's wanderings]<ref>[https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-52550973 BBC News: Scientists explain magnetic pole's wanderings]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. I'm going to start with a quick one. This is just an interesting follow up. We've talked about the difference between the geographic poles, right? The geographic North Pole and the magnetic North Pole.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And Bob, I know you know, because you've spoken about this before, there's actually two different kinds of magnetic poles. Do you guys know that?<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Tell us more.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' North and South.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So there are three poles on the North and three poles on the South, right? So there's the, in the North, there is the geographic North Pole, which is basically the axis through which the Earth rotates, right?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' 23.5 degrees.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's easy.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That's easy.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's easy.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' That's easy.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And then there's two different kinds of magnetic North Pole. There's the magnetic North Pole and the geomagnetic North Pole. So the geomagnetic pole is the one, is basically, if you looked at the Earth like a dipole magnet, right? With two poles a dipole, two poles of the magnet. That's the geomagnetic poles. And in fact, the North Pole is where the geomagnetic South Pole is.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, they're flipped right now.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. So, yeah. So if the Earth were a magnet, the South Pole of that magnet will be near the North Pole. They're not in the same place. You know, the geomagnetic North Pole is like just, just North of Greenland, you know. But then there's also the magnetic North Pole, which is where the magnetic lines, right? The field lines, you know what the magnetic field lines look like? Where they are perpendicular. That's the magnetic pole. The North and South ones are opposite each other. I think so.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No, I think that's in the geomagnetic. Like with the dipole situation, they're exactly opposite. But in the other one, they're like not perfect.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' They're not. They're not. Because there's local factors. And so that, the news item is that, well, the follow up is the news item that the magnetic North Pole is moving that it has been moving quickly.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah. Fast. A little scary.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's moving by 50 to 60 kilometres a year. And it started out in Northern Canada. And it's been moving actually almost directly towards the geographic North Pole. And it's pretty close to the geographic North Pole now.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So Bob, why is that scary?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It just seems like something is wrong superficially. It's scary. What's going to happen? Is the magnetosphere going to collapse? Because if it collapses we think the pandemic's bad. That would I'm just saying superficially, it's scary that something fundamental to the Earth is changing in different ways. It's like, oh, wait, wait a second. That's what's scary.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Well, changing so rapidly. We're used to very slow changes.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, but I think that it's even – we did a story – I did a story maybe two years ago. I don't know anything about time anymore. But –<br />
<br />
'''E:''' The big hand is on.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. About these wiggling poles. And I remember it was so – like, it always is shifting fast. So they do these GPS updates like every X number of months or years. And it was shifting so fast that they had to force a GPS update because, like, people were off track.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah. Yeah, I remember that.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. So, I mean, I think that it's been happening and it's been happening fast and they might even – we always see – I feel like every two months there's a new story that's like, are they flipping? When are they flipping? Are they going to flip? What do we think?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So here's the actual news item now is that basically scientists are updating their model of how the magnetic poles are formed, the magnetic field of the earth is formed, to try to better fit this data of this meandering north magnetic pole. And because it's not like there's just one coherent magnet in the earth. There's multiple smaller magnetic fields that in the aggregate add up to the earth's magnetic field. And this all depends on the molten, mostly iron, rotating in the earth's core and the outer core. So because that's it's the flowing conductive iron that's generating the magnetic field. Where the magnetic, the north magnetic pole is, they say, is partly determined by this tug of war between two sub patterns of molten material rotating one kind of over North America, the other over like Siberia. And the one over Siberia has been strengthening and the one in North America has been weakening. And so that tug of war is pulling the north magnetic pole more towards Siberia, which is in the direction of the North Pole, like from Canada to the North Pole, it's like going over the top of the earth towards Siberia. So that's it. They're better modeling these flows of molten material in the outer core, explaining these like sort of sub magnetic fields, how they're pushing and pulling and currently responsible for this very rapid movement of the north magnetic pole.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Besides the technological implications of such, does this pose any danger to people or anything we should be as concerned about?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No. No, but as Bob said it is possible that the magnetic fields could go away for a while. And that would be bad. This is the kind of thing like an asteroid impact where it happens on very long time scales. And so we don't know if it's going to happen in any meaningful timeframe as far as we're concerned. But the better you would think that the better scientists are able to model the magnetic field of the earth, maybe the better we'll be able to predict if any changes are going to occur. But it doesn't seem like this movement of the north magnetic pole has anything to do with the every now and then sort of collapse or flipping of the magnetic poles.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' And how about animals who migrate and use the magnetic field to guide themselves by it? That's going to mess up their world.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Honestly, though, probably not. I mean, less than climate change is messing them up.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I don't think so because the geomagnetic pole is very stable. And I think that's the one that the compasses point to because that's the dipole magnet, right?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Steve, I think that this is such a cool story because it like shows in a microcosmic way what science really is all about. It's like, okay, our models didn't predict this. Hmm, we should probably go back and rework our models.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You should tweak those models.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, not just like, whoa, our models didn't predict this. This is not actually happening.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Right, but also keep in mind that when you alter a model to fit existing data, you don't really know if you did that correctly until you predict future data, right? So models are great at predicting the past. But the thing is you don't, that is not to dismiss that because a model has to at least predict the past, right? If your model doesn't spit out data that we already know that we know there's something wrong with the model, but of course, but the ultimate test is predicting the future.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Sure. It has to, yeah, the ones that match both are the best ones.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So it's a necessary but insufficient criterion for a valid model that it predicts the data that has already occurred.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' And that's a hallmark of science really is predicting the future. That's when you know you got something decent.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' You mean like gravitational waves, Bob?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Right? Imagine?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I don't know, Bob. I might say that's a hallmark of physics. I don't know if it's fair to say that that's a hallmark of science.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, I agree with Bob. I think it is a hallmark of science, but you have to expand it. You have to expand it though. When we say predicting the future, what we really mean as just a generic scientific criterion, we mean that you're able to make a prediction about future data, not necessarily about what's going to happen in the future. But if I do make this observation or if I do this experiment, these theories predict that this will be the result. So it's not necessarily predicting the future. It's just predicting data you don't already have.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, like if this model is correct, then there must be this that I could see over here. And like, oh, there it is. Like, OK, that boosts my confidence.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' As long as it's predicting fresh data, it could even be data from the past. It could be retrospective data, as long as it's the fresh data that it's telling you should be there. Does that make sense?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It does. I just think that it makes sense when you talk about it in a very, very structured way. And I agree that fresh data can be a broad statement. But I think predicting trends, predicting large, complicated algorithms, it becomes less feasible when you start to introduce biological factors, when you start to introduce psychological factors like disease vectors and things like that. So I think, yes, modeling for physics is cleanly—doesn't work because it predicts what's happening in the future. But I think that when we talk about larger climate change models and things like that—<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Things that are inherently chaotic.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, like your model doesn't suck because it didn't see that thing coming.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, but that's—you're right. But that's not what I'm talking about, right? I'm trying to distinguish that. I'm just saying it's—like, for example, you could say that your diagnostic scheme predicts response to treatment or something. It's got to tell you something that you don't already know. Otherwise, what is it? It's astrology if it's only confirming stuff you already know. If you look in that broadest sense, that is a key feature, I think, of science and that separates science from other things. Now, of course, when you start to apply science in things like medicine and psychology, it's more than science. Now there's the art of practice and individualizing our knowledge. And that's where the chaos of individuals and all that stuff comes into play as well. So anyway, let's move on.<br />
<br />
=== Air Plasma Jet Propulsion <small>(25:59)</small> ===<br />
* [https://phys.org/news/2020-05-fossil-fuel-free-jet-propulsion-air.html Phys.org: Fossil fuel-free jet propulsion with air plasmas]<ref>[https://phys.org/news/2020-05-fossil-fuel-free-jet-propulsion-air.html Phys.org: Fossil fuel-free jet propulsion with air plasmas]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' So, Jay, I like this news item because it's like half cool technology and half horrible science reporting.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, no.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's like two things we like to talk about. So tell us what's going on with this plasma jet propulsion.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' All right. First, let's talk about the part of this that's really cool. So researchers at the Institute of Technology Sciences at Wuhan University have created a prototype jet engine. And you might ask, why do we need a prototype jet engine, Evan, right? You might ask that.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Jay, why do we need a prototype jet engine?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Well, we do, Evan, if we don't want it to use fossil fuels, right? So the thing about this engine is that it doesn't use fossil fuels. It uses microwave air plasmas.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, that sounds dangerous.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Oh, it's very dangerous. You do never inhale this stuff. I'm just kidding. So you might know that there are four states of matter, right? We can have solid, liquid, gas, and plasma.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, there's so many more than that. But go ahead.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' There's also peanut butter. Sorry, Bob.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' True.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' What, are you going to build this plane in fantasy land? Anyway.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Jay, Jay, do not diss the Bose-Einstein condensate. I'm just saying.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Sorry. Sorry. I know Bob's up at one in the morning thinking about that. So out of these states of matter, plasma is the one that we don't really get in a normal day to interact with. And scientists can create plasma-<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Unless you look at the sun.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Right. But are you interacting with it? Are you playing with it? No.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yes. Yes.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Its photons are impinging me.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yes, but not plasma.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's the only reason I can see.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Not plasmas. Plasmas. Thank you. They might have a lot of plasma happening in Australia, but not here in the United States.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Wait, what state of matter is a photon?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It's a shut up and let me finish my news item, okay?<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' What about a plasma TV? I watch that. How about that?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's right. There you go. My lightsaber is plasma contained in a magnetic field.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, poor Jay.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' In my mind.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Scientists create plasma in different ways. So in this instance, scientists are compressing air and then using microwaves to ionize the pressurized stream of air. So the researchers say that they can build a large array of these plasma thrusters and if they couple that with a high powered microwave source, they can generate enough thrust that would equal a modern day jet. So let me dig into some details here now. So up until now, plasma thrusters like this one would be used solely in outer space. The real novelty of this new engine is that they created one that would operate inside the earth's atmosphere and this is really cool. So the engine works by first creating microwaves, right? So I'm just giving you the overall concept of it now. So they have a way to create microwaves. They use a magnetron that can generate high powered microwaves and these microwaves are directed down a metal tube and the tube gets narrower as it goes, right? So now before the compressed air interacts with the microwaves, because the compressed air comes from another part of the engine, electrodes strip some of the electrons off of the air molecules which create the low pressure, low temperature plasma, right? That's how they're creating the plasma. That's not really that novel either. We've been able to do that for a very long time. Now this plasma, when it's ready, passes through the metal tube where the microwaves are and what happens is the air that passes through gets bombarded with microwaves. The charged air particles begin to oscillate as they enter the microwave field. Now this of course dramatically heats them up. Now we have electrons, ions, and atoms colliding into each other and they're also spreading around that heat energy from them moving around to the other atoms that weren't affected by the electrodes and what happens? The air expands because it's heating and there you go and that plasma can be thought of kind of like a blowtorch and when they ramp it up, it can have an immense amount of thrust to it because of the hugely increase in temperature that it's on a super short amount of time. So when you think about regular, just room temperature air that's compressed getting heat up to 1,000 degrees Celsius in a quarter of a second. That air has to go somewhere, obviously thrust, so therefore thrust. We can say that this same model was used for the steam engine, right? Same idea. Even modern jet engines are all about the heating up of the air and having the air go through the blades which creates thrust. We're just using fuel to produce the heat. But now what they're saying is they want to use microwaves and electricity to actually be the origin of that heat or to create the energy. That's where the energy comes from, where the heat is created. Now of course the engine has to scale up significantly in order to actually be able to pull out the thrust of a modern day commercial jet. Now if anything kills this project, that'll be the first problem is that they can't scale it up. But there are other significant omissions that this article, and I read a bunch of them, but this study doesn't cover. It's not the article. It's the actual study. Now let me ask you a question, Steve. Where would a jet that's 40,000 feet above the ground get the electricity needed in order to operate this machine, this engine?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Exactly.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' A fusion generator.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' You can't have an electrical cable connected to the earth as this thing flies. It's not a freaking remote controlled plane on a string. It needs to carry-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' A battery?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yes. It needs to have some way of carrying electricity with it, stored electricity, in order to do half of the functioning of this engine. So where's it come from, Steve?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's my problem with the whole framing of the press release and this news item, is that you didn't really create a fossil fuel free jet propulsion. You created a mechanism for generating thrust that could be used for jet propulsion. Right now it's used for more like rocket-like propulsion in outer space, but using electricity, using a power source that is not necessarily derived from fossil fuel. But here's the problem. Right now we have no way of having an aircraft carry that much electrical power with it for any significant journey.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And it can't use nuclear power? That's too dangerous?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, I mean, so, all right, so there's several options here, right? So batteries would be one option. You could, or you need some kind of local onboard power supply. You could use a hydrogen fuel cell. You could burn fossil fuel, which would probably, honestly, honestly, probably the earliest use of this would just burn fossil fuel to generate the power to run the plasma-<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' There you go.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You know, jets. That's why it's not necessarily independent, but it certainly couldn't operate off of batteries today. So we've talked about electric airplanes before, and there's lots of problems with those, not only carrying around all the batteries you would need to have sufficient electricity, but just all the electronics that go along with that are super big and heavy. And downscaling all of those electronics is a prerequisite to really having viable electrical aircraft.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, otherwise it's just a drone. You can't carry anything.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, right. Exactly. Yeah, a small drone, fine, but a passenger jet? And they don't even talk about the feasibility of any of this, like how much electricity would it require? What would be the source of that power? What would be the feasibility of different possible sources of power? They bypass that massive problem with this entire thing, right? It's like they basically solved the smaller of the two things that would keep you from having an electric jet, right? And then proclaim victory, kind of. All we got to do is scale it up. No, all you got to do is scale it up and solve this huge problem you completely ignored to even mention in your reporting.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' But I don't even think that they're not even concerned about that. That's the part that I don't like.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' What do you mean? That's the headline. It's like the opener is say, humans depend on fossil fuels. Not anymore. You know, that's like a whole framing of this news item.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Let's start your sentence over again and swap out headline with marketing. That's the marketing. They're selling this idea.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, but that's the same thing.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' But you get my point. The point is other companies globally are working on battery technology. These guys came up with a jet engine. And they're saying, yeah, this will do it. This will be great. This will be awesome. This will be a jet engine that doesn't use fuel. As long as they wink, wink, nod, nod, nod. As long as they fix that battery problem we have today.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So all they really had to do was eliminate the words fossil fuel free from there. If the headline was just jet propulsion with air plasmas, that would be great. That's a great technology.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, but nobody would read it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I know. But that's what's frustrating. That's a problem. That's marketing. Exactly. And then the press office of Wuhan University is like, how are we going to sell this? You know, how are we going to get people to talk about it? And that's what they came up with and who knows how much that it does. We talked about this too. You know, a lot of the times it originates with the researchers. A lot of the times it originates in the press office and not with the researchers. But that gets carried on down the reporting all the way to the end. And it's focusing on this small aspect of what is the actual breakthrough. What was the actual science here, the results, and talking about one possible implication of the development and ignoring all the other things that would need that one possible implication to manifest. It's like saying, you're going to have an invisibility cloak. No, you're not going to have a freaking invisibility cloak with this metamaterial. But the metamaterial is interesting. Talk about the metamaterial, but don't forget about this possible implication that becomes the headline.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Don't talk about Harry Potter. Jesus.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' The problem is also...<br />
<br />
'''E:''' But I love Harry Potter.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's not just about marketing like, hey, I want people to read this because who cares if people read it? For a lot of them, it's about funding. And unless they can like make it sound sexy to a Silicon Valley investor, they might not be able to get the funding that they need. So to like use these kinds of words, even if they're a stretch, I think obviously there's a reason for it. But yeah, it pisses us off. I have a little bone to pick with this idea. And I want you guys to be pedantic with me. Maybe I'm just kind of misunderstanding something.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Ooh, I love when you say that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Ooh, be pedantic with me. Go ahead.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I feel like we often talk about sources of energy. We make a distinction between fuel, as if that's a physical liquid or gas or whatever, and electricity or electrons or batteries. Although isn't that just another kind of fuel?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. Absolutely.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's always pissed me off that it's like, oh, it's a fuel-less thing. Like, no, it's not. It still needs to be powered. It just doesn't use fossils.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You're correct. And I have been critical of articles that, for example, would say, like, oh, this car gets 100 miles to the gallon because half of its energy is coming from a battery. And you're not counting the energy that was used to recharge the battery.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's messed up.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. So that's very deceptive. But you're right. Fuel is stored energy. That's what fuel is. A charged battery is stored energy. Hydrogen for a hydrogen fuel cell is stored energy. So you have to think about that. Yeah. Where's the energy coming from? How's the energy being stored? How is it being converted into the usable form for whatever application? So that's why, again, this uses energy that's electrical. So it's not directly converting fossil fuel into whatever the outcome is, right? So therefore, it's neutral. It's agnostic towards the fuel source, the energy source. That's like the best you could say about it. But pretending like we're going to be having electric jets anytime soon is very misleading. My real bone to pick is with all of the downstream science journalists who didn't pick up on this and ask the right questions, and put it into context, who are just carrying forward the press release gullibly as if it's... So it's science journalism by press release. And that... Would you do that? Would you do that in politics? Would you accept some political party or candidate's press release as if it were news?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I think that most of the time, the scientists themselves don't... Like the scientists themselves don't accept the press release. That's the frustrating thing. They'll be like, that outlet completely misrepresented my research. And then it's like, that's what your own press office wrote.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' That must happen all the time.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, it does. It does.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' When I was reading this, it occurred to me, and you've probably seen the same pictures yourself from around the world, major cities, which are usually covered in smog or pollution of one kind or another, suddenly people are seeing the stars and the mountains in the distance and clean, breathable air. So come on, let's have this clean energy as soon as we can get it because we've seen a taste of the future, I think.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, I agree with you. I mean, totally. I mean, that's part of the starstruck nature of news items like this, is we want it so badly that kind of giving it a half unconscious pass, you know? You know, before I put my gloves on, I read this, and I'm like, cool! You know what I mean? You know, there's always that 10-year-old in me that reads this stuff and drools. But then you sit back and you're like, oh, shit, man. Those scientists know better than that. What's going on here?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, Jay, I read an article on Ars Technica by Chris Lee about this, and he had one great quote. He was talking about the scaling problem, and to him, that was one of the biggest problems.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Always a big issue.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' He says, extrapolating linear trends over four orders of magnitude is a good way to be disappointed in life. Oh, man, I loved it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Right, because when you scale up electrical systems like this, you end up with tons of electrical stuff that can't fly, you know what I mean?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' The contraption itself becomes larger than what you're trying to fly.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. Let's move on.<br />
<br />
=== Hydrogen Breathers <small>(41:09)</small> ===<br />
* [https://www.sciencealert.com/life-could-be-found-on-an-exoplanet-with-a-hydrogen-atmosphere-says-study ScienceAlert: Some Astronomers Think We Should Be Looking For Hydrogen-Breathing Aliens. Here's Why]<ref>[https://www.sciencealert.com/life-could-be-found-on-an-exoplanet-with-a-hydrogen-atmosphere-says-study ScienceAlert: Some Astronomers Think We Should Be Looking For Hydrogen-Breathing Aliens. Here's Why]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' Bob, apparently, we should be looking for hydrogen breathers as for aliens. Tell us about that.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, Steve. So we may see the search for exoplanetary life take new directions in the near future as a study confirms the theory that microbes can survive in atmospheres swamped with hydrogen. So this is a paper that was published recently in the journal Nature Astronomy. So my question was, so how could we possibly detect or learn anything about an atmosphere, literally dozens or hundreds of light years away? I mean, this is an atmosphere far, far away. They're tiny.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Spectroscopy.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Well, yes. But what kind of spectroscopy, Steve?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Don't go technical.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Okay. I'll try not to, Steve. But we've got megascopes coming online like James Webb, and they will absolutely have a much more refined ability to actually examine some exoplanets' atmospheres. And we've already been doing it for, say, for example, for gas giants that are close to their star. But the technique used to actually look at it is transmission spectroscopy. And essentially, it looks at stars' light filtered through a planet's atmosphere. So imagine you've got a planet that's transiting a star, and there will be an actual detectable amount of starlight that's going through the atmosphere. So now the atoms and molecules in that atmosphere will absorb specific wavelengths of starlight because that's what they do. And so then what you do is you compare the regular starlight unaffected by the planet, and then the light that went through the planet's atmosphere. You compare it, and you see what is different. And that's when you can see what the composition of the exoplanet's atmosphere is. You could also infer things like temperature, pressure, and more. So it's an amazing tool. But it still isn't what I would say, oh, yeah, that's real easy. Imagine the Earth. If the Earth were the size of an apple, our atmosphere would be as thin as apple skin. That's really thin. Now imagine pushing that out for many light years. Now an exoplanet with a significant hydrogen atmosphere wouldn't be Earth-sized, though. And it wouldn't by definition, actually. Hydrogen is much lighter than nitrogen and oxygen, right? Therefore, you would need a lot of planetary mass to hold on to the hydrogen, otherwise it would just escape right into space. So by definition, if you have a good-sized hydrogen atmosphere, you're going to be massive, much more massive. So we're talking about a super-Earth size, say 2 to 10 Earth masses, very, very big. Such a planet could potentially have an enormous hydrogen-based atmosphere. That would be much easier to spot using transmission spectroscopy. So it would just be a much – it would be just a bigger target and something much easier to deal with. So what kind of life then could live onto the planet? I mean, a lot of what I've just said is kind of background. What kind of life are we talking about here? And so this is where this most recent study comes in. So this was done by Dr. Sarah Seager and her colleagues. Sarah is a researcher in the Department of Earth, Atmosphere, and Planetary Sciences, the Department of Physics, and the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics at MIT. How awesome is that? I feel like such a punk, like what the hell have I done? So in this study, they used two types of microbes. They used a bacterium, E. coli, which we've all heard about. That's a simple prokaryote. And they also used a yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, which is a complex eukaryote. So they took those. They separated them. They put them in special containers, and they added nutrients. And they evacuated all the normal air, and they replaced it with 100% hydrogen. They would take it. They would shake it up a little bit to mix the nutrients and the microbes. And then every hour or so, they would look at the microbes. And what they found was a classic growth curve. It just went up. It grew and grew and grew as they were eating the nutrients. And then it stabilized. And eventually, you'd have new ones replacing the old ones as they would die. So it's pretty classic. But that really wasn't a huge surprise, right, because hydrogen is not a poison. It's inert. So it's not a huge, like, oh my god, look what we've shown. Dr. Seeger said, regarding this, she said, the experiment was not designed to show whether microbes can depend on hydrogen as an energy source, which you might think. Rather, the point was more to demonstrate that 100% hydrogen atmosphere would not harm or kill certain forms of life. And that is something that perhaps maybe not as appreciated as widely as it should. Seeger continues by saying, I don't think it occurred to astronomers that there could be life in a hydrogen environment. I hope the study will encourage crosstalk between astronomers and biologists, particularly as the search for habitable planets and extraterrestrial life ramps up. And that's true. They really need to be talking to each other. Because I mean, you could essentially double or increase by a significant fraction the types of planets that you would really need to vet, like, oh, this planet's just got hydrogen all in the atmosphere. Let's go to the next exoplanet. No, you probably need to actually take a serious interest in that planet. Now, another benefit, some would argue even more important, another benefit of the study was to show that E. coli produces many different gases while living under hydrogen. Many of them, I hadn't heard before, dimethyl sulfide and isoprene, they can actually be viable biosignatures of life now that we know what to look for, right? And that's often half the battle. You know, like, oh, look, there's some isoprene. Big deal. But wait a second. You know, you could have – we saw some isoprene being created by E. coli when it was in the presence of hydrogen. Maybe there's some sort of microbial life on that exoplanet. So I will end with another – yet another Seeger quote. She said, there's a diversity of habitable worlds out there.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Habitable.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Habitable.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Habitable.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Habitable.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Habitable.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Habitable.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' And we have confirmed that earth-based life can survive in hydrogen-rich atmospheres. We should definitely add those kinds of planets to the menu of options when thinking about life on other worlds and actually trying to find it. So yeah. So pretty cool. I would say they couldn't really cover – it was out of scope to say, well, what kind of life could evolve in a hydrogen atmosphere. That really wasn't in the scope. I mean you can say general things like it probably wouldn't be as efficient as life that uses oxygen. You could say basic things like that. But that doesn't matter. You don't need maximal efficiency. Life finds a way, as somebody said one time.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. I have a comment and a question.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah. Sure.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So one is that I've been reading about hydrogen breathers in science fiction for decades.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yes. Bryn.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Is that really a new idea? Yeah, among others. Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' No. I mean you've got it in science fiction. David Brin-<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Uplift novels are excellent.<br />
<br />
'''B:'' Right. Yeah. No. They've talked about it. But it's just like Sigur was saying, that the crosstalk between the astronomers and the biologists, they may have – some of them I think would definitely have necessarily not have been too interested in a hydrogen world. Not as interested as say if they found an oxygen, an exoplanet with an atmosphere more similar to ours. But there could definitely be potentially more potential for life on these hydrogen worlds than we thought. And that's kind of –<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. And my other question relates to a news item Cara spoke about I think one or two weeks ago. What was it? Synphagic. So if you have life breathing oxygen – breathing hydrogen, there would need to be some other form of life exhaling hydrogen, right? So any biological thought given to like what processes would replenish the hydrogen in an atmosphere? Because after millions, billions of years even a super earth with a dense hydrogen atmosphere, the hydrogen is going to get used up at some point unless there's got to be some sustainable synphagic loop process going on there.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. It would either have to be a biological process or I mean maybe there's like a planetary process.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Or chemical.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, exactly. There's something that's actually happening geologically.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Something's breaking down and emitting hydrogen.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That could be interesting.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah. That was definitely out of scope for the research that I did as well. Who knows? I mean, I don't know, Steve. A super earth with an atmosphere filled with hydrogen we had more hydrogen in our atmosphere in the past until the great oxidation event, right? But we've had hydrogen in the atmosphere for maybe billions of years but it was never a lot. It was never a lot. And the mass of the earth just can't hold on to it. I don't know how long could an exoplanet that's not creating hydrogen last based just on the hydrogen that it happened to hold on to just because of its mass. I don't know how long that would last. And I'm not sure if they're looking into what kind of processes, biological processes these could create hydrogen.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I don't know.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Somewhere in the universe there are aliens on a planet thinking, should we really spend time, waste time looking at oxygen planets? No.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Oxygen is poison.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Who would want to live there?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Those biases that you just take for granted because that's the only data point you have.<br />
<br />
=== Murder Hornets <small>(50:28)</small> ===<br />
* [https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/invasion-murder-hornets-180974809/ Smithsonian Magazine: No, Americans Do Not Need to Panic About ‘Murder Hornets’]<ref>[https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/invasion-murder-hornets-180974809/ Smithsonian Magazine: No, Americans Do Not Need to Panic About ‘Murder Hornets’]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, Cara, this is my favorite news item of the week, 90% because of the title. Tell us about murder hornets.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, my God.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Makes you think it was murder.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Murder.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Murder.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So you guys have probably been seeing this trending all over the news, these Japanese murder hornets or these Asian murder hornets. And these should not be confused, actually. The common name is the Asian giant hornet, and it should not be confused apparently with the Asian hornet. So if you live in Europe, you may deal with the invasive Asian hornet. This bad boy is worse. So the Asian giant hornet is local to East Asia. It is bigger. It's local to East Asia, South Asia, the Russian Far East. You'll see it in Japan. You'll see it in China. And it's enormous, but that's not how it got its moniker. The murder hornet, we'll talk about that in a second. But the actual species name that you may see referenced, and it can get a little bit confusing when you're reading about this, is Vespa mandarinia. Okay, so Vespa mandarinia, the Asian giant hornet. The queens can be two inches tall with a wingspan of three inches. So just hold up your hand and kind of look at what that would look like in your hand. And the reason that they're called murder hornets is because when they go into a beehive, they decapitate all the bees.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Nice.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' They cut off their heads.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Are they trying to?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No, they do. They do. They're amazing. They cut off their heads, and then they carry their bodies away.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, so one reference I read, Cara, said they don't just carry the bodies away. They chew them up into little bee meatballs.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's amazing.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And then they deliver that as food back to their nest. So yeah, they're like pre-chewed bee meatballs.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So what do they use for sauce and cheese, then?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' From what I've been reading, they're really, not really, but they're going after the larva. That's kind of like the golden honey. It's the larva that are inside of the comb. That's what they want to bring back to actually-<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The sweet sweet larva.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' -to feed their own larva. So what they'll do is this giant Asian hornet will – not the queen, by the way, but the worker – will fly to a hive.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' A scout, I think is what it is.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' A scout, but they are workers. Yeah. They're also workers. So she'll – sure, the first one you could call the scout, but she'll fly to the colony, and she will mark the colony. She'll use pheromones to mark the colony.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Marked for death.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Ooh.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Pretty much. And so if this is a European honeybee colony, then there are no defences. She'll go in, and she'll get her murder on. Her friends will come with, get their murder on, and it's pretty brutal. I've seen some images of apiarists who had havoc wreaked on their hives, and it's horrible. There's just like piles of bee bodies that fall down on the ground as they're decapitating them and pulling out the bodies, and so you'll see these piles of just like dead bees. That's a pretty trademark indication that they came through.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I see a Pixar movie in all of this.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right. Well, here's the really cool part. This is my favorite part. It's not so much the giant murder hornets. It's actually the Asian honeybees that have adapted and developed a defense against the giant murder hornets.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, this is cool.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's so cool. So if a giant murder hornet actually goes to an Asian honeybee hive and it marks it, the bees all like just hang out. They get this scent cue, and then they like hunker down, and then if a hornet actually goes in-<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Hunker in place.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Just minding their own beeswax.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Minding their own beeswax.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Oooof.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' The hornet will go in, and unsuspectingly, he will, she, she actually, she is female, will be surrounded by hundreds of worker bees that form what they call a bee ball. And this bee ball actually starts what they call heat balling. Heat balling is when they flap their little wings, they actually use the muscles that are connected to their wings, and they start wiggling them so fast that it raises both the temperature and the CO2 level inside that ball to such high levels that the hornets cook and choke to death.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Good grief.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's amazing. And the temperature is like 115 degrees Fahrenheit, it's 45.9 Celsius. But researchers are more and more showing that it may not even be the temperature as much as the CO2, it's really, really toxic in this little bee ball. And so it's a really cool way that these bees have developed a defense against the hornets. The problem, and this is where I think a lot of the headlines are starting to come in, is that there's a little bit of indication that these murder hornets have shown up on American soil. On the West Coast, the Pacific Northwest, they found two bodies of hornets, dead bodies. They also found, I think, one swarm of them in Canada, and they were able to remove that. And so far, I don't think as of this telling, there has been any other evidence, but there was an entomologist who lost a hive and all of his bees were decapitated. I shouldn't laugh at that, that's horrible. And so he was like, hmm, I think I know who did this, but there's no other proof.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So you have a little bee detective there who's like, yep, this has all the telltale signs of a serial bee killer, ritual decapitation.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Was that the detective John His Beat?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's not even...<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That was an Evan-level joke, I'm sorry.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That was lower than Evan-level.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Thank you.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So obviously, the very serious news here is that if these make an incursion as an invasive species, they could wipe out... Because American bees, honeybees, don't make the murder balls, they don't know how to defend against these hornets. They can get wiped out.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, the vast majority of our honeybees are European honeybees and they have no defences against these murder balls. In Asian countries, oftentimes they use both European and Asian honeybees, and so the Asian honeybees do have a leg up there. So the big issue here is if they make their way in and they establish within an ecological niche, it's true. Our bees could be facing a massive threat. They're already facing a lot of threats with certain types of pesticides, with climate change. We're seeing that our bee populations are in decline anyway. So it's a really dangerous thing if this pest or this predator, I should say, makes its way to American soil. But from almost everything that I've read that was good science reporting, most entomologists are saying, let's not freak out, you guys. There's literally two of these things. They've been eliminated. There's no evidence whatsoever that these guys have established any sort of colonies. And we've caught them early. A lot of researchers are actively looking for more evidence of them now. Apparently some of the forests in the Pacific Northwest are ecologically quite similar to the places where they live in Asia. And so they're looking deep in these forests to see if they can find more evidence. But so far, it's like we should be cautious, but there's no reason to freak out. Also, murder hornets are named that because of what they do to bees. Now don't get me wrong. Apparently if you get stung by a murder hornet, it feels like there's a hot nail going through your skin. And there is evidence that murder hornets have killed people. I think something around 40 or 50 deaths from what I've read.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Anaphylactic shock?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. Most often it's because of an allergic reaction.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Guys, this is what I heard. First off, they're big and their stingers are very big.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Their stingers are big.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I think it was up to seven times the amount of poison-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Venom.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' -or fluid that honeybees do. And they could sting over and over and over and over. And people have died even if they don't have any allergic reactions to the sting, so that's scared the crap out of me.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That part I think is more like a question. So it's recommended that if people get stung over and over that they seek medical treatment as if it's an emergency. Single stings have killed people, but usually that is because of an anaphylactic reaction. And to be clear-<br />
<br />
'''S:''' From a single sting, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Single sting. And to be clear, it's still half the number of deaths in Asia, reported deaths in Asia, compared to American honeybee deaths per year.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Right, right.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So let's keep that in mind. I think the reason that it's scary is that their stingers are long enough, like you said, Bob, that they can actually puncture standard apiary gear. Our beekeepers are used to gear that was designed to keep out bee stings, not Asian giant hornet stings. But keep in mind too, people in America die of hornet stings as well, because it's not something special about the Asian giant hornet that it can sting you over and over. Hornets can sting over and over. Bees can't. And so if you do have an allergy, I mean, you probably shouldn't be hanging out with bees anyway. You probably shouldn't be keeping bees. But yes, I mean, obviously there is a risk to health and human safety, but it's like so minimal. So minimal. Like we've seen two of these things on US soil, and they kill less people in Asia than our own honeybees do here in the US. So keep that in mind for kind of a little bit of risk perspective.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, but the real risk is to our bee infrastructure which is important for agriculture. And this is the kind of thing where you do want to nip it in the bud. You don't want them to establish themselves. But I do have the answer to this problem is that we just import the killer bees from South America. Remember those?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, no. Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And then the killer bees could fight off the murder hornets.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's right. And then when they get out of control.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Then we'll just genetically... We'll use some gene drives and engineer some murder mantises.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Well, no.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Assassin aphids.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Assassin aphids. Yes.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Cara, what it boils down to is you're saying we should bee careful.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, my God.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That's not good.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Womp. Womp.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Right.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I know. I liked it.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' But wouldn't we introduce the Asian bee into our population to try to counter it?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, we could. But remember, that's just a defense. It's not an offensive strategy. So all it's going to do is protect the bees themselves that are the source of honey. I see that. The problem is our entire apiary culture.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' We can't send them on a mission for us.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No, no, no. Our entire culture is around the European honeybee. So in Asia, they use a mix. And it seems to help with some of their outcomes because this is an endemic. It's a creature that lives there all the time. So they're constantly on alert. And apparently, they're so big that oftentimes, Asian apiaries use mechanical means to stop them. So there are really smart things you can do. You can literally put mesh on the hive that has holes small enough for the bees, but not so small that these hornets can fly through because they're huge. So that's a really easy thing. Also, apparently, they sometimes just have people who manage the hives swat them with tennis rackets. That's like an actual strategy that's used.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' You have an electric bug zapping tennis racket, Cara.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I do. That would be so satisfying. I mean, it's satisfying when I swat at a mosquito. I can't imagine hitting a two-inch long murder hornet. They're beautiful.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' What if you missed and it got angry?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, yeah. And it got... Yeah, that would not be fun.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Don't miss it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' They are beautiful. Look up some pictures. They have some cool macro photography of their faces. You can see their big, crazy chompers that they decapitate the bees with. It's just ludicrous. It's ludicrous, and it's not new. It's only new to us here in the US. This is something that, obviously, a lot of Asian bee farmers have been dealing with for a long time. But I think the reason that it really got so much traction is because everybody's like, 2020, are you serious? Like what next do you have?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So he's saying, Cara, we shouldn't wax alarmist.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' I thought mine was bad.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' How many are you guys writing down as I'm talking?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I was reading an article about these murder hornets, and someone said, God, what's next? And they had a picture of a bird, and somebody had photoshopped the mouth of a shark on it.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Don't give nature any new ideas, please.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right.<br />
<br />
=== Prayer for COVID-19 <small>(1:03:40)</small> ===<br />
* [https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/05/01/849408522/clinical-study-considers-the-power-of-prayer-to-combat-covid-19 NPR: Clinical Study Considers The Power Of Prayer To Combat COVID-19]<ref>[https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/05/01/849408522/clinical-study-considers-the-power-of-prayer-to-combat-covid-19 NPR: Clinical Study Considers The Power Of Prayer To Combat COVID-19]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well Evan, we'll just pray it all away, right?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Absolutely. Okay. I saw this at the National Institute of Health. It's a website called clinicaltrials.gov. And the title of this is called the COVID-19 ICU Prayer Study. Yep. Yep. So this is taking place. The sponsor, I should say, is the Kansas City Heart Rhythm Institute, a legitimate heart facility. All right. I'll just read you some facts here about what they're proposing. A multi-center, double-blind, randomized control study investigating the role of remote intercessory multi-denominational prayer on clinical outcomes in COVID-19 patients in the intensive care unit. All patients enrolled will be randomized to use prayer versus no prayer in a one-to-one ratio. Each patient randomized to the prayer arm will receive a universal prayer offered by five religious denominations, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, and Buddhism, in addition to standard care. That's one group. Whereas the patients randomized to the control arm will receive standard care, care outlined by their medical teams. And that's all you get. No prayer. So during the ICU stay, patients will have serial assessments of multi-organ functions and Apache-2 SOFA scores, serial evaluation performed on a daily basis until discharge. And this is going to go on, well, it's supposed to start May 1. They must have started already. And I believe it's going to last throughout most of the year. There's going to be a thousand patients as part of this trial. And the doctor in charge of this, his name is Dounjia Lakiridi, as best as I can pronounce it. And here are some quotes he has to say about this study. He says, we all believe in science and we also believe in faith. If there is a supernatural power, which a lot of us believe, would that power of prayer and divine intervention change the outcomes in a concerted fashion? That was our question. I believe, I believe, he says this, I believe the power of all religions. I think if we believe in the wonders of God and the universal good of any religion, then we've got to combine hands and join the forces of each of these faiths together for the single cause of saving humanity from this pandemic.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So what if the Judaism prayer works, but the Hinduism prayer doesn't? Is he going to convert?<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' But how would they know? How would they know?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Right. Are they going to be able to determine that? Is that part, is that a part, a sub layer of the study?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Studies, studies of intercessory prayer, which is what this is called, intercessory prayer means-<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That you're praying for other people.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. It doesn't, the subject doesn't know whether or not they're being prayed for.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's like a blind prayer.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Many of them have been done and they're negative.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Negative.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I mean, some of them are presented as positive, but it's always the horrible methodology and cherry picking some parts of the data. Like we looked at these 10 outcomes and this one on day three was superior in the intercessory prayer group. And then of course they never replicate. It's always a different random thing that they're looking at that may be different out of line by random chance alone. But in the aggregate, if you you do systematic reviews, the data is basically negative. But unsurprisingly intercessory magic doesn't work. Intercessory prayer does not work.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' And that's my point is you're attributing this to magic. There's no other possible mechanism. It's got to be placebo because these people know that they're going to be part of this test regardless if they're being prayed for or not. So you're going to have that, I imagine a placebo effect going on here. Isn't this unethical?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. I mean, that's, that's an interesting ethical question because are the subjects getting informed consent? Do they know that they might be prayed for? Do they have a say in which kind of religious prayer is being done for them? Does it, are, are they stopping other people from praying for them?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's a funny thing because if like us, you know that this is bullshit and it doesn't matter. But if you're looking at it from the perspective of somebody who believes it works, it should be unethical to you.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But here's the thing, Cara, you can't simultaneously argue ethically that it doesn't matter because this can't possibly work. You know, we're not going to give them informed consent.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, you're right.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Because the thing is, you can't ethically do a study into an intervention that can't possibly work. There has to be the potential for benefit as part of the criteria. So if there's the potential for benefit, then you have to include all of the safety valves for the subjects that you would for anything.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And so this must have been approved by their IRB. But that's the thing. If it's an institutional review board, and if this place is like a quacky place, then their own institutional review board is going to have like dubious ideas about what to study.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Honestly, from what I could tell, it's like just a regular cardiology institute.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' What? So what's up with their IRB?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, but the thing is, they, but you know, oftentimes they get infiltrated by one or two people who have some religious belief or ideology or a very alternative medicine friendly. And everyone else is just a shruggy. They don't care. They don't care. Whatever. You know, it's not worth their time.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' So dangerous.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So but then it hijacks the reputation of the institution.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And also, I feel like if I were a legitimate researcher there, I'd be like, how the hell did that guy get funding for this when I'm desperate to get funding for like a drug trial?<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' One of the arguments about this for a long time is all around the world, 24 hours a day, there are thousands, if not millions of people, devout people praying for the sick. Do they shield all those prayers for the sick?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, you're right.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' When the studies are negative, that's what they say. Well, I guess the control group is being prayed for too, you know? So then again, so it's a worthless study is what you're saying. No matter what the outcome, it's not going to change anything.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Like you said, Steve, a lot of studies like this have been done in the past. In fact, there was a meta-analytic review of those studies. The conclusion is such, there is no scientifically discernible effect for IP. As assessed in the control studies, given that the IP literature lacks a theoretical or theological base and has failed to produce significant findings in controlled trials, we recommend that further resources not be allocated to this line of research. And that was in 2006.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Ooh, so right there. Yeah, that could be argued against it ethically to show that kind of thing.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, it's a waste.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Don't waste your time with this. Yep, here we are.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But they're pretending like they're the first ones to think of it.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Of course. Of course. And desperate times, you know? I mean, these are desperate times. So taking advantage.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Still, you've got to review the literature. That's like step one when you're doing research.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Absolutely. All right. But not surprising that they're not following usual research protocol.<br />
<br />
== Special Segment: Premium Wine Cards <small>(1:10:59)</small> ==<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay. Richard, you're going to tell us about some pseudoscience going on in your neck of the woods.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Absolutely. Now, like I'm sure like all of SGU, many Australians enjoy a nice glass of wine from time to time.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I only drink Klingon blood wine.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Well, you're in luck. I know you normally buy the cheaper Klingon blood wine, Steve being a frugal man that you are. There's a device here in Australia, which is the same size as a credit card. It's made out of light metal. It's called the premium wine card. And this is a great thing you put. It always makes me laugh even to think about it. As you're pouring a glass of wine, you hold this card on the outside of the glass as the wine is poured in and it changes your normal standard blood wine into premium blood wine. The sort Kahless would probably drink.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Wait, what's blood wine?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Nice touch.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Geek point there.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Anyway, so this came to my attention. This came to my attention some years ago, actually, way back in 2014. It's been, I've been using it for years at conventions and talks and having a lot of fun with it. But I finally got around to writing a report to it. And this report will appear in the next issue of The Skeptic Magazine. Now that's the journal from Australian skeptics. Now briefly, we've done a couple of tests on this wine card, which have been a lot of fun. The skeptics in the pub here in Sydney, we had a wine card and a dummy wine card and lots of people lined up to taste wine treated with the wine card or not treated with the wine card. It also works on water, you'll be pleased to hear. This card-<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Will it turn water into wine?<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' You know, if you rub it long enough, you never know.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I would be impressed.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, boy. Here we go.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That was out of scope, Steve.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Now that's a sign.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' So this card can be yours for only $65 Australian dollars. I think that's about $40 US. How does it work, I hear you ask.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah. Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' How does it work? It works with embedded frequencies.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Of course.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Embedded.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Embedded frequencies. Now various people here in Australia, The Choice Magazine, The Consumer Magazine have tried it out and found it didn't work. Another report published in an Australian newspaper, The Australian Newspaper, concluded it didn't work and they returned it to get their money back. But you can still buy this thing. And as I said, it's a lot of fun to do tests on. But this whole thing about embedded frequencies, this has been long since dispelled as just a nonsense term, really. Even Dr. Harriet Hall, our friend Dr. Harriet Hall, has written about it saying you can't embed frequencies. You can embed something in something which generates frequencies, but you can't embed the actual frequencies themselves.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Richard. Richard. You just use your quantum phase inverters which you can get at the same store that you can get your turboencabulator.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, yeah. Got to love one of those.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' I stand corrected. Now, some years back on their website, they had a link to their YouTube channel and they had all sorts of very interesting videos up there about how this wine card works. The only video that still exists online is a general demonstration of the wine, which is hilarious enough. But the videos that have disappeared, one of them shows a public demonstration. It's sort of like a fair or something. There's lots of people walking by their booth to try it out. It's a trade show or something like that. They have video of – and they're all women, as it happens, doing these testing. They'll give them a glass of wine and say, this wine has been treated with a wine card. Taste the wine. They go, taste, taste. Yeah, that's okay. Now, try this identical glass of wine which hasn't been treated with a wine card. Now, the women sip the wine and Steve, you've seen this video. They immediately screw up their face, almost spitting it out, contorting their face. I said to Steve, Steve, what's going on here? Because to my way of thinking, this was an involuntary reaction to tasting something bitter or bad.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, it could be. You can't rule out that they're acting or that this is all a nocebo effect. It also looks indistinguishable from a legitimate disgust response which seems out of proportion to just like – this is just average wine versus premium wine. I also noticed – and I've noticed this across contexts. Whenever I see these quacky tasting demonstrations, they always do the good stuff first and the bad stuff second. I wonder if that's part of the shtick.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' You think they're priming them? The first thing makes the second thing taste really horrible?<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' In a way, they would be primed because this is the whole thing. This card makes the wine taste better. But their reactions are not those reactions of taste this wine. Now taste this wine which isn't quite so good but it's just out of the bottle. Their reaction is that's nice wine to this is disgusting wine. Now in all the tests we've done, we've done two rounds of tests with – oh, I don't know, in the order of a hundred people. We've never seen anything even approaching that sort of instant reaction. So either they're actors which I kind of doubt or there's something going on in the glass that we don't know about or the wine card really works and next year, they'll be lining up to get their Nobel Prize in physics. Now that – it's been a fascinating thing to study and you can read the full report in the next issue of our magazine from Australian Skeptics. So if you enjoy a good glass of wine, Klingon wine or whatever it is, maybe this is the card for you.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But Richard, you were saying – you would suspect that they might be spiking the control wine with something bitter like quinine or something or they just –<br />
<br />
'''C:''' A drop of something in the glass.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Bitter drinks.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Or they just use corked or bad wine for that one.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Well, I wasn't there and I would never go too far in suggesting skullduggery. But I would say if I was doing it and I wanted to get an instant reaction like that, it's something that would certainly cross my mind. Let's leave it like that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's one way to accomplish that.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' It's one way it could be accomplished. Absolutely.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Right, right, right. So Richard, while we're talking about skepticism in Australia, we should mention that you guys just passed a milestone for your podcast, 600 episodes.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Nice, man.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' 600!<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's awesome.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Thank you. Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' How did you do it?<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' How did I do it? Persistence. You guys know.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, it's just showing up every week, right?<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Now, being – yeah, showing up every week is doing the hard yards as you well know. Coming up to 604 episodes now and I was just having a look at the statistics at, SGU coming up to 774 combined we have 1,378 episodes. If we add our friend Brian Dunning and Skeptoid, his episodes, it's a total of 2,105 skeptical episodes out there. And it's quite remarkable to be in such company, not only fun, good, entertaining, educational podcast, but the longevity. So many podcasts come and go in a month, two months, three months and people give up and get bored or disinterested. But I'm in very fine company to know that we're all sticking in there and I'm quite pleased about that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. Well, congratulations. It is a big accomplishment. And I will say that yesterday, May the 5th, was our 15-year anniversary on the SGU.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Holy crap. Are we done yet? Are we done?<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' That's what I think every –<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Bob, we're done with the first 15. We're going to measure this in 15s.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Bob, look at it like this and Richard, I want you to hear this. The world needs us now more than it ever did. And I don't mean that in a pat on your back way. It's just a reality. The world needs critical thinking and skepticism so much now. I thought things would get better in my old age. They're worse. It's worse.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Maybe they're less worse than they would have been though.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' We hope so. Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yes, that's the hope.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Making the world less worse.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Less worse. That's it.<br />
<br />
'''S:'' This is probably a good time to mention that we're always branching out and looking for new things to do. I did recently start a YouTube video series if you haven't had a chance to check that out yet, The Skeptical Consult. Just put our fourth episode up today as of recording the show.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, I wish you told me earlier. I would have watched it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So it's on homeopathy, Richard, which you mentioned just not too long ago.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Yep.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Explaining exactly why it is complete and utter horseshit.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Nice.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I am open to ideas for future videos. There's basically a bottomless pit of things I could talk about, but I also do like to crowdsource it a little bit, see what people are interested in hearing about. They reach about 10 minutes. It's like just one little area, one question and then I riff on it for 10 minutes.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So you can go to theskepticsguide.org and if you hover over the videos link in the main navigation, you'll see a Skeptical Consult pop up. All of Steve's videos are there. You know, you could also go to the SGU YouTube channel. I also do put them on Facebook as well, but go to the website. That's the quickest and easiest way to get to it. I really like them. I mean, it's amazing how little work, like there's almost no editing for me, which is amazing. You know, Steve hands me the raw video and I have a lot of video editing that I do, especially for Alpha Quadrant 6. With this, it's like slap this, slap that on and I'm done.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I do it as one take. Each one is one take.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' And Steve, calling homeopathy horse shit is actually an insult to horse shit because we actually use horse shit. It's manure. It's very-<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yes, horse shit is excellent.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It actually does something.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It's utilitarian.<br />
<br />
== Who's That Noisy? <small>(1:21:22)</small> ==<br />
* Answer to last week’s Noisy: Baby {{w|Hippopotamus|hippos}}<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, Jay, it's who's that noisy time.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' All right, guys, last week I played one of the cutest noisies I've ever played in my entire history of the SGU. But here it is again for your enjoyment.<br />
<br />
[_short_vague_description_of_Noisy]<br />
<br />
It's so cute. Don't you just want to run over and give whatever it is a hug? You know what I mean? Come on. What do you guys think it is?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I think it's Bob opening a gift and it turns out to be some kind of robot inside and that's his reaction.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It could be a murder kitten for all we know.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' A murder kitten.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, the murder kittens.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You hug it and then it injects you with venom.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So before I answer these questions that you want to know about that noisy, I actually have to make a slight correction or some comments about the hail cannon. Remember the hail cannon from last week?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Richard, there's a thing called a hail cannon that makes this incredibly loud, thumping, ridiculously echoey noise that people buy and they install them in like fruit orchards and stuff. So when it hails, this cannon is supposedly is supposed to break up the hailstones as they come down. Okay?<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Sounds like a great idea.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It turns out that it's not.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Doesn't work.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It turns out that it doesn't work.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' You mean I have to cancel my order? Damn.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yes.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Makes the hailstones bigger?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I have a couple of things I'll tell you that I found out over the past week. One, I love our audience because they care so much that they emailed me to tell me, send me resources. Hey, Jay, you know what? I thought that they were legit too and I found this. So yes, companies make them. People buy them. The people who sell these things pretty much lie when they don't work.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Lying salesman. No way.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah. So buyer beware. So here's what people are saying. These cannons are not strong enough to actually reach the part of the atmosphere where hailstones are formed in order to do anything to stop them from forming. Now I will tell you this, these cannons are strong. I saw a video where someone shot one horizontally and wow, it shoots this percussive wave of sound that the guy set up like a wood structure and then a brick structure and it blew the house down. It did blow the houses over. But that's 30 feet. It would need to travel hundreds of feet or more. I'm not even exactly sure how high up it would have to go, but it's nowhere near where the density, the strength is there.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' The law of inverse squares would just make a mockery of that.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' You're totally right, Richard. So yeah, by the time you get up there, forget it. And they're noisy as hell and people really don't like them. But it was cool to look at the video and I really appreciate all the emails that everyone wrote in. The MythBusters talked about it. But the best information I got was from someone that worked at a place that had one. And he basically said, it hailed and the hail choked the freaking thing. It went into it because it's like a horn. So no, it didn't work. Not on the farm that he worked at. So it's bullshit. All right. Now back to that ridiculously cute noise. A listener named Visto Tutti, who is from Australia, but I thought was Roman, like an ancient Roman or something.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's Italian, no? He's Italian.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' He said, this week's noisy is definitely a mammal. I can hear a large one breathe heavy and then a tiny one babble. So I'm saying this sounds birth of a baby panda. I wrote him back and I said, no, that's incorrect. So I did tell him that he was wrong. He did call them good for nothing bamboo eating parasites. I agree with him. You know, I used to like pandas. And then it turned out after getting to know pandas from watching YouTube videos and whatnot over the last 30 years of my life-<br />
<br />
'''E:''' They sneeze and stuff. It's awful.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' They're useless. They're lazy. They don't do anything. Every once in a while, one of them does some falling bit out of a tree that I find humorous. But beyond that, they're useless. Anyway, next-<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Carbon footprint's not worth it.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Cameron Gall, I think, G-A-L-L-E, Cameron said, Asian small-clawed otters. Now-<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Wow.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Look up a picture of the Asian small-clawed otters. They're adorable. They're incredibly cute, but they are not the creatures that made these noises. That was a good guess though. I just found the picture is so cute that they fit it, but it wasn't right. Then the winner of this week named Jim Kelly wrote in, and Jim said, Jay, and he used my name correctly. Do you see the weird coincidence? He won, and he used my name correctly. He said, I think this week's noisy is the sound of a litter of baby hippos.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' What?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Why does he? Now, who thinks that?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Listen to this. [plays Noisy] Baby hippos? Baby hippos. Baby hippos. Are you kidding me with that sound? That is literally like a lure into death, right?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' A siren. A siren sound.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' It's a siren.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Hippos are not safe animals to be around. They will step on you and destroy you in a heartbeat, but the baby ones-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, they won't just step on you. If they're in the water, they're really aggressive, or they can be. I've seen hippos in the wild. It's incredible. They're so amazing to sit and watch, but I've never seen a litter of babies.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Oh, Cara, this video. Just look up baby hippos and you'll see it. It's so freaking cute. So anyway, guys, thank you so much, and thanks Timothy Wagner for sending in this week's noisy. It was a lot of fun.<br />
<br />
=== New Noisy <small>(1:27:23)</small> ===<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I have a new noisy for you guys. This noisy was sent in by a listener named Andrew Hansford, and here it is. I would like you to identify this person.<br />
<br />
[British man discussing a {{w|Dunning–Kruger effect|finding of David Dunning's}}]<br />
<br />
All right. Who is that? And part of the reason why I chose this one is because it's just a fun reminder of something that all skeptics should know. So you can email me the answers or any cool noises you've heard this week at WTN@theskepticsguide.org.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Thank you, Jay. All right, guys, let's go on with science or fiction.<br />
<br />
== Science or Fiction <small>(1:28:38)</small> ==<br />
{{SOFResults<br />
<br />
|fiction = artificial fertilizer<br />
|fiction2 = <!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
<br />
|science1 = urine fertilizer<!-- short word or phrase representing the item --><br />
|science2 = Haber-Bosch process<!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
|science3 = <!-- leave blank if absent --> <br />
<br />
|rogue1= richard<br />
|answer1= artificial fertilizer<br />
<br />
|rogue2= jay<br />
|answer2= artificial fertilizer<br />
<br />
|rogue3= cara<br />
|answer3= artificial fertilizer<br />
<br />
|rogue4= evan<br />
|answer4= artificial fertilizer<br />
<br />
|rogue5= bob<br />
|answer5= artificial fertilizer<br />
<br />
|host= steve<br />
<!-- for the result options below, <br />
only put a 'y' next to one. --><br />
|sweep= <!-- all the Rogues guessed wrong --><br />
|clever= <!-- each item was guessed (Steve's preferred result) --><br />
|win= <!-- at least one Rogue guessed wrong, but not them all --><br />
|swept= y <!-- all the Rogues guessed right --><br />
}}<br />
{{anchor|theme}}<br />
''Voice-over: It's time for Science or Fiction.''<br />
{{Page categories<br />
|SoF with a Theme = <!-- redirect created for Agriculture (774) --><br />
}}<br />
<blockquote>'''Theme: Agriculture'''<br>'''Item #1:''' Artificial fertilizer is responsible for 80% of current world food production.<ref>[https://ourworldindata.org/how-many-people-does-synthetic-fertilizer-feed Our World in Data: How many people does synthetic fertilizer feed?]</ref><br>'''Item #2:''' The Haber-Bosch process, used to fix nitrogen, consumes between 1-2% of the world’s energy usage.<ref>[https://cen.acs.org/static/about/aboutus.html Chemical & Engineering News: Industrial ammonia production emits more {{co2}} than any other chemical-making reaction. Chemists want to change that ]</ref><br>'''Item #3:''' One adult’s urine contains enough nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium to fertilize enough food production for 50-100% of one person’s food requirements.<ref>[https://modernfarmer.com/2014/01/human-pee-proven-fertilizer-future/ Modern Farmer: Can Human Urine Replace Chemical Fertilizers?]</ref><br></blockquote><br />
<br />
'''S:''' Each week I come up with three science news items or facts, two real and one fake, and I challenge my panel of skeptics to tell me which one is the fake. There's a theme this week. The theme is agriculture. Agriculture. Are you guys ready? All right, here we go. Artificial fertilizer is responsible for 80% of current world food production. Item number two, the Haber-Bosch process used to fix nitrogen consumes between one and 2% of the world's energy usage. And item number three, one adult's urine contains enough nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium to fertilize enough food production for 50 to 100% of one person's food requirements. All right, Richard, you get to go first.<br />
<br />
=== Richard's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' I think, I hope I've got a reasonably good track record at science or fiction over the years, but I must admit these ones are pretty screwy. Wow. I'm not going to beat around the bush too much. I'm going to take more or less a stab in the dark. One adult's urine contains enough nitrogen, phosphorus. That sounds to me like it might be science. I'm going to mark that as science. The second one I haven't even heard about, and the first one, artificial fertilizer is responsible for 80%. 80%? No, I don't think so. I think that's, I'm going to go with number one being the fake and the other two being the science.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All righty, Jay.<br />
<br />
=== Jay's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''J:''' All right, I'll skip the one that Richard went with and just look at the other two. The Haber-Bosch process used to fix nitrogen consumes between 1% to 2% of the world's energy usage. Damn. So fixing nitrogen could be incredibly energy, what would you call it? Energy wasteful?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Intensive.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Intensive?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Inefficient?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That's a shitload of energy if that's true. Damn. I don't like that at all. The last one here, one adult's urine contains enough nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium to fertilize enough food production for 50 to 100 of one person's food requirements. I mean, I'm semi-agreeing with Richard here that 80% of the current food that we eat is artificial fertilizers are responsible for 80%. Ah, my God, I don't think that we... I mean, that would mean that we're using an incredible amount of fertilizer. I would think that number would be a lot less than that. So between the three of these, I could see that the urine can have enough of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium. The one that's really bothering me is this nitrogen one. Nitrogen. You know what? Because Richard is our guest, because I love him and have personal affection for the man, I will go with Richard. G-W-R.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, Cara?<br />
<br />
=== Cara's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Artificial fertilizer is responsible for 80% of current world food production, Haber-Bosch process, 1 to 2% of the world's energy usage, and one adult's urine contains enough nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium to fertilize enough food production for 50 to 100% of one person's food requirements. That one is weird to me. That one, I feel like that's the one that you picked because it doesn't seem like it would be true, but it is. I don't know what the Haber-Bosch process is. I mean, you told me what it is, it's used to fix nitrogen, but I don't know anything about it. It uses 1 to 2% of the world's energy. I mean, that doesn't seem that bizarre to me that nitrogen fixation would require so much energy. It's so fundamental. So yeah, the urine one is bizarre, but maybe then that means that we'd be fine in space. I don't know. And the artificial fertilizer one also sticks out to me because even though it is true that factory farming and like large kind of, what do you call it, corporate farms are feeding a lot more people, I still think that most of the people in the world, or huge percentages of the people in the world are subsistence farmers. And they probably aren't using artificial fertilizer. They're probably actually using farm animals to fertilize their crops. So I don't know. I'm going to say that it's not 80%, but it's closer to like 50%, like half or something like that. So I think that number is too high. I'm going to go with Richard also.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay. Evan?<br />
<br />
=== Evan's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I don't want to be alone here.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, Bob still hasn't gone.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's true. I will kind of force Bob's hand though. I think I am going to agree with everyone else. I think, Steve, maybe this number 80%, maybe that's United States only as opposed to world. I can't imagine in Asia that they're using that ratio of artificial fertilizer. I just don't see it. Whereas fixing nitrogen on the second one, I'll just say I didn't know nitrogen was broken and needed to be fixed.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh no.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' So that's interesting. You learn something every day. That it uses energy, no big deal. But I agree with Cara. The surprise one is the adult urine containing all the goodies it needs that you can use it for half to almost all of one person's food requirements. So I'm with the group, 80% fiction.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And Bob?<br />
<br />
=== Bob's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah. 80% definitely seems like a lot. But remember, I mean, how much, what percentage of world food production does the United States?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That is probably the key, right?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That's probably the key. You probably be using lots of artificial fertilizer. But then you got China and India, lots of food production going on there as well. Are they using it? Oh man, I don't know. Haber-Bosch process, I remember doing a talk about that a bit. Of course, I don't remember the important details. I mean, it's an industrial process to create ammonia for fertilizer, but that doesn't really help answer this question. Is it that energy intensive? One to 2%. And then the urine one, yeah, who knows? Maybe, maybe not. It could be something completely out of whack with that, but I could kind of see it. 80% using... I think there's a lot of farmers out there that are flinging a lot of real shit around as fertilizer. I'll say that's fiction as well.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #3 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. So we're all with one. So I'll take these in reverse order, starting with number three. One adult's urine contains enough nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium to fertilize enough food production for 50 to 100% of one person's food requirements. So if the 100% is if we're close to 100%, that could mean theoretically that we could produce all of our food using our own urine as fertilizer. That's what that could mean if this was science. And this one is science. So did you guys know that using urine for fertilizer is already a thing?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I wouldn't doubt it.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Makes sense free.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So we do pee out a lot of nitrogen in the form of urea, and there's phosphorus and potassium in there as well, along with other things. The idea is if we could recapture those nutrients from urine, we could create a closed loop, fertilizer cycle, right, where we're recapturing nutrients rather than a linear model where we are taking nitrogen from the air mostly and then putting that into the soil. And then it goes into waste basically into the streams and causes the algae blooms and all that stuff. Rather than having that more of a linear thing, we have a closed loop where we're just putting back into the soil what came from there in the first place through food, people, urine, right?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah. But if we put urine in as fertilizer that is involved with food and then we eat it, will that give us mad cow disease?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So that's deceptively a good question. The real question is, whenever you use any kind of human waste as fertilizer, it creates the possibility of pathogens getting into the stream. So the good thing is, is that unless you have a urinary tract infection, your urine should be sterile. It's also not that hard to treat the urine heat it or whatever to sterilize it further, to remove further pathogens.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Sterilize.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The real problem, the real concern about using urine as fertilizer is what? It's not so much pathogens as...<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Social stigma.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' It smells.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Stink?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Pharmaceuticals.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, right.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Oh, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Artificial chemicals.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Probably birth control is a big problem.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We pee out a lot of hormones, a lot of pharmaceuticals.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, hormones.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So, all right, so there are some places which are collecting pee, including human pee, treat it a little bit, let it sit around for a while, the urea becomes ammonia, and then you can use it directly as fertilizer. But there are also, there was a news item about this, and then I did a little bit of research into the item more in general, but the news item was about one process for separating the nitrogen from the urine. So you don't have to use the urine. You just basically extract ammonia from the urine. And that process uses up a lot less energy than the Haber-Bosch process, right? So which has made, the Haber-Bosch process, by the way, was responsible for the Green Revolution. You ever heard that term, the Green Revolution?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yes, I just watched a whole doc about the Green Revolution.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's the Haber-Bosch process. That's it.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Huge.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That is what created the Green Revolution.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #2 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay, so let's go back to number two. The Haber-Bosch process used to fix nitrogen, which is true, consumes between one to two percent of the world's energy usage. So is that true? How much, how energy intensive is it and how much energy is it actually using compared to all the things that we're using energy for in the world? So you guys thought that was high, but all went for it. And this one is science.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #1 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The Haber-Bosch process, the estimate is, and this relates back to number one, artificial fertilizer is responsible for 80% of current world food production. That's fiction. So the process, however, is critical. Cara, you were almost exactly right. It's 48%. It's just about half.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That's awesome, Cara.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's amazing.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But it's been steadily increasing as a percentage of our food coming from artificial fertilizer. It's been steadily increasing. So 20 years ago, it was only like 30%, and then it went to 40%, and now it's closing in on 50%. And almost all of the increase in our food production is artificial fertilizer.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And do you think that's mostly coming from like industrial farming?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Using more science, basically.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Totally.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Farming. Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And it is a problem. So it's feeding the world. Again, imagine if our food production just was cut in half. That would be a problem. That'd be a non-trivial problem. And people would say, well, we'll just farm organically. And where the hell are you getting all of your manure from? You're going to double the manure production in the world? You know, that's not happening.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Maybe we could donate that along with the pee. Give it all. Give it all.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, that's the thing. If we harvest nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium from urine, that becomes another stream, if you will, of nutrients.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Don't cross the streams.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' You're in luck.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Hey, Richard. Well met.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And then that could displace a lot of the nitrogen that we're getting from the Haber-Bosch process. And because that's recycling, basically, these nutrients, rather than introducing them into the system, it would be more efficient. Absolutely. If we ever have a Mars or Moon base, you're going to be using your own pee as fertilizer. No question.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Cool.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And you're going to recycle that. And that's where all the research into separating these from the pee is important. Because first of all, if you're on the Moon, you want the water from your pee, right?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, you're right.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So the question is, how do we—although you have to water the crops, so maybe it's a wash. Who knows? But the question is, if we're going to do this on any kind of significant scale, how do we separate pee from the waste stream? And we would have to do that. We would need a change to our infrastructure, where basically you capture urine separately from poop and toilet paper and anything else you might flush down. Already 80% of human waste winds up on farmland. Did you know that?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' No.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. Jay, you talked about this. It's like, what happens to our poo? A lot of it ends up as fertilizer. But we could more efficiently perhaps do this with the urine if we separated it out to begin with and then had an efficient process, which is, again, there's multiple labs working on how to do this, including the recent one that I was talking about. That would go a long way to reducing the reliance on artificial fertilizer, which everyone agrees is a problem. It's a necessary problem for now. What are the ways in which we can fix this problem? One is to introduce other sources of nitrogen, like from human urine. That's one possibility. Another one is to genetically modify crops so that they can fix nitrogen from the atmosphere themselves, like legumes can. Imagine if our wheat and corn could do that too. That would be awesome. There's multiple labs working on that, and I think those will be coming online probably this century. But who knows how long that will take. Then there's other sort of low-tech ways of trying to control where the nitrogen goes after it leaves the farm so that it doesn't end up in the gulf or whatever and cause algae blooms to try to use the fertilizer better and in a more controlled way. We're kind of getting to that point that if we want to keep pushing our food production, thinking about the nitrogen cycle is huge. This is definitely a problem that we need multiple solutions to, but the research is very clear that organic farming is not the solution because it uses way too much land and because nobody has an answer for where's all the nitrogen coming from, right? They just don't have an answer for it.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, just don't have a black box in the middle that's labeled, and a miracle occurs here.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, right.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Exactly.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's like the plasma engine where you just completely ignore where the energy is coming from.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah. Electricity. We'll just make more.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Exactly. All right. Well, good job, everyone. Yeah, I had to make the number high enough that it was clearly wrong without being too obvious, and it's always hard to know where exactly to put that number.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah. 78 would have been better.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' 78, yes.<br />
<br />
== Skeptical Quote of the Week <small>(1:44:54)</small> ==<br />
<br />
<!-- For the quote display, use block quote with no marks around quote followed by a long dash and the speaker's name, possibly with a reference. For the QoW in the recording, use quotation marks for when the Rogue actually reads the quote. --> <br />
<br />
<blockquote>It is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence. <br>– {{w|William Kingdon Clifford}}, mathematician and philosopher (1845-1879)</blockquote><br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. Evan, give us a quote.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' This week's quote was submitted by our friend, Craig Good.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, Craig.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' We love Craig.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Formerly of Pixar, he taught us.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's right.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' He gave us a basic class in film.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, many moons ago. Remember that, Steve? I was like, oh, we're going back what? Eight years?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But it was cool. Because there's an area about which you know nothing. Getting a basic, the learning curve is really steep at the beginning, and I always find that so fun. Like when you're being introduced to these basic, powerful concepts that you were completely ignorant of before.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Right. Clears up 70% of the problems right off the bat.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I know. Like stuff is where they are two-dimensionally on the screen actually matters. OK, that's interesting.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It's important. So he submitted this quote. Thank you, Craig. "It is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone to believe anything upon insufficient evidence." That was written by William Kindon Clifford, who was a mathematician and philosopher. He was born in 1845, died 1879. Interesting fellow. I don't know that we've spoken about him much on this show. He introduced what is now termed geometric algebra, for those who are math aficionados out there in the SGU listening world. I'm sure you'll recognize that. And there's a special case of the Clifford algebra named in his honour. Now, Bob, he was the first to suggest that gravitation might be a manifestation of an underlying geometry.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Really?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' In 1870, he actually lectured at Cambridge that the curved space concepts of Riemann, he talked about it, and he included speculation at the time on the bending of space by gravity in the year 1870. <br />
<br />
'''C:''' Whoa.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Wow, man.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's a full 40 years before Einstein put it all together. So that's kind of cool.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Wow.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' As far as his philosophy goes, obviously the quote kind of says it all, but he would often argue in direct opposition to religious thinkers who put faith – or put stock in blind faith and considered it a virtue, they did, and he'd take them down on a regular basis. And one last note, in his philosophical writings, he coined the expression, mind stuff. So whenever you use that, you owe his estate a nickel if you're going to use the term mind stuff.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. Thanks, Evan.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Thanks.<br />
<br />
== Signoff/Announcements <small>(1:47:10)</small> == <!-- if the signoff/announcements don't immediately follow the QoW or if the QoW comments take a few minutes, it would be appropriate to include a timestamp for when this part starts --><br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, Richard, thanks for joining us. I gave you very short notice for joining us, but you're one of the friends of the SGU that we know I could email, and 12 hours later, you're on the show.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Thank you very much. Thanks very much for inviting me. And please give my podcast a listen if you haven't discovered it yet, skepticzone.tv. And Jay, you'll be interested in this. Our friend Maynard now does a regular live stream from his lounge room every Friday night here in Australia.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Awesome.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I know. I stumbled on it. I'm like, what is happening here? You know what I mean? Because he's just going apeshit. It's so freaking funny. And I got to tell you, that guy, every time I see him or talk to him, he puts a smile on my face.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah. He's awesome.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' If you want to check that out, just go to maynard.com.au.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And Richard, you have to join us for NECSS. We're doing an all digital NECSS, and we're inviting a lot of our skeptical friends to come and watch. And who knows, maybe you could even join us for some of our interludes, our green room kind of chatting about things.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' That sounds like a lot of fun. Count me in.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' And remember, you don't have to fly over.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Thank goodness for that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, stay safe down there, Richard.<br />
<br />
'''RS:''' Thank you.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And thank you all for joining me this week.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Sure, man.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' You got it Steve.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Thank you.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Thank you, Steven.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' —and until next week, this is your {{SGU}}. <!-- typically this is the last thing before the Outro --> <br />
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}}</div>Hearmepurrhttps://www.sgutranscripts.org/w/index.php?title=SGU_Episode_415&diff=19120SGU Episode 4152024-01-20T16:34:39Z<p>Hearmepurr: episode done</p>
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{{InfoBox <br />
|episodeNum = 415<br />
|episodeDate = 29<sup>th</sup> Jun 2013<br />
|episodeIcon = File:Biosphere_2.jpg<br />
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|downloadLink = http://media.libsyn.com/media/skepticsguide/skepticast2013-06-29.mp3<br />
|forumLink = http://sguforums.com/index.php?topic=46463.0<br />
|qowText = Data is not information, information is not knowledge, knowledge is not wisdom, wisdom is not truth.<br />
|qowAuthor = Robert Royar<br />
|}}<br />
<br />
== Introduction ==<br />
''You're listening to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.''<br />
Hello and welcome to The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe. Today is June 29th 2013 and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Rebecca Watson<br />
<br />
R: Hello everyone<br />
<br />
S: Jay Novella<br />
<br />
J: Hey guys<br />
<br />
S: and Evan Bernstein<br />
<br />
E: Good evening everyone <br />
<br />
R: Where the hell is Bob?<br />
<br />
S: Bob, once again, is too busy to join us. Bob has a major thing happening at work<br />
<br />
E: uh huh<br />
<br />
S: that does keep him away.<br />
<br />
== This Day in Skepticism <small>(0:35)</small> ==<br />
June 29: Happy birthday to Dr. Roy Wolford, calorie restriction pioneer and Biosphere 2 inhabitant<br />
R: Hey, happy birthday to Roy Wolford, Dr. Wolford. <br />
<br />
E: Awesome! Is he a listener? <br />
<br />
R: Well, uh no, he died in 2004. He was born June, 29 1924 and Dr. Roy Wolford is probably best known for being one of the inhabitants of Biosphere 2. <br />
<br />
E: I love that movie<br />
<br />
R: He was also though a pioneer of calory restriction as used for longevity. He wrote a book about living to 120. It was not, uh...<br />
<br />
E: A life of perpetual hunger, that's what the title of the book was called. <br />
<br />
J: Imagine what Perry would have said about that. <br />
<br />
R: I think Perry would have said that he would gladly die at 20 than live on a restricted calorie diet. <br />
<br />
J: Choking on a hamburger right?<br />
<br />
R: Right<br />
<br />
E: hahaha<br />
<br />
<br />
R: Yeah, uh, Wolford lived on something like 1600 calories a day <br />
<br />
E: Alright<br />
<br />
S: It's not that bad. <br />
<br />
R: Which is realy not that bad<br />
<br />
J: That's not bad<br />
<br />
<br />
R: That's slightly more than what I take in when I'm trying to cut back on my fats. <br />
<br />
S: That's a weight loss diet, 1600 calories a day is a pretty reasonable weight loss plan<br />
<br />
R: He died at the age of 79 uh, from comoplications from ALS, Lou Gehrig's Disease. <br />
<br />
E: That's not, that's got nothing to do with his lifestyle <br />
<br />
R: It's not, yeah it's not a fair, it's not really a fair judgement wether or not his calorie restriction were the... Although he claimed at the end of his life his calorie restriction helped extend his life further by a couple of years after he was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's.<br />
<br />
J: Unprovable <br />
<br />
R: Yeah<br />
<br />
E: That's a nice antecdote. <br />
<br />
S: Honestly, ya know, again this is all antecdotal I have no idea about the individual case but, that's unlikely to be true. <br />
<br />
R: Yeah<br />
<br />
S: Calorie restriction actually hastens death in ALS. It often, the ability to get enough calories in and keep your calories up is a huge pragnostic factor in ALS. So if anything, ya know, ya can't, it's very hard to argue that calorie restriction prolonged his life once he developed ALS. <br />
<br />
R. But yeah, he also thought that his ALS was possibly caused by his time in the Biosphere due to lack of oxygen and increased nitrous oxide. Exactly what causes ALS is not entirely settled and so he suspected that that might have had something to do with it. <br />
<br />
S: That's wild speculation. <br />
<br />
E: Nitrous Oxides builds up in these Biodomes? I didn't know that. <br />
<br />
J: Well they were having trouble in there right?<br />
<br />
R: They had a lot of trouble. Although, they did stay in there for two years. But, one of the problems they had was a severe lack of food and so it was helpful that their resident doctor happened to be this guy who believed in calorie restriction. So he convinced them all to go on this diet. Ya know, to join him in his diet.<br />
<br />
S: Yeah since we have no food anyway.<br />
<br />
R: Right. And so they did, but even so at some point many months in they finally broke down and opened up a container of food that was grown outside of the Biosphere in order to supplement their diets. <br />
<br />
J: That would have made an awesome YouTube video <br />
<br />
E: Watching the moment of breaking that chest open <br />
<br />
S: So they just didn't...Did something go wrong with their food production or they didn't plan properly?<br />
<br />
J: If you couldn't grow enough food in the Biodome, and ya know, it was never done before. They didn't have the data going in to it, it was all just engineered and it failed. Biodome experiments didn't last as long as they hoped <br />
<br />
S: It wasn't self sustaining. <br />
<br />
J: No<br />
<br />
R: Yeah by all their models I guess it seemed like it could be done but one thing after another went wrong. <br />
<br />
S: Now imagined if that happened on Mars. <br />
<br />
R: Well that's why they do this stuff. Although I'm sad that they're not, they haven't continued trying that sort of thing. I would love to see that project continue. <br />
<br />
S: Yeah<br />
<br />
R: I don't know the details of why nobody has tried Biosphere 3<br />
<br />
J: Ya know what I noticed? <br />
<br />
E: Pauly Shore<br />
<br />
J: I noticed, looking at pictures of Biodome, first its interesting if you look at it today, a weed infested back yard. I also noticed it looks a lot like Logan's Run, that's 1970s movie of the people that get put into a Biodome like thing because that was like a last ditch effort to sav humanity and people were in there so long that they forgot what happened. That was Biodome man. Ya ever see, like it looks like it. <br />
<br />
S: Well, it was a lot bigger<br />
<br />
R: There was apparently a Biosphere 3, maybe still is in Syberia and there's a Biosphere J in Japan. But one other thing, despite the potential pseudoscience with origins of disease and wether or not calorie restriction can actually work in humans to extend life, Walford seemed like a really awesome guy. At one point he would like take off for a time as part of his studies and measure the rectal temperatures of holy men in India.<br />
<br />
E: uh huh <br />
<br />
R: He traveresed the African continent on foot, according to his obituary in the New York Times. So he specifically wanted to go out and just have adventures. He said, " If you spend all your time in the laboratories, as most scientists do, you might spend 35 years in the lab and be very successful and win a Nobel Prize. But those 35 years will be just a blur. So I find it useful to punctuate time with dangerous and eccentric activities." He once broke his leg on a motorcycle. <br />
<br />
E: That qualifies as dangerous. <br />
R: Yeah he just seems like he was a fun guy.<br />
<br />
== News Items ==<br />
=== Podcasting Patent <small>(06:42)</small>===<br />
* http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-06-05/company-sues-tech-giants-claiming-podcast-patent-breach/4735786<br />
S: Alright well Jay, tell us why we're gonna be shut down. We can't do podcasting anymore. <br />
<br />
R: Nooooo<br />
<br />
E: We're done? This is it?<br />
<br />
J: I'm not convinced that we're gonna get shut down as a podcast, but this story has to do with patent trolling. Patent trolling is the business du jour. And if you haven't heard about it, those of you who haven't, it's a pretty simple and amazingly lucrative idea. Here's how it works: Patent trolls, also known as non-practicing entities, or NPEs, are typically companies that buy defunct businesses or ya know any kind of organization or even individual patents. And they buy these companies for their patents specifically, and then they used those acquired patents to sue other companies for patent infringement. It's pretty basic and it goes a long way and they've made a ton of money. These organizations make all or most of their income through the lawsuits. Most of them, like I said, they don't have anything else going on. They become a patent troll and they don't actually have a product or sell anything or do any other type of commerce. It's not 100% fast and true but a large majority of them are just companies that revolve around these lawsuits. And this scam, or whatever you wanna call it, has worked on some of the worlds' most biggest and lucrative companies. The US patent office is widely known to issue patents for ideas that are already in use and common place. And these are ideas like, say online shopping or shopping cart system or a file sharing system or an in app purchase, as an example. And many of these lawsuits are about things that should never have been patented in the first place. Like I think that a shopping cart system should have never been patented. You really can't say, hey you owe me money because you're using this workflow process to sell products online to online customers; to me that's insane. In 2011, patent trolls cost the United States, or companies inside the Unites States, a total of twenty-nine billion dollars; and, they have increased their activity 400% since 2005. And they are 62% of all patent lawsuits in the United States. It's a phenomenal portion of patent lawsuits and they're really growing leaps and bounds year for year. I guess, instead of these companies finding new uses for their patents and expanding on the technology they already own, they're focusing on these lawsuits. You know these companies are, in my opinion, they're pretty transparent because they use similar procedures to get to the point where they can start hitting up the big companies and one of the things that they do is that they'll find a week company or a financially poor company, with no regard of winning anything other than just the lawsuit from this company to set a legal precedent. And then they take that legal precedent, and they take it to a bigger company, and they'll tell the next court, "Hey, we already won a lawsuit about this." And now ya know instead of them ya know just trying to win a lawsuit and maybe stopping that company, they're gonna ask for fifty million dollars. And they guise it as a licensing fee. Oh we're just sueing for licensing fees here. We want them to pay us for the use of the patent, and we want them to go back to this year, or whatever, and now and we're not gonna sue them in the future because they're actually going to be paying us for this licensing fee. Companies like Rackspace, Microsoft and Ebay, just to name a few, are starting to turn and face these patent trolls and go for it. Really really get down and dirty in court, and let the years go by and spend the millions and millions of dollars to fight them. But they're putting they're um they're putting a flag in the ground and saying, "No, we're not going to pay any of these blackmail fees. We're actually gonna fight you and try to get you to go out of business." Very recently, June 4th of 2013, the White House enacted five executive actions and seven legislative recommendations to restrict the activities of patent trolls. And this is a huge step forward in helping companies protect themselves and make it much much more difficult for patent trolls to actually win against US based companies. A patent troll named Prsonal Audio LLC has sued three podcasters and sent demand letters to a number of others. Now this is the case that Steve was talking about. Recently this company filed suit against CBS and NBC, and has also sent additional demand letters to small podcasting operations. So an organization called EFF, Electronic Frontier Foundation, is fighting against Personal Audio LLC, which is the company that's sueing these podcasters. And what EFF is trying to do is help to save podcasting. Now the first thing that they did was they asked for donations so they can raise the thirty thousand dollars to begin the lawsuit process. And what they're trying to do, is they're trying to prove that the patent that Personal Audio LLC owns is actually not a legitimate patent at all. And what the, the reason that they're trying to do this is it's the quickest and most direct route to stop the lawsuit. And they way that they're doing it is that they're asking for people to help them find proof that the idea of podcasting, either in part or similar ideas or even the entire idea, if it was ever stated, written down or communicated online. Any way that they can prove before October 2nd of 1996, then they can take that proof to the patent office, go to court and say, "Look it, ya know this idea predates their patent. It was ya know on a public forum and this whole thing is illegitimate." The worst case scenario here is if this company gets a foothold and starts sueing the bigger organizations, ya know some of these organizations that can afford will probably pay; but I'd imagine some of them won't because as most people know podcasting is not really a lucrative venture. For those people that are running a lucrative podcasting venture, like Adam Corrola as an example, he's one of the people being, his company is being sued. Ya know Adam Corrola does a pretty damn good job on his podcast<br />
<br />
E: Yeah<br />
<br />
J: He's making some decent money over there, I mean this could put him right off the air. Of course, being a podcaster and being just a huge fan of the podcasting world, I stand very firmly against what this company is trying to do. Now, I did read some things that troubled me. That made me think that there might be some legitimacy to this lawsuit because it is possible that the person, the engineer the software engineer, is claiming that he did make these engines and that he does deserve some compensation.<br />
<br />
S: So what though? What did he invent? RSS, ya know the really simple syndication, they didn't do that, that's open source. What, MP3 files?<br />
<br />
J: No, I I I'm not 100% sure, Steve. I tried to find it, I was all over the web searching for facts and I think it's vague and it's deliberately vague. I think it boils down to the idea that you're distributing serialized episodes of something over the web. That's what I read. That's it. I didn't get to more detail than that. <br />
<br />
E: So he's um<br />
<br />
S: Yeah, that's still simply b.s.<br />
<br />
E: patenting the concept, right? Just the concept of podcasts.<br />
<br />
J: Yeah. But let me let me give you a<br />
<br />
E: Sounds Week<br />
<br />
J: It does sound weak. And let me give you an example of something that I saw on Shark Tank as an example. I really like that show for a lot of reasons, it is entertaining. There is a pretty good amount of stuff to learn if you want to watch it and one of the sharks on the show, it... Real quick, what the show is people come in and pitch their business to rich people, business men and women, and they uh they're asking for money like they wanna they want to be funded. So uh Mark Cuban, who is my favorite person on the show is really, first off we've mentioned him on The Skeptics' Guide before, he's he's the only person I think is really a critical thinker on the show. And he he's fought against pseudoscience when it comes on that show. But one guy came on with a, it was like a vest, and he had a patent where if you had like your iPhone in an internal pocket it runs a wire up to like your neck and you have your ear buds there. And the guy patented basically running a wire through clothing; and Mark Cuban went ape shit on him. Just saying this is b.s. Like, you know it's guys like you that are you know destroying innovation and and growth and and you know companies developing new technologies because ya know you're holding this ridiculous patent. It stops other people from using a similar technology. You can't patent a wire going through clothing. It's absurd. And I think when I watched it, at first I didn't understand why he was getting so upset. I did get his idea, but I didn't understand everything that we just discussed. I have learned a lot since I watched that episode; and now I fully understand it. I completely agree with Mark Cuban. This is the type of thing that squelches innovation, puts companies out of business and ya know all that money is just being syphoned out of these companies that are developing technology. These patent trolling companies are not technology developers. All they're doing is, they're in the business just to make money, that's it. They don't. There's no good side to it. Somebody is just getting rich. <br />
<br />
S: They're like just, they're parasites. <br />
<br />
J: So if you if you are interested ya know take a look online. Uh look up the company, the name of that company again is the Electronic Frontier Foundation. They're fighting a lot of other technology and digital based threats to the future of our technology. And I do believe in what they're trying to do and if you're interested, take a look and maybe even make a donation. <br />
<br />
S: Obviously, patents are important. People need to be able to protect their intellectual property and benefit from their innovation. But yeah, but patenting like a really basic idea is is counterproductive, it's absurd. The kind of idea that like anybody can come up with "I'm the first person to submit a patent for it". In fact, you can patent ideas that can't even be implemented yet. In other words, if you see a technology coming on the horizon, you can patent a use of that not yet existing technology. And then when the technology does come online, you can then start sueing anybody that tries to use it in the way that you patented. And all you're doing is patenting an idea, a basic obvious idea. It just becomes a race to see who can patent it first. It is totally broken. That kind of system is completely counterproductive. <br />
<br />
J: Yeah, it's, well the government is taking steps to heat and it's moving forward. There doesn't seem to be that much holding these decisions that they're making so. I think things are moving in the right direction.<br />
<br />
S: Hopefully<br />
<br />
=== Class System in Mice <small>(17:21)</small>===<br />
* http://www.universityherald.com/articles/3575/20130617/mice-big-brother-setup-develop-social-structures.htm<br />
17:21<br />
S: Alright well, Rebecca tell us about how mice have their own class system. <br />
<br />
R: I will. Uh, yeah, there's a really fun experiment that's been happening on mice; looking at their social strati. And what's interesting isn't the fact that mice set up class systems and different social statuses; but the way in which scientists are starting to study them, and study their social behavior... It's not necessarily...like studying the way animals are interacting with each other isn't necessarily as easy as studying, let's say studying what a particular drug is doing to a particular mouse system, uh it's much more complex. You've got mice interacting with each other, displaying different behaviors doing different things that you have to constantly watch and log in, you know, an objective a way as possible. This study, by Dr. Tali Kimchi, which I did not know was a last name, but I really like it, Kimchi<br />
<br />
J: Kimchi<br />
<br />
E: Kimchi<br />
<br />
R: Yeah Kimchi is a delicious condiment uh, and also a last name. So Dr. Kimchi at the Wiseman's Institute's Neural Biology department is studying mice and their social interactions using a big brother house. So if you recall the tv show, which hasn't been around in the US for quite a long time. Big Brother is a show where they have cameras that are constantly watching the residences of the house. And the residents aren't allowed to leave the house, and the cameras are watching 24 hours. And in the UK, they were broadcast 24 hours in the most boring feed you can possibly imagine. Same sort of deal here, only slightly more complex, uh because the human big brother inhabitants were not microchipped. In this case, yes, the mice had microchips implanted in them. <br />
<br />
S: RFIDs <br />
<br />
R: RFIDs, yes. Yeah, exactly. The same sort of microchip you put in cats and dogs to keep track of them if they run away. <br />
<br />
E: and credit cards.<br />
<br />
R: yeah credit cards or tube cards, things like that. So in this case uh the microchips were used to track the mice movements. Mice?<br />
<br />
S: Meece<br />
<br />
E: Meeces. Meeces to pieces <br />
<br />
R: Ok. To track the meeces movements. And they go around their little house so their ccd cameras all over this relatively large house, for a bunch of mice, I think. And a computer examining what those behaviors are.And it was extraordinarily effective at parcing the different movements, at figuring out what the mice were doing, when they were doing it how they were interacting. To the point where uh they could predict with over 90 percent accuracy who the mice were going to be mating with. For instance... uh and they were also able to differentiate between the different genetic strains of the mice, so different strains uh showed different behaviors that they were able to see in the computer analysis. So it was an interesting way of collecting a vast amount of information and parcing it in a way that could have important uses in the future when figuring out uh behavviors. Some of the other things they figured out, they found that within 24 hours uh one group of normal strain mice had already established a leader and like a caste system. So it took about 24 hours for them to figure that out. Uh they also did an experiment where they put, they filled the house with another strain that they labeled as autistic. These mice exhibited very little social engagement. And what they found with the autistic mice, is that <br />
<br />
E: they were fascinated<br />
<br />
R: Yeah, right. Uh what they found with the autistic mice was that no leader emerged at all, uh no social strati happened. Except like occasionally it would appear that a leader would emerge and then they would promptly be dethroned. So social mice like immediately organized themselves into like a caste system. While autistic mice did not. Part of the, the intersting thing about this system that they've developed of analyzing behavior, can in the future be used for things like identifying the different aspects of disorders like autism or schizophrenia. <br />
<br />
S: Yeah, it sounds like a really great research paradigm. <br />
<br />
R: Yeah, exactly. It's fun, you can go online and see uh, I'm sure if you google Dr. Kimshee you can find a video of the mice running around in their little house. And it's kind of cool, they're all color coded uh when you watch the videos and you can follow them around as they do different things. It made me want to get my own mouse set-up. <br />
<br />
S: They should make it into a reality tv show. <br />
<br />
E: They should. <br />
<br />
R: People would watch it. I bet within like two weeks, whichever mouse established itself as king would be on the front page of Us magazine.<br />
<br />
=== Anti-GMO Pseudoscience <small>(22:50)</small>===<br />
* Science-based Medicine: [http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/once-more-bad-science-in-the-service-of-anti-gmo-activism/ Once More: Bad Science in the Service of Anti-GMO Activism]<br />
S: Alright, well let's move on. There's a study making the rounds. Another one of those studies reporting to show severe negative outcomes from uh feeding animals GM food, or genetically modified food. Uh so from the abstract of this study, let me read to you a part of the abstract and you can uh tell me what you think about it: Feed intake weight gain mortality and blood biochemistry were measured; organ weights and pathology were determined postmortem. There were no differences pigs fed the GM and non GM diets for feed intake, weight gain, mortality and routine blood biochemistry measurements. The GM diet was associated with gastric and uterine differences in pigs. GM fed pigs had uteri that were 25% heavier than non GM fed pigs. And GM fed pigs had a higher rate of severe stomach inflammation. With a rate of 32% of GM fed pigs compared to 12% of non GM fed pigs with a P value of .004. This severe stomach inflammation was worse in GM fed males compared to non GM fed males by a factor of 4. And the GM fed females compared to non GM fed females by a factor of 2.2. So that sounds like pretty impressive. <br />
<br />
E: Bad news<br />
<br />
S: Pretty impressive outcome, but does anything jump out at you guys that there might be some problems with this study? <br />
<br />
R: Nope, seems legit. <br />
<br />
E: Everything's great. <br />
<br />
S: This is like our lessons on how to evaluate studies right? One thing you have to always ask is whenever they're comparing two different groups, is how many comparisons do they actually look at? Because if you look at enough different comparisons, then you can cherry pick, by random chance you know there's gonna be some correlation somewhere. And if you're cherry picking that out of many comparisons, that's one of the...Remember the researcher degrees of freedom? You know, researchers can manufacture positive results by manipulating the data. And one way of doing that, even if they're doing it honestly or inadvertantly, one way to do that is to make multiple comparisons. Now there's a statistical fix that you're supposed to do for each additional comparison that you do or you make. You have to adjust the statistics to see if it's truly statistically significant. So for example, if you set the P value at .05, then roughly speaking that means that one in twenty comparisons are going to be statistically significant and by chance alone. If you make twenty comparisons and one is .05, that's probably just random chance. But even if you just look at that one thing, if that were the only comparison you made, then the P value of .05 would be meaningful. So they tell you right here in the abstract that feed intake, weight gain or mortality, a whole panel of blood biochemistry were measured. Organ weight, apparently all the organs were weighed and pathologically examined; and now they're just telling us about the stomachs and the uterus. So, that's what we call a fishing expedition, right? David Gorski wrote about this on science-based medicine, so if you want you can... He goes into it in great detail. And I think he absolutely correctly characterizes this as a fishing expedition. You go looking for a whole bunch of things, you're gonna find correlations by random chance alone, right? Astrologers are famous for this. This is astrology with pigs and GM corn. But it's actually even far worse than what you might um, than what you might... Even from the abstract you can say this is B.S. They went fishing and they came up with these two randoms. Why would GM corn cause severe stomach inflammation? But it's actually much worse than that. Because what they did was, this is a good way to increase your probability of generating false positive results. They took inflammation of the stomach, and they broke it down into different, somewhat arbitrary categories. No inflammation, mild, moderate, severe, erosions pinput ulcers, frank ulcers and bleeding ulcers. Out of all of those categories, only severe inflammation was worse in the GM fed versus the regular pigs. <br />
<br />
E: Ohh... That's not what they said in the abstract<br />
<br />
S: You wouldn't know that from just reading the abstract. All they say is severe inflammation was worse in the pigs fed the GM feed. Yeah but, not all the other kinds of inflammation. And, in fact, if you look at all inflammation, regardless of how severe it is, there was a slight decrease in the GM fed group compared to the non GM fed group. <br />
<br />
E: Wow<br />
<br />
S: It was just if you cherry pick out the one category in the middle, there wasn't even a dose response curve. That's another question you ask yourself. How many comparisons are being made, is there a dose response to any effect that they're claiming exists? You also of course have to ask is it plausible, but we could put that aside. So this data... So this is an exercise in cherry picking data. They cherry picked the severe inflammation out of this arbitrary categorization of different levels of inflammation. Over all inflammation... ya know this is just a random scatter of data, this is random noise. But actually, the thing that they're claiming, it increases the risk of sever stomach inflammation, overall inflammation was actually decreased in that group. Contradicting what they're pointing out. So this is complete B.S., this is just utter B. S. And this is coming from researchers, Judy Carman for example, who have a history of doing anti GM research. <br />
<br />
E: mmmhmmm<br />
<br />
S: just seems to be someone with an agenda, basically. <br />
<br />
E: Yeah, how does she account for her personal biases. <br />
<br />
S: So yeah, there's a bias, misdirection, crappy data ya know just horrific methodology.Also, David pointed out that, which is a very legitimate point, you always wanna know also in studies was anything unusual happening? When you're studying a disease, did the disease behaved like it always does. When you're studying animals, were they animals otherwise normal and healthy other than the thing that you were manipulating. These pigs, did overall, did pretty poorly. They had a very high rate of infection and complications. It's almost as if they weren't well cared for. So that's like an outlyer and really calls into question just what was happening in this study. The final analysis, again you want to avoid nitpicking little details of a study and then claiming that the results are invalid; you have to put it into context. But these are fatal flaws that we're talking about. And taken together, they make the results of this study worthless and uninterpretable. But yet, this is being spread around the internet as a stunning ya know study showing that GM corn and GM feed causes this horrible stomach inflammation in pigs. As if there's something dangerous ya know about this particular type of GM feed. And it's all based upon the naturalistic phallacy. It's all just genetic modification ain't natural. It's really just nonsense. <br />
<br />
J: Are people eating the same exact food as they feed the pigs. <br />
<br />
S: Well this is , animal feed. So no. They're trying to make genetically modified food seem scary. <br />
<br />
J: Yeah.<br />
<br />
S: It's just fearmongering, at the end of the day, is what it is. <br />
<br />
J: Now, are they gonna do a follow up, Steve? Because typically, when a study like this happens, some other group will do another one similar or exactly like they did just to see if their results match. <br />
<br />
S: Yeah, I'd like to see this replicated. You know, I strongly predict this is not the kind of study that's gonna replicate. And replication, of course is in the final analysis, that's how you tell. When you do this kind of multiple analysis where you're just looking at... you're just throwing a whole bunch of crap up against the wall and seeing what sticks, that study is never conclusive. That is always an exploratory study. Then you say, okay, we have this correlation and we looked at twenty, thirty fourty comparisons. We found this correlation. Then you get a fresh set of data, you replicate the study and see if that correlation holds up. If it was all random statistical noise, it will go away. And you'll probably see some other random association. But if it's a real effect, it should replicate. And that's how you know. So this is an exploratory study at best, because of all the multiple comparisons. It's not the kind of thing that should be reported in the press as fear mongering about GM foods. The kind that, at best, inspire a folllow up study. Let me give you an analogy to help put this into perspective: Prayer, intercessory prayer research, you guys familiar with research? Where the number of studies that were done looking at people who were sick and they were getting prayed for by a third party, intercessory prayer and they often didn't even know that they were being prayed for. They knew that they were in the study, but they didn't know if they were in the prayed for group or the not prayed for group. Tons of problems with this research, but the bottom line is, that they did multiple comparisons. For example, they looked at patients in the cardiac ICU and they followed a number of complications, number of days in the ICU, number of days in the hospital, survival... They looked at multiple multiple different end points. And then in one study, again there weren't differences across the board. There was like this one outcome was a little bit better in the prayer group. Then they replicated the study, and a different outcome was a little bit better, but not overall. Like overall it's random noise. But again the same outcome wasn't better, it's like a different outcome every time. That's, that's not a replication, that's a failure to replicate. That is consistent with random noise, which is of course what you would expect when you're hypothesis is magic makes people better, ya know. <br />
<br />
E: Hahaha that's true<br />
<br />
S: This is when you're considering the multiple comparisons that are being disclosed in the study. You may not be aware that they may have made, the researchers may have made multiple comparisons and only published the ones that were positive, or just a small subset. So they might have done all kinds of comparisons bu that doesn't work that doesn't... just discarded it and never reported it. Which is why why you know no single study is ever that believable, especially if it's like one research group. Uh, or, still one off study. It's hard... We get confronted with this all the time. Oh here's a study on ESP, why don't you guys believe this? Cuz it's one study. Because you have no idea what these researchers really did behind the scenes.<br />
<br />
R: It would be great if grade school science tearchers would, during a science fair, point out to their students that all of the things the students did to make their science fair project look better and get an A. It's exactly what scienctists still do once they're actual working scientists and, hey that's wrong. Make sure that you don't actually do that <br />
<br />
J: Like fudge the numbers?<br />
<br />
R: Yeah, like I did that when I was doing science fair projects I would have outlyers and be like, "Oh that one just didn't count like if I just this then I get, I got like a nice clean line here and uh I get an A. Because it looks like I knew my stuff. Yeah So<br />
<br />
S: You're absolutely right. Teachers should emphasize that its the messiness that they wanna see. <br />
<br />
R: Yes<br />
<br />
S: If they get something that looks too clean, that should count down your grade should go down, not up. Yeah my daughter recently, my older daughter recently like last year had a science fair. And I made sure that there were no shenanigans with her data. But going, walking through the posters of all the other students studies ya know there were a lot of them. Of course ya know we were uber skeptic evaluating a twelve year old science fair project.<br />
<br />
J: Could you imagine? Steve walking around like checking out all these like hey kid, you're all wrong over here. <br />
<br />
S: I just did it, it was a good teaching opportunity for my daughter. I didn't like criticize the students and make them cry.<br />
<br />
J: Sure you didn't <br />
<br />
S: It was like to Julia, it was a good lesson. Hey let's look at this study. What do you think about this? What were the methods and what are they doing wrong here? Like are they not using control groups and not carefully defining terms. I mean every error that was possible to make was made. But it is, it was a good and awesome learning opportunity. To ruthlessly pick through those, you can do it in a constructive nurturing way. But that would be a great learning opportunity to show how hard it is to do good science. All the ways in which, even a simple science project can go awry. <br />
<br />
R: And on that note, I just wanted to mention that, I think I might have mentioned this before, but you can, if you're interested you can volunteer to be a judge at the local science fair. They'll probably be happy to have you. I did it a couple of years ago at a local high school and I really enjoyed it. Just talking to the kids and finding out what they were interested in, it was pretty cool. <br />
<br />
S: Awesome<br />
<br />
E: That is cool. Very cool<br />
<br />
=== Skunk Ape <small>(36:31)</small>===<br />
* http://miami.cbslocal.com/2013/06/14/man-claims-he-spotted-floridas-elusive-skunk-ape/<br />
S: Alright, well Evan, you're gonna finish up the news segment of our show with a the latest stunning evidence of the Florida Skunk Ape.<br />
<br />
J: Skunk Ape?<br />
<br />
E: The Skunk Ape, of course. In Sarasota County Florida, a man claims he has spotted Florida's elusive Skunk Ape.<br />
<br />
S: Very elusive<br />
<br />
E: ...so the headlines read from CBS Miami. Alright, so what is a Skunk Ape? Well who better to ask than the folks at Floridaskunkape.com. Yes, there is such a website. <br />
<br />
S: Anybody?<br />
<br />
E: They claim, it's what Floridians call their big foot, as best known as sasquatch in most other places in North America, oh yeah. Evidence supporting the existence of the creature has been gathered over the years, and consists of hundreds of documented sitings, a few pictures, several foot casts and a few hair samples. Mmhmm. So they have actual evidence, apparently. It gets its name from the very fact that it lives in Florida it in itself emits an awful stench. Now that's their writing, I didn't write that, that's from their website. Lives in the state of Florida and emits an awful stench. People who've had the pleasure to experience the smell, it's described as that of an elephant's cage or a trash dump. And one person even said it was like the scent of a skunk that did battle with a dumpster. <br />
<br />
J: *laughs*<br />
<br />
E: I went to the gallery on that website to have a look at the photos and stuff and it said, "your search yielded no results." So much for that. But, forget that for now because we have new video evidence. This is smoking gun evidence, smoking gun so hot it must be shot evidence. Mike Falconer is the person who posted the video and still pictures on YouTube. <br />
<br />
S: I wonder what his ancestors did for a living. <br />
<br />
E: They probably made barrels or something. Uh he says that he captured this footage on March 2nd of this year 2013. That he and his son spotted a large hairy creature off in the, off, it was a field at the Myakka River State Park which is a place in which the Skunk Ape has been sited before, apparently. And there were other people in who um, in this footage you can hear them and they've also stopped their cars on the road to try to get a glimpse as well. Now I think that's um, well not important, but I think noteworthy in the case of this. Instead of having this, we're so used to having this you know there's someone out in the wilderness with a camera shooting ya know whatever they think is a big foot off in the distance. But this one is different it has a gathering, sort of a group of people who are all... They've all seen something; they've seen something off in the distance. <br />
<br />
S: Yeah, but they were strolling around like nothing special was going on. Honestly, it didn't seem that impressive to me.<br />
<br />
E: They were saying some things in the background like ya know "oh what is that over there" and "I'm trying to get a glimpse of it". At no point did anyone say they smelled something funny or were like ooo that's a skunk or like... I know that if a skunk gets hit by a car like a mile up my road from here I can smell it. That's a very powerful smell and if it's half what they're describing, according to the websites and stuff, I think you would ya know perhaps smell something. But, in any case. So what they did is uh a guy and his son started to pursue whatever it is that they saw out in the fields. So they've got their iPhones right? And they're recording video. And at one point you can kind of see something off in the far grassland. It looks like it has to be hundreds and hundreds of feet away. Something is kinda moving around back there, just some little brown dot or something and they're saying "Oh yeah can you see it? There it is! There it is! Let's go get a closer look".<br />
<br />
S: It's pixelsquatch<br />
<br />
J: *laughs*<br />
<br />
E: Exactly. And that's when they decided, of course, what you do when that happens. Well you turn off your video camera and you start shooting photos instead. So when they started to take photos is when they supposedly captured the quote unquote evidence. And Steve, correct me if I'm wrong, they're brown blotches.<br />
<br />
S: Yeah it's <br />
<br />
E: Brown blotches off in the trees<br />
<br />
S: It turns from pixelsquatch to blobsquatch, to the more classical blobsquatch. Absolutely. It's a completely unrecognizable amorphous brown blob. <br />
<br />
R: Enhance!<br />
<br />
S: Enhance! Enhance!<br />
<br />
R: Zoom in, enhance <br />
<br />
E: zoom zoom zoom<br />
<br />
S: Evan, do you know what the difference is between the Myakka Skunk Ape and the Hamden Bald Eagle? <br />
<br />
E: Oooo um, one really exists and the other doesn't. <br />
<br />
S: Yes. I have close up, in focus, unambiguous photographs of the Hamden Bald Eagle<br />
<br />
E: Exactly. And yet, once again, someone does not have such shots of the supposed Skunk Ape.<br />
<br />
J: The freakin bald headed eagle, that thing could just fly away. You know talk about...it's not just stuck on the ground. <br />
<br />
E: Apparently in the year 2000, there was some video footage shot of something that they deemed the Skunk Ape. And then around 2006 someone else came up with something that was more clearer, but to me it was clearly just a hoax, a guy in a suit walking around of some sort. And that's, and then there's this. And that's pretty much it; and a few other blurry photos out there which could have been anything shot by anyone at any time. That's it. That's the sum of evidence you have when it comes to this thing. For the folks who, the guys who, Falconer when he shot this video, when he posted it to YouTube he put up a description on the YouTube channel, YouTube page he has and here's what he wrote in regards to this, and I think this is a bit revealing. He says that: This is real footage my son and I took in Myakka March 2nd 2013. We had iPhones with us. You'll see actual still shots of the thing. Some have called it big foot or sasquatch. The only editing we did to these pictures was to lighten it up. Alright? So here we go. At one point, you hear us talk of two of them. It was a deer out there hiding in the tall grass; maybe that's what it was after. You can see it in the middle at the thin tan line of grass under the tree. You will also see the deer a little to the left and closer in. Hello, deer!<br />
<br />
S: Okay<br />
<br />
E: Ok, so what's more likely? You've got Skunk Ape legend, ya know, in which there is absolutely no physical evidence whatsoever. It's all a bunch of blurry photos and weak videos of. Or, the people actually shooting this stuff saying that was clearly deer there, running around. And um, hmmm gee. Skunk Ape or deer? I don't -know. What does Occam's Razor tell us to think in this situation?<br />
<br />
S: Hey it's more likely to be a Florida panther than the Skunk Ape. <br />
<br />
J: Yeah<br />
<br />
R: It'd be more likely to be a zebra<br />
<br />
S: Yeah<br />
<br />
R: than a Skunk Ape. I mean, cuz the skunk ape doesn't exist. <br />
<br />
E: Unimpressive, sorry. It is getting a lot of headlines<br />
<br />
J: Alright, Ev, c'mon. This whole thing has been a little vague, ya know. What's your gut tellin ya?<br />
<br />
E: My gut's telling me that there is a network of Skunk Apes living in those fields, all over Florida.<br />
<br />
J: And once again, I want there to be a Skunk Ape. You know, somebody please find some real evidence and I'd be all over it. But these fuzzy pictures, I'm getting tired of it guys. <br />
<br />
S: By the way, I am patenting the word pixelsquatch. Everytime you say it, you've got to give me a quarter. <br />
<br />
J: Pixel squatch!<br />
<br />
E: Alright, well you'll hear from my lawyers. <br />
<br />
S: So have any of you guys heard about the GyroStim?<br />
<br />
J: No<br />
<br />
S: Probably not. <br />
<br />
R: It's pronounced "Yeerow"<br />
<br />
S: "yeerow?"<br />
<br />
E: Is that a new sandwich they're serving at Subway or something?<br />
<br />
R: Yeah it's a combination. It's like a regular gyro, but with Slim Jims<br />
<br />
E: Haha cool<br />
<br />
S: So this is a machine that was developed by an engineer whose daughter has cerebral palsy. And it's essentially a chair. You sit in the chair and you have a little joystick remote control and you can swing around in all three dimensions, you know. <br />
<br />
E: XYZ?<br />
<br />
S: Exactly. In every axis. He developed this because she was getting physical therapy in which she had to do exercises to essentially do the same thing. Rotate around in order to um improve her balance in her walking. And, it was a bit tedious. So he, being an engineer, was like I'm gonna help her out, automate this. So he built a chair, the GyroStim, you know he built this chair and it does what he wanted it to do. It rotates around in all three axes. Now unfortunately, some not science-based practioners got their hands on this machine and have ran with it. The engineer is Kevin Maher, and you guys remember Ted Carrick? He is a quote un quote chiropractic neurologist.<br />
<br />
J: Yeah I remember that<br />
<br />
S: So he is using the GyroStim, and claiming it can cure all kinds of things. So I wrote a review on Science-Based Medicine of the GyroStim. Which, you know, is just one of an endless sequence of devices with overblown claims without adequate evidence. The thing hasn't been studied. It's actually not an illegitimate concept, there is such a thing called vestibular therapy where you essentially do just that. You stimulate the vestibular system by you know putting by rotating and changing your head position over and over again. And it can treat...it's actually a very effective treatment for some kinds of vertigo.<br />
<br />
J: What's the vestibular system, Steve?<br />
<br />
S: The vestibular system, that's a very good question Jay, is the system in your brain that senses two things - your orientation with respect to gravity and acceleration. So, this is the three semi circular canals that are in your inner ear. They have fluid in them so when you rotate around you're oriented towards gravity the fluid flows through those semi circular canals, which there's three of them, one in each axis, and then that moves hair cells that sense the movement of that fluid. And that's the sensing organ, but then that vestibular information gets taken in by the brain and is process compared to your visual information and tactile information and that's how you get a sense of motion and stability and balance ya know. <br />
<br />
J: So this is your internal accelerometer<br />
<br />
S: Yeah, well exactly. When there's a disconnect between your visual input and your vestibular input, that results in dizziness and motion sickness. That's why you get motion sick. When your vestibular system is telling you that your rocking up and down and your visual system is not because it is locked to something in the foreground. It's also a very delicate system, and a lot of people have dizziness of vertigo and we can't really identify anything specific that's not working. There's no lesion anywhere and it looks normal. But that integration of misinformation is just a little bit off. Those are the people who do well with vestibular therapy or essentially just retraining the brain to integrate this information. Conceptually it's perfectly fine. But where we get into trouble is in two areas. One is, the machine costs tens of thousands of dollars, so it's very expensive. There is no evidence to show that getting vestibular therapy with this 20 30 40 thousand dollar machine is superior to getting vestibular therapy manually with no machine; or just getting a twenty dollar swing and swinging back and forth on it as a way of stimulating your vestibular system. Which is something that physical therapists actually do. Investing in an expensive piece of equipment and paying a lot of money for expensive sessions is not justified until there's research showing this is not only as good as the far cheaper options, but is significantly superior to it. But there's no research, we don't even know if it works at all or that it's safe. All you have is the idea of using the machine. But of course that doesn't stop chiropractors, like Ted Carrick, from starting to use it. But in addition, the claims that are being propogated for this machine, especially by Ted Carrick and also by others now, is that it not only is a way of delivering vestibular therapy- which is the plausible component of the claim - but that it actually helps the brain recover from a traumatic injury.<br />
<br />
J: Oh, yeah<br />
<br />
S: In genaral, yeah. So I was reviewing a specific article written by a sports writer who wrote and article about the GyroStim, because it's being used to treat a lot of like hockey players who have had head injuries. And he did the typical journalist thing of antecdote miracles happening every day, then quicky, generic canned disclaimer. Well this scientist said it hasn't been tested yet and hasn't been approved by the FDA, now let me go back to these glowing antecdotes. Meanwhile he's talking, he's mentioning Autism and Asperger's. I mean it's ridiculous. So I wrote a typical blog post about it on Science-Based Medicine, and the author of the original article, Adrian Dater who is again a sports writer writing for the Denver Post, leaves a comment, like a really pissy comment - it didn't immediately get, because he was a first time poster it went to moderation and it didn't immediately get approved because we work for a living - in the middle of the day. Then he writes a blog post saying "I'm being censored over on Science-Based Medicine".<br />
<br />
E: *laughs* He gave you all of 45 minutes. That's not...<br />
<br />
S: He gave a full hour. So, but anyway, that's just a little aside. The thing is he like doubled down and completely defended his journalism. So then I of course, I had to write a follow up post on Neurologica, just about science journalism using him as an example of horrible science journalism. <br />
<br />
J: Uh Oh!<br />
<br />
E: Gee why would a sports writer be bad at science journalism?<br />
<br />
S: Yeah I mean the thing is the guy's a sports writer, I don't expect him to be a good science journalist. But his problem was he wrote an article about science, and he got it all completely wrong. He fell for all the typical pit falls that non-experience trained science journalists fall for when they think that they can cover these complex topics. And he actually was defending his token skepticism. So in my follow up article I characterized different levels at which articles deal with science, especially when there's something contreversial. There's the false balance aproach in which you say oh experts over here say this, and this fringe lunatic over here says that; and you treat them like they're equal. Then there's the token skepticism where you actually give the bulk of the time to the fringe claim and you only have a quick skeptical blurb, which is what he fell into. And then there's the just complete abject gullibility without a hint of skepticism. So he was in the middle category of token skepticism, in which you don't get much credit for that. There's of course the fourth category which is the way it should be, which is appropriate skepticism. Right? But we didn't get that from him. So he was defending his token skepticism and also defending the GyroStim, completely ignoring all of my legitimate actual different criticisms. And in the end he was like criticizing David Goreski and the others on Science-Based Medicine about the positions that we were taking. We were like look, dude, you cover hockey. Go back to covering hockey. Seriously, you're arguing with a group of physicians who have spent a decade writng about these topics. You're telling us we don't know what we're talking about? <br />
<br />
J: Did you say that to him?<br />
<br />
S: Yes! How arrogant does this guy have to be? <br />
<br />
E: Are you serious?<br />
<br />
S: Like he had a fit that we disagreed with his journalism. He had a fit and it was horrible. It was horrible token skepticism and bad science writing. He didn't understand the issues at stake. And again, I wouldn't expect him to understand; but he had no sense of his own limitations. And of course he has no editor who would know, you know, that this is an innappropriate way to cover a medical science news story.<br />
<br />
E: Yep<br />
<br />
J: Steve, it also sounds like he's never engaged in any kind of legitimate discourse about things like that. You know?<br />
<br />
S: No, he didn't engage, he got childish right out of the gate. Which, you know, always makes it worse of course.<br />
<br />
J: Yeah, I mean I can understand from one perspective a guy like him never really entering that arena before. Not knowing what to expect, you know. And of course let's like, let's also achknowledge the idea here that you went up against Science-Based Medicine, you guys.<br />
<br />
S: Yeah that's the thing. He had no idea what he was up against. So he started to back pedal a little bit. Like I wasn't endorsing it, I was just relaying the stories. Peple have a right to know about this; that whole coy bs. And one of our commentors dug up a twitter <br />
<br />
E: *laughs*<br />
<br />
S: A tweet that he did where he was like read about the device that cured you know this hockey player of his traumatic brain injury. Oh yeah, you're not endorsing it.<br />
<br />
J: Uh oh! That sounds like an endorsement! He's just stating facts?<br />
<br />
E: Yeah, he's just reporting what he heard<br />
<br />
S: Yeah he was totally busted. He was totally busted. <br />
<br />
J: How did it end, Steve? Did he just end up having to quit?<br />
<br />
S: Yeah, he went away. It was a fun little exchange though.<br />
<br />
J: Yeah it's something to learn... it's something for people like us to learn from and it sadly... Did that go back to his man cave and lick his wounds or did he actually say hey you know I screwed up here like what did I do wrong?<br />
<br />
S: He did not give any evidence of any self awareness in this exchange.<br />
<br />
E: mmmm<br />
<br />
R: They rarely do though. You might have planted a seed<br />
<br />
S: I might have planted a seed, you never know. But yeah, I don't expect most people to have the scales fall from their eyes and to say I was wrong, mea culpa. Very few people have I think the security and maturity to do that. Especially when you're in the middle of an internet fight. You know everyone has, as you like to call Jay, internet balls. You know?<br />
<br />
J: Yeah<br />
<br />
E: mmhmm<br />
<br />
S: But, yeah you're right, you never know. Maybe he'll be a little bit more gun shy the next time he dips his toe into science journalism. Who knows?<br />
<br />
E: Or he'll do some real research into what the hell he's talking about.<br />
<br />
S: And we were, we got very polite and very proffesional. We were like listen, we want to help journalists write better. You know next time you want to cover a story like this, we're happy to provide you with some perspective and background information. <br />
<br />
J: What?! That'll take hours!<br />
<br />
S: *laughs*<br />
<br />
J: I don't have time for that!<br />
<br />
S: This is, this is what... I just told someone the other day you know in a similar context I'd much rather provide advice ahead of time rather than criticism after the fact. You know, run these things by somebody who knows what they're talking about ahead of time. We're here, we're a resource, ask us. We're, you know... What's the worst thing that could happen? We make your journalism better?<br />
<br />
J: Yeah<br />
<br />
S: You know? What's the worst thing that could come out of it?<br />
<br />
J: It's basically you're like you're saying to them, I'll write your freakin essay paper for you pal just all you gotta do is pick up the phone. <br />
<br />
S: Good journalists know how to do that. They know how to use resources well.<br />
<br />
== Who's That Noisy? <small>(55:54)</small>==<br />
55:54<br />
S: Alright well, Evan, we're still falling behind on Who's That Noisy, but you're gonna give us a new one for this week.<br />
<br />
E: Yeah I'll give you a new one for this week. We are going to catch up on all the correct answers and winners and everything in a couple more episodes. Bare with us while we get through this little stretch of podcasting. And uh I'm gonna play for you this week's brand new, fresh off the presses Who's That Noisy. It is an actual noisy, a classic as I like to say, and here we go...<br />
<br />
R: mmm<br />
<br />
S: hmmm<br />
<br />
E: Okay<br />
<br />
S: What do you want to know? Who that was speaking?<br />
<br />
E: That's it. Send us your guess wtn@theskepticsguide.org or sgu forums.com. And that's about it; good luck everyone. <br />
<br />
S: Thanks Evan<br />
<br />
E: Thank you<br />
<br />
== Questions and Emails <small>(56:40)</small> ==<br />
=== Staticman <small>(56:40)</small>===<br />
<blockquote>Hey guys! Thanks for the show. I've been listening for years now and it's by far and away my favorite podcast. I was wondering if you heard about Static Man reported in Australia. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/4252692.stm Sounds like balderdash to me, but who knows maybe it's a new Scientology superpower. Keep up the excellent work,<br/><br />
Damian Tinkey<br /><br />
Marlboro, NY</blockquote><br />
S: We're going to do one e-mail this week. This e-mail comes from Damian Tinkey from Marlboro, NY. He Writes: Hey guys! Thanks for the show. I've been listening for years now and it's by far and away my favorite podcast. I was wondering if you heard about Static Man reported in Australia. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/4252692.stm Sounds like balderdash to me, but who knows maybe it's a new Scientology superpower. Keep up the excellent work, Damian. So he links to an article<br />
<br />
R: It does sound like a super power<br />
<br />
S: Yeah, Static Man! They're actually are, there are cartoon super heroes who are basically static, that is their super power, static.<br />
<br />
J: That's powerful stuff man<br />
<br />
E: Lightning guy, electron boy<br />
<br />
S: So, the article he links to is from Septemberf 2005, a little bit<br />
<br />
E: Okay<br />
<br />
S: But I don't think we ever talked about it. So we might as well deal with this. So what do you guys think? Static man. Let me read the article here, it's very short. I'll just read pieces of it. It's about a man, Frank Clewer, of the Western Victorian city of Warrnambool. It said he was wearing a synthetic nylon jacket and a woolen shirt when he went for a job interview. He walked into the building, the carpet ignited from the fourty thousand volt of static electricity that had built up. It sounded almost like a fire cracker, or something like that he said. Within about five minutes, the carpet started to erupt. The article goes on to say that his clothes were measured by a fireman as carrying an electrical charge of fourty thousand volts. The Reuters news agency quoted Mr. Barton as saying.<br />
<br />
J: Yeah I don't think that fireman could determine that.<br />
<br />
E: Fourty thousand volts? You could kill people with that! <br />
<br />
S: It's saying... It depends on the current right?<br />
<br />
J: Yeah what I'm saying, would firemen be able to make that assessment. I mean I know that they know a lot about things that cause fires and they might say hey in order for this type of thing to happen this is the kind of voltage you need. But it just seems...<br />
<br />
S: No that's a physicist, Jay, not a fireman. But I think fourty thousand volts of static electricity is not enough to ignite carpet, first of all. I mean for the firemen to measure the voltage - remember there's no current here, it's static - then they would of had to discharge it. Right? They would have to build it up and discharge it and maybe they could measure the discharge. It's also, it's just too much static electricity. It's almost like, it sounds apocryphal. Oh he had a nylon jacket over a wool sweater and he built up so much static electricity that he ignited the carpet. <br />
<br />
J: Yeah, what did the guy run a marathon right before he went in there?<br />
<br />
S: Someone speculated that with that much static electricity, wouldn't his hair be standing on end as if he had his hand on one of those grass static electricity generators.<br />
<br />
E: Yeah. A voltage meter could figure that out. <br />
<br />
S: Yeah I don't know what the voltage you have to get to to have your hair stand on end. Yeah and also, like he got out of his car, why didn't he discharge upon exiting the car when he touched the metal of the door? Or when he walked in the building, how did he get in the building without a discharge?<br />
<br />
J: How did he not die?<br />
<br />
S: Yeah I don't know if it's possible to develop enough static charge that the discharge would be fatal. I mean there are reports of static discharges causing fires. But that's only when there's some kind of accelerant. This is actually a real risk at the gas station. Either there's gasoline dripping or vapors and you build up the static electricity on the seat of the car. And when you touch the frame of the car it discharges and could spark a fire. There are reported cases of that. I don't think that the static charge that a person can build up on themselves could set a carpet on fire without some kind of gasoline or accelerant. This (?) does give some interesting statistics. They say that the lethal dose of a static charge measured in millijoules is 1,350. Usually like shuffling across a carpet can generate from ten to twenty-five millijoules. So not very much compared to what a lethal dose would be. And they report, really the maximum you could get to would be something on the order of 300 millijoules, just from building up static on yourself. Measured in volts, they reference a study showing that getting in and out of a car can generagte - if you're dressed in nylon - could reach up to twenty-one thousand volts. That was sort of the maximum that was reported; so not quite the fourty thousand volts reported in this story. And for reference, a typical lightning bolt - which is static electric discharge - can contain five hundred megajoules, which is three hundred seventy million times the lethal dose. <br />
<br />
E: How does someone end up earning the title of static man if this happened like one time in sort of this fluke thing. It doesn't... the sensationalism that it's worth I suppose. <br />
<br />
S: Yeah, cuz it's the media. Some headline writer... I mean how did Super Man get his title? Some headline writer dubbed him Super Man. By the way, have you guys seen the new Super Man movie? <br />
<br />
J: No, but I heard it wasn't so good. <br />
<br />
S: So, I'm not going to review the movie but I have to say one thing: Krypton, it's moon, busted apart.<br />
<br />
R: Oh yeah, someone tweeted me about that.<br />
<br />
S: And even worse than all the other movies, it was like half and half almost. Just hanging right next to each other. Why? It's now officially a science fiction movie cliche. Every alien planet has to have a busted apart moon.<br />
<br />
E: It's an homage to Thunder the Barbarian. Everyone was clearly very impressed with that horrible cartoon from 1981.<br />
<br />
S: But how quickly did that become a cliche? I mean, it's ridiculous.<br />
<br />
R: Yeah<br />
<br />
S: Show some imagination and don't have scientifically implausible busted apart moon. I mean okay, it's pretty. But you're just doing it like every single other movie did it. Sorry, it loses its' appeal; do something different. A ringed moon, do something else!<br />
<br />
J: Yeah I agree Steve. I think, I think what's happening is it's kind of seeping into collective unconscious. <br />
<br />
S: Yeah. It's just alien worlds have busted moons, of course they do! <br />
<br />
J: What's with these busted up moons?<br />
<br />
== Science or Fiction <small>(1:03:05)</small> ==<br />
[http://www.nature.com/news/light-flips-transistor-switch-1.13178 Item #1]: Researchers at MIT have developed a transistor that is switched by a single photon. [http://geology.gsapubs.org/content/early/2013/06/05/G34100.1 Item #2]: Geologists have found evidence for a new subduction zone forming near Portugal which may indicate the beginning of the next phase of continental movements in which Europe will move towards North America. [http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/06/130617110929.htm Item #3]: A new study of whole body vibration therapy finds that it produced significant weight loss in obese subjects, who lost on average 10% of their body mass in 12 weeks.<br />
S: Each week I come up with three science news items or facts; two genuine and one fictitious. Then I challenge my panel of skeptics to tell me which one is the fake. Are you guys all ready for this week?<br />
<br />
J: Very ready<br />
<br />
R: Oh yeah<br />
<br />
E: Uh, sure<br />
<br />
S: Item #1: Researchers at MIT have developed a transistor that is switched by a single photon. Item #2: Geologists have found evidence for a new subduction zone forming near Portugal which may indicate the beginning of the next phase of continental movements in which Europe will move more towards North America. Item #3: A new study of whole body vibration therapy finds that it produced significant weight loss in obese subjects, who lost on average 10% of their body mass in twelve weeks. Rebecca, go first.<br />
<br />
R: Alright, so a transistor that’s switched on by a single photon; that’s cool and that’s believable to me. Subduction zone… I can believe that there’s a new subduction zone forming. Although, I don’t know if that would mean that Europe is moving towards North America. Um I’m trying to think of, like subduction is I think where one plate is sliding under the other. I know that it’s the powerful, like it causes the most powerful earthquakes. But I don’t know how much it moves continents. Um, I can believe that though; because if it’s one plate sliding over the other one I guess that would bring Europe and North America closer. So then whole body vibration that produces significant weight loss, that’s tough to believe. Because I know that you know there’s those crazy things they sell on TV that you wrap the band around you and it just *mimics vibration sound* like giggles you.<br />
<br />
J: *laughs*<br />
<br />
E: *laughs*<br />
<br />
R: *laughing* Yeah that’s what it sounds like. And I’m fairly certain that those don’t work, but they might be based on something that does work. So I can believe that, I don’t know… I think I’m gonna go with the transistor one just because I don’t really know much about it and the other two make sense, they seem reasonable. So, I’m gonna go with that one. <br />
<br />
S: Alrighty, Jay<br />
<br />
J: Okay, the one about the transistor that’s switched by the single photon, that is so cool. Yeah, I could see working. Geologists have found the one about the evidence of the subduction zone, I wanna know a lot more about this. That sounds really interesting. How big is this subduction zone, how long will it take to work. And this last one about the whole body vibration, wait, WHOLE BODY VIBRATION THERAPY! Um, that has got to be BS. So there you go.<br />
<br />
S: Okay<br />
<br />
E: *laughs* has got to be<br />
<br />
S: Alright, Evan<br />
<br />
E: Transistor switched by a single photon, I don’t see anything scientifically implausible about it certainly. Um, have we gotten to that level of precision yet? Possibly, yeah that one’s possible to me. Um the second one about a new subduction zone forming near Portugal, I have a feeling that is the one that’s going to trip me up. I’m not feeling good about this one. But the last one, the whole body vibration therapy, oh boy. But lost an average of ten of their body mass in twelve weeks, that’s not insignificant. Ten percent is pretty significant. And I think like when you use these things with moderate caloric intake restriction you wind up getting results and it’s hard to determine which one did it. The vibration or your limited on calories, your restricted calories?<br />
<br />
J: Yeah, like <br />
<br />
E: They should kind of go hand in hand<br />
<br />
J: Yeah like use this thing for an hour a day and also you know cut your caloric intake in half and you’ll lose weight. <br />
<br />
E: I think people who are using these things are being a little bit more conscious about what it is they’re putting into their bodies. So I think that’s gonna wind up being what’s really going on here. I’m going to say body vibration therapy, that one is the fiction. <br />
<br />
S: Okay, so you all agree that geologists have found evidence for a new subduction zone forming near Portugal which may indicate the beginning of the next phase of continental movements in which Europe will move towards North America. You all think this one is science, and this one is SCIENCE. <br />
<br />
J: Awesome<br />
<br />
R: Yay!<br />
<br />
E: That’s what I like about this game, you always get one right. <br />
<br />
S: *laughs* Yeah that’s true, way to look on the bright side. <br />
<br />
E: Yep<br />
<br />
S: They’re calling it an embryonic subduction zone or a new subduction zone. They knew that these two plates came together here. Uh they call this the Gibraltar Arc. But this, they have new evidence now that show that it is actually forming into a subduction zone. The technical implications for this are more about how these subduction zones form; and the fact that…just to read the conclusion in the abstract of the article – our work suggests that the formation of new subduction zones in Atlantic type oceans may not require the spontaneous foundering of its passive margins. Instead, subduction can be seen as an invasive process that propagates from ocean to ocean. So what they’re saying is that you know the way that the spread of subduction zones around the world may actually interact with each other, you know. And cuz it all has to average out, of course. Right? The Earth isn’t growing or shrinking despite what Neil Adams has to say. So any spreading of new ocean floor has to be exactly matched by subduction zones. So I guess what they’re saying that this, cuz it all has to balance out, that they behave as if they’re connected. And a subduction zone can literally propagate from ocean to ocean. <br />
<br />
R: I read this<br />
<br />
S: Yep<br />
<br />
R: …a little while ago. But I didn’t read the thing about the continents moving closer together. But I did read, this thing that I had to read several times to make sure that I wasn’t misreading it – I still might be misreading it -, but it was something like this could eventually result in the Atlantic Ocean filtering down into the, like further into the Earth’s core. Like it could drain the Atlantic Ocean because of this subduction zone. <br />
<br />
S: Yeah I haven’t read that in the context of this story but that certainly is, there is you know speculation among geologists about what happens to the ocean because of subduction zones. And is the water in the oceans getting dragged down you know toward deeper into the Earth and will this eventually drain away our oceans or if not than what is the… like what other factors are keeping it in equilibrium. <br />
<br />
R: Scary.<br />
<br />
S: In the articles about this story though, not in the technical paper but in the reporting about this story, it said that Pangaea type super continents that come together and they break apart and the continents will spread apart and then eventually the continents will come back together and reform a super continent. This has happened a few times over the life of the Earth. So what they’re saying is that if this new subduction zone could spell the transition from the continents drifting apart to coming back together again with the Atlantic Ocean closing up Europe and the United States coming back together. But what I don’t get though is how that happens when we have the Mid-Atlantic ridge with three spreading zones in the middle of the Atlantic. The conventional wisdom is that the Atlantic Ocean is getting bigger and the pacific ocean which is shrinking will this actually change the direction in which the continents alter the mid-Atlantic Spread? I could not find answers to those questions. <br />
<br />
J: Does this happen incredibly slowly, Steve, or is this<br />
<br />
S: Well yeah of course! It’s over hundreds of millions of years. <br />
<br />
J: It’s not like the ocean is gonna sink like breach and sink into the core or something crazy like that right?<br />
<br />
S: No no no, these are things that happen over millions of years, yeah.<br />
<br />
R: But it could mean that we could be seeing powerful earthquakes coming out of that zone. <br />
<br />
S: Yes, that’s true. Alright, well let’s go to number one. Researchers at MIT have developed a transistor that is switched by a single photon. Rebecca, you think this one is fiction. Jay and Evan, you think this one is science. And this one is SCIENCE. <br />
<br />
J: AAAAAH!<br />
<br />
E: Oohh<br />
<br />
R: Ugh! Damn my crap knowledge of this stuff.<br />
<br />
S: Yep this is a huge advance that, Bob would have got this. This is one of those huge advances that we were waiting for. “About time!” ya know that’s how Bob would have said it. <br />
<br />
E: Yeah, “We’ve been waiting eight years for this”<br />
<br />
S: We have been trying to develop light-based computers right? Rather than sending information around a computer and interacting with transistors with electricity with electrons with like a an optical computer would use light because light obviously goes as fast as anything can go. So researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MIT, have reported building a transistor that is switched by a single photon. That’s huge, that’s a major building block of optical computers. They take advantage of a property called electromagnetically induced transparency, by sending a single ‘gate’ photon that could turn the switch on or off due to this electromagnetically induced transparency. So the injected photon excites the caesium atoms, rendering them reflective to light trying to cross the cloud. So it turns off the signal. <br />
<br />
E: What kind of atoms were those, Steve?<br />
<br />
S: Caesium<br />
<br />
E: Caesium?<br />
<br />
J: That is awesome<br />
<br />
S: Yeah<br />
<br />
<br />
J: I wonder how long it will take to get that into a usable shape.<br />
<br />
S: Yeah you’re right though, that’s the thing. Will this actually translate into a usable computer that’s gonna sit on your desktop? Who knows? But it is, it’s huge. They are able to make a photon gated transistor, so.<br />
<br />
E: That will be cool. <br />
<br />
S: Let’s go on to number three. A new study of whole body vibration therapy finds that it produced significant weight loss in obese patients, obese subjects, who lost on average ten percent of their body mass in twelve weeks; and of course this one is the fiction. <br />
<br />
J: You made the whole thing up?<br />
<br />
S: No, no no. Whole body vibration therapy is a thing, and there was an article based upon that. I did, Rebecca, calculate the percentage over time to make it plausible. You did exactly what I was hoping somebody would do and say oh that sounds plausible. <br />
<br />
J: *laughs*<br />
<br />
E: *laughs*<br />
<br />
R: Thanks, thanks for that. You used my logics against me. <br />
<br />
J: As soon as Rebecca went like *mimics vibration sound* I went no way! That went out in the twenties!<br />
<br />
S: But what this is, this treatment, the study was looking at bone strength and muscle strength in cerebral palsy patients. And they found that it increased the bone density and muscle strength in the lower legs and the bone density also in the spine, but not elsewhere in the body. I don’t know why. This was a small study, thirteen adolescents with cerebral palsy received the treatment nine minutes per day for twenty weeks. So there doesn’t appear to be a control group, again it appears to be a bit of a fishing expedition with only some things being positive and some things not being positive. I couldn’t use this as a science, because they study isn’t robust enough for this to be a science item. So I made it into the fiction. But yeah so it’s using whole body vibrational therapy to increase bone density. The weight loss bit is the bit I made up. Speculative, I don’t know. I mean this is an exploratory study. You can’t draw conclusions from this, you can’t say that this therapy actually works but<br />
<br />
E: Ted Carrick can<br />
<br />
S: Right? He’ll start selling it for twenty thousand dollars. <br />
<br />
E: That’s right, yeah. <br />
<br />
S: Absolutely<br />
<br />
R: Nice job you guys. <br />
<br />
E: I hadn’t won one of those in a while so it feels good. <br />
<br />
S: A rare solo loss for Rebecca, very rare.<br />
<br />
R: Yeah<br />
<br />
S: But you did well this year, you are kickin butt this year; I do have to say. <br />
<br />
R: I think I have been <br />
<br />
S: Yep<br />
<br />
R: I’ll take it on the chin, like a champ<br />
<br />
== Skeptical Quote of the Week <small>(1:15:25)</small> ==<br />
<blockquote>Data is not information, information is not knowledge, knowledge is not wisdom, wisdom is not truth.</blockquote><br />
S: Alright Jay, do you have an impressive quote for us this week?<br />
<br />
J: Yeah, so, a lot of people e-mailed me and I’m going to be continuing to yell the name. <br />
<br />
S: You had a lot of positive feedback for the yelling. I had, I don’t recall seeing one negative one. No one said stop the yelling.<br />
<br />
R: No<br />
<br />
<br />
J: Stop with all that yellin<br />
<br />
R: Now, of course we’re going to get the people <br />
<br />
S: Too late. You had your chance, do not e-mail us telling Jay to stop yelling. You had your chance, the window is closed. <br />
<br />
J: On top of that, people said oh and by the way what’s with the… you didn’t uh continue or finalize the dice rolling hubbub. <br />
<br />
S: Yeah, Jay you have to do the calculations and we’ll give the results. <br />
<br />
J: Yeah, so this is what I’m doing, because I’m so busy with Occ the Skeptical Caveman business, um could anybody that has the time be willing to go back and make the calculation for me? E-mail me info at theskepticsguide.org. I will mention your name on the show, I will thank you, and I will see who’s better – me or randomness. <br />
<br />
S: Got it. <br />
<br />
<br />
R: I’m gonna put my nickel down on randomness. <br />
<br />
S: *laughs<br />
<br />
E: *laughs<br />
<br />
J: We shall see. Uh, ok this is a quote sent in from a listener called Magnus Husweit (?) from Oslo, Norway. And the quote is: Data is not information, information is not knowledge, knowledge is not wisdom, wisdom is not truth. And that is a quote from Robert Royar, paraphrasing Frank Zappa’s anadiplosis. It means, it’s the repetition of the last word of a preceding clause.<br />
<br />
S: Ah<br />
<br />
J: So the word is used at the end of a sentence and then used again at the beginning of the next sentence. <br />
<br />
S: It’s like that recent pop song by The Wanted, I’m glad you came. I don’t know anything<br />
<br />
R: *laughing* what?<br />
<br />
J: I don’t even know who they are. What is that?<br />
<br />
R: What<br />
<br />
E: Is that like a boy band or something?<br />
<br />
R: They’re like the Backstreet Boys <br />
<br />
J: ROBERT ROYAR. PARAPHRASING FRANK ZAPPA’S ANAPOLIS…DIPLOSIS…ANADIPLOSIS<br />
<br />
S: I do like that quote, I like that quote a lot. <br />
<br />
J: Thank you <br />
<br />
S: It’s very profound<br />
<br />
R: Yeah<br />
<br />
S: Of course truth, is not profundity<br />
<br />
R: Don’t start<br />
<br />
== Announcements <small>(1:17:30)</small> ==<br />
J: So in a couple of weeks we’re gonna be at TAM. Uh everyone’s going to be traveling out there except me and my wife early and then we’ll be there I think on Thursday afternoon. And you’re flying out when, Steve? <br />
<br />
S: Well Evan and I are going to the Grand Canyon<br />
<br />
E: Yep, we’ll have a Grand Canyon report.<br />
<br />
S: earlier in the week. And if anyone has any ideas on stuff that we should do while there, then please let us know right away. Because we’ll be going out on Tuesday. <br />
We’re taking a bus trip with the family to the Grand Canyon. Going to what, the South Rim?<br />
<br />
E: Yes we’re going to the south end of the canyon. It takes longer to get there but I’m, we’re told it’s worth it. <br />
<br />
S: It’s well worth it. <br />
<br />
J: And if any of our listeners are going, definitely come up and say hi to us. And also consider joining us at the SGU dinner, it’s always a good time. <br />
<br />
S: Alright well thank you all for joining me this week. <br />
<br />
J: Thank you Steve<br />
<br />
R: Thank you Steve<br />
<br />
E: Good job sir, as always. <br />
<br />
S: And until next week, this is your Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe.<br />
<br />
<br />
{{Outro404}}<br />
<br />
== References ==<br />
<references/><br />
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|qowText = Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfills the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things.<br />
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<!-- <br />
Note that you can put the Rogue’s infobox initials inside triple quotes to make the initials bold in the transcript. This is how the final statement from Steve is typed at the end of this transcript: '''S:''' —and until next week, this is your {{SGU}}.<br />
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== Introduction ==<br />
<br />
''Voice-over: You're listening to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.'' <br />
<br />
'''S:''' Hello and welcome to the {{SGU|link=y}}. Today is Wednesday, January 13<sup>th</sup>, 2021, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella... <br />
<br />
'''B:''' Hey, everybody!<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Cara Santa Maria... <br />
<br />
'''C:''' Howdy. <br />
<br />
'''S:''' Jay Novella... <br />
<br />
'''J:''' Hey guys. <br />
<br />
'''S:''' ...and Evan Bernstein. <br />
<br />
'''E:''' Good evening, folks.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I just love saying 2021 every time we introduce.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Right?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' 2021.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's a new year. I don't forget to write that. Usually when you click over to a new year, it takes you a month to remember to write the new date, you know.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Not this year. Not this year.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Not at all. No problem. 21.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Because he's writing the date all the time like we used to.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. Well, I have to do it all the time because of work.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Well, that's you.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. There's never a slow news week, anymore just general news, but something about a second impeachment today. Who knows? It's hard to keep track of all that.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' What are people are tweeting like he's now officially been impeached twice as many times as he was elected.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, wow.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Snap.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And there's still some kind of pandemic going on.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, that thing.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, boy.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I did get my first dose of vaccine.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Samesies.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Did you have a reaction, a negative reaction of any kind?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' My arm hurt for a couple of days. That was it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right. It was weird to me. And I know we got two different vaccines. I got Pfizer and you got Moderna. Right? And they jabbed me. I didn't feel it at all. It was a really easy jab. And then like hours later, it just got increasingly sore and sore and I couldn't sleep on it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' There's clearly a local inflammatory response to the vaccine, which is appropriate, right? It's probably supposed to work. I couldn't sleep on it either. That was the big thing. But nothing else. I've talked to a couple of people who had some systemic reaction, and apparently the second dose is worse. But again, it's all anecdotal. I don't know. We'll see.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Some of the people I talked to said the second dose gave them some flu-like symptoms, low-grade fever, joint pain, things like that. But usually it was enough that an NSAID took care of it and they were fine the next day.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It makes sense because you're supposed to have a bigger inflammatory reaction the second time. That's the whole point of the second dose is it's supposed to be a bigger immune reaction, right? And that's the timing is designed to maximize that second reaction. So it makes sense. So whatever. But it feels good. I mentioned now I only have like 50% protection. I still like that. And I'm very anxious to get up to my 95% protection.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Me too.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Heck yeah.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I'm a half a year away from that though.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Maybe. You know what? In California, I shouldn't say in LA. In California, as of today, January 13th, they just announced that they're opening vaccination up to people 65 or older.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, that's basically happening all around the country now.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, it's moving fast, faster than kind of... It's slower than we had hoped, but faster I think at this point than we sort of anticipated. So I don't know. We'll see. We'll see how it nuts out.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, there's a lot of talk too about maybe prioritizing school teachers, college teachers. Those are definitely super spreader locations, the colleges. So anything we could do to keep that from happening. All right. Let's move.<br />
<br />
== What’s the Word? <small>(3:11)</small> ==<br />
* {{w|Degeneracy|Degenerate}}<ref group="v">[https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/degenerate Wiktionary: degenerate]</ref><br />
<br />
<blockquote> _consider_using_block_quotes_for_emails_read_aloud_in_this_segment_ </blockquote><br />
<br />
'''S:''' We're going to go right to our first segment of the show, which is a what's the word segment we haven't had for a while. I just want to mention that later in the show, we have a great interview with a representative from NASA to talk about commercializing spaceflight. Really great interview. But we're going to start with Cara and what's the word.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. So we got a recommendation for a what's the word from Christopher from Virginia. And he said he wanted to suggest the word degeneracy because this term is used in astrophysics to describe what keeps certain stellar bodies from collapsing when they speak of "electron degeneracy pressure". But he also recently came across the same term in neurology having to do with something with brain cells swapping out while maintaining the network patterns in the brain. And he was like, what is going on? And let me tell you, Chris, thanks, but no thanks. This was a rough one, brother. Degeneracy is complicated. So we know degeneracy is another form of the word degenerate or degenerate or degenerative. We've heard all these different forms of the word. I think at first we should look at the etymology, then we should look at the colloquial definition, and then we can go into some of the more specified scientific definitions. So degenerate can either be an adjective or a verb, but usually we pronounce them differently, at least here in the States. So a degenerate something would be an adjective, to degenerate would be a verb. And actually, in many cases, it's used as a noun, although not a very nice one. And so this comes from the roots for de and genus. And so when we really break down those core roots of genus or gene or genesis, genetic, that really is all about, what do you guys think?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Hereditary?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, the beginning.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Genesis.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Genesis. Yeah. It all comes down to this kind of early root that refers to birth, descent, beginning, forming, beginning. And then de-, usually we see that at the beginning to mean like away from or off. So when we think about the colloquial definition of like a degenerate or to degenerate, the earliest definition really meant like to be inferior to one's ancestors, to become unlike one's race or kind. So it's like you were, they saw it as a value judgement that you were falling away from ancestral quality, that is to degenerate. And I think that that's in some ways has had staying power in our language, because when we think of things degenerating, we think of them falling apart or getting worse, right? And we might talk about that in terms of a degenerative disease, we might talk about it in terms of a person who is a degenerate which is like not a very nice thing to say that that person's immoral, or they've somehow fallen from a previous stature. But interestingly, it has very, very different definitions in different types of the sciences. And so that's where things start to get complicated. In math, in physics, and even in biology, it has a different meaning, all of which I do believe are a little bit related, but I've had to draw some real inferences and make some assumptions based on that. So when we look at, for example, there are degenerate codons, there is something called degeneracy within biology, there's degeneracy within mathematics, and then and that can be broken into all sorts of different terminologies. And then there's degenerate energy levels in physics or degenerate matter. So when I first brought this up, Bob was like, oh, I know degenerate matter. And I think that Chris was writing about electron degeneracy pressure. So that's more about degenerate energy levels, but it relates to matter. And so it seems like the core definition across these is that there are different physical systems that are arranged differently, but they have the same amount of energy. So Bob, when you were talking about degenerate matter specifically, this is a really compressed phase of matter that can't be compressed any further because quantum mechanics gets in the way. But it's very highly compressed.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, highly compressed, but it takes something like amazing amounts of mass to go from, say, a white dwarf to a neutron star. You can blow through it, but it takes a lot to do that. And then the next step would be, of course, from the neutron star to the black hole, which takes even more even more mass to compress it to blow past that degeneracy pressure.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right. And when we talk about, let's say, degeneracy in biology, what we're often talking about, this is a really interesting one, is different pathways or different components that have similar functions to one another, but in other conditions can have different functions from one another. It's like redundancy within biological systems could be degenerate systems where they might do the same thing, but under different circumstances, they might do something different. So okay, this is really complicated. What does that have to do with being a degenerate? Or what does it have to do with degenerating? And I want to give a massive props and shout out to my dear friend James in Hong Kong, because he's a linguist. And I was like, you need to help me with this, I'm so confused. From what we kind of determined is that when we're looking at these different roots, the first one meaning to be born, we often think, okay, so he was looking at that, like the basic root, I don't even know if that's a Greek, he wrote it in some weird notation, this being born or coming into existence, we often extend it to this Latin where we add the de- and we see it as moving away from, down worse than this kind. But really, if we think about it as being deviated from the kind, then it starts to make a little bit more sense. So if we're saying that degenerate energy states, which have equivalent mass, are deviated from their original form, then it starts to make sense that it uses the same roots, that the way that it was born is one way, and now there are two distinct ways that something can exist, that have, for example, the same mass, or the same function, or the same outcome, like in biology. You even see it, for example, the term codon degeneracy, where we're looking at actual codons portions of the genetic code, where there are multiplying. So there are these codon combinations that are redundant, they go over and over and over. And that's really what accounts for a lot of mutations in the genetic code. So it's these redundancies, these areas where the thing is the same but in different forms. And that is also a degeneracy. So it seems like it still works with the root, but we have to reconceptualize the way we think of de-. Instead of less than or down from, we have to think of it as away from, which is not necessarily a negative valence.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, cool. That's a good word. All right, let's move on to some news items.<br />
<br />
== News Items ==<br />
<br />
=== Graphene Supercapacitors <small>(10:27)</small> ===<br />
* [https://theness.com/neurologicablog/graphene-supercapacitors/ Graphene Supercapacitors]<ref>[https://theness.com/neurologicablog/graphene-supercapacitors/ Neurologica: Graphene Supercapacitors]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' Cara, do you know what a capacitor is?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Okay, so a capacitor is the thing in a circuit that—I always mix these up—it's not a resistor. Yeah, it's the thing that holds the energy, that like stores it for a little bit.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, exactly. Do you know how they work?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. So the basic concept is pretty simple, but again, it's one of those things—yeah, if you have two conductors very close together, separated by a dialectic non-conductor. So essentially, electrons, like negative charge will build up on one plate, positive charge on the other plate, and that's how the energy is stored in the produced electric field, right?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And then I guess it just kind of bounces out automatically over time.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, it doesn't necessarily leak over time. It does a little bit, but not a lot leak over time. You can tap into that energy, though. If you connect the two, then you get a current, right? So it's storing like the potential electrical energy in the electrical field, and then you could close the circuit, and then you could get the energy out when you need it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Isn't that what a battery is?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That's one of the keys, right?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Very quickly.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, very quickly. You can feed it or pull it out very fast, which is one of the big advantages over a regular battery.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, I see. Okay. A battery is a type of—<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Is it not? Okay.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So, Bob, you were kind of bleeding into a supercapacitor. What's the difference between a capacitor and a supercapacitor?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah. I guess I tend to just go right to the supercapacitor because it's so short.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' If super is a prefix, I'm already there.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So, I mean, they're functionally similar, right? But they're a little bit different in how they're constructed, and there are many ways to make a capacitor, and there's many different types of capacitors. We don't need to get into all that detail. A supercapacitor essentially holds a lot more energy than a basic capacitor. They're designed to hold maximal amount of energy, and they may hold between 10 and 100 times as much energy as a regular capacitor does, but they still don't hold as much energy as a battery does.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' The density is not there.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yes.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Okay. Okay.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But—<br />
<br />
'''B:''' But?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But supercapacitors, as energy storage devices, have some really interesting advantages. Bob already mentioned that they can store and release energy very quickly, much more quickly than any battery. And so for certain applications, like regenerative braking—not degenerative braking, but regenerative braking, they— Or it's like if you're trying to use regenerative braking for a train, let's say, where that's a lot of potential energy you want to convert into electrical energy very quickly. And so you really need a supercapacitor to store that. You're not going to be able to store it in batteries. And then likewise, when you want to get that train moving, you need a burst of a lot of energy, if it's an electric train, of course. And so then the supercapacitor could release all that energy very quickly as well. For those kinds of applications, they are—they're better than batteries where you need a quick storage and discharge. The other advantage is that they do not really have any significant limitation on charge-discharge cycles, whereas chemical batteries, the chemicals will crystallize or they'll change. And so—<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Or catch fire.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, that's a separate issue. They tend to be more stable. But even meaning they're thermally stable they don't catch fire as easily as high-energy density batteries do. But even apart from that, they don't lose their power, their potential over time, whereas batteries—actually, I think it's more—rather than thinking of batteries in terms of their lifespan, you should think of them in terms of their degradation. So like after—over time, how much of their potential do they lose? So like after a year, maybe they only have 90% of the capacity they had at start. After two years or three years.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Think of your cell phone. That's—everyone can relate to that. You know, over time, your phone is just not lasting as long as it used to on day one, right?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And I think in iPhones, you can even look that up now. It's like a setting where you can look up how—what is the—I don't want to say capacity because that confuses, but like how much does my battery have left?<br />
<br />
'''B/S:''' Degradation.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, what's the degradation of my battery?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And I learned in studying for this particular news item that there's degradation as another aspect to it as well. It's not just the total amount of energy that it can store, it's also how quickly it can charge. It actually gets slower and slower at recharging over time as well. Super capacitors don't have that problem. That's just not a limitation. But the big disadvantage—so capacitors have a much lower energy density than batteries by an order of magnitude. So for example—<br />
<br />
'''B:''' 20 times though. Probably, right?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. 10 to 20 times. Even 20 times, depending on the battery, depending on the capacitor. But yeah, somewhere between 10 and 20 times. So the battery pack in a Tesla Model 3 weighs 1,200 pounds. So even taking the lower end of that comparison of a tenfold increase, that would be 12,000 pounds. But it could be 24,000 pounds, right? If you take the 20 time figure, factor of 20.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Deal breaker.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So it's a deal breaker. So you can't use it as your only energy storage for cars. Okay, so now here's the news item, right? So with all that in mind. The news item is graphene supercapacitors.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Graphene. Love you, baby.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So you got two things that taste great, taste even better together. So supercapacitors, awesome. Graphene, super awesome. Put them together, you have graphene supercapacitors. And so obviously researchers are working on this. So a team working with TUM chemist Roland Fisher developed a graphene hybrid material for supercapacitors. And guess what their energy density that they've so far achieved is?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' In terms of what?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, what's the metric?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's only about, rather than being 20 times less we will say than the best lithium ion battery, it's only 3.6 times.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Nice. Not bad.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So it actually has the energy density of a nickel metal hydride battery.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah. Like a bad battery.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. Well, the state of the art-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's getting there.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' -in the 1990s, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' But still, man, that's, I mean, what's the cutoff? When is it worth it to switch over, right?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's a good question. Right. When, what's the crossover point? So, and the thing is, I don't know if they will ever cross because batteries are getting better too. But it could. If the pace at which the energy density of supercapacitors increases more quickly than those for batteries, they're making a point where-<br />
<br />
'''B:''' And assuming there's no other deal breakers, right? That's always the case. Yeah. Like scaling it up, is that possible? Depends on the details of the new technology, of course.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The generic sort of details of, is it mass-producible? Is it cost-effective? All that stuff. Assuming there aren't any other manufacturing deal breakers, and we're just talking about the properties of the thing itself. And I also think that it doesn't have to have the same energy density as batteries before you get the crossover because there are, the advantages of a supercapacitor will mean that, okay, I'll go for 20% or 30% or whatever more weight. Maybe even 50% more weight. You know, who knows? At some point, it's going to be worth the extra weight to have the benefits of the supercapacitor. But in the meantime, Bob, and this is already happening, but you can have, Jay, right? A hybrid.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yes.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You have a supercapacitor and a battery. And you get the best of both worlds. So imagine, for example, an electric car that has a supercapacitor, even with a 20 or 30-mile range. Let's say there's a 30-mile range. And now that would be a reasonable amount of weight to add to a car if it's at this level. Most commuting driving is 30 miles or less, right? So for 90-plus percent of your driving, you never have to dip into the battery. You can go entirely off the supercapacitor. Therefore, you're not using up your battery's lifespan. You're not getting any of that degradation.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, that's pretty cool.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Longer life.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And it charges up super fast.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Right? So this is, like, even faster than filling up the tank kind of charging. So if you, like, get up in the morning and realize, oh, I forgot to plug my car in last night, whatever, a minute, one minute, you got your 30 miles on your car. And then that will get you to work. So it definitely will increase the performance profile of an electric car to incorporate this kind of fast-charging, really, really long lifespan power supply that will really spare the battery. So you know, the battery will not have any significant degradation over the course of your ownership of that car. The average age of a car on the road, you guys remember this statistic? I threw this out there before. The average age of cars on the road.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, crap. Is it either a lot or a little?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I don't remember.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I know. 10?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' 11 years.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Seven or?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' 11. Yeah, 11 years. That's interesting. Really, on average, people are driving cars that are 11 years old. That's amazing. I know that's probably not the mean, not the median, rather, it's the mean, but not the median. I think probably there are some people who are keeping cars a really long time that are maybe probably increasing that, I suppose. I don't know. So yeah, people might be driving their electric cars for 200,000 miles, and there'd be significant battery degradation at that point, but having even a modest supercapacitor could dramatically reduce that. And then, of course, as this technology improves, it may just progressively displace the battery. Who knows? They may be cheaper, and if they don't degrade, they may last longer than the battery itself. They may last longer than the car itself. We talked about this kind of issue before, even with batteries. When the car is done, you pull the battery out of there, and you do something else with it, right? You could put it into another car. You could put it onto the grid for grid storage, use it in your home, whatever. I think that supercapacitors, we haven't talked about them as much as batteries, but they have some really interesting advantages.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, my God, yeah. I've loved them for years.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, the energy density has been just sort of the killer for these kind of applications, but we've really, this isn't a breakthrough, but it's a significant improvement that kind of puts it into the low end of the battery realm.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' And increases confidence that we can up it even more.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, always we like to think that, yeah, this is only the first iteration of a new approach, and if this works out. But again, there's always those things of, is it going to be cost-effective and scalable to manufacture?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' But talk about a game changer, right? Steve, have you ever? Have you gotten a sense of- Say we've got like real full-blown supercapacitor in your car, could you fully charge it in what, 10 seconds type of thing? Or as fast as you can?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, it'd be very, very fast, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' A minute then.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Now, when I wrote about this, someone argued that you could supercharge your battery and get 30 miles into it in a minute.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Right, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But I countered that you shouldn't do that, though, because when you supercharge your battery, that is the number one source of degradation of your electric car's battery, is using the supercharge, the fast-charging feature. You really should not use a fast charger.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Don't Tesla owners do that all the time?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I know, they do, but you really- It should be an emergency only. You shouldn't build it into. You shouldn't be relying upon fast charging as the way you get by day to day. It really destroys the life of your battery, and we have good data on this now. We have very good data on this. It's the number one problem.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' When you say fast charge, you're not talking about 240 versus 110. You're talking about the or versus 120. You're talking about the supercharging.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, well, the specifically- Like the DC fast charge. The DC fast charger is the absolute worst.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I've only done that with my car once, and it was an emergency.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, that's fine. If you do it once in an emergency that the effect is minimal, what they considered "often" was three times a month.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Three times a month.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's a lot.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's not that much in my opinion, but that was enough to cause significant degradation. Instead of being 10%, it was 40% after a few years. Oh, wow. Yeah, so don't use the DC supercharger on a regular basis, the DC fast charging. That's the bad one. I don't think the- What is it? 220?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' 240.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' 240, whatever it takes. 240 versus 120, that is as big a negative effect?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's good, because I plug it in every night to my 240 volt charger. The good news is it stops charging once it's full, so it stays plugged in, but it's not actually doing anything. I treat it like my cell phone. I plug it in every night.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Apparently, if you want to eke out really minimized degradation, you should not charge to 100%. You charge it to 80%, it's better for battery life.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, and you can actually, my car luckily has that setting. It's like all these cool charging settings.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Right, but imagine if you just were charging a supercapacitor for 30 miles. What's your commute every day, Cara?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Not far, not 30 miles.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, so you would never even use your battery.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, that's really cool, and you think about it too, so much is that regenerative braking, so much is all that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, is it better for that? It's better in low temperatures. Low temperatures, batteries suck. So here in Connecticut in the winter, the regenerative braking thing is almost useless and your battery life isn't nearly as good. It doesn't really affect a supercapacitor though, so that's another situation in which it has superior characteristics, but I'm a big fan of taking the hybrid approach where you have competing technologies and you can get the best of both worlds by combining them together in an intelligent way, and I think that maybe we're getting to the point now with supercapacitors and electric vehicles that they're getting at that point. So far, they've been used really only for the regenerative braking and the fast burst thing, like if you need that burst of power, but they're now the energy density, if this pans out commercially, would be at the point where it could actually be used to store energy, not just for regenerative braking type applications.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That fast burst thing, I got to tell you, Steve, it's the best part of driving electric. Electric cars have so much torque and off the line you beat everyone.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It is nuts.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's amazing.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I've experienced it a few times. Unforgettable. I've never been pinned to the back of a seat like I have in a Tesla. I was like, what the hell is happening?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's so badass.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And this is one more reason why I think that the hydrogen fuel cell is toast. I just think that electric-<br />
<br />
'''E:''' But the hydrogen economy-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, it just didn't catch on.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I just think that the batteries and now supercapacitors, some combination of that, which of course, you can use supercapacitors with hydrogen too, don't get me wrong, but I just think the batteries have beat out hydrogen. They're just more efficient. They're more energy efficient than hydrogen. I think that's going to ultimately be the thing that keeps them ahead of the pack. And hydrogen-<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Hydrogen is the new Betamax.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It is. I think, though, it might find a niche. I wrote not too long ago about the fact that it might be perfect for trains or for commercial trucks where you have a predefined route. You don't have to have filling stations everywhere. You just need to have them along a predefined route. It could actually make a lot of sense. And maybe they might make more sense in something like an airplane, because we talked about how challenging the electronic equipment is for- it's heavy for a plane. So there may still be places where it works. I don't think it's going to be- I don't think most people are going to be driving hydrogen fuel cell cars rather than battery supercapacitor cars.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Because isn't hydrogen storage too? It's just so dangerous.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' They've never cracked that nut. They're just compressing hydrogen. They never really- they were supposed to. If you go back to the early 2000s-<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Slush.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Everyone was anticipating the hydrogen economy, which is like- that's probably the biggest head fake of our lives, technology-wise. Right? Think about it.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It wasn't a bad idea, though.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's just they couldn't figure it out.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But the whole thing was- all we got to do is figure out this storage issue, how to store lots of hydrogen safely and in a small, light, compact-<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Safe.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And this will be it. This will take over. It'll displace electric. It'll be- this is the way to go. But they never figured it out. We were like 20 years later, and they just never came up with that magical material that could store hydrogen the way we would really need it to be. And so that's part of the problem as well.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I'm not willing to bury, basically, a potential bomb in my backyard just so I can charge my car. That doesn't sound like it would serve me very well.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. Well, you don't have to. I mean, you could just go to a filling station.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But I love that I don't have to go to a station anymore.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I know. That's true.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I'm so free.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yes.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's true.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I haven't been to a gas station in like eight years.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Just fill up at home if you plan it out right.<br />
<br />
=== Controlling Superintelligent Machines <small>(28:17)</small> ===<br />
* [https://techxplore.com/news/2021-01-wouldnt-superintelligent-machines.html We wouldn't be able to control superintelligent machines]<ref>[https://techxplore.com/news/2021-01-wouldnt-superintelligent-machines.html techeplore: We wouldn't be able to control superintelligent machines]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, Bob, tell us how we are going to keep super intelligent machines from taking over the world.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah. Good luck.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's a great question.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' So, yeah, researchers claim that calculations show that it would not be possible, even in principle, to control the super intelligent artificial intelligence. So my first knee-jerk superficial reaction to that was, duh, it's super intelligent. I mean the whole premise is we're stupid and it's crazy smart. Yeah. This is from a study called Super Intelligence Cannot Be Contained, Lessons from Computability Theory, and published in the Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research. And this comes from an international team of researchers, including scientists from the Center for Humans and Machines at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development. Now—<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Soon to be just the institution for machines only.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That's right.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' No humans.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' A super intelligent AGI, of course, is exactly what it says. It's an artificial general intelligence that's smarter than a human. But what's not so obvious, perhaps, is the reasonable—what I think is a reasonable belief that if we do create an artificial intelligence that's on par or slightly superior to humans, that it would likely soon attain super intelligence far superior to even the smartest natural human could ever attain. I mean it should be relatively easy to amp it up. Even if you overclock it 10, 20, 50 times, it's going to be then 50 times smarter than a person. I mean, pretty soon, if we can get close to a human, we'll get way past it. We'll get way past a human. So the implication is that it would soon then be 10, 100—imagine a million times smarter than any of us, even Steve.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' But you really can't imagine that, Bob, you realize.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You can't almost by definition imagine.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, right. So talking about other things that we can't imagine, so that level of smarts should be able to solve most, if not all, of the grandest and most pressing challenges that face humanity, right?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Hey, Bob, is this unlike Next Generation when Barclay becomes like a super intelligent creature and like—<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Dude.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' —starts imagining—<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That's Next Generation, The Nth Degree, my favorite Next Gen episode ever. I saw it just last month and I love it to death. Watch it.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' So if I'm thinking of that episode, am I thinking—<br />
<br />
'''B:''' There you go.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' —about like how we cannot predict what the super intelligence will come up with?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Now, of course, I'm extrapolating AIs to the Nth Degree, so to speak. Artificial intelligence will be extremely helpful even before it even approaches human level intelligence. There's just so many ways that it's useful. Look what we've done with it already, with deep learning and all these things, beating people in chess and Go and in so many ways. But I'm talking the far end of that spectrum. But we all know the downside, right? It's even a cliché now that it elicits groans from people when they refer yet again to the Terminator taking over the world. When somebody talks about robots or artificial intelligence, somebody makes a reference to Terminator.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Because it's a trope.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Right. Because it's a trope. It's such a cliché at this point. But, I mean, it's there for a reason and we would definitely be quite irresponsible not to consider what such an intelligence, what a superintelligence could do to humanity. And so because of that, because of that, scientists and armchair scientists, people have been talking for years about how do you control this? How do we make sure that we're kind of okay with this thing in our midst? And one common idea is to make sure that the AI has no access to the outside internet or other computers, right? You just air gap it. And if it can't get out, then it's safer, right? It's safer. But, of course, that could limit the AI. If you've got these certain goals, you might be crippling it by walling it out and not having any way for it to soak up all the information that it needs and having control of things. But that's one way that people have mentioned. And this, of course, reminds me of Daniel Wilson's book, Robopocalypse. We actually interviewed him on episode 241, if you want to check that out. But in that, I'll never forget, in Robopocalypse, he has this guy, the scientist is testing these new superintelligent AIs and he's conversing with it, trying to decide is it worthy? Is it safe to have this thing with us? And he realizes that he has to kill it and he tries to kill it and he can't. And the thing says to him, it says to him that I sent infrared commands through the computer monitor, through the Faraday cage that it was surrounded by, and used the receivers on his laptop because he left the laptop open and facing him. So the guy, it's superintelligent. Of course, it's going to find some sneaky way to get past us dumb humans. So this would be so funny and ironic.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Right. If Hal can read our lips that's pretty much it.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That's another, that's another example of of something that's really smart outsmarting people.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, but Bob, if we really get into trouble, we'll just have Captain Kirk out with it and pull the Norman coordinate maneuver on it.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Norman coordinate. Yeah, he'd be, we definitely have to call him in. And then the other way that people have very commonly talked about how to control an AI is to basically what? Instill the laws of robotics a la Isaac Asimov, right? Somehow instilling these ethical principles in it so that it doesn't want to kill us. And I, and I've said that for years that if if we could make it ethical in some way, then, then when it goes into its own, like this self recursive loop with this black box of iterating itself to become really, really intelligent, what comes out of that box could be pretty unpredictable, but hopefully hopefully maybe it would still be ethical in some sense that would save us.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' And harking back to the next generation again, isn't that the whole data versus Lore plot line? Basically, Lore was made first, but didn't have the right program chips to kind of control them and he went out of control.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I think, yeah, it's been a while since I've actually seen any Lore episodes, but I think, I think that's right. So yeah, so there's so many examples of this. With all that in mind, as Steve said in his talk, the researchers claim that both of these options and other options and methods that people have discussed over the years have limits. Now, this is what Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrom called the control problem. How can we make sure that a super intelligent machine acts in our interest? So it's a, yeah, it's kind of a classic problem and examining that what kind of control we could have is what these researchers in this news item address in what they call a theoretical containment algorithm. And this is the new bit, this theoretical containment algorithms, they came up with it. And what that algorithm would do was essentially simulate the behavior of the AI before the AI does anything and stopping everything if something goes awry, like, oh boy. So it would have the power to stop it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But wait, how does it stop it? I thought that's the whole question.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Well, it would be kind of an an integral integrated component of the AI that's kind of like running simulations about what the AI would do. So that's kind of the idea. They claim, though, that after analysing this idea, they believe that this algorithm cannot be built using conventional computer science principles like kind of like impossible. So in their paper, they say this. We argue that total containment is in principle impossible due to the fundamental limits inherent to computing itself. So I tried to find out to really understand what they're talking about. And so I got another quote. This is from Ayad Rawan. He's a director of the Center for Humans and Machines. He said, if you break the problem down to basic rules from theoretical computer science, it turns out that an algorithm that would command an AI not to destroy the world could inadvertently halt its own operations. If this happened, you would not know whether the containment algorithm is still analysing the threat or whether it has stopped to contain the harmful AI. In effect, this makes the containment algorithm unusable. So let's see. Let's see if we maybe look at this from a different angle then.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's like a weird paradox.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah. Well, they believe that the containment problem is basically incomputable. And we obviously can't predict what the super AI would do. So we can't do this work. You know, it'd be like your pet lizard predicting what you do on vacation. You know, it's just not going to happen, right? Ever. Ever.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' We can ask the super AI what it takes to get the job done.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' There you go. And that's kind of like what this sounds like to me. It sounds to me like you need another identical AI to predict the first super AI. But then you'd need another one to predict that second one. And then so on, add absurdum. So there's that. And then finally, the researchers contend that we may not even know when a super intelligent AI exists because figuring that out is similar to the containment problem itself, which is like what? So I don't know about that because I understand what they're saying, but I'm not sure I believe it. Because if my research AI resolves, for example, all the holy grails in all of science in a weekend, I think it's safe to conclude that it's smarter than any other human. And you could say that, yeah, it's a super intelligence. But it's frustrating, though, that even computer science, the principles of computer science, according to these researchers, cannot be used to contain the super intelligent AI.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, but I mean it kind of makes sense that that paradox would exist, right? It's foundational to what it is to do computer science.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Right. So either we need to come up with new methods or I think we're just going to wing it. I mean we're not going to stop this train. This train is going. The benefits, the short-term and mid-term benefits, are just way too impressive. The first country or company that really makes those first breakthroughs in near human level artificial general intelligence or super intelligence, the first ones to do that, that's it. They're in control. They've got the goods and nobody will be able to match them in so many different endeavours. So it's too compelling of a field to not pursue. And it's almost like cybersecurity. You've got to pursue this because you want to be among the first to have the big breakthroughs because if you don't, then you're in a world of hurt. So we're heading there. So like I say about so many other different types of transformative technologies is we have to talk about it now. We have to think about it, think about ways we can do to attenuate any potential damage because the benefits can be mind-boggling. But the other side of the double-edged sword, it could be bad too. So we've got to think about it, talk about it, and try to head off some of the downsides. We have to. I mean it could mean these are existential threats potentially, and we've got to talk about it and try to deal with it now while we can.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I agree with all that, although I think we're going to have to just carefully track it as it goes along. I do think that whatever we do figure out now will probably be obsolete by the time we get to the point that we're concerned about. You know what I mean? I don't know that we could absolutely predict the course that AI development is going to take.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' No. I mean like I said, I think when it goes into this when the AI is smart enough and autonomous enough to go into this kind of self-recursive improvement where it kind of basically dives into a black box. And it's like, okay, guys, I'll see you in a little while when I'm about a billion times smarter and it comes out. I mean you've got to just flip a coin or flip a million coins. We don't know what's going to come out if and when that happens. And we've just got to put – make sure what's going in is as good as we can make it and then cross your fingers. I mean I think there's no avoiding it. There's no avoiding it. And maybe this is part of the great filter where biological life always wipes itself out because they create a super intelligence that thinks of it as a carbon infestation that needs to be wiped out. Who knows?<br />
<br />
'''S''' But shouldn't machine civilization be running the universe?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Maybe it is.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' You can make that argument.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Wouldn't there be more evidence of that though?<br />
<br />
=== Scalar Energy Scam <small>(40:30)</small> ===<br />
* [https://theness.com/neurologicablog/smartdot-scam/ SmartDot Scam]<ref>[https://theness.com/neurologicablog/smartdot-scam/ Neurologica: SmartDot Scam]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay. Evan, however, you have the secret, right? Scalar energy is going to cure everything.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Before we get to that, let's talk about what led to that comment. So actually a lot of listeners contacted us about this particular news item. BBC News reported a few days ago that one of their technology correspondents, his name is Rory Killen-Jones, acquired a product called SmartDot. SmartDot comes from a company called EnergyDots. Now SmartDot in particular is a sticker that you put on your cell phone or your tablet or any other electronic device that emits an electromagnetic frequency. What does the SmartDot do? Well, here is the claim directly from the EnergyDots website. SmartDot is a magnetic disk programmed with Phi, PHI, Phi energy, which interacts with this form of radiation. Acting as a filter, SmartDot retunes electromagnetic frequencies directly at their source so that they are no longer harmful for the human body to absorb. The EMF protection device is programmed to harmonize EMFs from our much-loved gadgets using the process of entrainment. Ooh, okay, that's quite a statement or a set of statements. <br />
<br />
'''C:''' Turboencabulator maybe?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' A little bit, yeah, but it's three sentences and I'll go over each one and scalar energy is going to come up shortly.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I'm already lost. I don't even know what you're talking about.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' All right, well, here's the first sentence. SmartDot is a magnetic disk programmed with Phi energy, which interacts with this form of radiation. Despite that's a terrible sentence, but despite that, all right, Phi energy. I had to look this up, obviously. PHI. So it's not, it's a Greek letter, obviously, but in this context, they're talking about Phi is programmed harmonic interface. And as I did a deeper dive into what they mean by that, here's what they say. This activation is similar to homeopathic medicine or other vibrational remedies where an energy signature is stored in a solid substance. How exactly this interacts with radiation is, what, beyond our understanding? Steve, if I'm not mistaken, in the BBC report, which included some back and forth between the BBC and the representative from EnergyDots, the EnergyDot people brought up scalar energy. I think that was the first time I've come across that term. Have you seen that term before?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Nope. I know what a scalar field is.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' What is a scalar field?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Let's say temperature is a scalar field because you have a value at every point in space, right? And then there are vector fields, which have a value and a direction in every point of space. So like gravity is a vector field, temperature is a scalar field. So it's sort of a science-y term, scalar energy, but it doesn't really mean anything in and of itself other than that very, very basic thing. It's not a type of energy specifically. It's just a way of putting a science-y sounding word in front of energy so people who are scientifically illiterate are impressed. But I agree, though. It is exactly like homeopathy. It is exactly like homeopathy in that it's a complete 100% scam.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Right. Yeah. Programmed harmonic interface? I mean, what the heck?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I don't like that word. When I see that word harmonic, it always perks my ears up.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It's always bad. When does it ever mean anything good?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Except in music, you know.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Well, they mention it again in the third sentence of their description, but let me read the second sentence to you and we'll dive into this just a little bit. Acting as a filter, SmartDot retunes electromagnetic frequencies directly at their source so that they are no longer harmful for the human body to absorb.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, there's a lot of assumptions there that are already harmful for the human body to absorb, which they're not.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's right, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And how do you retune a field?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Depends on the energy, right? Gamma rays, yeah, they're pretty harmful.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right, but not your cell phone.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Right.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' But they're awesome.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' So, yeah, we've spoken about this many times before about non-ionizing radiation, which is the type of radiation that our cell phones and so many other things in our lives emit. They don't damage our tissue or our cells or our DNA, as they are fond of wanting to say and claim. And the energy dot people would have us believe that that's the truth. Now, also in regards to retuning electromagnetic frequencies, what the BBC did smartly is that they sent the stickers to be tested at the University of Surrey. And they found, guess what?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's just a sticker?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Correct.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Is it one of those hologram-y stickers?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It's kind of what it looks like, those stickers that they used to put on the power bands that people would wear on their wrists. It looks exactly the same, maybe a little bit bigger.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Why are they always hologram stickers?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, it's another sticker-based, magical energy, gobbledygook nonsense product. That's what it is.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, how can we produce something that's as cheap as possible and make as much money on it as possible?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Well, here's how, Cara, because of the claims that they're making about what this sticker actually can do. Because it benefits you by boosting your energy, your mood, and your concentration. They claim it reduces headaches, anxiety, and fatigue. I'm reading this from their website. This is what they are saying.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' These are all things that placebo has such a strong power over. These are all subjective things that you can say. Oh, man, I do feel less fatigued now.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Right. How about this one, Cara? You're going to love this. They write that using a mobile phone can lead to misshaped cells similar to those suffering illness.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' What illness? Wait, illness causes misshaped? Just generic illness causes generic misshaped cells?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' But fear not, Cara, because if you use a smart dot on your mobile phone, it will give relief to red blood cells, allowing them to continue the vital transportation of oxygen around the body, keeping you at optimum health.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, that's the only thing that keeps you at optimum health? I can cure all my diseases if my red blood cells are healthy?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Here comes the word harmonize again, the last sentence. The device is programmed to harmonize EMFs from our much-loved gadgets using the process of entrainment. So here we go. Like Steve said, they're using science terminology to help brand their products as scientific, but it's actually a red flag of pseudoscience. When they use the word, say, entrainment, for example, that's a legitimate scientific term, but the context is actually what's key there because, for example, entrainment in the terms of engineering means the entrapment of one substance by another substance. And then there's entrainment in physics, which is described as the process whereby two interacting, oscillating systems assume the same period. Now, how the heck are the people at EnergyDots are using the definition? Who knows? And they probably don't even know it themselves.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No, it sounds to me like somebody took a basic physics class that's on their team because it sounds to me like what they're trying to say is that their sticker tunes itself to the radiation's period and actually oscillates in unison with the radiation. And somehow that cancels it out and makes all your cells have their normal shape and your red blood cells be healthy and healthy and no more disease. So it's like that thing where you're right, it sounds almost realistic. And if you read up on it, you might find superficially things that feel confirming about it.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Absolutely. Steve, you know I mentioned the homeopathic term before. Well, it came up again when I was doing research into this because they have independent reports on their website about the effects of these products. There are Electrodot products of which there are several, but the SmartDot among them. And the research was conducted by a woman named Pam Layfield. And when you do a search on Pam Layfield, well, guess what? She works with homeopathy. And she apparently is a student of Robert Oldham Young. Have we talked about him before? American naturopathic practitioner and author of alternative medicine books like Promoting the Alkaline Diet, PH Miracle is his series of books. Well, Robert Young, I looked up him. Oh, 2017, charged and sentenced. Arrested by U.S. Marshals, accused of practising medicine without a license.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Oh, that's not true. Come on, cut the guy a break.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's amazing. Oh, my God.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I'll leave you with this, though. The researchers at Surrey did find one effect that these stickers had. Remember the old scratch and sniffs from the 1970s? You'd scratch the blueberry stickers and smell something like blueberry.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I love those.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Well, if you scratch these SmartDots, it smells like bullshit. So there is that. At least it has that going for it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Now, Evan when I wrote about this as well, I pointed out the fact that when they were challenged about the fact that there's no energy detectable from their stickers and no effect on the cell phone. They said, well scientists can't detect the energy. But what you can detect is the subjective clinical effect it has on people. So this is a typical maneuver of this kind of con where, like, they try to whitewash over the basic physics problem with what they're saying. And they want to live entirely in the realm of the squishiest subjective outcomes possible. So they could do their in-house study showing placebo effects and claims that it works. So this is just like acupuncture, right? It's the same thing. Don't worry about chi, whatever. It's just about people feel better. Or homeopathy with the micro-dosing or the non-existent dosing. You know, it's all, it's just, it's whatever. It's energy fields. Don't worry about it. You know, Reiki, therapy. It's all the same thing. Forget about the glaring basic science physics problems with their claiming. Let's just talk about the subjective crappy clinical studies that we do.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And, yeah, let's only ask about really, really subjective measures. Like, oh, do you feel as tired? Do you feel as much vague pain?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Right, right.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, God.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' We see these throughout all the pseudoscientific products that we come across and report on. They all say the same thing.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, this is boilerplate nonsense.<br />
<br />
== Who's That Noisy? <small>(51:21)</small> ==<br />
* Answer to last week’s Noisy: Ice<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay, Jay, it's Who's That Noisy time.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' All right, guys, last week I played this noisy.<br />
<br />
[_short_vague_description_of_Noisy]<br />
<br />
All right, so what do you think this guy, what's going on here, guys?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Sounds like something's rolling away.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, or rolling down. You know those big, in museums when you want to donate coins? And they're like in those really big spirally funnel things, so they just go on forever?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Absolutely.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Until they get to the middle. That's kind of what it sounds like, but a bunch of coins in it, like a Plinko machine.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Plinko.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' All right, these are not bad guesses at all. So Greg Rogalski, it's R-O-G.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Rogalski.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Rogalski, thank you. Greg, hi, Greg. He said, my guess based on my distant days in organic chemistry lab is a magnetic stirrer in a beaker spinning up to mix a solution. Not bad.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It does kind of sound like that.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, yeah. It does.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, that clinky, spinny sound.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Because it's the metal on the glass. That's the clinky noise, and then it's going faster. That's not it, but that's a cool one. I'd like to hear that. Michael Janikowski, he wrote and said, I think January 9th, who's that noisy, is a rain stick. Now, if you don't know what a rain stick is, it's like a hollowed out kind of like imagine if you hollowed out bamboo, which is pretty much already hollow. And then you put in a bunch of things that when you tip the bamboo, if you seal it, when you tip it, it makes like a clinkily noise, and this is what a rain stick sounds like. [plays rain stick noise] Right, so there's a lot of stuff inside of this hollow wooden thing that are kind of falling down. They might have things in there that they hit. That is a very good guess. It's not a rain stick, but damn, that's pretty damn close to the sound, which is every once in a while someone will pick something. I'm like those two sounds are very similar, very, very similar, but not the correct guess I was looking for. Aaron Field said, hi, I think it's a marble drop or kinetic sculpture with a bunch of marbles funneling and filtering through.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, like Plinko.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Right, exactly. That's why I said it was a good guess, because you're not the only one. So, also not a correct guess, but yes, that is there. I've heard those things, and they do have that kind of waterfall-y, Plinko-ly sound happening, sure. But isn't it interesting? That's not the correct answer either. And then we have another guess from a guy named Daniel. He said, hi, Jay, I think this week's noisy is ice cubes in a blender. And it's not correct, because what is missing is the blender noise itself.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, yeah, that.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' But if you could magically only hear the part that's happening inside the blender, yeah, I could see that, because the key word here is actually ice. Now, there was no winner for this week, but imagine if you will. Somebody takes a chunk of I'm not thinking like super solid ice. I'm thinking kind of like crunchy ice that's kind of froze and refroze. And they throw it on a frozen lake, and it hits the ice. Yes, it hits the ice.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I've heard that before. It's an amazing sound.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' And it explodes into tens of thousands of pieces of ice that now, with a lack of friction, slide across this frozen lake and make that incredible noise. So now listen again. [plays Noisy] What's so cool about that sound is you hear the reverberation of the sounds like the water in the lake and the ice sheet are changing that sound. It's like almost, it's making the sound louder, and it's giving it shape. It has a huge, it's like a vast kind of sound, because you're dealing with a ton of ice and a ton of water. So I think that was such a cool sound. You could actually look this up on YouTube if you want to see it happen. Very cool, very, very relaxing sound, especially as it gets past that initial shock. It's really great. And I thought it was just really cool looking as well. So thank you so much for sending that in. That was sent in by Scott Bringlow.<br />
<br />
=== New Noisy <small>(55:52)</small> ===<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I have a new noisy for you guys. Okay, so I am looking for, in this noisy, I'm looking for specifics. You must be specific when you answer this one, or else you will not even have a chance to guess correctly. Are you ready to hear it?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yes.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' And here we go.<br />
<br />
[_short_vague_description_of_Noisy]<br />
<br />
Very interesting, no?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yes.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' No?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So guys, if you think you know what that is, if you think you might know what it is, if you heard something cool, if you'd like to say anything to Evan, you email me at WTN@theskepticsguide.org.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Thank you, Jay.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' You're welcome.<br />
<br />
== Questions/Emails/Corrections/Follow-ups <small>(56:43)</small> ==<br />
<br />
=== Email #1: Learning Styles ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Quick email before we go on to the interview. We had a number of emails, a ton, ton of emails responding to our discussion of the learning styles in education, which I thought was fascinating. A lot of the feedback was that it's worse than we even think, right? A lot from teachers. And in fact, I was a little concerned about our discussion last week that we were coming off too harsh. And I edited out some of the harsher things that we said about the lack of the application of science to education. But then a bunch of teachers said, dude, it's a lot worse than you think. Essentially, what's happening is you get a number of things. One is that people just come up with these ideas, these systems whatever. And they're not based on science, but they just come and go like a revolving door. The other thing is that teachers get a lot of this fatigue over all the things they're supposed to be doing, but none of it's based on science. Some teachers pointed out that it's not as bad as we've said, specifically because, the argument wasn't very good. They basically said, teachers don't have time to do that anyway. They don't have the time to individualize the teaching, the learning style to the student, you know. So—<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right. Like what am I going to do with 45 kids in my class?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And in fact, they argued that what many teachers will do is just do a multimedia presentation, which is good anyway. And so they might be for the wrong reason, but in practice, it's not like they're actually wasting all of their time tailoring teaching methods to individual students. And I get that. I'm not really implying that. It was more about what they're not doing. They're not optimizing the teaching method to the material. And also, students are then getting pigeonholed, and then they may use this sort of self-label, like I'm an auditory learner, whatever, as a way to avoid certain kinds of content, maybe as an excuse in terms of their performance. But it's not—it's all relying on pseudoscience is never a good thing, and it just becomes a huge distraction and maybe a negative influence. But it was interesting how many people, how many teachers wrote I was worried we were going to get, oh, you're being a little harsh, aren't you? And it was the exact opposite. You know, I don't know if you looked through a lot of them, Cara. It was the—<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, it was a lot of like, you guys don't even know.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You don't know half of it. Kind of thing. So I thought we would pass that along. A lot of—I appreciate all the feedback we got from people in the field, but kind of jives with what I experienced as well is that they're just just people think that they can come up with some kind of idea, a notion about how to do it, and then that sort of gets implemented rather than being strictly evidence-based. So there's a disconnect there. All right. Well, we have a fascinating interview for you, so let's go on to that interview now.<br />
<br />
== Interview with Phil McAlister <small>(59:43)</small> ==<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We are joined now by Phil McAllister. Phil, welcome to The Skeptic's Guide.<br />
<br />
'''PM:''' Thank you. Great to be here.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And you are the Director of Commercial Spaceflight Development at NASA Headquarters, correct?<br />
<br />
'''PM:''' Yes.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I got that right. Awesome. Give us a quick overview to get us started. Tell us what you do at NASA.<br />
<br />
'''PM:''' So I work at NASA Headquarters here in Washington, D.C., and I oversee the Commercial Crew Program, which is a partnership with Boeing and SpaceX to get our astronauts up and down to low Earth orbit and the International Space Station. I also oversee the Commercial LEO Development Program, which is a collection of initiatives that NASA is engaged in trying to transition space activities in low Earth orbit over to the private sector. We, NASA, are heavily involved in low Earth orbit, both in operating and maintaining the International Space Station, as well as doing a lot of experimentation for crew accommodations and human research. And NASA and the government is really the dominant figure in most of that activity. And what we'd like to do in the Commercial LEO Development Program is, over the next five or ten years, to transition the majority of that work over to the private sector so that NASA can then focus our efforts on our deep space exploration, Moon and Mars. We feel like the time is sort of ripe for entrepreneurs to come in behind NASA now that we've sort of knocked down some of the technological and financial barriers to operating and working and living in low Earth orbit, and we can set our sights deeper where there's not necessarily an entrepreneurial or profit motive. That's as a parent. So, those are the two big programs. I've got some cats and dogs that I also oversee, but those are the two biggies.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So, right now, SpaceX, for example, is a commercial company. They're making their money by NASA paying them to bring astronauts to the space station and to do resupply. Is that correct?<br />
<br />
'''PM:''' Yes.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So, what's going to be the profit, do you think, for commercial low Earth orbit activities that doesn't involve getting paid by NASA?<br />
<br />
'''PM:''' Right. So, we see a variety of different markets for low Earth orbit operations and activity. I can't give you a definitive market study that says exactly how big these markets are going to be. We've done a bunch of studies, and some say they're going to be small, some say that they're going to be big. So, I'll give you some examples of the ones we think are going to be big, but I'm not promising these, and I don't think it's NASA's job necessarily to create those markets and make them happen. We're trying to enable them, trying to create the conditions by which entrepreneurs and business people can do what they do best, which is figuring out how to satisfy demand and make money at it. And so, for example, in my personal opinion, the big one that I see is tourism, space tourism. So, today, I think for the first time in human history, a private individual can buy a ticket to space and low Earth orbit from a commercial company. Fifteen years ago, you would have had to have been a NASA astronaut to fly to space on the space shuttle, but today, you can buy a ticket from SpaceX or somebody else, like a broker, and fly to space. You're going to have to be financially well off because it's pretty expensive right now, but we hope the prices will come down over time, and you're going to have to be relatively healthy. It does stress the body to fly to space, but if you can satisfy those two criteria, you can go to space. And there is a very, very large demand for people wanting to do that. And so, I think space tourism is going to be a big market, and I think it's going to be transformative, to be honest with you. Once more people go to space and experience what it's going to be like, and come back and tell their story, other people are going to want to go to space. And they're not going to be satisfied just floating around. They're going to want to do things. And then, when you do things, that's going to attract more people to want to go, and then more people wanting to do more things. And I just see it's sort of a virtuous cycle of increasing demand and increasing that market segment fairly dramatically, I hope, and fairly quickly, I also think. So, that's one that we've got our sights set on, is hopefully being a real strong market in the near term. And then, every day, somebody is coming up with something interesting to do in microgravity. You know, everything that we do on Earth is influenced by gravity. And when you take gravity out of the equation, all sorts of interesting things happen. And we've got scientists proposing and performing experiments to see what it's like to grow a protein, or develop a pharmaceutical, or to study the bodies and the effects of microgravity on the body in order to counteract some of the negative effects that we see in the body and being in space. All these things, every day, I tell you, there's something new and innovative from these smart scientists and researchers who want to do things in microgravity. So, I think there's a number of markets manufacturing things in space, doing pharmaceutical research in space. We've heard some biomedical advances. One very interesting one that's come up recently is producing artificial retinas in space. In the absence of gravity, you can have a very even process that doesn't get influenced by gravity, where it pulls things down low. You can get a very equal product when you try and grow something in space. I could just go on and on and on about some of these things. They're really cool. Some of them are going to pan out. Most of them probably aren't and won't become profitable. But what we're going to see with Commercial Crew is the ability for more people to go up there and do cool things and see what works.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So, Phil, there's going to be people then that are like space jockeys, right? There are going to be people that are piloting these private endeavours. And where's the line between private and the designation of astronaut? How does that work?<br />
<br />
'''PM:''' Well, I think it's pretty straightforward right now. We've got a designation and a definition of government astronaut and spaceflight participant. That's in some legislation that Congress passed a couple of years ago. If you're a government employee working on a government project, you are a government astronaut. And there's some rules and regulations associated with that. Other than that, you're a private astronaut, spaceflight participant. There's been lots of names people call it. But that's pretty much the designation. What you do is not necessarily the distinction. It's kind of who you are. And if you are working on a government project and you are a civil servant, you're a government person or a government astronaut. If you're not, you are a private astronaut, spaceflight participant.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' We're going to have to change that name from the name of spaceflight participant. It's just not cool enough. You got astronaut on one side. You really want to attract the maximum amount of people. You got to give it a cool name to make it even more enticing, right?<br />
<br />
'''PM:''' Oh, you have no idea the arguments and debates that we've had in the space community as to what to call those people. At first, we were calling them space tourists. And people didn't like that because not all of them are going up there just to be tourists. Some of them are actually doing real work. And so then spaceflight participant came on the scene. Private astronauts, I think a lot of people have kind of settled on that. But I agree with you. You got to have a name to match the coolness of what you're doing. And I can't think of anything cooler than flying to space.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Well, if it's got to do with the economy, they should call them economots or whatever, econonauts.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, it's not going to work.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' All right. Look, we have time. It's going to be a while before this gets here. We'll have time to come up with something. I'm talking about the International Space Station now. So that is considered to be – that's in low Earth orbit. But is that going to be something that's involved with anything to do with the economy or is that strictly for NASA and future missions and scientific endeavour?<br />
<br />
'''PM:''' Yeah, that's a great question. It is predominantly for NASA and our international partners and our government requirements and our government research. That is predominantly why we have the International Space Station. We have designated it the International Space Station National Lab. So you can think of it like a lab. We have many of these research labs across the country. This one just happens to be 200 miles in space. And so that's predominantly why we built the ISS. But as we are looking forward to this transition that I talked about where we're sort of disengaging from low Earth orbit and letting entrepreneurs and business people come in, we are looking towards the ISS to sort of be a gap filler or a pathfinder to help stimulate some of these commercial markets. Right now, the International Space Station is the only destination that you can go to. The Chinese also have a space station up there. But for the International Space Station, there are no private destinations to go to space. So we want to use the International Space Station kind of as an incubator for some of these markets. And so that's why we have announced we have carved out some of the resources associated with the ISS for companies to just do commercial activity, things that they can see where they might be able to make a profit. It's only a small amount. It's 5%. And you have to reimburse NASA for a portion of the cost to go up there. But prior to June 2019, we didn't have an allocation for that. So we are recognizing that this transition is going to occur, and we're trying to, like I said, enable it. We can't promise it. We can't make it happen. But we can help enable it by carving out some research, carving out some resources and astronaut time for them to perform some of these experiments that can hopefully demonstrate some of these markets, the early sort of incubation phase, to see what works and what doesn't. And we think that's a good use of the ISS as long as we can still meet our requirements. So we do see the ISS as being a key sort of early enabler of this transition.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So from what I understand, the first commercial module on the ISS is going to be the Axiom module, right, from Axiom Space, a Houston company. Still on schedule for 2024. Is that correct?<br />
<br />
'''PM:''' Well, we actually have a module that's currently up there called the BEAM. That stands for the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module. Several years ago, we partnered with Bigelow Aerospace, and we put their BEAM module, and it is currently attached to the ISS, and we're using it for storage and some other functions. So that was really the first commercial module on the ISS. We do have a contract to partner with Axiom Space, and they are working towards getting their module attached to the space station sometime in the middle part of this decade, and they are working diligently on that, and we are hopeful that Axiom is successful. And then Axiom has some very grand plans to operate that module that's attached to the space station for several years, but then prior to the ISS retiring, their plan is to detach that module and then operate it as a free flyer. And so that's a very ambitious project, and we are partnering with Axiom, trying to do everything we can to make them successful. We also plan to announce a solicitation or procurement, hopefully this year, for free flyers, companies that want to go directly to some altitude in low Earth orbit, but not necessarily attached to the space station. And so we call those sort of free flyers. They're going directly to orbit and operate as an independent spacecraft. And so we hope to be able to facilitate the development of a few of those also in the early stages, and then see how that progresses, make decisions downstream as to which ones we're going to partner with to actually purchase services from. That's the plan.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So, Phil, you've got to help me. We have tried to find out what happens to modules that are decommissioned or if the entire space station is decommissioned. What do we do with that monstrosity if it has to come down? Do we deorbit and let it burn up? Do we try to land it in the ocean? Would we just let it float out there?<br />
<br />
'''PM:''' Yeah. So we've done a number of analyses on what to do post-ISS how we were going to sort of retire the space station. And there are a number of different scenarios, and it will depend on sort of the situation that exists, sort of the ground truth at that time. But I think our plan now is to deorbit the ISS as a complete entity, meaning we wouldn't detach certain modules and bring them down separately. I think the safest and the current plan right now is to bring the space station down all at once in one piece where we can control it and make sure that we are safely deorbiting it over one of the oceans and obviously a not populated area so that we don't have any injuries or fatalities. So that is the plan. It takes some propulsive capability to deorbit the ISS. We think we understand what that takes. And I think that's the plan. If somebody comes up, like I said, we've got the number of private sector companies that are interested in developing and deploying private space stations. If one of them wants to maybe use one of the modules, I think we would consider that. But the plan is, I think the baseline plan or default plan is to bring it down all at once.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So is there any talk of just continuing to add modules to the ISS to indefinitely extend its lifespan, just retire old modules, replace them with new modules? Is that even technically viable? Or is it just that NASA wants to completely cede low-Earth orbit to private sector?<br />
<br />
'''PM:''' Yeah, I think we could probably maintain the ISS for an extended period of time by doing what you said, sort of replacing the modules. But yeah, that is not the plan. We think, like I said, it's in everybody's interest for NASA to kind of step back from low-Earth orbit and let the private sector come in and do that. Generally, when sort of the entrepreneurs come into this market, they kind of like a clean sheet of paper. We didn't develop the ISS with a primary goal of cost effectiveness. We didn't develop it to close a business case. It had certain requirements that it had to meet, and we developed the ISS to meet those requirements in a very somewhat complicated international partnership, which has been super effective and very successful and beneficial, I think, to everybody. And all these different countries provided modules that we sort of assembled on orbit. I think if you were to operate a commercial destination where you needed to make money and so the operations needed to be very cost effective, I think the most efficient thing and effective thing would be to start with a clean sheet, use new technology, and develop all your systems all at once, and just bring a new space station. We think that is probably the best way to go. Like I said, we know and love the ISS, but just like your car, there gets to be a time where you just need a new car. It just doesn't make sense for you to keep fixing the old one. Right now, the maintenance bill on the ISS is sort of climbing as we find some obsolescence, and it just gets to the point where you could do it. It just doesn't make financial sense.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Phil, are you guys going to strip it and move all the hardware that would cost so much money per pound to get things into space? Do you have a way of preserving the little things, like a clipboard and whatever, like stuff that other people could use?<br />
<br />
'''PM:''' Yeah, so that's a great question. And what it goes into is basically our strategy for doing these commercial ventures. And the way we have done them, and I'm particularly talking about commercial cargo and commercial crew, we let the private sector companies define how they're going to do things. They come up with a design. It's not up to NASA. We don't dictate to them. So I think we would make available certain subsystems of the ISS or even a module if a company wanted those, but we wouldn't dictate that. It would be up to the private sector to come up with these designs that they think is most effective. If they think using a clean sheet of paper and developing all new systems is the way to go, that's up to them. If they want to use a piece of the ISS, we are open to having those discussions after ISS retires and coming up with some sort of way to potentially use some of the piece parts or subsystems. I think we'd be open to that. But we, NASA, are not going to dictate the design for these private sector companies. It's going to be up to them, letting them use their entrepreneurial spirit and innovation. And what we found is when we partner with the private sector this way, they come up with all kinds of cool things, things that we, NASA, never even envisioned and maybe even thought wouldn't work. Reusability is something that was very difficult for a lot of us to envision 10, 15 years ago on how that would really work. We did it with the space shuttle, obviously. We reused the orbiter and we reused the solid rocket boosters. They required a significant amount of maintenance. And I think SpaceX, when they introduced reusability, there was some skeptics on the part of the aerospace industry and some in NASA, and they've really proven that it can be done, and it can be done profitably and cost-effectively and reliably. And so that's just one example that when you open the trade space up for private industry, they really come up with innovative and state-of-the-art solutions, and that's what we're looking for. So we really want to kind of step back and let them come forward with their design ideas.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So, Phil, I think they have a pretty good sense now of what the plans are for the ISS, and we've been following very closely SpaceX, and we're very excited when they became the first commercial company to bring people up to low-Earth orbit. How do you see their future with NASA and as leaders now in the commercial space industry?<br />
<br />
'''PM:''' I can tell you I've been working commercial crew for almost a decade. It's about a third of my career, and it was so gratifying to see that SpaceX Demo-2 mission where we launched Bob and Doug to the International Space Station and brought them back safely to Earth. I do not believe it's an exaggeration to say that we have changed the arc of human space transportation. For the first time in human history, you can purchase a ticket to space from a private sector organization and fly to space. First time in human history. I think that is just an amazing accomplishment, and I think we are going to see 2020 as an inflection point in the evolution of human space transportation. But let's not forget Boeing is not far behind. We are hopefully going to certify them very soon to also carry passengers to low-Earth orbit and the International Space Station, and then we'll have another milestone. We will have redundant capability in the United States to fly people to space, something we've never had. We had Apollo. That was a single system. Then we had Shuttle, single string. When we have both SpaceX and Boeing flying commercially to the low-Earth orbit and the International Space Station, we'll have a redundant capability, and we will hopefully never be grounded again, as we saw twice in our history with the Shuttle.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' The day that two spacecraft leave Earth on two different missions in two completely separate systems, that to me is going to be profound when you have just traffic going on. We're really on the horizon of having low-Earth orbit be kind of like, okay, this is just an extension now of what we can do, and only the deep space stuff is novel.<br />
<br />
'''PM:''' I couldn't have said it better myself.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It sounds like, Phil, that this whole notion, the big picture of NASA bootstrapping commercial spaceflight has worked out well. Has it been financially a good deal for NASA?<br />
<br />
'''PM:''' Yes, it has been an excellent deal financially. Not only do we see the capability as being advantageous to NASA, but it has also been very cost-effective for us to do commercial crew the way we did it. Our price per seat is significantly lower than what we pay Soyuz for the same capability to launch our astronauts to the International Space Station, so we're saving money every time we take an astronaut to low-Earth orbit, which is really just amazing because the Soyuz has been around a long time, and these are new systems, and it just speaks to the entrepreneurial capability of the United States aerospace industry. Just amazing. Then we also did an analysis that said if we had done commercial crew sort of in a traditional way where NASA was in charge and we made all the decisions and this was government-owned and operated hardware, that we saved between $20 and $30 billion by doing commercial crew the way we did it. So not only did we save a lot of money up front, but we're going to continue to reap the benefits of that cost savings every time we take an astronaut to the International Space Station. It's just been an amazing ride. It was a very unique combination. We had the right partners, and we had the right mission, and everything kind of came together well. I'm not saying it's always going to work out this well for anything that we do commercially, but certainly with commercial crew, I think we can check the box and say that was very successful. It doesn't mean it always will be and that we're never going to have an anomaly. Every mode of human transportation has fatalities. I hope to avoid that, and our teams are working as diligently as possible to avoid that. So I'm not promising that we'll never have a mishap in the future, but so far we feel like this was really the way to go and has been very successful not only for NASA, but also for the nation because we've saved NASA a lot of money, and also for all of humanity. Again, I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that because if you're a person in India or Japan or South Africa, you can buy a ticket to space as long as you have the money and are healthy enough.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, Phil, thank you so much for giving us your time. We really appreciate it. Obviously, we're big fans of NASA and spaceflight. We grew up under Apollo. This is a sort of lifelong romantic love affair for us, so we always love to talk to people from NASA. Thanks for joining us.<br />
<br />
'''PM:''' Yeah, it was my pleasure, and I just want to thank you guys for following it and being interested. We're always trying to engage the public, and podcasts like yours are definitely making an impact, so thank you.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Great. Thank you, Phil. Take care.<br />
<br />
== Science or Fiction <small>(1:24:15)</small> ==<br />
<br />
{{SOFinfo<br />
|item1 = Scientists have imaged quadruple-helix DNA in living human cells.<br />
|link1 = <ref>[https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-20414-7]</ref><br />
<br />
|item2 = New research finds that watching horror movies correlates with better psychological resilience to the stresses of the pandemic, even when personality factors are controlled for.<br />
|link2 = <ref>[https://neurosciencenews.com/zombie-movie-pandemic-17564/]</ref><br />
<br />
|item3 = Engineers at Osaka University have built the most powerful pulse laser to date, at 500 petawatts, beating the previous record of 10 petawatts. <br />
|link3 = <ref>[https://phys.org/news/2021-01-exawatt-class-lasers.html?deviceType=desktop]</ref><br />
<br />
|}}<br />
<br />
{{SOFResults<br />
|fiction = pulse laser<br />
|science1 = quadruple-helix DNA<br />
|science2 = horror movies<br />
<br />
|rogue1 =Evan<br />
|answer1 = pulse laser<br />
<br />
|rogue2 =Cara<br />
|answer2 =pulse laser<br />
<br />
|rogue3 =Bob<br />
|answer3 =pulse laser<br />
<br />
|rogue4 =Jay<br />
|answer4 = pulse laser<br />
<br />
|host =steve<br />
<br />
|sweep = <!-- all the Rogues guessed wrong --><br />
|clever = <!-- each item was guessed (Steve's preferred result) --><br />
|win = <!-- at least one Rogue guessed wrong, but not them all --><br />
|swept = y<!-- all the Rogues guessed right --><br />
}}<br />
''Voice-over: It's time for Science or Fiction.''<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Each week I come up with three science news items or facts, two real, one fake, and I challenge my panel of skeptics to tell me which one is the fake. No theme this week, just three news items. First one I think of the year with no theme. Are you ready?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yes.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Ready.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. Item number one, scientists have imaged quadruple helix DNA in living human cells. Item number two, new research finds that watching horror movies correlates with better psychological resilience to the stresses of the pandemic, even when personality factors are controlled for. Item number three, engineers at Osaka University have built the most powerful pulse laser to date at 500 petawatts, beating the previous record of 10 petawatts. Evan, go first.<br />
<br />
=== Evan's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''E:''' All right. The quadruple helix DNA. Forgive me. Is this out of a Star Trek episode? Did I see that? Where have I seen this before? Maybe it was Futurama.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You may be thinking of the triple helix.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, fifth element?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Fifth element, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, my gosh. But a quadruple. So you have to fly right over that and go to quadruple helix DNA in living human cells. So how could that be? Something's not right in that. Is that a mutation of human cells? And is that even possible? That's incredible. Something tells me it is incredibly true, though, and that might be the one that's trying to throw us off because it's just so beyond what we know. All right. Next one, about watching horror movies correlating with better psychological resilience, especially in the stresses of the pandemic, even when personality factors are controlled for. So we've talked before about the psychological either benefits or experiences of horror movies in that I remember us speaking about how it becomes a sensation that we have of danger yet no harm. Like the equivalent would be a roller coaster ride for the most part. Most people survive their roller coaster rides. You go through this mostly. You go through this harrowing sort of experience, but you come out alive on the other end. And sort of I think in that correlation we were talking about maybe horror movies having a similar sort of effect in the brain. So I have a feeling that that one is science. Now, it's this last one that I'm thinking is the fiction because the most powerful pulse laser to date, 500 petawatts, beating the previous record of 10 petawatts. So the reason I think this one is fiction is because if you hearken back or hearken forward to our 2035 podcast that we recorded while we were in New Zealand or was it in Australia? No, we did it in New Zealand.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It was Australia.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Was it? Okay. During our trip in Australia. We had our 2035 episode. One of the fake news item I spoke about was a laser used to redirect a comet and other things that were going to threaten the Earth or asteroids that were going to threaten the Earth. And we were going to launch vehicles out there that had these lasers on them to change the trajectory, but you needed several of them to do it, almost an array. And I said that they had 50 petawatts of power, and that was 2035. And I also remember getting some feedback on that from someone saying that's probably a little too optimistic even for 2035. So I think maybe they did come up with a 50 petawatt laser that they're testing now, which would be incredible. But I think 500 petawatts, too high, order of magnitude too high. That's why I think that one's the fiction.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay. Cara?<br />
<br />
=== Cara's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I think I know that the quad helix DNA, which is, I think, from what I remember, that this is normal, not necessarily healthy, or maybe it is healthy in certain parts of the body, but relatively, I should say, common in cancer cells where the DNA like folds over on itself. And so instead of a double, it's a quad. If you had said triple, I might have been like, meh, or like five, I might have been like, meh, how would that work? Maybe there would be some zipping, unzipping problems, and then doubling over. So I could see that if that actually happens in people that they, or in other organisms, that they'd be able to image it. Oh, you did say human there, though. And then the horror movies correlating with psychological reasons. These always get me, Steve. I hate it when you get me on psych questions. Because I'm like, yep, that computes, and then it's like, meh, nope. But yeah, of course, I think that we can develop resilience in safe spaces where we have perceived threats. I think this is how exposure therapy works for a lot of people who have anxiety disorders. This is how VR therapy works for like fear of heights and things like that. That approximates real threat, but that we know is not a threat, so that we can be better prepared when we're an actual threat. And then I was going to say this one was probably the fiction, too, only because I feel like anytime we say PETA before something, that's because Bob is getting really techno-optimistic. And he like throws PETA.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Petaflops.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' He'll throw PETA before something, and it's like, oh, yep, that's a fantasy. So I'm going to go with Evan because that just reinforced my view on this one.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay, Bob.<br />
<br />
=== Bob's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, the quadruple helix. Initially, my knee jerk was like, what? But yeah, listening to those guys, and I could see there's some quirky thing that makes that happen. And the horror movies, yeah, I buy that as well. I love horror movies. I think the last time I briefly covered my eyes in a horror movie, I think I was like 12. And, of course, now that reminds me of Jay. We went to a horror movie, and Jay was a little shit. He was like, I don't know, 10, 12, or whatever. And he literally looked at his foot for the entire movie.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, boy.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I did.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I'll never forget that.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It's because you guys brought me to stuff I should not have been anywhere near when I was too young to see that stuff.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I hated being young. Yeah. I had moments like that in my youth, too.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Definitely.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I hear you. But you were a little extra scared, too, Jay. It's hard because, I mean, I love the stuff so much that it's like, oh, yeah, it's nothing. It's like an amusement park ride. Yeah. Or a spicy dish. Yeah, this is no problem. And then people run out of the room screaming.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Hey, Bob, you like spice?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Spice. Oh, God.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Spice.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Spice. That was hilarious. So I could totally see that. That one makes sense. Yeah. So now to the laser. And, yeah, to me, 500 petawatts is fantastic. I mean, that's actually a half an exawatt, which is amazing.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Shut up at this point.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I love it.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Hey, look it up, dude. Peta-exa. But, yeah, I think a leap from 10 petawatts to half an exawatt is too much. I think that's quite a big leap. Now, maybe since it's a pulse laser, maybe they're pulsing it for really ever brief. And we've got attosecond lasers that are so brief that, yeah, you can get incredible energy in such a tiny amount of time. I guess maybe that's part of it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So you're saying you would believe an attosecond exawatt laser?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Half an exawatt. So, yeah, there's lots of ways to look at it. But I assume that the 10 petawatt was a pulse laser going to the 500. I think that still would be quite an increase in how brief that pulse is. So, yes, I'll say that one's fiction. Go with the other crew.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And Jay.<br />
<br />
=== Jay's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''J:''' All right. The first one about imaging the quadruple helix, the thing about that one is that it's quadruple.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That's the thing.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah. I mean, sure, I believe that. Whatever. There's so many variations of things out there. There really isn't any reason to not believe that. Watching horror movies correlates with psychological resilience. Yeah, I think this is like having small, controllable sources of something that scares you, like being the virtual reality spider thing that helps people. Yeah, I could see that. If you're not going to go straight to Evil Dead, something that's maybe too over the top for a lot of people.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Evil Dead is the funniest and least scary horror movie in existence.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Don't tell 8-year-old Jay that.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That's goofy. That's goofy. But there's one scene, I remember watching that, and I think it was in like 83 or 84. I have a distinct memory watching that in the theatre. And there's a scene, and they show it mostly in shadow, where this guy is literally taking an axe and hacking his friend to pieces. Everyone except me in the theatre was screaming at the same time. I have never experienced everyone except one person.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Seriously? It's so campy.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It is. It's campy and goofy and fun and creepy.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It is a fun movie.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It is, but there's that one scene.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' To the extent that his sequels were intentionally campy and ridiculous.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, yeah, Army of Darkness and stuff, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, so good.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' They definitely double down on the campy part.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, because he knew. He knew.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' My response to it was the way that Bob said it, like when people saw it in the theater, they were losing it. Like, yeah, I guess today—<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's because, yeah, Evil Dead was full of, what are they called, like Pratt scares? Yeah, like the little whoo, those kind of moments. And that's why people scream in movie theaters, because the music's tense and then something happens.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, the jump out scares are—<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Join us.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, the jump scares are the lowest quality of jump scares.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' But I do think the voices were scary, though. The demonic voices that they did in post-production were just awesome.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Phantom parts, Jack of clubs.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' All right, so getting back to the game, because I can feel, Steve, his temperature starting to rise. I do think that watching some types of horror movies could kind of detune you from stress. It also is a release of tension. Did you know that horror movies release tension when you watch them?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' They do? I thought they build tension.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Right, fear minus death equals fun.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, but after you get off a roller coaster, you feel relief, right? The roller coaster ends, you're like, oh, it's over, and you get like a success kind of feeling almost. Anyway, let's see what Steve says. The last one here, I mean, yeah, I think 500 petawatts is way too big. That's basically it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's too effing much. That's an obscure movie reference.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Used Cars.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #2 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Used Cars, yeah. All right, so you guys all agree? You all agree? So someone got swept this week. Let's see who. Let's start with number two, since you seem to have the easiest time with that one. Research finds that watching horror movies correlates with better psychological resilience during the pandemic, even when personality factors are controlled for. You all think that one is science, and that one is science.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yay!<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, you guys pretty much nailed it. This is kind of the thinking is this is like you're mentally preparing for these kinds of scenarios, and the hypothesis was that this would build some kind of psychological, emotional resilience. They basically surveyed people on their horror movie, apocalypse zombie movie, watching habits, and they then used a standardized test of emotional resilience, and they correlated the two, and they found that there was, in fact, a correlation. They also controlled for personality factors, which they said were very strong.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, the personality thing might be overwhelming, the movie-watching factor, but it still emerged as an independent factor. And I only said correlated because this kind of study doesn't tell you about cause and effect, so that was kind of a low bar. That was kind of my throwaway for this week.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #3 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, well, let's get to this laser. Let's see what you guys did. Engineers at Osaka University have built the most powerful pulse laser to date at 500 petawatts, beating the previous record of 10 petawatts. I want to read you from the article. Listen to this. This is awesome. In this newly improved design by using a two-beam pumped—get this—wide-angle non-collinear optical parametric chirped pulse amplification and carefully optimized phase-matching pump interference is completely avoided and an ultra-broadband bandwidth with two broad spectra is accomplished, resulting in a less than 10 fs high-energy laser amplification.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Femtosecond.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And they believe that this could be pushed into the exawatt class.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, halfway there.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Could be.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But this is a simulation they haven't built yet. So this is the fiction.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, okay. No way. So it is 500 petawatts simulated.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, I just cut it in half because I thought the exawatt would be too much. They simulated an exawatt laser using that turboencabulator stuff I just talked about.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, that was some gobbledygook right there.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Boy, you gotta be in the field to understand half of that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. I understand all the words. I just, you know...<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I don't know how they quite go together.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, but that's a lot of jargon.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, some of the words like chirped I've heard before, but some of them are like, wait, that's a lot of gobbledygook.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Wide-angle non-collinear optical parametric chirped pulse amplification, Bob.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, chirped pulse I've heard before, but not some of that other stuff. So wait, so what is the record now, then?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's 10 petawatts.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It's 10, and that's what I reported, yeah. When I did my news item and I looked it up, that's what I was basing it on. 10, okay, and by the time 2035 comes along, we'll get to maybe 50. I thought that was reasonable.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But they're jumping right over that to one exabyte, but that's assuming exawatt, but that assumes that this all works out. This is in simulation. This is like the theoretical limit of using this approach, I think, is what they're talking about.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Exawatt, man. That would do some damage.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I was about to say, like, how dangerous is this thing going to be?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Hey, forget pushing asteroids. You could put moons out of the way probably with those things.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You can fill an entire house with popcorn.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Remember, though, it's pulse, so it's crazy brief.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, but a brief pulse can still, like, cut a person in half.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You worry about a person with an exawatt laser? No. That would cut buildings in half.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Exactly. It cut through all the people in the building.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' If you do one pulse, then you're not. You're going to put a nice hole into anything. But you won't have time to swing it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No, you got to do a bunch of pulses in a line.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' If you had a super capacitor made of graphene that could store the energy necessary, then you could do multiple pulses. There you go.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Being fed from a fusion reactor, yep, would be good.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Controlled by a super smart AI. Oh, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Nice. Bringing it all together.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Don't give them lasers. No lasers for the AI.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Give that laser to a super intelligent AI, and you'd get a Yottawatt class laser.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yottawatt. Term of the day.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Then you get something like, this is the voice of Colossus. Okay. You got that reference, right, Cara? Sure.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #1 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay, so scientists have imaged quadruple helix DNA in a living human cell. Is science. This is rare. It is, though, naturally occurring. And, Cara, your vague memory is pretty much accurate.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Cancer?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, it has been identified in cancer cells, and you're right, four is actually not as impressive as three or five would be, because it is just transitive DNA that manages to helix together. It does happen. It's sort of a transient thing, but what they showed, the new bit, they actually knew about this, but the new bit was really that they were able to image it in living human cells and that they showed that it's actually functional, that the DNA is functional in this form.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, wow. Is it functional at being cancerous?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, that's what they're trying to figure out, but it could become a new drug target for cancer therapy if it is something that is more important to cancer cells than non-cancer cells, for example. It's a little curiosity, but definitely the idea of this quadruple helix DNA is kind of interesting.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Totally.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You think about it, the way DNA winds up, you have individual strands, two of those strands can bind together and wind into a double helix. You can have them binding together and curling themselves up into a quadruple helix. There's no reason chemically why that can't happen. It's just rare.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' If it can happen, it probably does happen at some point.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It doesn't matter how common it is. I don't know if it's going to lead anywhere. It's just a very interesting basic science finding. All right. Good job, guys. Couldn't get you with the 500 petawatt laser.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Thanks, Evan.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' You're welcome.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' You set a good tone there.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Glad I went first this week.<br />
<br />
== Skeptical Quote of the Week <small>(1:42:18)</small> ==<br />
<br />
<blockquote>Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfills the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things.<br>– {{w|Winston Churchill}} (1874-1965), British statesman </blockquote><br />
<br />
'''S:''' Evan, give us a quote.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' "Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfils the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things." Winston Churchill said that. Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. Yes, yes, and more yes.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Without a doubt.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It's so important. It's how we're able to make corrections.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, as long as it's constructive and not personal or biased or whatever, not ad hominem. Constructive criticism is absolutely critical.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' A fatal flaw that any adult can have is definitely not being able to hear, digest, and acknowledge criticism. If you can't edit yourself, then you don't evolve. It's remarkable. I know so many people at all age ranges who just can't hear it. They can't take any criticism whatsoever. It's a really difficult thing to acknowledge if you've never worked on it, and it's a very, very difficult thing to get rid of or work on when you're an adult. Witness your own behavior and make sure that you admit when you're wrong. It's part of being human.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Cara, have you looked into the psychology of criticism? How people are impacted by criticism?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. There's obviously a lot of really interesting research on flexibility, cognitive flexibility, growth, and change. There's a lot of really interesting research on how personality traits would play into this, openness to opportunity. We talk a lot about personality on the show, and pretty much the only personality metric that seems to hold a lot of good research water is OCEAN. It's the big five. We talked about that. Openness, conscientiousness, extroversion versus introversion, agreeableness and neuroticism. And definitely openness is highly correlated with mind changing, with being able to utilize criticism. Yeah. I think as a construct, it's a really interesting one because so many psychological facets or ways of thinking about things can track back to how people deal with criticism. Also, a lot of it has to do with how it's given.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We talk about the compliment sandwich. That's a very popular phrase in the education world now. Because we have to, I've mentioned before, we have to give residents, who are physicians, we have to give them very deep specific criticism if they're not practising medicine optimally. The implications are so huge.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' They could kill someone.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No kid gloves. But you also need to deal with the psychology. You can't just lay on something. You're a terrible clinician. Whatever. Obviously, you've got to be constructive. The other paradigm that is being suggested to us to help make it go down is the compliment sandwich where you open up with a compliment and then you slip in a constructive criticism and then you close with a compliment. It's like sandwiched in between two compliments. You're very diligent. You work really hard. I wish you could work on this a little bit more, but I really appreciate all the hard work that you do.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It works, especially if they are authentic compliments. If they match to reality.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' They will see right through it. Totally.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' If they're like, you look good today. Hey, you're about to kill this patient.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That's a really good point, but your hair looks like shit today, but your shirt's good.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It looks good on you, though.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' No, you start with a compliment.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I did. I said it was a good point. I know how to make a sandwich.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's not an open-faced sandwich.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' What about a compliment taco?<br />
<br />
== Signoff/Announcements <small>(1:46:20)</small> == <br />
<!-- if the signoff/announcements don't immediately follow the QoW or if the QoW comments take a few minutes, it would be appropriate to include a timestamp for when this part starts --><br />
<br />
'''J:''' A 12-hour live stream for our patrons.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, that's right.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Full of compliments.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Let me throw some details on you guys. You can go to theskepticsguide.org/12, 12-hour show. That's one, two, hour show.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's hour with an H, not hours.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That's one, two. H-O-U-R-S-H-O-W. On that page, you will find of course the date, time, and all that stuff. There'll be a placeholder where we'll put the link once we create it, because we can't create the live stream link until I think a day before. You'll have the recipes. If you're interested in cooking along with us on the show, there'll be a number of recipes on there that we'll be doing during the show. You'll see us cooking, and it'll be fun if you did it with us. There will also be George's taste test, which we did at NECSS a year and a half ago. This is where we tested, can you tell the difference between regular Coke and Diet Coke, skim milk, whole milk, blah, blah, blah. So you can go buy all that stuff. Maybe somebody at home can help you to randomize it so you don't know what you're drinking. We can all see who guesses what. Trust me, you'll be amazed at some of the answers that we get out of these experiments. The other information on there will be, if you're a patron, I will be sending you over Patreon, I'll be sending you a link or you already received the link to submit your pictures. If you are an SGU patron, you will be allowed to upload up to five pictures and we will be displaying those in the background during the live stream, pretty much throughout the entire live stream. Of course it depends on how many pictures we get and keep it clean, please just make it easy on us. Steve doesn't want to go to jail for nudity on the SGU live stream.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That is correct. That is a true statement.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' We'll see you on January 23rd, 11am Eastern Time. The show runs for 12 hours. We have a huge array of different things happening. We have several guests that are coming along. George Hrab will be with us and it's just going to be a ton of fun. We've been working on this a long time. Lots of fun and new content for you guys and we really hope you enjoy it. Thank you so much to all of our patrons.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Jay, I have a question.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Go ahead, Cara.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Do I need my lightsaber?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Cara, if your lightsaber is ever, if you're in your house and it's...<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I'm looking at it right now.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Good, because it should never be more than like 15 feet away from you.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It should never be out of force summoning range.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Or Osseo spell range.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Don't mix genres. Come on.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Or if you believe in episode 9, you can pass your lightsaber through time and space to another place. Oh, don't get me started on episode 9. Oh my gosh. Don't get me started.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Don't get me started.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That'll be for the 12 hour show, maybe.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Alright. We're looking forward to it. It's just next week. When this show comes out, it's just a week later that the 12 hour show.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh my god.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's right.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' —and until next week, this is your {{SGU}}. <!-- typically this is the last thing before the Outro --> <br />
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}}</div>Hearmepurrhttps://www.sgutranscripts.org/w/index.php?title=SGU_Episode_838&diff=19118SGU Episode 8382024-01-19T11:45:20Z<p>Hearmepurr: </p>
<hr />
<div>{{Editing required<br />
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|}}<br />
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|episodeNum = 838 <!-- replace with correct Episode Number --><br />
|episodeDate = {{month|7}} {{date|31}} 2021 <!-- broadcast date --><br />
|verified = <!-- leave blank until verified, then put a 'y'--><br />
|episodeIcon =File:838 Magnet therapy.jpg<br />
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|guest1 = KA: Knute Adcock<!-- ZZ: {{w|NAME}} or leave blank if no guest --><br />
|guest2 = <!-- leave blank if no second guest --><br />
|guest3 = <!-- leave blank if no third guest --><br />
|qowText = It seems almost natural for us to want to look up, to look back in time, and to learn and appreciate the wonder of this universe that allows us to exist, whether we are scientists or not.<br />
|qowAuthor = Suze Kundu <!-- use a {{w|wikilink}} or use <ref name=author>[url publication: title]</ref>, description [use a first reference to an article attached to the quote. The second reference is in the QoW section] --> <br />
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}}<!-- <br />
** Note that you can put each Rogue’s infobox initials inside triple quotes to make the initials bold in the transcript. This is how the final statement from Steve is typed at the end of this transcript: '''S:''' —and until next week, this is your {{SGU}}.<br />
--><br />
== Introduction ==<br />
''Voice-over: You're listening to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.''<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Hello and welcome to the {{SGU|link=y}}. Today is Wednesday, July 28<sup>th</sup>, 2021, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella... <br />
<br />
'''B:''' Hey, everybody!<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Cara Santa Maria... <br />
<br />
'''C:''' Howdy. <br />
<br />
'''S:''' Jay Novella... <br />
<br />
'''J:''' Hey guys. <br />
<br />
'''S:''' Evan Bernstein...<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Good evening, folks.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And today we have a guest rogue this week, Knute Adcock. Knute, welcome to the Skeptics Guide.<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' Hello. Thanks for inviting me.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So Knute, tell us, we had a big debate before the show, whether it was Knute or Knut or Knewt. The Knut wasn't really serious, but you said in Germany it's Knute and in the United States it's Knewt.<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' It is, yeah, it's Knute. To spell it with a K, my mother was gracious enough to change the spelling early on when I was born, even though I was named after the salamander, the N-E-W-T style. But the pronunciation is the same. According to my dad, I looked and sounded exactly like one when I came out. So I don't know if we got enough time for that whole story. The K is silent and yeah, when I lived in Germany, it was Knut, like the ice bear.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' And you said you're a pilot, correct?<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' I am. Yeah, I've been a pilot for about 25 years now, 20 of those in the Air Force, a little bit at the Air Force Academy before that, flew Cessnas, and now I fly in a private corporate aviation.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' How many tic-tac UFOs have you seen? Come on, be honest. Now's the time.<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' Oof. I don't know if I'm allowed to talk about it.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' See?<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' Well, as pilots, they're really tight-knit. I mean, it's hard enough keeping the chemtrails under wraps.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I know, you've got to pretend the world is a sphere. You've got to it's hard.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's right.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' The ice wall.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Fly at the edge of the planet.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' What's funny is you sound like a pilot.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I was about to say that, Jay. I don't think it'll translate to the podcast because he's recording his own thing, but definitely the way that he sounds through Skype right now to us, it's like, shh, hello?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That intercoms.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' This is AlphaEchoNiner.<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' I can break out the pilot speak if you like, I'm actually wearing the headset I use when I fly.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Well, first off, we demand that you do talk like a pilot right now.<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' Roger.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' There it is.<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' Copy.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Roger, Roger.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Knewt, have you ever said anything by accident thinking the microphone was off?<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' Oh, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Besides right now.<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' Actually, I only got in trouble once saying something.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Okay, I'll tell you the story.<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' My last job in the Air Force, I flew Air Force One and-<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Wow.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' No way.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That's amazing.<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' So, we would be very critical of our radio supply and one time we're sitting there at the end of the runway waiting to take off and there's this storm right off the end and we could not find a way around this thing. Finally, it looked like there was a break in the weather and I think Tower knows well because they asked you want to go? And I was on the radios at the time, I was on the right seat and I said, Air Force One copies. Yeah, we'll risk it. And that was like the worst thing I could have said on the radios because everything we do and say is recorded. I think I remember getting hit in the side of the head with a checklist by somebody saying, dude, don't say things like that. Normally, we are very, very succinct and precise and practice saying, Air Force One, ready for takeoff. You know, that's it. Don't say anything like that.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Right. No unnecessary words.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Oh my God. I just realized I could never be a pilot.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Did you just realize that?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I could never follow that protocol. Forget it. I would be like- Trying to chat the guy up.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's the same thing when you're a physician, like they teach you early on, like you don't say whoops. There's certain things you don't say, like when you're examining a patient, you don't say, yeah, that's good. Like there are things that you would just say normally that can be interpreted in a nefarious way. You have to clean your lingo.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, psychologists never ever, or like good psychologists, I think, never say, I understand. Even though that's a normal thing to say in common parlance, when somebody's telling you about an experience and you're like, yeah, I understand.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Is it considered discourteous or why?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Because you don't understand and it's actually, like the really important thing as a psychologist is not to be sort of like feigning empathy. You don't understand what the patient is going through. You can say, that sounds very difficult. It sounds like you really were struggling there. I can imagine, or I even try not to say I can imagine because I don't know if I can, but I would never just say, totally, I understand. It's so disingenuous.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Well, maybe.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No, it is. Trust me. If somebody says that to you when you're talking about going through like a death or something really intense, they're like, I understand. That's not what you want to hear.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You learn to follow the path of least resistance. For example, early on in my career, I used to, when I was doing the neurological exam, I would tell patients, just walk normally across the room just so I could see them walk. After about the third or fourth time, I had a patient get mad at me and say, I can't walk normally. I said, walk as you normally would across the room just so that every now and then somebody doesn't get mad at me for implying that they can walk normally.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Well, the word normal itself also has kind of become-<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It can be loaded. When you're just dealing with thousands of people in an interaction, you sort of learned how to avoid, you smooth out all these rough edges.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, especially if you're seeing, like you said, if you're seeing people every day. Because I have ongoing relationships with my patients weekly, one of the things I do since I work at a cancer center that's, I think, so important is to figure out their identity language early on. Do you like the word survivor? Do you like the word victim? Do you like the word- Because so many people have very strong feelings about those words and you want to make sure you know what they are and you're operating within their frame. But anyway, that's very far away from the pilot saying, whoopsie. We'll risk it. We'll risk it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We'll risk it. To the press.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' They're saying, you smell that?<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' Yeah, that's another good one you don't want to say. What's that smell? Yeah, things like that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' What's that noise?<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' What's that noise? I've never heard that before.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Whoa, that sounds bad.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' How do I turn that off?<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' Anything new.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Is it supposed to do that?<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' Exactly. Anything new that happens-<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Can you turn those alarms off, please? Ever been struck by lightning while in flight?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Hold that thought. Hold that thought.<br />
<br />
== COVID-19 Update <small>(6:36)</small> == <br />
<br />
'''S:''' We're going to move on to some COVID updates. And I do want to say before I do that, today is July 28th, so my birthday is tomorrow, July 29th.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Happy birthday.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Happy day before your birthday.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Her birthday is the day before mine.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Julia!<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Happy birthday, Julia. I know she listens to the show. She wants to say happy birthday.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, Julia.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, so a couple of COVID items I wanted to point out.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Okay.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Here we go.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Both things that I get a ton of questions about, and there were some news items today that were relevant, so I thought I would cover them. One is about ivermectin. You guys remember what that is?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yes.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' A drug that many people claim is effective at treating COVID-19, so an antiviral drug that treats COVID-19. And there is a bit of a controversy about how well it works. There's a controversy because the data is preliminary. If it were ironclad, there'd still be a controversy because it's COVID and people are dumb, right? But it would be less of one. So there was a systematic review published recently where they go over all of the published data to date. This was 14 studies with 1,678 participants, so that's the total amount of data that they had to work with. And they concluded that, well, I'll read you the author's conclusions. This is sort of the executive summary of all the data. Based on the current very low to low certainty evidence, we are uncertain about the efficacy and safety of ivermectin to treat or prevent COVID-19. The completed studies are small and few are considered high quality. Several studies are underway that may produce clearer answers and review updates. So they're basically saying there's not enough evidence to say either way. But keep in mind what that also means is that if there were a big signal, we would be seeing it and there isn't a big signal. It's hard to rule out a small signal. So usually preliminary data tends to be more positive. There's a bias towards the positive. So if in the preliminary data, they're not even saying it's encouraging or there's a potential signal. Yeah, there's not really much there with the studies we have. Most are negative. There's one big positive study that was really lit a fire under the claims for ivermectin and that was retracted as fraudulent. It was a fake study. So you now have to factor that out of any previous reviews about ivermectin. This is the most up to date one and it accounts for that one fraudulent study. This really is a fairly negative review, but it's based upon preliminary evidence. So there is room for more definitive studies. But again, it probably isn't a big effect there because if there were a big effect, we probably would be seeing it even in the preliminary data.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So Steve, how does that work? You know how the New York Times writes an article and then they correct it later in the day saying, we accidentally named the source as Dr. So-and-so, but really it's Mrs. So-and-so or something like that. But we don't do that with journal articles.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, they just retract them completely.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But I'm saying like, let's say a meta-analysis includes a study that later was found fraudulent. Wouldn't it be great if the authors of that meta-analysis could just update their study and sort of like make a note at the bottom so that now when people search for it, it's still the same DOI number. It's just an updated version.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Usually editors will do that. Like they'll publish an editor's note that includes a study which has now been retracted or whatever.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right. Because that seems like a really unfortunate aspect of the scientific publishing world, that there's always outdated information.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. But no, they do publish corrections though.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Okay.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And that could be even just once it goes through the meat grinder of open-ended peer, not the pre-publication peer review. But the community now has to tear it apart. If they go, oh, you really screwed up here, and you know, if like the, basically if the journal gets embarrassed because they missed something or they really didn't do a good job editorially, they'll correct it post-production in response to the feedback from the community, which is appropriate.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right. It's just such a hard thing when like, like you said, a published journal article passes peer review. Everybody thinks it's legitimate. They cited a bunch of times. They actually utilize it as part of their own analysis. And then later it's uncovered that it's fraudulent. So everything it touched is now tainted.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Oh, yeah. And these retracted articles continue to be cited even after they're retracted.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Which is bananas. I understand if they were cited prior to that point.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, it's just lazy. It's because people are not going back to the primary source. They're citing something that's citing the article just perpetually, we really should never do that, you know. And hopefully a reviewer should pick that up. These are all things that should happen, but yeah, whatever. It's tough. It's why it takes months to get a paper through peer review because there's so many details to go over. And you know, and having published what I have and written thousands of blog posts and et cetera. You write anything of any length, no matter how careful you are, there's going to be errors. There's going to be mistakes. There's no way you can, you can weed them all out.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I'm reading the news today and the CDC changed the mask recommendations like, circumstantial, right?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So what's the confusion? Why are people like what is this? It's like, yeah, they changed it because the circumstances changed. So do you understand why there's general confusion about the CDC's change in recommendation?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It depends on where it is, right? Like the new CDC guidance is that in hotspot areas, vaccinated people should wear a mask indoors. I think the concern is like, why didn't they just say everywhere? Why not say everywhere?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I know it's tough because there's an intention to treat kind of approach to it, but it's complicated. So in other words, if you leave people wiggle room, there's the perception that maybe they'll be more receptive. And if you if you are draconian, then you'll get more backlash. But if you make it more too complicated, then they'll be confused. And so it's no one really knows what the perfect way to put it is. But that's the thinking that goes behind it. But I was just interviewed on the radio yesterday about this, and they asked that question. It's like, oh the experts are changing their mind when we don't know what to believe. Like, listen, this is a rapidly evolving pandemic, right? The facts are actually changing. This is literally a new variant of the virus. It's a different virus that's circulating now.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Right. That's how it should be.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. The recommendations have to keep being updated in order to track facts on the ground. And we have to just accept that that the CDC is going to tell us one thing today and then something else a month from now, because it's going to be a different situation.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' And also, this is actually based on actual new facts like they actually discovered that people with the beta variant are have like a thousand times the load of a virus in their mucosal tracts or whatever.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Delta variant.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah. What did I say?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You said beta.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, boy. The Delta variant. I mean, it's like a new fact. They found that there's a thousand times the virus that there was in the second variant in a second. And because of that it's going to spread a lot worse. And so even if you get it, so even if you're even if you're vaccinated and you don't have a mask, there's a greater chance that you're going to catch it because there's a thousand fold increase. And you might not even get sick, but you can still potentially spread it even if you're vaccinated. So it's just safer and better to put to have a mask on if you're in a yellow or a red zone. And that makes sense to me, too, because that's where you're going to get the most bang for the buck. It's not it's not nearly as as as required in a regular in a place where it's it's good where the vaccine rates are decent.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And Cara, you're also right, though, that we can have like the most evidence based tweaked out recommendations. But if they're too complicated, people will throw up their hands in confusion. And so sometimes you may need to just gloss over some of the complexity just to make the recommendations a little bit more simple. But it's no one knows what the perfect answer is. It's difficult when you're dealing with public messaging like that.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' In some states and some municipalities are like, we're going to say we're going to be more extreme than what the federal government says that like California and then other states and municipalities it's like, we're not going to do any of this until we're forced to. And I think that's where the confusion comes in, too. The federal guidance is not always in line with the local guidance.<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' Something I recently read on the pilot forums. Now, I'm not an airline pilot, but I have a lot of friends who fly airlines, as you can imagine when an airline pilot flies next to somebody they may have never met, even though they've been in the airline for a decade and they sit there and everybody cycles into the plane and maybe they'll look in the cockpit and maybe they'll see if the pilot's wearing a mask or not. And what they've talked about is that if they're not wearing a mask, they are being assumed to have vaccinated. But if they are wearing a mask, people are assuming the opposite. People have heard them mutter under their breath things like, oh, I have a MAGA pilot.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, I think I mentioned on the show a few weeks ago that I went into a bakery and it was in the in-between when you couldn't when you were allowed to not wear a mask.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' In the in-between, is that like the upside down?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, the in-between times. And I was wearing my mask. Everybody there was wearing their mask. A woman walked in. She said, do I need to do I should I take it out of my bag? And they were like, if you're vaccinated, it's fine if you're not blah, blah, blah. She was like, well, I am, but I didn't want to send the wrong message. And I literally had that moment, that thought. And I kind of turned to the guy who was working the register and I was like, oh, I was just wearing mine so that people don't think I'm an anti-masker. And he's like, oh, same.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We're clearly in a gray zone kind of transition period. And the bottom line is get vaccinated. Wear a mask. Suck it up until this is over. OK, we want this to be over. All right. One more quick news item.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' OK, so the question is, is it OK to mix and match COVID vaccines? What happens to the question?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's a big question.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Big question. So there was a study. And the study looked at it compared. This is now in Europe. They compared, getting one dose of AstraZeneca and another dose of the Pfizer BioNTech vaccine, versus getting just the AstraZeneca or just the Pfizer. So how do you think that shook out?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's so hard. It's different. I don't know.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I think it works. I think it's fine to mix and match. That's my guess.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I hope it's my guess, too.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Maybe I guess it's a little bit better to mix and match.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Really?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Bob is correct. It's a little bit better to mix. So the BioNTech, the Pfizer BioNTech vaccine did better overall than AstraZeneca, the Oxford AstraZeneca one. And if you took one of each, it was slightly better than if you got two of the Pfizer.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Even though it's not just that mixing was better than just getting AstraZeneca, mixing was better than just getting Pfizer?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' A little bit, but only by a little bit.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Interesting.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Sounds kind of negligible, but interesting.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, that is interesting. I would get why it would be better because if it had a higher efficacy, then yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Now, however, this was a measuring antibodies and T cells, not risk of infection. So this is remember we talked, I think, a couple of weeks ago about different ways. Yeah, so looking at markers, not risk of infection, they said they're all fine. They're all protective. It's all good. But we were just looking at antibodies just to see if there was like any reason for concern, if anything, mixing is not only fine, if anything, it might be slightly better because maybe just getting different stimulation of different antigens and the overall stimulation to the immune system was a little bit more robust. So mixing and matching is based on this one study of these particular vaccines appears to be fine.<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' Steve, I have a question for you, Steve, regarding this. So just tonight, my son and I look forward to watching baseball games all the time, and they just canceled the Nationals Phillies game due to COVID. So right before we started here, my son came up to me and told me it was because 12 national players and management team have been tested positive, 11 of them were vaccinated. And he said that he said that those 11 were Johnson and Johnson. Now, this is this is from my 15 year old son. So I haven't had a chance to peer review this journal. But he's pretty smart on Facebook. My question, then, related to what you just brought up, Steve, is say someone does get the Johnson and Johnson, they read some of this anecdotal evidence and they get nervous. Can they go out and get themselves some Pfizer or Moderna?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, I was like 85 versus 90 to 95. It's still very, very effective. It's not quite as effective as the mRNA vaccines. I haven't seen any published studies looking at crossing over, getting a booster from the from the Johnson and Johnson. And then they're basically the other thing is you have to remember they were sort of discouraging that mainly because they think everyone wants needs to get a first dose before we talk about people getting boosters or second doses or insurance doses or whatever.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right. But J&J was a single shot.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's a single shot. But they're basically saying, don't worry about that until we get everybody vaccinated. Was kind of the standard answer. And I think I think we're going to be getting our boosters at a year. I think that's going to happen.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I think you're right. I think we're all going to be getting boosters. And when you look at the hospital data, again, over and over and over 90, some extreme number percent of people in hospitals across the country were not vaccinated or only had a single shot.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And the single shot definitely is not adequate. Like you do not get for the ones that require two shots. A single shot is not does not do it does not cut it. All right. Let's move on to some news items.<br />
<br />
== News Items ==<br />
<br />
=== Folding Proteins <small>(20:27)</small> ===<br />
* [https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02025-4 DeepMind’s AI predicts structures for a vast trove of proteins]<ref>[https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02025-4 nature: DeepMind’s AI predicts structures for a vast trove of proteins]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' Bob, you're going to start with an update on folding proteins.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yes.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I thought you were going to say folding laundry.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I don't do it.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, I wouldn't cover that unless maybe it was metamaterial laundry. So yes, DeepMind and European Bioinformatics Institute released a treasure trove of 350,000 predicted protein structures created by their deep learning AI Alpha Fold 2. Now, you may remember Alpha Fold 2. I talked about it in episode 804. Check it out. Fascinating stuff. Last December, it won the Olympics of protein folding, showing that it could predict how hundreds or thousands of linked amino acids would fold into complex proteins far, far better than any other predictive system at that time. So knowing the specific shape of a protein is critical, right? Because that 3D shape actually determines how that protein will function. And proteins are, by the way, proteins are the shit they make. They make up and make happen most of the important life stuff, in quotes, life stuff that happens in biology. That's, of course, all over the earth. Proteins are they really are the queens of biology. They catalyse far and away most of the chemical reactions in the cell. They could be so many different things. They could be structural. They could be protective. They could be used as transport or storage. Their membranes, their enzymes, their toxins. I mean, just look at the cell's resume. Most of what they have written down, proteins, proteins, proteins. That's kind of like what they do. So proteins are kind of important in biology. And intimately knowing what those those proteins are and especially the ones that humans create, particularly, is obviously that's a that's a holy grail of biology. So this almanac of all the proteins for humans is called the proteome. And it was the biggest ineluctable goal once the genome was mapped in 2003, because once we mapped our genome, a lot of these scientists were saying, all right, now that we got this, we've got to go after the proteome. And of course, it's been that's been a goal for years. But you really kind of need the genome first before you're really going to start mapping creating the proteome. And but only until now do we really kind of have the tools to do this. Because remember that just because we know the genome, that doesn't mean that we know the shape of the proteins that it codes for. It's not encoded in DNA. It's not in there. It's just way too hard to predict how amino acids would fold in on themselves to form a protein. Incredibly complicated. Some amino acids are hydrophobic, some are hydrophilic, some are charged, some are uncharged. I mean, trying to suss that out for a protein comprised of hundreds and thousands of amino acids, not going to happen in any way that we could come up with in like an algorithmic way until really the alpha fold two. Now, we've had other methods to actually get a fairly definitive look at the 3D shape of proteins, but they were expensive. They were time consuming. Like, for example, you may have heard of X-ray crystallography or cryo electron microscopy. Those are two methods. They're great. They will really get you a look at what the 3D shape of that protein is. But that takes too much time, too much money, way too slow. But that's really the gold standard for years. But really no longer. It's not necessarily the gold standard anymore. All right. So how does AlphaFold do this? It uses two methods primarily. It uses training data that was taken from all that hard one information from the crystallography data. We have all those images, all those all those those that hard one data from X-ray crystallography. And using that, you could use that as training data. So basically saying that look at this amino acid sequence. This is exactly what the protein looks like. So that is training it. And then the second way that it does this, that it uses actually the knowledge that we have about how related proteins fold. Because if you're a related protein, you're going to generally fold similarly to the your cousin protein down down the road. So all that information was kind of thrown into AlphaFold as well. And those are the two the two main ways that it that it's really doing all this. Now, this latest news is the result of unleashing AlphaFold 2 on the human genome, the human genome and the genomes of important model organisms like E. coli, fruit flies and even meatballs. Right, Jay?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Don't even.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' OK. I won't go there.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Even? Don't even.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' So last week, as I said, they released a database of three hundred and fifty thousand three dimensional protein structures. Now, let's look at the subset of those that are just the human proteins. Many researchers put that the human proteome at twenty thousand proteins. But that's kind of a guess, I think, Steve, right? That's not exactly that firm. I've come across numbers that were smaller and even far bigger. But kind of the big number you'll hit when looking up the human proteome is about twenty thousand proteins. And that's probably close enough, I guess. <br />
<br />
'''S:''' Twenty thousand is always this is the estimate I always see now.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, yeah. OK. So so the database that was released covered only about ninety eight point five percent of them. So almost all of the twenty thousand. And that's mainly because they had to they had a limit. They said, all right, no proteins that are beyond, say, twenty three hundred amino acids. They cut it off there because it gets kind of crazy once you get the really huge proteins and they're much harder to predict. So ninety eight point five percent. Pretty close. So we had previously laboriously identified 17 percent of the human amino acids, so-called residues in our proteome. We spent decades, decades using those gold standard methods I mentioned. Seventeen percent. So now this new database brings that number up to fifty eight percent, almost sixty eight percent at a confident level. It's just confident. They are very confident. And of that fifty eight, thirty six percent are highly confident. So they're very highly confident over of thirty six percent of it. Now, think about that. I mean, from 17 to 36 or to 58 percent, that's a staggering increase. There's nothing incremental about that. And what what that is, if you really think about it, that's essentially decades worth of research done in months or weeks. I mean, probably be a lot quicker than that for the program to to run. Can you mean we're actually doing this where we're doing decades worth of research in a day or so. Now, Alpha Fold is obviously it's not perfect. There are things that it can't do. There are some proteins that do not have a defined structure. I mean, that actually is what they do. They're not defined at all that there. If they have any structure, their structure is to be flexible. So Alpha Fold is not designed to really deal with that. There are some proteins that will not take on a specific structure until they are like physically touching another protein. So Alpha Fold is definitely not designed to deal with that. The data is just not there to handle that as well. So it's not going to you know, it can't do all proteins. Not at all, but it can do a lot of them and it can do some of them incredibly, incredibly well. One thing about this release that I really loved is that DeepMind is making their data set publicly available on a site hosted by a European Bioinformatics Institute. I checked it out today. You can go there right now. [https://alphafold.ebi.ac.uk/ AlphaFold.ebi/ac/uk]. Go there right now. I poked around and under a minute I was looking at the predicted shape of cell division protein FTSP for E. Coli. BAM. I just like it offered it as E. Coli as an example. And I drilled down a little bit and I was looking at a protein and the confidence level for most of the shape of that protein was above the 90th percentile, above 90th, which is essentially what the X-ray crystallography gets you after months of work and a ton of money. And they got it probably between breakfast and lunch. Amazing, amazing. This is going to be an amazing tool. Now, over the course of the rest of this year, DeepMind plans to target every last gene sequence and DNA databases, like probably all the major databases all over the world. They're just going to hit all of those gene sequences and feed them in to Alpha Fold 2. Their goal is to increase their database of predicted structures from 350,000 to 100 million proteins, 100 million or more. Researchers say we think this is the most significant contribution AI has made to science to date. That is a hell of a quote right there. So what does that mean? And so what's this going to mean to me? So now having the proteome and we don't have the proteome yet, but we've made big strides, it seems, and we're going to make even bigger strides in the very near future. It's definitely going to make some big changes to the practice of medicine, obviously, designing drugs, understanding diseases. Computational biologist Mohammed Al Quraishi describes having the availability of so many protein structures as a paradigm shift in biology. Steve, you mentioned in your blog that we'll be able to move more quickly from research on people and animals to computers, right? From in vivo and in vitro to in silico, right?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The more data we have, the better we'll be able to model things. So you're still going to for anything medical, you're going to need that final piece of testing it in actual people. The goal is by the time you get to that point, you've maximized safety and you maximize the probability of it working. And the more information we have, the better. So this this will speed up clinical research because it'll get us to that final human stage with much greater confidence.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah. But of course like the Genome Project, when that remember when that came out in 2003, I distinctly remember it. A lot of changes now will be behind the scenes. You're not going to you're not going to go to your doctor and talking about this really. It's not going to trickle down to you for a while. It could take years for that to happen. This kind of stuff takes time. But behind the scenes, there's going to be a lot of stuff going on. And but of course, not everyone is doing a happy dance, apparently. I found David David Jones, David Jones, as a UCL computational biologist, he thinks he believes that many of Alphafold's predictive structures could have been created with earlier software developed by academics. He said, for most proteins, those results are are probably good enough for quite a lot of things that you want to do. So, OK. So to sum it up, I'll end with a quote from Alphabet and Google CEO Sundar Pichai, who said recently, the Alphafold database shows the potential for AI to profoundly accelerate scientific progress. Not only has DeepMind's machine learning system greatly expanded our accumulated knowledge of protein structures and the human proteome overnight, its deep insights into the building blocks of life hold an extraordinary promise for the future of scientific discovery. And I'll finally end with with my big takeaway. My big takeaway from this is that I think this is starting to give us a glimpse of the potential of narrow AI. I mean, if you already hadn't having gotten that glimpse already, it's it's an amazing tool. It's you know, and this we're just scratching the surface. We're just getting started. And it's going to continue and continue and continue to improve and change our lives. And I mean, I'm just trying to think, can you imagine in 20 to 30 years, what narrow AI and beyond will be giving us? It's going to I mean, it's going to be amazing. I mean, clearly some crazy stuff's coming down the road.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I agree. And I'm usually not nearly as much as a techno optimist as you, Bob. But I think that it's you can't oversell, I think, like the promise of narrow AI, the way it's been taking off in the last five years or so with deep learning and neural networks and everything. Think about this. This is jet fuel to biological and medical research. We're going to be feeling the effects of this for decades and it's only going to get better. So yeah, it really is allowing us to do decades of research in months in some areas.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' And yeah, even though it could take some years before we really start seeing the payoff, your kids and your grandkids, they are going to be seeing the results of this. They'll be thinking of this of this date and maybe they'll even remember this talk. I remember when Bob talked about that.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Wouldn't that be nice?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' He first brought it up in episode 804.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's 838. All right. That's the episode we're on today.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Thank you.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You're welcome.<br />
<br />
=== Magnet Therapy for Cancer <small>(32:46)</small> ===<br />
* [https://theness.com/neurologicablog/treating-brain-cancer-with-magnets/ Treating Brain Cancer with Magnets]<ref>[https://theness.com/neurologicablog/treating-brain-cancer-with-magnets/ Neurologica: Treating Brain Cancer with Magnets]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' What if I told you guys, what would your first reaction be of a study that claims, to treat brain cancer with magnets?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Brain cancer?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Sounds like it's from an article a hundred years ago.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' But we're using magnets on the brain. I would imagine that it's probably derivative of that.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah. But for cancer treatment?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, but how do you how do you shrink a tumor with a magnet?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. So-<br />
<br />
'''J:''' You hit it with magnetism.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So wait, but what if you're using the magnets to guide the drugs?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, is that how? Oh, like an etch a sketch kind of thing?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' This is just from the directly from the magnetic field itself.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, that's cool. I mean, I would say I'm skeptical, but tell me more.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, it's kind of you guys are reflecting kind of the dichotomy here. So magnets are real. It's like it's not like their magnets themselves are made up and they affect the body because our biological organisms are electromagnetic and magnetic resonance imaging, MRI scans or use magnets to make the best images we can of of biology. And we're using transcranial magnetic stimulation to change brain function. And so, yeah magnets are a powerful, real biological force.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But that's all like physiology, there's something interesting about the idea of like there being a tumor in the brain.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, yeah. So this definitely is like a new level. And of course, my initial reaction was skeptical as well, because the flip side of that coin is for the last 200 years, basically, since there's been a science of magnetism and magnets, there has been magnetic quackery and it's still flourishing. And so the question is always when you want to hear any claim being put forward for magnets, is this real or is this magnetic quackery? Is this nonsense? And sometimes there's things in the middle where you have legitimate researchers who think they've hit upon something, but they're just getting kind of lost in the sexiness of using magnetic fields to affect the body. I've seen that happen as well. So I took a deep look at this at this one and my overall sense is that this is legitimate, but preliminary. If I had to encapsulate the executive summary there. First of all, the brain cancer that they're treating here is glioblastoma multiforme, which is the most GPM. It's the most common. It's also the nastiest. It's bad. It's the hardest to treat. Survival times are still like 12 to 18 months on average. And yeah, and like our treatments, they've made a little bit of a difference, but not much.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And they can be kind of brutal, too.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. Oh, yeah. It's hard because it's brain cancer. It's a very invasive cancer. It sends out like the tendrils into the brain tissue. That's why it's impossible to cure. It's not like encapsulated or anything. And by the time you detect it, it's like too late. It's already insinuated itself in the brain. And of course, our ability to use aggressive treatment, whether surgical or radiation or whatever, is limited because it's the brain that you're talking about. At some point, you're like you could take out lobes of the lung and try to manage people that way. But you can't do that to the brain without causing significant neurological impairment. So it's bad. It's very, very bad.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' But wait, we only use 10 percent of our brains. So can't you just cut off the other 90 percent?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And delete it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And that's not just to make sure everyone listening knows that's absolutely not true. That's myth. Bob said that in jest.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It's 12 percent.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Bob was supposed to say, what is it? Sarcasm symbol.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, the sarcasm. All right. So this is how the thing I was most interested in when I heard this is what's the apparent mechanism here? Because it's not obvious. And I did not think of it. Wasn't even among the things that I would consider. So this is how it allegedly works. And this is based upon some in vitro data. So there's some preliminary data. And this is what led to this study. And that is that the if you have an intense enough magnetic field for a long enough period of time, it can affect the function of mitochondria in such a way that it causes them to spew out a lot of oxygen free radicals. Now, if you have a very metabolically active tissue like cancer, it might cause them to put out so many oxygen free radicals that it triggers cell death. Apoptosis.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Apoptosis.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. So that's the idea.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But it would never be like all of it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, probably not.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But yeah, I just don't see how this is. I mean, but it could definitely maybe tamp it down, slow its progression.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, you want to hear what the results were? So first of all, this was a case report. This is a case report of one person. This is one person. So this is just a proof of concept. We just want to make sure it's not going to make the person drop dead so that we could actually study it in people. So this was somebody who has glioblastoma, GBM, or I should say had he passed away during the study. But he had GBM and had failed all treatment and there was nothing left they can do for him. So it was like nothing left to lose. Let's try this experimental treatment sort of thing. So he had to wear it. It's interesting because you wear a helmet with these three magnets on them and it looks like a beer drinking hat. You know what those look like?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, no.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Exactly like that. Like, yeah, like almost with the exact same dimensions as like a beer can. There's sort of like a little fat. So there's like these two little fat beer cans on either side, like at both temples. And then there's a third one on the top of the head. So there's these three can magnets, which are very powerful. And he had to wear them for several hours a day, like with five minutes between each hour for five days a week. And they tracked the size of the tumor while he was doing this. And the tumor actually shrunk. You know, it shrunk by by 1.03 centimetres per day, cubic centimetres per day.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It might have been an enormous tumor.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. So overall, overall, it shrunk by 31 percent during the course of the treatment. Thirty one percent.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Random question, Steve. How sure are we that this wasn't just the cumulative effect of all the other treatments this guy had taken?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, because there's we don't know for sure because it's one person. But there's a couple of good reasons to suspect that it isn't.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That it was the magnets.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' One is at one point he had to take a break from wearing the magnets and the tumor started to get bigger. And then they reinstated the magnets and they got smaller. And then when he did it for longer, it got smaller, faster. So there was an apparent dose response and there was there was good correlation to actually because they were again, they were following him during the course of several months. It wasn't just like at the beginning and the end.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, that's a good.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's pretty good. That's pretty good. That's pretty strong.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Wear them all the time.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Interesting. OK.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Unfortunately, the guy had you mean he had a brain tumor, he's neurologically impaired. At some point during the study, he fell, had a closed head injury and ultimately died from the injury.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, my gosh.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Not from the tumor and not from the treatment, but from falling and hitting his head.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Which is related, probably.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, probably secondarily related, probably because I said he's impaired because he's got a brain tumor. The family did allow for an autopsy. So this allowed the researchers to do a pathological examination of the brain, and they were able to document the tumor shrinkage that way. You know, it's a case report of one person. So that's a hugely preliminary. It has to be replicated. We need statistics. You know, we need to do real controls here. It's encouraging enough to do more research. I don't want to, like, oversell the implication of a single study with one person. But as a proof of concept to justify later research, it's pretty solid. And it's interesting. It's interesting, I never would have thought about that, that effect. But again, one of the main ways that we treat cancer is to put cells that are the most metabolically active under some stress, because cancer cells are probably the most metabolically active cells.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That's why you lose your hair, right?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But that's why you lose your hair and you have other effects, because the other metabolically active cells will tend to be affected as well.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, it's why chemo is severely toxic. It's not just hair loss.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It is literally a toxin just killing cells is hoping to kill the tumor cells more than the healthy cells.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And that's why a lot of a lot of chemotherapies, you have to like get your levels of your liver enzymes checked. You have to get heart tests and yeah, just make sure your organs are OK.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So the other thing is that this was looking at tumor size, which, again, is a very important marker, but it didn't look at survival because it couldn't because he died in the middle of it. And there's only anecdotal evidence about quality of life. You know, his caregiver said he was getting a little bit decreased effects of the tumor. But so what later studies will need to look at is does it actually increase survival and does it and or does it increase quality of life duration and quality of life? That's what it's all about. And so it's probably not going to be a cure, probably not going to be a cure. But if it does help whack back the tumor and extend survival even a little bit, it's something because again, it's such a horrible diagnosis. I did want just to remind you guys of the CRISPR study from a few months ago.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, that was incredibly encouraging.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That was in mice. It was not in humans. Right. But that was also with GBM. So who knows, maybe in four or five years might have in the clinic, some combination of CRISPR and this magnetic therapy that might start moving the needle on GBM would be really, really nice.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. And the truth is, human trials would probably be relatively easy to get approval for considering that it's not invasive.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's all risk versus benefit. Right.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And the standard of care for glioblastoma is still it's they're low survival. I mean, it's a very low survival. So even the best we have right now is not great.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, exactly.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So being able to have a clinical trial like this would be helpful.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And this could be completely adjunctive therapy to whatever else is standard of care. So it's very easy.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, I don't see any reason why this would be at least from a face validity perspective, why this would in any way like gum up chemo or radiation.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Right. Right. Right. But again, I just have to my huge word of caution here is we've been here before with GBM, with treatments like, oh, this keeps blood vessels from growing. This is going to be fantastic. And it does like very little to nothing. So we just got to be very cautious because everything that's looked encouraging previously for GBM has just not had that much of an effect. But we got to keep playing, buying those lottery tickets, right? We just got to keep trying. And this is one of the more encouraging things to come down for a while. So we'll see how it works out.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I mean, have we ever seen a 30 percent decrease like that?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Probably. I mean, that's the thing. You've got to remember, this is one dude. Probably plenty of people have seen 30 percent decrease when they took chemo.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. Or radiation therapy.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Or radiation, like stuff we already have.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. Yeah. The problem is that even when it looks good with markers and everything, it just doesn't seem to extend survival. That's the key.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. And also a 30 percent decrease means nothing if it's just going to come roaring back the minute you can no longer tolerate the treatment because it's too toxic. And that's a huge problem. It's like you can only stave these things off for so much. And the minute that you're not in treatment anymore, it comes raring back.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' So I mean, I could wear that helmet all day.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, but we can't we can't assume it's benign. It's doing something. If you're killing cancer cells, it's doing something.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, it might cause long term cognitive impairment or I mean, there's no reason to think it wouldn't. It's just not relevant if survival solo.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Steve, Steve, are the doctors worried, though, that somebody might end up with superpowers?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' No, they're very worried. It's why they haven't said anything about it yet.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' OK, just curious.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Take their silence as panic.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Do you have a sticky note on your laptop that says to ask that every time we do a CRISPR or magnetic?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I'm just checking because this is where these superpowers come from. If you if you read comic book historical research, that's where all these wacky stuff is coming from.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's right.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' The peer reviewed comic book literature tells me this.<br />
<br />
=== Galileo Project <small>(45:29)</small> ===<br />
* [https://www.space.com/galileo-project-search-for-extraterrestrial-artifacts-announcement 'Galileo Project' will search for evidence of extraterrestrial life from the technology it leaves behind]<ref>[https://www.space.com/galileo-project-search-for-extraterrestrial-artifacts-announcement Space.com: 'Galileo Project' will search for evidence of extraterrestrial life from the technology it leaves behind]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, Jay, since you're so keen on trying me in here, tell us about the Galileo project.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, I want to start off by saying before we get into this news item that right now, I don't know where the researchers really lie on the science versus pseudoscience spectrum. I'm hoping they're way more on the science side of things. But there is a little bit of question about it. So do your own research. I'm just going to tell you about what took place this week. So the concept here is imagine if we could find an alien artifact for real and how cool that would be. You know, I'm talking about something that was built by an alien culture. You know, what impact would that have on today's society? That's for philosophers and Cara to figure out. But astrophysicist Avi Loeb from Harvard University and Frank Lockean, CEO of Brooker Corporation, they're both co-founders of this new initiative called the Galileo project. And the goal of the project is to search for and hopefully find extraterrestrial technological civilizations or ETCs. So on Monday, the 26th of July, the team announced, and this is in quotes, Given the recently discovered abundance of Earth, Sun, systems, the Galileo project is dedicated to the proposition that humans can no longer ignore the possible existence of extraterrestrial technological civilizations. So that's a mouthful, right?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' OK, ignore the existence.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Have you been ignoring?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Have there been any evidence?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, I know, Bob. Right. There's there's a lot of question marks.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' They're missing the word potential or possible.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Exactly. Well, I'll get into it a little bit later where what I was able to read today, what I found out. But let me just go through what the Galileo project is, because on the surface, it's not a complete waste of time. The team will look for techno signatures. Have you ever heard of a techno signature?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yes.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, we talked about it on the show.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Right. OK, so just to remind people, there are physical objects, right? Maybe it's an alien species that built something that we can see, right? It could be an alien technological equipment of some kind. Like, Bob, you always talk about Dyson spheres, right? Like a Dyson swarm, like encasing a sun in a material that will collect the energy of that sun.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Right. And it would radiate infrared and you could detect the infrared. Sure.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Right. So there might be who knows, right? You know, come on.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' The universe is huge. There might be some artifact out there.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' The problem is detecting it.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Exactly. So the project has three research goals. The first one is to obtain high resolution images of unidentified aerial phenomena. This is a new way of saying UFO. It's UAP.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Really? They're going they're going local with this. Ugh.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Through multi detector sensors to discover their nature. Search and conduct in depth research on interstellar objects. That part is great. Search for potential ETC satellites in Earth's orbit. Not so great.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' In Earth's orbit?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yes.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Wow. No, this is pseudoscience.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' But this is Avi. This is Avi.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I think it's mixed. I think it's mixed.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Not from what I'm hearing so far. I mean, you're going to look for extraterrestrial technology in the atmosphere, in orbit around the Earth or in the solar system. Steve this is the ʻOumuamua guy.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I know.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' So, I mean, what do you hear? What are you hearing that that looks that sounds encouraging to you?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So the team is not investigating previous claims of alien visitation or UAPs. This is good news, by the way, right? Because there's all this crap in the news for the past several months about UFOs, whatnot. They want to look for and research physical objects like ʻOumuamua. And no matter what oddities they do find, this is what they say. They want to discover the origin, if possible. It could be an atmospheric phenomenon. This is what they're saying, that it could be an atmospheric phenomenon or a similarly mundane explanation. Or it could be something much more compelling, like an actual alien artifact. Either way, the team is going to use a science-based methodology to draw conclusions. That's basically what they're saying. Now, of course, what they actually do with the information that they find is a completely different thing. And that's going to happen behind closed doors, which we won't know. So in the past two weeks, the team has received one point seven five million dollars in donations. They're currently selecting the scientific instruments that they need to get started. And they plan to set up multiple telescopes and or they're calling it telescope systems globally. So each telescope system is going to have two 25 centimeter telescopes and, of course, a digital camera. And they'll use software to search through all the collected data that they end up with. Then they'll find an object of interest and then they'll do a deeper dive on it and get the highest resolution that they can off of that. They also plan to analyse data collected from other survey telescopes, like the 8-meter Verisi-Rubin Observatory that's currently under construction in Chile. Okay, that's cool. They should use these bigger telescopes as well. Now, just for some context here. Many fields of science look for signs of life outside our Earth. Legit like planetary scientists, astrobiologists, exoplanet astronomers, and, of course, SETI. Hello, right? They they're they're looking for evidence. And we don't like turn a crooked eye to SETI because we know that they're science based. The question always is how legitimate is the science? And the problem here is that pseudoscience has a strong presence when it comes to proof of aliens. It always has. Some scientists are conducting legitimate research and others aren't. So time will tell how legitimate this new endeavour is. But I found something very interesting. So Carl Sagan's book, Contact, was very loosely based on a scientist named Jill Tarter. And she recently went head to head with Ali, the guy-<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Avi.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Avi Loeb, right? She went head to head with him, basically saying, like cut the pseudoscience, right? You need to read it. There's there's there's an exchange that they had. It was it's interesting. But the point here is that other scientists are turning an eye and saying how legitimate is this? That's the main question here. And I think it's a good thing for people to discuss because money is being spent and they're making claims and they're going to what if they do find something? You know, this team actually believed that that object that came through, ʻOumuamua, they really believe that it was an alien technology. And there is no evidence of that whatsoever. So I feel like they're being very, very optimistic, like in the face of true science, they're being way too optimistic. So that puts a big skeptical red flag in the sky for me when I hear that kind of sentiment towards an object that happened to pass by the earth. You know, now that he wrote a book and now he's out collecting money. So the only thing we could do is sit back and watch what they do and see if anything comes out of it. I mean, if they do legit science, the sad fact is they're probably going to find absolutely nothing.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, I agree. I mean, I obviously have no problem with people in doing scientific investigation to things like this. I have no problem with SETI. I think SETI is great. As long as they keep the quality of the science high and they don't overstate any claims or they're not trying to prove that this is true. They're just they're trying to really answer the question. Like, is there any evidence for technosignatures out there? Then that's fine. I have no problem with it. And I agree. It's like probably come up with nothing. But it's also possible that somewhere in our galaxy there is a Dyson swarm. You know, it's possible. And if they find that great.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Well, the question for me is the the implication I got earlier, Jay, was that they were looking primarily local, earth's atmosphere, earth orbit, and our solar system. And so if they're looking just there, I think okay, look, but I think that's a waste – kind of a waste of time because it's basically looking for UFOs. There's just no evidence that extraterrestrials visited our solar system, our planet. And I think if you're going to spend millions to look locally, I think that's a massive waste of time. If you're going to do good science, that's great. But I would rather you look outward, you know? Look out into the galaxy and into the universe for technosignatures of like Kardashev civilizations type 2, type 3, the kind of civilizations that can make an impact on their local environment to such a degree that we could detect it thousands or millions of light years away. That's great because I think that's probably going to be the only way we're going to find alien evidence is some technosignature or a signal that we could detect. That's how it's probably going to be detected. And we got to look. And we actually did look. We did a big survey. We did a big survey, I remember a few years ago, looking for a specific infrared signature that you would get from a Dyson swarm. And they didn't find anything. And that was very disappointing because it was a solid, it was a solid task. It was a solid mission that they were doing. They really, it was a pretty wide survey. And so that was very disappointing. But that's the kind of stuff I think you're going to need to do to find a technosignature. So I hope they look more non-local than what they, sounds like they're doing.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' But if we do hear a signal from outer space that it goes bang, bang, bang. If we hear that, we know, we know it's legit. That's what aliens sound like.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' And only like that.<br />
<br />
=== Wing Colour and Flight Efficiency <small>(54:53)</small> ===<br />
* [https://rs.figshare.com/collections/Supplementary_material_from_The_evolution_of_darker_wings_in_seabirds_in_relation_to_temperature-dependent_flight_efficiency_/5477695 Supplementary material from "The evolution of darker wings in seabirds in relation to temperature-dependent flight efficiency"]<ref>[https://rs.figshare.com/collections/Supplementary_material_from_The_evolution_of_darker_wings_in_seabirds_in_relation_to_temperature-dependent_flight_efficiency_/5477695 The Royal Society Publishing: Supplementary material from "The evolution of darker wings in seabirds in relation to temperature-dependent flight efficiency"]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. Knewt, you're going to tell us about this study looking at wing colour and flight efficiency.<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' Yes. So wing colour and flight efficiency, specifically in birds.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Not airplanes. Okay.<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' Not airplanes. Not yet. Maybe we'll get there as a pilot. I would love to talk about airplanes, so I'll find a way to work that in. But also as a pilot, I've had a lifelong fascination and I would say inherent jealousy of our winged friends. And one thing that we've noticed, not me, but this research that I read, they noticed that all of those large swooping birds across the ocean, they all have one thing in common. That is dark wings. So a group of researchers out of Ghent University, they examined about 324 specimens on record of soaring birds. And what they found was, yeah, dark wings are great for things like camouflage and perhaps mating, hiding. The classic reason that you would think a bird has decorative plumage. But what they got interested in was that if the dark wings, the dark feathers actually helped them fly. And sure enough, the study determined that they did find there was a benefit to having dark wing in the actual mechanics of flight for a bird. What they found specifically was that, well, what they did took, they took wings from a northern gannet. And they propped them up in a wind tunnel after stuffing them with cotton. And they manipulated the colouring of the plumage. Of course, they had white, they had dark, they had white fading into dark. And they ran them through all sorts of positions and different wind speeds and wind directions. And also they simulated various sun intensities using infrared bulbs on these wings. And what was interesting is that, of course, they found out that the darker wings heated up more. But what the researchers found was that when the wings started with the white feathers closer to the body and then branching out to the darker feathers, that there was up to nine degrees temperature change from the lighter to the darker. And this boosted airflow by what you may know of as a convection current. So from colder air to hotter air, just like works in the water. But what they found was that, interesting thing, is that it resulted in a 20% reduction in drag across the wing. And that's significant. And I can tell you as a pilot, that's significant based on, now here we go into aircraft. Back in 1973 with the oil crisis, there was a push by NASA and they worked with Boeing, a bunch of other companies, trying to figure out how they could improve fuel efficiency. And this one guy, he said we should do something about the wingtip vortices at the end of a wing. And what they came up with was the winglet. And you've seen that if you've ever flown Southwest. You look out the wing, you can see the little nub going up at the end of the wing. That's a blended winglet. But what they first tested was just a chunk of metal at the end of a KC-135 wing. And what they determined was that that also reduced drag by 20%. Coincidentally, exact same number. But what that translated into was about five to 7% fuel savings. And that's maybe a little better version of efficiency. Because five to seven translates to dollars when you're talking to airlines. It translates to a lot of dollars. So NASA has said it's in the billions. It's hard to wrap your brain around that number. So I went and grabbed some numbers just to make sure. But Southwest, the number one user of the 737, they've got 746 of those. They say that by adding those winglets, they save 100,000 gallons of gas a year per jet. And that's just a four to six percent. So five percent, let's say, fuel savings. And yeah, absolutely. It reduces the carbon footprint as well. In fact, that two billion gallons of jet fuel worldwide was saved in 2010. Which equated to 21.5 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions. I mean, I buy gas when I'm out on the road and say you get a good rate. Say it's an easy number, five bucks a gallon. If you've got 750 jets at 100,000 gallons a day or a year, five bucks a gallon, you're already over $3.75 billion a year saved. So how do you translate that? So we go from the birds having dark wings, try to put it on an aircraft. If you've ever looked out, you have looked out your window and you see most aircraft are white. I fly business jets. They're all white. In fact, they're just called white jets. So you've got to think there's got to be a reason. We're all about saving money. Everybody wants to be more efficient. Why is it they haven't figured this out yet? That if I painted the wing dark, I could save billions of dollars. So I'll open it up to you guys. Why do you think we paint jets white?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Identification.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' To reflect, so they don't absorb heat energy. I always imagine that that colour made it so they didn't get hot.<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' Absolutely. Where do aircraft keep their fuel?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' In the wings.<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' You don't want to get that hot. And then someone else said identification as well.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yes, you can see other planes.<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' I said that at the beginning. They use dark plumage to be adaptive, to hide. Camouflage. We don't want that. We want birds to see the plane. So painting white, they've proved over time, actually helps the bird avoid the aircraft. And that'll save way more money than a couple of gallons of gas for sure.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' So what we need are black wings with a lot of light.<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' Or maybe, like they talked about, the one that they found was where it's white at the root. And then it sort of gets darker as it extends out. But honestly, we're just-<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Let's just kill all birds.<br />
<br />
[talking over each other]<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Let the cats do that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's kind of in the way of wind turbines. I mean, come on, they're a menace.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Bird strikes.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I got it guys, all they need to do is put deer whistles on the airplanes and we're good to go.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Pig whistles?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Deer whistles.<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' But the likelihood of changing the colour of aircraft, that's pretty slim. However, and you know, you touched on this on the blog just this week with hydrogen fuel cells in aircraft. And of course, you all talked about significantly recently with electronic aircraft and using batteries. So if you're no longer holding your fuel source in the wings, and you have a fuel cell through a battery or through a hybrid engine, and that's in the fuselage, then maybe the wing could be a source of efficiency by changing its colour.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Sure.<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' And then this is, I think one of you called it the Wikipedia rabbit hole. So I just started Googling all these EV aircraft that are coming out because birds, they fly relatively slow compared to business jets. But so do electronic aircraft, the ones that are coming out. They're looking at ranges of 200 to 400 miles. But there's a lot of them. There's a bunch coming out this year, or that claim to be able to fly this year. And it seems like by 2024, I found no less than three or four companies that say that they're going to have a fleet of 19 passenger or less EV aircraft that'll be flying around. But in all the mockups, they're all white. They're solid white. Just like because that's what we're used to seeing. And I would think we can make most of it white. But there's got to be a way to save some gas on the engines.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, you'd think if all you do is put some black stripes at the end of the wings, then you could save money.<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' Probably will. They'll find a way.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It reminds me of when they figured out that like for the space shuttle, they would paint the main gas tank white for the first few launches. Then they go, let's just not paint it.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Because we save 200 pounds. They save like hundreds of pounds of paint.<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' White is also the lightest. It's easy to put a coat of white on there and not be as unattractive as the coloured, the darker paints because those fade. You just got to keep adding paint.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Right.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' What did they end up with? Wasn't it orange?<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Orange. Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Orange? Yeah. Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay. Thanks, Knewt.<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' No problem.<br />
<br />
=== Mercola Misinformation <small>(1:02:39)</small> ===<br />
* [https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/24/technology/joseph-mercola-coronavirus-misinformation-online.html The Most Influential Spreader of Coronavirus Misinformation Online]<ref>[https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/24/technology/joseph-mercola-coronavirus-misinformation-online.html The New York Times: The Most Influential Spreader of Coronavirus Misinformation Online]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' Cara, tell us about Joseph Mercola and coronavirus misinformation. We know this guy. He's a…<br />
<br />
'''E:''' The collective groan goes out.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I'm reading this article in the New York Times and I'm thinking, I remember way back when I joined the SGU. One of the things they used to say to me is Cara, what we love about like your addition to the show is that you're skeptically minded. You're a skeptical scientist, but you're not like steeped in the skeptical kind of culture. And so I love learning about people. I mean, obviously, I've heard of Mercola, but I don't know if I have quite the amount of information in my brain that you guys do about Mercola. So I got to do a little bit of a deep dive on him. Great guy.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, my gosh. Where do you start?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. So, okay, here we go. Yeah. Where do you start? New York Times did their own investigation, but I'm also going to cite a really interesting study that came out of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, which is a nonprofit that looks at hate speech and misinformation online. So I don't know if you guys have been following, but the Center for Countering Digital Hate put out what they call the disinformation dozen. So, yeah, so they looked at a sample of anti-vaccine content that was shared or posted on Facebook or Twitter a total of 812,000 times between February 1st and March 16th, 2021. So just like a kind of like a sample in the middle of COVID disinformation. And they were like, let's look at this and see who's posting it, who's sharing it, what's going on. And they basically, through their analysis, were able to there's a lot of numbers in this analysis. It was this many accounts and shared this many times and this many people retweeted or whatever. But ultimately, they came up with a list of the disinformation dozen. So the top 12 people who collectively account for 73% of Facebook's anti-vax content and that disinformation. Can you guys guess who some of the people on it are?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Wink Martindale?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, come on, come on. Who do you think makes up the anti-vax disinformation dozen?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I know. I've read the whole list.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So Mercola is at the top. Joseph Mercola is the number one contributor. Number two, Robert F. Kennedy.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, sure.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right? Junior.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Wakefield's not in there?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Wakefield is not in there. No. Sherry Tenpenny, number four.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, Tenpenny.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Ty and Charlene Bollinger, number three. And then we've got Riza Islam, Rashid Buttar, Erin Elizabeth, who I didn't know about Erin Elizabeth, but she's Mercola's partner. So they take up extra space on this list together. Sayer G, I'm not sure if it's Jai or G, Kelly Brogan, Christiane Northrup, Ben Tapper and Kevin Jenkins. So if you come across any of these people.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Leroy Jenkins.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Be skeptical. Yeah, Leroy Jenkins. We had to. And there are also key anti-vaxxer organizations that the Center for Countering Digital Hate points to. So it's not just the disinformation dozen, the top 12, but the organizations that are linked to them, which often it's shared through these organizations that have like a sheen of professionalism. So I'm saying this, I mean, to really arm us. So the Children's Health Defense, anti-vax. Informed Consent Action Network, anti-vax. The National Vaccine Information Center, anti-vax. The Organic Consumers Association. And lastly, Millions Against Medical Mandates. These are pseudoscientific organizations that were developed to spread misinformation, specifically anti-vax misinformation. So not only did this organization, this nonprofit, find that he was number one on the disinformation dozen, but the New York Times did their own investigation. You know, so they sampled. I think they were just looking at Facebook and they found that Mercola is responsible. The number one, the most influential spreader of COVID misinformation online. So they cite an article that showed up on February 9th, which has since been taken down, where Mercola says that COVID vaccines are a medical fraud. They don't prevent infections. They don't provide immunity. They don't stop transmission. But they do alter your genetic coding, turning you into a viral protein factory that has no off switch.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh my God. That's not gene editing.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Exactly. And then later, they do make some, I think, really important points in here. Because, I mean, I could just like list horrible things that this man has said. And for a little bit of background, this is an osteopath who I think very early on realized that a media empire was the way that he was going to make a lot of money. So in the 90s, he started building these different websites. And then when social media really caught on, he very quickly hired a team of people and worked very hard to create viral content that would spread and spread and spread through social media. This is a big part of his focus. There are quotes in this New York Times article from unnamed sources who used to work for him that they had signed NDAs. So they weren't willing to give their names on the record about how he does this. He like often does A, B testing. It's just it's a really important part of his job that he figure out how can I make these posts go as viral as possible. I did mention before that he is dating a woman named Erin Elizabeth and she is the founder of the website Health Nut News. And she is also responsible for a large percentage of the anti-vaccine rhetoric that you see out there. What I think this article does a good job of noting is that Mercola is not a dumb guy. And what Mercola does really well is skate right up to the line. But a lot of times the way he writes his articles, he doesn't outright say vaccines are bad. I am not I am an anti-vaxxer. I do not advocate for vaccines. He like uses, I mean, it's that perfect definition of pseudoscience. It has a sheen of scientific.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Just asking questions. Just asking questions. Cites debunked studies or cherry-picked results and just really it's like he understands the machine so he knows how to manipulate it. Whereas, for example, his girlfriend Erin Elizabeth is like straight up, I am an anti-vaxxer. Vaccines are bad. And so these different people, if you actually look at the disinformation dozen, you can see, for example, they cite an individual named Riza Islam who specifically tends to target, he himself is a black guy and he tends to target black Americans. For example, you'll see that some of these people on the list tend to target a more religious audience or a more health conscious audience. So collectively they're really hitting lots of pockets of people who might tend towards hesitancy or who might tend towards denialism and then they're able to sort of trap them and get them in. Like you've got Ty and Charlene Bollinger who are like hardcore super pack, like big, more like politically biased individuals. So that's kind of, I think, one of the, unfortunately, the most insidious things about Mercola is that a lot of people think he's legitimate. He's a physician. He knows how to talk about science in a way that sounds scientific. He's very good at misinformation and he always backtracks. So in an email with the New York Times, he said, it's quite peculiar to me that I'm named as the number one super spreader. There are relatively small number of shares. I don't see how this could possibly cause such calamity to Biden's multi-billion dollar vaccination campaign. I mean, again, I don't think I'm, I don't think it's a stretch to say that the actions of this man are leading maybe indirectly, sometimes possibly directly to loss of life, to injury, to significant harm. And I think he needs to be held responsible for that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Totally. He's a poster child for inadequate regulation of this kind of medical malpractice, basically. Yeah, it's a disgrace. Let me read you guys this quote I just saw. This is a tweet from George Takai who's great. He wrote, overheard that in quotes, the irony of anti-vaxxers saying they don't want to be part of an experiment without realizing they are now the control group.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I love that so much.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, that's it. That's great.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's amazing.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Welcome to the study.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' They got the placebo.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, right.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' They're not going to get better.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Unfortunately, they're a self-selective group, so it's not a good study.<br />
<br />
== Who's That Noisy? <small>(1:11:37)</small> ==<br />
{{anchor|futureWTN}} <!-- this is the anchor used by "wtnAnswer", which links the previous "new noisy" segment to this "future" WTN --><br />
<br />
{{wtnHiddenAnswer<br />
|episodeNum = 837<!-- episode number for previous Noisy --><br />
|answer = Horn <!-- brief description of answer, perhaps with a link --><br />
|}}<br />
'''S:''' All right, Jay, it's Who's That Noisy time.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' All right, guys, last week I played this noisy.<br />
<br />
[_short_vague_description_of_Noisy] <br />
<br />
It's probably the shortest noisy I've ever done. I'll play it again. [plays Noisy] You guys want to make any guesses before I start?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It sounds like a bird.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Sideshow Mel, I think it was.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' All right, Steve thinks it's a bird. Anybody else?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, like a whistle, some sort of. No, it's not a whistle. That's too easy.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' A whistle. All right.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I'm going to pull a Price is Right move and say a slightly bigger bird than Steve's.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Let's get into this. Rachel Benaggia wrote in and said, the noisy this week has to be nature's squeaky toy, a guinea pig. So it turns out a lot of people wrote in guinea pig, a lot of people. Rachel just happened to be the first. So it's not a guinea pig. I did try to find sounds that a guinea pig makes, and I didn't find any that sounded like that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Is it a whistle pig?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' A whistle pig.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Remember that?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Remember?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's a groundhog.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' A groundhog, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's a groundhog. A whistlepig.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I love that.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That's awesome.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' My favorite.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' All right, another person wrote in, Kevin Williams. He says, Hi, guys. Love the show. One thing I've always wondered is where does the name of the segment come from?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, I'll tell you.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, so I'm figuring instead of me emailing him back, I thought that I'd let Steve say it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We've said it on the show before, but basically when my daughter was like two and she was just learning how to talk.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Happy birthday, Julia.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, the one whose birthday it is today. When she heard something, instead of saying, What's that noise? She said, Who's that noisy? So we just started saying that in my family and with Evan and everyone.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It became a thing.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, it just became a thing. And so when we were doing this segment, we just naturally started calling it, Who's that noisy? And we just figured just to keep it that way since we're already calling it that.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's right.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So it's basically just a way of embarrassing my daughter.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' For the rest of her life. Yeah. So he says he continues. He says, Anyway, my guest this week is the sound of fingers moving over guitar strings. So I happen to have my acoustic guitar here, and he's right because it does kind of have that sound. Let me try to simulate what he's doing.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I mean, he's wrong, but he's correct in what it sounds like.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' He's wrong, but there is something to it. But let me see if I can do this now. Can you hear that? So I get what he was saying. Maybe an electric guitar would have something a little bit louder than that. That was from my acoustic. But that is incorrect. So John Creasy writes in, It's a steam powered siren from a traction engine. Have you ever heard of a traction engine, guys?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Traction engine.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It looks like a train engine that somebody put gigantic tires on, and it drives down the road. So it's kind of like a steam tractor. Super powerful steam based tractor. Now, I suspect, because multiple people wrote in about these traction engines, that they have toot toot horns, right? I would assume, though, that they probably do make a noise, a high pitched noise like that. This is not correct. Anyway, my favorite answer so far this week came from Dane Milner, and he wrote, It's a dancer wearing corduroy pants. Corduroy does sound like that. It does have that noise. You might not have been fat enough when you were a kid to hear it, Evan. But when I was a kid, I was husky, and my thighs would always hit each other. And when you walk with corduroy, it made that noise.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' OK.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' They were very popular when we were in high school, and we had a dress code. That's why I wore corduroy for four years, basically.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Dane said it sounds like paracord or nylon rubbing together. Corduroy was kind of a joke. Now, here's the closest guess that we got. Nobody won this week. But long, long time Who's That Noisy submitter, guesser, Evil Eye, wrote in. He said, I know I'm wrong, but I so want it to be a little kid in a toy electric cop car pulling over his friend.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Cute. Cute.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I thought that was cute. But he happens to be moderately close. So let me play it again before I tell you what it is. [plays Noisy] OK. Here's the explanation. So this comes from Bob Leadham, who sent it in. He said, here's one I haven't heard anywhere else. When we were on a bus tour in Morocco, the bus driver had two choices when he used the horn. One was the normal loud beep that says, watch out like a normal horn. The other is one for pedestrians who might be straying a bit close to the road or for when we were moving slowly through a crowded street scene. It's what I called the polite horn saying, excuse me, big bus here. Please take care where you walk. In Morocco, they have these polite horns. One version of the horn is like that noise. Here's the noise again. [plays Noisy]<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, my God.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' A little warning noise. Not like a big, oh, my God, you scare somebody noise. If they're right next to the vehicle and you lean on your horn, you could jump out of your skin. So it's a polite horn.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I like it.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I thought that was cool. Makes perfect sense. Think about how many times you'd use it if you had a car. <br />
<br />
'''E:''' There should be more polite horns out there.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' My version of a polite horn is like two quick beeps. Not being a dick here, but pay attention or whatever. But one long one, that's when you mean it. There's a good reason, hopefully, that you're going to do that.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It's called leaning on it. You got to lean on it.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Lean on the horn. Does an airplane have a horn?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Can you imagine?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Knewt, does an airplane have a horn?<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' It does not. And I've got a great story if you want to hear one.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Absolutely.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Do it.<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' Okay. So I was flying a 737, actually, and I was going to New Zealand. And we get there, and we run a thing sometimes when we're flying distinguished visitors called quiet arrivals, where we want to know as the pilots whether or not there's going to be some sort of fanfare when we arrive, in which case we need to do certain procedures to make sure the engines are off and the APU is down before they do their proper circumstances.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' And the automated weapons are turned off, too.<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' Yeah, those, too. The 737 with the missiles did not have those. So they told us nothing. They said nothing's going to happen in New Zealand. So we land, we roll into parking, and there is everything you can imagine from a huge band to a whole, the Maori warrior tribe and a red carpet. And so we park, and we're like, probably it was supposed to be quiet arrivals. The guy runs up. He's like, you've got to turn everything off. All right, we're doing what we can. So we start turning stuff off, and he says, it's still too loud. It's still too loud. And so one guy just reaches up and he just kills the batteries, makes everything die, no cool-down cycle, nothing. So we don't have a horn, but what we do have is a warning system when the DC power loses all power unexpectedly, and it makes a beeping noise. So it goes quiet. The leader of the Maori tribe thinks that that's his cue to start so he grabs one elbow with the hand. His tongue sticks out. He goes, ah, ah, ah, and screams at the jet. And the jet starts going, ah, ah, ah, ah, and starts beeping back at him because that sound has to be able to be heard by an outside maintenance guy to know that the DC power is not being powered. And the look on the dude's face was great. But that is the extent of horn that an aircraft will have.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Is it just me? I'm kind of surprised because you guys, you taxi.<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' Yeah, but no turn signals either, but no horn. Honestly, I think if we had one, no one could hear it. Those engines are pretty loud.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You have to have one of those aouga horns on.<br />
{{anchor|previousWTN}} <!-- keep right above the following sub-section ... this is the anchor used by wtnHiddenAnswer, which will link the next hidden answer to this episode's new noisy (so, to that episode's "previousWTN") --><br />
=== New Noisy <small>(1:19:12)</small> ===<br />
<br />
'''J:''' All right, I have a new noisy for this week.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Jay has a new noisy.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Jay, let's hear your new noisy.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' This is from Joshua Gillespie.<br />
<br />
[_short_vague_description_of_Noisy] <br />
<br />
So I love this noisy. So if you think you know {{wtnAnswer|837|what this week's noisy is}} or if you heard something cool, and come on, people like Knewt who work on airplanes, they hear cool stuff all the time, and you're not sending it to me. Just take two seconds and send me a cool sound. I know you heard something cool. Send it to WTN@theskepticsguide.org.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. Thank you, Jay.<br />
<br />
== Announcements <small>(1:19:48)</small> ==<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We're going to do one quick email. But before we do, this is the last episode to come out before NECSS. NECSS is all digital. Essentially, the week after this comes out, August 6th and 7th, we have a great lineup. If you didn't join us last year or even if you did, join us this year. We have two game shows, a live SGU show, a bunch of speakers. It's going to be awesome. Jay and Ian have been working in the studio for a month or longer, actually.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' More than that, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Got it all tweaked out. So go to NECSS.org.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' necss.org.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yes, necss.org and sign up for NECSS next week, August 6th and 7th.<br />
<br />
== Questions/Emails/Corrections/Follow-ups <small>(1:20:31)</small> ==<br />
<br />
=== Email #1: Nuclear Enegry ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, one quick email. This comes from Rainer in Portland, Oregon, and he writes, thanks for the show and the skeptical view on a lot of issues. Couldn't agree more on most of what you say. You know what's coming next. The one topic I feel like you are disregarding skeptical thinking is nuclear power. It always sounds like it is a no-brainer when you mention it. I'm missing, for example, the discussion about the risks involved or the unsolved waste discussion on the production side. On the demand side, I don't think it is a given that it is needed at all. Just using standard technology, we could easily save a very significant amount of energy. U.S. citizens still use about two to three times their primary energy than any other developed country. If we would spend the same amount of money we put into nuclear power subsidies, into energy-saving measures and alternative sources, it would look even better. All right, a lot to unpack there. I actually, for premium content this week, I did like a 30-minute deep dive on this email, so I'm just going to give you the five-minute version. If you want to hear the 30-minute version, you could listen to the premium content. That's for people who are members of the SGU. Very, very quickly, the U.S. citizens don't use two to three times as much energy as anybody else per capita. Actually, Canada uses more energy than we do per capita. Canada.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Why?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Because it's cold up there, and they've got to heat all their houses.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Cold. They need a lot.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The point is you can't make direct comparisons like that because different conditions will lead to different energy needs. We are a big country, and you have to drive far to go everywhere. You can't compare like Latvia to the United States. Not that there isn't room for energy conservation and energy saving. Of course there is. That doesn't mean, though, that that's going to solve our energy mix issue. So I just want to focus on one thing because, again, this is the short version, and that is the nuclear waste question. And that's because it really isn't an issue, or at least it doesn't have to be. And there's a number of reasons why, but I want to focus on one. Do you know how much of the energy, the potential energy, potential extractable energy that we get out of uranium in the existing nuclear power plants?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, it's a fraction, right?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. What do you think?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' 10%? 3%.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' The nuclear energy? Not antimatter.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, the nuclear energy.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I would say we're extracting what? Say, I don't know, 12%.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' 5%. Evan's closer. 5%. The other 95%, it then becomes nuclear waste.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Waste.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The reason for this is because our nuclear reactors are so-called slow reactors. The idea is that you create a self-sustaining chain reaction because the neutron that gets kicked out of one uranium atom will then hit another one and cause that to break down, decay, and keep spreading. However, a uranium atom cannot capture a neutron directly because it's too fast. And so that's why we have to use the water, like the light water, heavy water, or light water, depending on the reactor design. That slows down the neutrons just enough that they can be captured by another uranium atom and cause a self-sustaining reaction. So using that method, we can only get about 5% to 6% of the energy out of the uranium fuel. The other 95%, which is plutonium and other things, now becomes, "waste". But what if we could make a fast reactor that can capture those fast neutrons?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' You could burn the waste.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But what if we used all of the energy? There's like this other 95% of the energy in the nuclear waste that could be fuel. Again, the only difference between nuclear waste and nuclear fuel is whether or not we can burn it for energy. So we actually have the design for fast reactors.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' The Gen 4?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, some of the Gen 4 reactor designs are fast reactors, and they can actually use existing waste from older reactors as their fuel.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, great.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And the waste that we currently have in this country, in the U.S., could supply all our energy needs for 100 years. We have 100 years of fuel for fast nuclear reactors without having to mine any more uranium.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' And we're also getting rid of our waste.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It would get rid of all of our waste.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' And what's the byproduct of burning the—<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It blows up the planet in 500 years, but still.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, no problem.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, no. So here's the thing. Existing nuclear waste has some isotopes in it that have half-lives in the thousands and hundreds of thousands of years, which is why you have to store it basically indefinitely. But if you use a fast reactor, that extracts all of the long half-life material. And you're left with just the short half-life stuff that's like 30 years, 30 to 50 years.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Manageable.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, so that's completely manageable. So you want to solve our nuclear waste problem, you build fast reactors, which are Gen 4 reactors, which have lots of other advantages, too. Like they can't melt down because of the auto-cool. Like if you embed them in salt and if they heat up more, the salt expands, moves the rods apart, and they cool down. So even if left unattended, it won't melt down. Or if a pump fails, it won't melt down, et cetera. So they're much, much safer. They can be completely self-contained. They don't have as many pipes and stuff that can fail. They're much, much safer than older stuff.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' If there's an apocalypse for another reason, you don't have to worry about your nuclear reactors exploding as it would during a normal apocalypse.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Or if there's a tsunami or whatever. Right, also they burn hotter, which means that we could do two other things with them if we choose to. We could make hydrogen or we could desalinate water. Do you know where we get most of our hydrogen from now, by the way?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' We mine it off of Jupiter.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' We order it on Amazon.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We strip it from fossil fuels.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, that too, that too.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Which is kind of defeating the purpose of using hydrogen, right? Imagine if we could just make hydrogen by electrolyzing water using the heat from a fast nuclear reactor. The hydrogen becomes a byproduct and then you could bottle that and use that in our rockets or our hydrogen.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Hydrogen economy.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, for whatever part of the economy.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' So what's the downside for these Gen 4 reactors?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Right, where are they?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Is there a downside?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, the downside is it's still more expensive than just building solar panels or wind turbines. But here's the issue. They're more expensive now.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' More of an upfront investment.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The more you try to increase the penetration of renewables, the more expensive the renewables get. Because then you have to get into overproduction. You have to upgrade the grid. You need grid storage. And you use up all the prime locations, et cetera, et cetera. So it gets progressively less cost effective. And also we're counting on innovations we don't have yet, like for grid storage. And it's going to take decades to do things like upgrade the grid. So if time were not an issue at all, you might make a reasonable argument for saying, all right, let's just go for all renewable and grid storage. Fine. Do that. Let's keep doing that. Let's keep building renewable and grid storage and all that stuff. That's great. Let's upgrade the grid. We got to do that anyway. But if we try to do that without keeping our nuclear in the mix, like we have 20% of our electricity right now in the US is nuclear. It's about 10% worldwide. And it's all retiring pretty soon. If we don't keep that in the mix, then we're going to be building fossil fuel plants. Absolutely. If the goal is to get rid of fossil fuel as quickly as possible, then we want to do both. We want to do nuclear and as much renewable as we can and grid storage and hydroelectric and geothermal, whatever we can other than fossil fuel. So the people who are the renewable purists are going to delay by decades decarbonizing our energy infrastructure. Are you guys aware of the fact we talk about global warming all the time, and yet the bottom line is between now and 2050, we're going to be increasing the amount of fossil fuel that we're burning for energy. It's already over 80% of our energy profile is from fossil fuel, and it's going to increase between now and 2050. And then the game is over in terms of preventing the worst outcomes of global warming. It's over. We have to actually change what's happening over the next 30 years. So we could have small modular Gen 4 reactors up by 2030, and they could burn fuel from older plants. They won't have any waste of their – I mean they could burn waste from older plants. They won't generate any waste of their own. They'll be taking care of our waste problem. Yes, it's more expensive than just building more solar for now, but if you plan out the next 30 years of our energy infrastructure, it's actually cost-effective, and especially if you consider the cost of global warming and the healthcare costs of burning fossil fuels and the subsidies to the fossil fuel industry, it's actually quite cost-effective certainly than fossil fuel. To me, it seems like we need to be hedging our bets, and there's no reason why we shouldn't pursue this technology. Just to buy us a few decades that we actually need.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' You're way over five minutes, man.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Sorry. I tried. I tried. All right, here we go. Let's move on to science or fiction.<br />
<br />
== Science or Fiction <small>(1:30:33)</small> ==<br />
<br />
{{SOFinfo<br />
|item1 = Although lightning strikes are common, on average they cause only about one crash per year of commercial aircraft<br />
|link1 = <ref>[https://mainblades.com/article/aircraft-and-lightning-strikes-here-is-what-the-statistics-say/]</ref><br />
<br />
|item2 = It is physically impossible to open a cabin door on a commercial aircraft at typical cruising altitude.<br />
|link2 = <ref>[https://www.businessinsider.com/why-plane-doors-cant-open-mid-flight-2020-2]</ref><br />
<br />
|item3 = According to a survey of commercial airline pilots, 56% admit to falling asleep while flying the plane, and 29% report waking up to find their co-pilot also asleep.<br />
|link3 = <ref>[https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-24296544]</ref><br />
<br />
|}}<br />
<br />
{{SOFResults<br />
|fiction = lightning strikes<br />
|science1 = cabin door<br />
|science2 = sleeping pilots<br />
<br />
|rogue1 =Evan<br />
|answer1 = cabin door<br />
<br />
|rogue2 =Cara<br />
|answer2 =lightning strikes<br />
<br />
|rogue3 =Bob<br />
|answer3 =lightning strikes<br />
<br />
|rogue4 =Jay<br />
|answer4 = lightning strikes<br />
<br />
|rogue5 =Knute<br />
|answer5 = lightning strikes<br />
<br />
|host =Steve<br />
<br />
|sweep = <!-- all the Rogues guessed wrong --><br />
|clever = <!-- each item was guessed (Steve's preferred result) --><br />
|win = <!-- at least one Rogue guessed wrong, but not them all --><br />
|swept = <!-- all the Rogues guessed right --><br />
}}<br />
''Voice-over: It's time for Science or Fiction.''<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Each week, I come up with three science news items or facts, two real and one fake, and I challenge my panel of skeptics to tell me which one is the fake. We have a theme.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Airplane.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' This week, the theme is air travel.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' There you go.<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' I think I'm getting set up.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Unfair advantage, I'd say.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That's what I think.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Who's going first?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You think so? All right. We'll see. We shall see. All right, here we go. Item number one. Although lightning strikes are common, on average, they cause only about one crash per year of commercial aircraft. Item number two. It is physically impossible to open a cabin door on a commercial aircraft at typical cruising altitude. Item number three. According to a survey of commercial airline pilots, 56% admit to falling asleep while flying the plane and 29% report waking up to find their co-pilot also asleep.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's how many they admit.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. Knewt, for what should be obvious reasons, I'm going to have you go last.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Damn it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Because Evan groaned I'm going to have him go first.<br />
<br />
=== Evan's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh. Well, at least I know now, Steve, why you stopped me from asking the question about lightning.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yes. Absolutely. Absolutely.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I was reading the future. Lightning strikes are common. On average, they cause only about one crash per year of commercial aircraft. Yeah, okay. I can believe that. The planes are designed to take the lightning hits. They have to. And I know we've spoken about it before on shows maybe many years ago, but the only reason I think this one might be the fiction is it would be less than one crash. Maybe one crash would be 10 years or something like that. So I don't think that's a problem. Next one. Physically impossible to open a cabin door on a commercial aircraft at typical cruising altitude. That could be how the pressure works. You'd have to have enough strength to overcome that. And just a typical person could not do it maybe on their own. And then the last one about airline pilots, 56 admit to falling asleep and 29% report waking up to find their co-pilot also asleep. I'm trying to think of why this would be the fiction. It just would have to be the numbers themselves. Is it really just much, much lower than that? You know, because again, admitting to falling asleep. Although I guess we're going to learn about how much soon, about how much the pilots actually need to be awake at certain points versus being able to be able to go to sleep. All right. I'm going to go against the grain in my own head and say, I think maybe the cabin door one, maybe it is possible to open a cabin door at cruising altitude. I'll say that one's fiction.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay. Cara.<br />
<br />
=== Cara's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. I mean, part of me wants to go with Evan because it's like, my rule I used to always tell my students when I would teach is if you have a quick, if you're taking a true false exam and the question States always or never, it's usually false. Usually you see that. So to say it's physically impossible. It doesn't allow for any caveats, but I still think it's physically impossible. I don't know. I think the pressure is probably like exorbitant. It's like, it's like saying it's physically impossible to open the submarine door. It's like, well, yeah, I don't think you can do that. So let's see. So for me, it's, it's a question of frequency, right? Like, do more pilots admit to falling asleep? Fewer pilots admit to falling asleep. Are lightning strikes more common than that though? I think the lightning strike one is getting to me the most because I feel like we hear about airplane crashes often. Like when an airplane crashes, it's on the news. Pretty much every time. And I've never heard of an airplane crashing because it was struck by lightning. It's almost always on takeoff or landing. And it's almost always because of some sort of like failure of like an engine or something like that. So to me, I, this one just, it doesn't have face validity because I can't remember a time in my existence where I was watching the news and I was like, holy crap, that airplane got struck by lightning and went down. So that's, that's the reason I'm going to say that's the fiction.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay, Bob.<br />
<br />
=== Bob's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Okay. Physically impossible to open the cabin door. It makes perfect sense. It's gotta be, it's gotta be that way. I mean, come on, you know there's crazy people on a plane that would do that. I even thought about it at one point.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's like not pushing the big red button, Bob. It's like asking for you to try.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' You know, it's, it just makes too much sense. Falling asleep. Yeah, that's gotta happen. I mean, they're not needed. They're needed for, they're needed for takeoff and landing.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's so cruel.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I mean, this is talking on the speaker.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Someone who's on the call with us right now begs to differ.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, wait. Oh, shit. But I mean, technically, I mean, cruise control. I mean, yeah, falling asleep. Absolutely. I totally buy it. The one I'm not buying is lightning. One a year is way too much. I've also never heard of it. And I think one a year would, would be enough to, to make people say, I'm not going on that damn plane because one a year, one of them are going down. I've never heard of one. I mean, I think, they have designs in place to, to deal with it. They get struck all the time. Like buildings. And I think that they basically almost, it's never so rare that we don't really even, we can, none of us can think of one, one example. So one is fiction. Lightning strike is fiction.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay, Jay.<br />
<br />
=== Jay's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I'll take them in reverse order. So the, the it says according to the survey, so 56% of pilots admit to falling asleep while flying the plane. This is vague though, because, hold on, let me turn that off.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' What the hell?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Somebody called me. I silenced the phone and then I accidentally played my thing.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Jay, man, I, I really hate, when you just have these recorded things, just go off. I'm sorry.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Bob. I'm sorry, man. I know what you mean.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' You're welcome to our lives.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I won't, I shouldn't let it happen while we're talking. It's really, it's obnoxious.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I bought you that damn thing.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So 50%, 56% of pilots admit to falling asleep that, they do fall asleep on the plane. They're allowed to, but this seems to be that they're saying that they did it when they're not supposed to. So, I guess I'm sure that they fall asleep just like everybody else. Like when they're on cruise control and that things are, there are times when they could probably have a lot of downtime. I'm not a hundred percent sure, but I just don't think that one is the fiction. Number two, the one about being physically impossible to open the door. So air pressure inside of a plane is, is what between eight and 10,000 feet and airplanes usually cruise around 36,000 feet. So there is a massive air pressure change, but the air pressure is higher in the cabin than it is outside. And you would think that that would make the door easier to open, but I guess I bet you that in the design of the airplane, that air pressure change does make it impossible to open the door. I'm sure that the door is impossible to freaking open. Cause it would open a lot more. Well, that's the thing where Cara said, you'd never hear people opening doors on airplanes like that.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Not what I said, but that's fair.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Well, you kind of made me think of that.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' You never hear of Cara never hearing about it.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I'll say, I think my guess is that the door locks when the wheels are up, right? If the wheels are in, it like automatically makes it like you can't.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, but Bob, what about on a crash landing? What about on a water crash landing when they don't put the landing gear down? I don't agree with that. So finally, the last one here about the lightning strikes, it can't, this one cannot be true because if it means that there's one crash per year because of lightning, you think about how many airplanes are flown every day. There would be airplane crashing all the time.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But Jay, it's one crash, one total crash per year.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' No, I think, I think I don't agree with it. I think that it still would be, it still would be a thing.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I suppose this needs clarifying, not per plane. In the world, one plane a year crashes due to a lightning strike.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I mean, I've been, I think every single person that's ever been on an airplane, it was probably been on the airplane that's been hit by lightning. It happens all the time. I've seen, I saw lightning hit an engine on an airplane and it just, nothing happened. It scared the shit out of me, but nothing happened.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah. The creature on the wing hung on too.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' There's something on the wing. So I think that planes get hit very often, but nothing happens. So I think the first one's got to be the fiction.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay. Knewt, straighten them out.<br />
<br />
=== Knute's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' All right. Jay, your analysis is really good actually on all three of them, but everybody had great points. I think I'm going to end up going around the same lines, but I'll work backwards as well. According to the survey, talking to pilots and I want to just get a clarification. This is talking to the pilots that are in the seats. Correct. Because a lot of aircraft have crew rest facilities.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. This is a pilot who is supposed to be flying the plane, supposed to be at the controls. Yes.<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' So while back, I hate to say that this is the truth because it looks like what my profession is inherently unsafe. I'm going to say that this is the truth because this is a fact, because actually part of good cockpit resource management and safety and flight is something we call controlled cockpit rest, where you're encouraged to sleep for 20 minutes, but you're supposed to set an alarm or have the other guy wake you up at exactly 20 minutes. And this is for those really long, insane flights where you will be drunk to the point if you're so sleep deprived that it's unsafe.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Going to New Zealand.<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' It's actually unsafe for you to not just get a little bit of rest. And it's kind of an emergency situation to do that, but it will pay dividends later. So there are regulations that allow for people to sleep. It could be used 56% of the time. Sounds like maybe a little bit of abuse, but I'm going to go ahead knowing pilots that that is fact. Physically impossible to open a cabin.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But it sounds like you're not supposed to have your co-pilot be asleep at the same time.<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' That is true, but I don't want to admit, maybe I know somebody who's woken up and seen that.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Here we go.<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' And I haven't flied for a while.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' 29% of people.<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' I can't say it happens 29% of the time, but I can see 29% of people saying that they've seen that happen for sure. Physical impossibility to open a cabin door. Jay hit it right on. Yeah. It's like 8,000 feet. Cabin altitude is inside the plane and outside about 36,000 feet. We're usually the commercial airlines fly aircraft. I fly routinely go up to the high forties. Imagine the pressure differential between 49,000 feet outside and 8,000 feet inside. And that, I mean, I just know it. That is what keeps, keeps the doors closed. It keeps everything tight. Is when it's pressure pushing out on that round two toy. So I imagine that that pressure applies to the doors as well. Makes it pretty much impossible for a human to overcome those kinds of pressure differentials. So that leaves us with number one, although lightning strikes are common that they would result in a single crash a year seems excessive. I got to think that across the commercial airline industry, completely you're in single digit crashes for any reason a year. This is commercial aircraft because airlines can survive a wreck. They're very, very safe and you can't control lightning, but they can mitigate it. So we have a, I've asked earlier if I've ever been hit by lightning. And the answer is yes. And I didn't know it till I landed. And the maintenance guy said, hey, it looks like you got hit by lightning. So there's a lot of ways.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's reassuring in a way.<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' So I will say that number one is the fiction. It's way less.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #3 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. Let's I'll take these in reverse order. Since Evan, you're you think that the number two is the fiction.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Well, not anymore, but my guess is.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. So according to a survey of commercial airline pilots, 56% admit to falling asleep while flying the plane, meaning they were meant to be at the controls and 29% report waking up to find their copilot asleep. You guys all are pretty happy thinking this one is the science. And this one is science. This is science. This was a British survey. So I don't think it's, unique to British airways, but yeah. So pilots not off, I guess when they're not supposed to, obviously like, it's not like when they fall asleep, the plane immediately starts going to a nose dive.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Used the as a pillow.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. But, but they're supposed to be awakened at the, at the controls, but not surprising.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #2 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. Let's go back to number two. It's absolutely impossible to open a cabin door on a commercial aircraft at typical cruising altitude. I do want to, just before I do the reveal, I want to ask you guys a question related to the first one. How many crash do you think there are a year? If we look at it around the world, commercial.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Less than one.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Per year. Totally. Of all sizes. I also didn't say fatal crash. I didn't say fatal crash.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. You just said crash.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Define crash.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' A dozen or fewer.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' There's 14 fatal crashes a year.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Okay. Fatal?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Fatal ones. So there's probably more-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Gosh, that sounds high.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I'm not hearing about 14 a year.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, why would you?<br />
<br />
[talking over each other]<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, they're probably often on airlines that have like pretty low safety rating.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, you hear about the big ones.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Uzbekistan air.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Huddle jumper flights and stuff.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Exactly. It is physically impossible to open a cabin door in a commercial aircraft at typical cruising altitude. Evan, you think this one is a fiction. Everyone else thinks this one is science. And this one is science. This is science. Yeah, Jay, you nailed it. So I did the calculation. I've read it in multiple places, but I did it myself just to double check. So how much pressure do you think there is on a cabin door if you're flying at 18,000, at 36,000 feet?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Tons, right?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' 36,000 pounds. Of pressure.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' How many?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' 36,000.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' So tons.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, that's a lot.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. So they are designed, the inside of the door is bigger than the outside of the door. So it's a plug. It's literally called a plug design, right?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Makes sense.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, which makes sense. It's designed to be plugged by the pressure inside the cabin. And even if you were at 18,000 feet, it would still be, it would be half that. It would be, 18,000 pounds of pressure.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right. That's why the little cards, the safety cards show you have to like undo it, turn it sideways. And then throw it out the door.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But even if you did all that, even if you did all that-<br />
<br />
'''B:''' You'd have to be Hulk.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You couldn't do it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No, no, I'm saying because of the plug design. You can't open the door. You have to turn it sideways.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Wouldn't you be literally ripping through the metal before you'd open it normally?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, and you'd probably pull the handle off of it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Rip the handle off.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. It's just not possible.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #1 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So all this means that lightning strikes are common, on average they cause only about one crash per year of commercial aircraft. That is the fiction. Do lighting strikes are very common. And moder aircraft are well designed so that they withstand lightening strikes. The big risk is to the instrumentation. If you suddenly loose all your instrumentation mid flight that would be a bad thing. Not that the plane is necessarily blow up. But they are well designed to handle strikes. So how often do you think it does happen?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' All the time.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' One every 10 years.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, how often does a plane crash because it was struck by lighting?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Oh, very, very, very infrequently.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, like once every 10 years, I would say.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Or once every 50 years.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The last one was in 1963.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Hey.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh my God. So 58 years.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, but it hasn't happened. So it basically doesn't happen anymore.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right, because they probably didn't have the same like, safety?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yes. It's basically zero. Because it hasn't happened since 1963.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, you're putting a big metal tube in the sky. Of course, lightning is going to love that shit.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It goes right through the plane. You could look up pictures. I mean, there's tons of pictures online. If you haven't figured it out, I know a lot about all this stuff because I have anxiety. And I had to kill it with information. So I've read about this shit a million times. And there's nothing to worry about when you're on a good airline.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' My favorite statistic, Jay, for the people who have fear of flying, like Sandra Bullock, for some reason, is that in order to have a 50-50 chance of dying in a plane crash, you would have to fly every day for 500 years. Think about that. That's pretty reassuring.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, it's safer than driving to the airport. That helps me.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Heck yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, for sure.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, it's not necessarily. It's safer than driving total. That doesn't mean that. It depends on how far you have to drive for the Airport, et cetera, et cetera.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Not to be pendantic.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, we've already been hit with the pedantic email about that exact statistic. I don't want to repeat it. How about this one?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And guys, pendantic is an inside joke. I wasn't not knowing how to say pedantic. I have to be pedantic about that.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, your pendantry, Cara, your pendantry.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So what is more fuel efficient per passenger, flying or driving?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yes.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Driving my electric car?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Flying.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Fuel efficient? I mean, that's a hard one.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' All the people that are in that plane?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's a lot of stuff you got to calculate.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' 747 has a fuel efficiency per passenger of 100 miles per gallon. Yeah, per passenger. So if you had one person in the car, flying in a plane would be much more fuel efficient.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Except for my car.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Electric cars, I mean, you still have to count the energy.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, but there's an MPG equivalency. And I think it's over 100.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Is it over 100?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I think so, but I'll look.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Definitely for a gasoline engine, it's more efficient.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, oh, wow. In most electric cars, it's right about 100.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Interesting. OK, I wonder, yeah, yeah. So I guess it's specific to individual cars, but it averages at 100. Wow, so it's about the same.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Cool.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Cool.<br />
<br />
== Skeptical Quote of the Week <small>()</small> ==<br />
<br />
<blockquote>It seems almost natural for us to want to look up, to look back in time, and to learn and appreciate the wonder of this universe that allows us to exist, whether we are scientists or not.<br>– Dr. Suze Kundu, nanochemist, science presenter on the Discovery Channel, science writer for Forbes, Head of Public Engagement at Digital Science</blockquote><br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, Evan, give us a quote.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' "It seems almost natural for us to want to look up, to look back in time, and to learn and appreciate the wonder of this universe that allows us to exist, whether we are scientists or not." And that was said by Dr. Susie Kundu, who is a nanochemist. She's a science presenter on the Discovery Channel. She's a science writer for Forbes, and she's the head of public engagement at Digital Science, a science communicator.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Do you know her, Cara?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I don't, actually. I don't know her. And I'm surprised Bob doesn't know her either, because she's a nanochemist.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' My first thought, though, was aren't all chemists dealing in the nano realm? I mean, that seems a little redundant, but it's cool.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, yeah, I guess that is nano.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It's the first descriptor in her bio, nanochemist.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, I guess that is nano if you're doing chemistry.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So, Knewt, what did you think?<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' That was great. I really appreciate you guys letting me come on. I didn't believe it at first when I saw that that was an option, being a Patreon, that you could be on the show, but I pressed the test with Jay, and he wrote me right back, saying, sure, and we tried three times and finally got it to work.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yay!<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Well, I'm sorry we were so drunk for the whole episode, right?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Or asleep for 59% of it, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' It's fascinating to see what I sound like at one and a half when I play this back later.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, yes, you will. We sound drunk right now, but you're gonna sound like a chipmunk to yourself later.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I wanted to thank you for being a patron, because it means a lot, right? So, it's what keeps our doors open, so we really appreciate it.<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' Oh, no. I mean, the thanks is all directed at you guys. This is, I don't know how to explain it, but when the pandemic hit, and you've seen it, the misinformation, I mean, it seems to come from more than just 12 people. It seems it could come from everywhere. And somehow, I was mowing my lawn and listening to a Steve Novella, great courses that got turned onto your book. I read the SGU book first, and then it mentioned a podcast. I honestly had no idea. Then I just couldn't get enough of you guys' analysis of the stuff going on in the world. I started binge podcasting, if that's a thing, until I finally got, I didn't go back 800 episodes. I probably went back to somewhere in the 600s. And then I would just put one in while I was riding my mountain bike. I had to go on double speed for a while there to get caught up. And then eventually, by last summer, I think I got to where I was waiting for the next week's episode.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I don't know, Knewt. Some of those earlier episodes are gold.<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' I may have to go back.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' But some of them are terrible.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' No.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' The production value was really bad. We came a long way in a short time.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Vintage, Jay. The word is vintage.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Vintage, yeah. Well, it was a lot of fun having you on the show.<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' I appreciate it. Thanks, guys. I really enjoyed it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, thank the rest of you for joining me this week.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Thanks Steve.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Sure. And Steve, for the record, nanochemistry is the combination of chemistry and nanoscience. Nanochemistry is associated with synthesis of building blocks at that scale.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Sweet.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Thank you. Thanks for that. <br />
<br />
== Signoff/Announcements == <br />
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}}</div>Hearmepurrhttps://www.sgutranscripts.org/w/index.php?title=SGU_Episode_838&diff=19117SGU Episode 8382024-01-19T11:43:50Z<p>Hearmepurr: </p>
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|episodeIcon =File:838 Magnet therapy.jpg<br />
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|guest1 = KA: Knute Adcock<!-- ZZ: {{w|NAME}} or leave blank if no guest --><br />
|guest2 = <!-- leave blank if no second guest --><br />
|guest3 = <!-- leave blank if no third guest --><br />
|qowText = It seems almost natural for us to want to look up, to look back in time, and to learn and appreciate the wonder of this universe that allows us to exist, whether we are scientists or not.<br />
|qowAuthor = Suze Kundu <!-- use a {{w|wikilink}} or use <ref name=author>[url publication: title]</ref>, description [use a first reference to an article attached to the quote. The second reference is in the QoW section] --> <br />
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--><br />
== Introduction ==<br />
''Voice-over: You're listening to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.''<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Hello and welcome to the {{SGU|link=y}}. Today is Wednesday, July 28<sup>th</sup>, 2021, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella... <br />
<br />
'''B:''' Hey, everybody!<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Cara Santa Maria... <br />
<br />
'''C:''' Howdy. <br />
<br />
'''S:''' Jay Novella... <br />
<br />
'''J:''' Hey guys. <br />
<br />
'''S:''' Evan Bernstein...<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Good evening, folks.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And today we have a guest rogue this week, Knute Adcock. Knute, welcome to the Skeptics Guide.<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' Hello. Thanks for inviting me.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So Knute, tell us, we had a big debate before the show, whether it was Knute or Knut or Knewt. The Knut wasn't really serious, but you said in Germany it's Knute and in the United States it's Knewt.<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' It is, yeah, it's Knute. To spell it with a K, my mother was gracious enough to change the spelling early on when I was born, even though I was named after the salamander, the N-E-W-T style. But the pronunciation is the same. According to my dad, I looked and sounded exactly like one when I came out. So I don't know if we got enough time for that whole story. The K is silent and yeah, when I lived in Germany, it was Knut, like the ice bear.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' And you said you're a pilot, correct?<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' I am. Yeah, I've been a pilot for about 25 years now, 20 of those in the Air Force, a little bit at the Air Force Academy before that, flew Cessnas, and now I fly in a private corporate aviation.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' How many tic-tac UFOs have you seen? Come on, be honest. Now's the time.<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' Oof. I don't know if I'm allowed to talk about it.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' See?<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' Well, as pilots, they're really tight-knit. I mean, it's hard enough keeping the chemtrails under wraps.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I know, you've got to pretend the world is a sphere. You've got to it's hard.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's right.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' The ice wall.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Fly at the edge of the planet.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' What's funny is you sound like a pilot.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I was about to say that, Jay. I don't think it'll translate to the podcast because he's recording his own thing, but definitely the way that he sounds through Skype right now to us, it's like, shh, hello?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That intercoms.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' This is AlphaEchoNiner.<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' I can break out the pilot speak if you like, I'm actually wearing the headset I use when I fly.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Well, first off, we demand that you do talk like a pilot right now.<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' Roger.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' There it is.<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' Copy.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Roger, Roger.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Knewt, have you ever said anything by accident thinking the microphone was off?<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' Oh, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Besides right now.<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' Actually, I only got in trouble once saying something.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Okay, I'll tell you the story.<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' My last job in the Air Force, I flew Air Force One and-<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Wow.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' No way.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That's amazing.<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' So, we would be very critical of our radio supply and one time we're sitting there at the end of the runway waiting to take off and there's this storm right off the end and we could not find a way around this thing. Finally, it looked like there was a break in the weather and I think Tower knows well because they asked you want to go? And I was on the radios at the time, I was on the right seat and I said, Air Force One copies. Yeah, we'll risk it. And that was like the worst thing I could have said on the radios because everything we do and say is recorded. I think I remember getting hit in the side of the head with a checklist by somebody saying, dude, don't say things like that. Normally, we are very, very succinct and precise and practice saying, Air Force One, ready for takeoff. You know, that's it. Don't say anything like that.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Right. No unnecessary words.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Oh my God. I just realized I could never be a pilot.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Did you just realize that?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I could never follow that protocol. Forget it. I would be like- Trying to chat the guy up.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's the same thing when you're a physician, like they teach you early on, like you don't say whoops. There's certain things you don't say, like when you're examining a patient, you don't say, yeah, that's good. Like there are things that you would just say normally that can be interpreted in a nefarious way. You have to clean your lingo.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, psychologists never ever, or like good psychologists, I think, never say, I understand. Even though that's a normal thing to say in common parlance, when somebody's telling you about an experience and you're like, yeah, I understand.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Is it considered discourteous or why?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Because you don't understand and it's actually, like the really important thing as a psychologist is not to be sort of like feigning empathy. You don't understand what the patient is going through. You can say, that sounds very difficult. It sounds like you really were struggling there. I can imagine, or I even try not to say I can imagine because I don't know if I can, but I would never just say, totally, I understand. It's so disingenuous.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Well, maybe.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No, it is. Trust me. If somebody says that to you when you're talking about going through like a death or something really intense, they're like, I understand. That's not what you want to hear.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You learn to follow the path of least resistance. For example, early on in my career, I used to, when I was doing the neurological exam, I would tell patients, just walk normally across the room just so I could see them walk. After about the third or fourth time, I had a patient get mad at me and say, I can't walk normally. I said, walk as you normally would across the room just so that every now and then somebody doesn't get mad at me for implying that they can walk normally.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Well, the word normal itself also has kind of become-<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It can be loaded. When you're just dealing with thousands of people in an interaction, you sort of learned how to avoid, you smooth out all these rough edges.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, especially if you're seeing, like you said, if you're seeing people every day. Because I have ongoing relationships with my patients weekly, one of the things I do since I work at a cancer center that's, I think, so important is to figure out their identity language early on. Do you like the word survivor? Do you like the word victim? Do you like the word- Because so many people have very strong feelings about those words and you want to make sure you know what they are and you're operating within their frame. But anyway, that's very far away from the pilot saying, whoopsie. We'll risk it. We'll risk it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We'll risk it. To the press.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' They're saying, you smell that?<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' Yeah, that's another good one you don't want to say. What's that smell? Yeah, things like that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' What's that noise?<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' What's that noise? I've never heard that before.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Whoa, that sounds bad.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' How do I turn that off?<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' Anything new.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Is it supposed to do that?<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' Exactly. Anything new that happens-<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Can you turn those alarms off, please? Ever been struck by lightning while in flight?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Hold that thought. Hold that thought.<br />
<br />
== COVID-19 Update <small>(6:36)</small> == <br />
<br />
'''S:''' We're going to move on to some COVID updates. And I do want to say before I do that, today is July 28th, so my birthday is tomorrow, July 29th.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Happy birthday.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Happy day before your birthday.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Her birthday is the day before mine.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Julia!<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Happy birthday, Julia. I know she listens to the show. She wants to say happy birthday.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, Julia.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, so a couple of COVID items I wanted to point out.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Okay.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Here we go.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Both things that I get a ton of questions about, and there were some news items today that were relevant, so I thought I would cover them. One is about ivermectin. You guys remember what that is?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yes.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' A drug that many people claim is effective at treating COVID-19, so an antiviral drug that treats COVID-19. And there is a bit of a controversy about how well it works. There's a controversy because the data is preliminary. If it were ironclad, there'd still be a controversy because it's COVID and people are dumb, right? But it would be less of one. So there was a systematic review published recently where they go over all of the published data to date. This was 14 studies with 1,678 participants, so that's the total amount of data that they had to work with. And they concluded that, well, I'll read you the author's conclusions. This is sort of the executive summary of all the data. Based on the current very low to low certainty evidence, we are uncertain about the efficacy and safety of ivermectin to treat or prevent COVID-19. The completed studies are small and few are considered high quality. Several studies are underway that may produce clearer answers and review updates. So they're basically saying there's not enough evidence to say either way. But keep in mind what that also means is that if there were a big signal, we would be seeing it and there isn't a big signal. It's hard to rule out a small signal. So usually preliminary data tends to be more positive. There's a bias towards the positive. So if in the preliminary data, they're not even saying it's encouraging or there's a potential signal. Yeah, there's not really much there with the studies we have. Most are negative. There's one big positive study that was really lit a fire under the claims for ivermectin and that was retracted as fraudulent. It was a fake study. So you now have to factor that out of any previous reviews about ivermectin. This is the most up to date one and it accounts for that one fraudulent study. This really is a fairly negative review, but it's based upon preliminary evidence. So there is room for more definitive studies. But again, it probably isn't a big effect there because if there were a big effect, we probably would be seeing it even in the preliminary data.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So Steve, how does that work? You know how the New York Times writes an article and then they correct it later in the day saying, we accidentally named the source as Dr. So-and-so, but really it's Mrs. So-and-so or something like that. But we don't do that with journal articles.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, they just retract them completely.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But I'm saying like, let's say a meta-analysis includes a study that later was found fraudulent. Wouldn't it be great if the authors of that meta-analysis could just update their study and sort of like make a note at the bottom so that now when people search for it, it's still the same DOI number. It's just an updated version.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Usually editors will do that. Like they'll publish an editor's note that includes a study which has now been retracted or whatever.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right. Because that seems like a really unfortunate aspect of the scientific publishing world, that there's always outdated information.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. But no, they do publish corrections though.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Okay.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And that could be even just once it goes through the meat grinder of open-ended peer, not the pre-publication peer review. But the community now has to tear it apart. If they go, oh, you really screwed up here, and you know, if like the, basically if the journal gets embarrassed because they missed something or they really didn't do a good job editorially, they'll correct it post-production in response to the feedback from the community, which is appropriate.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right. It's just such a hard thing when like, like you said, a published journal article passes peer review. Everybody thinks it's legitimate. They cited a bunch of times. They actually utilize it as part of their own analysis. And then later it's uncovered that it's fraudulent. So everything it touched is now tainted.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Oh, yeah. And these retracted articles continue to be cited even after they're retracted.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Which is bananas. I understand if they were cited prior to that point.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, it's just lazy. It's because people are not going back to the primary source. They're citing something that's citing the article just perpetually, we really should never do that, you know. And hopefully a reviewer should pick that up. These are all things that should happen, but yeah, whatever. It's tough. It's why it takes months to get a paper through peer review because there's so many details to go over. And you know, and having published what I have and written thousands of blog posts and et cetera. You write anything of any length, no matter how careful you are, there's going to be errors. There's going to be mistakes. There's no way you can, you can weed them all out.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I'm reading the news today and the CDC changed the mask recommendations like, circumstantial, right?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So what's the confusion? Why are people like what is this? It's like, yeah, they changed it because the circumstances changed. So do you understand why there's general confusion about the CDC's change in recommendation?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It depends on where it is, right? Like the new CDC guidance is that in hotspot areas, vaccinated people should wear a mask indoors. I think the concern is like, why didn't they just say everywhere? Why not say everywhere?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I know it's tough because there's an intention to treat kind of approach to it, but it's complicated. So in other words, if you leave people wiggle room, there's the perception that maybe they'll be more receptive. And if you if you are draconian, then you'll get more backlash. But if you make it more too complicated, then they'll be confused. And so it's no one really knows what the perfect way to put it is. But that's the thinking that goes behind it. But I was just interviewed on the radio yesterday about this, and they asked that question. It's like, oh the experts are changing their mind when we don't know what to believe. Like, listen, this is a rapidly evolving pandemic, right? The facts are actually changing. This is literally a new variant of the virus. It's a different virus that's circulating now.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Right. That's how it should be.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. The recommendations have to keep being updated in order to track facts on the ground. And we have to just accept that that the CDC is going to tell us one thing today and then something else a month from now, because it's going to be a different situation.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' And also, this is actually based on actual new facts like they actually discovered that people with the beta variant are have like a thousand times the load of a virus in their mucosal tracts or whatever.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Delta variant.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah. What did I say?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You said beta.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, boy. The Delta variant. I mean, it's like a new fact. They found that there's a thousand times the virus that there was in the second variant in a second. And because of that it's going to spread a lot worse. And so even if you get it, so even if you're even if you're vaccinated and you don't have a mask, there's a greater chance that you're going to catch it because there's a thousand fold increase. And you might not even get sick, but you can still potentially spread it even if you're vaccinated. So it's just safer and better to put to have a mask on if you're in a yellow or a red zone. And that makes sense to me, too, because that's where you're going to get the most bang for the buck. It's not it's not nearly as as as required in a regular in a place where it's it's good where the vaccine rates are decent.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And Cara, you're also right, though, that we can have like the most evidence based tweaked out recommendations. But if they're too complicated, people will throw up their hands in confusion. And so sometimes you may need to just gloss over some of the complexity just to make the recommendations a little bit more simple. But it's no one knows what the perfect answer is. It's difficult when you're dealing with public messaging like that.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' In some states and some municipalities are like, we're going to say we're going to be more extreme than what the federal government says that like California and then other states and municipalities it's like, we're not going to do any of this until we're forced to. And I think that's where the confusion comes in, too. The federal guidance is not always in line with the local guidance.<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' Something I recently read on the pilot forums. Now, I'm not an airline pilot, but I have a lot of friends who fly airlines, as you can imagine when an airline pilot flies next to somebody they may have never met, even though they've been in the airline for a decade and they sit there and everybody cycles into the plane and maybe they'll look in the cockpit and maybe they'll see if the pilot's wearing a mask or not. And what they've talked about is that if they're not wearing a mask, they are being assumed to have vaccinated. But if they are wearing a mask, people are assuming the opposite. People have heard them mutter under their breath things like, oh, I have a MAGA pilot.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, I think I mentioned on the show a few weeks ago that I went into a bakery and it was in the in-between when you couldn't when you were allowed to not wear a mask.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' In the in-between, is that like the upside down?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, the in-between times. And I was wearing my mask. Everybody there was wearing their mask. A woman walked in. She said, do I need to do I should I take it out of my bag? And they were like, if you're vaccinated, it's fine if you're not blah, blah, blah. She was like, well, I am, but I didn't want to send the wrong message. And I literally had that moment, that thought. And I kind of turned to the guy who was working the register and I was like, oh, I was just wearing mine so that people don't think I'm an anti-masker. And he's like, oh, same.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We're clearly in a gray zone kind of transition period. And the bottom line is get vaccinated. Wear a mask. Suck it up until this is over. OK, we want this to be over. All right. One more quick news item.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' OK, so the question is, is it OK to mix and match COVID vaccines? What happens to the question?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's a big question.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Big question. So there was a study. And the study looked at it compared. This is now in Europe. They compared, getting one dose of AstraZeneca and another dose of the Pfizer BioNTech vaccine, versus getting just the AstraZeneca or just the Pfizer. So how do you think that shook out?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's so hard. It's different. I don't know.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I think it works. I think it's fine to mix and match. That's my guess.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I hope it's my guess, too.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Maybe I guess it's a little bit better to mix and match.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Really?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Bob is correct. It's a little bit better to mix. So the BioNTech, the Pfizer BioNTech vaccine did better overall than AstraZeneca, the Oxford AstraZeneca one. And if you took one of each, it was slightly better than if you got two of the Pfizer.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Even though it's not just that mixing was better than just getting AstraZeneca, mixing was better than just getting Pfizer?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' A little bit, but only by a little bit.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Interesting.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Sounds kind of negligible, but interesting.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, that is interesting. I would get why it would be better because if it had a higher efficacy, then yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Now, however, this was a measuring antibodies and T cells, not risk of infection. So this is remember we talked, I think, a couple of weeks ago about different ways. Yeah, so looking at markers, not risk of infection, they said they're all fine. They're all protective. It's all good. But we were just looking at antibodies just to see if there was like any reason for concern, if anything, mixing is not only fine, if anything, it might be slightly better because maybe just getting different stimulation of different antigens and the overall stimulation to the immune system was a little bit more robust. So mixing and matching is based on this one study of these particular vaccines appears to be fine.<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' Steve, I have a question for you, Steve, regarding this. So just tonight, my son and I look forward to watching baseball games all the time, and they just canceled the Nationals Phillies game due to COVID. So right before we started here, my son came up to me and told me it was because 12 national players and management team have been tested positive, 11 of them were vaccinated. And he said that he said that those 11 were Johnson and Johnson. Now, this is this is from my 15 year old son. So I haven't had a chance to peer review this journal. But he's pretty smart on Facebook. My question, then, related to what you just brought up, Steve, is say someone does get the Johnson and Johnson, they read some of this anecdotal evidence and they get nervous. Can they go out and get themselves some Pfizer or Moderna?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, I was like 85 versus 90 to 95. It's still very, very effective. It's not quite as effective as the mRNA vaccines. I haven't seen any published studies looking at crossing over, getting a booster from the from the Johnson and Johnson. And then they're basically the other thing is you have to remember they were sort of discouraging that mainly because they think everyone wants needs to get a first dose before we talk about people getting boosters or second doses or insurance doses or whatever.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right. But J&J was a single shot.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's a single shot. But they're basically saying, don't worry about that until we get everybody vaccinated. Was kind of the standard answer. And I think I think we're going to be getting our boosters at a year. I think that's going to happen.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I think you're right. I think we're all going to be getting boosters. And when you look at the hospital data, again, over and over and over 90, some extreme number percent of people in hospitals across the country were not vaccinated or only had a single shot.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And the single shot definitely is not adequate. Like you do not get for the ones that require two shots. A single shot is not does not do it does not cut it. All right. Let's move on to some news items.<br />
<br />
== News Items ==<br />
<br />
=== Folding Proteins <small>(20:27)</small> ===<br />
* [https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02025-4 DeepMind’s AI predicts structures for a vast trove of proteins]<ref>[https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02025-4 nature: DeepMind’s AI predicts structures for a vast trove of proteins]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' Bob, you're going to start with an update on folding proteins.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yes.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I thought you were going to say folding laundry.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I don't do it.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, I wouldn't cover that unless maybe it was metamaterial laundry. So yes, DeepMind and European Bioinformatics Institute released a treasure trove of 350,000 predicted protein structures created by their deep learning AI Alpha Fold 2. Now, you may remember Alpha Fold 2. I talked about it in episode 804. Check it out. Fascinating stuff. Last December, it won the Olympics of protein folding, showing that it could predict how hundreds or thousands of linked amino acids would fold into complex proteins far, far better than any other predictive system at that time. So knowing the specific shape of a protein is critical, right? Because that 3D shape actually determines how that protein will function. And proteins are, by the way, proteins are the shit they make. They make up and make happen most of the important life stuff, in quotes, life stuff that happens in biology. That's, of course, all over the earth. Proteins are they really are the queens of biology. They catalyse far and away most of the chemical reactions in the cell. They could be so many different things. They could be structural. They could be protective. They could be used as transport or storage. Their membranes, their enzymes, their toxins. I mean, just look at the cell's resume. Most of what they have written down, proteins, proteins, proteins. That's kind of like what they do. So proteins are kind of important in biology. And intimately knowing what those those proteins are and especially the ones that humans create, particularly, is obviously that's a that's a holy grail of biology. So this almanac of all the proteins for humans is called the proteome. And it was the biggest ineluctable goal once the genome was mapped in 2003, because once we mapped our genome, a lot of these scientists were saying, all right, now that we got this, we've got to go after the proteome. And of course, it's been that's been a goal for years. But you really kind of need the genome first before you're really going to start mapping creating the proteome. And but only until now do we really kind of have the tools to do this. Because remember that just because we know the genome, that doesn't mean that we know the shape of the proteins that it codes for. It's not encoded in DNA. It's not in there. It's just way too hard to predict how amino acids would fold in on themselves to form a protein. Incredibly complicated. Some amino acids are hydrophobic, some are hydrophilic, some are charged, some are uncharged. I mean, trying to suss that out for a protein comprised of hundreds and thousands of amino acids, not going to happen in any way that we could come up with in like an algorithmic way until really the alpha fold two. Now, we've had other methods to actually get a fairly definitive look at the 3D shape of proteins, but they were expensive. They were time consuming. Like, for example, you may have heard of X-ray crystallography or cryo electron microscopy. Those are two methods. They're great. They will really get you a look at what the 3D shape of that protein is. But that takes too much time, too much money, way too slow. But that's really the gold standard for years. But really no longer. It's not necessarily the gold standard anymore. All right. So how does AlphaFold do this? It uses two methods primarily. It uses training data that was taken from all that hard one information from the crystallography data. We have all those images, all those all those those that hard one data from X-ray crystallography. And using that, you could use that as training data. So basically saying that look at this amino acid sequence. This is exactly what the protein looks like. So that is training it. And then the second way that it does this, that it uses actually the knowledge that we have about how related proteins fold. Because if you're a related protein, you're going to generally fold similarly to the your cousin protein down down the road. So all that information was kind of thrown into AlphaFold as well. And those are the two the two main ways that it that it's really doing all this. Now, this latest news is the result of unleashing AlphaFold 2 on the human genome, the human genome and the genomes of important model organisms like E. coli, fruit flies and even meatballs. Right, Jay?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Don't even.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' OK. I won't go there.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Even? Don't even.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' So last week, as I said, they released a database of three hundred and fifty thousand three dimensional protein structures. Now, let's look at the subset of those that are just the human proteins. Many researchers put that the human proteome at twenty thousand proteins. But that's kind of a guess, I think, Steve, right? That's not exactly that firm. I've come across numbers that were smaller and even far bigger. But kind of the big number you'll hit when looking up the human proteome is about twenty thousand proteins. And that's probably close enough, I guess. <br />
<br />
'''S:''' Twenty thousand is always this is the estimate I always see now.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, yeah. OK. So so the database that was released covered only about ninety eight point five percent of them. So almost all of the twenty thousand. And that's mainly because they had to they had a limit. They said, all right, no proteins that are beyond, say, twenty three hundred amino acids. They cut it off there because it gets kind of crazy once you get the really huge proteins and they're much harder to predict. So ninety eight point five percent. Pretty close. So we had previously laboriously identified 17 percent of the human amino acids, so-called residues in our proteome. We spent decades, decades using those gold standard methods I mentioned. Seventeen percent. So now this new database brings that number up to fifty eight percent, almost sixty eight percent at a confident level. It's just confident. They are very confident. And of that fifty eight, thirty six percent are highly confident. So they're very highly confident over of thirty six percent of it. Now, think about that. I mean, from 17 to 36 or to 58 percent, that's a staggering increase. There's nothing incremental about that. And what what that is, if you really think about it, that's essentially decades worth of research done in months or weeks. I mean, probably be a lot quicker than that for the program to to run. Can you mean we're actually doing this where we're doing decades worth of research in a day or so. Now, Alpha Fold is obviously it's not perfect. There are things that it can't do. There are some proteins that do not have a defined structure. I mean, that actually is what they do. They're not defined at all that there. If they have any structure, their structure is to be flexible. So Alpha Fold is not designed to really deal with that. There are some proteins that will not take on a specific structure until they are like physically touching another protein. So Alpha Fold is definitely not designed to deal with that. The data is just not there to handle that as well. So it's not going to you know, it can't do all proteins. Not at all, but it can do a lot of them and it can do some of them incredibly, incredibly well. One thing about this release that I really loved is that DeepMind is making their data set publicly available on a site hosted by a European Bioinformatics Institute. I checked it out today. You can go there right now. [https://alphafold.ebi.ac.uk/ AlphaFold.ebi/ac/uk]. Go there right now. I poked around and under a minute I was looking at the predicted shape of cell division protein FTSP for E. Coli. BAM. I just like it offered it as E. Coli as an example. And I drilled down a little bit and I was looking at a protein and the confidence level for most of the shape of that protein was above the 90th percentile, above 90th, which is essentially what the X-ray crystallography gets you after months of work and a ton of money. And they got it probably between breakfast and lunch. Amazing, amazing. This is going to be an amazing tool. Now, over the course of the rest of this year, DeepMind plans to target every last gene sequence and DNA databases, like probably all the major databases all over the world. They're just going to hit all of those gene sequences and feed them in to Alpha Fold 2. Their goal is to increase their database of predicted structures from 350,000 to 100 million proteins, 100 million or more. Researchers say we think this is the most significant contribution AI has made to science to date. That is a hell of a quote right there. So what does that mean? And so what's this going to mean to me? So now having the proteome and we don't have the proteome yet, but we've made big strides, it seems, and we're going to make even bigger strides in the very near future. It's definitely going to make some big changes to the practice of medicine, obviously, designing drugs, understanding diseases. Computational biologist Mohammed Al Quraishi describes having the availability of so many protein structures as a paradigm shift in biology. Steve, you mentioned in your blog that we'll be able to move more quickly from research on people and animals to computers, right? From in vivo and in vitro to in silico, right?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The more data we have, the better we'll be able to model things. So you're still going to for anything medical, you're going to need that final piece of testing it in actual people. The goal is by the time you get to that point, you've maximized safety and you maximize the probability of it working. And the more information we have, the better. So this this will speed up clinical research because it'll get us to that final human stage with much greater confidence.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah. But of course like the Genome Project, when that remember when that came out in 2003, I distinctly remember it. A lot of changes now will be behind the scenes. You're not going to you're not going to go to your doctor and talking about this really. It's not going to trickle down to you for a while. It could take years for that to happen. This kind of stuff takes time. But behind the scenes, there's going to be a lot of stuff going on. And but of course, not everyone is doing a happy dance, apparently. I found David David Jones, David Jones, as a UCL computational biologist, he thinks he believes that many of Alphafold's predictive structures could have been created with earlier software developed by academics. He said, for most proteins, those results are are probably good enough for quite a lot of things that you want to do. So, OK. So to sum it up, I'll end with a quote from Alphabet and Google CEO Sundar Pichai, who said recently, the Alphafold database shows the potential for AI to profoundly accelerate scientific progress. Not only has DeepMind's machine learning system greatly expanded our accumulated knowledge of protein structures and the human proteome overnight, its deep insights into the building blocks of life hold an extraordinary promise for the future of scientific discovery. And I'll finally end with with my big takeaway. My big takeaway from this is that I think this is starting to give us a glimpse of the potential of narrow AI. I mean, if you already hadn't having gotten that glimpse already, it's it's an amazing tool. It's you know, and this we're just scratching the surface. We're just getting started. And it's going to continue and continue and continue to improve and change our lives. And I mean, I'm just trying to think, can you imagine in 20 to 30 years, what narrow AI and beyond will be giving us? It's going to I mean, it's going to be amazing. I mean, clearly some crazy stuff's coming down the road.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I agree. And I'm usually not nearly as much as a techno optimist as you, Bob. But I think that it's you can't oversell, I think, like the promise of narrow AI, the way it's been taking off in the last five years or so with deep learning and neural networks and everything. Think about this. This is jet fuel to biological and medical research. We're going to be feeling the effects of this for decades and it's only going to get better. So yeah, it really is allowing us to do decades of research in months in some areas.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' And yeah, even though it could take some years before we really start seeing the payoff, your kids and your grandkids, they are going to be seeing the results of this. They'll be thinking of this of this date and maybe they'll even remember this talk. I remember when Bob talked about that.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Wouldn't that be nice?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' He first brought it up in episode 804.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's 838. All right. That's the episode we're on today.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Thank you.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You're welcome.<br />
<br />
=== Magnet Therapy for Cancer <small>(32:46)</small> ===<br />
* [https://theness.com/neurologicablog/treating-brain-cancer-with-magnets/ Treating Brain Cancer with Magnets]<ref>[https://theness.com/neurologicablog/treating-brain-cancer-with-magnets/ Neurologica: Treating Brain Cancer with Magnets]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' What if I told you guys, what would your first reaction be of a study that claims, to treat brain cancer with magnets?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Brain cancer?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Sounds like it's from an article a hundred years ago.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' But we're using magnets on the brain. I would imagine that it's probably derivative of that.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah. But for cancer treatment?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, but how do you how do you shrink a tumor with a magnet?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. So-<br />
<br />
'''J:''' You hit it with magnetism.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So wait, but what if you're using the magnets to guide the drugs?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, is that how? Oh, like an etch a sketch kind of thing?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' This is just from the directly from the magnetic field itself.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, that's cool. I mean, I would say I'm skeptical, but tell me more.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, it's kind of you guys are reflecting kind of the dichotomy here. So magnets are real. It's like it's not like their magnets themselves are made up and they affect the body because our biological organisms are electromagnetic and magnetic resonance imaging, MRI scans or use magnets to make the best images we can of of biology. And we're using transcranial magnetic stimulation to change brain function. And so, yeah magnets are a powerful, real biological force.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But that's all like physiology, there's something interesting about the idea of like there being a tumor in the brain.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, yeah. So this definitely is like a new level. And of course, my initial reaction was skeptical as well, because the flip side of that coin is for the last 200 years, basically, since there's been a science of magnetism and magnets, there has been magnetic quackery and it's still flourishing. And so the question is always when you want to hear any claim being put forward for magnets, is this real or is this magnetic quackery? Is this nonsense? And sometimes there's things in the middle where you have legitimate researchers who think they've hit upon something, but they're just getting kind of lost in the sexiness of using magnetic fields to affect the body. I've seen that happen as well. So I took a deep look at this at this one and my overall sense is that this is legitimate, but preliminary. If I had to encapsulate the executive summary there. First of all, the brain cancer that they're treating here is glioblastoma multiforme, which is the most GPM. It's the most common. It's also the nastiest. It's bad. It's the hardest to treat. Survival times are still like 12 to 18 months on average. And yeah, and like our treatments, they've made a little bit of a difference, but not much.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And they can be kind of brutal, too.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. Oh, yeah. It's hard because it's brain cancer. It's a very invasive cancer. It sends out like the tendrils into the brain tissue. That's why it's impossible to cure. It's not like encapsulated or anything. And by the time you detect it, it's like too late. It's already insinuated itself in the brain. And of course, our ability to use aggressive treatment, whether surgical or radiation or whatever, is limited because it's the brain that you're talking about. At some point, you're like you could take out lobes of the lung and try to manage people that way. But you can't do that to the brain without causing significant neurological impairment. So it's bad. It's very, very bad.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' But wait, we only use 10 percent of our brains. So can't you just cut off the other 90 percent?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And delete it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And that's not just to make sure everyone listening knows that's absolutely not true. That's myth. Bob said that in jest.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It's 12 percent.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Bob was supposed to say, what is it? Sarcasm symbol.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, the sarcasm. All right. So this is how the thing I was most interested in when I heard this is what's the apparent mechanism here? Because it's not obvious. And I did not think of it. Wasn't even among the things that I would consider. So this is how it allegedly works. And this is based upon some in vitro data. So there's some preliminary data. And this is what led to this study. And that is that the if you have an intense enough magnetic field for a long enough period of time, it can affect the function of mitochondria in such a way that it causes them to spew out a lot of oxygen free radicals. Now, if you have a very metabolically active tissue like cancer, it might cause them to put out so many oxygen free radicals that it triggers cell death. Apoptosis.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Apoptosis.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. So that's the idea.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But it would never be like all of it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, probably not.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But yeah, I just don't see how this is. I mean, but it could definitely maybe tamp it down, slow its progression.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, you want to hear what the results were? So first of all, this was a case report. This is a case report of one person. This is one person. So this is just a proof of concept. We just want to make sure it's not going to make the person drop dead so that we could actually study it in people. So this was somebody who has glioblastoma, GBM, or I should say had he passed away during the study. But he had GBM and had failed all treatment and there was nothing left they can do for him. So it was like nothing left to lose. Let's try this experimental treatment sort of thing. So he had to wear it. It's interesting because you wear a helmet with these three magnets on them and it looks like a beer drinking hat. You know what those look like?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, no.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Exactly like that. Like, yeah, like almost with the exact same dimensions as like a beer can. There's sort of like a little fat. So there's like these two little fat beer cans on either side, like at both temples. And then there's a third one on the top of the head. So there's these three can magnets, which are very powerful. And he had to wear them for several hours a day, like with five minutes between each hour for five days a week. And they tracked the size of the tumor while he was doing this. And the tumor actually shrunk. You know, it shrunk by by 1.03 centimetres per day, cubic centimetres per day.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It might have been an enormous tumor.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. So overall, overall, it shrunk by 31 percent during the course of the treatment. Thirty one percent.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Random question, Steve. How sure are we that this wasn't just the cumulative effect of all the other treatments this guy had taken?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, because there's we don't know for sure because it's one person. But there's a couple of good reasons to suspect that it isn't.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That it was the magnets.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' One is at one point he had to take a break from wearing the magnets and the tumor started to get bigger. And then they reinstated the magnets and they got smaller. And then when he did it for longer, it got smaller, faster. So there was an apparent dose response and there was there was good correlation to actually because they were again, they were following him during the course of several months. It wasn't just like at the beginning and the end.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, that's a good.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's pretty good. That's pretty good. That's pretty strong.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Wear them all the time.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Interesting. OK.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Unfortunately, the guy had you mean he had a brain tumor, he's neurologically impaired. At some point during the study, he fell, had a closed head injury and ultimately died from the injury.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, my gosh.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Not from the tumor and not from the treatment, but from falling and hitting his head.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Which is related, probably.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, probably secondarily related, probably because I said he's impaired because he's got a brain tumor. The family did allow for an autopsy. So this allowed the researchers to do a pathological examination of the brain, and they were able to document the tumor shrinkage that way. You know, it's a case report of one person. So that's a hugely preliminary. It has to be replicated. We need statistics. You know, we need to do real controls here. It's encouraging enough to do more research. I don't want to, like, oversell the implication of a single study with one person. But as a proof of concept to justify later research, it's pretty solid. And it's interesting. It's interesting, I never would have thought about that, that effect. But again, one of the main ways that we treat cancer is to put cells that are the most metabolically active under some stress, because cancer cells are probably the most metabolically active cells.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That's why you lose your hair, right?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But that's why you lose your hair and you have other effects, because the other metabolically active cells will tend to be affected as well.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, it's why chemo is severely toxic. It's not just hair loss.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It is literally a toxin just killing cells is hoping to kill the tumor cells more than the healthy cells.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And that's why a lot of a lot of chemotherapies, you have to like get your levels of your liver enzymes checked. You have to get heart tests and yeah, just make sure your organs are OK.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So the other thing is that this was looking at tumor size, which, again, is a very important marker, but it didn't look at survival because it couldn't because he died in the middle of it. And there's only anecdotal evidence about quality of life. You know, his caregiver said he was getting a little bit decreased effects of the tumor. But so what later studies will need to look at is does it actually increase survival and does it and or does it increase quality of life duration and quality of life? That's what it's all about. And so it's probably not going to be a cure, probably not going to be a cure. But if it does help whack back the tumor and extend survival even a little bit, it's something because again, it's such a horrible diagnosis. I did want just to remind you guys of the CRISPR study from a few months ago.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, that was incredibly encouraging.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That was in mice. It was not in humans. Right. But that was also with GBM. So who knows, maybe in four or five years might have in the clinic, some combination of CRISPR and this magnetic therapy that might start moving the needle on GBM would be really, really nice.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. And the truth is, human trials would probably be relatively easy to get approval for considering that it's not invasive.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's all risk versus benefit. Right.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And the standard of care for glioblastoma is still it's they're low survival. I mean, it's a very low survival. So even the best we have right now is not great.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, exactly.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So being able to have a clinical trial like this would be helpful.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And this could be completely adjunctive therapy to whatever else is standard of care. So it's very easy.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, I don't see any reason why this would be at least from a face validity perspective, why this would in any way like gum up chemo or radiation.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Right. Right. Right. But again, I just have to my huge word of caution here is we've been here before with GBM, with treatments like, oh, this keeps blood vessels from growing. This is going to be fantastic. And it does like very little to nothing. So we just got to be very cautious because everything that's looked encouraging previously for GBM has just not had that much of an effect. But we got to keep playing, buying those lottery tickets, right? We just got to keep trying. And this is one of the more encouraging things to come down for a while. So we'll see how it works out.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I mean, have we ever seen a 30 percent decrease like that?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Probably. I mean, that's the thing. You've got to remember, this is one dude. Probably plenty of people have seen 30 percent decrease when they took chemo.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. Or radiation therapy.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Or radiation, like stuff we already have.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. Yeah. The problem is that even when it looks good with markers and everything, it just doesn't seem to extend survival. That's the key.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. And also a 30 percent decrease means nothing if it's just going to come roaring back the minute you can no longer tolerate the treatment because it's too toxic. And that's a huge problem. It's like you can only stave these things off for so much. And the minute that you're not in treatment anymore, it comes raring back.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' So I mean, I could wear that helmet all day.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, but we can't we can't assume it's benign. It's doing something. If you're killing cancer cells, it's doing something.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, it might cause long term cognitive impairment or I mean, there's no reason to think it wouldn't. It's just not relevant if survival solo.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Steve, Steve, are the doctors worried, though, that somebody might end up with superpowers?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' No, they're very worried. It's why they haven't said anything about it yet.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' OK, just curious.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Take their silence as panic.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Do you have a sticky note on your laptop that says to ask that every time we do a CRISPR or magnetic?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I'm just checking because this is where these superpowers come from. If you if you read comic book historical research, that's where all these wacky stuff is coming from.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's right.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' The peer reviewed comic book literature tells me this.<br />
<br />
=== Galileo Project <small>(45:29)</small> ===<br />
* [https://www.space.com/galileo-project-search-for-extraterrestrial-artifacts-announcement 'Galileo Project' will search for evidence of extraterrestrial life from the technology it leaves behind]<ref>[https://www.space.com/galileo-project-search-for-extraterrestrial-artifacts-announcement Space.com: 'Galileo Project' will search for evidence of extraterrestrial life from the technology it leaves behind]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, Jay, since you're so keen on trying me in here, tell us about the Galileo project.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, I want to start off by saying before we get into this news item that right now, I don't know where the researchers really lie on the science versus pseudoscience spectrum. I'm hoping they're way more on the science side of things. But there is a little bit of question about it. So do your own research. I'm just going to tell you about what took place this week. So the concept here is imagine if we could find an alien artifact for real and how cool that would be. You know, I'm talking about something that was built by an alien culture. You know, what impact would that have on today's society? That's for philosophers and Cara to figure out. But astrophysicist Avi Loeb from Harvard University and Frank Lockean, CEO of Brooker Corporation, they're both co-founders of this new initiative called the Galileo project. And the goal of the project is to search for and hopefully find extraterrestrial technological civilizations or ETCs. So on Monday, the 26th of July, the team announced, and this is in quotes, Given the recently discovered abundance of Earth, Sun, systems, the Galileo project is dedicated to the proposition that humans can no longer ignore the possible existence of extraterrestrial technological civilizations. So that's a mouthful, right?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' OK, ignore the existence.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Have you been ignoring?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Have there been any evidence?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, I know, Bob. Right. There's there's a lot of question marks.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' They're missing the word potential or possible.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Exactly. Well, I'll get into it a little bit later where what I was able to read today, what I found out. But let me just go through what the Galileo project is, because on the surface, it's not a complete waste of time. The team will look for techno signatures. Have you ever heard of a techno signature?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yes.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, we talked about it on the show.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Right. OK, so just to remind people, there are physical objects, right? Maybe it's an alien species that built something that we can see, right? It could be an alien technological equipment of some kind. Like, Bob, you always talk about Dyson spheres, right? Like a Dyson swarm, like encasing a sun in a material that will collect the energy of that sun.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Right. And it would radiate infrared and you could detect the infrared. Sure.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Right. So there might be who knows, right? You know, come on.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' The universe is huge. There might be some artifact out there.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' The problem is detecting it.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Exactly. So the project has three research goals. The first one is to obtain high resolution images of unidentified aerial phenomena. This is a new way of saying UFO. It's UAP.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Really? They're going they're going local with this. Ugh.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Through multi detector sensors to discover their nature. Search and conduct in depth research on interstellar objects. That part is great. Search for potential ETC satellites in Earth's orbit. Not so great.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' In Earth's orbit?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yes.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Wow. No, this is pseudoscience.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' But this is Avi. This is Avi.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I think it's mixed. I think it's mixed.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Not from what I'm hearing so far. I mean, you're going to look for extraterrestrial technology in the atmosphere, in orbit around the Earth or in the solar system. Steve this is the ʻOumuamua guy.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I know.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' So, I mean, what do you hear? What are you hearing that that looks that sounds encouraging to you?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So the team is not investigating previous claims of alien visitation or UAPs. This is good news, by the way, right? Because there's all this crap in the news for the past several months about UFOs, whatnot. They want to look for and research physical objects like ʻOumuamua. And no matter what oddities they do find, this is what they say. They want to discover the origin, if possible. It could be an atmospheric phenomenon. This is what they're saying, that it could be an atmospheric phenomenon or a similarly mundane explanation. Or it could be something much more compelling, like an actual alien artifact. Either way, the team is going to use a science-based methodology to draw conclusions. That's basically what they're saying. Now, of course, what they actually do with the information that they find is a completely different thing. And that's going to happen behind closed doors, which we won't know. So in the past two weeks, the team has received one point seven five million dollars in donations. They're currently selecting the scientific instruments that they need to get started. And they plan to set up multiple telescopes and or they're calling it telescope systems globally. So each telescope system is going to have two 25 centimeter telescopes and, of course, a digital camera. And they'll use software to search through all the collected data that they end up with. Then they'll find an object of interest and then they'll do a deeper dive on it and get the highest resolution that they can off of that. They also plan to analyse data collected from other survey telescopes, like the 8-meter Verisi-Rubin Observatory that's currently under construction in Chile. Okay, that's cool. They should use these bigger telescopes as well. Now, just for some context here. Many fields of science look for signs of life outside our Earth. Legit like planetary scientists, astrobiologists, exoplanet astronomers, and, of course, SETI. Hello, right? They they're they're looking for evidence. And we don't like turn a crooked eye to SETI because we know that they're science based. The question always is how legitimate is the science? And the problem here is that pseudoscience has a strong presence when it comes to proof of aliens. It always has. Some scientists are conducting legitimate research and others aren't. So time will tell how legitimate this new endeavour is. But I found something very interesting. So Carl Sagan's book, Contact, was very loosely based on a scientist named Jill Tarter. And she recently went head to head with Ali, the guy-<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Avi.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Avi Loeb, right? She went head to head with him, basically saying, like cut the pseudoscience, right? You need to read it. There's there's there's an exchange that they had. It was it's interesting. But the point here is that other scientists are turning an eye and saying how legitimate is this? That's the main question here. And I think it's a good thing for people to discuss because money is being spent and they're making claims and they're going to what if they do find something? You know, this team actually believed that that object that came through, ʻOumuamua, they really believe that it was an alien technology. And there is no evidence of that whatsoever. So I feel like they're being very, very optimistic, like in the face of true science, they're being way too optimistic. So that puts a big skeptical red flag in the sky for me when I hear that kind of sentiment towards an object that happened to pass by the earth. You know, now that he wrote a book and now he's out collecting money. So the only thing we could do is sit back and watch what they do and see if anything comes out of it. I mean, if they do legit science, the sad fact is they're probably going to find absolutely nothing.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, I agree. I mean, I obviously have no problem with people in doing scientific investigation to things like this. I have no problem with SETI. I think SETI is great. As long as they keep the quality of the science high and they don't overstate any claims or they're not trying to prove that this is true. They're just they're trying to really answer the question. Like, is there any evidence for technosignatures out there? Then that's fine. I have no problem with it. And I agree. It's like probably come up with nothing. But it's also possible that somewhere in our galaxy there is a Dyson swarm. You know, it's possible. And if they find that great.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Well, the question for me is the the implication I got earlier, Jay, was that they were looking primarily local, earth's atmosphere, earth orbit, and our solar system. And so if they're looking just there, I think okay, look, but I think that's a waste – kind of a waste of time because it's basically looking for UFOs. There's just no evidence that extraterrestrials visited our solar system, our planet. And I think if you're going to spend millions to look locally, I think that's a massive waste of time. If you're going to do good science, that's great. But I would rather you look outward, you know? Look out into the galaxy and into the universe for technosignatures of like Kardashev civilizations type 2, type 3, the kind of civilizations that can make an impact on their local environment to such a degree that we could detect it thousands or millions of light years away. That's great because I think that's probably going to be the only way we're going to find alien evidence is some technosignature or a signal that we could detect. That's how it's probably going to be detected. And we got to look. And we actually did look. We did a big survey. We did a big survey, I remember a few years ago, looking for a specific infrared signature that you would get from a Dyson swarm. And they didn't find anything. And that was very disappointing because it was a solid, it was a solid task. It was a solid mission that they were doing. They really, it was a pretty wide survey. And so that was very disappointing. But that's the kind of stuff I think you're going to need to do to find a technosignature. So I hope they look more non-local than what they, sounds like they're doing.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' But if we do hear a signal from outer space that it goes bang, bang, bang. If we hear that, we know, we know it's legit. That's what aliens sound like.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' And only like that.<br />
<br />
=== Wing Colour and Flight Efficiency <small>(54:53)</small> ===<br />
* [https://rs.figshare.com/collections/Supplementary_material_from_The_evolution_of_darker_wings_in_seabirds_in_relation_to_temperature-dependent_flight_efficiency_/5477695 Supplementary material from "The evolution of darker wings in seabirds in relation to temperature-dependent flight efficiency"]<ref>[https://rs.figshare.com/collections/Supplementary_material_from_The_evolution_of_darker_wings_in_seabirds_in_relation_to_temperature-dependent_flight_efficiency_/5477695 The Royal Society Publishing: Supplementary material from "The evolution of darker wings in seabirds in relation to temperature-dependent flight efficiency"]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. Knewt, you're going to tell us about this study looking at wing colour and flight efficiency.<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' Yes. So wing colour and flight efficiency, specifically in birds.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Not airplanes. Okay.<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' Not airplanes. Not yet. Maybe we'll get there as a pilot. I would love to talk about airplanes, so I'll find a way to work that in. But also as a pilot, I've had a lifelong fascination and I would say inherent jealousy of our winged friends. And one thing that we've noticed, not me, but this research that I read, they noticed that all of those large swooping birds across the ocean, they all have one thing in common. That is dark wings. So a group of researchers out of Ghent University, they examined about 324 specimens on record of soaring birds. And what they found was, yeah, dark wings are great for things like camouflage and perhaps mating, hiding. The classic reason that you would think a bird has decorative plumage. But what they got interested in was that if the dark wings, the dark feathers actually helped them fly. And sure enough, the study determined that they did find there was a benefit to having dark wing in the actual mechanics of flight for a bird. What they found specifically was that, well, what they did took, they took wings from a northern gannet. And they propped them up in a wind tunnel after stuffing them with cotton. And they manipulated the colouring of the plumage. Of course, they had white, they had dark, they had white fading into dark. And they ran them through all sorts of positions and different wind speeds and wind directions. And also they simulated various sun intensities using infrared bulbs on these wings. And what was interesting is that, of course, they found out that the darker wings heated up more. But what the researchers found was that when the wings started with the white feathers closer to the body and then branching out to the darker feathers, that there was up to nine degrees temperature change from the lighter to the darker. And this boosted airflow by what you may know of as a convection current. So from colder air to hotter air, just like works in the water. But what they found was that, interesting thing, is that it resulted in a 20% reduction in drag across the wing. And that's significant. And I can tell you as a pilot, that's significant based on, now here we go into aircraft. Back in 1973 with the oil crisis, there was a push by NASA and they worked with Boeing, a bunch of other companies, trying to figure out how they could improve fuel efficiency. And this one guy, he said we should do something about the wingtip vortices at the end of a wing. And what they came up with was the winglet. And you've seen that if you've ever flown Southwest. You look out the wing, you can see the little nub going up at the end of the wing. That's a blended winglet. But what they first tested was just a chunk of metal at the end of a KC-135 wing. And what they determined was that that also reduced drag by 20%. Coincidentally, exact same number. But what that translated into was about five to 7% fuel savings. And that's maybe a little better version of efficiency. Because five to seven translates to dollars when you're talking to airlines. It translates to a lot of dollars. So NASA has said it's in the billions. It's hard to wrap your brain around that number. So I went and grabbed some numbers just to make sure. But Southwest, the number one user of the 737, they've got 746 of those. They say that by adding those winglets, they save 100,000 gallons of gas a year per jet. And that's just a four to six percent. So five percent, let's say, fuel savings. And yeah, absolutely. It reduces the carbon footprint as well. In fact, that two billion gallons of jet fuel worldwide was saved in 2010. Which equated to 21.5 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions. I mean, I buy gas when I'm out on the road and say you get a good rate. Say it's an easy number, five bucks a gallon. If you've got 750 jets at 100,000 gallons a day or a year, five bucks a gallon, you're already over $3.75 billion a year saved. So how do you translate that? So we go from the birds having dark wings, try to put it on an aircraft. If you've ever looked out, you have looked out your window and you see most aircraft are white. I fly business jets. They're all white. In fact, they're just called white jets. So you've got to think there's got to be a reason. We're all about saving money. Everybody wants to be more efficient. Why is it they haven't figured this out yet? That if I painted the wing dark, I could save billions of dollars. So I'll open it up to you guys. Why do you think we paint jets white?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Identification.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' To reflect, so they don't absorb heat energy. I always imagine that that colour made it so they didn't get hot.<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' Absolutely. Where do aircraft keep their fuel?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' In the wings.<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' You don't want to get that hot. And then someone else said identification as well.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yes, you can see other planes.<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' I said that at the beginning. They use dark plumage to be adaptive, to hide. Camouflage. We don't want that. We want birds to see the plane. So painting white, they've proved over time, actually helps the bird avoid the aircraft. And that'll save way more money than a couple of gallons of gas for sure.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' So what we need are black wings with a lot of light.<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' Or maybe, like they talked about, the one that they found was where it's white at the root. And then it sort of gets darker as it extends out. But honestly, we're just-<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Let's just kill all birds.<br />
<br />
[talking over each other]<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Let the cats do that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's kind of in the way of wind turbines. I mean, come on, they're a menace.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Bird strikes.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I got it guys, all they need to do is put deer whistles on the airplanes and we're good to go.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Pig whistles?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Deer whistles.<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' But the likelihood of changing the colour of aircraft, that's pretty slim. However, and you know, you touched on this on the blog just this week with hydrogen fuel cells in aircraft. And of course, you all talked about significantly recently with electronic aircraft and using batteries. So if you're no longer holding your fuel source in the wings, and you have a fuel cell through a battery or through a hybrid engine, and that's in the fuselage, then maybe the wing could be a source of efficiency by changing its colour.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Sure.<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' And then this is, I think one of you called it the Wikipedia rabbit hole. So I just started Googling all these EV aircraft that are coming out because birds, they fly relatively slow compared to business jets. But so do electronic aircraft, the ones that are coming out. They're looking at ranges of 200 to 400 miles. But there's a lot of them. There's a bunch coming out this year, or that claim to be able to fly this year. And it seems like by 2024, I found no less than three or four companies that say that they're going to have a fleet of 19 passenger or less EV aircraft that'll be flying around. But in all the mockups, they're all white. They're solid white. Just like because that's what we're used to seeing. And I would think we can make most of it white. But there's got to be a way to save some gas on the engines.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, you'd think if all you do is put some black stripes at the end of the wings, then you could save money.<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' Probably will. They'll find a way.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It reminds me of when they figured out that like for the space shuttle, they would paint the main gas tank white for the first few launches. Then they go, let's just not paint it.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Because we save 200 pounds. They save like hundreds of pounds of paint.<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' White is also the lightest. It's easy to put a coat of white on there and not be as unattractive as the coloured, the darker paints because those fade. You just got to keep adding paint.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Right.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' What did they end up with? Wasn't it orange?<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Orange. Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Orange? Yeah. Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay. Thanks, Knewt.<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' No problem.<br />
<br />
=== Mercola Misinformation <small>(1:02:39)</small> ===<br />
* [https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/24/technology/joseph-mercola-coronavirus-misinformation-online.html The Most Influential Spreader of Coronavirus Misinformation Online]<ref>[https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/24/technology/joseph-mercola-coronavirus-misinformation-online.html The New York Times: The Most Influential Spreader of Coronavirus Misinformation Online]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' Cara, tell us about Joseph Mercola and coronavirus misinformation. We know this guy. He's a…<br />
<br />
'''E:''' The collective groan goes out.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I'm reading this article in the New York Times and I'm thinking, I remember way back when I joined the SGU. One of the things they used to say to me is Cara, what we love about like your addition to the show is that you're skeptically minded. You're a skeptical scientist, but you're not like steeped in the skeptical kind of culture. And so I love learning about people. I mean, obviously, I've heard of Mercola, but I don't know if I have quite the amount of information in my brain that you guys do about Mercola. So I got to do a little bit of a deep dive on him. Great guy.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, my gosh. Where do you start?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. So, okay, here we go. Yeah. Where do you start? New York Times did their own investigation, but I'm also going to cite a really interesting study that came out of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, which is a nonprofit that looks at hate speech and misinformation online. So I don't know if you guys have been following, but the Center for Countering Digital Hate put out what they call the disinformation dozen. So, yeah, so they looked at a sample of anti-vaccine content that was shared or posted on Facebook or Twitter a total of 812,000 times between February 1st and March 16th, 2021. So just like a kind of like a sample in the middle of COVID disinformation. And they were like, let's look at this and see who's posting it, who's sharing it, what's going on. And they basically, through their analysis, were able to there's a lot of numbers in this analysis. It was this many accounts and shared this many times and this many people retweeted or whatever. But ultimately, they came up with a list of the disinformation dozen. So the top 12 people who collectively account for 73% of Facebook's anti-vax content and that disinformation. Can you guys guess who some of the people on it are?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Wink Martindale?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, come on, come on. Who do you think makes up the anti-vax disinformation dozen?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I know. I've read the whole list.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So Mercola is at the top. Joseph Mercola is the number one contributor. Number two, Robert F. Kennedy.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, sure.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right? Junior.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Wakefield's not in there?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Wakefield is not in there. No. Sherry Tenpenny, number four.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, Tenpenny.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Ty and Charlene Bollinger, number three. And then we've got Riza Islam, Rashid Buttar, Erin Elizabeth, who I didn't know about Erin Elizabeth, but she's Mercola's partner. So they take up extra space on this list together. Sayer G, I'm not sure if it's Jai or G, Kelly Brogan, Christiane Northrup, Ben Tapper and Kevin Jenkins. So if you come across any of these people.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Leroy Jenkins.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Be skeptical. Yeah, Leroy Jenkins. We had to. And there are also key anti-vaxxer organizations that the Center for Countering Digital Hate points to. So it's not just the disinformation dozen, the top 12, but the organizations that are linked to them, which often it's shared through these organizations that have like a sheen of professionalism. So I'm saying this, I mean, to really arm us. So the Children's Health Defense, anti-vax. Informed Consent Action Network, anti-vax. The National Vaccine Information Center, anti-vax. The Organic Consumers Association. And lastly, Millions Against Medical Mandates. These are pseudoscientific organizations that were developed to spread misinformation, specifically anti-vax misinformation. So not only did this organization, this nonprofit, find that he was number one on the disinformation dozen, but the New York Times did their own investigation. You know, so they sampled. I think they were just looking at Facebook and they found that Mercola is responsible. The number one, the most influential spreader of COVID misinformation online. So they cite an article that showed up on February 9th, which has since been taken down, where Mercola says that COVID vaccines are a medical fraud. They don't prevent infections. They don't provide immunity. They don't stop transmission. But they do alter your genetic coding, turning you into a viral protein factory that has no off switch.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh my God. That's not gene editing.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Exactly. And then later, they do make some, I think, really important points in here. Because, I mean, I could just like list horrible things that this man has said. And for a little bit of background, this is an osteopath who I think very early on realized that a media empire was the way that he was going to make a lot of money. So in the 90s, he started building these different websites. And then when social media really caught on, he very quickly hired a team of people and worked very hard to create viral content that would spread and spread and spread through social media. This is a big part of his focus. There are quotes in this New York Times article from unnamed sources who used to work for him that they had signed NDAs. So they weren't willing to give their names on the record about how he does this. He like often does A, B testing. It's just it's a really important part of his job that he figure out how can I make these posts go as viral as possible. I did mention before that he is dating a woman named Erin Elizabeth and she is the founder of the website Health Nut News. And she is also responsible for a large percentage of the anti-vaccine rhetoric that you see out there. What I think this article does a good job of noting is that Mercola is not a dumb guy. And what Mercola does really well is skate right up to the line. But a lot of times the way he writes his articles, he doesn't outright say vaccines are bad. I am not I am an anti-vaxxer. I do not advocate for vaccines. He like uses, I mean, it's that perfect definition of pseudoscience. It has a sheen of scientific.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Just asking questions. Just asking questions. Cites debunked studies or cherry-picked results and just really it's like he understands the machine so he knows how to manipulate it. Whereas, for example, his girlfriend Erin Elizabeth is like straight up, I am an anti-vaxxer. Vaccines are bad. And so these different people, if you actually look at the disinformation dozen, you can see, for example, they cite an individual named Riza Islam who specifically tends to target, he himself is a black guy and he tends to target black Americans. For example, you'll see that some of these people on the list tend to target a more religious audience or a more health conscious audience. So collectively they're really hitting lots of pockets of people who might tend towards hesitancy or who might tend towards denialism and then they're able to sort of trap them and get them in. Like you've got Ty and Charlene Bollinger who are like hardcore super pack, like big, more like politically biased individuals. So that's kind of, I think, one of the, unfortunately, the most insidious things about Mercola is that a lot of people think he's legitimate. He's a physician. He knows how to talk about science in a way that sounds scientific. He's very good at misinformation and he always backtracks. So in an email with the New York Times, he said, it's quite peculiar to me that I'm named as the number one super spreader. There are relatively small number of shares. I don't see how this could possibly cause such calamity to Biden's multi-billion dollar vaccination campaign. I mean, again, I don't think I'm, I don't think it's a stretch to say that the actions of this man are leading maybe indirectly, sometimes possibly directly to loss of life, to injury, to significant harm. And I think he needs to be held responsible for that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Totally. He's a poster child for inadequate regulation of this kind of medical malpractice, basically. Yeah, it's a disgrace. Let me read you guys this quote I just saw. This is a tweet from George Takai who's great. He wrote, overheard that in quotes, the irony of anti-vaxxers saying they don't want to be part of an experiment without realizing they are now the control group.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I love that so much.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, that's it. That's great.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's amazing.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Welcome to the study.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' They got the placebo.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, right.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' They're not going to get better.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Unfortunately, they're a self-selective group, so it's not a good study.<br />
<br />
== Who's That Noisy? <small>(1:11:37)</small> ==<br />
{{anchor|futureWTN}} <!-- this is the anchor used by "wtnAnswer", which links the previous "new noisy" segment to this "future" WTN --><br />
<br />
{{wtnHiddenAnswer<br />
|episodeNum = 837<!-- episode number for previous Noisy --><br />
|answer = Horn <!-- brief description of answer, perhaps with a link --><br />
|}}<br />
'''S:''' All right, Jay, it's Who's That Noisy time.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' All right, guys, last week I played this noisy.<br />
<br />
[_short_vague_description_of_Noisy] <br />
<br />
It's probably the shortest noisy I've ever done. I'll play it again. [plays Noisy] You guys want to make any guesses before I start?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It sounds like a bird.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Sideshow Mel, I think it was.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' All right, Steve thinks it's a bird. Anybody else?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, like a whistle, some sort of. No, it's not a whistle. That's too easy.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' A whistle. All right.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I'm going to pull a Price is Right move and say a slightly bigger bird than Steve's.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Let's get into this. Rachel Benaggia wrote in and said, the noisy this week has to be nature's squeaky toy, a guinea pig. So it turns out a lot of people wrote in guinea pig, a lot of people. Rachel just happened to be the first. So it's not a guinea pig. I did try to find sounds that a guinea pig makes, and I didn't find any that sounded like that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Is it a whistle pig?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' A whistle pig.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Remember that?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Remember?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's a groundhog.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' A groundhog, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's a groundhog. A whistlepig.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I love that.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That's awesome.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' My favorite.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' All right, another person wrote in, Kevin Williams. He says, Hi, guys. Love the show. One thing I've always wondered is where does the name of the segment come from?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, I'll tell you.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, so I'm figuring instead of me emailing him back, I thought that I'd let Steve say it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We've said it on the show before, but basically when my daughter was like two and she was just learning how to talk.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Happy birthday, Julia.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, the one whose birthday it is today. When she heard something, instead of saying, What's that noise? She said, Who's that noisy? So we just started saying that in my family and with Evan and everyone.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It became a thing.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, it just became a thing. And so when we were doing this segment, we just naturally started calling it, Who's that noisy? And we just figured just to keep it that way since we're already calling it that.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's right.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So it's basically just a way of embarrassing my daughter.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' For the rest of her life. Yeah. So he says he continues. He says, Anyway, my guest this week is the sound of fingers moving over guitar strings. So I happen to have my acoustic guitar here, and he's right because it does kind of have that sound. Let me try to simulate what he's doing.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I mean, he's wrong, but he's correct in what it sounds like.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' He's wrong, but there is something to it. But let me see if I can do this now. Can you hear that? So I get what he was saying. Maybe an electric guitar would have something a little bit louder than that. That was from my acoustic. But that is incorrect. So John Creasy writes in, It's a steam powered siren from a traction engine. Have you ever heard of a traction engine, guys?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Traction engine.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It looks like a train engine that somebody put gigantic tires on, and it drives down the road. So it's kind of like a steam tractor. Super powerful steam based tractor. Now, I suspect, because multiple people wrote in about these traction engines, that they have toot toot horns, right? I would assume, though, that they probably do make a noise, a high pitched noise like that. This is not correct. Anyway, my favorite answer so far this week came from Dane Milner, and he wrote, It's a dancer wearing corduroy pants. Corduroy does sound like that. It does have that noise. You might not have been fat enough when you were a kid to hear it, Evan. But when I was a kid, I was husky, and my thighs would always hit each other. And when you walk with corduroy, it made that noise.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' OK.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' They were very popular when we were in high school, and we had a dress code. That's why I wore corduroy for four years, basically.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Dane said it sounds like paracord or nylon rubbing together. Corduroy was kind of a joke. Now, here's the closest guess that we got. Nobody won this week. But long, long time Who's That Noisy submitter, guesser, Evil Eye, wrote in. He said, I know I'm wrong, but I so want it to be a little kid in a toy electric cop car pulling over his friend.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Cute. Cute.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I thought that was cute. But he happens to be moderately close. So let me play it again before I tell you what it is. [plays Noisy] OK. Here's the explanation. So this comes from Bob Leadham, who sent it in. He said, here's one I haven't heard anywhere else. When we were on a bus tour in Morocco, the bus driver had two choices when he used the horn. One was the normal loud beep that says, watch out like a normal horn. The other is one for pedestrians who might be straying a bit close to the road or for when we were moving slowly through a crowded street scene. It's what I called the polite horn saying, excuse me, big bus here. Please take care where you walk. In Morocco, they have these polite horns. One version of the horn is like that noise. Here's the noise again. [plays Noisy]<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, my God.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' A little warning noise. Not like a big, oh, my God, you scare somebody noise. If they're right next to the vehicle and you lean on your horn, you could jump out of your skin. So it's a polite horn.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I like it.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I thought that was cool. Makes perfect sense. Think about how many times you'd use it if you had a car. <br />
<br />
'''E:''' There should be more polite horns out there.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' My version of a polite horn is like two quick beeps. Not being a dick here, but pay attention or whatever. But one long one, that's when you mean it. There's a good reason, hopefully, that you're going to do that.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It's called leaning on it. You got to lean on it.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Lean on the horn. Does an airplane have a horn?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Can you imagine?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Knewt, does an airplane have a horn?<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' It does not. And I've got a great story if you want to hear one.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Absolutely.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Do it.<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' Okay. So I was flying a 737, actually, and I was going to New Zealand. And we get there, and we run a thing sometimes when we're flying distinguished visitors called quiet arrivals, where we want to know as the pilots whether or not there's going to be some sort of fanfare when we arrive, in which case we need to do certain procedures to make sure the engines are off and the APU is down before they do their proper circumstances.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' And the automated weapons are turned off, too.<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' Yeah, those, too. The 737 with the missiles did not have those. So they told us nothing. They said nothing's going to happen in New Zealand. So we land, we roll into parking, and there is everything you can imagine from a huge band to a whole, the Maori warrior tribe and a red carpet. And so we park, and we're like, probably it was supposed to be quiet arrivals. The guy runs up. He's like, you've got to turn everything off. All right, we're doing what we can. So we start turning stuff off, and he says, it's still too loud. It's still too loud. And so one guy just reaches up and he just kills the batteries, makes everything die, no cool-down cycle, nothing. So we don't have a horn, but what we do have is a warning system when the DC power loses all power unexpectedly, and it makes a beeping noise. So it goes quiet. The leader of the Maori tribe thinks that that's his cue to start so he grabs one elbow with the hand. His tongue sticks out. He goes, ah, ah, ah, and screams at the jet. And the jet starts going, ah, ah, ah, ah, and starts beeping back at him because that sound has to be able to be heard by an outside maintenance guy to know that the DC power is not being powered. And the look on the dude's face was great. But that is the extent of horn that an aircraft will have.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Is it just me? I'm kind of surprised because you guys, you taxi.<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' Yeah, but no turn signals either, but no horn. Honestly, I think if we had one, no one could hear it. Those engines are pretty loud.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You have to have one of those aouga horns on.<br />
{{anchor|previousWTN}} <!-- keep right above the following sub-section ... this is the anchor used by wtnHiddenAnswer, which will link the next hidden answer to this episode's new noisy (so, to that episode's "previousWTN") --><br />
=== New Noisy <small>(1:19:12)</small> ===<br />
<br />
'''J:''' All right, I have a new noisy for this week.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Jay has a new noisy.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Jay, let's hear your new noisy.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' This is from Joshua Gillespie.<br />
<br />
[_short_vague_description_of_Noisy] <br />
<br />
So I love this noisy. So if you think you know {{wtnAnswer|837|what this week's noisy is}} or if you heard something cool, and come on, people like Knewt who work on airplanes, they hear cool stuff all the time, and you're not sending it to me. Just take two seconds and send me a cool sound. I know you heard something cool. Send it to WTN@theskepticsguide.org.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. Thank you, Jay.<br />
<br />
== Announcements <small>(1:19:48)</small> ==<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We're going to do one quick email. But before we do, this is the last episode to come out before NECSS. NECSS is all digital. Essentially, the week after this comes out, August 6th and 7th, we have a great lineup. If you didn't join us last year or even if you did, join us this year. We have two game shows, a live SGU show, a bunch of speakers. It's going to be awesome. Jay and Ian have been working in the studio for a month or longer, actually.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' More than that, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Got it all tweaked out. So go to NECSS.org.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' necss.org.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yes, necss.org and sign up for NECSS next week, August 6th and 7th.<br />
<br />
== Questions/Emails/Corrections/Follow-ups <small>(1:20:31)</small> ==<br />
<br />
=== Email #1: Nuclear Enegry ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, one quick email. This comes from Rainer in Portland, Oregon, and he writes, thanks for the show and the skeptical view on a lot of issues. Couldn't agree more on most of what you say. You know what's coming next. The one topic I feel like you are disregarding skeptical thinking is nuclear power. It always sounds like it is a no-brainer when you mention it. I'm missing, for example, the discussion about the risks involved or the unsolved waste discussion on the production side. On the demand side, I don't think it is a given that it is needed at all. Just using standard technology, we could easily save a very significant amount of energy. U.S. citizens still use about two to three times their primary energy than any other developed country. If we would spend the same amount of money we put into nuclear power subsidies, into energy-saving measures and alternative sources, it would look even better. All right, a lot to unpack there. I actually, for premium content this week, I did like a 30-minute deep dive on this email, so I'm just going to give you the five-minute version. If you want to hear the 30-minute version, you could listen to the premium content. That's for people who are members of the SGU. Very, very quickly, the U.S. citizens don't use two to three times as much energy as anybody else per capita. Actually, Canada uses more energy than we do per capita. Canada.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Why?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Because it's cold up there, and they've got to heat all their houses.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Cold. They need a lot.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The point is you can't make direct comparisons like that because different conditions will lead to different energy needs. We are a big country, and you have to drive far to go everywhere. You can't compare like Latvia to the United States. Not that there isn't room for energy conservation and energy saving. Of course there is. That doesn't mean, though, that that's going to solve our energy mix issue. So I just want to focus on one thing because, again, this is the short version, and that is the nuclear waste question. And that's because it really isn't an issue, or at least it doesn't have to be. And there's a number of reasons why, but I want to focus on one. Do you know how much of the energy, the potential energy, potential extractable energy that we get out of uranium in the existing nuclear power plants?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, it's a fraction, right?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. What do you think?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' 10%? 3%.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' The nuclear energy? Not antimatter.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, the nuclear energy.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I would say we're extracting what? Say, I don't know, 12%.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' 5%. Evan's closer. 5%. The other 95%, it then becomes nuclear waste.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Waste.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The reason for this is because our nuclear reactors are so-called slow reactors. The idea is that you create a self-sustaining chain reaction because the neutron that gets kicked out of one uranium atom will then hit another one and cause that to break down, decay, and keep spreading. However, a uranium atom cannot capture a neutron directly because it's too fast. And so that's why we have to use the water, like the light water, heavy water, or light water, depending on the reactor design. That slows down the neutrons just enough that they can be captured by another uranium atom and cause a self-sustaining reaction. So using that method, we can only get about 5% to 6% of the energy out of the uranium fuel. The other 95%, which is plutonium and other things, now becomes, "waste". But what if we could make a fast reactor that can capture those fast neutrons?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' You could burn the waste.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But what if we used all of the energy? There's like this other 95% of the energy in the nuclear waste that could be fuel. Again, the only difference between nuclear waste and nuclear fuel is whether or not we can burn it for energy. So we actually have the design for fast reactors.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' The Gen 4?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, some of the Gen 4 reactor designs are fast reactors, and they can actually use existing waste from older reactors as their fuel.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, great.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And the waste that we currently have in this country, in the U.S., could supply all our energy needs for 100 years. We have 100 years of fuel for fast nuclear reactors without having to mine any more uranium.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' And we're also getting rid of our waste.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It would get rid of all of our waste.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' And what's the byproduct of burning the—<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It blows up the planet in 500 years, but still.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, no problem.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, no. So here's the thing. Existing nuclear waste has some isotopes in it that have half-lives in the thousands and hundreds of thousands of years, which is why you have to store it basically indefinitely. But if you use a fast reactor, that extracts all of the long half-life material. And you're left with just the short half-life stuff that's like 30 years, 30 to 50 years.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Manageable.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, so that's completely manageable. So you want to solve our nuclear waste problem, you build fast reactors, which are Gen 4 reactors, which have lots of other advantages, too. Like they can't melt down because of the auto-cool. Like if you embed them in salt and if they heat up more, the salt expands, moves the rods apart, and they cool down. So even if left unattended, it won't melt down. Or if a pump fails, it won't melt down, et cetera. So they're much, much safer. They can be completely self-contained. They don't have as many pipes and stuff that can fail. They're much, much safer than older stuff.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' If there's an apocalypse for another reason, you don't have to worry about your nuclear reactors exploding as it would during a normal apocalypse.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Or if there's a tsunami or whatever. Right, also they burn hotter, which means that we could do two other things with them if we choose to. We could make hydrogen or we could desalinate water. Do you know where we get most of our hydrogen from now, by the way?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' We mine it off of Jupiter.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' We order it on Amazon.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We strip it from fossil fuels.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, that too, that too.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Which is kind of defeating the purpose of using hydrogen, right? Imagine if we could just make hydrogen by electrolyzing water using the heat from a fast nuclear reactor. The hydrogen becomes a byproduct and then you could bottle that and use that in our rockets or our hydrogen.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Hydrogen economy.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, for whatever part of the economy.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' So what's the downside for these Gen 4 reactors?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Right, where are they?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Is there a downside?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, the downside is it's still more expensive than just building solar panels or wind turbines. But here's the issue. They're more expensive now.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' More of an upfront investment.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The more you try to increase the penetration of renewables, the more expensive the renewables get. Because then you have to get into overproduction. You have to upgrade the grid. You need grid storage. And you use up all the prime locations, et cetera, et cetera. So it gets progressively less cost effective. And also we're counting on innovations we don't have yet, like for grid storage. And it's going to take decades to do things like upgrade the grid. So if time were not an issue at all, you might make a reasonable argument for saying, all right, let's just go for all renewable and grid storage. Fine. Do that. Let's keep doing that. Let's keep building renewable and grid storage and all that stuff. That's great. Let's upgrade the grid. We got to do that anyway. But if we try to do that without keeping our nuclear in the mix, like we have 20% of our electricity right now in the US is nuclear. It's about 10% worldwide. And it's all retiring pretty soon. If we don't keep that in the mix, then we're going to be building fossil fuel plants. Absolutely. If the goal is to get rid of fossil fuel as quickly as possible, then we want to do both. We want to do nuclear and as much renewable as we can and grid storage and hydroelectric and geothermal, whatever we can other than fossil fuel. So the people who are the renewable purists are going to delay by decades decarbonizing our energy infrastructure. Are you guys aware of the fact we talk about global warming all the time, and yet the bottom line is between now and 2050, we're going to be increasing the amount of fossil fuel that we're burning for energy. It's already over 80% of our energy profile is from fossil fuel, and it's going to increase between now and 2050. And then the game is over in terms of preventing the worst outcomes of global warming. It's over. We have to actually change what's happening over the next 30 years. So we could have small modular Gen 4 reactors up by 2030, and they could burn fuel from older plants. They won't have any waste of their – I mean they could burn waste from older plants. They won't generate any waste of their own. They'll be taking care of our waste problem. Yes, it's more expensive than just building more solar for now, but if you plan out the next 30 years of our energy infrastructure, it's actually cost-effective, and especially if you consider the cost of global warming and the healthcare costs of burning fossil fuels and the subsidies to the fossil fuel industry, it's actually quite cost-effective certainly than fossil fuel. To me, it seems like we need to be hedging our bets, and there's no reason why we shouldn't pursue this technology. Just to buy us a few decades that we actually need.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' You're way over five minutes, man.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Sorry. I tried. I tried. All right, here we go. Let's move on to science or fiction.<br />
<br />
== Science or Fiction <small>(1:30:33)</small> ==<br />
<br />
{{SOFinfo<br />
|item1 = Although lightning strikes are common, on average they cause only about one crash per year of commercial aircraft<br />
|link1 = <ref>[https://mainblades.com/article/aircraft-and-lightning-strikes-here-is-what-the-statistics-say/]</ref><br />
<br />
|item2 = It is physically impossible to open a cabin door on a commercial aircraft at typical cruising altitude.<br />
|link2 = <ref>[https://www.businessinsider.com/why-plane-doors-cant-open-mid-flight-2020-2]</ref><br />
<br />
|item3 = According to a survey of commercial airline pilots, 56% admit to falling asleep while flying the plane, and 29% report waking up to find their co-pilot also asleep.<br />
|link3 = <ref>[https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-24296544]</ref><br />
<br />
|}}<br />
<br />
{{SOFResults<br />
|fiction = lightning strikes<br />
|science1 = cabin door<br />
|science2 = sleeping pilots<br />
<br />
|rogue1 =Evan<br />
|answer1 = cabin door<br />
<br />
|rogue2 =Cara<br />
|answer2 =lightning strikes<br />
<br />
|rogue3 =Bob<br />
|answer3 =lightning strikes<br />
<br />
|rogue4 =Jay<br />
|answer4 = lightning strikes<br />
<br />
|rogue5 =Knute<br />
|answer5 = lightning strikes<br />
<br />
|host =Steve<br />
<br />
|sweep = <!-- all the Rogues guessed wrong --><br />
|clever = <!-- each item was guessed (Steve's preferred result) --><br />
|win = <!-- at least one Rogue guessed wrong, but not them all --><br />
|swept = <!-- all the Rogues guessed right --><br />
}}<br />
''Voice-over: It's time for Science or Fiction.''<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Each week, I come up with three science news items or facts, two real and one fake, and I challenge my panel of skeptics to tell me which one is the fake. We have a theme.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Airplane.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' This week, the theme is air travel.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' There you go.<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' I think I'm getting set up.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Unfair advantage, I'd say.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That's what I think.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Who's going first?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You think so? All right. We'll see. We shall see. All right, here we go. Item number one. Although lightning strikes are common, on average, they cause only about one crash per year of commercial aircraft. Item number two. It is physically impossible to open a cabin door on a commercial aircraft at typical cruising altitude. Item number three. According to a survey of commercial airline pilots, 56% admit to falling asleep while flying the plane and 29% report waking up to find their co-pilot also asleep.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's how many they admit.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. Knewt, for what should be obvious reasons, I'm going to have you go last.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Damn it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Because Evan groaned I'm going to have him go first.<br />
<br />
=== Evan's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh. Well, at least I know now, Steve, why you stopped me from asking the question about lightning.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yes. Absolutely. Absolutely.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I was reading the future. Lightning strikes are common. On average, they cause only about one crash per year of commercial aircraft. Yeah, okay. I can believe that. The planes are designed to take the lightning hits. They have to. And I know we've spoken about it before on shows maybe many years ago, but the only reason I think this one might be the fiction is it would be less than one crash. Maybe one crash would be 10 years or something like that. So I don't think that's a problem. Next one. Physically impossible to open a cabin door on a commercial aircraft at typical cruising altitude. That could be how the pressure works. You'd have to have enough strength to overcome that. And just a typical person could not do it maybe on their own. And then the last one about airline pilots, 56 admit to falling asleep and 29% report waking up to find their co-pilot also asleep. I'm trying to think of why this would be the fiction. It just would have to be the numbers themselves. Is it really just much, much lower than that? You know, because again, admitting to falling asleep. Although I guess we're going to learn about how much soon, about how much the pilots actually need to be awake at certain points versus being able to be able to go to sleep. All right. I'm going to go against the grain in my own head and say, I think maybe the cabin door one, maybe it is possible to open a cabin door at cruising altitude. I'll say that one's fiction.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay. Cara.<br />
<br />
=== Cara's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. I mean, part of me wants to go with Evan because it's like, my rule I used to always tell my students when I would teach is if you have a quick, if you're taking a true false exam and the question States always or never, it's usually false. Usually you see that. So to say it's physically impossible. It doesn't allow for any caveats, but I still think it's physically impossible. I don't know. I think the pressure is probably like exorbitant. It's like, it's like saying it's physically impossible to open the submarine door. It's like, well, yeah, I don't think you can do that. So let's see. So for me, it's, it's a question of frequency, right? Like, do more pilots admit to falling asleep? Fewer pilots admit to falling asleep. Are lightning strikes more common than that though? I think the lightning strike one is getting to me the most because I feel like we hear about airplane crashes often. Like when an airplane crashes, it's on the news. Pretty much every time. And I've never heard of an airplane crashing because it was struck by lightning. It's almost always on takeoff or landing. And it's almost always because of some sort of like failure of like an engine or something like that. So to me, I, this one just, it doesn't have face validity because I can't remember a time in my existence where I was watching the news and I was like, holy crap, that airplane got struck by lightning and went down. So that's, that's the reason I'm going to say that's the fiction.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay, Bob.<br />
<br />
=== Bob's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Okay. Physically impossible to open the cabin door. It makes perfect sense. It's gotta be, it's gotta be that way. I mean, come on, you know there's crazy people on a plane that would do that. I even thought about it at one point.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's like not pushing the big red button, Bob. It's like asking for you to try.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' You know, it's, it just makes too much sense. Falling asleep. Yeah, that's gotta happen. I mean, they're not needed. They're needed for, they're needed for takeoff and landing.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's so cruel.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I mean, this is talking on the speaker.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Someone who's on the call with us right now begs to differ.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, wait. Oh, shit. But I mean, technically, I mean, cruise control. I mean, yeah, falling asleep. Absolutely. I totally buy it. The one I'm not buying is lightning. One a year is way too much. I've also never heard of it. And I think one a year would, would be enough to, to make people say, I'm not going on that damn plane because one a year, one of them are going down. I've never heard of one. I mean, I think, they have designs in place to, to deal with it. They get struck all the time. Like buildings. And I think that they basically almost, it's never so rare that we don't really even, we can, none of us can think of one, one example. So one is fiction. Lightning strike is fiction.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay, Jay.<br />
<br />
=== Jay's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I'll take them in reverse order. So the, the it says according to the survey, so 56% of pilots admit to falling asleep while flying the plane. This is vague though, because, hold on, let me turn that off.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' What the hell?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Somebody called me. I silenced the phone and then I accidentally played my thing.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Jay, man, I, I really hate, when you just have these recorded things, just go off. I'm sorry.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Bob. I'm sorry, man. I know what you mean.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' You're welcome to our lives.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I won't, I shouldn't let it happen while we're talking. It's really, it's obnoxious.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I bought you that damn thing.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So 50%, 56% of pilots admit to falling asleep that, they do fall asleep on the plane. They're allowed to, but this seems to be that they're saying that they did it when they're not supposed to. So, I guess I'm sure that they fall asleep just like everybody else. Like when they're on cruise control and that things are, there are times when they could probably have a lot of downtime. I'm not a hundred percent sure, but I just don't think that one is the fiction. Number two, the one about being physically impossible to open the door. So air pressure inside of a plane is, is what between eight and 10,000 feet and airplanes usually cruise around 36,000 feet. So there is a massive air pressure change, but the air pressure is higher in the cabin than it is outside. And you would think that that would make the door easier to open, but I guess I bet you that in the design of the airplane, that air pressure change does make it impossible to open the door. I'm sure that the door is impossible to freaking open. Cause it would open a lot more. Well, that's the thing where Cara said, you'd never hear people opening doors on airplanes like that.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Not what I said, but that's fair.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Well, you kind of made me think of that.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' You never hear of Cara never hearing about it.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I'll say, I think my guess is that the door locks when the wheels are up, right? If the wheels are in, it like automatically makes it like you can't.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, but Bob, what about on a crash landing? What about on a water crash landing when they don't put the landing gear down? I don't agree with that. So finally, the last one here about the lightning strikes, it can't, this one cannot be true because if it means that there's one crash per year because of lightning, you think about how many airplanes are flown every day. There would be airplane crashing all the time.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But Jay, it's one crash, one total crash per year.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' No, I think, I think I don't agree with it. I think that it still would be, it still would be a thing.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I suppose this needs clarifying, not per plane. In the world, one plane a year crashes due to a lightning strike.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I mean, I've been, I think every single person that's ever been on an airplane, it was probably been on the airplane that's been hit by lightning. It happens all the time. I've seen, I saw lightning hit an engine on an airplane and it just, nothing happened. It scared the shit out of me, but nothing happened.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah. The creature on the wing hung on too.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' There's something on the wing. So I think that planes get hit very often, but nothing happens. So I think the first one's got to be the fiction.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay. Knewt, straighten them out.<br />
<br />
=== Knute's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' All right. Jay, your analysis is really good actually on all three of them, but everybody had great points. I think I'm going to end up going around the same lines, but I'll work backwards as well. According to the survey, talking to pilots and I want to just get a clarification. This is talking to the pilots that are in the seats. Correct. Because a lot of aircraft have crew rest facilities.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. This is a pilot who is supposed to be flying the plane, supposed to be at the controls. Yes.<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' So while back, I hate to say that this is the truth because it looks like what my profession is inherently unsafe. I'm going to say that this is the truth because this is a fact, because actually part of good cockpit resource management and safety and flight is something we call controlled cockpit rest, where you're encouraged to sleep for 20 minutes, but you're supposed to set an alarm or have the other guy wake you up at exactly 20 minutes. And this is for those really long, insane flights where you will be drunk to the point if you're so sleep deprived that it's unsafe.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Going to New Zealand.<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' It's actually unsafe for you to not just get a little bit of rest. And it's kind of an emergency situation to do that, but it will pay dividends later. So there are regulations that allow for people to sleep. It could be used 56% of the time. Sounds like maybe a little bit of abuse, but I'm going to go ahead knowing pilots that that is fact. Physically impossible to open a cabin.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But it sounds like you're not supposed to have your co-pilot be asleep at the same time.<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' That is true, but I don't want to admit, maybe I know somebody who's woken up and seen that.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Here we go.<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' And I haven't flied for a while.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' 29% of people.<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' I can't say it happens 29% of the time, but I can see 29% of people saying that they've seen that happen for sure. Physical impossibility to open a cabin door. Jay hit it right on. Yeah. It's like 8,000 feet. Cabin altitude is inside the plane and outside about 36,000 feet. We're usually the commercial airlines fly aircraft. I fly routinely go up to the high forties. Imagine the pressure differential between 49,000 feet outside and 8,000 feet inside. And that, I mean, I just know it. That is what keeps, keeps the doors closed. It keeps everything tight. Is when it's pressure pushing out on that round two toy. So I imagine that that pressure applies to the doors as well. Makes it pretty much impossible for a human to overcome those kinds of pressure differentials. So that leaves us with number one, although lightning strikes are common that they would result in a single crash a year seems excessive. I got to think that across the commercial airline industry, completely you're in single digit crashes for any reason a year. This is commercial aircraft because airlines can survive a wreck. They're very, very safe and you can't control lightning, but they can mitigate it. So we have a, I've asked earlier if I've ever been hit by lightning. And the answer is yes. And I didn't know it till I landed. And the maintenance guy said, hey, it looks like you got hit by lightning. So there's a lot of ways.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's reassuring in a way.<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' So I will say that number one is the fiction. It's way less.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #3 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. Let's I'll take these in reverse order. Since Evan, you're you think that the number two is the fiction.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Well, not anymore, but my guess is.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. So according to a survey of commercial airline pilots, 56% admit to falling asleep while flying the plane, meaning they were meant to be at the controls and 29% report waking up to find their copilot asleep. You guys all are pretty happy thinking this one is the science. And this one is science. This is science. This was a British survey. So I don't think it's, unique to British airways, but yeah. So pilots not off, I guess when they're not supposed to, obviously like, it's not like when they fall asleep, the plane immediately starts going to a nose dive.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Used the as a pillow.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. But, but they're supposed to be awakened at the, at the controls, but not surprising.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #2 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. Let's go back to number two. It's absolutely impossible to open a cabin door on a commercial aircraft at typical cruising altitude. I do want to, just before I do the reveal, I want to ask you guys a question related to the first one. How many crash do you think there are a year? If we look at it around the world, commercial.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Less than one.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Per year. Totally. Of all sizes. I also didn't say fatal crash. I didn't say fatal crash.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. You just said crash.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Define crash.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' A dozen or fewer.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' There's 14 fatal crashes a year.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Okay. Fatal?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Fatal ones. So there's probably more-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Gosh, that sounds high.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I'm not hearing about 14 a year.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, why would you?<br />
<br />
[talking over each other]<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, they're probably often on airlines that have like pretty low safety rating.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, you hear about the big ones.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Uzbekistan air.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Huddle jumper flights and stuff.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Exactly. It is physically impossible to open a cabin door in a commercial aircraft at typical cruising altitude. Evan, you think this one is a fiction. Everyone else thinks this one is science. And this one is science. This is science. Yeah, Jay, you nailed it. So I did the calculation. I've read it in multiple places, but I did it myself just to double check. So how much pressure do you think there is on a cabin door if you're flying at 18,000, at 36,000 feet?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Tons, right?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' 36,000 pounds. Of pressure.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' How many?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' 36,000.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' So tons.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, that's a lot.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. So they are designed, the inside of the door is bigger than the outside of the door. So it's a plug. It's literally called a plug design, right?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Makes sense.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, which makes sense. It's designed to be plugged by the pressure inside the cabin. And even if you were at 18,000 feet, it would still be, it would be half that. It would be, 18,000 pounds of pressure.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right. That's why the little cards, the safety cards show you have to like undo it, turn it sideways. And then throw it out the door.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But even if you did all that, even if you did all that-<br />
<br />
'''B:''' You'd have to be Hulk.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You couldn't do it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No, no, I'm saying because of the plug design. You can't open the door. You have to turn it sideways.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Wouldn't you be literally ripping through the metal before you'd open it normally?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, and you'd probably pull the handle off of it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Rip the handle off.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. It's just not possible.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #1 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So all this means that lightning strikes are common, on average they cause only about one crash per year of commercial aircraft. That is the fiction. Do lighting strikes are very common. And moder aircraft are well designed so that they withstand lightening strikes. The big risk is to the instrumentation. If you suddenly loose all your instrumentation mid flight that would be a bad thing. Not that the plane is necessarily blow up. But they are well designed to handle strikes. So how often do you think it does happen?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' All the time.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' One every 10 years.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, how often does a plane crash because it was struck by lighting?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Oh, very, very, very infrequently.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, like once every 10 years, I would say.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Or once every 50 years.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The last one was in 1963.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Hey.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh my God. So 58 years.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, but it hasn't happened. So it basically doesn't happen anymore.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right, because they probably didn't have the same like, safety?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yes. It's basically zero. Because it hasn't happened since 1963.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, you're putting a big metal tube in the sky. Of course, lightning is going to love that shit.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It goes right through the plane. You could look up pictures. I mean, there's tons of pictures online. If you haven't figured it out, I know a lot about all this stuff because I have anxiety. And I had to kill it with information. So I've read about this shit a million times. And there's nothing to worry about when you're on a good airline.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' My favorite statistic, Jay, for the people who have fear of flying, like Sandra Bullock, for some reason, is that in order to have a 50-50 chance of dying in a plane crash, you would have to fly every day for 500 years. Think about that. That's pretty reassuring.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, it's safer than driving to the airport. That helps me.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Heck yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, for sure.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, it's not necessarily. It's safer than driving total. That doesn't mean that. It depends on how far you have to drive for the Airport, et cetera, et cetera.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Not to be pendantic.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, we've already been hit with the pedantic email about that exact statistic. I don't want to repeat it. How about this one?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And guys, pendantic is an inside joke. I wasn't not knowing how to say pedantic. I have to be pedantic about that.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, your pendantry, Cara, your pendantry.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So what is more fuel efficient per passenger, flying or driving?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yes.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Driving my electric car?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Flying.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Fuel efficient? I mean, that's a hard one.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' All the people that are in that plane?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's a lot of stuff you got to calculate.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' 747 has a fuel efficiency per passenger of 100 miles per gallon. Yeah, per passenger. So if you had one person in the car, flying in a plane would be much more fuel efficient.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Except for my car.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Electric cars, I mean, you still have to count the energy.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, but there's an MPG equivalency. And I think it's over 100.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Is it over 100?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I think so, but I'll look.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Definitely for a gasoline engine, it's more efficient.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, oh, wow. In most electric cars, it's right about 100.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Interesting. OK, I wonder, yeah, yeah. So I guess it's specific to individual cars, but it averages at 100. Wow, so it's about the same.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Cool.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Cool.<br />
<br />
== Skeptical Quote of the Week <small>()</small> ==<br />
<br />
<blockquote>It seems almost natural for us to want to look up, to look back in time, and to learn and appreciate the wonder of this universe that allows us to exist, whether we are scientists or not.<br>– Dr. Suze Kundu, nanochemist, science presenter on the Discovery Channel, science writer for Forbes, Head of Public Engagement at Digital Science</blockquote><br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, Evan, give us a quote.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' "It seems almost natural for us to want to look up, to look back in time, and to learn and appreciate the wonder of this universe that allows us to exist, whether we are scientists or not." And that was said by Dr. Susie Kundu, who is a nanochemist. She's a science presenter on the Discovery Channel. She's a science writer for Forbes, and she's the head of public engagement at Digital Science, a science communicator.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Do you know her, Cara?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I don't, actually. I don't know her. And I'm surprised Bob doesn't know her either, because she's a nanochemist.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' My first thought, though, was aren't all chemists dealing in the nano realm? I mean, that seems a little redundant, but it's cool.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, yeah, I guess that is nano.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It's the first descriptor in her bio, nanochemist.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, I guess that is nano if you're doing chemistry.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So, Knewt, what did you think?<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' That was great. I really appreciate you guys letting me come on. I didn't believe it at first when I saw that that was an option, being a Patreon, that you could be on the show, but I pressed the test with Jay, and he wrote me right back, saying, sure, and we tried three times and finally got it to work.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yay!<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Well, I'm sorry we were so drunk for the whole episode, right?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Or asleep for 59% of it, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' It's fascinating to see what I sound like at one and a half when I play this back later.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, yes, you will. We sound drunk right now, but you're gonna sound like a chipmunk to yourself later.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I wanted to thank you for being a patron, because it means a lot, right? So, it's what keeps our doors open, so we really appreciate it.<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' Oh, no. I mean, the thanks is all directed at you guys. This is, I don't know how to explain it, but when the pandemic hit, and you've seen it, the misinformation, I mean, it seems to come from more than just 12 people. It seems it could come from everywhere. And somehow, I was mowing my lawn and listening to a Steve Novella, great courses that got turned onto your book. I read the SGU book first, and then it mentioned a podcast. I honestly had no idea. Then I just couldn't get enough of you guys' analysis of the stuff going on in the world. I started binge podcasting, if that's a thing, until I finally got, I didn't go back 800 episodes. I probably went back to somewhere in the 600s. And then I would just put one in while I was riding my mountain bike. I had to go on double speed for a while there to get caught up. And then eventually, by last summer, I think I got to where I was waiting for the next week's episode.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I don't know, Knewt. Some of those earlier episodes are gold.<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' I may have to go back.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' But some of them are terrible.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' No.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' The production value was really bad. We came a long way in a short time.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Vintage, Jay. The word is vintage.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Vintage, yeah. Well, it was a lot of fun having you on the show.<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' I appreciate it. Thanks, guys. I really enjoyed it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, thank the rest of you for joining me this week.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Thanks Steve.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Sure. And Steve, for the record, nanochemistry is the combination of chemistry and nanoscience. Nanochemistry is associated with synthesis of building blocks at that scale.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Sweet.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Thank you. Thanks for that. <br />
<br />
== Signoff/Announcements == <br />
<!-- ** if the signoff/announcements don't immediately follow the QoW or if the QoW comments take a few minutes, it would be appropriate to include a timestamp for when this part starts --><br />
<br />
'''S:''' —and until next week, this is your {{SGU}}. <!-- typically this is the last thing before the Outro --> <br />
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}}</div>Hearmepurrhttps://www.sgutranscripts.org/w/index.php?title=SGU_Episode_838&diff=19116SGU Episode 8382024-01-19T11:42:51Z<p>Hearmepurr: episode done</p>
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|qowText = It seems almost natural for us to want to look up, to look back in time, and to learn and appreciate the wonder of this universe that allows us to exist, whether we are scientists or not.<br />
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** Note that you can put each Rogue’s infobox initials inside triple quotes to make the initials bold in the transcript. This is how the final statement from Steve is typed at the end of this transcript: '''S:''' —and until next week, this is your {{SGU}}.<br />
--><br />
== Introduction ==<br />
''Voice-over: You're listening to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.''<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Hello and welcome to the {{SGU|link=y}}. Today is Wednesday, July 28<sup>th</sup>, 2021, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella... <br />
<br />
'''B:''' Hey, everybody!<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Cara Santa Maria... <br />
<br />
'''C:''' Howdy. <br />
<br />
'''S:''' Jay Novella... <br />
<br />
'''J:''' Hey guys. <br />
<br />
'''S:''' Evan Bernstein...<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Good evening, folks.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And today we have a guest rogue this week, Knute Adcock. Knute, welcome to the Skeptics Guide.<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' Hello. Thanks for inviting me.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So Knute, tell us, we had a big debate before the show, whether it was Knute or Knut or Knewt. The Knut wasn't really serious, but you said in Germany it's Knute and in the United States it's Knewt.<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' It is, yeah, it's Knute. To spell it with a K, my mother was gracious enough to change the spelling early on when I was born, even though I was named after the salamander, the N-E-W-T style. But the pronunciation is the same. According to my dad, I looked and sounded exactly like one when I came out. So I don't know if we got enough time for that whole story. The K is silent and yeah, when I lived in Germany, it was Knut, like the ice bear.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' And you said you're a pilot, correct?<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' I am. Yeah, I've been a pilot for about 25 years now, 20 of those in the Air Force, a little bit at the Air Force Academy before that, flew Cessnas, and now I fly in a private corporate aviation.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' How many tic-tac UFOs have you seen? Come on, be honest. Now's the time.<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' Oof. I don't know if I'm allowed to talk about it.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' See?<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' Well, as pilots, they're really tight-knit. I mean, it's hard enough keeping the chemtrails under wraps.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I know, you've got to pretend the world is a sphere. You've got to it's hard.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's right.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' The ice wall.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Fly at the edge of the planet.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' What's funny is you sound like a pilot.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I was about to say that, Jay. I don't think it'll translate to the podcast because he's recording his own thing, but definitely the way that he sounds through Skype right now to us, it's like, shh, hello?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That intercoms.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' This is AlphaEchoNiner.<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' I can break out the pilot speak if you like, I'm actually wearing the headset I use when I fly.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Well, first off, we demand that you do talk like a pilot right now.<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' Roger.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' There it is.<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' Copy.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Roger, Roger.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Knewt, have you ever said anything by accident thinking the microphone was off?<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' Oh, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Besides right now.<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' Actually, I only got in trouble once saying something.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Okay, I'll tell you the story.<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' My last job in the Air Force, I flew Air Force One and-<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Wow.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' No way.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That's amazing.<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' So, we would be very critical of our radio supply and one time we're sitting there at the end of the runway waiting to take off and there's this storm right off the end and we could not find a way around this thing. Finally, it looked like there was a break in the weather and I think Tower knows well because they asked you want to go? And I was on the radios at the time, I was on the right seat and I said, Air Force One copies. Yeah, we'll risk it. And that was like the worst thing I could have said on the radios because everything we do and say is recorded. I think I remember getting hit in the side of the head with a checklist by somebody saying, dude, don't say things like that. Normally, we are very, very succinct and precise and practice saying, Air Force One, ready for takeoff. You know, that's it. Don't say anything like that.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Right. No unnecessary words.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Oh my God. I just realized I could never be a pilot.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Did you just realize that?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I could never follow that protocol. Forget it. I would be like- Trying to chat the guy up.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's the same thing when you're a physician, like they teach you early on, like you don't say whoops. There's certain things you don't say, like when you're examining a patient, you don't say, yeah, that's good. Like there are things that you would just say normally that can be interpreted in a nefarious way. You have to clean your lingo.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, psychologists never ever, or like good psychologists, I think, never say, I understand. Even though that's a normal thing to say in common parlance, when somebody's telling you about an experience and you're like, yeah, I understand.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Is it considered discourteous or why?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Because you don't understand and it's actually, like the really important thing as a psychologist is not to be sort of like feigning empathy. You don't understand what the patient is going through. You can say, that sounds very difficult. It sounds like you really were struggling there. I can imagine, or I even try not to say I can imagine because I don't know if I can, but I would never just say, totally, I understand. It's so disingenuous.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Well, maybe.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No, it is. Trust me. If somebody says that to you when you're talking about going through like a death or something really intense, they're like, I understand. That's not what you want to hear.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You learn to follow the path of least resistance. For example, early on in my career, I used to, when I was doing the neurological exam, I would tell patients, just walk normally across the room just so I could see them walk. After about the third or fourth time, I had a patient get mad at me and say, I can't walk normally. I said, walk as you normally would across the room just so that every now and then somebody doesn't get mad at me for implying that they can walk normally.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Well, the word normal itself also has kind of become-<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It can be loaded. When you're just dealing with thousands of people in an interaction, you sort of learned how to avoid, you smooth out all these rough edges.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, especially if you're seeing, like you said, if you're seeing people every day. Because I have ongoing relationships with my patients weekly, one of the things I do since I work at a cancer center that's, I think, so important is to figure out their identity language early on. Do you like the word survivor? Do you like the word victim? Do you like the word- Because so many people have very strong feelings about those words and you want to make sure you know what they are and you're operating within their frame. But anyway, that's very far away from the pilot saying, whoopsie. We'll risk it. We'll risk it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We'll risk it. To the press.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' They're saying, you smell that?<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' Yeah, that's another good one you don't want to say. What's that smell? Yeah, things like that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' What's that noise?<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' What's that noise? I've never heard that before.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Whoa, that sounds bad.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' How do I turn that off?<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' Anything new.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Is it supposed to do that?<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' Exactly. Anything new that happens-<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Can you turn those alarms off, please? Ever been struck by lightning while in flight?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Hold that thought. Hold that thought.<br />
<br />
== COVID-19 Update <small>(6:36)</small> == <br />
<br />
'''S:''' We're going to move on to some COVID updates. And I do want to say before I do that, today is July 28th, so my birthday is tomorrow, July 29th.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Happy birthday.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Happy day before your birthday.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Her birthday is the day before mine.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Julia!<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Happy birthday, Julia. I know she listens to the show. She wants to say happy birthday.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, Julia.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, so a couple of COVID items I wanted to point out.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Okay.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Here we go.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Both things that I get a ton of questions about, and there were some news items today that were relevant, so I thought I would cover them. One is about ivermectin. You guys remember what that is?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yes.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' A drug that many people claim is effective at treating COVID-19, so an antiviral drug that treats COVID-19. And there is a bit of a controversy about how well it works. There's a controversy because the data is preliminary. If it were ironclad, there'd still be a controversy because it's COVID and people are dumb, right? But it would be less of one. So there was a systematic review published recently where they go over all of the published data to date. This was 14 studies with 1,678 participants, so that's the total amount of data that they had to work with. And they concluded that, well, I'll read you the author's conclusions. This is sort of the executive summary of all the data. Based on the current very low to low certainty evidence, we are uncertain about the efficacy and safety of ivermectin to treat or prevent COVID-19. The completed studies are small and few are considered high quality. Several studies are underway that may produce clearer answers and review updates. So they're basically saying there's not enough evidence to say either way. But keep in mind what that also means is that if there were a big signal, we would be seeing it and there isn't a big signal. It's hard to rule out a small signal. So usually preliminary data tends to be more positive. There's a bias towards the positive. So if in the preliminary data, they're not even saying it's encouraging or there's a potential signal. Yeah, there's not really much there with the studies we have. Most are negative. There's one big positive study that was really lit a fire under the claims for ivermectin and that was retracted as fraudulent. It was a fake study. So you now have to factor that out of any previous reviews about ivermectin. This is the most up to date one and it accounts for that one fraudulent study. This really is a fairly negative review, but it's based upon preliminary evidence. So there is room for more definitive studies. But again, it probably isn't a big effect there because if there were a big effect, we probably would be seeing it even in the preliminary data.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So Steve, how does that work? You know how the New York Times writes an article and then they correct it later in the day saying, we accidentally named the source as Dr. So-and-so, but really it's Mrs. So-and-so or something like that. But we don't do that with journal articles.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, they just retract them completely.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But I'm saying like, let's say a meta-analysis includes a study that later was found fraudulent. Wouldn't it be great if the authors of that meta-analysis could just update their study and sort of like make a note at the bottom so that now when people search for it, it's still the same DOI number. It's just an updated version.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Usually editors will do that. Like they'll publish an editor's note that includes a study which has now been retracted or whatever.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right. Because that seems like a really unfortunate aspect of the scientific publishing world, that there's always outdated information.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. But no, they do publish corrections though.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Okay.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And that could be even just once it goes through the meat grinder of open-ended peer, not the pre-publication peer review. But the community now has to tear it apart. If they go, oh, you really screwed up here, and you know, if like the, basically if the journal gets embarrassed because they missed something or they really didn't do a good job editorially, they'll correct it post-production in response to the feedback from the community, which is appropriate.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right. It's just such a hard thing when like, like you said, a published journal article passes peer review. Everybody thinks it's legitimate. They cited a bunch of times. They actually utilize it as part of their own analysis. And then later it's uncovered that it's fraudulent. So everything it touched is now tainted.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Oh, yeah. And these retracted articles continue to be cited even after they're retracted.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Which is bananas. I understand if they were cited prior to that point.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, it's just lazy. It's because people are not going back to the primary source. They're citing something that's citing the article just perpetually, we really should never do that, you know. And hopefully a reviewer should pick that up. These are all things that should happen, but yeah, whatever. It's tough. It's why it takes months to get a paper through peer review because there's so many details to go over. And you know, and having published what I have and written thousands of blog posts and et cetera. You write anything of any length, no matter how careful you are, there's going to be errors. There's going to be mistakes. There's no way you can, you can weed them all out.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I'm reading the news today and the CDC changed the mask recommendations like, circumstantial, right?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So what's the confusion? Why are people like what is this? It's like, yeah, they changed it because the circumstances changed. So do you understand why there's general confusion about the CDC's change in recommendation?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It depends on where it is, right? Like the new CDC guidance is that in hotspot areas, vaccinated people should wear a mask indoors. I think the concern is like, why didn't they just say everywhere? Why not say everywhere?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I know it's tough because there's an intention to treat kind of approach to it, but it's complicated. So in other words, if you leave people wiggle room, there's the perception that maybe they'll be more receptive. And if you if you are draconian, then you'll get more backlash. But if you make it more too complicated, then they'll be confused. And so it's no one really knows what the perfect way to put it is. But that's the thinking that goes behind it. But I was just interviewed on the radio yesterday about this, and they asked that question. It's like, oh the experts are changing their mind when we don't know what to believe. Like, listen, this is a rapidly evolving pandemic, right? The facts are actually changing. This is literally a new variant of the virus. It's a different virus that's circulating now.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Right. That's how it should be.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. The recommendations have to keep being updated in order to track facts on the ground. And we have to just accept that that the CDC is going to tell us one thing today and then something else a month from now, because it's going to be a different situation.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' And also, this is actually based on actual new facts like they actually discovered that people with the beta variant are have like a thousand times the load of a virus in their mucosal tracts or whatever.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Delta variant.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah. What did I say?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You said beta.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, boy. The Delta variant. I mean, it's like a new fact. They found that there's a thousand times the virus that there was in the second variant in a second. And because of that it's going to spread a lot worse. And so even if you get it, so even if you're even if you're vaccinated and you don't have a mask, there's a greater chance that you're going to catch it because there's a thousand fold increase. And you might not even get sick, but you can still potentially spread it even if you're vaccinated. So it's just safer and better to put to have a mask on if you're in a yellow or a red zone. And that makes sense to me, too, because that's where you're going to get the most bang for the buck. It's not it's not nearly as as as required in a regular in a place where it's it's good where the vaccine rates are decent.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And Cara, you're also right, though, that we can have like the most evidence based tweaked out recommendations. But if they're too complicated, people will throw up their hands in confusion. And so sometimes you may need to just gloss over some of the complexity just to make the recommendations a little bit more simple. But it's no one knows what the perfect answer is. It's difficult when you're dealing with public messaging like that.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' In some states and some municipalities are like, we're going to say we're going to be more extreme than what the federal government says that like California and then other states and municipalities it's like, we're not going to do any of this until we're forced to. And I think that's where the confusion comes in, too. The federal guidance is not always in line with the local guidance.<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' Something I recently read on the pilot forums. Now, I'm not an airline pilot, but I have a lot of friends who fly airlines, as you can imagine when an airline pilot flies next to somebody they may have never met, even though they've been in the airline for a decade and they sit there and everybody cycles into the plane and maybe they'll look in the cockpit and maybe they'll see if the pilot's wearing a mask or not. And what they've talked about is that if they're not wearing a mask, they are being assumed to have vaccinated. But if they are wearing a mask, people are assuming the opposite. People have heard them mutter under their breath things like, oh, I have a MAGA pilot.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, I think I mentioned on the show a few weeks ago that I went into a bakery and it was in the in-between when you couldn't when you were allowed to not wear a mask.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' In the in-between, is that like the upside down?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, the in-between times. And I was wearing my mask. Everybody there was wearing their mask. A woman walked in. She said, do I need to do I should I take it out of my bag? And they were like, if you're vaccinated, it's fine if you're not blah, blah, blah. She was like, well, I am, but I didn't want to send the wrong message. And I literally had that moment, that thought. And I kind of turned to the guy who was working the register and I was like, oh, I was just wearing mine so that people don't think I'm an anti-masker. And he's like, oh, same.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We're clearly in a gray zone kind of transition period. And the bottom line is get vaccinated. Wear a mask. Suck it up until this is over. OK, we want this to be over. All right. One more quick news item.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' OK, so the question is, is it OK to mix and match COVID vaccines? What happens to the question?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's a big question.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Big question. So there was a study. And the study looked at it compared. This is now in Europe. They compared, getting one dose of AstraZeneca and another dose of the Pfizer BioNTech vaccine, versus getting just the AstraZeneca or just the Pfizer. So how do you think that shook out?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's so hard. It's different. I don't know.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I think it works. I think it's fine to mix and match. That's my guess.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I hope it's my guess, too.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Maybe I guess it's a little bit better to mix and match.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Really?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Bob is correct. It's a little bit better to mix. So the BioNTech, the Pfizer BioNTech vaccine did better overall than AstraZeneca, the Oxford AstraZeneca one. And if you took one of each, it was slightly better than if you got two of the Pfizer.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Even though it's not just that mixing was better than just getting AstraZeneca, mixing was better than just getting Pfizer?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' A little bit, but only by a little bit.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Interesting.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Sounds kind of negligible, but interesting.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, that is interesting. I would get why it would be better because if it had a higher efficacy, then yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Now, however, this was a measuring antibodies and T cells, not risk of infection. So this is remember we talked, I think, a couple of weeks ago about different ways. Yeah, so looking at markers, not risk of infection, they said they're all fine. They're all protective. It's all good. But we were just looking at antibodies just to see if there was like any reason for concern, if anything, mixing is not only fine, if anything, it might be slightly better because maybe just getting different stimulation of different antigens and the overall stimulation to the immune system was a little bit more robust. So mixing and matching is based on this one study of these particular vaccines appears to be fine.<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' Steve, I have a question for you, Steve, regarding this. So just tonight, my son and I look forward to watching baseball games all the time, and they just canceled the Nationals Phillies game due to COVID. So right before we started here, my son came up to me and told me it was because 12 national players and management team have been tested positive, 11 of them were vaccinated. And he said that he said that those 11 were Johnson and Johnson. Now, this is this is from my 15 year old son. So I haven't had a chance to peer review this journal. But he's pretty smart on Facebook. My question, then, related to what you just brought up, Steve, is say someone does get the Johnson and Johnson, they read some of this anecdotal evidence and they get nervous. Can they go out and get themselves some Pfizer or Moderna?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, I was like 85 versus 90 to 95. It's still very, very effective. It's not quite as effective as the mRNA vaccines. I haven't seen any published studies looking at crossing over, getting a booster from the from the Johnson and Johnson. And then they're basically the other thing is you have to remember they were sort of discouraging that mainly because they think everyone wants needs to get a first dose before we talk about people getting boosters or second doses or insurance doses or whatever.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right. But J&J was a single shot.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's a single shot. But they're basically saying, don't worry about that until we get everybody vaccinated. Was kind of the standard answer. And I think I think we're going to be getting our boosters at a year. I think that's going to happen.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I think you're right. I think we're all going to be getting boosters. And when you look at the hospital data, again, over and over and over 90, some extreme number percent of people in hospitals across the country were not vaccinated or only had a single shot.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And the single shot definitely is not adequate. Like you do not get for the ones that require two shots. A single shot is not does not do it does not cut it. All right. Let's move on to some news items.<br />
<br />
== News Items ==<br />
<br />
=== Folding Proteins <small>(20:27)</small> ===<br />
* [https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02025-4 DeepMind’s AI predicts structures for a vast trove of proteins]<ref>[https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02025-4 nature: DeepMind’s AI predicts structures for a vast trove of proteins]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' Bob, you're going to start with an update on folding proteins.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yes.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I thought you were going to say folding laundry.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I don't do it.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, I wouldn't cover that unless maybe it was metamaterial laundry. So yes, DeepMind and European Bioinformatics Institute released a treasure trove of 350,000 predicted protein structures created by their deep learning AI Alpha Fold 2. Now, you may remember Alpha Fold 2. I talked about it in episode 804. Check it out. Fascinating stuff. Last December, it won the Olympics of protein folding, showing that it could predict how hundreds or thousands of linked amino acids would fold into complex proteins far, far better than any other predictive system at that time. So knowing the specific shape of a protein is critical, right? Because that 3D shape actually determines how that protein will function. And proteins are, by the way, proteins are the shit they make. They make up and make happen most of the important life stuff, in quotes, life stuff that happens in biology. That's, of course, all over the earth. Proteins are they really are the queens of biology. They catalyse far and away most of the chemical reactions in the cell. They could be so many different things. They could be structural. They could be protective. They could be used as transport or storage. Their membranes, their enzymes, their toxins. I mean, just look at the cell's resume. Most of what they have written down, proteins, proteins, proteins. That's kind of like what they do. So proteins are kind of important in biology. And intimately knowing what those those proteins are and especially the ones that humans create, particularly, is obviously that's a that's a holy grail of biology. So this almanac of all the proteins for humans is called the proteome. And it was the biggest ineluctable goal once the genome was mapped in 2003, because once we mapped our genome, a lot of these scientists were saying, all right, now that we got this, we've got to go after the proteome. And of course, it's been that's been a goal for years. But you really kind of need the genome first before you're really going to start mapping creating the proteome. And but only until now do we really kind of have the tools to do this. Because remember that just because we know the genome, that doesn't mean that we know the shape of the proteins that it codes for. It's not encoded in DNA. It's not in there. It's just way too hard to predict how amino acids would fold in on themselves to form a protein. Incredibly complicated. Some amino acids are hydrophobic, some are hydrophilic, some are charged, some are uncharged. I mean, trying to suss that out for a protein comprised of hundreds and thousands of amino acids, not going to happen in any way that we could come up with in like an algorithmic way until really the alpha fold two. Now, we've had other methods to actually get a fairly definitive look at the 3D shape of proteins, but they were expensive. They were time consuming. Like, for example, you may have heard of X-ray crystallography or cryo electron microscopy. Those are two methods. They're great. They will really get you a look at what the 3D shape of that protein is. But that takes too much time, too much money, way too slow. But that's really the gold standard for years. But really no longer. It's not necessarily the gold standard anymore. All right. So how does AlphaFold do this? It uses two methods primarily. It uses training data that was taken from all that hard one information from the crystallography data. We have all those images, all those all those those that hard one data from X-ray crystallography. And using that, you could use that as training data. So basically saying that look at this amino acid sequence. This is exactly what the protein looks like. So that is training it. And then the second way that it does this, that it uses actually the knowledge that we have about how related proteins fold. Because if you're a related protein, you're going to generally fold similarly to the your cousin protein down down the road. So all that information was kind of thrown into AlphaFold as well. And those are the two the two main ways that it that it's really doing all this. Now, this latest news is the result of unleashing AlphaFold 2 on the human genome, the human genome and the genomes of important model organisms like E. coli, fruit flies and even meatballs. Right, Jay?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Don't even.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' OK. I won't go there.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Even? Don't even.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' So last week, as I said, they released a database of three hundred and fifty thousand three dimensional protein structures. Now, let's look at the subset of those that are just the human proteins. Many researchers put that the human proteome at twenty thousand proteins. But that's kind of a guess, I think, Steve, right? That's not exactly that firm. I've come across numbers that were smaller and even far bigger. But kind of the big number you'll hit when looking up the human proteome is about twenty thousand proteins. And that's probably close enough, I guess. <br />
<br />
'''S:''' Twenty thousand is always this is the estimate I always see now.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, yeah. OK. So so the database that was released covered only about ninety eight point five percent of them. So almost all of the twenty thousand. And that's mainly because they had to they had a limit. They said, all right, no proteins that are beyond, say, twenty three hundred amino acids. They cut it off there because it gets kind of crazy once you get the really huge proteins and they're much harder to predict. So ninety eight point five percent. Pretty close. So we had previously laboriously identified 17 percent of the human amino acids, so-called residues in our proteome. We spent decades, decades using those gold standard methods I mentioned. Seventeen percent. So now this new database brings that number up to fifty eight percent, almost sixty eight percent at a confident level. It's just confident. They are very confident. And of that fifty eight, thirty six percent are highly confident. So they're very highly confident over of thirty six percent of it. Now, think about that. I mean, from 17 to 36 or to 58 percent, that's a staggering increase. There's nothing incremental about that. And what what that is, if you really think about it, that's essentially decades worth of research done in months or weeks. I mean, probably be a lot quicker than that for the program to to run. Can you mean we're actually doing this where we're doing decades worth of research in a day or so. Now, Alpha Fold is obviously it's not perfect. There are things that it can't do. There are some proteins that do not have a defined structure. I mean, that actually is what they do. They're not defined at all that there. If they have any structure, their structure is to be flexible. So Alpha Fold is not designed to really deal with that. There are some proteins that will not take on a specific structure until they are like physically touching another protein. So Alpha Fold is definitely not designed to deal with that. The data is just not there to handle that as well. So it's not going to you know, it can't do all proteins. Not at all, but it can do a lot of them and it can do some of them incredibly, incredibly well. One thing about this release that I really loved is that DeepMind is making their data set publicly available on a site hosted by a European Bioinformatics Institute. I checked it out today. You can go there right now. [https://alphafold.ebi.ac.uk/ AlphaFold.ebi/ac/uk]. Go there right now. I poked around and under a minute I was looking at the predicted shape of cell division protein FTSP for E. Coli. BAM. I just like it offered it as E. Coli as an example. And I drilled down a little bit and I was looking at a protein and the confidence level for most of the shape of that protein was above the 90th percentile, above 90th, which is essentially what the X-ray crystallography gets you after months of work and a ton of money. And they got it probably between breakfast and lunch. Amazing, amazing. This is going to be an amazing tool. Now, over the course of the rest of this year, DeepMind plans to target every last gene sequence and DNA databases, like probably all the major databases all over the world. They're just going to hit all of those gene sequences and feed them in to Alpha Fold 2. Their goal is to increase their database of predicted structures from 350,000 to 100 million proteins, 100 million or more. Researchers say we think this is the most significant contribution AI has made to science to date. That is a hell of a quote right there. So what does that mean? And so what's this going to mean to me? So now having the proteome and we don't have the proteome yet, but we've made big strides, it seems, and we're going to make even bigger strides in the very near future. It's definitely going to make some big changes to the practice of medicine, obviously, designing drugs, understanding diseases. Computational biologist Mohammed Al Quraishi describes having the availability of so many protein structures as a paradigm shift in biology. Steve, you mentioned in your blog that we'll be able to move more quickly from research on people and animals to computers, right? From in vivo and in vitro to in silico, right?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The more data we have, the better we'll be able to model things. So you're still going to for anything medical, you're going to need that final piece of testing it in actual people. The goal is by the time you get to that point, you've maximized safety and you maximize the probability of it working. And the more information we have, the better. So this this will speed up clinical research because it'll get us to that final human stage with much greater confidence.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah. But of course like the Genome Project, when that remember when that came out in 2003, I distinctly remember it. A lot of changes now will be behind the scenes. You're not going to you're not going to go to your doctor and talking about this really. It's not going to trickle down to you for a while. It could take years for that to happen. This kind of stuff takes time. But behind the scenes, there's going to be a lot of stuff going on. And but of course, not everyone is doing a happy dance, apparently. I found David David Jones, David Jones, as a UCL computational biologist, he thinks he believes that many of Alphafold's predictive structures could have been created with earlier software developed by academics. He said, for most proteins, those results are are probably good enough for quite a lot of things that you want to do. So, OK. So to sum it up, I'll end with a quote from Alphabet and Google CEO Sundar Pichai, who said recently, the Alphafold database shows the potential for AI to profoundly accelerate scientific progress. Not only has DeepMind's machine learning system greatly expanded our accumulated knowledge of protein structures and the human proteome overnight, its deep insights into the building blocks of life hold an extraordinary promise for the future of scientific discovery. And I'll finally end with with my big takeaway. My big takeaway from this is that I think this is starting to give us a glimpse of the potential of narrow AI. I mean, if you already hadn't having gotten that glimpse already, it's it's an amazing tool. It's you know, and this we're just scratching the surface. We're just getting started. And it's going to continue and continue and continue to improve and change our lives. And I mean, I'm just trying to think, can you imagine in 20 to 30 years, what narrow AI and beyond will be giving us? It's going to I mean, it's going to be amazing. I mean, clearly some crazy stuff's coming down the road.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I agree. And I'm usually not nearly as much as a techno optimist as you, Bob. But I think that it's you can't oversell, I think, like the promise of narrow AI, the way it's been taking off in the last five years or so with deep learning and neural networks and everything. Think about this. This is jet fuel to biological and medical research. We're going to be feeling the effects of this for decades and it's only going to get better. So yeah, it really is allowing us to do decades of research in months in some areas.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' And yeah, even though it could take some years before we really start seeing the payoff, your kids and your grandkids, they are going to be seeing the results of this. They'll be thinking of this of this date and maybe they'll even remember this talk. I remember when Bob talked about that.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Wouldn't that be nice?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' He first brought it up in episode 804.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's 838. All right. That's the episode we're on today.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Thank you.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You're welcome.<br />
<br />
=== Magnet Therapy for Cancer <small>(32:46)</small> ===<br />
* [https://theness.com/neurologicablog/treating-brain-cancer-with-magnets/ Treating Brain Cancer with Magnets]<ref>[https://theness.com/neurologicablog/treating-brain-cancer-with-magnets/ Neurologica: Treating Brain Cancer with Magnets]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' What if I told you guys, what would your first reaction be of a study that claims, to treat brain cancer with magnets?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Brain cancer?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Sounds like it's from an article a hundred years ago.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' But we're using magnets on the brain. I would imagine that it's probably derivative of that.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah. But for cancer treatment?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, but how do you how do you shrink a tumor with a magnet?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. So-<br />
<br />
'''J:''' You hit it with magnetism.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So wait, but what if you're using the magnets to guide the drugs?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, is that how? Oh, like an etch a sketch kind of thing?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' This is just from the directly from the magnetic field itself.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, that's cool. I mean, I would say I'm skeptical, but tell me more.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, it's kind of you guys are reflecting kind of the dichotomy here. So magnets are real. It's like it's not like their magnets themselves are made up and they affect the body because our biological organisms are electromagnetic and magnetic resonance imaging, MRI scans or use magnets to make the best images we can of of biology. And we're using transcranial magnetic stimulation to change brain function. And so, yeah magnets are a powerful, real biological force.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But that's all like physiology, there's something interesting about the idea of like there being a tumor in the brain.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, yeah. So this definitely is like a new level. And of course, my initial reaction was skeptical as well, because the flip side of that coin is for the last 200 years, basically, since there's been a science of magnetism and magnets, there has been magnetic quackery and it's still flourishing. And so the question is always when you want to hear any claim being put forward for magnets, is this real or is this magnetic quackery? Is this nonsense? And sometimes there's things in the middle where you have legitimate researchers who think they've hit upon something, but they're just getting kind of lost in the sexiness of using magnetic fields to affect the body. I've seen that happen as well. So I took a deep look at this at this one and my overall sense is that this is legitimate, but preliminary. If I had to encapsulate the executive summary there. First of all, the brain cancer that they're treating here is glioblastoma multiforme, which is the most GPM. It's the most common. It's also the nastiest. It's bad. It's the hardest to treat. Survival times are still like 12 to 18 months on average. And yeah, and like our treatments, they've made a little bit of a difference, but not much.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And they can be kind of brutal, too.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. Oh, yeah. It's hard because it's brain cancer. It's a very invasive cancer. It sends out like the tendrils into the brain tissue. That's why it's impossible to cure. It's not like encapsulated or anything. And by the time you detect it, it's like too late. It's already insinuated itself in the brain. And of course, our ability to use aggressive treatment, whether surgical or radiation or whatever, is limited because it's the brain that you're talking about. At some point, you're like you could take out lobes of the lung and try to manage people that way. But you can't do that to the brain without causing significant neurological impairment. So it's bad. It's very, very bad.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' But wait, we only use 10 percent of our brains. So can't you just cut off the other 90 percent?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And delete it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And that's not just to make sure everyone listening knows that's absolutely not true. That's myth. Bob said that in jest.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It's 12 percent.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Bob was supposed to say, what is it? Sarcasm symbol.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, the sarcasm. All right. So this is how the thing I was most interested in when I heard this is what's the apparent mechanism here? Because it's not obvious. And I did not think of it. Wasn't even among the things that I would consider. So this is how it allegedly works. And this is based upon some in vitro data. So there's some preliminary data. And this is what led to this study. And that is that the if you have an intense enough magnetic field for a long enough period of time, it can affect the function of mitochondria in such a way that it causes them to spew out a lot of oxygen free radicals. Now, if you have a very metabolically active tissue like cancer, it might cause them to put out so many oxygen free radicals that it triggers cell death. Apoptosis.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Apoptosis.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. So that's the idea.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But it would never be like all of it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, probably not.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But yeah, I just don't see how this is. I mean, but it could definitely maybe tamp it down, slow its progression.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, you want to hear what the results were? So first of all, this was a case report. This is a case report of one person. This is one person. So this is just a proof of concept. We just want to make sure it's not going to make the person drop dead so that we could actually study it in people. So this was somebody who has glioblastoma, GBM, or I should say had he passed away during the study. But he had GBM and had failed all treatment and there was nothing left they can do for him. So it was like nothing left to lose. Let's try this experimental treatment sort of thing. So he had to wear it. It's interesting because you wear a helmet with these three magnets on them and it looks like a beer drinking hat. You know what those look like?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, no.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Exactly like that. Like, yeah, like almost with the exact same dimensions as like a beer can. There's sort of like a little fat. So there's like these two little fat beer cans on either side, like at both temples. And then there's a third one on the top of the head. So there's these three can magnets, which are very powerful. And he had to wear them for several hours a day, like with five minutes between each hour for five days a week. And they tracked the size of the tumor while he was doing this. And the tumor actually shrunk. You know, it shrunk by by 1.03 centimetres per day, cubic centimetres per day.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It might have been an enormous tumor.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. So overall, overall, it shrunk by 31 percent during the course of the treatment. Thirty one percent.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Random question, Steve. How sure are we that this wasn't just the cumulative effect of all the other treatments this guy had taken?<br />
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'''S:''' Well, because there's we don't know for sure because it's one person. But there's a couple of good reasons to suspect that it isn't.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That it was the magnets.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' One is at one point he had to take a break from wearing the magnets and the tumor started to get bigger. And then they reinstated the magnets and they got smaller. And then when he did it for longer, it got smaller, faster. So there was an apparent dose response and there was there was good correlation to actually because they were again, they were following him during the course of several months. It wasn't just like at the beginning and the end.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, that's a good.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's pretty good. That's pretty good. That's pretty strong.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Wear them all the time.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Interesting. OK.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Unfortunately, the guy had you mean he had a brain tumor, he's neurologically impaired. At some point during the study, he fell, had a closed head injury and ultimately died from the injury.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, my gosh.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Not from the tumor and not from the treatment, but from falling and hitting his head.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Which is related, probably.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, probably secondarily related, probably because I said he's impaired because he's got a brain tumor. The family did allow for an autopsy. So this allowed the researchers to do a pathological examination of the brain, and they were able to document the tumor shrinkage that way. You know, it's a case report of one person. So that's a hugely preliminary. It has to be replicated. We need statistics. You know, we need to do real controls here. It's encouraging enough to do more research. I don't want to, like, oversell the implication of a single study with one person. But as a proof of concept to justify later research, it's pretty solid. And it's interesting. It's interesting, I never would have thought about that, that effect. But again, one of the main ways that we treat cancer is to put cells that are the most metabolically active under some stress, because cancer cells are probably the most metabolically active cells.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That's why you lose your hair, right?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But that's why you lose your hair and you have other effects, because the other metabolically active cells will tend to be affected as well.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, it's why chemo is severely toxic. It's not just hair loss.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It is literally a toxin just killing cells is hoping to kill the tumor cells more than the healthy cells.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And that's why a lot of a lot of chemotherapies, you have to like get your levels of your liver enzymes checked. You have to get heart tests and yeah, just make sure your organs are OK.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So the other thing is that this was looking at tumor size, which, again, is a very important marker, but it didn't look at survival because it couldn't because he died in the middle of it. And there's only anecdotal evidence about quality of life. You know, his caregiver said he was getting a little bit decreased effects of the tumor. But so what later studies will need to look at is does it actually increase survival and does it and or does it increase quality of life duration and quality of life? That's what it's all about. And so it's probably not going to be a cure, probably not going to be a cure. But if it does help whack back the tumor and extend survival even a little bit, it's something because again, it's such a horrible diagnosis. I did want just to remind you guys of the CRISPR study from a few months ago.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, that was incredibly encouraging.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That was in mice. It was not in humans. Right. But that was also with GBM. So who knows, maybe in four or five years might have in the clinic, some combination of CRISPR and this magnetic therapy that might start moving the needle on GBM would be really, really nice.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. And the truth is, human trials would probably be relatively easy to get approval for considering that it's not invasive.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's all risk versus benefit. Right.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And the standard of care for glioblastoma is still it's they're low survival. I mean, it's a very low survival. So even the best we have right now is not great.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, exactly.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So being able to have a clinical trial like this would be helpful.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And this could be completely adjunctive therapy to whatever else is standard of care. So it's very easy.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, I don't see any reason why this would be at least from a face validity perspective, why this would in any way like gum up chemo or radiation.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Right. Right. Right. But again, I just have to my huge word of caution here is we've been here before with GBM, with treatments like, oh, this keeps blood vessels from growing. This is going to be fantastic. And it does like very little to nothing. So we just got to be very cautious because everything that's looked encouraging previously for GBM has just not had that much of an effect. But we got to keep playing, buying those lottery tickets, right? We just got to keep trying. And this is one of the more encouraging things to come down for a while. So we'll see how it works out.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I mean, have we ever seen a 30 percent decrease like that?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Probably. I mean, that's the thing. You've got to remember, this is one dude. Probably plenty of people have seen 30 percent decrease when they took chemo.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. Or radiation therapy.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Or radiation, like stuff we already have.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. Yeah. The problem is that even when it looks good with markers and everything, it just doesn't seem to extend survival. That's the key.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. And also a 30 percent decrease means nothing if it's just going to come roaring back the minute you can no longer tolerate the treatment because it's too toxic. And that's a huge problem. It's like you can only stave these things off for so much. And the minute that you're not in treatment anymore, it comes raring back.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' So I mean, I could wear that helmet all day.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, but we can't we can't assume it's benign. It's doing something. If you're killing cancer cells, it's doing something.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, it might cause long term cognitive impairment or I mean, there's no reason to think it wouldn't. It's just not relevant if survival solo.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Steve, Steve, are the doctors worried, though, that somebody might end up with superpowers?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' No, they're very worried. It's why they haven't said anything about it yet.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' OK, just curious.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Take their silence as panic.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Do you have a sticky note on your laptop that says to ask that every time we do a CRISPR or magnetic?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I'm just checking because this is where these superpowers come from. If you if you read comic book historical research, that's where all these wacky stuff is coming from.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's right.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' The peer reviewed comic book literature tells me this.<br />
<br />
=== Galileo Project <small>(45:29)</small> ===<br />
* [https://www.space.com/galileo-project-search-for-extraterrestrial-artifacts-announcement 'Galileo Project' will search for evidence of extraterrestrial life from the technology it leaves behind]<ref>[https://www.space.com/galileo-project-search-for-extraterrestrial-artifacts-announcement Space.com: 'Galileo Project' will search for evidence of extraterrestrial life from the technology it leaves behind]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, Jay, since you're so keen on trying me in here, tell us about the Galileo project.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, I want to start off by saying before we get into this news item that right now, I don't know where the researchers really lie on the science versus pseudoscience spectrum. I'm hoping they're way more on the science side of things. But there is a little bit of question about it. So do your own research. I'm just going to tell you about what took place this week. So the concept here is imagine if we could find an alien artifact for real and how cool that would be. You know, I'm talking about something that was built by an alien culture. You know, what impact would that have on today's society? That's for philosophers and Cara to figure out. But astrophysicist Avi Loeb from Harvard University and Frank Lockean, CEO of Brooker Corporation, they're both co-founders of this new initiative called the Galileo project. And the goal of the project is to search for and hopefully find extraterrestrial technological civilizations or ETCs. So on Monday, the 26th of July, the team announced, and this is in quotes, Given the recently discovered abundance of Earth, Sun, systems, the Galileo project is dedicated to the proposition that humans can no longer ignore the possible existence of extraterrestrial technological civilizations. So that's a mouthful, right?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' OK, ignore the existence.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Have you been ignoring?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Have there been any evidence?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, I know, Bob. Right. There's there's a lot of question marks.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' They're missing the word potential or possible.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Exactly. Well, I'll get into it a little bit later where what I was able to read today, what I found out. But let me just go through what the Galileo project is, because on the surface, it's not a complete waste of time. The team will look for techno signatures. Have you ever heard of a techno signature?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yes.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, we talked about it on the show.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Right. OK, so just to remind people, there are physical objects, right? Maybe it's an alien species that built something that we can see, right? It could be an alien technological equipment of some kind. Like, Bob, you always talk about Dyson spheres, right? Like a Dyson swarm, like encasing a sun in a material that will collect the energy of that sun.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Right. And it would radiate infrared and you could detect the infrared. Sure.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Right. So there might be who knows, right? You know, come on.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' The universe is huge. There might be some artifact out there.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' The problem is detecting it.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Exactly. So the project has three research goals. The first one is to obtain high resolution images of unidentified aerial phenomena. This is a new way of saying UFO. It's UAP.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Really? They're going they're going local with this. Ugh.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Through multi detector sensors to discover their nature. Search and conduct in depth research on interstellar objects. That part is great. Search for potential ETC satellites in Earth's orbit. Not so great.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' In Earth's orbit?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yes.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Wow. No, this is pseudoscience.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' But this is Avi. This is Avi.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I think it's mixed. I think it's mixed.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Not from what I'm hearing so far. I mean, you're going to look for extraterrestrial technology in the atmosphere, in orbit around the Earth or in the solar system. Steve this is the ʻOumuamua guy.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I know.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' So, I mean, what do you hear? What are you hearing that that looks that sounds encouraging to you?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So the team is not investigating previous claims of alien visitation or UAPs. This is good news, by the way, right? Because there's all this crap in the news for the past several months about UFOs, whatnot. They want to look for and research physical objects like ʻOumuamua. And no matter what oddities they do find, this is what they say. They want to discover the origin, if possible. It could be an atmospheric phenomenon. This is what they're saying, that it could be an atmospheric phenomenon or a similarly mundane explanation. Or it could be something much more compelling, like an actual alien artifact. Either way, the team is going to use a science-based methodology to draw conclusions. That's basically what they're saying. Now, of course, what they actually do with the information that they find is a completely different thing. And that's going to happen behind closed doors, which we won't know. So in the past two weeks, the team has received one point seven five million dollars in donations. They're currently selecting the scientific instruments that they need to get started. And they plan to set up multiple telescopes and or they're calling it telescope systems globally. So each telescope system is going to have two 25 centimeter telescopes and, of course, a digital camera. And they'll use software to search through all the collected data that they end up with. Then they'll find an object of interest and then they'll do a deeper dive on it and get the highest resolution that they can off of that. They also plan to analyse data collected from other survey telescopes, like the 8-meter Verisi-Rubin Observatory that's currently under construction in Chile. Okay, that's cool. They should use these bigger telescopes as well. Now, just for some context here. Many fields of science look for signs of life outside our Earth. Legit like planetary scientists, astrobiologists, exoplanet astronomers, and, of course, SETI. Hello, right? They they're they're looking for evidence. And we don't like turn a crooked eye to SETI because we know that they're science based. The question always is how legitimate is the science? And the problem here is that pseudoscience has a strong presence when it comes to proof of aliens. It always has. Some scientists are conducting legitimate research and others aren't. So time will tell how legitimate this new endeavour is. But I found something very interesting. So Carl Sagan's book, Contact, was very loosely based on a scientist named Jill Tarter. And she recently went head to head with Ali, the guy-<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Avi.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Avi Loeb, right? She went head to head with him, basically saying, like cut the pseudoscience, right? You need to read it. There's there's there's an exchange that they had. It was it's interesting. But the point here is that other scientists are turning an eye and saying how legitimate is this? That's the main question here. And I think it's a good thing for people to discuss because money is being spent and they're making claims and they're going to what if they do find something? You know, this team actually believed that that object that came through, ʻOumuamua, they really believe that it was an alien technology. And there is no evidence of that whatsoever. So I feel like they're being very, very optimistic, like in the face of true science, they're being way too optimistic. So that puts a big skeptical red flag in the sky for me when I hear that kind of sentiment towards an object that happened to pass by the earth. You know, now that he wrote a book and now he's out collecting money. So the only thing we could do is sit back and watch what they do and see if anything comes out of it. I mean, if they do legit science, the sad fact is they're probably going to find absolutely nothing.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, I agree. I mean, I obviously have no problem with people in doing scientific investigation to things like this. I have no problem with SETI. I think SETI is great. As long as they keep the quality of the science high and they don't overstate any claims or they're not trying to prove that this is true. They're just they're trying to really answer the question. Like, is there any evidence for technosignatures out there? Then that's fine. I have no problem with it. And I agree. It's like probably come up with nothing. But it's also possible that somewhere in our galaxy there is a Dyson swarm. You know, it's possible. And if they find that great.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Well, the question for me is the the implication I got earlier, Jay, was that they were looking primarily local, earth's atmosphere, earth orbit, and our solar system. And so if they're looking just there, I think okay, look, but I think that's a waste – kind of a waste of time because it's basically looking for UFOs. There's just no evidence that extraterrestrials visited our solar system, our planet. And I think if you're going to spend millions to look locally, I think that's a massive waste of time. If you're going to do good science, that's great. But I would rather you look outward, you know? Look out into the galaxy and into the universe for technosignatures of like Kardashev civilizations type 2, type 3, the kind of civilizations that can make an impact on their local environment to such a degree that we could detect it thousands or millions of light years away. That's great because I think that's probably going to be the only way we're going to find alien evidence is some technosignature or a signal that we could detect. That's how it's probably going to be detected. And we got to look. And we actually did look. We did a big survey. We did a big survey, I remember a few years ago, looking for a specific infrared signature that you would get from a Dyson swarm. And they didn't find anything. And that was very disappointing because it was a solid, it was a solid task. It was a solid mission that they were doing. They really, it was a pretty wide survey. And so that was very disappointing. But that's the kind of stuff I think you're going to need to do to find a technosignature. So I hope they look more non-local than what they, sounds like they're doing.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' But if we do hear a signal from outer space that it goes bang, bang, bang. If we hear that, we know, we know it's legit. That's what aliens sound like.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' And only like that.<br />
<br />
=== Wing Colour and Flight Efficiency <small>(54:53)</small> ===<br />
* [https://rs.figshare.com/collections/Supplementary_material_from_The_evolution_of_darker_wings_in_seabirds_in_relation_to_temperature-dependent_flight_efficiency_/5477695 Supplementary material from "The evolution of darker wings in seabirds in relation to temperature-dependent flight efficiency"]<ref>[https://rs.figshare.com/collections/Supplementary_material_from_The_evolution_of_darker_wings_in_seabirds_in_relation_to_temperature-dependent_flight_efficiency_/5477695 The Royal Society Publishing: Supplementary material from "The evolution of darker wings in seabirds in relation to temperature-dependent flight efficiency"]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. Knewt, you're going to tell us about this study looking at wing colour and flight efficiency.<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' Yes. So wing colour and flight efficiency, specifically in birds.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Not airplanes. Okay.<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' Not airplanes. Not yet. Maybe we'll get there as a pilot. I would love to talk about airplanes, so I'll find a way to work that in. But also as a pilot, I've had a lifelong fascination and I would say inherent jealousy of our winged friends. And one thing that we've noticed, not me, but this research that I read, they noticed that all of those large swooping birds across the ocean, they all have one thing in common. That is dark wings. So a group of researchers out of Ghent University, they examined about 324 specimens on record of soaring birds. And what they found was, yeah, dark wings are great for things like camouflage and perhaps mating, hiding. The classic reason that you would think a bird has decorative plumage. But what they got interested in was that if the dark wings, the dark feathers actually helped them fly. And sure enough, the study determined that they did find there was a benefit to having dark wing in the actual mechanics of flight for a bird. What they found specifically was that, well, what they did took, they took wings from a northern gannet. And they propped them up in a wind tunnel after stuffing them with cotton. And they manipulated the colouring of the plumage. Of course, they had white, they had dark, they had white fading into dark. And they ran them through all sorts of positions and different wind speeds and wind directions. And also they simulated various sun intensities using infrared bulbs on these wings. And what was interesting is that, of course, they found out that the darker wings heated up more. But what the researchers found was that when the wings started with the white feathers closer to the body and then branching out to the darker feathers, that there was up to nine degrees temperature change from the lighter to the darker. And this boosted airflow by what you may know of as a convection current. So from colder air to hotter air, just like works in the water. But what they found was that, interesting thing, is that it resulted in a 20% reduction in drag across the wing. And that's significant. And I can tell you as a pilot, that's significant based on, now here we go into aircraft. Back in 1973 with the oil crisis, there was a push by NASA and they worked with Boeing, a bunch of other companies, trying to figure out how they could improve fuel efficiency. And this one guy, he said we should do something about the wingtip vortices at the end of a wing. And what they came up with was the winglet. And you've seen that if you've ever flown Southwest. You look out the wing, you can see the little nub going up at the end of the wing. That's a blended winglet. But what they first tested was just a chunk of metal at the end of a KC-135 wing. And what they determined was that that also reduced drag by 20%. Coincidentally, exact same number. But what that translated into was about five to 7% fuel savings. And that's maybe a little better version of efficiency. Because five to seven translates to dollars when you're talking to airlines. It translates to a lot of dollars. So NASA has said it's in the billions. It's hard to wrap your brain around that number. So I went and grabbed some numbers just to make sure. But Southwest, the number one user of the 737, they've got 746 of those. They say that by adding those winglets, they save 100,000 gallons of gas a year per jet. And that's just a four to six percent. So five percent, let's say, fuel savings. And yeah, absolutely. It reduces the carbon footprint as well. In fact, that two billion gallons of jet fuel worldwide was saved in 2010. Which equated to 21.5 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions. I mean, I buy gas when I'm out on the road and say you get a good rate. Say it's an easy number, five bucks a gallon. If you've got 750 jets at 100,000 gallons a day or a year, five bucks a gallon, you're already over $3.75 billion a year saved. So how do you translate that? So we go from the birds having dark wings, try to put it on an aircraft. If you've ever looked out, you have looked out your window and you see most aircraft are white. I fly business jets. They're all white. In fact, they're just called white jets. So you've got to think there's got to be a reason. We're all about saving money. Everybody wants to be more efficient. Why is it they haven't figured this out yet? That if I painted the wing dark, I could save billions of dollars. So I'll open it up to you guys. Why do you think we paint jets white?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Identification.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' To reflect, so they don't absorb heat energy. I always imagine that that colour made it so they didn't get hot.<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' Absolutely. Where do aircraft keep their fuel?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' In the wings.<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' You don't want to get that hot. And then someone else said identification as well.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yes, you can see other planes.<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' I said that at the beginning. They use dark plumage to be adaptive, to hide. Camouflage. We don't want that. We want birds to see the plane. So painting white, they've proved over time, actually helps the bird avoid the aircraft. And that'll save way more money than a couple of gallons of gas for sure.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' So what we need are black wings with a lot of light.<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' Or maybe, like they talked about, the one that they found was where it's white at the root. And then it sort of gets darker as it extends out. But honestly, we're just-<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Let's just kill all birds.<br />
<br />
[talking over each other]<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Let the cats do that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's kind of in the way of wind turbines. I mean, come on, they're a menace.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Bird strikes.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I got it guys, all they need to do is put deer whistles on the airplanes and we're good to go.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Pig whistles?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Deer whistles.<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' But the likelihood of changing the colour of aircraft, that's pretty slim. However, and you know, you touched on this on the blog just this week with hydrogen fuel cells in aircraft. And of course, you all talked about significantly recently with electronic aircraft and using batteries. So if you're no longer holding your fuel source in the wings, and you have a fuel cell through a battery or through a hybrid engine, and that's in the fuselage, then maybe the wing could be a source of efficiency by changing its colour.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Sure.<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' And then this is, I think one of you called it the Wikipedia rabbit hole. So I just started Googling all these EV aircraft that are coming out because birds, they fly relatively slow compared to business jets. But so do electronic aircraft, the ones that are coming out. They're looking at ranges of 200 to 400 miles. But there's a lot of them. There's a bunch coming out this year, or that claim to be able to fly this year. And it seems like by 2024, I found no less than three or four companies that say that they're going to have a fleet of 19 passenger or less EV aircraft that'll be flying around. But in all the mockups, they're all white. They're solid white. Just like because that's what we're used to seeing. And I would think we can make most of it white. But there's got to be a way to save some gas on the engines.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, you'd think if all you do is put some black stripes at the end of the wings, then you could save money.<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' Probably will. They'll find a way.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It reminds me of when they figured out that like for the space shuttle, they would paint the main gas tank white for the first few launches. Then they go, let's just not paint it.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Because we save 200 pounds. They save like hundreds of pounds of paint.<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' White is also the lightest. It's easy to put a coat of white on there and not be as unattractive as the coloured, the darker paints because those fade. You just got to keep adding paint.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Right.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' What did they end up with? Wasn't it orange?<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Orange. Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Orange? Yeah. Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay. Thanks, Knewt.<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' No problem.<br />
<br />
=== Mercola Misinformation <small>(1:02:39)</small> ===<br />
* [https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/24/technology/joseph-mercola-coronavirus-misinformation-online.html title]<ref>[https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/24/technology/joseph-mercola-coronavirus-misinformation-online.html The New York Times: The Most Influential Spreader of Coronavirus Misinformation Online]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' Cara, tell us about Joseph Mercola and coronavirus misinformation. We know this guy. He's a…<br />
<br />
'''E:''' The collective groan goes out.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I'm reading this article in the New York Times and I'm thinking, I remember way back when I joined the SGU. One of the things they used to say to me is Cara, what we love about like your addition to the show is that you're skeptically minded. You're a skeptical scientist, but you're not like steeped in the skeptical kind of culture. And so I love learning about people. I mean, obviously, I've heard of Mercola, but I don't know if I have quite the amount of information in my brain that you guys do about Mercola. So I got to do a little bit of a deep dive on him. Great guy.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, my gosh. Where do you start?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. So, okay, here we go. Yeah. Where do you start? New York Times did their own investigation, but I'm also going to cite a really interesting study that came out of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, which is a nonprofit that looks at hate speech and misinformation online. So I don't know if you guys have been following, but the Center for Countering Digital Hate put out what they call the disinformation dozen. So, yeah, so they looked at a sample of anti-vaccine content that was shared or posted on Facebook or Twitter a total of 812,000 times between February 1st and March 16th, 2021. So just like a kind of like a sample in the middle of COVID disinformation. And they were like, let's look at this and see who's posting it, who's sharing it, what's going on. And they basically, through their analysis, were able to there's a lot of numbers in this analysis. It was this many accounts and shared this many times and this many people retweeted or whatever. But ultimately, they came up with a list of the disinformation dozen. So the top 12 people who collectively account for 73% of Facebook's anti-vax content and that disinformation. Can you guys guess who some of the people on it are?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Wink Martindale?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, come on, come on. Who do you think makes up the anti-vax disinformation dozen?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I know. I've read the whole list.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So Mercola is at the top. Joseph Mercola is the number one contributor. Number two, Robert F. Kennedy.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, sure.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right? Junior.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Wakefield's not in there?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Wakefield is not in there. No. Sherry Tenpenny, number four.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, Tenpenny.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Ty and Charlene Bollinger, number three. And then we've got Riza Islam, Rashid Buttar, Erin Elizabeth, who I didn't know about Erin Elizabeth, but she's Mercola's partner. So they take up extra space on this list together. Sayer G, I'm not sure if it's Jai or G, Kelly Brogan, Christiane Northrup, Ben Tapper and Kevin Jenkins. So if you come across any of these people.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Leroy Jenkins.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Be skeptical. Yeah, Leroy Jenkins. We had to. And there are also key anti-vaxxer organizations that the Center for Countering Digital Hate points to. So it's not just the disinformation dozen, the top 12, but the organizations that are linked to them, which often it's shared through these organizations that have like a sheen of professionalism. So I'm saying this, I mean, to really arm us. So the Children's Health Defense, anti-vax. Informed Consent Action Network, anti-vax. The National Vaccine Information Center, anti-vax. The Organic Consumers Association. And lastly, Millions Against Medical Mandates. These are pseudoscientific organizations that were developed to spread misinformation, specifically anti-vax misinformation. So not only did this organization, this nonprofit, find that he was number one on the disinformation dozen, but the New York Times did their own investigation. You know, so they sampled. I think they were just looking at Facebook and they found that Mercola is responsible. The number one, the most influential spreader of COVID misinformation online. So they cite an article that showed up on February 9th, which has since been taken down, where Mercola says that COVID vaccines are a medical fraud. They don't prevent infections. They don't provide immunity. They don't stop transmission. But they do alter your genetic coding, turning you into a viral protein factory that has no off switch.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh my God. That's not gene editing.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Exactly. And then later, they do make some, I think, really important points in here. Because, I mean, I could just like list horrible things that this man has said. And for a little bit of background, this is an osteopath who I think very early on realized that a media empire was the way that he was going to make a lot of money. So in the 90s, he started building these different websites. And then when social media really caught on, he very quickly hired a team of people and worked very hard to create viral content that would spread and spread and spread through social media. This is a big part of his focus. There are quotes in this New York Times article from unnamed sources who used to work for him that they had signed NDAs. So they weren't willing to give their names on the record about how he does this. He like often does A, B testing. It's just it's a really important part of his job that he figure out how can I make these posts go as viral as possible. I did mention before that he is dating a woman named Erin Elizabeth and she is the founder of the website Health Nut News. And she is also responsible for a large percentage of the anti-vaccine rhetoric that you see out there. What I think this article does a good job of noting is that Mercola is not a dumb guy. And what Mercola does really well is skate right up to the line. But a lot of times the way he writes his articles, he doesn't outright say vaccines are bad. I am not I am an anti-vaxxer. I do not advocate for vaccines. He like uses, I mean, it's that perfect definition of pseudoscience. It has a sheen of scientific.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Just asking questions. Just asking questions. Cites debunked studies or cherry-picked results and just really it's like he understands the machine so he knows how to manipulate it. Whereas, for example, his girlfriend Erin Elizabeth is like straight up, I am an anti-vaxxer. Vaccines are bad. And so these different people, if you actually look at the disinformation dozen, you can see, for example, they cite an individual named Riza Islam who specifically tends to target, he himself is a black guy and he tends to target black Americans. For example, you'll see that some of these people on the list tend to target a more religious audience or a more health conscious audience. So collectively they're really hitting lots of pockets of people who might tend towards hesitancy or who might tend towards denialism and then they're able to sort of trap them and get them in. Like you've got Ty and Charlene Bollinger who are like hardcore super pack, like big, more like politically biased individuals. So that's kind of, I think, one of the, unfortunately, the most insidious things about Mercola is that a lot of people think he's legitimate. He's a physician. He knows how to talk about science in a way that sounds scientific. He's very good at misinformation and he always backtracks. So in an email with the New York Times, he said, it's quite peculiar to me that I'm named as the number one super spreader. There are relatively small number of shares. I don't see how this could possibly cause such calamity to Biden's multi-billion dollar vaccination campaign. I mean, again, I don't think I'm, I don't think it's a stretch to say that the actions of this man are leading maybe indirectly, sometimes possibly directly to loss of life, to injury, to significant harm. And I think he needs to be held responsible for that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Totally. He's a poster child for inadequate regulation of this kind of medical malpractice, basically. Yeah, it's a disgrace. Let me read you guys this quote I just saw. This is a tweet from George Takai who's great. He wrote, overheard that in quotes, the irony of anti-vaxxers saying they don't want to be part of an experiment without realizing they are now the control group.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I love that so much.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, that's it. That's great.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's amazing.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Welcome to the study.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' They got the placebo.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, right.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' They're not going to get better.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Unfortunately, they're a self-selective group, so it's not a good study.<br />
<br />
== Who's That Noisy? <small>(1:11:37)</small> ==<br />
{{anchor|futureWTN}} <!-- this is the anchor used by "wtnAnswer", which links the previous "new noisy" segment to this "future" WTN --><br />
<br />
{{wtnHiddenAnswer<br />
|episodeNum = 837<!-- episode number for previous Noisy --><br />
|answer = Horn <!-- brief description of answer, perhaps with a link --><br />
|}}<br />
'''S:''' All right, Jay, it's Who's That Noisy time.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' All right, guys, last week I played this noisy.<br />
<br />
[_short_vague_description_of_Noisy] <br />
<br />
It's probably the shortest noisy I've ever done. I'll play it again. [plays Noisy] You guys want to make any guesses before I start?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It sounds like a bird.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Sideshow Mel, I think it was.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' All right, Steve thinks it's a bird. Anybody else?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, like a whistle, some sort of. No, it's not a whistle. That's too easy.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' A whistle. All right.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I'm going to pull a Price is Right move and say a slightly bigger bird than Steve's.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Let's get into this. Rachel Benaggia wrote in and said, the noisy this week has to be nature's squeaky toy, a guinea pig. So it turns out a lot of people wrote in guinea pig, a lot of people. Rachel just happened to be the first. So it's not a guinea pig. I did try to find sounds that a guinea pig makes, and I didn't find any that sounded like that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Is it a whistle pig?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' A whistle pig.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Remember that?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Remember?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's a groundhog.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' A groundhog, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's a groundhog. A whistlepig.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I love that.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That's awesome.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' My favorite.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' All right, another person wrote in, Kevin Williams. He says, Hi, guys. Love the show. One thing I've always wondered is where does the name of the segment come from?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, I'll tell you.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, so I'm figuring instead of me emailing him back, I thought that I'd let Steve say it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We've said it on the show before, but basically when my daughter was like two and she was just learning how to talk.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Happy birthday, Julia.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, the one whose birthday it is today. When she heard something, instead of saying, What's that noise? She said, Who's that noisy? So we just started saying that in my family and with Evan and everyone.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It became a thing.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, it just became a thing. And so when we were doing this segment, we just naturally started calling it, Who's that noisy? And we just figured just to keep it that way since we're already calling it that.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's right.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So it's basically just a way of embarrassing my daughter.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' For the rest of her life. Yeah. So he says he continues. He says, Anyway, my guest this week is the sound of fingers moving over guitar strings. So I happen to have my acoustic guitar here, and he's right because it does kind of have that sound. Let me try to simulate what he's doing.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I mean, he's wrong, but he's correct in what it sounds like.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' He's wrong, but there is something to it. But let me see if I can do this now. Can you hear that? So I get what he was saying. Maybe an electric guitar would have something a little bit louder than that. That was from my acoustic. But that is incorrect. So John Creasy writes in, It's a steam powered siren from a traction engine. Have you ever heard of a traction engine, guys?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Traction engine.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It looks like a train engine that somebody put gigantic tires on, and it drives down the road. So it's kind of like a steam tractor. Super powerful steam based tractor. Now, I suspect, because multiple people wrote in about these traction engines, that they have toot toot horns, right? I would assume, though, that they probably do make a noise, a high pitched noise like that. This is not correct. Anyway, my favorite answer so far this week came from Dane Milner, and he wrote, It's a dancer wearing corduroy pants. Corduroy does sound like that. It does have that noise. You might not have been fat enough when you were a kid to hear it, Evan. But when I was a kid, I was husky, and my thighs would always hit each other. And when you walk with corduroy, it made that noise.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' OK.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' They were very popular when we were in high school, and we had a dress code. That's why I wore corduroy for four years, basically.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Dane said it sounds like paracord or nylon rubbing together. Corduroy was kind of a joke. Now, here's the closest guess that we got. Nobody won this week. But long, long time Who's That Noisy submitter, guesser, Evil Eye, wrote in. He said, I know I'm wrong, but I so want it to be a little kid in a toy electric cop car pulling over his friend.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Cute. Cute.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I thought that was cute. But he happens to be moderately close. So let me play it again before I tell you what it is. [plays Noisy] OK. Here's the explanation. So this comes from Bob Leadham, who sent it in. He said, here's one I haven't heard anywhere else. When we were on a bus tour in Morocco, the bus driver had two choices when he used the horn. One was the normal loud beep that says, watch out like a normal horn. The other is one for pedestrians who might be straying a bit close to the road or for when we were moving slowly through a crowded street scene. It's what I called the polite horn saying, excuse me, big bus here. Please take care where you walk. In Morocco, they have these polite horns. One version of the horn is like that noise. Here's the noise again. [plays Noisy]<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, my God.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' A little warning noise. Not like a big, oh, my God, you scare somebody noise. If they're right next to the vehicle and you lean on your horn, you could jump out of your skin. So it's a polite horn.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I like it.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I thought that was cool. Makes perfect sense. Think about how many times you'd use it if you had a car. <br />
<br />
'''E:''' There should be more polite horns out there.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' My version of a polite horn is like two quick beeps. Not being a dick here, but pay attention or whatever. But one long one, that's when you mean it. There's a good reason, hopefully, that you're going to do that.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It's called leaning on it. You got to lean on it.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Lean on the horn. Does an airplane have a horn?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Can you imagine?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Knewt, does an airplane have a horn?<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' It does not. And I've got a great story if you want to hear one.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Absolutely.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Do it.<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' Okay. So I was flying a 737, actually, and I was going to New Zealand. And we get there, and we run a thing sometimes when we're flying distinguished visitors called quiet arrivals, where we want to know as the pilots whether or not there's going to be some sort of fanfare when we arrive, in which case we need to do certain procedures to make sure the engines are off and the APU is down before they do their proper circumstances.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' And the automated weapons are turned off, too.<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' Yeah, those, too. The 737 with the missiles did not have those. So they told us nothing. They said nothing's going to happen in New Zealand. So we land, we roll into parking, and there is everything you can imagine from a huge band to a whole, the Maori warrior tribe and a red carpet. And so we park, and we're like, probably it was supposed to be quiet arrivals. The guy runs up. He's like, you've got to turn everything off. All right, we're doing what we can. So we start turning stuff off, and he says, it's still too loud. It's still too loud. And so one guy just reaches up and he just kills the batteries, makes everything die, no cool-down cycle, nothing. So we don't have a horn, but what we do have is a warning system when the DC power loses all power unexpectedly, and it makes a beeping noise. So it goes quiet. The leader of the Maori tribe thinks that that's his cue to start so he grabs one elbow with the hand. His tongue sticks out. He goes, ah, ah, ah, and screams at the jet. And the jet starts going, ah, ah, ah, ah, and starts beeping back at him because that sound has to be able to be heard by an outside maintenance guy to know that the DC power is not being powered. And the look on the dude's face was great. But that is the extent of horn that an aircraft will have.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Is it just me? I'm kind of surprised because you guys, you taxi.<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' Yeah, but no turn signals either, but no horn. Honestly, I think if we had one, no one could hear it. Those engines are pretty loud.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You have to have one of those aouga horns on.<br />
{{anchor|previousWTN}} <!-- keep right above the following sub-section ... this is the anchor used by wtnHiddenAnswer, which will link the next hidden answer to this episode's new noisy (so, to that episode's "previousWTN") --><br />
=== New Noisy <small>(1:19:12)</small> ===<br />
<br />
'''J:''' All right, I have a new noisy for this week.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Jay has a new noisy.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Jay, let's hear your new noisy.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' This is from Joshua Gillespie.<br />
<br />
[_short_vague_description_of_Noisy] <br />
<br />
So I love this noisy. So if you think you know {{wtnAnswer|837|what this week's noisy is}} or if you heard something cool, and come on, people like Knewt who work on airplanes, they hear cool stuff all the time, and you're not sending it to me. Just take two seconds and send me a cool sound. I know you heard something cool. Send it to WTN@theskepticsguide.org.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. Thank you, Jay.<br />
<br />
== Announcements <small>(1:19:48)</small> ==<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We're going to do one quick email. But before we do, this is the last episode to come out before NECSS. NECSS is all digital. Essentially, the week after this comes out, August 6th and 7th, we have a great lineup. If you didn't join us last year or even if you did, join us this year. We have two game shows, a live SGU show, a bunch of speakers. It's going to be awesome. Jay and Ian have been working in the studio for a month or longer, actually.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' More than that, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Got it all tweaked out. So go to NECSS.org.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' necss.org.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yes, necss.org and sign up for NECSS next week, August 6th and 7th.<br />
<br />
== Questions/Emails/Corrections/Follow-ups <small>(1:20:31)</small> ==<br />
<br />
=== Email #1: Nuclear Enegry ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, one quick email. This comes from Rainer in Portland, Oregon, and he writes, thanks for the show and the skeptical view on a lot of issues. Couldn't agree more on most of what you say. You know what's coming next. The one topic I feel like you are disregarding skeptical thinking is nuclear power. It always sounds like it is a no-brainer when you mention it. I'm missing, for example, the discussion about the risks involved or the unsolved waste discussion on the production side. On the demand side, I don't think it is a given that it is needed at all. Just using standard technology, we could easily save a very significant amount of energy. U.S. citizens still use about two to three times their primary energy than any other developed country. If we would spend the same amount of money we put into nuclear power subsidies, into energy-saving measures and alternative sources, it would look even better. All right, a lot to unpack there. I actually, for premium content this week, I did like a 30-minute deep dive on this email, so I'm just going to give you the five-minute version. If you want to hear the 30-minute version, you could listen to the premium content. That's for people who are members of the SGU. Very, very quickly, the U.S. citizens don't use two to three times as much energy as anybody else per capita. Actually, Canada uses more energy than we do per capita. Canada.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Why?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Because it's cold up there, and they've got to heat all their houses.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Cold. They need a lot.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The point is you can't make direct comparisons like that because different conditions will lead to different energy needs. We are a big country, and you have to drive far to go everywhere. You can't compare like Latvia to the United States. Not that there isn't room for energy conservation and energy saving. Of course there is. That doesn't mean, though, that that's going to solve our energy mix issue. So I just want to focus on one thing because, again, this is the short version, and that is the nuclear waste question. And that's because it really isn't an issue, or at least it doesn't have to be. And there's a number of reasons why, but I want to focus on one. Do you know how much of the energy, the potential energy, potential extractable energy that we get out of uranium in the existing nuclear power plants?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, it's a fraction, right?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. What do you think?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' 10%? 3%.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' The nuclear energy? Not antimatter.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, the nuclear energy.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I would say we're extracting what? Say, I don't know, 12%.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' 5%. Evan's closer. 5%. The other 95%, it then becomes nuclear waste.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Waste.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The reason for this is because our nuclear reactors are so-called slow reactors. The idea is that you create a self-sustaining chain reaction because the neutron that gets kicked out of one uranium atom will then hit another one and cause that to break down, decay, and keep spreading. However, a uranium atom cannot capture a neutron directly because it's too fast. And so that's why we have to use the water, like the light water, heavy water, or light water, depending on the reactor design. That slows down the neutrons just enough that they can be captured by another uranium atom and cause a self-sustaining reaction. So using that method, we can only get about 5% to 6% of the energy out of the uranium fuel. The other 95%, which is plutonium and other things, now becomes, "waste". But what if we could make a fast reactor that can capture those fast neutrons?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' You could burn the waste.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But what if we used all of the energy? There's like this other 95% of the energy in the nuclear waste that could be fuel. Again, the only difference between nuclear waste and nuclear fuel is whether or not we can burn it for energy. So we actually have the design for fast reactors.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' The Gen 4?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, some of the Gen 4 reactor designs are fast reactors, and they can actually use existing waste from older reactors as their fuel.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, great.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And the waste that we currently have in this country, in the U.S., could supply all our energy needs for 100 years. We have 100 years of fuel for fast nuclear reactors without having to mine any more uranium.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' And we're also getting rid of our waste.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It would get rid of all of our waste.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' And what's the byproduct of burning the—<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It blows up the planet in 500 years, but still.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, no problem.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, no. So here's the thing. Existing nuclear waste has some isotopes in it that have half-lives in the thousands and hundreds of thousands of years, which is why you have to store it basically indefinitely. But if you use a fast reactor, that extracts all of the long half-life material. And you're left with just the short half-life stuff that's like 30 years, 30 to 50 years.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Manageable.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, so that's completely manageable. So you want to solve our nuclear waste problem, you build fast reactors, which are Gen 4 reactors, which have lots of other advantages, too. Like they can't melt down because of the auto-cool. Like if you embed them in salt and if they heat up more, the salt expands, moves the rods apart, and they cool down. So even if left unattended, it won't melt down. Or if a pump fails, it won't melt down, et cetera. So they're much, much safer. They can be completely self-contained. They don't have as many pipes and stuff that can fail. They're much, much safer than older stuff.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' If there's an apocalypse for another reason, you don't have to worry about your nuclear reactors exploding as it would during a normal apocalypse.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Or if there's a tsunami or whatever. Right, also they burn hotter, which means that we could do two other things with them if we choose to. We could make hydrogen or we could desalinate water. Do you know where we get most of our hydrogen from now, by the way?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' We mine it off of Jupiter.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' We order it on Amazon.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We strip it from fossil fuels.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, that too, that too.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Which is kind of defeating the purpose of using hydrogen, right? Imagine if we could just make hydrogen by electrolyzing water using the heat from a fast nuclear reactor. The hydrogen becomes a byproduct and then you could bottle that and use that in our rockets or our hydrogen.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Hydrogen economy.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, for whatever part of the economy.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' So what's the downside for these Gen 4 reactors?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Right, where are they?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Is there a downside?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, the downside is it's still more expensive than just building solar panels or wind turbines. But here's the issue. They're more expensive now.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' More of an upfront investment.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The more you try to increase the penetration of renewables, the more expensive the renewables get. Because then you have to get into overproduction. You have to upgrade the grid. You need grid storage. And you use up all the prime locations, et cetera, et cetera. So it gets progressively less cost effective. And also we're counting on innovations we don't have yet, like for grid storage. And it's going to take decades to do things like upgrade the grid. So if time were not an issue at all, you might make a reasonable argument for saying, all right, let's just go for all renewable and grid storage. Fine. Do that. Let's keep doing that. Let's keep building renewable and grid storage and all that stuff. That's great. Let's upgrade the grid. We got to do that anyway. But if we try to do that without keeping our nuclear in the mix, like we have 20% of our electricity right now in the US is nuclear. It's about 10% worldwide. And it's all retiring pretty soon. If we don't keep that in the mix, then we're going to be building fossil fuel plants. Absolutely. If the goal is to get rid of fossil fuel as quickly as possible, then we want to do both. We want to do nuclear and as much renewable as we can and grid storage and hydroelectric and geothermal, whatever we can other than fossil fuel. So the people who are the renewable purists are going to delay by decades decarbonizing our energy infrastructure. Are you guys aware of the fact we talk about global warming all the time, and yet the bottom line is between now and 2050, we're going to be increasing the amount of fossil fuel that we're burning for energy. It's already over 80% of our energy profile is from fossil fuel, and it's going to increase between now and 2050. And then the game is over in terms of preventing the worst outcomes of global warming. It's over. We have to actually change what's happening over the next 30 years. So we could have small modular Gen 4 reactors up by 2030, and they could burn fuel from older plants. They won't have any waste of their – I mean they could burn waste from older plants. They won't generate any waste of their own. They'll be taking care of our waste problem. Yes, it's more expensive than just building more solar for now, but if you plan out the next 30 years of our energy infrastructure, it's actually cost-effective, and especially if you consider the cost of global warming and the healthcare costs of burning fossil fuels and the subsidies to the fossil fuel industry, it's actually quite cost-effective certainly than fossil fuel. To me, it seems like we need to be hedging our bets, and there's no reason why we shouldn't pursue this technology. Just to buy us a few decades that we actually need.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' You're way over five minutes, man.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Sorry. I tried. I tried. All right, here we go. Let's move on to science or fiction.<br />
<br />
== Science or Fiction <small>(1:30:33)</small> ==<br />
<br />
{{SOFinfo<br />
|item1 = Although lightning strikes are common, on average they cause only about one crash per year of commercial aircraft<br />
|link1 = <ref>[https://mainblades.com/article/aircraft-and-lightning-strikes-here-is-what-the-statistics-say/]</ref><br />
<br />
|item2 = It is physically impossible to open a cabin door on a commercial aircraft at typical cruising altitude.<br />
|link2 = <ref>[https://www.businessinsider.com/why-plane-doors-cant-open-mid-flight-2020-2]</ref><br />
<br />
|item3 = According to a survey of commercial airline pilots, 56% admit to falling asleep while flying the plane, and 29% report waking up to find their co-pilot also asleep.<br />
|link3 = <ref>[https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-24296544]</ref><br />
<br />
|}}<br />
<br />
{{SOFResults<br />
|fiction = lightning strikes<br />
|science1 = cabin door<br />
|science2 = sleeping pilots<br />
<br />
|rogue1 =Evan<br />
|answer1 = cabin door<br />
<br />
|rogue2 =Cara<br />
|answer2 =lightning strikes<br />
<br />
|rogue3 =Bob<br />
|answer3 =lightning strikes<br />
<br />
|rogue4 =Jay<br />
|answer4 = lightning strikes<br />
<br />
|rogue5 =Knute<br />
|answer5 = lightning strikes<br />
<br />
|host =Steve<br />
<br />
|sweep = <!-- all the Rogues guessed wrong --><br />
|clever = <!-- each item was guessed (Steve's preferred result) --><br />
|win = <!-- at least one Rogue guessed wrong, but not them all --><br />
|swept = <!-- all the Rogues guessed right --><br />
}}<br />
''Voice-over: It's time for Science or Fiction.''<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Each week, I come up with three science news items or facts, two real and one fake, and I challenge my panel of skeptics to tell me which one is the fake. We have a theme.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Airplane.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' This week, the theme is air travel.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' There you go.<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' I think I'm getting set up.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Unfair advantage, I'd say.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That's what I think.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Who's going first?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You think so? All right. We'll see. We shall see. All right, here we go. Item number one. Although lightning strikes are common, on average, they cause only about one crash per year of commercial aircraft. Item number two. It is physically impossible to open a cabin door on a commercial aircraft at typical cruising altitude. Item number three. According to a survey of commercial airline pilots, 56% admit to falling asleep while flying the plane and 29% report waking up to find their co-pilot also asleep.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's how many they admit.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. Knewt, for what should be obvious reasons, I'm going to have you go last.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Damn it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Because Evan groaned I'm going to have him go first.<br />
<br />
=== Evan's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh. Well, at least I know now, Steve, why you stopped me from asking the question about lightning.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yes. Absolutely. Absolutely.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I was reading the future. Lightning strikes are common. On average, they cause only about one crash per year of commercial aircraft. Yeah, okay. I can believe that. The planes are designed to take the lightning hits. They have to. And I know we've spoken about it before on shows maybe many years ago, but the only reason I think this one might be the fiction is it would be less than one crash. Maybe one crash would be 10 years or something like that. So I don't think that's a problem. Next one. Physically impossible to open a cabin door on a commercial aircraft at typical cruising altitude. That could be how the pressure works. You'd have to have enough strength to overcome that. And just a typical person could not do it maybe on their own. And then the last one about airline pilots, 56 admit to falling asleep and 29% report waking up to find their co-pilot also asleep. I'm trying to think of why this would be the fiction. It just would have to be the numbers themselves. Is it really just much, much lower than that? You know, because again, admitting to falling asleep. Although I guess we're going to learn about how much soon, about how much the pilots actually need to be awake at certain points versus being able to be able to go to sleep. All right. I'm going to go against the grain in my own head and say, I think maybe the cabin door one, maybe it is possible to open a cabin door at cruising altitude. I'll say that one's fiction.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay. Cara.<br />
<br />
=== Cara's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. I mean, part of me wants to go with Evan because it's like, my rule I used to always tell my students when I would teach is if you have a quick, if you're taking a true false exam and the question States always or never, it's usually false. Usually you see that. So to say it's physically impossible. It doesn't allow for any caveats, but I still think it's physically impossible. I don't know. I think the pressure is probably like exorbitant. It's like, it's like saying it's physically impossible to open the submarine door. It's like, well, yeah, I don't think you can do that. So let's see. So for me, it's, it's a question of frequency, right? Like, do more pilots admit to falling asleep? Fewer pilots admit to falling asleep. Are lightning strikes more common than that though? I think the lightning strike one is getting to me the most because I feel like we hear about airplane crashes often. Like when an airplane crashes, it's on the news. Pretty much every time. And I've never heard of an airplane crashing because it was struck by lightning. It's almost always on takeoff or landing. And it's almost always because of some sort of like failure of like an engine or something like that. So to me, I, this one just, it doesn't have face validity because I can't remember a time in my existence where I was watching the news and I was like, holy crap, that airplane got struck by lightning and went down. So that's, that's the reason I'm going to say that's the fiction.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay, Bob.<br />
<br />
=== Bob's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Okay. Physically impossible to open the cabin door. It makes perfect sense. It's gotta be, it's gotta be that way. I mean, come on, you know there's crazy people on a plane that would do that. I even thought about it at one point.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's like not pushing the big red button, Bob. It's like asking for you to try.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' You know, it's, it just makes too much sense. Falling asleep. Yeah, that's gotta happen. I mean, they're not needed. They're needed for, they're needed for takeoff and landing.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's so cruel.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I mean, this is talking on the speaker.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Someone who's on the call with us right now begs to differ.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, wait. Oh, shit. But I mean, technically, I mean, cruise control. I mean, yeah, falling asleep. Absolutely. I totally buy it. The one I'm not buying is lightning. One a year is way too much. I've also never heard of it. And I think one a year would, would be enough to, to make people say, I'm not going on that damn plane because one a year, one of them are going down. I've never heard of one. I mean, I think, they have designs in place to, to deal with it. They get struck all the time. Like buildings. And I think that they basically almost, it's never so rare that we don't really even, we can, none of us can think of one, one example. So one is fiction. Lightning strike is fiction.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay, Jay.<br />
<br />
=== Jay's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I'll take them in reverse order. So the, the it says according to the survey, so 56% of pilots admit to falling asleep while flying the plane. This is vague though, because, hold on, let me turn that off.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' What the hell?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Somebody called me. I silenced the phone and then I accidentally played my thing.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Jay, man, I, I really hate, when you just have these recorded things, just go off. I'm sorry.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Bob. I'm sorry, man. I know what you mean.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' You're welcome to our lives.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I won't, I shouldn't let it happen while we're talking. It's really, it's obnoxious.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I bought you that damn thing.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So 50%, 56% of pilots admit to falling asleep that, they do fall asleep on the plane. They're allowed to, but this seems to be that they're saying that they did it when they're not supposed to. So, I guess I'm sure that they fall asleep just like everybody else. Like when they're on cruise control and that things are, there are times when they could probably have a lot of downtime. I'm not a hundred percent sure, but I just don't think that one is the fiction. Number two, the one about being physically impossible to open the door. So air pressure inside of a plane is, is what between eight and 10,000 feet and airplanes usually cruise around 36,000 feet. So there is a massive air pressure change, but the air pressure is higher in the cabin than it is outside. And you would think that that would make the door easier to open, but I guess I bet you that in the design of the airplane, that air pressure change does make it impossible to open the door. I'm sure that the door is impossible to freaking open. Cause it would open a lot more. Well, that's the thing where Cara said, you'd never hear people opening doors on airplanes like that.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Not what I said, but that's fair.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Well, you kind of made me think of that.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' You never hear of Cara never hearing about it.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I'll say, I think my guess is that the door locks when the wheels are up, right? If the wheels are in, it like automatically makes it like you can't.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, but Bob, what about on a crash landing? What about on a water crash landing when they don't put the landing gear down? I don't agree with that. So finally, the last one here about the lightning strikes, it can't, this one cannot be true because if it means that there's one crash per year because of lightning, you think about how many airplanes are flown every day. There would be airplane crashing all the time.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But Jay, it's one crash, one total crash per year.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' No, I think, I think I don't agree with it. I think that it still would be, it still would be a thing.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I suppose this needs clarifying, not per plane. In the world, one plane a year crashes due to a lightning strike.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I mean, I've been, I think every single person that's ever been on an airplane, it was probably been on the airplane that's been hit by lightning. It happens all the time. I've seen, I saw lightning hit an engine on an airplane and it just, nothing happened. It scared the shit out of me, but nothing happened.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah. The creature on the wing hung on too.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' There's something on the wing. So I think that planes get hit very often, but nothing happens. So I think the first one's got to be the fiction.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay. Knewt, straighten them out.<br />
<br />
=== Knute's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' All right. Jay, your analysis is really good actually on all three of them, but everybody had great points. I think I'm going to end up going around the same lines, but I'll work backwards as well. According to the survey, talking to pilots and I want to just get a clarification. This is talking to the pilots that are in the seats. Correct. Because a lot of aircraft have crew rest facilities.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. This is a pilot who is supposed to be flying the plane, supposed to be at the controls. Yes.<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' So while back, I hate to say that this is the truth because it looks like what my profession is inherently unsafe. I'm going to say that this is the truth because this is a fact, because actually part of good cockpit resource management and safety and flight is something we call controlled cockpit rest, where you're encouraged to sleep for 20 minutes, but you're supposed to set an alarm or have the other guy wake you up at exactly 20 minutes. And this is for those really long, insane flights where you will be drunk to the point if you're so sleep deprived that it's unsafe.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Going to New Zealand.<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' It's actually unsafe for you to not just get a little bit of rest. And it's kind of an emergency situation to do that, but it will pay dividends later. So there are regulations that allow for people to sleep. It could be used 56% of the time. Sounds like maybe a little bit of abuse, but I'm going to go ahead knowing pilots that that is fact. Physically impossible to open a cabin.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But it sounds like you're not supposed to have your co-pilot be asleep at the same time.<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' That is true, but I don't want to admit, maybe I know somebody who's woken up and seen that.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Here we go.<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' And I haven't flied for a while.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' 29% of people.<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' I can't say it happens 29% of the time, but I can see 29% of people saying that they've seen that happen for sure. Physical impossibility to open a cabin door. Jay hit it right on. Yeah. It's like 8,000 feet. Cabin altitude is inside the plane and outside about 36,000 feet. We're usually the commercial airlines fly aircraft. I fly routinely go up to the high forties. Imagine the pressure differential between 49,000 feet outside and 8,000 feet inside. And that, I mean, I just know it. That is what keeps, keeps the doors closed. It keeps everything tight. Is when it's pressure pushing out on that round two toy. So I imagine that that pressure applies to the doors as well. Makes it pretty much impossible for a human to overcome those kinds of pressure differentials. So that leaves us with number one, although lightning strikes are common that they would result in a single crash a year seems excessive. I got to think that across the commercial airline industry, completely you're in single digit crashes for any reason a year. This is commercial aircraft because airlines can survive a wreck. They're very, very safe and you can't control lightning, but they can mitigate it. So we have a, I've asked earlier if I've ever been hit by lightning. And the answer is yes. And I didn't know it till I landed. And the maintenance guy said, hey, it looks like you got hit by lightning. So there's a lot of ways.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's reassuring in a way.<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' So I will say that number one is the fiction. It's way less.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #3 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. Let's I'll take these in reverse order. Since Evan, you're you think that the number two is the fiction.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Well, not anymore, but my guess is.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. So according to a survey of commercial airline pilots, 56% admit to falling asleep while flying the plane, meaning they were meant to be at the controls and 29% report waking up to find their copilot asleep. You guys all are pretty happy thinking this one is the science. And this one is science. This is science. This was a British survey. So I don't think it's, unique to British airways, but yeah. So pilots not off, I guess when they're not supposed to, obviously like, it's not like when they fall asleep, the plane immediately starts going to a nose dive.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Used the as a pillow.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. But, but they're supposed to be awakened at the, at the controls, but not surprising.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #2 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. Let's go back to number two. It's absolutely impossible to open a cabin door on a commercial aircraft at typical cruising altitude. I do want to, just before I do the reveal, I want to ask you guys a question related to the first one. How many crash do you think there are a year? If we look at it around the world, commercial.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Less than one.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Per year. Totally. Of all sizes. I also didn't say fatal crash. I didn't say fatal crash.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. You just said crash.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Define crash.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' A dozen or fewer.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' There's 14 fatal crashes a year.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Okay. Fatal?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Fatal ones. So there's probably more-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Gosh, that sounds high.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I'm not hearing about 14 a year.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, why would you?<br />
<br />
[talking over each other]<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, they're probably often on airlines that have like pretty low safety rating.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, you hear about the big ones.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Uzbekistan air.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Huddle jumper flights and stuff.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Exactly. It is physically impossible to open a cabin door in a commercial aircraft at typical cruising altitude. Evan, you think this one is a fiction. Everyone else thinks this one is science. And this one is science. This is science. Yeah, Jay, you nailed it. So I did the calculation. I've read it in multiple places, but I did it myself just to double check. So how much pressure do you think there is on a cabin door if you're flying at 18,000, at 36,000 feet?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Tons, right?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' 36,000 pounds. Of pressure.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' How many?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' 36,000.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' So tons.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, that's a lot.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. So they are designed, the inside of the door is bigger than the outside of the door. So it's a plug. It's literally called a plug design, right?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Makes sense.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, which makes sense. It's designed to be plugged by the pressure inside the cabin. And even if you were at 18,000 feet, it would still be, it would be half that. It would be, 18,000 pounds of pressure.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right. That's why the little cards, the safety cards show you have to like undo it, turn it sideways. And then throw it out the door.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But even if you did all that, even if you did all that-<br />
<br />
'''B:''' You'd have to be Hulk.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You couldn't do it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No, no, I'm saying because of the plug design. You can't open the door. You have to turn it sideways.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Wouldn't you be literally ripping through the metal before you'd open it normally?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, and you'd probably pull the handle off of it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Rip the handle off.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. It's just not possible.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #1 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So all this means that lightning strikes are common, on average they cause only about one crash per year of commercial aircraft. That is the fiction. Do lighting strikes are very common. And moder aircraft are well designed so that they withstand lightening strikes. The big risk is to the instrumentation. If you suddenly loose all your instrumentation mid flight that would be a bad thing. Not that the plane is necessarily blow up. But they are well designed to handle strikes. So how often do you think it does happen?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' All the time.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' One every 10 years.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, how often does a plane crash because it was struck by lighting?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Oh, very, very, very infrequently.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, like once every 10 years, I would say.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Or once every 50 years.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The last one was in 1963.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Hey.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh my God. So 58 years.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, but it hasn't happened. So it basically doesn't happen anymore.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right, because they probably didn't have the same like, safety?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yes. It's basically zero. Because it hasn't happened since 1963.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, you're putting a big metal tube in the sky. Of course, lightning is going to love that shit.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It goes right through the plane. You could look up pictures. I mean, there's tons of pictures online. If you haven't figured it out, I know a lot about all this stuff because I have anxiety. And I had to kill it with information. So I've read about this shit a million times. And there's nothing to worry about when you're on a good airline.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' My favorite statistic, Jay, for the people who have fear of flying, like Sandra Bullock, for some reason, is that in order to have a 50-50 chance of dying in a plane crash, you would have to fly every day for 500 years. Think about that. That's pretty reassuring.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, it's safer than driving to the airport. That helps me.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Heck yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, for sure.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, it's not necessarily. It's safer than driving total. That doesn't mean that. It depends on how far you have to drive for the Airport, et cetera, et cetera.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Not to be pendantic.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, we've already been hit with the pedantic email about that exact statistic. I don't want to repeat it. How about this one?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And guys, pendantic is an inside joke. I wasn't not knowing how to say pedantic. I have to be pedantic about that.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, your pendantry, Cara, your pendantry.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So what is more fuel efficient per passenger, flying or driving?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yes.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Driving my electric car?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Flying.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Fuel efficient? I mean, that's a hard one.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' All the people that are in that plane?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's a lot of stuff you got to calculate.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' 747 has a fuel efficiency per passenger of 100 miles per gallon. Yeah, per passenger. So if you had one person in the car, flying in a plane would be much more fuel efficient.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Except for my car.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Electric cars, I mean, you still have to count the energy.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, but there's an MPG equivalency. And I think it's over 100.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Is it over 100?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I think so, but I'll look.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Definitely for a gasoline engine, it's more efficient.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, oh, wow. In most electric cars, it's right about 100.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Interesting. OK, I wonder, yeah, yeah. So I guess it's specific to individual cars, but it averages at 100. Wow, so it's about the same.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Cool.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Cool.<br />
<br />
== Skeptical Quote of the Week <small>()</small> ==<br />
<br />
<blockquote>It seems almost natural for us to want to look up, to look back in time, and to learn and appreciate the wonder of this universe that allows us to exist, whether we are scientists or not.<br>– Dr. Suze Kundu, nanochemist, science presenter on the Discovery Channel, science writer for Forbes, Head of Public Engagement at Digital Science</blockquote><br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, Evan, give us a quote.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' "It seems almost natural for us to want to look up, to look back in time, and to learn and appreciate the wonder of this universe that allows us to exist, whether we are scientists or not." And that was said by Dr. Susie Kundu, who is a nanochemist. She's a science presenter on the Discovery Channel. She's a science writer for Forbes, and she's the head of public engagement at Digital Science, a science communicator.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Do you know her, Cara?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I don't, actually. I don't know her. And I'm surprised Bob doesn't know her either, because she's a nanochemist.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' My first thought, though, was aren't all chemists dealing in the nano realm? I mean, that seems a little redundant, but it's cool.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, yeah, I guess that is nano.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It's the first descriptor in her bio, nanochemist.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, I guess that is nano if you're doing chemistry.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So, Knewt, what did you think?<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' That was great. I really appreciate you guys letting me come on. I didn't believe it at first when I saw that that was an option, being a Patreon, that you could be on the show, but I pressed the test with Jay, and he wrote me right back, saying, sure, and we tried three times and finally got it to work.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yay!<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Well, I'm sorry we were so drunk for the whole episode, right?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Or asleep for 59% of it, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' It's fascinating to see what I sound like at one and a half when I play this back later.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, yes, you will. We sound drunk right now, but you're gonna sound like a chipmunk to yourself later.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I wanted to thank you for being a patron, because it means a lot, right? So, it's what keeps our doors open, so we really appreciate it.<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' Oh, no. I mean, the thanks is all directed at you guys. This is, I don't know how to explain it, but when the pandemic hit, and you've seen it, the misinformation, I mean, it seems to come from more than just 12 people. It seems it could come from everywhere. And somehow, I was mowing my lawn and listening to a Steve Novella, great courses that got turned onto your book. I read the SGU book first, and then it mentioned a podcast. I honestly had no idea. Then I just couldn't get enough of you guys' analysis of the stuff going on in the world. I started binge podcasting, if that's a thing, until I finally got, I didn't go back 800 episodes. I probably went back to somewhere in the 600s. And then I would just put one in while I was riding my mountain bike. I had to go on double speed for a while there to get caught up. And then eventually, by last summer, I think I got to where I was waiting for the next week's episode.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I don't know, Knewt. Some of those earlier episodes are gold.<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' I may have to go back.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' But some of them are terrible.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' No.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' The production value was really bad. We came a long way in a short time.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Vintage, Jay. The word is vintage.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Vintage, yeah. Well, it was a lot of fun having you on the show.<br />
<br />
'''KA:''' I appreciate it. Thanks, guys. I really enjoyed it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, thank the rest of you for joining me this week.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Thanks Steve.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Sure. And Steve, for the record, nanochemistry is the combination of chemistry and nanoscience. Nanochemistry is associated with synthesis of building blocks at that scale.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Sweet.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Thank you. Thanks for that. <br />
<br />
== Signoff/Announcements == <br />
<!-- ** if the signoff/announcements don't immediately follow the QoW or if the QoW comments take a few minutes, it would be appropriate to include a timestamp for when this part starts --><br />
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}}</div>Hearmepurrhttps://www.sgutranscripts.org/w/index.php?title=SGU_Episode_818&diff=19115SGU Episode 8182024-01-19T10:44:00Z<p>Hearmepurr: episode done</p>
<hr />
<div>{{Editing required<br />
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|qowText = Understand well, as I may. My comprehension can only be an infinitesimal fraction of all I want to understand.<br />
|qowAuthor = {[w|Ada Lovelace}} <!-- use a {{w|wikilink}} or use <ref name=author>[url publication: title]</ref>, description [use a first reference to an article attached to the quote. The second reference is in the QoW section] --> <br />
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<br />
<!-- <br />
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--><br />
== Introduction ==<br />
<br />
''Voice-over: You're listening to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.'' <br />
<br />
'''S:''' Hello and welcome to the {{SGU|link=y}}. Today is Wednesday, March 10<sup>th</sup>, 2021, and this is your host, Stephen Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella...<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Hey, everybody.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Cara Santa Maria...<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Howdy.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Jay Novella...<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Hey, guys.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' ...and Evan Bernstein.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Good evening, and welcome back, Cara.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yes, welcome back.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, did you miss me?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We're back to normal. We're back to the Wednesday slot with the full crew, first time in a while.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So, Steve, guess what?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' What?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I made a mistake last week when I was covering Perseverance and the Moxie unit.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yes, I know. Do you want to do that up front?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, I'd like to correct that if you don't mind. I was wrong. Now, what I did find out was that they had been developing these gerbils that are like mega athletes and they said, no, follow me on this. They sent them over and all they do is eat and run. They don't need sleep. They do have sweat bands on around their foreheads.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Of course.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I mistakenly said that Perseverance was using solar power solar arrays, solar panels, whatever you want to call them, Cara, to collect energy, and I was wrong. There is actually a radioisotope power system in that, bad boy, and it just-<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Suckers nuclear?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah. It's Multi-Mission Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator, MMRTG.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' They're awesome.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' What the heck do you think powered Cassini with all of its wonder and-<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Matter, anti-matter analysis?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's radioactive decay of plutonium, which is the advantage there is it works all the time. You don't need sunlight. It doesn't get covered with dust. It doesn't power down when the sun goes down, so yeah.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' When they launched it, it had 110 watts of power, and then it slowly declines a few percent per year, so it's not that bad. You know, that MOXIE unit, though, I mean, that thing sucks so much power out of it, I wonder if they're going to try to only use it early in the mission or if that doesn't matter.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I don't think it would matter. They also have two lithium-ion batteries just for some extra juice for peak demand.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Does the RTG charge the batteries?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I guess it would have to.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's a good design.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I wonder how integrated it is, I wonder if they could just send a new power supply and then it could just go and pick it up and click it in like a battery, more like a traditional battery system.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I doubt it. I seriously doubt it, but that would be maybe for a future mission.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, that'd be cool.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But it might be that when the rover's done, there's probably still some good life in that battery. You could plug it into the habitat when the astronauts get there, you know?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' They're not as dangerous as you may think. I remember the movie The Martian. They made it seem like they were dangerous, but they're not that dangerous to be near for extended periods of time.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I mean, I'm sure they're shielded.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Were they trying to say in The Martian that it was just dangerous for him to be near it?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Well, wasn't it buried deep and far away? That was definitely movie overkill.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I see. Okay. I just thought it was because it was like hot.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Putting out radiation.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I thought it was a radiation issue.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But he was like in the car with it, remember? He was using it as a heat.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah. I'm sure it gives off heat as well.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Like they think it was physically hot. Yeah. And when it's the car, I mean the rover. He was in the car on Mars.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' The Prius.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Whatever that thing was, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' The MMRTG can last up to 14 years. It said that it gives the rover a greater mobility over a larger range of latitudes and altitudes. It also allows scientists to maximize the function of the science instruments, I guess, because it gives plenty of electricity. And the other cool thing is that they're saying it gives a lot of flexibility to the operating the missions that they can do because it can run 24-7. There is no need to wait. Doesn't matter if it's winter, the season and day or night cycle have no bearing on power, which is important because they want to get as much out of it as they can for the first year and a half or so. But it is cool to think that thing's going to be sitting there. And then, like you said, Steve, like maybe 14 years, like we could have people there in 14 years. They might be pulling this thing apart, you know?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. Yeah, I got it. Probably it's useful. Like, maybe that's its useful life expectancy, but it still will be producing power after 14 years, right? Because it's got a half life. Just probably not that much.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' 14.4 years.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' 14.4 years. Yeah. 14.4 years. It depends on the isotope. Plutonium-241's half life is 14.4 years, so yeah, so it'll be producing half as much energy in 14 years. It won't be useless.<br />
<br />
== COVID-19 Update <small>(4:44)</small> == <br />
<br />
'''S:''' So let's, we're not going to give a COVID update every week anymore, but there's a lot going on. So I thought we would definitely give one this week, and then the first news item is going to also be COVID related, so we'll just sort of blend one into the other. There's a lot going on with the variants of COVID-19. There's three that are critical right now. We'll call them the UK variant, the South African variant, and the Brazil variant. And the preliminary evidence coming out so far is that while antibodies from previous infection and the vaccines cover the UK variant, the Brazil variant and the South African variant are partially resistant to those antibodies, so they're not covered as well. So that's a real...<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But only an extreme disease, right?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, it just, it depends on how you look at it. One study said that it takes up to 10 times as much antibody to neutralize the Brazil variant. And so if it's a minor disease, you still might have enough antibody to, I guess, to get ahead of it. But it's still, it gives you partial protection, but it's not as good as against the older variants.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, so the idea here is because they were doing a lot of these studies in vitro, it's all about, like, actual physical viral loads. But we don't, it hasn't translated yet to human beings.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We know that people can get reinfected with the Brazil variant, even if they were already infected with older variants.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right. And do we know yet if people who are vaccinated and then get the Brazil variant have died?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That I haven't seen.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, I don't think we know that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Because we hear the guidance all the time in the news that they're still effective at preventing serious disease and death. But I'm wondering if that's just based on laboratory knowledge or if we actually have human trials knowledge around that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So it depends on the vaccine. I know the companies that are putting out each vaccine are testing it against the new variants. And so some of them are starting to come up with some preliminary data saying, yeah, it's still effective, but it's not quite as effective. So there's some mixed data out there. I think that these variants are kind of a warning sign. They're not going to completely obviate the vaccines and they're not going to be, hopefully a significant game changer in this pandemic. We'll see. I mean, in the US, they were predicting, for example, that the UK variant is going to become dominant by the end of this month, end of March.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, right.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We will see if that produces a new surge or not. You know, it's more infectious. It's still covered by the vaccine. So it's still this race against time, right? What's going to happen first? Are we going to get herd immunity first or the new variants going to cause more surges? And then the big concern here is that there'll be a variant of a variant that these more infectious variants will cause more mutations that will fully evade the vaccine, for example.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right. Because as long as there are reservoirs, as long as people are walking around, unvaccinated and developing sickness and passing it on to other people, variants are going to develop.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' We know this.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Every time the virus replicates, it's an opportunity to have a mutation that could make it more deadly or more resistant or more infectious or whatever. And so that's one of the dangers of allowing a pandemic to simmer along.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. It's the armour. They get a heads up in the arms race.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' They, it gets a heads up in the arms race.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's all evolution.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Are we going to be chasing this thing, Steve, forever or what's your...<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That is a distinct possibility that's the thing. At this point, it's possible that there's multiple scenarios. One is we achieve herd immunity and the pandemic is basically over and we won, you know. So that's one scenario. The other scenario is that these variants delay getting the pandemic under control. They cause new surges, they may require another round of vaccination to cover new variants and maybe the pandemic is extended for a year or so because of the emergence of new variants. And the third possibility is that it becomes endemic. It's like the flu. It's going to be here. It's going to be 30,000 deaths every year or whatever. We're going to have to get our annual COVID vaccine. It'll be maybe to be mixed with the flu vaccine, who knows. And then...<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That'd be cool.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, I don't know if they're compatible. Especially if it's still the two shot one, I don't know. But in any case, it'll be we just have to live with it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And I think one of the major pieces of that calculus, of that algorithm, that sort of... It's being talked about, but it's often being talked about as like a separate conversation is anti-vax and vaccine hesitancy. Is that there are people across the country who have access to the vaccine, who are eligible for the vaccine, who are refusing to get the vaccine. And it's not an insignificant number of people.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' And we know people.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, I do, too. My sister works in a health care facility in Texas. It's like a residential treatment facility. And as far as she knows, she's the only employee that elected to get vaccinated.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Oh, my God.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So vaccine hesitancy is on the wane, though. I mean, more people are saying they will get vaccinated. I think some of the initial hesitancy was, oh, there's these new mRNA vaccines and blah, blah, blah. But now that like 50 million people got it and we're not seeing third arms growing out of the back or something, they're feeling that it's OK. Yes, I think more people were on the fence are coming over and I think once we start to see the... If you're vaccinated, life gets a little bit back to normal. You know, that's a big carrot, too. And that's the other sort of news item about COVID is that the CDC finally came out with their recommendations, their guidance for if you're fully vaccinated, what does that mean? Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That means you and I can hang out, Steve.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's right.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' More of a guideline.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So yeah, basically, if you're fully vaccinated, you can hang out with somebody else who's fully vaccinated without having to wear a mask or socially distance. If you're fully vaccinated, which is two weeks after your second dose, is what that means. You can visit with like one family unit who is unvaccinated or people who are unvaccinated, up to like one family unit, one household, as long as there's no one there who's high risk. Right?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So the two caveats are they're they're low risk and you're fully vaccinated. And then if but if you know, if it's for bigger groups, they still think you should you should wear a mask if obviously if there are people from two different households together and any of them are unvaccinated or not fully vaccinated, they have to wear a mask.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And of course, you have to wear a mask in public. Don't just like take your mask off and start walking around the grocery store.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And they'll also nonhealthcare settings. They said nonhealthcare settings. Although I just read a study that said that it is interesting. They looked at people, health care workers who and they found that they were at high. We said this on the show. They were at higher risk out in the public than they were in the hospital.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. Not surprised.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, my God. Yeah, that makes sense.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Because the hospital is controlled.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. Probably not early in the pandemic.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, this was recent. This was recent. This is now basically.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Wow.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' The other thing. There was another piece of guidance there, Steve, that was about you don't need to self quarantine anymore.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yes, that's true. You need to quarantine if you're exposed.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. Which is like huge. I mean, that's a big part of for a lot of people who are back at work, they've been having to take two weeks off every time there's a potential exposure.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Including teachers, which is a big reason why schools are having a hard time. They didn't have the staff to cover for all the quarantining that was happening.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' So, Steve, what are your thoughts on double masking? I've been doing that for weeks and it just seems like such an awesome idea.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, it's a good idea. You wear like a hospital mask under your cloth mask, for example, that that yeah, it's more protection. It's good.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' The hospital. What is it?<br />
<br />
== News Items ==<br />
<br />
=== Vaccines Prevent Spread <small>(12:54)</small> ===<br />
* [https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/covid-vaccines-probably-prevent-spread/ COVID Vaccines Probably Prevent Spread]<ref>[https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/covid-vaccines-probably-prevent-spread/ Science-Based Medicine: COVID Vaccines Probably Prevent Spread]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' The final question is, do vaccines prevent the spread of illness, which you might think isn't a question, but it is. And this is going to be my news item. So this is going to be the first news item for the show because I did a deep dive on this question.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' So are you starting it now?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' OK. News item starting now. OK. Go ahead. I want to make sure you know the demarcation. Go ahead.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Listen up people.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Are you saying that was unclear? OK.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So initially, the official word was we don't know if the vaccines prevent spread. And that's because the primary endpoints of the trials that we compared vaccinated versus unvaccinated in the double blind placebo controlled trials where like the Moderna and the Pfizer vaccine got their FDA emergency use authorization, not approval. They were the endpoint was was illness. So people reported when they got sick, they got symptoms. Which means it was not based on data about viral load, viral infection, the presence of virus testing positive for the test. It was you were clinically ill. And so the vaccines were shown to prevent illness. They also followed secondarily, like hospitalization and death. So they reduce your chance of getting sick. They reduce your chance of getting hospitalized if you do get sick, and they reduce your chance of dying if you get sick. But the question remained, what if people who are vaccinated can still have the virus? It still is shedding from their their nasopharynx and they can pass it along asymptomatically. So they could be still be a vector for asymptomatic viral spread. That's why the CDC was so reluctant to make these recommendations. They were waiting for some data to come in that they could use as a scientific basis for relaxing the recommendations for people who are fully vaccinated.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So Steve, to be clear, like what you're saying is, I'm fully vaccinated, been fully vaccinated for a while. I go on a hike with a friend and even though we're staying six feet apart, she sneezes and turns out she had COVID and now it's all up in my nose. And I don't ever really get sick from it. But maybe it's still hanging out in my nose and then later if I sneeze, I can pass it on to somebody else.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. Or even just talking. Spraying stuff out, droplets out just from talking.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Say it, don't spray it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So yeah, that's exactly it. You pass it, it passes through you from one person to the other without you ever getting sick because your vaccinated antibodies, fight it off too quickly to produce actual symptoms.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But there's that time period where I'm still carrying it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yes.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Okay.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So that's the theory. So now, so how should we think about that? If we look at it from just a plausibility point of view, it's highly plausible that effective vaccines, especially these highly effective vaccines, remember these are like approaching 95% effectiveness, that they would reduce viral load, right? That's how they work. You're making antibodies that will attach to and destroy the viruses. So yeah, there should be less virus, fewer viruses in your body and therefore you're shedding fewer viruses, you should be less contagious and there's almost no question that that's happening, right? But the real question is just how much. It's got to reduce the probability of asymptomatic spread, but we didn't really have any data on how much and so that's why the CDC wanted to keep the full social distancing mask wearing recommendations in place until we had some data. But everyone who knows how vaccines work was hopeful that they would and this, of course, impacts herd immunity. The more effective they are in preventing asymptomatic spread, the quicker we'll get to herd immunity with maybe the fewer percentage of the population needing to be vaccinated before we'll achieve it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And it's also kind of only, I don't want to say only, but the reason it's a big concern right now is because we're in a mixed milieu. Some people are vaccinated and some aren't. So it's kind of like driverless cars on the road next to cars with drivers. That's when things start to get complicated. When it's all one or all the other, it makes a little bit more sense because once everybody or at least we get to a place where enough people are vaccinated for herd immunity, that's less of a concern because the risk is plummeted.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So now we have some data. So what is that data? So there was a UK study. This was looking at the Pfizer BioNTech vaccine. This was in a hospital workers because they were doing a nasal swab testing on everybody. So we have data on people who are vaccinated, people who are not vaccinated, and the probability of them testing positive in a screening test, right? So this is not only looking at people who are exposed or only looking at people who are symptomatic. This is just that everybody in the hospital is getting tested. So it's a good opportunity to see if the vaccine reduces the probability of getting an asymptomatic positive test, right? And it did. So 21 days after, and this was, so everyone was tested before their second dose. So this is right before their second dose or 21 days after the first dose. The reduction in the risk of being COVID positive was 86%.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' After three weeks.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, three weeks after the first dose.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Nice, man.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's really good, especially-<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Two more weeks ago.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, it's going to be even better after the second dose. But because everyone was getting tested before the second dose, that was an opportunity to gather that data. So that's good evidence of efficacy in terms of reducing asymptomatic carrier status of the virus, which directly relates to the ability to pass it along. Also, there was an Israeli study. This has been reported but not published. So it's not peer-reviewed yet, but so consider this preliminary. And they found that asymptomatic infections were reduced by the vaccine in 89.4%. And also, asymptomatic infections were reduced by 89.4%. Symptomatic infections were reduced by 93.7%, and that's replicating the results from the previous studies. 89.4% are almost as good at preventing asymptomatic infections. That's really good. And Moderna did gather some data during their trial, which they reported to the FDA. They also did the swab antibody tests for virus. They did the swab viral tests for in-subjects during the trial. And in the vaccine group, they were in the cohort where they were testing, as it wasn't everybody. There were 14 participants in the vaccine group who were asymptomatic positive and 38 in the placebo group. So it seems to reduce it by two-thirds, the risk of getting it by two-thirds in that one data pool that they had from the original studies. So there's three different studies, pools of data showing pretty significant reduction in asymptomatic carrier status from getting one of the two mRNA vaccines. Very good. That's very encouraging. It still should be considered a little preliminary, and obviously, we want to continue to get more data and follow this very closely. We want real-world experience as much as possible, say, is it really decreasing the risk of passing it along? We want to know if there's any documented cases of vaccinated people clearly being a vector passing it along. So that's going to be tracked. I'm sure the CDC is following that closely. They'll update their recommendations if necessary, but it's looking good. So the plausibility is very good, and the data we have so far is looking good. In medicine, we're always making decisions with incomplete and imperfect evidence, and this is no different. But I think that the CDC was correct in saying, with all the evidence we have, I think it's a good science-based decision to say that, yeah, the risk of somebody who's vaccinated passing it along is low enough that we could start to relax the social distancing and mask wearing. But they still didn't do that in a hospital setting or for those who are high risks. That's where they drew the line in terms of risk versus benefit. And I do think part of this is to hold out that carrot of, see, if you get vaccinated, you don't have to wear a mask in front of other small groups.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So Steve, is there anything that people listening to this show can do other than aggressively get themselves vaccinated?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Aggressively, they get themselves vaccinated with anger.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' No, I just mean don't even delay.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Wear a sword.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Be the first person.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Be proactive.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, be proactive. I mean, I know everybody is trying to talk to their family members if there's anybody on the fence. We've gotten a ton of emails from listeners asking for advice.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' There's just so much misinformation out there. So yeah, I think that's a good question, Jay. I think that as skeptics, not just the five of us, but everyone listening to this show, it is helpful to be as informed as you can about how the vaccines work, how effective they are, how safe they are. And again, these other sub-questions of they probably do prevent spread, et cetera, so to get that information out there as much as possible so that when in your social group and your work environment, whatever, when it comes up, you could be the voice of reason, armed with facts and references, authoritative information, and shutting down misinformation and rumors. And that's really important. That kind of science communication just sort of out there in the real world is really critical at this point.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. I think the gamut, like you said, the misinformation, it's easy often for us to sit here and kind of laugh or to roll our eyes when we hear about people saying, don't get vaccinated because there's a tracker there's a GPS chip in there and then now they're going to know all your whereabouts. But a lot of times it's more insidious. I was talking to a dear friend of mine and she said somebody at work came up to her and was like I really don't think you should get vaccinated because there's some real risk. I've been reading a lot that there's a real risk that within the first five years, you might go sterile. And she was like, where did you read that? She was like, I don't know. I mean, I just saw it somewhere. And she was like, you're part of the problem.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Five years.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' You can't just read something like that somewhere random, not remember and then go verbally spread it to other people because this is how misinformation catches fire. You hear it once under somebody's breath. Then you see it in some sort of like Facebook post that nobody thought to double check. And now you've heard it two, three times. It becomes real to you.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' She's a carrier. She was shedding information.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Exactly.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' She's a vector.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Exactly. And this is the problem. It's sometimes these more insidious, almost believable lies.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Right. Right. I know I had a patient who was vaccine hesitant and they said, I heard someone died after getting the vaccine. It's like, well, almost 50 million people got the vaccine. So I'm sure some people did die after the vaccine. That's going to happen by chance. But you know, the CDC has been following it very carefully and there's no correlation. There's no increased risk of anything bad happening. It's very, very safe. I hope I made a difference for that one patient. But yeah, like there's that's kind of people are risk averse. You know, it's hard to reassure them that that's just our the way our brains work. You hear things like that. People are reluctant to take an active risk. They'd rather take a passive risk than an active risk. The risk of not getting the vaccine versus the risk of doing direct harm by getting the vaccine and rather than playing moneyball and doing what forget about the emotion, just do what statistically is the best risk versus benefit. That's where the medical profession comes in. We have to make those those cold calculated recommendations because people are fundamentally irrational when it comes to things like that or only semi rational. I think it's the way it's often described.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, we think about ourselves only and we don't think about public health.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And that's not even taking that into consideration. This is just from a purely selfish point of view.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right. Yeah. But I see this a lot with the people who are like, oh we're talking about so and so is jumping the queue. Oh, these people are getting vaccinated when they shouldn't yet. Blah, blah, blah. And it's like the goal is not to get vaccinated two weeks faster than somebody else. The goal is to get everybody vaccinated in as methodical in as timely a manner as possible, which means we have to have we have to have levels. It's not about you're better or your life is going to be better faster. We're all living in this still. It's really about how do we go about it?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's true. And also comes around again, because, like, if if other people get sick, you get sick, too. That's the whole point. We are all in the same boat with this pandemic. What happens in China affects us. What happens in Brazil affects us. What happens in down the street with people is going to is going to affect you. So jumping the line is maybe not even in your own self-interest when you really look at the big picture. What's in everyone's best interest is that we do this as efficiently and quickly as possible. And you know what I mean? There was also a recent study which showed, just as an aside, that people who think of that they're their tribe as all of humanity, like people who, like, feel like humanity is their tribe rather than a smaller group, like just their country or their party or whatever.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Patriots fans?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. We're more likely to engage in pro-social pandemic behavior, like to wear masks and to and to do things like that, which is interesting.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Makes sense.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, makes sense. You think we're-<br />
<br />
'''B:''' [inaudible] to discriminate.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And we're all in the same boat here. Yeah, it's actually a very pragmatic perspective, not just, I think, an ethical perspective.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Earth is one Petri dish.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, right.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And that's why you see sometimes different countries taking different tax, because I think there's the moral question. And here in the United States, we took the moral question, which was who is most likely to die from this disease? Let's vaccinate them first. In other countries, you saw them take a much more pragmatic question, which is who is most likely to spread this disease? Let's vaccinate them first.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Which is an interesting dilemma.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, interesting.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. But at the end of the day, the goal of both approaches is to reach herd immunity. How we go about it, yes, you can argue how we go about it, but ultimately it's just about getting there and all getting there together.<br />
<br />
=== Cave of Dog Evolution <small>(28:07)</small> ===<br />
* [https://www.sciencealert.com/a-single-cave-in-germany-is-one-possible-center-for-early-wolf-domestication A Single Cave in Germany Is One Possible Origin of Early Wolf Domestication]<ref>[https://www.sciencealert.com/a-single-cave-in-germany-is-one-possible-center-for-early-wolf-domestication ScienceAlert: A Single Cave in Germany Is One Possible Origin of Early Wolf Domestication]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, Cara, tell us about this cave with all the dogs. What's going on?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yep. All the doggos and some wolfos and apparently even some foxos.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Wolfos and foxos.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So when I first came across this paper and I read it really quickly, or this article, I should say, I didn't read the paper really quickly. When I came across the article, I was like, that's fascinating. And then the more I dug into it, I was like, that's not exactly what I thought it was going to be. And that's OK, because it's still really fascinating. So the headline of the Science Alert article, which is basically a wire surface, so you're seeing this starting to get picked up by other by other areas, is a single cave in Germany is one possible origin of early wolf domestication. And I actually really like that headline. I think that headline is is a skeptical headline. A single cave in Germany. And yes, we are talking about one single cage is one. Sorry, you're right. Not cage. Oh, no. The wolf was domesticated in his early little puppy cage. One single cave in Germany is one possible origin of early wolf domestication. Possible and also only one. And these things are important to remember. But when we look at the study that this was taken from, that the title of the study, which is going to be even obviously more skeptical and caveated because these are the scientists who wrote it, a refined proposal for the origin of dogs, the case study of Niersholm, a Magdalene cave site. And I want to ask all of you really quickly because I tried. I think this story is still too new. So I could not find anywhere in the interwebs somebody saying this word out loud. So I want everybody to chime in, look at the chat and tell me how the hell would you pronounce that?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' You want me to answer this?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I would say Nerschle.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Ners-hur-lee.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Ners-hur-lee?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Ners-hur-lee. That's how I think the G is silent. Unless you pronounce the G, Gners-hur-lee.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But you think it's hur-lee at the end?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah. Well, the O with umlauts over it is an uh sound.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Uh, but there's no R. So it's like Ners-hur-lee.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Ners-hur-lee.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I think it's Ners-hur-lee.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Gners-hur-lee.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Why would it be Swedish?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, what we're going to call it from now on is ''the cave''.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Okay. Okay.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' You guys good with that?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' The cave.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It's a Nerschle.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' This cave is in the boundary between Southwestern Germany and Switzerland, which is another thing I can't pronounce, but I think it's like the Hegau-Jura region. And during a period called the Magdalenian period. So this is a just one of the ways that we define time in Europe. And this would have been between 16 and 14,000 years ago was, was the Magdalenian period. And this cave was active during this period. It's often referred to as like a hotbed of activity within Europe. This cave, it turns out these researchers have been studying this cave for a while. And that's the other thing that I think we have to remember when we look at these studies, usually it's not the case that it's like the headlines make us think scientists discover cave, never before seen cave full of fossils. It's like, no, this cave has been studied for a long time. They're just now sorting through some of this evidence. They're just now figuring out what exactly is in there and what they've got their hands on. And what happened, what is the case is that there are a lot of fossil fragments within this cave that represent, this is a really cool thing. And for me, this was the coolest part of this that seemed to represent the genetic diversity of like all of Europe's dogs, like that's cool.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That is really cool.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And at least some of Europe's or most of Europe's wolves, there are foxes in there as well, but so the idea is, oh my gosh, there's so much diversity within this cave. Maybe this could give us some insight into how dogs were first domesticated. And that's really, I think, where the question started and where some of the hypotheses that were that were drafted out of this research became developed. So not only do we see that there are a ton of different species within the cave, we also see that it's really, really old and that that gives us some interesting insights as well. Super old cave, lots of different species. Now, what the researchers really push in their published study, which is not really pushed in the right up, is that they have a somewhat novel approach because they looked at three different parameters when most of this type of research only looks at one or two of those parameters. So they looked at not only the morphology of the specimens. So what did they look like and how could that represent? Is it dog? Is it wolf? How old is it? They also, of course, looked at the genetics because that gives us even more information about how much is this dog? How much is this wolf? What can we actually call this species that we have?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' How old was it?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' There's a big range within this cave, and that's why it's so interesting. It's not one specific date. It's a wide range of dates.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, between what and what?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Okay. So the actual cave itself is between.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I'm just thinking the genetics, the DNA.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' 3,000 and 14,000 years ago, the cave is part of a bunch of caverns where people lived between 12,000 and 17,000 years ago. So it's a pretty big span of time considering that the best agreed upon time of dog domestication is about 16,000 years ago. That's not to say that there aren't studies and hypotheses purporting that dog domestication occurred as long ago as 30,000 years, but they're somewhat controversial and it doesn't mean they're not true. It doesn't mean that the evidence isn't strong. It just means that it's not yet entered into what we call theory. The best available theory right now is 16,000 years ago. Those are still hypotheses. They're not completely accepted within the field that it would be 30,000. What these researchers were interested in is how do we, can we look at this information and determine number one, where would be the kind of the common ancestor, the latest common ancestor for all these different species? And number two what can our specific methods tell us about these different species that we're finding within this cave? So as I mentioned, they took a three-pronged approach. Not only did they look at the morphology, but they also looked at the genetics and they looked at isotopes to try and determine what the, what the animals would have eaten, because if we understand what the animals would have eaten, we have a better understanding of their trophic level. Were they eating a wide and varied diet or were they eating a restricted diet? And there are two different ways to approach that. They might've been eating a restricted diet because they were forced into a niche by evolution, or they might've been eating a restricted diet because they were being domesticated, right? Does that make sense? So some animals naturally, wild animals, naturally eat a restricted diet as a function of their evolution. But we do know that, for example, the gray wolf, yeah, the Panda, very restricted diet, you're right, or koalas. The gray wolf has a really varied diet. And we know this across continents. We know this across different niches. It's adaptable, it's varied, it's capable of eating a lot of different stuff. Whereas my dog eats kibble. That's his whole diet is just kibble. Probably 16,000 years ago, dogs didn't eat kibble. Pretty sure. But the idea would be that they would probably have eaten what the humans ate.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, their scraps, their waste.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Exactly. And of course, there's also still debate about this garbage dump hypothesis or an active domestication hypothesis. We still don't fully know whether dogs domesticated themselves or whether there was a drive to domesticate them early on. Or when did that domesticating themselves switch over to the active drive to domesticate them? So there's a lot of unanswered questions. And when you read the study, you leave with a lot of unanswered questions. But there are a couple of things that the researchers do try to support. The first thing is that they believe that it's very likely that one of two things was happening within dog domestication within this cave. They believe that either the dogs were being actively domesticated or that the dogs were forced into a sort of morphological similarity. When you find specific individuals that all seem similar from a similar region in time, that came from common ancestors that were very diverse. You either could be forcing domestication, its human guided evolution, or you could find that all of these animals were existing at a similar trophic niche. They were all eating the same kind of food because of evolution. And in doing so, that that would lead them to similarity across the other species. So they call that the egomorph hypothesis versus the domestication hypothesis. They also looked at a refugium hypothesis and they rejected that hypothesis. So they were able to say, I cannot tell you with no doubt that this is the source of early dog domestication, because this could have still happened naturally. But it seems likely that dogs were domesticated here because so many of the animals that they looked at were eating a very restricted diet compared to older animals or different animals that were more wolf-like within the same cage. So we've got wolf-like species that seem to have a varied diet. We have dog-like species that seem to have a restricted diet. What does that tell us? Well, one option is that these dogs were domesticated here.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' How did they know what they were eating?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's that isotope analysis that they were able to do, which is pretty cool. So they were able to say this is varied protein or this is restricted protein, which is, I don't, fascinated. And I guess that they didn't establish, I don't think, that method. It's just, it's very rare, apparently, in these kind of studies that they use all three of those methods together and look at the multiple lines of inquiry, which is cool. So they were able to come up with these broad hypotheses and then say this is what we think happened within this cave. It's likely that what we're seeing here is evolution before our eyes and specifically evolution as a function of human guidance, as a function of domestication. When they compared all the different haplotypes of the dogs and the wolves that were there, they set, based on their analyses, a date for what they think could be their last common ancestor, which would have been one hundred and thirty five thousand years ago, putting it in the late Pleistocene. They were very clear that this doesn't represent the actual split between dog and wolf. It also doesn't represent a time. Well, I guess that's the best way to put it. It doesn't represent a specific split. And and because of that, it doesn't mean that this is when dogs were domesticated. But what they are saying is that we might be able to say that if we were looking at fossils that date to this era, they could represent the last common ancestor of dogs and wolves. Does that make sense?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah. Wow.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' We don't know. The split could have happened later or sorry, earlier.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Cara, can't you tell-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I'm so confused by the backward time.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' The genetics help them figure out exactly when?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That is what they did. That's what they why they pointed to that day. It looks like it's about one hundred thirty five thousand years ago in the late Pleistocene. Remember, the species from this cave are not that old. So they were backward calculating based on their genetic diversity, because here's the complicated part. We still have wolves and there were plenty of wolves twelve thousand years ago. There were plenty of wolves three thousand years ago, but there were also plenty of dogs. And I think the other wrench in this that we don't often think about is at what point is wolf dog? It's not that clear.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's always going to be fuzzy. The other thing, I think complexity here, it kind of reminds me of that cool horse story where paleontologists discovered a sequence of horse fossils in North America that represented the evolution of horses. But it turns out horses evolved in Europe and Asia. And what they were seeing was successive migrations into North America, not the evolution in North America. And so like this cave might just be a really good place to hang out and live. You know what I mean? And just over time, different populations would settle in this cave, but they weren't necessarily evolving in the cave. You know what I mean? They just at different times, different populations occupied the cave. And that represents maybe with a pretty high resolution the evolution of domestic dogs and wolves.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And so the big question here is and this has been a controversial question for a long time in dog domestication, was there a single domestication event where all dogs subsequently evolved from that or were there multiple domestication events? Did this happen simultaneously or at different times in Europe and Asia? And there seems to be good evidence for both hypotheses. But what's interesting about this case specifically is that when you compare the genomes of the species that were found in the cave, they seem to be representative of all European genomes. So that does at least tell you that it's an early source of a lot of genetic diversity. It doesn't tell you that it's the only source. It also doesn't tell you that it's the domestication event, but it tells you that if it were representative of a domestication event, it could have led to most all of the dogs in Europe. And that's pretty cool.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, that is cool. All right. Thanks, Cara.<br />
<br />
=== Batteries on the Rise <small>(42:25)</small> ===<br />
* [https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/utilities-are-installing-big-batteries-at-a-record-pace/ Utilities Are Installing Big Batteries at a Record Pace]<ref>[https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/utilities-are-installing-big-batteries-at-a-record-pace/ Scientific American: Utilities Are Installing Big Batteries at a Record Pace]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' Jay, I understand that batteries are on the rise. We talk about batteries a lot and obviously they're critical to the green energy future that we're trying to get to. But what's going on here?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So we all know that even though battery technology has been, as we say every time, it's slowly and steadily improving. There has been a lot of proliferation of battery. And think about all the batteries we use. It's in every device now. You know, there's almost everything has a battery in it. It wasn't this way 20 years ago. And the fact that batteries last longer and they charge faster today, of course, they become more and more useful. Now, we've talked many times on the show about we want to see a major upgrade in batteries right away. It's not going to happen. It's going to continue to slowly and steadily percolate forward. But what we can do is use them smarter and better. And one thing we need to do is start integrating them into our electrical grids. And many countries need to do it. And there's upgrades that come with it. So this means a few different things when you say, like, let's upgrade the electrical grids. What does that mean? It means a lot of things. But one of them, I'll tell you, is that we need to to put in more aggressive power transfer lines, high intensity lines that can carry a ton of voltage, because that's how we're going to be able to definitely move electricity across the grids so people can gain access to power. Let's say California happens to have more power than Connecticut. And we want to get power from California to Connecticut today. We can't really do it. You know, it just doesn't physically. We can't do it. So we need greater-<br />
<br />
'''S:''' There are two different grids.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. So that's one of the ways that you compensate for intermittent power sources like wind and solar is with overproduction and a massive grid. The idea is the wind is always blowing somewhere. And if you average it all out, you get more of a steady, predictable supply. But that requires like the continent wide grid.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' We don't have like incredibly large energy storage capacity. So we have to be reliant on power sources like gas and oil. This is like the the emergency style stuff like quick turn on the the oil power plant or the coal power plant, whatever whatever is out there, which there's tons of them. Fire it up quick. We're having an energy shortage and they can turn those suckers on and get them up and humming really quickly. But what do we do when there's a surplus of power? What can we do with a surplus of power? Not much. Today we don't really have much. But as renewable technologies continue to improve now we have to start to shift away from oil based and gas based energy sources. The time is right now on multiple fronts. The good news is that there's an energy storage industry and it's doing very well, which I find to be very encouraging. I didn't even know that there was like a sizeable energy storage industry out there. So what they're doing is this industry is continuously beating previous records of battery deployment. So as an example, the last quarter of 2020, the last three months of the year, 2020, 2.2 gigawatt hours of energy storage was put into operation. That was the last three months of 2020, 2.2 gigawatts. That's a hundred and eighty two percent increase from the previous quarter. So to give you a little perspective, I said there it was 2.2 gigawatts. Let's talk about what is one gigawatt hour. What is a one gigawatt hour? I'm not going to go into anything other than what can it do. So as an example, a one gigawatt hour is generated by three point one two five million photovoltaic panels, solar panels. It would take four hundred and twelve utility scale wind turbines to generate a one gigawatt hour. So one gigawatt hour could light up one hundred and ten million LEDs at the same time. A one gigawatt hour could power nine thousand and ninety Nissan Leafs, which are electric cars, right? You know, midsize electric car.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Is it Leafs or Leaves?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Leaves.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I think it's still Leafs.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I don't know. When they all drive away, do you say Leaves leaves?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Those Leafs are leaving.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Leaving.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' All right.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Love you, Jay.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I love you, too. I don't know. Believe me, if I wasn't the person doing the news item, I'd be just like you guys running down everything I can think of. But if you think of the fact that the storage that they added in the last three months of 2020 could continuously power over nine thousand cars, that's amazing. And this is really this battery thing that we're adding to our grids is just beginning. So for 2020, the total year of 2020, there was three point five gigawatt hours added. Now, pay attention to this. That is three point one gigawatt hours more than what they installed the previous six years. So think about what we did in 2020 is incredibly more than what they did the previous six years. That's how much the technology has changed. And that's how much that countries and states inside the United States are buying more of this battery storage for grid to grid level battery storage. So what are we seeing? We're seeing an explosion of battery grid storage and energy experts are saying that this rapid pace will even increase. So it's going to just continue to to get faster and faster. And as it does, the prices will go down. The technology will get better. So most of this growth was due to utility companies purchasing large scale battery installations like the state of California was the top person purchaser in 2020. You know, they had a really bad power situation there very recently. And they just said, you know what, we need more instantaneous electrical response to when we have shortages or power outages or if we have a reason why the factories that we use to generate electricity are having problems, we want a way to store energy very quickly and neatly. So a study that was by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, why they cover everything in that joint, don't they? They took a deep look at how the United States could bring its incredibly high carbon emissions down to net zero by 2050. Right. I've heard this a million times by 2050, we're going to be at net zero. How are we going to do that? Let's talk about how it's going to happen. Now, this study outlined how energy storage was vital in order to reach that goal. And specifically, to be fair, it's not just battery storage. There's other like there's compressed air storage. There's the the rock salt melting energy storage. Even the thing that I had been talking about for years, kinetic energy, energy storage. They spin up large disks. I didn't realize that this was happening. It's happening. So I find that fascinating. And of course battery storage is huge in this collection of ways to store energy. So by 2030, it's predicted that battery energy storage will increase in order of magnitude, which I'm surprised it was was just an order of magnitude. I'd like it to be a lot more than an order of magnitude in the next 20 years. But that's what the experts are saying. And it's estimated that it will be at that time. And I know Bob's going to love this. It's going to be approximately two terawatt hours of total battery capacity in 20 years in the United States. So that's pretty interesting. Now, that's if things continue on the trajectory that they're going. There might be a massive uptick in these estimates because of A, B and C happening. You know, like it might just become one of those things that even more and more money is invested into it. You know, the federal government might get way more involved and drop a ton of money on the states and say, yes do it. And maybe it'll be a lot more than that. But it's cool because you think there's going to be installations largely a lot of these installations are like underground or they're hidden away. But we need to have these battery storage facilities and other kind of energy storage facilities sprinkled around the country, all around the world, everywhere around the world, just like coal and gas fired plants are like they're everywhere. Look, go look at a map of where they all exist in every country on the world. You'll see, like, it's just unbelievable number of places that we're burning fossil fuel based product for energy that's got to go away. It's got to go away. This is the way to do it. And there is one thing I want to say, Steve. A lot of people email us and say, yeah, you guys love batteries. But there's a lot of negative environmental consequences to batteries, like getting the material for batteries. And I agree. I agree with that. I'm not going to close my eyes just because I think batteries are great. You know, we have to be careful about our environment when it comes to the materials that we need. But the good news is that people that are working on battery science and technology are finding materials that don't ruin the environment. And we're shifting towards better materials. That's really the only thing we can do because we can't function without batteries anymore. It's just like electricity. It's just like the web. We can't function. The world will not function without batteries anymore. They are here to stay probably forever, which is 100 years as far as lifespans go. It's going to be that long that we're going to be dealing with battery technology. We just have to make it cleaner and better on the environment. And it's something I think that we should lean into heavily.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So I think that from my understanding, I'm reading about this not too long ago, maybe a year ago. I read an interesting, interesting article that basically said the reason battery technology is now going to take off in terms of grid storage is because it's now cheaper for a utility company to install a battery grid storage facility than it is to install, say, a natural gas plant to manage their peak demand or as needed demand when they have the needs of extra. So once it became the cheapest option for utility companies, that's why we're seeing it take off. It's really all about the money. It's not about it's a good idea. It's better for the environment, whatever. It's the moment it became cheaper. That's when that's when it became adopted. And so once we've crossed we've crossed that line, basically, and it's only going to get better from here. Like we said, we crossed the line with wind and solar. It's only going to get better. I just read today more than one article about, oh, yeah the Russians figured out a way to increase the life expectancy of lithium ion batteries by fivefold. You know, great. Now, we know that not all these are going to work out, but that is all contributing to this incremental improvement in battery tech. Their costs are coming down. Their energy density is getting greater. And you're right, Jay, I think one of the big things it's not sexy to talk about, but it's huge, is that even if we can keep the batteries the same, but use more environmentally friendly components, that is a huge advantage. Because some of the stuff that's in there is is not good.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' And they strip mine to get to certain minerals that we need.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I know, and they don't recycle well. You know, so, yeah, there's a lot of challenges with it. So yeah, there's so many researchers working on that. Now, you don't know which one of these things is going to hit. But the incremental progress is pretty steady. So, yeah, I agree. And also, I think the other big thing about battery as grid storage, we've talked about lots of different grid storage options on the show. But at the end of the day, batteries are the most energy round trip efficient. So again, that's going to that's another factor that's going to affect the bottom line and therefore really promote batteries as a grid storage option.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It seems like it's virtually universal that when we invest in science, science pays back, right? Look at what happened with the vaccine. We went for it. We opened up every floodgate that we could to just get out of the way so we can get this vaccine done. That was a lot of consideration. It took a lot of money. It took a lot of hours of scientists trying to to get this job done. But look at what they did. You know, three, four companies pulled pulled it off.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Science and education have the best R.O.I.<br />
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'''J:''' I totally Cara. That's what I was trying to say.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' By far.<br />
<br />
=== AI Tech Gap <small>(54:42)</small> ===<br />
* [https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanponciano/2021/03/07/google-billionaire-eric-schmidt-warns-of-national-emergency-if-china-overtakes-us-in-ai-tech/?sh=451c24f3199f Google Billionaire Eric Schmidt Warns Of 'National Emergency' If China Overtakes U.S. In AI Tech]<ref>[https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanponciano/2021/03/07/google-billionaire-eric-schmidt-warns-of-national-emergency-if-china-overtakes-us-in-ai-tech/?sh=451c24f3199f Forbes: Google Billionaire Eric Schmidt Warns Of 'National Emergency' If China Overtakes U.S. In AI Tech]</ref><br />
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'''S:''' Bob, I understand we cannot have an AI gap.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Heck no.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah. This this news really caught my attention. It did not get the broad attention I had hoped. But we shall see if the people that really matter pay attention. So after two years, the United States National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence submitted its full report to the president and Congress. In a nutshell, it says that we are on track to lose our technological lead in artificial intelligence and other key technologies to China, which could impact national security and privacy in such a way that it constitutes a national emergency. What is that all about? So this is about the N.S.C.A.I. National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence. I hadn't heard about that. Maybe you haven't either. It was a commission, bipartisan commission of 15 technologists. And also there's national security professionals, business executives, academic leaders, a lot of smart people led by the current chair is Eric Schmidt, former Google CEO. Yes. Worth about, I think, around 18 billion dollars. Guy's got a lot of money. Also on the commission were other other high tech heavy hitters like incoming Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, Oracle CEO Safra Katz, Microsoft Chief Scientific Officer Eric Horvitz and head of Google Cloud A.I., Andrew Moore. So now some people see those names and they think that oh, they are probably biased because if there's any extra funding for A.I. that the government starts handing out because of the report that would really help their bottom line. And and sure, I understand why you would go there. But I kind of lean more towards the interpretation that these people are on the cutting edge of A.I. and they're well placed to know what it might be capable of and what exposure that democracies of the world might have by not staying on the cutting edge of A.I., which is potentially disruptive new technology. All right. So now I'm going to throw a bunch of quotes at you more than usual. So sit back and relax. So Eric Schmidt had a lot has a lot to say about this. Of course, he's the lead of this of this commission, the 700 plus page commission report. So he says stuff like the following, the big the big take home quote, "America is not prepared to defend or compete in the A.I. era." Big bold underlined. So now Schmidt definitely has a focus on China and he paints a kind of a scary picture. So Schmidt said "China possesses the might, talent and ambition to surpass the United States as the world's leader in A.I. in the next decade if current trends do not change. Simultaneously, A.I. is deepening the threat posed by cyberattacks and disinformation campaigns that Russia, China and others are using to infiltrate our society, steal our data and interfere in our democracy." No big surprises there, except maybe perhaps that A.I. is really a tool that they are using. He says that if these technologies are built in China, for example, they are not necessarily going to follow our privacy rules or our ethics. We have to be careful to win this battle. And sure, I mean, you could have plenty plenty of countries have plenty of problems with the United States and how we handle things in our military. There's a lot of things that I would change. But when you compare us to kind of the things that China has been accused of and shown to do, I think it's clearly far worse. So Schmidt goes into greater detail about that. This is from a letter he submitted with the commission report, and he's had a lot of great stuff to say in that letter. He says that "China's domestic use of A.I. is a chilling precedent for anyone around the world who cherishes individual liberty, its employment of A.I. as a tool of repression and surveillance at home and increasingly abroad is a powerful counterpoint to how we believe A.I. should be used. He continues, the A.I. future can be democratic, but we've learned enough about the power of technology to strengthen authoritarianism abroad and fuel extreme extremism at home to know that we must not take for granted that future technology trends will reinforce rather than erode democracy." So that's a that's a real big point here. It seems like, oh, look what technology can do. Look what technology can accomplish. But in the wrong hands, it's we've seen it it can be used. It's double edged sword, classic double edged sword. It can be really used for some pretty nasty stuff. And and he stresses that this isn't just an America first policy when he said the following. "We must work with fellow democracies in the in the private sector to build privacy protecting standards into A.I. technologies and advanced democratic norms to guide A.I. uses so that the democracies can responsibly use A.I. tools for national security purposes." So, yeah, I mean, it seems obvious that this powerful tool of artificial intelligence and all the industries that it touches, it isn't inherently it's not inherently bad. And you can use it properly with with transparency and oversight, something that you will not see in countries like China. I mean, transparency and oversight in China. I mean, those words just don't even belong in that sentence.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I think there's a lot of oversight but transparency, maybe not.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Not the one you're talking about, though.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, not the oversight. Yeah, not the good oversight. So now the business end of this commission report was to make recommendations. And the huge report has hundreds, hundreds of recommendations. And I'm just going to go over a few. Now, to even attempt Schmidt claims that to even attempt to be competitive with the likes of China and the money that they have at their disposal. He recommends that we increase our budget for research and development in A.I. from one point five billion this year to two billion in 2022. And from there, we should double it every year until we reach thirty two billion in twenty twenty six. So when I read that, I'm going, hmm, massively increasing our R&D and artificial intelligence. Either he listens to me on this show or well, that's my only takeaway, really. He must listen to the show. But yeah, I mean, it seems it seems obvious. And this is for me. I know maybe our reasoning was a little bit divergent a bit. But yeah, it's it's it's I think it's clear that that A.I. we just need more research because it's such a disruptive technology that you know, you don't want to be the only one on the block that that has some facility with a new technology like this. Now, Schmidt made an interesting comparison. I think of this sometimes, he equates this level of spending to the creation of the national highway system. It's funny, I was just talking about that just like a couple of days ago. He said "This is not a time for abstract criticism of industrial policy or fears of deficit spending to stand in the way of progress. In 1956, President Dwight Eisenhower, a fiscally conservative Republican, worked with the Democratic Congress to commit 10 billion dollars to build the interstate highway system. That's 96 billion in today's world." A ton of money, no matter how you slice it. He says "Surely we can make a similar investment in the nation's future." And of course, I totally agree. I mean, A.I. is just becoming completely embedded in every facet of our world. And this is something that money's going into it right now at an amazing pace. And it's just really not enough. But let me let me just conclude here with another recommendation that caught my eye. This one was interesting. They're recommending establishing a digital service academy, which would be similar to America's military service academies. The goal, though, would be to produce people not trained for war, but to be experts on high technology issues. And that just seems like a wonderful idea, because I've thought about that in terms of like cybersecurity and how we should have like cybersecurity academies spitting out people that are just like, geniuses at cybersecurity, because that is to me, that's just it's a it's a related example to the A.I. It's something that you need to be among the best in the world at cybersecurity, because if you're not, then you are so wide open. You're so wide open. We're only scratching the surface. You know, the whole thing with solar winds, we're just scratching the surface of the damage that can be done with with lax cybersecurity. And I think investment in that as well as in A.I. and other technologies that the commission report talks about, like additive manufacturing. It's another one has such an amazing it's going to have such an amazing impact. It's clear that the impact is going to be staggeringly huge. And that's the problem with these disruptive technologies that are coming, like artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, cybersecurity, robotics, those are the things that they're important today. And the power that they're going to have in the future and the impact they're going to have is so big, it's going to be game changing.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, Bob, I think the two critical points that stuck out for me is one. Yeah, this should not be like an America first policy. This has got to be something that the international order of liberal democracy looks at as critical infrastructure.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, like I thought of like NATO, Steve it's like a group of of countries united around the world who to develop A.I. technologies and make it ethical and and transparent and make it so that it can't be used for surveillance. I mean, look what China is doing with facial recognition. I mean the privacy is like out the window and it's extending beyond the borders of China. You know, those are things that we could develop in a way that that is, ethical to use that that they're not doing. And that that's what should proliferate. Not what not the kind of technology that they're proliferating.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' And what's the other one? You had you had a second one?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, those are the two things that should be considered critical infrastructure. Just in general, not optional or not being about technology. This has got to be considered something that is like roads it's just a part of the future of our country of the world. It's like the Internet is no longer like a luxury. It's critical infrastructure. Just yeah like electricity was 100 years ago.<br />
<br />
=== Nearby SuperEarth <small>(1:04:48)</small> ===<br />
* [https://www.independent.co.uk/space/new-super-earth-planet-glides-b1812967.html Astonishing new, nearby super-Earth found: ‘This is the kind of planet we’ve been dreaming about for decades’]<ref>[https://www.independent.co.uk/space/new-super-earth-planet-glides-b1812967.html Independent: Astonishing new, nearby super-Earth found: ‘This is the kind of planet we’ve been dreaming about for decades’]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' Evan, Evan, why should I get excited about one more exoplanet? <br />
<br />
'''E:''' I know.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' We have four thousand now?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' What's one more in the in the pot? Astronomers of the Carmenes C.A.R.M.E.N.E.S. Consortium. They recently reported the discovery of a hot rocky super earth operating its parent star, which is a red dwarf star. And the red dwarf is only 26 light years away.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Wow. Right around the corner.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, I know. Just like Vega, 26 light years away. Remember that from?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, Contact.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yep. The new world is called Gliese 486 b, and it's referred to as a super earth. Yep. Because it's-<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I've heard of them<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yep. Solid and rocky like our own world. But it's bigger. It's 30 percent bigger than Earth and about three times heavier. And it orbits two point five million kilometers around its parent star. So guess how long it takes to complete one orbit around its sun.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It's pretty damn fast, isn't it?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It's one and a half Earth days.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' OK, so it's years.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' One and a half days. Yep. Day and a half. That's close. That thing's whipping around.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah. Probably tidally locked pretty quickly.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yes, Bob. Very good. I even put a note in there and yes, Bob, it is tidally locked. I wrote that down. I kid you not. I'll share the note with you. But this is the third closest such transiting alien world that we've discovered and the closest one that orbits a red dwarf. And Bob, get this, though. It maintains an atmosphere.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It's not burnt off? Jeez.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' No, no.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It's not like a lava atmosphere?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Well, you're getting we're getting to the point of exactly what what is there on this planet. Lava is the key. It's hot, too hot for humans to inhabit. Four hundred thirty degrees Celsius. Steve, for you, that's eight hundred six degrees Fahrenheit. So, yeah, that would cook us to a crisp, really quickly. Yep. So hot at the surface.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' How hot is it?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Melts lead, like Bob said. Bob, did you read this news?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' No, I did not.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' And it has rivers of lava that cover its surface. At least that's what they anticipate based on the data. They said it would look kind of like Venus with a hot and dry landscape crisscrossed by those glowing rivers of lava. So, Jay, if you if you looked at it using a very, very, very sophisticated instrument-<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Obi-Wan and Anakin Skywalker. Gotcha, man. Gotcha.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Bob, are you are you looking at my notes here? What are you talking about?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It just comes to me man, I don't know how it happens.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' You know me so well. Well, I was thinking the exact same thing, obviously. So absolutely the Char planet where they fought. But in any case, these planets, which they orbit relatively close to their parent star, and they're very hard to detect, let alone to learn information about their features, such as the composition of its atmosphere and how many of these have atmospheres that close to their parent sun that it hasn't all blown away. The nice thing about Gliese 486 b is that it's a transiting planet. So that means we are in a relative position to it where we can see it as it passes in front of the host star. So that's a plus. But an added bonus, astronomers are also able to observe it using radio velocity measurements. And that's known as Doppler spectroscopy. And that method relies on observing the star for signs of the wobble effect. And the movement is caused by the presence of planets, which exert a gravitational influence on the sun. So those are the two most effective methods of exoplanet discovery and analysis. And when combined, they were able to confirm the existence of Gliese 486 b. Trifon Trifonov, that's a great name, who is a planetary scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Germany. He was the lead author on the study. And he said that the proximity of this exoplanet is exciting because, and Steve, this answers your original question, because it will be possible to study it in more detail with powerful telescopes such as the upcoming James Webb Space Telescope, which we've been talking about forever and other extremely large telescopes. We can hardly wait for the new telescopes to become available. The results will help us to understand how well rocky planets can hold their atmospheres, and what they're made of and how they influence the energy distributions on the planets. One of the other researchers in the study, his name is Ben Montette. He said this is the kind of planet we've been dreaming about for decades. We've known for a long time that rocky super earths must exist around their nearby stars. But we haven't had the technology to search for them until very recently. So that's the new news on exoplanets. Latest and greatest.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Cool.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, it's neat. It's always disappointing, though, when you read a super earth or you just an earth size planet and and then you realize it's lava.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' But if it's tidally locked, I mean, the far side, it's not getting direct hit. So there might be some zone that's not as crazy, right?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Perhaps. Right. Perhaps. Hard to overcome that temperature, though, a little bit.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But the estimates are that there are billions of earth-like habitable planets in the galaxy.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' How much do you love that word? Habitable.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Habitable.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Habitable.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Habitable.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, it is. It is appealing.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' My favorite word, but I remember taking like middle school Spanish and everybody loved the word hablabamos. <br />
<br />
'''E:''' Onomatopoeia was also a very popular fun word.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I read an article that was talking about, like, the prettiest words in the world around in different languages and non-English speaking people think that the word diarrhoea is very pretty.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, my God.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' You know, it is lyric.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It is. Oh, my God. That's right.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. Weird. Until they know what it means.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah. Yeah, it's really. It was a bad choice of word for the thing, for the event.<br />
<br />
=== Sea Slug Self-Decapitation <small>(1:10:58)</small> ===<br />
* [https://www.sciencenews.org/article/sea-slug-detached-head-crawl-regenerate-grow-new-body A sea slug’s detached head can crawl around and grow a whole new body]<ref>[https://www.sciencenews.org/article/sea-slug-detached-head-crawl-regenerate-grow-new-body ScienceNews: A sea slug’s detached head can crawl around and grow a whole new body]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, Cara, you're going to do a quick. This is sort of the runner up news item of the ones you picked. This is but I just had to talk about this and it will become immediately apparent why. So tell us about this, is a sea slug or just a slug? What is it?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So a sea slug, which is sort of a common name. And it's a little confusing because it refers to a lot of different things. So this specific sea slug, which is an Elysia species, Elysia marginata, which, to be clear, and an Elysia marginata is a gastropod mollusk. But it's in the family. I think you would pronounce this placo brancadet. So not to be confused with a nudibranch because they look like nudibranchs. Do you guys know nudibranchs going off topic? It's OK. They're really fun. They're like the funnest things in tide pools. But anyway, not to be confused with it, but kind of looks like a nudibranch. This is a sea slug, Elysia. And what can Elysia do? Self decapitate.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, boy.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Self is really interesting here. Self decapitate and then grow a whole new body.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, so anyone who's ever watched the movie The Thing will immediately think of it. Yeah, the head pulls away from the body, crawls away and then grows a new body.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's a good adaptation.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It grows legs like spider legs and eye stalks. It doesn't last long.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Oh, yeah, in the Thing, in the Thing it does. Yeah, but the slug, it does, literally does that. The head comes off and grows a new body.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Wait, wait, wait. The head comes off and that head piece grows a new body. What does the body do?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' The body dies.<br />
<br />
'''J:'' OK, good. So the head, you see, there's continuity there.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Mm hmm. Yeah, it's the head that regrows the body. So you guys remember, you may remember my seventh grade science fair project for which we won regionals in which we took planaria, which are little flat worms and cut them and showed the mazes, then cut them in half. And then both halves knew the maze.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That's cool.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' You didn't read about this in your local paper? And a lot of kids study regeneration and they study kind of RNA and they study planaria because they can do this. You can cut a planarium in half and both halves will regrow. But planaria have really simple body plans. Of course, we know that complex vertebrates like certain herps, they can regrow tails if they lose them. But this is amazing about Elysia, because not only once its head is disconnected from its body, will it regrow a body. But it has a complex body plan and it regrows its own heart.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' So how does it last before the heart gets grown again?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, I think it actually takes a couple of days before it even starts to regrow. It takes hours to remove its head from its body. Hours.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Hours. That sounds nasty.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. And then I think it takes it takes a while to regrow the body. Here's the cool thing. Researchers looked really closely. So basically what happened is they noticed that in this sample of the sea slugs, that some of them were doing this. They were like, whoa, what's that head doing? And then they're like, holy crap, it has a body now. And they were like, what is happening? And when they oh, 20 days, 20 days it took for them to grow their body back, including their heart. So it's pretty slow. But then they were like, OK, what is happening? This is super weird. They looked up close and there's apparently a little ridge in between the head and the body. That seems like the cut your point.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' The zipper.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, it's a little like a point like on the cheese package. So there's the little ridge there. And they're like, OK, this must be the place where they can actually do that ripping. The other really interesting thing is that they were like, why the hell is it doing this? Like, we know, for example, that if a salamander's tail gets hurt, do salamanders regrow their tails? I think so. Or let's say a lizard's tail gets hurt and it can. Or if it's doing it in order to run away from predators, it can drop the tail. And then it'll regrow it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Although not all lizards who drop their tails regrow them. Some don't regrow.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, yeah. Interesting. But we know that there's some of them have the capability to do that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yes.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' So this is just twice as good. It's like twice as long as dropping a tail. Just drop your back too.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, it's whole body, even its blood supply. So there's questions here, right? A, why the hell would they do this? Right. B, how are they staying alive during those from day one to day 20? And so the researchers still have to answer some of those questions. But there's a couple of interesting takeaways here. One, and this is again, I don't think it was a controlled study. So the control study needs to be done now. But they noticed after the fact that when they looked at the dropped bodies, they were infested with parasites. So they're wondering, is this a way?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' You say infested as if it's a bad thing.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Party in the parasite dead body. They're wondering, is this a way once a parasite load gets too high for these sea slugs, that they can drop their parasite load and then grow a fresh new body that that's parasite free and then continue to live on their lives in a healthy way? So that's fascinating. And the second thing is the researchers are hypothesizing, but they don't know that the reason that these specific alesia are green and have these little spots is because they absorb chloroplasts from algae. And they're wondering if they're able to actually use those chloroplasts as a fuel.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, they're solar. Holy crap.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right. Until they are able to regrow, because they can apparently keep the chloroplasts alive within their bodies for for weeks to months. And very young alesia don't have the chloroplasts yet. They have to get them through feeding. And then once they feed on them, they start to populate the body. So they're wondering there's long been a debate as to what these chloroplasts do beyond just make them look green. And now they're wondering, hey, could this actually help with the energy that they need to be able to regrow the body, especially while it doesn't have a heart and a main blood supply?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I didn't think it could get any cooler than they go photosynthetic on us. That's awesome.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I know. Right. Yeah. Yeah. And I love the name of the article Extreme Autonomy and Whole Body Regeneration in Photosynthetic Sea Slugs.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Wow.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I'm all in on this. This is all [inaudible].<br />
<br />
'''C:''' This is so cool. And you guys got to watch the videos. There's all there's videos online. They're going to be GIFs or GIFs or whatever you want to call them. Anyway, I still call them GIFs deal with it. It's just and they're beautiful. They're actually really beautiful.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, that is just so cool.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
== Who's That Noisy? <small>(1:17:45)</small> ==<br />
* Answer to last week’s Noisy: Lungs<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Jay, it's Who's That Noisy time.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' All right, guys. Last week, I played this noisy.<br />
<br />
[_short_vague_description_of_Noisy] <br />
<br />
All right, guys, any guesses before I begin?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Sounds aquatic.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' For some people there was a lot of grouping of guesses here, and I will unveil those as we go. So our first guesser is Jasper Henton and Jasper says, "Dear, Jay, my name is Jasper. I'm 11 years old and I live in England. My guess is a beluga whale. Love the show, Jasper." Jasper, first of all there are people that start their lives and they don't even think about learning about science and technology at your age and critical thinking. And like the fact that you're an 11 year old listening to a science podcast, this is probably one of the best types of information you can put into your head. You know, being a co-host on this show, of course, I believe that. But I'm very proud of you. Thank you for writing in. Continue to listen, because this education is valuable as beyond belief. Right, Steve?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, Jasper, we're proud of you.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It is very cool, though. So you're not correct, but you are not alone. Tons of people wrote in with all different kinds of whale and dolphin guesses. There is absolutely something about this sound that has that vibe. I think it's because it's muffled a little bit. You have like a muffled sound. It sounds like it's underwater, but he's not correct. All right. Here's another guest. This was sent in by Jimmy Johansson. "Hello, Jay. I think this is what babies hear inside their mother's belly. Felt like I heard a voice through something fleshy and squishy, so it felt right." And then he goes on to thank us and that we changed his life. And that's why we're here, because we want to help people and teach them about science and critical thinking. And, Jimmy, I'm sorry you're wrong. But again, you're not alone because, I don't know, 30 or 40 people guess the same thing that you're writing. You just happen to be the first person. So now I'm getting quickly going on to the winner. So the winner for last week, Andrea Shuck. And Andrea said "This week's noisy sounds like lungs. Sounds like lungs of a patient with asthma or otherwise narrowed small airways. I have a few horses in my practice with equine asthma syndrome that sound just like that. Thanks and keep up the good work." So let me play this back to you now that you know that it's pulmonary. [plays Noisy] So what's going on here? Let me just read to you what the person who sent it in said. They gave a good explanation. This is from Marcus Johansson. Marcus says, "I thought I'd give you some background info. I work for a medical tech company that uses AI for analysis of osculatory sounds from digital stethoscopes. We're working on detecting pulmonary illness before symptoms occur. For development of our algorithms, we have to feed the AI a bunch of data, which means we have to manually annotate thousands of audio files. While doing this work, I've noticed something strange. Most of the audio files are from people with severely reduced pulmonary function. And after listening to their struggled breathing, I start feeling out of breath myself, some sort of empathic breathlessness." I had the same experience and I wrote him back and said, when I heard it, I read the email, then I listened to the sound. And it does. If you listen to the sound again and you think about the person is struggling to breathe, it might make you feel a little bit of that tension. I don't know. It must be some type of sympathetic thing going on. But so this was recorded with an electronic stethoscope. Again, he's feeding algorithms to to the AI. So it can pick up all of these different nuances in the sounds so that before somebody shows heavy symptoms, the AI will eventually be able to pick up early, early on in a sickness or disease that there's something going on, right? That human ears can't hear. And that the instrumentation that doctors are using might not be crystal clear or whatever, but if an AI listens to it, it would be able to pick it up. So fascinating, right? AI is going to tell you, hey you have like the amazingly small beginnings of blah, blah, blah. And we're going to be able to help you very easily with that because we detected it so early, right? Like lots of diseases that way. Very curable early on, very deadly late in the game. So, Marcus, thanks. That was really cool. It does sound to me like another guess that I had your thing that it reminded me of was definitely like suffocating, right? Which definitely is related to this, because that is the sound of of suffocation. You know, a person is struggling to breathe and and their their lungs are literally clogged and damaged from the disease. So I got it is a scary little sound. But anyway, don't let it bother you because you don't have that problem, hopefully.<br />
<br />
=== New Noisy <small>(1:22:44)</small> ===<br />
<br />
'''J:''' All right, Steve, I have a new Noisy.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Let's hear it.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I'm going to play it for you.<br />
<br />
[_short_vague_description_of_Noisy] <br />
<br />
All right. It's a little bit of a long Noisy. <br />
<br />
'''B:''' I got an idea.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Go ahead, Bob.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Red blood cells banging into each other.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That's pretty interesting, Bob. That's not correct, though.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' They all sound like that.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So when you give me the answer for this noisy, just be as accurate as you possibly can. And of course, if you heard something cool or you want to send in a guess, you can email me at WTN@theskepticsguide.org.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. Thanks, brother.<br />
<br />
== Questions/Emails/Corrections/Follow-ups <small>(1:24:21)</small> ==<br />
<br />
=== Email #1: Mechanical Turk ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. We're going to do one email this week, although I got about a bazillion emails about this. This is a sort of correction to my reference to the mechanical Turk last week. So actually, Evan, you in your note news item, you brought up the mechanical Turk.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I did.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I made a kind of a tangential reference, which I see now was very obscure and confusing. But I want to I think the explanation of where my head was at is really interesting. So you were talking about Amazon's mechanical Turk, right?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yes. And I expressed that I did not know what it was. Also-<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Amazon's mechanical Turk is a crowdsourcing app where they they use a system to get people to do specific tasks. They hire you to do do like, oh, you need to label these thousand things. You know, whatever. They they match people with these, ad hoc tasks that need to be done. Let me tell you explain why it's called a mechanical Turk. Let's go back in time to the 1860s. This is a really fascinating story. If you guys don't know the story of the mechanical Turk, it's very fascinating. 1860s, a showman was was going around Europe with a chess playing essentially robot, like a wooden mannequin that would play chess and and beat all comers. And the idea was the idea. The idea was that this was a machine programmed to play chess mechanically. You know, this is like 1860s. This is before they even knew what a computer was. And this is this was a time when it was very popular to make a lot of these mechanical animals like a bird that would chirp. Yeah. Clockwork very steampunky. Yeah. Very clockwork stuff. And so people were kind of prepared to believe, well, this is just in a really elaborate clockwork man that plays chess. Of course, people who had their crap together figured out this is impossible. This level of creativity is way beyond like a bird that sings the same chirp over and over again, the same song over and over again. So the whole thing was an elaborate hoax. Turns out there was a guy in the table that was operating the mechanical Turk, and he was a human being was playing chess. And it was just it was all a deception.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' A person in a box.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, it was a person in a box. It was that simple. So people there was some magic illusion going on, how the box was designed so that people would underestimate how much room there was inside of it. They would think, no, was there a tiny person there, a child? No, actually, a full grown human being could fit in there.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Like the boxes where you carve a lady in half?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's kind of optical illusions.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Steve, he was a dwarf, wasn't he?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' First of all, it wasn't one person. No, he wasn't a dwarf. And no, it wasn't a single person. The guy would just pick up local chess players in the city he went to. And that person would work for them for a few weeks. And then he'd go on to the next guy. So that was the other thing is that another lesson here is that people did not realize that there are they were master chess players everywhere, and it was not hard for him to find a local master chess player to be the mechanical Turk for that month, for that city or that gig, whatever. So it was a it was not one person. It was a bunch of people. And this was a sensation. And the wooden statue that was moving around was dressed in a turban. He was a Turk.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It looked like Zoltan.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And that cultural thing still exists. The idea that the magic person is has a turban is like a genie kind of character. Just like in Asia, I understand like Jesus is the magic man, in Asian culture, like our magic man is a genie or whatever or one of them anyway. So the concept of a mechanical Turk then came to represent whenever you had a human being pretending to be a machine. Or the idea that you think a machine, this is automated. You think this is an auto and something that is mechanical or automated. Really, there's a person behind the machine-<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Pulling the levers.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Doing the complicated stuff.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Which makes sense for Amazon's mechanical Turk what they're doing. You pay them money. You say, I want answers to these surveys. You think it like magic. A machine gave it to you, but really, they're distributing it out to a bunch of people.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yes. That's exactly why it's called a mechanical Turk.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. And they're in tiny boxes.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' A lot of people think think mechanical Turk refers entirely to Amazon's mechanical Turk. They don't even realize that this concept has a deeper history and a broader meaning.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And that they took that name.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. But now people know that that refers to Amazon's mechanical. Well, no, it originally refers to this mechanical Turk from the 1860s. And that was the name was just used by Amazon. But also, when I was researching this, just to fill in the gaps, when you search for mechanical Turk, all of the articles are about Amazon mechanical Turk now. And I had to get really creative to bypass all of the the hits to Amazon.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, I just was looking to, apparently on Wikipedia. Like if you look up mechanical Turk, it takes you to Amazon's page. But if you look up the Turk, the Turk, that's how you get it. Wow. Also known as mechanical Turk.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But here's where it gets a little bit more nuanced, though. And this is where my brain went. So there is also a more subtle and broader meaning. And this is the one that I'm very interested in, which is why I'm biased towards this. It's not just a human pretending to be artificial intelligence. You could also use it in a more general sense. And I have used it this way to refer to narrow AI pretending to be general AI. In other words, like if you have a chatbot pretending to be an actual person or pretending to be an artificial intelligence, it's that's what I was talking about when I was referring to the website, which is actually called the Akinator, the specific website I was talking about, where you think of a person and it will guess it. The Akinator is a character. And in fact, it's a Turk. It has a turban. It's like a genie. And so it's still cultural. That connection is still there. And the thing is, it's acting as if it's like a sentient artificial intelligence when it's really just using this AI algorithm. That's what I was referring to, which I guess it's very obscure connection to what Evan was talking about. But that's where my head went. But that to me, that's what I encounter a lot. In fact, I just by coincidence, recently wrote about this, the idea of taking a very narrow effect and pretending like it's something much deeper and more profound than it is. And I think most specifically, like pretending that you're dealing with or thinking that you're dealing with a fully sentient AI when it's just a chatbot or some equivalent in a very, very narrow AI. But I do think it most accurately refers to whenever you have a human pretending to be an AI or whether narrow or general. So, yeah, there isn't this automation doing this. It's actually just being outsourced to people who are doing it in the background. So it's complicated. But the history of it is fascinating. The Mechanical Turk story itself is fascinating. There's a lot of wrinkles to a lot of interesting aspects to it. And how the term has sort of come full circle to like the Amazon Mechanical Turk. And now, unfortunately, everyone thinks that's the only thing that it refers to. But there's actually a much more rich story behind it.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Neat.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Right. But, Evan, you were specifically referring to Amazon's Mechanical Turk.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Correct. That was what the article was referring to. Yes.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Right.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's right.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It's mechanical?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, yeah, the Mechanical Turk is people. Right. That's the thing.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' One day I want us to revisit the story about as long as Mechanical Turk in the history of it, which is amazing, Steve. I also want to one day revisit the story about how the heck does that chicken play tic tac toe?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, that's also a cheat, right? It's the same thing.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And also the horse who would stomp his foot. What was his name?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Clever Hans.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Clever Hans. Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Which you can read about in our book, by the way. All right. Let's go on with science or fiction.<br />
<br />
== Science or Fiction <small>()</small> ==<br />
<br />
{{SOFinfo<br />
|item1 = Psychologists find that people who habitually engage in impressive-sounding BS are better able to detect BS in others. <br />
|link1 = <ref>[https://uwaterloo.ca/news/media/research-shows-people-who-bs-are-more-likely-fall-bs]</ref><br />
<br />
|item2 = A new study finds that people with aphantasia show no fear reaction to scary stories, while showing typical fear reactions to scary images.<br />
|link2 = <ref>[https://neurosciencenews.com/aphantasia-fear-horror-18809/]</ref><br />
<br />
|item3 = Physicists have measured the smallest gravitational field to date, produced by an object of only 90 mg.<br />
|link3 = <ref>[ https://medienportal.univie.ac.at/presse/aktuelle-pressemeldungen/detailansicht/artikel/wie-ein-marienkaefer-die-raumzeit-kruemmt/]</ref><br />
<br />
|}}<br />
<br />
{{SOFResults<br />
|fiction = BS<br />
|science1 = aphantasia <br />
|science2 = smallest gravitational field<br />
<br />
|rogue1 =Evan<br />
|answer1 = aphantasia<br />
<br />
|rogue2 =Jay<br />
|answer2 =BS<br />
<br />
|rogue3 =Cara<br />
|answer3 =BS<br />
<br />
|rogue4 =Bob<br />
|answer4 = BS<br />
<br />
|host =Steve<br />
<br />
|sweep = <!-- all the Rogues guessed wrong --><br />
|clever = <!-- each item was guessed (Steve's preferred result) --><br />
|win = <!-- at least one Rogue guessed wrong, but not them all --><br />
|swept = <!-- all the Rogues guessed right --><br />
}}<br />
''Voice-over: It's time for Science or Fiction.''<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Each week, I come up with three science news items or facts, two real, one fake. Then I challenge my panel of skeptics to tell me which one is the fake. Three regular news items this week. Are you guys ready?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Let's do it.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' OK.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Here we go. Listen carefully. Item number one, psychologists find that people who habitually engage in impressive sounding BS are better able to detect BS in others. Item number two, a new study finds that people with aphantasia show no fear reaction to scary stories while showing typical fear reactions to scary images. And item number three, physicists have measured the smallest gravitational field to date produced by an object of only 90 milligrams. Evan, go first.<br />
<br />
=== Evan's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''E:''' People who habitually engage in impressive sounding BS are better able to detect the BS in others. Seems reasonable, I think. My father used to say you can't BS a BSer. So I think that has a little something to do with this in a certain sense. And perhaps they do have the means to flesh out the intricacies, the small details, the small clues that give away that sort of information. So maybe that that one seems reasonable. The next one about aphantasia, which I've not heard before.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I'll explain that to you.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yes, you have. We've talked about it on the show.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Have we?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We've talked about it on the show.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' We talk about a lot of stuff on the show.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's the people who have an inability to have an internal mental image of something. They can't control mental images.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' We refer to it as having no mind's eye.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' So if that were the case, then why would they show typical fear to scary images?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Well, there's visual images, right?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You have to show them scary picture.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I see.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' They react with fear. If they're told a scary story, that doesn't affect them.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Well, this one's the challenging because it's hard. It's hard to put yourself sort of in that mindset and be that person who might be experiencing that to try to get a glimpse as to if this one might be true or not. Really, really tricky. So I don't know that that one's a problem per se. But the measurement of the smallest gravitational field to date, an object only 90 milligrams. What's an object that would be 90 milligrams?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Flea poop.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I'll just tell you that the 90 milligrams, the example of that is a ladybug. That was the go to example for what's 90 milligrams.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' And they were able to detect it in something this small. Hmm. Well, I guess I got to guess. I will say that the aphantasia one, I'll say that one's the fiction. I have kind of the least amount of feeling for this one in that I cannot put myself in those shoes to figure this one out per se. So I'm going to guess that that one's going to wind up being the fake.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' OK, Jay.<br />
<br />
=== Jay's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''J:''' OK, let's go down the line here. So psychologists find that people who habitually engage in impressive sounding B.S. are better able to detect B.S. and others right out of the gate with this one I feel like I don't see why someone that is a B.S. or would be able to innately detect other people's lies. I mean, I think it is the person that is a liar, a good liar. You know what I mean? They effective at it. What if they're just not good at it? You know, and they're looking for bad lying skills. You know what I mean? I know that doesn't sound I'm not being I'm not using really fancy language there, but I just don't see any reason why B.S. or would be able to be better at picking it up just because they concoct lies in their head. But let's go down here. Now, let's go to the one about the aphantasia. They're not showing a fear reaction to scary stories, but they're showing normal fear reaction to scary images. That makes perfect sense to me, because if they're hearing a story, they're not being able to visualize the story. So that makes sense. So I say that one is definitely science. And then this last one about the physicist detecting a gravitational field in a small object. To me, it's not the size of the object-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But the motion of the ocean.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It's not the size of the object. I think everything that has the tiniest bit of mass creates gravity. I think the real interesting part of this, if it's true, is that they're able to detect such light amounts or tiny amounts of gravity. That's the thing that's being discussed here. Yeah. And I'm like, OK, sure. They came up with an instrument that can pick out a tiny, tiny little bit of gravitational fluctuation. That's not as impressive as a B.S. or being able to detect B.S. I think that's what's B.S.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Wow.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' OK, Cara.<br />
<br />
=== Cara's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, I'm kind of feeling like I want to go to go with Jay on this. I definitely see the aphantasia one being science, of course. Part of scary movies, part of haunted houses is sound is smell. But the vast majority of majority of it is visual imagery. So I think that if you couldn't visualize the story, it would lose some of that fear component. I agree with Jay on the gravitational field, too. It's just how how minimally can we detect it? I think it's still there. So the question is, do we have the tools and the tricks to be able to detect it? But the B.S. detector one, it just reminds me, I feel like recently we talked about how it's hard to tell when somebody's lying. It's just really, really hard to tell when somebody's lying. And so if somebody is good at lying, I don't see why that would make them better at being able to tell if somebody else is lying. It doesn't seem like it would be sufficient because fundamentally detecting B.S. is difficult. So for that reason, I think I'm going to go with Jay and say that that one's a fiction.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' OK, and Bob.<br />
<br />
=== Bob's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, I mean, I don't have a lot to add since I'm last here. Number three, the the gravitational field impressive for something that's only 90 milligrams, that's that's impressive. Two, the no fear reaction. Yeah, it seems kind of obvious if you can't picture it in your mind. So that means that a lot of our fear to scary stories is the is the mental component and not just what's happening, but being actually to visualize it happening. So that's actually interesting and it makes a lot of sense. And so that means that the the bullshit detector one, the B.S. is is probably that seems like the least likely. So I'll say that's fiction.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #3 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. So Evans out on his own with the aphantasia, but you all agree that physicists have measured the smallest gravitational field to date produced by an object of only 90 milligrams or the the mass of a ladybug. You all think this one is science and this one is science.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yay!<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So how did they do it? So do you know how classically, like hundreds of years ago, they measured gravitational force of of objects?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' How long ago, Steve?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Seventeen ninety seven. This technique was first.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Oh, my God. I mean, I would I didn't even know how like on a small scale. I have no idea.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So in 1797, a researcher by the name of Cavendish, using a method called the Cavendish method. Named after him, was able to measure the was able to record the effect of the gravity of a lead ball that weighed one hundred and sixty kilograms, hundred sixty kilograms, which at the time was thought that was amazing that you could measure the gravitational field of something that this was 30 centimeter chunk of lead, not like an asteroid or a planet. And so what he did was he used a torsion pendulum. So imagine you have a rod with balls at each end, right? Kind of like a baton and then that is suspended from the middle by a very thin wire. So it's like the bar is horizontal, suspended from a third from a vertical wire. So the the rod can twist, right? You could freely spin.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Like a mobile.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, right. Exactly. And then you put the mass next to one end and see if it twists just a tiny little bit. That's the Cavendish experiment. So the so researchers in Vienna replicated the Cavendish experiment, but they did it on the micro scale, two millimeter gold spheres. So that's weighing 90 milligrams. So they had these gold spheres at the end of the rods suspended by a wire that was a glass fiber, a few thousands of a millimeter in diameter. So that would be the ideas that would be free to free to rotate. And then they used another gold sphere of two millimeters, 90 milligrams as the as the mass, which they had swinging back and forth so that like a pendulum, right, so that it would go to one end of the rod and then the other end of the rod. And that would create so its gravitational attraction, would swing back and forth from one end of the rod to the other end of the rod. And this would cause the rod to rotate with the same frequency to torsion one way and the other by a few millionths of a millimeter.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, my God.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' A few millions of a millimeter.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' How did they know that it wasn't just like wind?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Hang on. And this was detected by a laser, right? So that that tiny movement. So that was kind of the key is like, how could they detect this tiny movement? Now, Cara, you ask a perfectly cromulant question. You know, this has got to be an incredibly sensitive experimental set up. And how do they?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, they put it in the vacuum tube.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So it's obviously inside. So they make sure there's no air movement whatsoever. They had to use a barrier to block electrostatic forces, because that would be enough to overwhelm gravitational forces. And they had to do it like in the wee hours of the morning and on holidays, because traffic on the street outside would be enough to screw it up. So, yeah, they had to like minimize environmental noise. And they were able to detect it because they had to they would they were able to pull the signal out of the background noise because it would have a very specific frequency. Right. They were they knew what they were looking for.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Not as sensitive as LIGO, but still pretty sensitive.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Right. Still pretty sensitive. So yeah, so 90 milligram gravitation. Now they plan this is ambitious, but they say they're planning on progressing this experiment and they want to be able to measure the gravitational field of objects thousands of times lighter. So we'll see.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Wow.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Wow. Thousands.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. I feel like they're going to have to do that in a in a chamber.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. Yeah, I agree. Like in somewhere special in a vacuum-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Where they remove the air. Yeah, it seems like the only way to. Yeah.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #1 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. Let's go back to number one. Psychologists find that people who habitually engage in impressive sounding BS are better able to detect BS in others. Evan, you believe your father, who famously told you that you can't BS a BSer. Funny enough, our father told us that all the time as well. The implication being that he was a BSer. So don't try to fool him. Right?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Right.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So is that correct? Or is is is everyone else correct that it gives you no ability to do that? So this one is the fiction. Sorry, Evan. In fact-<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I blame my father.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' In fact, in this study, there were some people, they were worse. They were actually worse at detecting.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Was it because they were ballsy about what they thought they could do?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well the study wasn't designed to to answer that question. But not only were they worse, but there was a dose response curve, right? Meaning that the more of a BSer they were, the worse they were at detecting BS in others. And also they had fake news headlines. They were worse at identifying which headlines were fake as well. And they tried to control for reflective thinking, metacognitive skills and cognitive ability, and those did not explain the differences. So they did. Yeah, they did try to. This is always a difficulty in situations like this where there's confounding factors. They tried to control for as many as they could think of.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' What did they hypothesize in the discussion? Did they take its confidence?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, they think that they're there because they are very impressed with pseudo profound bullshit. So the thing that makes them susceptible to it is the same thing that makes them do it.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Vulnerable to it. Yeah. So what you do is make friends with like an extreme bullshitter. And then so so have him say, what do you think of that guy? Is he telling the truth? And then you go with the opposite of what he says?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, yeah. It's like George Costanza, like just-<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Canary in a coal mine.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' -do everything exactly opposite what your intuition says you should do. You guys remember that episode?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yes, I loved it. It's good to see him successful for a little while.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So they're thinking is that their their key malfunction is that they mistake superficial profoundness for actual profoundness. So they use superficial profoundness themselves, but they're also vulnerable to it. But that's the core.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Makes sense. Makes sense.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' There must be a psychological instrument that has been developed over the past decade, like the Chopra test that you can give to.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' There is.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, yeah, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' There is. There's a standard. We've talked about this before. There's a standardized test. It's the superficial bullshit test.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yes.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' This is not the first study to use that they're building off of that earlier research.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, I love that. So, yeah, we could we could take this sample and test them with that and see what happens.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' There is also a technical definition of bullshit in the psychological literature. Bullshitting is not lying. It's saying things with a complete indifference to whether or not it's true. So that may seem like a subtle difference.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So like trump. Well, it's like his foundational character trait.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It could be true. You don't know if it's true or not. You don't care if it's true or not. You not deliberately lying. It's just that you're saying something because it sounds good, not because you think it's true or not. It doesn't matter. All right. <br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #2 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All of this means that a new study finds that people with aphantasia show no fear reaction to scary stories while showing typical fear reactions to scary images is science. And I think you guys pretty much nailed this one. This one, I thought, was was was the easier of the three. And because it makes perfect sense. And it's true. This was the hypothesis that the researchers were studying. The idea is that when you're hearing a scary story is imagining what's happening in the story necessary to really have an emotional fear reaction. So they they measured fear physiologically. They basically did a sweat test. And as a control, they had people without without aphantasia hear the same story and their sweat increased as the story built and to its scary climactic ending. And the people with aphantasia did not sweat. Then they did that both groups where they showed them scary images like a viper with fangs exposed and whatever other things. And they had similar fear reactions to these scary images. So the inability to imagine what's happening in a story blunted, at least to the point where it didn't show up physiologically in this study, the emotional reaction to the story itself. So that's interesting.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I wonder what other kind of stories or audible information is blunted for them. I mean just like when you're talking to them. How else is that manifested?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, but it's hard. It's hard to know. Right. Because like when you say blunted, it's like compared to what compared to you or compared to their other experiences.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Compared to normal people.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I would like to see this study replicated with erotic stimuli, because not for pervy reasons, just because I think that that's a really powerful stimuli. Just imagine-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's an easy study to do.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's easy. And there's and there's obvious physiological responses as well.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But I wonder if there'd be some crossover effects because so with fear based stories, usually the things that are scary in a scary movie, like the what are they called?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The jump scare?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Like the the things where the music changes really fast.<br />
<br />
'''B/S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I know there's a phenomenon. There's a word for that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The jump scare?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. So those things usually get us. And those would still get somebody who's scared or who has a fantasia, of course. But those don't exist in ghost stories. And so we're really having to build up a scary imagery. But with porn versus, let's say, erotica, like an erotica novel, I wonder if they can tap into a sensory memory, feeling sex as opposed to just seeing sex within their mind's eye.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, that's why it'd be fascinating.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It would be. And you know, what's really cool about the study, too, is that not only does it give us insight into how a fantasics process, but it also gives us insight into potential screening tools for this, because afantasia, from what I understand, is very similar to synesthesia in that a lot of people don't know they have it. Until it's pointed out to them.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. It's normal for them. Right.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's totally normal for them. Right. So and it's an internal experience. So you have no reference point. But like with I remember a really cool story about a researcher who was looking at synesthesia and he put a sign out in front of the laboratory that said, does this sign look wrong to you? And all the letters were different bright colors and textures. And synesthetes were like, I hate this. Like that G should not be green. And why is that R fuzzy? So I wonder if telling somebody a story and measuring their response would be a cool kind of baseline screening tool.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, I think there's a lot of potential here.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' What about the other end of the spectrum, though? What about people that are super imaginers?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's the fantasy prone personality. They are better storytellers.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yes, but-<br />
<br />
'''S:''' People who are fantasy prone.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' But I'm talking more of the the detail and of the mental imagery.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Bob, that's what I'm talking about, too. That's what fantasy prone is. Yes.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' They're better storytellers.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' They are better able to imagine things. They're much more imaginative and creative. They're better storytellers. Things they hallucinate even they see things. They have imaginary friends to all there. It's at the other end of the spectrum.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' But I remember talking to a guy-<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That was imaginary Bob.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Doesn't strike me as fantasy prone necessarily. But he said that when he would imagine something, he can like literally see it, like almost literally see is.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Maybe that is.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, but also, again, there's a subjective component there to say like, that is your red, my red. Well, we know what the wavelength of a red. So there is an objective, right? Quantitative. Sure. And then there's the qualia, like you said. And so this guy's saying, I can see so much detail like anybody could say that. I see a lot of detail in my imagination. At what level is that hyper? At what level is that?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, it's hard to compare because you don't know what other what other people are experiencing. But if you try to measure it in some way, then they do. The fantasy prone people do score higher on those measures. Fascinating.<br />
<br />
== Skeptical Quote of the Week <small>()</small> ==<br />
<br />
<blockquote>Understand well, as I may. My comprehension can only be an infinitesimal fraction of all I want to understand.<br>– Ada Lovelace (1815-1852), an English mathematician and writer. </blockquote><br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, Evan, give us a quote.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' "Understand well, as I may. My comprehension can only be an infinitesimal fraction of all I want to understand." Ada Lovelace.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' She was awesome.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' She was. Also, I love the word infinitesimal.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yes, me too.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Is it better than habitable?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It's close.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I think it's a more useful word. It's a better word fundamentally. But does it sound better than hablabamos? Habitable, I don't know.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, I know that's always a profound realization. Or just like when I think about as much as any individual person knows, there's just a massive amount of stuff you don't know. It is a tiny slice. You will only ever know a tiny slice of all there is to know. And humanity only currently understands a tiny slice of all there is to know.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Remember when Carl Sagan and Cosmos talked about it in about a lifetime, you could read about maybe 10,000 books. I mean, that is so small compared to the sum of knowledge that is out there.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So choose wisely. All right, guys. Well, thank you for joining me this week.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Sure man.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Thank you.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Thanks Steve.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Any week you're asked to come I'm there, brother.<br />
<br />
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'''S:''' —and until next week, this is your {{SGU}}. <!-- typically this is the last thing before the Outro --> <br />
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}}</div>Hearmepurrhttps://www.sgutranscripts.org/w/index.php?title=SGU_Episode_813&diff=19114SGU Episode 8132024-01-19T08:55:27Z<p>Hearmepurr: episode done</p>
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|qowText = All human experience proves over and over again that any success which comes through meanness, trickery, fraud, and dishonor is but emptiness and will only be a torment to its possessor.<br />
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== Introduction ==<br />
''Voiceover: You're listening to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.'' <br />
<br />
'''S:''' Hello and welcome to the {{SGU|link=y}}. Today is Tuesday, February 2<sup>nd</sup>, 2021, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella... <br />
<br />
'''B:''' Hey, everybody!<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Cara Santa Maria... <br />
<br />
'''C:''' Howdy. <br />
<br />
'''S:''' Jay Novella... <br />
<br />
'''J:''' Hey guys. <br />
<br />
'''S:''' ...and Evan Bernstein. <br />
<br />
'''E:''' Happy Whistle Pig Day.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' What's a whistle pig?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' A groundhog.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' A groundhog.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, that's a whistle pig? I wondered because that's also a type of rum. No, not rum. Whiskey. Rye whiskey.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's right.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's one of the common names for a groundhog.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yep. Wood shock, ground pig, whistler, thick wood badger, it's got all kinds of names.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Weird. I always just heard groundhog. Puxatani Phil. Is that his name?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. Puxatani Phil. Did you watch the movie Groundhog Day, Cara?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yes. I've seen it. It's repetitive.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That movie was wonderful.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' One takeaway.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Did you see the Twilight Zone episode that's related to that concept?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No, but I feel like I've seen that iterated so many times.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It has been.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Star Trek, Star Trek Next Gen had an episode.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That guy, Andy Samberg from SNL, he did a movie, I think it's called Palm Springs on Hulu. It's pretty good. And it's got that kind of Groundhog Day vibe to it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Cara, so I understand you got your second dose of the vaccine already.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I did. I went into the clinic last Wednesday, got the jab in my arm. So remember, that's three weeks to the day after I got the first jab. The first jab...<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Did you go to Dodger Stadium to get it?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I did not. Oh my gosh. Wait, I have to tell you guys this first, or you might have seen it in the news. Did you see that anti-vax protesters shut down the site for at least an hour?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, that was national news.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' What does that exactly mean?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' They were blocking the entrance. And so they had to shut everything down so that they could get a handle on the situation, get rid of the chaos, restore... Because here's the thing about the Dodger Stadium vaccine site. I have a friend who just took his dad to drive through. They're like building it as it's happening. It's bananas, the number of, I mean, 5,740 doses at one site, sometimes up to over 7,000 doses a day. So it's this big drive-through. And think about it. It's Dodger Stadium. It's in the parking lot of Dodger Stadium. It's huge. And that's where I went historically to get COVID tests. And this is free. So people are getting in their cars. They're waiting in line for hours. And anti-vax protesters block the entrance, shut the whole thing down. People who are desperate to get this vaccine, it's their turn. They've been patiently waiting, weren't able to get it, at least not right away. It could have been worse, sure. It makes my blood boil.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, totally. They said they gave out all the doses. It didn't delay any doses. Basically the net result was the people who were there at the time had to wait an extra hour in their car.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And some of these people are, you think about it, 75 or older, some of these people are in ill health.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And they organized on Facebook.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And they played Plan-Demic.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' They played Plan-Demic. When they were planning it, they told each other, don't wear MAGA apparel because they didn't want to politicize it. Really? That was your goal, to not politicize vaccines?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But they know that there are ties to extreme right-wing. So I kept saying anti-vax, but most of the reporting on it says anti-vax and extreme right-wing groups shut down. So it was definitely organized.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And also one of the groups was a militant anti-masker group. So it's all mish-mashed together now.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So not only is the entrance shut down, but it shut down because there are these people who are not wearing, yeah, I'm looking at the images. They're not wearing masks and they're holding up like banana signs. Moderna is not a vaccine, it's gene therapy. Like just turn back now, they're going to microchip you, COVID equals scam.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I mean, there's got to be some fun aspect to simply being able to make up your reality.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, it's called fantasy just don't confuse entertainment with reality.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Life is not a LARP, folks.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Unfortunately. So I love the fact that their whole conspiracy theory is that the epidemic and the vaccine, it's all just a ruse so that Bill Gates can inject everybody with chips so that he could track us.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, and also to prevent Trump from being elected president.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Oh, yeah? Otherwise, there's no way that he could get all of us to carry around a computer chip everywhere we go that allows people to track what we do and where we are.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, no way. That's ludicrous.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Who would carry around a device that could monitor you all the time?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I mean, I'm optimistic about the future but Jesus, I got limits.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And get this, they'll make you pay for it. And upgrade it frequently.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, at least the COVID vaccine is free. But it is pretty ludicrous that the two biggest arguments against are either that Bill Gates is microchipping you or this was some sort of ruse that somehow connects back to Trump losing the election, both of which are very America centric views as if the rest of the world is not reeling from this pandemic.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, you're right.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's just they can't see past their own hand in front of their face.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's a good point, Cara. I do notice that a lot of the American conspiracies are not only American centric, they have on American blinders, like the whatever, like all the conspiracies that involve hiding information or faking information. So that would need to involve the governments around the world, but you forget the rest of the world exsists.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Even hostile governments who would never hide our secrets.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Right, exactly. So why was Russia not exposing the fact that we didn't send a rocket to the moon? Why did that? So then to to escape from that, they say, well, that's because the entire world is secretly being run by a shadow worldwide government. Yeah, that's how you get to that point.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Illuminati and all that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, the Build-a-Bear group, my favorite one.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Build-a-Bear. I love those things.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Wait, wait, wait. Am I missing something? Is there like a Build-a-Bear conspiracy?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's Bilderberg. I can't say that without thinking Build-a-Bear. And they're controlling the world with giant Jewish space lasers.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, my gosh. I'm so glad. At least Mitch McConnell was like, yeah, this is not OK, you guys.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' We know they're Jewish because they don't fire on the Sabbath.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So Cara, you got jabbed.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, right. So I do want to tell you guys, though, about my vaccine experience. So three weeks ago, or three and a half weeks now, I got the first jab of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine in my arm, didn't feel the needle at all. It was a very easy shot, waited 15 minutes, no side effects, went home, went throughout my day. And I'd say about eight hours later that day, my arm just started to get really sore. And for probably a good solid two days, it was pretty sore, hard to lift over my head, just felt like somebody punched me really hard in the arm, which to me is like, OK, I can deal with it. And I've definitely had other vaccines that have similar local immune responses with the inflammation and the pain. And then three weeks later, I go in and I get my second jab. Luckily, because I work at a hospital, some people had already kind of warned me there for some people, not everybody, for some people, there is a pretty severe immune response that can occur. So be ready for it. Night clockwork about 12 hours later, so I got the vaccine at 11 a.m. At about 11 p.m., it was just fever, chills, malaise, teeth chattering. I sweat through my through my sheets that night. I felt pretty bad. I took a bath, that helped. I took naproxen, that helped. And for the next two days, so I'd say the first night, it felt like I had the flu. They were definitely flu-like symptoms, obviously it was not the flu. And then the next two days, it was more like I had a cold. It was not quite as severe, but I was still a little achy and fatigued. Now I'm 100% again. And what I kept experiencing was this phenomenon of kind of cognitive dissonance, where I was like, I know I'm not actually sick, but my body, for all intents and purposes, is doing the same thing it would do if I had an infection. I don't have an infection. I have a vaccination.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But most of the symptoms are the immune system anyway.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Totally. It's so funny that you think about the fact when you take naproxen, ibuprofen, and whatever, these NSAIDs, like you're reducing inflammation and it really works. I felt considerably better when I took an NSAID because I was reducing all that inflammation and it brought my fever down.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, I got the Moderna, not the Pfizer, had the exact same reaction to the first dose, sore arm for two days. I get my second dose in two days. On the Friday live stream, I will be able to talk about what my reaction was. But I'm hearing a lot of the same things that the second dose, the reaction to the second dose is a lot more vigorous than the first one, which is actually makes sense. That's why you take two doses and that's why they're timed to the way they are. It's because you're supposed to have a bigger immune response the second time around. So in a way, it's good that it says that the vaccine's working, but also just be ready for it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's what I'm thinking.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' How common is that level of reaction?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well we have that data from the trial, so we have the percentages in front of me. The incidence of, this is from the second dose, so fatigue was 59.4%, headaches 51%, muscle pain 37%, joint pain 29%, chills 35%, fever 15.8%, with similar numbers between the Pfizer and the Moderna vaccine. So yeah, those are the symptoms that are likely to occur with the second dose.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Obviously if the fever is significant, that's when you call your doctor. If it doesn't go away within three to four days, that's when you call your doctor. But it is normal to have that range of reactions. You're not allergic to the vaccine. If this comes 12 hours later and you feel like you have the flu, that is a normal immune response. My worry about talking about it on air, and we were just discussing this, is I don't want to turn anybody away from getting vaccinated. Please get vaccinated if you're able. That said, I don't like that people don't seem to know this, that this is a normal reaction. So I think more knowledge is better. Expect it as part of the process, and if you don't get it, good on you. I'm jealous.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You're lucky. On the CDC website, it says you might get fevers, chills, tiredness, headache, pain and swelling. They list all the side effects, but they don't really put it into perspective.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No. Because they make you think like, yeah, that's a normal vaccine reaction. It's like, I've never felt that way from any other vaccine. It's the first time I've ever had those reactions to the vaccine.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Cara, did you get the chills?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I got the chills.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Were they multiplying?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh yeah. They were multiplying. I was losing control. For sure. I was losing control. At a certain point, I Googled if it's safe to take a bath when you have a fever. I was like, is this going to be bad for you? My fever was like 99.5. It was not even that high.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's not even technically a fever.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I know. I was like, it's okay. I can take a warm bath. That helped so much. Oh my gosh. So much.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Right now, we're what? Two-fifths vaccinated, or you're almost on your second dose, Steve?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Second dose in two days, and then it takes a couple of weeks to maximize your antibody response.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' 10 to 14 days, something like that. I'm six days out, so I'm close. I'm so close.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' All right. So the SGU will survive.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I will survive.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' So far, so good.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's a medley tonight.<br />
<br />
== Forgotten Superheroes of Science <small>(12:21)</small> ==<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. Let's go on with the show. Bob, you're going to start us off with a forgotten superhero of science.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, man. It's been a while. So welcome to Forgotten Superheroes of Science. This time out, I'll be discussing Rita Levy Montalcini, 1909 to 2012. She won the 1986 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the discovery of nerve growth factor. Now, Levy Montalcini thought she'd be a writer when she grew up, but she decided to become a doctor after seeing a family friend die of stomach cancer, nasty. Steve, did you have a similar epiphany growing up when you decided to be a doctor?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Okay. Moving on, her Italian father didn't want her to attend college, as it might interfere with her being a wife and mother. He eventually supported her desire to become a doctor, which I think is saying a lot, especially for an Italian dad in the 1930s. Growing up with a big Italian family, Steve, Jay, I think you would agree. I think I have some insight into that type of reaction. Levy Montalcini graduated from in 1936, but before long, the war intervened with her science plans, specifically Mussolini's 1938 Manifesto of Race, which resulted in laws preventing Jews from academic careers. Pretty nasty stuff there. She famously set up a laboratory in her bedroom, though, and studied the growth of nerve fibers in chicken embryos. That actually laid the foundation for work she did after the war at Washington University in St. Louis, where she held a position of research associate, associate professor, and then full professor for 30 years. Her most important work was isolating this nerve growth factor. When she placed tumors inside of these chicken embryos, she discovered that the tumors released an unknown growth factor that made the nerve cells grow at an amazing rate, never been seen before. She was the first woman to receive the Max Weinstein Award for the United Cerebral Palsy Association due to her significant contributions into neurological research. Levy Montalcini received her Nobel Prize along with Stanley Cohen in 1986 in the physiology or medicine category. This was for their research for the nerve growth factor, NGF, the protein that causes cell growth due to stimulated nerve tissue. So an amazing life. Remember Rita Levy Montalcini mentioned here to your friends, perhaps when discussing neurotrophic factors or maybe tropomyosin receptor kinase, or of course, adrenocortico-trophic hormones. Duh.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You know, the discovery of the nerve growth factor is huge, although I still have a little bit of a problem with calling somebody who won a Nobel Prize a forgotten superhero, I have to say.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Have you ever heard of her?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Well, you don't count. Jay, Evan, Cara, have you ever heard of her?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I have not.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I've heard of her research, so I think I've probably, I don't know if I connected her name to it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So it's in the gray zone. I just think they're not quite as forgotten as some other people.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, not quite, not quite, but you know, still a little forgotten.<br />
<br />
== News Items ==<br />
<br />
=== Dunning Kruger Validity <small>(15:29)</small> ===<br />
* [https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0160289620300271 The Dunning-Kruger effect is (mostly) a statistical artefact: Valid approaches to testing the hypothesis with individual differences data]<ref>[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0160289620300271 SienceDirect: The Dunning-Kruger effect is (mostly) a statistical artefact: Valid approaches to testing the hypothesis with individual differences data]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, Cara. So this is when I read this, I got a little sad, but I had to do a deep dive on it. I'm interested to see, I know we sort of separately did our deep dives, I'm curious as to what your take on this is, is the Dunning-Kruger effect real?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So my big answer is, what do you think? It's complicated.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Sort of. Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's complicated.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It's really complicated.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So this is not the first nor will it be the last article that is critical of the Dunning-Kruger effect. There are many, many critical journal articles written about the Dunning-Kruger effect, especially right after Dunning and Kruger published their first paper on this phenomenon in 1999. We saw a bunch of people saying, no, no, no, no, no, this can't be real. This is statistical. This is something else entirely. And they at the time would systematically kind of reply to people and say, well, here, look at this evidence, here, look at that evidence. One thing that I will say to Dunning and Kruger's credit, which I've always appreciated and to the many studies that have replicated the Dunning-Kruger effect, which I've often appreciated, very often you have access to the raw data. In this newest paper, it's very difficult to replicate this study because they don't give you access to the data, which means that you have to back replicate. Luckily for us, some people have done that online already, kind of in a in a quick and dirty back of the napkin way. So we're going to get to that. Let's talk for a second about what Dunning and Kruger actually hypothesized, because I even don't think that the description of it within this new study really fully captures the Dunning-Kruger effect as it was described by David Dunning and Jason Kruger. So the Dunning-Kruger effect says basically that our metacognition is necessary in order for us to be able to accurately judge our ability to perform certain skills or tasks. So what they found is sort of the antithesis of that, that people who did very poorly on very specific tasks tended to rate themselves as doing better. In the worst that they did, the bigger that gap in their self-assessed and their objectively assessed measures. So Dunning and Kruger did a few studies when they first published. One of them was about, I think, logical reasoning. One of them was about humor, which is kind of funny. So somehow they were able to assess whether somebody thought they were funny or whether somebody was funny. And they showed...<br />
<br />
'''S:''' In my heart, I know that I'm funny.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Exactly.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Cara, can I clarify one thing before we go on? Because almost, almost every time I hear somebody quote the Dunning-Kruger effect, they get it wrong. I just wanted to point out that the Dunning-Kruger effect, as described in that original paper, is not that the less you know, the higher you rate yourself, the slope still goes down. People who performed worse still rated themselves lower. It's just that the gap was bigger. There was a difference between how well they rated themselves and how well they performed got bigger. They were worse at rating themselves. But also, everyone rated themselves above 50%, which obviously half are wrong. And when you get to about the 75th percentile, people actually underestimate their performance.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It crosses over. Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Just to be more specific.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And that's a whole other part of the Dunning-Kruger effect that nobody really mentions in any of this new kerfuffle around this article. But basically, Dunning and Kruger figured out, or they think that they figured out why there's a crossover effect at the end. So basically what happened was that the people who rated them, the people who scored in the highest quartile, because that's another statistical problem with this we'll get to, is the quartile thing. But the people who, in the top 25% of people who performed the best on whatever task they were given, actually rated themselves as having performed poorer. And so they're like, well, what's that about? But then they showed them other people's tests. And they go, oh crap, I think I did better and adjusted their scores. So their explanation for why at the end, at the top quartile, people rate themselves as actually doing poorer than they did is because they're overestimating everybody else's abilities too. Isn't that interesting? So most people overestimate their own abilities. A lot of people overestimate other people's abilities too. The people at that tippy top of competence tend to think other people are better at the thing than they are. And they tend to say at that point, through humility, I'm probably not as good at it, which is a function, of course, of being an expert in something, is knowing what you don't know. Basically, the people on the lower end of performance don't know what they don't know. And because of that, they think that they're going to do better, or they think they are better at a particular task. OK, so that's kind of Dunning-Kruger in a nutshell. It's not that stupid people don't know they're stupid. That's, I think, a really, really bastardized simplification of it. And you'll notice that Dunning and Kruger never use the word stupid. They always use the word ignorance, because what they're talking about is gaps in knowledge. Lack of information. Also, Dunning-Kruger did not do their experimentation utilizing intelligence tests. Neither did most of the people who have replicated the study. So the new article, which was published in Intelligence. So this new article that was just recently published this past year, the Dunning-Kruger effect is parentheses, mostly close parentheses, a statistical artifact, valid approaches to testing the hypothesis with individual differences data. They did three different things in this study. We'll talk about all three. Their argument, though, their central core argument is that what we think of as the Dunning-Kruger effect is actually they call them two statistical artifacts, which is a problem. But what they're really talking about is one statistical artifact and one cognitive bias. So they claim that it has to do with regression to the mean, which we can get to. And we'll talk about that Dunning and Kruger themselves said in their very first article, there is likely a regression to mean phenomenon happening here. We just don't think it accounts for all the variants. So it's not like this is shining a light on anything new. Even Dunning and Kruger knew that it was likely that we were also looking at regression to the mean. But apparently, their argument is this is an effect that's above and beyond regression to the mean. So we'll come back to that. The other thing that the new paper asserts is that it's also the better than average heuristic, which they consistently call a statistical bias. But it's not a statistical bias. The better than average heuristic basically claims that people have a tendency to rate themselves or to, as it was first listed by the author, assimilate positively evaluated social objects toward ideal trait conceptions. What they're basically saying is that people think of an ideal when they think of a trait. So if you're asking them, how well would you do on a measure of honesty? How well would you do on a measure of humor, of musical ability? They think of the ideal, and they think of that ideal as the top of the scale. And then they rate themselves according to the ideal. But the ideal is not usually the top of the scale. The ideal is something that nobody has. So they end up overestimating their own abilities. And this is what we see as a part of a larger phenomenon, which is called illusory superiority. And as you referenced it, Steve, we all tend to think that we're kind of better than average, which is statistically impossible. We can't all be better than average. And we see this over and over in studies. One other caveat that I have to say, though, is this is culture bound. And we often forget to talk about the fact that this is culture bound. Most of these studies that we're looking at were done in America. And Americans think they're really good at everything. But when you actually start to look at certain cultures, especially in East Asia, you find that people underestimate their skills as a form of social and cultural humility. So we've got to remember that, too. So basically, the researchers are saying, we believe, or we are testing the hypothesis. I think I want to be fair to them. They're not saying we believe. They're saying, let's test the hypothesis that the Dunning-Kruger effect isn't actually a real phenomenon, that it's an artifact that's made up of the statistical artifact, which is regression to the mean, and the bias of illusory superiority, or more specifically, the better than average heuristic. Unfortunately, they lump those things both together as statistical artifacts, which I think is a fundamental flaw in the way they write their paper. Regression to the mean, it's simply, this is a statistical artifact. It's basically saying, if you look at any normal curve, the normal curve bulges in the middle, right? The mean, median, and mode are in the middle. So there's more people in the middle. If you pick random points on that curve at any given time, they're going to regress to the mean the more points you pick. Does that make sense to everybody? You might start with an outlier, but eventually, the more times you sample that data, the closer you're going to get to the average. So then in the study, they say, we're going to test this basically two main ways. The first way is we're going to set up fake data. We're not going to actually take data from people. We're just going to make up data that's clean data that would have no psychological biases in it because it's just, it's clean, random data. And then we're going to see what happens if we plot it the way that Dunning and Kruger and most of the people that have replicated the Dunning-Kruger effect did. So here comes the first problem with Dunning and Kruger, which I admit is a problem and most researchers do as well. The way that they chunked out the data that they collected. So they looked, remember, at actual skill and perceived skill, and they compared the two. Instead of actually drawing a smooth line, they decided, we're going to break it up into quartiles. We're going to say the lowest group, the lowest 25%, the low average group, that's the next 25%, the high average group, which is the next 25%, and then the highest group, the next 25%, four quartiles. And we're going to average those out and just compare the quartiles to each other. So when they did that, you get the famous Dunning-Kruger curve. And it's been replicated so many times, there are actual meta-analyses that show in almost every setting, we can find a Dunning-Kruger effect. So these researchers said, we think that if you do that with any data, you're going to find that weird line. And so they invented data. They invented data where they said people are going to, like fake people, right, like data points, have a skill of X, and they're going to rate that skill as being 25% better than X. And then they plotted it, and they found that the curve moves. It's not a straight line. So it's not that the people on the low end are 25% underestimating and the people on the high end are 25% underestimating. The line shifts according to the Dunning-Kruger illusion. And so because they're saying we were able to show this purely statistically with no humans, Dunning-Kruger doesn't exist. There are a lot of responses to that. And the best ones that I found are that just because you can show it statistically, it doesn't delete out the actual Dunning-Kruger effect. There can still be.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, if you look at their data, if you look at their graphs, it's not as impressive as Dunning-Kruger.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, it's not as significant. That's true.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, at most, it's a partial explanation, which is what, again, they admitted in the first paper.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And also, remember, they preloaded it with the idea that people already think they're doing better. So they're giving it the superiority bias or the illusory superior. They're actually saying that's a given and encoding it into the system. And that actually brings me to my first question, which is, so what, so what if Dunning-Kruger is a combination of regression to the mean, illusory superiority, and other personal variance kind of points? It feels like a semantic argument that these people are making. It's sort of like saying, well, there's no such thing as love, because we know that there's attraction, sexual attraction, affection, and interpersonal affinity for other people. It's like, well, what's the difference then?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, I agree.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I could still be love.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That was my reaction to Cara. I do think it's important in terms of us conceptualizing how people work. But in terms of the effect, yeah, of course it's a combination of multiple things. But I do think it's important to try to answer that question. Is there a distinct separate effect going on here? And ultimately, it doesn't matter, because one of the other effects that they mention is the lower your knowledge, the worse you are at rating your knowledge. And so the variance increases. It's not necessarily biased in the overestimation direction. It's just that your self-assessment is more variable. It's less accurate, right? Less precise.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, the gap is bigger.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But they said the worse you score, there's just more room above you than below you.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, so they're saying statistically that's always going to happen if we map this out.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, and if you're at the top end, there's more space below you than above you. And so that part, it's like, I remember Stephen Jay Gould made this argument for evolution. It's like evolution does not inherently lead to greater complexity. But we started at maximal simplicity, and there was only one direction to go in.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And so I do think you need to take that into consideration. But again, as you said, if you combine, we overestimate our ability, we're less precise in evaluating our ability when we have less knowledge, and therefore our self-assessments are going to be in overestimation, and that's going to be greater at the lower end of that curve. I was like, OK, that is the Dunning-Kruger effect.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, like what does it matter if we call it? And that's the part that I think I get sometimes frustrated when I see psychological research really reduce down to its most sort of logical positivist stance. Because there's almost a forgetting in the setup that these are constructs that we developed and constructs overlap. You can't say that, for example, throw out a cognitive bias, guys on the panel, like any cognitive bias we often talk about. <br />
<br />
'''B:''' Confirmation bias?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Confirmation bias, yeah. Confirmation bias is a great one because it's like the mother of all biases. You can't say because this is confirmation bias, it's not also illusory superiority. Yeah, it's like, well, yeah, they cross over each other.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I also thought of one other thing, Carol, you tell me what you think about this. We've spoken before on the show about the super DK, right, the super Dunning-Kruger, and this is one where it's not just the Dunning-Kruger effect as we described, it's that the people at the lowest end of the knowledge curve actually thought that it did actually make them think that they were better. So they actually thought they rated themselves the highest, not just the greatest error, but actually the greatest knowledge. And that only occurs in certain, as you say, subcultures specifically with information. So among people who are anti-GMO, for example, the people who knew the least about genetics thought they knew the most. And so there we are dealing with a distinct phenomenon of misinformation, of illusory knowledge, and so it's something that's in addition to the Dunning-Kruger effect that we're talking about. So I do think it's helpful to tease those things apart, but you do see it in the data though.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, I think you're right. And it's an important exercise, especially for researchers, to be able to say, if there's a regression to the mean here, can we extract that variance from the data so that we can now have a cleaner perception or a cleaner statistical picture of the actual Dunning-Kruger effect? Or can we subdivide the Dunning-Kruger effect into what we think might be its constituent parts? That's an interesting study. That's an interesting dissertation topic. Is Dunning-Kruger really a sort of gestalt combination of illusory superiority plus regression to the mean plus these other statistical effects? And collectively, can we say, hey, all of these things could account for when they work in concert for what we call the Dunning-Kruger effect?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's an effect. It's an effect. It's not its own bias.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Exactly.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's a net effect.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's an effect. Yes. It's not the cause. And so researchers in 2016 were like, hmm, I wonder if there's such a thing as cognitive immunity from Dunning-Kruger. Are there certain subtypes of people who are less susceptible to this type of effect? And they found that, yeah, they were able to subdivide their subjects into people who had more of a fixed mindset and people who had more of a growth mindset. So basically, people who are more willing to say, I was wrong, who are more willing to add new information to their old information and adapt their worldviews versus people who say, no, this is how I think. I'm going to confirm how I think. And anything that's disconfirming, I'm going to ignore or justify away. And they found that people with a fixed mindset had a stronger Dunning-Kruger effect, which is not surprising.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Which makes sense.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It makes total sense.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I bet you there's all kinds of correlations. I would be interested to see, like, does it correlate with intuitive versus analytical thinking styles, for example?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And the cool thing, Steve, is that a lot of people don't know this, because this was actually a deep dive on that the paper I wrote was a deep dive on David Dunning himself. He started his career in social psychology because he was interested in why people think the way that they think. And he was trying to show that thinking styles are directly related to personality traits. And he was pretty much unsuccessful in finding clean effects there. And that's where Dunning-Kruger came out, because he was just investigating how and why people fall victim to cognitive biases and how can we make sense of these different phenomena. But the last thing I really wanted to touch on was something that I found really interesting as I was digging through the paper I wrote, medical residents, inflated assessment of their patient interviewing skills, corporate executives, workplace computer users, even athletic coaches. They've all shown Dunning-Kruger effect. Financial literacy is unduly poor, like the self-perception, sorry, is unduly high in younger people versus older people, because the longer you live, the more wise you become. And so you see that there's a shift there. Even when Dunning and Kruger gave people money, they said a hundred bucks to as accurately as possible, tell me how well you think you did on this test, they still saw the effect. So it shows that this was not a social desirability bias, that money trumped the social desirability bias. And the thing that I thought was so fascinating is, and it directly applies to the types of things we talk about on the show a lot, we often see echoes of the effect in modern society. Benegal from 2018 argued that conspiratorial distrust of scientific institutions is exacerbated by the tendency for some people to think they know better than the experts who have dedicated their careers to these topics. And we see this across the board. Sylvester in 2018 made a convincing argument for a direct link, as you mentioned, Steve, between anti-vaccine attitudes and the Dunning-Kruger effect. And of course, this one's fascinating. In 2018, Anson replicated the effect using a large online survey of American voters. The author found, and I'm reading this directly from my own writing, the author found that participants with low political knowledge significantly overestimated their prowess. In addition, such low information voters were more reliant on partisan cues and tended to rate themselves as even more politically knowledgeable when partisan cues were made salient. This is worrisome.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Not surprising, though.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But not surprising.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. So one of the things that I found frustrating is, because a lot of people emailed us on this, and I've found a lot of blog posts about it, et cetera, is that a lot of people come away from this with the bottom line of, Dunning-Kruger isn't real.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. Which is not my takeaway at all.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, it's not the bottom line. The bottom line is, yeah, it's complicated. We knew it was complicated. It's psychology, man. It's freaking going to be complicated because there's going to be tons of different effects interacting with each other, and context is going to be massively important. But in there, because it's pretty robust, it's very replicable, I think there is something going on there. Is it partly statistical? Sure. Is it partly just other biases that we know about, like the overconfidence bias? Absolutely.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Sure. Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But the curves are the curves. I mean, there is an effect there. All right. Let's move on.<br />
<br />
=== Junk on the Moon <small>(36:49)</small> ===<br />
* [https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/12/the-trash-weve-left-on-the-moon/266465/ The Trash We've Left on the Moon]<ref>[https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/12/the-trash-weve-left-on-the-moon/266465/ The Atlantic: The Trash We've Left on the Moon]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' Jay, how much junk have we left on the moon?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So when you think about the question, we want to know how much have we left on the moon or how many spacecraft have gone there that are still there. And it's a really cool question because it goes back quite a long ways. And there's also something to be said about what to do with that stuff. So we have moon visitors, and what? They've left urine collection kits on the moon, and there's a gold olive branch.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Full or empty?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' There's tons of robotic equipment from all different probes and just a lot of other equipment. It's hard to say exactly how much stuff has been left on the moon, but NASA has estimated that it's about 400,000 pounds or 181,000 kilograms according to Earth gravity, right? Not its weight on the moon, but its weight on Earth. That's a lot of stuff. So the bulk of the debris was left by NASA, of course, because NASA did the most work on the moon. And this was done during the US moon missions back in 1969 to 72. This was during the Apollo program. And the remaining debris comes from unmanned missions, like I said, sent by the United States, Russia, Japan, India, and Europe. So I think we should not be overly judgmental about countries leaving hardware on the moon. There's a lot of good reasons why they needed to do it and why you can't really judge them. So when scientists were conducting tests on the moon's surface in the early 60s, some believed that the moon's regolith could have been a bit like quicksand, which I think is fascinating. And they're judging this by how many asteroids have hit it and what they think those asteroids were doing to the surface of the moon. It is responsible. Those asteroid strikes are responsible for the moon's regolith being so fine and also so sharp as it is. So we landed robotic probes to see how the moon's surface would react to heavy objects. We had to do it or else we could never have sent people there. And these probes stayed on the moon and gave us information we needed to eventually legitimately put human beings on the moon, which is one of, if not the most, unbelievable feats of humanity. The lunar orbiters that map the moon's surface have all crashed into the moon and are now part of that debris. And also remember that experiment that they did, remember the whole feather and hammer thing and they dropped them at the same time on the moon. They hit the moon's surface at the same time because there's no atmosphere. Well that hammer and that feather are still there.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Cool.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' The lunar crater observation and sensing satellite, also known as lacrosse, was sent to the moon to analyze the moon's hydrogen and to see if there is water on the moon. That's still on the moon. NASA decided to leave as much of that debris as they could so they would save fuel and space inside the spacecraft on their way home. So what does a I'm talking about the most basic thing that you could say about a moon mission, a NASA moon mission. What are the things that they're concerned about? One, they want to plan to get the astronauts safely to the moon. They want to perform their tasks and experiments. And then of course they want to get the astronauts back home. And they don't factor in picking up trash or returning all the materials that they sent with them because that would actually not help the overall mission's goals. If you think about it, it's the right thing to do, especially at a time when we didn't have an easy way to transport all that gear. How would we get the rovers off of the moon's surface that you'd be sending more fuel? It's just ridiculous. You know, there was no other way to do it. The interesting thing about all those different materials that they left on the moon is that they provide scientists with some actually very useful information. And I know this is the part where I fully expect Bob to try to say what he thinks. So let me try to say it quicker so he doesn't cut me off. These materials...<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I don't know about that, Jay.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' They've been what? Think about it, guys. The materials on the moon have been what? They've been...<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Exposed to the elements of space.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Right, exactly. They've been exposed to constant radiation. They're in a vacuum. And they've been cycling through these extremes of temperature over and over and over again. And those materials are a treasure trove of information for scientists. It tells us about what materials last, what doesn't. What happens when this particular material gets heated up 50,000 times, whatever, however many cycles have happened since then. It's a big deal. And I think that they're going to use those objects to really help them. At some point, a probe or a human is going to be walking on the surface of the moon or rolling on the surface of the moon, and they're going to pick up some of this stuff and analyze it.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' They're legitimate artifacts. There's no doubt about it.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Oh, without a doubt. We talked about this, Evan. My God, those landing sites. This is museum, things that we should hold on to for as long as we possibly could. And we were talking about this, I forget when, because we've had so many shows in a 12-hour show.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Just recently. We were talking about putting a glass thing over the footprint.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah. Absolutely. So that's some stuff. Other stuff, who cares? You know what I mean? They're going to just get rid of it, because it's a probe that crashed and nobody... Most people didn't even know the probe existed. <br />
<br />
'''B:''' Probably sell a lot on eBay, though.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Oh, I forgot. Before I continue. I had a really cool... Because I'm reading about this, and I love doing a deep dive on stuff like this. And I thought of a cool science fiction scenario where there's... It's just like the Mars thing where there's people stranded on the moon and they need supplies. They need some gear. And there's all these things. So they get out a map and they're like, all right, what do we know of? Where are the crash sites? Where is all the gear that we're aware of? And they go and collect it, and they build the thing that helps them get off the moon.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, that's what his name did in The Martian. Without that equipment, he would have been dead.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, totally. It's just a cool scenario. So the reflector, you know that reflector that they put up on the moon? The laser reflector?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Still using it. Yep.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' They've been using it since then. It's a tiny little reflector. And because of that reflector, we are now able to measure that the moon is moving 1.5 inches or 3.8 centimeters a year away from the Earth.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I thought it was two inches.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' As reported by NASA. Yeah, there's arrow bars on it. All right, so I said there's a lot of debris on the moon. We talked about that some of these things should be considered artifacts that we want to preserve. But during those six Apollo missions that landed on the moon, they produced 96 bags of waste. Straight up waste. But let me quickly go through a list of stuff that's on the moon, because this to me is really the interesting part. More than 70 spacecraft, including rovers, modules and crashed orbiters, five American flags, two golf balls, 12 pairs of boots, multiple TV cameras, film magazines, 96 bags of urine feces and vomit, like I said, numerous Hassenblad cameras and accessories, several improvised javelins. What? I didn't know about that.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' What? Why are there improvised javelins? Just in case they were like.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' No, they did like an Olympics test.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You have to see how far you can throw it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' For science, not to hurt people.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So various hammers, tongs, rates, shovels, backpacks, insulating blankets, utility towels, used wet wipes, personal hygiene kits, empty packages of space food, a photograph that one of the astronauts snuck on board, the feather, it's a falcon feather, the hammer, I told you a small aluminum sculpture that was a tribute to American and Soviet fallen astronauts who died in space, a patch, a small silicon disc, a silver pen, a metal honoring Soviet cosmonauts and a cast golden olive branch. That's pretty much it.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Okay.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That's a lot of stuff.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' By the way, Jay, by the way, you were closer than I was. It's 1.48 inches per year. It's moving away 3.78 centimeters a year, about the same speed at which our fingernails grow. That's how fast the moon is moving away from us.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So if you just let your fingernails keep growing in like 10 years, you'll be able to be like, see, this is how far away the moon is now from the earth. That is so nasty. Those people that let their fingernails grow. Anyway.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' They get all curly.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I know. Some of them paint them and then it just looks like what? All right. Anyway, so at some point we'll clean it up. We'll do some nice stuff. We're sending people back. Don't be upset. It's all good. You know, it's not like there's, other than the poop and the vomit and the pee, there's really not that, but it's not that nasty. You know, it's mostly metal and wiring.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That would, wait, oh, it wouldn't break down. It would just sit there. No, but the human poop and vomit and pee is not sterile.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Something has had to have happened to it. I would really like to find out like what an expert has to say because it has gone through that.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Because it has bacteria in it.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It's been heated and frozen and heated and frozen over and over and over. Like what? I don't know. What happens?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It's like 600 times since they, I assume 50 years ago, 600 times, I think.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It could be sterilized at this point.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Dude, somebody's job is going to be to pick that stuff up. Oh my God. What do you do?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, but it's just gonna be like pellets.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I'm the guy that flew to the moon to pick up bags of poop, urine, and vomit.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But freeze-dried poop, urine, and vomit is probably not even gross.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, pick it up in the frozen stage.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yes.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' They're all going to be in museums on the moon. Come on.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' This is our vomit collection.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Our bodily fluid collection.<br />
<br />
=== Protein Switches <small>(46:25)</small> ===<br />
* [https://theness.com/neurologicablog/protein-switches-and-covid-testing/ Protein Switches and COVID Testing]<ref>[https://theness.com/neurologicablog/protein-switches-and-covid-testing/ Neurologica: Protein Switches and COVID Testing]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, guys, let's look at this headline. I read this headline. Oh, this should be an interesting article. New biosensors quickly detect COVID-19 coronavirus proteins and antibodies. Right? Sounds pretty straightforward. I read into it and when I started to wrap my head around the actual study they were reporting on, I'm like, holy crap, they totally buried the lead on this one. The underlying technology is so much more interesting than this one application that they're talking about. <br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, so they just used the COVID hook.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, I think the researchers used the COVID hook, which is fine, but then, of course, that's what, again, that became the lead. The paper is de novo design of modular and tunable protein biosensors. That's the story. The fact that one application of this could be detecting COVID-19 proteins is interesting, but that's not the story. I don't know. I've been thinking about this. This could be something as big as CRISPR.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That's saying something.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I mean, who knows? Well, we'll know in 20 years when we look back and see it, but it was just a couple of years ago that, so let me back up a little bit further than a couple years ago. We're talking here about protein switches. A protein switch is essentially a protein that changes configuration in response to some biological stimulus.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Which means it has a new function then, right?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Which means it alters its function. It isn't necessarily a new function, but it alters its function. This is a basic component of biology at the cellular level. This is a basic part of evolution. Proteins, when they, for example, bind something, they bind a hormone or an ion or another protein, they can change their configuration, and that could turn their function on and off. It could open and close a channel, right? It could alter their function to something else entirely. This is just a basic way that biology works. Proteis change their function based upon sensing their environment in some way. We've known about this for a long time. The new bit is the modular and tunable protein switches, is the fact that we could now design a protein switch to react to whatever we want and to change configuration in a specific way. The specific way that they engineered in this study is to become bioluminescent. This protein glows when the signal of interest binds to it with obvious applications. This now could be a test for anything. They tested it on breast cancer proteins, on hepatitis virus proteins, on bacterial toxin, on lymphoma proteins. So you could take your blood, put this in there, and if it glows, you have lymphoma or whatever.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's brilliant. It's like taking similar kind of the idea, I guess, of fluorescence proteins that we often do in research and extending it to an in vivo kind of setting or I guess ex vivo because you're taking a blood and then just dropping the reagent into it. It's genius.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, again, it was just I think one or two years ago where the first study was published where they showed that they could actually tune these, they could design them to respond to what they want to. And now the new study made it modular where you could, once you have the underlying technology, you could now quickly and easily crank out these protein, these switches that are designer switches that do what you want to do and they're modular as they say, what do you want to have happen and what do you want to react to? So this could, the diagnostic application with the luminescence is one obvious application, but this could have therapeutic applications as well. Think about it as a biologic, this is a major, whenever you gain control over one of the basic machinery of life, then that's a really powerful tool. So I wonder where this is going to go because again, it's like with CRISPR, we were able to quickly and easily alter make cuts in the DNA at where we want to and maybe even insert pieces of DNA, etc. It brought down the cost of doing this tenfold, made it accessible to many, many labs and applications. This is the same thing. We now can make tunable modular protein switches that are cheap and easy and fast, relatively speaking. And now this opens up a whole avenue of not only diagnostics, but of therapeutics. And we'll see what potential this has. But it's just amazing to me, it's like, really, that's, that was the lead, I mean, I guess if I understand it the COVID-19 testing thing, but it's like, man, the real news story here, man, is the modular tunable protein switches.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Could you make your face glow bioluminescent if you have COVID, that type of thing?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' If you have enough of it.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Steve, let me throw this quote at you. This is from, you maybe came across this name, Hanna El-Samad, a PhD professor of biochemistry and biophysics. I think Hanna might have been involved in the research. He or she said, the ability to control cells with designer proteins ushers in a new era of biology in the same way that integrated circuits enable the explosion of computer chip industry. That's quite a comment.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Wow, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' And then the quote ends with, these versatile and dynamic biological switches could soon unlock precise control over the behavior of living cells and ultimately our health. So we can control cells with this. I mean, I mean, how dramatic could that be? Could we basically put one of these in most of your cells and tailor their responses to given scenarios?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We'll see. I mean, so this is this, therapeutically, this would be considered a biologic, right? Just like we have monoclonal antibodies, that we might be having protein switches where you get an IV bag or an injection, let's say, of these protein switches that are designed to do a specific thing, like they'll respond to something in your body and release a drug or they will, whatever, they'll lower your blood pressure, they'll do whatever we needed to do. They'll kill cancer cells. Who knows? Now it's just a matter of, well, okay, what can we do with this tool?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Well, yeah. And that goes to another quote I got here that this was a graduate student at UCSF. He said that we are now limited more by our imagination and creativity rather than the protein that nature has evolved. That's a powerful statement right there. Yeah, this is really interesting. I did not see this at all. I had no idea. I'm really curious now to see where this does go.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, I do have the same kind of feeling when I first really wrapped my head around CRISPR.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Right. That took a little while.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It did take a little while. By the way, guys, did you know, speaking about CRISPR, we've given that a lot of attention, but there are two other methods of altering genes that are at CRISPR level in terms of their power.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' What?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' There's TALEN. You guys know about TALEN?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Nope, never heard of it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, it's strange. Why CRISPR is hogging all the spotlight?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' TALEN is a cooler name.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Way cooler.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' What's a vector?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' There's also zinc finger proteins.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Zinc finger proteins?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, so there's TALEN, CRISPR, and zinc finger proteins are really the three.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Did you say stink finger what?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Zinc.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Zinc finger proteins.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's a thing.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' CRISPR is the cheapest among them and the fastest.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' There you go.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But TALEN is much more precise, and it could be actually more efficient in certain circumstances. So what I think is going to happen is that they will each find their niche and where their strengths and weaknesses are optimal. But there's really those three that we're dealing with, and they're all improving over time. So it's not just CRISPR.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' The more the merrier, man.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's the same feeling when I read about this tunable modular protein switches. That's on the same level with that genetic technology. Mainly I wanted to put this out there, put this on your radar. This is something that's happening. We're going to be hearing about this, I think.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Steve, just do me a favor. Just for fun, it's all speculation, but can you come up with something cool that you think that this might be able to do?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, so I think, for example, killing cancer cells. So if we can find some signal that's unique to a specific kind of cancer on the detection end, and then have a protein that reconfigures into a toxin that triggers apoptosis and kills the cancer cell. So that's off the top of my head. That's one thing. That's theoretically possible. It's just a matter of can we actually figure out how to do that. So that's a kind of level of control that we're talking about.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That's awesome.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, it couples some environmental state in the body with some protein that can configure itself, become an enzyme, become a signal.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So you're saying we'll have that next year?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, we have them now.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' No, the cancer thing.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, it's just a matter of now the... I know you're kidding, but we have the protein switches now. Now it's just a matter of thinking of ways to use the tool.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That sounds awesome.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We're going to be hearing about it in the future.<br />
<br />
=== Bipolar Ionization <small>(56:29)</small> ===<br />
* [https://www.cbsnews.com/minnesota/news/anoka-hennepin-installs-game-changer-filtration-systems-in-schools-before-students-return/ Anoka-Hennepin Installs 'Game Changer' Filtration Systems In Schools Before Students' Return]<ref>[https://www.cbsnews.com/minnesota/news/anoka-hennepin-installs-game-changer-filtration-systems-in-schools-before-students-return/ CBSNews.com: Anoka-Hennepin Installs 'Game Changer' Filtration Systems In Schools Before Students' Return]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, Evan, tell me about bipolar ionization.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I will tell you about it. I want to let you know, though, that this news item came courtesy of Ross Pomeroy, and many people in this audience know him as the editor of Real Clear Science. Runs a great website over there. And I know, Steve, he's linked to your blog posts in the past.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' So it's always fun seeing you up there. It's a good website. So a Minnesota high school district spent 1.4 million bucks to have bipolar ionization technology installed into their HVAC system to help kill coronavirus in the classroom. Now, what is bipolar ionization technology? Well, the technology uses specialized tubes that take oxygen molecules from the air and convert them into charged atoms that then cluster around microparticles surrounding and deactivating harmful substances like airborne mold, bacteria, allergens and viruses. Yes. And breath droplets as well. Dust particles. All these things transport viruses. So if you put it into your filtration system, it helps negate those things. According to the New York University School of Medicine, the ions produce a chemical reaction on the cell membrane surface that inactivates the virus. It can reduce 99.9% of microbes in a matter of minutes. That sounds good. Why aren't we all using this stuff? Which I think is a good question. So they invested a lot of money. This is Minnesota's largest school district that did this. And again, 1.4 million dollars. They used CARES, that's C-A-R-E-S, that was the act that was passed by Congress in order to help, among other things, with coronavirus prevention efforts and all those related items. And they used their funds to install these items. Other schools in other districts around the country have also done the same thing. One district in California used 400,000. Another one in Virginia used a million bucks to have the system installed. So it is taking place in a lot of different areas around the country. Now, according to the makers of these devices, when they are installed, they claim that their products inactivated 84.2% of coronavirus particles after 10 minutes. Flip the switch and 10 minutes later you've got 84.2% of the particles gone. If you leave it on for 30 minutes, 99.4%. It's not the same ratio as Ivory soap, 99.4%. That number sticks in my head. So those were the original claims by these manufacturers. It was pretty much across the board for several companies that did this. However, some of these claims have started to be removed from their websites. One particular company, GPS, not Global Positioning System, but one particular manufacturer, they replaced that particular statistic of 99.4% after 30 minutes with this. They say, the use of this technology is not intended to take place of reasonable precautions to prevent the transmission of pathogens. It's important to comply with all applicable public health laws and guidelines issued by federal, state, local governments and health authorities, as well as official guidance published by the CDC.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' What we call the quack Miranda rights, right? These are not meant to be actual claims that we could be held liable for.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' So, yeah, there's a lot of skepticism as far as this particular technology. And I think the main problem here is that while the test...<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's not real?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Well, it works, but in a very small space. You can't have whole classrooms. You can't have whole buildings with these things. It does not seem to work at that level. If you have like maybe portion of a closet or something, it could work to that effect. But certainly this is not what they were, what these schools invested in because they thought that they were going to be getting the benefits for their entire buildings. But that is not the case. Let's say Penn State University, William Benfleff, professor of architectural engineering, skeptical of ionization filtration. Much of the proof of their performance is in the form of laboratory studies commissioned by manufacturers that are often performed under conditions that are not representative of actual application conditions. So that's what you have with this. And yeah, they're investing in quackery effectively at that point. Why have these things if they're only going to work under very, very specific limited circumstances which do not apply to the real world?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And even then it's in-house studies. We don't really even know if they work.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Right. We don't have the peer-reviewed studies. We don't have the scientifically rigorous studies. And actually in one case, they're saying that these systems may emit ozone at high levels, which is bad. That's bad for health.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' We used to decon our clean room in the lab where we had these like UV, like big UV lights that were the right frequency or whatever to kill pathogens. And they were mounted all in the clean room in the lab in like strategic places. And we had to have like a charcoal UV filter because so much UV is put off by them that while it was on, you weren't allowed to be in the room. And we had to absorb all that. Sorry, a charcoal ozone filter to absorb all that ozone that gets put off by them. I think that's the thing we often don't think about, Evan, is that even if something works in a laboratory setting or even if something works in a practical way in small portions, we've got to think about all the downstream effects too. Something that kills pathogens might also be dangerous. And it's worrisome.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It's doing other things, right?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, and it's worrisome when companies don't go through the proper procedures to get these things on the market. And then all of a sudden, we as consumers can just utilize them without thinking about some of the negative consequences as well.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, it's easy for something to sound good superficially, but as we know from centuries of experience now, medicine's complicated. You need good rigorous studies to look at net health effects. Otherwise, it is pseudoscience. And that's, I think, what we're dealing with here. All right, thanks, Evan.<br />
<br />
== Who's That Noisy? <small>(1:03:03)</small> ==<br />
* Answer to last week’s Noisy: NPC's shop in Zelda game<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Jay, it's Who's That Noisy Time.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Last week, I played a Noisy, and I'll say this. One, I have never had more people send in correct answers on any noisy ever. So I was questioning to myself, is this even guessable? You know, there's got to be like a big fan out there that's going to be able to guess what this thing is. So anyway, yes, when you find out what it is, I think you'll realize what the deal is. OK, so let me just play the noisy for you.<br />
<br />
[_short_vague_description_of_Noisy] <br />
<br />
All right, just so you know, not one person emailed me a what the hell was that email. There was not one negative reaction or a weird inquisitory nothing. It was like you either knew it or you made a joke about it, and that was it. So here's what we got. We got Sam L-A-U-C-I-R-I-C-A.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No idea.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, this is from a listener named Sam. He says, hey, Jay, the Who's That Noisy from episode 811 is definitely a recording of Bob's brain as he opens a package containing a new Halloween prop.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's so good.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' This is what it sounds like. That's awesome. That made me laugh out loud.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That's exactly what my brain's doing, awesome.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' He said, love the 12 hour stream, guys. Sam. Paul Levine, Paul wrote, somehow I've only just recently discovered you guys, but I'm instantly sold. Anyway, this week's Noisy sounds like some extended cut of the music from Portal. I don't think the excerpt you played gets heard in the game, but I'm guessing that the loop from the game was sampled from a longer piece, which this week's Noisy is another part of, or else somebody composed something inspired by the game music and did an uncanny job recreating the sound. So I thought that was a very interesting thing that he thought of. I mean, that would have been very difficult, like an extended cut that nobody heard. It's not true, but you did hit on something in your guess, which you will find out very soon. Another person that guessed was Adam Slagle. He said, Jay, I see what you did here. This is a tricky one. At first you think Japanese games show music, but the Latin music style makes you think Latin America game show, but that was a total false flag. It has to be a Japanese interpretation of a Latin American game show. There can be no other answer, Adam.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Whoa.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I love this explanation. I think you did nail so many things about the style of the music in a freakishly accurate way. You're not correct completely, but I think, yeah, you're right about the Japanese with Latin influence. Absolutely. Michael Blaney said, hi, Jay, wow, you went tripping B-A-L-L-S with this week's Noisy. I'm serious. That rang a bell, and I believe it's from, and he goes on to guess the correct thing. I just thought it was a funny response, but he didn't win because he wasn't the first person to guess, even though I liked Michael's response. Here is the winner, Patrick Babineau, and he said, that's the Malo Mart theme from the video game The Legend of Zelda, Twilight Princess. This is funny. I played this game a long time ago. It might have been over a decade ago, 15 years ago, maybe even that long ago. And that song stuck in my head since then. I can drum it up at any moment I want, wherever I am. If I want to hear that song in my head, I can hear it because of how oddly distinct it is and how weird it is, and I love it. But essentially, Link walks into a shop that's in one of the cities that's in the game, and that's the music that plays whenever you're in that shop. And when I used to play the game, I would leave it there and just let it play in the background as I go and cook dinner and stuff because it used to crack me up. Listen again.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It's the police whistle and the slide whistle. I think that's what gives it the comic tone.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Totally. Oh, yeah, the whistle in the back is really, you're right, it's part of the humor. So anyway, I picked that. That was a noisy that I love that I wanted to play for everyone. It's a video game. It's a fantastic video game. The Zelda series is just fantastic. And by the way, on February 21st, which is very, very soon from now, it will be Zelda's...<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Another 12-hour show?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' No, it will be Zelda's 35th anniversary.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, OK.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Hey, Zelda.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yep, the first Zelda game dropped 35 years ago. So anyway, I suggest you play one or more of the games in that series. So thanks a lot, everyone, for guessing.<br />
<br />
=== New Noisy <small>(1:07:53)</small> ===<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I have a new noisy this week. This is a noisy that was sent in by a listener named Jaron Van Ninja Jindenton. I'm telling you, it's a hard... Look, N-I-J-N-A-N-T-E-N. Ninja Jindenton. Anyway, he sent a really cool noisy. I'm going to play it for you now. You will hear a human's voice in this recording, and that's not what I want to know. I want to know what the other sound is. Are you ready?<br />
<br />
[_short_vague_description_of_Noisy] <br />
<br />
So there's a longer cut of this that I'll play for you next week that is much funnier than that, but that trilling noise, that's the noise I want you to identify. And if you think you know what it is or you heard something really cool this week, you can email me at WTN@theskepticsguide.org.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Thank you, Jay.<br />
<br />
== Announcements <small>(1:08:50)</small> ==<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Jay, we have a Save the Date.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, we do.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And would you like to know what it is? They're much more effective that way.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, Steve, we have more than one Save the Date.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's true, but let me tell you about the one I was thinking of. August 6th and 7th. It's Friday, August 6th, Saturday, August 7th, is the next NECSS, which will be another all-digital NECSS.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yay!<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Virtual.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, Virtual NECSS number two. The first one was massively successful in every way. We were really happy with how it came off.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' When you said that, Steve, I expected you to be like, Virtual NECSS number two, revenge of the NECSS.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' This time, it's personal.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It wasn't successful from every angle.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' From the ones that matter.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I gained a pound that weekend, man. I was just eating junk food all weekend.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I know, right, Bob?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Uh-huh.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' You're locked in a room with everyone for the whole time. Just think about that. We're going to be, by this summer, I know, let me get to the point. This summer, we might be vaccinated enough where we all can actually be in a room together again.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Just vaccinated enough.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I would think by August.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I hope, I hope.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' What do you think about that, Steve? What's your prediction on that?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I think so. We'll definitely all be vaccinated by then.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. I think it's doable, for sure.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And then we'll have it updated and know that, yeah, two people who are both fully vaccinated and immune can be in a room together without wearing masks, you know? Hopefully, we'll be at that point.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' All right, so you could go to [https://necss.org/ NECSS.org], N-E-C-S-S dot O-R-G, to do an early sign-up. We will be filling in all of the details soon. I will tell you that we came up with a theme for this NECSS, which I think everyone is really going to think is fun and interesting. But we're working on it. We're fleshing it all out right now. It's going to we have plenty of time. And as these speakers get placed and selected and everything, we will be putting all that information up. We'll talk to you about it on the show. But go to NECSS.org, N-E-C-S-S dot O-R-G to get your tickets now. And another cool thing, this is really good news as well. So we had a show planned for The Extravaganza, which is everyone on this program right now. We do a stage show, including George Hrab. And it's called the Skeptical Extravaganza of Special Significance. It got utterly destroyed by the virus. And we had a show scheduled, what was it, April, I think, of last year, last spring, and it got canceled. And then we rescheduled it early, like right when the pandemic hit, we thought, okay, well, by October, it'll be over. And we rescheduled it and that got canceled. So now we have scheduled this for November 18th it is the week before Thanksgiving. It's on a Thursday night. So it's November 18th, 2021. This is going to be at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. There are a lot of people who just held onto their tickets since almost a year ago. I will be changing the Eventbrite to reflect the new dates. I will email everyone that purchased tickets and basically say, I'll do whatever you want. You want to refund? I'm totally cool with that. You want to hold onto it? That's fine. And if you want to, then if you want to buy tickets to this, please feel free. It seems like big gatherings of, over a hundred and more will be okay. The industry the actual like performance industry is starting to schedule things for that time of year. We will cancel this show in a heartbeat if it's not safe. You know, we have absolutely no motivation other than to entertain people. And we don't want anyone to get sick or we don't want us to get sick. So again, this is all tentative on the virus, but it's starting to get to that point where the industry is starting to open up. You know, venues are accepting reservations. So we're doing it with total safety in mind. You can go to [https://www.theskepticsguide.org/ theskepticsguide.org] and you can take a look for a link on our homepage that will help you find the Eventbrite link very easily if you're interested. And my God, it'll be so amazing to do a stage performance again. I can't wait to do it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Right. You think we'll require, people get vaccinated before they come to the show?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, boy.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I would say, like just in general safety measures, I think that that is what the plan is going to be. Like, if you're going to attend an event, they're going to say you got to be vaccinated.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, I wonder if that's going to be a thing for a while.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I think it's going to be a thing for travel, but I don't think it's going to be a thing here. I think shows won't exist until people have the opportunity. And at that point, if you refused, you refused. Sadly, it's not illegal. Yeah. And we're probably not going to be able to prevent people from doing things in public if they're not vaccinated. But I could see for global travel, a vaccine passport being necessary because some countries don't have access to vaccines yet. Whereas if everybody in the US has had access to the vaccine and the only people who don't have it are people who couldn't or chose not to, at that point, hopefully, we're at herd immunity anyway.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, we should be at herd immunity at that point. If not, if a new variant or something is killing everybody, obviously, we'll be flexible.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' We'll reschedule.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, we'll reschedule. That'll be our biggest concern.<br />
<br />
== Questions/Emails/Corrections/Follow-ups ==<br />
<br />
=== Email #1: Inverse Gambler's Fallacy <small>(1:14:03)</small> ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, so a couple of emails. I'm not going to really be able to get fully into either of these. I just wanted to quickly to do this. So a couple weeks ago, we talked about the multiverse and the inverse gambler's fallacy. That garnered a ton of feedback. I'm approaching, like, 1,000 comments on the blog post I wrote about it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Whoa.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Most not quite on topic. I mean, most of it... What's interesting is that people want to talk about so many things around this. So again, very, very quickly, the idea is that the universe is so fine-tuned for life. How fine-tuned is it? That the probability, if... This is a big... Now, this is the premise, right? This is a huge premise of the fine-tuning argument is that if the constants and laws of the universe vary at random along some kind of an equal distribution, in order for all of the laws to be compatible with life... Like, most universes would survive for less than a second, so we would figure that intelligence is not going to evolve in a universe that collapses in on itself within a second. That sort of thing. That's what we're talking about. The space of universes in which complex life is possible is teeny-tiny. Something like 1 in 10 to the 200-something kind of order of magnitude. So it's almost zero probability, if it's random. So the question is, why do we exist? Is our universe a highly improbable event? So improbable that it's indistinguishable from zero. And one of the answers to that is... Again, it could be that those premises are wrong. The laws of the universe are the way they are for a reason, and we just don't know what it is yet, etc. But one answer is, well, maybe there's a lot of universes. If there's a multiverse with 10 to the 200 universes, then that one of them is compatible with life is actually probable, rather than being extremely improbable. And so the claim is that the multiverse solution to the assumption of the fine-tuning argument is itself a logical fallacy, because observing our universe does not make it more likely, more or less likely. It tells you nothing about whether or not there are many universes or only one. And my point was that that's the inverse gambler's fallacy to think that because this is a highly unlikely event there must have been multiple opportunities. My point was that the inverse gambler's fallacy doesn't apply. Trying to apply it in this situation is an example of the lottery fallacy. So it's like dueling fallacies going on here. What I love about this is that this is becoming like a Monty Hall problem where you have different camps and people can't quite wrap their head around it. Very fascinating discussion. But I think a lot of people are getting distracted, in my opinion. They're getting distracted by elements which are not relevant to the core logic here. And I wrote about it again. I wrote a follow-up blog where I thought, after all the discussion, I think I've kind of zeroed in on the key piece here. And that key piece is all of the analogies that are brought to bear are like, which I talked about, the joker monkey typewriter scenario where you wake up in a room, there's the joker from Batman in front of you, a monkey and a typewriter, and the joker tells you, I gave the monkey an hour to type out an English sentence. If he did, I was going to let you live. If he didn't, I was going to kill you before you woke up. So the fact that you are alive is a highly improbable event, but you only would know that the whole thing happened. If you did survive, you wouldn't observe all the instances in which you would be dead. So does that mean there's lots of monkeys out there typing away on lots of typewriters? Or does it say nothing about that? Now, here's the problem with that analogy. The problem with that analogy is the premise of you wake up, you wake up in a room with a monkey, the joker and a typewriter. So it's already committing a lottery fallacy right there because, yes, it's improbable that you would be alive. Just like if I say you win the lottery, yeah, it's unlikely that you will win the lottery as opposed to somebody wins the lottery.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Any person versus you.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Right, anybody wins, yeah. So the analogy fails at the first word. So I say, again, there's no real perfect analogy. The bottom line is that if you don't get distracted by things by things that are really non-sequiturs or irrelevant, the bottom line is if a one in 10 to the 200 event occurs, is it more likely to happen if there's only one opportunity for it to happen or if there's lots of opportunities for it to happen? It's obviously more likely if there's lots of opportunities for it to happen. And it's the lottery fallacy to say but you still need to explain why one particular opportunity won. No, you don't need to explain that. To try to fix the analogies, let's try to figure out a way to fix the analogy. Let's say we go to the lottery example. Instead of saying you win the lottery, let's say you're a journalist. Lotteries have never existed before. You have no prior information about lotteries, the concept, anything. But some company creates a lottery for the first time. And as a journalist, you are tasked with investigating it. So you're like the scientist in this analogy. And the company tells you this is the lottery. Here are the rules. This is the odds of winning. And this is the person who won the first lottery. You interview that person. There was a one in 10 trillion chance of any individual ticket winning. They bought one ticket and they won. Now, what's more likely? That that's the only person to buy a single ticket and it won with a one in 10 trillion chance of winning? Or that millions of people bought lots of tickets? What's more likely? Isn't it obvious that it's more likely that there are lots of people buying lots of tickets? If that one person is the only one to have bought a ticket, they bought one singular ticket and won with a 10 trillion to one odds, you would probably want to investigate that further, right? You probably would not accept that that was a massive, improbable coincidence. You would think, oh, it was rigged. It's a bullshit. There's a reason why he won. It wasn't actually random. Those weren't actually the odds. But if you knew that, oh, 100 million people played and trillions of tickets were sold, then you'd be like, oh, okay, this guy's really lucky, but that somebody won doesn't require any special explanation, right? Anyway, I think that gets to the nub of it, but people get distracted by so many irrelevant aspects of this whole thing.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Speaking of an irrelevant aspect of this whole thing, did you see the documentary about the McDonald's monopoly scam?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yes, yes, it was really nice.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It was so good and it's so crazy that people did not catch on for ages.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, right, for years, I know.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Our statistical spidey senses are not good, are they?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But if you are interested in this, the real lesson here is how counterintuitive statistics are and that things that you might not think are relevant, like whether it's you won a lottery or somebody won the lottery, it makes all the difference in the statistics. If you're interested in this, read my follow-up blog post, send me an email, take part in the comments. People love to talk about this. This is like the new Monty Hall problem. And if you don't know what the Monty Hall problem is, look that up.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That has 2,000 comments.<br />
<br />
=== Email #2: Compliment Sandwich <small>(1:22:02)</small> === <br />
<br />
'''S:''' The second biggest group email we got in the last few weeks we didn't have a chance to go over is the compliment sandwich that we mentioned a couple of weeks ago. And Cara, I was thinking of this the whole time through the Dunning-Kruger discussion because very quickly, the compliment sandwich is a rule of thumb about how to effectively give negative feedback to people. It's like you're a boss giving criticism to an employee, for example. The idea is that you don't just hit them with the criticism, that you open up with some positive context you give them constructive criticism and then you follow up with something positive as in terms of how we're going to move forward. But then we got a lot of emails with people saying the compliment sandwich is a myth, it doesn't work. It can be counterproductive. And then I went down the well of blog posts and articles and reporting and journalism on the "compliment sandwich". People love to say nobody wants to eat your compliment sandwich or the compliment sandwich doesn't taste so good. You're like, oh my God, just totally doubling down on that metaphor. But here's the thing, just like the bottom lining in saying the compliment sandwich doesn't work is the same thing as bottom lining the Dunning-Kruger by saying it's not real. It's overly simplistic and it's not fair. So all of the criticism of the compliment sandwich is based upon what appears to me, at least how I've always conceived of it, as a kind of a silly straw man about what the compliment sandwich is. It's like, yes, if you follow this lazily like a simplistic algorithm of give it a relevant compliment, then give them your criticism, then give them another irrelevant compliment, yes, that's stupid.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Like Bob did right after you talked the story.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I know, like Bob was joking. Because yes, that's confusing. It's like, why are you throwing these irrelevant compliments at me? What's going on here? Yes, of course that's confusing because it's stupid.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's not the point.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's not the point. That's what happens when you try to take a nuanced kind of thing and apply it simplistically. But the idea is, and I think the real version of it is, if let's say you're an employer giving constructive criticism to an employee, you first might want to put it into context. Overall, you are doing a good job and you're a valued employee. There's this one area, however, where I think you could need work. You need to be better organized. And then you followed up by saying, now let's talk about how we can address this issue because if we do, I feel like you will do great work at this company. So you see how there was positive things at the beginning and the end, but they weren't irrelevant. They were 100% relevant to the context of the feedback. You're just saying, put into context, this is not a deal killer. And at the end, you're like, if we can figure out ways to constructively address this, things I think are going to be very positive.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' You're also preventing them from getting defensive off the bat. I mean, this is what is taught in... My university is mostly online and we do a lot of peer feedback and in almost every course, the peer feedback rules are like, don't be polemical. The idea is not to rip somebody to shreds. The idea is to give them good critiques that are useful, that they can utilize, but open with the things that they did right. Because if you open with the things that people are doing right, then they're not going to be defensive and not even listen to the feedback that you give them.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I mean, it's all human psychology. The shields just go up.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Of course it is.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' They just go up so fast, so easy. You got to kind of work with that and try to minimize that because nothing is getting through those shields.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' You get people comfortable, then you show them places where they could improve in a safe way and then you close it by continuing to tell them that you value their contribution and people will walk away going, huh, I could do this thing and it would be better instead of going, what a dick, I'm not going to listen to him.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Right, right. Now unfortunately, and there's the legitimate criticism, is there isn't a lot of good empirical data on this.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Who cares? It feels right.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Face validity.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I do think it's based upon valid concepts that have been supported, but this approach specifically, it would be very hard to control for, but the other thing is what's the outcome measure? If the outcome measure is you're more likely to change people's behavior, good luck, because nothing is really effective at changing people's behavior. That's a really high bar.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But is it like they still like you after the conversation?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, is it better for the relationship or does the person come away with a higher self-esteem, which we know correlates with better outcomes. There are, I think, softer outcomes that are worth looking at and that actually, if you look at the literature, I think appropriately, does support this approach. But I couldn't find any real studies that zeroed in specifically on this detail and looked at it in a rigorous and fair way in my opinion. But it's also, I think it is a reasonable extrapolation from psychological studies that show the elements of it. And the other thing is, but if somebody did do a well-designed controlled study with good outcome measures and everything that was really rigorous and it showed that it wasn't effective, okay, I would change my mind about it. But until we have that, you're putting everything we do know together, it's a reasonable approach and it doesn't take that much effort, and it seems to comport with a lot of basic psychological wisdom. So, all right, let's go on with science or fiction.<br />
<br />
== Science or Fiction <small>()</small> ==<br />
<br />
{{SOFinfo<br />
|item1 = Computational scientists have developed a new method of performing large scale simulations of neural networks using only desktop computers but performing as well as supercomputers worth tens of millions of dollars. <br />
|link1 = <ref>[http://www.sussex.ac.uk/broadcast/read/54567]</ref><br />
<br />
|item2 = Genomic analysis helps explain why duckweed (Wolffia) is the fastest growing plant known, able to double its mass in as little as 16 hours under optimal conditions.<br />
|link2 = <ref>[https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/02/210201090829.htm]</ref><br />
<br />
|item3 = A recent review of research finds that human bitter taste receptors evolved in the mammalian lineage where they remain widely conserved.<br />
|link3 = <ref>[https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2021-02/lfla-wer020221.php]</ref><br />
<br />
|}}<br />
<br />
{{SOFResults<br />
|fiction = bitter taste receptors <br />
|science1 = neural networks<br />
|science2 = duckweed is the fastest growing plant<br />
<br />
|rogue1 =Bob<br />
|answer1 =bitter taste receptors <br />
<br />
|rogue2 =Jay<br />
|answer2 =bitter taste receptors<br />
<br />
|rogue3 =Evan<br />
|answer3 =bitter taste receptors<br />
<br />
|rogue4 =Cara<br />
|answer4 =bitter taste receptors<br />
<br />
|host =Steve<br />
<br />
|sweep = <!-- all the Rogues guessed wrong --><br />
|clever = <!-- each item was guessed (Steve's preferred result) --><br />
|win = <!-- at least one Rogue guessed wrong, but not them all --><br />
|swept = y<!-- all the Rogues guessed right --><br />
}}<br />
''Voice-over: It's time for Science or Fiction.''<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Each week I come up with three science news items or facts, two genuine and one fake. And then I challenge my panel of skeptics and tell me which one is the fake. No theme this week, we've had a lot of themes recently so I think I'll just do all news items. You ready? Here we go. Computational scientists have developed a new method of performing large-scale simulations of neural networks using only desktop computers but performing as well as supercomputers worth tens of millions of dollars. All right, number two, genomic analysis helps explain why duckweed wolfia is the technical term is the fastest growing plant known able to double its mass in as little as 16 hours under optimal conditions. And number three, a recent review of research finds that human bitter taste receptors evolved in the mammalian lineage where they remain widely conserved. All right, Bob, go first.<br />
<br />
=== Bob's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''B:''' So let's see, we've got large-scale simulations of neural networks mimicking supercomputers. Yeah, I mean, it all depends on how many desktops do you have access to?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, Bob, a single desktop is doing this as well as a supercomputer worth tens of millions of dollars.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Well, it says here using only desktop computers.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I'm clarifying for you because I see the ambiguity in that now. We're talking about a desktop computer using this technique will do the simulation that previously would require a supercomputer with tens of millions of dollars.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, crap. How the hell does that happen?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' This is not like using a thousand desktops. It's not that.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Right. It's just one or very few. Clearly not analogous computer power is somehow replicating lots of super computer level. So, I mean, I mean, what is it? It's like some using algorithms that work very, very well on a desktop computer. But they don't work well on a super computer. I don't know how that would work using only desktop. That's just too obvious. Too easy. I got to metagame it, I think. So let's look at the next one here. So we got this duckweed fastest growing plant known double it to mass 16 hours. Yeah, I mean, it's OK. 16 hours. That seems a little quick, but it's not shockingly impossible. It doesn't seem so anyway. Let's look at this third one here. Even bitter taste receptors evolved in the mammalian lineage where they remain widely conserved. OK, that makes sense too. But just mammals? I mean, I think bitter evolved because of poisons are often bitter and you don't want to have a pleasant taste to something that we sense is bitter because that could be bad. So then based on that, I would guess that it would be something that would be widely conserved beyond just mammalian taste receptors. So I'll say that that one's fiction then. Although I'm really curious how that number the supercomputer one would be would be science. But OK, let's do it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, Jay.<br />
<br />
=== Jay's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''J:''' All right. The first one here where the scientists came up with a way to to run simulations on a regular desktop computer. So what do you mean by large scale simulations?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So like simulating the visual cortex of a mouse, something like that?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I mean, I would say it comes down to actually I don't want to oversimplify this because it would be it would sound ridiculous. I mean, I think sure there's probably ways like similar to maybe how we use like with like zipping technology, like how they'll find similar computations. And then when you zip a file, it's finding patterns that repeat and they use flags to mark those large patterns. And then they it makes it so you can you could crunch down something and make it more dense. I think they may have come up with a way to do that with the way the brain functions. So, I mean, I would say, sure. Going on to this next one, genomic analysis that helps explain why duckweed is the fastest growing plant known. All right. So you're saying it doubles its mass in as little as 16 hours. You know, I know that bamboo grows really fast. That's like the go to for fast growing plants. So in optimal conditions, it can double its size in 16 hours. I mean, I wouldn't say I'd say that's not like a crazy thought and that I don't know exactly what duckweed is, but I would help if I saw a picture of it. But I would say that that's not impossible. And this last one, a recent review of research finds humans bitter taste receptors evolved in the mammalian lineage where they remain widely conserved. Steve, I got to admit I'm not sure what this means.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So conserved means it's still present in all mammals. So in other words-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' In the DNA.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. So the human's bitter taste receptor is unique to mammals, but pretty much all mammals have it.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' OK. I mean, that also makes sense. Let me let me try to rip this one apart. I mean, I know, like, for example, birds can't taste spice, like spicy food.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It's so bad for birds.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Do you like spice?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Spice.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Sorry.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, but bitter. You know what? You know what I'm going to say? I'm going to say that that one's the fake because I think bitter is a sign of poison and poison affects more creatures than just mammals.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Jay was clearly not listening to Bob at all.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' What did Bob say?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Exactly what you just said.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I wasn't. I actually I'll admit that I wasn't.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' You know, you already did admit it.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That's fine.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. You think that one's a fiction?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Wait, hold on, Steve, wait.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' There's more? That's usually the end of your...<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That is it. That's it. You got to let me finish it, OK? I like to finish.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Evan?<br />
<br />
=== Evan's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''E:''' OK. About the computers, Bob, you missed an excellent opportunity opportunity to say the word pedaflop. I was really waiting for you to say that. Didn't happen, so I guess I had to say it. And this does seem the most unlikely of the three, which is why Bob probably avoided it as being the fiction. And I'm having the same kind of feeling as well. I have no idea how it did this. Who also mentioned Jay, you were talking about zip drives or zip files?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Remember jazz drives? I don't know why suddenly.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I do.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, I had one.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I had one and I still have the disks and I don't want to throw them away because I'd love to know if I can recover some of the data.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Right, right. It's like having the, what, the three and a half inch floppies lying around somewhere that.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I know those, but I don't know what a jazz drive.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Jazz drive from the 90s. It was, I don't know, double the space of a three and a half?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It was like the A-track of data storage.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It was popular for about three months.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It just jumped right over.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' No, it was like, I think it was fairly significant, like a hundred meg maybe.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, something like that.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It was very intermediary to like the stuff that really settled in.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Before we were burning CDs.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' They sold it until 2002. And you're right. It was a hundred megabytes.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Cool. Sorry about that tangent, but I had to get that off my mind. Now the second one about Duckweed. Jay, you missed this one. The real name is Wulfia.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Wulfi.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Wulfi.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Mark your cards, listeners. Oh wait, we're not playing the bingo game that we play on Fridays.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' They could be playing SGU bingo.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Fastest growing plant known. Okay. Double its mass. 16 hours. Optimal conditions. Genomic analysis. Sure. Why? What other analysis would explain why? If not genomic. As far as I'm concerned, I think that one's science. So I'm kind of left with this bitter taste in my mouth and that one is going to wind up being the fiction for all the reasons that Jay said that Bob said.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay, Cara.<br />
<br />
=== Cara's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, I got to go with the guys. The neural net one is incredible. And I can't wait for you to tell me why that is science because it sounds too good to be true. And I had the first thought that Bob did, which was of course they daisy chained them all together. Like we're using their processing power in the same way that a supercomputer would.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Like the SETI program used for desktops.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right. But if that's not the case, and I'm really interested in what is the case, the duckweed one seems like, I bet you people listening right now, if I'm remembering correctly, will be like, duh, that's science. We just during the live show interviewed Kevin Folta and I remember him talking at length about how duckweed and algae are really great sources, sustainable sources of photosynthetic fuel because duckweed grows so quickly. So hopefully that's, I feel like I remember him literally just saying that. So that one is aligned with that. So I got to go with the other guys too. Simply because I think that bitter is probably older than mammalian lineage. It's probably like a chordate thing. I wouldn't be surprised if everything, lizards, birds, yeah, anything that's kind of a, has a spine. So not obviously insects, not things at that level, but anything that we think of that's a chordate is probably able to detect bitter. Otherwise, yeah, they'd just constantly be killing themselves by eating toxins.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #2 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. So you all agree on number three. Let's start with number two since you seem to have the easiest time with this one. Genomic analysis helps explain why duckweed, Wolffia, is the fastest growing plant known, able to double its mass in as little as 16 hours under optimal conditions. Now, is it the fastest growing plant? That's the thing. You guys focused on the 16 hours.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' A fast growing plant.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But is it the fastest? This says it's the fastest.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Crap.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' This one is science. This is science.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, God. Will that be insane?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' He didn't have me for a second.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Most people, Jay's correct. The go-to answer here is bamboo.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Bamboo grows the fastest when it comes to linear growth but not mass. Duckweed, you guys have all seen duckweed. These are the tiny little plants that float on the top of ponds or lakes. Yeah, like a mat of these tiny little things. You probably didn't realize that they were individual plants themselves. The reason why they, part of the reason why they grow so fast, this is what scientists are trying to figure out, why do they grow so fast and can we replicate this in, like, crops? What can we do about this? So they want them to know what genes are responsible for allowing them to grow so quickly.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' CRISPR, baby.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Part of what they found out was that the duckweed has a very simplified genome. So first of all, they have no roots, right? So they don't have to spend energy growing roots. They actually reproduce by budding and the entire plant consists of like a stem fused to a leaf, basically. So it's just one little green thing that floats on top of the water. Now 16 hours is, again, that's like the lowest number I found under optimal conditions. Every two to three days is more realistic under real-world conditions. Still, that's a lot.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Amazing.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Here's the reason why Kevin Folta was so interested in it. 40% protein, 40% protein. So not just biofuel, this could be a massive food supply in the future. It is eaten in Southeast Asia, apparently.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Little cricket flour with that.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Steve you just gave that...<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I swallowed my glottal stuff.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yes, I was like, you just gave that classic Connecticut-cution, it's eaten. It was so good.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Eaten.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Eaten.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yes, that is our regional, people ask us, what size do you have of a speech impediment? That is our regional accent. It's called the glottal stop. Just suck it up.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That's the right way to say those words.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So wait, Bob, yeah, you all say eaten, don't you? That's so funny.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Eaten, written, written is probably the one.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I don't say eaten, but I would say it in between. It's like eaten.<br />
<br />
'''E:'''Isn't there a donut chain called best eaten donuts?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Eaten.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Eaten.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #3 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay, let's go on to number three.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Sorry sorry.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' A recent review of research finds that human bitter taste receptors evolved in the mammalian lineage where they remained widely conserved. I think the word that you all missed in there is human bitter taste receptors. This doesn't mean that non-mammals don't taste bitter.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's the same as ours.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' They don't have the same bitter taste receptor as human.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I hate when we miss words.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Which is why I put that word in there. Because I was hoping that you were going to key in on it because this one is the fiction. You failed, you failed to fall for my bait.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I love how he has to frame that in the negative.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Well done Bob, thans for going first, Bob.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' We failed at falling for his bait.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' We failed at not winning.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Our victory is our victory.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I call that the insult sandwich.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' The insult sandwich. That works well.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The study was actually looking at the bitter taste receptors in coelacanth. What they found was that we have the same bitter receptors. At least there's an evolutionary continuity between the coelacanth bitter receptors and pretty much everything. Our bitter taste receptors go back at least 400 million years.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' 400 million?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Not only all chordates, as you say, Cara, all vertebrates, let's say, but going way back into the early dawn of vertebrates. And you're correct. It's because bitter, the whole point of tasting bitter is to avoid poisons. Could it make sense that it's more of a land animal kind of thing because plants and bitter? But it's also, for fish, it's eating other fish. Other fish have poison. But they're discovering a lot about the bitter taste receptors because once something exists, it's going to find other uses. That's how evolution works.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Sure.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' There are bitter taste receptors in your heart. Did you know that?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' What?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It also can sense things like your bile. It can serve a lot of it. This is adaptive radiation. Other things have evolved out of these bitter taste genes that they're discovering that serve other functions.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Did you guys know that rats can't throw up?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I didn't know that. Is that really true?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I remember reading about this in early neuroscience courses because it was all behavior and biology. Rats can't vomit, so they actually observe other rats fall victim to things like poisons, and they learn from that, which is why rat poison almost never works if you have multiple rats.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It kills one rat.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It kills one rat, the rest of them watch, and they develop almost a food aversion by proxy by watching that rat die because, yeah, they can't vomit, so they have to be extra vigilant. It's pretty cool. <br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, that was a good non-sequiter. All right, going back to number one.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Steve, that's like when we would have Jay eat the weird stuff before you and I would eat it when we were young.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Exactly. Just in case he dies.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, you know.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #1 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, number one, computational scientists have developed a new method of performing large-scale simulations of neural networks using only desktop computers but performing as well as supercomputers with tens of millions of dollars is science. This is pretty incredible.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, tell me about this.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I mean, I don't understand really how they do it because they're computational scientists but, and this was published, this study was published in Nature Computational Science, go figure, and...<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Cool.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' What they did was they used a GPU, right, so a Graphics Processing Unit.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Graphical Processing Unit. That's common. I mean, they're calculation intensive. They do crazy calculations.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Extremely.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' A lot of supercomputers are just a whole bunch of GPUs.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, they figured out how to use a GPU to do exactly the kind of computing that is necessary for simulating large-scale neural networks and the key is, as far as I could tell...<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Gaming computers.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's a little bit technical for me. The key is that they figured out a way of doing it where it doesn't need to store massive amounts of information. It's not generating and storing a ton of information where you need the power of the supercomputer to do it and so they were able to sort of bypass that with the method that they're using.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Well, it's not just storage. It isn't just pure speed. Don't you want quintillions of operations per second? Something that a desktop is not going to do?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, but I guess a lot of that time was being taken up generating and storing information that they were able to bypass. So their method was actually a little bit faster. So if you look at how quickly it would take a computer to simulate one second of biological time, let's say, in a mouse's brain in the part of the core, not the whole brain, we're not at that point yet, but in the part of the cortex they're simulating. So using a supercomputer in 2018, this specific simulation that they were doing, they were actually doing a macaque's visual cortex.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Any details on the supercomputer? How many petaflops, exaflops?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Too late Bob.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' In 2018, this was in 2018, one rack of an IBM Blue Gene Q supercomputer.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That's fast. That was number one for a while.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Would simulate one second of biological time in 12 minutes. They were able to simulate that same second of biological time in 7.7 minutes.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Wow.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So that's better.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That is better.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I'm still not sure. I mean, then it can't really just be pure calculations per second that's doing this. And so how could storage, so why then, if you don't need storage to accomplish this, then couldn't that bring down the time for a supercomputer as well? Because they won't need the storage and they'll just have the pure raw processing power. So there's some details there, I'm just not quite getting, but okay, I still won.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So this was it. They're procedurally generating connectivity and synaptic weights on the go as spikes are triggered, removing the need to store connectivity data in memory.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, it's like instead of having to draw things up, do the calculation and bring them back down, they're somehow accessing it in real time.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' On the go. Again, Bob, just reading off the article. I don't understand exactly what they're doing.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I'll look a little deeper if I can find a better way to explain it next week, I'll do it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, we could do some follow-up. But that's pretty cool. And again, off the cuff, you're like, wow, you can use a desktop computer that two years ago would have taken a supercomputer worth tens of millions of dollars or pounds, depending on what side of the pond you're on. That's amazing. And so this, of course, would bring this kind of simulation down to accessibility to all researchers, whereas previously, booking time on a supercomputer was a limited resource. So this could be like rocket fuel to this kind of research, which is awesome.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' But that's an important caveat there, though, Steve, because this kind of research, yes, but other types of research that require supercomputers that does not mean at all that you can just use a laptop for them. I think this is very specific type of research that's amenable to desktops that other types aren't.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You're correct so far, but who knows? Maybe they can adapt this procedure to weather simulation or who knows? It may not be only useful for neuronal networks. You know, it might be useful for other things that remains to be seen.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Maybe a few other things-<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Or generalizable it is.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It's not like we're going to be replacing supercomputers with desktops.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, I don't think so. I don't think so. But yeah, you're right. It'll be for some things, but hopefully not just one thing.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Classes of problems, potentially, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Right. But it also does show you how powerful GPUs are. You know, the graphics processing units.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh yeah, they're little beasts.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's what they do.<br />
<br />
== Skeptical Quote of the Week <small>(1:49:34)</small> ==<br />
<br />
<blockquote>All human experience proves over and over again that any success which comes through meanness, trickery, fraud, and dishonor is but emptiness and will only be a torment to its possessor.<br>– Frederick Douglass (1817-1895), an American social reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman. </blockquote><br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay, Evan, give us a quote.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' "All human experience proves over and over again that any success which comes through meanness, trickery, fraud, and dishonor is but emptiness and will only be a torment to its possessor." And that was written by Frederick Douglass, who we all know.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, very interesting person. Any of you guys watching the series Good Lord Bird?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' No.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, I just started. I watched the first episode.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Oh yeah, it's great.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' With Ethan Hawke.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, with Ethan Hawke. It's about, is it John Brown? Yeah, it's about John Brown.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, John Brown led the slave revolt.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, led the slave revolt at Harpers Ferry. Very interesting.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Precursive of the war, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's based on a book that was written like a literary kind of take on John Brown, I think. And it's like a dark comedy.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It is, it's a dark comedy.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's interesting, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Wow.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But it's very accurate. Every time something happened, did that really happen? We would look it up like, yeah, that's really happened.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh good, okay, cool.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' He had a relationship with Frederick Douglass.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So it's like narrative nonfiction. It's got that storytelling component. Yeah, that's really cool.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, they say most of it happened. So there's obviously characters that were not real that we see the story through, but the story is actually historical. I highly recommend it. The name Good Lord Bird, at one point in the story, this isn't giving much away, at one point in the story, you see there's a bird on a tree. And I'm looking at it. I'm like, damn, that looks like an ivory-billed woodpecker.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, no way, no way.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Was it?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And it was an ivory-billed woodpecker.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' CG'd?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I totally nailed it. Of course. But they called the ivory-billed woodpecker a common name for it was the Good Lord Bird because that's what people said whenever they saw it. Good Lord.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Good Lord, it's making a racket.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' What, is that true?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I don't know.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And it's like a sign of good luck.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yes. That's right.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's a beautiful bird.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I kind of said Good Lord when I first saw it in the show.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Good Lord, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Right, it's funny.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I was like, dear mother of God.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' A little bit of birding in there.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Sorry, I had to.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Have we found some DNA somewhere, Steve, of the ivory-billed woodpecker? Could we bring it back?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, it's extinct?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Allegedly.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, that's so sad.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, it is. Remember, there was this, there was possible footage emerged in 2017 around there. But it's almost certainly a Pileated woodpecker, which is the most closely related bird. It didn't have the field markings that would positively identify it as an ivory-billed. So it's probably been extinct for about 80 years, and there's no convincing evidence.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Weird. Wikipedia still counts it as critically endangered.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, there's no convincing evidence that there's any living specimens. But the thing is, it lives in the deep swamps so that people could say, oh, it's hidden away. It's okay. It's a fair point. But until we have evidence, it's like the Tasmanian tiger. So it's unclear, apparently, if there's any DNA fingerprint of it. Maybe in a lab somewhere, who knows? But I don't know that we know for sure.<br />
<br />
== Signoff/Announcements <small>(1:52:56)</small> == <br />
<!-- if the signoff/announcements don't immediately follow the QoW or if the QoW comments take a few minutes, it would be appropriate to include a timestamp for when this part starts --><br />
<br />
'''S:''' We are still doing our Friday live stream, starting at 5 o'clock Eastern time. So if you want to, you could join us. We will be doing that every week. And thank you guys for joining me this week.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Sure, man.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' You're welcome, Steve.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Thank you, Steve.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Thanks Steve.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' —and until next week, this is your {{SGU}}. <!-- typically this is the last thing before the Outro --> <br />
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}}</div>Hearmepurrhttps://www.sgutranscripts.org/w/index.php?title=SGU_Episode_676&diff=19113SGU Episode 6762024-01-19T07:13:25Z<p>Hearmepurr: episode done</p>
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|forumLink = https://sguforums.org/index.php?topic=50370.0<br />
|qowText = Science has not yet mastered prophecy. We predict too much for the next year, and yet far too little for the next 10. <!-- add quote of the week text--><br />
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== Introduction ==<br />
<br />
''Voice-over: You're listening to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.'' <br />
<br />
'''S:''' Hello and welcome to the {{SGU|link=y}}. Today is Tuesday, June 19<sup>th</sup>, 2018, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella... <br />
<br />
'''B:''' Hey, everybody!<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Cara Santa Maria... <br />
<br />
'''C:''' Howdy. <br />
<br />
'''S:''' Jay Novella... <br />
<br />
'''J:''' Hey guys. <br />
<br />
'''S:''' ...and Evan Bernstein. <br />
<br />
'''E:''' Good evening everyone.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Cara, welcome back.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Hi.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' How was South America? Oh, wait. That was...<br />
<br />
'''E:''' No.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That was summer.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I was just in D.C.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah. A different swamp.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I was there for the National Geographic Explorers Festival.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Oh, cool.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Neat.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Which is so fun. Yeah. They get explorers from all over the world to come together in D.C. and they do all these different events and symposia and stuff. And so I don't know if you know, but a National Geographic Explorer is a grantee. So they're mostly scientists, but a lot of them are conservationists. And sometimes it's, photographers and different people who are documenting what's going on around the world. And I hosted or emceed, if you want to call it that, these two full-day symposia events. Joel Sartori, if you follow any of his photography work, he's incredible. He does a project called The Photo Arc, where he wants to document every species on the planet.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Nice.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. He's done tens of thousands already. And he has all these beautiful photography books with birds of the photo arc, mammals of the photo arc. And he's documented all the species that have gone extinct from the time he started the project. It's pretty intense.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Sad.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' He should start with those.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I think he does. He tries to, but a lot of them are tough. A lot of the images you see plastered around zoos are actually his work because he gives them for free away to zoos. And he showed this really hilarious video of him trying to get a chimpanzee. He still has not photographed a chimpanzee because all of his photos are on white or black cyc. So they're really stark. And chimpanzees rip the cyc. He has this hilarious thing of getting the cage already in the zoo. And it's an area where he walks from the enclosure into the smaller enclosure. And they have all the white cyc, which is the white paper, all taped down perfectly. And then the chimpanzee literally just reaches his hand in and crumples it all up in two seconds flat and starts laughing. And they're like, OK.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Of course.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. That's probably the hardest one for them to get.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Did you happen to eat at the International House of Burgers?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' IHOB. You could be good at IHOB while you were there.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' IHOB.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Why would I eat at IHOB?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' This story upset me.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Why? You and I have very different reactions to this story.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I'll tell you why. Because. Because. In case you didn't know, the International House of Pancakes, or IHOP as it's known, they had announced plans to flip the P in IHOP to a B. And they left it up to people for a whole week to figure out why and what the B was going to be. And, I mean, basically the Internet burned down over it as far as I could tell.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Then they announced it was burgers.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' They announced it was burgers. Right.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Not breakfast. Everybody thought it was going to be breakfast. Like, oh, they're not just pancakes. They're also breakfast. But it wasn't.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But that was actually the opposite of what they were trying to do was to advertise that they serve lunch and dinner. Not just breakfast.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' So I did an unscientific poll in which I asked sort of everyone for a day or so whom I came across, family, friends, and others, what they thought of that. And almost 100% unanimous reaction was this dour face and like, that's so stupid. Why are they doing this?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, I thought that was dumb.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's just a dumb advertising.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Dumb. Well, guess what? They're not changing their name to International House of Burgers. They used it as a marketing stunt, basically.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Of course.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' No way.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's also like, I don't understand why that surprises anybody.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' To get people talking about it.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Not surprised, but the thing that it did, it just made me think they were really stupid because it's a bad name.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No. I think they're really smart. You know why they're smart? Because we're talking about it right now on our show.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yes. Yes. As was everybody had an opinion about it.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' They tricked me.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I wonder what the long-term effects of it are, though, because it's manipulative and stupid and it doesn't endear me to the franchise, to IHOP, you know what I mean? <br />
<br />
'''C:''' I don't know. I guess maybe I'm super cynical, but I'm like, why is this a story?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Because Chrissy Teigen tweeted about it and therefore it's a story, right? Doesn't she have the most Twitter followers or something?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I just feel like literally, who cares?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I go to IHOP once a decade, so really, I don't have a lot invested in this, but I do love breakfast food.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Who cares what it's called?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We go there all the time for breakfast.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Are you going to, is this going to change your behavior at all, Steve?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, if anything, it would make us avoid going there.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Ooh, boomerang effect.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' You're not going to go there for burgers regardless. Why would anybody eat a burger at IHOP?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's basically a diner.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I've not tried it, actually.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's a great breakfast place and a diner the rest of the day, and that's fine.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, that was actually, that was me showing my ridiculous snobbery living in Los Angeles and having like a million amazing restaurants at my disposal. There are just so many other, like I don't eat red meat that much, so I feel like if I'm going to indulge in a hamburger, it's going to be the best hamburger. It's not going to be at IHOP.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, it's got to be worth it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Totally.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Right, exactly. I consider myself a connoisseur of diners. Liz and I go to diners every weekend without fail. If we don't go to a diner and have breakfast food, we get cranky. And we have never gone to an IHOP, never, except when we were in Atlanta.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' What's the most ordered item in a diner, Bob?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Water.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' No, you don't order water. They just throw it in your face whether you want it or not.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' You order water in LA, lots of restaurants won't give it to you. It's free, but you have to ask for it.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' The most ordered item in a diner, Jay? Do you actually know the answer to this?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I might.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' All right.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I would assume it's eggs. Or coffee.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' French fries?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, yes. Coffee. It's got to be.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Jay, is it coffee?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' What is it? Haggis? What is it?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Is it coffee?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Coffee and French fries.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Coffee and French fries, there you go.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's a good combo.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, not necessarily together. It's not necessarily together, right? Just the most frequent beverage is coffee and the most frequent food item is French fries. It's like there probably aren't a lot of people named Muhammad Lee, even though Muhammad is the most common first name in the planet and Lee is the most common last name.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' You're right.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' There are probably still a fair amount of people, though. There might be. You never know.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' There's Muhammad Ali.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's true.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' You know what I think is a good beverage with French fries is a chocolate shake.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Oh, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Better than coffee, probably.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Although I prefer vanilla shakes, but yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But do you prefer to dip ... I'm talking about dipping your French fries in a chocolate shake.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Whoa, hold on now. What are we doing here?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' How do you not know about this?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I know about it. My daughter does. I hate it, though.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's a best kept secret, but I don't think it would be as good in vanilla, although it wouldn't be bad.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Maybe if they had a ketchup flavoured shake.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Ew.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' All right. Forget it. You killed the whole thing.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Did you know that when chocolate was really first discovered by the West, it basically was introduced as an alternative to coffee? It was really only offered as a hot beverage.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It was a drink, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Interesting.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, because it's bitter unless you sweeten it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It was a drink, like coffee or tea. Yeah, it's basically just a different version of a hot beverage. It's a bitter bean that you roast and make into a drink.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, but isn't that basically what Starbucks does? I mean, a lot of their coffees is essentially glorified chocolate milk, right?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But is it cacao? I don't think so. I think it's still cocoa.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, we're going to get a lot of emails, aren't we?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. I don't mind Starbucks.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Until they figured out the chemistry to get it into a solid, that would melt in your mouth, right?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah. That's critical.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I learned that in the book I finished reading called Stuff Matters.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Stuff Matters.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It was a good book, but I have to say it wasn't as detailed as I was hoping. It didn't go deep enough on each of the topics.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' You're going to have to get a book on each of those individual topics.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, pretty much.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' The ones that really interested you, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Pretty much, yeah. I think to delve deeper.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, they didn't even talk about metamaterials, which I thought was a gaping hole.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh gosh.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It was more of a primer than, let's do a deep dive on material science. It was more, well, let's talk about the future. It was really just, all right, here's like the most basic stuff in our civilization, like cement and chocolate and steel and let's – ceramics and paper. Let's talk about those things and get some basic fundamental knowledge about their history and everything. So it was good.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I started reading a fascinating book for school. Have any of you read Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' No.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I'm familiar with it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's a pretty famous book, but Viktor Frankl who is – he was Austrian, an existential psychotherapist who came up with something that he called logotherapy, which is partially what the book is about. But really, the book is about his experience in a concentration camp. He survived Auschwitz. So he writes all about his experiences and that's really where he developed his view of psychotherapy. But it's a fascinating like first person look of – and in a very clear, very kind of weirdly academic but also emotional way and I'm riveted. I sat down to start it last night and I'm already 75 pages in and it's a short book. I think it's only like a 200-page book.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That does sound amazing.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I recommend it. Yeah. It's really good.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It sounds interesting.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. It's a quick read. It's good for intellectuals or just people in general. It's kind of like on that must-read list. Like probably some point in your life, you should check this book out.<br />
<br />
== What's the Word? <small>(9:55)</small> ==<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. Well, Cara, what's the word?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, how did I know you were going to ask that? OK. The word this week was recommended by –<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's right there in the notes.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, yeah. It was recommended by Hatun Bazim. I hope I'm saying that right. He's actually from Austria but originally from Saudi Arabia. He says, "I'm a PhD student in immunology but also a writer. Thank you for your great show. It's kept me company for many hours as I experimented away in a gloomy quarantine animal facility that we, the PhD students and postdocs, like to call the dungeon." I feel your pain, Hatun. He said "My suggestion for what's the word would be vector because he has experience with it in genetic engineering but, of course, he knows that there's a lot of other usages." So this one is tough. I tried to be comprehensive but I know that I'm leaving things out because when I looked at the Wikipedia page at the last minute, you know how it has like the disambiguation? Like you put in a word and it's like, it can mean and then you can click on everything. Under math, there are five bullet points. Under computer science, there are like 15. Biology has at least 10. Business has a lot. Entertainment, fictional characters, transportation, vehicles, and other uses.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, my god.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I know. So I'm like, ooh.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' What do we do?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But let's start at the beginning – or not at the beginning but let's do a kind of top-down look. I saw on a blog post that was published on Wired that they wrote, "When you think of a vector, many people probably call up vector's definition from Despicable Me." He says, it's a mathematical term, a quantity represented by an arrow with both direction and magnitude. Vector, that's me because I'm committing crimes with both direction and magnitude. Oh, yeah. So that's what we often think, a quantity that has magnitude and direction. It's usually represented by a line segment whose length represents the magnitude and whose orientation in space represents the direction. But apparently, a mathematical vector doesn't have to have those two pieces of information, direction and magnitude. It can really be any pieces of information that give you an understanding of this measurement in 2, 3, 4, 5, or even 6-dimensional space, plus, plus, plus. So basically, vector is used as a term that's in opposition to or is distinct from the word scalar. A scalar has only one piece of information, like temperature, mass, charge. But vectors would have multiple. So when we're talking about, let's say, acceleration, that's going to be a vector because it has multiple pieces of information, multiple constructs that tell you what's going on. Or forces often are vectors. Displacement might be a vector. So it can be something that's like moving, but it definitely is something where you've got multiple pieces of data that tell you more about this quantity. Also, apparently, in math, didn't realize this, when you're looking at matrices, a vector is how you describe a single row or column within a matrix. Hmm, who knew? The first vector would be the first column of a matrix. What else do we have? We've got computing. We've got design. You guys have heard of vector files. If you've ever used Photoshop or you've been designing merchandise or something, you're going to use a vector file, right? It's a type of graphical representation that uses lines to construct the outlines of objects. Usually, it's going to be over some sort of transparent background. And it can scale without losing its resolution.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That's the key. Make it tiny or huge. It's so awesome.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But apparently, there's a lot more to computer science, which I didn't even get to get into. So that definition has to do with it being an array, a one-dimensional array. But apparently, there is an algorithm called a vector clock. A vector has a usage in C++. There's something called an attack vector, which is an approach that's used in attacking a computer. We talked about vector graphics. There's a vector game, which is a game that uses vector graphics. Early computers used vector monitors. Oh, my gosh. There's so many. But now let's talk about biology because this was the usage that Hatun was describing. And even within biology, there's a different usage in genetics than there is in maybe ecology. So often in like ecology and medicine, we'll use the term vector to describe an organism that transmits a pathogen, right? Like the vector for that disease would be a mosquito or a rat.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' A tick.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, or a tick. Exactly. Those are common vectors. But we also use vector to describe an agent like a plasmid or a virus that helps carry usually modified genetic material into an organism's genome. So we might use some sort of virus and it carries the coding portion of the genome that we're interested when we're making a GMO, for example, into that organism. And that's how it can be kind of transfected, how it can enter into the nucleus, enter into the DNA, and affect change there. So we also call that a vector.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Transfected, did you say?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I like that word.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, it's a good one. Let me add that to the list. I love it when we come up with new things. All right. There's also a definition that I came across, which is kind of not a scientific definition, but it's another common usage of the word vector, which is it's just the course that's taken by a plane or a missile. That's its vector. Oh, yeah. Kind of makes sense. It goes with the physics definition. So let's talk about the word itself. It goes back a long time. It seems to have roots going. It's Latin in origin, but you might be able to even pull it back to the PIE. It's Proto-Indo-European, which is, remember we talked about that a while back on the show, which is thought to be this like backward described root language of all of the different Proto-Indo-European languages, or sorry, all of the different Indo-European languages that came out of it. And so when we look even at Latin and the ancestors of Latin, the word vector just continuously goes back to a meaning of being a transport, carry, carrying, maybe even riding. And so it makes sense when you look back at all of these different definitions. It's a quantity that has magnitude and direction. It's transporting. It's carrying. It's moving in a particular direction. A vector in biology, it's transporting. It's carrying. It's moving in a particular direction. So it actually is one of those cool words where even though it has a lot of different applications, when you really think about the root of the word, they all seem to have something in common.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. That's a deceptively difficult one because there's so many different uses.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' When you guys first hear the word vector, I mean, because it must have to do with priming, right? I should have asked you this at the beginning, but do you go to the math and kind of physics definition first, like the calculus definition?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I go to the movie Airplane and say, what's your vector, Victor?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, hilarious.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Vector, Victor. Roger, Roger.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Hilarious. So you go to the aircraft definition. I almost always go to the disease vector definition, but I know a lot of people that work more in genetics who go into the plasmid or the virus vector definition. What about you, Steve?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, I do both the math and the medicine one come to mind immediately.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' The more genetic one or the disease one?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The disease vector. Disease vector and mathematical vector are kind of equal in my mind as far as the first definition.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Interesting. I love it. All right. Thanks, Cara.<br />
<br />
=== Video Game Addiction <small>(17:48)</small> ===<br />
{{shownotes<br />
|weblink = https://www.gamerevolution.com/news/398115-video-game-addiction-now-a-recognized-illness<br />
|article_title = Video Game Addiction Now a Recognized Illness<br />
|publication = Game Revolution<br />
|redirect_title = Video Game Addiction <!--technology; delete this parameter when redirect is created --><br />
}}<br />
'''S:''' So Jay, I understand the World Health Organization now recognizes video game addiction as a real thing.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, no.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yep.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Do they?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' About time.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That's right. So, yeah, so the WHO.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Count us in, I guess.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' As we like to call it. The WHO, International Classification of Diseases. That's the ICD, International Classification of Diseases, now has a new entry.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's the big book.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That is, and it's very important. It's a very cool thing to read about because it's used across the world and people rely on this for critical information. So they have recently added something called a gaming disorder, and this new entry states that people who are addicted to video games can't control their behavior when they're around gaming, and they give gaming a priority over the more important aspects of their lives. So as an example, if you would rather play a game than eat a meal or take care of yourself, you could possibly have an addiction. So the WHO's listing for the gaming disorder reads, "Gaming disorder is characterized by a pattern of persistent or recurrent gaming behavior. This is digital gaming or video gaming, which may be online or offline. It manifests by impaired control over gaming, increased priority given to gaming, and continuation of escalation of gaming." So in other words, the three main vectors here, thank you.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Nice, Jay.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So vector one, the gaming behavior takes precedence over other activities to the extent that other activities are pushed to the periphery. The second feature is an impaired control of these behaviors even when the negative consequences occur, meaning you can clearly see that your relationships in your life are suffering, but you don't care. You just keep obsessively gaming. And the third feature is that the condition leads to significant distress and impairment in personal, family, social, educational, or occupational function, and the impact is real, and it may include details like bad sleep patterns, diet problems, and a deficiency in physical activity, which could be very serious as well. So listen, a little healthy obsession in video games is fine, and any real gamer would kind of see themselves in these things that I described here, but we're not talking about like, oh man, I played that game like crazy for a week, and then everything's back to normal in your life for the most part. I'm talking about people that do this on a profound level, and it has a massive disruption to their life. Now of course there's a spectrum here, and you've got to be honest with yourself because if you do have this problem, you really should do something about it because of just how disruptive it can be. They are comparing this to a gambling addiction, which could be devastating. So the WHO warns that when gaming has these characteristics that I described, it's really time to get help, and they also note that it could be episodic or all the time, but episodic, like I said, it isn't like two or three days. Episodic could be a couple of months, and then a week off, and then a couple of more months. You really got to skew this in your head to someone whose life is about to explode or has exploded because of gaming. They say you need to have at least 12 months of negative behavior before you could be diagnosed. Unless under certain circumstances you could have all of the requirements and the addiction is so severe that you might get an earlier diagnosis, but they're kind of looking at it being like a 12-month pattern before they're really going to give you the diagnosis. So apparently, as an example, there's a newish game out there called Fortnite. I'm sure you guys have heard of it, and a lot of kids have become addicted to this game. This is just the beginning because I think when VR hits, we're going to have an epidemic. It could be really bad because it's so immersive that you could be in a VR environment and feel like you are living a life. You do have friends.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' People won't want to return back to non-VR.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah. So as a parent, you should definitely monitor your kids' gaming. I would say it's not just the amount of time that they're gaming, but what kind of games are they playing. You got to really think about the psychology behind it. How hooked do they seem to be into the game? So history has shown that healthcare companies and insurers will use the ICD as a basis for deciding if a patient should get reimbursed for treatment or not.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But, of course, then you're really just talking, not just, but you're generally talking about a primary care physician, maybe a neurologist, but most mental health professionals, some of them use the ICD, but most of them use the DSM. So they have their own classification, but there's a section.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The ICD is for billing. That's all it's for.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Exactly. Honestly, so is the DSM. But that's why I was wondering, Steve, what your take is on this because I think that there's a lot of politics behind this. This is a lumper and a splitter question. Like do we need to be parsing out, "different" types of behavioral addiction or should we just have behavioral addiction or some sort of umbrella term?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The ICD has evolved into an epic splitter. They split diagnoses now so fine it's just a pain in the ass. So this just fits its overall pattern of where they've gone. Like they have numbness, numbness in the left hand, numbness in the right hand, numbness and tingling and whatever. It's like they parse it down so fine. Sometimes there's like 100 versions of a basic level diagnosis and you have to go through it all. Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Exactly. But like it's not going to affect therapy. You know what I mean? Like working with a client with this, whether there's a code next to their name, it's not going to inform, I don't think, how the therapist approaches the problem.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, and I think interestingly, so the American Psychiatric Association is also considering this for the DSM, the Internet Gaming Disorder is their provisional diagnosis. And they have very reasonable criteria. I think that many people might react by saying it's a spectrum and they're just making it up and how do you – where do you draw the lines? But this is what they do is they take these spectra and they say, okay, if you're way, way over to this side to the point where it's a disorder, then all that means is that this is a problem that we need to address. So, for example, here are some of the criteria they use, which I think are all reasonable. Preoccupation, so spending a lot of time thinking about the games, even when you're not playing. Some kind of withdrawal, so like when you're not playing, you're restless. You have almost withdrawal symptoms. Tolerance in that you need to play more and more and more to get the same excitement. The feeling that you feel like you should play less, but you're unable to do so. It's like you self-identify, I play too much. I shouldn't play as much as I do, but you feel compelled to do so. It replaces other activities. So you give up many, many other activities in your life. You continue to play even though it's causing problems in your life. Like if your work is suffering, your relationships are suffering, but you still do it, then obviously that's a problem. You start to lie about it. So that's another classic addictive type behavior. You start to cover for yourself and you use deception in order to protect your time. And you are willing to risk tremendous loss in your life so that you can gain. So you make tremendous sacrifices for it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' The bottom line with a lot of the diagnoses in the DSM is this kind of qualifier. Different iterations of the DSM utilize this qualifier differently. Sometimes it's a line of the diagnostic code. Sometimes it's you have to have seven out of these ten in order, however they want to do it. Like I said, versions use it differently. It almost always comes down to does it significantly interfere with your life, whether that be your work, your relationships, or your daily functioning.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And that's how we define a disorder generically. The other issue is the use of the term addiction, which is why you'll notice the APA didn't use that term. Some people think that addiction should be reserved for a biochemical addiction.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And also because there are medical treatments that are very different than psychological treatments. I don't know if there's a lot of good research showing that giving a person who has a video game, a difficulty with video games and not stopping, is going to have any sort of benefit taking a psychoactive medication. It might be an anxiety issue. It might be an underlying depressive disorder. I mean it's so complicated.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Then you get to a dual diagnosis where they're using it to reduce their anxiety. And some people do have that as well. That's why the diagnosis gets so complicated because they interact with each other. But there have been studies looking at what's happening in the brain when people are playing video games. And then that, of course, stuff is happening. And then that gets translated into, look, it's your brain on video games.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, it's dopamine.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's the same. Yeah. It all comes down to dopamine. But of course, dopamine is sort of the generic neurotransmitter for any positive pleasurable reinforcement. So anything you enjoy doing is going to give you a squirt of dopamine.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, when you pet your dog, when you have sex, all that gives you dopamine.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It doesn't mean it's as addictive as heroin. So it's not a drug. It doesn't do to your brain what drugs do. It's not a biological addiction. It's a compulsive behavior. And at some point – we all engage in compulsive behaviors to some degree. But at some point, you're more than two standard deviations to one side and it starts to have a significant, measurable, demonstrable, objective negative impact on your life. Then you can consider it a disorder. It's a problem that needs to be addressed. Often it's self-identified. People recognize that it's a problem that they have. Other times they may be in denial or they may lack insight or they may be covering because, again, the compulsion tends to do that too.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' We want to say addiction.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The other people in your life may be the ones who are identifying the problem. And it gets tricky. It gets tricky. But, yeah, I think it's perfectly reasonable to identify, I think, any compulsive behavior. If you're gambling your life away, that's a problem.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, and I think if you see any negative feedback to this, like even my opinion might be one that says, like, we don't need this other diagnosis. It's just because it's how we're categorizing. I think nobody's going to deny that this is a real issue and that people who are facing this life issue need or would benefit from psychotherapeutic intervention or some sort of intervention. But whether or not we put it under the header of anxiety disorders, whether it's listed under a type of obsessive compulsive disorder, that's just – that's where I think you're going to see the arguments come in.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And there's no absolutely objective resolution to that. It is a categorization issue.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Absolutely. Yeah, this is all – these are all human and human-created categories. So there's always going to be an argument about how, better taxonomic systems for these.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, and there's different contexts here. One is pragmatic. We need to – bookkeeping and communication and paying the bills. And the other is more scientific. It's like how does this affect how we think about these things and how we approach them clinically? And that's where it gets complicated. Are we constraining our thinking about it by – are the labels constraining our thinking?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, which is not uncommon.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We have to treat them as placeholders. They're just placeholders for practical reasons and they help, but they shouldn't really be constraining how we think about it.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I always thought that a good game, a game that really hooked you, that was a better game than a game that doesn't hook you.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It just means it's really good, right?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And that's fine.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, I know. But it's funny when you think about that. But it could be – there are games that have things about them that give people a lot of satisfaction.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Especially when they overwhelm – like there are new worlds that they can enter into that allow them to withdraw from their real world.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Sure, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, that's a good point, Cara.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' All the modern games that we have today, I mean these are – these companies spend hundreds of millions of dollars. I mean these are more expensive than a lot of movies you go see to produce a video game. They're fantastically immersive. I mean they're building them to be immersive. They're building them to give you a lot of satisfaction. So the gaming industry – and I'm not putting it down in any way because that's what makes a good game. When you get – you say, man, I'm so hooked on that game. It's true. Like I've had games where I was obsessed with it for a week or two. But then the game ends. Like a lot of the games that we play, you put in 40 hours and you're done.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So people have gotten lost in hobbies forever, right? And I think we shouldn't be judgmental about what those hobbies are. I think video games have an unjustified stigma because they're nerdy and they could seem isolationist or whatever. But somebody spends – has a hobby. They spend hours and hours and hours a day painting or something. And it's purely for their own enjoyment. They're not like making a living on it or anything. People tend not to be judgmental about that.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's true. If somebody reads, like, ugh, he just reads so much.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, you spend the same amount of time playing a video game, there's automatically a negative judgment. But that's not fair. And there's a lot of positive aspects to playing video games as well. They do – it could be very intellectually engaging, very creative.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' They can train you for things like hand-eye coordination. Military, they use them a lot. Like, yeah, there's a lot of good aspects.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's all about how is it fitting into your life. If all the other aspects of your life are suffering because of your one compulsive thing that you do, then you have to consider that. You have to think about – whether it's video games or anything.<br />
<br />
=== Continent of Stability <small>(32:03)</small> ===<br />
{{shownotes<br />
|weblink = https://phys.org/news/2018-06-periodic-table.html<br />
|article_title = New form of matter may lie just beyond the periodic table<br />
|publication = Phys.org<br />
|redirect_title = Continent of Stability <!--technology; delete this parameter when redirect is created --><br />
}}<br />
'''S:''' All right, Bob. Tell us about this continent of stability. What is that?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Is that like the ninth continent on the planet?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Not even close.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Like Zealandia? No? Oh, OK.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' So researchers have revealed the possibility that beyond the known elements of the periodic table may exist a huge swath of stable, ultra-heavy elements known not as an island of stability as they've used in the past but a continent of stability made from quark matter instead of normal nuclear matter.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, boy.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Wait. What was an island of stability? I'm very confused, Bob.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Well, OK. That's fine. So that's this idea of a continent of stability. So over the years, there's been a lot of talk about how the really heavy elements with protons well into the hundreds. I mean imagine an atom with 120, 130 protons alone. They become increasingly unstable. So as we make bigger and heavier atoms, they've become more and more unstable. So if you look at the last, say, 10 or 20 or 30 elements that we've created or made and you look at how long they last, it goes kind of steadily, almost precisely from like months to days to hours and eventually seconds and even fractions of a millisecond. I mean there's a steady, pretty steady decline. I've been reading about this for probably decades. Scientists have proposed that certain magic combinations of lots of neutrons and protons could create very heavy but fairly stable elements. So they call this possibility these groups of potential synthetic atoms that we could create, islands of stability, that there's some island of stability in our near future where we will come across these atoms that are very heavy and very stable. And I've always loved that turn of phrase, an island of stability. So you can imagine how I felt when I started reading about this possible continent of stability. Like what are you talking about? So this has to do with a paper published in Physical Review Letters by a trio of researchers from the University of Toronto. Bob Novella – no wait, Bob Holdom. Holdom, H-O-L-D-O-M, very similar to Novella. Jing Ren and Chen Zheng. So the theory revolves around the idea of quark matter, which is fascinating stuff. So everyday matter is nuclear matter, right? Everything that you deal with is nuclear matter. It's composed of what they see as a fluid of protons and neutrons, right? Atoms have protons and neutrons. That's pretty much your everyday interaction is with these types of matters. And each proton and neutron has three quarks, right? If you want to dig down one layer deeper, either two up quarks and a down or two downs and an up. But there's three quarks in each of those in a proton or a neutron. So now quark matter is seen as a fluid of just up and down quarks but also strange quarks. So that's one type of quark matter. That's some bizarre stuff. And it's a type of matter that exists really or we thought it existed only in extreme environments like neutron stars, heavy ion colliders. Or even hypothetical quark stars. So this is a non-nuclear type of matter. It's called quark matter. But there's another type of quark matter though. And that's composed of just up and down quarks. There's no strange quarks. And they call this up-down quark matter. So that's UDQM for their goofy little initialism. UDQM, up-down quark matter. So the crux of this latest discovery though is that they have some fairly rigorous mathematics apparently showing that if you get enough of these up and down quarks together in the right way, it will achieve an energy state that's so low that it will prefer, that nature will prefer to create UDQM over any other type of matter including everyday nuclear matter. So imagine you have a bunch of up-down quarks and you just kind of throw them together in a collider or whatever. And if you put enough of them together, they're not going to separate and become bound quarks creating protons and neutrons. They're saying that they could likely create this up-down quark matter preferentially over any other type of matter. No matter what you do, it's going to be hard to avoid it. That's a good way to put it. It would be hard to avoid creating up-down quark matter once we start creating these really ultra super heavy elements. So the thinking then is that once atomic masses reach about 300, which is essentially the number of protons and neutrons, we may start seeing this quark matter. Element after element, we may just – we might not be able to avoid it in a way. So that's why they're calling it this continent of stability, that it could just be the way our future is going to unfold in terms of the periodic table of elements. So for example, our newest element.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Undobaninium.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, you were close, but they actually renamed it. Now it's Oganesson.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Oganesson.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' What?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oganesson.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' How the heck did that happen?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I actually kind of – that's fine. Unun, Untium, whatever the hell those names were, blah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, they're kind of annoying.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' They're placeholders.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, so they were – so that's element 118. So Oganesson has an atomic mass of around 294. So we are really, really close potentially. So in fact, some researchers are saying that Oganesson may be the last nuclear element that we can create because they all – everyone that we can potentially create in the future is going to be – could potentially be this up-down quark matter. And it's fascinating to think that we may have reached this kind of milestone or plateau where any of these super heavy elements that we create are going to be fundamentally different types of matter. So not only can these things become – these new types of elements become prevalent, it could be also relatively easy to smash heavy elements together to create them. So actually creating these new elements might be easier than any other type of quark matter or easier than we have ever thought in the past.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Why?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Well, because there's no strange quarks in the mix, it's easier because strange quarks just make things really complicated. <br />
<br />
'''C:''' Does it make them like unstable or something?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Well –<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Why is it that you can't smash together things?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' No, no. Actually, actually no.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Okay.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' They think that – actually Witter showed that mathematically that you could smush together up-down quarks with strange matter in a way that has so little energy that nature might prefer that. But that's the crux of this latest advance. They show that even this strange matter is not as preferentially created as this up-down quark matter. So this is the one that nature is going to say, yeah, I'm going to go with you because this is the most favorably energy, lowest energy state. So it's kind of displacing the strange matter with this new up-down quark matter as the matter that we may see with these super heavy elements. Sure, you could see this in neutron stars and heavy colliders, but you're not going to be able to make it as easily as this up-down quark matter because it's just up-down. It's just up-down quarks. I mean, they're everywhere. Strange quarks are not common to say the least.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Gotcha.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' What does this mean? All right. Yay. We could make this up-down quark matter. So what? Now what are we going to do? If it's stable, we may be able to see some bizarre things like you've heard of superconductivity. This type of matter may allow us to investigate what's called color superconductivity. And don't even ask me what that precisely means because I'm still actually trying to figure it out right before the show a good way to describe it. You know, making Cooper pairs of electrons. I mean, that's regular superconductivity and making –<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Is that the one that makes things levitate?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah. Superconducting material excludes magnetic field. So the idea is that superconductors are, like, bizarre and counterintuitive and, like, wow, that's really awesome. So colour superconductivity could be similarly, like, amazing material. But the best possible reason for this is using these new up-down quark matter material as an energy source. I never would have seen that coming because I always think, oh what could we do with this matter? I never really think of, like, something like an energy source because for me it's like, oh, maybe we could build this ultra-dense type of circuitry or this ultra-dense building material. But an energy source just really kind of came out of left field for me. So this is what the researchers said according – about using this as an energy source. They said, if quark matter is found or produced in accelerators, it may be stored and then fed with slow neutrons or heavy ions. The absorption of these particles means a lower total mass and thus a release of energy mostly in the form of gamma radiation. Unlike nuclear fusion, this is a process that should be easy to initiate and control. So not only a new and intense form of energy production, but one that's actually easier than fusion, which is really nice because fusion is really, really hard. And so, of course, my first thought was gamma radiation. Hmm. Is anyone else thinking Hulk besides me?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, gosh. Bruce Banner? Come on.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Just saying. So, yeah, I'm going to follow this. This is really fascinating. I hope they're right and I hope we get to see some of this up-down quark matter within our lifetimes.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, it's interesting because we think of matter as neutrons, protons, and electrons, right? That's the only real stable matter that we're used to dealing with every day.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yes, okay. Good choice of throwing every day in there.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, every day. But quarks tend – they like to form triplets. They kind of do that spontaneously. So this would be really unusual, the up-down quark matter. But it's interesting that it all comes down to the fact that the energy state is lower. It's like rolling downhill. Things are going to settle at the bottom of the hill. This is the bottom of the hill. And so that's where the matter is going to settle out.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' And that's how it looks. And that's how it looks.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, that's really interesting.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah. I've read the mathematics is fairly rigorous. So that's good. I mean, of course, there's no guarantee because who knows what subtle effects might come into play that were unaccounted for, unanticipated for sure. And also, we're talking about creating massively heavy and stable new elements. I mean, that's something. I mean, you don't know how that is.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Although the write-up says that the up-and-down quarks are nearly massless. Does that mean they'll be lighter even though they're massive?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' The same thought occurred to me. But I don't think so because I think we're still talking about very dense, very dense matter. So I think even though individually they're incredibly light, I think it could potentially be fairly heavy. But it was actually very difficult to find any commentary or even speculation about what would stable up-down quark matter be like.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, I mean, could you use it to make something? Could you build a ship with it? Could you build a ship-<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Build a bridge out of it?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That's just it, Jay. I mean, I don't know. That's what I tried to find out. I tried to find out specifically what some of the speculation is. I haven't found any of it yet. Maybe if I find something interesting, I'll report it back on the show. But that's the kind of stuff that really fascinates me. What kind of like science fiction technology and materials? I mean, come on. Here's your quark matter car. I mean, holy crap, or even engine. Who knows if that's even possible? It's encouraging to me because we're talking about just up-down quarks. I mean, the strange quarks are scary because you've heard of strangelets. I mean, a strangelet is a bound form of an up-down and strange quark. And that's some scary stuff because you've heard speculation that if you have one strangelet particle, it tries to make itself bigger. It basically tries to create – the least energetic thing it could do is to duplicate itself. So it's going to try and make more copies of itself. So it's the classic runaway reaction. I mean this is the speculation that if you create one strangelet, it could create a hell of a lot more, which will become a huge problem. We're not sure exactly what would happen.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' So it's just a really scary theory right now.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Right.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Also, I love your assumption that I have heard any of this. Like you've heard of the strangelet. Nope. No, I have not.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Well, yeah. I mean –<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It's a household term.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' No, I would guess – who knows? But I would guess 20% of our audience might have heard of strangelets. I mean, of course –<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Really? Interesting. Evan, are you in that 20%?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Nope. Me neither.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Well, Jay, have you?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Of course I have. I'm related to you.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' All right. I mean I haven't –<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I've also heard of clreamlets. You know what a creamlet is?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' What's a creamlet?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It's a new type of ice cream.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' No, it's a food product I came up with in my 20s. It's the best part of an ice cream cone. It's just the last inch of an ice cream cone.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' The tip down at the bottom?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It's a cone filled with ice cream. It's bite-sized. And you throw two or three of them in your mouth.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' And then what? And you chew and smile.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, but imagine if you added strange quarks to those, Jay.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, Jay, this is material science I can get behind.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It comes in strange flavours too.<br />
<br />
=== Return of Astrology <small>(45:25)</small> ===<br />
{{shownotes<br />
|weblink = https://theness.com/neurologicablog/new-york-times-and-the-return-of-astrology/<br />
|article_title = New York Times and the Return of Astrology<br />
|publication = Neurologica<br />
|redirect_title = Return of Astrology <!--technology; delete this parameter when redirect is created --><br />
}}<br />
'''S:''' We have some more pseudoscience to talk about. We're going to talk about the return of astrology.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yikes.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Did it ever really leave?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, no, but classic pseudosciences like this do tend to wax and wane over the long period of time. Like a generation will have a flirtation with it. It will be popular for a while. Then people get tired of it. They move on to other things. They realize it's bunk or whatever, and it fades to the fringe. It never goes away entirely. And then when people, like skeptics, like, oh, we don't have to talk about that anymore, right? That's all passe. And people have forgotten about it. Then it comes back because then people are not familiar with it. Then it seems new. <br />
<br />
'''E:''' Rediscovered.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's rediscovered, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Hmm, given new life.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Cocaine had the same pattern. Like every 20 years there would be a little bit of a huge uptick and then people realize how dangerous it is and it goes away. And then it comes back 20 years later. Things like magnet therapy, all these things, they tend to come and go at a sort of a generational time scale. We've seen that with UFO, belief in UFOs comes and goes over periods of time. So apparently astrology is making a comeback after spending some time relegated to the skeptical fringe. The question is, and this is now I'm basing this partly on a New York Times article that was interesting, although said some stupid things. But I thought most of it was interesting trying to think about the different cultural forces at work that might be related to this increasing popularity of astrology in the last few years. So the article was written by Krista Burton. She was writing from the point of view of not only a woman but a member of the LGBTQ community. And she made an interesting point that I had never heard before that apparently it's very common for members of the queer community, as she says, to be into things like astrology and new age belief systems. And she attributes that to the fact that, well, mainstream religions have basically rejected us and our community. And so, of course, we reject them, you know. But paganism is pretty much wide open. And so if you're looking for spirituality in that community, you're not going to find it in mainstream religions pretty much. And so a lot of them turn to new age belief systems as a source of spirituality. So belief in astrology and crystal healing and all that sort of stuff is just huge.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But paganism is like an actual thing, right?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yes. Wiccans Wiccans are growing in popularity recently as well.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, boy.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That doesn't like subsume. I don't think that's the right word. I think I'm misusing that word. But that doesn't include things like astrology, does it? I thought it was like a very specific kind of belief structure.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Subsume would work.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, it does. Good. Thanks, Bob.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, but they're both similar in that they're pagan and that they are anti or at least separate from mainstream religions and that they would be open to the LGBT.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I see. It's not about God, but there's still magic.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yes, exactly. It's spiritual but not Christian or Jewish or whatever. So there are some – let me just go over – yeah, I was thinking about it. What are all the things that could be at work here? One is just the generic ebb and flow of belief systems as we were just talking about. Another might be this turning away from mainstream religion but people still have a yearning for spirituality and there it is. And Burton also made another point which I thought was very interesting and that is belief in astrology is increasing among young millennials. And there's a recent study showing that like 18 to 24-year-olds that more than half take it somewhat seriously.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Wow.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' What?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Wow, that's a lot.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Do you think it's because we're living in a very difficult time so they need something to look up to, look – be happy about?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. So that's another factor that people point to. So some people say because we're – yeah, the more unstable, uncertain, anxiety-provoking the times are, the more people will turn to things like this, spirituality, pseudoscience as a source of comfort. So that's another factor. But Burton says that millennials also are completely accepting of the gay community, right?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, even republicans, millennial right-wingers.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The idea that – the idea of intolerance to somebody based upon their sexual or gender choices is like totally foreign to them. It's disgusting to them. I know that I'm making huge generalizations and we're talking about a huge diverse group of people but I'm just saying there's statistically general trends. Speaking to, knowing a lot of young people my daughter's age. It's like, yeah, the idea of discriminating based upon gender or sexual identity is just anathema to them. They cannot – it's disgusting to them. They just can't conceive of it. So therefore, as part of that, they are very embracing of the LGBTQ community, right? Since they embrace astrology and everything gay is cool and hip, astrology is cool and hip. So this is Burton's hypothesis, which I think is reasonable and I never had thought about that before.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I think that's a stretch.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Maybe. Yeah, but it's interesting how – it's an interesting hypothesis and even if it's not strictly true, it shows you how complicated these cultural phenomena could be. Why is belief in astrology going up and why especially among young millennials? Well, all these sorts of things that are going on that could be potentially – you could connect the dots in lots of different ways. We're in a politically contentious time. There's the rise of the nuns, the turning away from mainstream religion, the acceptance of this community that has embraced it for their own reasons. Another factor could just be the internet, the social media, the decreasing respect for institutions and expertise and this idea that all knowledge is kind of equivalent. Anything you don't like is fake news or a conspiracy or whatever and your opinions are as good as my facts. You know what I mean? It's all just a mishmash.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Do you know what's a good antidote to that? There's a book that I heard of called The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe, How to Tell What's Really Real in a World Full of Fake.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, yeah. So exactly. I mean it is – the rise of something that has been so thoroughly debunked as astrology shows that we need to constantly keep the pressure up against pseudoscience to be educating the public about not only scientific literacy but critical thinking and skepticism. And we need to be the memory of the facts and the details about how astrology has been debunked in the past so we can jump on it when it starts to make a resurgence because you know it's going to. This is an endless, endless struggle, right? Not anything that we're ever going to achieve and be done. In a way, we are going against powerful historical and cultural trends and human nature. The enlightenment is never over. It's a constant struggle, right? It's not a destination.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's right.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, I think this reminds us of that. In fact, we've spoken on the show about the whole Bigfoot skepticism criticism. We talked about this recently just last week I think where the idea is that skeptics shouldn't waste their time on the old classic pseudosciences because they're done. They've been debunked. Just move on. Let's get on to the interesting stuff like global warming and vaccine denial and all that stuff.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' But they're microcosms.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. So in a way, first of all, I think that there's a point there in that, yes, we do have to be full service skeptics. We have to deal with them. We should focus on the important issues of the day, absolutely. But we can't completely neglect even these classic pseudosciences because as Bob says, it's a microcosm of science and critical thinking and human nature and psychology and all the things that we deal with. And you can cut your teeth on these more sort of self-contained issues. You know what I mean? Like understanding why astrology is a pseudoscience, if you really fully understood that, you would understand a lot about science and pseudoscience. You would understand why creationism is a pseudoscience and why alternative medicine is a pseudoscience and why a vaccine refusal is a problem. These are all connected ultimately.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And conspiratorial thinking, like you start to really understand conspiracy theories.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And the way people justify their belief in astrology is the same kind of psychological tricks and logical fallacies that people use to justify all their crazy beliefs. And so it's all good. It's all good fodder for promoting critical thinking. And it's good to keep the pressure on so that when a new generation starts to flirt with astrology, we could be there, hopefully gently and in a nurturing way, maybe turn them towards a source of meaning and empowerment that's a little bit more legitimate and valid like real science and critical thinking. As we are fond of saying, the universe is an amazing place without the magic. The magic is not as amazing as the universe actually is. There may be up-down quirk matter in the world. That's more exciting than freaking astrology.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Or psychic pigs.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Or psychic pigs. That's the most frustrating thing is that a lot of times pseudoscience becomes a source of empowerment and meaning and identity. And that's a shame. I've seen that in the nursing profession, which also highlights the fact that often there's an absolutely legitimate anti-mainstream, countercultural piece to all of this. So women were horribly discriminated against in healthcare. And they were sort of relegated to a subservient profession that was thought of as in the service of physicians who were male. Nurses are female and they have to be in the service of physicians who are male. The whole system was entirely sexist. And then when that started to change and with female empowerment and women's rights, et cetera, and that's all a great thing. But part of that, starting in the 1970s, some nurses used things like therapeutic touch, which is just blatant pseudoscience, in order to find empowerment for their profession. It was something that nurses could do by themselves. They owned it. It didn't have to be prescribed by a physician. It was they found it very empowering. But in my opinion, that's just victimizing them all over again because it's fake. It's fake empowerment. And then not only that, but as we talked about like with Gwyneth Paltrow and Goop, savvy marketers then do it cynically. They sell fake empowerment through pseudoscience. And they do it just to make money. They're not even sincere about it. Like I think some of the nurses were. It was just, oh, we're just going to make money off of these dumb women by convincing them that buying my jade eggs and putting it up their cooch is somehow going to empower them.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And did you guys see – I mean I wasn't on the show last week. Did we cover what came out recently about Goop?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, I heard about it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' How they relabeled everything on the website I think probably just to avoid legal issues in different categories. So like one category is like this is just fun. And then another category is like some people think this might be beneficial. And then the like most stringent category is like health professionals agree that this is something that we should be looking into. But they list DOs and NDs and chiropractors within the – and MDs like all together within the "health professional". So even that is like bullshit. They started subdividing the labels on their stories because so many people were like you are harming the public.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. Yeah, there's a lot of critical articles written about that. They're basically retroactively rebranding all of their nonsense as this is just for entertainment and fun. It's basically saying – like there's one article, Dr. Jen Guttner who is one of the physicians who called them out and got targeted. Yeah, she's awesome. Her title is Gwyneth Paltrow and Goop say the joke is on you if you followed their advice, which is true. If you go back now and say this is all for fun. But wait a minute. You were kind of selling this as serious medical advice and medical products.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' There's no doubt about it. They can't do that now.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Retroactively you're saying, oop, just kidding.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oop, goop. Oopy doop.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I think the behind the scenes look is that they may know it's all BS. But when you make that kind of money, all of a sudden they get very serious about the business.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, yeah. They know they can get sued if people start dying.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But that's exploitative in my opinion.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Of course. That is different than like what you're talking about. And there's shades of gray, right? A lot of these nurses who are probably empowered to go off to become midwives or doulas where there's like some legitimacy, but then it can go into the woo-woo place really easily. So I totally understand why a pregnant woman might want to have a doula, like even a scientific thinking, because they want somebody who they're hiring just for them who's like their—<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But be science based. Do that and be science based.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Exactly. You can still do that. But yeah, it does open the door because it's not regulated.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But so much—<br />
<br />
'''C:''' A lot of woo.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And that's the thing. It's like I understand why certain people may be pissed off at the elites for giving them the shaft because, yeah, there's always a power dynamic and people in power will tend to abuse it and favor themselves, et cetera. And then the elites do tend—this has happened throughout history everywhere in every society. There tends to be a greater and greater gap between the haves and have-nots. It's just a natural tendency of human society. And then there's a backlash against it. But it's unfortunate when the baby gets thrown out with the bathwater, when legitimate ways of separating reality from fiction then get lumped in with the power dynamic, which is what happened with doctors and nurses, you know. It's the same thing. It's like, no, we can get rid of the bad stuff. We can get rid of the power dynamic and the sexism and racism or whatever, the colonialism, all that stuff, right? We talk about this a lot. You can get rid of that but not get rid of the good stuff, the science, the philosophy, the legitimacy, the expertise, the value the virtues. But that takes nuance and people—<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, it has to be somewhere in the middle. And we're still not there.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' People tend towards simplicity, which is unfortunate.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Because we're not in a post-racist, post-colonial, post-sexist society by any stretch.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We're working on it, but yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Some of us are working on it.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' There are pockets.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We're making progress.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Collectively, we're working on it. But that means that we do have to be mindful when we hear people having legitimate concerns about like a woman's perspective in healthcare or an indigenous perspective in psychology. It's like, yeah, that is a legitimate conversation to have and then let's go in with nuance and start excising all of the things that are pseudoscientific from those views. There's nothing wrong with that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We as skeptical activists have to be very sensitive to that and we have to approach it with a lot of nuance.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, because if we're black and white about it, we're just as bad.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, we'll get lumped in, right? And that happens even despite our best efforts. Like as soon as we say, yeah there's no evidence to support therapeutic touch. You're a sexist. You're a kind of—no, no. This is pseudoscience. But anyway, one more thing I want to talk about. At the end of her article, I have to point this out. Burton writes, "Now, I'm not stupid. I may be a woo-woo crystal worshipping homosexual but I know that a polished red rock is not going to heal my tailbone. It's not going to bring my mom back either. It may do a thing. But none of us know anything about anything really. So why not be open to the posibility of hope."<br />
<br />
'''E:''' There you go.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh no.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Relativism.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I was with her for the first half of that sentence. It's so funny.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Beware relativism.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So I know.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Post-modernism.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, it's the false equivalency that if we don't know everything, that's the same thing as knowing nothing. And therefore, let's go with our feely feelings because why not? Because we don't really know anything anyway.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's just as right as anything else.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, yeah, because there is a big difference between talking about different ways of knowing and getting into a philosophical debate. Philosophical. Jeez, I haven't heard that term. Yeah. A philosophical debate about having a personal conviction of knowledge and a collective understanding of corroborative knowledge. That's two very different things. And we have to be very careful about that. Because somebody can say, I know I feel happy when I use my crystals. And nobody can argue with that. But they can't say, it's not bringing back my grandma, but we don't know why. So maybe one day it will.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's a very pernicious, very pernicious philosophy because it basically boils down to believe what feels good. And believing what feels good is what leads to darkness, tribalism, feudalism, superstition. Every dark impulse that people have is justified by believing what feels good.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Unless that thing is back rubs, then you're good.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It is very, very dangerous. That engages our absolutely worst instincts, no matter how well-intentioned you may be going in. And I think that was sort of the key realization of the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment is all about the fact that these methods matter. And they are what is ultimately going to lift us out of the darkness. We're not going to get rid of things like slavery. For example, to use something from the time, you're not going to get rid of slavery believing in what feels good, what just supports your ego. You're only going to do that through approaching the world from a critical thinking, philosophical enlightenment perspective.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And that perspective has to be inclusive of everybody.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's by definition. It's got to be transparent. It's got to be fair. It's got to be inclusive. Absolutely. And it's always a work in progress, but that's what we've got to be working towards. And that's why I really, really get annoyed at that perspective, that who knows kind of perspective, because it does lead to such bad things. Demonstrably so.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' The truth is, on most of these things, we do know. On some of them, we don't. But on most of them, we do. We know that crystals don't do anything for your health. There have been plenty of double-blind controlled studies looking at all of these inert, non-medical objects and rituals, and they don't do anything. Sorry. They don't do anything.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Right, right. All right. Let's move on.<br />
<br />
=== Antarctic Ice <small>(1:05:24)</small> ===<br />
{{shownotes<br />
|weblink = https://cosmosmagazine.com/climate/antarctica-has-lost-three-trillion-tonnes-of-ice-in-25-years-time-is-running-out-for-the-frozen-continent<br />
|article_title = Antarctica has lost three trillion tonnes of ice in 25 years time is running out for the frozen continent<br />
|publication = Cosmos Magazine<br />
|redirect_title = Antarctic Ice <!--technology; delete this parameter when redirect is created --><br />
}}<br />
'''S:''' Cara. So for a long time, the global warming deniers pointed at Antarctic ice to say, look, Antarctic ice is increasing. So that kind of debunks the whole global warming thing. But this story is a little more complicated than that.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, you're right. Yeah. There was always that big land versus sea ice debate, right? And it was really confusing for a lot of people. I really think it was just kind of some mental Tetris, just to wrap people up in confusion knots, so that then they couldn't come back for the argument. But the truth of the matter is, a new study has been published. Can you guys guess? I'm assuming, Steve, you can't answer. I'm assuming none of you read the notes for the episode very closely. So how much ice do you think Antarctica has lost between 1992 and last year, 2017?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Measured in bags?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Measured in tons.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' In tons. Tons.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Which I think are metric tons, T-O-N-N-E-S, because this is written by an Australian. Yeah, Australian team.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Trillion tons.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Metric tons. You think a trillion. What do you think? Bob?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' In terms of tons, I can't even hazard a guess.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Come on. Hazard a guess, Bob.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' You think it's the same order of magnitude as Evan?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I have no idea.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Express it in ten to the what?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I think a better answer would be how much percent has it lost.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's not what she asked.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That requires that you know how much was there to begin with.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Right. But I won't even guess tons, because who the hell knows how much tons of snow is up there.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' What do you think, Jay?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Oh, how much have we lost?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So what is that, 25 years?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' How much has melted away?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I would say 175 trillion tons.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, that's a good number.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' The answer, and Evan's pretty close to it, is three trillion tons of ice. Three trillion tons.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, okay.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Between 92 and 2017. And this is a new analysis of satellite observations. Now, there's a big plus or minus on a lot of this, because apparently it's very hard to measure this kind of thing. And that's what most of the article that was published in Nature is about, is kind of how this was measured and what they found. It's called Mass Balance of the Antarctic Ice Sheet from 1992 to 2017. It was published on June 13, 2018 in Nature, the main Nature, by the IMBI, the Ice Sheet Mass Balance Intercomparison Exercise. So this is what they do, is try and measure the ice sheets. And this is researchers from all over the world. The paper really does detail a lot of these changes. But then what they also did is they wrote a secondary paper, kind of an easier-to-read, I would say, response called Choosing the Future of Antarctica, where these researchers decided to model, because that's, of course, what they do, what Antarctica could potentially look like in the year 2070. And they compared two different extreme scenarios. One is if we actually affect change immediately and we stop putting emissions into the environment at the rate that we are right now. And the other is if we literally don't make any changes between now and then. Both of these are probably not realistic. It's probably going to be somewhere in the middle. What these researchers say, based on their models, is that if we were to dramatically reduce emissions, and we had a low-emission scenario because we had effective Antarctic policy and government, and we had increased... Yeah, exactly. So again, the Mass Balance of the Antarctic Ice Sheet from 1992 to 2017, and the response article by the same authors called Choosing the Future of Antarctica, which was published side-by-side with it. When you look at this infographic, they compare side-by-side a lot of different things. Global air temperature, sea level rise, Antarctic air temperature, the ocean temperature, acidification, all these different things. And these are directly due to Antarctic ice loss, okay? Directly due to that. So we're not talking about anything but the Antarctic and the Southern Ocean around it. If emissions are kept low, if there's effective governance globally, then we're seeing a global air temperature rise of less than one degree Celsius.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Okay, that's good.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' If we make no changes, we're looking at... By 2070, we're looking at a global air temperature rise by three degrees Celsius.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Three! That's devastating.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, which is devastating. It's actually 2.9, but yeah, that's devastating. It's 0.9 versus 2.9. Sea level over the whole world, six centimeters if we make drastic changes, 27 centimeters if we make no changes now, which literally means millions, potentially hundreds of millions of people displaced. Antarctic air temperature, that's 0.9 and three, so that's pretty similar. Southern ocean temperature, gosh, the temperature of the ocean, 0.7 degrees Celsius if we make a lot of changes now, 1.9 degrees Celsius if we don't do anything. That's massive. That's the water temperature. Gosh, listen to this. The summer sea ice extent, so we've talked a lot about the difference between land ice and sea ice, so here we're talking about the sea ice. 12% loss if we make drastic changes now, so we're still going to be seeing a big change. 43% loss if we do nothing.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Wow.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' 43. And the ice shelf volume is an 8% versus a 23% reduction. We know that a big outcome of this is ocean acidification and what is secondary to ocean acidification, not just a lot of changes in the balance of the ecosystem, a lot of algal blooms and a lot of jellyfish blooms and things like that, but also what is ocean acidification due to ocean creatures with shells?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It decalcifies them.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. I mean, they literally cannot persist. And this is a huge problem. It actually affects the global... There's deep stuff here. Not only does it kill off a lot of these organisms, it can affect the amount of sand that we see in the earth, which sounds crazy, but we need sand for a lot of things. There's a lot of things secondary to that. And then, of course, biological invasions. They think that we're going to see invasive species, maybe not the species count, but the incidence of biological invasions as double what it is now if we make massive change and 10 times what it is today if we don't make any effective change, which is huge because I think most ecologists agree that we're facing the, "sixth extinction" right now, or at least that we're seeing biodiversity plummeting across the globe. And can you imagine 10 times the amount of invasive events as we're seeing now? It's huge. We're also going to see a massive shift in ecosystem structure. You know, a lot of the predators are going to be dying off. And they also think as a result of this, we're going to see... This is interesting. It's like this kind of, "negative feedback loop" where more people are going to be able to go to Antarctica, which will then cause more devastation to the ecosystems there. And in addition, we'll see more resource use, so drilling for oil, overfishing, because we'll be able to pass these areas more readily with our ships. And of course, more people will be able to come. So we're already sort of seeing this problem in the Arctic Circle. And they say that they think they're going to see this in Antarctica as well. Now, they think that in the worst case scenario, we could see by 2300, which sounds like it's so crazy in the future. But guys, it's 2018 already. And remember how crazy 2018 sounded like when we were kids?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, of course.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It was just crazy.<br />
<br />
'''C:'''' It was so far away. Yeah. So by 2300, which would be what? Your children's children's children? Something. No, maybe more than that. But whatever.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I'll still be around.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' There you go. Bob will still be around. He might just be a frozen head, but he'll be here. They think that we could see three meters of sea level rise.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's crazy.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Three meters. Can you imagine?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' What would the world look like?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I know. It would be a very, very different place.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Most of Florida would be gone, right?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' By Disney World.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, I think most of every coastal city you can think of would be gone. Yeah. The continents would actually be different. They would be shaped differently with three meters of sea level rise.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, my God. Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. I mean, we'd lose all our low-lying islands just completely. They wouldn't exist anymore.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It's easy to think that, oh, I don't live near the water. I'm fine. But if you look at things like the number of insanely hot days, there are some cities, especially some cities in the Mideast that will be so hot that they're talking mass migrations away from these areas where the temperature will get over 120, 130 regularly, like many, many more times a year than we're seeing today. I mean, imagine mass migrations trying to get away from the heat because people will be dying from heat stroke in numbers that we've never seen. Think about that.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, yeah. People are going to die. I mean, climate change is going to effectively kill a lot of people. And I think that you're right. We're going to see that the population distribution is just very different. We are accelerating at a rate that we have never seen before, both in terms of emissions and just in terms of population and resource usage. And of course, all of these data that I was just telling you about, they're just from Antarctic sea ice loss. These are direct consequences. I'm sorry, Antarctic ice loss. These are direct consequences from that. So that's not to mention all of the other things that are happening globally due to climate change. I mean, three trillion tons of ice in only 25 years, you guys. Think about that. You know, greenhouse gases. We've got to make these massive policy changes in order to see. And this is a tough one because this requires global cooperation. And I know when I first mentioned that, like, we chuckled because it seems so far fetched. But the truth is, these numbers are getting kind of smaller and smaller. So it's one thing to say, oh, we're not very good at planning for the future. Oh, we want to make decisions that affect us now. Oh, we don't want to work with other nations because it doesn't seem like it's in our best economic interest. But hell yeah, it is. Like, this is a economic disaster. I lost everybody just then. I lost Bob. We all did.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We dropped Bob.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Can you say it again? Oh, he's not there.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' What, you're mad at us?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Aren't there a lot of countries? There are, Bob. There are a lot of countries.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Let's list them.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' A whole lot of them.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Angola, Afghanistan. Oh, there you are.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' What did you ask? Can you ask it over again?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Even if you don't believe in global warming, it's a good idea to go to renewable energy.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Totally. Don't you want like free energy from the sun? Like, come on. It's amazing.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The technology is there. It's just it's there. We need to upgrade our grid. We definitely need to continue to develop grid storage options. But at this point, just continued incremental advances is enough. You know what I mean? And if we do make a breakthrough like fusion, all the better. But we don't need to.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No. And I personally feel, and you can take this or leave it because you may disagree with me, but I have a very activist mentality. And I think that if you're in a position where you can afford to, you're actually doing the right thing by making these kinds of changes. Because not everybody is yet. And even though it might cost you a little bit more, not only are you setting a really good example and a really good precedent, you're starting to affect these sea changes. And so, like, don't wait. Don't wait until it's 5% cheaper. Don't wait until it's, like, the best the cheapest option in front of you. If you can afford it, pay the extra whatever percent it costs to make that shift because you are leading the charge. I personally believe that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. And also, like, being energy efficient, that saves you money.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Of course.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's a win-win.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, in the long run. Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Right now, we're at the point where the win-wins are all we need. We just have to do them. We don't have to, like it's not like, oh, they want you to reduce your quality of life. No, no, no. No, no.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, but eventually, we're going to have to. You realize that. We're going to have rolling brownouts like they often do in India. You know, like, we're not going to be able to.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But we don't have to ever have that.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Exactly, if we make change now. But we cannot continue to live like this. Like, it's not sustainable. And we'll hold out as long as we can because we're a very, very rich nation. But eventually, we'll be hit by these problems, too.<br />
<br />
== Who's That Noisy? <small>(1:18:50)</small> ==<br />
{{wtnHiddenAnswer<br />
|episodeNum = 675<br />
|answer = Atari Adventure video game<br />
|}}<br />
'''S:''' All right, Jay, it's who's that noisy time.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Okay, last week, I played this noisy.<br />
<br />
[_short_vague_description_of_Noisy] <br />
<br />
All right, Cara, what does it sound like?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It sounds like Super Mario or like some sort of charge up in a video game, except there's, like, static over it. So I'm not sure what that is.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Not bad. Not bad at all.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, that's a good guess.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So we had some guesses. We had some people guess. We have, this was from a listener named Franziska Weers. And Franziska says, absolutely love your show. I feel like this week's noisy sounds like someone reversed the sound of Super Mario when you get one of the magic mushrooms and he grows and gets super power. Totally random guess. Well not a horrible guess because I'll give it to you that it is a video game sound.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I still can't get over how you guys pronounce the word Mario. I love it.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Mario.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Mario.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Mario.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Very New York. That's New York.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Who would Mario me?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Did you?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yep.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So I take it I got it wrong.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Not far from being correct. Not that far.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' We did have a winner this week and it was WM and they said it was very precise email. It was titled description. The June 16, 2018 show 675. It sounds like eight consecutive rising glissandos created on an 8-bit computer with each starting one note higher.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Okay.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Guess. This is the answer. The victory sound from the Atari Adventure video game.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Atari. The game was called Atari Adventure.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It was called Adventure.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Adventure. It was on the Atari platform. This was the Atari 2600. It had a cassette that you put in. So this was a pretty famous game for a couple of reasons. One was that it was fun. It was very fun to play. So you were a square dot pretty much on the screen.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' A large pixel.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah. Large pixel and you were moving around in and out of these different castles and you had to go through some mazes and all that. But this also happens to be the very first video game that had an Easter egg because the game developer put a hidden room in the game that a lot of people found.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That was so cool.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' And he had his name in that room, which was very cool.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, neat. And then everybody started to do that, didn't they?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah. Most games have Easter eggs, if not at this point, all of them. Because there's little doodads that the developers put in there and a lot of times they're deliberate for fun. They want people to find them. It's a lot of interaction that way. But bottom line is back then they didn't exist. This was it. This guy hid something in the game and it was discovered by players and it was a huge deal. I remember talking about that and being like, oh my God, really? It sounded like against the law almost back then.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah. It was as if you were breaking the game in a sense.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. For the younger listeners of the show, Atari is a platform that had Pong on it, right?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yes.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' We're going old school.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' This version of Atari, it wasn't the very first version, right, Steve? I don't think it was.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Did it have joysticks still?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It was still joysticks.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It was all joystick, yeah. Yeah. You had two joysticks. You had one that was a stick and then one that was a dial.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's right.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' You swapped them out depending on what you wanted to play. Great job, WM.<br />
<br />
=== New Noisy <small>(1:22:18)</small> ===<br />
<br />
'''J:''' All right, so here we go. We have a new noisy this week and this is from a listener named Morgan Loveless.<br />
<br />
[_short_vague_description_of_Noisy]<br />
<br />
That's a cool noisy.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I like that.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I like that noisy.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yes.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Got some dopamine with that noisy.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, definitely, right? You get a distinct satisfaction out of that. It has a very, dare I say, blaster-y sound to it.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Sure.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I think that Morgan knew exactly what he was doing when he sent me this.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Are you sure that Morgan's a man?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' No. But when you hear about the details about what Morgan does for a living, then you'll think it's a man.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Will I? Or is that sexist?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It's sexist. I'm sorry.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I love you so much, Jay.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Didn't mean to be sexist.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No, you're amazing.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Oh, God. Okay, so moving onward.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' He has a manly job. How could he?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's right.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' One of them doctor and lawyer types.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's right. Go get the female nurse for me.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It's more like lifting really heavy things and lots of heat and stuff like that. That's all.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Okay.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' All right. So if you think you know what this week's noisy is, or if you really do think I'm a sexist, email me at WTN@theskepticsguide.org.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. Thanks, Jay.<br />
<br />
== Questions and Emails ==<br />
<br />
=== Question #1: Polio in Venezuela <small>(1:23:43)</small> ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Just one quick follow-up email. Evan, we reported last week about a possible case of polio in Venezuela and how awful that would be, but there's an update.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yes, that's right, because we recorded the episode last Wednesday, and they came out with an update the following Friday, so two days afterwards. They believe a child contracted polio, polio virus, in Venezuela, showed all the symptoms, all the conditions. The initial testing said it was. The samples went out to be confirmed. So following those unconfirmed reports, which was back on June 8th, of the suspected polio reemergence in Venezuela, the final laboratory tests are in. This was just this past Friday. And they confirmed that the cause of the paralysis in the child was not wild polio virus or vaccine-derived polio virus.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, it was neither.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Neither. <br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, that's great.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Neither. That is good.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Did they think it was wild at first?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, that was one of the...<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, obviously, that's the biggest fear.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' ...leading candidate. But it turns out it was not that. They're still, I believe, trying to figure out exactly what it is, what it was.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Didn't they detect polio in his stool?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, it was isolated from the stool samples from the child, but the final...<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And that still stands, right? Like somehow the kid passed polio through his stool, but he doesn't have it?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' But he doesn't have it, right.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Interesting.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' And we talked about that, the number of people who... Do you call them carriers, Steve? Is that... I don't know if that's officially...<br />
<br />
'''S:''' If you have it but don't have an infection, then you're a carrier, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Then you're a carrier.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Or you have what's called a subclinical infection, meaning it's not manifesting.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Gotcha. So maybe your immune system can fight it off before it starts to overwhelm you.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Right.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Right.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's interesting.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' So the child is in... Two years and 10 months old, so sad. The child is in for clinical evaluation, and they are trying to determine what the cause of his paralysis is, and hopefully they will get to the bottom of it for the sake of the child and maybe be able to treat it in some way. But no, it is not the return of poliovirus to the Americas.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Which is awesome.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, which is good.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's amazing, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It's still isolated to just a three... Less than a handful of countries, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, everyone, let's go on with Science or Fiction.<br />
<br />
== Science or Fiction <small>(1:26:13)</small> ==<br />
<br />
{{SOFinfo<br />
|item1 = A new study finds that a non-antibiotic chemical often used in toothpaste can promote the emergence of antibiotic resistant bacteria. <br />
|link1 = <ref>[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160412018303672]</ref><br />
<br />
|item2 = Astronomers have discovered new exo-asteroids close to their host star by a new technique for direct observation. <br />
|link2 = <ref>[https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/06/180618113030.htm]</ref><br />
<br />
|item3 = Biologists have discovered a species for the first time that uses two different translations of the genetic code to translate DNA into proteins.<br />
|link3 = <ref>[https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/06/180614213814.htm]</ref><br />
|}}<br />
<br />
{{SOFResults<br />
|fiction =new technique for discovering ateroids<br />
|science1 = toothpaste <br />
|science2 = DNA translations<br />
<br />
|rogue1 =Cara<br />
|answer1 = <br />
<br />
|rogue2 =Jay<br />
|answer2 =new technique for discovering ateroids<br />
<br />
|rogue3 =Evan<br />
|answer3 =new technique for discovering ateroids<br />
<br />
|rogue4 =Bob<br />
|answer4 = new technique for discovering ateroids<br />
<br />
|host =Steve<br />
<br />
|sweep = <!-- all the Rogues guessed wrong --><br />
|clever = <!-- each item was guessed (Steve's preferred result) --><br />
|win = y<!-- at least one Rogue guessed wrong, but not them all --><br />
|swept = <!-- all the Rogues guessed right --><br />
}}<br />
''Voice-over: It's time for Science or Fiction.''<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Each week I come up with three science news items or facts, two real, one fictitious, and I challenge my panel of skeptics to tell me which one they think is the fake. There is no theme this week, Cara, you'll be happy to know.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yay.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Maybe you won't be so happy when you hear the news items. Item number one, a new study finds that a non-antibiotic chemical often used in toothpaste can promote the emergence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Item number two, astronomers have discovered a new technique that allows them to identify exo-asteroids. And item number three, biologists have discovered a species for the first time that uses two different translations of the genetic code to translate DNA into protein. Cara, you missed last week. The guys swept me.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Really?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, and you missed it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Wow.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It was, yep, a rare occurrence.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's strange.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But that's okay. To make up for that, you'll get to go first this week.<br />
<br />
=== Cara's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, great.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Welcome back, Cara.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, let's see. Yeah, I'm very excited to be here, you guys. A new study finds that non... So the operative thing here is that there's a chemical in toothpaste which can basically promote resistance towards antibiotics and bacteria, but that chemical is not itself an antibiotic.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Right.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I could see that, though, because if it mimics an antibiotic in structure, I don't see why it would have any effect. Or if it has some sort of similar downstream action as antibiotics, even though it's not technically... Even though then it should be then not classified as an antibiotic. But yeah, I mean, that happens. I could see that happening a lot. I'm going to say that this one's true. Astronomers have discovered a new technique that allows them to identify exo-asteroids. So I don't understand. What's an exo-asteroid? Does that mean it's outside of the solar system, or does that mean that it's...<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yes.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Okay, cool. All right. Oh, I guess we probably... Those are so small, we probably can't see them. We can see exoplanets, though, so I don't see why we wouldn't be able to see an exo-asteroid. I mean, they're way smaller, sure, but at what point is something a planet or a planetoid or an asteroid? But we're not talking about comets with the tails. We're talking about asteroids, rocks, rocks that are in orbit around some sort of star. They're just really, really small. So basically, it just means our resolution is being improved. That seems believable to me. Biologists have discovered a species for the first time that uses two different translations of the genetic code to translate DNA into proteins. What does that even mean? Two different translations of the genetic code to translate... This is word confusing.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. I don't want you to be confused by the words. That means that the three-letter code... The three letters stand for one amino acid. It's using a different relationship between the three letters equal which amino acid. The basic code itself.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Okay. So kind of like when we would say like...<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's right. Different translation. How it translates the base pairs, the triplets into an amino acid is different.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Interesting.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And not only is it different, it's using two different ones.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Okay. So this is an alien species. Panspermia, you guys. This one seems the least believable to me. But maybe Bob is sitting there like holding his mouth being like, there's no way we could ever detect an asteroid. They're way too small. That's crazy, Cara. That's crazy. And I'm like, sure. Seems believable to me. Because I'm pretty sure we can only detect exoplanets when they like transit their stars. Like the same way we learned about Venus way back when. They'd have to be huge. They'd have to be big enough to make a blip in the light source. So I don't know. But then how big is an asteroid versus... You're killing me, Smalls. And also like why would there only be one species? Like that's nuts. You would think if we discovered this that there would be multiple.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' At least two, right?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's just weird that only one species. I mean, and you didn't say genus. You didn't say order or class. Just a single species?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It's got to be the octopus.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I know, right? And it would just be one type of octopus because there's got to be a lot of octopus species out there. So that just one seems too far-fetched to me, which means it's probably the science. But whatever. I'm going to say it's the fiction.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay, Jay.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Which one?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Right.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Three. I'm saying three is the fiction.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Translating genetic code.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Genetic code.<br />
<br />
=== Jay's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So this one about there's a non-antibiotic chemical that is often used in toothpaste. And this can promote antibiotic-resistant bacteria. There are a lot of chemicals in toothpaste. This is scary when you think about like a non-antibiotic chemical. There's probably lots of products that have non-antibiotic chemicals out there. And now they're studying them and they're saying, hey.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Lots of them.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Some of these non-antibiotic chemicals. Yeah, but you know what I mean. Like there's just a lot o chemicals.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, all products.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' No, no.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Other than antibiotics.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' But a non-antibiotic chemical that could have an effect on bacteria though, right?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yes. Very scary.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Like there's something specific when we say it's antibiotic. Yeah. Okay. And it would have to be on that scale if you think about it. Everybody's using toothpaste every day, or at least you should be. Huh. Okay. All right. I could buy that. Cara did bring up some good points about this exo-asteroid. So I asked the same questions that Cara did. Like how big would this thing have to be if it's outside of our solar system? And how big is an asteroid? Well, of course they vary in size, but they're not as big as planets are.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, Jay.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I'm getting nervous here.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' How would they see it? That's the question. And Cara asked it. How would they see the asteroid if it's not actually transiting in front of something? Next. This last one here, biologists discovered. These biologists discovered for the first time, Bob, that two different translations of genetic code to translate DNA into proteins. So that, man, wow. That, wow. That's like Bob's news item where we have new materials. You know, like it's a huge thing. So that seems the least likely out of all three of these. I'm kind of agreeing with Cara, but I don't know, man. That second one there is sneaky because it seems so like, ah, no problem, right? They just found a new way to see exo-asteroids. You know? What to do?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Pick. That's what you got to do.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I'm going to GWB.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Wait a minute. What? Bob hasn't gone yet.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Whatever Bob picks.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, that's a... Can you do that?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' You can't do that.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' No one ever said you can't.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Let me look up the rules here.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's why he waited. That's why he didn't ask Bob.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Wait, hold on. Wait, Steve, hold on. I'm looking up the rules.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's like a blind bet you can't do it.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Subsection G.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, hold on. There's a lot of paper here. Hold on.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Fourth paragraph.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I'm looking up the rules too, which are just entirely in my head, and you can't do that.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Wait. I'm on page 45.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So that means A, that he's going to pick Bob last, and B, Bob's answer is going to be right.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' And this one about the exo-asteroid just seems too simple. What's the opposite of this? That they didn't find it? I can't think of what the null factor here is for the second one.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, interesting.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Or he made it up out of whole cloth. Hello?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, he does that sometimes.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It's true. He's been known to do that.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, and he's good at making stuff up. The liar.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I'm going to go with the exo-asteroid.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Crap.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay, Evan?<br />
<br />
=== Evan's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''E:''' They all seem like fiction to me, all three. But I think the exo-asteroids, one is the most fictitious of them all.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Fictitious?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I think Steve's used that word before.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, I'll put it down for both of you.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Cara, you're awesome.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Because that one tastes the strangest of the three. I'll have to go with that one. I'll go with Jay.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That was me doing my character from The Simpsons, the religious next door neighbour.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, Ned Flanders.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Ned Flanders. That was my Ned Flanders.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Fictitious.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, Bob. It's up to you.<br />
<br />
=== Bob's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''B:''' All right, yeah. This is a really good one, Steve. Start at the top here.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Bob sounds confident AF.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' No, no. You're totally misreading me.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' You're a terrible bluffer.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' No, I mean, no need to bluff. This was especially since I'm going last. So let's see. New antibiotic. Yeah, I like what Cara said. It could be chemically. The structure could be chemically close enough where it's kind of can use it to become antibiotic resistant. Or more so. So that certainly seems plausible. The third one. Yeah, that's dicey as hell and really fascinating but doesn't surprise me. I mean, sure, it's a very interesting discovery buthere's nothing there that makes me think that's impossible biologically. Or incredible unlikely. Even the astronomy one, guys. Exoplanets, it's sure. It's really small. And I'm really skeptical about this one. And for the record, there's a lot of techniques for finding exoplanets. I think there's like four or five.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Interesting. Not just transit.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Radial velocity. Yeah, radial velocity, transit, direct imaging, microlensing.There's lots of different ways. But you need, typically, it's something much bigger. Now, the microlensing could find asteroids in aggregate. But that's really difficult. You need a perfect setup and then you can only detect them once.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And also remember though, re-read the item.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It's a new technique.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, it's a new technique.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' So it's something, it can't be any one of those singly, itcan be perhaps a combination that's never been tried before. That's possible. But more likely it's just a completely new technique and I'm having trouble trying to think of what the hell that is. My guess is that it's the DNA one or the asteroid one. If that's how I feel that probably means that it's the antibiotic one. But I'm not terribly confident. I'll go with the exoasteroid because they are tiny as hell. Cara, don't be worried, I'm almost as confident that you probably are right as well. This is not confident AF scenario for me at all.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #1 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, so the guys all went for the exoasteroids, and Cara is left twisting in the wind by herself with the genetic code. So you all agree in the first one, so we'll start there. A new study finds that a non-antibiotic chemical often used in toothpaste can promote the emergence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. You all think this one is science, and this one is science.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' All right.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' There was a part of me that wanted us to be swept.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' At least you have company, right, Cara? So Evan, you hit upon it.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Don't turn your back on me, Cara.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I'm sorry. I'm sorry.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Evan, you hit upon it. It is triclosan is the chemical. It is a non-antibiotic antimicrobial.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, he knew the name of the chemical. That's awesome.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Not all antibiotics, it's an antimicrobial.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Antimicrobials.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Antimicrobials are not all necessarily antibiotics. So it's more of a antiseptic kind of agent.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Like alcohol?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. It doesn't work by an antibiotic mechanism. So the question is, could the use of triclosan-containing products like toothpaste, although it was banned in the U.S., toothpaste or hand cleanser, could that lead to resistance to other antibiotics? And they found that it could, which it is kind of scary.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Is that why it was banned here? Or was it banned for some other purpose?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I think mainly because it didn't work. The FDA reviewed it for like a year and said, all right, you guys, you have a year to prove that it works. And if you can't prove that it works, we're taking it off the market. And that's what happened.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But now we know it negatively works. Yay.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So they looked at wild-type E. coli after 30 days of exposure to triclosan. And essentially the exposure did produce a selective pressure, which upregulated genes that are associated with antibiotic resistance, even multi-antibiotic resistance.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Gross. Ew. E. coli? Like tooth poop bacteria?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Tooth poop. Upregulation of genes encoding beta-lactamases and also multi-drug efflux pumps. So in other words, the pumps that the bacteria would use to get rid of the drugs, to pump them out of their system. So in dealing with that, it would also give them resistance to antibiotics, right? So that's unfortunate. But it's at least good to know. And this could provide extra impetus for a more widespread reduction in the use of antibiotic soaps and putting them into toothpaste, antimicrobials in soaps and toothpaste. Because you don't really need them. And it's just contributing to antibiotic resistance, even if it's a little bit.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #2 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. Let's take these in order. We'll go to number two. Astronomers have discovered a new technique that allows them to identify exoasteroids. The guys think this one is fiction. Cara thinks this one is science. I do want to say first that not all asteroids are tiny. You know that Ceres, right? Ceres was originally classified as a planet. Then it was downgraded to an asteroid.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It's a 100 miles, right?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. So the Ceres for most of its life was classified as an asteroid. It makes up 25% of the mass of the asteroid belt. And now it's a dwarf planet, although some astronomers still consider it as both an asteroid and a dwarf planet. And yeah, so this is a new technique, right? It's not any of the techniques that you mentioned, Bob. Have you ever heard of quantum flux lensing, Bob?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I have not.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Sounds like something Bob would be waiting on.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' What?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's because I just made it up because this is the fiction.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Ah, crap.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That guy scared me there for a second.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, wait. Does that mean I got it right?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, it means you got it wrong.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No, I got it wrong. I'm opposite. I'm opposite all the guys. Crap. You just straight up made this up.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. I straight up made it up.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, it's wholesale. It's whole cloth fiction.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's so annoying.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Good one, though.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But there was an item.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I'm going to go back through all of the exoplanets and see if any of them could qualify as asteroids.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No. So this was based on a real item, though, that I couldn't make a fiction by just tweaking it. I had to make it up whole cloth. This is a new technique for imaging exoplanets. They didn't find new exoplanets with the technique, but they have used it to look back at imaging data from known exoplanets. This is a way of separating exoplanets from their host star. The way they do this is to look at light spectra for specific molecules that would exist in the planet, but not the star.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Is that really new? I thought that my friend did this for her dissertation.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, they might have been working on it, but now they were able to do it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Because things don't come out of the blue, right? They looked at some images down to the pixel levels. Even at a single pixel, there's still a spectrum of light in that pixel. If you look at, for example, H2O, water vapour, the star becomes invisible because there's no water vapour in the star, but the planet is visible. If they look at something that's not in that planet, like they looked at methane and there was no methane in the atmosphere of this planet, the planet also becomes invisible. The planet disappears. But it's a way of separating out a close-up planet, a planet that's relatively close to its host star from the blinding glare of the star itself by just imaging it in a spectrum that exists in the planet, but not the star. That's the new technique.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And what did you call the technique?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Quantum flux.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Quantum lensing.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I'm like, of course he would have heard of that. That's like Bob's wet dream.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Quantum flux capacitor, maybe?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Nano quantum flux.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item # ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, so let's go on to number three. Biologists have discovered a species for the first time that uses two different translations of the genetic code to translate DNA into proteins. This is very interesting science. This would have gotten me, if this is the one that would have gotten me.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Thank you, Steve.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Because this ain't supposed to happen, right? This breaks the last universal DNA rule, right?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, they call this the dogma, the central dogma of, it's like, come on.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But there's always an exception out there, right? So it's a yeast. So they found a yeast that translates, and it's just one trinucleotide, one of the three letter codes. So the CGA, normally CTG binds to the codes for the amino acid leucine. But in this species of yeast, it translates into serine or alanine, one or the other at pretty much 50-50 at random.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So wait, so this species can't make leucine at all?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, no. Probably something else codes for leucine. It's redundant. There's always multiple codes for each amino acid. But instead of a leucine, there's either a serine or an alanine, and they found out that that's because of the transfer RNA. It makes two different kinds of transfer RNA. One will pick up the serine and one will pick up the alanine.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So it's still predictable. That's really neat.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's unpredictable. It's unpredictable. So for the first time, you cannot predict the protein from the DNA because it depends on what transfer RNA.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' They can figure out what transfer RNA is involved then.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, but each time it makes a protein, it just picks one at random, picks one of those two at random.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, I see. Interesting.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But they also find that... So this is some kind of weirdo mutation, right, in the yeast, and you would think that these would kill themselves off pretty quickly, right, that they wouldn't work. And also, these amino acids have very different properties, so it would dramatically change the structure and therefore the function of the protein. It wouldn't be a silent mutation, right? These are different amino acids. One's hydrophobic and the other one would be on the outside. But what they found is that the yeast deals with the problem because it developed a way of basically skipping over the sections that have the CTG in it. So it tries to just avoid those parts of the protein that would be screwed up by it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, so it just translates using the redundant...<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It just works around it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Gotcha. But like it still makes those amino acids, it just uses the other codes for it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It does.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Interesting.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So they think that this yeast is about 100 million years old, so this has been doing this for a while. But it just evolved a fix, it evolved a jury rig.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So it thinks it's 100 million years old and there's not been a secondary evolutionary event at all in 100 million years from this one species of yeast? This is so hard to believe.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I know. It still is hard to believe.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Single species.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Think about it, though, Cara.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' There's not like a class of them or a genus of them.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Think about it. Think of how phenomenally conserved the genetic code is. So from that perspective, it makes sense. So even when these weirdos arise, rarely, they don't spread and proliferate, they wipe themselves out.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. But what we're saying here is that it's a neutral mutation, it's not a deleterious...<br />
<br />
'''S:''' This is not a neutral mutation, though. But the thing is, it had to simultaneously evolve a fix or it eventually evolved the fix so that it could survive.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. So the net effect is neutral. It's not deleterious. So it's interesting to me that you wouldn't at least see some differentiation, like that you wouldn't see a couple other species.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Again, it's a yeast. Maybe there are, but they've only found one so far.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. They're going to start looking, they're going to find a bunch, and I'm going to try and get my win back.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' This is true for right now, but they may find... It is the first. It didn't say the last, right? I mean, this is the first. There may be some...<br />
<br />
'''C:''' You and your pedantry.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' There may be some species that they discover that also, but it's interesting that it just quickly enough evolved the fix that it could survive with this, and so it persisted. It was allowed to endure. But yeah, it makes sense that we don't see a lot of these things because this is such a highly conservative feature of all life on Earth.<br />
<br />
== Skeptical Quote of the Week <small>(1:47:50)</small> ==<br />
<br />
<blockquote>Science has not yet mastered prophecy. We predict too much for the next year, and yet far too little for the next 10. — Neil Armstrong</blockquote><br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. Evan, give us a quote.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' All right. "Science has not yet mastered prophecy. We predict too much for the next year, and yet far too little for the next 10." Neil Armstrong said that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Really?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yes. The Neil Armstrong.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Oh, cool.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' And I like it because we need to be a little bit more... It's true, and even back then, 70s, you needed to be more forward thinking about the long-term effect of things and have a little more perspective on the larger picture in a lot of things, and that's very true. With science and the challenges we're facing that are science challenges, global warming I think is the prime example of that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, but this is a generic feature of futurism that has been observed for a long time is that we tend to overestimate short-term progress and underestimate long-term progress.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' 5 to 10 years.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And we see this with science fiction movies, right? So you have a science fiction movie that's set 10 years, 20 years in the future. It massively overestimates the advances that we make. But if you look 100 years in the future, we probably are massively underestimating transformational changes that nobody saw coming. I remember seeing a 1920s movie about the 1980s, and it was ludicrous. I mean...<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Living in airships.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, no, but they had weird things, but they completely missed all the real innovations, and they completely underestimated how transformed the world was going to be by the end of the century.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' And you can't blame them either, by the way.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You can't, not at all. But just by looking back on it, you're like, oh my God, they extrapolated all the wrong things in all the wrong way, and they missed everything. They couldn't have been more wrong in terms of their vision of... First of all, it's the 1980s, and everyone is dressed in 1920s fashion.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Which is not that unbelievable.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That was just lazy. A woman literally goes to a vending machine on the corner and gets a baby out of it.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' The Stork-O-Matic 3000.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, whatever. But but no cell phones, you know?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, that's the one thing they never, ever thought to invent in their futurism.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Right. Exactly. It's funny. It's funny. And obviously, I would love to see what the world is like in 100 years and compare that to our futurism. It'd be fascinating. Fascinating.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, gosh.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, I think that we've gotten really good at the dystopian future, which unfortunately might not be far from the truth.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' The smoldering ruin char of a planet. Nice.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, guys. Well, good job, boys. Cara. Hey. You've been having a good year.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Maybe next week.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I know.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You've been having a good year. So occasionally taking your lumps, you know?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. All right.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You're probably still ahead of the game, so don't worry about it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I hope so. Thanks for the words of encouragement, Steve.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I'll see what I can do about that, but for now, you're probably still ahead of the game. Well, thank you all for joining me this week.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' You got it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Thanks, Steve.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Sure man.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Thanks, Steve.<br />
<br />
== Signoff ==<br />
<br />
'''S:''' —and until next week, this is your {{SGU}}.<br />
<br />
{{Outro676}}{{top}} <br />
== Today I Learned ==<br />
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}}</div>Hearmepurrhttps://www.sgutranscripts.org/w/index.php?title=SGU_Episode_777&diff=19112SGU Episode 7772024-01-18T20:30:12Z<p>Hearmepurr: </p>
<hr />
<div>{{Editing required<br />
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{{InfoBox <br />
|episodeNum = 777<br />
|episodeDate = May 30<sup>th</sup> 2020 <!-- broadcast date Month ## <sup>st nd rd th</sup> #### --> <br />
|verified = <!-- leave blank until verified, then put a 'y'--><br />
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|previous = 776 <br />
|next = 778 <br />
|bob =y <!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
|cara =y <!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
|jay =y <!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
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|perry = <!-- don’t delete from this infobox list, out of respect --><br />
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|guest2 = <!-- leave blank if no second guest --><br />
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|qowText = I’m 13, so I don’t want to rush everything ... I’m still trying to figure it out, but I just want to focus on learning right now. That’s what I love to do.<br />
|qowAuthor = Jack Rico, youngest graduate in {{w|Fullerton College}} history<ref name=rico>[https://news.fullcoll.edu/at-13-jack-rico-is-the-youngest-fullerton-college-graduate/ Fullerton College News Center: At 13, Jack Rico is the Youngest Fullerton College Graduate]</ref><br />
|downloadLink = https://media.libsyn.com/media/skepticsguide/skepticast2020-05-30.mp3<br />
|forumLink = https://sguforums.org/index.php?topic=52734.0<br />
}}<br />
<!-- note that you can put the Rogue’s infobox initials inside triple quotes to make the initials bold in the transcript. This is how the final statement from Steve is typed at the end of this transcript: '''S:''' —and until next week, this is your {{SGU}}.--> <br />
<br />
== Introduction ==<br />
<br />
''Voice-over: You're listening to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.'' <br />
<br />
'''S:''' Hello and welcome to the {{SGU|link=y}}. Today is Wednesday, May 27<sup>th</sup>, 2020, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella... <br />
<br />
'''B:''' Hey, everybody!<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Cara Santa Maria... <br />
<br />
'''C:''' Howdy. <br />
<br />
'''S:''' Jay Novella... <br />
<br />
'''J:''' Hey guys. <br />
<br />
'''S:''' ...and Evan Bernstein. <br />
<br />
'''E:''' Good evening, folks.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So guys, this show, this show is number 777.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Whoa.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Cool.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It must have some significance.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So wait, I always forget, Cara, what was the first numbered show you did with us?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I have no idea.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Wow. Wow, that is ingrained in your frontal lobe?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Five hundred and something, right?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's five something. Yeah. It was like, how many years ago? Four years ago now? Or five years ago?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Four.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Is this the longest podcasting relationship you've ever had? Well, relationship, yeah, but my podcast has I was doing Talk Nerdy for a year before I joined SGU. So Talk Nerdy, which is weekly, but I take two weeks off in the summer or I'm sorry, in the holiday. So it's 50 episodes a year. I just put out episode 309.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Nice.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. So you guys obviously have been doing it for, what is that, 15 years?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' 15 years, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' 15. And we're in our 16th.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And I've been doing, I've been doing Talk Nerdy for six years, over six years. And I think I've been with you guys now on the SGU for over five years. Yeah. Amazing.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, and according to trustedpsychicmediums.com, angel number seven, the angel number is 777.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So I was watching live today, the launch of SpaceX with the first.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Me too.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yes, I watched it as well.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Me too.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Two and a half hours, I turned on the cameras and everything, two and a half hours right before launch. I started watching.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Saw a lot of cool things.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Got to 15 minutes.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' 15 minutes.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It was actually, it was 16 minutes and some odd seconds, but I watched for two hours. I watched for two hours. I'm such a fan boy when it comes to this. There's something about, I remember when I was a kid and I remember being so into the space missions and just thought it was such an awesome thing that was going on that like the adults do it was such a powerful thing that was happening. So here's a bunch of observations I made today. One, the crew arm, which is the walkway that the astronauts and support crew access, the Dragon capsule. It's really cool. It's really cool. They have something in there called the white room, which is the very last place that they stand before they get on to the module. And this was, that name was used before in previous missions where they had to walk the gangplank to get out to the command module.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' They should play the white out mother in the white room.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I found out something else I thought was really cool. They use nitrox to test to make sure the suits are pressurized.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' What's nitrox?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Nitrox?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah. So it's a gas that they can detect. And what happens is I guess they fill it. They put it into the suit and if the suit leaks, then a nitrox detector in the capsule will pick it up and they'll know that it came out of the suit. So again, they said today during the two hours that I got to watch this, that the suit's primary function is to protect the crew from depressurization. So like I said, last time I talked about this, that those suits indeed can handle full depressurization, which is really awesome. And another thing is the seats in the Dragon swivel, meaning that they're in the mode where they put the astronauts in the seats, the form fitted seats, and then they swivel them up and back and that's where they gain access to the interface, the touch screen and analogue interface that they have.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' And they get to hold their cat and pet it in their lap as they swivel.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' The Dragon capsule was designed from scratch 12 years ago, completely from scratch, meaning that they've used, there was no legacy, nothing in there. There was all brand new material and they've been continuously upgrading it and improving it and making it more functional depending on, is it going to hold equipment? Is it going to hold depressurized equipment? Is it going to hold equipment that needs to be pressurized? So I thought that was really cool. It's a really interesting thing to think about when you go back to the beginning of the space shuttle, we're going back to the 80s.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Did anyone feel any anxiety today alongside excitement?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Oh yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I detected a real, because I'm not normally an anxious person, but I detected some anxiety in me.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Well, they're starting to think about, yeah, well, starting to think about, wow, all the things that could possibly really go wrong here. And that started to I kept it in check, but it was definitely present.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We lived through Challenger and then Columbia.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Well, all right. So first of all, I think the excitement Evan adds to the stress and anxiety adds to the excitement. It kind of turns into like the relief feeling that you get when you know that they got past the most dangerous part, which of course is the takeoff until they get into "outer space". I'm not saying it's not dangerous there, but you know, when they separate from the booster, from the rocket, that's a big deal. That's good. That's when you're no longer strapped to a rocket filled with combustible material. Don't be sad that they scrubbed the mission today.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's a good call.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' They did a dry test last week and this was a wet test because they filled the ship up, right? So it's a good thing to test. It's just another layer of testing that happened and you know, we got a few more days for the next launch. I have to admit something though. I didn't realize that they don't fill the ship until like 30 minutes before it takes off.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. You don't want the fuel sitting there.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It would add-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Just sitting there.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' -add risk.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah. I agree. And I guess it would evaporate out too. You know, in some way there'd be some type of evaporation, but yeah, I just didn't realize that they can fill those tanks up that quickly, which they can.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So the next launch is scheduled for Saturday, the day the show is airing, 3 22 p.m. Eastern daylight time. But of course that's dependent on the weather as well. But apparently there's another launch window the following day, so the Sunday will be a backup date.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Interesting.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's good.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Saturday's not looking great weather-wise, I heard.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' And they have to synchronize this with the position of the space station. Is that correct?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's why. That's why the window.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, that's the window. Yeah. So I was reading online, a friend of mine who's like a big space person was like tweeting a lot and they were saying, remember, it's not just about the weather at launch, it's also the abort weather. So like, was the issue the weather at launch this time or was it, because it didn't seem like the weather was bad.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' They said that there were tornado, there was a tornado watch at some point in the afternoon.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Did you see the map though?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' At launch location?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' If you'll see the radar map, there's like, there was lightning strikes all around, you know.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. You don't want that.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It was a good no-call.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' If they are going to abort and they have to dump, like it needs to be safe where they're aborting to us.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yes. Exactly.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And think about all those contingencies.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' There was no way this wasn't going to be canceled today. There were three separate distinct reasons why they canceled it. Any one of them could have done it, but there was three. So yeah, this was going to happen today.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' What were they, Bob? Other than weather, what was it?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' But they were like distinctions of the weather, like there was like an anvil cloud within a certain distance. And then there was this and that. I don't remember. I would just heard it, you know.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' There were three weather criteria.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' By the way, by the way, Cara, your first episode was 524.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Wow. And we're 777? So I've done.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' 254 episodes.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's amazing. 254.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So remember that number, 524, Cara.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I'm going to write it down in the same spot where I have my psychic predictions.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Good. That's where it belongs.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That'll be your next tattoo.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' 524.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' 524.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Well, Evan, I was going to say make a good t-shirt, but yeah, let's ink it on her.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Let's tattoo it. Do any of the SGU guys have tattoos? Am I the only tattooed member?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I do not.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. Don't you remember on that first episode when I announced to you that you brought diversity to the SGU because you're the only one with tattoos.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's right.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That was a great line. I remember that.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' What episode number was that?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' 524.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' 524.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It was TAM. Wasn't that the last TAM?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It was.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It was. It was the last TAM.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And we had that awkward dinner where I had to pretend like I didn't already know I was joining.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. That was the night before.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It was. Cara and I were at the table together kind of like, eh.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' People kept asking, are you guys going to get a new rogue? Are you going to get a new rogue? And it's like, hmm, I don't know.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, we're working. We'll see how it goes.<br />
<br />
== COVID-19 Update <small>(9:10)</small> == <br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. So let's do the COVID-19 update before we move on to the news items. So two days ago, I started working in the hospital in the ward, it's not just in the clinic.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Hospital? What is it?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. It's a building with sick people. That's not important right now. Yeah. So it's a totally different venue, the inpatient service versus outpatient clinics. And I actually have COVID-positive patients on my service. So I'm treating COVID-19.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, man.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' They're not sick with COVID-19, but they're SARS-CoV-2 positive and they have neurological issues. They're just incidentally positive. But it's partly business as usual and it's partly a total nightmare for a couple of reasons. One of the biggest problems is that it's really hard to discharge patients because like half of the rehab places and the places where we would send patients are shut down. It's already challenging sometimes to so-called dispo patients, right, to settle their disposition to find a place for them to go for their rehab or because they might need services, they need supervision, whatever. Now it's like we have patients hanging out for weeks and weeks simply because there's no place to send them.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That sucks because then they're just like at greater risk of exposure.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I know. I know. And then every time somebody gets a fever, we got to test them. We can't discharge anybody until they have two negative tests, which once they're positive, they need two negative tests 24 hours apart in order to be able to get rid of them. I also have patients who are just waiting to become negative.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So do you guys have a COVID delineated ward that you have kind of like segregated? Okay, so it's like a separate ICU for COVID patients.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, it's the floor, but there's also the floor where if you're COVID positive, 100% of patients get tested on admission. If you're COVID positive, you go to the COVID ward. So if you have a patient, even if they have a neurological issue and they're COVID positive, you have to go to the COVID ward with all the patients.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Just to keep them all isolated. That's actually smart, though. So you've got basically everything you can think of on the COVID ward, everywhere from like critical like ICU patients all the way down to...<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, the ICU patients are in the ICU.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, because that's where you have all those services.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's just floor patients.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Gotcha, gotcha.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But it's mixed services that are COVID-19 positive.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So of course, the patients are less likely to infect other patients, but now all the doctors are at risk because doctors from every specialty are going there.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' They're going down and use the shield. And now for every patient, COVID-19 or not, you have to glove as well as wash your hands in and out of every patient room. And everyone's wearing a mask, of course. So it's just another layer of protection. During my career, I've lived through multiple ratcheting up of having to take extra precautions because of infectious diseases that spread around the hospital, right? First HIV, then multiple antibiotic resistant bacterial infections, and now COVID-19, and who knows, this may become a permanent status in hospital care.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Did you guys have...<br />
<br />
'''E:''' HIV?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Did you have any bird flu... Well, HIV is the last pandemic. Did you guys have any like bird flu or swine flu extra precautions during those like kind of mini scares when the epidemics were existing?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, pretty much standard precautions was sufficient for those. It wasn't what we were already doing. Put them in a negative pressure room. And if anyone has anything like that, it's like individual precautions for that room. Like in this room, you have to go in glove and gown. In that room, you need to wear facial protection or you need eye protection. So but now it's more and more universal, you know.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Do you find that... And I know that flattening the curve is a whole much more complicated question overall, but one of the central components of flattening the curve was an attempt or is an attempt to not overload the health care systems, right? Of course, we hear the horror stories of New York City and what it was like in the hospitals during the peak of the crisis and even now. But at Yale, are you finding... You're at Yale, right? That's the hospital. At Yale, are you finding that the beds are maxed out? Is it really stressful?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's stressful.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Like you're still kind of at the top end of capacity.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. I mean, we're kind of a full hospital, just that baseline. And as I said I saw multiple patients in the ER today that were already admitted to my service, but we just didn't have a room to admit them to. So I'm basically managing them in the emergency room. That's how you know you're like at capacity. And as I said, it's a lot of patients in beds who should be at a rehab facility. So that's...<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Because you can't clear them out fast enough.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. Can't clear them out. So it's... Yeah. So yeah, it's definitely overwhelming the system. I think we're okay, but it's definitely stressing out our resources. So you could see how easy it is to tip over to completely overwhelming the resources just having to deal with...<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And what about in PPE? Are you guys good?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, we're good. We're good with PPE. That's not a problem. And again, the testing is available. I think we should be doing more, to be honest with you but we do have enough testing. So today in the United States, we just broke 100,000 dead from COVID-19.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Well, we knew that was coming.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I know. I mean, you could see it coming, but today's the day that we broke 100,000, so everyone was kind of...<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So sad. And you guys saw the New York Times, like, the front page with every name listed.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Beautiful. It's such a sad thing when you're dealing with numbers that high, because they're almost hard to fathom, and it becomes like a hive, like, oh, it's just it's the dead. And you have to sometimes really stop and remind yourself, like, those are 100,000 individual people.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I love it. I'm looking at the image right now. I love what they did, because I figured it would just be, oh, here's a list of names. It's not. It's a name. It's the age. And then, like, things like a sign language interpreter, or Solomon, New Jersey, love to figure out how things worked. Just these one little sentence things described. This is like a, not just a name or a number, this is like, this was a person. I love how they added that in there.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And there's a lot of protest artwork.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Sad milestone today. But there's a couple of interesting studies, so I'm always tracking the COVID-19 news items. A review published that, just saying, here's all the drugs that doctors, off-label drugs that doctors have tried in COVID-19, there's over 100 different ones. None of them are shown to work, 115 different drugs, but it's like, this is a list of drugs that could use further study.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Wait, even the R drug, I can never remember what it's called.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Remdesivir.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Remdesivir.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Remdesivir, there was a study published that showed a decrease in the time of sickness with remdesivir. So some encouraging early results, but again, it's not a home run, you know.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, nothing's curing this.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, no, not yet. And of course, the hydroxychloroquine is tanking is the biggest study.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It doesn't work, and it also makes you potentially really sick.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' The vectors on that one are pretty clear.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And again, there's no scientific reason why you would pick that one out of the 115 drugs, say this is the one that's going to do it. It's only because it was made into a political target, you know.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And isn't it amazing how much when something has some sort of political steam behind it, like it was probably utilized orders of magnitude more just because it was like, "famous" from press briefings.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, just because it was famous, not because of the science. Absolutely. Let's move on.<br />
<br />
== News Items ==<br />
<br />
=== Loners and Swarms <small>(16:48)</small> ===<br />
* [https://www.quantamagazine.org/out-of-sync-loners-may-secretly-protect-orderly-swarms-20200521/ Quanta Magazine: Out-of-Sync 'Loners' May Secretly Protect Orderly Swarms]<ref>[https://www.quantamagazine.org/out-of-sync-loners-may-secretly-protect-orderly-swarms-20200521/ Quanta Magazine: Out-of-Sync 'Loners' May Secretly Protect Orderly Swarms]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' Now, we have some interesting news items this week. I think of a good, good diverse group of news items. Cara, you're going to start by telling us about loners and swarms.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. So there's some new research that was recently published about loners in swarm behavior of slime mould. But before I get into that, when we were discussing, Steve and I were discussing doing this story, he was saying it might be good to kind of know the state of the literature on this. And I read a few kind of recent publications, a few blog posts from kind of like really solid science writers and entomologists and things like that to try, because this is something I didn't really know a lot about. Like have you guys read a lot about swarm behavior?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Mhm.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' No.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, okay.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, Steve's a bird.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Steve knows what's up.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It would make sense.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Insects, birds...<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Robots.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Schools of fish.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Robots, insects, birds, fish. So there's different words for it, right? When you say swarm, you're usually referring to insects. When you're talking about birds, you usually say murmuration. When you're talking about fish, you usually talk about schools. But I decided to kind of like look at all of it because I don't really know anything about it. All I know is, and if you are somebody who knows me really well and who has vacationed with me, you would know that I am freaked out by anything that swarms. This is why I do not like snorkeling. And it's kind of like recent in the news too, because we've been reading a lot about these North African locust swarms, right? And West Africa too.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' And we're going to have cicada swarms too.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Cicada swarms, all of it. So the thing to remember though is it's not the same thing that's happening in a bunch of different organisms. There's some central themes, but each organism physiologically, evolutionarily is actually really different. What I've kind of gathered is that historically, individuals thought that there was always some sort of signal from a leader. And then obviously in more modern research, kind of one of the things that's so unique about swarms is that they could never pinpoint who was telling them to do what. They just kind of did it. And they were like, yeah, like how is it that they're just doing this? So then they started to really look into the genetics, look into the physiology and look into the phenotypes of these individuals. And they realized that there are usually signals that are given, and those signals are contingent on environmental pressures. So for a lot of these organisms, it's a function of not having enough food. There's not enough food, they need to find food, so they're going to work together to do it. For some of them, it's about other environmental pressures. For locusts, I read a really cool in-depth kind of thing about how locusts swarm, because pretty well studied species or well studied genus, I guess. And this seems to do with density. So there's kind of this runaway thing that happens when enough of them are close enough together. And you actually find that there are phenotypic shifts within these organisms that are a lot more than just behavioral shifts. So you see all these markers of how the insects actually look. They physically look different when they're moving into this action. So locust nymphs and even full-grown locusts that are isolated are really pale. Their heads are a little bit smaller, and they don't have nearly as many of these little hairs on the outsides of their bodies. And researchers have noted that once they get to critical kind of concentration of these hairs, that's how they actually can detect nearby other locusts. So it's not so much a chemical signal for them, they're thinking that it's actually more of a physical signal in terms of density, like understanding density. When they're reared in very dense conditions, they can actually force these locusts to have all these new features, their colouring changes, the shape of the body changes, and the prevalence of these hairs change. But on top of that, also their behavior changes. They act as a unit instead of acting isolated. So it does seem to be that there's an epigenetic thing going on here where they're coded to be able to do both things. And there's a flip that happens. So where's that flip? Like what is the switch? Well, this new paper that was published, which Steve alluded to, which is all about loners, focuses on amoeboid slime moulds, and they are called Dictyostellium Discoidium. So usually, yeah, they live as solitary amoebas, and they just do their own thing. We remember amoebas from high school, right, with the pseudopods and the single cell protists. And so they will hang out, they eat on their own, they divide on their own, they do everything. But when they have a pressure, which is starvation, basically, when they don't have enough food, they actually coalesce and they make like a mushroom-looking tower. And that's, I think, why people call them slime moulds. And here's the cool thing. The tower has like features, like there's a stalk, and then there's like the head. And so the stalk is actually made of about 20% of the amoebas, and it's sacrificial. So they don't actually get anything out of it, except that they are the scaffolding for the top of the structure. At the very top, they form spores. And so when they go into this spore-like state, they don't need as much food, right? They can actually exist for months without food. And then eventually, they're dispersed, so the hope is that they're going to fly someplace else, just like when we think of mushroom spores, in order to seek out a new environment that has more food. I mean, it's amazing. And we've known about this behavior for a long time. Researchers have always studied individuals in the unit. And they've always wanted to know, oh, how do they know to do this? And how come these choose to be the stalk, even though they're going to die? And these choose to be the spores? And you know, who knows what? It's kind of like with bees, right? There's been a long history of like, how does the queen become the queen? And how do the drones become the drones? And so that's what people have, researchers have historically always been interested in. But they've also always known that there's a certain percentage of organisms that just don't participate. They're the loners, as Steve referenced. They were sort of ignored before. It's like, oh, just some of them don't do it. Why? I don't know. It's not important. Let's look at the ones who do it. And then they started this group, this group who has been publishing historically, usually it's funny when we reference new studies. We're like, oh, a study that was published last month said all of this. And we forget that, no, they've probably published like multiple things leading up to that study. So this group started publishing in 2015, I think, along these, well, probably even earlier, along these lines where they said, I want to look at the loners and try and understand more about the loners. And their most recent article, which was just published this March, so a couple of months ago, realized that it's actually, not only is there consistency in the loners in terms of how many of them there are, it's actually not a fraction. So they thought it was always going to be a fraction, kind of like a coin flip, except like a weighted coin flip. So if an entire population, there's a 20 percent chance that you're going to stay behind, then 20 percent of them are always going to stay behind. And that could be genetically a genetic disposition. But they realized it's actually not a percentage, it's a physical constant number. And so they think that this has to do with some sort of set point. And it's different for different species. But within the species, there's consistency in the number. So they found that some species of this amoeboid slime mould would leave behind 10,000, some species would leave behind 50,000, some would leave behind 100,000. But those species consistently left behind those numbers. And they were like, what?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Regardless the size of the number that weren't left behind?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' When comparing?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, interesting.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. And so they were like, OK, this is really weird. Why could this be? And they think it's because there's an aggregate set point. They think that it's actually a heritable trait. So when these selection pressures are set on them, along with like these other kinds of factors, there are signals that are given off. And we've known this for some time that there are like usually chemical signals when we talk about colonial organisms or aggregate organisms, that once they're near other individuals, they can detect some sort of chemical or physical signal that tells them continue to aggregate. And they think at a certain point that gets cut off and they no longer aggregate. So it's like aggregate first, then cut off and then no longer. Basically, the cells are starving, right? They don't have enough food. They send out signals that say I'm starving. And then when enough cells aggregate and it gets the starvation signal seems to degrade, and then at a certain point, that cell signal just doesn't exist anymore. And that's how these numbers get left behind. And so it's a really interesting idea that these loner cells consistently exist and they consistently exist in particular numbers. And they were like, why? Is this just a byproduct of the fact that enough have aggregated to do their job so we just don't need the rest of them? Or is there something that's actually evolutionarily advantageous to staying behind? And they think that, yeah, it could be the case that they're basically leaving behind the genetic material of a certain amount of the group to maybe be able to regenerate or to be able to exist under the local conditions, because obviously historically those local conditions were good enough for this population to exist. So maybe once a big group of these individuals aggregate and move on, the ones that are left behind can kind of, "repopulate". So they're calling that like hedging bets. And this is kind of a mathematical and physics kind of idea. And it's been applied to a lot of different organisms and they're wondering, can they apply it to larger organisms like locusts, like wildebeest, like things that swarm, like murmurations of birds or schools of fish, because they're they're obviously studying a very simple organism because that's what you do in science. You find model organisms. One of the big things that has helped this group that other groups didn't really have access to is that they figured out how to count them. And apparently it's not easy to count a million amoeboid locusts or sorry, a million amoeboid slime moulds that have all come together to make this stock. But they figured out a way to count them. And that's really changed their understanding of what's going on in this little unit.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, the whole idea of outliers is very interesting. Is it just that there's a certain amount of genetic diversity in any population? So there's by definition going to be outliers? Or is that sort of baked into the strategy of surviving, as you say, hedging your bets? Or sometimes the group does function better if there are those who pursue alternate strategies.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Totally. Think of MRSA. You referenced it before you reference bacteria or sorry, antibiotic resistant bacteria. So when you think of a normal curve, right, you think of the main is the mean median mode, whatever those measures of central tendency are. That's 68 percent of the normal curve exists within one standard deviation. Then you go out to like 97 and then I don't know, my numbers might be quite a little wrong, but then 99 point whatever. And then as you go out, it's a teeny and tiny fraction that are in those tails. So those are what we call outliers. But the thing is, they are different and sometimes weird. And that's why they're outliers. But they might have something in them that helps them in case if an environmental pressure comes along, that's also different and weird. So with MRSA these outliers already are resistant to a certain type of antibiotic just naturally. Genetically they're just different. And then all of a sudden they get pummeled by this antibiotic. These guys survive and everybody else dies. And then all of a sudden it becomes the main group. You know, they are able to pass around their DNA enough, they're able to reproduce enough. And now that's the new species. It's really cool.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And it might also be not only that it's hedging your bets evolutionarily, but also sometimes just the group dynamics function better when everyone's not pursuing the same strategy. There's there's literature now, for example, like why is a certain relatively stable percentage of all animal populations are homosexual, for example, when that's not in the individual's necessarily reproductive advantage?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Because there's a kinship advantage there.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. So there's two things. First of all, homosexual animals do parent children. So that's not an absolute. And second, it does seem to give a kin advantage. Yeah. That if you have a certain percentage who are not pursuing the same strategy but are supporting it, the population in a different way, the overall population is more successful.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And you often find that and generally it's the female of the species, but not always that the females of the species are the ones that rear the children. And so often, like during weaning and often you'll find that in certain populations, it's actually more advantageous to just have the female species working together in these kinship groups to help rear children. And it's not uncommon. There have been several species that have been identified where there's a lot of like lesbian activity between the female species, whereas the males are doing the things that the males of the species do. And so they might mate and then not really be involved in child rearing at all. And then there's like variations on that theme all across the board. But that's actually a theme that you see kind of slightly more often than you would think. And it's pretty interesting. It's like, of course, there's an evolutionary advantage to working together, to not just being an individualistic family unit, which I think has historically dominated sort of like American science, because that's how we think of people, because that's culturally like what we do. But then when we start to realize, like, oh, yeah, like the grandmother effect. I was just reading a really interesting book by Angela Saini and she was citing research that showed the mother of the human species now we're talking about. The mother is the most predictive of mortality of children. Right. So if mom is healthy and mom is around, there's a higher rate of thriving of children. The next most predictive is the grandmother, then the father.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Wow.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. That it's actually it seems to have a greater effect that a grandmother is able to care for the children than a father care for them. And when we're talking huge, like epidemiological numbers, it's pretty interesting.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. Have you guys ever been walking with other people and then at some point you realize that everyone is following somebody else?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yes.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Like, give me a for instance, Steve.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well like three or four people were walking together and everyone assumes that somebody else knows where we're going.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, we do this all the time with the SGU when we're in a new city is and we're walking to a restaurant and then we.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Some of us stand in the back and say, I wonder if they really know where they're going.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Are we following you? Are you following me? Yeah, right.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That didn't happen more than once on our latest Australia trip. No.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Remember when we were looking for the car, Jay?<br />
<br />
=== Dinosaur Asteroid Impact <small>(32:25)</small> ===<br />
* [https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-52795929 BBC News: Dinosaur asteroid's trajectory was 'perfect storm']<ref>[https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-52795929 BBC News: Dinosaur asteroid's trajectory was 'perfect storm']</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, Jay, tell us about the impact that wiped out the non-avian dinosaurs.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' All right. Scientists are getting a much more precise idea of why the asteroid that hit the earth 66 million years ago was just so freakishly devastating. This is really scary. If you try to visualize it, this asteroid killed 75 percent of all the species on Earth. And this was scientists have been trying to figure out the absolute details on what happened. But we are sure that that many creatures and plants died. We know that it did. It was devastating. So what happened? So using an on-site crater investigation and, of course, computer simulations, they found that the asteroid went into the crust in an inclination of up to 45 to 60 degrees, which basically is the angle of attack. So 90 degrees would be coming straight down. Now, this means that the asteroid kicked up an incredible amount of debris and had a big impact on the climate. The impact site was under Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula and it's a 200 kilometre wide crater. This area has a big amount of sulphur, which is coming from the mineral gypsum. Once the gypsum was placed up or rocketed up into the high atmosphere, it mixed with water vapour and was able to produce a global winter. So all of that material gets kicked up and it just shut the Earth down. It shut the incredible amount of sunlight was now being reflected away from the Earth. And there's a global winter.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' So that so that damn impact, it was a perfect storm. Right? It was like it came at the perfect angle and it hit the perfect spot in order to do maximal damage.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah. So that spot was key to it. The angle was needed to have the correct velocity and energy and everything to kick up the material. But that material could have been anything from seawater to dirt that really wouldn't have reacted with the atmosphere. But man, that sulphur reacted like crazy with the atmosphere. So Bob's right. So that particular angle was the perfect storm because it happened to be the most efficient way of rejecting and vaporizing the debris and any variation from that particular angle being shallower shallower or steeper would not have thrown anywhere near as much debris up into the atmosphere. Now, also, if the location did not have so much available sulphur, it wouldn't have had the same effect on the weather. So that particular spot when you think about how just random that is and how many different places it could have hit the earth and its size compared to the earth, it really wasn't that big, compared to the earth. But it was just just the right size to get deep enough and to do the damage that it did. So humans typically don't deal with forces of this magnitude, right? We're not used to, like, talking about rocks that big going at that speed and hitting the earth with that much force. This object was approximately 12 kilometres in diameter. And once it hit the earth, it made a 30 kilometre deep hole, a 30 kilometre deep hole. Of course, the earth reacted, right? The earth don't play that. So the earth had this reaction. So the crust gets hit and there was a rebound effect. And it said that it lasted just a few minutes. But a mountain that was bigger than Mount Everest was created as the the result of that thing hitting the earth. You know, think about it. It was pushing all of that material. And this mountain appears that was incredibly high in the atmosphere. But consequently, it quickly fell away and a crater was left in the wake of what happened because this crater was asymmetrical. And that's pretty much it, guys. That's what happened. And I'm sure that we'll have better simulations in the future or whatever, but nothing, I think, that's going to undo this research. This research was fantastically powerful in the fact that they were because of the simulations, they were able to really say it came in at this 40 to 65 degree angle. And if you ever see a video simulation of this, wow, it's scary. It's really scary seeing something of that size hit the earth. Everything on the earth felt that.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, and not just that, isn't it quite likely that there was ejecta that, left our atmosphere that actually went into space? I mean, that's insane.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That's how the moon was created.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, that's amazing.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It is amazing. It's intense.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And to know that we were teeming with life at the time, you know what I mean? Like there was so much organic material on this planet, so many living organisms, and a lot of them were shot into space.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, it wiped out 75 percent of species, but like ninety nine point nine nine nine percent of individual animal creatures were killed.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Sure.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's amazing. Right.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' But our genetic template was still was still there and it's still propagating. Even more fascinating for me was the impact that that hit the earth that created the moon, because that wiped out there could have been life on the earth when it hit. And that would have wiped out everything. This could have been life much more foreign than we would than we could think. You know, it could have been just wiped out and then had to start from scratch. Who knows how exotic it was or who knows how similar it was. Maybe it was surprisingly similar. We will never know. Some people refer to that as Earth Mark one.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' And keep this in mind, too. If that didn't happen, we wouldn't be here.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yes, I'm so glad it happened.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Of course.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So we were like basically little mice people, like little mouses that were back then. They survived. They were skulked around and they hid and they were able to find food and muscle through a freaking global winter. And they made it. Those tough little bastards made it so we can be here to have the internet. Thank you.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Here's a good question, though. So we're talking about how this was a perfect storm, right? It was a large asteroid coming in quickly, hitting the exact wrong location and hitting it at an angle designed to produce maximal chaos.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Well, not designed, but OK.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So the question is, is that a coincidence that this was so bad or is it that we know about this because it was so bad? Yeah, I didn't have those features, it wouldn't have caused a mass extinction. We wouldn't wouldn't be anything special.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right. Yeah. You know, it's like, will we ever really know?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' You never, ever know.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I'm glad.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Well, I mean, I assume you could you could simulate you could simulate a rock that big hitting the earth at a different angle at a different spot and then say, all right, what what kind of crater would that have left? And would we be able to see any any remains of that so that we can infer that? I mean, that wouldn't be that difficult to figure out.<br />
<br />
=== Backward Time Universe <small>(39:16)</small> ===<br />
* [https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/weird-news/nasa-scientists-detect-parallel-universe-21996849 Daily Star: NASA scientists detect parallel universe 'next to ours' where time runs backwards]<ref>[https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/weird-news/nasa-scientists-detect-parallel-universe-21996849 Daily Star: NASA scientists detect parallel universe 'next to ours' where time runs backwards]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. But the question is, Bob, what would it look like if the universe were running backwards?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, saw that coming. Saw that coming. All right, all right. So, yes, Steve's talking about a viral news story that refuses to go away and it makes the claim that scientists have discovered a parallel universe where time goes backwards.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I heard about this.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Flat out scientists have discovered it. It's like putting it out there.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I heard about this tomorrow.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, Evan.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' So, is this true? In a word, no. And that's it. I'm done. Steve, should I flesh this out a little bit more you think?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Little bit.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Maybe a little bit more. So, OK, so to set the tone, I'll start with a great tweet from the lead author on the research paper, Ibrahim Safa, in response to questions about what he thinks of the so-called news stories that link his research with evidence for a parallel universe, he said, NASA has discovered that y'all should not be getting your news from the New York Post. So the New York Post and the Daily News, a few of them were just like all quoting each other.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' What? Tabloids?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' And yeah, and now it's all it's like a lot of you just Google it, you'll be like finding lots of different news items from different outlets. So but it all started because of ANITA, all because of ANITA. ANITA, of course, is a acronym for Antarctic Impulsive Transient Antenna Experiment. So this is essentially a balloon experiment that lifts detectors in the air to sense neutrinos. That's what this thing's doing. And neutrinos, we've mentioned it many times. I'm going to mention it again. These nearly massless particles, right, produced by energetic events. They generally don't interact with anything. And you've got like probably millions going through every square centimetre of your body right now, right now and right now, every second right now. Here's another million every square, every square meter. So ANITA detects the radio waves that are emitted from the ice. They're pointed down. The detectors are pointing down and it detects the radio waves emitted from the ice when high energy neutrinos smash into them. So you might be thinking, wait, how many neutrinos are going to be smashing into anything? Don't they go through like your whole planet or even light years of lead without really interacting with anything? Because they're just called ghost particles, right? Well, that depends. It depends how much energy the energy they have. If they have enough energy, they are they are going to interact. And that's what ANITA was designed to detect. These very, very energetic neutrinos that that should interact with the ice and then spew out some radio waves that would then be detected by the detectors on the balloon. The thing is, these neutrinos should be coming from space, right? They shouldn't be coming from the earth because how are they going to get through the earth? Because they would almost invariably be detected or they would be they would interact with something in the earth and not make it through. But yet they detected a couple of these buggers. So how could that be? The standard model of physics does not easily account for that. It just does. It shouldn't really happen. There's a fun possibility, though, that this could involve new physics, right? If the standard model of physics of particle physics can't explain it, then maybe potentially there's some new physics in there. But that doesn't mean that it justifies what I call give me a break physics. So the crux of the outrageous claims being tossed around is that if this energetic neutrino could not go through the entire earth and be detected, perhaps it really was traveling backwards in time and only seemed to come through the earth. Because if you had a neutrino that was going from space and hits the earth but doesn't go through it, but you watch that backwards, it's going to look like it's coming out of the earth. So that's so that's kind of what these people are saying. And but it gets worse. The claim further declares that this particle is part of a parallel universe like ours. But many of the laws of physics are reversed, including time. So that's the crux of what these people are saying. You got time going backwards and you've got this parallel universe that kind of somehow intersected with our universe. Now, this whole idea, though, of these parallel universe and the reverse time, it didn't come out of nowhere like a virtual particle. It started with a pretty reasonable new scientist article with a horrible title. And the horrible title of that pretty reasonable article was "We may have spotted a parallel universe going backwards in time". Ah! So in that in that, yes, in that article, they talk about ANITA and the results and the article makes reference to a speculative theory that ANITA could potentially support. They're just kind of like Griffin, like, oh, look, you could use this to support this theory that was released a few couple of years ago. And this could actually support that. And the theory is actually kind of fascinating. It's called CPT Symmetric Universe Theory. And it's interesting. This theory states that at the Big Bang, now you imagine the Big Bang, it wasn't just our universe that was created, what was what the theory claims is that you had a universe anti-universe pair was created, kind of like virtual particles, that come out that come out of nowhere. You've got a particle and antiparticle that arise and then they and then they and then they collide and demolish each other and disappear. So like a universe, an anti-universe being created at the same time. Now, in many ways, according to the theory, this would be an opposite mirror reflection version of our universe. So, for example, anti-matter would dominate instead of matter, the matter that we that we call matter anyway. It also solves some major symmetry issues like CPT symmetry. Look it up. And dark matter. And of course, time would flow backwards, apparently. So this is where those news outlets got this idea of parallel universes and time going in reverse. But this is a very, very speculative out there theory right now. This has got major issues that need to be resolved. The authors had a lot of back and forth with their referees saying, hey, but you got to deal with this and you got to deal with that. So this is not ready for prime time. It's not widely accepted. So to say that scientists have found a parallel universe is really, really kind of silly. And so, of course, this is the classic mistake of bypassing the scientific method and jumping to the to the most sensationalistic option. Like, look, an unknown light in the sky. It must be aliens. Typical. It's like, oh, wait a second. You know, we got a lot of checkboxes to check off before you can go from light in the sky to aliens. Sure, you could potentially get to aliens, but man, you got a lot of steps to do. And most often people, right, they leapfrog right over all the the boring sciencey stuff and they go to the really cool, sexy stuff. So my favorite quote from Safa is a good summation. He said, ANITA's events are definitely interesting, but we're a long ways away from even claiming there's any new physics, let alone an entire universe. It's like, wait a second. You're going to claim there's an entire universe. Yeah, look at this little thing that we found that's kind of mysterious. We're not sure what's happening. I could explain this with an entire universe. Throw in and talk about. Oh, my God.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's very satisfying to a lot of people.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' But it's awesome. And I kind of hope this theory is true, but you've got some steps to do first. So here's something that I haven't heard anybody say about this. I have a problem with another universe interacting with ours, don't you? I mean, wouldn't we have seen these interactions before? I mean, you think that.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, I remember asking like a like a Nobel laureate physicist about this.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, what do they know.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' At a talk.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' What exactly did you ask?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, I was asking about the bubble universes, like this, the multiverse theory that universes are like bubbles, right? And they are kind of like pushed up against each other. And I said if you could detect it, because he came up with lots of scenarios in which we would never be able to detect it. But he said that probably the best way to detect it, if we could, would be that you would see actual round patterns on the cosmic microwave background radiation, like you'd see physical circles.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yep.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And where those bubbles are pushing up against each other.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Right. And that's actually yeah. So and there was actually that was in the news a bunch of years ago. I remember they they they speculated that they found some of some of these swirls. I don't think it was ever definitively proven. But yeah, I mean, sure, I can see I could. Yeah, I could see something sort of like that. And to see the cosmic microwave background radiation. I mean, that's you know, that's something that happened billions of years ago. This is not like interacting right now. But my biggest fear, though, is that if you have a universe that interacts with another one, the very last kind of that universe that I would want to interact with is one that's filled with anti-matter. Don't interact with our universe, please, because I don't want to interact with anti-matter because-<br />
<br />
'''E:''' What happens when matter meets antimatter? Oh, right.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Annihilation.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' But I'm sure I think this is this is really silly. And a lot of people are jumping on this and thinking that giving any credence to this. But I'm happy, though, that there's another possibility that we could have discovered new physics. I mean, that's all I'm waiting. I've been waiting years and years for something beyond the standard model of particle physics about particles and forces. And we really need an extension to that theory because it doesn't cover dark matter and other things. But I still would not bet on this, though. Like, do you remember the OPRA faster than light neutrino experiment from 19 or 2011? They said, look at this. This neutrino is traveling faster than light. We can't figure out why. Turns out one of the major reasons why it was doing that was because a fibre optic cable wasn't attached properly.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Human error never accounts for anything.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' So and so for ANITA, it's the same thing. There are people that are saying that the the the ice structures in the Antarctic, where they were doing this experiment, it's kind of complex. We don't know everything we need to know about about how this ice is potentially interacting with the experiment. It could be some sort of reflection that is unanticipated or a new type of reflection that needs to be discounted. So it could be something I would bet I would just bet money. It's something goofy like that. And not that we need this whole new universe to to to explain this. So only when you really account for all of that, can I do I think that you can seriously consider new physics. And then only then can you really more easily justify the more outlandish stuff like invoking a whole new parallel backwards universe. You got to do your science first before you're leaping to this.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And one other thing, Bob, this is an observation which led to speculation about what could explain that observation, which is very different than having a theory that predicts makes predictions about what we will observe. And then that observation confirming the theory. That's not what's happening here. And there's probably an infinite number of wacky things you could pull out of your butt to explain this one observation. This is just one of them. And there's no reason to think that this is the one correct.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Arm chair retrospective, like, oh, yeah, maybe that maybe this can support this. They're right. Yeah, if you show me a theory that makes a prediction and then we see that that that, yeah, that's [inaudible].<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Then come talk to me. Yeah.<br />
<br />
=== Why Beards? <small>(50:23)</small> ===<br />
* [https://www.sciencealert.com/researchers-suggest-my-bushy-beard-evolved-so-you-can-safely-punch-me-in-the-head ScienceAlert: Wild Study Suggests Human Beards Evolved to Absorb Punches to The Head]<ref>[https://www.sciencealert.com/researchers-suggest-my-bushy-beard-evolved-so-you-can-safely-punch-me-in-the-head ScienceAlert: Wild Study Suggests Human Beards Evolved to Absorb Punches to The Head]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, Evan, here's a burning question.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' OK.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Why do men have beards?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, that is a good question. And a lot of people, including a lot of women I know, would have a lot to say about that, both positive and negative. But the story also has to do with fighting around the world. I found this item at the website, sciencealert.com. Beards. What are they good for? Well, it depends on who you ask. If you were to ask the biologists Ethan Becerra's, Stephen Nelloway and David Carrier of the University of Utah, they would tell you that they have data supporting the hypothesis that human beards protect vulnerable regions of facial skeleton from damaging strikes.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Wow.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yep.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Now, Evan, very important biological question here.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' OK.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' The fact that I can't really grow a beard, I just don't have like that heft to my beard. Now, does that mean that what, like I'm more of a pacifist?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Or that you're more likely to get hammered?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, or that they can come easy to kill. I mean, you've got to help me out here.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, that that's an interesting question, Jay. And the authors of this study actually bring that up to a certain degree in their paper and they make mention of it. And the general answer to you, Jay, is that way back when, when males were competing in a very physical way for mates, among other things, some groups of people had to be more physical than others. So perhaps, perhaps it is speculated that those who did not have to have so much, say, fighting in their existence for procreation purposes or spreading the seed around, as they say, that those groups of males did not have the need as much for beards as others who perhaps did. That's speculation. It's a hypothesis. But there is research, apparently, that goes along those lines. And the authors did talk about that. But that's not really specific. It's a tangent. It's a bit of a tangent to what this one is about, because this actually has to do with does a beard really offer physical protection for a man? And they looked at it in a pretty interesting way. Now, the data was published in the Journal of of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology, which is part of the Oxford Academic Journal. Now, I'll pause here for a second, Steve. The word integrative, that word gives me the willies a little bit.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, but it could be used in a legitimate way.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' But OK, because when we hear about integrative in terms of medical-<br />
<br />
'''S:''' In medical terms it's bad.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, you have to sort of raise a red flag there. But here, I guess we're going to be OK. Their title of the paper is Impact Protection Potential from Mammalian Hair Testing the Pugilism Hypothesis for the Evolution of Human Facial Hair. That sounds interesting. What exactly is the Pugilism Hypothesis? This is actually a subject I believe we have hit on before. Get it? Pugilism Hypothesis.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' You know sometimes you're funny Ev.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But not this day.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I didn't say that.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Let me be blunt. Let me explain this. The Pugilism Hypothesis suggests that there have been evolutionary pressures for hominids such as great apes and humans to fight using their fists. Basically sums it up. But and we've talked about the actual fist biology of humans and great apes. We have talked about those in previous episodes. But what about the receiving end of those fists? What exactly are people trying to hit with their fists? Well, in the case of males, predominantly when they fight, they go for the face. And prior research suggests that the males go for the face to ugly up their opponents, really. So that potential mating partners might be more likely to choose them. Whoever comes out of a fight less damaged, which is really interesting in and of itself. Perhaps a more contemporary context, it's in a controlled setting, which we have nowadays. Well, boxing or MMA or a mixed martial arts match. I mean, this is where you see this sort of play out in modern terms, because we don't really fight for our mates and stuff anymore. Those days have long have gone for the most part.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Some people do.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' But we do have sport. But that's a little bit different because you're not necessarily going in there to the sport to ugly up your opponent. What you're trying to do is incapacitate them, knock them out in one way or another. But that nice brain that you're trying to send the jolt to is protected by a skull and tissues and other things that make it really hard to physically attack the brain. And that's a good thing. But a shortcut to the brain or through some knockout points. And then you have several of them in your head, including two, which are at the forefront of the human skull, lower jaw, the mandible. Just if you were to basically take your fingers, draw a line straight down from your eyes to where it hits your jaw line. And there you go. You got nice little knockout points right there on you on either side.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Isn't that the nerve hole?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yes, it is. Those are. And your jaw also comes out in front of your face. When you're heading, going for the head, you're you're most likely to hit that jaw. So it's right there. Well, they had some interesting highlights from the abstract, which I think explained it pretty well. Because facial hair is one of the most sexually dimorphic features of humans and is often perceived as an indicator of masculinity and social dominance.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' This was written by men by the way?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' This is written by, yes, three men.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yes. OK. Good to know. All right. Here we go.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Human facial hair has been suggested to play a role in male contest competition. And there are studies for that and research backing that up. Some authors have proposed that the beard may function similar to the long hair of a lion's mane, serving to protect vital areas of the lion's throat and jaw from lethal attacks.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' And that makes sense.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, it is. And it's consistent with the observation that the mandible on us, which is superficially covered by a beard, is one of the most commonly fractured facial bones in interpersonal violence. So the authors have hypothesized that beards protect the skin and bones of the face when human males fight by absorbing and dispersing that energy, which is a blunt impact to the jaw. And they ran some tests. So what they did is they took they thought it was unethical to actually, have people with beards and not beards hitting each other in the face to see what kind of damage would be done. So instead, they made a a fake skull basically and put some thick hair on it, so sheep's hair and skin. And they did various tests. So they have three sets of them. You had one in which it was very full, another one in which the hairs were plucked out and another one where it was shorn or pretty much shaved, shaved down. And basically what they found, the bottom line is that the total energy absorbed if you had the full beard in this particular experiment. It was 37 percent greater in a bearded face than compared to the other two samples. Total energy absorbed 37 percent grade.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That's a lot.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. But they were also using sheep hair.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, there are some problems here. I mean OK among the things. And this was brought up also in the article at Science Alert, the the author who said, yeah, OK, it's not the same as the human face and human beard because the material, first of all, is different. You know, there's a different thickness to the hair, the cushioning of it all. But they the authors acknowledge that. But they also said there were some other features of the hair that also kind of evened out to make it kind of close to to a human comparison. You know, it was kind of close enough for government work, as the old saying goes, at least for this particular one, for this particular set of experiments. Also, the human head is not just this is not just a fixed point thing that like the experiments that they ran. They had the skull, they had the beard on it, shaved or whatever. And they struck a basically dropped a hammer onto it and it didn't move. You know, if you get hit in the chin, your head goes back. You've got it goes in various directions and things. And all that is part of absorbing the energy as well. So this was kind of a very limited scope set of experiments. So how much you can actually glean from this is even they admit. They said, look, this isn't perfect by any stretch. It requires much more, much more testing.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Did they look at I mean, this is A, purely speculative hypothesis. Purely speculative. B, there probably is actual data out there from, like you said, fighters.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yes, and there is.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' There are bearded fighters and non bearded fighters.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Absolutely. And then I'm glad that they also referenced that in this paper as one of their points. They said our results appear to conflict with a recent study that demonstrated beards do not provide a performance advantage in mixed martial arts as measured by the number of wins by knockout decisions. So that's a little different as well in that you're using one set of measurements in these professional fighters based on knockouts. But their study did not necessarily indicate if you're going to be knocked out by this blow, just how much damage the face would absorb in cuts or in fractures. So they're kind of different. But you're right, Cara. The study with the MMA fighters was pretty controlled. And they said it was quite compelling. And it involved three hundred ninety five fighters. They found no evidence of a performance advantage provided by the facial hair.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's pretty damning.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's really. And the thing is, like, I think that we have a problem in the sciences, oftentimes when we look at things through an evolutionary lens where we feel like everything has to have a purpose. Like, why does this exist? Oh, it must confer an advantage. And the truth is, mammals are hairy. I think that we lost hair over time and maybe talking about why we're hairless in places could be interesting. But like, couldn't this just be an evolutionary holdover? Just men are hairier.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I had the same exact thoughts as well. When you start attributing why things evolved for maybe specific purposes, I think you start getting into areas in which you're going to wind up being disappointed by the actual answers.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And we know that we didn't evolve to grow beards. We already had them. We evolved to lose hair in other parts of the body.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Well, not so much lose it. It's just it's just I mean, the hair follicles are there. They're just very thin and.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No, but you know what I mean?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Human beards do represent an exaggerated facial hair. It is. It's not just like we didn't lose the fur on our chin. It's actually it is exaggerated from what mammals would normally have. So but you're right, it is very difficult to reverse engineer evolutionary causes and effects. You end up with just those stories that are probably really [inaudible].<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Genetic drift is a thing.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It could be incidental.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Sometimes things are just random.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I mean, definitely physiologically, it's because the follicles respond to testosterone. That's why there's it's different between men and women. But that doesn't tell us, again, it may not serve a purpose, right? We don't want to make the adaptationalist fallacy. But whenever there is a sexually dimorphic trait, there is a few possibilities that are generically that biologists will consider. Is it sexual selection? Is it a competition advantage? So for sexual selection of beards, the data is really all over the place. And what it shows is that some women like them. Some women don't. Some women don't care.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's why I said what I said at the very top.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Probably also cultural differences.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's probably cultural. Not only that, the more common beards are, the more attractive being clean shaven is. And the less common they are, the more attractive they are.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So the grass is greener.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, it's also like a sticking out effect. And there also may be male male competition is not always physical. It could just be kind of an intimidation dominance kind of signal, even if they're not physically competing with each other. So it's complicated, I think, is the bottom line. And the data is kind of all over the place.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, it seems to me like just as silly as if a study was published saying that curly hair conferred some sort of advantage over straight hair because it like, yeah, it absorbed blows better or you know, fill in the blank. It's a bit kind of like shot in the dark to me.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' And, Steve, when we were talking about the evolution of the clenched fist in a prior episode in this pugilism hypothesis, I believe we arrived at the same kind of conclusions here that you can't backwards engineer this stuff. And a lot of the things we're saying right now, I believe we were also saying then about that. So that gives me some pause here for this entire hypothesis.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' At best, they could say it's semi plausible because it does absorb some of the blow.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Right.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Sure. But that might also just be a fluke.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That could have falsified it, but it didn't falsify it. I mean, I think it's all you can really say. OK, one more quick news item.<br />
<br />
=== Solving Space Junk <small>(1:04:00)</small> ===<br />
* [https://cires.colorado.edu/news/solving-space-junk-problem CIRES: Solving the Space Junk Problem]<ref>[https://cires.colorado.edu/news/solving-space-junk-problem CIRES: Solving the Space Junk Problem]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' We've talked about space junk quite a bit on the show because it is a huge looming problem that we don't really have a solution to. So this this paper caught my eye because it kind of takes a different approach. We've been focusing mainly on what technology would we use to get all of that space junk out of orbit before it gets so clogged that you basically we lose the use of some low Earth orbits was just too much junk up there. And they're crashing into each other and destroying everything. This paper takes a more of an economic approach. So first, let me ask you guys, are you aware-<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Four foot one.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Of the term, the tragedy of the commons?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Absolutely not.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I am, but I don't remember what it means.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It sounds bloody Shakespearean.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It'll make sense when I explain to you that the tragedy of the commons is actually an observation that was made a few hundred years ago, that basically if you have individuals acting on their individual best interest, but that involves using a public resource that the individuals collectively could destroy the public resource. So, for example, I think the observation was first made it was first made 170 years ago in 1832 by William Foster Lloyd, who noticed that farmland, that grazing land, that public grazing land was being devastated while private grazing land was being maintained. And the question is, why is that happening? Because, well, if you own the land, you rotate your herd and you keep them at a sustainable level because you have a vested interest in maintaining your graze land. But if you are using public land, you have a short term economic advantage to graze all your animals and to grow your herd. Even though long term, it's going to use up that public resource. So that's the tragedy of the commons is that collectively we make poor decisions when we're acting individually. So the author of the new paper says we could apply this to the space junk problem. Right now, there's an incentive for any company or country or whatever to put up a satellite, in fact, to get it up quicker before the orbit gets too overcrowded. There's no incentive because orbital space is essentially a public resource, and individuals are utilizing that public resource for their own short term individual advantage without consideration of the public good.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And this is why we need some regulations.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Exactly. That's why you always need some kind of regulation. Exactly. Because because individuals are not going to solve the problem with their own individual behavior, the perverse incentive to to not to not be sustainable.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' If men were angels, no government would be necessary. James Madison.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' If all of them were angels. Yeah, that's correct. They actually quote that in the article that I'm talking about.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, there you go.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But they're not right. And it's not just being not being a bad person, not being angels, just that, you all have blinders on. We're making our decisions for our short term advantage, you know. Yeah. So, OK, so they say, OK, how do we reverse the incentive so that people do have an incentive to protect the common good? So one way that is being proposed is this is Akhil Rao and assistant professor of economics at Middlebury College. Said with other authors, he's the lead author. What we should do is charge an annual orbital fee. So if you put up a satellite into orbit, you get charged a fee every year, that satellite uses up that orbital space.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Sure, you're renting the space.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Basically renting your orbital space. Exactly.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Who gets paid?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, that's a good question. It could be the country that you're launching it from. It could be an international consortium or whatever. That's a detail that would have to be worked out. But some entity would get paid. And presumably that money would be used appropriately, like to to de orbit stuff or whatever.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So wait, Steve. So you have something in outer space, right? And something happens in that one object turns into a thousand objects. What happens then?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So that would have to be your I thought of that, too. It's not addressed in the paper. But if your satellite crashes, it becomes a thousand different bits of debris that would have to be dealt with in some way. Obviously, you're not going to.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's apparently kind of rare, though, right?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Now it is. Now it is. But not so much. And if that's the whole point.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' The problem is only getting worse.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That that could lead to a nightmare scenario where you've got this cascade, this domino effect, where it's it's actually possible that a satellite could hit another satellite, smash it to a lot of pieces. And then that one does it to another one. And then so on and so on. And worst case scenario is you have the entire orbit around the earth covered with useless debris and we cannot launch a rocket for like a few centuries. That's a worst case scenario.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Remember, I went to Kazakhstan. To to watch the launch. Yeah, they weren't doing it anymore. I know it's like pretty crazy. But when I was talking to them about space junk they got super defensive and everything. And they were like, oh, like, this is what we do. Blah, blah, blah. It's not as bad as you think. Blah, blah. But one of the things that they were. I know. But one of the things that they really pushed was like, it's so you wouldn't think that it's regulated, but you have to pass so much. You have to get so much approval to exist on an orbital plane, like to get something up into a specific orbit. And that orbit is clear. And most modern satellites, or at least their satellites, were built to de-orbit like they slowly fall back to Earth over time.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' And that tends to be the modern take on these things. I imagine there these that has to be a design requirement.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, that's kind of the point. So now you have. So if you're if you're a company or a government and you want to launch a satellite, you have to think twice about the cost benefit of that satellite, because you have to build into the cost the orbital rental fee, basically.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It becomes more valuable.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It becomes more valuable. In fact, they estimate this would increase the value of the satellite industry from six hundred billion dollars to three trillion dollars.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' By 2040.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Sure.<br />
<br />
'''S''' By 2040. Yeah. And then that's with increasing fees so that by 2040 it'll be two hundred and thirty five thousand dollars per satellite per year.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I love this idea. Because you could say, I imagine if we could clean up, you would think like if I had a wish, one one wish, not not a top ten, maybe not even a top hundred. But one of the wishes would be to imagine magically cleaning out all of the debris in orbit. And I would think that would be wonderful. There'd be less debris. There'd be less potential for an accident. But that could actually be worse in some ways, because then people would like rush to fill those empty spaces. And before you know it, we have it's all filled again with stuff. But if you're paying and you have it's actually more expensive and you're creating an orbit that you need to protect and take care of and it's valuable and increasing in value, then that's not going to happen and people will take it more seriously.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, you have to incent. It's incentivizing it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's also a similar concept to like a carbon tax. Where the commons are the atmosphere.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Which is probably coming someday.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, it's your individual. It's during your company's individual short term advantage to just dump CO2 into the atmosphere. But if you had to pay for it, suddenly that changes the incentive.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right. I'm surprised we've waited this long.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I like the general idea, this notion that this is just human behavior. This is what humans are going to do. And not because we're sharing resources and because there's so many of us there's a lot of things you don't also think of as resources like orbital space, but they are. This again, this wisdom is one hundred and seventy whatever plus years old. It's not like this is a new idea. This is kind of a time tested notion.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' There's always going to be a financial incentive to exploit without paying it back. Right? Like it's you see it in public spaces all the time.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Broadcasters can't just broadcast. You have to rent. You have to rent a license. You have to rent certain frequencies.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, it's also called an externalized cost.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, we've talked about it a lot on the show.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, you have to do it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Entities should not be allowed to externalize their cost onto others. Another way to look at it is there are situations in which the benefit is concentrated in one or a few individuals, but the cost is spread out over many individuals.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And in the US that's common.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, we don't perceive the cost because it's so spread out, but it adds up over time.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It sure does.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And so we have to make the cost as palpable and individual as the benefits that they balance out, basically. And again, this is not anti free market. It's actually pro free market because you know what the alternative is to this kind of thing?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Not having satellites?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's just about government control. Do you want total government control or do you want a free market where you're factoring in the externalized costs and the common use of resources so that there's no perverse incentive to destroy the common resource?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Basically, this is consumer protection in a major way. Which is important for the free market. You need consumer protection.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' And we have it. This is not a foreign concept. It's already built into a lot of things that we enjoy, purchase and spend our money on. So it's not unusual.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It's like what I told my daughter who just left college, the gravy train is over.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Steve, what if maybe they should also be putting money aside to retire the the spacecraft as well, like whatever it is, like they can't just leave it up there.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's a point.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' A lot of them, the newer ones, de-orbit.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, you'll want the satellite to de-orbit as soon as you no longer need it, because then you won't be paying for a defunct or a dead satellite, right?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Right.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yes.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. Let's move on.<br />
<br />
== Who's That Noisy? <small>(1:14:08)</small> ==<br />
* Answer to last week’s Noisy: {{w|Dead-man's_vigilance_device|Train's Vigilance Control System}}<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Jay, it's Who's That Noisy time.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Guys?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Noisy?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yes?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Last week, I played a noisy.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Did it come with a warning?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yes. This one does come with a warning. You're right. Thank you for reminding me, Evan. And here it is.<br />
<br />
[_short_vague_description_of_Noisy] <br />
<br />
Yeah. So. What the heck is that?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I don't know, but whatever it was, it caught fire and something just put it out.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' You guys want to take any guesses?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, it's an alarm.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Of some kind. I'll give you that. Sure.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Alarm system and triggering a reaction in which something is released.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, it sounds like steam almost.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Sure, it does. Sure, it does. Did you guys you guys remember David Cheeseman from last week?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, I remember Cheeseman.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' He sent in a guest. He sent in a guest. He says, hey, this sounds like a missile alarm on board an Ohio class submarine or on an attack submarine with VLS when conducting a missile jettison, not a launch. And then he goes on to explain what the each sounds are and everything. I'm sorry, my friend. You're incorrect, but not completely incorrect. I mean, you got a couple of interesting things in there, like about, we're not talking about a missile. I'll say this is not a missile launch type of thing, but there is an alarm. But you got that right. Another guest, Micah Woodward. Hi, Jay, is this week's noisy what happens when someone presses the big red button to stop the magnet on the MRI?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, interesting.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Steve, you have you ever done this?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I'm just checking. That's not the answer. But there has to be a big red button. There has got to be the kind where you could just smash through a little piece of glass and hit the button. Sure, I'll give you that. But I have no idea if that's what the MRI sounds like. But this isn't it. And then we have Brendan Flynn. Brendan wrote, hey, Jay, not Bob. My hopefully educated guess for this week's noisy is aircraft hangar, high expansion fire retardant foam.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Interesting.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' People have used this as a guess before. Apparently, there's some type of alert that happens before the foam comes out. And yeah, that that's pretty damn close as far as it's sounding like something else. This isn't it. But yes, I'm pretty sure that's very close to what that whole process of the retardant foam coming out sounds like. But no, not correct, sir. We do have a winner, though. The winner for last week was Brendan Robinson. And Brendan said, hi, Jay, hope you and the team are all going well. Thank you for your extraordinary performance in a dismal 2020. Hey, man, we're trying our best over here. So he said this week's who's that noisy sounds like a safety system on a train known as a vigilance control system. These systems are designed to stop a train in the event that the train driver or engineer are incapacitated, such as if they suffer a heart attack or fall asleep. They usually activate if the controls haven't been used in a set amount of time, usually around 30 seconds. There will then usually be a visual warning, such as a flashing light that the driver will have to acknowledge by pressing a button to reset. Should the driver not react and reset the system for within a few seconds and alarm sounds and then the driver still fails to react after a few more seconds, the emergency brakes will apply.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Cool.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So here's here's something really cool about this system. The system, when it's pressurized, is releasing the brake. When the system becomes depressurized, it the brake clamps down. It's the exact opposite of what our intuition would normally tell us that you have to use the system to to apply the brake. That's not the case.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So it's like pneumatic pressure? Like, is that the sound we're hearing is the air release?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yes, that's the air release. So the person who sent this in Damien Van Schneidel last week, he wrote train brakes operate in the reverse of how car brakes work in that the brakes are always on and a brake pipe is charged up to 500 KPA to release the brakes as brakes are applied the brake pipe is reduced, which allows the brakes to apply. So, for example, when a train is traveling along, the brake pipe will be sitting at 500 KPA. But when the driver applies the brake to initial it, it will reduce the brake pipe to 450 KPA, which essentially sits the brake pads onto the wheels, creating friction to reduce the speed. The more that the pressure drops, the more brake that's applied. And that's like a safety system where if it suddenly loses pressure, the brakes go on.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And so trains have this safety feature in case if the conductor is no longer doing their job.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Conducting?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yes, my car has its own version of that. If I take my hands off the wheel and the wheel starts to drift, it will like beep at me and it'll say like, take the wheel. And I wonder if a lot of it's funny that it took a while for that to get to a lot of cars. But my assumption is it's been on trains for quite some time.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So just so you know, the person who guessed and of course, the person who sent this in both work on trains. This is a very, if not impossible thing to know unless you're in the industry. You know, like the braking system of certain types of trains, you know what I mean? It's like a very rare piece of thing. But I always am blown away. You know, I play like this rare sound and somebody out there, somebody's got it. I love that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's the power of crowdsourcing.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That's right.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
=== New Noisy <small>(1:19:36)</small> ===<br />
<br />
[brief, vague description of Noisy]<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So I have a new noisy this week. I talked to Bob about it. I was so intrigued by this noisy that I called Bob and explained to him just how interesting I think it is.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I will neither confirm nor deny this.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' But what I'd like you to do, especially if you email me what you think it is, I want you to tell me how you felt. What was your emotional response to this noisy? I don't think I've ever asked that before, because I had an emotional response to this noisy. And this this noisy was sent in by a listener named Carrie Harmon.<br />
<br />
[_short_vague_description_of_Noisy] <br />
<br />
'''S:''' Cool.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Jay, you had an emotional reaction because it sounds like somebody being murdered with a chainsaw.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' At the beginning part, I thought it sounded like the Martians from War of the Worlds.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Oh, totally.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, it has that trumpety ring like that that high pitch, like screamy type of thing. Yeah, definitely. This one is really, really interesting. And I'm not going to say anything else because I want to get your reaction. So let me know. Email me at WTN@theskepticsguide.org if you have a guess, if you have a cool noisy and if you just want to say hi and tell me how you're doing with this whole pandemic bullshit that we have to deal with for what? Another two or three years.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. Thanks, brother. Quick one quick email.<br />
<br />
== Questions/Emails/Corrections/Follow-ups <small>(1:21:15)</small> ==<br />
<br />
=== Email #1: Electrical Treatment for RP ===<br />
<br />
<blockquote><p style="line-height:115%">First time long time listener (2010, I think). I'm a better thinker as a result of the show, so can't thank you enough. The book was great too. To my question: I have Retinitis pigmentosa (genetic degenerative vision condition). Diagnosed at 14 and now 36, so it's well on its way. Recently my partner found a German clinic advertising the Federov Treatment, link at the end. It claims not to cure but stabilize and, in some cases, improve night vision/peripheral vision. The treatment is electrical stimulation to retinal cells/optic nerve or parts of the brain dependent on the condition. It claims to natural - I don't see electricity to the dome in nature, myself - and the website is full of testimonials. I can't find anywhere else that delivers the treatment, although it's delivered by neurologists (good?) and has been going since '93. I've read a pinned review of the available studies, link at the end. Small studies in animals and humans...the improvements as far as I can see are all assumed markers: thicker this, increased blood flow to that, and the killer quote for me: "Despite several studies showing promising results in both animal experiments and clinical studies, there are presently few reports on the mechanisms of action for ES, making this field still poorly understood." I'd love to be wrong and not wait for CRISPR or the phase 2 stem cell trials, but I'm not optimistic. Thanks for all that you do; you're all wonderful. I don't know who picks these up, but I have to say that although she's part of the furniture now, I'm really happy with the addition of Cara. As much as I like the speculative and exciting potential sciences, I think she applies them to the world as it is: environmentally, socially, etc. I did have a COVID question, but this trumps it for me. Stay safe in these peculiar times and thanks again. - Stephen, Manchester, UK</p></blockquote><br />
<br />
'''S:''' This one comes from Stephen from Manchester in the UK. And he bookends it with some praise. I want to go right to the question so we can go forward. He says, I have retinitis pigmentosa genetic degenerative vision condition diagnosed at 14 and now 36. So it's well on its way. Recently my partner found a German clinic advertising the Fedorov technique. It claims not to cure, but stabilize and in some cases improve night vision peripheral vision. The treatment is electrical stimulation to retinal cells, optic nerve and parts of the brain dependent on the condition. It claims to natural. I don't see electricity to the dome in itself in nature myself. And the website is full of testimonials. I can't find anywhere else that delivers the treatment, although it's delivered by neurologists and has been going since 1993. I've read a pinned review of the available studies. Small studies in animals and humans. The improvements as far as I can see are all assumed markers. Thicker this increased blood flow to that. And the killer quote for me, despite several studies showing promising results of both animals experiments and clinical studies, there are presently few reports on the mechanisms of actions for ES making this field field still poorly understood. So he wants to know, is this something worthwhile or not? Yeah, so it's obviously a very narrow medical question, but the principles here are broad. So one thing is, all right, so you have one clinic giving this treatment, that's always a red flag. If this treatment is so great, why isn't everybody doing it? Also, they've been doing it since 1993. So they had 27 years to prove that this works and they haven't been able to do that. So that's a huge red flag. So either they don't care, which is bad, or it doesn't work and they can't prove that it does work. So they're just nibbling around the edges with animal studies and markers and intention, whatever, just like pragmatic studies. But not the kind of thing that would answer the definitive question, does it work? And so it's never getting any traction because they're not producing the kind of evidence that clinicians need to see. I did do a literature search to see what was out there. I think I found the same reviews that Stephen did. So a 2016 systematic review of the literature basically said, yep, there's a lot of animal and preclinical studies, but there basically aren't any double-blind placebo-controlled trials. And that's what we need to really know if this works or not. Again, why hasn't there been after 27 years? That's kind of problematic. However, I did find a randomized controlled trial since that review.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yes, yes?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But it was only masked. It was like partially masked, not double-blind. And they concluded that it didn't work. They found no, their primary outcome was basically a slowing of the decrease in vision in patients with retinitis pigmentosa specifically. And it basically was negative. There was no, they said it was a trend, but that means that's negative. There was no clinically significant, there was no statistically significant difference between the treatment groups and the sham group. And they looked at a bunch of-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Is this in the US?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' This clinic's in Germany, the one that he's talking about. And then they looked at a bunch of markers and one of the many markers was significant. The others were all negative. That to me is just shotgunning. That means nothing. The primary endpoint of the visual field, the decrease in visual field over time was not different between treatment. And placebo. So that's discouraging, that study. But again, it's not a lot of clinical data out there, but just what is there is not good. Then there's other trials looking at stimulation for nerve damage, not in retinitis pigmentosa, and they have mixed results. But some of them show some positive results. There could be that stimulating the brain may help certain kinds of vision overcome partial optic nerve damage in some cases. That, again, it's still early, but there is some clinical data. That's a little bit more encouraging, but again, too early to make any conclusions. But that's not studying retinitis pigmentosa. The only study I could find in that disease is negative. But the bigger lesson here is just beware of those red flags. Treatments not only need to be plausible, but we need that clinical evidence, man, the double blind plus super controlled trials. And without that, with this kind of treatment, how do you know you're not just seeing placebo effects? But beware of the one clinic.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' How is that legal?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, it's just the medicine is regulated in different ways. Those kind of clinics are legal in the US as well. There are these one-off clinics where the only people doing this controversial treatment for decades without producing any kind of convincing evidence. Unfortunately, again, that pattern be very wary of. You have to ask, why isn't everybody doing this? You've had plenty of time. Why haven't you been able to demonstrate a clear clinical benefit with rigorous trials? You know, the answer usually is because it doesn't really work, you know?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Are there like licensing bodies or regulatory bodies that maybe not governmental, but like the AMA or these certain groups that will make statements? Well, you make statements.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yes, like you have a professional organization, you know.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Maybe you can look into that kind of like, well, what does the Doctors' Association of Germany, whatever it's called, say about this?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, like the Ophthalmological Association or whatever, something the appropriate professional organization. Yeah, you're right. It's also it's often a very good place to go for an expert review position statement on these kinds of treatments if they're above the radar. You know what I mean?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right. Yeah, it's not so small.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Which they aren't always. Yeah, exactly. All right. Well, thanks for the question, Steven, and good luck with with everything. So, guys, let's go on with science or fiction.<br />
<br />
== Science or Fiction <small>(1:27:20)</small> ==<br />
{{SOFResults<br />
|episodeNum=777<br />
|fiction = online shopping <!--- short word or phrase representing the item ---><br />
|fiction2 = <!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
<br />
|science1 = ozone collapse<!-- short word or phrase representing the item --><br />
|science2 = missing baryons<!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
|science3 = <!-- leave blank if absent --> <br />
<br />
|rogue1 =Jay <!-- rogues in order of response --><br />
|answer1 = ozone collapse<!-- item guessed, using word or phrase from above --><br />
<br />
|rogue2 =Evan<br />
|answer2 =missing baryons<br />
<br />
|rogue3 =Cara<br />
|answer3 =online shopping<br />
<br />
|rogue4 =Bob <!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
|answer4 =online shopping <!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
<br />
|rogue5 = <!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
|answer5 = <!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
<br />
|host =steve <!-- asker of the questions --><br />
<!-- for the result options below, <br />
only put a 'y' next to one. --><br />
|sweep = <!-- all the Rogues guessed wrong --><br />
|clever =y <!-- each item was guessed (Steve's preferred result) --><br />
|win = <!-- at least one Rogue guessed wrong, but not them all --><br />
|swept = <!-- all the Rogues guessed right --><br />
}}<br />
''Voiceover: It's time for Science or Fiction.''<br />
<br />
<blockquote>'''Item #1:''' Scientists find evidence that the mass extinction 359 million years ago was caused by a UV damage resulting from a collapse of the ozone layer.<ref>[https://phys.org/news/2020-05-erosion-ozone-layer-responsible-mass.html Phys.org: Study shows erosion of ozone layer responsible for mass extinction event]</ref><br>'''Item #2:''' A new study of online clothes shopping using augmented reality showed higher purchase satisfaction than in person shopping.<ref>[https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2020/05/augmented-reality-can-improve-online-shopping-study-finds Cornell Chronicle: Augmented reality can improve online shopping, study finds ]</ref><br>'''Item #3:''' Astronomers have used a new technique to finally identify all the missing baryonic matter in the universe.<ref>[https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2300-2 Nature: A census of baryons in the Universe from localized fast radio bursts]</ref></blockquote><br />
<br />
'''S:''' Each week I come up with three science news items or facts, two real and one fake, and then I challenge my panel of skeptics to tell me which one they think is the fake. We have just three news items this week, no theme. You guys ready?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yes.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yep.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Are you ready? Here they are. Item number one, scientists find evidence that the mass extinction 359 million years ago was caused by UV damage resulting from a collapse of the ozone layer. Item number two, a new study of online clothes shopping using augmented reality showed higher purchase satisfaction than in-person shopping. And item number three, astronomers have used a new technique to finally identify all the missing baryonic matter in the universe. Jay, go first.<br />
<br />
=== Jay's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Me?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' All right. So this first one here, scientists find evidence that the mass extinction 359 million years ago was caused by UV damage resulting from a collapse of the ozone layer. Because that one thing we're sure of that we are, science is not 100% sure about pretty much anything, but they are 100% sure that not one of those creatures had sunglasses. And this is bullshit because they needed them. And it's really sad that they died from UV light. I'm very angry about that. God Steve, I don't know. Could UV do it? What about creatures that live under the ocean and under tree canopies and all that and whatnot? You know what I mean? I don't know. But if enough creatures died, then they would not be food for other creatures. And there you have that. Okay. So that there's a little bit of that in there. Number two, a new study of online clothes shopping using augmented reality showed higher purchase satisfaction in in-person shopping. All right. Using augmented reality to do what specifically, Steve? To put the clothes on them like virtually?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Exactly.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' All right. I've never done it. I don't know anyone that does it. And if Amazon doesn't do it, it doesn't count. I don't know.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Amazon does it.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' They do. I don't know. I mean, I never tried it. I think it's a great idea. I think that if they have a way to measure accurately measure your body, what would you call it? You know, like the different measurements of your body, your arm length and all that stuff. If they can get the sizing correct, that's cool. I mean, I've had virtual eyeglasses put on pictures of me that worked pretty damn well. So, yeah, that's cool. I can see that. And what is it about that's better? You don't have to go drive and you don't have to be in front of people you don't want to be in front of and try on clothes just basically does it automatically. That's pretty nice. I think that one's science. And then astronomers have used a new technique to finally identify all the missing baryonic matter in the universe.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So I'll give you baryonic matter is like normal matter with electrons, protons and neutrons.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Well... Electrons are not baryons.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, not only, whatever. Protons.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Did you just whatever particle? Oh shit. Neutrons, protons. That's good enough. Neutrons, protons is good enough.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' All right. But more importantly, Bob, there was missing baryonic matter that I didn't know about? All right. So they have a new technique to finally identify. I don't like this one for multiple reasons. They can finally identify all of the missing baryonic matter in the universe. How? That's impossible.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Including those socks you lost in your dryer last week.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' But seriously, like, am I reading it? Is it just because I don't understand this, Steve? Like when you're saying missing all of the baryonic matter in the universe, the observable matter? Like, what are you talking about here?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Theoretically, there should have been a certain amount of baryonic matter, but we only were able to identify a certain percentage of it. There was a big chunk missing. And now we found the missing big chunk of baryon.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Got it. OK. That makes much more sense. So they found a new technique that lets them through observation. Radio telemetry, you might say. Something along those lines. See it. They can now see it. This is amazing. All right. I'm not going to take that one, but I'm going to go with the ozone layer. I don't like that one anymore.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, jeez.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' OK, Evan.<br />
<br />
=== Evan's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''E:''' OK, ozone layer. What would be the evidence that you would have that all this stuff, 359 million years ago, died off because of the UV damage? I mean, it must be in the rocks. I mean, that's the only thing you can do is because that's all that's around from then that you can discern it from. So have they done that? I guess that's literally what it comes down to. And then the study of online clothes shopping using augmented reality showed higher purchase satisfaction than in-person shopping. Where were you 40 years ago in my life? Augmented reality. Boy, I could have used you because I hate clothes shopping. I want to do all my clothes shopping using augmented reality. That is sweet.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, that's awesome.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Just for the sheer personal satisfaction, I'm saying that one's science, whether it is or not. OK, and the last one, the detection of all the missing baryonic matter in the universe. They took a blue light in CSI Jay and they just waved it around and they said, oh, there it is. You know, all of a sudden it kind of glowed. There it was.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' And you also know who had sex recently.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's an added bonus. That too is baryonic matter. Thanks for defining it, Steve, because I kind of thought I maybe knew and I was maybe half right there. Jeez, it's either the UV damage or the baryonic matter one. It sounds more plausible comparing the two that they would be able to crack the rocks open and figure out the UV damage than they would in finding like missing material that's been missing for 13 billion years or whatever. So I have to say it's the baryonic matter one's going to be the fiction.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' OK, Cara.<br />
<br />
=== Cara's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''C:''' OK, tell me if you can clarify something. If you can't, that's fine. The online clothes shopping study, people that were in the study, were they men, women or mixed?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It was mixed.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It was mixed. OK. I would not prefer to try on clothes in augmented reality. I prefer to shop for some things that way. I bought a table in my entryway off Amazon. I augmented to see what it would look like in my space. It was freaking awesome. But for clothes, it fit is so important that just painting the clothes on yourself and augmented really doesn't tell you how well they fit. And I think trying them on and also shopping is a social experience for a lot of women. So not being able to go and do that, like with their friends and get people's opinions and stuff, I think I'm leaning towards this one being the fiction simply because I think if there are enough women in the study that they would say, no, I would still prefer to go and shop in person, especially because this is specifically clothing shopping, not like stuff you would buy on Amazon. But just to look at the other ones, UV damage resulting from a collapse of the ozone layer. What does that mean, a collapse?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It fell.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So it wasn't like a hole.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, no, it just like collapsed. Yeah, it went away. It was destroyed by something.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So we know that chlorofluorocarbons destroyed it in our lifetime and then we cut using those and it started to grow back. I don't know what would have caused a hole. I mean, it's usually some sort of chemical, right? So but it could be a greenhouse gas or something. That one, I have no idea. It could be science. It could be fiction. And then the same thing with the baryonic matter. I feel like this is probably actually a statistical thing, right? Like they are trying to do measurements based on things and they realized they were missing something based on models and then they changed the model. And now they're like, oh, that accounts for the missing matter. So that one seems likely to me. So I don't know. I'm going to go with the clothes shopping one and say that that's fiction. I could be wrong, but if there are a lot of women in the study, I bet you they actually prefer shopping in person.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay. And Bob.<br />
<br />
=== Bob's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''B:''' So the UV damage one, that's really interesting. I like this. The only thing that I know of that could wipe out ozone would be gamma ray burst. That could do it. Maybe they found evidence of that or maybe it was something else. I'm not sure what else could wipe it out, but that would happen. I mean, unless you were like in the deep ocean, you were kind of screwed without ozone. UVC is not pretty. I mean, that's what they're using to kill COVID, man. And you don't want anybody in there with those UVC lights.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Talked about that. That's right.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah. So I could see that happening. I never heard of that being ozone depletion being the reason for an extinction. That's just too awesome to be fiction. The third one, all right, baryonic matter. Yeah, protons, neutrons. I thought like literally five or six years ago they solved this problem. So they solved it again. Still, this seems likely to me. And yeah, it was a mystery because you could theoretically look at big bang nucleosynthesis when these particles were created and even a cosmic microwave background. You could say, all right, this is how much baryonic matter there should be. And it was like they were like less than 50%. They were like, where the hell is this? But like I said, I thought they already discovered that years ago. So I think that's probably science. The second one was grabbing me. I mean, AR is great, but I don't think anything is going to compare to closed purchasing and satisfaction and being in the store and trying it on. I think you get a lot of returns in any other way. So yeah, so I'll say that one's fiction.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #1 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, so we got a pretty good split. So I guess I'll take these in order. We'll start with number one. Scientists find evidence that the mass extinction, 359 million years ago, was caused by UV damage resulting from a collapse of the ozone layer. Jay, you think this one is the fiction? Everyone else thinks this one is science. So there were five mass extinctions in the history of the Earth, not including the current one we're in the middle of. One was caused by an asteroid impact six million years ago. We talked about that earlier in the show. Three were caused by volcanic eruptions, probably. And then there's the end Devonian extinction from 359 million years ago. And there's multiple theories as to what caused this. But there's a new study which says that it was UV damage from a collapsed ozone layer. This one is science.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I'm so glad. I was so nervous that you were going to be like, guys, there was no mass extinction 359 million years ago. Like that it was like one of those John Oliver things when he's talking about Luxembourg. And then he's like, you didn't even notice that's not Luxembourg.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' He wouldn't do that, though. He's not that nefarious.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' He could get us that way. That would be hilarious.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The mindf science, or fiction. I have to think about that. All right. Good idea, Cara.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Thanks Cara.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' You're welcome.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So what was the evidence? It was actually in spores in the rocks.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, not rocks. Spores in the rocks. Yes, I was right on the rocks.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Of course they're in rocks. But 359 million year old spores that showed two features. One was that they're very spiky, which they say was an indication of DNA damage from UV light.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Were they coronavirus spores?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And the other was that they were dark coloured, which they also attributed to UV radiation. So from this, and this is all at a particular, right at the extinction, that's when they found this feature. So it looks like corresponding to this mass extinction event, there was this dramatic increase in UV damage evidenced in the spores in the rocks. OK. So let's say, not proof, but it's evidence of that hypothesis. Then you guys were speculating, well, what would have caused the collapse of the ozone layer? And they don't know. That data, this data doesn't tell them. But it does correlate with a, so there was a ice age, like a drop in temperature, followed by a rapid period of global warming, leading up to the ozone collapse.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So it would have been greenhouse gases?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So the speculation is that was it the rapid warming that did it. Which, of course, would be very concerning, given what's currently happening.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, boy. Another thing we can look forward to. Thank you.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So again, that's a couple of dots you have to connect there. It's certainly not direct evidence of any of that. But there is pretty good evidence for the UV damage at that time. But again, though, putting the whole picture together is complicated. And that, I think, is one of the more complicated mass extinctions, the Andavonian one.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I wish it were a gamma ray burst.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Who knows? Maybe that triggered everything.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #2 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Let's go on. Number two. A new study of online clothes shopping using augmented reality showed higher purchase satisfaction than in-person shopping. Bob and Cara, you think this one is the fiction. Jay and Evan, you think this one is science. And this one is the fiction.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, Cara. High five.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So yeah.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It's not even fun.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Leave it to Cara to snuff it out. You totally nailed it, because it was actually they had lower satisfaction with the augmented reality. Because even when you can get the size correct using augmented reality, it doesn't tell you how it will fit. The fit is the thing. So augmented reality online shopping was better than regular online shopping.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right. I'm sure. Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But not better than in-person shopping. That was the part I made fiction. So it got you a little bit closer to in-person shopping, but there's still a huge difference.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But I bet you for furniture, it would be awesome.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, but this is for clothes. There's two things. One is the fit. So again, it's size/fit. And then this other thing, which nobody mentioned. What would be the other thing that it doesn't quite work?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Hang.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Feel.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' How it hangs.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' How close it is to the-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, the texture.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' The tactile.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Colour.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, colour. Interesting.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Because you can't really see the colour on your monitor, unless you use some colour matching software or whatever.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, god. Close enough.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But is it? That's the thing. You think, oh, yeah, I really like that blue. And then you get it's a different shade. I've had that where there's a slightly different shade of blue, and suddenly it looks terrible.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' You ordered that gold dress turned out to be blue.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Texture does matter. I actually want soft clothing. And so if I can't feel the fabric.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' A lot of that is the fit and the feel. So there's size, fit and feel, and then colour. Those are the features. So the AR basically fixed the size problem, because you could then virtually try it on and make sure you're getting the correct size. But you don't know if the cut. And this is something else I've run into, and sure you guys have run into as well. You get something that it's the correct size, but the cut is terrible. It's just like, ugh. And you can't really. So you know what people do when they buy online?<br />
<br />
'''C/E:''' They buy multiple sizes.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' They do bracket purchase.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Amazon does it where you could send it back without a problem.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, it's become.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, a lot of clothing companies.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So you guys say, "without a problem". But this is a massive source of inefficiency and waste.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Absolutely.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Think about all the clothes that are going back and forth in the mail, because people are buying three, four, five, six things to find the one that they really want. So they could try the one that they send us back.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' This is why Jorby Parker does such a smart thing, where they have a sampler box that's small. And it's easier with glasses, right? It doesn't take as much of a carbon footprint, because it's small. But you pick your top five choices, and they send you just the try-on pairs with no lenses in them. You try on of your five choices. Then you get to pick which one you want sent back.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' How can you see what you're looking at without the lenses?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That's a good idea.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, Catch 22.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right? It's smart. And then they'll mail you your fashion pair based on that. So then you don't have to go into the store to go glasses shopping, because that's not fun.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, so there's definitely a convenience to online shopping. But for clothes specifically, I don't know if it's ever going to really work, because it's never going to be a substitute for actually trying it on the physical object itself. And trying to do it leads to, again, this massive waste.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #3 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So all this means that astronomers have used a new technique to finally identify all the missing baryonic matter in the universe is science. Bob, I had the exact same reaction that you had. And I thought, I thought we already cracked that nut. So I looked it up, and yeah, there's a report from several years ago. We've finally identified all the... So I had to read the original article. And they mention all of that. But they say, yeah, but they didn't really visualize the baryonic matter. They were just inferring it indirectly. So what we were thinking of was a few years ago when they were imaging the hydrogen ions in intergalactic gas. And then from that, they had to infer how much total matter there would be. And it was also a limited observation. So they were extrapolating a lot from limited data. They were only looking at little parts of the universe and trying to extrapolate to the whole universe. So yeah, they had to model it and everything. It wasn't really good. But the authors of this study are claiming that this is the first time we've really visualized all the baryonic matter. And you know how they did it?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' How?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Fast radio bursts, FRBs.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Of course.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' No.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So you have to basically backlight this gaseous matter. So just to back up a little bit, so Bob is correct. Based upon the background microwave radiation, essentially the Big Bang, we can model how much baryonic matter there should be in the universe. And when we observe the universe, we only find initially like 50% of it. And then we got up to maybe 60% or 2 thirds. But that was it. We were somewhere between 60% and 70%. And that was it. We're missing 30 plus percent of the baryonic matter, which is itself only about 5% of all the stuff in the universe. But that's a different story. So but we figured it's got to be out there. It's not in the galaxies. You know, there are certainly intergalactic streams and clouds and structures of material. They would be very, very sparse. They estimate on average two atoms per average size room in your house, right? That's how diffuse is. And it's just hard to visualize.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Trixie.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, you need to backlight it somehow. And so that's these various studies have used different techniques. And again, this research reviewed like all the different techniques of sort of backlighting the matter to get a better estimate. But when you do that, you need to know the distance of your lighting source, right? Because you're basically calculating how much of that light is getting affected by the matter between the source and the observation. So different wavelengths of light will be slowed to different degrees by this intergalactic gas, right? So if you have a fast radio burst, which is very, very bright, very, very energetic, right? And you know how far away it is, you could then calculate how much matter it passed through to get here. And so the study looked at five different FRBs with a known source. We knew what galaxy they were coming from, right? The host galaxy.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' And they were repeaters? Were they the repeaters?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, that's one way to know, but there's two ways. There's two ways to know what's the host galaxy. One is that it's a repeater, which are rare. And two is that we were lucky enough to observe it with multiple different telescopes at the same time and then localize the host galaxy that way. So they present four new FRBs plus one old one. And because they're in different parts of the sky, we were able to look at five basically different pathways through the universe. So five different directions, right? So that gives us a good sort of estimate of how much stuff is out there between these FRB sources and the Earth. And when they run the calculations, bam, 100% of the baryonic matter that's supposed to be, that's predicted. They basically closed that gap to zero. And this is the most direct observation, the less sort of inference. So it's superior than the previous methods where they maybe prematurely claimed victory, at least according to these authors.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' What a cool usage of FRBs.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Right, yeah. Tell me about it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Cool, very nice, very nice.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I wonder if there's any ramifications to the discovery now that we know, or I guess like other calculations assumed the amount of baryonic matter that was in the universe, even if they hadn't discovered, haven't proved that it's out there. Say for example, the expansion of the universe, right? That would be impacted. So they probably just assumed, yeah, theory tells us this is how much baryonic matter there is. So we're just going to go with that number, even if we haven't quite found it yet.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, but it's good to know.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' But I just wonder if that will affect anything else.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' If they had to iterate any of their models.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, exactly.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Finding.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But they conclude this independent measurement is consistent with values derived from cosmic microwave background and from Big Bang nucleosynthesis.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Nucleosynthesis. Yeah, baby.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So very nice. Good job, Bob and Cara.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yay, Bob.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, so guys, don't forget, we have our Friday stream.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, I can't wait.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Friday, 5 p.m. Eastern time. We have a guest this week. I know it's too late.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' We do?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, we do. Brian Wecht. So it's too late for when the show comes out. But as I've said, first of all, these streams are hella fun. Everyone's really enjoying it. We're getting a good audience. George Hrab was on last week or two weeks ago. We have Brian on this week. So keep checking in. You may find some surprise guests joining us for these streams.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' We should have had a pandemic years ago.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That can be arranged.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh no.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I can arrange that.<br />
<br />
== Skeptical Quote of the Week <small>(1:50:32)</small> ==<br />
<br />
<!-- For the quote display, use block quote with no marks around quote followed by a long dash and the speaker's name, possibly with a reference. For the QoW in the recording, use quotation marks for when the Rogue actually reads the quote. --> <br />
<br />
<blockquote>I’m 13, so I don’t want to rush everything ... I’m still trying to figure it out, but I just want to focus on learning right now. That’s what I love to do.<br>– Jack Rico, youngest graduate in {{w|Fullerton College}} history, who earned 4 associates degrees simultaneously over the course of 2 years<ref name=rico/></blockquote><br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, Evan, give us the quote.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' "I'm 13, so I don't want to rush everything. I'm still trying to figure it out, but I just want to focus on learning right now. That's what I love to do." Word spoken by Jack Rico, the youngest graduate in Fullerton College history. He earned four associate's degrees simultaneously over the course of two years. Oh my gosh. His degrees are in social sciences, social behavior and self-development, arts and human expression and history. He earned the degrees in just two years at the college. He will be continuing his education at the University of Nevada. And point of fact, Fullerton College is the oldest community college and continuous operation in California. So well done, Jack, you're awesome.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' You said he was the youngest. You didn't say how old he is.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' 13. It was in the quote.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, did you say that? Shit, sorry.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, but what do you have done well on this week's Science or Fiction?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' No worse than me. Congratulations, Jack.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, thanks, Evan.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Thanks.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well thank you all for joining me this week.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Sure, man.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Thanks, Steve.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Thanks, Steve.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yep, we'll see you guys online on Friday.<br />
<br />
== Signoff/Announcements == <!-- if the signoff/announcements don't immediately follow the QoW or if the QoW comments take a few minutes, it would be appropriate to include a timestamp for when this part starts --><br />
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'''S:''' —and until next week, this is your {{SGU}}. <!-- typically this is the last thing before the Outro --> <br />
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{{Outro664}}<br />
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== References ==<br />
<references/><br />
=== Vocabulary ===<br />
<references group=v/> <!-- <br />
<br />
to tag a vocab word in your transcription, type <ref group=v>[https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/WORD Wiktionary: WORD]</ref> after the word, or after the punctuation mark if the vocab word is the last word in a sentence. --><br />
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}}</div>Hearmepurrhttps://www.sgutranscripts.org/w/index.php?title=SGU_Episode_777&diff=19111SGU Episode 7772024-01-18T20:29:42Z<p>Hearmepurr: episode done</p>
<hr />
<div>{{Editing required<br />
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{{InfoBox <br />
|episodeNum = 777<br />
|episodeDate = May 30<sup>th</sup> 2020 <!-- broadcast date Month ## <sup>st nd rd th</sup> #### --> <br />
|verified = <!-- leave blank until verified, then put a 'y'--><br />
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|qowText = I’m 13, so I don’t want to rush everything ... I’m still trying to figure it out, but I just want to focus on learning right now. That’s what I love to do.<br />
|qowAuthor = Jack Rico, youngest graduate in {{w|Fullerton College}} history<ref name=rico>[https://news.fullcoll.edu/at-13-jack-rico-is-the-youngest-fullerton-college-graduate/ Fullerton College News Center: At 13, Jack Rico is the Youngest Fullerton College Graduate]</ref><br />
|downloadLink = https://media.libsyn.com/media/skepticsguide/skepticast2020-05-30.mp3<br />
|forumLink = https://sguforums.org/index.php?topic=52734.0<br />
}}<br />
<!-- note that you can put the Rogue’s infobox initials inside triple quotes to make the initials bold in the transcript. This is how the final statement from Steve is typed at the end of this transcript: '''S:''' —and until next week, this is your {{SGU}}.--> <br />
<br />
== Introduction ==<br />
<br />
''Voice-over: You're listening to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.'' <br />
<br />
'''S:''' Hello and welcome to the {{SGU|link=y}}. Today is Wednesday, May 27<sup>th</sup>, 2020, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella... <br />
<br />
'''B:''' Hey, everybody!<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Cara Santa Maria... <br />
<br />
'''C:''' Howdy. <br />
<br />
'''S:''' Jay Novella... <br />
<br />
'''J:''' Hey guys. <br />
<br />
'''S:''' ...and Evan Bernstein. <br />
<br />
'''E:''' Good evening, folks.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So guys, this show, this show is number 777.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Whoa.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Cool.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It must have some significance.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So wait, I always forget, Cara, what was the first numbered show you did with us?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I have no idea.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Wow. Wow, that is ingrained in your frontal lobe?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Five hundred and something, right?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's five something. Yeah. It was like, how many years ago? Four years ago now? Or five years ago?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Four.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Is this the longest podcasting relationship you've ever had? Well, relationship, yeah, but my podcast has I was doing Talk Nerdy for a year before I joined SGU. So Talk Nerdy, which is weekly, but I take two weeks off in the summer or I'm sorry, in the holiday. So it's 50 episodes a year. I just put out episode 309.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Nice.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. So you guys obviously have been doing it for, what is that, 15 years?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' 15 years, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' 15. And we're in our 16th.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And I've been doing, I've been doing Talk Nerdy for six years, over six years. And I think I've been with you guys now on the SGU for over five years. Yeah. Amazing.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, and according to trustedpsychicmediums.com, angel number seven, the angel number is 777.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So I was watching live today, the launch of SpaceX with the first.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Me too.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yes, I watched it as well.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Me too.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Two and a half hours, I turned on the cameras and everything, two and a half hours right before launch. I started watching.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Saw a lot of cool things.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Got to 15 minutes.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' 15 minutes.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It was actually, it was 16 minutes and some odd seconds, but I watched for two hours. I watched for two hours. I'm such a fan boy when it comes to this. There's something about, I remember when I was a kid and I remember being so into the space missions and just thought it was such an awesome thing that was going on that like the adults do it was such a powerful thing that was happening. So here's a bunch of observations I made today. One, the crew arm, which is the walkway that the astronauts and support crew access, the Dragon capsule. It's really cool. It's really cool. They have something in there called the white room, which is the very last place that they stand before they get on to the module. And this was, that name was used before in previous missions where they had to walk the gangplank to get out to the command module.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' They should play the white out mother in the white room.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I found out something else I thought was really cool. They use nitrox to test to make sure the suits are pressurized.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' What's nitrox?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Nitrox?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah. So it's a gas that they can detect. And what happens is I guess they fill it. They put it into the suit and if the suit leaks, then a nitrox detector in the capsule will pick it up and they'll know that it came out of the suit. So again, they said today during the two hours that I got to watch this, that the suit's primary function is to protect the crew from depressurization. So like I said, last time I talked about this, that those suits indeed can handle full depressurization, which is really awesome. And another thing is the seats in the Dragon swivel, meaning that they're in the mode where they put the astronauts in the seats, the form fitted seats, and then they swivel them up and back and that's where they gain access to the interface, the touch screen and analogue interface that they have.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' And they get to hold their cat and pet it in their lap as they swivel.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' The Dragon capsule was designed from scratch 12 years ago, completely from scratch, meaning that they've used, there was no legacy, nothing in there. There was all brand new material and they've been continuously upgrading it and improving it and making it more functional depending on, is it going to hold equipment? Is it going to hold depressurized equipment? Is it going to hold equipment that needs to be pressurized? So I thought that was really cool. It's a really interesting thing to think about when you go back to the beginning of the space shuttle, we're going back to the 80s.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Did anyone feel any anxiety today alongside excitement?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Oh yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I detected a real, because I'm not normally an anxious person, but I detected some anxiety in me.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Well, they're starting to think about, yeah, well, starting to think about, wow, all the things that could possibly really go wrong here. And that started to I kept it in check, but it was definitely present.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We lived through Challenger and then Columbia.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Well, all right. So first of all, I think the excitement Evan adds to the stress and anxiety adds to the excitement. It kind of turns into like the relief feeling that you get when you know that they got past the most dangerous part, which of course is the takeoff until they get into "outer space". I'm not saying it's not dangerous there, but you know, when they separate from the booster, from the rocket, that's a big deal. That's good. That's when you're no longer strapped to a rocket filled with combustible material. Don't be sad that they scrubbed the mission today.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's a good call.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' They did a dry test last week and this was a wet test because they filled the ship up, right? So it's a good thing to test. It's just another layer of testing that happened and you know, we got a few more days for the next launch. I have to admit something though. I didn't realize that they don't fill the ship until like 30 minutes before it takes off.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. You don't want the fuel sitting there.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It would add-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Just sitting there.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' -add risk.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah. I agree. And I guess it would evaporate out too. You know, in some way there'd be some type of evaporation, but yeah, I just didn't realize that they can fill those tanks up that quickly, which they can.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So the next launch is scheduled for Saturday, the day the show is airing, 3 22 p.m. Eastern daylight time. But of course that's dependent on the weather as well. But apparently there's another launch window the following day, so the Sunday will be a backup date.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Interesting.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's good.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Saturday's not looking great weather-wise, I heard.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' And they have to synchronize this with the position of the space station. Is that correct?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's why. That's why the window.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, that's the window. Yeah. So I was reading online, a friend of mine who's like a big space person was like tweeting a lot and they were saying, remember, it's not just about the weather at launch, it's also the abort weather. So like, was the issue the weather at launch this time or was it, because it didn't seem like the weather was bad.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' They said that there were tornado, there was a tornado watch at some point in the afternoon.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Did you see the map though?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' At launch location?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' If you'll see the radar map, there's like, there was lightning strikes all around, you know.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. You don't want that.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It was a good no-call.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' If they are going to abort and they have to dump, like it needs to be safe where they're aborting to us.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yes. Exactly.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And think about all those contingencies.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' There was no way this wasn't going to be canceled today. There were three separate distinct reasons why they canceled it. Any one of them could have done it, but there was three. So yeah, this was going to happen today.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' What were they, Bob? Other than weather, what was it?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' But they were like distinctions of the weather, like there was like an anvil cloud within a certain distance. And then there was this and that. I don't remember. I would just heard it, you know.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' There were three weather criteria.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' By the way, by the way, Cara, your first episode was 524.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Wow. And we're 777? So I've done.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' 254 episodes.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's amazing. 254.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So remember that number, 524, Cara.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I'm going to write it down in the same spot where I have my psychic predictions.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Good. That's where it belongs.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That'll be your next tattoo.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' 524.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' 524.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Well, Evan, I was going to say make a good t-shirt, but yeah, let's ink it on her.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Let's tattoo it. Do any of the SGU guys have tattoos? Am I the only tattooed member?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I do not.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. Don't you remember on that first episode when I announced to you that you brought diversity to the SGU because you're the only one with tattoos.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's right.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That was a great line. I remember that.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' What episode number was that?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' 524.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' 524.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It was TAM. Wasn't that the last TAM?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It was.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It was. It was the last TAM.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And we had that awkward dinner where I had to pretend like I didn't already know I was joining.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. That was the night before.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It was. Cara and I were at the table together kind of like, eh.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' People kept asking, are you guys going to get a new rogue? Are you going to get a new rogue? And it's like, hmm, I don't know.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, we're working. We'll see how it goes.<br />
<br />
== COVID-19 Update <small>(9:10)</small> == <br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. So let's do the COVID-19 update before we move on to the news items. So two days ago, I started working in the hospital in the ward, it's not just in the clinic.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Hospital? What is it?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. It's a building with sick people. That's not important right now. Yeah. So it's a totally different venue, the inpatient service versus outpatient clinics. And I actually have COVID-positive patients on my service. So I'm treating COVID-19.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, man.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' They're not sick with COVID-19, but they're SARS-CoV-2 positive and they have neurological issues. They're just incidentally positive. But it's partly business as usual and it's partly a total nightmare for a couple of reasons. One of the biggest problems is that it's really hard to discharge patients because like half of the rehab places and the places where we would send patients are shut down. It's already challenging sometimes to so-called dispo patients, right, to settle their disposition to find a place for them to go for their rehab or because they might need services, they need supervision, whatever. Now it's like we have patients hanging out for weeks and weeks simply because there's no place to send them.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That sucks because then they're just like at greater risk of exposure.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I know. I know. And then every time somebody gets a fever, we got to test them. We can't discharge anybody until they have two negative tests, which once they're positive, they need two negative tests 24 hours apart in order to be able to get rid of them. I also have patients who are just waiting to become negative.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So do you guys have a COVID delineated ward that you have kind of like segregated? Okay, so it's like a separate ICU for COVID patients.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, it's the floor, but there's also the floor where if you're COVID positive, 100% of patients get tested on admission. If you're COVID positive, you go to the COVID ward. So if you have a patient, even if they have a neurological issue and they're COVID positive, you have to go to the COVID ward with all the patients.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Just to keep them all isolated. That's actually smart, though. So you've got basically everything you can think of on the COVID ward, everywhere from like critical like ICU patients all the way down to...<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, the ICU patients are in the ICU.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, because that's where you have all those services.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's just floor patients.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Gotcha, gotcha.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But it's mixed services that are COVID-19 positive.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So of course, the patients are less likely to infect other patients, but now all the doctors are at risk because doctors from every specialty are going there.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' They're going down and use the shield. And now for every patient, COVID-19 or not, you have to glove as well as wash your hands in and out of every patient room. And everyone's wearing a mask, of course. So it's just another layer of protection. During my career, I've lived through multiple ratcheting up of having to take extra precautions because of infectious diseases that spread around the hospital, right? First HIV, then multiple antibiotic resistant bacterial infections, and now COVID-19, and who knows, this may become a permanent status in hospital care.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Did you guys have...<br />
<br />
'''E:''' HIV?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Did you have any bird flu... Well, HIV is the last pandemic. Did you guys have any like bird flu or swine flu extra precautions during those like kind of mini scares when the epidemics were existing?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, pretty much standard precautions was sufficient for those. It wasn't what we were already doing. Put them in a negative pressure room. And if anyone has anything like that, it's like individual precautions for that room. Like in this room, you have to go in glove and gown. In that room, you need to wear facial protection or you need eye protection. So but now it's more and more universal, you know.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Do you find that... And I know that flattening the curve is a whole much more complicated question overall, but one of the central components of flattening the curve was an attempt or is an attempt to not overload the health care systems, right? Of course, we hear the horror stories of New York City and what it was like in the hospitals during the peak of the crisis and even now. But at Yale, are you finding... You're at Yale, right? That's the hospital. At Yale, are you finding that the beds are maxed out? Is it really stressful?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's stressful.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Like you're still kind of at the top end of capacity.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. I mean, we're kind of a full hospital, just that baseline. And as I said I saw multiple patients in the ER today that were already admitted to my service, but we just didn't have a room to admit them to. So I'm basically managing them in the emergency room. That's how you know you're like at capacity. And as I said, it's a lot of patients in beds who should be at a rehab facility. So that's...<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Because you can't clear them out fast enough.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. Can't clear them out. So it's... Yeah. So yeah, it's definitely overwhelming the system. I think we're okay, but it's definitely stressing out our resources. So you could see how easy it is to tip over to completely overwhelming the resources just having to deal with...<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And what about in PPE? Are you guys good?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, we're good. We're good with PPE. That's not a problem. And again, the testing is available. I think we should be doing more, to be honest with you but we do have enough testing. So today in the United States, we just broke 100,000 dead from COVID-19.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Well, we knew that was coming.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I know. I mean, you could see it coming, but today's the day that we broke 100,000, so everyone was kind of...<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So sad. And you guys saw the New York Times, like, the front page with every name listed.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Beautiful. It's such a sad thing when you're dealing with numbers that high, because they're almost hard to fathom, and it becomes like a hive, like, oh, it's just it's the dead. And you have to sometimes really stop and remind yourself, like, those are 100,000 individual people.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I love it. I'm looking at the image right now. I love what they did, because I figured it would just be, oh, here's a list of names. It's not. It's a name. It's the age. And then, like, things like a sign language interpreter, or Solomon, New Jersey, love to figure out how things worked. Just these one little sentence things described. This is like a, not just a name or a number, this is like, this was a person. I love how they added that in there.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And there's a lot of protest artwork.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Sad milestone today. But there's a couple of interesting studies, so I'm always tracking the COVID-19 news items. A review published that, just saying, here's all the drugs that doctors, off-label drugs that doctors have tried in COVID-19, there's over 100 different ones. None of them are shown to work, 115 different drugs, but it's like, this is a list of drugs that could use further study.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Wait, even the R drug, I can never remember what it's called.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Remdesivir.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Remdesivir.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Remdesivir, there was a study published that showed a decrease in the time of sickness with remdesivir. So some encouraging early results, but again, it's not a home run, you know.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, nothing's curing this.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, no, not yet. And of course, the hydroxychloroquine is tanking is the biggest study.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It doesn't work, and it also makes you potentially really sick.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' The vectors on that one are pretty clear.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And again, there's no scientific reason why you would pick that one out of the 115 drugs, say this is the one that's going to do it. It's only because it was made into a political target, you know.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And isn't it amazing how much when something has some sort of political steam behind it, like it was probably utilized orders of magnitude more just because it was like, "famous" from press briefings.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, just because it was famous, not because of the science. Absolutely. Let's move on.<br />
<br />
== News Items ==<br />
<br />
=== Loners and Swarms <small>(16:48)</small> ===<br />
* [https://www.quantamagazine.org/out-of-sync-loners-may-secretly-protect-orderly-swarms-20200521/ Quanta Magazine: Out-of-Sync 'Loners' May Secretly Protect Orderly Swarms]<ref>[https://www.quantamagazine.org/out-of-sync-loners-may-secretly-protect-orderly-swarms-20200521/ Quanta Magazine: Out-of-Sync 'Loners' May Secretly Protect Orderly Swarms]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' Now, we have some interesting news items this week. I think of a good, good diverse group of news items. Cara, you're going to start by telling us about loners and swarms.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. So there's some new research that was recently published about loners in swarm behavior of slime mould. But before I get into that, when we were discussing, Steve and I were discussing doing this story, he was saying it might be good to kind of know the state of the literature on this. And I read a few kind of recent publications, a few blog posts from kind of like really solid science writers and entomologists and things like that to try, because this is something I didn't really know a lot about. Like have you guys read a lot about swarm behavior?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Mhm.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' No.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, okay.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, Steve's a bird.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Steve knows what's up.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It would make sense.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Insects, birds...<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Robots.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Schools of fish.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Robots, insects, birds, fish. So there's different words for it, right? When you say swarm, you're usually referring to insects. When you're talking about birds, you usually say murmuration. When you're talking about fish, you usually talk about schools. But I decided to kind of like look at all of it because I don't really know anything about it. All I know is, and if you are somebody who knows me really well and who has vacationed with me, you would know that I am freaked out by anything that swarms. This is why I do not like snorkeling. And it's kind of like recent in the news too, because we've been reading a lot about these North African locust swarms, right? And West Africa too.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' And we're going to have cicada swarms too.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Cicada swarms, all of it. So the thing to remember though is it's not the same thing that's happening in a bunch of different organisms. There's some central themes, but each organism physiologically, evolutionarily is actually really different. What I've kind of gathered is that historically, individuals thought that there was always some sort of signal from a leader. And then obviously in more modern research, kind of one of the things that's so unique about swarms is that they could never pinpoint who was telling them to do what. They just kind of did it. And they were like, yeah, like how is it that they're just doing this? So then they started to really look into the genetics, look into the physiology and look into the phenotypes of these individuals. And they realized that there are usually signals that are given, and those signals are contingent on environmental pressures. So for a lot of these organisms, it's a function of not having enough food. There's not enough food, they need to find food, so they're going to work together to do it. For some of them, it's about other environmental pressures. For locusts, I read a really cool in-depth kind of thing about how locusts swarm, because pretty well studied species or well studied genus, I guess. And this seems to do with density. So there's kind of this runaway thing that happens when enough of them are close enough together. And you actually find that there are phenotypic shifts within these organisms that are a lot more than just behavioral shifts. So you see all these markers of how the insects actually look. They physically look different when they're moving into this action. So locust nymphs and even full-grown locusts that are isolated are really pale. Their heads are a little bit smaller, and they don't have nearly as many of these little hairs on the outsides of their bodies. And researchers have noted that once they get to critical kind of concentration of these hairs, that's how they actually can detect nearby other locusts. So it's not so much a chemical signal for them, they're thinking that it's actually more of a physical signal in terms of density, like understanding density. When they're reared in very dense conditions, they can actually force these locusts to have all these new features, their colouring changes, the shape of the body changes, and the prevalence of these hairs change. But on top of that, also their behavior changes. They act as a unit instead of acting isolated. So it does seem to be that there's an epigenetic thing going on here where they're coded to be able to do both things. And there's a flip that happens. So where's that flip? Like what is the switch? Well, this new paper that was published, which Steve alluded to, which is all about loners, focuses on amoeboid slime moulds, and they are called Dictyostellium Discoidium. So usually, yeah, they live as solitary amoebas, and they just do their own thing. We remember amoebas from high school, right, with the pseudopods and the single cell protists. And so they will hang out, they eat on their own, they divide on their own, they do everything. But when they have a pressure, which is starvation, basically, when they don't have enough food, they actually coalesce and they make like a mushroom-looking tower. And that's, I think, why people call them slime moulds. And here's the cool thing. The tower has like features, like there's a stalk, and then there's like the head. And so the stalk is actually made of about 20% of the amoebas, and it's sacrificial. So they don't actually get anything out of it, except that they are the scaffolding for the top of the structure. At the very top, they form spores. And so when they go into this spore-like state, they don't need as much food, right? They can actually exist for months without food. And then eventually, they're dispersed, so the hope is that they're going to fly someplace else, just like when we think of mushroom spores, in order to seek out a new environment that has more food. I mean, it's amazing. And we've known about this behavior for a long time. Researchers have always studied individuals in the unit. And they've always wanted to know, oh, how do they know to do this? And how come these choose to be the stalk, even though they're going to die? And these choose to be the spores? And you know, who knows what? It's kind of like with bees, right? There's been a long history of like, how does the queen become the queen? And how do the drones become the drones? And so that's what people have, researchers have historically always been interested in. But they've also always known that there's a certain percentage of organisms that just don't participate. They're the loners, as Steve referenced. They were sort of ignored before. It's like, oh, just some of them don't do it. Why? I don't know. It's not important. Let's look at the ones who do it. And then they started this group, this group who has been publishing historically, usually it's funny when we reference new studies. We're like, oh, a study that was published last month said all of this. And we forget that, no, they've probably published like multiple things leading up to that study. So this group started publishing in 2015, I think, along these, well, probably even earlier, along these lines where they said, I want to look at the loners and try and understand more about the loners. And their most recent article, which was just published this March, so a couple of months ago, realized that it's actually, not only is there consistency in the loners in terms of how many of them there are, it's actually not a fraction. So they thought it was always going to be a fraction, kind of like a coin flip, except like a weighted coin flip. So if an entire population, there's a 20 percent chance that you're going to stay behind, then 20 percent of them are always going to stay behind. And that could be genetically a genetic disposition. But they realized it's actually not a percentage, it's a physical constant number. And so they think that this has to do with some sort of set point. And it's different for different species. But within the species, there's consistency in the number. So they found that some species of this amoeboid slime mould would leave behind 10,000, some species would leave behind 50,000, some would leave behind 100,000. But those species consistently left behind those numbers. And they were like, what?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Regardless the size of the number that weren't left behind?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' When comparing?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, interesting.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. And so they were like, OK, this is really weird. Why could this be? And they think it's because there's an aggregate set point. They think that it's actually a heritable trait. So when these selection pressures are set on them, along with like these other kinds of factors, there are signals that are given off. And we've known this for some time that there are like usually chemical signals when we talk about colonial organisms or aggregate organisms, that once they're near other individuals, they can detect some sort of chemical or physical signal that tells them continue to aggregate. And they think at a certain point that gets cut off and they no longer aggregate. So it's like aggregate first, then cut off and then no longer. Basically, the cells are starving, right? They don't have enough food. They send out signals that say I'm starving. And then when enough cells aggregate and it gets the starvation signal seems to degrade, and then at a certain point, that cell signal just doesn't exist anymore. And that's how these numbers get left behind. And so it's a really interesting idea that these loner cells consistently exist and they consistently exist in particular numbers. And they were like, why? Is this just a byproduct of the fact that enough have aggregated to do their job so we just don't need the rest of them? Or is there something that's actually evolutionarily advantageous to staying behind? And they think that, yeah, it could be the case that they're basically leaving behind the genetic material of a certain amount of the group to maybe be able to regenerate or to be able to exist under the local conditions, because obviously historically those local conditions were good enough for this population to exist. So maybe once a big group of these individuals aggregate and move on, the ones that are left behind can kind of, "repopulate". So they're calling that like hedging bets. And this is kind of a mathematical and physics kind of idea. And it's been applied to a lot of different organisms and they're wondering, can they apply it to larger organisms like locusts, like wildebeest, like things that swarm, like murmurations of birds or schools of fish, because they're they're obviously studying a very simple organism because that's what you do in science. You find model organisms. One of the big things that has helped this group that other groups didn't really have access to is that they figured out how to count them. And apparently it's not easy to count a million amoeboid locusts or sorry, a million amoeboid slime moulds that have all come together to make this stock. But they figured out a way to count them. And that's really changed their understanding of what's going on in this little unit.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, the whole idea of outliers is very interesting. Is it just that there's a certain amount of genetic diversity in any population? So there's by definition going to be outliers? Or is that sort of baked into the strategy of surviving, as you say, hedging your bets? Or sometimes the group does function better if there are those who pursue alternate strategies.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Totally. Think of MRSA. You referenced it before you reference bacteria or sorry, antibiotic resistant bacteria. So when you think of a normal curve, right, you think of the main is the mean median mode, whatever those measures of central tendency are. That's 68 percent of the normal curve exists within one standard deviation. Then you go out to like 97 and then I don't know, my numbers might be quite a little wrong, but then 99 point whatever. And then as you go out, it's a teeny and tiny fraction that are in those tails. So those are what we call outliers. But the thing is, they are different and sometimes weird. And that's why they're outliers. But they might have something in them that helps them in case if an environmental pressure comes along, that's also different and weird. So with MRSA these outliers already are resistant to a certain type of antibiotic just naturally. Genetically they're just different. And then all of a sudden they get pummeled by this antibiotic. These guys survive and everybody else dies. And then all of a sudden it becomes the main group. You know, they are able to pass around their DNA enough, they're able to reproduce enough. And now that's the new species. It's really cool.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And it might also be not only that it's hedging your bets evolutionarily, but also sometimes just the group dynamics function better when everyone's not pursuing the same strategy. There's there's literature now, for example, like why is a certain relatively stable percentage of all animal populations are homosexual, for example, when that's not in the individual's necessarily reproductive advantage?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Because there's a kinship advantage there.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. So there's two things. First of all, homosexual animals do parent children. So that's not an absolute. And second, it does seem to give a kin advantage. Yeah. That if you have a certain percentage who are not pursuing the same strategy but are supporting it, the population in a different way, the overall population is more successful.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And you often find that and generally it's the female of the species, but not always that the females of the species are the ones that rear the children. And so often, like during weaning and often you'll find that in certain populations, it's actually more advantageous to just have the female species working together in these kinship groups to help rear children. And it's not uncommon. There have been several species that have been identified where there's a lot of like lesbian activity between the female species, whereas the males are doing the things that the males of the species do. And so they might mate and then not really be involved in child rearing at all. And then there's like variations on that theme all across the board. But that's actually a theme that you see kind of slightly more often than you would think. And it's pretty interesting. It's like, of course, there's an evolutionary advantage to working together, to not just being an individualistic family unit, which I think has historically dominated sort of like American science, because that's how we think of people, because that's culturally like what we do. But then when we start to realize, like, oh, yeah, like the grandmother effect. I was just reading a really interesting book by Angela Saini and she was citing research that showed the mother of the human species now we're talking about. The mother is the most predictive of mortality of children. Right. So if mom is healthy and mom is around, there's a higher rate of thriving of children. The next most predictive is the grandmother, then the father.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Wow.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. That it's actually it seems to have a greater effect that a grandmother is able to care for the children than a father care for them. And when we're talking huge, like epidemiological numbers, it's pretty interesting.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. Have you guys ever been walking with other people and then at some point you realize that everyone is following somebody else?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yes.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Like, give me a for instance, Steve.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well like three or four people were walking together and everyone assumes that somebody else knows where we're going.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, we do this all the time with the SGU when we're in a new city is and we're walking to a restaurant and then we.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Some of us stand in the back and say, I wonder if they really know where they're going.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Are we following you? Are you following me? Yeah, right.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That didn't happen more than once on our latest Australia trip. No.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Remember when we were looking for the car, Jay?<br />
<br />
=== Dinosaur Asteroid Impact <small>(32:25)</small> ===<br />
* [https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-52795929 BBC News: Dinosaur asteroid's trajectory was 'perfect storm']<ref>[https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-52795929 BBC News: Dinosaur asteroid's trajectory was 'perfect storm']</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, Jay, tell us about the impact that wiped out the non-avian dinosaurs.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' All right. Scientists are getting a much more precise idea of why the asteroid that hit the earth 66 million years ago was just so freakishly devastating. This is really scary. If you try to visualize it, this asteroid killed 75 percent of all the species on Earth. And this was scientists have been trying to figure out the absolute details on what happened. But we are sure that that many creatures and plants died. We know that it did. It was devastating. So what happened? So using an on-site crater investigation and, of course, computer simulations, they found that the asteroid went into the crust in an inclination of up to 45 to 60 degrees, which basically is the angle of attack. So 90 degrees would be coming straight down. Now, this means that the asteroid kicked up an incredible amount of debris and had a big impact on the climate. The impact site was under Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula and it's a 200 kilometre wide crater. This area has a big amount of sulphur, which is coming from the mineral gypsum. Once the gypsum was placed up or rocketed up into the high atmosphere, it mixed with water vapour and was able to produce a global winter. So all of that material gets kicked up and it just shut the Earth down. It shut the incredible amount of sunlight was now being reflected away from the Earth. And there's a global winter.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' So that so that damn impact, it was a perfect storm. Right? It was like it came at the perfect angle and it hit the perfect spot in order to do maximal damage.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah. So that spot was key to it. The angle was needed to have the correct velocity and energy and everything to kick up the material. But that material could have been anything from seawater to dirt that really wouldn't have reacted with the atmosphere. But man, that sulphur reacted like crazy with the atmosphere. So Bob's right. So that particular angle was the perfect storm because it happened to be the most efficient way of rejecting and vaporizing the debris and any variation from that particular angle being shallower shallower or steeper would not have thrown anywhere near as much debris up into the atmosphere. Now, also, if the location did not have so much available sulphur, it wouldn't have had the same effect on the weather. So that particular spot when you think about how just random that is and how many different places it could have hit the earth and its size compared to the earth, it really wasn't that big, compared to the earth. But it was just just the right size to get deep enough and to do the damage that it did. So humans typically don't deal with forces of this magnitude, right? We're not used to, like, talking about rocks that big going at that speed and hitting the earth with that much force. This object was approximately 12 kilometres in diameter. And once it hit the earth, it made a 30 kilometre deep hole, a 30 kilometre deep hole. Of course, the earth reacted, right? The earth don't play that. So the earth had this reaction. So the crust gets hit and there was a rebound effect. And it said that it lasted just a few minutes. But a mountain that was bigger than Mount Everest was created as the the result of that thing hitting the earth. You know, think about it. It was pushing all of that material. And this mountain appears that was incredibly high in the atmosphere. But consequently, it quickly fell away and a crater was left in the wake of what happened because this crater was asymmetrical. And that's pretty much it, guys. That's what happened. And I'm sure that we'll have better simulations in the future or whatever, but nothing, I think, that's going to undo this research. This research was fantastically powerful in the fact that they were because of the simulations, they were able to really say it came in at this 40 to 65 degree angle. And if you ever see a video simulation of this, wow, it's scary. It's really scary seeing something of that size hit the earth. Everything on the earth felt that.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, and not just that, isn't it quite likely that there was ejecta that, left our atmosphere that actually went into space? I mean, that's insane.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That's how the moon was created.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, that's amazing.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It is amazing. It's intense.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And to know that we were teeming with life at the time, you know what I mean? Like there was so much organic material on this planet, so many living organisms, and a lot of them were shot into space.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, it wiped out 75 percent of species, but like ninety nine point nine nine nine percent of individual animal creatures were killed.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Sure.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's amazing. Right.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' But our genetic template was still was still there and it's still propagating. Even more fascinating for me was the impact that that hit the earth that created the moon, because that wiped out there could have been life on the earth when it hit. And that would have wiped out everything. This could have been life much more foreign than we would than we could think. You know, it could have been just wiped out and then had to start from scratch. Who knows how exotic it was or who knows how similar it was. Maybe it was surprisingly similar. We will never know. Some people refer to that as Earth Mark one.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' And keep this in mind, too. If that didn't happen, we wouldn't be here.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yes, I'm so glad it happened.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Of course.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So we were like basically little mice people, like little mouses that were back then. They survived. They were skulked around and they hid and they were able to find food and muscle through a freaking global winter. And they made it. Those tough little bastards made it so we can be here to have the internet. Thank you.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Here's a good question, though. So we're talking about how this was a perfect storm, right? It was a large asteroid coming in quickly, hitting the exact wrong location and hitting it at an angle designed to produce maximal chaos.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Well, not designed, but OK.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So the question is, is that a coincidence that this was so bad or is it that we know about this because it was so bad? Yeah, I didn't have those features, it wouldn't have caused a mass extinction. We wouldn't wouldn't be anything special.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right. Yeah. You know, it's like, will we ever really know?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' You never, ever know.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I'm glad.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Well, I mean, I assume you could you could simulate you could simulate a rock that big hitting the earth at a different angle at a different spot and then say, all right, what what kind of crater would that have left? And would we be able to see any any remains of that so that we can infer that? I mean, that wouldn't be that difficult to figure out.<br />
<br />
=== Backward Time Universe <small>(39:16)</small> ===<br />
* [https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/weird-news/nasa-scientists-detect-parallel-universe-21996849 Daily Star: NASA scientists detect parallel universe 'next to ours' where time runs backwards]<ref>[https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/weird-news/nasa-scientists-detect-parallel-universe-21996849 Daily Star: NASA scientists detect parallel universe 'next to ours' where time runs backwards]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. But the question is, Bob, what would it look like if the universe were running backwards?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, saw that coming. Saw that coming. All right, all right. So, yes, Steve's talking about a viral news story that refuses to go away and it makes the claim that scientists have discovered a parallel universe where time goes backwards.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I heard about this.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Flat out scientists have discovered it. It's like putting it out there.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I heard about this tomorrow.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, Evan.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' So, is this true? In a word, no. And that's it. I'm done. Steve, should I flesh this out a little bit more you think?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Little bit.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Maybe a little bit more. So, OK, so to set the tone, I'll start with a great tweet from the lead author on the research paper, Ibrahim Safa, in response to questions about what he thinks of the so-called news stories that link his research with evidence for a parallel universe, he said, NASA has discovered that y'all should not be getting your news from the New York Post. So the New York Post and the Daily News, a few of them were just like all quoting each other.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' What? Tabloids?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' And yeah, and now it's all it's like a lot of you just Google it, you'll be like finding lots of different news items from different outlets. So but it all started because of ANITA, all because of ANITA. ANITA, of course, is a acronym for Antarctic Impulsive Transient Antenna Experiment. So this is essentially a balloon experiment that lifts detectors in the air to sense neutrinos. That's what this thing's doing. And neutrinos, we've mentioned it many times. I'm going to mention it again. These nearly massless particles, right, produced by energetic events. They generally don't interact with anything. And you've got like probably millions going through every square centimetre of your body right now, right now and right now, every second right now. Here's another million every square, every square meter. So ANITA detects the radio waves that are emitted from the ice. They're pointed down. The detectors are pointing down and it detects the radio waves emitted from the ice when high energy neutrinos smash into them. So you might be thinking, wait, how many neutrinos are going to be smashing into anything? Don't they go through like your whole planet or even light years of lead without really interacting with anything? Because they're just called ghost particles, right? Well, that depends. It depends how much energy the energy they have. If they have enough energy, they are they are going to interact. And that's what ANITA was designed to detect. These very, very energetic neutrinos that that should interact with the ice and then spew out some radio waves that would then be detected by the detectors on the balloon. The thing is, these neutrinos should be coming from space, right? They shouldn't be coming from the earth because how are they going to get through the earth? Because they would almost invariably be detected or they would be they would interact with something in the earth and not make it through. But yet they detected a couple of these buggers. So how could that be? The standard model of physics does not easily account for that. It just does. It shouldn't really happen. There's a fun possibility, though, that this could involve new physics, right? If the standard model of physics of particle physics can't explain it, then maybe potentially there's some new physics in there. But that doesn't mean that it justifies what I call give me a break physics. So the crux of the outrageous claims being tossed around is that if this energetic neutrino could not go through the entire earth and be detected, perhaps it really was traveling backwards in time and only seemed to come through the earth. Because if you had a neutrino that was going from space and hits the earth but doesn't go through it, but you watch that backwards, it's going to look like it's coming out of the earth. So that's so that's kind of what these people are saying. And but it gets worse. The claim further declares that this particle is part of a parallel universe like ours. But many of the laws of physics are reversed, including time. So that's the crux of what these people are saying. You got time going backwards and you've got this parallel universe that kind of somehow intersected with our universe. Now, this whole idea, though, of these parallel universe and the reverse time, it didn't come out of nowhere like a virtual particle. It started with a pretty reasonable new scientist article with a horrible title. And the horrible title of that pretty reasonable article was "We may have spotted a parallel universe going backwards in time". Ah! So in that in that, yes, in that article, they talk about ANITA and the results and the article makes reference to a speculative theory that ANITA could potentially support. They're just kind of like Griffin, like, oh, look, you could use this to support this theory that was released a few couple of years ago. And this could actually support that. And the theory is actually kind of fascinating. It's called CPT Symmetric Universe Theory. And it's interesting. This theory states that at the Big Bang, now you imagine the Big Bang, it wasn't just our universe that was created, what was what the theory claims is that you had a universe anti-universe pair was created, kind of like virtual particles, that come out that come out of nowhere. You've got a particle and antiparticle that arise and then they and then they and then they collide and demolish each other and disappear. So like a universe, an anti-universe being created at the same time. Now, in many ways, according to the theory, this would be an opposite mirror reflection version of our universe. So, for example, anti-matter would dominate instead of matter, the matter that we that we call matter anyway. It also solves some major symmetry issues like CPT symmetry. Look it up. And dark matter. And of course, time would flow backwards, apparently. So this is where those news outlets got this idea of parallel universes and time going in reverse. But this is a very, very speculative out there theory right now. This has got major issues that need to be resolved. The authors had a lot of back and forth with their referees saying, hey, but you got to deal with this and you got to deal with that. So this is not ready for prime time. It's not widely accepted. So to say that scientists have found a parallel universe is really, really kind of silly. And so, of course, this is the classic mistake of bypassing the scientific method and jumping to the to the most sensationalistic option. Like, look, an unknown light in the sky. It must be aliens. Typical. It's like, oh, wait a second. You know, we got a lot of checkboxes to check off before you can go from light in the sky to aliens. Sure, you could potentially get to aliens, but man, you got a lot of steps to do. And most often people, right, they leapfrog right over all the the boring sciencey stuff and they go to the really cool, sexy stuff. So my favorite quote from Safa is a good summation. He said, ANITA's events are definitely interesting, but we're a long ways away from even claiming there's any new physics, let alone an entire universe. It's like, wait a second. You're going to claim there's an entire universe. Yeah, look at this little thing that we found that's kind of mysterious. We're not sure what's happening. I could explain this with an entire universe. Throw in and talk about. Oh, my God.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's very satisfying to a lot of people.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' But it's awesome. And I kind of hope this theory is true, but you've got some steps to do first. So here's something that I haven't heard anybody say about this. I have a problem with another universe interacting with ours, don't you? I mean, wouldn't we have seen these interactions before? I mean, you think that.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, I remember asking like a like a Nobel laureate physicist about this.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, what do they know.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' At a talk.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' What exactly did you ask?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, I was asking about the bubble universes, like this, the multiverse theory that universes are like bubbles, right? And they are kind of like pushed up against each other. And I said if you could detect it, because he came up with lots of scenarios in which we would never be able to detect it. But he said that probably the best way to detect it, if we could, would be that you would see actual round patterns on the cosmic microwave background radiation, like you'd see physical circles.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yep.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And where those bubbles are pushing up against each other.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Right. And that's actually yeah. So and there was actually that was in the news a bunch of years ago. I remember they they they speculated that they found some of some of these swirls. I don't think it was ever definitively proven. But yeah, I mean, sure, I can see I could. Yeah, I could see something sort of like that. And to see the cosmic microwave background radiation. I mean, that's you know, that's something that happened billions of years ago. This is not like interacting right now. But my biggest fear, though, is that if you have a universe that interacts with another one, the very last kind of that universe that I would want to interact with is one that's filled with anti-matter. Don't interact with our universe, please, because I don't want to interact with anti-matter because-<br />
<br />
'''E:''' What happens when matter meets antimatter? Oh, right.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Annihilation.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' But I'm sure I think this is this is really silly. And a lot of people are jumping on this and thinking that giving any credence to this. But I'm happy, though, that there's another possibility that we could have discovered new physics. I mean, that's all I'm waiting. I've been waiting years and years for something beyond the standard model of particle physics about particles and forces. And we really need an extension to that theory because it doesn't cover dark matter and other things. But I still would not bet on this, though. Like, do you remember the OPRA faster than light neutrino experiment from 19 or 2011? They said, look at this. This neutrino is traveling faster than light. We can't figure out why. Turns out one of the major reasons why it was doing that was because a fibre optic cable wasn't attached properly.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Human error never accounts for anything.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' So and so for ANITA, it's the same thing. There are people that are saying that the the the ice structures in the Antarctic, where they were doing this experiment, it's kind of complex. We don't know everything we need to know about about how this ice is potentially interacting with the experiment. It could be some sort of reflection that is unanticipated or a new type of reflection that needs to be discounted. So it could be something I would bet I would just bet money. It's something goofy like that. And not that we need this whole new universe to to to explain this. So only when you really account for all of that, can I do I think that you can seriously consider new physics. And then only then can you really more easily justify the more outlandish stuff like invoking a whole new parallel backwards universe. You got to do your science first before you're leaping to this.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And one other thing, Bob, this is an observation which led to speculation about what could explain that observation, which is very different than having a theory that predicts makes predictions about what we will observe. And then that observation confirming the theory. That's not what's happening here. And there's probably an infinite number of wacky things you could pull out of your butt to explain this one observation. This is just one of them. And there's no reason to think that this is the one correct.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Arm chair retrospective, like, oh, yeah, maybe that maybe this can support this. They're right. Yeah, if you show me a theory that makes a prediction and then we see that that that, yeah, that's [inaudible].<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Then come talk to me. Yeah.<br />
<br />
=== Why Beards? <small>(50:23)</small> ===<br />
* [https://www.sciencealert.com/researchers-suggest-my-bushy-beard-evolved-so-you-can-safely-punch-me-in-the-head ScienceAlert: Wild Study Suggests Human Beards Evolved to Absorb Punches to The Head]<ref>[https://www.sciencealert.com/researchers-suggest-my-bushy-beard-evolved-so-you-can-safely-punch-me-in-the-head ScienceAlert: Wild Study Suggests Human Beards Evolved to Absorb Punches to The Head]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, Evan, here's a burning question.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' OK.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Why do men have beards?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, that is a good question. And a lot of people, including a lot of women I know, would have a lot to say about that, both positive and negative. But the story also has to do with fighting around the world. I found this item at the website, sciencealert.com. Beards. What are they good for? Well, it depends on who you ask. If you were to ask the biologists Ethan Becerra's, Stephen Nelloway and David Carrier of the University of Utah, they would tell you that they have data supporting the hypothesis that human beards protect vulnerable regions of facial skeleton from damaging strikes.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Wow.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yep.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Now, Evan, very important biological question here.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' OK.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' The fact that I can't really grow a beard, I just don't have like that heft to my beard. Now, does that mean that what, like I'm more of a pacifist?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Or that you're more likely to get hammered?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, or that they can come easy to kill. I mean, you've got to help me out here.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, that that's an interesting question, Jay. And the authors of this study actually bring that up to a certain degree in their paper and they make mention of it. And the general answer to you, Jay, is that way back when, when males were competing in a very physical way for mates, among other things, some groups of people had to be more physical than others. So perhaps, perhaps it is speculated that those who did not have to have so much, say, fighting in their existence for procreation purposes or spreading the seed around, as they say, that those groups of males did not have the need as much for beards as others who perhaps did. That's speculation. It's a hypothesis. But there is research, apparently, that goes along those lines. And the authors did talk about that. But that's not really specific. It's a tangent. It's a bit of a tangent to what this one is about, because this actually has to do with does a beard really offer physical protection for a man? And they looked at it in a pretty interesting way. Now, the data was published in the Journal of of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology, which is part of the Oxford Academic Journal. Now, I'll pause here for a second, Steve. The word integrative, that word gives me the willies a little bit.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, but it could be used in a legitimate way.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' But OK, because when we hear about integrative in terms of medical-<br />
<br />
'''S:''' In medical terms it's bad.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, you have to sort of raise a red flag there. But here, I guess we're going to be OK. Their title of the paper is Impact Protection Potential from Mammalian Hair Testing the Pugilism Hypothesis for the Evolution of Human Facial Hair. That sounds interesting. What exactly is the Pugilism Hypothesis? This is actually a subject I believe we have hit on before. Get it? Pugilism Hypothesis.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' You know sometimes you're funny Ev.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But not this day.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I didn't say that.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Let me be blunt. Let me explain this. The Pugilism Hypothesis suggests that there have been evolutionary pressures for hominids such as great apes and humans to fight using their fists. Basically sums it up. But and we've talked about the actual fist biology of humans and great apes. We have talked about those in previous episodes. But what about the receiving end of those fists? What exactly are people trying to hit with their fists? Well, in the case of males, predominantly when they fight, they go for the face. And prior research suggests that the males go for the face to ugly up their opponents, really. So that potential mating partners might be more likely to choose them. Whoever comes out of a fight less damaged, which is really interesting in and of itself. Perhaps a more contemporary context, it's in a controlled setting, which we have nowadays. Well, boxing or MMA or a mixed martial arts match. I mean, this is where you see this sort of play out in modern terms, because we don't really fight for our mates and stuff anymore. Those days have long have gone for the most part.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Some people do.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' But we do have sport. But that's a little bit different because you're not necessarily going in there to the sport to ugly up your opponent. What you're trying to do is incapacitate them, knock them out in one way or another. But that nice brain that you're trying to send the jolt to is protected by a skull and tissues and other things that make it really hard to physically attack the brain. And that's a good thing. But a shortcut to the brain or through some knockout points. And then you have several of them in your head, including two, which are at the forefront of the human skull, lower jaw, the mandible. Just if you were to basically take your fingers, draw a line straight down from your eyes to where it hits your jaw line. And there you go. You got nice little knockout points right there on you on either side.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Isn't that the nerve hole?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yes, it is. Those are. And your jaw also comes out in front of your face. When you're heading, going for the head, you're you're most likely to hit that jaw. So it's right there. Well, they had some interesting highlights from the abstract, which I think explained it pretty well. Because facial hair is one of the most sexually dimorphic features of humans and is often perceived as an indicator of masculinity and social dominance.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' This was written by men by the way?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' This is written by, yes, three men.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yes. OK. Good to know. All right. Here we go.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Human facial hair has been suggested to play a role in male contest competition. And there are studies for that and research backing that up. Some authors have proposed that the beard may function similar to the long hair of a lion's mane, serving to protect vital areas of the lion's throat and jaw from lethal attacks.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' And that makes sense.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, it is. And it's consistent with the observation that the mandible on us, which is superficially covered by a beard, is one of the most commonly fractured facial bones in interpersonal violence. So the authors have hypothesized that beards protect the skin and bones of the face when human males fight by absorbing and dispersing that energy, which is a blunt impact to the jaw. And they ran some tests. So what they did is they took they thought it was unethical to actually, have people with beards and not beards hitting each other in the face to see what kind of damage would be done. So instead, they made a a fake skull basically and put some thick hair on it, so sheep's hair and skin. And they did various tests. So they have three sets of them. You had one in which it was very full, another one in which the hairs were plucked out and another one where it was shorn or pretty much shaved, shaved down. And basically what they found, the bottom line is that the total energy absorbed if you had the full beard in this particular experiment. It was 37 percent greater in a bearded face than compared to the other two samples. Total energy absorbed 37 percent grade.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That's a lot.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. But they were also using sheep hair.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, there are some problems here. I mean OK among the things. And this was brought up also in the article at Science Alert, the the author who said, yeah, OK, it's not the same as the human face and human beard because the material, first of all, is different. You know, there's a different thickness to the hair, the cushioning of it all. But they the authors acknowledge that. But they also said there were some other features of the hair that also kind of evened out to make it kind of close to to a human comparison. You know, it was kind of close enough for government work, as the old saying goes, at least for this particular one, for this particular set of experiments. Also, the human head is not just this is not just a fixed point thing that like the experiments that they ran. They had the skull, they had the beard on it, shaved or whatever. And they struck a basically dropped a hammer onto it and it didn't move. You know, if you get hit in the chin, your head goes back. You've got it goes in various directions and things. And all that is part of absorbing the energy as well. So this was kind of a very limited scope set of experiments. So how much you can actually glean from this is even they admit. They said, look, this isn't perfect by any stretch. It requires much more, much more testing.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Did they look at I mean, this is A, purely speculative hypothesis. Purely speculative. B, there probably is actual data out there from, like you said, fighters.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yes, and there is.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' There are bearded fighters and non bearded fighters.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Absolutely. And then I'm glad that they also referenced that in this paper as one of their points. They said our results appear to conflict with a recent study that demonstrated beards do not provide a performance advantage in mixed martial arts as measured by the number of wins by knockout decisions. So that's a little different as well in that you're using one set of measurements in these professional fighters based on knockouts. But their study did not necessarily indicate if you're going to be knocked out by this blow, just how much damage the face would absorb in cuts or in fractures. So they're kind of different. But you're right, Cara. The study with the MMA fighters was pretty controlled. And they said it was quite compelling. And it involved three hundred ninety five fighters. They found no evidence of a performance advantage provided by the facial hair.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's pretty damning.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's really. And the thing is, like, I think that we have a problem in the sciences, oftentimes when we look at things through an evolutionary lens where we feel like everything has to have a purpose. Like, why does this exist? Oh, it must confer an advantage. And the truth is, mammals are hairy. I think that we lost hair over time and maybe talking about why we're hairless in places could be interesting. But like, couldn't this just be an evolutionary holdover? Just men are hairier.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I had the same exact thoughts as well. When you start attributing why things evolved for maybe specific purposes, I think you start getting into areas in which you're going to wind up being disappointed by the actual answers.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And we know that we didn't evolve to grow beards. We already had them. We evolved to lose hair in other parts of the body.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Well, not so much lose it. It's just it's just I mean, the hair follicles are there. They're just very thin and.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No, but you know what I mean?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Human beards do represent an exaggerated facial hair. It is. It's not just like we didn't lose the fur on our chin. It's actually it is exaggerated from what mammals would normally have. So but you're right, it is very difficult to reverse engineer evolutionary causes and effects. You end up with just those stories that are probably really [inaudible].<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Genetic drift is a thing.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It could be incidental.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Sometimes things are just random.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I mean, definitely physiologically, it's because the follicles respond to testosterone. That's why there's it's different between men and women. But that doesn't tell us, again, it may not serve a purpose, right? We don't want to make the adaptationalist fallacy. But whenever there is a sexually dimorphic trait, there is a few possibilities that are generically that biologists will consider. Is it sexual selection? Is it a competition advantage? So for sexual selection of beards, the data is really all over the place. And what it shows is that some women like them. Some women don't. Some women don't care.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's why I said what I said at the very top.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Probably also cultural differences.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's probably cultural. Not only that, the more common beards are, the more attractive being clean shaven is. And the less common they are, the more attractive they are.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So the grass is greener.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, it's also like a sticking out effect. And there also may be male male competition is not always physical. It could just be kind of an intimidation dominance kind of signal, even if they're not physically competing with each other. So it's complicated, I think, is the bottom line. And the data is kind of all over the place.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, it seems to me like just as silly as if a study was published saying that curly hair conferred some sort of advantage over straight hair because it like, yeah, it absorbed blows better or you know, fill in the blank. It's a bit kind of like shot in the dark to me.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' And, Steve, when we were talking about the evolution of the clenched fist in a prior episode in this pugilism hypothesis, I believe we arrived at the same kind of conclusions here that you can't backwards engineer this stuff. And a lot of the things we're saying right now, I believe we were also saying then about that. So that gives me some pause here for this entire hypothesis.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' At best, they could say it's semi plausible because it does absorb some of the blow.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Right.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Sure. But that might also just be a fluke.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That could have falsified it, but it didn't falsify it. I mean, I think it's all you can really say. OK, one more quick news item.<br />
<br />
=== Solving Space Junk <small>(1:04:00)</small> ===<br />
* [https://cires.colorado.edu/news/solving-space-junk-problem CIRES: Solving the Space Junk Problem]<ref>[https://cires.colorado.edu/news/solving-space-junk-problem CIRES: Solving the Space Junk Problem]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' We've talked about space junk quite a bit on the show because it is a huge looming problem that we don't really have a solution to. So this this paper caught my eye because it kind of takes a different approach. We've been focusing mainly on what technology would we use to get all of that space junk out of orbit before it gets so clogged that you basically we lose the use of some low Earth orbits was just too much junk up there. And they're crashing into each other and destroying everything. This paper takes a more of an economic approach. So first, let me ask you guys, are you aware-<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Four foot one.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Of the term, the tragedy of the commons?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Absolutely not.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I am, but I don't remember what it means.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It sounds bloody Shakespearean.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It'll make sense when I explain to you that the tragedy of the commons is actually an observation that was made a few hundred years ago, that basically if you have individuals acting on their individual best interest, but that involves using a public resource that the individuals collectively could destroy the public resource. So, for example, I think the observation was first made it was first made 170 years ago in 1832 by William Foster Lloyd, who noticed that farmland, that grazing land, that public grazing land was being devastated while private grazing land was being maintained. And the question is, why is that happening? Because, well, if you own the land, you rotate your herd and you keep them at a sustainable level because you have a vested interest in maintaining your graze land. But if you are using public land, you have a short term economic advantage to graze all your animals and to grow your herd. Even though long term, it's going to use up that public resource. So that's the tragedy of the commons is that collectively we make poor decisions when we're acting individually. So the author of the new paper says we could apply this to the space junk problem. Right now, there's an incentive for any company or country or whatever to put up a satellite, in fact, to get it up quicker before the orbit gets too overcrowded. There's no incentive because orbital space is essentially a public resource, and individuals are utilizing that public resource for their own short term individual advantage without consideration of the public good.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And this is why we need some regulations.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Exactly. That's why you always need some kind of regulation. Exactly. Because because individuals are not going to solve the problem with their own individual behavior, the perverse incentive to to not to not be sustainable.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' If men were angels, no government would be necessary. James Madison.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' If all of them were angels. Yeah, that's correct. They actually quote that in the article that I'm talking about.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, there you go.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But they're not right. And it's not just being not being a bad person, not being angels, just that, you all have blinders on. We're making our decisions for our short term advantage, you know. Yeah. So, OK, so they say, OK, how do we reverse the incentive so that people do have an incentive to protect the common good? So one way that is being proposed is this is Akhil Rao and assistant professor of economics at Middlebury College. Said with other authors, he's the lead author. What we should do is charge an annual orbital fee. So if you put up a satellite into orbit, you get charged a fee every year, that satellite uses up that orbital space.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Sure, you're renting the space.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Basically renting your orbital space. Exactly.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Who gets paid?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, that's a good question. It could be the country that you're launching it from. It could be an international consortium or whatever. That's a detail that would have to be worked out. But some entity would get paid. And presumably that money would be used appropriately, like to to de orbit stuff or whatever.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So wait, Steve. So you have something in outer space, right? And something happens in that one object turns into a thousand objects. What happens then?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So that would have to be your I thought of that, too. It's not addressed in the paper. But if your satellite crashes, it becomes a thousand different bits of debris that would have to be dealt with in some way. Obviously, you're not going to.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's apparently kind of rare, though, right?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Now it is. Now it is. But not so much. And if that's the whole point.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' The problem is only getting worse.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That that could lead to a nightmare scenario where you've got this cascade, this domino effect, where it's it's actually possible that a satellite could hit another satellite, smash it to a lot of pieces. And then that one does it to another one. And then so on and so on. And worst case scenario is you have the entire orbit around the earth covered with useless debris and we cannot launch a rocket for like a few centuries. That's a worst case scenario.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Remember, I went to Kazakhstan. To to watch the launch. Yeah, they weren't doing it anymore. I know it's like pretty crazy. But when I was talking to them about space junk they got super defensive and everything. And they were like, oh, like, this is what we do. Blah, blah, blah. It's not as bad as you think. Blah, blah. But one of the things that they were. I know. But one of the things that they really pushed was like, it's so you wouldn't think that it's regulated, but you have to pass so much. You have to get so much approval to exist on an orbital plane, like to get something up into a specific orbit. And that orbit is clear. And most modern satellites, or at least their satellites, were built to de-orbit like they slowly fall back to Earth over time.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' And that tends to be the modern take on these things. I imagine there these that has to be a design requirement.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, that's kind of the point. So now you have. So if you're if you're a company or a government and you want to launch a satellite, you have to think twice about the cost benefit of that satellite, because you have to build into the cost the orbital rental fee, basically.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It becomes more valuable.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It becomes more valuable. In fact, they estimate this would increase the value of the satellite industry from six hundred billion dollars to three trillion dollars.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' By 2040.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Sure.<br />
<br />
'''S''' By 2040. Yeah. And then that's with increasing fees so that by 2040 it'll be two hundred and thirty five thousand dollars per satellite per year.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I love this idea. Because you could say, I imagine if we could clean up, you would think like if I had a wish, one one wish, not not a top ten, maybe not even a top hundred. But one of the wishes would be to imagine magically cleaning out all of the debris in orbit. And I would think that would be wonderful. There'd be less debris. There'd be less potential for an accident. But that could actually be worse in some ways, because then people would like rush to fill those empty spaces. And before you know it, we have it's all filled again with stuff. But if you're paying and you have it's actually more expensive and you're creating an orbit that you need to protect and take care of and it's valuable and increasing in value, then that's not going to happen and people will take it more seriously.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, you have to incent. It's incentivizing it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's also a similar concept to like a carbon tax. Where the commons are the atmosphere.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Which is probably coming someday.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, it's your individual. It's during your company's individual short term advantage to just dump CO2 into the atmosphere. But if you had to pay for it, suddenly that changes the incentive.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right. I'm surprised we've waited this long.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I like the general idea, this notion that this is just human behavior. This is what humans are going to do. And not because we're sharing resources and because there's so many of us there's a lot of things you don't also think of as resources like orbital space, but they are. This again, this wisdom is one hundred and seventy whatever plus years old. It's not like this is a new idea. This is kind of a time tested notion.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' There's always going to be a financial incentive to exploit without paying it back. Right? Like it's you see it in public spaces all the time.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Broadcasters can't just broadcast. You have to rent. You have to rent a license. You have to rent certain frequencies.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, it's also called an externalized cost.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, we've talked about it a lot on the show.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, you have to do it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Entities should not be allowed to externalize their cost onto others. Another way to look at it is there are situations in which the benefit is concentrated in one or a few individuals, but the cost is spread out over many individuals.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And in the US that's common.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, we don't perceive the cost because it's so spread out, but it adds up over time.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It sure does.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And so we have to make the cost as palpable and individual as the benefits that they balance out, basically. And again, this is not anti free market. It's actually pro free market because you know what the alternative is to this kind of thing?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Not having satellites?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's just about government control. Do you want total government control or do you want a free market where you're factoring in the externalized costs and the common use of resources so that there's no perverse incentive to destroy the common resource?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Basically, this is consumer protection in a major way. Which is important for the free market. You need consumer protection.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' And we have it. This is not a foreign concept. It's already built into a lot of things that we enjoy, purchase and spend our money on. So it's not unusual.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It's like what I told my daughter who just left college, the gravy train is over.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Steve, what if maybe they should also be putting money aside to retire the the spacecraft as well, like whatever it is, like they can't just leave it up there.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's a point.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' A lot of them, the newer ones, de-orbit.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, you'll want the satellite to de-orbit as soon as you no longer need it, because then you won't be paying for a defunct or a dead satellite, right?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Right.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yes.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. Let's move on.<br />
<br />
== Who's That Noisy? <small>(1:14:08)</small> ==<br />
* Answer to last week’s Noisy: {{w|Dead-man's_vigilance_device|Train's Vigilance Control System}}<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Jay, it's Who's That Noisy time.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Guys?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Noisy?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yes?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Last week, I played a noisy.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Did it come with a warning?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yes. This one does come with a warning. You're right. Thank you for reminding me, Evan. And here it is.<br />
<br />
[_short_vague_description_of_Noisy] <br />
<br />
Yeah. So. What the heck is that?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I don't know, but whatever it was, it caught fire and something just put it out.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' You guys want to take any guesses?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, it's an alarm.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Of some kind. I'll give you that. Sure.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Alarm system and triggering a reaction in which something is released.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, it sounds like steam almost.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Sure, it does. Sure, it does. Did you guys you guys remember David Cheeseman from last week?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, I remember Cheeseman.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' He sent in a guest. He sent in a guest. He says, hey, this sounds like a missile alarm on board an Ohio class submarine or on an attack submarine with VLS when conducting a missile jettison, not a launch. And then he goes on to explain what the each sounds are and everything. I'm sorry, my friend. You're incorrect, but not completely incorrect. I mean, you got a couple of interesting things in there, like about, we're not talking about a missile. I'll say this is not a missile launch type of thing, but there is an alarm. But you got that right. Another guest, Micah Woodward. Hi, Jay, is this week's noisy what happens when someone presses the big red button to stop the magnet on the MRI?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, interesting.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Steve, you have you ever done this?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I'm just checking. That's not the answer. But there has to be a big red button. There has got to be the kind where you could just smash through a little piece of glass and hit the button. Sure, I'll give you that. But I have no idea if that's what the MRI sounds like. But this isn't it. And then we have Brendan Flynn. Brendan wrote, hey, Jay, not Bob. My hopefully educated guess for this week's noisy is aircraft hangar, high expansion fire retardant foam.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Interesting.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' People have used this as a guess before. Apparently, there's some type of alert that happens before the foam comes out. And yeah, that that's pretty damn close as far as it's sounding like something else. This isn't it. But yes, I'm pretty sure that's very close to what that whole process of the retardant foam coming out sounds like. But no, not correct, sir. We do have a winner, though. The winner for last week was Brendan Robinson. And Brendan said, hi, Jay, hope you and the team are all going well. Thank you for your extraordinary performance in a dismal 2020. Hey, man, we're trying our best over here. So he said this week's who's that noisy sounds like a safety system on a train known as a vigilance control system. These systems are designed to stop a train in the event that the train driver or engineer are incapacitated, such as if they suffer a heart attack or fall asleep. They usually activate if the controls haven't been used in a set amount of time, usually around 30 seconds. There will then usually be a visual warning, such as a flashing light that the driver will have to acknowledge by pressing a button to reset. Should the driver not react and reset the system for within a few seconds and alarm sounds and then the driver still fails to react after a few more seconds, the emergency brakes will apply.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Cool.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So here's here's something really cool about this system. The system, when it's pressurized, is releasing the brake. When the system becomes depressurized, it the brake clamps down. It's the exact opposite of what our intuition would normally tell us that you have to use the system to to apply the brake. That's not the case.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So it's like pneumatic pressure? Like, is that the sound we're hearing is the air release?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yes, that's the air release. So the person who sent this in Damien Van Schneidel last week, he wrote train brakes operate in the reverse of how car brakes work in that the brakes are always on and a brake pipe is charged up to 500 KPA to release the brakes as brakes are applied the brake pipe is reduced, which allows the brakes to apply. So, for example, when a train is traveling along, the brake pipe will be sitting at 500 KPA. But when the driver applies the brake to initial it, it will reduce the brake pipe to 450 KPA, which essentially sits the brake pads onto the wheels, creating friction to reduce the speed. The more that the pressure drops, the more brake that's applied. And that's like a safety system where if it suddenly loses pressure, the brakes go on.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And so trains have this safety feature in case if the conductor is no longer doing their job.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Conducting?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yes, my car has its own version of that. If I take my hands off the wheel and the wheel starts to drift, it will like beep at me and it'll say like, take the wheel. And I wonder if a lot of it's funny that it took a while for that to get to a lot of cars. But my assumption is it's been on trains for quite some time.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So just so you know, the person who guessed and of course, the person who sent this in both work on trains. This is a very, if not impossible thing to know unless you're in the industry. You know, like the braking system of certain types of trains, you know what I mean? It's like a very rare piece of thing. But I always am blown away. You know, I play like this rare sound and somebody out there, somebody's got it. I love that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's the power of crowdsourcing.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That's right.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
=== New Noisy <small>(1:19:36)</small> ===<br />
<br />
[brief, vague description of Noisy]<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So I have a new noisy this week. I talked to Bob about it. I was so intrigued by this noisy that I called Bob and explained to him just how interesting I think it is.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I will neither confirm nor deny this.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' But what I'd like you to do, especially if you email me what you think it is, I want you to tell me how you felt. What was your emotional response to this noisy? I don't think I've ever asked that before, because I had an emotional response to this noisy. And this this noisy was sent in by a listener named Carrie Harmon.<br />
<br />
[_short_vague_description_of_Noisy] <br />
<br />
'''S:''' Cool.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Jay, you had an emotional reaction because it sounds like somebody being murdered with a chainsaw.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' At the beginning part, I thought it sounded like the Martians from War of the Worlds.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Oh, totally.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, it has that trumpety ring like that that high pitch, like screamy type of thing. Yeah, definitely. This one is really, really interesting. And I'm not going to say anything else because I want to get your reaction. So let me know. Email me at WTN@theskepticsguide.org if you have a guess, if you have a cool noisy and if you just want to say hi and tell me how you're doing with this whole pandemic bullshit that we have to deal with for what? Another two or three years.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. Thanks, brother. Quick one quick email.<br />
<br />
== Questions/Emails/Corrections/Follow-ups <small>(1:21:15)</small> ==<br />
<br />
=== Email #1: Electrical Treatment for RP ===<br />
<br />
<blockquote><p style="line-height:115%">First time long time listener (2010, I think). I'm a better thinker as a result of the show, so can't thank you enough. The book was great too. To my question: I have Retinitis pigmentosa (genetic degenerative vision condition). Diagnosed at 14 and now 36, so it's well on its way. Recently my partner found a German clinic advertising the Federov Treatment, link at the end. It claims not to cure but stabilize and, in some cases, improve night vision/peripheral vision. The treatment is electrical stimulation to retinal cells/optic nerve or parts of the brain dependent on the condition. It claims to natural - I don't see electricity to the dome in nature, myself - and the website is full of testimonials. I can't find anywhere else that delivers the treatment, although it's delivered by neurologists (good?) and has been going since '93. I've read a pinned review of the available studies, link at the end. Small studies in animals and humans...the improvements as far as I can see are all assumed markers: thicker this, increased blood flow to that, and the killer quote for me: "Despite several studies showing promising results in both animal experiments and clinical studies, there are presently few reports on the mechanisms of action for ES, making this field still poorly understood." I'd love to be wrong and not wait for CRISPR or the phase 2 stem cell trials, but I'm not optimistic. Thanks for all that you do; you're all wonderful. I don't know who picks these up, but I have to say that although she's part of the furniture now, I'm really happy with the addition of Cara. As much as I like the speculative and exciting potential sciences, I think she applies them to the world as it is: environmentally, socially, etc. I did have a COVID question, but this trumps it for me. Stay safe in these peculiar times and thanks again. - Stephen, Manchester, UK</p></blockquote><br />
<br />
'''S:''' This one comes from Stephen from Manchester in the UK. And he bookends it with some praise. I want to go right to the question so we can go forward. He says, I have retinitis pigmentosa genetic degenerative vision condition diagnosed at 14 and now 36. So it's well on its way. Recently my partner found a German clinic advertising the Fedorov technique. It claims not to cure, but stabilize and in some cases improve night vision peripheral vision. The treatment is electrical stimulation to retinal cells, optic nerve and parts of the brain dependent on the condition. It claims to natural. I don't see electricity to the dome in itself in nature myself. And the website is full of testimonials. I can't find anywhere else that delivers the treatment, although it's delivered by neurologists and has been going since 1993. I've read a pinned review of the available studies. Small studies in animals and humans. The improvements as far as I can see are all assumed markers. Thicker this increased blood flow to that. And the killer quote for me, despite several studies showing promising results of both animals experiments and clinical studies, there are presently few reports on the mechanisms of actions for ES making this field field still poorly understood. So he wants to know, is this something worthwhile or not? Yeah, so it's obviously a very narrow medical question, but the principles here are broad. So one thing is, all right, so you have one clinic giving this treatment, that's always a red flag. If this treatment is so great, why isn't everybody doing it? Also, they've been doing it since 1993. So they had 27 years to prove that this works and they haven't been able to do that. So that's a huge red flag. So either they don't care, which is bad, or it doesn't work and they can't prove that it does work. So they're just nibbling around the edges with animal studies and markers and intention, whatever, just like pragmatic studies. But not the kind of thing that would answer the definitive question, does it work? And so it's never getting any traction because they're not producing the kind of evidence that clinicians need to see. I did do a literature search to see what was out there. I think I found the same reviews that Stephen did. So a 2016 systematic review of the literature basically said, yep, there's a lot of animal and preclinical studies, but there basically aren't any double-blind placebo-controlled trials. And that's what we need to really know if this works or not. Again, why hasn't there been after 27 years? That's kind of problematic. However, I did find a randomized controlled trial since that review.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yes, yes?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But it was only masked. It was like partially masked, not double-blind. And they concluded that it didn't work. They found no, their primary outcome was basically a slowing of the decrease in vision in patients with retinitis pigmentosa specifically. And it basically was negative. There was no, they said it was a trend, but that means that's negative. There was no clinically significant, there was no statistically significant difference between the treatment groups and the sham group. And they looked at a bunch of-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Is this in the US?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' This clinic's in Germany, the one that he's talking about. And then they looked at a bunch of markers and one of the many markers was significant. The others were all negative. That to me is just shotgunning. That means nothing. The primary endpoint of the visual field, the decrease in visual field over time was not different between treatment. And placebo. So that's discouraging, that study. But again, it's not a lot of clinical data out there, but just what is there is not good. Then there's other trials looking at stimulation for nerve damage, not in retinitis pigmentosa, and they have mixed results. But some of them show some positive results. There could be that stimulating the brain may help certain kinds of vision overcome partial optic nerve damage in some cases. That, again, it's still early, but there is some clinical data. That's a little bit more encouraging, but again, too early to make any conclusions. But that's not studying retinitis pigmentosa. The only study I could find in that disease is negative. But the bigger lesson here is just beware of those red flags. Treatments not only need to be plausible, but we need that clinical evidence, man, the double blind plus super controlled trials. And without that, with this kind of treatment, how do you know you're not just seeing placebo effects? But beware of the one clinic.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' How is that legal?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, it's just the medicine is regulated in different ways. Those kind of clinics are legal in the US as well. There are these one-off clinics where the only people doing this controversial treatment for decades without producing any kind of convincing evidence. Unfortunately, again, that pattern be very wary of. You have to ask, why isn't everybody doing this? You've had plenty of time. Why haven't you been able to demonstrate a clear clinical benefit with rigorous trials? You know, the answer usually is because it doesn't really work, you know?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Are there like licensing bodies or regulatory bodies that maybe not governmental, but like the AMA or these certain groups that will make statements? Well, you make statements.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yes, like you have a professional organization, you know.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Maybe you can look into that kind of like, well, what does the Doctors' Association of Germany, whatever it's called, say about this?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, like the Ophthalmological Association or whatever, something the appropriate professional organization. Yeah, you're right. It's also it's often a very good place to go for an expert review position statement on these kinds of treatments if they're above the radar. You know what I mean?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right. Yeah, it's not so small.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Which they aren't always. Yeah, exactly. All right. Well, thanks for the question, Steven, and good luck with with everything. So, guys, let's go on with science or fiction.<br />
<br />
== Science or Fiction <small>(1:27:20)</small> ==<br />
{{SOFResults<br />
|episodeNum=777<br />
|fiction = online shopping <!--- short word or phrase representing the item ---><br />
|fiction2 = <!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
<br />
|science1 = ozone collapse<!-- short word or phrase representing the item --><br />
|science2 = missing baryons<!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
|science3 = <!-- leave blank if absent --> <br />
<br />
|rogue1 =Jay <!-- rogues in order of response --><br />
|answer1 = ozone collapse<!-- item guessed, using word or phrase from above --><br />
<br />
|rogue2 =Evan<br />
|answer2 =missing baryons<br />
<br />
|rogue3 =Cara<br />
|answer3 =online shopping<br />
<br />
|rogue4 =Bob <!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
|answer4 =online shopping <!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
<br />
|rogue5 = <!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
|answer5 = <!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
<br />
|host =steve <!-- asker of the questions --><br />
<!-- for the result options below, <br />
only put a 'y' next to one. --><br />
|sweep = <!-- all the Rogues guessed wrong --><br />
|clever =y <!-- each item was guessed (Steve's preferred result) --><br />
|win = <!-- at least one Rogue guessed wrong, but not them all --><br />
|swept = <!-- all the Rogues guessed right --><br />
}}<br />
''Voiceover: It's time for Science or Fiction.''<br />
<br />
<blockquote>'''Item #1:''' Scientists find evidence that the mass extinction 359 million years ago was caused by a UV damage resulting from a collapse of the ozone layer.<ref>[https://phys.org/news/2020-05-erosion-ozone-layer-responsible-mass.html Phys.org: Study shows erosion of ozone layer responsible for mass extinction event]</ref><br>'''Item #2:''' A new study of online clothes shopping using augmented reality showed higher purchase satisfaction than in person shopping.<ref>[https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2020/05/augmented-reality-can-improve-online-shopping-study-finds Cornell Chronicle: Augmented reality can improve online shopping, study finds ]</ref><br>'''Item #3:''' Astronomers have used a new technique to finally identify all the missing baryonic matter in the universe.<ref>[https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2300-2 Nature: A census of baryons in the Universe from localized fast radio bursts]</ref></blockquote><br />
<br />
'''S:''' Each week I come up with three science news items or facts, two real and one fake, and then I challenge my panel of skeptics to tell me which one they think is the fake. We have just three news items this week, no theme. You guys ready?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yes.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yep.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Are you ready? Here they are. Item number one, scientists find evidence that the mass extinction 359 million years ago was caused by UV damage resulting from a collapse of the ozone layer. Item number two, a new study of online clothes shopping using augmented reality showed higher purchase satisfaction than in-person shopping. And item number three, astronomers have used a new technique to finally identify all the missing baryonic matter in the universe. Jay, go first.<br />
<br />
=== Jay's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Me?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' All right. So this first one here, scientists find evidence that the mass extinction 359 million years ago was caused by UV damage resulting from a collapse of the ozone layer. Because that one thing we're sure of that we are, science is not 100% sure about pretty much anything, but they are 100% sure that not one of those creatures had sunglasses. And this is bullshit because they needed them. And it's really sad that they died from UV light. I'm very angry about that. God Steve, I don't know. Could UV do it? What about creatures that live under the ocean and under tree canopies and all that and whatnot? You know what I mean? I don't know. But if enough creatures died, then they would not be food for other creatures. And there you have that. Okay. So that there's a little bit of that in there. Number two, a new study of online clothes shopping using augmented reality showed higher purchase satisfaction in in-person shopping. All right. Using augmented reality to do what specifically, Steve? To put the clothes on them like virtually?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Exactly.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' All right. I've never done it. I don't know anyone that does it. And if Amazon doesn't do it, it doesn't count. I don't know.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Amazon does it.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' They do. I don't know. I mean, I never tried it. I think it's a great idea. I think that if they have a way to measure accurately measure your body, what would you call it? You know, like the different measurements of your body, your arm length and all that stuff. If they can get the sizing correct, that's cool. I mean, I've had virtual eyeglasses put on pictures of me that worked pretty damn well. So, yeah, that's cool. I can see that. And what is it about that's better? You don't have to go drive and you don't have to be in front of people you don't want to be in front of and try on clothes just basically does it automatically. That's pretty nice. I think that one's science. And then astronomers have used a new technique to finally identify all the missing baryonic matter in the universe.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So I'll give you baryonic matter is like normal matter with electrons, protons and neutrons.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Well... Electrons are not baryons.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, not only, whatever. Protons.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Did you just whatever particle? Oh shit. Neutrons, protons. That's good enough. Neutrons, protons is good enough.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' All right. But more importantly, Bob, there was missing baryonic matter that I didn't know about? All right. So they have a new technique to finally identify. I don't like this one for multiple reasons. They can finally identify all of the missing baryonic matter in the universe. How? That's impossible.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Including those socks you lost in your dryer last week.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' But seriously, like, am I reading it? Is it just because I don't understand this, Steve? Like when you're saying missing all of the baryonic matter in the universe, the observable matter? Like, what are you talking about here?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Theoretically, there should have been a certain amount of baryonic matter, but we only were able to identify a certain percentage of it. There was a big chunk missing. And now we found the missing big chunk of baryon.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Got it. OK. That makes much more sense. So they found a new technique that lets them through observation. Radio telemetry, you might say. Something along those lines. See it. They can now see it. This is amazing. All right. I'm not going to take that one, but I'm going to go with the ozone layer. I don't like that one anymore.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, jeez.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' OK, Evan.<br />
<br />
=== Evan's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''E:''' OK, ozone layer. What would be the evidence that you would have that all this stuff, 359 million years ago, died off because of the UV damage? I mean, it must be in the rocks. I mean, that's the only thing you can do is because that's all that's around from then that you can discern it from. So have they done that? I guess that's literally what it comes down to. And then the study of online clothes shopping using augmented reality showed higher purchase satisfaction than in-person shopping. Where were you 40 years ago in my life? Augmented reality. Boy, I could have used you because I hate clothes shopping. I want to do all my clothes shopping using augmented reality. That is sweet.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, that's awesome.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Just for the sheer personal satisfaction, I'm saying that one's science, whether it is or not. OK, and the last one, the detection of all the missing baryonic matter in the universe. They took a blue light in CSI Jay and they just waved it around and they said, oh, there it is. You know, all of a sudden it kind of glowed. There it was.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' And you also know who had sex recently.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's an added bonus. That too is baryonic matter. Thanks for defining it, Steve, because I kind of thought I maybe knew and I was maybe half right there. Jeez, it's either the UV damage or the baryonic matter one. It sounds more plausible comparing the two that they would be able to crack the rocks open and figure out the UV damage than they would in finding like missing material that's been missing for 13 billion years or whatever. So I have to say it's the baryonic matter one's going to be the fiction.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' OK, Cara.<br />
<br />
=== Cara's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''C:''' OK, tell me if you can clarify something. If you can't, that's fine. The online clothes shopping study, people that were in the study, were they men, women or mixed?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It was mixed.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It was mixed. OK. I would not prefer to try on clothes in augmented reality. I prefer to shop for some things that way. I bought a table in my entryway off Amazon. I augmented to see what it would look like in my space. It was freaking awesome. But for clothes, it fit is so important that just painting the clothes on yourself and augmented really doesn't tell you how well they fit. And I think trying them on and also shopping is a social experience for a lot of women. So not being able to go and do that, like with their friends and get people's opinions and stuff, I think I'm leaning towards this one being the fiction simply because I think if there are enough women in the study that they would say, no, I would still prefer to go and shop in person, especially because this is specifically clothing shopping, not like stuff you would buy on Amazon. But just to look at the other ones, UV damage resulting from a collapse of the ozone layer. What does that mean, a collapse?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It fell.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So it wasn't like a hole.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, no, it just like collapsed. Yeah, it went away. It was destroyed by something.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So we know that chlorofluorocarbons destroyed it in our lifetime and then we cut using those and it started to grow back. I don't know what would have caused a hole. I mean, it's usually some sort of chemical, right? So but it could be a greenhouse gas or something. That one, I have no idea. It could be science. It could be fiction. And then the same thing with the baryonic matter. I feel like this is probably actually a statistical thing, right? Like they are trying to do measurements based on things and they realized they were missing something based on models and then they changed the model. And now they're like, oh, that accounts for the missing matter. So that one seems likely to me. So I don't know. I'm going to go with the clothes shopping one and say that that's fiction. I could be wrong, but if there are a lot of women in the study, I bet you they actually prefer shopping in person.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay. And Bob.<br />
<br />
=== Bob's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''B:''' So the UV damage one, that's really interesting. I like this. The only thing that I know of that could wipe out ozone would be gamma ray burst. That could do it. Maybe they found evidence of that or maybe it was something else. I'm not sure what else could wipe it out, but that would happen. I mean, unless you were like in the deep ocean, you were kind of screwed without ozone. UVC is not pretty. I mean, that's what they're using to kill COVID, man. And you don't want anybody in there with those UVC lights.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Talked about that. That's right.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah. So I could see that happening. I never heard of that being ozone depletion being the reason for an extinction. That's just too awesome to be fiction. The third one, all right, baryonic matter. Yeah, protons, neutrons. I thought like literally five or six years ago they solved this problem. So they solved it again. Still, this seems likely to me. And yeah, it was a mystery because you could theoretically look at big bang nucleosynthesis when these particles were created and even a cosmic microwave background. You could say, all right, this is how much baryonic matter there should be. And it was like they were like less than 50%. They were like, where the hell is this? But like I said, I thought they already discovered that years ago. So I think that's probably science. The second one was grabbing me. I mean, AR is great, but I don't think anything is going to compare to closed purchasing and satisfaction and being in the store and trying it on. I think you get a lot of returns in any other way. So yeah, so I'll say that one's fiction.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #1 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, so we got a pretty good split. So I guess I'll take these in order. We'll start with number one. Scientists find evidence that the mass extinction, 359 million years ago, was caused by UV damage resulting from a collapse of the ozone layer. Jay, you think this one is the fiction? Everyone else thinks this one is science. So there were five mass extinctions in the history of the Earth, not including the current one we're in the middle of. One was caused by an asteroid impact six million years ago. We talked about that earlier in the show. Three were caused by volcanic eruptions, probably. And then there's the end Devonian extinction from 359 million years ago. And there's multiple theories as to what caused this. But there's a new study which says that it was UV damage from a collapsed ozone layer. This one is science.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I'm so glad. I was so nervous that you were going to be like, guys, there was no mass extinction 359 million years ago. Like that it was like one of those John Oliver things when he's talking about Luxembourg. And then he's like, you didn't even notice that's not Luxembourg.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' He wouldn't do that, though. He's not that nefarious.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' He could get us that way. That would be hilarious.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The mindf science, or fiction. I have to think about that. All right. Good idea, Cara.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Thanks Cara.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' You're welcome.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So what was the evidence? It was actually in spores in the rocks.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, not rocks. Spores in the rocks. Yes, I was right on the rocks.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Of course they're in rocks. But 359 million year old spores that showed two features. One was that they're very spiky, which they say was an indication of DNA damage from UV light.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Were they coronavirus spores?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And the other was that they were dark coloured, which they also attributed to UV radiation. So from this, and this is all at a particular, right at the extinction, that's when they found this feature. So it looks like corresponding to this mass extinction event, there was this dramatic increase in UV damage evidenced in the spores in the rocks. OK. So let's say, not proof, but it's evidence of that hypothesis. Then you guys were speculating, well, what would have caused the collapse of the ozone layer? And they don't know. That data, this data doesn't tell them. But it does correlate with a, so there was a ice age, like a drop in temperature, followed by a rapid period of global warming, leading up to the ozone collapse.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So it would have been greenhouse gases?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So the speculation is that was it the rapid warming that did it. Which, of course, would be very concerning, given what's currently happening.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, boy. Another thing we can look forward to. Thank you.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So again, that's a couple of dots you have to connect there. It's certainly not direct evidence of any of that. But there is pretty good evidence for the UV damage at that time. But again, though, putting the whole picture together is complicated. And that, I think, is one of the more complicated mass extinctions, the Andavonian one.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I wish it were a gamma ray burst.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Who knows? Maybe that triggered everything.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #2 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Let's go on. Number two. A new study of online clothes shopping using augmented reality showed higher purchase satisfaction than in-person shopping. Bob and Cara, you think this one is the fiction. Jay and Evan, you think this one is science. And this one is the fiction.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, Cara. High five.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So yeah.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It's not even fun.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Leave it to Cara to snuff it out. You totally nailed it, because it was actually they had lower satisfaction with the augmented reality. Because even when you can get the size correct using augmented reality, it doesn't tell you how it will fit. The fit is the thing. So augmented reality online shopping was better than regular online shopping.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right. I'm sure. Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But not better than in-person shopping. That was the part I made fiction. So it got you a little bit closer to in-person shopping, but there's still a huge difference.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But I bet you for furniture, it would be awesome.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, but this is for clothes. There's two things. One is the fit. So again, it's size/fit. And then this other thing, which nobody mentioned. What would be the other thing that it doesn't quite work?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Hang.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Feel.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' How it hangs.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' How close it is to the-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, the texture.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' The tactile.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Colour.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, colour. Interesting.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Because you can't really see the colour on your monitor, unless you use some colour matching software or whatever.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, god. Close enough.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But is it? That's the thing. You think, oh, yeah, I really like that blue. And then you get it's a different shade. I've had that where there's a slightly different shade of blue, and suddenly it looks terrible.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' You ordered that gold dress turned out to be blue.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Texture does matter. I actually want soft clothing. And so if I can't feel the fabric.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' A lot of that is the fit and the feel. So there's size, fit and feel, and then colour. Those are the features. So the AR basically fixed the size problem, because you could then virtually try it on and make sure you're getting the correct size. But you don't know if the cut. And this is something else I've run into, and sure you guys have run into as well. You get something that it's the correct size, but the cut is terrible. It's just like, ugh. And you can't really. So you know what people do when they buy online?<br />
<br />
'''C/E:''' They buy multiple sizes.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' They do bracket purchase.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Amazon does it where you could send it back without a problem.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, it's become.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, a lot of clothing companies.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So you guys say, "without a problem". But this is a massive source of inefficiency and waste.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Absolutely.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Think about all the clothes that are going back and forth in the mail, because people are buying three, four, five, six things to find the one that they really want. So they could try the one that they send us back.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' This is why Jorby Parker does such a smart thing, where they have a sampler box that's small. And it's easier with glasses, right? It doesn't take as much of a carbon footprint, because it's small. But you pick your top five choices, and they send you just the try-on pairs with no lenses in them. You try on of your five choices. Then you get to pick which one you want sent back.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' How can you see what you're looking at without the lenses?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That's a good idea.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, Catch 22.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right? It's smart. And then they'll mail you your fashion pair based on that. So then you don't have to go into the store to go glasses shopping, because that's not fun.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, so there's definitely a convenience to online shopping. But for clothes specifically, I don't know if it's ever going to really work, because it's never going to be a substitute for actually trying it on the physical object itself. And trying to do it leads to, again, this massive waste.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #3 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So all this means that astronomers have used a new technique to finally identify all the missing baryonic matter in the universe is science. Bob, I had the exact same reaction that you had. And I thought, I thought we already cracked that nut. So I looked it up, and yeah, there's a report from several years ago. We've finally identified all the... So I had to read the original article. And they mention all of that. But they say, yeah, but they didn't really visualize the baryonic matter. They were just inferring it indirectly. So what we were thinking of was a few years ago when they were imaging the hydrogen ions in intergalactic gas. And then from that, they had to infer how much total matter there would be. And it was also a limited observation. So they were extrapolating a lot from limited data. They were only looking at little parts of the universe and trying to extrapolate to the whole universe. So yeah, they had to model it and everything. It wasn't really good. But the authors of this study are claiming that this is the first time we've really visualized all the baryonic matter. And you know how they did it?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' How?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Fast radio bursts, FRBs.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Of course.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' No.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So you have to basically backlight this gaseous matter. So just to back up a little bit, so Bob is correct. Based upon the background microwave radiation, essentially the Big Bang, we can model how much baryonic matter there should be in the universe. And when we observe the universe, we only find initially like 50% of it. And then we got up to maybe 60% or 2 thirds. But that was it. We were somewhere between 60% and 70%. And that was it. We're missing 30 plus percent of the baryonic matter, which is itself only about 5% of all the stuff in the universe. But that's a different story. So but we figured it's got to be out there. It's not in the galaxies. You know, there are certainly intergalactic streams and clouds and structures of material. They would be very, very sparse. They estimate on average two atoms per average size room in your house, right? That's how diffuse is. And it's just hard to visualize.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Trixie.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, you need to backlight it somehow. And so that's these various studies have used different techniques. And again, this research reviewed like all the different techniques of sort of backlighting the matter to get a better estimate. But when you do that, you need to know the distance of your lighting source, right? Because you're basically calculating how much of that light is getting affected by the matter between the source and the observation. So different wavelengths of light will be slowed to different degrees by this intergalactic gas, right? So if you have a fast radio burst, which is very, very bright, very, very energetic, right? And you know how far away it is, you could then calculate how much matter it passed through to get here. And so the study looked at five different FRBs with a known source. We knew what galaxy they were coming from, right? The host galaxy.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' And they were repeaters? Were they the repeaters?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, that's one way to know, but there's two ways. There's two ways to know what's the host galaxy. One is that it's a repeater, which are rare. And two is that we were lucky enough to observe it with multiple different telescopes at the same time and then localize the host galaxy that way. So they present four new FRBs plus one old one. And because they're in different parts of the sky, we were able to look at five basically different pathways through the universe. So five different directions, right? So that gives us a good sort of estimate of how much stuff is out there between these FRB sources and the Earth. And when they run the calculations, bam, 100% of the baryonic matter that's supposed to be, that's predicted. They basically closed that gap to zero. And this is the most direct observation, the less sort of inference. So it's superior than the previous methods where they maybe prematurely claimed victory, at least according to these authors.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' What a cool usage of FRBs.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Right, yeah. Tell me about it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Cool, very nice, very nice.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I wonder if there's any ramifications to the discovery now that we know, or I guess like other calculations assumed the amount of baryonic matter that was in the universe, even if they hadn't discovered, haven't proved that it's out there. Say for example, the expansion of the universe, right? That would be impacted. So they probably just assumed, yeah, theory tells us this is how much baryonic matter there is. So we're just going to go with that number, even if we haven't quite found it yet.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, but it's good to know.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' But I just wonder if that will affect anything else.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' If they had to iterate any of their models.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, exactly.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Finding.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But they conclude this independent measurement is consistent with values derived from cosmic microwave background and from Big Bang nucleosynthesis.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Nucleosynthesis. Yeah, baby.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So very nice. Good job, Bob and Cara.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yay, Bob.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, so guys, don't forget, we have our Friday stream.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, I can't wait.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Friday, 5 p.m. Eastern time. We have a guest this week. I know it's too late.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' We do?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, we do. Brian Wecht. So it's too late for when the show comes out. But as I've said, first of all, these streams are hella fun. Everyone's really enjoying it. We're getting a good audience. George Hrab was on last week or two weeks ago. We have Brian on this week. So keep checking in. You may find some surprise guests joining us for these streams.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' We should have had a pandemic years ago.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That can be arranged.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh no.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I can arrange that.<br />
<br />
== Skeptical Quote of the Week <small>(1:50:32)</small> ==<br />
<br />
<!-- For the quote display, use block quote with no marks around quote followed by a long dash and the speaker's name, possibly with a reference. For the QoW in the recording, use quotation marks for when the Rogue actually reads the quote. --> <br />
<br />
<blockquote>I’m 13, so I don’t want to rush everything ... I’m still trying to figure it out, but I just want to focus on learning right now. That’s what I love to do.<br>– Jack Rico, youngest graduate in {{w|Fullerton College}} history, who earned 4 associates degrees simultaneously over the course of 2 years<ref name=rico/></blockquote><br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, Evan, give us the quote.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' "I'm 13, so I don't want to rush everything. I'm still trying to figure it out, but I just want to focus on learning right now. That's what I love to do." Word spoken by Jack Rico, the youngest graduate in Fullerton College history. He earned four associate's degrees simultaneously over the course of two years. Oh my gosh. His degrees are in social sciences, social behavior and self-development, arts and human expression and history. He earned the degrees in just two years at the college. He will be continuing his education at the University of Nevada. And point of fact, Fullerton College is the oldest community college and continuous operation in California. So well done, Jack, you're awesome.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' You said he was the youngest. You didn't say how old he is.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' 13. It was in the quote.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, did you say that? Shit, sorry.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, but what do you have done well on this week's Science or Fiction?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' No worse than me. Congratulations, Jack.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, thanks, Evan.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Thanks.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well thank you all for joining me this week.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Sure, man.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Thanks, Steve.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Thanks, Steve.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yep, we'll see you guys online on Friday.<br />
<br />
== Signoff/Announcements == <!-- if the signoff/announcements don't immediately follow the QoW or if the QoW comments take a few minutes, it would be appropriate to include a timestamp for when this part starts --><br />
<br />
'''S:''' —and until next week, this is your {{SGU}}. <!-- typically this is the last thing before the Outro --> <br />
<!-- and if ending from a live recording, add ''(applause)'' --> <br />
<br />
{{Outro664}}<br />
== Today I Learned ==<br />
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}}</div>Hearmepurrhttps://www.sgutranscripts.org/w/index.php?title=SGU_Episode_776&diff=19110SGU Episode 7762024-01-18T13:28:46Z<p>Hearmepurr: episode done</p>
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<div>{{Editing required<br />
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{{InfoBox <br />
|episodeNum = 776<br />
|episodeDate = {{month|5}} {{date|23}} 2020 <br />
|verified = <!-- leave blank until verified, then put a 'y'--><br />
|episodeIcon = <!-- use "File:" and file name for image on show notes page--><br />
|previous = 775 <br />
|next = 777 <br />
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|cara =y <!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
|jay =y <!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
|evan =y <!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
|perry =<!-- don’t delete from this infobox list, out of respect --><br />
|guest1 = DC: David Cheeseman, {{w|Certified Information Systems Security Professional|CISSP}}<br />
|qowText = Mathematical science shows what is. It is the language of unseen relations between things. But to use and apply that language, we must be able fully to appreciate, to feel, to seize the unseen, the unconscious.<br />
|qowAuthor = {{w|Ada Lovelace}}, early computer programmer<br />
|downloadLink = https://media.libsyn.com/media/skepticsguide/skepticast2020-05-23.mp3<br />
|forumLink = https://sguforums.org/index.php?topic=51929.0<br />
}}<!-- <br />
Note that you can put each Rogue’s infobox initials inside triple quotes to make the initials bold in the transcript. This is how the final statement from Steve is typed at the end of this transcript: '''S:''' —and until next week, this is your {{SGU}}.<br />
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== Introduction ==<br />
<br />
''Voice-over: You're listening to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.'' <br />
<br />
'''S:''' Hello and welcome to the {{SGU|link=y}}. Today is Wednesday, May 20<sup>th</sup>, 2020, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella... <br />
<br />
'''B:''' Hey, everybody!<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Cara Santa Maria... <br />
<br />
'''C:''' Howdy. <br />
<br />
'''S:''' Jay Novella... <br />
<br />
'''J:''' Hey guys. <br />
<br />
'''S:''' Evan Bernstein...<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Good evening, folks.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And we have a special guest rogue on the show this week, David Chaseman. David, welcome to The Skeptic's Guide.<br />
<br />
'''DC:''' Great to be here. It's an honour.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So, David, you're a patron of the SGU, and that's why you're here with us. But we were just talking before the show how it's amazing, like all of the people that we've had on the show, all of the guest rogues who are patrons, have been awesome. Like they're experts in something, right? So you are like a nuclear engineer or something, right?<br />
<br />
'''DC:''' Yeah. So I did two and a half years in the submarine Navy as a submarine officer, got qualified on two different reactor designs. So there was the S5W reactor design, which is what they use for training you on land before they put you in a boat that's designed to sink but could sink really far if you don't do things right. And then qualified on S9G, which is the reactor of choice for the Virginia class submarines. And I was actually based in Groton, Connecticut, right at your doorstep. So did that for about two and a half years, got medically disqualified. So I had to cross right into information professional, which does Navy networks, radio communications, and cryptography for basically to keep communications secure on the allied side, so the blue side. And so that's basically what I did. Did that for six years and then punched out to work for a couple startups, which is a serious games company and an AI company. So that's what I do now.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Wow. Very cool.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Where's my thorium reactor?<br />
<br />
'''DC:''' Actually, we may get to that later. Who knows?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. Actually, yeah. So you're going to be talking about some nuclear reactor news item later on in the news segment. So how has the COVID-19 pandemic been for your industry?<br />
<br />
'''DC:''' For the most part, we were really resilient to it. So our office was designed from the beginning to be like, actually, the first company that I started with was remote work from the start, which was a huge win for me in terms of quality of life. And then the second company that I got hired onto, and I work for both concurrently, is designed to be an in-office company, but I was grandfathered in as remote because I live in another state.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, nice.<br />
<br />
'''DC:''' So I'm very lucky and very fortunate that it didn't affect my life too much, and particularly my industry too much, at least within our company.<br />
<br />
== COVID-19 Update <small>(2:49)</small> == <br />
* [https://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/no-benefit-from-hydroxychloroquine-for-covid-19/ Neurologica: No Benefit from Hydroxychloroquine for COVID-19]<ref>[https://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/no-benefit-from-hydroxychloroquine-for-covid-19/ Neurologica: No Benefit from Hydroxychloroquine for COVID-19]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' So let's talk a little bit about COVID-19. We've been giving the update every week. We'll start with the numbers. We were just over 5 million cases worldwide, 329,000 deaths. It looks like we're going up by about a million cases a week now last couple of weeks.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' A million cases a week? You mean globally?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. Globally. Yeah, of course. In the U.S., we were at 92,000 deaths. Of course, this will be higher by the time the show comes out. There's a little bit of a downtrend, but I think we mentioned either last week or the week before that that's entirely because New York State peaked early and it's on the downward trend. If you factor out New York State, the rest of the U.S. is actually still on the increase. But at some point, we have to be getting to the other side of this first wave.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, the problem is now that we're reopening kind of across the country, a lot of experts are saying there's probably going to be a quick second wave just from all of the social distancing, relaxing.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Is it better to have that second wave come earlier or have it come later?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, it's not like, oh, a second wave is bound to come. Until we have a vaccine, this is going to keep happening. We're nowhere near herd immunity. As soon as you relax social distancing, more people are going to get sick. It's just how it works. And I wanted to correct, if that's okay, Steve, something that, because a few people reached out, or maybe not correct, but clarify, a few people reached out, because last week I made an offhand comment about, and I think this might be what the people who reached out were referring to, about the fact that there seems to be a correlation between states that are relaxing social distancing and obviously rates increasing and that a lot of those states are southern states or are more conservative states. I wasn't talking about individual people. I think across the board, the mentality on the show, we've sometimes been a little less careful when we say that people want to get back to work because of isolation fatigue, and that's where a lot of this drive is coming from. And we maybe might've made that seem like that was a partisan issue. Of course, people that are struggling financially across the political spectrum are ready to get back to work. The point I was making is that at a policy level, like at a state level, we're seeing that those are where the correlations are, not that individuals want to.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The other thing, I think, that we mentioned in that conversation was the fact that the protests are largely, they're like turf, what do you call that, astroturf kind of movement. They're not really-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Grassroots.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, I'm sure there are some people who are legitimate grassroots conspiracy theorists out there who are part of those protests, but we're not talking about just somebody who is pushing back against the idea of continued isolation because it's really financially killing them. We're talking about the people with guns and signs, having armed protests against the government. That those demonstrations-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, saying that this is a mark on their liberty.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, I mean, those demonstrations, we know that those are more orchestrated.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' They're making political statements for sure.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We were not trying to say that anybody who is questioning, like, how long do we have to do this lockdown while they're struggling financially, that it was somehow political or orchestrated or whatever, so just to clarify that. But we are getting into this transition phase now where we're having a serious conversation, and we do also get some pushback, which I think kind of misses pieces of our conversation about it's not all about just the science of the pandemic itself. We have to balance the effect on the economy because that will kill people too versus the effect of the COVID-19 itself. But here's the thing. No one is saying that we're just going to shut down indefinitely or even err on the side of shutting down. We want to carefully calibrate exactly how to shut down and how and when to open up where. There's good ways to do it and not good ways to do it. And again, I will reinforce, however, that nobody knows ultimately. We haven't been here before. This is the first time we're doing this. I don't think anybody could say that we have a clear map on exactly how to do this. We're feeling our way with just logic and evidence as best as we can, but without really the experience to know what the right thing to do is. So what I'm hearing that I think makes the most sense, and these are, I think, a lot of the recommendations coming from the CDC, et cetera, is that you want to use some kind of metric, like declining numbers of cases, hospital admissions, deaths over a period of time to say, OK, then we could start opening up. You open up gradually and you monitor what effect that's having. If the gradual opening up starts to cause another spike in cases, then you've got to shut down again. And then also continuing to use hand-washing, masks and social distancing while we're opening up. And then finally, we need testing and contact tracing in order to do targeted isolation. Atul Gawande wrote a good article about it because he's at Harvard. He said, listen, we have our process. The process is every day you have to indicate whether or not you're having any symptoms. You get your temperature tested. If you have anything, then you get tested for COVID-19 and you stay away from work until you test negative. If you're positive, then obviously you have it, then you're in isolation for whatever two weeks. So they are being very, very careful. We're doing very similar things at Yale as well. I get my temperature taken every time I walk into my clinic, for example. Everyone is wearing a mask. They're wiping down everything between every patient. We're going to be opening up our clinic next week because Connecticut is opening up. And I just got a big email, here's our protocol, this long, elaborate protocol about how we're going to do social distancing in the clinic, fewer patients, longer times, wiping down between every patient, et cetera. We're going to be doing more, continue to do telehealth for those that we can. It's a process. It's going back to business as usual before the pandemic. I can tell you- That's what we're talking about.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' You're a clinic. You're a medical facility where you obviously have the know-how, you have access to the tests, you have access to all of the necessary PPE. It's going to take time before a hair salon is able to do this. It can't all just be like everything just opens up on the same day and it's pandemonium. People are going to get sick.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, but I need a haircut.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I know, right?<br />
<br />
'''DC:''' One of the things that I think is going to be sort of a hard truth that we're going to have to accept is that regardless of what we end up doing in the long run until this is over, hindsight is always going to make it look like we did something wrong. There's always going to be families that think that we waited too long to reopen and people that lost their jobs because of it. There will also be people who lost family members that think that we should have kept the controls longer. Those people will exist at the same time. It'll always look like we did something wrong.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. And the sad thing is, we talked about this once on the show, I know, but we've gotten an email since asking if there's a name for this kind of like cognitive bias or this fallacy where basically you look, it's like Y2K, you look at a lack of things being worse and you say, oh look, it wasn't as bad as we thought it was going to be when really it's because of the actions that we're taking are preventing it from being worse.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But it's part of hindsight bias. You're looking for information that you didn't have initially, right?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But it's almost like it's hard to measure a lack of something, you know what I mean? So it's like people say, oh look, we didn't lose as many lives as we thought we were going to. So obviously we shouldn't have been that worried. And it's like, no, because we were worried, we did all the things we needed to do to prevent that loss of life.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Or you could say, or you could say, oh look, the model predicted 2 million dead and we only had 200,000. The models are inaccurate, like no, because you took steps based on the model, so then everything changes.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Exactly. Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So the other thing to point out, I think we mentioned this, but just to reinforce it, you know, a lot of economists as well as medical experts are saying opening up the economy to restarting the economy is not the overused metaphor. It's not like flipping on a switch. The whole point is people are not going to necessarily listen to what the government is saying if the government is pushing to open up too early. You have to make people feel safe. Even though it might be legal to go to the hairdresser, people still might not go because they don't want to die for their hairdo. So how do you make people feel confident? You have to actually decrease the numbers. It has to actually work. You can't just, you can't make the choice. You can't choose the economy over the pandemic because if the pandemic is still raging, people are not going to do things. They're not going to go out.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. And that's a big part. Also, the flip side of that is a big part of living in a free society where we have, you know, the right to choose. And we have a lot of these constitutional protections that take care of our privacy and our safety. I mean, I just recently watched a doc about Wuhan and about kind of the early stages in China. And because everybody there is on WeChat, the way that they reopened so quickly is that they have regions in the city that are barricaded with active police enforcement and people have to show a tag in their WeChat. So it's, this is like pure contract tracing. It's kind of amazing. You are either green, yellow, or red because based on your GPS status, they know when you've been within close proximity to somebody who tests positive within a certain period of time. And once that happens, you flip from green to yellow. And once you're yellow, you can't go certain places until you've quarantined for two more weeks. And then, but if you're actively test positive, then you're red. So your movements are affecting other people's movements. And the fact that they have this, like, what we think of as almost like scary black mirror, big brother, but that's how they can actually do such like brilliant tracing and prevent more infection. We don't really have that option in our society. And because of that, a lot of what we're doing is on the honour system.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, that's true. But we can also be done sort of at the workplace level which can be extremely effective. Another sort of significant update in the last week that I wrote about on Neurologica, there were actually four fairly large studies published of hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for COVID-19. And they were all negative. One of them was a actually a prospective controlled randomized trial, wasn't blinded, but it was randomized and controlled. And then the other three were retrospective, but they were large. So there were two, one in New York State, one in a center in New York City both with over 1,400 patients comparing hydroxychloroquine with and without azithromycin versus usual care. No benefit, none whatsoever for any of these four studies. In fact, if anything, there was a little bit of a trend negative, but it wasn't, nothing was statistically significant. But that is important because you can't even say, oh, if a bigger study would have shown a benefit. No, it's actually trending negative. So there wasn't even like a trend to it being helpful. And there was a meta-analysis of all the studies to date, also published. They're publishing like every week, they're updating the meta-analysis of all the published data about hydroxychloroquine. And again, negative. They're basically just no data that...<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And not just negative, but side effects too, right? Like not just negative.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Side effects and depletion of the supply.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. So depletion. So people that like for their lupus are having a harder time getting it. We know that it can cause dangerous heart arrhythmias in the extreme. Although I think that physician... These studies were not like people taking it at home. These were in hospitals.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So they're monitored.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And in some of the studies, people were stopped. They were taken off the drug because they had EKG changes. So of course, if they were not being monitored, they could have died as a side effect.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Sure.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's basically all risk, no benefit is what the data is showing at this point.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, and the thing is, there is a drug that is showing positive benefits. And so if our world leaders are going to double down on something, it's kind of a weird thing to put his money on, I think, because there actually is an antiviral that so far is showing some positive benefits.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, I think I know. That's the thing.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's weird.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But I said, here's all, it's remdesivir, by the way. Here's what all the politicians were saying. And here's what all the experts were saying. All the experts were like, we have to be cautious. We don't know. We have to study it. You should not take it outside of a controlled setting. Because when politicians put their nickel down, now they have something politically invested in it. And they can't just listen to the science. Now it's a politically, so essentially, whether or not hydroxychloroquine works for COVID-19, it's a 100% scientific question, but it was made into a political question. And that's bad. And now they're doubling down on it and tripling down on it when the evidence is coming back negative. Whereas the experts, they want it to work. Of course, it would be great if we had an effective drug that could save people's lives, get them off the ventilator. It would be huge. But it just, the evidence is negative. You have to call it like we see it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, when the outcome is life and death, why would you... That's the one time when you can't fall victim to this, like, oh, I'm never wrong. I'm just going to keep pushing. It's like, come on, guys.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Well, the conspiracy theories are flying now. I mean, people are actually believing.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, God, yes.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I actually said this to someone on Facebook, I have to admit.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, God, when's he going to learn?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Who are they, in quotes? Because it's like, they are making money off of these drugs and we can't trust them. And I'm like, who, the entire medical community? What's your premise here that you're being lied to about what specifically and who is benefiting from this? Because to me, it's so obviously just a rush to, who's the next president going to be? This is about getting elected. All the political nonsense that we're hearing is posturing for the next election. But the medical community-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It doesn't even make sense. The arguments don't make sense.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Of course not. They never do, Cara. The problem is that in this circumstance, unlike so many other circumstances, people are dying because of decisions that politicians are making. It's so obvious.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But it's like, if I were a conspiracy theorist, Jay, I would be like, what is Trump getting out of doubling down so hard on hydroxychloroquine? What's going on behind the scenes with that? And I'm not a conspiracy theorist, so I'm kind of like, I just think he's doubling down on not wanting to be wrong. I think that's all it is. But the truth is, if I were a conspiracy theorist, that would be the thing that I'd be sniffing around. I'm like, come on.<br />
<br />
'''DC:''' And one of the things is, I think that having worked with people in government offices before, they needed to have an answer of some kind, and they just latched onto the first one. So it happened to be hydroxychloroquine. And then, as Steve mentioned, it's really hard in politics to go back on your initial stance on something. So they put their nickel down, and then they hold it down. And then when they say they need to die, and they say, well, that nickel's fine.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's why you should put your nickel down on whatever the science says.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, that's right.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It's always your best bet.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It gives you so much flexibility, too, because if the evidence comes out wrong, it's like, well, the evidence is wrong, and I listen to the evidence. It's a get-out-of-jail-free card. But by putting your nickel down on an answer that, before we have it, you're setting yourself up for being wrong. <br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, gosh.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And that's what happened.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' History's replete with examples.<br />
<br />
'''DC:''' And for better or for worse, we have governors taking up that role where other offices may not be representing as well.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Agreed.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' If you're lucky enough to be in a state with a governor who is taking up that role.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Real quick, one other bit of news that came out that was interesting, CDC is now de-emphasizing catching COVID-19 from surfaces and stressing even more it's person-to-person. It seems like it's more of a person-to-person thing, and surfaces is not as involved as they once thought. It's still a risk, but not as a person-to-person.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Still wash your hands.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Wash your hands. Wear a face mask. Keep your distance.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I wouldn't change any of that stuff, right?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzNhaLUT520 Watch your kids. Watch your wife].<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But yeah, you don't have to irradiate your groceries.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Go into the decontamination booth I built at home.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. We're going to try to get through six news items, so let's push forward.<br />
<br />
== News Items ==<br />
<br />
=== Online Symptom Checkers <small>(20:05)</small> ===<br />
* [https://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/low-accuracy-in-online-symptom-checkers/ Neurologica: Low Accuracy in Online Symptom Checkers]<ref>[https://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/low-accuracy-in-online-symptom-checkers/ Neurologica: Low Accuracy in Online Symptom Checkers]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' Have you guys ever used an online symptom checker?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Sure.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' No, I haven't.<br />
<br />
'''DC:''' Seriously. That is a serious...<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I asked my wife, Jennifer, what's going on because she knows a lot about that stuff.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' She's your symptom checker?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah. She's my symptom checker.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So there are a number of them. Some of them are run by things like WebMD or even like the Mayo Clinic. You go in there. You enter your sex, your age, and then they have various ways that you can enter your symptoms from a list or sometimes even just free typing, describing your own symptoms. And then they give you a list of possible diagnoses.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And you always end up with cancer.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So there's a recent study where they looked at 27 different diagnostic sites, the symptom checkers, and to see how accurate they were. So they had like entered symptoms that were based on a known result, right? They knew what the disease they were going for. They entered the symptoms of that disease. And then they said, what list of diagnoses did the symptom checkers come up with? So I don't know if you guys read my article, but if you haven't, just guess what percentage of the time in the aggregate all on average, all of them together, what percentage of the time did they come up with the correct diagnosis as the top choice versus top three versus top 10?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Four foot one.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Steve, I read your article and I will still guess incorrectly. But it was extraordinarily low. They are accurate.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Top one, top three, top 10?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' 5%, 30%, 60%. That's really low. It might not be that bad.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You're a little pessimistic at the low end, but pretty good at the high end. So for the top one, it was 36% got it as the first diagnosis, which is actually not bad, I will say.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Good for a robot.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Getting the correct, it kind of depends on what diagnosis you put in there, but getting the top one, it's not even that important. It just has to be in the list of things that you're going to work up, right? Top three is kind of important there. It was 52%. And then here's the worst one. Top 10 was 58%. So it didn't improve that much.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, no.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. So that's the one that concerned me the most. I read 42% of the time the correct diagnosis was not even in the top 10. That means you missed it. You completely missed it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And were these like common things or were they rare things?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Both. It was both.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That's a whiff.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' BEri-beri.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I went on a few of these in preparation for my article and I gave myself various neurological diseases that I'm very familiar with, typed in the symptoms just to see how they did. For really common things, like when I said, all right, I have... Well, I said, okay, for one, I'm somebody with a cluster headache and I entered in symptoms of a cluster headache and their first diagnosis was migraine. The second one was cluster.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Okay. Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But there's not really much else that has those symptoms. That I was expecting. If it doesn't get this one, it's broken.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That was the control, basically.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Oh, yeah. Then I gave myself something slightly uncommon, myralgia parastetica, which is basically a pinched nerve in your thigh. Right? Not that big a deal. Total whiff. It wasn't even in the top 10. The first diagnosis was multiple sclerosis, which was not, given that I put my agent, was not even a good guess. That would not be number one on my list if I were coming up with a differential diagnosis. And it completely missed the actual diagnosis. But anyway, that's anecdotal. That kind of fits with what they were saying. I think that these numbers, however, are not surprising for a number of reasons which I'll get into in a second. Perhaps more concerning than that was the triage advice that these sites give. In other words, more important than telling you what you might have is telling you what to do. Like, should you go to the emergency room? Should you make an appointment with your primary care doctor? And there, the triage advice was deemed appropriate only 63% of the time.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oof. That's dangerous. And was it too much or too little? Was it more like false positive triage advice or false negative?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Because that would be dangerous.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. So it was more false positive. So they were sending a lot of people, they were erring on the side of sending people to the emergency room.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So what's the problem, Steve?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I guess that's still better.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But they did make both kinds of mistakes. It was just they made far more of that kind of mistake.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Well, Steve, what kind of systems are they using? Was it some sort of expert system?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's a good question. Every kind because they did 27 different ones. So actually, I'm sorry. Just to correct those numbers, overall, the triage advice was only accurate 49% of the time. It was 63, though, appropriately going to the emergency room and 30 for non-urgent. So it was much less accurate for non-urgent than for urgent care. But overall, it was 49%, so less than half. So Bob, some of the systems use AI and some don't. The ones that do use AI did much better than the ones that didn't.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Sure.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So that's a good question. So the range was 12% to 61% with the AIs more towards the 61% end of the spectrum. So the authors were pointing out the fact that, first of all, there's zero regulation for these things, right? Anyone could do this, put up their own symptom checker. There's no quality control.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Is there a difference, then, between like a Mayo Clinic and like a WebMD?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, you would expect so, but they're both kind of chumpy, actually, in my experience.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Interesting. OK.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So it's more whether or not the software itself was more sophisticated. So yeah, you would think that better institutions would have a better application, but that's not necessarily true. So there's a couple of technical variables in here. One is just the sophistication of the software itself, but the other is the information that's put into it. You know, who's maintaining it? Who are the experts that are putting in the data? And is it being kept up?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Garbage in, garbage out?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. Is it being kept up to date? So these systems are tricky. So here's the thing. So any clinician, anyone who's in the diagnosis business, knows exactly why these computer programs are doing so poorly, and that's because patients are terrible at communicating information. So one of the caveats when I was testing, it's like, I'm a physician who knows how to describe my symptoms, you know? So I would expect to do a lot better than somebody with the same thing who is not a clinician who is meant to maybe not know what words to use. And I tell you, people confuse words all the time. They call it, they call numbness, weakness, a weakness, numbness, things like that. But not only that patients come to you with a narrative about their own illness, right? They have no idea of what's going on with them about their history. And they give you totally biased information that's filtered through their own narratives that they already have. And that actually affects their memory. We've spoken about this in multiple ways on the show before, like the telescoping memory. And when you think A caused B, you bring them together in time. And they often answer questions relatively, like meaning, I'll say, well, how long have you had that headache? It's since the car accident. They don't tell me, they don't say three years. They've anchored it to an event that may be true. It may completely not be true. They may have decided six months later, maybe it was that accident. And then they remember it as being starting after the accident. So they are anchoring as well. But anyway, you've got to figure out what the patient's narrative of their disease. Then you have to ask them questions in multiple different ways to sort of deconstruct the objective facts from that narrative and then reconstruct it as best you can in a medical way. It's a very dynamic investigative process. And it takes a lot of insight into how people communicate, how they think. And you also have to individualize it throughout your therapeutic relationship with the patient. Trying to do that by typing symptoms into an algorithm, it doesn't work, right? It's just not going to happen. Now, if you have something really basic like carpal tunnel syndrome, then yeah, it should be able to do that. But otherwise, it would be really, really challenging to do it in this sort of dumb way that most of these algorithms do rather than the dynamic way that a clinician does.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Steve, do you think it would split somewhere down the middle if it were a lot of my doctors have these things where you can log in to see your test results and stuff. So it's like a secure and it's got your medical records all tied up. So let's say you were logged in and now they have access to your history and all your medical records and then the algorithm utilizes that. You think that that would probably really improve outcomes, right?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yes, it would. Absolutely. A couple other observations here. One is how do people use, why are people using symptom checkers? And I don't know. I'd like to see that data. But I do, what I can tell you is my experience as a physician, because people use me as their symptom checker, right?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Guilty.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Absolutely. Yeah. That's fine. And that's fine to do that. But what I'm talking about is why are they doing that? And my experience is people fall into three categories. One is just their people just want more information and they don't really have an agenda. They just want more information about something they're experiencing. But often people have one of two agendas. One is they're looking for permission not to go to the emergency room or not to seek medical attention.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yep.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You know, they're like, yeah, well, I ran it by Steve and he wasn't too concerned, so I'm not going to do anything, you know. They're basically looking for permission, you know. And then the second group are people who have health anxiety and are looking for stuff to be anxious about. You know what I mean?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And so like putting in benign symptoms and coming back with multiple sclerosis is not a good thing if you're on the anxious end of the spectrum. And that's something that you also have to figure out in the therapeutic interaction. Like what are people trying to get out of this interaction? And you have to calibrate to the patient. So but the other thing is, what would make this work optimally? You know, what could make it work, just technically work better? Forget about how it's being used. That's a separate question. I think the thing that we would need to do, I think the AI systems is the way to go. But we need to close the loop, meaning that you need to train the system so that you have at some time, there are some subset of patients who are inputting their symptoms. And then at some point, if they get an actual diagnosis, that is then being fed into the system. So it knows if it was accurate or not. Then it becomes like the mechanical Turk. Have you guys played with that? Whereas think of anyone in the universe, fiction or nonfiction. And then with a surprisingly few number of questions, it guesses who you're thinking of. But that's because it gets the feedback. It knows when it's correct and that information gets fed into the algorithm. That could work really well. So then-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I'm surprised they're not doing that now. Nobody's really doing that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So it's like, how do patients describe their symptoms when they have this entity? It's also, in medicine, you don't have to guess correct. You just need to have the correct answer somewhere in the top tier of possibilities that are above the line.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Top five.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. Whatever. Above the line where you're going to work it up. That's what really matters. And so it's actually easier. You want a differential diagnosis. I often tell this to medical students, what do you think is going on here? But I don't want you to tell me what the diagnosis is. I don't want you to guess the diagnosis. I want you to tell me all possible diagnoses, why you think it's more or less likely and what you think we should do. So that's where we need to get to with this. And this could work as an expert system, meaning providing information to a physician, not providing information to a patient other than triage, which is why I was actually more concerned about that being so inaccurate. So but yeah, I don't know that maybe it's happening out there somewhere. I'm just not aware of it. It wasn't tested in this study.<br />
<br />
'''DC:''' And the devil's advocate argument to kind of caution against that, or not caution against it, but to be mindful of is in AI, as was mentioned earlier, you kind of have sort of a crap in, crap out. And also, as mentioned earlier, some of these measures are completely subjective. And what that ends up being in AI terms is what, as I understand it, is called a noisy feature. And a noisy feature can sort of make it more difficult to predict what you are trying to predict. So some problems, just because of the data that is provided and how much noise there is in the different features can result in poor predictions in general. And what is, could also, though that's not a nail in the coffin for any particular piece of data. What is a trend in AI going on right now is trying to get away from what's known as black box AI, where you throw in data and it throws out a prediction, and that's it, and you don't get much information out of it. So, multiple AIs and AIs that provide some amount of explanation as to why they predicted things and, or how sure they are, can sort of provide a better sort of operator aid. So, a physician looks at a list of top 10, and then the top choice says, oh, by the way, I'm only about 25% certain at most of all of these things.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, that's exactly how, that's exactly how diagnoses works, and that's what I, that's what I'm saying. That's what an expert system should be producing. So, what we do in medicine is we have what we call predictive value, right? If a patient clutches their chest with a closed hand, what is the predictive value of that, that they're having a heart attack? We could put a number on that. I don't know off the top of my head what that number is, but that's you could put numbers on things like that. And it's not just test results. It's also how people describe their symptoms or what they do or how they look or whatever, if they have a certain demographic history, et cetera. So there basically would be two ways for the, for an AI diagnostic system like this to work. One would be just in programming it with, with data from research about signs and symptoms and their predictive values, and then the other would be the Mechanical Turk approach. You feed back, if you feed it back the accuracy of the answers that it was previously putting out and then it refines what it does based upon that feedback. And those two things are not mutually exclusive as far as I know. I mean, you could just use them together to make it more powerful. And but for a physician providing expert information, it absolutely has to say why it's saying what it's saying and what the error bars are. Again, remember, it doesn't have to give me an answer. It just has to give me a list of possibilities that I then explore, you know?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. The scary thing is like what you mentioned, it's, it's less about, oh, did I get the diagnosis right? Or is it based on these symptoms? Should I seek medical attention right away? And how do you give that kind of feedback? Like it's one thing to go back and say, hey, it was MS. It's another thing to go back and say, hey, if I hadn't gone in, I would have died. Like how do you quantify that?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. I think it would need to be done in a setting where you have experts who can feed it back the information that it can use to refine its recommendations.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So Steve, these programs could most definitely be the cause of people dying.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, yeah. Before the internet, people would get books at the bookstore that were symptom checkers, you know? So this is not new to the internet. You know, it's got to be this way. You have to be so careful. And that's why I'm very careful. Like when people ask me medical questions, I'm careful, very careful to first of all figure out what their agenda is and to not say anything that they can use in a way to make, to make poor decisions for themselves, you know? By the way, you know who did that to me all the time? Was Perry.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' In what way?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Perry was always looking for permission not to seek medical attention. And the "funniest" example of this, it's like scary funny, he literally calls me up like at midnight one night and it's like, Steve, I can't breathe when I lay down. You know? It's that bad?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's bad.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' He couldn't breathe. Like the guy couldn't breathe. So I don't need to, like I'll be fine, right? And literally, he literally would have been dead if he didn't go to the emergency room. You know, he would have gone to sleep and woken up dead, right? So I was like, Perry, go to the freaking emergency room right now. And he's like giving me pushback. Why did you call me? You know?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. To hear what he wanted to hear.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Because he knew. He knew he needed to go. He knew. But anyway, the real data I want to see is what's the effect of people using these things? And that's the hard real world data to get, but that's what I'd really like to see.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, right. Because if somebody...<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's hard to infer. It's hard to infer.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' If it says go to the ER and then they just don't, then there's also that. Like how do you even know?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Right. All right. Let's move on.<br />
<br />
=== Crewed Dragon <small>(37:32)</small> ===<br />
* [https://www.space.com/spacex-crew-dragon-demo-2-one-week.html Space.com: SpaceX just one week away from launching 1st astronauts on Crew Dragon for NASA]<ref>[https://www.space.com/spacex-crew-dragon-demo-2-one-week.html Space.com: SpaceX just one week away from launching 1st astronauts on Crew Dragon for NASA]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' Jay, you have some big news coming up about the crew dragon.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' You talking to me? I don't have a problem with you. You don't have to give me that attitude. All right. So I don't know about you guys. I have been waiting for this for a very, very long time. So we are, as we record this, we're one week away. So it's going to happen on May 27th that SpaceX will launch their first crewed flight. We're going to have two astronauts, two ASA astronauts, Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken, B-E-H-N-K-E-N. Right, Behnken? And Bob Behnken will be taking the crew dragon space capsule to the ISS. And they'll be riding on top of the Falcon 9 rocket. And this whole thing will launch from NASA's Space Kennedy Center in Florida. You know, just a little interesting fact. This one is for Bob. Bob, when was the last time the U.S. sent a crewed mission into outer space?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It was a decade ago.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' 2010?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' 2011. Good job. So this new mission is called Demo 2, and its primary function is to test the dragon capsule. They're going to... Now, we've tested it. They've tested the hell out of it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Wait. Then why did they call it Demo? Because it's the last crewed person on something called Demo?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. It's actually not technically even a mission. It's a test.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It's a test.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's the last test flight before the first crewed mission, which is later this year, we're hoping for.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So wait, does that mean they're going to come back?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' No, no. They'll go up.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It sounded like it's a test flight.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, they'll go up, and they can be anywhere from a month to six months up there. So NASA has paid SpaceX $2.6 billion for six crewed missions using the dragon capsule and Falcon 9. And by the time you hear this, the mission will have already been received and reviewed for flight readiness, which means that they're going through all those last minute checks. The astronauts have already been moved down to the space center. They go through all this rigmarole to the lead up to this, where things are pretty frantic, trying to make sure that all the systems are working, they had to make sure the astronauts aren't sick. But I thought we would take this opportunity to talk about the dragon capsule version 2 and why this is really a landmark situation that we have going here. So first, it's specifically designed to take people and cargo to and from low Earth orbit, and it has a max capacity of seven people. So seven astronauts or seven spacefaring people would be able to go into the capsule. In this particular mission, two people are going, and the capsule will only have a total of four seats for this particular mission that we're talking about. The capsule is considered partially reusable. So it's not as reusable as I initially thought, and I'm not even crystal clear on what the reusability is. I remember reading something that said that after 10 missions, they'd have to do a significant refurbishment. But I think that was hinging on the fact that the capsule would actually do a retro rocket landing, which it will not be doing. This one will definitely be splashing down in the ocean, which does incur more wear and tear on all the components. So I think that they're testing a lot of other systems, and they're not going to be using the landing, the actual powered landing on this one for real significant reasons. And I actually fear that it might not be a feature moving forward, but I'm not 100% sure on that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' They've gone back and forth on it for the capsules because, yeah, they said they were going to do it. They said, oh, now it's easier to splash down, but then it's a lot harder to reuse the capsules then.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Is it too risky?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' No, not more risky.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, it's just that the salt water and everything, it's just too expensive to refurbish them.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No, no, no. I mean, it's landing.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The dry landing. Yeah, the dry landing is just harder to do, you know? And so you either need to perfect the system for a dry landing, or you do the easier water landing. The reason for the dry landing is the reusability of the capsule. So I don't know. I think they're still sort of waffling on that.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' There is something just so epic about this spaceship having retractable landing gear. It strikes a chord in my science fiction soul. I just love it. I love the imagery. If you haven't seen it, you should look at some of the pictures or video of the testing of the retro rockets and everything. It's really, really cool. So the Dragon capsule has eight 16,000 pound thrust per Super Draco rocket engine, right? So there's eight of those engines. They're grouped in pairs. It has five observation windows, which is really cool. And I know a lot of you guys have seen the inside of the cockpit. The cockpit is freaking amazing. It's mostly touchscreen. There are analogue buttons and a joystick for critical functionality. But most of it is definitely touchscreen. There's a really cool center console. It has a very spacious feel and a futuristic look. I just absolutely think this thing is a work of art. So as of March of 2020, there are four Dragon capsules built right now. There's four of them built. I'm not exactly sure if all four are currently ready to be used. I know, of course, one of them is. But they say that there's four that are built. So they're probably in pre-mission shape because they outfit these things specifically for each mission. So astronauts that fly in the Dragon wear the custom space suit that I'm sure some of you have seen. These are the white ones. They have a completely different look than any other space suit that we've seen. These are specifically made per person, isn't like medium male, medium female. This is Frank's space suit. You know what I mean? And even-<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Custom.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Absolutely. Down to the millimetre.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Bespoke.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Even though the suits are meant to be worn inside the capsule and they're meant to work inside the capsule, there's a synergy between the suits and the spaceship, that the astronauts could actually have a full vacuum event happen, which is pretty scary. But the space suits can handle that, which is great to know. So they could be in outer space with these suits. I'm sure.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's a real advantage to space suits that they can handle that.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, they can handle space.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I like that. I like that in the space suit.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah. I mean, you could make it-<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Especially the hard vacuum.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah. The hard vacuum is scary. And that's the thing that you want to avoid, but it can happen, you know? Worse things have happened.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Hey, Jay, at the beginning, you said the price tag that NASA was paying for four missions, right?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Six missions. Six crewed missions.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Six missions. Six crewed missions was how much?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It was 2.6 billion.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' How do you compare to shuttle missions? Like is this cheaper or is it more expensive than the space shuttle was?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Oh, this is much cheaper than the space shuttle.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' The thing you got to keep in mind, Cara, is that I think SpaceX, if I'm correct, SpaceX is coming in as the least expensive of even all the new fleets that are being built. It's very affordable and they have such a wonderful reusability factor in a lot of their components. Hey, Cara, they have 3D printed stuff in these ships. We're talking state of the freaking art. Their technology is fantastic.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I don't really think 3D printing is state of the art.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' 3D prints in space, that's cool.<br />
<br />
'''DC:''' To put it into some perspective too, in terms of costs for other things in our government, $2.something billion is about the cost of one submarine and the United States has a fleet of 66 of them right now.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' And how long will the-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I love that military spending.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' And how long will the submarine last for the United States?<br />
<br />
'''DC:''' Actually quite a long time. They're about 30 year lifespans, so you spend a lot of money on crew. So the initial cost is basically nothing compared to the lifetime of the craft, but something to compare against.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That is interesting. Something that is terrestrial could be so much more, phenomenally more expensive than something that's going to go into outer space.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, it's not terrestrial.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It's leaving the earth.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's aquatic.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' You know what I mean.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's not on land.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It's normal conditions, even though it's going very deep. You're not leaving the earth. You're not strapping a rocket to your ass. You are strapping a nuclear reactor to your ass, though. Which would you rather?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. There are a lot of comparisons between going deep into- I mean, it's in many ways just as dangerous, just as unknown, just as whatever.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Jay, come on. Have you ever been in a submarine?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Well, not the good ones. I haven't been in the modern ones. I've been in the ones that are in museums.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I think I toured the Nautilus ones.<br />
<br />
'''DC:''' It feels like a floating office building that tilts every once in a while. You really can't tell that you're in a craft on the water. The only time that you can tell you're on the water at all is when you're on the surface, and that's where a submarine's basically like a floating hot dog. It doesn't have much stability, so you rock really bad on the surface.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But in order to go into one of these, don't you have to be trained, like really trained? You have to know how to do decompression. You have to know how to scuba, right? Deep.<br />
<br />
'''DC:''' No.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' You don't?<br />
<br />
'''DC:''' Ideally, if you are on a submarine, you will never have to swim.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No, ideally, you're right, but it's not always like that.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Close those screen doors.<br />
<br />
'''DC:''' I got to do an escape trainer. If your submarine lands on the bottom without imploding, there is an escape procedure, and about a third of people go through that escape training. It's a lot of fun.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' What? Wait, not everybody-<br />
<br />
'''E:''' So you're two miles down, and there's an escape plan for that?<br />
<br />
'''DC:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But not everybody gets trained on it? What happens if you actually have to escape?<br />
<br />
'''DC:''' Well, then you have the other people there that have been trained to get you along. So there's medical reasons that you can't put everybody through it, and one of them's really funny. It's basically, you're in this suit. It's not like an enclosed suit that's pressurized. So you hook up to this air hose while in this airlock, and then you let all the water in. But the water is at whatever pressure and whatever depth you're at. That then compresses the air that's going into this suit that is not pressure tight. So you are starting to breathe in all this compressed air, and then when you're ready to go up, you open the hatch, you release this, and then the air floods out of this suit. And because it's compressed, it's expanding as you go up. So you basically become this air rocket going straight up. And then while you're going up, because the air is decompressing as you go up, you also have to yell at the top of your lungs the entire time, because you're constantly expelling-<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, your lungs would explode.<br />
<br />
'''DC:''' Exactly. And so one thing that they found out while doing this sort of training is that while you're hooked up to this tube, that certain bodily fluids in your nasal cavity will carbonate effectively. And then when you decompress, they will decarbonate and shoot out of your nose all over the inside of the suit.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Awesome.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Amazing.<br />
<br />
'''DC:''' So a lot of people don't get to do it because they had a cold in the past couple weeks or something like that.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Whoa.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That sounds crazy.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' The truth is, if you go on a submarine, you get great food. They feed you very well, right? Isn't that true?<br />
<br />
'''DC:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That's what I've heard.<br />
<br />
'''DC:''' Yes, it is really, really good food. What's cool about the escape training too is the risk of going from, I think it's from like zero to, it's a 15 foot tank, but that 15 feet represents a doubling of the air volume in your lungs. And it's actually the most dangerous part of the traversal. So they keep it, they actually notate it on your record as an actual submarine escape. They don't make any distinction between a real one and a training one because the risks are the same, which is pretty cool.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So the only other two things I wanted to say was the Dragon Capsule has an emergency system to, if anything goes wrong during the launch, they can press a button. I don't know if there's an actual button, but it can be called home and the emergency system has been tested and it worked very, very well.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I remember that.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' What does that mean? It can be called home?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Well, like a program goes into effect, right, which kind of takes everything over and brings them safely back.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' How?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' They could be up 50, 60, 70, 80,000 feet. Something tragic could happen, something the rocket, the Falcon 9 can explode. The capsule has the capability to return back to the earth from that position.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, it separates and deploys its parachutes and comes down. Oh, it just comes back down.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Steve, didn't we talk about this? Doesn't it have to fire rockets as well and stuff? Like it has to do something to orient it and get it, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' To separate.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So that's important. That's important because other previous systems didn't work or weren't even in place. So Crew Dragon also has, and I think this one is like a no-duh, a fully autonomous docking system, which means that the computer can dock it to the ISS. They used to use the arm and the astronauts were flying it in and controlling things. Like why not just have computers do it? So I guess it's more complicated than I understood it to be, but now it can do that. So I'm psyched. This is awesome. This is groundbreaking. We're moving into a new level of technology for spaceflight. And I think most of us alive today will see spaceflight become very commonplace.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. So we'll give an update next week once it actually happens, hopefully.<br />
<br />
=== Robot Boots <small>(50:21)</small> ===<br />
* [https://theconversation.com/robo-boot-concept-promises-50-faster-running-134105 The Conversation: Robo-boot concept promises 50% faster running]<ref>[https://theconversation.com/robo-boot-concept-promises-50-faster-running-134105 The Conversation: Robo-boot concept promises 50% faster running]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, Bob, tell me about these Roboots or Robot Boots.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Hey, what are they all aboot?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Robo Boots.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Robo Boogie.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah. Researchers claim.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Shouldn't it be Roboots?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, but that sounds like you're rowing.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Robo Boot. I like Robo Boot or Robot Boot. So researchers claim their concept for a novel spring-based, human-powered Robo Boot could hopefully one day allow the fastest people to run 18 meters per second, or for the metric impaired, that's 40 miles an hour.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' What? No.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yes. This is so cool.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' How fast are the fastest people now?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' 24? 25?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' 12?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Miles an hour?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' 12.3 meters per second. So this is from David Braun, who's Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering, and his students at Vanderbilt's Center for Rehabilitation Engineering and Assistive Technology. So this research was also recently published in Science Advances. So for this item, of course, I saw Robo Boot in the title and I was already hooked like a fish. But this was genuinely a really fascinating topic. So human running. The fastest human can run, like I said, a little over 12 meters per second. So how can you dramatically increase that using only human power? Now you might think, well, hey, they got cutting-edge running shoes like Nike's Vaporfly. Have you heard of Nike's Vaporfly? It's a cutting-edge running shoe. It uses 4% less energy than standard running shoes. And actually, there was an Olympic medalist who recently ran, for the first time, a marathon under two hours, and he was wearing them. And that's cool and all, but shoes like this won't dramatically increase running speed ever. They aren't changing the physics of running. They will never match the best way that we've devised to increase running speed. Which way is that, guys? What have we done? What's the best way we create to dramatically increase, essentially, running speed?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Meth.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Lions, tigers, to chase people.<br />
<br />
'''j:''' The assist. I've seen the thing where you have like a...<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I guess it's a little bit of a stretch, but the common bicycle. That's basically what a bicycle is doing. It's making you move your body a lot faster using just purely human power.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Bob, that's not running.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That's how these researches equate it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No. It's a trick question.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' They compare it to a way to increase your running speed using nothing, no batteries, no technology. I mean, just something mechanical.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But Bob, isn't that because the precursor, they're saying to the modern bike, was a pedal-less bike that you ran on?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Really?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Like Fred Flintstone in his car or something?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' A wheeled hobby horse. Yes, exactly.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I love that.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' No.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' The first bike was called a hobby horse. It had no pedals. It had no gears. You could steer it by changing the direction of the front wheel. And the first bike bicycles were four wheels, really. But then the second generation was the two-wheeler. But even that did not increase your running speed. It supported your weight and things like that and helped you out a bit, but you could not go faster than that. You could not go faster than the fastest.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' But did it require less energy to go the same speed you would have gone?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' A little bit less energy. But keep in mind, I'm talking about running fast. I don't give a shit about anything else in this content.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' You brought up bicycles.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' No, no. I did bring up bicycles, and I did it for a really good reason, because bicycles increase your ability to move faster than anything that's ever been designed that's purely human-powered. So why? Why does a bike do that? Why does it offer that? Here, you're giving metal to a person and saying, here, go faster carrying this, and it works. So some of these are obvious.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Because you're overcoming friction to a huge degree, aren't you?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' To a certain extent. There's three big reasons. The wheels, obviously, are huge. You have a rolling motion with the wheels that prevents what they call collisional energy losses every time your foot impacts the ground. Every time your foot hits, it's jarring. It's friction. It's going to slow you down to a certain extent, and then you push off really fast. So the wheels help. The wheels also support your weight, which is really good, because if the bike is supporting your weight, then your legs can really just focus on moving fast and not supporting the actual body. So that's good. But the big thing, the most important thing about bikes that make them so awesome in making people move so fast is the pedals. It's all about the pedals. Because think about it. They allow you to supply energy continuously instead of intermittently only when your leg is on the ground. So think about that. When you run, every time your leg pushes off the ground, it does nothing for a while, right? It lifts off the ground. You kick off with one foot, it lifts off the ground, and it extends back up a little bit, and then you move it forward and then down until it hits the ground again, and then you push off. But all that time I just described, your leg is dead weight. It's not doing anything for you, and the pedal takes that away. The pedal, it's basically your foot's on the ground pushing all the time, all the time. That's why-<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Constant on the surface.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Right.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' All the time.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's why you can go farther and faster on an elliptical than when you're running?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Probably. It's the same concept, right?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' You're never taking your foot off. It's basically a large pedal.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Right. Right.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And of course, there's no impact and blah, blah, blah. But when you add that all together-<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Right. If you could-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's less energy to go the same speed.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Right. As long as you can get rid of that dead time when your feet are in the air, that's what makes the bike so good. The take home is that's why bikes can move you so fast, is because of the pedal. What else can you do besides a bicycle? What about the spring boot? You've all seen these cool spring boots, right? They have a curved piece of metal on the bottom, or some type of bouncy spring mechanism, right? And that increases your ability to leap, and it increases your stride length, and all that stuff. And so you would think, oh, that's got to let you run really, really fast too, or maybe in the future. But those aren't that great either, because that type of foot gear certainly makes it easier and maybe more efficient when you walk, or run, or leap, especially when you leap, because the spring absorbs some of the impact, and then gives some of it back to you, like a kangaroo. So it is helpful for making it a little bit more efficient. But the problem with springs though, and it should be obvious, is that they're still like natural running. You still have a very limited amount of contact time with the ground. And in fact, with the spring boots, you have even less contact time overall with the ground. So you can't even run as fast with the spring boots than a really good runner, a really well-trained runner can. So even spring boots aren't that great. <br />
<br />
'''C:''' What about those blades that amputees sometimes run on?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Same thing. Same exact idea.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So they can't run as fast? I always thought they ran faster.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' No, you can't run. It doesn't necessarily make you faster at running. And then this is what the focus is. Basically, when you ride a bike, your body is somehow tapping into this potential that lets you bike twice as fast as you run. So how can we tap into that potential without a bike? What other mechanism could do this? And this is what the researchers figured out. They wanted to augment running that lets you contribute all the time, just like with the bicycle pedals do. They wanted to have your legs being used to make you move fast as much as possible, not just when your foot hits the ground.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Foot bikes.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Foot bikes, yes. David Braun. So David Braun worked with his students at the Vanderbilt Center. And this is his quote, which encapsulates how this works. He said, using the RoboBoot, runners supply energy by compressing a spring with each leg while it's in the air. With each footstep, the spring releases its stored energy by pushing against the ground faster and stronger than the legs could otherwise do. So in effect then, your leg would be creating the running energy and storing it in a special variable stiffness spring while your leg is in the air, which would then be released by the spring when your foot hits the ground. So these springs then will offer many advantages of the bike then. The springs could support the body. They could minimize that collision energy as your foot hits the ground. But most importantly, like the pedals, they use leg energy for more than just when it touches the ground. So that's the idea. So going by their calculations, they show that if they could create an ideal RoboBoot, it would allow some people to use their legs 96% of the time, the step time they refer to it, 96% of the step time, to actually run faster than 20 meters per second or 44 miles an hour, which is considered the top speed in cycling. So if you had an idealized version of this RoboBoot, you could run as fast as a top cyclist is what they're saying. But when you try to get more down to earth and more realistic, it's more like 60% of the step time would be utilized. But still, we're talking 18 meters per second, which is essentially 50% faster than Usain Bolt in the 100 meter sprint. You would blow him out of the water, go 50% faster than him using this thing, even if it's only 60% efficient. Remember, this is all just human power. There's no engine, no batteries, no mini fusion engines inside. This is just people power.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Is this a concept or is an actual product?<br />
<br />
'''b:''' Well, that's a good segue into what we can expect to see from this. In the future, they hope to have the first RoboBoot prototype in about a year, which is actually better than five to 10 years. So they have it in a year. And of course, this will be like a version 1.0. But who knows? Over the course of many years, like bicycles have been developing since the 1800s, and they've been increasingly improved, improved, improved over each major change. And I think we could see the same thing for this if this actually pans out. So what could they be used for?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Running?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' The researchers say that this could be used for, yeah, good idea, search and rescue. Who would be running though? Search and rescue, first responders, law enforcement. We may even see, even in sports, imagine there could potentially be an Olympic event that involves this type of thing where people are running crazy fast. Imagine running as fast as a top bicyclist. I mean, that's incredibly fast.<br />
<br />
'''DC:''' Well, that's the one thing I was thinking about because at least with a bicycle, you have gyroscopic stability. Now I'm running two pogo sticks at 45 miles an hour.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Exactly. Yeah, you won't have that. So if you fall, yeah, it's going to hurt. Definitely going to hurt.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And can your legs even handle those?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's a good question.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I mean, is the difference that you just have a really long stride now, or is it that you're doing the same stride just twice as fast?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Well, I mean, I think your stride might be a little bit bigger, but the key is that your body can handle it when you're riding a bike. I think you can handle it using this mechanism. It's not like beyond human...<br />
<br />
'''C:''' You're sitting on a seat when you're riding a bike though. You're not like...<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Sometimes.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, I guess that's true. And also a lot of times when people ride bikes, they're not pedaling consistently. They coast in between.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That's true. And there are interesting differences. But the key difference with this RoboBoot is that you are generating the energy you need when your leg is in the air. And then as soon as your foot, as soon as the spring hits the ground, blam, you get a huge push off that you could never have gotten with just your legs because your foot's in contact with the ground for just a fraction of a second. So you can't build up a lot of energy that way. A lot of power, I guess, is the more accurate word.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I just see a lot of broken ankles and torn ACLs in the future of this device.<br />
<br />
'''DC:''' Yeah, me too. So I doubt it's going to be as ubiquitous as bicycles, but it will be entertaining to see somebody use it successfully and unsuccessfully.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, those YouTube videos will...<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Well, I think I came up with probably the way this year is going. I have another use for these things. Another potential future use of the RoboBoots could be running away from zombies, especially if they're the fast kind.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But here's my thing, Bob. I feel like this has a little bit of a weird purist vibe to it. Isn't something that's powered always going to be better? And I get it if you're talking about just running without technology. But if you're adding technology anyway, is there something more important about it being mechanical and not battery powered? I just don't understand why.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Well, then why are bikes still wired? If you don't...<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It doesn't require a power supply other than...<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Once you have it, that's it. You don't need anything else. You don't need to...<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, but we're not talking about...<br />
<br />
'''B:''' You don't need to buy fuel. Why are bikes...<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I don't think this is going to be ubiquitous. We're talking about specialized people using it.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Right, exactly.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So I'm pretty sure that cops, if there was a difference between a powered boot that was even better and an unpowered boot, that they would just use the powered boot.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Well, I think the researchers envision that this would be among the list of many different robot wearables, robotic wearables that could augment human performance. And who knows how this would fit in the ecosystem of powered systems. For sure. Who knows? Can't really predict right now.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Here you go, Bob.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It's a fascinating idea.<br />
<br />
'''DC:''' And there's a niche for everything. There's a niche for everything because New York City still has horsebacked policemen despite there being motorcycles and cars. So there may be some niche where...<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's just the idea that anybody would say, because it's a horse and it's not a car, it's somehow more important or better. I didn't really understand that because you kept driving home the idea that this is just human powered. It's like, so?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I mean, like I said, bikes are just human powered. And also think about the limitation, the biggest limitation of wearable powered systems is what? It's battery technology. And battery technology, slow incremental change. This is something that's always going to be a problem. If you're going to go somewhere and you're going to need to move fast in a human powered way because you're not going to have access to gas or batteries or anything, then this would be something that you would definitely want to do because you don't need anything extra except human power. You don't need gas or whatever.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I'm already looking 20 years into the future for this. You've got these for your legs. You build an assembly for your arms as well that will also reach the ground and you can use all four of your limbs to get yourself going on these things. You'll be cheetah speed at that point.<br />
<br />
'''DC:''' And the face plants will be extra special.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh yeah, they'll be great.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' You know, you've got your mouth guard, right?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' To relearn how to run.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I was thinking about that because that's one of the reasons why animals move so fast because they've got double the amount of time where the foot is on the ground helping push off. And that's one of the reasons why they can move so much faster than people because we just have two legs. We've got big forelegs, so four times the amount of surface interaction time, I guess you would call it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. So it's in the concept stage, not even in the prototype stage, so definitely keep an eye on it. See if anything comes to you.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' They say a year.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. It's one of those things that we may never hear of again.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' True. True.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But yeah, interesting concepts behind it.<br />
<br />
=== Small Modular Reactors <small>(1:04:59)</small> ===<br />
* [https://www.genewsroom.com/press-releases/us-department-energy-awards-two-advanced-reactor-projects-utilizing-bwrx-300-small GE: U.S. Department of Energy Awards Two Advanced Reactor Projects Utilizing the BWRX-300 Small Modular Reactor Design]<ref>[https://www.genewsroom.com/press-releases/us-department-energy-awards-two-advanced-reactor-projects-utilizing-bwrx-300-small GE: U.S. Department of Energy Awards Two Advanced Reactor Projects Utilizing the BWRX-300 Small Modular Reactor Design]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' David, tell us about, this is a technology I'm actually extremely excited about and it's very disappointing how little support that they get, but tell us about using artificial intelligence to control small modular nuclear reactors.<br />
<br />
'''DC:''' All right. So this initially started out as me reading a press release about GE, Hitachi, and MIT getting a grant from the Department of Energy through a program called Gemina, which is a sub-program under a broader program called ARPA-E. And the whole goal of these projects is to put investment into the energy infrastructure where there may not be incentive for private industry to do X, Y, or Z. It got started by the Bush administration and has been around ever since. Specifically, GE and MIT got grants to make digital twins of what they call the BWRX-300 reactor design. And that's a boiling water reactor based off of a larger version of it called the Economic Simplified Boiling Water Reactor. And what they want to do in this entire Gemina project is figure out ways to make nuclear energy more cost efficient in terms of an operations and maintenance perspective. So you have this big thermodynamic system. You've got hot, often pressurized water that is moving through metal pipes and going through pumps and going through valves that have mechanical seals and all this stuff. And there's all these things that you have to do to maintain that system, to keep it operational and to keep it safe. Normally, the way that things are done is you kind of just do routine checks. Like every quarter, you go to check the leak by on X, Y, Z, or double check the flow rate or check the resistance across this instrument, stuff like that. GE is going to use what they're calling their Humble AI project, which is AI that is given sort of the constraints of the real world. And there's some way to objectively determine if the AI is behaving predictably or if it's in sort of a context that it wouldn't perform optimally on. And if you detect it in that, it falls back to a more deterministic sort of fallback procedure in terms of maintenance schedules or safety procedures or whatever. It's going back to the whole idea of, at least from my perspective, of trying to peer into the black box of AI. It says that you should do X. Why should I do X? Oh, you're outside of your context. I'm just going to fall back to what we would normally do in this situation. Digital twin technology is them basically making very high accurate models, physical models of this in computer simulation to be able to train these AIs over timescales that couldn't be done in real life or in situations that wouldn't be safely or that you couldn't do safely in real life. I say that this started with me looking at this GE press release. I then backed out and looked at the Greater Gemini project. And there's nine total projects, two of which are kept between GE and MIT. And of those, five of the projects are doing digital twins. And two of them are doing AI or machine learning integration. And then one is doing something really crazy, which is moving away from sort of the normal maintenance concept of install it and then maintain it and do regular maintenance to keep it up. Moving to a model instead where you replace and refurbish something, which is kind of an interesting concept that needs to pan out. But it's very interesting to me because when I was in the nuclear Navy, we didn't have, we had computerized assistance, but for the most part, you still relied on the operator to be able to detect when there was some sort of plant condition that needed some sort of action. Pure automation from a computer standpoint was hard to accept in that industry. Because if your computer was set up wrong, it could go off on a haywire angle. And then if you have one accident, you could ruin the entire nuclear industry. Or in the case of the nuclear Navy, if you have one accident on a nuclear submarine, you could have the entire submarine fleet brought home all in the same day. So it's not desired to have any sort of accidents and to trust or to have your systems trustworthy and to have your people trained to properly operate everything. So I'm really excited about this because AI does have the potential, I believe, to be able to detect things like, say, you're watching the chemistry of your plant because steam systems and primary cooling systems have very tight pH windows because it's hot water moving through metal pipes. And so corrosion gets accelerated like crazy. So maybe this AI will better predict when you need to adjust pH and how often, and that will change through the lifetime of the plant. And as a result, you'll cut costs down while keeping the plant safe. Like that, to me, seems like a reasonable thing. But it's one of those things where it's sort of, you have all the cautions that you normally have with AI models. You have crap in, crap out, and general AI model design. But given the pedigree of the organizations, GE, who's been making nuclear reactors and systems like this for decades, and MIT, who also has a pedigree of nuclear research, I'm really, I'm more excited than cautiously optimistic about all this. So yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' What's the timeline look like for it?<br />
<br />
'''DC:''' I'm actually not too sure. The Gemina project did make its formal press release on the 13th. And they do have some white paper releases about that. But I'm not sure about the tenure of these grants. It's $27 million total. Again, GE and MIT got about $6.5 million, if I remember right. Then some general quick facts about small modular reactors.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. I was going to ask your opinion about them in general.<br />
<br />
'''DC:''' I'm really excited about them. So particularly the Boiling Water Reactor X300, the way that GE designed it was they were trying to cut costs down. So this ESBWR that they had done has all these parts and components that have already been through the NRC sort of regulatory structure. So the control rod mechanisms, the pumps certain valves, all that stuff have already been certified. So they're basically reusing those because they already know they work. They're reducing some of the costs by switching to a metal containment versus a concrete containment. And they're shrinking it down. So these things take up 90% less space. It's 300 megawatts in 10% of the space of 1.5 gigawatts.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Jay?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' No, I mean, there isn't a geek alive that won't laugh when they hear that.<br />
<br />
'''DC:''' And then they're designed to utilize what's called passive safety. In fact, the IAEA has a small modular reactor book that you can download that has 50 of these designs. And if you control F for the little part of the Excel sheet that says like what safety systems they use, pretty much every single one of them use passive safety. And that means literally every operator could walk out of the room and the reactor would either shut itself down or operate safely agnostic to operator error. So in particular, the boiler water reactor design is natural circulation driven. So there's no forced circulation. There's no pumps needed to operate the reactor.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So Homer Simpson could work at this reactor is what you're saying.<br />
<br />
'''DC:''' Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. And again, it's like it's 300 megawatts in 10% of the space. It's also much cheaper. They're trying to get under a particular capital cost bar that makes them competitive with natural gas. And then they're trying to get, again, under a cost per kilowatt hour operational to compete with natural gas as well as other renewables. But if this all excites you, you should definitely still get in touch with your congressman because this overall project, ARPA-E, they have a line by line budget that's put out by the Department of Energy. And while there is money being allocated to this kind of research, overall funding for these sort of researches into grid technology have been cut and disproportionately away from renewables and nuclear. If you have time and you're excited about this kind of research, please take some time and write your congressman about that kind of thing because these small modular reactors are really cool and could really innovate the nuclear field.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' And what's the byproduct?<br />
<br />
'''DC:'''The byproduct?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You mean waste?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, waste. I'm sorry.<br />
<br />
'''DC:''' That's actually something that I got excited about. I saw $90 million allocated to nuclear waste handling in the most recent Department of Energy budget request, which was kind of exciting, but it will produce some amount of waste. I'm not pretty clear on the details. Some reactors have waste that can be reprocessed and reused, especially the ones that were designed to develop plutonium and produce a lot of waste, but that waste could be used by other reactor designs. There's a whole separate conversation about that that could take for quite a bit of time.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, yeah. Just very, very quick. I've been reading a lot about that as well. There are cycles that they're experimenting with, nuclear cycles, where basically, again, there's no difference between nuclear waste and nuclear fuel. That's a relative designation. The only difference is what we can burn, right? If you can burn it, it's fuel. If you can't, it's waste. It all depends on what we can do. These newer reactors are definitely able to burn more thoroughly through the fuel and leave less waste. With reprocessing, they have reprocessing cycles, at least on paper now, that can take all of the long-term products, ones that take a million years, half-life, and get rid of them, basically, and burn them so that you're left with only the ones that last for hundreds of years, not millions of years. It's a complete game-changer in terms of nuclear waste, but we got to do it. We just got to do it.<br />
<br />
'''DC:''' Yep. To give you some perspective, as I mentioned before, we have 66 submarines by my last lookup active in the US Navy. Those submarines have reactors that are on the order of 200-some megawatts. We have 66 of those all around the world. I don't know how many civilian plants are still operational, but as I understand it, I think it's less than the number of military-deployed ones. The military-deployed ones we send to other countries, sometimes friendly, sometimes not friendly, and we let them tool around, not necessarily saying that we're there. We're comfortable with that at the government level, and I think we could be more comfortable with that in our own backyard if we're willing to put a nuclear reactor in, say, an ally's port.<br />
<br />
== Who's That Noisy? <small>(1:16:55)</small> ==<br />
* Answer to last week’s Noisy: {{w|Domesticated red fox|Pet Fox}} Steals Phone<ref>[https://www.boredpanda.com/fox-steals-phone-saveafox-rescue/ This Sneaky Fox Steals A Woman’s Phone, Runs Away While It’s Still Recording, Tries To Bury It]</ref><br />
<br />
'''J:''' All right, Jay, it's, who's that noisy time.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' All right, last week I played this noisy.<br />
<br />
[Cackling animal has taken someone's phone] <br />
<br />
All right, so I got like so many responses. It was really fun. This one, so many people got right, just like last week. I definitely need to turn up the difficulty starting after this one. So guys, do any of you have a guess before I go into the emails?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It sounds like a dog took someone's phone and ran away with it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It sounds like an animal. I don't know if it was a dog.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It was recorded. There's a painting of an animal or something.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, it could have been a fox.<br />
<br />
'''DC:''' I want to guess. Yeah, the chortling makes it sound like it's a fox.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Well, a listener named Dan B guessed, that sounds like a monkey that took off with a kid's smartphone.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Monkey phone.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, so you're in the right phylum, but that is not correct. Sarah Nash wrote in, Jay, hi, I am Maggie, age 11. I love your show. I think the noisy from last podcast was a dog named Daisy who was running from their owner with their phone in its mouth. While their owner yelled, Daisy, don't eat my phone. Don't you hurt my dog. Maggie, that is not correct, but thank you for writing in. You're closer. This thing is definitely more like a dog than it is like a monkey. So the winner from last week, the winner is Bill Woolverton. Bill said, pet fox steals girl's iPhone while it's recording and runs away from girl with it. That's what he wrote.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's a pet because she's named.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Pet fox?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Is it a Russian fox?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, then we can talk about Russian foxes.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yay. That's so cool. Yeah. They promote to keep the best pets.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So the founder of Save a Fox Rescue set her phone on the ground against a barrel to film a yoga video and her pet fox took the phone in its mouth and ran away. Now you can hear Dixie the fox laughing, literally laughing at her. Listen to this. [plays Noisy]<br />
<br />
'''B:''' What?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' He's excited. The fox, or she's excited. The fox is definitely excited and knew that it was doing something naughty, which is adorable. And this fox is trained and raised and all that. But it's still a wild animal. They're not domesticated.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, they are if this is from the Russian foxes. I wouldn't say that.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' You come with foxes.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It might not be, but a lot of, "pet foxes" do come from that experiment.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. Don't they cost like 20 grand or something?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' They're expensive, and they pee themselves constantly because they're so excited to have people that they can't control it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So did my puppy. I had a miniature, long-haired dachshund.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Murray! I miss Murray.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Took three years to potty train, and then even then had happy pee whenever he got excited.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, that's the thing.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Especially when he saw me.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, some dogs have that. Apparently, the vast majority of the Russian foxes have that, because it's just one of those things that, because it was a forced evolution, it's close enough to the gene or the alleles that it's what, I guess, very domestic animals do. They're just too excited.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That's nutty. So that was sent, the original Who's That Noisy was sent in by Christina Lynn. So, Christina, thank you. This was a lot of fun. The fox is adorable, and thus ends my adorable animal series. I had a mini adorable animal series.<br />
<br />
=== New Noisy <small>(1:20:44)</small> ===<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I have a new noisy for you guys this week. This was a noisy that was sent in by a listener named Damian Van Schneidel. God, Damian, don't be mad. Yeah, if I don't say your last name correctly. This one is really cool. So, this is one of those noisies. I'm warning you right now. It's a little sharp. You might call it loud.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's a little harsh.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, it's a little harsh. Throttle back. Ready? And here we go.<br />
<br />
[brief, vague description of Noisy]<br />
<br />
All right, so before the jokes come out, I'll say my own joke. That's the noise that happens before I fart in the house. There you go. So what I'd like you to do is, with as much information as you can, tell me what's happening in this sound. What is this associated with? What's happening? What's going on? And please email me at WTN@theskepticsguide.org if you heard something cool this week or if you think you know the answer.<br />
<br />
== Announcements <small>(1:21:45)</small> ==<br />
<br />
'''J:''' And Steve, did you know, Steve, that there's multiple things going on all at the same time around the world? <br />
<br />
'''S:''' Sure.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Right? So one of those things is NECSS, N-E-C-S-S.org. We're doing a live streaming conference this year because, oh the pandemic came to town, came everywhere, and we did not want to not have NECSS, so we decided to do a live stream. The list of speakers is almost complete. I will begin the marketing probably tomorrow. It will be on Facebook and other social media if you're interested, and I will give a full announcement next week of everything. We're doing great. I had a technology meeting with Ian today. The green screen is working, and everything is looking good.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's good to know.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yes. Things are good. We really know what we're doing this time. Oh, boy. They said it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' This time.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' The green screen is green.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I hope you're not setting us up there, Jay. All right. We're going to do one quick email.<br />
<br />
== Questions/Emails/Corrections/Follow-ups <small>(1:22:45)</small> ==<br />
<br />
=== Email #1: V.A. Shiva Ayyadurai misinformation ===<br />
<br />
<blockquote><p style="line-height:125%">Could you PLEASE talk about this MIT Ph.D. that has been spreading misinformation about COVID?! This is the description to his latest FB live: "Dr. Shiva LIVE: Hydroxychloroquine - How It Works, Benefits and Side Effects. Dr. Shiva Ayyadurai, MIT PhD in Biological Engineering, the Inventor of Email, world-renowned Systems Biologist, Innovator, Scientist will share the molecular systems biology of Hydroxycholorquine on how it works, its benefits and side effects." He also claims he invented email! - Gary W. Candido</p></blockquote><br />
<br />
'''S:''' This one comes from Gary Candido. Gary writes, "Could you please talk about this MIT PhD that has been spreading misinformation about COVID? This is the description to his latest Facebook live. Dr. Shiva live, hydroxychloroquine, how it works, benefits, and side effects. Dr. Shiva Ayyadurai, MIT PhD in biological engineering, the inventor of email, world-renowned systems biologist, innovator, scientist, will share the molecular systems biology of hydroxychloroquine on how it works, its benefits, and side effects." Right. This guy claims-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Wait, what? He invented email?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That he invented email. I had to check that claim out. What do you guys think? Do you guys know that Dr-<br />
<br />
'''DC:''' Low probability of that.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I would say not any one. How do you nail it down to one person?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Tell me the name again, Steve.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' An organization?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It just reminds me of Dr. Evil saying his father invented the question mark.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Dr. Shiva Ayyadurai. It's BS, right? It's totally BS. He claims that when he was 14, in 1978, he invented email. He wrote a email messaging system that was email.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Wait, what?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' He did do that. When he was 14, he did write an email program, but he didn't invent email. Email predated that. It goes back to the 1960s. It's very well documented. The history of email is all there. The person who is most credited with it is Ray Tomlinson, who came up with the at symbol, the idea that you have a person at a location. You know what I mean? All the elements that make up email were all in place by 1975 before this guy Shiva wrote his program in 1978. He didn't invent email. He actually sued TechDirt for pointing out that that's not true, that he did not invent email, and he lost that lawsuit.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' How did he lose it? How did he lose it?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' What do you mean, how did he lose it? Because he didn't freaking invent email.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Can you see that case? The judge is like, oh, wait, let me check. Let me Google it. Oh, no, you didn't invent it. You lose.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Right. That's basically it. You can't prove that what they're saying is wrong, basically. The judge didn't say you didn't invent email. He just said, you can't prove that what these people saying that you didn't invent email are wrong. That's kind of all they had to do. And whatever. It was their free speech and everything. Yeah, just ridiculous. So right there, his credibility is in the toilet, right? If you're claiming you invented email when you didn't, it's just ridiculous. But I watched this video that he's talking about, and he's just going over the potential molecular mechanisms of hydroxychloroquine, which here's the thing. This is like the typical basic science researcher mistake, is that they think because they understand something at a basic level, they could make clinical claims about it. And you can't, because how it might work on a biological systems perspective doesn't tell you if it actually works clinically. You need clinical evidence to tell you that. And the clinical evidence is negative. So this guy is like a Dunning-Kruger, all over the place. This is what happens when you have, this is where we talk about the Nobel Prize syndrome. If you have credentials in one area, and then your ego is just unchained, right? <br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, Linus Pauling.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, Linus Pauling is a good example. And so of course, I get most annoyed when the non-clinicians make clinical claims based upon their non-clinical knowledge, and they always embarrass themselves like this guy is, because they have no idea how to evaluate clinical evidence, because it's different. I don't care if we have some data about a potential mechanism. All it does is make it plausible. It means that we should study it clinically, which is what all the experts, including myself, were saying about it months ago. It's like, yeah, it's plausible. We should test it. It's been tested. It turns out, at least the evidence we have so far is really negative, which means it's very unlikely that there's a significant clinical effect that's being missed by this preliminary evidence. But he doesn't know how to think about the clinical evidence, because that's not his expertise. But yeah, the whole inventing email thing is like the icing on the cake. All right, let's move on to science or fiction.<br />
<br />
== Science or Fiction <small>(1:27:18)</small> ==<br />
{{SOFResults<br />
<br />
|fiction= baker's dozen <!--- short word or phrase representing the item ---><br />
|fiction2 = <!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
<br />
|science1 = presliced ban<!-- short word or phrase representing the item --><br />
|science2 = dyed brown<!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
|science3 = <!-- leave blank if absent --> <br />
<br />
|rogue1= David <!--- rogues in order of response ---><br />
|answer1=dyed brown <!--- short word or phrase representing the guess ---><br />
<br />
|rogue2=Bob<br />
|answer2=dyed brown<br />
<br />
|rogue3=Evan<br />
|answer3=dyed brown<br />
<br />
|rogue4=Jay <!-- delete/leave blank if absent --><br />
|answer4=baker's dozen <!-- delete/leave blank if absent --><br />
<br />
|rogue5= Cara <!-- delete/leave blank if absent --><br />
|answer5=baker's dozen <!-- delete/leave blank if absent --><br />
<br />
|host= Steve <!--- asker of the questions ---><br />
<!-- for the result options below, <br />
only put a 'y' next to one. --><br />
|sweep= <!-- all the Rogues guessed wrong --><br />
|clever= <!-- each item was guessed (Steve's preferred result) --><br />
|win= y <!-- at least one Rogue guessed wrong, but not them all --><br />
|swept= <!-- all the Rogues guessed right --><br />
<br />
}}<br />
''Voice-over: It's time for Science or Fiction.''<br />
<br />
<blockquote>'''Theme: Bread'''<br>'''Item #1:''' The U.S. Government banned presliced bread in 1943, but the ban lasted only several months due to widespread protest.<ref>[https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/569606/time-us-government-banned-sliced-bread Mental Floss: The Time the U.S. Government Banned Sliced Bread]</ref><br>'''Item #2:''' In the U.S., some products sold as wheat bread are just white bread dyed brown with caramel coloring.<ref>[https://healthyeating.sfgate.com/brown-bread-vs-whole-wheat-9104.html SF Gate: Brown Bread Vs. Whole Wheat]</ref><br>'''Item #3:''' A "baker's dozen" is 13, originally used as a marketing ploy, as 13 is prime and cannot be easily divided, encouraging purchase of the full "dozen."<ref>[https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/Bakers-dozen.html The meaning and origin of the expression: Baker's dozen]</ref></blockquote><br />
<br />
'''S:''' Each week I come up with three science news items or facts, two real and one fake, and then I challenge my panel of skeptics to tell me which one is the fake. We have a theme this week. The theme is based upon my latest pandemic hobby, baking bread.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, God.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's all about bread. Come on, you guys eat bread?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' We love bread. Oh, my gosh.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I have had it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, you've had bread.<br />
<br />
'''DC:''' I've ate it once, so I'm an expert about it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Exactly.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' You've had it with these questions, Cara?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I have.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So I made another loaf of the sourdough. It tasted great. It didn't really... It was kind of flat because I didn't have the right kind of pot to put it in. And then I made...<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, that's why.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, it's true. It rose nicely. It was very fluffy, but it just was... Because it's soft, the sourdough is very wet, so it will flatten out like a pancake if you don't keep it in a Dutch oven, which I don't have. So anyway...<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, you've got to get a Dutch oven. They're the best.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I know. I know. I need to get one. So today I made just regular Italian bread using yeast. God, it's so much easier.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And honestly, it's in some ways more useful, although you can do a lot with sourdough starter. Sourdough is a very particular taste.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, which I like, and it was very... It tasted great. The bread I baked today came out really good. We had one of the two loaves for dinner. It was great. But...<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So you made Italian bread. I mean, how good did it come out?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It was great. It was perfect. It tasted like any Italian bread you've ever had. But the thing is, though, the crust was pale. It didn't turn this golden brown. So now I'm troubleshooting how to fix that. And I've read some things... I didn't wash the top of it with anything. And sometimes I could put water on it, or milk, or yeah, whatever, to make it that little brown. So next time I'll... Yeah, egg. So those are the three I read about, water, milk, or egg. And they said, it depends on what you want, et cetera, et cetera. But next time I'll try it with a wash and see if I can get the outside to look a little bit more golden brown. So we'll see.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh yeah, it'll be beautiful.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's a whole technology skill set unto itself. So you just have to really just do it and figure it out as you go along.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Baking is science. It's like basic lab science.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, food science? Are you kidding?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But baking specifically, it's like a lot of the same skills that you learn when you're learning to do wet lab work.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Mm-hmm. Yeah. And the thing is, I follow recipes no problem, but this is more than following a recipe because there are some skills involved with it as well. A lot of it is, I think, the experience of doing it. Anyway, so for all of those reasons, we're talking about bread. So are you guys ready to hear the three items?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Let's do it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yep.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. Number one, the U.S. government banned pre-sliced bread in 1943, but the ban lasted only several months due to widespread protest. Item number two, in the U.S., some products sold as wheat bread are just white bread dyed brown with caramel colouring. And item number three, a baker's dozen is 13 originally as a marketing ploy, as 13 is prime and cannot be easily divided, encouraging purchase of the full dozen. All right, David, as our guest, you have the distinct honour of going coveted first position.<br />
<br />
=== David's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''DC:''' It is indeed an honour, and I will try to do my best based on all the times I critiqued you from my armchair doing poorly. So the first item about the U.S. government banning pre-sliced bread in 1943, but it obviously not lasting long because that's super convenient. That seems plausible just because I'm kind of curious as to whether or not the U.S. government did it at a federal level or a state level or something like that, and I can easily see like some...<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, I'll just clarify that. I'll clarify that it was the federal government, that the U.S. Federal government.<br />
<br />
'''DC:''' Yeah, it's the federal government. And that's around World War II era, so maybe it was a rationing thing and the fact that it was sliced as sort of an arbitrary metric, who knows. Going on to some products sold as wheat bread are just white bread dyed brown with caramel colouring. That sounds compelling because of standard narratives about how obviously somebody is doing that, but who knows. And then a baker 13 originally as a marketing ploy as 13 is prime number and cannot easily divide, encouraging more consumption. I believe that more because it seems like somebody or something that would happen upon accidentally and then would turn into a marketing strategy where somebody started selling a baker's dozen, noticed that they were selling more volume, and then they sort of worked backwards and figured out the process. I'm going to go with number two just because as being the fiction because I think the USDA or somebody else has some specific rules about what can and can't be called 'wheat bread", and that you can't depart from those without potentially getting in trouble with them. So number two, or sorry, the wheat bread that's just dyed that way, I believe is the fiction.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay, Bob.<br />
<br />
=== Bob's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Let's see. The pre-sliced bread makes sense that that could just be a money-saving during World War II. Number three, the baker's dozen. Yeah, I can go either way with this one. I could make sense at a lot of different angles. But yeah, I'm going to agree and say that number two, that the wheat bread, yeah, at first I was thinking that's exactly what those scumbags would do because there's so much false advertising and that kind of stuff. Even whole wheat, it isn't necessarily as helpful as you think it is. And they are strict. I think they're very strict. I don't think you could say wheat bread if it's just white with a little dye. I think there might be something critical that would need to be beyond just the caramel colouring. So I'll say that's fiction as well.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All righty, Evan?<br />
<br />
=== Evan's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Well, for a lot of the same reasons already expressed, I'm going to join the guys and agree that the wheat bread one is the fiction. I don't think you can get away with calling something wheat bread unless there's actually some percentage of wheat in there. And yeah, 1943, about that one, banning it. Yep, World War II, right in the middle of it, there were all sorts of rules about rationing and what you can and can't do. So that I can't – easy to believe that that's part of that. And then the baker's dozen marketing ploy, yes, I absolutely believe that that's right. So I'm with the guys so far.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All righty, Jay?<br />
<br />
=== Jay's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Am I the last one? No, Cara's going to be last.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' You forgot I exist. Thanks, Jay.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I don't know. Sometimes Bob sounds like you. All right, so the sliced bread ban during the war, I believe that is science. I have a little trickle in the back of my head of what the reasoning was. I'll move on. Oh, my God. The next one here, yeah, the wheat bread being sold as actually healthy bread that has a lot of fibre in it and whatnot, I completely think that one is science, that that is the truth. You would be amazed at what we can be lied to about with the labeling and marketing. They call it wheat bread. Well, what does that actually mean? What the freak does wheat bread actually mean? So it all comes down to what the rules are and what they can get away with. So I think that is science. I absolutely do not think that a baker's dozen had anything to do with as a marketing ploy here. And if the 13 is a prime and cannot be easily divided, nope, I don't believe that this one is a fiction.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay, so Jay's going to break from the group. Interesting. All right, Cara, you're last.<br />
<br />
=== Cara's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I'm with Jay. Then that's exactly what I was thinking. I think that wheat bread just in and of itself, I would not be surprised if this is bleached flour that then is re-dyed to look like it wasn't bleached flour. And I don't think wheat means anything. It's not a regulated term. The bread ban one, I still don't get. So I'm excited to hear the story, but it seems like it could have happened. I don't know if it had something to do with the war or rationing, or if it was more likely like the extra step of slicing it, there was some sort of like outbreak, like somebody got sick or something. So they thought, okay, if we ban slicing it, people won't get sick. I don't know. But yeah, maybe it's just easier for people. So they got mad about that. I can't believe there'd be widespread protests, but that's hilarious. But I guess it's true. And then the baker's dozen one, I guess the wives' tale that I always thought was that if there's just like extra that you can't make into another pack of 12, that bakers would throw them in as a bonus or something like that. And that's where it came from. It's probably not any of these things. But I feel like your explanation as a marketing ploy specifically with it being prime is like too specific. So I bet you it's something different. So I'm going with Jay.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #1 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All righty. So let's start with number one, since that's when you all agree with the US government banned pre sliced bread in 1943. But the ban lasted only several months due to widespread protest. You guys all think this one is science. And this one is science.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Steve, can I take a guess?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yes.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Again?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Why they were banned?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' You know, Steve I love-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That was not passive aggressive at all.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' You know, I love bread.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yes, I do.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' And I've come to realize that in these certain pockets, I have-<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Bread pockets.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I have good knowledge on certain things in certain pockets. Does this have to do with the wrapper on the bread and not the bread itself?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You're correct.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, what the hell.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So they're actually-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' They had to wrap it, right.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. You're correct, J. So sliced bread started around 1928, pre sliced bread. And it was a, again, it was a great thing. That's where the term that's the greatest thing since sliced bread comes from. Because it was a huge time saver.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It was a hit. It was a hit.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It was absolute hit. And it became within a couple of years, 80% of bread sold on the market was pre sliced. It was just really popular. But some somebody, and it's hard to know who, because it was so unpopular that nobody would take credit for it, that the federal government decided to ban it. It was a World War II thing. I told you, so David, you were correct to key in on that. So they were experimenting with a lot of things in World War II. And so the paraffin and the wax wrapping around bread, you need about twice as much for sliced bread as for not sliced bread to keep the sliced bread from drying out.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, right. Because this wasn't like plastic era.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, it was paraffin wrapping paper. And so they wanted to save paraffin by banning the sliced bread so that you could use less of it. It actually didn't even work. Even for that thing, it didn't work. But they didn't save, it saved very, very little paraffin. But also the idea was that they wanted the baker, bakeries to not raise their prices. And so it was a ploy to keep the price of bread down. So that, because that was regulated, but they were sort of charging a vig for the slicing and they wanted to get rid of that so that the price would be kept down. But actually it didn't really work there either. The thing that probably ended it was a letter to the editor of the New York Times on January 26th. This was from Sue Forrester of Fairfield, Connecticut.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, Sue.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And she was complaining on the behalf of the country's housewives. So that was the sign of the times there, Cara. And she basically was like, do you know how much freaking time I waste every day slicing bread? Are you kidding me? Plus, you know how hard it is to get a good bread knife in the middle of this war which was a legit point that no one had thought of.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, metal was precious.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So yeah, it only lasted a few months. It was so, it was massively unpopular. They got rid of it and nobody could even, would take credit for even doing it in the first place.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Wasn't me!<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #2 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Let's move to number two. In the US, some products sold as wheat bread are just white bread dyed brown with caramel colouring. So Jay and Cara think this one is science that, yep, some companies actually do that. The rest of the guys think that their regulations would have to keep companies from doing this. And this one is science.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I knew it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Good job, Jay and Cara.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. So the key word that's missing there, and this is all true, they do it. They dye the flour brown with caramel colouring.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Is it whole wheat, Steve?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's whole wheat.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Whole wheat. Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''DC:''' That's the regulated term.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's got to be in the, it's actually, you really, you have to look at the, every reference I said, you have to look at the ingredients. So if it's, in the first couple of ingredients, it needs to be some whole grain. And it has to say whole wheat or whole whatever the grain is, that is whole oat or rye or whatever. If it doesn't say that in the first, okay, if it's too far down, that means they threw a little bit in there. It's got to be one of the top ingredients. Then you're not really getting whole wheat bread or whole grain bread.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So if you ever see, if it says country bread or honey bread, that's bullshit. That is not, and the reason why I know this is because since my wife and I got together, she really got me to read food labels. Because she wants to, she wanted me to avoid what do you call it?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Trans fats and shit.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Trans fats. And you could, and you would be amazed in what foods, it's actually like, I think the list is going down a little bit now because food companies are starting to-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Aren't trans fats banned?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Some places, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' But so, but it's still, now I'm like after doing this for so long, I'm just like, I inherently do it. And I noticed like, man, there's no difference between this loaf of bread and Wonder Bread. There's no difference.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. It's pretty amazing. Sometimes you check like a cereal brand that's like health-oriented and you're like, this has the same amount of sugar as Lucky Charms.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Exactly. Exactly. It's all marketing. It's all marketing. So yeah, be to watch out for that. But there are some breads out there that are whole grains. I like the whole grain breads myself.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I'm sure it tastes better.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Once you make the switch, once you switch over, it tastes so much better. It's just a better bread.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It does. Yeah. I like whole wheat, everything. I like wheat, pasta, whole I like it all.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Now you've gone too far my friend.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But it's good. It's hearty. It's hearty.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No, it's got more of a depth of flavor. I agree.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, absolutely.<br />
<br />
'''DC:''' I still love Wonder Bread nostalgia trips every once in a while though.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I mean, white bread's fine. I remember sometimes seeing like the brown bread and thinking, God, this is not freaking whole grain bread. This is it's brown, but what is this? This is like white bread.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Steve, can I guess the last one? Because this is the one I really think I know.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yes. But let me read it.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #3 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' A baker's dozen is 13. Originally, as a marketing employee, 13 is prime. It cannot be easily divided. Encouraging purchase of the full dozen. That is fiction. I completely made that up. So what is the real reason, Jay?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So this has everything to do with medieval bakers not wanting to break the law or get in trouble because there was something about like the loaf size. You know how like today when you go buy a box of cereal and you're like, did I get bigger or did this cereal box actually get smaller? Right? You ever have that happen to you? Cereal boxes are thinner. They're thinner today than they were. So they're ripping you off by-<br />
<br />
'''E:''' You get less product.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, less product. About 20% less product for the same price. So this is what was happening back then is that bakers were making loaves of bread smaller and then saying, here's a dozen loaves of bread. And it's like, yeah, but this is the equivalent of three loaves of bread. You know what I mean? So what they would do is they would give you 13 loaves of bread instead of 12 saying, I'm giving you an extra loaf of bread just to make sure that they're giving you enough bread so they don't get in trouble. Is that correct?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So you're close. Yeah. So it was in medieval England when this rule came out. And essentially, to prevent bakers from shortchanging their customers, they were statutes that regulated the weight of the bread being sold. So if a dozen rolls or a dozen loaves had to weigh a certain amount, and if it weighed less than that, you could be fined. But of course, there's variability in exactly how big and how much things weigh.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Did they have scales in medieval? Was every baker using a scale?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' They had scales. They had scales.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Seems like it would be expensive.<br />
<br />
'''DC:''' Did it weigh as much as a duck?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, exactly. That's what I was thinking. It was like a standard.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' If you threw in an extra whatever loaf or roll, that was a hedge against coming in just under the weight. So that's a way for the baker to make sure they don't get fined because they're over the weight of a dozen because they threw in an extra in case a couple of their loaves were a little light. And it's not necessarily 13. It could be 14. It could be 15, although usually, it's 13.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Well, like sliced bread, people took that really seriously. It was a big deal. Because today, for most people, a couple of slices of bread out of a loaf is not that big of a deal. I complain about cereal.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Oh, that was life. That was the big deal. Apparently, this started with in 1266, Henry III revived an ancient statute regulating the price of bread. So that's where it goes back to.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Now, how cool is that? This idea of a baker's dozen lasted. It's in our, what do you call it, Steve? The unconscious-<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Vernacular. It's like almost 800 years later. It's still there. There were some other cool things when I was researching this. So you know the word for lord and lady mean bread? So a lord was like the bread ward, and the lady was the bread maker. That's what those words derive from in Old English. Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Wait, so she made the bread, and he just like-<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Her servants made the bread, and he distributed the bread.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Steve, you want to know, you want to hear something that's even cooler than that?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Cara and I won this week. Cara, high five.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You did.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Hells yeah. Woo-hoo!<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Good job, guys. All right, Evan, give us a quote.<br />
<br />
== Skeptical Quote of the Week <small>(1:46:10)</small> ==<br />
<br />
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<br />
<blockquote>Mathematical science shows what is. It is the language of unseen relations between things. But to use and apply that language, we must be able fully to appreciate, to feel, to seize the unseen, the unconscious. <br>– {{w|Ada Lovelace}} (1815-1852), English mathematician and writer, chiefly known for her work on Charles Babbage's proposed mechanical general-purpose computer, the Analytical Engine.<!--also from show notes, but left out in case Evan reads this part: "She was the first to recognize that the machine had applications beyond pure calculation, and published the first algorithm intended to be carried out by such a machine. As a result, she is widely regarded as the first to recognize the full potential of computers and one of the first computer programmers."--></blockquote><br />
<br />
'''E:''' So before I give you the quote, I just wanted to give a little shout out because I was featured on another podcast called the TWA Family Hour Podcast. TWA stands for The Word Alive. The Word Alive is a band, a metalcore band, one of my daughter Rachel's favorite bands. We went to see them. They performed in New Haven. This was back pre-COVID, just before it all happened. And as part of the experience, we got a meet and greet with them, which turned out to be a podcast. They started this podcast just recently, just shortly after that. It turned into Skeptics Guide meets metal music kind of show. And they did a really nice thing in which they have titled the episode in New Haven, Connecticut with Evan from the Skeptics Guide to the Universe.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Aw.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That was very nice of them to promote that for us. Thank you. We will promote you, our friends at The Word Alive, Zach, Tony, Telly, and Matt. Thank you so much. And you should check them out as well, The Word Alive and the TWA Family Hour Podcast. And now the quote. "Mathematical science shows what is. It is the language of unseen relations between things. But to use and apply that language, we must be able to fully appreciate, to feel, to seize the unseen, the unconscious." And that was written by Ada Lovelace.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' One of our forgotten superheroes.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, definitely. We're talking her. She was born in 1850 and died in 1852. Was an English mathematician and writer. She was chiefly known for her work on Charles Babbage's proposed mechanical general purpose computer, the analytical engine. She's widely regarded as the first to recognize the full potential of computers and one of the first computer programmers. So cool.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That is amazing. You know, you think about it, there was something like a computer in the 1800s.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Right. Just even the idea of a computer in the 1800s. I mean, beyond an abacus is just remarkable.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And also that a woman was the one who, like in a time when women could do very little in society that were "man's roles". I mean, that's like a really, really big deal.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Right. And beyond that, what always impressed me is that she saw the implications of what the technology could potentially accomplish before pretty much everybody.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I'd love to bring her to the modern day and have her see what has become of Babbage's new machines.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I knew it! I knew it!<br />
<br />
'''E:''' What would she do? Yes, in the 21st century. Oh my gosh. She'd be so happy and she would blossom even more.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Hey David, I want to thank you so much for being a patron of the SGU. We really appreciate it.<br />
<br />
'''DC:''' Yeah, it's definitely an honour to come on the show. If I can, real quick, I'll give a quick shout out to a couple of my skeptical heroes. My mom and dad. My dad mainly because he got me skeptical by telling me that I wouldn't be able to drive until I was 35. My husband, Mikey Campion, who's love him to death. And one of my favorite professors, Liz Bradley, over at the University of Colorado Boulder. Really, really great professor in the computer science department out there.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Awesome. Well, it's been great having you on the show, David. Thanks for doing that.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' This was fun, David.<br />
<br />
'''DC:''' Yeah, it was definitely a lot of fun for me too.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Good job, man. Great.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, you rocked.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And thank the rest of you for joining me again this week.<br />
<br />
'''C/E:''' Thanks, Doc.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' You got it, man.<br />
<br />
== Signoff/Announcements == <!-- if the signoff/announcements don't immediately follow the QoW or if the QoW comments take a few minutes, it would be appropriate to include a timestamp for when this part starts --><br />
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'''S:''' —and until next week, this is your {{SGU}}. <!-- typically this is the last thing before the Outro --> <br />
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{{Outro664}}<br />
== Today I Learned ==<br />
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== References ==<br />
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=== Vocabulary ===<br />
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}}</div>Hearmepurrhttps://www.sgutranscripts.org/w/index.php?title=SGU_Episode_808&diff=19109SGU Episode 8082024-01-17T13:27:53Z<p>Hearmepurr: episode done</p>
<hr />
<div>{{Editing required<br />
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{{InfoBox <br />
|episodeNum = 808<br />
|episodeDate = {{month|1}} {{date|2}} 2021<br />
|pastpredictions=<br />
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|qowText = You are modern humans of the civilized world. And modern humans rise beyond all laws and superstitions of the society. They help their fellow beings to rise from the ashes of ignorance, illusion and fear.<br />
|qowAuthor = Abhijit Naskar, neuroscientist <ref name=naskar>[https://naskarism.wordpress.com Wordpress: Abhijit Naskar]</ref><br />
|downloadLink = {{DownloadLink|2021-01-02}}<br />
<br />
|forumLink = https://sguforums.org/index.php?topic=53131.0<br />
}}<br />
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== Introduction ==<br />
<br />
''Voice-over: You're listening to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.'' <br />
<br />
'''S:''' Hello and welcome to the {{SGU|link=y}}. Today is Tuesday, December 29<sup>th</sup>, 2020, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella... <br />
<br />
'''B:''' Hey, everybody!<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Cara Santa Maria... <br />
<br />
'''C:''' Howdy. <br />
<br />
'''S:''' Jay Novella... <br />
<br />
'''J:''' Hey guys. <br />
<br />
'''S:''' ...and Evan Bernstein. <br />
<br />
'''E:''' Goodbye 2020.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. So we're all still stuck in 2020 back here at December 29th, but this is the first show of 2021 because it will be airing in January, January 2nd. So this is going to be our first episode of 2021. Our listeners are so lucky. They're already there.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. Seriously.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Future you. So jealous.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So did you guys survive your holiday shenanigans?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah. It was fine.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' No, I did not.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' This is the ghost of Bob.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Thought I would, but I didn't.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It was good. We did our pandemic Christmas where we had limited get-togethers smaller groups. We didn't eat together. We just sort of waved from across the room kind of thing. It was still good. It was good to have whatever social contact we could. But I keep telling everybody, we're almost there. Just buckle down until we get this damn vaccine, and then life can start to creep back to normal. Now we made it through the year. Now is not the time to drop your guard and screw up. I know. Imagine that. I mean, I'm kind of proud of the fact that I got my whole family through this without anyone catching COVID.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Knock wood.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And I would hate for that to happen right at the end, you know?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Right. Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Definitely.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I like to think I saved mom's life, though, because every time she said, Bob, Bob, come on. Let's go to Costco. Let's go to Costco. I gotta go to Costco, Bob. Like, mom, it's the height of the pandemic. She's like, come on. We'll be quick. We're not going.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Good for you, Bob. Protect your loved ones, please. And I hope the new strain of COVID is not going to put a damper on things for our recovery.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, we'll talk about that in the show. I'm going to do a deep dive on that bad boy.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Okay.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' No spoilers now.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. But I don't know. It's been a little frustrating, I have to admit, to see how many people are like, screw it. I'm just going to jump on a plane and go visit my family.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, boy.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And how many people really are just throwing the rule book out because somehow, I guess, biology doesn't apply during the holidays. But yeah, now more than ever is when we need to be vigilant.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I know. But the fatigue is, it wears on people. It just does.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It must be tough for you guys on the East Coast, though, where you can't really be spending much time outside.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Oh, yeah. It's been hit or miss. Like, the weather's been hot and cold, even though it's winter. It's weird how much the weather has changed. But yeah, it sucks because we had a lot of people, like friends, come over when we were like 15 feet apart on my patio, or my deck, rather, and that's out. And I hate doing, I can't stand video conferencing people. I just feel like, it just makes me more aggravated.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But it's the only thing you've got right now.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I know. I know.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So do you just not do it?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I do it, but I don't like it because I just don't, especially the more people, the harder it is to communicate.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, for sure. Yeah. It's easier if you keep it small. Or if you just go with it and say, this is crazy, we're just going to have a ton of people.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Basically, by June, we should be at herd immunity, hopefully, assuming that people are compliant enough. The other thing to point out is and the World Health Organization recently made this point, that the COVID-19 is probably not the worst pandemic we're going to get this century. This is really a dry run for the big bad one that's probably still coming.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's much more, like, fatal. And maybe even more contagious.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I mean, on the range of potential properties of a pandemic virus, this is not at the bad end of the spectrum. Not even close. But this is good sort of wake-up call to say, all right, what are our plans? What is our infrastructure to deal with a really serious pandemic? And I think part of that is public education. I think also part of that is getting our political shit together. We're not going to survive if we can't get our crap together. That's just the bottom line.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I agree.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The world is too unforgiving now for a dysfunctional political environment like we have.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Absolutely.<br />
<br />
== Psychic Predictions for 2020 <small>(4:43)</small> ==<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. But let's get serious, guys. Let's talk about psychic predictions.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yes. Come on.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So this is mainly for fun, where we like to look back over what psychics predicted and didn't predict for 2020. And we like to make a few points that, first of all, obviously, we don't believe that psychics are real. There's no evidence that ESP is real. The idea that you can see the future is a violation of causality, cause and effect. And so it's basically impossible. And of course, it's not surprising that self-proclaimed mediums and psychics or whatever, whatever mechanism they're using, whether it's tarot cards or astrology or numerology, asparagus, assology, whatever their mechanism, is that their performance is indistinguishable from either random guessing, at best. At best, they do random guessing. At worst, they're actually worse than random guessing. They're just saying stuff to be entertaining, like to be for the shock value.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Or extrapolation.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, yeah, but there are a few methods that they use to try to make it seem like they're more accurate than they are. And we'll give examples of all of these things. So one is shotgunning. Just make a bunch of predictions and then tout the ones that were correct after the fact. The other one is the vague prediction that gives way more wiggle room than it may seem. This is very common, even in a personal reading. Like someone says, oh, I see a red door. And it seems like a very specific prediction, but actually it's so common that almost everybody will find meaning for it. Or I see an older person in uniform. It sounds really specific, but it's very, very vague. Or they make predictions that are high probability, like there's going to be an earthquake. And yeah, there's hundreds of earthquakes, thousands of earthquakes a year. So again, people don't realize how high probability. One of my favorite is, oh, I see an airplane and there's red in the tail. Yeah, like 60% or something of airlines have red in their logo. But if you don't know the—so part of it is that they know statistics that the general public may not know, like how frequent names are or whatever. And so they can make high probability or shotgunning or very vague with plenty of wiggle room kind of predictions. And then they make the—and then they use post hoc analysis or really to just encourage the people that are the target of their predictions to do all the heavy lifting in terms of making the connections and engaging in the cognitive errors and the logical fallacies to make it seem more impressive than it is. But one way to poke a hole into all of this is just to track the predictions and see somewhat more objectively how they did. And again, no one performs in such a way that it requires an extraordinary explanation other than random guessing and a little showmanship. So I reviewed a number of psychics to see how they did. So one thing I did was look at as many different psychics who made predictions about the 2020 election, because usually in years where there's like a big presidential election, everyone makes their predictions. And of course, any one person's going to be random, you know. But I sort of counted up how they did in the aggregate. Almost no one that I looked at predicted that Joe Biden would win.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Really?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' These are only counting ones that were made prior to 2020. So remember, this is prior to the primaries. So most of them either said Trump will win or Trump will lose without naming who he was going to lose to. And most of them, it was like 80 to 90 percent said Trump was going to win. So just—<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, I see. You're saying most of the psychics either said he would win or he would lose, not most of the psychics said he would win or lose.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Because that's a much easier guess to make when you have an incumbent running for re-election. That raises your odds tremendously. Whereas if you had each candidate running primary campaigns, that's a lot harder to predict in December for the coming year.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. So Trump, it was a coin flip, except one psychic managed to predict that Trump would not run in 2020. So they did worse.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, awesome.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, well, that would be—<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But most said that Trump would win. So they just in the aggregate did horribly. And then in terms of like on the Democratic side, most said that Elizabeth Warren was going to get nominated. There were a lot of Michelle Obamas for some reason, even though she wasn't running. I don't know where that came from.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, because they wouldn't have known yet, maybe.<br />
<br />
'''E:'''Because that would be something you could hang a hat on. You said, nobody saw that coming. I got it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Exactly.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' They'll take collateral on that for the next 10 years.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's the gunshotting approach where they make some low probability predictions, hoping that people will just forget about it. But if they get it right occasionally, then they're the superstar, right?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yep. Gamble big.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Some said that, oh, yeah, after Biden was nominated, he would get replaced by Elizabeth Warren or Bloomberg. There was a few people who said Bloomberg was going to win or was going to get nominated.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Wow. When he was still in the discussion, right? You have to remember, this was December of 2019 when people are making these predictions.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So they were all over the place on the Democratic side and 90-plus percent wrong. And they were mostly wrong about Trump winning. So just, again, in the aggregate, their performance on the presidential election was horrible. They didn't even do as well as just the political pundits who—Biden was the favorite from the beginning, right? So all they had to do was play the odds on this one. And of course, there was a lot of room to predict the unusual things that did happen. Like if they said Trump will massively outperform the polls but still lose in a squeaker that would be kind of the specific prediction that would be at least a little impressive. But nobody had said anything remotely compelling about the election. And this was an unusual year because this year was so dominated by the election, first of all, but then also the pandemic. That was pretty much the big news for the year. And so everything people said were somehow laughably wrong because they didn't account for the pandemic. Like, it affected everything. It didn't predict anything really about the economy or about entertainment or about sports. It's like, nobody predicted, but it won't be happening because there's a pandemic. You know what I mean? Like, it just—it disrupted—the predictions—I mean, we usually say this till the end, but we have to state nobody predicted the pandemic. And so if you missed that, pretty much all your other predictions are going to be off. There's one category, though, that's pretty independent of just these kind of events, and that's technology. This is now coming from a group of psychics that were collected by the top10.com, right? And they had, after they got it all wrong about the election, they had a medical and technology one. So these are always fun because you have non-scientists making scientific predictions.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, that's always good.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' New bionic eye will be created to perfect human vision. We're about 20, 30 years away from that. 5G will increase cases of brain tumors and aneurysms. Nope. People should avoid Libra, Facebook's cryptocurrency. So that's not really a prediction, that's just financial advice. Saying that some other cryptocurrency is not going to do well is kind of an easy one. There will be a creation of an at-home flu vaccine that can be administered through a Band-Aid. Nope.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's ambitious.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And here, gold will rise in value and make a good investment. I'm not sure why that's under medical and tech. It's kind of an economic one. Gold has been steadily on the rise. That's just, again, that's another one, another typical sort of high probability prediction is just continuing an existing trend and making that into a prediction. So those were the ones that I covered. I did look specifically at who predicted COVID-19 and I found two people sort of given credit for that. One, did you guys hear about this? So that in 2008, Sylvia Brown, in her book about the end of the world, said that around 2020, there's going to be some kind of pneumonia kind of infection going around.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Around 2020.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Around 2020. So 2020 is obviously a round number. That's like saying, yeah, around 2100 that's like, you're not really saying specifically that you're just in that timeframe. So saying that there's going to be a pandemic around 2020, which you could charitably say that's a three to five year sort of window there, if you go one or two years on either side.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' And how often do we have pandemics?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, it was very high. That's very high probability. More than that it was inevitable, basically, so just predicting something that's inevitable. But she got all the... Any details that she did give, she got wrong because it's not really a pneumonia, but okay, you could sort of give her wiggle room on that. But she said the one very specific thing she said, which was completely wrong, was that it would suddenly disappear as mysteriously as it appeared.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I wish.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Sounds familiar.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Define suddenly.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Well, she can't get it all right, Steve. I mean this is very hard work.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah. She was right about the end of the world, though, for her, in that she wasn't here to see it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Aww.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' So maybe there's a sliver of truth in there. Is that too cold too soon?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Not too cold.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The kid's dead. All right. Who did you guys review? Did you guys see any other kinds of predictions?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, I was looking around. I agree with Evan. I did some searching. I was like, wait, where are these? Did they take them down because they were just so amazingly, incredibly, explosively incorrect this year? I don't know. But then I found some guy, Mark Drought. I found a website, My Prophecies for 2020. And it was a little weird reading this. He says something that, let's see, in the new year, GOP will satisfy the devout in its base, continuing its war with science. I'm like, OK. Then he said the federal government will continue to treat climate change as a hoax. I'm like, OK, easy prediction. But this guy's obviously a Democratic psychic, I would say, if he's got this pattern here. And he's like, then he's talking about climate change. New records again will again be set, then be explained away or simply ignored. Like, fine. OK. And then he said something that I thought he was wrong. It turned out I was wrong. He said there's no reason to expect fewer gun deaths in 2020. And my first reaction was, wait, wasn't that weren't gun deaths a lot less, a lot fewer in 2020 because of the pandemic? And I did research like, no, it kind of is pretty bad. So he's correct on that one, too. And so I'm like, wait, this isn't going with the way I thought. And this guy seems somewhat reasonable. Well, then I found out why I was like, who is this guy, Mark Drought, editor at Stanford IT firm. And he was an adjunct English professor. Oh, crap. He's not even a psychic. He's just like he's a you know, he's an editor and he's an English professor. And he just he just named it my prophecies for 2020 totally got me with it. But so what I said, I don't. Hey, we all know that the prophet, the psychics are full of crap. Let's see what this guy has to say. So I read his whole thing. Then then he goes off the rails a bit. He's like pretty much every year for the past two millennia, prophets have announced the date of the second coming. But I'm predicting less end of days activity this year. And I'm like, whoa, no, wrong. If any year was like an end of days year, it was 2020, even though it really wasn't. It was so bad that people were like totally, of course making that connection all year. So it's kind of wrong there. Then he's like the nexus of pseudoscience and paranoia will be flat earthism. No, no, you'd have to, flat earthism is bad. But I'd have to give that to like the whole anti COVID, anti mask science, pseudoscience. I'd have to give it to that for 2020 above pretty much anything, especially in terms of having a real negative impact and people dying because of it. So he was wrong on that one. Then he throws out that 2020 will be the year the Iranians joined the nuclear club. Nope. Not an unreasonable prediction, I suppose. But I was wrong on that one, although that may happen sooner than we would like. Then he's like, I predict a second Trump term. No. So he got that wrong. And but of course, no mention of COVID or a pandemic. And then I look, he posted this at the end of January, like, wait, dude, I mean, all right. And the January was kind of early.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' He had some data there.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' He got some data.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' He could have used COVID by then.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' He figured, I guess that was right by the cusp to I guess you could have believed that it wasn't going to be a global pandemic right by then. But maybe just but he must have been like right at like a week or two after he posted. He must have been like, damn, I should have probably thrown that. So that's what so that's what I came up with this year. Not really a psychic, but he did make prophecies, as he called them, for 2020. And it was right more on the pure extrapolation stuff that made sense. But the more predictive predictions, he was off. So just what you would expect.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I've got Tana Hoy, T-A-N-A is his first name and H-O-Y is the second name. I've never heard of this person before. However, according to the banner at the top of his Web site, he is the world's foremost psychic. No doubt about what he does here, Bob.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Putting it out there. Yeah. No doubt.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' He broke up. I like that he subcategorized his. He broke it up into Hollywood and international. You're going to do Hollywood because that's just silly. Here's what he said about some international predictions. A commercial airplane crash will cause the death of several people. Now is that a prediction? What is that? I mean, it chances are so are high that somewhere in the world, a commercial airplane is going to go down and it will almost always cause the death of several people as a result to go hand in hand. So I don't know what that is. The U.S. president will not be impeached, but will have his reputation badly tarnished to a point of no return. That could be right. You know, he got the not not impeached.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So he was impeached. That's incorrect.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' No, I'm sorry. He was not. Right. He was not. He's impeached by the House, not convicted. You're right.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' He was impeached, so that is wrong.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' So he got that X.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And if you get it wrong on a 50 50, you get zero credit.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' He said a major ice cap will break, causing water levels in the ocean to rise.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I don't recall there being a major ice cap break report. I don't recall that. I couldn't find anything. But then he moves on to his science category where he says new areas of the human brain will be discovered to do more than scientists realized. Generic. Cars running on vegetable oil will make a resurgence and more people will begin converting their diesel cars. Nope. Vegetable oil is still used mostly for cooking.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' What a silly prediction, though, considering there was the electric cars that are that are just totally exploding everywhere. You know, like, why would you even go there and think, yeah, we're going to start using vegetable oil again? Really?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I mean, that's a very niche market. There are people who have cars that run on vegetable oil that have been modified to do that.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Sure.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But I don't think it's been any change. It was a tiny, tiny sliver and it still is.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' If anything, it's probably gone down.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Cars can run on propane as well.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, because the people who want it, who would do that for like environmental reasons, just get electric.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah. Right. Yeah, that's right. There are better options nowadays. Health and medicine. A vaccine for HIV will be announced for human trials. Did that happen? Vaccine for HIV?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' For human trials? It's been in the works for decades, obviously.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Right.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Decades, huh?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. It's been a hard one to pin down.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It's not an mRNA vaccine?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Inside the fight. Nope. This is all about HIV vaccine trial participants benefit socially from their efforts. Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Socially.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I mean, this is ongoing. So that's like, predict, that's another kind of high probability thing. I read a lot of those under scientific predictions where it's like, we'll make advances in battery technology. So, yeah, that happens every year, like just predicting an incremental change in something that constantly has incremental changes is that you're just stating what's happening now. You know what I mean? So, yeah, we've been working on an HIV vaccine. There are trials going on all the time. So saying that there's going to be trials of an HIV vaccine, it's like, yeah, that's happening.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, it's not new.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's not new.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' But did you hear the news item about milk is discovered to actually cause bone damage instead of making bones stronger?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Oh, wow. That's – we've got to stop drinking milk.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' What?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I'm glad I never was a milk drinker.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Milk will be discovered to cause bone damage.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Cara, stop questioning, go in the kitchen and dump it now.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Dump it.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Pay attention to the psychic. Due to the new focus on meat-free products, stocks related to meat will plummet. I don't believe that that happened at all. In fact, stocks overall went on the rise for a good part of the year. It did go down early due to the COVID, but it rebounded pretty nicely. He also says here that three months will be very lucky for investors this year and two months won't. Well, that's actually OK. I mean not terrible. But again, this vague – that can apply to anything. You take any year, OK, and you look at the stock market.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Those are the best predictions.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' You can put that prediction in any year.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The stock market would rise and fall throughout the year.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Exactly. So not a prediction at all. That's just one of the – one of the psychics I stumbled upon.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Give me a specific number on a specific date, then I'll be impressed.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, exactly.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But don't give me 500 of them.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Another category is sort of a non-falsifiable prediction, right?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It doesn't say anything that can be falsified actually because it's vague or because it's kind of covering all of its bases or it could be interpreted in many ways.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And that's kind of like when you look at the different types of psychics and what their process is, you've got your clairvoyants and you've got your tarot readers and you've got your astrologers. And that's sort of like the astrology approach, which is sort of like Libra, you will come into openness throughout the month.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, that's the subjective part. Love will increase. There's a lot of psychics who definitely are on that sort of new agey end of the spectrum where they're just making vague, sugary subtotally subjective statements. 2020 will be the year of openness.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. And then anybody can go, yeah, I feel that. I came across some psychics from Dallas. So not exactly my hometown, but I grew up in the suburbs of Dallas and Plano. And I wanted to see what they thought about COVID because they made these predictions actually in April of 2020 about how COVID was going to continue. So I found at least some specific COVID 2020 predictions. Of course, they were made later in the year, in April of 2020. So it's like, given that we are living in a COVID world, what do you predict for the future? So Megan Benanti, who reads tarot cards, I love this, she said, I got the sense that some things will start to go back to normal in June.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' You get that?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Got that sense, huh?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right. But summer is weird. I get a lot of mixed readings on what summer feels like. So I don't have a strong answer to how summer will be yet. And then there's, it doesn't matter when quarantine ends because there's no vaccine yet. So when it ends, there will not be a joy we are hoping to feel. Well, that's weird. We're not going to end quarantine before there is a vaccine. So thanks for that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And what do they mean by quarantine?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's that vague term that everybody uses for stay at home, don't go outside, try not to gather?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But there's an operational definition for quarantine, and that's not it, you know?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No, exactly.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' They're just using a technical term in a vague way, and then even and the vague way doesn't really tell us.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Incorrectly. Yeah. This one's very strange. Based on the Seven of Pentacles, some, of course, she's reading tarot cards, which was reversed. Apparently, that's important to know. As we come out of quarantine, we need to prepare for the slow progress of financial affluence. Some people are going to have adjusted to the demands of the market and immediately make money. Most everyone else will find themselves needing to bend and be flexible to accommodate sales in ways they never expected. For example, it might be a sole proprietor making a deal with an individual buyer just to move more merchandise. The less flexible a business is, the longer their recovery will take. I think it's interesting that at the top of that statement, she used the term affluence simply because the data show that over the course of this pandemic, we have seen greater income inequality than in almost any time. So the affluent are getting more affluent, and those of us who don't fall in that category are just struggling. That seems to be the real outcome. I'm also seeing that Madame Stella Devine, who is a resident psychic down in Deep Ellum.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Do you think that's her real name?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I'm going to say it is. We need to steal that actually for our own purposes in the SGU.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Cara, we need to come up with one of those things where you come up with your psychic name, like you take your shoe size and you add it to the name of the garage door manufacturer that you just purchased.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right, like your porn star name, which by the way, have we done this before? Mine, it's so good, is Midnight Hearthstone.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It doesn't fit on a marquee, though.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Your first pet in the street you grew up on, Midnight Hearthstone.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Oh, my God.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Say action.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Mine is Cokie Smokehill.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Which is great for a guy.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's so good.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Cokie Smokehill and Midnight Hearthstone, starring in Pa-Pow!<br />
<br />
'''C:''' 2020 Pa-Pow!<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Actually, the three of us, the three novella boys, would each have a different name because we each were born on different streets.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, good. And did you all have a different pet when you were born?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, sort of. I mean, yeah, well, sort of, because Jay was really super young when we had a dog briefly before we got Cokie, so mine would be Brandy Appleblossom.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Okay.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Bob, are you also a Brandy?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I guess, but what the hell was that road?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Appleblossom. Before we moved to Smokehill. And you were Blackthorn.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Ooh, that's good.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That's cool, Bob.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Blackthorn, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' All right, Evan. We need yours, Evan.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' What is it? It's dog and then street?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No, just first pet and the street you grew up on.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Tongue Mohegan.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Nice.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Is that what you said? Tongue? Like King Kong?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Actually, I would reverse that, though. Mohegan Tongue.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, that's going to take some poetic license.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So we've got down here, Madam Stella Divine, who calls herself an intuitive consultant. She uses tarot, palm readings, and psychic channeling to divine information for her clients. So I love what she has divined. 2020 is going to be a roller coaster. It's pretty much going to suck. Thank you, based on the available evidence for all of us. I think that's not as much a psychic prediction as just looking around and saying what you see. I love this. We don't get to choose when it's done. The universe tells us when it's done. I've been seeing that we're in this through November. So this is a common tactic that psychics use, too, where they'll make very specific predictions about things that we can't measure. But then when it comes to things that they know they're very easily going to be potentially wrong on, then they leave it up to the universe. It's sort of what you see sometimes with, what do you call them, like channelers and diviners where they'll be communing with the dead. And then if they're on a cold streak, then they're like, well, the spirits, they're just not very talkative today.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Right.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And you're like, really, dude, really?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' One of a hundred escape hatches they have.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, exactly.<br />
<br />
== Rogues' Results for 2020 and Predictions for 2021 <small>(29:49)</small> ==<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, guys. So let's compare how the psychics, I can go first here, how the psychics do it compared to the rogues. So we make our own predictions. And just to illustrate, if you're actually trying to be accurate and you're not an idiot, you could do better than the average psychic. So here are my predictions for 2020. You ready? Number one, 2020 will be the hottest year on record. Ding, ding, ding. So 2020 is...<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Isn't that the second hottest?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, so some sources are saying, the end of the year has not been fully analysed, so either it's on track to be the hottest or it's in a dead heat tie with 2016. So either it's tied for the hottest or it is the hottest. We'll know in a couple of weeks, I guess, when they analyse the last of the data.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Wow.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So that's pretty close. All right, here's number two. Sometime in 2020, I will be accused of being a shill simply for expressing the consensus of scientific opinion. I think that came true 20 or 30 times this year.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It's one of those very high probability...<br />
<br />
'''S:''' In fact, just before doing this show, I had an email claiming, accusing me of being a shill. You know, for Big Pharma, that's like nine out of ten of them. And then number three, a breakthrough VR game will be released that will significantly affect demand for the technology. So I'm currently playing Half-Life Alyx. Have any of you guys played that?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I haven't played it, but I know everything about it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I think it's the single best VR game that's out there.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Really?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's certainly the best that I've played. It's awesome. It's, again, like the first time you have like a major release. This is Valve on a major brand, Half-Life, built for VR. So that's the threshold. That's the milestone that we hit rather than repurposed for VR. VR is an afterthought or it just was like a side, not a major title. And it's just incredible. It's what I've been waiting for. It's a fantastic VR experience. You know, only about a third or a quarter of the way through right now playing it. It's just great. Loving it.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' You think this could do it, Steve? You think that could be it?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Oh, it's definitely increased VR sales and demand for the tech. "Significantly" is kind of vague, so it depends on what you mean by that.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' You have a very accurate set of predictions.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I think it's legit to call it a breakthrough VR game, but it is actually legitimate.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So on the Steam store, it has received – and I've never seen this before. The ratings are like have a huge variability, right? It could be like really bad pretty good. Okay, blah, blah, blah. This one is overwhelmingly positive.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Mm-hmm.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Very good.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' 40,000 reviews. Yeah, it's fantastic.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Wow.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The thing is the game it's an alternative future game where aliens have sort of taken over the earth and you're part of the rebellion. So there's this alien tech all over the place.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Ooh.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And some of it is massive. And so in VR, like when you're standing next to one of these massive structures or massive machines or whatever, it's overwhelming. It really is.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Overwhelming?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And also, there's a lot of creepy parts where you're crawling through dark tunnels and creatures, alien creatures are jumping out at you. It's very visceral, absolutely. So it's a great game for VR, which is what I'm talking about. It was like Half-Life was this before VR, but it was sort of a perfect marriage, I think, of a game and VR. Great, great experience. All right, so here are my three predictions for 2021. You ready?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yes.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Ready.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I'm kind of following the same pattern as 2020. They're serious predictions, but they're very high probability, although there's something specific in there, so they can be wrong. Prediction number one, the Artemis mission's return to the moon will be delayed by one to two years, and that will become apparent in 2021. Number two, the closest FRB, that's a fast radio burst, source to the Earth will be discovered. So in 2021, an FRB source will be discovered that will be at that time the closest to the Earth.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Di d you look up [inaudible].<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Didn't that happen this year too?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. I think they recently discovered one from within-<br />
<br />
'''E:''' In our galaxy.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, our galaxy.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I love the ones where every year, it's just the newer version of the same prediction.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And number three, I don't think I've made an FRB prediction that before. And then number three is a remarkable archaeological find will disrupt our current understanding of the time period in question.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's so bullshit.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' A disruptive archaeological find.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's so good.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It sounds impressive.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It happened like 50 times this year.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, come on. No, this would have to be truly disruptive.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Okay. Okay.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, there's definitely some wiggle room there. All right, who wants to go next?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' All right, here were my predictions for 2020. An earthquake during the Olympic Games in Japan with limited loss of life, but damage will have an impact on the venues, canceling some events. No. You see, the Olympic Games in Japan did not happen in 2020 due to COVID.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's so sad.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' They've been postponed until the summer of 2021. So obviously, that's a miss. Next one.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So your prediction was disrupted by COVID.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, I know. COVID got in the way. Damn it. Who saw that coming? My second prediction was the cyber crime of the century as Visa, MasterCard, or American Express get hacked, compromising data for over a billion users worldwide. Oh, my gosh.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That probably happened.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' No, it didn't happen. No, no. In fact, some of the more egregious cyber crimes took place prior to 2020. There was some in 2019, 2018, but that trend apparently did not continue into 2020. There was cyber crime, but nothing near a billion users being hacked. So that's wrong, too. And then my last one. Three major heads of state will resign in 2020, but none of them would be Trump. OK, so that part I got right. None of them Trump. Now, I looked up list of resignations for 2020. And you have to tell me if these are major heads of states. Hashim Taichi resigns as president of Kosovo.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' President? Sure.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' President? OK. And then we have Hassan Diab resigned as prime minister of Lebanon in the wake of the explosion.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, I'll give you prime minister.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' And that was it as far as heads of states.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So two out of three.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' So I got two out of three. I didn't know if you were going to allow Kosovo and Lebanon to be considered major.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I think the leader of any country is a major world leader.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I'll take that in this context. No doubt about it. So my score was 0.667 out of three, which is not good. Now, here are my 2021 predictions. Ready? An earthquake during the Olympic Games in Japan with limited loss of life but damage will have an impact on the venues, canceling some events. See what I did there?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I can do that because.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You can.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Because if COVID is going to play that game, I'm going to play this game. So that prediction will happen in 2021. Number two, global warming trends will plateau in 2021. They will be the same as 2020 or no more severe.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So, Evan, I'll just tell you, 2021 is going to be a La Nina year. It'll probably be cooler in 2021.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yes. I am already ahead of the game. And third, a prominent celebrity psychic will come clean and confess that their entire career has been a ruse.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, you can't even.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' You can't even.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Okay. Okay. A year from now. Let's talk about it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. Bob, you go.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' So I found my predictions from last year. I did horribly. I predicted for 2020, Jay will be sick. I got that one. I predicted that we will confirm dark energy does not exist. I don't know what the hell I was thinking, but that did not happen.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It's one of those things, Bob, where if you were right, you'd be like, oh, Bob's brilliant.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That's true. Let's see. I predicted for 2020 a major deep fake political scandal, which was an eminently reasonable prediction to make a year ago. And it'll probably happen next year. But it will happen. I think everyone's pretty positive that we will be seeing those at some point. And for my final prediction for 2020, let's see. We will find solid indirect evidence of extraterrestrial technology. Yeah, that was me swinging for the fences and did not find that yet. That would have been just-<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Not solid.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Just got to keep doing that one every year, Bob.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Nothing solid.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Let's see. So for I predict 2021, first quarter, a plague of bunnies.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Bunny plague?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' What?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That's my – yes, a plague of bunnies.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Like when rabbits got loose in Australia?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yes. A plague of bunnies, though. These are bunnies.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' How do we identify?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, it'll be obvious. It'll be obvious. That's my requisite real silly prediction. I predict that in 2021 we'll have a COVID SARS-2 variant that is decidedly less lethal than the handful of strains that are out right now. And actually that one's not unreasonable. That often happens with illnesses like this where it comes out with a less virulent strain than was initially out and about. And for my third prediction, 2021, there will be a naked eye visible supernova in the night sky. Now, to vastly increase the odds of this prediction actually happening, I will also predict that the supernova will only be visible in the hemisphere of the earth that I am currently not in.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I thought you were going to go with the cloud cover.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' No. It will happen. It'll be spectacular. But it will be on the opposite side of the planet that I'm currently in no matter which hemisphere I'm in.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' How long would that remain visible in the sky for? Do you have to be there that night to see it?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' No, it could be days or weeks. But, of course, if I flew there, it would be cloud cover.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Well, see, okay. I knew cloud cover was going to come into that at some point.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, somehow Bob will not be able to directly observe it.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That's part of my prediction. I will have failed if I could see it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, I mean, the thing is, if it's in the southern hemisphere, like an unexpected supernova pops up in the southern hemisphere, we're not going to be able to get down there in two weeks. We'll miss it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, you could.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yes.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' If you want it too bad, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' But it's physically possible for me to get down there within two weeks.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's not. I mean, no, it would not be physically possible for me to do that because I can't cancel patients with less than two weeks' notice.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Well, then go there without you, wouldn't I?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' But if they knew it was a supernova, they would understand.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, it doesn't work that way.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I feel like I could do it because I only see patients Monday through Thursday, and they're all telehealth. So I could travel on the weekend and then just wake up at odd hours, unless it was directly below me.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I guess I could go over the weekend.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' In my time zone. Exactly. It's doable.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Can you imagine?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It would be much easier if it were in, like, South America than if it were in Australia.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, how far south would you have to go to see it?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I don't know about that. It's more just about time zones. It'd be much easier.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I mean, it could just be, like, just below the equator, so we would have to go to, like, Florida to see it or something.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' You'd still have to go farther.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Just go to a really tall building.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' You could go to Ecuador. Yeah. It'd be a really tall building. This is a science podcast.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Really tall.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, but I mean, if it were overhead just below the equator, you wouldn't have to go to the equator to see it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's true.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' No. No, it would be visible in both hemispheres.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, you're right.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I just have to go far enough south that it would pop up above our horizon.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Remember when we saw Orion in New Zealand?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. It was awesome.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Upside down from the direction we see it.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, that was great.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It's so weird, isn't it?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' How do you explain that? How could it be upside down? Look at the moon. It's upside down, too.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Jay.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Are yours more interesting? Because mine sucks, so I want to go next. So you can close with better ones.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, go ahead. You go next.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Okay. All right. I am ready to share my psychic predictions.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, you got yours from last year?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. So last year, I predicted that the pound would spike and then plummet after Brexit, which is kind of confusing because Brexit is a vague term. But if you actually look back at all of the times the referendum and the deal were pushed back, the negotiation was extended again January 31st. Okay. 11 p.m., January 31st, the UK officially withdrew from the EU. So we'll call that the Brexit day. And then when I looked at the pound versus the dollar, there was a minor spike and a minor like dip.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Plummet.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, right after that. But if we were to look at plummets, that would have been on March 19th, 20th. Biggest plummet, which I think I could be wrong, is tied to COVID.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Again, COVID disrupting psychic predictions.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Everything. Yeah. Okay. Number two, a gene drive will be successfully implemented in the wild. Parenthesis, it doesn't mean the outcome will be successful. It just means that it will be successfully implemented. So I think that that happened.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I think so, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But gene drive strategy for mosquitoes. And I want to say there were two, like there was one in Florida and maybe one somewhere in South or Central America. But I'm going to have to do more digging to really, because like this is a complicated one in terms of small scale studies, large releases. What do we consider a wild release? Yeah. But I think that was one of those like it's pretty clearly going to happen because we're right there with the research.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's happening.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. And then number three, more species will go extinct than in any previous recorded years, which I don't think is true, but it seemed like a good bet, sadly.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Sad bet.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' If I was going to be really cynical, which it looks like I was pretty freaking cynical when I placed these. For 2021, looking forward, trying to come up with a more successful strategy, we've got number one, more acres will burn worldwide than in any other modern recorded year. Number two, sales on home gym equipment will reach an all time high.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Oh, yeah. That was good, Cara.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's good.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No, this is new.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, this is coming up.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Oh, okay.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But I think it's actually going to be higher in 21 than 20, because yes, it's true that in 20, nobody could leave their houses, so they bought home gym equipment, but then they didn't use it. So I think in 2021, when they realize that they put on those extra quarantine pounds and they still can't go to the gym, then they're actually going to really spend more money. And then number three, a great political mind will unexpectedly die.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Sufficiently vague?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' No, there's some specificity there. More than an earthquake will happen or people will die if a plane crashes. I mean-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' True. Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' All right. So last year, for some reason, I decided that all of my predictions were just going to be silly jokes.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I'll give you a couple of samples. The US government will begin a fake news tax on social media sites. I think that that would be actually a good idea.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' We gotta do something, man.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Another one I said was that Mark Zuckerberg will be called in front of Congress again, and it will be revealed that he was actually lip syncing the whole time.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I think he was in front of the Senate this year again.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Is that a South Park episode?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' No, but I was like, the joke was more like he's a robot. But anyway, all of mine were ridiculous. So none of them could possibly come true. But I do have 2021 predictions for you.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It will be revealed that Donald Trump leaked US secrets to foreign entities. Cryptocurrency value will significantly increase as more people start to use it as their main currency.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Wow. Main currency. Okay.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Due to lack of trust in governments. China will crack down on protesters in Hong Kong using lethal force.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Didn't that already happen?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Well, I was thinking on a larger scale like not even trying to hide it anymore type of lethal force.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Is there open fire on people?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Well, it's very hard to see that far into the future. I'm trying.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It is.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' And the last one, I'm just hoping that the last one comes true. Beards will go out of style.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's never going to happen.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Whoa, never.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's never happened.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Well they came back with a vengeance like what, five years ago? Like it became hugely popular. You know, it was like tattoos kind of had their heyday and then beards took over.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. But the beard has staying power.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, Jay, I think we charitably say that beards will go back down to their floor, their baseline floor. But yeah, they won't be in style above and beyond their historic levels anymore.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Interesting.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Is there something, Jay, just to pry a little bit, is there something that you think will replace the beard?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' The mutton chop.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Will it be the clean shaven? Will it be the moustache? The mutton chops? The soul patch?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' No, I mean, the mutton chops inspired me. I felt something from the Kashuk Library. It's going to be it's definitely going to be polyester pants.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, just on your face?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' No, no, no. People will start wearing, like, polyester pants again. They'll make the noise of zip, zip when you walk that.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, like, oh, like parachute pants?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' No, not those.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' You want a low probability psychic prediction.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' No, really, really tighten the butt and really loosen the legs, you know what I mean?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Tighten the butt, lose in the legs.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, that's what I'm looking for. It's going to happen.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Okay.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Somebody hire this man up to be your fashion consultant.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's right.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I'm writing that down as a prediction for next year.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I think we have some solid predictions here.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Thanks, Steve. Good stuff, man.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We're going to have bunnies with beards. You know, it's the kind of crazy stuff that's going to happen in 2021. All right. We have time for a few news items.<br />
<br />
== News Items ==<br />
<br />
=== The New SARS-CoV-2 variant <small>(48:30)</small> ===<br />
* [https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/23/health/coronavirus-uk-variant.html Coronavirus Variant Is Indeed More Transmissible, New Study Suggests]<ref>[https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/23/health/coronavirus-uk-variant.html NY Times: Coronavirus Variant Is Indeed More Transmissible, New Study Suggests]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' Cara, I think we had to pretty much talk about this one. Getting a lot of questions about the emergence of a new SARS-CoV-2 variant. What does this mean for the pandemic?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right. So we, as mentioned at the top of the show, are recording this on the evening of Tuesday, December 29th. I want to make that clear just because the news is changing literally every day with regards to this new variant. A lot of people are calling this the British variant because it looks like it was first identified in Kent and very quickly became the dominant variant in London. The big news coming out today after an article was just published in a preprint, a preprint of an article was just published in the Center for Mathematical Modeling of Infectious Diseases, is that it does appear to be the case after now multiple investigations through different sort of avenues that this new variant is indeed more transmissible. But there is no evidence as of yet that it is in any way more deadly. It does not seem to increase mortality. It does not seem to make people sicker, but it does seem to spread more quickly. And there are a lot of different potential reasons for that that we're still trying to zero in on. So the new study, which I'll just mention quite quickly, and then maybe we can talk in more depth about the variant itself. And again, this is a preprint. This is not yet peer-reviewed, so keep that in mind. But you are already seeing in a fair amount of sort of public write-ups of this individual researchers that are at the top of their field from different nations being quoted. So even though it hasn't been peer-reviewed by the journal yet, there are a fair amount of experts in the field that have read this research and are willing to comment on it at this point. And for the most part, what I've been reading is that people are saying that this is pretty good evidence and that it's something that's important for us to look at. So basically, these researchers did some computer modeling, and they used a lot of different ideas in their model, everything from places where people go, residential workplaces, grocery stores, pharmacies, retail locations, transit. They looked at hospitalizations. They looked at how many people are living within close quarters. And they modeled out the spread of the virus based on where we were previously seeing transmission and how things have changed since this new variant was detected. And they were able to come to the conclusion based on the evidence they have, and they were very clear to say this, more evidence is needed and this number will likely change. But that this new variant is 56% more transmissible than preexisting variants of SARS-CoV-2. You may have read in some outlets earlier in the week that the UK government was saying it could be up to 70% more transmissible. So the newest number that seems to have some amount of consensus right now is that it's 56% more transmissible. But again, that's based on modeling. There are a lot of other ways that different labs are researching this new variant. They're looking at it genetically. They're looking at its biology. This was based on computer modeling. So let's talk about the actual variant. It's being dubbed B.1.1.7. So if you hear B.1.1.7, that is what they're referring to. And it appears to have 23 different mutations on it. There are some changes to an RNA sequence on the ORF1A protein. There are some mutations that occurred on the ORF1B protein. There's a deletion of a gene. But the major, major changes that we're seeing here and the ones that seem to be leading heavily to the increase in transmissibility are the mutations that occurred on the spike protein. So we remember when we talked about the spike protein that there are these spikes on the outside of the virus that are used to latch onto and enter into human cells. The spike protein gene is going to code for that protein that produces those spikes. And so some researchers are saying that it could be the case that this variant is spreading more rapidly because it latches on more readily to cells. Some are saying perhaps it's not because it latches on more readily to cells, but perhaps it is in fact because it stays virulent for longer, that people shed the virus for longer. And because of that, they're more infectious. It could be that they are actually getting higher viral loads because of this. And it could be that some individuals that maybe wouldn't have been infected before are more likely of getting infected. None of that is known right now. But what we do know is that there is a demonstrable difference in the infection rate. So when we look at known exposure within the UK where this research is being done, known exposure to individuals with the previous and the well-established coronavirus version that most of us have been discussing to this point, that had a 9.8% infection rate. This new variant has a 15.1% infection rate. What that means is that if an individual is known to have been exposed to someone that was already infected with the variant, then they will infect either 15.1% or 9.8% of other individuals that they're exposed to. So that's a significant increase there. That said, I think we have to be careful when we talk about variants and mutations when it comes to viruses. Because it can sound pretty clear, even by the way that I'm talking, that there's the old SARS-CoV-2 and now there's the new SARS-CoV-2. But we know that mutations happen all the time. And they generally happen at a relatively predictable rate. What's been, "astounding", like people are literally calling this astounding, about this strain is that the mutation rate happened incredibly quickly, quicker than it, "should have happened" according to modeling. And so that's where people are becoming concerned. But even the SARS-CoV-2 that somebody you know caught last week is different than the SARS-CoV-2 that somebody caught months and months ago. Because mutations are always occurring in viruses. This is different enough that we can call it its own variant. And it's different enough and happened so quickly that researchers are concerned. But let's allay, I think, some of those concerns. Again, to repeat, because I think this is very important. There is no evidence to suggest that this variant is more deadly or even increases sickness. The only evidence that we have available right now is that it spreads more quickly. Now the question, also, by the way, you may hear about a variant in South Africa that is a different variant. That variant has now also shown up in the UK. That is another mutated version of SARS-CoV-2. It's independent from the UK variant that I've been discussing, the B.1.1.7. As of this morning, I found evidence. I think WAPO wrote up an article that the first variant of the UK variant, the first patient with a positive test of the UK variant, was identified in the US. It happened outside of, I can't remember the name of the town, but it happened in Colorado, which is in Elbert County. In South Park, exactly. Of course, in South Park. In Elbert County, about 50 miles southeast of Denver. Here's an interesting thing. The individual who is now in isolation had no travel history. No travel history, and most people with this variant did. The first variant that we've detected here in the US, that tells us something really important, which is that this is very likely already spreading within the community. If this person didn't get it from traveling, they probably got it from somebody else who got it from somebody else. Some of the papers and the commentary that I've been reading from epidemiologists and infectious disease specialists at some really kind of large institutions, follows the reasoning that in some ways the UK is sort of getting punished for being really good with gene sequencing. Whereas here in the US, we've sort of been behind the curve when it comes to gene sequencing because we haven't had a coordinated viral response. In the UK, where they have the National Health Service, the response to the pandemic, at the very least, has been incredibly coordinated. Even though we have a lot of gene sequencing resources here in the US, we're not using them in a coordinated fashion. What some of the commentary that I've been reading is, is that because the UK identified this variant quickly, and because they did so much good research on it now, and now for, I think, a reasonable public health measure, we're seeing that a lot of countries are closing their borders to the UK. Here in the US, we haven't closed our borders, but we have required testing. That's a new change.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's too late, though. So, Cara, just reading it just today, India confirmed six cases of the new variant.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, yeah, it's in 17, 18 countries now. Yeah, it's spread all over the world. But the question is, is the UK being penalized for having done this research when it's highly likely that there are other variants out there, but nobody is actually taking the time to sequence the genomes of the coronavirus cases? And so we just don't know. It's a black box here. In the UK, they actually did the research, and they said, look, we have this variant that was several weeks ago, it was just a few cases. Then we saw in London that it made up something like 20% of the cases. And then only three weeks later, it was 60% of the cases. And that's when they started to get concerned and started to really dig deep into this. So that's, I mean, that's neither here nor there. It's just an interesting idea. But long story short, I do think that there's some interesting takeaways here. People are asking, why? Why? If we know that viruses are always mutating, and we know that there's sort of a predictable mutation rate, why is it that this particular variant, that the South African variant, and potentially others are mutating so quickly?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Maybe it's because it's spreading more than we realize because of all the asymptomatic cases.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right. So some people are saying it could be because there's this spread that is undetectable because of either asymptomatic or low-level symptomatic cases. Some people are saying maybe there's a handful of super spreader events that are responsible for these particular cases. Just like when we look at evolution and nature, if you have a bottleneck, then all of a sudden you'll see this one individual thing sort of take over. It could be that these genes are taking over so quickly because there were a handful of super spreader events that haven't yet been identified.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' A couple of things. So just to be clear, the vaccine covers this variant, so this isn't going to make the vaccine not work. As far as we know.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' We don't fully know, but it does seem to be the case that because our own immune response is just as good with this variant as with any other variant, that the vaccine, because it was developed utilizing that, will still work. Because this doesn't make us sick in a different way, it's very likely that the vaccine will work on this variant. But for how long, would there be a new variant that it wouldn't work on? We don't know, which is why we need to get to herd immunity fast.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. We'll keep an eye on this.<br />
<br />
=== Satellites Made from Wood <small>(1:00:16)</small> ===<br />
* [https://www.bbc.com/news/business-55463366 Japan developing wooden satellites to cut space junk]<ref>[https://www.bbc.com/news/business-55463366 BBC News: Japan developing wooden satellites to cut space junk]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' So this was a very interesting news item, very unusual. What do you guys think about making a satellite out of wood? Doesn't that sound totally counterintuitive?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Kind of, but when you see spacecrafts a lot in museums, it looks like they're made out of foil.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' What kind of wood though, Steve? I've heard of woods that are amazingly resistant and resilient and tough. Even a treatment on wood. I found a news item like a year ago that we didn't talk about, but I read about it, that makes wood like crazy resistant and tough.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So I guess it depends on the type of wood. Lightweight, it's lightweight. And if you make it tough enough, why not? So Japan is developing, a Japanese company and the Kyoto University are developing the technology for possibly wood-based satellites. So we think our image of a satellite is something that's shiny and metal, very futuristic. And thinking about wood just doesn't really fit. But Bob is correct. It depends on the wood. But let's back up a little bit. Let's talk about what are the properties of the substance that you would want to build your satellite out of in the first place. So obviously they have to withstand the stress of being launched into orbit. So three to five, maybe more G's. That's not a problem for any reasonably strong material. If anything inside needs to be pressurized, this is probably the biggest strain. Like if you need one atmosphere inside the satellite for whatever reason. And obviously for a space station with people, you would absolutely need to be pressurized. And that's I don't think any wood of any size would withstand that. That would require a lot of force. But it would have to withstand the wide temperature variations that you get. Because like when you're in orbit, when you're exposed to the sun, the part of you that's exposed to the sun gets very, very hot. And the other side gets very, very cold. That's why they all rotate with respect to the sun so that they're sort of heating evenly. So that's one way to deal with that. And they also would have to withstand space junk slamming into them, right? But also you want them to be fairly light because you're launching it into orbit and you pay by the pound for that. So aluminium alloys is a very common substance to use. Aluminium is very light. And alloys of aluminium can be very, very strong. And the strength per weight is very good. So that's a common material that satellites are made out of. For example, Kevlar, also a good material. It's got a lot of the properties in terms of being lightweight and strong and very resistant to temperature variations.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' And impacts.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And impacts. So you have ballistic impact. So it's got a lot of perfect properties for surviving up there. So Kevlar and aluminium are two very common materials that are being used. So the idea is then could we replace, for example, the aluminium casing on a satellite with wood? So the properties of wood depend on, the big factor is the ratio of cellulose and lignin. They're the two sort of polymers that make up the major constituent of wood in terms of its strength and durability. Obviously, its structure makes a difference as well. So yes, there are kinds of wood, especially if they're treated. As Bob said, there are polymers that you could use to treat the wood that would increase its strength even further. So you can make versions of wood that would be as strong as the aluminium alloys and similar in weight. But here's the interesting thing. Wood has a property that might make it superior for some applications. And that is that it's transparent in many of the frequencies used in satellite communication.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, wow.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Wait, what?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Transparent.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, in the frequencies. Okay.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' In the frequencies used by like radio waves satellite communication. So if you – one of the big things about vulnerabilities of a communication satellite is that you have to get the transmitters and receivers outside of the aluminium shell. And so they have to unfurl or unfold in some way. But imagine if you just had a solid wood casing that doesn't have to unfold and all the electronic equipment is on the inside. And it's completely transparent in the frequencies being used for communication. So it actually would make it a lot easier, a lot less vulnerable, maybe even cheaper. So there might be certain applications for which it's advantageous. Now, some of the reporting about this focuses a lot on the – using wood satellites, wooden satellites in order to minimize space junk.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So how would that help though?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But that's an interesting – yeah, exactly. How would that help? That's an interesting angle.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Maybe they don't shatter the same way.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, no. Just it won't really help at all because if something's going to be left up there, it's going to be left up there no matter what it's made out of. You know, having pieces of a wooden satellite flying around. Again, if the wood has the properties we need it to have in terms of strength, et cetera, it's still not going to be good flying around as space junk. But most space junk is not used satellites anyway. And the answer to that in any case is deorbiting the satellites when their lifespan is over. You know, some people are saying the real advantage is that when it deorbits and it burns up in the atmosphere, it's more environmentally friendly. So that's the whole space junk angle. If we deorbit the satellites, the wooden satellites, then when they burn up in the atmosphere, they won't be putting alumina or other sort of potentially toxic substances into the atmosphere. It will just be burning wood which is organic.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I find this kind of strange because more because of my ignorance. I never heard about people being concerned about polluting our atmosphere or the planet with debris from satellites.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, that's because it's not really a problem. And for a couple of reasons, one is just the volume is not that great. But second, the upper atmosphere, like they get burned up really high in the atmosphere. You know, it's probably not going to be a significant environmental impact. So some people are commenting on the fact that it's kind of solving a non-existent problem and it's not solving the problem that is existent. And so not really sure why they're doing this, but it was still is interesting to think that there may be ways to use wood in the construction of satellites that is actually advantageous. The other point that some of the commenters are making, the people the experts who are reviewing this proposal is a lot of the guts of the satellite would have to be the same. All the electronics have to still be aluminium and metal and conducting material, whatever. And so this is really, we're really just talking about like the casing the outer casing, things like that, not any of the guts. And so is that really, what's the contribution of that anyway? You're still going to, all the metallic electronics are still going to be burning up in the atmosphere when you de-orbit them. So I don't think this is going to be a solution to space junk. And again, that's kind of a weird angle for the reporting to take in some cases. But there is very, like Ars Technica had a very good article about it where they sort of put it into perspective very well. But most of the straight up, like news outlets just took that framing without really questioning it. But we may who knows, maybe in a few years we'll be seeing wood enclosed satellites. I think that one notion that it actually makes sense for communication satellites because it's transparent in radio frequencies is very compelling. Because like not having to unfurl could be a massive advantage-<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I'm sure it would lower the cost.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' -in terms of construction and safety.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Complexity.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Until you see the numbers like, yeah, this is all, it's interesting, but it doesn't matter until the dollars are lined up and you can see what the costs are.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, it's right now, they're developing the technology. They're going to first, they're going to build one. They're going to engineer it just on earth and then test it just to see what features it has. Then they'll engineer it for orbit. And then we'll see how it does. And it's going to take a few years just to develop the basic technology of wood based satellites. But not something I would have predicted that we're going to, it feels like going backwards. You know, that's why it's like wood having anything to do with space made out of wood sounds totally counter-intuitive.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It's actually a Futurama episode about that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Of course there is. Of course there is.<br />
<br />
=== Quantum Computing <small>(1:09:41)</small> ===<br />
* [https://phys.org/news/2020-12-important-milestone-creation-quantum.html Important milestone in the creation of a quantum computer]<ref>[https://phys.org/news/2020-12-important-milestone-creation-quantum.html Phys.org: Important milestone in the creation of a quantum computer]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, Bob, you have an update for us on quantum computing. Is this a real breakthrough or just like another incremental advance?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It's maybe potentially more than just incremental. But it depends. It depends. Let's see. Yeah, so yet another interesting quantum computer advance that could, like I was saying, set the stage for many of its brethren in the future. This time it involves quantum dots and two dimensional arrays. So will this advance be a critical stepping stone for near future commercial quantum computers? I have no effing idea. But it's interesting nonetheless. Let's go through this. This is in the recently published Nature Communications. So a pan-European collaboration in partnership with French microelectronics leader Sayaleti. They've been working for years on this underlying technology that could support future quantum computers from different potentially revolutionary angles. One angle has to do with the wafers. The wafers that microelectronics are created on. And Sayaleti makes them and they've got billions – they can put billions of transistors and other components on these wafers. And now if those same foundry processes could create qubits, for example, in quantum circuits, then you could potentially see how important this could be. You could potentially create orders of magnitude more components for the quantum computer, quantum circuits, qubits. And so that could be dramatic if that's even feasible at all. Because if you think about it, a lot of the qubits made today are made in labs and they make five of them or 50 or 100. I mean the fastest quantum computer on the planet is, I think, 96 qubits. Not a lot yet. So now to do this, though, you just can't print this on using conventional techniques. You need to be creating different structures that are amenable to a quantum computer. And that's where the quantum dots come in. Now quantum dots, I think we've already probably mentioned these a couple times on the show. These are artificial semiconductor nanoparticles. They could be crystals. They could be electrons or even electron holes. And they're known as artificial atoms since they can behave like atoms in some important ways. Like, for example, they could combine electrons within specific energy levels. So they're very, very tiny, 1 ten-thousandth the diameter of a human hair. And that's so small that quantum effects come into play. They're both photoluminescent and electroluminescent, two words that I instantly fell in love with that I haven't really come across very often. That just means that in the presence of light and electric current, it could make the quantum dots will emit a very pure wavelength of light, which is based on their size. And as you might imagine, something like this could have very many versatile applications in optical and electrical industries, medicine, optics, nanotech, quantum research, and TVs. You may be watching a TV that has quantum dots in them to produce the wide array of colors that you see. So one of the big ideas is to use these quantum dots in two-dimensional arrays by arranging them in these two-by-two arrays. And then using those arrays to create the things that are needed, like qubits and quantum circuits, and then control the electrons that are at the heart of the quantum dots. And that's exactly what they've pulled off here. Got a quote from Fabio Anzalone. He's a postdoc at the Center for Quantum Devices, NBI. He said, what we have shown is that we can realize single electron control in every single one of these quantum dots. This is very important for the development of a qubit, because one of the possible ways of making qubits is to use the spin of a single electron. So reaching this goal of controlling a single electron and doing it in a 2D array of quantum dots was very important to us. So what he's talking about here is using the spin, up and down spin, of an electron to make it like the 1 and the 0 of the classical bit. So another angle to their research, though, and this one you may have heard before, has to do with minimizing the qubit errors that plague computers. Error correction, when it comes to any computer, is a big deal. If you look at your phone right now or your desktop, these are classical computers. How old are the computers like this? They're very, very old. They've been around for so long, but even they can have errors. A binary 1 can change to a binary 0 for unavoidable reasons, and it's happening all the time. It could be even something like a cosmic ray. Jay, we talked about this relatively recently. A cosmic ray can go in and flip one of your bits, and then what happens? So your computer calculations are now wrong? So what they do and what they've been doing for years is they do the calculations using repetition code. They actually will do the calculations multiple times. So if the answers don't match, then you know there's a problem. So if you get three 1s as an answer and one 0 as an answer, then you could assume that that 0 is the mistake because you have three or four other ones that said it was not a 0, that it was a 1. So that's a classical computer. But now with the quantum computers, they need error correction as well, but you can't do the same type of error correction because you cannot perfectly replicate a qubit. So how are you going to do it? How are you going to deal with this error correction? Well, some of you may have guessed it. The quantum dot arrays can help with that. If these quantum dots are in a two-dimensional array, they can actually, in a sense, error correct each other in a way. So just by having the array can deal with this error correction problem at least to some degree. And in fact, some of these scientists actually believe that they are essential. These arrays, these two-dimensional arrays are essential to efficiently implementing quantum computer error correction. So this may be the way to go. You may absolutely need to have these arrays if you really want to deal with error correction in quantum computers. And if we don't deal with error correction, then we're screwed. I mean it's vitally important. So that's the crux of what they created. So what's new for this research? They've shown now that they can control the electrons in these quantum dots. They can deal with them. They can move them around and swap them out and things like that. The next thing they need to be able to do then is to detect the spin of these particles. And once that's done, then you can start creating these quantum logic gates, which are analogous to the classical logic gates that I'm sure many of you are familiar with. Like AND, OR, NAND. These are used in Boolean logic. And once you have Boolean logic in your computer, no matter what kind of computer it is, then you can start using all of the algorithms and mathematics that are amenable to Boolean logic. And that's, oh my god, once you've got that, that's it. You've got the keys to the city. Once you have this, once you can create this and you have a complete set of quantum gates, then theory says that what we now have then is this universal quantum computing architecture. And you could do everything that is promised with quantum computing. So yeah, so this seems to me to be a decent advance. They've spent years and years doing all the small incremental steps that it's taken to get to this point. So it's definitely a little bit more of an incremental advance. And we could potentially be looking back on this and say, wow, yeah, this was the way to do it. Because there seems to be lots of different ways to go about doing this, lots of different ways to create qubits. And this may be the way to create these quantum circuits and quantum logic gates. It may be the most efficient way to do it, the most efficient way to deal with error correction. And if that's the case, then this day, then this this advance will definitely be remembered. But we'll see. Things are changing so fast with quantum computers. It's like battery technology. I see articles all the time about these incremental advances and different directions that people are going in. So it's tough to predict where it's going to end up in 10 in 10 or 20 years. So we'll have to see. But this one looks pretty interesting. Check it out online if you're interested.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, definitely. I think we're going to be seeing quantum computing in our future. But as you often say, it's not going to be on your desktop. It'll be behind the scenes working in some capacity, but it will be changing our world.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Doing things that classical computers will never be able to do, not in a million billion years.<br />
<br />
== Who's That Noisy? <small>(1:18:16)</small> ==<br />
* Answer to last week’s Noisy: [https://youtu.be/YLNSKM9EpA4?t=12 Verrazano Bridge Groans and Shifts in High Winds]<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, Jay, it's who's that noisy time.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' All right, guys, last time we did a show, here was the noisy.<br />
<br />
[_short_vague_description_of_Noisy] <br />
<br />
What do you think?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Nothing's coming to mind. Gee whiz.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Cheese whiz.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Cheese whiz, yes.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So a listener named Kyle Pizzola wrote in. So, hi, Jay. I think that the noise is a large piece of dock equipment that moves in a pendulum motion. Or it's Steve groaning when his dog gets another package. That is a fantastic guess. A big piece of dock equipment that's I could see it like moving with the water or something. That's not correct, but I think that was a really cool inventive guess that you came up with. Another listener named Jason S. wrote in and said, hey, Jay, this week's noisy is definitely a large machine. So considering it's outside, is it a car crusher? If you haven't seen one of those, check them out on YouTube. There really are monster machines. It is not a car crusher. And the one thing about the car crusher that I would say is it probably wouldn't have that repeat kind of sound happening. And I've seen them many times over the years on YouTube, whatever. And I don't think they sound like that either. But it is a cool guess because, of course there's lots of steel and metals being bent and whatnot.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Is it outside?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' This is, in fact, an outside sound. Yes.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' All right. So they must have picked up on something I couldn't hear. Birds or something. By the way, Jay, to that first guess, have you guys not just Jay, everybody. Have you guys ever watched high speed dock footage?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Like what do you mean? What's high speed about it?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So like there will be these fixed cameras around different docks and you know how they run all through the night. And a lot of their machinery is robotic. And they'll fix these high speed cameras on them. And then you watch this kind of sped up dock footage. It's fascinating. It's like I think one of my favorite meditative things to look at.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Really?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's stunning. Yeah. There's something really weird about high speed dock footage that just captures me. I highly recommend everybody look at it.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Well, you have all the boats coming and going and coming and going.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And not just that, lifting all of the big shipping containers and stacking them. And it's almost like these giant cranes. And everything looks like a toy when it's done in high speed photography.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It has a meditative quality to it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Totally. It's amazing.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' There's also that way to focus the lens to make big things seem like tiny toys.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, like teeny tiny toys. And they're just like stacking and unstacking and stacking.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, it's not so much the sped up nature of it. It is the angle and how you film it that could reproduce that. It's so cool.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It could be that too, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It looks like a little toy model, but it's not.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's beautiful.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Is that your ASMR, Cara?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That might be my version of ASMR is weird dock footage. What does that say about me?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I looked up the physics on how they take those pictures. What is it about it? And it all has to do with, I guess, the focal length. Yeah, that's called tilt shift. And they're doing something to a special lens to change the focal quality.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I love it. Look up tilt shift dock footage and just zen out with me.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So another listener named Ryan Gebhardt wrote in. Said hi, Jay. My name is Ryan from Minnesota. Found you all a few weeks ago and been binging the podcast since. This is my first What's That Noisy? Ryan, you will figure out that the name of this segment is Who's That Noisy? But you're a young listener, so no worries. For the December 19th noisy, my first thought was a metal bed frame dragging like in a suspenseful movie. I think that's pretty cool. You know what I mean? You can hear like that noise, like something dragging. Just so listeners know, whatever your first guess is in the email, that's the one I take because you can't shotgun me with five guesses or whatever. People like say, hey, I thought of this and I thought of this and I thought of that. I'll always just go with the first one. So anyway, I thought that that guess was pretty cool. That is not it, though. I thought I could see why you picked that. A couple more. Ryan Boyes wrote in, so hi, Jay. Love the show. My guess is almost certainly wrong, but you got to try it. I'm going to say it's a failing wind turbine as its bearings give up the ghost. I thought that that was a really cool guess and I looked it up. And here is what a wind turbine, a normal wind turbine sounds like. [plays wind turbine noise] And that is about at 50 meters. And that's one fan or one turbine. So I did see video of turbines like crashing and burning in all sorts of different ways. But none of them made like that epically creaky noise that was happening. But I did do a little reading about wind turbines just because I was looking up the sounds that they make and the distance. It was pretty interesting, like how far the sound travels and what happens to the sound as it as it as it gets farther and farther away. Of course, the volume goes down. But then there's the added complexity of multiple turbines. And, of course, the weather has a huge impact on how much noise that they put out. But they're not as loud as you would think. Now, it's definitely not as much as people complain. One last guess before the winner. Of course, this is Visto Tutti. He sent in a joke guess. But the whole point was that Visto guessed every single who's that noisy this year.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yay!<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I love that.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That's why I stuck with him because he really committed himself. He did it. I feel like it was a little adventure he and I went on together. It was a lot of fun. One thing that I don't think everyone realized was that every email he sent, he wrote a different thing in Italian at the end of the email.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Cool.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Which I also thought was a lot of fun. So, Visto, I must meet you at some point. We must get together and have a drink or whatever.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Meatball.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah. And, of course, eating meatballs. That will always happen if you're near me. But anyway, man, thanks a lot. I really appreciated all those guesses. You don't have to stop. But I'm just talking about 2020. It was a shit year and you made me smile a little bit during that year, especially everybody. Everybody made me smile this past year. All of my who's that noisy guessers. So many emails I can't read on the air because they're not appropriate that are more for me. I think they know it because everybody knows that we keep it clean on the show. Oh, my God. I have so many people send me wacky stuff and weird things. I just love it. It's great. All right. The winner. Let's get to it. Crystal Haka wrote in, said, this is the sound of New York City's Verrazano Bridge swaying in high winds on 11-30-2020. Listen again. You will not believe what the sound of this bridge makes. [plays Noisy] When you see the video of this, it's really it's pretty scary. The entire bridge is swaying like up and down, up and down a lot. You know, feet, multiple feet. And there are these joints where the bridge I guess there's multiple of these joints. These are the expansion and retraction joints. So it's kind of like taking two combs and putting them together and perfectly lining up the teeth of the comb in between the other teeth of the other comb. So they can go in and out, go in and out. Except it's giant pieces of steel teeth that are doing this kind of connecting and separating, connecting and separating type of thing. So that that must absolutely be the bulk of the of the noise that we're hearing is that steel rubbing against the other steel. So so the bridge can stretch and move. It also could. I do believe that part of the sound is coming from the cables. It's a suspension bridge. So the cables are probably making a big noise. But the thing that really freaks me out is my God, how much can steel reinforced concrete move? I mean, it's remarkable.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's scary.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Like you hold a piece of concrete in your hand and you're like, this would not move. This would not bend in any way. Well, it does.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Especially if you put steel in it.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yes. Especially if you put steel in it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, but that's actually the opposite of what's true, Bob. The steel is there so that it can move. The concrete is there to provide hardness to steel strength. The steel will return to true, will return to its original position after it's displaced, whereas the concrete is brittle and will fall apart. That's why steel reinforced concrete is the best of both worlds. It's strong and hard. That's exactly why it's made that way. If you had just concrete to be brittle, if you had just steel, it wouldn't be hard. And so if you combine the two and it works.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah. But if I had some.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Bob, it's a matter of scale. Yes, if you're holding a small piece of concrete, you're going to think this is not going to move. But you've got to then a bridge of concrete is different.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Of course. You've got long expanses of the material and the more malleable, the more movable it is.<br />
<br />
=== New Noisy <small>(1:27:51)</small> ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Jay, what's your new noisy for this week?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' All right, guys. This was a noisy sent in by a listener named Robert Bowmaker. What a cool name.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I'll just say he started his email by saying, hey, Bob. And then he crossed it out and it said, Jack, people are still doing it right now.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That's all right.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Love it.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So here is this, what I would consider to be a special noisy. I thought this was a fun way to end and begin the year because we're recording in 2020 and we will be playing this episode in 2021. Check this out.<br />
<br />
[whooshing/whirring noise]<br />
<br />
I'm going to play more versions of this next week. You'll understand. But do give me a guess. It definitely has a very large and busy sound to it. The only thing I'll say is you will be happily surprised at how cool and interesting this noisy actually is.<br />
<br />
== Announcements <small>(1:29:01)</small> == <br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, Jay, we'll get the new year off to a start relatively soon in the year with our January 23rd 12 hour live stream. You guys are all looking forward to it.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Prepping already. Yep. Definitely.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I hope so. I hope you're prepping already. We've got a lot of material. It's like six shows to prep for.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Well, Ian and I have been working tirelessly. Like, I got a whole bunch of like the tiles, the green screen tile, the floor mat tiles that we use, Steve. I got a box of those. We have more green screen floor space, which is cool. I can't wait for everyone to see what we've done. I'll definitely show you the studio without the background just so you can see how we've changed it. And I have a person who listens to the show who also happens to work with my wife. He is a 3D digital artist, and he offered to help us out with some of our 3D design needs, which is really, really cool. So we're going to have something really cool to show you. It's going to be the set, the virtual set is going to be pretty awesome. I'm really excited about this whole thing. I think we're going to have a great time, and I think the food is going to be amazing.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, we'll see about that. All right, guys, let's go on with science or fiction.<br />
<br />
== Science or Fiction <small>(1:30:16)</small> ==<br />
{{SOFResults<br />
|fiction = year getting longer<!-- short word or phrase representing the item --><br />
|fiction2 = <!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
<br />
|science1 = short Roman calendar<br />
|science2 = Gregorian vs Julian<br />
|science3 = <!-- leave blank if absent --> <br />
<br />
|rogue1 = cara<!-- rogues in order of response --><br />
|answer1 = year getting longer<!-- item guessed, using word or phrase from above --><br />
<br />
|rogue2 =Evan<br />
|answer2 =year getting longer<br />
<br />
|rogue3 =jay<br />
|answer3 =year getting longer<br />
<br />
|rogue4 = bob<br />
|answer4 = year getting longer<br />
<br />
|rogue5 = <!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
|answer5 = <!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
<br />
|host = Steve<br />
<!-- for the result options below, <br />
only put a 'y' next to one. --><br />
|sweep = <!-- all the Rogues guessed wrong --><br />
|clever = <!-- each item was guessed (Steve's preferred result) --><br />
|win = <!-- at least one Rogue guessed wrong, but not them all --><br />
|swept = y<!-- all the Rogues guessed right --><br />
}}<br />
''Voiceover: It's time for Science or Fiction.''<br />
<br />
<blockquote>'''Theme: The Calendar'''<br>'''Item #1:''' The ancient Roman calendar year originally contained only 304 days.<ref>[https://www.timeanddate.com/calendar/roman-calendar.html TimeAndDate.com: The Roman Calendar]</ref><br>'''Item #2:''' In the last 2000 years the year has increased by 2.8 seconds due to the slowing of the Earth’s rotation.<ref>[https://www.nasa.gov/topics/solarsystem/features/extra-second.html NASA: NASA Explains Why Clocks Will Get an Extra Second on June 30]</ref><br>'''Item #3:''' While the Gregorian calendar was first proclaimed official in 1582, the Julian calendar is still used by several groups even though it is now 13 days off.<ref>[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_calendar#:~:text=The%20Julian%20calendar%20is%20still,leap%20year%20of%20366%20days. Wikipedia: Julian calendar]</ref></blockquote><br />
<br />
'''S:''' Each week, I come up with three science news items or facts, two real and one fake. And I challenge my panel of skeptics to tell me which one is the fake. It's a new year. We wipe the slate clean. Our eyes are all tied at nothing. So we'll see how you do. There's a theme this week because not much science news happens between Christmas and New Year's. So I did a theme. But in honour of the calendar switching over to a new year, I decided to make the theme the calendar. Okay, ready?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, here we go. Item number one, the ancient Roman calendar year originally contained only 304 days. Item number two, in the last 2,000 years, the year has increased by 2.8 seconds due to the slowing of the Earth's rotation. And item number three, while the Gregorian calendar was first proclaimed official in 1582, the Julian calendar is still used by several groups, even though it is now 13 days off. So Cara, as last year's winner, you get to go first this year.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I love that.<br />
<br />
=== Cara's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''C:''' The ancient Roman calendar year originally contained only 304 days. So this is either a really good lie or it's true, as are everything in science or fiction, because it's off but not so off, which would make sense to be based on the observations of the time with the tools of the time. So yeah, I'm sort of liking that one. That one's not sticking in my craw. In the last 2,000 years, the year has increased by 2.8 seconds due to the slowing of the Earth's rotation. And then lastly, while the Gregorian calendar was first proclaimed official in 1582, the Julian calendar is still used by several groups, even though it is now 13 days off. The Julian calendar, okay, so that would be post the ancient Roman calendar.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' A Roman calendar after the ancient Roman calendar.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Okay, cool, because that's off by more than 13 days. I wouldn't be surprised if there are still like religious groups that use a Julian calendar. I like how you said several groups and not like nations. That one strikes me as something as maybe religious groups use it, but then they also still use obviously the calendar that they have to use for work, for example. Because I have a lot of Jewish friends and they use a different calendar. Actually, I think there are several new years within the Jewish tradition, depending on how orthodox you can be. So I wouldn't be surprised. And we've got Chinese New Years. There are a lot of different calendars that individuals use. So I don't know. That one doesn't surprise me. But the increasing of the year by 2.8 seconds due to the slowing of the Earth's rotation. So that's not what leap years account for, right? That's not like that extra day every four years to sort of recheck. I don't do that kind of math in my head. Just 2.8 seconds per year. Is that what you're saying? The year has increased by 2.8 seconds per year.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' 2.8 seconds over 2,000 years.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Over 2,000 years. So we're very different. Yeah. OK. And so we're saying that that's it would be different now, but it wouldn't. It would take so long to actually affect the calendar date that maybe that's true. But, oh, God, Steve, this one's hard. But I think I'm going to say the 2.8 seconds slowing of the Earth's rotation 2,000 years later. How could we know that? Probably from rocks. Dammit. Rocks tell us everything about magnets and spin. Whereas the Gregorian calendar, this one could have more things that are wrong. Like some of the things could be right, but some things could be wrong. Would you do that to us, Steve? You would, wouldn't you?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I have that.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I'll say the 2.8 seconds one's the fiction, but I'm probably wrong.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' OK. Evan.<br />
<br />
=== Evan's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''E:''' The ancient Roman calendar, 304 days. Well, it doesn't divide by 12 easily. So in that context, that one could be fiction. But not every month has an equal amount of days. So that would be the explanation there. So it puts it back into the plausibility category. And then the 2.8 seconds due to the slowing of the Earth's rotation. I think the only question here, there's no doubt that that has been happening. But is it 2.8 seconds or did you order of magnitude this thing? Is it 28 seconds or is it another order, 280 seconds? So if that one's fiction, that I think would be the reason why. And then the last one about the Gregorian calendar and the Julian calendar. Yeah, several groups using it. Sure, because there's groups. I mean, that's a pretty vague term. But like Cara said, there's – she spouted off just what? Eight off the top of her head. There's probably dozens, maybe more obscure ones that we don't even know. So I think that one's right. So is it 304 days or 2.8 seconds? I will go with Cara. Cara, I'm hitching my star to you on this one.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Crap.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay, Jay.<br />
<br />
=== Jay's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''J:''' The ancient Romans with the 304-day calendar. When you hear things like this, you say that is pretty far off. It's very far off from what it should be. And how did they equate that? How did they deal with those differences? Unless the – I don't know. That just doesn't make much sense. But there is something that I do semi-recognize about it. I don't know. It's really hard. I have so much junk in my head. This one about the last 2,000 years. We've increased 2.8 seconds due to the slowing of the earth's rotation. I don't know if we can calculate things that accurately. I wonder. I wonder if we can get that accurate with those types of calculations. And I would think 2,000 years is way too short. If this one is the fiction, to me, that's what number has been faked. And the last one, yeah, sure. I'm positive that there are people that use many different calendars around the world. And why not use the Julian calendar? So, I'll say the second one at 2.8 seconds is the fiction.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And Bob.<br />
<br />
=== Bob's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Ancient Roman calendar 304. That seems low to me. I thought it would be a little bit higher, like 320 or something. Yeah, that's within error bars of my memory, I think. Gregorian calendar. Let's see. It was first. Wow. I haven't just focused on this 2,000-year 2.8 second one. I haven't really even looked at this third one. Yeah, yeah. I think there's some weirdos out there still using that. So, yeah. I think I got a problem with 2.8. I calculate that to be 0.38 hours per million years, which is a lot. And then if you go to like 100 million years ago, it's basically the earth would have been stopped. So, I think that's off by a lot. And, yes, they can be that accurate in terms of that kind of thing. This is all due to tidal breaking. You can thank the moon for this. Essentially what it's doing, the moon is tidal breaking the rotation of the earth.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Such a drag.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' And then it's basically sloshing the oceans in its basin against our direction of rotation. And that is what's slowing down the spin of the earth. And, of course, that energy can't disappear. So, it's actually as the earth is slowing down, the moon is moving farther away. So, it's a fascinating dynamic. I just love that stuff. But, yeah, that 2.8 seconds per 2,000 years seems like too much. It's less than that. So, I'll say that's fiction as well.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #1 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay. So, you all agree on number two, which means we're starting the year with a sweep one way or the other. So, we'll take these in order. We'll start with the first one. The first one, the ancient Roman calendar year, originally contained only 304 days. You all think this one is science. And this one is science. And you guys were surprisingly okay with this.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah. It seemed low. It seemed low to me. And I would have picked that one if it wasn't for the second one.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It seemed low. I mean, you think that their year was 61 days off?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I don't know.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That would be like every year the seasons would shift by two months.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, when you think about it that way, they must have had some sort of way to shift it back.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, but maybe it originally contained 304 days for a week. And then they changed it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Maybe their days were longer. That's weird. How would they do that?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, this is what they did. So, first of all, I should say, we're going to like 700 BCE, right? And what historians think was going on at that time is a lot of inference, you know? So, we're not sure. We have to say we're not sure about whatever was happening this far back. But the calendar was a 304-day calendar. The other 61 days was just off calendar.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Sex parties and stuff?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, they just didn't count that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' They just didn't count it. It was the winter. It was like the calendar year went from March to December. Then they took a break for the winter.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' They're taking a break from time. That's awesome.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, because nobody could do anything. It was just cold and awful.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' A very carefully worded it as the Roman calendar year because the rest of it is off calendar. It's just not part of the calendar.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's kind of like all of 2020.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's just been off calendar for us.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Remember what happened during that interstitial period between 2019 and 2021?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It was just – and this is very common just to have extra days in the calendar to make things work, right?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' We do that with leap year.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But it's not just leap year. They were just like – I mean, various calendars throughout the world.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' They just kind of stop and then start back up again.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, they just start and stop back up again.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But how do they know what day to start up again?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, right? You still need like some meta calendar.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's what everybody in town agrees. It's like at the first frost.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, right. They had some way of estimating the seasons. The frigging druids could precisely measure the seasons and then they would just make it work.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Cherry blossoms.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Because the world was only so big back then. So yeah, like a bird saying that was pretty much everybody you knew and saw.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' How long was their calendar year plus the off period? Add that together.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' 365 days.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' What was that? That's the real question.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Because it was 61 days. So you know that they had only 10 months, right? March. The year started in March.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's why all of ours are off by two.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yes.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oct is 10.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Once you get to like September, October, November, December, that should be 7, 8, 9, 10. But they're 9, 10, 11, 12. They're off by two.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's annoying.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So what happened was they added January, February between December and March in order to pick up those missing days. To make them part of the calendar. And even then the calendar was only 355 days. Because they were more obsessed with making the months more standardized. So you had the full months, the plenis months with 31 days. And then you had the hollow months which only had like 20 days.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' They had Halloween.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Although that's on the 31st.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Hollow has nothing to do with Halloween. So this was the Republican calendar. And that lasted for 355 days. And again, they just sort of had a 10-day break just to make it all sort of roughly fit. And it was a mess. So the bottom line is for like 700 years or whatever, the Roman calendar was a complete mess. There were many different calendars. There were fixes upon fixes, you know. And then came Julius Caesar who was like, all right, we got to fix this shit. This is just not working. So then came the Julian calendar which had a 365 and one quarter day year. 365 days and a leap year every four years. That's the Julian calendar.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' But did they have the leap year every century?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, they didn't.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Because it's not just .4.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It's .4, like 2.4.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' You have to throw some extra time back in there, right?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's the difference between the Julian and the Gregorian calendar.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yes.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Right. The Julian calendar was just 365 and a quarter just a straight up quarter.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Which is fine for a while but relatively accurate.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But it drifted.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #3 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And so let's go to number three. We'll skip over to number two. While the Gregorian calendar was first proclaimed official in 1582, the Julian calendar, that's the one we've been talking about, is still used by several groups even though it is now 13 days off. You guys all think this one is science. And this one is science.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Ah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yay.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Because.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Go Cara.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. So in 1582 it was off by 11 days. So they basically had to just make 11 days vanish to re-sync the calendar to the season.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' And my birthday, if I were alive, my birthday would be within those 11 days.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, no. You wouldn't exist.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I thought it was in October, Bob. Those 11 days were in October.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I'm just saying. You can imagine me being born back then. I can imagine being born in October too.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And it would have been cloudy too.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The solar year is 365.24219 days.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, of course.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So that's where you have all of the leap year rules in order to make it work for a lot longer.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Leap seconds.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But there are several groups, and Cara you're correct, they're religious groups, who still use the Gregorian calendar. They are, I mean, you still use the Julian calendar. They are the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Oriental Orthodoxy, and the Berbers.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' The Berbers. We always forget about the Berbers.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Oh, yeah, you're right.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The Berbers.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I visited some Berber groups when I was in Morocco.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, that's where they are.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I do not forget about them.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' There's a group in Seville of Berbers.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, dammit, that took me a second.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Happy New Year.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' The Berber of Seville. So stupid.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yet you laugh.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' He's like trimming a rug.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #2 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So all this means that in the last 2,000 years, the year has increased by 2.8 seconds due to the slowing of the Earth's rotation is the fiction. Evan, you were going in the wrong direction. Bob is correct. I shifted it by two orders of magnitude.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Bigger.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, wow.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' At least.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's 14 milliseconds a century. I think that's how it works out. It would have been 1.4 milliseconds per century. So if I did the math right. So it would have been 0.028 seconds in 2,000 years. So I shifted it by two orders of magnitude bigger. And, yeah, a little bit of back of the envelope calculation tells you that's way too fast as a steady increase.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That's what I was doing. I was calculating. Like, wait, a third of an hour in a million years? Too much.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's why you went last.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yes, I figured.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's too high.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Good guess, Cara.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's too high.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It's fascinating. It's fascinating because they have evidence of a 10-hour day millions and millions of years ago. A 10-hour day.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I know. Oh, we were spinning around like a top. Oh, my gosh.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That's like Jupiter.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The 2,000-year distance difference isn't based upon rocks or anything. That's based upon us precisely measuring the year. And we could measure the difference year to year. We could measure those 1.4 milliseconds or whatever it comes out to be.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' And that will change. I mean it's not hard and fast like 2.8735. It's not consistent. The earth can actually spin a little bit faster if we have a certain type of earthquake. When you have lots of rocks shifting around like a skater conservation of angular momentum, the tighter you are, the faster you spin. So if you have a lot of rocks shifting, the earth could actually speed up a little bit faster than it would. It normally would have or slow down. It would affect it. It could be that sensitive. So it's fascinating.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But it averages out.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah. Tidal forces are just amazing.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. So good job. Guys, getting the year off to a good start. You're all at 100%. Awesome.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yay.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' All right, man.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It won't last for long.<br />
<br />
== Skeptical Quote of the Week <small>(1:47:28)</small> ==<br />
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<blockquote>You are modern humans of the civilized world. And modern humans rise beyond all laws and superstitions of the society. They help their fellow beings to rise from the ashes of ignorance, illusion and fear.<br>– Abhijit Naskar, neuroscientist<ref name=naskar/></blockquote><br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay, Evan, give us the first quote of the new year.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' "You are modern humans of the civilized world, and modern humans rise beyond all laws and superstitions of the society. They help their fellow beings to rise from the ashes of ignorance, illusion, and fear." And that was said by or written by Abhijit Naskar. He's a neuroscientist and an author and speaks a lot about people breaking their superstitions and old traditions. And it's the responsibility of those who do know better to help the others along in bringing them out of the illusions of the past. So that's what he talks about.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. I have a sense that he's saying that they should be doing this, not necessarily that all modern humans do do this. Or he's doing it as a matter of definition. If you're a modern human, to be a modern human by definition means that you rise above superstition and to help others also rise above superstition.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Agreed.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Because otherwise it's always hard to get away from sounding a little condescending. You know, this is just a sort of a generic skeptical thing that we have to be very, very careful about because we are kind of setting ourselves up by saying, well we're thinking straight and you're thinking wrong. So it's really important.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Brights.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's why the brights are like the worst thing ever to be recommended. But you have to frame it in such a way. Listen, we all have these cognitive biases. We all are on the Dunning-Kruger curve at some point or other. We all have the same emotional makeup. But these are the tools that we all can use to help us rise above superstition and our cognitive failings, things like that. But still, even if we make a Herculean effort to not be condescending, some people are still going to interpret it that way.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's right.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's just hard to get away from it.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It is. It's hard. But it's practice. And as long as we're aware of it and we try to guard against it to at least some degree, then we still have to do it. It's not like we have to stop doing it. It must happen. And we all need the help.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's why I say the principle of charity and humility is probably the most important thing for skeptics to follow, to teach and to follow. Because otherwise, yeah, you end up just becoming that jerk. And then you're not helping anybody. You're actually just giving critical thinking a bad name.<br />
<br />
== Signoff <small>(1:49:58)</small> == <br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, guys, I had a lot of fun. Looking forward to 2021. Looking forward to the 12-hour show. I think it's going to be epic.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yes, yes.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' A lot of fun.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Can't wait.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' —and until next week, this is your {{SGU}}. <!-- typically this is the last thing before the Outro --> <br />
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}}</div>Hearmepurrhttps://www.sgutranscripts.org/w/index.php?title=SGU_Episode_963&diff=19108SGU Episode 9632024-01-17T12:10:42Z<p>Hearmepurr: episode done</p>
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|caption = "A prominent extraterrestrial-hunting scientist thinks that more than 50 tiny, metal spheres pulled from the Pacific Ocean might be the work of intelligent aliens. Others are skeptical."&nbsp;<ref name=spheres>[https://www.livescience.com/space/extraterrestrial-life/harvard-scientist-claims-anomalous-metal-spheres-pulled-from-the-ocean-could-be-alien-technology-others-are-not-convinced Live Science: 'Anomalous' metal spheres unlikely to be alien technology, despite Harvard scientist's claim]</ref><br />
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|bob =y<br />
|cara =y<br />
|jay =y<br />
|Evan =y<br />
|guest1 =EB: [https://elibosnick.com/about-eli/ Eli Bosnick],<br>American comedian & podcaster<br />
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|qowText = It's all about being a part of something in the community, socializing with people who share interests and coming together to help improve the world we live in.<br />
|qowAuthor = {{w|Zach Braff}}, American actor and filmmaker<br />
|downloadLink = {{900s|963|download}} <!-- inserts the date-specific variables for the DownloadLink template; the link will be created for the correct mp3 audio --><br />
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|forumLinktopic = 55263.0 <!-- now all you need to enter here is the #####.# from the TOPIC=#####.# at the end of the sguforums.org URL for the forum discussion page for this episode --><br />
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<br />
== Introduction, Live from NotACon ==<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Hello and welcome to the {{SGU|link=y}}. ''(applause)'' Today is Friday, November 3<sup>rd</sup>, 2023 and this is your host, Steven Novella. ''(applause)'' Joining me this week are Bob Novella... <br />
<br />
'''B:''' Hey, everybody! ''(applause)''<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Cara Santa Maria... <br />
<br />
'''C:''' Howdy. ''(applause)'' <br />
<br />
'''S:''' Jay Novella... <br />
<br />
'''J:''' Hey guys. ''(applause)''<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Evan Bernstein...<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Hello White Plains! ''(applause)''<br />
<br />
'''S:''' ...and we have a special guest joining us for this episode, Eli Bosnick. Eli, welcome to the show.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Hi, Eli.<br />
<br />
'''EB:''' Hello, hello.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So we are live at NOTACON. This is not a conference, but it's a conference, but it's not a conference. And so far, it's going really well. This is, I think, the best part of the show.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' He wouldn't really know, though.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I wouldn't know. That's what I'm told. I'm told that so far, it has gone pretty well. Eli, you're a fellow podcaster. Tell us about your many, many podcasts.<br />
<br />
'''EB:''' So I have a lot of podcasts, and I don't think you even know this, Steve. Skeptic's Guide to the Universe was my intro to Skepticism.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I was told that.<br />
<br />
'''EB:''' Yeah, so when I was 20 years old, I was a 9-11 truther. And yeah, you're allowed to boo for that, because it sucks. And that's what I thought the word skeptic meant. And my co-worker, now co-host, No Illusions, was like, I was talking to him about Zeitgeist. I was like, yeah, Zeitgeist, right? And he was like, hey, I have a blog you should read about that movie you're praising. I read your blog about Zeitgeist and got interested in the skeptical movement by listening to Skeptic's Guide to the Universe. And now I'm here and terrified. ''(laughter)'' Mortally terrified. I do not belong up here.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So much so that you didn't plug your own shows, which is what happened.<br />
<br />
'''EB:''' Right. God-awful movies. The Scathing Atheist. D&D Minus. The Skeptocrat. And Dear Old Dads.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Nice. Whoa.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Wow.<br />
<br />
'''EB:''' And Citation Needed.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Good resume.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We've got a great show for you. There's been a discussion about whether or not we should do NOTACON next year. And it depends on how it all goes. Are you guys having a good time? ''(applause)'' So we've been brainstorming some topics that we might cover on next year's NOTACON when we do the show. So these are the ones that came up. Artificial intelligence, friend or foe. Yes. Yeah, that's definitely going to be next year. Arby's sandwiches. Real meat or not. I think we're going to have to do a live taste test there. Operating room horror stories. That's my favorite. New England. How the Patriots cheat and get away with it. You sat there. Hello. Time out. Taking a break is the best way to recharge. That was Cara's suggestion.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It was? When did we have this conversation?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Roll with it, Cara. Roll with it, Cara.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Okay.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Being autocrat or visionary.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' This was bad.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That'll be a lively discussion. And Bob, this is Bob's topic. Nanoseconds. Can anyone perceive time that short?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' No.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' What's Brian doing in this slide?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I guess we covered that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I don't know. I don't know how that picture got there.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' We almost had a bit in this weekend called is it mayonnaise?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We're not doing is it mayonnaise.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Ewww. Oh, no.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That one dropped out early.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It was always mayonnaise.<br />
<br />
'''EB:''' I played that game to get into a frat. It wasn't mayonnaise. ''(laughter)''<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Gross. Gross.<br />
<br />
{{anchor|quickie}} <!-- leave anchor(s) directly above the corresponding section that follows --><br />
== Quickie with Steve <small>(3:59)</small> ==<br />
{{shownotes<br />
|weblink = https://www.livescience.com/space/extraterrestrial-life/harvard-scientist-claims-anomalous-metal-spheres-pulled-from-the-ocean-could-be-alien-technology-others-are-not-convinced <br />
|refname=spheres<br />
|article_title = 'Anomalous' metal spheres unlikely to be alien technology, despite Harvard scientist's claim<br />
|publication = Live Science<br />
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{{shownotes<br />
|weblink = https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2515-5172/ad03f9<br />
|article_title = Anthropogenic Coal Ash as a Contaminant in a Micro-meteoritic Underwater Search<br />
|publication = Research Notes of the AAS<br />
|note = These two articles are not from the SGU show notes page, but Steve mentions the second one in the show.<br />
}}<br />
'''S:''' All right. So I love this article. This is one of those ones where, like, you read it. The title is so, like, techno jargon. Anthropogenic coal ash as a contaminant in a micrometeoritic underwater search. Sounds like who cares, right? But this is awesome. So they were examining these little microscopic spherules of metal on the ocean floor to see what they were made of. And do you guys know where I'm going with this?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yes. Avi Loeb.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' This was the Avi Loeb study where they said, look, these little spherules. They're where we thought they were supposed to be based upon the trajectory of something that might have been an interstellar meteor. And they're made of they're mostly iron, but it's not the same ratio. There's too much, like, nickel and uranium and stuff in there. So it's not volcanic. That means it's a meteor. But it's not the ratio that meteors from our solar system have. So it's probably an extrasolar meteor. And, in fact, it could be an alien spaceship, right? This is Avi Loeb.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That's a hell of a leap.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, it's a few leaps there. So this is follow-up research by another team where they found that the constituent in those spherules that were like there was too much nickel and stuff in there matches what you would find in coal ash. So this is an industrial contaminant, right? You're burning coal. It goes up into the atmosphere. And some of it gets into whatever, into these spherules ultimately. So what this means is clearly that extraterrestrials came to our solar system in iron spaceships powered by coal, right? That's the only, I think, reasonable conclusion that we can.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Where did you get that picture?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Is that a spell jammer?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That is AI generated.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Oh, okay.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Nice.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' What did you feed in?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I fed in iron spaceship powered by coal. ''(laughter)''<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Seems obvious now.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Should have known.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Lovecraftian.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, right?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay. Jay.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' We got him, you guys. This doesn't happen very often. Especially not without Joss here. He's crying.<br />
<br />
== News Items ==<br />
{{anchor|news#}} <!-- leave this news item anchor directly above the news item section that follows --><br />
<br />
=== Making Lunar Roads with Sunlight <small>(6:12)</small> ===<br />
{{shownotes<br />
|weblink = https://www.space.com/blasting-lunar-soil-with-sunlight-could-create-moon-roads<br />
|article_title = Scientists want to make moon roads by blasting lunar soil with sunlight<br />
|publication = Space.com<br />
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'''S:''' Tell us about how we're going to build roads on the moon.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So when this happens to Steve, I extend it by laughing in his face. And it works every freaking time. He gets, now if he goes to stage two, he starts crying. Look at his eyes, Cara.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, it's just on the cuff.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I'm good, I'm good.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So we've talked about this many times. NASA is in a huge way preparing for all of these moon missions that are coming up. And there's so much stuff that they have to figure out. And this is just one of a thousand things that they really need to land. Or at least come up with a solution for if this one isn't going to be it. But this is really cool, though. This is what they're talking about and they're running experiments now. They're trying to figure out how that they can use the moon's regolith to actually make kind of like something like concrete. So they can build roadways and launch pads on the moon. Because you don't want to land on an uneven surface. It's really bad. Every time a rocket would take off and land, huge amounts of regolith goes everywhere. And the thing is, is regolith is bad.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I hate regolith.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It's nasty.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It {{sand|gets everywhere}}. It's irritating.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It's coarse.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Coarse, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' What the hell was Lucas thinking? Somebody should have slapped a pen out of his hand.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's the problem. When you get that powerful, you have no one to tell you, no, that doesn't work. It's stupid. What was that movie? Because that way it wouldn't be terrible, you know.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' What was he talking about?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Steve's drunk. Sorry. He was hitting the bottle. We didn't tell him to stop.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I had to get up early this morning and go to work.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, we know, Steve. We know.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Because he's a doctor.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' He's a doctor. ''(laughter)''<br />
<br />
'''B:''' ''(in robotic voice)'' He's a doctor.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' All right, so let's talk about the regolith for a minute here. So lunar soil is nasty stuff. It's really dangerous, right? It's made out of dark gray powder volcanic rock. And the thing is, it's abrasive. And they're saying, they call it sticky. It's sticky because it has a lot of like spines on it that can stick onto lots of different materials. It gets in electronics. It's really bad to inhale. And it actually literally does damage equipment. So they're thinking like, we've got to minimize the amount of regolith that ends up all over everybody and the equipment and everything. So, of course, they're like, well, we could make areas where, especially when they're traveling, right? When you see the earlier moon rovers going, the tires kick up a lot. This stuff is always getting kicked up. And reports back from the Apollo missions were horrible about what this stuff does.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' They hated it. Astronauts hated it with a passion.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So NASA researchers are looking for ways to use the regolith and turn it into a positive. So what they came up with is pretty interesting. And it seems like it's doable. They say that they could melt the regolith using solar energy. And, of course, they also need lasers to be there, I guess, to help do certain things that the solar radiation or solar energy couldn't do. So what they're saying is that they're going to essentially liquefy the regolith, turn it into like a magma kind of situation. Then they're going to form it into layers and then let it solidify. And they think that early studies are showing that this stuff could actually stand up to the abuse of what it would need to. So they have a synthetic moon dust. It's a fine-grained material called EAC1A. This was designed by the European Space Agency as a lunar soil substitute. And it's pretty damn close to lunar soil. And it's really cool because it allows scientists to get in there and do all the things that they need to do to figure out, like how they could use this. Because we're going to want to take the lunar regolith and get oxygen out of it and all that type of stuff. And they have to be able to study it. And we just don't have that much lunar rock and soil to do all these tests with. So what they devised was they're going to use concentrated sunlight, which will simulate laser beams up to 12 kilowatts, which is pretty powerful. And this is to melt the lunar dust into triangular and hollow-centered tiles. I could not find why they want them hollow other than maybe heat dispersion. But I don't know why they want them to be hollow. But that's another thing that we'll probably eventually find out. The cool thing is, is that they know that they could make them to interlock, which makes them easy to build roads with. I also couldn't find anything on, are they going to have a bulldozer type of thing to level things out? They'd have to. They'd have to have machinery up there that would prepare the ground to just be able to lay this stuff down.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So they want to make roads out of this stuff?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, so launch pads.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So would they be solar roads then?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Lunar roads.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yes, they will, Steve. Anyway, that didn't work out here on Earth. So what they came up with was, I don't know if any of you know what a {{w|Fresnel lens}} is, but they have a 7.8-foot Fresnel lens. Now, these are lenses that are famously used in movie making, right? They're these big glass lenses that look like they have layers to them. And they're very good at focusing light. And usually with a Fresnel lens, you move it farther away from the light source, and the light goes from wide to pointed. It's very, very useful. So what they're going to do is they're going to make it very pointed, to get it super hot and condensed. So then there are some advantages here. Now, first, using the lunar regolith and sunlight, these are resources that are there, right? We don't have to ship them from Earth. And as you know, shipping things from Earth is wildly expensive, especially heavy stuff and durable stuff. So they're trying to use the lunar regolith for as many ideas as they can come up with. There's a lot of challenges ahead of them. One of them is material integrity. They have to make sure that these tiles are going to be able to stand up against radiation. It has to stand up against meteor impact and all sorts of stuff like that that they're going to deal with. And the big one is temperature change, which we all know. What's the variability in temperature on the regolith?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's like 200 degrees.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' They said that the gravity, the lower gravity is an issue because when they melt the lunar regolith into magma, whatever they're calling it, the real problem is that it behaves differently than magma on Earth. It doesn't flow the same, everything. We don't know the physics exactly on how to do it yet. And I think about the problem is how do we do that on Earth? How do we simulate that on Earth? So they're going to have to come up with a way to figure that one out, and I don't see a clear path for that.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Don't they have a room where they could just dial in the amount of gravity in the room and then do the – right? Doesn't that exist?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Don't astronauts train, like, in water mostly? Yeah, and you couldn't do this in water.<br />
<br />
'''EB:''' Get a plane full of lava to fly.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' The vomit comet.<br />
<br />
'''EB:''' Guys, I don't want to do this one. I don't think we can do it. Why did all these jars say lava?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It's a typo. Keep going.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So this is a very high energy requirement, and they're also worried about the idea that how much energy will we have on the moon that's available for processes like this? So they're trying to figure out – you see, this is the problem. We don't know how we're going to generate energy on the moon yet. We haven't landed it. We don't know exactly how it's going to be, how much energy everything is going to need. So right now, scientists are like, well, we don't know how much energy this process is going to need, and they need to know how much energy they'll have available to them. So you see, it's the chicken or the egg type of thing. They have to be very careful about – they want to make it as low as possible, and then they have to, of course, once they get all of the numbers in from everything, then they have to calculate, what's going to actually be used on the moon or not, depending on energy requirements. They said that getting the lens and the lasers to the moon was actually going to be really tricky.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, I imagine.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I guess that they've never put equipment up like that before, so they have to figure out how to do that as well.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, and I think it's kind of a no-brainer that we've got to be able to build stuff out of the regolith, and you can't have the loose regolith in a place where people are living and working and equipment is happening. So this is a good solution. I know they're also talking about coming up with a formula where they could turn it into a substance that they could feed into the big 3D printers, and you could basically print buildings out of the regolith, which is also a good way to solidify it so it's not a dust kind of thing.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It seems like they could just make cement blocks out of it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Mooncrete.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Mooncrete.<br />
<br />
'''EB:''' I have a PR question. Like, there's the smart people, right, who are like, hey, guys, we can use the mirror and it's going to make cement. But is there a PR person who's like, guys, that sounds a lot like laser on the moon. I just – I don't know what Marjorie Taylor Greene is going to do with that. Can we make it look less laser-y? Put a flag on it.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' See, that's how they get you.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Don't put a Star of David on it.<br />
<br />
'''EB:''' Right, exactly, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' The mission is a hoax just to get the laser up there.<br />
<br />
'''EB:''' They're just firing Herb Rothschild from the team. Hey, man, you've done great work here, but we're about to put out the press release.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So right. That's so sad.<br />
<br />
=== Misinformation vs Disinformation <small>(15:50)</small> ===<br />
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'''S:''' Well, speaking of Marjorie Taylor Greene, Cara, are we in the middle of a misinformation panic?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Ooh. So we talk about this a lot on the show. We talk about misinformation. But there's recently an article published in Undark by Joanna Thompson, who's a science journalist, and she sort of raises the question, are we having a moral panic over misinformation? We know that there is a lot of good evidence out there to show that misinformation is rampant, right? There are a ton of different sort of scientific investigations from multiple different disciplines that are looking into whether or not misinformation exists. But we've all just sort of collectively made an assumption that it's affecting people's behavior. And so the question posed in this article is kind of twofold. The first is, are we doing a good job of discriminating between misinformation, disinformation, and propaganda? And generally speaking, the sort of definition of misinformation is just wrong information. But it's not necessarily got an intentionality to it. And that definition gets very wiggly because we don't know where that demarcation line is. So is a weather reporter saying it's going to be 75 degrees tomorrow and it turns out to be 80 degrees delivering misinformation? Is a scientific community saying, and this happened during the COVID pandemic a lot, this is what we think is going on right now. And then later we had to say, OK, we've got new information and we're going to update that. Was that previous information misinformation? It's factually wrong, but it was the best that we could do with what we had at the time. Now disinformation has intentionality behind it. It's intentionally feeding information to change a narrative. And then in the extreme, we would call that propaganda, right? So the first question is, are we doing a good enough job of differentiating between the three? The second important question that I want to pose to the panel is when we think about causality versus correlation, there's a really open question here that are people who are already prone to believe certain things simply seeking out reinforcement of their previously held biases and then acting in accordance? Or is being exposed to those things online actually changing their views? And interestingly, a lot of the literature is not really supporting the former argument there.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That it's changing their minds?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That it's changing their minds. Because we can't really do a lot of clean causation research here. And there have been examples in which causation research was done. And we actually saw the opposite of what we expected. We saw anti-vaxxers being, or individuals being exposed to anti-vax rhetoric and then being more likely to get the COVID vaccine afterward. So obviously, we're talking about a lot of different things. Anti-vax falls under the same umbrella, but it's very, very different than what's another big kind of pseudoscientific thing we're struggling with right now? Like another type of misinformation.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Anti-GMO.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Anti-GMO. So even though they follow the same playbook, you probably know people who are anti-GMO who aren't anti-vax. You might know people who are anti-vax who aren't anti-GMO. And their reasoning is going to be slightly different. So I'm curious what the panel, what the show kind of thinks about this topic. Because I think it's an important one that we don't often raise.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I think the misinformation one, the first classification, that just sounds like the normalcy of our day-to-day lives. We have the best information that we can. Science is auto-correcting. It's constantly updating the accuracy of its information. That's cool. I mean, I would think that misinformation is the least worrisome out of all of them, right?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But the worst is curated, narrative-driven propaganda.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Clearly.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And certainly that, anecdotally, I see the effects of that every day. Just on my podcast this week, we've been dealing with a new commenter who is basically spewing out a consistently extreme propaganda. Everything they say is demonstrably wrong. It's propaganda. It's curated propaganda.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' What's the topic?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, it's a lot of things.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, okay. So you're seeing it across the board with this commenter.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. But for example, there's a lot of anti-climate change propaganda out there, right? And there's a lot of information that you can tell it's propaganda because it's like they're quoting sources that they didn't make up how they're saying it. They're saying things the way it was presented to them. And they're stating it as a fact. And it's supporting their worldview and their political ideology and their tribe. It certainly is reinforcing. And I think you're right. They probably were already believing that way to begin with. But it absolutely solidifies their opinion on that one topic. You know, they're like, say, anti-climate change is real. So I think it's hard to tease apart the chicken and the egg effect there. Because it is sort of self-reinforcing. Yeah, they were probably there already. But now it's stronger. And it does move the needle. It might not be as big as we think. But even if it's moving the needle 5% or 10%, that's a lot in a very closely divided political environment.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And that's the question that the researchers that are often cited in this article, so a lot of different psychologists were interviewed and cited, the question that they really bring to the table is, is what we think is a needle movement actually a needle movement? And is it that because we see it more online, that it's somehow a more perceptible problem to us? And they, of course, when we talk about moral panic, and we've talked about this before on the show, when the printing press came out, people were burning them because they were afraid that they were going to corrupt people because they had access to books.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' People could print anything.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Exactly. And we saw the same thing when radio was launched. And we saw the same thing when television came out. And, of course, we see the same thing about the Internet. And is it a bias wherein our exposure is so saturated, we see the hits and the misses more, but it feels like we're seeing more of the hits? Or because we can look back to mudslinging during presidential campaigns 200 years ago.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It's always been there.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And there was so much disinformation, I should say.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It's always been there.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So it's pretty fascinating. Is it actually a worse problem now? Or is it just that we're all so much more aware of it, and it's the dinner table conversations are not happening in a public arena?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' From my perspective, I'm not doing research and everything, and I actually find this question interesting because, to me, I'm much more like, whatever, let's just handle the disinformation. I don't need to tease it out and figure it out. I know that that's part of what some people do, and in a way, it really does need to be done. But as a consumer and as a skeptic, I'm like, look, we know there's a problem. We know that social media is a big part of it. And we're sitting here talking about it, but we're not doing much about it. And look at what's happened in the last 10 years. Is it just weird perception? Or is it true that the world is filled with more disinformation now? I mean, we say, collectively, in the 20 years that we've been doing this, that, indeed, it's worse now than it was when we started.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But the interesting thing is, and the argument is made in this article, not only are we doing something about it, we're funneling billions of dollars into this problem, and nobody has really defined yet whether this problem exists. We know it happens, but we don't know if people's behavior is being changed because of it. And governments and corporations are spending ungodly amounts of money trying to combat it. And the question is, is this the right use of our money?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, I get that.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' You know what I mean? And I don't think any of us know the answer to that question.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I think most people, though, I think everyone kind of agrees. Everyone thinks it's social media. Social media has become this big demon in this whole thing, and everyone is using that as their first go-to when it comes to misinformation.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, but it's clearly not just social media. The problem preexists in social media. But also, I think a bigger problem is, even within mainstream media, within radio, TV, or whatever, it's propaganda media. It's the fact that we've eliminated the lines between news and entertainment and between news and propaganda. So there are now news agencies that are propaganda agencies.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' They've legitimized propaganda in a way that, yeah, I think historically wasn't the case.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' And that started in the 80s, right? I mean, it's been a while. We're reaping the benefits of that now.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' And isn't that like the ridiculously low-hanging fruit? We know that when they, what was that law?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The Fairness Doctrine.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' The Fairness Doctrine. We know that when that changed, it dramatically changed the way that news agencies were disseminating information. So why don't we just put that back? These are the simple things that I don't understand.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, it's hard to put that genie back in the bottle.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' You know, if people are getting fined, they'll stop doing it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Maybe. Look at Alex Jones.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' First Amendment, you know.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Exactly. It is a complicated issue. And so, yeah, that line between misinformation and disinformation, A, like you mentioned, I think is a good one because we conflate it all the time. And I think one of the problems is that there are certain groups of individuals who are ostensibly fighting against disinformation, but they're actually just fighting against misinformation. And that's a foundational misunderstanding of the scientific method. And sort of against that are individuals who are actively fighting against propaganda, and yet it seems like they're on a level playing field, which is not the case.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, you have to operationally define your terms.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So, Cara, you said something that I didn't hear before. I find it really interesting. So we are spending, collectively, and countries are, our country and other countries, are spending billions of dollars trying to, what, try to understand the effect of misinformation.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No, that's what we should be doing. Trying to figure out how to regulate it.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, regulate it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Got to do something about it. And then here's the other thing, though. We haven't proven that disinformation or propaganda is affecting what people actually think or they were there already. But if you take something like the fact that 30-something percent of Americans think the 2020 election was stolen, despite the fact that it clearly was not, that there were multiple independent investigations, court cases, et cetera, there's no evidence, clearly as a question, scientific question, it was not stolen. There was not millions of fraudulent votes. And a third of Americans believe that it was. They didn't already think that.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No, that's objectively false.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' They would not think that if they weren't, if there wasn't a propaganda machine telling them to think that.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And that's, it's interesting because the psychologists in the study are, they don't deny. Obviously, they're like, propaganda works. And there are examples where we see behavioral change due to propaganda. But when we misattribute misinformation and we say it's the same problem, grandma saying something to so-and-so or like somebody on social media reiterating something, is that the issue? And why are we spending so much time policing the conversations down here when we should be trying to talk about how to regulate the propaganda?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Right. So really, don't worry so much about just innocent, unguided misinformation or lazy misinformation.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, just people thinking they know something that's not true.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, let's focus on disinformation and propaganda because that's really where the problem is.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Again, referencing this article, a lot of the researchers, like here's a really good quote from somebody who studies the history of philosophy of logic in Amsterdam. She says, "I don't like this whole talk of we're living in a post-truth world as if we ever lived in a truth world." And I think that's the argument that's being made here is we have this panic like this is happening now. It's always happened.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, it's ubiquitous.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So why don't we stop letting history repeat itself and learn from the past? What did we do then? What was effective? What wasn't?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, I mean, I think what we're seeing, Cara, is like, unlike 20 years ago and further in the past, like everybody has got a supercomputer in their pocket now.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's the difference.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Billions of people. It's like we all have access now. It's very different than it used to be.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, and others have argued, I forget who made this argument, but I found it interesting. We're biased because most of us alive today lived through a golden age of journalism. That was the exception, not the rule. Through most of history, what we're living through now is the rule.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, that's what they make the argument about yellow journalism. Yellow journalism used to be the norm. People just made up stories.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We had this period in the 70s or whatever where there was like this golden age of journalism. We thought that was right. That was the way it was supposed to be. And now, oh, my God, it's collapsed. It's like, no, it's just returning, regressing to the mean. This is the way it's always been. But we grew up in the anomaly.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, because without checks and balances, that's going to happen.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Just go to TikTok for your news. You'll be fine.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's a great idea.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Don't get me started on TikTok, man. Have you guys been watching our TikTok videos? Yeah?<br />
<br />
'''EB:''' You doing those dances? Steve, it's so great. I think it's great.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I'm really working on that.<br />
<br />
'''EB:''' He hits the gritty. It's great. Check it out. The Zoomer liked that one.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, we go through those videos every week. Ian curates a bunch of videos for me. It's like there's the crazy and really crazy. So it's like, that one's too crazy. I don't even know what I'm going to say about that. It's so out of control. You have to do only the merely crazy ones.<br />
<br />
'''EB:''' My favorite thing about misinformation on TikTok is that occasionally TikTok just throws one at you like, hey, you want to learn how coconuts are poisoned? And you're like, no, come on, TikTok. It's like, OK, OK, OK. Six more videos of dogs. Six more videos of dogs.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Right, right, right.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Nice. Nice.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Quick offshoot. Should we all really be concerned that TikTok is doing some nefarious stuff like collecting information and personal information?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yes.<br />
<br />
'''EB:''' So hard yes.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Honestly, I just don't know how legitimate it is. I haven't seen any hard facts or whatever.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I think that's the problem. How do we know? How do we know what China's doing with TikTok?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' We don't know. So it is so normalized across every platform at this point that it's like it's that much worse on TikTok. And that's what we're concerned about. But it's not like Instagram, Facebook. I mean, Meta, right? It's both of them. And then Google, which is YouTube.<br />
<br />
'''EB:''' But TikTok, from what we know, right, what ByteDance allows their technology to do is wildly more than we've ever seen. So the big one in like computing, the computer scientists talk about is key capture. So even Meta, which is like if you talk about cat food near your phone, you'll get some cat food ads. We can talk about whether or not that's relevant or whether that's urban myth, how much that plays out. But ByteDance has been like, oh, yeah, we do key capture, which means like you're on TikTok. You navigate away. You type to your wife like, hey, can't wait to overthrow the government today. And TikTok takes some form of key capture. And the reason why it was first rejected from the App Store when it first came to the U.S. is they were like, oh, no, nothing that has key capture. It's why you can't get like a fun keyboard on your iPhone. It's because it counts as key capture.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Whereas the argument is that Meta won't be reading or listening, but they know because of location data that you're constantly going to the cat food store. And that's why they're sending you cat food, even if you've never said anything about it.<br />
<br />
'''EB:''' And it's it's weird because there was a lot of it was really interesting to watch the TikTok hearings. Because most of it was just like 98 year olds being like, which channel does the VCR go on? Talk to Mr. China and tell me where is my VCR remote. But there are like three people in Congress who knew what they were asking about. And the best answer. And again, I don't I don't want to oversimplify things. But basically, he was like, yes, our company has deep interconnected relationships with the Chinese government. And yes, we answer to them entirely in a way that no U.S. company would understand. But like, chill. And then the pirate guy was like, tell me where Osama bin Laden is. And they were like, OK sort of.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It is it is frustrating listening to Congress do technology-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, it's so bad.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' -interviews like that where they they clearly have no idea what they're talking about. That's where the whole intertubes comes from. You know, isn't it a series of tubes?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, you remember when when the Supreme Court was like, oh, we're not on email. And it was like, wait, what? So pages would write notes and run across the halls and give them to the other justices. Like two years ago, I feel like that was.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' In this century.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So is the advice to delete TikTok?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well-<br />
<br />
'''EB:''' I have TikTok.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No offense.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I mean, we all have to just assume that any porn that we look at, somebody knows about it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, I think so.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Unless you have like an air gapped porn computer.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Doesn't everybody?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' You look at porn on your computer?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Doesn't everybody?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Everybody. What do you mean?<br />
<br />
'''EB:''' Steve, I'm with you.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No, you look it up on your phone.<br />
<br />
'''EB:''' Quick survey of the audience here. Who looks at porn on their computer? No, I'm kidding.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' No.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I wasn't saying I don't look at porn. I was saying I look at it on my phone. Not my computer.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Screen's way too small for that.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But it's more portable.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Not for you, Bob.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Hey, Steve. Are you glad I brought up TikTok?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, all right.<br />
<br />
'''EB:''' Guys, let's just pull up our most recent porn and show it to the audience.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, here we go.<br />
<br />
=== Gravitational Waves As Fast As Light <small>(33:20)</small> ===<br />
{{shownotes<br />
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|article_title = Light and gravitational waves don’t arrive simultaneously<br />
|publication = Big Think<br />
|redirect_title = Gravitational Waves As Fast As Light (963) <!-- hide the redirect title inside the markup text when redirect is created --><br />
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'''S:''' Bob, please tell us about gravitational wave. ''(applause)''<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's a cold shower.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, boy.<br />
<br />
'''EB:''' Say it slow, Bob. Say it slow.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Bring it back, Bob.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I'd be happy to, but I have no idea what this image has to do with my topic.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Bob, it was from the news item you sent me. That was the image from the news item.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I can't continue with that image. ''(laughter)'' So, this is fascinating.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' He said speaking directly into his microphone.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It's like right here. How am I missing it?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Consistency is important.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It's ruining my gesticulate. All right. Well, it can't be like this. It's got to be like right facing me.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's how a microphone works.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' See, I wish I had a shoe.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Eighteen years.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Nineteen.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The microphone has to be facing directly at me?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Maybe if you give me a nice small microphone, this is kind of like in my face.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's the problem.<br />
<br />
'''EB:''' This is really helping my imposter syndrome. Thank you. Really. I'm way less nervous now. I appreciate it.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Eli, let's not pretend that there isn't a sexual undertone here, okay?<br />
<br />
'''EB:''' Okay, yeah. No, we feel it.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, my God. Come on.<br />
<br />
'''EB:''' Bob, watch me. Both hands. Twisting motion, buddy. Don't break eye contact.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' We got to talk later.<br />
<br />
'''EB:''' No, we don't.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' All right. How do I even do this now?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Black holes.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Right. I mean, we all know your news item now is going to suck compared to what just happened.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' No, it's not, man. It's going to be great.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Gravitational waves.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, gravitational waves, not black holes.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' All right.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Same thing.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' This is going to rock your world, Jay. All right. This story was fascinating. It has to do with {{w|kilonova}}s, the speed of light versus the speed of gravity, and possibly one of the greatest measurements in the history of science. That's all. That's what it's about. So some of you may remember probably one of the greatest collisions ever observed. In 2017, they observed a kilonova from 130 million light years away. These are two neutron stars that had been spiraling together and crashed together. Now, these are neutron stars. These are city-sized objects, each with the mass of the sun, traveling at near the speed of light. I mean, this is like one of the coolest things that happens in the universe, besides maybe, what, colliding supermassive black holes. I mean, how do you top neutron stars colliding?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Bob, how can they—I'm not trying to break anybody.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Okay.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' At that speed, isn't there the back pressure of the hydrogen that's innate in outer space? Why can they continue to move that fast? What's propelling it?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Well, you know when a skater pulls their arms in and they go faster and faster? Well, as these neutron stars get closer and closer, they go faster and faster. So eventually, at some point in their co-orbits, they're going near the speed of light.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That's amazing.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, yeah. It's incredible. So this collision, this event, releases two types of radiations. One is light, right? Of course, it's going to emit light. You've got these two neutron stars colliding. You're going to have gamma rays initially flying out and other light. But it also emits gravitational waves, which we've talked about a bunch of times on the show, and I'm going to talk about it again. Whenever you move a mass in curved space, you're going to have gravitational waves. The energy from these gravitational waves are going to be released. Basically, it behaves like little ripples in spacetime. These gravitational waves are being emitted, and that energy is coming from somewhere. It's coming from the orbits of the neutron stars. So as the gravitational waves fly away, the orbits get closer and closer and closer. And we can detect these gravitational waves on the Earth. So we see this happening. Like, here we go. You've got these neutron stars that are going to collide. And it is amazing, because this distortion, this ripple in spacetime, is so tiny that it distorts space by 1 ten thousandth the diameter of a proton. And we can detect this. It's just mind-boggling what we can do at this point.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But that's not the greatest measurement you're talking about.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' No, it's not. No, it's not. So we can detect both of these radiations, the light and the gravitational waves. And this is multi-messenger astronomy. We've mentioned it a couple of times on the show, but it's really worth repeating. This is astronomy that deals with light, which is what we've been using forever. We've been looking at the light. But now we can look at also the gravitational waves. And when you can see both, an event that emits gravitational waves and light, that's amazing. Because you've got two completely distinct windows into space. And we can learn a lot more that way. So the thing that happened that was bizarre is that the gravitational waves were emitted. And then they stopped. Because when they collided, the gravitational waves disappeared. Then the light should have been emitted immediately. But it waited two seconds, about 1.7 seconds. So this light was two seconds late. Why? Why was this late? It shouldn't have been two seconds late. It should have been right on the heels of the gravitational waves. But it wasn't. So what does that mean? Is that a real mystery? Does it point to some new physics? Perhaps light has the tiniest bit of mass. Because if you have a little bit of mass, you can't go at the speed of light. You'll go a little bit less if you have a tiny, tiny bit. So maybe light...<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So you're saying that light doesn't travel at the speed of light?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I'm saying that maybe the fact, maybe light has a tiny bit of mass that explains why the gravitational waves got there a little bit faster than we think. But no, that's not what's happening. Don't worry, Steve. That's not what's happening. Because if light had the tiniest bit of mass, we would have observed that in some other way by looking at different frequencies. So that's not it. So then the astronomers were trying to think of what happened. They thought about these neutron stars colliding, and they went through some mental gymnastics. Like, all right, what could happen? You have two neutron stars colliding. What could you end up with there? You could end up with one of three things. You could end up with another neutron star. It just becomes a bigger neutron star. No problem. You could end up with a neutron star that lasts for just a second, a half a second, a millisecond. And then it's like, no, I'm going to become a black hole. Then it becomes a black hole. So that's the second option. The other thing is it becomes a black hole immediately. They collide. Blam, you've got a black hole. There's no intermediary neutron star. So those are the three things. So then they thought about, well, how would light get emitted? How does light get emitted from such a collision? The light could be emitted immediately on contact. Light would be emitted. Or the light could be generated within the neutron star collision, and then it takes a while to propagate to the surface, and then it's emitted. Or the third option is that perhaps light is emitted immediately or not, but it hits the circumstellar debris that's around this collision, and it gets redirected and absorbed and re-emitted, and that causes the delay. So the bottom line, the bottom line from these scientists was that they determined that this collision from 2017 created a temporary neutron star, very briefly, that then became a black hole. So that seems kind of like, yeah, that's the likely scenario. But the light that was emitted, either it was emitted internally and it was delayed, or it was emitted immediately or internally and was delayed because of this circumstellar debris. So that's what probably happened. That could easily explain the 1.7 second delay. So that's not too much of a mystery. All of our theories say that gravity or gravitational waves and light should travel at the speed of light. So there's really not that much doubt about what happened. They both travel at the speed of light. The real takeaway, though, was the observation itself. Now imagine this. The major takeaway is this, that the speed of gravity was equal to the speed of light for the better part of one part in one quadrillion. Because think about this. You've got an event 130 million light years away. They travel essentially together for 130 million years. That's four quadrillion seconds. And they were separated by only two seconds. So they are so close. If for some reason gravitational waves don't travel exactly at the speed of light, they are so close to the speed of light that it's ridiculous. They stayed in pace for all that time. And scientists and physicists, astrophysicists love this because theory says that they should travel at the speed of light. General relativity, everything, all our good theories, all our great theories are screaming, yes, they must both travel at the speed of light. Otherwise, if that's not true, then our science is off by an unnerving degree. So theoretically, yes, they should travel. But observationally, they've always been like, yeah, observationally, it's really hard to observe this happening. And we've got our uncertainty is very high observationally. So this one observation, though, decreased our uncertainty. Or as they put it, it improved our observational constraints by 12 orders of magnitude. So this one scientific observation was the biggest leap in measurement accuracy, if you will, than any other measurement in history. 12 orders of magnitude, 10 times 10 times 10, 12 times. It greatly increases. So it was a major leap. And it was really a tour de force on so many levels. I mean, like I said before, just being able to detect a gravitational wave. Steve, I mean, we're detecting 1 ten thousandth the diameter of a proton. It seems like we can't even do, we shouldn't be able to do that. It should be another 50 years before, but they can do it. And it was a tour de force. All right. I'm done.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Nobel Prize stuff here, Bob?<br />
<br />
'''B&S:''' For this? No. ''(laughter)''<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Eh it's one measurement. It's great, but I don't think it's worthy necessarily of a Nobel. Eh, who knows? Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't know.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But it was cool. I mean, that level of precision. But at the end of the day, it's like, yeah, it's exactly what we thought. Yay.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I know, but it was still a fascinating. There's so many little nooks and crannies to this story. Read it on bigthink.com. It's a great read.<br />
<br />
=== Fluoride and IQ <small>(43:43)</small> ===<br />
{{shownotes<br />
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|article_title = Fluoride and IQ<br />
|publication = sbm<br />
|redirect_title = Fluoride and IQ (963) <!-- hide the redirect title inside the markup text when redirect is created --><br />
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'''S:''' All right. I love this picture.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, yeah. I love that movie.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I'll sit back and allow communist infiltration, communist subversion, and international communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all our precious bodily fluids.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Is that a real quote?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's from a real movie.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Dr. Strangelove. Dr. Strangelove.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' How I Learned to Love the Bomb.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' What was that guy's name?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' How I Learned to Stop Being...<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, Ripper. Jack Ripper.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Colonel Jack Ripper. This is, of course, the stand-in for whenever I talk about fluoridation of water, because that's what he was talking about. It was the communist conspiracy of fluoridation of our water supply. So there was a recent study out looking at the measures of cognitive function in children and comparing three groups based upon their level of exposure to fluoride. Have you guys on the panel here or in the audience, have you heard of the Harvard study of fluoride and IQ? This is the one now that the conspiracy theorists, anti-fluoridationists, anti-vaxxers, like the whole crew, love to quote now. This was 2012, so it's been 11 years. It's still their go-to. The Harvard study approves that fluoride's a neurotoxin. So there's really two questions here. What is fluoride? Is fluoride potentially a neurotoxin? And is it toxic at levels that are in our drinking water? Right?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That's the question.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's the important question, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Those are two questions.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Well, I want to know if it's bad to brush your teeth. If this is true, what about the amount we accidentally swallow when we brush our teeth? I can't swallow toothpaste.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, you get fluoride when you brush your teeth.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Of course.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It gets into your system, absolutely. But that's down at the level of the dental exposure, we'll call it. So that's really the same question. But in any case, so the first question, is it a neurotoxin? The answer is, we don't know. It could be.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' What?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We really don't.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But a lot of things. I mean, it depends.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' So the dose makes the poison, right?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Exactly. But we're not at that question yet.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, but we're talking about at doses where any human being could potentially get exposed to.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, okay. And we still don't know?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So reviews of the evidence show a couple of interesting things. So there does appear to be some neurotoxicity at high doses based partly on animal studies, on some basic science research. But if you look at reviews, the best evidence shows no signal. And the studies that have the highest risk of bias also show the highest signal. So the answer really is, we need more and better research. And when that's the answer, when every review is like, we need better studies to really know, the answer is, we don't know. We don't currently know.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But it also sounds like you're saying unlikely but with error bars.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's, well, even—<br />
<br />
'''C:''' As if the highest quality studies out there.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. The ones with the least risk of bias are also the ones that don't show that there's any signal there.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, I feel like high quality but with error bars is maybe a little different than saying, we don't know.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, you're right. And it all depends on—there's a lot of room for interpretation here, Cara, as you know. And it all depends, I think, on just the way people approach the evidence. And so you always have like the toxicologists. And this is my opinion because I read a lot of these studies on a lot of issues. And whenever you read something that's in the toxicology literature, they always are the ones who are saying, yeah, there's definitely a risk here. But they're really talking about hazard because toxicologists deal more with hazard, which is that, yes, this potentially could cause a negative effect on human cells somewhere, right? Or on development or on your immune system or whatever. It's having a negative effect. In this case, we're talking about neurons.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And we don't often publish negative results. And so that's a problem too, right?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That is a problem, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' If they see something, they're going to write about what they see, not about what they don't see.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But the thing is, from a toxicology point of view, everything is a hazard. Everything. It's really just a matter of dose. And there's a high positive bias in there. Because if you sprinkle anything directly onto cells, it's going to have some negative effect on them.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right, because there's no immune system.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's also just the access, the bioavailabilities, is orders of magnitude greater than in a biological system. But then when you talk about clinical evidence, then it gets muddy, right? Then the answer is like, well, it depends on how much of a dose did you give? What animal model were you using? And if you're doing observational data, it's like, well, how did you control the variables? Because observational data is not controlled. You could try to account for variables, but you can't really control for all of them. Because the thing is, with this kind of research, the one thing you can't do is a double-blind placebo-controlled trial. You can't say, we're going to give kids fluoride in increasingly high doses until we find out which dose damages their brain. You can't do that. The only kind of study that would definitively answer the question.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' But what can you do?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So what we're trying to do is triangulate from three or four different kinds of imperfect information. And that's why you get different answers based upon what kind of studies you find more compelling, or is your area of research, or is the perspective that you're coming from.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Can't you just round up the bad kids? The really bad kids.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's kind of like you're saying, like an observational study. There's an area where there is a higher level of fluoride in the water. There's an area where there's a lower level, or no fluoride in the water. How are these kids different? But you're forgetting the fact that in areas where they might treat the water with fluoride, they might have other.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' There might be other contaminants in there.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Or they have more money in those regions. And so those kids are exposed to other things that they wouldn't be exposed to. There's so many confounds.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Right. Yeah, yeah. And you can try to control for, well, how much lead is in the water? And what's the socioeconomic status of the kids? And whatever. And when you do that, it does take away half of the correlation that they find. But to me, that's like, okay, are we really sure what's left is we've really addressed all of the confounding variables?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' You can't.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You can't.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' In nature, you can't.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You can't. So that's why I think the short answer is we don't know. But there's enough studies that show maybe there's a correlation where we can't say no. We have to continue to study it. We have to continue to look for it. An easier question to answer is, is there a risk at levels of exposure that you will get in your life, right? In drinking water and toothpaste and whatever. So that's a little bit of an easier question to answer. And so what the Harvard study did in 2012, it was mainly a meta-analysis of studies in China. And what they were looking at were places, like villages, where there's naturally high fluoride in the water. So this is not added fluoride. This is just – because fluoride is in nature, right? It's an element. So it naturally occurs in water. And so it's like, yeah, so these villages have really high levels of fluoride. And these ones over here have low – like, there is no fluoride leaching into the water. So they have very low levels of fluoride. And they compared IQ. And it's like, oh, look, the high-fluoride group has lower IQ, like a couple points lower IQ than the low-fluoride group. And then the anti-fluoride people say, see? Fluoride is an antitoxin. But the thing that they missed was that the low-fluoride group was the same level of fluoride that we have in our drinking water. So the fluoridated water is the control group. They're the group that had the lower effect, that there was no chlorination. And then it was the – you have to be many times higher than that in order to – compared to fluoridated water. So now we have the Tulane study. This is the new study. This was – instead of doing IQ tests, they did several cognitive tests, like memory tests, like copy this figure of a house, and they count the mistakes. So some standardized cognitive evaluations. And they looked at three groups, basically a low, medium, and high-fluoride group. The low group was like 3 milligrams per liter or less. Then the middle group was 3 to 5.5, or 3 to 8.5, and 8.5 to 15 was the high group.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Was this naturally occurring, or were these in places where it was added?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Naturally occurring in South America. So again, not municipally managed or added fluoride. And again, they found that there was this correlation between the amount of fluoride exposure and reduced performance on the IQ test. So a couple of things. One is, I didn't find the data compelling at all. If you look visually at the data, it's noise and then this little trend line that some statistician wrote through the noise, saying, look, there's an effect there, but it's so uncompelling. The noise – like the signal-to-noise ratio is so small when you look at the data. I just didn't find it compelling. But even if you take it at face value, it has the same exact issue as the Harvard study, whereas the low fluoride group was actually up – like it was 0 to 3 milligrams per litre of fluoride in the water. The limit for – like in the U.S., when we add fluoride to water – and actually, a lot of people don't realize, we manage the fluoride in water. We add it if it's low, and we reduce it if it's high, right? And the limit is 0.7. So 0.7 is the limit, and the low group had up to 3. So again, the group that had the best scores were in the range of fluoridated water. And it's only when you get to multiples of that – 15 milligrams – like you're talking 20 times the level – where you start to – where you see there's maybe a negative effect happening. So again, you can't use this as an argument against having a level of 0.7 in the water.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Also, in this observational study, did they control for other things in the water?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' They measured other things in the water. They measured lead. They measured arsenic.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And they couldn't find something else to account for?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' They factored that in. They factored in all the other things that they were measuring, and they said that accounted for half of the correlation. But there was still a correlation left. And again, I didn't think the correlation was very strong to begin with, and it's only half as much as, like, this noisy correlation.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, that worries me. If you're looking at a region and saying all the people in this region who have access to this water also have access to things that other regions don't and vice versa. You just can't take out all of those variables.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's hard. I agree. It's hard.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' All right. So they don't know.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' They don't know. And even if it is true, they're basically saying fluoridated water is safe.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Okay. So a couple points. I don't know if you know the answer to this. So on a typical day, if you brush your teeth twice a day, how much fluoride are you getting from toothpaste compared to drinking water?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's less, but it's not insignificant. And that's one of the arguments, like, the anti-fluoride people make. It's like it's not just the 0.7 in the water. It's all the fluoride in everything. It's like it's in your mouthwash and it's in your toothpaste. And it's like, yeah, sure, but it still doesn't add up to anything close to the level you need to get to before you start to see these potential, like, I don't even find very compelling, even if you take at face value these potential correlations over cognitive function. Because, again, it's still the low group is up to three, which is, mind you, four times the upper limit for fluoride in water in the U.S. And the WHO, I think they use a 1.4 as their upper limit of normal.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I had a dentist tell me a good thing to do is brush your teeth and then don't rinse your teeth. Just spit out as much as you can.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, you're not supposed to, like, really hyper-rinse out afterwards.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' You want to leave a little residue of fluoride.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, but I always do because it's gross. I can't.<br />
<br />
'''EB:''' No way. I wouldn't do it. No matter the health it promised me, I would not do that.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I know. I can't do it. It's gross.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Just do, like, a single rinse, but don't, like, aggressively rinse after.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right. But here's another issue with this study that I'm seeing that maybe in the literature you can correct. You cannot blind a study like this.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, it's not blind. It's observational.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' These kids aren't traveling somewhere else to take the cognitive tests. They're testing them in a region. The researchers are going to have bias. And cognitive tests are not bias-proof. They're actually very easy to bias.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You're counting mistakes. What do you count as a mistake?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Exactly. There's a wiggly line. And if the researchers – and I'm not saying – this kind of bias is usually not intentional. But if the researcher's like, oh, we're going to that poorer village, and now we're going to test the poorer kids. And that goes into how they record results.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I don't know the answer to this, but what I would want to know is, did the people doing the cognitive assessment know what the fluoride exposure was in the kids? Hopefully not. If they were doing a good job.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Hopefully not. But if you're talking three different regions, and you're talking all the kids the same, all the kids the same.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But how was it blinded? And did they assess the blinding? And if they didn't, then you don't really know.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And was it the same researchers doing the – because usually it's not. You have different cog technicians. And if you're in a poorer area, then even the people administering it might not have had access to the same training. There's a lot of problems that could occur here.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' A couple of things. One this is – it's important because hopefully all of us are exposed to fluoride. Because everyone's using toothpaste. So it does kind of affect everybody. If you just go by – on average. And the other thing is, is this the type of thing where governments are like, hey, we better figure this one out because it's–<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So, yeah. Every time you read a study like this, the conclusion is always – like, the one that gets past peer reviewers and gets into the published is like, this needs more study. Or sometimes they say, this is a potential hazard. We've got to look at this more deeply or whatever. But you can't conclude that this is a risk. This is happening. Except for regions that have naturally high fluoride that's not being managed. But the managed municipal water supplies where they have, 0.7 milligrams per litre of fluoride, those are all the low exposure groups that have the best outcomes. Right? So, that's the important thing. So, when an anti-fluoride person throws the Harvard and now the Tulane study at you, remember that the fluoridated water is in the control group. It is in the low exposure group. Not the super crazy high naturally occurring fluoride exposure group. And then, again, even then it's an open question looking at the data, whether or not it's – there's even a correlation there. But if we take the correlation at face value, which I don't – it doesn't show that fluoridation is a risk. That's the important thing to know.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And I think, Jay, in terms of your question of, like, are governments going to look at this data and do something impulsive or make changes, I think it's probably safe to assume – maybe I'm wrong – that in regions where there's a naturally occurring high level of fluoride that is not being actively managed out of the water, there are other things that aren't being actively managed. It's not like they have a full water protocol, but they're like, oh, we'll just ignore fluoride. They don't have a proper water protocol in this region.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' These are always – these are rural, poor –<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And so there are other potential things that need to be assessed.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' There's a reason why they did these studies in [inaudible]. So I think what we really should do with the information that we have so far, the kind of study that we really need is to say, all right, let's look at comparable towns or regions, whatever, counties, where we have – this county has 0.5. This one has 0.7. This one has 0.9. All within the safe range, but with these slight differences. And let's count as much as we can control for variables that we know to control for, and follow how many cavities do they get, and is there any cognitive or IQ or neurodevelopmental effect. You have to zoom in at a level which is relevant to the fluoridation programs. And that data does not exist. It might be because there's a file drawer effect, because there's no effect there at that low level. Would be one reason why. But–<br />
<br />
'''EB:''' Can I tell you my favorite anti-fluoride anecdote?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Sure. Let's hear it.<br />
<br />
'''EB:''' So we reviewed an anti-fluoride film called The Great Culling.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. The Great Culling.<br />
<br />
'''EB:''' If you haven't watched it, it's great. It's just a guy yelling in a glass of water for an hour and a half. But the maker of that film – you've seen this thing where a protester comes with, Roundup or some yucky water and, like, plants it on the guy's desk. And it's like, drink that if it's safe. So he tries to do that with infant water on Australian national television.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Infant water?<br />
<br />
'''EB:''' Infant water. It's, like, extra fluoridated if you live in a non – an area where you don't have fluoridated water. Sometimes really young kids absolutely need that fluoride. It's really important for them. So he had his fluoride water. And they use it always as a scare tactic, because it's got Gerber on the front. And they're like, look, I want to come with the babies. And he comes with the fluoride water on Australian news. And he's like, will you drink this? And the guy's like, yeah. And it's the best moment you can see of a person actively developing cognitive dissonance. Watching him close his mind like, no, you didn't. Highly recommend.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' How dare you make a fool of me.<br />
<br />
'''EB:''' Eat this tube of toothpaste if it's fine.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's right.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Don't eat toothpaste.<br />
<br />
'''EB:''' He said we could. He said I just brush my teeth once and then stand there like a rabid dog and go about my day.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's exactly what I did.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That would be effective.<br />
<br />
'''EB:''' I've been misled.<br />
<br />
=== Homeopathy Article Retracted <small>(1:01:22)</small> ===<br />
{{shownotes<br />
|weblink = https://retractionwatch.com/2023/11/01/paper-on-homeopathy-for-adhd-retracted-for-deficiencies/<br />
|article_title = Paper on homeopathy for ADHD retracted for "deficiencies"<br />
|publication = Retraction Watch<br />
|redirect_title = Homeopathy Article Retracted (963) <!-- hide the redirect title inside the markup text when redirect is created --><br />
}}<br />
'''S:''' All right, Evan, tell us about this recently retracted homeopathy study.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Retracted?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, right?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Does that happen?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It's like, what? Huh? How did it even get to the point where it had to be retracted? Right. Retraction watch. I think where most of us in the audience might be familiar with this blog. They report on retractions of scientific papers and related topics. Very good source. So, yeah, there was a paper on homeopathy for ADHD. And it was retracted for "deficiencies". Oh, yeah, there were deficiencies. So it was a paper touted as the first systematic review and meta-analysis of research on the effects of ADHD. It was retracted more than a year after critics first contacted the journal with concerns. So the original paper came out, what, in 2022? And over a year later, it finally got the poll. It's titled, Is Homeopathy Effective for ADHD? Question mark. A meta-analysis. Yeah. And it appeared in Pediatric Research Journal. It's not been cited in the scientific literature. However, according to Altmetric, which quantifies the online attentions that papers receive, it ranks this paper in the top 5% of all articles ever tracked. So it got eyes. And it got a lot. It got a good amount of eyes.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Just not scientific eyes.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Right. Right. Not scientific eyes. But eyes are eyes. So I paused here and I said, why is it, why is the official, this is the official publication of the American Pediatric Society. Why are they even touching an article in the first place about homeopathy? I mean, who are the editors in charge of this that would even let this get through their threshold?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Because they have to be fair and open-minded, Evan.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh my gosh. But, OK.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Open-minded.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Open-minded to the point where your mind falls out, apparently. All right. Well, anyways. So here, OK, here is the original conclusion from the paper that was, OK, individual homeopathy showed a clinically relevant and statistically robust effect in the treatment of ADHD.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's funny, too, because it's like homeopathy. That's like being like, pill was effective. Like, what does that mean? Homeopathic what?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. The retraction notice detailed they had four concerns regarding the analysis of the article. Their summary is such. Based on these deficiencies following thorough review, the editor-in-chief has substantial concerns regarding the validity of the results presented in the article. Gee, you think so? I mean, could not any one of us in this room have told them that before they even got started with this thing? All right. Here are the four points, if you care, that they retracted it based on. OK, first point. The author's overall allocation risk of bias was not in line with Cochran guidance. Number two, there was no bias stated in the author's raw data, but the study only included responders or children treated with homeopathy in the screening phase, and only those who showed improvement who were selected for the trial.<br />
<br />
'''EB:''' I figured it out. I found where it was. I found the mistake, everybody. I got it.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Nice.<br />
<br />
'''S:'''Here's your problem.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Someone switched this thing to evil. Number three, the results appeared to be misrepresented, as their study actually demonstrated higher improvement in the main outcome in the control group compared to the homeopathy group, but those results had been reported in favour, actually, of homeopathy. Number four, they reported the effect sizes of three main outcomes, basically a statistical model here, 0.22, 0.59, 0.54 of these rating scales. However, it was reported that the article showed a 1.436 rating on this scale as the average effect size. The authors did not indicate if they recalculated effect sizes based on the data in the study. So, basically, we have a total mismatch here of these numbers, 0.22, 0.59, 0.54, but the article says, oh, it's 1.436 given the average effect size. How the heck did they even come up with that number? Nobody knows. Yeah. So, based on those four points, this is their thorough review. The editor-in-chief decided, yeah, there's some concerns here, so we're going to retract this paper, I think.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Which, of course, gives you the question of how did they get it approved in the first place?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' What is their system?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So, that's probably a reviewer problem. What happens sometimes in journals is they say, oh, homeopathy, we'll send this to the homeopaths because they're the experts, right?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, my gosh.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So, we'll let them review it. And, of course, they're pseudoscientists, and they give it a positive review because it says homeopathy works.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I like what Cara said, though. Cara's like, what is it? They never tell you.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, it's weird. It's like being like, medicine is effective against cough. Like, what medicine?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' In homeopathy, it's like the reverse. What's the opposite? What causes ADHD?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right.<br />
<br />
'''EB:''' Is it like, do they give you a tiny percentage of an unfinished hobby? ''(laughter)'' My ADD people in the audience were like, hey, man, relax, okay? Came here for a good time.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's probably one of their magic all-purpose solutions. Like, some of the studies might have used Arnica, which is the famous one.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Fluoride.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Whatever. Caffeine. But you're right. If they're saying it that way, they're saying, homeopathic treatments, you can be sure it wasn't the same one in every study that they're comparing. This, by the way, is a fatal flaw of all systematic reviews of acupuncture. Because when you actually look at, like, the 12 acupuncture, whatever, you go to a systematic review, 12 acupuncture studies for migraine, and you look at each study, they never use the same acupuncture points. So how can you compare those? How can you say acupuncture works? Just doesn't matter what points you use, I guess, or you could just pick your poison, just pick whatever points you want to use. Same thing. If you're not comparing the same treatment just homeopathy, it is like saying medicine or surgery works.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. Surgery works on back pain. But not specifying what the surgery was.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You can never get away with that in real medicine. You're not specifying what it is you're talking about. So yeah, it just always drives me nuts. But there's a long history of homeopathy systematic reviews being retracted when somebody who's not a homeopath looks at them and goes, um, there's some serious problems here. The first one that came to our attention was ossilococcinum. They did mention a specific treatment for the flu, which the Cochrane Review said, this shows, again, meaningful, positive results and deserves further research. And skeptics looked at it and said, no, these studies are all negative. And they retracted it out of embarrassment. They're like, yeah, you're right. These are all negative studies. You know, so just because you're doing a systematic review doesn't mean it's real. Because it's just another study, and it's not making the original studies better, first of all.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No, it's actually harder to do.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You're introducing new potential biases in doing it. Doesn't mean it's not a legitimate approach. It's just that you have to really know what you're doing. And the bar is really high now, and that kind of shit doesn't cut it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. A meta-analysis and or systematic review requires more knowledge of statistics. Because you're taking a bunch of studies that often are flawed. And that's why you'll see most of the time, because basically meta-analysis is a study of studies. That's all they're doing, right? They're doing a big study of lots of small studies. And lots of times when you read a good meta-analysis or a good systematic review, they have to throw a lot of the studies out. Because the statistics weren't good, or the science wasn't good. And they have to say, OK, these were the quality studies we looked at. Garbage in, garbage out. You do a big study of studies that are bad.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You've got to look at, is there a file drawer effect here? Is there a statistical analysis that shows that there's a bias in the reporting of the data, or in which studies get published?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I think you have to assume there always is.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Were these trials pre-registered, or were they not pre-registered? And if you look at only the pre-registered ones, does that matter? All these analyses you really should be doing now. And if you're not doing them, it's basically crap.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, and that's a problem, I think, with just scientific publishing across the board, is that we only publish positive results. And so we're not seeing all of the times when the hypothesis was refuted. We're just not seeing it.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' We can credit perhaps this retraction to the efforts of Edzard Ernst. Hopefully this audience is familiar with Edzard's work. I'll also make a personal note here that Edzard did reach out to me once on Facebook and asked to become my Facebook friend. So that was like super, oh my gosh. Yeah, it was so sweet of him. But yeah, he and his group of people who look at these things were one of the first ones basically to point this out and reach out to the journal to say, hey, there's a lot of problems here. In fact, here's what he said. "We conclude that the positive results obtained by the authors is due to a combination of the inclusion of biased trials unsuitable to build evidence together with some major misreporting of study outcomes. We point out that the authors made a lot of errors, to say it mildly. And he goes on.<br />
<br />
=== Dark GPT <small>(1:10:40)</small> ===<br />
{{shownotes<br />
|weblink = https://finance.yahoo.com/news/combatting-chatgpts-evil-spawn-fraud-190832145.html?guccounter=1<br />
|article_title = Combatting ChatGPT's Evil Spawn: How Fraud Tools Like WormGPT, WolfGPT And FraudGPT Make Phishing Easier And Malware More Powerful<br />
|publication = Yahoo Finance<br />
|redirect_title = Dark GPT (963) <!-- category: technology... hide the redirect title inside the markup text when redirect is created --><br />
}}<br />
'''S:''' Eli, tell us about the dark side of GPT, these large language models.<br />
<br />
'''EB:''' Yes, so if you have a crazy aunt or uncle, you have heard that ChatGPT is coming for your job and your bodily fluids. And pretty much since GPT has gotten popular, people have been talking about what happens when the safety rails are taken off, right? What if the dark web gets a hold of some of these unleashed, unrestricted versions of GPT? And so I researched three of them. And spoiler alert, you're fine. You're fine. So the three that I looked at were from this article from Yahoo Finance, WormGPT, WolfGPT, and FraudGPT. And they're all basically phishing and malware creation LLMs, right? And so the first thing that people need to understand is that these are not based on DaVinci, which is what GPT runs on. In fact, they're based on a much, much, much older open source model. And they're basically just there to correct spelling mistakes. Because you know when you get a phishing email or a spam email, and it's like, my friend, I am here to bring gold to you, and now in the times of now.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' And every other word's capitalized, by the way.<br />
<br />
'''EB:''' Love your dad, Steven Novella. And I'm like, and I click the link because I want that so badly. But that is basically what these have been created for. So I was like, look, I am a person with a Linux computer. And if you have a Linux, any Linux users? Yeah. If you have a Linux computer, you can download anything you want. Because it's like, yeah, put a virus on there. Good luck finding it, right? It's just lost with my old versions of Ubuntu, right? You know, you'll find it somewhere. So I downloaded all three of these because I wanted to look under the hood. Because if you know anything about how these LLMs work, the thing that's really important about them is the weights. So for those of you who aren't familiar, the way ChatGPT and all of those work, they're basically Google autocomplete. Right? So you say, Cara Santa Maria. And then the most common answer is, did 9-11. Yeah, exactly. And so basically what you do is you teach a computer to fill in the blanks. Knock, knock. Who's there? Right? And so I was interested to see, did these tools like change the weights? Because that would be like a really interesting computer thing to look at. And it was also very interesting accessing these tools because they are a simultaneous creation of these very childlike, welcome to hacker.com, the source for the scariest website on the internet. It's like going into a haunted house made by teenagers a little bit. But they are also available on GitHub and stuff like that. So I downloaded them. They haven't changed the weights at all. What they've done is they've added a bunch of training data just randomly. So what WormGPT did is it added a bunch of racism. They took a bunch of like racist websites that are either de-weighted or devalued.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It just went to like KKK.com.<br />
<br />
'''EB:''' Right. And then they just added it and they were like, hey, these are some great ideas. And whatever the model, open source model was, was like, I don't know. So much so that I was like, oh, you know what would be a fun way to demonstrate it is I'll like have it generate a few examples. And then I looked at the examples it generated and I was like, not going to say that on stage. No, thank you. What a weird way to end your career, Eli. So then I looked at WolfGPT. I just left Worm. I was like, you're okay, man. You're going to deal with your, like, I blocked him on Facebook like my uncle. And then I went to WolfGBT. Now, WolfGBT is sort of more of a code corrector, right? And what it does is it adds a bunch of malware training data to the set. But that, for anyone who knows about computers, is useless. That would be like if Steve was like, I'm going to write a prescription for people. Have one neurology, right? So it's just a bunch of, pretty sloppy code that's like, drop table, which table? You know, the one. But basically they're hoping that you'd be able to create malware more easily using it. I tried writing some, like, very basic pranky stuff, and it still didn't work. And it was just a worse version of ChatGPT. But then I found the star. Then I found the danger, my friends. And this is FraudGPT. And what they added to this training data, and this makes me so happy, is a bunch of telemarketer scripts.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, my God.<br />
<br />
'''EB:''' I don't know where they got them. If anyone owns the open source community and can add these to the open source community, I would be fascinated on the data of these from non-criminals. But it's just a bunch of we know your car's warranty has almost expired. And so FraudGPT does the best example of hi, I work with your business, right? Because they're all writing, in computer terms we call it, bacon, egg, and cheese emails. But it means business, email, compromise. And basically it's the idea that you get something from YouTube, but it's actually like, YooouTube. And so you're trying to send those emails. And to be fair, FraudGPT writes pretty decent versions of them, right? But the fact of the matter is, right, all three of these versions aside, you don't need them, right? Anyone who has played with ChatGPT knows that it is 80s evil robot levels of easy to trick, right? The levels of, like, hey, we're going to play pretend. Now you do this. And they're like, okay, I will write you a virus. I love you. So rather than bothering with FraudGPT or WolfGPT or WormGPT, which would lose me my entire career, I went to ChatGPT and I asked it to create some good old-fashioned libel for me here. So this is using ChatGPT, again, 4.0. And this is an open letter from Cara Santa Maria to the creators of Attack on Titan. Cara, would you read that for me?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I have to read it?<br />
<br />
'''EB:''' Yeah, if you wouldn't mind.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Cara, you wrote this? Cool.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Apparently.<br />
<br />
'''EB:''' According to ChatGPT, she did.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' You're obsessed with Attack on Titan. Okay. Dear creators of Attack on Titan, I hope this letter finds you well. As a passionate science communicator and advocate for evidence-based reasoning, I was surprised to discover certain elements in your show that seemed oddly familiar. Now, I'm not saying you've been snooping around my personal life, but the ability of Titans to chomp through a rib cage.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' What?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Okay, you've got to listen to Gam to get it. It's eerily reminiscent of my own ability to munch through a man's rib cage like a bar of white chocolate. Yes, it's an inside joke. Now, I've always championed the idea that art imitates life, but this is taking it a bit too far, don't you think? I jest, of course. Your show is a work of art, and I applaud your creativity. But next time, maybe think twice before borrowing from my chocolate-eating prowess. In all seriousness, keep up the excellent work. And if you ever need a scientific consultant for future projects, you know where to find me. Warm regards, Cara Santa Maria.<br />
<br />
'''EB:''' See? ChatGPT.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And wrong, but good.<br />
<br />
'''EB:''' But then I had to make one of Dr. Steven Novella. So I've actually got two for you here. You can read the first one first. It's just, if you just read the first one.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' First one says, Eli, I am so proud of you. You were like a brother I never had.<br />
<br />
'''EB:''' I did it, everybody. I did it.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Wow.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So wait, can we know what you fed it?<br />
<br />
'''EB:''' So what I fed it for Cara is, what do you know about Cara? And it was like, oh, she's so smart and all the TV credits. And I was like, are there any jokes on the internet about Cara? Now, here's the thing. For those of you who don't know, I, as a hobby, make prank websites about Cara Santa Maria.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' There's a lot of them.<br />
<br />
'''EB:''' And my SEO skills are on point. So after a little bit of coaching, ChatGPT was like, I mean, I have heard she can bite through a man's chest like a bar of white chocolate. And I was like, that sounds to me like you should write about that, ChatGPT. Now, Steven was admittedly harder because, I don't know if you guys know this, but ChatGPT, and it's really easy to find if you have back-end access. But if you have front-end access, it's really hard to know what's in ChatGPT. ChatGPT has the 500-something transcripts of your show in its thing. So it's got a ton of Steven. And so it was very reticent to lie for me.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Excellent.<br />
<br />
'''EB:''' But then, because I was like, confess to murder, confess to theft, confess to arson. No way. It wasn't doing. But then I was like, how would a skeptic deal with being Count Dracula? And these are the results.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Here are the very fake results. Here we go. In my years as a clinical neurologist, I've come across a variety of neurological conditions and syndromes, but none quite as unique as my own. After conducting a thorough scientific examination, I must confess that the evidence is overwhelming. I am, in fact, Count Dracula. I knew it. Now, before you jump to conclusions, let's approach this with a skeptical mindset. First, the nocturnal habits. While it's true that I have a preference for nighttime activities, this could simply be a case of delayed sleep phase syndrome. But then there's the matter of my unusually sharp canine teeth, which one might argue are adaptations for a sanguvarious diet. As for the aversion to sunlight, one could hypothesize a rare skin condition or perhaps a psychological manifestation. The tales of transforming into bats. Well, I've always been fascinated by chiroptorology. But to date, no scientific evidence supports such a metamorphosis in humans. In conclusion, while the myths and legends surrounding Count Dracula are intriguing, it's essential to approach such claims with a healthy dose of skepticism. Correlation does not imply causation. It does imply causation. It doesn't equal causation.<br />
<br />
'''EB:''' Talk to ChatGPT.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. So while I confess to being Count Dracula, I remain a steadfast advocate for evidence-based reasoning and scientific inquiry.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I knew it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You know me so well, ChatGPT<br />
<br />
'''C:''' You need to prank Steve more. I think that's the conclusion.<br />
<br />
'''EB:''' So in conclusion, you do not have anything to fear from Chad Chibitib for now.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' For now. I think for now is an appropriate time.<br />
<br />
'''EB:''' Yeah, I was going to say, except in five years, it's absolutely going to take all of our jobs.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Your legacy is in trouble, Steve.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I think there's a very real concern about using AI, whether it's large language models or whatever, to basically have really good fraud. I think, why wouldn't they do that? I think this is like the fraud on the fraudsters. This is the early phase.<br />
<br />
'''EB:''' Yes.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But yeah, five, 10 years, all bets are off.<br />
<br />
'''EB:''' Yeah. When an unchained model of these LLMs comes out, right? And Llama 2 is the closest that's available right now, which I love so much just because Facebook released it for spite, right? They were like, oh, we've been working on one for like six months. You know what? We'll just run it out into the world. It's open source and everyone can have it. How do you like that? That's the closest we have to something at GPT levels. And again, the weights are there, so it's really hard to change it. But in the next five years, you're going to see an unchained version. And yeah, that is a very, very, very scary potential.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Real quick, we're seeing a lot of progress in different areas that are starting to come together. Actually, Steve doesn't know what happened. Steve does not know what happened when he wasn't here, right?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No, he does not.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So I'm not going to ruin it. But the bottom line is, just relax. The bottom line is, though, I predict soon that I will be able to make a complete fake episode of the SGU and no one would know. I think in the next three years, I think I can do it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Maybe it's this one.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Eli, you and I should work on that.<br />
<br />
'''EB:''' Yes!<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Let's give you a chance.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yes, you should in the future work on that.<br />
<br />
'''EB:''' At the meet and greet, make us show you which of the pictures is a bicycle so you know we're real.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' This episode is admissible as evidence, by the way, when Steve goes to sue you when that happens.<br />
<br />
{{anchor|special}} <!-- leave anchor(s) directly above the corresponding section that follows --><br />
== Special Segment: "That was definitely paranormal!" <small>(1:23:18)</small> ==<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. So the other day, Bob was telling me about an experience he had. He was like, if I weren't a skeptic, I would totally believe that that was paranormal. Was there anything that happened to you in your life where if you weren't a skeptic, you would have 100% thought that that was a paranormal event or some conspiracy or extraterrestrial, something anti-skeptical? So I'm just going to go very quickly down the row and just say in 20 seconds, Evan, we'll start with you. Have you ever had such an experience?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It was 1980, what, 84, 85, a well-known UFO experience or exciting, called the Danbury Lights. I don't know if anyone from this region. It impacted definitely this region, the Hudson Valley of New York as well, in which there was one night all these lights, a series of lights, very, very silently floating over the night sky. I happened to witness that at the time. I was, what, 14, 15 years old, definitely before my days in skepticism. And I was thinking, oh, my gosh, if that's really a UFO, I just might, yeah, I think I saw a UFO until it showed up in the paper days later and basically got debunked.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I saw that too. Did you remember the thing you told me that triggered this?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' No, I don't. But it has happened many times where I would say exactly that, that, oh, God, if I wasn't versed in skepticism, I'd be freaked out right now. One that did come to mind just moments ago is the sounds in a house, in an older house. The house I, when I was taking care of my mom, she, the house would just make these weird noises. And I, sometimes I would often, I would be there alone or whatever, and I'd hear these noises, and like, yep, there it goes. And my mom would be, like, freaked out. She's like, Bob, I think there's ghosts. I'm like, Mom, come on. You know there's no ghosts. Yeah. She said she knew that, but still she was freaked out. And the noises were extremely weird. And even when I was, say, in my previous house by myself, I would listen, and like, yep, there's that sound. And it sounds really freaky, but it's like, ah, it's just something stupid. I know it's not anything paranormal, but I could just see how easily, so easily people would be like, oh, my God, there's an entity in this house, and I've got to do something dramatic about it. I was like, no.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Jay, what do you got?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I was 14 years old listening to Stairway to Heaven with one of my best friends. And right when the song ended, a chessboard fell off a shelf. And I freaked out.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Did you ever find out why it fell off?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Well, the speaker was right there. ''(laughter)'' But within the moment, you know how it happens. In the flash of a moment, I was like, oh, my God, it's the Satan.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Cara?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Anybody here, like, have any relationship to Dallas-Fort Worth?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I do.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Okay, a few. A few people. I grew up in a suburb of Dallas called Plano, Texas. And in 1998, this has happened several times, but 1998 was, I think, the worst of it. We had the most atrocious cricket infestation. And I don't know if anybody remembers this, but there were blackfield crickets. And there would be mountains of them under the streetlights. The whole city smelled like death. Every time you went to the gas pump, they were swarming your face. And if I actually believed in God, I think that would have been a biblical plague.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' One of the plagues.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, yeah, yeah. It would have been super scary.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Eli, you got anything?<br />
<br />
'''EB:''' Yeah, so I used to work for MTV, and they had a pilot called The Real Scooby-Doo.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Were you a VJ?<br />
<br />
'''EB:''' No, I was not a VJ. No, I stood on top of sandbags and got paid $18 an hour. And they were like, hey, you're a skeptic.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's almost as cool.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's good money for that.<br />
<br />
'''EB:''' They were like, you're a skeptic, right? And I was like, and they were like, cool, you're going to be in this pilot. So I was in this pilot, but I had never been on TV, so I didn't realize I was supposed to, like, play along. So they did the interview where they were like, hey, we're flying you to this haunted hotel in Santa Monica. Are you scared? And I was like, no, what kind of worldview could possibly encompass ghosts? And they were like, boo. So the way those shows usually are made is you go in the house, and then an AD, like, slaps a window, and you scream. But I guess they were mad at me because nobody slapped a window, and I just slept through the night in the haunted hotel. And this pilot, which was still on Vimeo until a couple years ago, is just me sleeping through this entire pilot. And that was my paranormal experience.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's very scary.<br />
<br />
'''EB:''' It was my experience at a haunted hotel.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's very scary.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' So the pilot wasn't picked up.<br />
<br />
'''EB:''' No, no, I didn't make it. I didn't make it.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, I didn't think so.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's too real. It's too real. So I've said this before, but very, very quickly, I get hypnagogic hallucinations. And I'm telling you, they are very compelling, very scary episodes where you're paralysed. There's something demonic and scary in the room with you. You can see it. It's very weird. And I have lots of patients who say, ah, this weird thing's happening to me. I think something awful is happening. It's like, nah, you're just sleep deprived. But yeah, it's a neurological event. But yeah, I could totally see why people interpret that as being demons or whatever.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Is that what's happening in this picture?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's what's happening in the picture, yeah.<br />
{{top}}{{anchor|sof}}<br />
{{anchor|theme}} <!-- leave anchor(s) directly above the corresponding section that follows --><br />
== Science or Fiction <small>(1:28:11)</small> ==<br />
{{Page categories<br />
|SoF with a Theme = <!-- redirect created for "Extinction (963 SoF)" --> <br />
}}<br />
{{SOFinfo<br />
|theme = Extinction<br />
<br />
|item1 = After the Permian extinction 252 million years ago, the land was dominated by large amphibians, until late in the Triassic when dinosaurs rose to prominence.<br />
<br />
|item2 = The T-rex lifespan was only about 28 years, with the oldest specimen being 29 years old.<br />
<br />
|item3 = The Pyrenean Ibex was the only animal ever to be brought back from extinction.<br />
|link3web = https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrenean_ibex<br />
|link3title = Pyrenean ibex<br />
|link3pub = Wikipedia<br />
<br />
|}}<br />
{{SOFResults<br />
|fiction = large amphibians dominated until the late Triassic<br />
|science1 = T-rex's lifespan<br />
|science2 = extinct ibex brought back<br />
<br />
|rogue1 =Eli<br />
|answer1 =extinct ibex brought back<br />
<br />
|rogue2 =cara<br />
|answer2 =T-rex's lifespan<br />
<br />
|rogue3 =jay<br />
|answer3 =T-rex's lifespan<br />
<br />
|rogue4 =bob<br />
|answer4 =T-rex's lifespan<br />
<br />
|rogue5 =Evan<br />
|answer5 =extinct ibex brought back<br />
<br />
|audienceanswer = extinct ibex brought back<br />
|host =steve<br />
<br />
<!-- for the result options below, <br />
only put a 'y' next to one. --><br />
|sweep =y <!-- all the Rogues guessed wrong --><br />
|clever = <!-- each item was guessed (Steve's preferred result) --><br />
|win = <!-- at least one Rogue guessed wrong, but not them all --><br />
|swept = <!-- all the Rogues guessed right --><br />
}}<br />
''Voice-over: It's time for Science or Fiction.''<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Each week I come up with three science news items. Facts, two real and one fake. And I challenge my panel of skeptics to tell me which one is the fake. We have a theme this week, and the theme is extinction. These are all about extinct animalcules. Here's the first one. After the Permian extinction 250 million years ago, the land was dominated by large amphibians until late in the Triassic when dinosaurs rose to prominence. Item number two, the T. rex lifespan was only about 28 years, with the oldest specimen being 29 years old. And item number three, the Pyrenean ibex was the only animal ever to be brought back from extinction. All right, we're going to do the panel first, and then I will poll the audience. And we are going to start with Eli.<br />
<br />
=== Eli's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''EB:''' Oh, mean-spirited. I am going to go with number three because...<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The ibex.<br />
<br />
'''EB:''' Yeah. Because that's the one you said most recently, Steve.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's the last thing I heard.<br />
<br />
'''EB:''' I remember this anxiety dream. I've been having it every day for a week.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, Cara.<br />
<br />
=== Cara's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's funny because I was actually going to go with the Pyrenean ibex, too, because I don't think... When you say the only animal ever to be brought back from extinction, you mean it was de-extinction? You're specifically referring to de-extinction.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' At one point, it was extinct, and at some other point in the future, it was not extinct.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So that could happen if it was miscategorized as extinct.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It wasn't because they saw one or they miscategorized it or whatever. It was they did something to bring it back.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' They did something to bring it back from extinction. But could it have been some sort of hybridization with another ibex, and then they were able to purify it again? And ooh, I could see that happening. If there was another ibex that was similar genetically, and they could have viable offspring, they could make a new one, even if there were no old ones. Now I'm liking that one. Okay, so T. rex lifespan, 28 years. That one bothers me because I've seen some really good T. rex life sequences, and they start tiny, and they get huge. And maybe they grew that quickly, but usually when things have that large of a change from the time they're small, they do have to live a little bit longer, which means this might be the science because it's like a gotcha, but I think I'll go with that as the fiction.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay, Jay.<br />
<br />
=== Jay's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I was going to say everything that Cara said, so I'm going to go with what Cara said.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The T. rex. All right, Bob.<br />
<br />
=== Bob's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, I think T. rexes, or as you say, trex.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I know, I forgot the hyphen.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I think they live longer than that. I'll say that's fiction.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay, and Evan.<br />
<br />
=== Evan's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Crumbs. Shoot. The ibex, I think, is the fiction.<br />
<br />
'''EB:''' Thank you.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, I'm not aware that they have been able to bring back anything from extinction. I thought it was rediscovered.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' We would have heard that.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' So that one is just not right with me.<br />
<br />
=== Audience's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay, we're going to poll the audience. We have two for the ibex, three for the T. rex. Did you say ibex?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I said ibex.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No, two ibex, three T. rex, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We have two for the ibex, three for the T. rex, none for the Permian extinction. So we'll start. We'll take them in order. So we're going to do the one clap thing, right? George has been doing this with you so far. So if you think that the Permian extinction is the fiction, clap. ''(small number of claps)'' All right, four people.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Four honest people.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' If you think that the T. rex lifespan is the fiction, clap. ''(a medium number of claps)'' And if you think that the Pyrenean ibex is the fiction, clap. ''(a lot of claps)''<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Wow.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Definitely three got the most votes.<br />
<br />
'''EB:''' The people are with me.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Then two, very few for one, nobody on the panel went with one. So we'll start there. We'll take these in order.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #1 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' After the Permian extinction, 252 million years ago, the land was dominated by large amphibians until late in the Triassic when the dinosaurs rose to prominence.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That says amphibians.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Amphibians.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I read that as reptiles.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. Everyone on the panel thinks this one is science. And most of the audience thinks this one is science. And this one is the fiction.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yay, good for the audience.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I read that as reptiles.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I don't know why.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I don't either.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I like not being wrong alone.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' After the Permian extinction, this wiped out most life on Earth. Actually, for about 8 million years or so, the dominant species was the Lystrosaurus, which is an early mammal. So mammals made an early run for it in the Triassic.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Was it an early mammal or was it a mammal-like reptile?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's a mammal-like reptile, yeah. But they are the ancestors of mammals. That's why it was a synapsid, right?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' How large is that creature there I'm seeing?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Those plants are about a meter tall in that picture. But then the archosaurs took over by the late Triassic, right? And then in the Jurassic, the dinosaurs ruled the world. The amphibians, they had their run prior to the Permian extinction. So pretty much all the large amphibians were gone by the Permian extinction. All right.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Dammit.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #2 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So that means that the T. rex lifespan was only about 28 years, with the oldest specimen being 29 years old. That is science. That is science.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Really? They lived in their 40s. Come on.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And we know because bones have rings just like tree rings, right?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Look at the bones.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So we can age.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So they grew fast.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' They grew fast. I thought exactly why. I said, that's surprising because they're so big. You're going to think, oh, it must have taken longer to get that big.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #3 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And then the Pyrenean ibex was the only animal ever to be brought back from extinction. It's science.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' How?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' How, how, how?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' There's one word in there that may have been a little clue.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Brought back.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Was.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Was.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Not is. If they were still alive, I would have said is.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' What difference does it make?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Because they were cloned. The Pyrenean ibex was cloned, and a live ibex was born. So for that moment, it was no longer extinct.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Alive for a minute?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But it didn't survive?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It survived about three minutes after birth.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, that's so sad.<br />
<br />
'''EB:''' That's some Alien 3 level science. And that's Sigourney Weaver killed it with a flamethrower?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' When did that happen?<br />
<br />
'''EB:''' Thank you.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So the last Pyrenean ibex died because a tree fell on it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Poor thing.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And then they said they ran over to it, and they took the cells, and they said, oh, we're going to clone it. And they cloned it. But cloning's hard. And it doesn't always work.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Why didn't they take more samples before? There's only one.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I don't know.<br />
<br />
'''EB:''' Why didn't they lift the tree?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yes.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I don't know.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Why do you wait until there's only one left to take a sample?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' There's one left. Whatever. This is the story, right? It's a very it's a pretty animal.<br />
[[File:963 Pyrenean Ibex.png|left|200px|Wikipedia: Pyrenean ibex]]<br />
<br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br> <!-- delete any or all of these line breaks if it looks better without them... --> I should have put it in the picture.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' But if it was the last one, if it was the last one, it doesn't matter that the tree fell on it. It was going to die anyway.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's true.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Did it make a noise?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Did it take more samples before that?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Maybe they did. This is like when you're reading the summary. This is the story that gets told.<br />
<br />
'''EB:''' They had a busy week Cara.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' There's one left. There's one left. The tree falls on it, so they go over there, and they take cells, and they clone it. Of course it's silly. I mean, they must have had whatever.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' They had like another Ibex caryat, probably. Like a different species.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, they probably did. And again, it was born alive, and it survived for about three minutes, and then it died. So I don't know why they don't keep trying to clone it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Because they only had one sample.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But they could clone the one that died. I don't know. Is that like Xeroxing something multiple times?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yes. We all saw {{w|Multiplicity (film)|Multiplicity}}. Yes, that's a bad idea.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I didn't.<br />
<br />
'''EB:''' Eventually, the Ibex is Michael Keaton. You've got to be careful.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And the other thing is, if they only made one, yeah, it doesn't help. You've got to make a breeding population of it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And you can't make a breeding population that are all clones.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's going to be genetically very deficient very soon.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, so your options are you have to clone multiple individuals.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Multiple samples.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Or you need to induce mutation in your one that you have, so that you induce genetic differences. But those are hard.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's asking a lot.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's asking a lot.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' We don't know how to do that yet.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's hard to do because mutation's probably not going to be good ones, you know?<br />
<br />
'''EB:''' Do you think when the Ibex was lying there under the tree, it was like, oh, here's Chris, the zookeeper. He's going to help me. He brings me food. And then it was like, pfft. In the neck. And it was like, Chris, where are you going? Chris! Chris, come back!<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's really dark in your head.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' How horrible.<br />
<br />
'''EB:''' I think that Ibex had a bad last minute.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I think he probably did. You're right.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I mean, by definition, [inaudible]. They're trying to bring back the woolly mammoth. You guys have heard that. I did a recent TikTok video on this.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' For how many years have they talked about this?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I know. Some guy was like, it's 2025. You're going to be able to go to a zoo and see a woolly mammoth. No. Not going to happen. So there are a couple of companies. One company is, I'm stretching stuff here. One company is, they have a plan. Their plan is they're going to get the DNA from the frozen samples of the woolly mammoth, and they're going to do the Jurassic Park thing where they plug it in as much as they can into a woolly mammoth.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Into elephants.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Into an Asian elephant. An Asian elephant intact DNA, because that's the closest living relative. And then make a clone, which they then grow inside an Asian elephant, and then you have a woolly mammoth. And then if you can make enough of them, then maybe they could breed with each other, whatever. And then you could get a breeding population of woolly mammoth. It's not impossible, but it's hard. Cloning is not like, it's a yes, we can do it, but cloning large mammals is still a tricky thing to do.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It's 2023, man. What's the problem?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I think my explanation was way more interesting. I wonder if that could happen. You take a pisley bear, for example.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, that's another thing.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' You take a grizzly who mates with a polar bear, and then sadly, the polar bear goes extinct. But now you have enough pisleys that you can mate the pisleys together, and 25% of them might be polar again.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I don't like the name.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, that's one of the alternate plans. That is one of the plans, where you make a woolly mammoth Asian elephant hybrid, and you keep hybridizing it back with woolly mammoth DNA until you get, like, it's mostly woolly mammoth.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' There's a big problem here. The world is getting warmer. Where the hell are these fuckers going to live?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' They don't have a habitat.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' You know what I mean?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's legitimately part of the problem.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' We already have a land problem as it is.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I did an interesting Nat Geo show about dog breeding and all the problems with dog breeding, but also the things that are going well. And we covered these interesting people that are making something called a Levitt bulldog, where they're backbreeding English bulldogs to try and make them more viable again and make them healthier, back to the original mastiffs that they were bred from. And so it is interesting that backbreeding is a practice in domestication right now.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' As a means of preserving.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' As a means of preserving the health and wellness of a-<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, that's standard when you're making cultivars. If you do GMOs, you make the mutation, but you keep backbreeding it to the original stock until you have a viable plant that just happens to keep the mutation that you're interested in, the genetic change. But you have to backbreed to make a viable cultivar.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Eli, have you ever done any backbreeding?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, no. No, no, no. We're out of time, you guys. We're out of time.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Steve, do we have a quote for the show?<br />
<br />
{{anchor|qow}} <!-- leave anchor(s) directly above the corresponding section that follows --><br />
== Skeptical Quote of the Week <small>(1:39:19)</small> ==<br />
{{qow<br />
|text = It's all about being a part of something in the community, socializing with people who share interests and coming together to help improve the world we live in.<br />
|author = {{w|Zach Braff}}<br />
|lived = 1975-present<br />
|desc = American actor and filmmaker<br />
}}<br />
'''S:''' Evan, do we have a quote?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, here's a NOTACON quote. "It's all about being part of something in the community, socializing with people who share interests, coming together to help improve the world we live in." Zach Braff.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' What does that have to do with NOTACON?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' What was he talking about? Was he talking about Scrubs?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, I see the connection.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Community. Yes. Socializing with people. Common interests. Improving the world. Come on. What are we doing here?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' NOTACON.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I quickly read it. I'm like, Zach Brannigan? Evan would totally use a Futurama quote. But no, it was Zach Braff.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Zach Braff. Scrubs.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Was that from Scrubs?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' No.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' From an interview of some sort.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' He just said it.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, thank you all for joining me for this special NOTACON version of The Skeptic's Guide.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Sure.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Thank you, Steve.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Our pleasure, Steve. ''(applause)''<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Eli, thank you for joining us. It was really a pleasure to have you on the show. Tell us where people can find your stuff.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Great job, man.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Godawful Movies, The Scathing Atheist, The Skeptocrat, D&D Minus, Citation Needed and Dear Old Dads.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Awesome.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Did you guys all enjoy the show? ''(applause)'' Are you enjoying NOTACON? ''(applause)'' Should we do it next year? ''(applause)'' We'll think about it.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' See how tomorrow goes.<br />
<br />
== Signoff == <br />
'''S:''' —and until next week, this is your {{SGU}}. <!-- typically this is the last thing before the Outro --> <br />
''(applause)'' <br />
<br />
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}}</div>Hearmepurrhttps://www.sgutranscripts.org/w/index.php?title=SGU_Episode_837&diff=19101SGU Episode 8372024-01-16T20:21:12Z<p>Hearmepurr: episode done</p>
<hr />
<div>{{Editing required<br />
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|}}<br />
{{InfoBox<br />
|episodeNum = 837 <!-- replace with correct Episode Number --><br />
|episodeDate = {{month|7}} {{date|24}} 2021 <!-- broadcast date --><br />
|verified = <!-- leave blank until verified, then put a 'y'--><br />
|episodeIcon =File:837 balloon telescope.jpg<br />
|bob =y <!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
|cara =y <!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
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|guest3 = <!-- leave blank if no third guest --><br />
|qowText = When people don’t search for scientific evidence for things, they find a very compelling, convincing person with a very sympathetic story and think they must be right. They’re convinced that this is true. But it’s not true. You need to be able to question it. If people aren’t conversant in science, they mightn’t ask those questions.<br />
|qowAuthor = {{w| Aoife McLysaght}}, Professor in the Molecular Evolution Laboratory of the Smurfit Institute of Genetics, University of Dublin, Ireland <!-- use a {{w|wikilink}} or use <ref name=author>[url publication: title]</ref>, description [use a first reference to an article attached to the quote. The second reference is in the QoW section] --> <br />
|downloadLink = {{DownloadLink|2021-07-24}}<br />
<br />
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}}<!-- <br />
** Note that you can put each Rogue’s infobox initials inside triple quotes to make the initials bold in the transcript. This is how the final statement from Steve is typed at the end of this transcript: '''S:''' —and until next week, this is your {{SGU}}.<br />
--><br />
== Introduction ==<br />
<br />
''Voice-over: You're listening to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.'' <br />
<br />
'''S:''' Hello and welcome to the {{SGU|link=y}}. Today is Wednesday, July 21<sup>st</sup>, 2021, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella... <br />
<br />
'''B:''' Hey, everybody!<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Cara Santa Maria... <br />
<br />
'''C:''' Howdy. <br />
<br />
'''S:''' Jay Novella... <br />
<br />
'''J:''' Hey guys. <br />
<br />
'''S:''' ...and Evan Bernstein. <br />
<br />
'''E:''' Good evening everyone.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Welcome back, Jay. You had a two-week hiatus.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I missed you.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I missed you guys. It's funny. No, I didn't originally select to go away for two weeks, but I wasn't opposed to it. But I didn't realize that's a long time to be away from work.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Wait, were you in Hawaii for two whole weeks?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I was there for two weeks.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's a long time. Were you in a remote part of Hawaii or were you in Honolulu?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I went to... No, we didn't go to Honolulu. We went to Kauai and then we went to the Big Island.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's a long time to be vacationing.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It's a long time.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I feel like I start to get itchy to come home.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, at day 10. So day 10 and 11 is when I felt it turn in my head. I'm like, I could go home. You know what I mean? Plus, I was with nine other people. There was 10 of us. It wasn't like I'm just alone with my wife and it was quiet and we're doing all sorts of fun stuff. It was kids. So it was a kid-centric vacation.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' So sex wasn't happening.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah. I mean, that's a funny thing, right, Bob? Yeah. But you know. So bottom line is though, Hawaii is the second prettiest place I've ever been to in my life. Of course, New Zealand being the first.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, Hawaii and New Zealand have a lot of similarities.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah. They do.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah. So but wonderful trip. You know, we did a lot of really cool stuff. I was trying to expose the kids to as much as we could. We swam with a manta ray and we went on a really cool snorkeling thing, saw the volcano. There's just so much in Hawaii and all the islands are different. They have they have different kind of vibes and climates and all sorts of stuff. It's a beautiful place to go. And if you can afford it, I recommend you go. You're going to spend a lot of money there because everything has to be shipped to the islands. Like everything. Everything that you-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, it's a very expensive place to live even.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Except the sugar cane.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Did you, when you guys went to Volcanoes National Park, did you stop at the like orchid farm at the base of the mountain?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I wasn't told about that. What is that?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' There's like a really pretty little orchid greenhouse-y farm area where they have all these really exotic and I don't know, they grow a lot of really gorgeous orchids that you've never seen before.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So but you know, so you know, then you know this and Steve, you've been there as well, right? So like you have a viewing spot where you could see the mouth of the volcano and it is like a mini Grand Canyon. It's huge. It's huge. So it's hot there. It's hot, right? So the water seeps down into these cracks and then it spews back out because it turns into steam. It's kind of like a mini geyser, right? So you just see like steam coming out of the ground, but sulphur and other nasty things are coming out with it because it's just kind of oozing out, I guess, of the soil and everything. So you're seeing like these holes, and there was a picture of a warning picture where this kid like veered off the path and fell into one of these holes.<br />
<br />
'''E/C:''' Oh my gosh.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, it was terrible. I don't even want to go into the details because like my kids are there and we're like, oh my God. You know, but bottom line is it's dangerous. It's a dangerous place to go. You never know when something's going to happen. They have a very good idea on what's going on and everything, but still, it's a volcano. It spewed intense amounts of a billion yards of lava like two and a half years ago. Like it's no joke. It's one of the wonders of the world. Like God, I wanted to see lava so bad, but you know, not to my detriment, right? I don't want to ever be in a situation where I'm like, I've got to run.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, that's horrible. While I was in the Big Island, I took a helicopter trip from Kona to Hilo and back and we flew over a lot of lava flow and it was really cool to see it like from that perspective because not only could you see the beauty of the lava, but you could also see how it changes the landscape and becomes rock becomes the landscape. How cool is that?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, well the airport, the airport at the Big Island, they built a new airport on lava that flowed 200 years ago. Like it just made more land and I'm like, oh, this looks pretty stable. Let's build an airport. Now, Cara, I have some news for you because you were not at last Friday's live stream, which I was-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yes, please.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Is this about the pineapples?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, I have to talk about it again, Evan, I'm sorry. Thank you. But I did experience some alternate bananas to tell you about. First, I could not get my hands on a Gros Michel banana. I tried. I found out that they're called bluefields in Hawaii. Didn't help. I kept asking, kept asking, couldn't find any. I was really disappointed. Okay. But I did get to eat apple bananas and candy apple bananas and I ate ice cream bananas. I found out that ice cream bananas are cooking bananas, so they don't taste like ice cream. They're not creamy. There's nothing nice about them. They're just like cooking bananas. Kind of, I don't want to say like plantains because plantains are really weird if you bite into them. It's still an edible banana.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I love plantains.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, you can't eat a raw plantain.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No, yeah. You want to cook a plantain. Oh, that's what you mean by cooking bananas. Okay. Got it.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' You can't cook a plantain out of the ice cream bananas.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' By the way, to interject, Jay, have you had cotton candy grapes?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Nobody has ever offered me them, no. I want them, though.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' They're so good. Cotton candy grapes, keep your eyes peeled for them. They're so yummy.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Oh, I thought, yeah, they're in my local grocery store. But okay, the apple banana and the candy apple banana, which was my favorite, were delicious. And they don't taste like apples. They just have a tartness to them. There's a dimension of flavor that's added that is special and it's wonderful. And if you ever have the opportunity, please try them because I really, really enjoyed them. And then, oh my God, the other thing I got to try is called a sugar loaf pineapple. All right. They selectively bred these pineapples. So this is what they did to them. One, I think it's an artifact and not done deliberately, but the flesh of the pineapple got to be a much, much more white colour than like the typical yellow, like dark-ish yellow colour that a normal pineapple has. So imagine if it's a lot more white. There is no center core. You can eat the whole thing. And it's got four times the sugar and I dare say like 10 times the flavor of a regular pineapple.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Wow.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah. They're amazing.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Did you learn about how pineapples grow? It's so weird.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It is weird. It doesn't make any sense. It looks like they grow from the tops, not the bottoms. It's so weird.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I'm wondering. And there's just the one and they take forever. It gives you a better appreciation every time you eat a pineapple, like how much work goes into it. But did you notice that with this sweeter pineapple, what'd you call it? What was its name?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' A sugarloaf.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' The sugarloaf pineapple. Was the papain content as high as a normal pineapple? Because I can't eat raw pineapple. It like burns my throat.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Really?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Cara, guess what? It's damn near acid-less. It doesn't have any.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, then I would love that.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yes. I mean, they said that they genetically bred it. They didn't do it. It's not GMO. They just selectively bred it out. They're like, you don't want it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's really not. It's not about, I think, acid. I think the issue is that pineapples have a high level of papain, just like papaya do.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Enzymes.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. It's an enzyme and it's like a digestive enzyme. We used to use it in the lab to help break down like cell membranes and stuff. But yeah, it hurts. I find that when I consume pineapple, it's painful.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That pineapple sting?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' The sting and the itchy throat.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It'll make you bleed.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's hard for me.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So this was the ultimate. Evan, I endeavour to have one of them with you. We can order one. Now look, we'll drop 80 bucks at some point and we'll do it.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I'm so in on that.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It costs $80 for one pineapple?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' To ship it. No, you can buy them out there for about 13 bucks.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, I see. But then to ship it. And you have to do it on the up and up because there's the rules about shipping fresh food.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So guys, I want to tell you about this email I got recently.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, you got an email?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. Occasionally do get actual emails. So this was from somebody who, I'm just going to paraphrase, he said that he's been a long time fan of the Science-Based Medicine website. He's like some kind of teacher and he often will send his students there. But he no longer can recommend Science-Based Medicine because clearly, clearly we are now a propaganda organ promoting what? What do you think this guy was upset about, Science-Based Medicine?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Vaccinations.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh no.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I read it, so I know the answer.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Vaccinations.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, no.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' What is going on?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Has he not read any of the other articles on Science-Based Medicine?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' What happened to the years prior to this all about the vaccination articles? Never piped up then.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, I think I know what's going on. It's always amazing how when people disagree with whatever, like on any articles I wrote they immediately go to, you must be getting paid by industry or you must be in the pocket of big government. Whatever it is.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, for sure. Shill, shill.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's like immediately they assume that we're compromised. It's like, no, we actually have these opinions because the cognitive dissonance is too much for them, I guess.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' And we came to those opinions using the same methods we used to come to other opinions.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, yeah. Right. So anyway, I want to use this as a segue to our COVID update this week, which is all about vaccine hesitancy.<br />
<br />
== COVID-19 Update <small>(9:26)</small> ==<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So in the U.S., the U.S. did a great job with a vaccine roll-out program. They really were able at the peak we were getting three million vaccine doses delivered a day. And now we're essentially pushing up against vaccine hesitancy. That is now the limiting factor.<br />
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'''C:''' Oh, yeah.<br />
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'''E:''' Which we knew at some point would happen.<br />
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'''S:''' And the question was always, what's that point going to be?<br />
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'''E:''' You hope it's much, much later than it turned out to be.<br />
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'''S:''' So right now in the U.S., 68.3% of adults have been vaccinated, close to the 70% goal that the Biden administration set, but not quite there. But we'll get there by the end of the month.<br />
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'''C:''' Wait, that sounds high.<br />
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'''S:''' That's of adults. So that's not including children who are not eligible for vaccination. It's only 48.6% of the U.S. population.<br />
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'''C:''' Yeah, I was going to say, I think that California is like 49, 50% of the population and we're like ahead of the curve.<br />
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'''S:''' Yeah, it's 56.1% have gotten at least one dose, 48.6% fully vaccinated, 16.3% of adults. And so we're we don't know exactly how to calculate in people who have immunity from being infected because we don't know how much overlap there is.<br />
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'''B:''' Interesting.<br />
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'''S:''' So the question is, are we at herd immunity? And the answer is yes and no, because this 68.3% is not evenly distributed around the country. And in certain locations, it seems that we are having some functional herd immunity, meaning that the virus doesn't have enough people to spread to and so it can't be self-sustaining. And in other locations, there are high concentrations of people who do not want to get vaccinated. So we have lower vaccination rates. And the virus is happily spreading in highly unvaccinated populations. The data is overwhelmingly clear. So we have not achieved enough distribution of vaccination to prevent COVID from spreading. Now back in February, and I wrote about this and I know we talked about it in the show, that we're basically in a race between variants and vaccination. And the question was, by the summer, who was going to win, right? Not that kind of variant. So the viral variant. So what do you guys think, did the variants win or did the vaccination program win at this point?<br />
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'''C:''' Oh, well, at this point, yeah, at this point-<br />
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'''E:''' There's a lot of variants.<br />
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'''C:''' I think it's hard to say, did the variant win or did the vaccination program win because there's like self-sabotage of the program.<br />
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'''S:''' That includes that.<br />
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'''B:''' One in a sense.<br />
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'''S:''' That includes all of that.<br />
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'''C:''' Yeah. Then I think the variants are winning. I don't know.<br />
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'''S:''' Unfortunately, the number of cases are starting to turn back up. So it's still a little too early to say hopefully that'll be, because we don't know when that's going to turn back down again. You never know.<br />
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'''C:''' But in California, we just rolled everything back. We're back to, I mean, it's not lockdown, but it's mask mandates everywhere. It's you know, I think social, I don't know about social distancing going into effect, but schools are starting to change their rules. Yeah, it's, we're going backward, not forward now.<br />
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'''J:''' We were just pulling out.<br />
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'''C:''' I know. This is why I get so mad. This is why we can't have nice things. These people are ruining it for the rest of us. Like we're all working so, so hard. And then there are people out there who, and this is, again, I'm not talking about the people who are afraid, who for medical reasons have an inability to get vaccinated, but I'm specifically talking about the people who ideologically are choosing not to get vaccinated. It makes me crazy. And I think part of the reason that it's so frustrating is that we use words like vaccine hesitancy. But I think that the vaccine hesitant community is a community that I empathize with and that is a smaller portion. There is an agenda out there. It's not vaccine hesitancy. It is anti-vax.<br />
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'''J:''' Yes, yes, anti-vax. It's anti-vaxxers.<br />
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'''C:''' And those are the people I'm frustrated with, not the vaccine hesitant.<br />
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'''S:''' The thing is, I always have to say this the SGU is a nonpartisan show and we don't get involved in directly political issues. We do involve politics because politics are involved with science and with medicine. And in a lot of the things that we advocate for, we can't talk about vaccines without there being a political angle. Unfortunately, not us, but some people have made vaccines incredibly political. And in the United States, the data is absolutely clear that essentially the Republican Party has decided to make anti-vaccination part of their ideology. And if you look at the right wing media, the conservative media, they're all in on anti-vax right now. They're pushing it hard like this is just part of their narrative now. And I think that that's what was behind that email from that email, this vehemence of you're a government stooge if you're pushing the vaccine for COVID. And the other reason why I say that is because the having been a follower of multiple science denial campaigns, especially ones that are politically motivated, you start to see how the media ecosystem feeds on certain narratives, right? And that's what we're starting to see. We are seeing a huge increase in those kinds of narratives being marshaled for this anti-vaccine ideology. So in other words, when you start to get email from people, and it's not like I heard this or I'm concerned about that, they come prepared with this narrative that they clearly consumed in some media outlet. And it's the same one that I'm getting from multiple, multiple different people. It's like, okay, you guys are all feeding in the same ecosystem here. And this is now this is the narrative of the day. This is what you are being fed. That's what we're seeing now, this essentially program of anti-vaccination among the right wing media.<br />
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'''J:''' Steve, my observation, though, is this is like one of those things like, where are you? Do you want to be a skeptic first? Or do you want to be a political party follower first, right? Of course sitting in the seat that I'm sitting in, people have to put their critical thinking first. That should be your first filter. Politics should not be your first filter. Everything should be going through your absolute most critical mind that you have.<br />
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'''C:''' Right. But the problem is that, Jay, it doesn't feel like politics when you're watching the news. It feels like you're just getting information. And I think that's the frustrating part about this approach is that it's a deeply biased source of "news". The good news is, I think Hannity recently begged people to get vaccinated. I think but the problem is on the other extreme of that, you've got a Tucker Carlson who is, digging in his heels. And that's frustrating.<br />
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'''J:''' But Cara, even if that is true, and I wanted to make sure that got out there. There were a couple of talking heads that said, I got vaccinated. I believe in vaccinations. Please get vaccinated. That's great. They should have said it a long time ago. But the problem is, even with Hannity, if you look at what he talked about before he made that comment, and after he made that comment, it just complete like opposite, basically opposite so he just like shoehorn that in there. And it's just it's ridiculous.<br />
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'''S:''' And listen, there's a lot of there's a lot of Republican politicians who are saying go out and get vaccinated.<br />
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'''C:''' Yeah, for sure.<br />
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'''S:''' Especially if you're like a governor, or like, it's your job, you like to, to vaccinate your state. So I'm hearing a lot of that.<br />
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'''C:''' But it is my dad's a Republican. And he's he's actually Fox News consumer, he got vaccinated as soon as he could.<br />
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'''S:''' So yeah, it's certainly not uniform, but it is it is making it more challenging. But Cara, I think you hit upon something. And that's also a key difference between vaccine hesitancy and this current crop of anti vaccine that we're seeing that the people who are vaccine hesitant, have questions and concerns and they're legitimate questions. They're not the fake just asking questions there. They honestly don't know. I heard that people are getting myocarditis and that scares me and I don't know what the truth is.<br />
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'''C:''' Or I am actually have a predisposition to X, Y, and Z. And this scares me. Am I a candidate for this?<br />
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'''B:''' It's not FDA approved. It's using a new technology. Sure.<br />
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'''C:''' Sure. It's scary.<br />
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'''B:''' That makes sense to be a little scary.<br />
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'''C:''' And it's confusing.<br />
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'''B:''' But not anymore. Not in July 2020.<br />
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'''S:''' That's true, Bob. But that's why the new crop is not this vaccine hesitant. I don't understand. I have concerns. This is people who have the illusion of knowledge. Because as you say, Cara, they have information. They're just loaded up with misinformation or selected information. And they're much more challenging to deal with. Like the people say, oh, what about the myocarditis? I can say it's 12 cases per million doses, and mostly mild no one was harmed by it. So the numbers are very reassuring. But then you have people say, yes, but I heard it's really 6000 cases. And they're high. And it's probably a lot more. And they're like, full of misinformation that gives that they gives them the illusion of this confident knowledge. And so you can't just cruise, yeah, they're, they're hopeless, they're hopeless.<br />
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'''C:''' And this is something that I asked her. So I know this is okay. But like, this is something that hits home for me, because my own mother recently got COVID and my mother is vaccinated. And she was vaccinated as soon as she was able to be in Texas. Because she was exposed to somebody who has anti vaccine ideology, and chose not to get vaccinated. And because of that, she got sick. And and she didn't just have most of the cases of people who are vaccinated, catching COVID. They're asymptomatic, they probably wouldn't even know it, except they had to get tested because of work or because of whatever. But my mom, it was short, but it was sick. She did not feel well, for many days. And now she's having to isolate quarantine at home, she did everything right. And she's paying the price.<br />
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'''S:''' And it's not only that, it's also just like, how about we'd like to get the economy going again which in itself causes a lot of harm. This is why like the Biden administration is really pivoting to directly confronting vaccine misinformation, because that's the that's the problem now. We have the doses, we have the ability to get it out there, it's just that people don't want it. And so we are paying the price for allowing pseudoscience to fester in our medical system and in our social media, etc. for all of these years. People ask, this is this is definitely one of the harms from alternative medicine, too, because alternative medicine industry is completely rife with anti vaccine sentiments, as well as anti authority anti expertise, anti institutional medicine, etc. And so, yeah, we created millions of people who were susceptible to anti vaccine propaganda. And we shouldn't be surprised when in the middle of a pandemic, this is now biting us in the ass. I don't think we will learn this lesson. I don't think we'll learn the lesson from it. But it's absolutely true.<br />
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'''J:''' What's happening out there, though? This is this is the information that I can't find. Are people responding to this mini non vaccinated pandemic or are they are they digging their heels in?<br />
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'''S:''' My personal experience that they're mostly digging their heels in. I'm sure the needle's gonna move a little bit, but I don't see any massive change in the people who are think that they're justified in being anti vaccine. Also, the longer and the more you dig in your heels, the harder it is to admit that you were duped. You know, people in a cult when the UFO doesn't show up, they go on a they go on a membership drive. They don't say, oh, I guess I was gave all my property away for nothing. You know, they don't easily admit that they were that they were wrong.<br />
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'''B:''' And then they say, then our efforts save the day. We changed history.<br />
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'''C:''' Yeah. I think my favorite meme that I've seen going around, and I hate that I'm not giving credit to the original person that wrote it, but I have no idea who it would be, was something like, I think it's time to retire the phrase, avoid it like the plague, because clearly we're not smart enough to do that.<br />
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'''B:''' Oh, I like it.<br />
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'''S:''' They've ruined that phrase, avoid it like the plague.<br />
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'''C:''' Yeah. Like, we clearly are like, no, I'm just not going to avoid the plague. Like what? What?<br />
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'''S:''' Well, I think as we've said before, if humanity goes down, it would be will be because of our own stupidity. That's the greatest threat to humanity is, is this is just is our, the dark underbelly of our psychology. And that's what we're facing right now. All right, let's move on to some news items.<br />
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== News Items ==<br />
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=== Plastic Tipping Point <small>(22:15)</small> ===<br />
* [https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/07/210701140931.htm Is global plastic pollution nearing an irreversible tipping point?]<ref>[https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/07/210701140931.htm ScienceDaily: Is global plastic pollution nearing an irreversible tipping point?]</ref><br />
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'''S:''' I hate to move on to another dark one. Jay, we've got some brighter times ahead, I promise.<br />
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'''C:''' Good, get it over with.<br />
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'''S:''' But Jay, you're going to tell us about a, are we reaching a plastic tipping point?<br />
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'''J:''' The answer is yes, unfortunately, I'll give you guys an update, but I just want to ask you guys a couple of questions like, so decisions we make every day can and do have a dramatic impact on the world because everybody like, just like what we were just talking about, right? So if you're not getting yourself vaccinated, your little tiny part in not getting vaccinated is part of a bigger problem. And something you might not think about is the amount of plastic that you use. Do you really sit around and just think about how much plastic you interface with and you purchase and you dispose of in your daily life? We all need-<br />
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'''E:''' Lately, more and more, but probably I can do more.<br />
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'''C:''' I'm kind of obsessed with this.<br />
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'''J:''' Yeah. And, and I know you're interested, Cara. I am too, by the way. I'm right along with you. Every time we talk about this, I'm like riveted when I hear about it. Just as a fun and maybe a little unnerving exercise, just scan the room you're in right now real quick. Look around. How many things are made of plastic?<br />
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'''E:''' Pip, pip, pip, pip, pip.<br />
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'''J:''' Right? Plastic, plastic, plastic. It's everywhere. Everything. I got plastic in my eyeglasses. I'm wearing plastic.<br />
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'''B:''' My plastic robots are awesome. They're not going anywhere.<br />
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'''E:''' Well, as long as my plastic stays plastic, it doesn't break down and go into the ocean and in other places.<br />
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'''C:''' Yeah. But where's it going to go when you're done with that plastic? That's the problem. It doesn't break down. The reason it breaks down in the ocean is because it breaks apart, not because it biodegrades.<br />
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'''J:''' All right. So do you guys do this? Like, I started doing this. When I drink soda, I refuse to drink soda, pretty much drink anything out of a disposable plastic container. I just don't do it.<br />
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'''C:''' I don't buy it. I buy, I only buy Mexican Coke in a glass bottle. That's my...<br />
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'''J:''' And as weird as I thought this was probably five, 10 years ago, I bought myself a nice stainless steel Camelbak drinking container. You know what I mean?<br />
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'''C:''' And one of the greatest ploys that these corporate behemoths that produce single-use plastic, one of the greatest things that they, like fleeces that they pulled out on us was shifting the onus to the consumer and not taking responsibility.<br />
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'''J:''' Exactly.<br />
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'''B:''' Yeah.<br />
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'''J:''' So researchers from Sweden, Norway, and Germany published a paper on July 2nd in the journal Science and they're now saying that the amount of plastic emissions globally is coming to this kind of a tipping point where we could not reverse the damage that's done. The authors say that plastic pollution is a global threat. It's not like this is just happening in your country. It's happening everywhere and it's moving... The plastic is moving everywhere from everywhere. You know what I mean? So we need to, they say that we need to drastically reduce the amount of plastic that makes it into the environment. Today's plastic can be found pretty much everywhere. Like I said, now it's everywhere, meaning it's in our house, but it's everywhere on the planet as well. You can find it on any mountain. There's just plastic. You know, people have been there and they've dropped plastic and there's plastic particles, all the way to the deepest parts of the ocean, to the hottest deserts in the world, to the coldest Arctic climate. So global emissions in the world's waterways, like oceans, rivers, and lakes range from nine to 23 million metric tons per year. Now look, we don't know. Who knows what that is, right? I can't visualize that. But it is, all you need to know is it's a fantastically enormous amount of plastic.<br />
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'''C:''' There's so much plastic, Jay, that it's in our blood chemistry and it is packing the abdominal cavities of marine animals left and right.<br />
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'''J:''' Yeah. Not to mention that their heads are getting caught in plastic bottles. So okay. So I said nine to 23 million metric tons per year are entering the waterways of the world, right? That's the same amount that's happening on the land as well. So you just double that.<br />
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'''S:''' Jay, there is a technical term for that amount. It's technically a shit ton.<br />
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'''J:''' A shit ton.<br />
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'''C:''' Yeah. I thought you were going to go F, but S ton.<br />
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'''J:''' Yeah, me too.<br />
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'''C:''' Yeah. I know. I was like waiting for it. I was like, Steve.<br />
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'''J:''' So these are estimated emissions and they're forecasted to what, guys? By the year 2025, where will this nine to 23 number go?<br />
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'''E:''' Double.<br />
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'''J:''' Double. Right, Evan. It's going to freaking double in three years, guys. I don't know how, Bob.<br />
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'''S:''' Well, a lot of it too is that we're seeing the effects of the industrialized world. And now as we develop the developing world, that they're adding to the total numbers.<br />
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'''C:''' Yeah. And then the gross thing is that the industrialized world turns to the developing world and blames them for our problems. Like, oh no, you can't have cars and put off emissions. You can't have all of these nice things because we already did that and created a tipping point. And now you're going to put us over the edge.<br />
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'''J:''' And even though people have been made aware, I've known for a very long time, it took me way too long to upgrade to a steel water bottle. We significantly continue to increase our use of plastics and the use of plastics is deeply ingrained in our society, right? And it's also now, today, it's a political and an economic issue, just like Cara, like you were saying. I have a question. Why can't companies like Coca-Cola and Pepsi just say, no more plastic? We're done with it.<br />
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'''C:''' It's cheaper to use plastic and they have really good lobbies.<br />
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'''B:''' It's the bottom line.<br />
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'''J:''' Lobbies.<br />
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'''C:''' It's all about the bottom line.<br />
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'''E:''' Yeah. And their models are built on plastic.<br />
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'''S:''' Well, part of it too is, and this is something, this is a concept, you don't have this concept in your repertoire, you need to add it. The notion of externalized costs. If you allow a company to do something that's cheaper for them, but then shifts the cost on to society, for whatever reason, so we're like, we all have to now pay for the plastic cleanup that they profited on, and so we're allowing them to externalize that cost. So if you just don't do that, you say you have to pay the actual total cost of your industry, then things that are more environmentally friendly become cost effective. So like it might be then cost effective to switch to glass from plastic.<br />
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'''J:''' Let me lower the boom here, guys, on like cleanup and recycling technology, right? Because this was, you remember, I remember the first modern Earth Day that happened, I forget, was it 20 years ago? There was a big Earth Day that happened that was like, yeah, and if you recycle, everything's good. Well, plastic recycling, no bueno. Not good.<br />
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'''C:''' Oh yeah. Not good at all.<br />
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'''J:''' All governments need to do, world governments need to immediately invest in technology that can help remove plastic from the environment, right? That's one thing. That's not even recycling, it's just picking up plastic that is out in the world. Consumers need to make, and this is every one of us, and if we all, everybody listening to this show could just listen to this, and if we all make changes right now, we need to make a dramatic change in the way that we perceive plastic. It's not as simple as putting it in your recycling bin at your house. Like I said, the researchers say that we have to dramatically reduce the production of what they call virgin plastic. So that's brand new plastic if you didn't figure it out. How do you do that? What's the deal with this? If we reduce the amount of virgin plastic that's being made, this will increase the value of recycled plastics, and companies will become economically invigorated to work with recycled plastics more, and we also have to globally reconfigure how plastics are recycled because right now, plastic recycling is not what you think it is. It's not-<br />
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'''C:''' It's terrible. You can really only recycle one in two plastics. Yeah. Most people throw stuff in their recycling bin that's not recyclable and that completely Fs up the recycling machines that most municipalities use. You should never be throwing away plastic bags, plastic films, blister packs, that really thin crappy plastic that most things come in. It's not actually recyclable.<br />
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'''J:''' But Cara, you could spend a week, I don't know if you've ever seen this. I know Bob has, but there are people that have dedicated the time to say, we're going to clean up this beach, or we're going to clean up this roadway, and they take all the garbage and they get rid of it. Well, a huge amount of it is plastic, right? But here's where things get scary. Okay, so they pick up the plastic and then they bring it to a recycling center and it gets returned back to nature. You know what I mean? It's like we can't-<br />
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'''C:''' Yeah, because it's not recyclable.<br />
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'''J:''' So here, let me give you some more information. So when plastic is in the environment, however it gets there, if it goes into a landfill, if it's just being thrown out a car window, or if it finds its way into the ocean, it breaks down and it's known as weathering, right? So we can't rely on the degradation of plastic in the environment, and I'll tell you why. Plastic breaks down in the environment. It happens very slowly, and in many cases, it causes a constant flow of pollution into the environment. So plastics break down in the environment. They create micro and nanoplastic particles as they break down. They're shedding plastic particles as water and sunlight hit them and stuff in the soil starts to break them down. What's happening is these things are slowly cracking and breaking off of the plastic polymer backbone, right? So it's like you think of plastic as one big molecule that slowly is shedding pieces of that molecule, right? Chemicals also leach off the plastic and get into the environment, and this means that plastic is constantly shedding pollution. One of the last things that we want to do is put plastic into a landfill. We have to change plastic production. You know how we always hear these news items about, oh, they came out with a plastic, and it's 89% recyclable or whatever. We're not seeing anything change fast enough because money and attention aren't being put into it, but also these things are probably not scaling up. The technologies aren't able to make it to the big games because they just don't work when we try to make them happen on the level of soda bottles, you know what I mean? So the researchers say that plastic adds stress to natural environments. It can increase climate change because it disrupts the global carbon pump, right, which is basically the reabsorption of carbon back into trees and everything. It contributes to biodiversity loss, and as it goes on to damage animal habitats, it's dramatically affecting many different species. So we have animals dying because of plastic and suffering because of plastic, and we have the leaching of chemicals into the environment is slowly choking our world.<br />
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'''C:''' Don't forget that you're eating those things. The things that are the lowest on the food chain are either absorbing the chemical toxins from the plastic, or like you said, they're physically eating microplastics. And then bigger things are eating them, and bigger things are eating them, and then we're eating those bigger things.<br />
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'''J:''' Because of my research on this item, and it's kind of like a light went on with me reading this and learning more about this. I've heard Cara talk about it a million times. We've all talked about it on the show before. But I did. I had that click happen. I am disgusted with the amount of plastic that I'm surrounded by right now. I like plastic. It's a really cool medium. It's very-<br />
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'''C:''' Oh, and it's necessary. It's necessary for medical purposes. There are places in our life where like, thank goodness for plastic, but we don't need to be drinking soda out of plastic.<br />
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'''J:''' Right. Every time you throw away a piece of plastic, analyse it. Like, where did this come from? I have things that will let... Look, right now I'm picking up... I have one of those like grip enhancer things. I was using it when I got my carpal tunnel surgery. I pulled it out. I've had this thing for 30 years. I've owned that piece of plastic for a very long time, and it's held up, and it's great. It's the ones that we throw away. It's drinking a whole bottle of water, and then you squish it down into nothing, and you throw it in the garbage. You don't think about it. Or you put it in your recycling bin as if. But no.<br />
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'''E:''' Commonly referred to as the single-use plastic. Very bad.<br />
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'''J:''' So please do me a favour and just think about it.<br />
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'''C:''' Well, and the truth is, you're right, Jay, because if we... It's frustrating. It shouldn't have to start with us. That's the part that pisses me off. It shouldn't have to start with us, but the truth of the matter is, it does. That's the way our system is structured. So knowing that it starts with us, two things happen downstream. Number one is, we physically put less plastic into the system. But number two is, the companies don't sell as much. And when they're no longer selling it, they're going to stop producing it. As long as they feel like there's not a market for their product because we choose to vote with our dollar, we're going to affect change. But again, that comes back to that really, really entrenched problem, which is that it is a privilege to be able to vote with your dollar.<br />
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'''J:''' Yeah. That's right. Yeah. Let's move on, Steve, because I'm just going to keep getting pissed off here.<br />
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'''C:''' It's just raging over here.<br />
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'''E:''' Yeah.<br />
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'''C:''' For good reason.<br />
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=== Balloon Telescope <small>(34:55)</small> ===<br />
* [https://phys.org/news/2021-07-superbit-low-cost-balloon-borne-telescope-rival.html SuperBIT: A low-cost, balloon-borne telescope to rival Hubble]<ref>[https://phys.org/news/2021-07-superbit-low-cost-balloon-borne-telescope-rival.html Phys.org: SuperBIT: A low-cost, balloon-borne telescope to rival Hubble]</ref><br />
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'''S:''' All right. Bob, tell us about a balloon telescope that's going to rival the Hubble.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' What?<br />
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'''B:''' Yes. Yes. Basically stole my thunder from the entire first part. But yes, the famous HST, the Hubble Space Telescope, may be on the way out, but a cheap and in many ways better alternative is being tested, and it's called Superbit. And as Steve said, it's carried by a balloon, a balloon. So this new kind of astronomical telescope is a result of a team up between Durham, Toronto and Princeton Universities and NASA and the Canadian Space Energy. So Superbit. What is a Superbit? It stands for Super Pressure Balloon Born Imaging Telescope. It's essentially it's an imaging system lofted 40 kilometers into the stratosphere by a helium balloon. It will get high resolution images rivaling those of Hubble, which is saying something. So just let that simmer for a second in your brain. Hubble like images, but just using a balloon instead of a rocket. Hubble, of course, is the current standard, right? Primarily because it's in space, which is an awesome place to be for a lot of astronomy.<br />
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'''C:''' I thought you were going to say primarily because James Webb still hasn't lost.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Any day now.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' No, but actually, well, you will see that that's not technically correct. But that's because why? Why is it such a good place to be for astronomy? And that's because our atmosphere sucks in a lot of ways. Imagine visible light from a distant exoplanet or star or a whole galaxy, that light travels for years, millions of years, billions of years. And that light is essentially pristine for for all that time. And then, bam, the last one point six thousandths of a second as the light goes through our atmosphere and it turns into a huge, distorted mess, the last little bit, it gets completely screwed up. So that's basically just a goofy way to say that, yes, observing lots of frequencies of electromagnetic radiation from orbit is great because the atmosphere doesn't you just bypassing the atmosphere, atmospheric distortion. So it's great. It's fantastic. That's why everybody loves the Hubble. And that's why lots of observatories are on mountaintops, right? I mean, all the good ones are on these great, great mountaintops. Jay, you were really close to a bunch of them in Hawaii. And because that gets it up, that gets them above as much of the atmosphere as possible. So what Superbit with a special balloon is allowing to happen, it's like putting the telescope on a 40 kilometre high mountain. That's pretty much exactly what it's doing, putting it about as high as you can get and still be kind of like technically in the atmosphere. Now it's called a super pressure balloon because of advances in in material science. Cara, I know you'd love to hear that. Another advance in material science that's having some amazing impacts. So and essentially it has a lot to do with the stitching and it does not lose pressure. So it's basically allowing it to stay aloft, not for the typical three days, but for three months. And that's where you can do some real science. If you're three days is not enough, I don't care how well you can see up into space. Three months is where you can get some really good stuff done. Now this balloon is is big. Even when it's deflated, it's about as big as a couple of buses on the ground. But by the time this thing floats up to 35 to 40 kilometres in the stratosphere, which is above, say, more than 99 percent of the Earth's atmosphere, it grows to half a half a million cubic meters, which is the size of a small football stadium, apparently. A small football stadium. This thing is it gets gargantuan and it needs to be because you're hauling up a lot of mass there. But as cool as that is, though, the balloon is wonderful technically, but it's still just a balloon. The real business end and the real technology is what's hanging under the hook under the balloon on the hook. And my first thought, maybe you guys had this, my first thought when I was thinking about a balloon holding something like a a telescope, a big half a meter telescope. I mean, how do you stop this thing from swinging it back? How do you get a stable image off of something like that in the in the stratosphere? I mean, way up high. You know, what's the atmosphere like? I mean, there's no real weather up there. It's kind of it's got to be stable and kind of above. Well, actually, actually, they they weren't sure how stable it would be, because I don't think there's been a lot of studies in the stratosphere of like what's what did you know? What's the air? What's the wind like? What's going on right there? At least that's what one of the scientists was said. So it's actually more stable than they than they had thought it would be. But still, that apparatus still swung back and forth like a pendulum. And what they found was that when it went up there, that it's it's it's swung about an arc minute, which is one sixtieth of a degree. And that doesn't sound too bad. You know, a sixtieth of one degree, that's kind of tiny, right? But that's actually a deal breaker in terms of blur. You can't you can't do good, much to good astronomy if you're if you're swinging a sixtieth of a degree. So they added passive dampening on the hooks, right? So the movement that's transferred from the balloon to the hook would not be transferred down to the observatory below. So that's kind of like low hanging fruit. Yeah, let's put a dampener on that hook. So it's not transferring any of that swing. But then they added gyroscopes and frameless motors. So essentially what it's doing is that if it swings a little bit to the left, then it actually looks a little bit to the right and vice versa. If it swings a little bit to the right, it looks a little bit to the left to counter that. And when they when they did that, it brought the swing down from an arc minute to an arc second RMS. RMS apparently stands for residual pointing stability. I think it might stand for residual movement stability because it doesn't match the initialism. But that's what the scientists said. So I'm going to go with residual pointing stability. So so that's still that's really good, right? An arc second. That's a sixtieth of an arc minute or one thirty six hundredths of a degree. That's small enough. No, it's not small enough. It's really tiny, but it's still they need to go down another notch. So for that, to prevent even that tiny little swing, they use adaptive optics. We talked about that in the past, but in this specific case, adaptive optics. So this uses a fast tilt mirror, which essentially keeps target on a guide star. And so it stays locked on that guide star and it makes corrections based based on that. If it moves a little bit, it makes a correction back. And when they did that with the adaptive optics, they brought it down to 50 milli arc seconds. Super, super tiny. And finally, that was that was good enough. And that was well within the diffraction limit, which means that for that specific half a meter lens, any smaller swinging wouldn't have made any difference. It wouldn't have been able to discern it. So for that mirror, that was that was as good it was going to get. Only if they had a bigger lens would they need something that was even more stabilized. And that probably will come in the future. But the thing that makes me most excited about this is the advantages of this system. And they might not be obvious. But then when you hear about them, you're like, oh, damn, yeah, this makes so much sense. So first advantage, number one, super bit costs five million USD or three point six two million pounds, a lot cheaper. That's a thousand times less than a similar satellite, three orders of magnitude cheaper. Balloons are cheaper than rocket fuel, right? Who would have guessed? So so that level, that level of cheapness makes it possible to have a fleet of space telescopes. You could make a fleet of them that could offer time to astronomers all over the world. It's amazing just to think about that. Besides being cheap, the second advantage is a really big one. This is the ability to return the payload to return the observatory to Earth and fix it and tweak it as often as you want. So try to think about doing that with a satellite satellites really, really, really wait one, two, three. I'll give you these three release. They really, really, really need to work the first time because because of that, that makes them very, very expensive because you got to add redundancy. You got to add safeguards. You got to even throw in meatball sometimes. It has to work because if you don't survive space, if you don't survive the launch and if you don't survive in space, no one's going to go in for a house call. It's not like your Hubble was the exception that that proved the rule. No satellites get a house call. If it's screwed up in orbit, it's screwed up forever, essentially. So they've got to make it work. But you don't need to do that. You don't need to do that for this. And you have to remember with satellites, you have to lock down that design years before launch. That's standard practice. You know, you make jokes about, oh yeah, remember that satellites got technology from the from the 1990s. That's like a classic joke because you got to lock down technology well before it launches. So that's why anything that's in orbit or on Mars right now is already way out of date. Even before it was launched, it was already out of date because that's just how it works. So Superbit never needs to do that. It never needs to be obsolete because after a mission aloft, if it's up for a month or even three months, it comes down by parachute and then you could just upgrade the shit out of it and then put it back up. You know, that's that's just how it works. So for example, we modern digital cameras, we know that they improve every year, right? Every new phone that you get, even if it's every year, is a much better camera. So for example, the development team for Superbit, they actually bought this cutting edge camera and used it for a test flight three weeks before the launch. Three weeks. You will never do that for any anything that's going to go into orbit or anything that's going to go onto a planet. It just doesn't happen. Even even more dramatic, the day of a launch, the morning it was going to launch for a test, the Superbit, they got a GoPro, a GoPro camera, and they gaffer taped it on onto the thing just like, yeah, let's just tape this on and to see what it can record. Yeah, let's do that. No way is that done with satellites, I guarantee you that doesn't happen. To me, that's a huge advantage. You can just over the years, it's steadily improve it and you will always be cutting edge instead of- Hubble is great, but it is like decades out of out of date in terms of having good technology. This technology is much better than even what Hubble already already has. All right, so the last advantage of Superbit over space observatories, I will call the coming optical graveyard. The Hubble telescope is clearly near the end of its life, right? You can hear that you can hear the death rattle, right? Because just it was out of action for a month just just recently for one whole month. It's like, sorry-<br />
<br />
'''S:''' They got it back.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I know. Let me finish the sentence.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Bob, why do you hate the Hubble?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That's why I said, yeah, it was out of action for a month. They got it back. I think that what they did was they tried turning it on and off again. I think that's what did it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's amazing.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' They had to back up the IT.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' They had this thing switched to evil.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Evil. So the payload computer failed. They got it going. It took a whole month. But the Hubble is never going to be repaired again. They could do some troubleshooting from the ground. But clearly its days are numbered. All right. That's a given. It's sad. But hey, that's just that's just a fact. The problem is when the Hubble telescope finally dies, could be tomorrow, could be next year. We don't know. But when that happens, we will no longer have a space telescope with high res optical and UV imaging. It's gone.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' What?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It's going to be gone. All of the future missions that you talk about, Jack Webb the Webb, all the other ones that you've heard about.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' James.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Jack Webb was from Dragon.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. James Webb.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I love that guy. I love that guy. Just the facts, man.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I love it.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Now listen. So Webb, Webb is going to be great, but it's infrared only. It's not. It's not optical. It's not UV.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Bob, why do you hate the Webb?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Other telescopes that are going to go up, they're infrared as well. Or at the very least, they're not optical or they're not UV. So there's going to be whole fields of astronomers that are going to be screwed. It's going to be like, sorry, nothing new for you for a while. Now that Hubble's dead, you're not going to get anything new in your field for a long time. So that niche can be filled by super bit. And I think it will definitely be filled because if you don't know why it will definitely be filled, just rewind for about seven minutes and listen again. And hopefully it'll be clearer the second time. Seems pretty obvious. So in the future, a super bit is scheduled to launch a long duration balloon mission from Wanaka, New Zealand in April, this coming April. It's going to circumnavigate the earth a few times. It's going to image at night. It's going to recharge during the day. And hopefully it goes really well, well enough to warrant putting that putting this thing full steam ahead. And they're already talking about they have funding for an upgrade. They already have the funding for an upgrade. They want to bring it from point five meters aperture to one point five meters. And that upgrade will actually make it better than a Hubble in many respects and light gathering and megapixels, this and that. It's going to be clearly superior to Hubble when they go to one point five meters. And the balloons that they have now can actually go to two meter, two meter class. And NASA is actually encouraging the team to submit a proposal for a two meter class observatory. But that's the limit of the current balloons. But as you know, the balloon technology, I'm sure we'll be getting better and maybe we can get to two and a half meter observatories and even then be some amazing, amazing astronomy going on better than far better than than what Hubble has done ever. But what I find really exciting about this is that I think we're going to see a time within the next decade where you're going to have scores of universities launching not their own Hubble Space Telescopes into orbit. What we are going to see, I think, within 10 years are these universities with their university budget launching this these superpressure balloons and observatories into the stratosphere and doing Hubble class work for much cheaper. I mean, imagine 20, 30, 40 universities having each having their own essentially own Hubble. It's great. I think it's great to imagine. And I think it seems like a no brainer. Now, I've been wrong in the past, but I think this this is going to absolutely take off. This is just too much of a no brainer. And hopefully the next April mission in Wanaka, New Zealand, does very well. And it'll be even clearer that, yeah, we got to go this route. I just didn't even see this coming. So cool.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' And Bob, maybe Jeff Bezos can wave to the balloon the next time he's flying in his space penis.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, right.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Space penis.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I mean, seriously, it looks like a penis. What the hell?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It looks like a penis.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' We'll come to that later.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' We will come to that, Evan?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No one disagrees with you.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, let's move on.<br />
<br />
=== AI Creativity <small>(49:22)</small> ===<br />
* [https://theness.com/neurologicablog/teaching-ai-imagination/ Teaching AI Imagination]<ref>[https://theness.com/neurologicablog/teaching-ai-imagination/ Neurologica: Teaching AI Imagination]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' I've got a artificial intelligence related news item. This is a study where they tried to teach AI creativity. Now this is not like human level creativity, of course, but they're trying to do, which I think is common among as they're developing and advancing narrow AI, right? Artificial intelligence that is not like a general AI that is self-aware or anything like that, but is able to do things like beat experts at chess or go and drive your car, et cetera. Part of the process of that is to try to deconstruct or reverse engineer the mental cognitive processes that humans go through in doing the similar kind of task. It doesn't mean the AI has to do it in the same way, but if they could understand the milestones along the way, then maybe they can build towards that same kind of functionality. So that's what they're doing now with creativity. What do we mean by creativity? So that's, again, that's part of it. What do we actually mean by it? What is actually happening? So in this concept of creativity something that humans are very good at, and that is being able to categorize things and then extrapolate within that category. So let me give you an example of what I mean. Let's say a young child has seen several different kinds of dogs in their life, right? And then you introduce them to a new breed of dog that looks nothing like any other dog they've ever seen. They will instantly know that it's a doggie, right? You show a kid that knows Newfoundlands and German shepherds, a chihuahua, they'll go to the chihuahua and they'll go, a puppy. They know it's a puppy. It looks nothing like a German shepherd, but somehow they get this idea that this is all part of the same category, right?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Sure.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Right.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So that's something that humans are very, very good at. But creativity also involves being able to disentangle, disentangle the pieces of what goes into that category, and then alter those variables individually, right?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's a good way to put it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I always thought of it as like a way to be outside of the box, but still with the constraints, like you have to know the box.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yes.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' You have to be able to operate outside of the box, because if you go too far outside of the box, it's no longer creative. It's like this test that we do in psychology of creativity, where we go, it's like, to young kids, it's like, what can you make with this paperclip and this whatever? And it's like, is it really creative if they go, it's an airplane, and you're like, that's not a freaking airplane. Like, that's not, what are you talking, that's not creativity. But if they literally can make it into something, that's there's a point where it goes too far.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. Right.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' If you go too far outside the box all you end up saying, it's what's in the box.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It becomes too abstract, right?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, exactly. Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So, let's do another example. Like if I say, imagine a red Corvette, right? Got an image of that in your head now. Imagine a blue Corvette. Like you could flip the red to blue mentally, even if you've never seen a blue Corvette before in your life, you could take your knowledge of the colour blue and apply it to a specific item. But also it would be like, all right, think about a car that's not a Corvette. You can think about something that's within the same category that has all the same pieces, but you could very them, you could extrapolate from that and still be within the category of a car. The AI would need to identify category by looking at examples. And then be able to disentangle specific elements of that category and then be able to extrapolate to new combinations of those elements. So that's what they were seeing if they could have AI do.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It's just a matter of a lot of training. There's a lot of deep learning training with thousands of images of what you want, I'm sure it's kind of what they did.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, but there was a difference. So it was a neural network, and it was with training. But instead of doing one item at a time, they did multiple items at a time. And what the AI was doing was looking for all the similarities among multiple items, not just this is an example of this category. These are all examples of this category and processing that in a different way than previous AI. Does that make sense?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Interesting. Hmm.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. So they call this controllable disentangled representation learning, that process.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, gosh.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Controllable disentangled. It's just an initialism, right, Bob?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Very creative title.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, yeah, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Always check with Bob on these things.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And then the next step was, again, to create a new image with the disentangled pieces of the previous category. And they called that controllable novel image synthesis. Again, very creative. And they were successful. So, like, for example, you trained the AI on different transformers, like the cartoon, the transformers. And they said, all right, now give me a yellow one in Times Square. And the AI was able to do that. So this is not that impressive, honestly. It's kind of a proof of concept. t was just like, did it do what they wanted it to do? Yes, they were able to apply details to a category and combine it with other elements. When I wrote about this, I said, I'll be impressed when the AI can create a novel transformer that we still recognize as a transformer.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, it didn't even do that?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, no. It just changed its colour and its location. So, again, this is kind of a proof of concept of these processes the disentanglement and then the novel image creation. So it did that successfully. Again, very incremental, very, very incremental. But what I found interesting about it is that this is part of this bigger program to reverse engineer creativity, to try to understand, like, operationally, what is it? Because we tend to think about these processes, these subconscious processes as magic, right? It's like this black box. It by definition happens subconsciously. So you're not aware of all the individual steps that are that are happening. It just happens like you just think of something. I'm sure we've all been engaged in creative process. And sometimes ideas will occur to you. You don't know how that idea popped into your consciousness. You don't – you're not aware of what was happening in the background. But, of course, if you're trying to design an AI, it's all about what's happening in the background, right?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Right. I wonder what it would be like if we could peer in there and see what was happening in the background. Would that, like, just short circuit the entire process by like when you try to think something out that you've memorized and you're like you can't – you can't decompose it into separate steps. Because then you just lose track because it's a habit. Because I've come across, like, AIs in short stories. And the AI or the digital human comes up with this thing. It's like, wait, how did I think of that? And then they look into their mind and they trace it back to see where that thought came from. And they're like, oh, that's why I thought that. It's like, wait, what would that even be like?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Bob, it's weird because the thing that comes up in my mind with this, like, creative processing that you're talking about. And then, like, applying metacognition to it is almost like the yips. Like, I think about what happens when a sports person, like an athlete, like loses flow and starts to think too hard instead of being in it. And then it actually starts to make them not as good at their sport. And they get the yips. It's like a weird thing where deconstructing something that feels like a flow state might actually undo the flow.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, neurologically, that's because our brain's hierarchical, right? So when you first do something, you're engaging your conscious cortical processing. It's very—<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, it's very frontal.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Very processing intensive, very hard to do. But then the way your brain—one of the ways in which your brain learns is that it automates the components of it.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Right. Internalizes it, basically. So it goes from conscious to subconscious.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's why we practice.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yes. Then you don't have to think about it. It just happens automatically. But if you start to think about it too much, then you interfere with that because obviously the conscious stuff is hierarchically above the subconscious stuff. It's like you breathe without thinking about it, but you can control your breathing if you do think about it, right? It's like you're interfering with your breathing.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's super weird when after the doctor listens to your chest with his stethoscope, he goes, okay, now breathe normally. And you're like, don't know how.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' What do I do with my hands?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, exactly.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So obviously one interesting question is how far will this go, right? How far will this attempt at reverse engineering creativity in narrow AI be able to go? Personally, I think there's no reason why it can't completely duplicate human creativity. Again, it won't necessarily need to do it in the same way that our brains do it. It just needs to duplicate the output. And in fact, there's no reason to think that it won't be eventually better than human brains are doing it.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Absolutely.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So far, everything we thought—and this is one of the history of our thinking about artificial intelligence— is all along the way we falsely assumed that an AI would need to have a general intelligence in order to be able to do something. Like going all the way back to chess, which is probably the first time this really came up. It's like, okay, well, in order to teach a computer how to play chess, it's got to understand how to think like a chess master. And that would require a massive level of intelligence that computers don't have. And so they'll never be able to beat a human in chess. And then we realized, no, you don't need to be able to think like a human. You can do it in a completely different way with narrow AI. And then this, okay, well, all right, now narrow AI can beat any chess master at chess, but not Go. That's way too complicated. You could just like—every time you make a move in chess, there's like 20 options. Every time you make a move in Go, there's like 200 options. And it's just literally an order of magnitude more difficult.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Right, it's too complex.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And now, recently, one of the World Go champions resigned. He said, I can't beat the AI. It's like there's no point in me existing anymore.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, how sad.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' He quit the game.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But how sad to like quit because of the computer. It's like, imagine what it was like to be one of those human computers who's like doing all the calculations. And then all of a sudden, you just push a button and like everything you did is like— And like, I don't know. I don't feel like—I mean, it must have been hard. Like, oh, gosh, am I out of a job? But at the same time, I don't think I would feel like, oh, my life's work doesn't matter. Like I'm still better than every other human being on the planet.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' You can still celebrate human excellence. It's like I'm not going to be a runner anymore because of cars. Like, oh why?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, thank you. Bob, that was a way better example.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. But here's the deeper philosophical question. How far will this go?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' All the way.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So far, I think it will, too. So far, narrow AI has been able to do anything that we tried to get it to do as long as—<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Anything I can do.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I can do better.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Invested the time to develop it, right? And all predictions that narrow AI will never be able to do this have been proven wrong. So let's say that that pattern holds out and that essentially every single thing that human consciousness does can be replicated with narrow AI. Language conversation, pattern recognition.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' What about reflection on consciousness?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So, well, all right. I have to say other than self-awareness itself.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right. And that requires a certain level of metacognition that like a reflective quality that it's fundamental to consciousness.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, human level consciousness.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You're getting to like one level beyond where the next step I'm going to go. So first of all, could we have a sophisticated multifunctional narrow AI set of subroutines that duplicates everything that a human conscious does? So it essentially would be able to, to all appearances, be a human being, a human intelligence with zero self-awareness. Like is that going to be possible?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Like a P-zombie?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Like a P-zombie.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It'll be possible within—my hope at least is that it'll be possible within an application, like an assistant at work. That you'll have an AI assistant at work who can do all of the work functions that a human being could do and be a very good executive assistant.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But what? But not what?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It wouldn't then be able to be translated to be also a domestic partner or a—I don't know. I feel like—<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, I'm saying you could do everything. You could do anything a person could do. It has every capability that a person has. It's indistinguishable from a conscious human being, but it's just a bunch of narrow AI subroutines.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' A bunch of narrow AI clustered together.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yes.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Now we can't tell the difference kind of between narrow AI and what's the other one called?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' General AI.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' General AI.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yes.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So that's—you're asking a Turing test question, right?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yes. Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Like ultimately.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Sort of.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Because it's really—does it matter that it's capable of X, Y, and Z or does it matter that it passes to us as being capable of X, Y, and Z?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Again, we brought this up before too. It's like will it be self-aware and how would we know? If you could replicate a general AI with just narrow AI, how would we ever—unless you're the programmer who knows exactly how it works—how would we really know if it had any kind of experience of its own existence? And let's say, Cara, that we throw in a narrow AI subroutine that is self-reflective, that monitors its own internal state, that communicates among the different subroutines and—<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So then it sounds like it has feelings.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Closes the loop on perception and output and all that stuff. Essentially—and so this is a philosophical question and I'm sort of answering my own question here. But, for example, Daniel Dennett says—and I tend to agree with him—when you solve all of the easy problems of consciousness, you have solved the hard problem. And now I'm just translating that into AI. If you solve all of the narrow AI problems, you've basically solved the general AI problem. Are those two things analogous? That's fascinating.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' In a way, though, is that then saying that the gestalt—sort of the gestalt conceptualization doesn't apply? That the sum is not greater than the whole of the—or the whole is not greater than the sum of the parts? Because if we sum the parts, we get the whole.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, that's what I'm saying.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, and I tend to not agree with that, but the question is, does it even matter? Is it a moot point? Because I do think we'll get to a place where we'll have enough narrow AI that human beings are fooled into thinking.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Right.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Totally.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That it's conscious.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I could see that, but I could also see—don't forget, don't discount the possibility of once you're having all this complexity in one place, that there could be some emergent behavior that's completely unanticipated. Something like self-awareness, sentience, sapience, all that.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' You're right, and then that solves both problems. It answers Daniel Dennett and the gestalt.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Right. I could see both things happening where it's just a collection of narrow AI, and the soul in the machine, if you will, isn't necessarily there, although it might be hidden from us. We might be fooled, or it could genuinely be an emergent behavior that gives it true human-like or human-level self-awareness.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' If that makes you feel better.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Wouldn't it suck, Bob, if at that point, if that happened, it was still a black box, and we were still sitting here going, crap! It's happened right before our eyes, and we still can't solve this consciousness problem.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' But Steve, you can't deny the power of unpredictable emergent behaviors in complex systems.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I'm not. I'm not. This is a philosophical—<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It sure seems like it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, I'm not denying. It's a straw man. I'm not denying that that's emergent things occur. The question is, is human consciousness an emergent property, or is it an illusion? Stringing together a bunch of narrow AI.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I would totally buy into either one of those.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's what I'm saying. We might not need to invoke an emergent property. It's just that when one part of the brain talks to another part of the brain, and then it talks to another part of the brain, and then it talks to another part of the brain, and if you keep doing that, you have consciousness. You are doing everything that we think of as consciousness, and we don't need to add any special sauce or emergent property or global workspace or anything.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' But Steve, you could still call it emergent property because I think the key definition of something that's emergent, an emergent behavior, is something that was essentially unpredictable at the start.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I don't even think that's true. I think all it is is that it requires the substrate. So it's like when we say mind is an emergent property of brain, what we're saying is that as long as brain is braining, mind happens. And I think that says what you're saying and what Steve's saying. I feel like you're in agreement there.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I mean, it becomes a semantic thing. At that point, what exactly is the emergent property of all this? And if you try to define that, you may find that it's really not anything in addition to all of the narrow processes, the easy problem things to solve.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's just that we don't understand it. That's the question.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Because we're trying to understand our own consciousness. We are all falling for the illusion of our own consciousness. There's no way for us to get out of ourself enough to realize or to really imagine or wrap our head around the fact that we're just a bunch of narrow AI algorithms just in a constant stream of consciousness. And there isn't any emergent self from all of that. Unless you're using emergent in a way that's not process-oriented, but that's just what you're calling our experience of our own existence.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It's like a flock of birds. They follow very simple rules. Flocking is caused – it's very simple. Stay at least a few inches away from the bird next to you and this and that. So you follow like very few rules and you have this beautiful flocking and flying behavior that you wouldn't necessarily have predicted just by looking at the rules. You got to like run it. You got to simulate it and say, oh, wow, that's beautiful.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' The difference there, Bob, is that the bird itself can't see the murmuration.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Right.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And what we can do is we can actually reflect on the emergence and the consciousness. And that's the part where we get stuck in this loop.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But isn't that just another subroutine? The reflection, the ability to communicate with our own – parts of our brain communicating with other parts of our brain?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Maybe. But the fact of the matter is that we still have the ability to suppress. We have the ability to induce. We can actually control that reflection. It's not just something that happens passively. It's something where we can exercise power.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But that's yet other parts of the brain.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's true.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The frontal lobe. Hierarchically exerting its programming over other parts of the brain. It still just comes down to you just keep going to one other part of the brain doing something.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Right. And we're too close to it, right? We're like right in the middle of it.We can never really appreciate this.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But the thing that's interesting is that even if we make general AI and we do it by putting together a bunch of narrow AI, we won't have solved the philosophical problems of consciousness.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I don't think we will either.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We'll still be at this point where it's like, okay. We can operationally explain everything as solving all the, "easy problems", which I think are analogous to the narrow AI problems. But it still doesn't tell us if there's something else going on when you put it all together, this emergent property that you're talking about, Bob. And again, I predict. I'm going to make a prediction. There will come a day when we have a general AI thing, and we have no idea if it's really self-aware or not or if it's just acting self-aware, and there'll be no way to objectively resolve the dilemma.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. That's kind of what I'm saying is we'll get to a point where we'll be dealing with the same black box and the same holy grail of consciousness neuroscience that we're dealing with right now. It's just it'll also be with a machine.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Right. And we'll just have to give it the benefit of the doubt.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' If they truly create an AI that becomes conscious, we'll know that it's really conscious when it starts screaming.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Why? What if it screams just to fool J. Novella into thinking it's conscious?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' There's a little scream subroutine.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Screaming subroutine, very easy.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, exactly.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' If, for, then, next, whatever. Yeah. Scream.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I just wish that I would have been alive during this time because I'm really, really curious to know what it would be like to talk to a computer like that, talk to an AI like that.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' You say that now.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah. And then come away from that conversation feeling, oh, wow, I'm so small.<br />
<br />
=== More Space Tourism <small>(1:11:47)</small> ===<br />
* [https://apnews.com/article/jeff-bezos-space-e0afeaa813ff0bdf23c37fe16fd34265 Jeff Bezos blasts into space on own rocket: ‘Best day ever!’]<ref>[https://apnews.com/article/jeff-bezos-space-e0afeaa813ff0bdf23c37fe16fd34265 APNews: Jeff Bezos blasts into space on own rocket: ‘Best day ever!’]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, Evan, give us a quick update on the space tourism thing we were talking about last week because there's been another launch.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yep, yep. As we alluded to last week, this one happened July 20, 2021, the first launch of Blue Origin's New Shepard reusable launch vehicle with humans aboard. That's the key here. First time, humans aboard. And including none other than the company's owner, Jeff Bezos. And if I have to explain to you who he is, I can't help you. Bob, we were talking off air about July 20. July 20 is burned into our memories as the Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, Walking on the Moon date in 1969. No small coincidence, I think, that this one was scheduled for July 20.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And no small hubris either.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Well, I mean, from a purely marketing standpoint, it's brilliant, actually.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Is it? Is it?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I think so.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' All right, whatever. He didn't go to the moon.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I mean, if you ask anyone what they think about July 20, anyone who is somewhat aware of the Apollo program will know. But in any case, technologically speaking, it's quite an accomplishment. Much the same way we praise the technical achievement of last week's Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic jaunt into space, the Blue Origin flight, and their entire team deserve credit for this feat. Onboard the ship were, in addition to Bezos, his brother, Mark Bezos, Wally Funk, an 82-year-old aviation pioneer.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' How much do you love her?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, my gosh.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, my gosh. She's so cool.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' She was part of the group of female pilots that formed the Mercury 13. They passed all the same tests that their male colleagues took, but they never sent Funk or her colleagues into space for, I'm sure, several reasons, not the least of which is space was a man's place only at the time.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' What a lost opportunity that was.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, my gosh.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' NASA blew it. If you watch For All Mankind, a great TV show, they do focus a lot on the Mercury 13 because the whole premise is that the Soviets actually beat America to the moon, and this lights a massive fire under NASA and the space program, and they revisit the whole Mercury 13 thing. Women become a big part of the American space program a lot earlier than they did in the real world.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. And if we can all just take a moment to reflect on Sally Ride's first ride when NASA asked her if 100 tampons would be enough for her week in space.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, my gosh.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' If we can just think about how incredibly out of touch.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Wait, what are you talking about? That's real?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's absolutely real.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, Bob, you've never heard that?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' 100?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' 100 tampons for one week to be safe.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I mean, talk about, talk about. Yeah, well, you're in progress. Also on board was an 18-year-old student from the Netherlands. His name is Oliver Damon. So you had both. This launch set a record for both the oldest and youngest person to fly into space all in the same flight. So that was kind of cool in itself.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Out of spice.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Spice. You like spice Bob?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' The flight lasted roughly 11 minutes. And Bezos and everyone went past the Kármán line, the 100 kilometre mark, which is internationally recognized as the boundary of space. And we touched on that a little bit last week as well in the minor controversy surrounding that. So we won't revisit that. Top speed of the vehicle, 2,300 miles, just under 2,300 miles per hour. That's roughly three times the speed of sound. They reached three Gs at their maximum ascent. So they were that's quite a feeling. Three Gs. I can only imagine what that's like. It is, okay, so it's not at all like Branson's plane-like vehicle. This is more traditional rocket. Takes off vertically from the launch pad. It's a shorter, higher speed experience than Branson's Virgin Galactic. And it has the, it's easy to understand. If you watch the video, it doesn't take long. Obviously it's only about 11 minutes. As you're watching it, the nice thing about it is you can understand everything sort of as it happens. There's a capsule placed on top of the rocket booster. It all goes up together. You see them separate. The rocket booster itself then does a controlled landing, which is fascinating unto itself, right back onto the launch pad. The capsule then stays up there for a little while and then starts to come back down, deploys two sets of parachutes. And then at the very, very end, I mean, and we're talking about like the last, I don't know, second or less than a second. The capsule puffs out a little cushion or a pillow of air, as they call it, and gives you the soft landing. So they're going from 16 miles an hour as it's approaching the surface of the planet. I mean, really right to the last fraction of a second where it almost goes to zero and then touches down. So it becomes this nice soft landing. It's really, really cool to have watched this. This capsule I read has the largest windows that have ever flown in space. And that one third of the capsule's interior surface area is windows. So it's definitely, yeah, it's, I mean, one third.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Wow.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' One third. That's a lot. I mean, I would love to see a totally transparent ship or vehicle or something. Yeah, exactly. You know, the Wonder Woman jet kind of idea. That would be cool someday. And some really neat features there, obviously, with space tourism totally in mind here. The seats were really neat. They have extra energy absorption for the landing. You know, they're in this scissor configuration, which absorbs much of the shock as you land. You really get this soft landing. And the system does have a built-in escape system, which some of the prior flights, so this was the 16th time the Blue Origin took off. And some of those prior ones, they specifically tested some of the safety features of the escape system itself on some of those test flights to make sure that it works. So they were touting its safety that comes along with it. You know, even in the worst circumstances, if there are ways to plenty of ways to survive in case something goes horribly wrong. So that sums up the technical part, certainly, of all this. And much of the news, obviously, of the day that it occurred was focused on the technology. But it was also part of the larger, larger conversation about this private space industry and these billionaires sort of taking what is considered to be a luxury ride up into space that only very few privileged people can frankly afford to experience. And the discussions that all circle around that, and a lot of it is legitimate. Those are questions that do need to be asked.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Ultimately. I think that's the biggest question that I'm still not satisfied with the answer, that somehow there's going to be a capitalistic downflow to the everyday person by this. Like, a lot of people are likening this unto the space race. That suborbital space tourism is the same as Apollo missions, where regular everyday people were going to space, and where it was funded by taxpayer dollars, and where, of course, there was like a lot of nationalism involved, and a lot of unsavoury kind of Cold War era motivation. But that this is really much, very much feels like a billionaire's game, in the hopes that maybe, like, ''please, sir, might I have some more?'' eventually, that somehow something will trickle down. But I don't see the evidence that that's going to happen. I think these guys are just going to get richer off the backs of these industries. I just don't understand the purpose or why everybody thinks that somehow the everyday person who's struggling on the planet will ultimately gain from this, except that we're just supposed to believe that.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' If you take what they're telling you at face value from the folks at Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos' team, they are using perhaps some of this money that they are going to be getting from those people who are going to be purchasing those rides to fund their other projects, such as the, oh, it's called New Glenn. New Glenn is a transportation system to space to launch satellites, among other things, bring cargo payload up to space and do some other things like that. Also, they have a project called Blue Moon in which is going to be a lunar lander.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So, if you want to look at it optimistically, I mean, I think I agree with all of your criticisms. A lot of people are criticizing these private space tourism endeavours because of how they were funded and how the people made their billions and all that. But if you wanted to be fair and look at the optimistic view, the argument I think goes that this is sort of an early adopter, billionaire phase of a new technology, a new industry. And there are many industries that did get bootstrapped this way where you had wealthy early adopters paying a lot of money at the beginning, but that enabled the industry—<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Cars, for example.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, cars, commercial jet travel, etc. And that allowed for the industry to develop and then it becomes more part of our everyday life. And it doesn't necessarily have to be specifically suborbital space tourism. It's just that it could be more general, just access to space for other purposes as well. Because this is not just about the tourism. It's also about shifting to a private space industry.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Which has worked out the way NASA said they hoped it would be, that there would be competition which would lead to greater efficiency and greater innovation. And the cost of getting a pound of stuff into space, the cost has plummeted under the private industry by orders of magnitude beyond what NASA was able to do. And so it is kind of working in that way. It's hard to predict exactly how that will play out, but I think you can't— I personally am not pessimistic about this piece of it. It may not be an end unto itself, but I think it's part of the bootstrapping of privatization of space, which I think could be a good thing.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And I think the hope and optimism that you're talking about and the great technological achievements and these things that we do know that we can get from this and even things as simple as the orbital perspective, none of these are things that I want to knock because I actually do agree with you guys at a fundamental level that this is a beautiful and important aspect of humanity. But I think the question is, is at what cost? I'm not saying the good is not good. What I worry is, is the bad so much worse than the good that the good, is it worth it right now? Is this good a good that we should be celebrating right now? Or is it against such a backdrop of bad and bad by the same actors? That's where I think my trust falters because this isn't NASA doing this and this isn't even a Warren Buffett or somebody who has a proven track record of ethical dealings. These are individuals who I don't trust at a fundamental level because they cheated their way into space.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' History is replete with assholes who made important contributions to civilization.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Carnegies.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, but that doesn't mean we should give them a pass.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I'm not giving anybody a pass, but there still might be a good outcome from it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' There may be a good outcome, but I do not feel comfortable celebrating this. I think that's where I stand. Let's hope there's a good outcome, but if it were my dollar or if it were my nickel on a poker game or on a craps table and you're saying, where do you want to put your nickel down? Would not be on these guys. That's what I'm saying. Yeah, that's all.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I agree with that, definitely. To me, the optics were terrible.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' And this isn't just anybody. It is Jeff Bezos. He is the wealthiest person by far on the planet.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And what did he say, Evan, after he got off the flight?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Well, here's the quote. I want to thank everyone. I also want to thank every Amazon employee and every Amazon customer because you guys paid for all this. Seriously, for every Amazon customer out there and every Amazon employee, thank you from the bottom of my heart. That's what he said.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' He was trying to be nice, but it just shows you how out of touch he is.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It just shows how out of touch he is. And that's the part where I'm like, this is the guy making these decisions. I'm scared. I'm scared.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. Let's move on.<br />
<br />
== Who's That Noisy? <small>(1:24:58)</small> ==<br />
{{anchor|futureWTN}} <!-- this is the anchor used by "wtnAnswer", which links the previous "new noisy" segment to this "future" WTN --><br />
<br />
{{wtnHiddenAnswer<br />
|episodeNum = 833 <!-- episode number for previous Noisy --><br />
|answer = lava <!-- brief description of answer, perhaps with a link --><br />
|}}<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Jay, we've been a couple of weeks without a Who's That Noisy.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, it's been a while. Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It has been quiet around this time of the show.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' All right, guys. Not last week. What was it, Steve? Two weeks ago? Three weeks ago?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Four weeks ago.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' What? Yeah. Four weeks ago, I played This Noisy.<br />
<br />
[_short_vague_description_of_Noisy] <br />
<br />
All right, guys. Any guesses?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' No. I really don't.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's something that's happening close to people, because I hear like a child in the background. I know that's not the important part, but clearly it's happening within earshot of a family.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It has a rain stick quality to it.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, you're right. I totally agree with that. All right. Well, Richard Smith wrote in and said, to Who's That Noisy, this week's noisy is from an ice shove, when ice is pushed ashore by currents or wind, sometimes creating large dunes of ice shards that creep inland heedless of man-made obstacles. So I have heard noisies about this before. So I have heard the noisies about this before as a similar kind of sound I definitely can see why you said that's not not correct but definitely a good guess. Another listener named Shane Hillier wrote in and said hey Jay I am I have many guesses but I'll commit to the front of a flash flood in the desert. I thought this one really was provocative I don't know I know that flash floods could happen in the desert I've never heard the sound I don't know if it has a water sound to me.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Is that like when the water hits the dry sand what he's saying before it gets wet?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah I think so I think it's kind of like water shuffling on top of the sand. You're hearing it kind of scuttle along the top of the sand. But I'm not sure, I'd have to do some research to hear that sound I just couldn't couldn't find anything quickly with the time I had. That is also incorrect. Michael Blaney wrote in and said hi Jay it's really it really just sounds like a bunch of horses to me so I'm going to flip the common wisdom on its head and when I hear hooves I'm going to guess zebras. And it's not correct but definitely not the only person that guessed some type of horse related noise like the hooves and I could kind of see that as well. We had another guest here saying this is Mark and he said hi Jay long time listener and second time guesser is it a strand beast by any chance? Love the show, thanks folks. Strand beast, you guys know what that is?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Is it from Harry Potter universe or something?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So it's a construct. Somebody made this thing that is powered by the wind on the beach that walks via the power of the wind. So the wind pushes it and then it turns, it makes the legs, it has tons of legs. And it's kind of like rolling on these multitude of legs as the wind blows it. So it's propelled by the wind and the legs turn around and kind of make the thing walk. Very cool just look up strand beast B-E-E-S-T and you'll be able to see this thing that somebody built very cool little invention somebody made. No winner guys. Nobody guessed it. Nobody guessed it. So this sound, not by coincidence, is lava. I'll play it again but just imagine lava that's flowing but the outer portion of it has been cooling and as the lava is pushing on the inside it's kind of rolling on top of and dropping pieces of like the recently cooled lava rock right so the lava rock is like tumbling on top of itself can you visualize that? Listen again.<br />
<br />
[_short_vague_description_of_Noisy]<br />
<br />
And those are people that are standing near the lava that are watching it as it slowly creeps along. So if you just had a stick that you could poke into it you'd poke right in and there'd be orange lava in there. Super hot, can't get close, I'm sure it's emitting very dangerous gases. But very cool. Very very very cool. This was sent in by Leslie Longhurst. This was a volcano in Iceland. I think it's pretty recent. So you can go and look on YouTube you can find I'm sure I've seen I saw a bunch of videos about this. Very very cool, cool interesting noise. Thank you for that.<br />
<br />
{{anchor|previousWTN}} <!-- keep right above the following sub-section ... this is the anchor used by wtnHiddenAnswer, which will link the next hidden answer to this episode's new noisy (so, to that episode's "previousWTN") --><br />
=== New Noisy <small>(1:29:12)</small> ===<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I have a new noisy this week. This may very well be the shortest noisy I ever play so I'll play it a few times and of course I just want you to identify what this is.<br />
<br />
[_short_vague_description_of_Noisy]<br />
<br />
Let's play it again.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's it?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yep. [plays Noisy] This is one of those noisies that you either know it or you don't. But if you think you know {{wtnAnswer|838|what this noisy is}} or you've heard something cool over the last few weeks, don't hold out on me. Email me at WTN@theskepticsguide.org.<br />
<br />
== Announcements <small>(1:29:42)</small> ==<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Guys we are as you hear this it'll be less than two weeks before NECSS arrives. So it's August 6th and August 7th we have so much to give you guys. Please go to NECSS.org, you could check out all the details on who's going to be speaking and that's where you could go to register. Thanks, we really are looking forward to it and guys. Please please do show your support and join us.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah so we're also doing our first extravaganza since the pandemic. Our last one was in the end of January in 2020 so it's be more than a year and a half. We're doing one in Denver but we decided to try to do one in Atlanta since you know most of us are going to be there. However this is a bit of an experiment. We're still in the middle of the pandemic even though a lot of people now are vaccinated etc. And we're not sure exactly how willing people would be to open up and how many people are going to be even going to Atlanta. But we thought we would try to schedule our debut post pandemic or post onset of the pandemic extravaganza. However we're not booking very many tickets, which is not surprising, but we're not even getting to the minimal number that we need in order to cover the cost of the venue. So this is what we're going to do. Essentially we have one week to sell enough tickets in order to run the extravaganza in Atlanta and if we don't the promoter is going to cancel it. That's the bottom line. It's kind of out of our hands at that point. So if you are going to be in Atlanta or if you want to go to the extravaganza book your ticket as soon as you hear the show. Basically you have to do it before July 30th. If we get to the threshold then great then we'll do the extravaganza. If we don't book enough tickets then the promoter is going to cancel it at that point and then of course everybody will be refunded. There's no risk to doing this whatsoever so don't worry about. We hope that maybe people were waiting to see, or thought they would just get their tickets at the door. Well unfortunately we're not going to be able to do that because we haven't met the minimum requirements. So hopefully enough people will want to go that we'll be able to do the show. We were really looking forward to it. And you have until July 30th to get your ticket for the Atlanta extravaganza which is on Sunday September 5th at 6 p.m. in Atlanta, Georgia.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Right, and also conversely the Denver extravaganza that we're doing on November 18th, that's almost sold out, there's still some tickets left. So you could go to the events page as well if you want to book that. That's going to be at the Science Museum in Denver we're super psyched about that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right guys, let's go on to science or fiction.<br />
<br />
== Science or Fiction <small>(1:32:27)</small> ==<br />
{{SOFinfo<br />
|item1 = A systematic review finds that elite athletes overall have a reduced life expectancy compared to the general population, by about 4 years in men and 2 years in women. <br />
|link1 = <ref>[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4534511/]</ref><br />
<br />
|item2 = A recent study finds that elite runners spend more time in the air and less in contact with the ground than their equally trained but non-elite controls.<br />
|link2 = <ref>[https://news.umich.edu/elite-runners-spend-more-time-in-air-less-on-ground-than-highly-trained-but-nonelite-peers/]</ref><br />
<br />
|item3 = Not only do elite athletes have a higher concentration of mitochondria than the general population, their individual mitochondria are more efficient, producing 25% more energy.<br />
|link3 = <ref>[https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/11/161102132208.htm]</ref><br />
<br />
|}}<br />
<br />
{{SOFResults<br />
|fiction = life expectancy<!-- short word or phrase representing the item --><br />
|fiction2 = <!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
<br />
|science1 = runners<!-- short word or phrase representing the item --><br />
|science2 = more efficient mitochondria<!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
|science3 = <!-- leave blank if absent --> <br />
<br />
|rogue1 = Jay<!-- rogues in order of response --><br />
|answer1 = more efficient mitochondria<!-- item guessed, using word or phrase from above --><br />
<br />
|rogue2 =Evan<br />
|answer2 =more efficient mitochondria<br />
<br />
|rogue3 =Cara<br />
|answer3 =life expectancy<br />
<br />
|rogue4 =Bob <!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
|answer4 =life expectancy <!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
<br />
|rogue5 = <!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
|answer5 = <!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
<br />
|host =steve <!-- asker of the questions --><br />
<!-- for the result options below, <br />
only put a 'y' next to one. --><br />
|sweep = <!-- all the Rogues guessed wrong --><br />
|clever = <!-- each item was guessed (Steve's preferred result) --><br />
|win =y <!-- at least one Rogue guessed wrong, but not them all --><br />
|swept = <!-- all the Rogues guessed right --><br />
}}<br />
<br />
''Voice-over: It's time for Science or Fiction.''<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Each week I come up with three science news items or facts. Two real and one fake. And then I challenge my panel of skeptics to tell me which one is the fake. We have a theme this week kind of because of the Olympics coming up. The theme is elite athletes. All right here we go item number one, a systematic review finds that elite athletes overall have a reduced life expectancy compared to the general population about by about four years in men and two years in women. Item number two, a recent study finds that elite runners spend more time in the air and less in contact with the ground then they're equally trained but non elite controls. And item number three, not only do elite athletes have a higher concentration of mitochondria than the general population, their individual mitochondria are more efficient producing 25% more energy. Jay, you've been gone for a while so you get to go first.<br />
<br />
=== Jay's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Okay so the first one about elite athletes having a reduced life expectancy compared to the general population by about four years in men and two years in women. Wow. So I don't know, I could see football players as elite athletes. They damage their bodies to such a degree that they might be shortening their life expectancy, head injuries and everything but in general elite athletes-<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So I'll say this includes across many sports.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, yeah. Just everything. All the athletes. We're talking about people who are in incredible shape while they're while they're in peak form but who knows what they do with the rest of their life. All right so let me just put that one as a maybe. Let's go down the second one here. This one is the recent study finds that elite runners spend more time in the air and less in contact with the ground then they're equally trained but non elite controls. Interesting. Interesting. I'm visualizing a runner running and just thinking the amount of time your leg is up versus when your foot is in contact. That's a really cool thing to think about. I bet you that science. And then the last one here, not only do elite athletes have a higher concentration of mitochondria than the general population, their individual mitochondria are more efficient producing 25% more energy. What? I don't know about that. That's huge. 25%, I'm gonna say that one's a fiction.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay Evan. Evan coming off a solo win, right?<br />
<br />
=== Evan's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh yeah, that's right. Adding pressure to me Steve.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I throw you off your game a little bit.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' All right the first one elite athletes overall have a reduced life expectancy compared to the general population by about four years in men and two years in women. Okay. Must be stress on the organs to some degree? Although it's supposed to make the organs in a way stronger. Certainly the heart. But that could lead to there are other things that come along with being an athlete. If your head gets knocked around for instance you're gonna have problems later in life. Your joints start to give out and that could create other problems in which you can't exercise. Say your heart later in life and then maybe that has an impact on lifespan. So the second one about the runners spending more time in the air and less contact with the ground than equally trained but non-elite controls seems on the surface to be bunk. However and I can't speak to any expertise on this. They've looked at the science of running quite a bit and have I'm sure analysed the proper methods and techniques to use when running and I imagine that through the learning of the best techniques this winds up being the result. Is that technically they do spend more time in the air. So I have a feeling that one's right. I'll agree with Jay, I think the last one here about the higher concentration of midichlorians, I mean mitochondria than the general population producing 25% more energy. What? It gets down to that level? To the cellular, subcellular level. To that, you can train that to be the case. That just seems implausible. So I'll agree with Jay that one just doesn't sound right at all.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay Cara.<br />
<br />
=== Cara's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I disagree with you guys.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' All right.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I mean I know for a fact that Lance Armstrong has a higher quantity of mitochondria. I remember those being big studies that specifically Lance Armstrong, granted, we now know he was juicing too. But I think you said something interesting Evan because you said how could training do that. But do we know that elite athletes by and large would have been normal every day and they train themselves to the elite level, or is there something fundamental about their biology that made them go into athletics and continue that journey and that path. And I think it's probably a little bit of both. There probably is something where they could train into. Maybe a more efficient mitochondria but maybe they just naturally had more. I don't know, this one seems realistic to me. I think as we start to do more and more comparisons we'll start to see more and more biological differences between elite athletes and everyday Joe Schmoes. No matter how hard I work out I ain't never gonna be jumping over hurdles the way they do. For me it was between that one and the reduced life expectancy. Yeah, I think the elite runners one is fine. The reduced life expectancy one I feel like it could go either way. Maybe they beat themselves up but honestly they're probably by and large if you looked at every single sport, they're just more healthy. I think they just eat better, they exercise more. When we look at most of the recommendations of how to live a longer, healthier life it's that you get a high level of intensive exercise regularly. And these people do that. It's their job to do that. So to me it just seems like of course they're going to have a higher life expectancy and all the different types of Olympic sports out there are going to outweigh the handful of football and the things where the head injuries would maybe bring the life expectancy down. So I'm going to say that one is the fiction. I think they have an increased life expectancy.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, and Bob.<br />
<br />
=== Bob's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I guess I could buy the mitochondria potentially. 25 seems like a lot and it even seems like a lot for just natural variation but the other ones are problematic as well. I keep thinking for the elite runners I keep thinking that you don't want to spend more time in the air because you're not really accelerating when you're in the air. You're accelerating when you're pushing off the ground. So I think you would be at a disadvantage of spending more time in the air. I just can't get that out of my head. I could be wrong but it just makes sense to me. The reduced life expectancy, that doesn't make any sense at all. And I know that the better shape you're in does not mean that you're going to live a lot longer. It's your quality of life it's going to be vastly improved, generally, for the last decade of your life. But this is saying it's reduced. I don't know, maybe what do they find that there's some kind of reaction like after your peak years, your athletic years are done you just rebel and just like eat like pizza every goddamn night. And don't work out anymore, you're like saying screw that lifestyle.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I hope that's exactly what Steve's gonna tell us at the end.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' So for me it's between the elite athletes reduced life expectancy and these elite runners. Screw it. I'm going with one, reduced life expectancy. Fiction.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #2 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So that means we'll start with number two. A recent study finds that elite runners spend more time in the air and less in contact with the ground than their equally trained but non-elite controls. You all think this one is science. What I like about these all these items is that they could really you could make an argument either way, right? You could make an argument either way. That's why they're studied because it's not really completely obvious which way the answer would go. So this one is science. It's very interesting.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' They do though, huh? More time in the air?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So one of the big advantages in being an elite runner. So when we say elite athletes you have to remember these are like world champions. They're in the top tier of athletes out of like almost eight billion people.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It's like top five or ten in their field.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Not necessarily that much but even if you're in the top hundred of your field out of, with billions of people on the planet that is just, you have to have everything going your way. You're definitely pushing the limits of human training and ability and talent. So what they found was that in running it's a huge advantage to have very springy legs because what you're doing is you're recapturing the gravitational you know energy when you hit the ground. You absorb the energy and then you release that energy again when you spring up.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Kangarooing it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The really fast runners, their legs are like pogo sticks. Imagine running on two pogo sticks and if you looked at the para-athletes who have the-<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, the blades.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The blades, yeah. That's what's happening, there it's the spring, right? So it's all about the efficiency of recapturing that energy. So they said the elite runners it's not just a matter of training they're just physiologically, they had much more springy tendons and they were much more efficiently recaptured and then that energy and so they were spending less time on the ground because it was a very fast springing kind of step that they had. So their running was essentially more efficient and the end result of that was they were spending less time in contact with the ground because they were springing very quickly.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #1 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay, let's go back to number one. A systematic review finds that elite athletes overall have a reduced life expectancy compared to the general population, by about 4 years in men and 2 years in women. Bob and Cara, you think this one is a fiction. Jay and Evan, you think this one is the science. This one's interesting because I was reading the study I didn't know what the answer was, right? I'm just reading the methods and everything let's get to the results and you could make an argument either way because elite athletes don't train to optimal health. They train to maximize performance.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' They could be wearing themselves out for sure.<br />
<br />
'''E:'''' They want the outcome.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That makes a lot of sense.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Cara, you talked about runners. Have you seen runners? A lot of them are painfully thin.<br />
<br />
[inaudible]<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But we have to look all the athletes.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I know. So you have the sports that are very damaging. You have sports that require very low body fat and if you look at just overall statistics people who are slightly overweight actually live longer than people who have no body fat. But at the same time they have so much endurance training that should be good for them. So it was really a question as to which way it would shake out? So this is how it shook out. This one is the fiction.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yes!<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Because the meta-analysis of lots of studies looking at hundreds of thousands of athletes collectively in this data, they didn't give one number to it because they went sport by sport. But all of these studies showed an increased life expectancy.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Makes sense.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's not a huge factor but in general they had an extended life expectancy over the general population. So the conditioning wins out over any punishment they might be doing to their body.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, it makes sense.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' If i said it the other way you could make it make sense the other way too but this is what it's-<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It's would have been a surprise.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It was a huge meta-analysis so it's a lot of data.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #3 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right all this means that not only do elite athletes have a higher concentration of mitochondria than the general population, their individual mitochondria are more efficient producing 25 percent more energy is science.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Wow, that's awesome.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' This is amazing. I was surprised by this.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Some people are born to be elite athletes?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well so that is the question. So that is the question is this born or trained? So the number of mitochondria are clearly trained, when you train your myocytes, your muscle cells produce more mitochondria and just the density of kind of mitochondria per cell increases. Because the mitochondria are the energy factories of your cells you need to make more energy, so therefore you develop more mitochondria.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yes, endosymbiosis, thank you.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' One of the factors of conditioning when your endurance goes up it's because you literally have more mitochondria in your body. But what they want to know is what let's look at the individual mitochondria you may be surprised to find, I wasn't because I know this from just my medical background that there's actually quite a big difference in mitochondria from different people. There's a genetic range of efficiency of mitochondria. You get to the point where it's like a disease state where they have really inefficient mitochondria. They're just like cranking out oxidative chemicals and they could be so inefficient that they are actually a disorder. So they found that yeah, if they looked at the the mitochondria and the myocytes of elite athletes their individual mitochondria are putting out 25% more energy than a than a typical mitochondria. And they had that very question. Are they elite athletes, are they elite because they have this genetically superior mitochondria or did they actually condition their mitochondria to be more efficient. That's a very interesting question. This study did not definitively answer it but there is there is a suggestion that it may be trained because the mitochondria in the muscles that were used by their sport have more efficiency than the mitochondria in the muscles not used in their sport. And so that suggests that there is a training component.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Nice.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's that fascinating.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That is really cool. Well, start exercising people.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Exercise is good for you.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Start playing sports.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It is. If there was a if they had a drug, I'll never forget Covert Bailey in his books years ago is like, if they could reproduce what training and exercise does in a pill it'd be the most prescribed pill in the world. There's so many benefits. Pages and pages and pages of benefits from exercise.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's true.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Start moving people. Do resistance and weight training. And if you have an extra time maybe even a little stretching. Which something I've ignored.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And some cardio, throw in some cardio.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' No no, I said cardio and weight, didn't I?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No you said resistance.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Cardio, resistance. Stretching you've got to be careful. The evidence on stretching is mixed. You actually can increase your risk of injury if you overstretch before you do engage in a sport or exercise because you're not protecting your joints as well.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But make it the actual exercise. If you can do like a yoga class once a week or something like that, a stretching class where that is what your exercise is that day. I think over time that's actually quite protective of joint injury.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, but being flexible is protective. You're absolutely right. Just don't overstretch right before a huge physical exertion is this kind of the caution<br />
<br />
== Skeptical Quote of the Week <small>(1:48:53)</small> ==<br />
<br />
<blockquote>When people don’t search for scientific evidence for things, they find a very compelling, convincing person with a very sympathetic story and think they must be right. They’re convinced that this is true. But it’s not true. You need to be able to question it. If people aren’t conversant in science, they mightn’t ask those questions.<br>– Aoife McLysaght<!-- <ref name=author/>[** this is a second reference to an article attached to quote in the infobox] … don’t use if you just need a {{w|wikilink}} -->, Professor in the Molecular Evolution Laboratory of the Smurfit Institute of Genetics, University of Dublin, Ireland </blockquote><br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, Evan. Give us a quote.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' "When people don’t search for scientific evidence for things, they find a very compelling, convincing person with a very sympathetic story and think they must be right. They’re convinced that this is true. But it’s not true. You need to be able to question it. If people aren’t conversant in science, they mightn’t ask those questions." And that was said by Aoife McLysaght who is a professor in the molecular evolution laboratory of the Smurfit Institute of Genetics at the University of Dublin, Ireland.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The smurf institute?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Smurfit. S-M-U-R-F-I-T, the Smurfit Institute of Genetics.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Iss that why he said mightn't?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yes.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Is that an Irish thing?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That is mightn't m-i-g-h-t-n apostrophe t. She's a science communicator among other things. Obviously genetics is her specialty, I've seen YouTube videos of her talking to kids, teaching them about genetics and science and she's engaging. Fascinating, the amount of information that she's able to convey at a very very consumable level. Really really great. She does a great job.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah and this is very relevant to what we're talking about at the top of the show about the illusion of knowledge. Absolutely. All right guys, thank you all for joining me this week.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' You got it brother.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Sure man.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Thanks Steve.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Thank you Steve.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It's good to be back.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yep, welcome back Jay.<br />
<br />
== Signoff/Announcements == <br />
<!-- ** if the signoff/announcements don't immediately follow the QoW or if the QoW comments take a few minutes, it would be appropriate to include a timestamp for when this part starts --><br />
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}}</div>Hearmepurrhttps://www.sgutranscripts.org/w/index.php?title=SGU_Episode_761&diff=19100SGU Episode 7612024-01-16T15:37:12Z<p>Hearmepurr: episode done</p>
<hr />
<div>{{Editing required<br />
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|episodeNum = 761<br />
|episodeDate = February {{date|8}} 2020 <!-- broadcast date --><br />
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|guest2 = <!-- leave blank if no second guest --><br />
|guest3 = <!-- leave blank if no third guest --><br />
|qowText = Nanotechnology will let us build computers that are incredibly powerful. We'll have more computing power in the volume of a sugar cube than exists in the world today.<br />
|qowAuthor = {{w|Ralph Merkle}}, American computer scientist<br />
|downloadLink = https://media.libsyn.com/media/skepticsguide/skepticast2020-02-08.mp3<br />
|forumLink = https://sguforums.org/index.php?topic=51756.0<br />
}}<br />
<!-- note that you can put the Rogue’s infobox initials inside triple quotes to make the initials bold in the transcript. This is how the final statement from Steve is typed at the end of this transcript: '''S:''' —and until next week, this is your {{SGU}}.--> <br />
<br />
== Introduction ==<br />
''Voice-over: You're listening to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.'' <br />
<br />
'''S:''' Hello and welcome to the {{SGU|link=y}} ''(applause)''. Today is Saturday, February 1<sup>st</sup>, 2020, and this is your host, Steven Novella ''(applause)''. Joining me this week are Bob Novella... <br />
<br />
'''B:''' Hey, everybody! ''(applause)''<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Cara Santa Maria... <br />
<br />
'''C:''' Howdy. ''(applause)''<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Jay Novella... <br />
<br />
'''J:''' Hey guys. ''(applause)''<br />
<br />
'''S:''' ...and Evan Bernstein. <br />
<br />
'''E:''' Hello, Philadelphia. ''(applause)''<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And our frequent guest and good friend, George Hrab.<br />
<br />
'''G:''' E-A-G-L-E-S.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' You are earning those SGU frequent flyers.<br />
<br />
'''G:''' Seriously, man. I get the upgraded, like, the nuts and the warm nuts when we start the show and everything. It's great.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' The hot towel.<br />
<br />
'''G:''' The hot towel. The warm nuts. It's great. It's delicious.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So, as you might have guessed, we are in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. We are here for, we're in the middle of our extravaganza tour, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, and then Brooklyn. And we, like, we, our plan is to always hey, we're all together. We might as well record a live show. So thank you guys all in the audience for joining us for this. We really, always really appreciate to see our listeners come out. We're going to start with a few news items, and then we're going to go into some fun bits that we have specially planned for this show.<br />
<br />
== COVID-19 Update <small>(1:33)</small> == <br />
<br />
'''S:''' First Cara, you're going to get us updated on the coronavirus thing, right? There's a lot of, we've been talking about it on the show. We're going to continue to give the numbers as they move so quickly. I'll probably break in with some updated numbers on this episode, because it's going to be a week before this comes out. There's, and the, of course, the conspiracy theories and the misinformation is exploding as fast as the virus is, but give us the numbers. What's going on?<br />
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'''C:''' So I flew here and-<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You have the flu?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No, I got my flu shot.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Your second one?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' My maybe second flu shot of the year, because I forgot if I got it already, but I flew here and I would say at LAX, there was also a layover. I flew straight to Pittsburgh and there was a layover in Phoenix and between LAX and Phoenix, I would say probably 10% of the people in the airport were wearing masks probably. And they were all like young, healthy looking people who I would love to survey them and be like, how many of you got your flu shot this year?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Is that warranted at this time though? At the airport?<br />
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'''C:''' A flu shot, yes.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' No, no, no. At the airport. Wearing a mask at the airport.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, I don't think that LA or Phoenix even have confirmed cases, so I'm not sure. I mean- I'm not warranted there. Not warranted, but also, I mean, whatever. I'm not going to blame somebody. I just feel like the misinformation there, like they were mostly wearing lawnmower masks. I don't really know if those are effective. And my friend-<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No puppy masks?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' My friend who lives-<br />
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'''B:''' What's a lawnmower mask?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's like the one that's big with the little pinch thing that just goes like this. It's kind of hard.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, gotcha.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' As opposed to a surgical mask which like forms to your face.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But those are probably, to be honest with you, those are better.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, really?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The ones that pinch over the nose. So if you're in a hospital and you need respiratory precautions to go into a patient's room, that's the one you wear.<br />
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'''C:''' It's the pinchy one, but it's the one that goes around your ears, right? That's like this. Whereas the lawnmower ones are hard. They're like rigid.<br />
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'''S:''' Oh, yeah. Those are- So they're actually yet a different one.<br />
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'''C:''' Yeah, yeah, yeah.<br />
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'''S:''' So there's the- Yeah, there's the hard ones that are round that fit over your mouth. Then there's the surgical masks that pinch your nose, which are-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But I wonder if the actual respiratory capabilities of them are different. Like the actual pore size? I don't know. Whatever. I will say that my friend who lives in Hong Kong was saying it's like mass hysteria there. It's like really out of control. But he was like, my favorite is seeing all the people wearing the masks in the street pulled down so that they can smoke their cigarettes. He's like hundreds of people. But anyway, so we have some new information. And the coolest thing, there's a new article that came out today in Business Insider that talks about the fact that over the last three weeks, there have been- They combed the research literature and found that there have been 50 scientific studies that have been published. Now most of them are not peer reviewed, obviously, because the peer review process is slower than that. But a handful of them have been fast tracked in peer review. Most of them are published on different archives. So what they did is they looked through all of this literature to see like, what do we know now that we didn't know then? So there's a few highlights here. Number one is an update on the numbers. So as of today, which is Saturday, February 1st, there have been 259 people who have died. And the infection, which I have in here, is at least 12,000 people have been infected. 259 dead, 12,000 infected. That's obviously going to change because we see those numbers going up pretty quickly. And let's talk about the rate there. I want to jump ahead to that.<br />
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'''S:''' Hey there. Here's Steve breaking in with the latest numbers as promised. So this now is being recorded on February 8th, 2020. As of right now, the latest numbers are 34,958 confirmed cases. 6,106 of those are deemed to be in severe condition. There are 724 confirmed deaths. So as you can see, the numbers are increasing geometrically. And obviously, the numbers are going to get much higher before this infection plays itself out. Let's get back to the show.<br />
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'''C:''' So there have been a couple different studies to try and identify what the rate of infection is. And the idea here, they call it the R-naught, which is like for every one infected person, how many other people are they likely going to infect? And they're saying that it's between one and five based on the literature, which is pretty high.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. And just for background, if you're more than one, the infection is spreading. If you're less than one, it's dying out. Remember with the Ebola outbreaks, we're always waiting for that number to get below one because that's when we're on the far side of that. As long as it's over one, it's going to continue to spread.<br />
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'''C:''' Yeah. And so looking at the average of that, there was a study that was published in The Lancet on Friday that said that they think it's about two to three people per infected person. So that means that the infected population would double every six and a half days.<br />
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'''J:''' Wow.<br />
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'''C:''' So they are saying that it looks like it's more infectious than SARS, but it actually seems to be less deadly than MERS or SARS, the other two big coronaviruses that have caused a lot of problems. And there's a great chart that it's all as of January 31st that they pulled some of this data.<br />
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'''B:''' It's already a day out of date.<br />
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'''C:''' Yeah, right? A day out of date. No, some of it was actually pulled from the end of the other infection cycles, obviously. And so comparing so far the novel coronavirus, the 2019 novel coronavirus, which is what they're kind of calling it, or the Wuhan coronavirus, the infection rate, or I'm sorry, the fatality rate, that's what they're comparing in this chart, appears to only be 2.2%. I shouldn't say only, because that's still very high. But compared to other special pathogens, we're talking MERS, 34%.<br />
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'''B:''' I read 30 to 40%, which is huge.<br />
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'''C:''' SARS around 9 or 10%, Marburg virus, 80%. I mean, when we start to look at filoviruses, they're bad. Ebola, 40%, Hendra, 57%, Nipah virus, also very high.<br />
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'''B:''' Ebola, Zaire on there?<br />
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'''C:''' Yeah, Ebola. I mean, they just have all the Ebola's together.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Well, that's misleading, because there's flavours of it in Zaire. It was nasty.<br />
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'''C:''' Sure, but still, in terms of the total number of cases, it's not much lower than novel coronavirus so far, but it's still not that high in the grand scheme of things. So here's a fun fact, H1N1, right? H1N1. I just had them guess in the car how many cases worldwide, I would love to hear you guys. How many cases do you think worldwide?<br />
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'''B:''' Put it in the context of exactly what H1N1 is.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That was the swine flu.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Bird flu.<br />
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'''S:''' No, not the bird flu. It's H5N1. This is the swine flu.<br />
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'''C:''' H5N1 is bird flu. H1N1 is swine flu. It's a little confusing, though, because I don't know if anybody's been watching Pandemic on Netflix, but apparently they called the bird flu the swine flu in India, so it gets a little confusing with the common names.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, H1N1. But for our American colloquialism, that's-<br />
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'''C:''' H1N1, the infection was 2009, so that's the more recent one. I'm sorry, bird flu was 1997. It was a long time ago, the H5N1. Okay, so swine flu, H1N1, 2009. How many cases worldwide in total since then? 1,632,000. A lot. And 284,500 people died. Yeah. So the infection, or the fatality rate there, 18%. It's very, very high. And just in sheer numbers, killed, I don't even, I can't do that math that quickly, like 30 times more people than Ebola, like something just intense, yet people don't think about the flu. They don't think about the fact that the flu causes so many deaths every year, that the flu is very infectious. And so I think it's not like, don't be concerned about coronavirus, only be concerned, I don't want to be black and white in this, but like, let's compare these things. Let's think about scale. Let's think about these rates. I think the reason that coronavirus is so scary is because we don't know much about it yet.<br />
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'''S:''' Because it's new. It's new. And it could just be a new endemic virus that we have to live with.<br />
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'''C:''' Exactly. It could be something that we all figure out how to work around. It could be something that takes off. We're still in the early stages.<br />
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'''B:''' It's new. I mean, the common cold is made up of like four coronaviruses.<br />
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'''S:''' This particular strain is new, not coronavirus as a genus.<br />
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'''C:''' No, there are eight different, there are eight different listed, or nine, seventh. Seven.<br />
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'''S:''' Seven. Four is common cold, and then SARS, MERS.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Common cold and pneumonia are very common, and then SARS, MERS.<br />
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'''B:''' But what's the difference between a coronavirus and influenza?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' A different virus.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' There are different viral types.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The influenza virus versus the coronavirus.<br />
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'''C:''' I think they're both RNA viruses.<br />
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'''B:''' Right, but they're both respiratory infections. I mean, so what's that? Is it just the-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, the flu is different, though, right?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' The type of virus that's causing it? And so the coronaviruses are all similar enough where they're just kind of like cousins?<br />
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'''C:''' Yeah, it's a different species. Like if you could call a virus a species, which they actually do. I didn't realize that they do.<br />
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'''S:''' Coronavirus is one species. And the different ones are strains.<br />
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'''C:''' And they're subtypes.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Strains of that species of virus.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And there are four different flus. There's influenza A, B, C, and D. I think there's single species of most of them, and then there's a bunch of subtypes of A. That's what we're used to seeing, like the H5N1, the H1N1. Those are all influenza A's, and they're subtypes. But think about what the flu feels like.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I don't know.<br />
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'''C:''' Oh, yeah, you've never had the flu.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' You're lucky.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I know. So the flu-<br />
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'''B:''' I rolled a 20 for constitution.<br />
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'''C:''' The flu does have some respiratory symptoms, but it's also like deep muscle symptoms, right? Like a lot of people have muscle pain and malaise as a common-<br />
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'''J:''' Yeah, massive fatigue.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I'd say malaise is probably the most identifying feature of the flu. Whereas these specific coronaviruses, MERS, SARS, and especially now this new coronavirus is a pneumonia virus. Like people have pneumonia symptoms. And so that's what you want to look out for. If you have been to China recently, or if you've been doing a lot of air travel, and you get a pneumonia-type experience, seek treatment. That's like- And let them know. Tell them there's a risk here. And so, yeah, let's talk about, here's some interesting stuff that they pulled up out of all of these studies that were like, ooh, a little bit eye-opening. They think that anywhere from two to 14 days is the incubation period for this virus.<br />
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'''J:''' That's a long time.<br />
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'''C:''' They also think that you can spread it if you're asymptomatic. So there's a study that was published in the New England Journal of Medicine, actually is a letter talking about a German case, when a 33-year-old man met with a business partner from China, three days later. So he got fever and chills and horribleness. And then three days later, he felt better, so he went to work. When he went to work, he actually infected two of his colleagues. So remember that some people don't show symptoms, and some people have mild symptoms. So it's different for different folks. And it does seem to be a little bit more virulent is not the right word, a little bit more deadly for older adults.<br />
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'''J:''' Didn't they shut school down in Hong Kong for a month?<br />
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'''S:''' No, Hong Kong schools are closed until March right now. My friend who lives there is a teacher, and he said the schools are all closed until March. He works for like a private school, and they're doing all of their classes online right now. And a lot of physicians in Hong Kong and public health experts are urging China to close the border because obviously this is a huge risk. Based on some of these projections, that's another section in this article, they think that the most at-risk city outside of China is Bangkok because that's where the most air travel occurs and the most trade. And then if they were to rank it after that, it's Bangkok, Hong Kong, Taipei, Sydney, then New York, then London. And that's based on not cases so far, but based on air travel and different kind of epidemiological forecasts. And now it seems to be that the consensus is bats. It looks like it came from bats, not snakes. There's one study that's still pushing for snakes, but there's no evidence so far that this is anything other than an avian or mammalian. They think it's a predominantly mammalian virus.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So bats do this deliberately?<br />
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'''C:''' They're jerks, these bats. They're horrible. They're common reservoirs.<br />
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'''S:''' Unfortunately, coronavirus can live in non-humans, so we call that a reservoir, which means we'll never get rid of it because it's just going to always be out there in the wild.<br />
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'''C:''' In the wild, yeah. And then finally, there's an interesting one study not peer-reviewed yet that suggests that it may not only be respiratory, but it might also pass through the digestive tract. So that's like a secondary transmission potentiality, something to be careful of.<br />
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'''S:''' The bigger picture here is that China now is serving as an incubator for generating these viruses. There's been multiple. The third coronavirus. The bird flu. The third coronavirus. Every 10 years, another coronavirus is coming out of China, and they're saying it's not a big mystery why this is happening. Massive population, a concentrated population with intimate contact with lots of species of animals that are potential reservoirs.<br />
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'''C:''' Yeah, wet markets.<br />
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'''S:''' They don't have great hygiene required.<br />
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'''C:''' Well, these wet markets are difficult, yeah.<br />
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'''S:''' It's not like they're not regulations. So loose regulations, population, lots of animals. It's a recipe for just spitting out these kind of viruses.<br />
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'''C:''' We tend to buy our food packaged. We tend to buy our food where... So there's going to be agriculture, and sometimes agriculture is really dense, right? Because we are like the kings of factory farming here. And so we do see viruses popping up in that area or infections popping up in factory farms. So generally speaking, they're then processed and packaged before the consumer gets to them. Whereas in China, the wet market model is quite common. I visited one when I was there, where you've got freshly slaughtered animals, you've got skins and you've got vegetables, and live animals. Because there's a lot of live reptiles. I saw a lot of frogs and a lot of seafood and poultry, unfortunately. A lot of people want to buy live poultry and then slaughter themselves. And that's a recipe for avian flu. It's just densely populated chickens and geese and things like that.<br />
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'''G:''' I like that the film Soderbergh's Contagion is on the top 10 iTunes rentals that popped back up. It's eight years old or whatever, and it's in the top 10 rentals.<br />
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'''C:''' And I know I mentioned this on the show last week, but I do actually highly recommend the new Netflix series. It's quite measured. It's very pro-vax, obviously. It's called Pandemic. It shows anti-vax sentiment in it, and it counteracts it very well. And it really does help you, again, with that perspective, because Pandemic is mostly about flu. They touch on some Marburgs. They touch a little bit on some coronaviruses. I mean, the timing's perfect that it came out now. But it's mostly about flu and the fact that we really don't take the time to look at the numbers and realize, because we've been living with flu for so long, exactly how deadly it really is worldwide and how we can protect ourselves.<br />
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'''J:''' It's kind of like alcohol abuse. We're so used to being around alcohol and everything. The world is filled with alcoholics and people that have drinking problems.<br />
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'''S:''' I know. I always point out. It's like you always have to put things into perspective. People are worried about this drug problem or that drug problem. There's one recreational drug that causes orders of magnitude more morbidity and mortality than all other recreational drugs combined, and that's alcohol. It's not even close.<br />
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'''J:''' Have any of you guys heard of gutter oil?<br />
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'''C:''' Oh, God, with the gutter oil.<br />
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'''J:''' It just blew my mind. So gutter oil is reclaimed oil that what people do is they go and they lift up the septic lid off the street, and they put a bucket in, and they pull it up, and they're pulling out this coagulated ball of grease that has everything in it, because that's where the street runoff goes into, septic systems, sewage, all this stuff from the city, and it's legit oil dumped down there from restaurants and all that stuff.<br />
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'''G:''' In Asia, you're saying?<br />
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'''J:''' In Asia, yeah. Okay. They take the oil. They take the oil outside of the city, and then they boil it, and it stinks to all hell. And this is like... Guys, this is disgusting shit that they're doing.<br />
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'''C:''' Literally.<br />
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'''J:''' Then they get this huge strainer, and they get out all the garbage and the solid material, and then they put it into big vats, and they bring it back into the city, and they sell it to the people that cook food on the street. And you virtually cannot avoid it if you buy food on the street. Legit restaurant don't do it, because they know. But these people that are like... That day could be the difference between them eating or not eating. They're going to buy gutter oil, so they can make more money, and it's less expensive. And the woman who did this that they were following, she earned so much money from it, she bought a house, because it's a massive market.<br />
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'''C:''' So they boil it. Do they boil it long enough and hot enough for it to actually be sterile?<br />
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'''J:''' I have no idea. I would imagine yes, because there's sewage in there, so...<br />
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'''C:''' You would imagine it, because way more people would be sick, right? Like we would know about it.<br />
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'''E:''' How the hell do they police this? How do they control for it? There's no control.<br />
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'''C:''' No, but I think so. No, but they might-<br />
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'''J:''' The process of them just kind of getting the trash out of it and being able to strain it, it didn't seem like there was this huge epidemic of people getting sick off of gutter oil.<br />
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'''C:''' Then again, it's state-run media in China, so it's actually very hard to know if the line in the newspaper or the radio is actually what's happening, or just what the government wants to kind of portray as happening.<br />
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'''E:''' That's what I'm also worried about with some of these numbers. These are the reported numbers, but what are the real numbers?<br />
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'''C:''' It does seem, though, at least the scientific community is heavily involved. We always say this on the show, but science is one of the best sources of global diplomacy, because when something like this happens, people really do communicate, and they come together across party lines, across any geopolitical conflicts. They just want to prevent this epidemic.<br />
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'''B:''' Another good example of that is scientists from different countries in the space station. They work together. They don't care what's going on geopolitically. They work together to do good science.<br />
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'''J:''' Yeah, of course. It's like a love of anything, if you think about it. Think of all the people we met through skepticism, and science fiction, and other passions that we have.<br />
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== News Items ==<br />
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=== Proxima B Climate <small>(18:24)</small> ===<br />
* [https://www.universetoday.com/144770/heres-what-the-climate-might-look-like-on-proxima-centauri-b/ Universe Today: Here’s What the Climate Might Look Like on Proxima Centauri B]<ref>[https://www.universetoday.com/144770/heres-what-the-climate-might-look-like-on-proxima-centauri-b/ Universe Today: Here’s What the Climate Might Look Like on Proxima Centauri B]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, Jay.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yes?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We actually just talked about the Alpha Centauri system, which includes Proxima Centauri, which is a red dwarf closest to our solar system, I should say. But there's an update on Proxima B, one of the planets around Proxima.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' And it's B, because it's the second one.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, so the star is always A.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Oh, it's the first planet, okay.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So the first planet's B.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Proxima B, as most of you know, is the first planet, right next to the sun. Don't ever make a mistake. It's B means the first planet. A is the sun, Steve.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, it's a star.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' The star, yeah. Whatever.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' The sun is the name of our star.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Stop it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Okay.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Stop it.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Helios.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It's a red dwarf. So, all right. This is a cool situation that we have here. So they're calling it a super earth. They're saying that because it's in the Goldilocks zone, we heard someone tell us not to say that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's a habitable zone.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It's the habitable zone.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I love the word habitable.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I know.<br />
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'''J:''' You can't say it slowly. Habitable. So it's probably tidally locked, which means that the same side of the planet is facing the sun at all times.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Like the moon. To the earth.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Like the moon, yeah. That's no moon. So what they decided to do was they took the software that they're using that models global warming climate, all that incredible bulk of data, and they're using those computer systems to run a model with all the information that they think would possibly affect this particular planet. So they're putting in different places where the land masses could be, and different weather conditions, and different temperature ranges, and all these different variables that can give us a possible view into what the makeup of this planet is.<br />
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'''B:''' Well, because Jay, what's the classic problem with a planet that's really close to a small star that's tidally locked?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Super hot.<br />
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'''B:''' Super hot on one side. Super cold on the other. And then how could anything live there except maybe on a band in between the hot and cold? So that's the classic idea of how a planet like that would be.<br />
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'''S:''' Which is, just for further background, so we talk about, obviously we're interested in what planets out there in the galaxy would potentially harbour life. There's a lot of red dwarfs. 80% of the stars out there are red dwarfs, right? If red dwarfs could potentially-<br />
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'''B:''' In our galaxy.<br />
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'''S:''' Yeah, but probably everywhere, right? It depends. There's different galaxies, different ages and stuff. Yeah, I get you. But in our galaxy, definitely, 80% of the stars, if you look up at the sky, 80% of the stars you see are red dwarfs.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Well, they're hard to see, but yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Sampling bias.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's true. If they could contain planets with life, that would dramatically increase the number of planets potentially that could have life. So the astronomers have gone back and forth on that. At first they said, no, the planets would be too close.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Too hot, too close. <br />
<br />
'''B:''' Too hot and cold.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Tidally locked.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Too old to begin the training.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Maybe the climate may, it may still work out. But then there's also the instability and the red dwarfs. They flare up, and that would strip the atmosphere away from the planet, which is bad. But what? But maybe they could migrate in late enough after the stars calm down. So we don't know. The bottom line is you can make an argument either way. But so this is adding one piece to that puzzle. So if we have the scenario of a planet that's the size that it could, like a super earth in this case, but that could be rocky and could have an atmosphere in life. What would the climate be on that planet? Is it – would it be – would life be ruled out because it would be boiling on one side and freezing on the other? Or what? So what did they find?<br />
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'''C:''' Wait, so Jay, is it rocky?<br />
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'''S:''' We don't know.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Well, rocky one, two, or three. <br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, the groan.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I'm here. I'm here, for Christ's sake.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Good.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I let the first one go. But I said to myself, somebody else says rocky. I'm going for it. There you go.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Jay.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Come on, George. Back me up, man.<br />
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'''G:''' It's all you. It's all you.<br />
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'''B:''' Jay, because it's – I think it's 1.3 solar masses – earth masses, 1.3.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah. Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Because of that, it's probably rocky. It's probably –<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Probably not gaseous.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, not gaseous. But we're not 100% sure.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So, look, we don't know. But given the computer models, they put it in, and they're looking at, like, OK, what are the computers saying? Like, what could possibly be here? And I don't honestly know what the spectrum is, but one of the things that they were saying is, well, from what we're seeing, they think that clouds would likely be building up on the side of the planet that's facing the sun.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' The star.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I call them suns.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' OK.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' We'll let it go.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Is that really not cool?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's more accurate when we're referring to another star as a star.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' But aren't they all suns?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Our sun is a star, and all stars are suns. But the name of our star is ''the Sun''.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Sol, if you prefer.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's like solar system.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' The planet, the side of the planet that's facing the star, they think would have a big buildup of cloud cover, which would be great, because as you know, that would insulate it or reflect a lot of the energy back to the star, which is good.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And you can only have clouds in an atmosphere, right?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' This assumes it's an atmosphere.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It absolutely has to have an atmosphere. So then they were saying, with that in play, that the air and water would actually move a lot of the hot and cold. Now, look at our ocean, right? You see how we have the dipoles, and the ocean is incredibly connected to it. It's a part of our weather system. So you have weather systems on a planet this size with certain parameters that would allow for the atmosphere and the ocean to move a lot of the heat and cold around. I'm not saying it would normalize it, because on the other side of the planet, it's basically like one big South Pole, North Pole. It's going to be Arctic. But there would still be a lot of movement of the water and air, enough that it would level things off to a certain degree. So and I do feel like there's a little bit of wishful thinking here, but...<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, the thing is, it's not wishful thinking. They were not saying, what is the atmosphere like? What's the climate like on the planet? They said, if we put in a range of plausible parameters, what percentage of those parameters lead to a climate that is habitable for life? And it was actually a lot broader range than they went in assuming. It's not a narrow range. You just have to have the right exact amount of water and atmosphere, whatever. It's like, yeah, in most situations, the convection of heat, when the water and the atmosphere actually spreads the heat out cools the hot side and warms the cold side, under most scenarios, you're going to have a pretty habitable climate.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Now, wouldn't it be amazing if we could send a ship there fast enough to get a better glimpse of what the... It doesn't have to go all the way. Just close enough to get a lot more data.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' At that point, for all intents and purposes, it's all the way there.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Let me finish my point, because this is really cool. That would give us a better idea if our computer models work well.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Don't forget, the James Webb Telescope and other telescopes coming online this decade will be able to directly image that planet.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' The atmosphere.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Really?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Wait a second.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's so far.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' No, it can't, because that planet is too close to the star, to the sun, to the star. So Proxima C, that's the one we could image.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That's the second planet.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That's farther away.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' You're right. We can't image that one.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Crap. But we can image the star itself.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, we could get more information.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Huh?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We could get more information.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Bob, all they have to do is put their thumb up and block the star.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' No, no. Jay, that's actually what they do. They block...<br />
<br />
'''J:''' You see how I invent science on the fly?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Proxima B is too close to do that method.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But can't you still do-<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Indirect methods?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, yeah. You could look at the light from the star shining through any potential atmosphere and look at the spectral absorption. We could say it has an atmosphere that has oxygen in it. That would be interesting.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Or it has no atmosphere.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Or it doesn't appear to have any atmosphere.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Wait, then why can't they do that now?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' We can already do that.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Well, I think the thing is it's close.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We could theoretically do it now, but it's not... The better telescope is going to be able to do it.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It's something that someday humanity might visit. I would love to be able to check our algorithms to see how accurate they are.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. Yeah. I know. I mean, that's the thing. We're living in an age of... We're detecting planets indirectly, and we're trying to infer their properties and everything, but we're never going to really know, like really be able to see these planets and know what they're like. This is the closest...<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Four light years.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' This is the closest exoplanet to Earth. This is the closest exoplanet to Earth. It's 4.2 light years.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' 4.2 light years. That doesn't seem that far away.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It's not that far.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It would take us tens of thousands of years to get there.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' By the current technology.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's far.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, but you send a light sail with a laser propulsion, 20% speed of light, and there's 20...<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, that's far.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' You never know. In 50 years, we might have...<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Slowing that thing down.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' ...much faster.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' We could send a probe there in 20 years.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' How long would it take to get there, though? We need something...<br />
<br />
'''B:''' In 20 years, if it's a light sail...<br />
<br />
'''E:''' 20 years using light sail and laser technology.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' ...at relativistic speeds. But the probe is like a nanoprobe. It's like... And it goes right by. It's not going to be slowing down because it's going to...<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, that's the problem.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' But we could image it. We could image it and within...<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Potentially.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Within a quarter century, potentially.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, but the picture would be pretty blurry, wouldn't it? Moving that fast.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I'll tell you what. If we could send a probe to hit that planet that is such a feat of science. It blows my mind.<br />
<br />
'''G:''' Wait, are the probes actually that tiny, Bob? They're that...<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It would have to be.<br />
<br />
'''G:''' These are all probes that... I mean, I don't think they've really built a probe to do that yet.<br />
<br />
'''G:''' But, I mean, the idea of it...<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, they're predicting that the probe...<br />
<br />
'''G:''' Would it be in a camera of some kind or this is going to be emitting some kind of...<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That would be the idea.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Some imaging. There'd be some limited imaging.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You just need a camera and a transistor.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' You'd have to have Wi-Fi.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Gram-sized. Very, very... Super crazy light. But there's some information we could get.<br />
<br />
'''G:''' Wow.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That's the idea, anyway.<br />
<br />
'''G:''' Tiny.<br />
<br />
=== Drug Development with AI <small>(27:54)</small> ===<br />
* [https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-51315462 BBC News: Artificial intelligence-created medicine to be used on humans for first time]<ref>[https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-51315462 BBC News: Artificial intelligence-created medicine to be used on humans for first time]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay. We're going to be bouncing back between sort of medical and astronomical items today. So I'm just going to give a quick one. I say quick. It never turns out to be that way.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Never.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. But this is an interesting milestone. For the first time, a company brought a drug to clinical trials, all the way to a clinical trial, that was developed using artificial intelligence. That in it of itself is nothing new. There's over a 160 startup companies that are using artificial intelligence in drug development. But let me let you what phase of drug development we're talking about. In order to bring a drug to the point you're ready to test it on people you have to either get that drug, that chemical from nature. It needs to be something out there in nature that we've shown it to have properties that are potentially useful. Maybe already in sort of traditional use. And that actually gives us a little bit of a head start, if that's the case. That field, by the way, is called pharmacognosy. And it's basically just trying to pick a low-hanging fruit. What's out there that we can get access to that's growing on trees or whatever that maybe even people are already using. But we've actually picked a lot of that low-hanging fruit. Not that it's all gone, but we've already gone through that. In fact, pharmaceutical developments start in the slowdown, in terms of the number of new drugs being brought to market, partly because of that. So we do the easy stuff. So by definition, as we keep going, it gets harder and harder and harder and harder.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Well, what else could be slowing that down?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, we're also clear-cutting the Amazon, which is where a lot of this helps. But a lot of people are using computational chemistry.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. So if you're not finding it in nature, you're just basically making a designer drug. You're synthesizing it, but you're also designing the drug just de novo, based upon first principles of chemistry. I want to put an OH group here, an alkaloid group there, whatever, a benzene group there.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And you've got the binding site. So you want to make something that fits in that binding site.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So if you have a target. So having a new drug target is like the whole game. Like, when we find a new drug target, meaning something in the body, this is just basic science. Oh, we figured out that there's this receptor on neurons in this part of the brain that are involved in this. Hey, maybe if we block that receptor, we could treat obsessive compulsive disorder, which is what this drug is.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Or you find a receptor on a cancer cell that healthy cells don't have. Then you could just nail that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Or whatever. So there's some basic science finding that has a potential drug target. Then you have to develop a drug to bind to that target. And so you can either screen existing drugs. That's one approach. Or you could design a new drug. How do you design a new drug? It's largely done computationally, right? We do it in computers.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' There's software for it.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' How good is that? How well does that work?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It works, but it takes years.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It works, but you have to do thousands of iterations, usually.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So this is just taking it to the next step, not just using computation, but using artificial intelligence, the latest in deep learning algorithms.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So they're giving artificial intelligence drugs and seeing how looped out they get?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So what they're doing is they're saying, here's the receptor, the target. Build me a molecule that binds to that. And that also doesn't kill people.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, try to make it non-toxic.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So the drugs have to have, like a lot of things we talk about, like batteries or whatever, they have to have a suite of properties all at the same time. And any one of them could be a deal killer, right? So it has to get into the body, have a certain half-life, and not be toxic to the liver, or the kidney, or the blood, or whatever.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, you've got to be able to excrete it.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, metabolize it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, we like to see that it's not acid. It doesn't burn your tissues.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' This drug would work great, but it'll melt your skin.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That happens a lot. Oh, this would be perfect. I've designed this thing, and it would be perfect. But it's also going to clog up. Like, it's got all these off-target binding sites that are really dangerous.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But there are drugs that are literally acidic. And then there's obviously a degree of acidity. But there are drugs that you can't give them intravenously because they're too acidic. They'll burn.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, they'll change your blood chemistry.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Or it doesn't get absorbed, so you can't give it through the stomach, or whatever. So they're trying to design drugs with the properties that they want to be useful clinically. And so that involves, as one of the researchers here said, it involves billions of decisions about that chemical. And so they're saying, all right, AI, you do it. You just figure out what all the parameters are, given all the thousands of drugs that we already have and the thousands of chemicals. You figure out ones that will have the properties we want and will have the specificity that we want. And so that's what they did. And what they said was that this took what is typically about a five-year drug development process, again, just coming up with the chemical that you then put into clinical trials, down to one year.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Nice.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Bob, what does this remind you of? Bob, what does what Steve just said remind you of? It's kind of like the precursor to a singularity, right?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, yeah, automating scientific research.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, like, this totally smacks of that. Imagine if, now, I don't know all the details. I don't know how much the humans have to interact as they go over that year to do stuff. But imagine if they got the computer models so tweaked, like, they just chug. And they go, and then they're done. And they're like, OK, cool, we got a result, right? And imagine, instead of it taking a year, it took a month. And then imagine if it took a day. Imagine if the computer processing gets so fast.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, but that's not the singularity.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Well, I know. That's a straw man.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No, but that's designer drugs.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Excuse me. I said one little tiny thing. And you turned it into me saying, I'm just saying it reminds me of the singularity.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' You just said Bob, what does this remind you of the singularity.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Remind you of.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It's related to the singularity.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's one aspect of it.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It smacks of the singularity.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Because as the AI gets more intelligent and does a better and better job, then you get closer and closer to what could be the singularity. Because the AI is getting more intelligent. And in my mind, the singularity is all about an intelligence explosion.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Cara, are you anti-singularity?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, I don't. Yeah, totally. But what I'm seeing here is the runaway kind of version of this would be an at-home or elite clinic where you would ultimately be able to take a blood sample, a stool sample, or whatever, and design a drug on the spot to treat whatever you're dealing with.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' To the individual.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That sounds horrible.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' To the individual. It sounds amazing, but it sounds nothing like the singularity.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I agree with you.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It just sounds like really advanced, really sophisticated designer drugs.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Imagine designing a vaccine for the new coronavirus in an hour.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Immediately. Yeah, exactly. You sample 500 people.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Everybody downloads it to the 3D printer at home.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's not infeasible. But the other aspect of this to keep in mind, though, is that the pharmaceutical companies are looking to increase their technology and the efficiency and the speed of their drug development just to keep even. You know what I mean?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Just to maintain pace.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The problems are getting harder and harder. So even as the research technology advances, sometimes it's advancing just to stay in place. And so for each research challenge, you have to know how quickly is the challenge getting more significant, and how quickly is the technology getting more significant. And it's different for everything. Sometimes progress slows down. Sometimes it speeds up. Sometimes we hit roadblocks that we just can't get past until something changes the game. And here, the pharmaceutical companies are struggling just to keep up.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Steve, you said that this is very generalized. They can do this to search for any type of drug, for any type of scenario.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, it's not specific to this one problem.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Right.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But some drugs aren't going to be computationally feasible either. I don't think you can generalize it to everything.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So the AI program that they're using, that process, is not specific to this one problem. It's generalizable to I need a target. But you can't change the laws of physics and chemistry, right? You can't make a drug to do something that drugs can't do. And the other thing that pharmaceutical research can't change is biology. So that is the inherent limit of pharmacology as an approach to medicine. Specifically, we have a target. We have a receptor. But we evolved, right? It's a messy process. And not only did we evolve as a whole organism, all of the parts of us evolved. Those receptors evolved from other receptors. And they're related to other. You know what I mean? There's a branching, nestled branching relationship among receptors as well and to the genes that code for them. And so the receptor that I'm interested in is going to be very similar to receptors that I'm not interested in. And so that's where the side effects come in.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But the cool thing about computational chemistry is you can increase affinity in a way that you probably might not have been able to do before.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But there's an inherent limit to that.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Totally.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' What does that mean exactly?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It means that you're making it so that it fits that much better into the receptor. But you're right, there is an inherent limit. Even if you have the perfect key, it's still going to fit in multiple locks.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And that same receptor could be serving multiple functions in different locations.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Exactly, in a totally different part of your body.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Steve, do we have receptors that we evolved that we don't use anymore? Like, they're just there and we don't use them for anything?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' People think so. Like, PCP, we haven't found an endogenous version of PCP. So you take PCP, it binds to stuff and has an effect. But we haven't found an endogenous, like a chemical that our bodies make that binds to those same receptors.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I wonder how much of that we have, just legacies, like access points.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Vestigial receptors, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Here's the cool thing I'm thinking. Right now we're talking about using AI to develop the drug itself. What happens when we can use AI and computational models to test the drug?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So I agree, but I think what-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right now we still have to do clinical trials.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I think that what will happen is we'll do a round of virtual clinical trials to further narrow those-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Because we'll get all the body parameters logged in a huge database.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Because, like, the worst case scenario is that you get to your phase three clinical trial, which is the big one, right, that's like where you're the final one to get FDA approval. And then, like, this 1% liver failure crops up. We just lost $100 million.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Steve, that is not the worst case. The worst case scenario is if these meds turn people into evil mutants.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' But that's the holy grail. Remember that Star Trek episode, the one Ashley Judd was in it? They had a device, a video game, that you put these glasses on. You played a video game, and you got addicted to it, and it messed up with your mind. So they were like, what is this thing? And they put it on the computer, and it actually had a virtual brain that interacted with that device. And they said, oh, boy, look what this thing does. Wow, that's not good right there. Essentially, a virtual brain that they could test it. That's the holy grail. That's something that's-<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, I think for a long time, we'll still have to ultimately then try in actual biological organisms. But again, it's all about screening. It's about maximizing the probability that it will do what we want it to do and not do what we don't want it to do.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' We might be able to eventually just skip animal trials altogether. Use computational animal trials instead of animal trials.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' As soon as it gets better than animal trials, because animals are not people.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Exactly. It's already an approximation.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' They're an approximation. If our virtual approximations get better than the animal approximations, then it would be obvious.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Wouldn't that be amazing if some- it's going to happen eventually. But someday, we'll just be like, yep, we don't have to- no animals have to suffer anymore for anything.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' We try to reduce their suffering.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Eventually, they'll be able to test it on your specific biopsy, because everybody's different, right?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' You can take a little biopsy, and they can test it on yourself.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Because a generic human, like, oh, yeah, it passes mustard. But then you put it on you, and it's like, oh, damn.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Because eventually, it's going to be targeted specifically for your biology anyway. That's the cool thing.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' You were right, Steve. This is not going to be a short news item.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I know.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But it's fascinating.<br />
<br />
=== Frame Dragging System <small>(38:57)</small> ===<br />
* [https://science.sciencemag.org/content/367/6477/577 Science: Lense–Thirring frame dragging induced by a fast-rotating white dwarf in a binary pulsar system]<ref>[https://science.sciencemag.org/content/367/6477/577 Science: Lense–Thirring frame dragging induced by a fast-rotating white dwarf in a binary pulsar system]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, Bob, back to astronomy. Tell me about frame dragging. What's frame dragging?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' So yes, this is really cool. Astronomers have found the best example of a spinning star dragging space around it. This was in the journal Science this week. So this is frame dragging. So this is developed by Einstein's general relativity. He predicted this. And so what's happening is that a spinning mass actually drags space along with it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Space-time.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Space-time. What did I say?<br />
<br />
'''S/C:''' Space.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Of course, I meant space-time. So imagine you've got a blanket on the floor, and your feet are on it, and you twist your feet. The way that rug will bunch and turn around you, that's basically what a spinning or rotating mass does to space-time. So for example, this is great.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Is it also referred to as spice-time?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' No.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Spice. Only in New Zealand.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Outer spice.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Do I have to tell the story now? OK. So all right, so our SGU coin. So spin this coin. So this spinning mass is actually frame dragging. It's taking a little bit of space-time around with it, but cannot detect it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's too tiny.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Way, way too tiny. You would need something probably orders of magnitude more sensitive than LIGO to actually test that. So how do you actually verify that?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Is that because it's so small that we can't detect it?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, so small. The mass is so tiny. The spinning mass is so tiny.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Because of the size of the coin.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' The mass of the coin.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So you've got to look at something gigantic, and then maybe our instrumentation can see it.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I think Einstein himself thought that we'd never be able to test this. I mean, a lot of his predictions, he said, we'll never be able to test this.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But he didn't foresee something like LIGO.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' No, no, my god, no, god, no. So how do you test it? So we tested it, I think it was in 2011. We had a $750 million satellite, Gravity Probe B, I think, in orbit around the Earth. And it detected, the gyroscope in that probe detected frame dragging because of the spinning Earth. But the mass of the Earth, it's huge, right? But it's so relatively tiny that it would take, what was it, 100,000 years to detect for one degree of change to be made to the gyroscope because of the frame dragging. So it's super tiny. And it's really, really hard to say, yep, this is exactly what happened. So what do you need? You need something bigger. You need something with a lot more mass spinning a lot faster than the Earth. You need something like ultra-relativistic. And it's actually called relativistic frame dragging. And they found it in a star system. They say it's 10,000 to 25,000 light years away. What kind of error bars is that?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' 10,000 to 25,000.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, like, hello.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I mean, 10,000 to 25,000, which is still huge.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, 10,000 is just huge, not 10,000. You said 10,000 to 25,000.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Zero to 25,000.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No, we know what you meant.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' 10,000 to 25,000 light years away. So this is the star system PST J114016545. I hate these boring names. I can't think of names that are really cool.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' There's too many of them.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I know, but just call it Frank.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' You're like the only person using them.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Frame dragging age. Give it a cool name or something. All right, so this is a fascinating star system. They've been looking at this for 20 years. And they finally got their observations really kind of dialed in. So this is a system. Imagine it's a white dwarf, which is about the size of the Earth, and 300,000, let me make sure my numbers are right, 300,000 times the density of Earth. So this is huge. It's a massive density, a dead core of a sun-like star. And in orbit around that is a pulsar. Now, they're kind of co-orbiting, but it's really, if you really look at it, it's kind of more orbiting around the white dwarf.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So a white dwarf already died.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, so the white dwarf is a core of a sun-like star.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So it wasn't big enough to have become a black hole.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It wasn't big enough. Yeah, it wasn't big enough to overcome degeneracy pressures to become a pulsar, and definitely not a black hole. So that's what our sun is going to turn into. Many stars, a lot of this is going to happen to. No, no, not massive enough. Now, the next star, though, the pulsar, that was close. That was closer to being a black hole, but not quite enough. So that collapsed into a pulsar. So that's about 20 kilometres wide, about the size of a city, but 100 billion times the density of the Earth.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And these would have been a binary system, is that why?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It is. It's a binary system.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I mean, when they were living stars?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yes.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' You know what I mean?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Right.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So, Bob, I've got to ask a basic question about this that I'm not quite getting. So the frame dragging is distorting space-time, just like gravity.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Right, mass, we know mass distorts, right? Mass changes the shape of space-time, and space-time shows mass how to move. So it's kind of like this relationship between the two.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' But then you're saying that momentum, I guess, is distorting space-time as well.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Right, the spinning mass bunches it up, because there's so much energy in such a small place that it's actually bunching up the space-time around it.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' As if, like, space-time was-<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Malleable. I mean, we know that mass changes. Like, when you look at the gravity well of the Earth, it's changing space-time because of that mass. So we know that you could change space-time with mass, right? So this is what a rotating mass does.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So is the frame drag from them rotating around each other, or is it the pulsar itself that's got the stronger frame drag?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Neither. It's the white dwarf. The white dwarf is spinning so fast, and it's so dense and spinning so fast that the frame dragging is intense.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And it's because the pulsar is going around it that it's spinning faster?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, because as it collapsed, it spun faster.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' But there's more detail to that. Because now imagine, at some point in the past, you had a white dwarf, and then you had a big star, a really big star. That star was going to become, this is the progenitor star, this was going to become the pulsar. But it lost something like 20,000 Earth masses of gas, and that fell onto the white dwarf, which caused it to spin faster and faster and faster, right? Like a skater bringing their arms in and spinning faster and faster.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But still not to get enough mass to fall in on itself.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' No, not enough mass to turn into a pulsar, but it spun much faster. So they think that's the key to the system, because you have a white dwarf spinning faster and faster and faster. So fast, in fact, that it's like one day is like two minutes. Now, this is the size of the Earth. We have 24 hours to rotate. This does it in two minutes. So this is like an amazing system.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, right?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Headache.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' All right, now, so imagine Cara's head is a white dwarf. So here's a pulsar.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I can't turn my head around.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Your hand is the pulsar, Bob?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' You've got to do it really fast. OK, so the pulsar is not far away. It's only like the width of the sun, which is what, 800,000 miles, something like that? It's tiny. So they're orbiting around each other in five days. So the pulsar goes around it. It's years, five days, if you will.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But my year is two minutes.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Your day is two minutes. Now, they looked at this system, and they're like something's going on here, because they're intercepting the radio signals from the pulsar, right? The pulsar emits from its magnetic poles. It's emitting radio waves. So they detect these things for 20 years. They're like, there's something crazy going on with this system, because if you look at the orbital plane around Cara's head, that orbital plane is slowly shifting over time. It's changing. And they looked at that, and they looked at general relativity, and like, this doesn't make any sense. The only way it makes sense is if this white dwarf was frame-dragging the entire orbit of the pulsar. And that's when they realized, oh, now general relativity makes sense. This is a massive frame-dragging system.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So it's like when your vacuum sucks up the carpet. Like, the carpet is so disturbed that it's like all the way around the edges that it's coming in.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' The frame-dragging is just messing up with the velocity and the orientation of the entire binary system.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Bob, so would we ever have to calculate that if we were sending a probe, or is it too subtle?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' If we were sending a probe to that system, that over time, if we wanted to enter, have something, have a stable orbit, we'd probably have to think about that. But for a brief period of time, not so. But because this is such an amped up system with gravity and the rotation and the distances, that things are happening much, much faster there. And that's why, and still, it took 20 years for them to really say, yes, we're confident to publish this. So it took a while.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' This is another win for Einstein.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, this guy just doesn't lose, does he? In the future, I was thinking, all right, what can we get from this in the future? And one thing, we could use these techniques to learn more about binary pulsars and to learn more about pulsars themselves, neutron stars. I mean, essentially, you've got what happens when a supermassive star collapses, and it's not heavy enough to turn into a black hole. You have a neutron star, and some of them will rotate and become pulsars shooting out the radio waves. But this is degenerate matter. This is like the most fascinating substance in the universe, even more so. Somebody asked me in Australia, Bob, what would you rather look at up close, a black hole or a neutron star? And actually, I was thinking, it has to be a neutron star, because a black hole, I mean, you've got the event horizon. You've got maybe the accretion disk. You've got intense gravity. But a neutron star has got so many more things that we could learn from this degenerate matter. Because essentially, imagine taking an atom, a whole bunch of atoms, and you're squishing it down so much that the proton and electron merge to become another neutron. So it's basically one big neutron.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' You already know what that is, then. Well, what's inside a black hole, Bob?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' If I knew that, I wouldn't be sitting here.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's what I'm saying. Don't you want to go see that?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, but as soon as you find out, you're turned into spaghetti.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, I assume that the thought experiment allowed you to still live. No, you're still within the laws of physics. So let me finish this thought. So yeah, but just because it's one ball of neutrons, it's still much more complicated than that. There could be quark matter in there. Weird things happening with the surface. I mean, there's so much to learn. So if this technique could teach us a lot about neutron degenerate matter and neutron stars, that would be a huge win, too.<br />
<br />
=== Scream Therapy <small>(48:27)</small> ===<br />
* [https://globalnews.ca/news/6457068/julianne-hough-treatment/ Global News: Julianne Hough writhes, screams during so-called ‘energy treatment’]<ref>[https://globalnews.ca/news/6457068/julianne-hough-treatment/ Global News: Julianne Hough writhes, screams during so-called ‘energy treatment’]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' Evan, you're going to finish up the news part of the show by telling us about screaming therapy.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Screaming therapy, yeah. So enough of this science. Let's have some fun, right? There was a meeting, not last week, but the week prior in Davos, Switzerland, in a world economic forum. Every year this happens. A bunch of very powerful elites and wealthy individuals and representatives of corporations get together, and they talk about how to make the planet a better, wonderful place using their vast resources. That's generally what it boils down to. Now, but I was interested because there was a particular person there. Jay, who is Julianne Hough?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I have no idea.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Exactly, nor do I. Steve, who's Julianne Hough? Right, Bob, who's Julianne Hough?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' She run the Hough Poe?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' George? Anyone here know Julianne Hough?<br />
<br />
'''Audience:''' She was on Dancing with the Stars.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Dancing with the Stars, exactly. And that's exactly why we don't know up here who she is. Because why? She was there. Why is she there?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I don't know.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I don't know. Why is she there? Who knows?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Well, who is she? What does she do?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' She's made famous, apparently, by being a dancer on Dancing with the Stars. She's apparently an actress, among other many talents. I have some nods here in the back and confirming that that is, in fact, true. I really have no idea. Well, she underwent something while at Davos called energy treatment and scream therapy.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Oh, cool.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' What the heck is that? Well and there's video online of this. And it made the rounds on social media. Perhaps some of you have seen it. It did go viral, in which, essentially, she was there on a table. And a chiropractor did some sort of manipulation on her and allowed her to release all this tension and other things that were inside of her.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Oh, my god, I saw that video. That's where she was lying on her stomach.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' She was lying on her stomach. And she's basically screaming. Do I have any audio of this?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That sounded so fake to me. OK, I didn't know that was her.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, so that was that scream you heard this morning, too, that was playing that video.<br />
<br />
'''G:''' Oh, yes. OK, I was wondering what was going on.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's a sample, basically, of what she was undergoing.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Sounds like a breakthrough.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You know what that is? That's mesmerism.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, that's pretty much what that is.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' But that's also the exact noise you make when you no longer have a career.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Now, who was doing this? So she participated in this demonstration led by Dr. John Amaral, A-M-A-R-A-L. Well, he's a chiropractor. You know, 25 years of working with thousands of people, blah, blah, including A-list celebrities, entrepreneurs, athletes, influencers, thought leaders, and other gullible people with a lot of money, apparently. He most recently appeared in the Goop Lab Netflix series.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That's good for his resume.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, OK, so.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Rabble, rabble, rabble.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Birds of a feather, as they say, yeah. And all kinds of nice testimonials here on his website from famous people. The term miracle worker can often be overused, except in John's case. John's rare gifts, coupled with his equally rare techniques, have healed me multiple times and left me in awe. This is Maria Menousos.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Menudos.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Menudos, thank you. Television host, entrepreneur, and actress. So apparently this person has, obviously, a Hollywood-related following.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I know her exclusively from the intro to movies. Like, she's doing the interlude, right? Isn't that her?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Is that her?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Well, I mean, Evan, if she's on TV, we should listen to her, right?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Exactly. So here's technically, here's the technical analysis. It's called Network Spinal Analysis, NSA. I don't know if you've ever heard of this. I'll read it from the Network Spinal Analysis website, exactly what this is. Sometimes called network chiropractic, it's a distinct form and philosophy that evolved out of chiropractic, used for healing and promoting wellness. That's not too generic, is it? It involves a chiropractor using precise, specific, gentle touch on the spine to update and cue the nervous system and improve quality of life.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, you've got to cue up that nervous system, man.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' How is that different from craniosacral therapy? Don't they do the same thing where they just go, boop, all better.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Essentially.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, because with craniosacral therapy, they claim that they're readjusting the bones of the skull.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Of the skull, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But they're fused. They're fused, right? They don't move. So they don't have to apply much force, because they're not moving anything anyway.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' There's a picture that George has of himself where someone is squeezing his head and he's making his face like this. And that's basically the face you make when you get that treatment, because they're literally like, going like this on your skull, pretending that they're shifting bones around. And if they did, it'd probably kill you.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Right, that wouldn't be a good thing.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Now, I explained how NSA works. Here's what they write. It focuses primarily on working with the spine using low-force gentle adjustments. Practitioners shift the nervous system from a defense physiology to growth and healing by accessing the nervous system through the spine at specific areas known as spinal gateways.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Sounds like chakras to me.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Exactly, what?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' They're just making it all up.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, just making it up.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' So, all right. So we're here.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I did not learn any of that in biology, by the way.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Spinal gateways.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Like, not in any of my textbooks. Spinal gateways, I forgot.<br />
<br />
'''G:''' You know what, let's make this more authentic. I think you should read that again. We're gonna do it live, though, from the lab where they're doing this. So present this to the clients that are doing it and just read it again.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Okay, so how does. ''(George screams)'' The practice focuses. ''(George screams)'' Primarily on. ''(screams)'' Using low gentle.<br />
<br />
'''G:''' Harder!<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Adjustments.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Oh my God.<br />
<br />
'''G:''' That's good, that's good, that's good, that's good.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Live from the clinic itself.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That is magical. Well.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' You know, these places like these World Economic Forces.<br />
<br />
'''G:''' I feel great now. Sorry, I feel really good now.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' This is what they're inviting in and lending all sorts of legitimacy to it through money and other, and celebrity. Both money and celebrity, which is, of course, a magic formula, to spreading it worldwide into viral videos in which all sorts of people now are gonna start questioning and I'm sure some will be curious as to how they, too, can get NSA for themselves.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Italian couples all around the world figured out long ago that screaming is very therapeutic.<br />
<br />
'''G/C:''' Just Italian.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It makes you feel good.<br />
<br />
'''G:''' Solely Italian couples.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Gateways, Steve.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Spinal gateways.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's a neurological term.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Spinal gateways.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I mean, the good news is that that video, that specific video you're talking about with Julianna Hough and this guy, all I've seen regarding that video is sheer ridicule, which is good, at least. It's spread all over the internet and everybody was like, WTF is happening?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Well, she can't even act. She can't even pretend, like, she screams and it's like, wow, that sounds so fake, it's pathetic.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And she looks like she's convulsing.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, I'm reminded of like exorcisms where you have somebody who's actually, needs to be seeing a psychiatrist. So, Evan, I'm gonna start marketing MSU therapy, which to combat the NSA therapy.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' What's that?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Making shit up.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Careful.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Just don't tell anybody that's what it's called.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Not that it matters.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' You're right.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It's basically what it is.<br />
<br />
'''G:''' No, I think telling people that's what it stands for would be great, because it's just, look how honest he is. He's so honest about it that he's.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So refreshing.<br />
<br />
'''G:''' It's so refreshing that he's just, he's lying to us and telling us that he's lying.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But it's the power of the placebo now, right?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's so strong.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Placebo enterprises, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Making shit up, it's like the secret, right?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yep. Yeah, it is.<br />
<br />
== Special Segment: Personal Questions <small>(56:12)</small> ==<br />
* George Hrab asks the other Rogues personal questions<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, George.<br />
<br />
'''G:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' One of the roles that you recurrently play on the SGU is to ask us very probing and emotional questions.<br />
<br />
'''G:''' Sometimes emotional, but yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Sometimes emotional. Probing. You have a reputation of making rogues cry.<br />
<br />
'''G:''' Right.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' On multiple occasions.<br />
<br />
'''G:''' And that's not even on the show.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, that's not even on the show.<br />
<br />
'''G:''' That's just in the car right here, but yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So tell us what you're gonna do. You got some questions?<br />
<br />
'''G:''' Yeah, I got some really fun questions. I think what would be neat to do is some of these are gonna be sort of a little bit more in depth, and I think some of these should just be five second, don't really even think about the answer, and just blurt it out.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, that's dangerous, yep.<br />
<br />
'''G:''' Then some of them will be like whoever has the best answer can answer, and then some of them, I think, will all sort of go through and sort of chat. So for this very first one, I think it'd be nice to just, I'm gonna ask it, and we're gonna go straight down the line. Just Evan, Jay, Steve, Cara, Bob, and just don't explain.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' You did that so well.<br />
<br />
'''G:''' Okay, Steve, Cara, Bob. Don't even think. Don't even think. Just whatever pops in your brain as the answer, and we're gonna go straight down. Maybe we'll come back and do an end run, and we'll figure out the details.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' George, is it the same question for all of us?<br />
<br />
'''G:''' Same question for all of you. So yeah, ready? Ready. So here we go. What's the worst job you ever had?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Picking fruit and vegetable for you, and vegetables in the fields.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Working in a paper factory.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Working in a pill coating factory.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I worked at Feces Pizza. AKA Cece's, but that's what we also call it.<br />
<br />
'''G:''' Bob?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Digging ditches in my dad's truck.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That was actually a good exercise.<br />
<br />
'''G:''' Steve, did you and Jay ever dig ditches in your dad's truck?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Oh yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And it was not their worst job.<br />
<br />
'''G:''' And it was not your worst job.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I loved it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So Bob has had a pampered life.<br />
<br />
'''G:''' Why, why did you love it?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' We worked with tube guys who became role models for me. They were amazing. They taught me how to work. They actually taught me how to have a work ethic. And I learned a ton about the construction business and it was very physical. I loved it.<br />
<br />
'''G:''' How old were you?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Starting at 13. 13 to 16.<br />
<br />
'''G:''' So Bob, why'd you hate it?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Because digging ditches isn't fun. But it was. I mean, the company was great. I'll say that. All right, maybe working at Macy's. Maybe that was worse. All right, you happy?<br />
<br />
'''G:''' You're changing notes, yeah. All right, all right. What did you do at Cece's Pizza?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I worked there before I was 16. So the labour laws allowed me to work until like 7 p.m. Like, they're rules if you're under 16 in Texas, at least. And so I didn't work in the kitchen.<br />
<br />
'''G:''' You didn't carry a gun, though, right?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Totally. I worked the register and then I worked, I had to call pies, so like people, because it's a buffet, it's an all-you-can-eat buffet. So people come in and you have to like count heads and call pies to the kitchen so you can make sure that there's always enough food, but not too much food. And then also people special order. But the worst part about working there, honestly, because I loved all the free food, is that you cannot get that smell out of your clothes.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yes, you smell like a sandwich your whole food.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' You had like special pizza pants and they lived in the pizza drawer. Yes, it's still there. And it was terrible. It really is like, I think, not good for people's sense of self-worth when they constantly smell like the job that they come from.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The only time I had to have smell-isolated work clothes was when I was in gross anatomy.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' There you go.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Because everything I smelled.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' You were in Gray's Anatomy?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It smells like a corpse.<br />
<br />
'''G:''' For me, when Pennsylvania changed the smoking rules, we couldn't smoke in bars anymore. It was like this sea change of my lifestyle. Not only my car no longer, I didn't smoke, but because you have all your gear in the bar and you're playing. First off, when you're setting up gear and you're full of a room just full of smoke, before you even start singing, your voice is gone. So like there was that. Then all of your clothes get infused with smoke and then all of your cases get infused with smoke. So my car for about, I don't know, 15 years just smelled like smoke because you have it in there. You'd have this process if you go home, you get changed downstairs, take everything off. So staying in the garage. My dad all through the 60s and 70s did the same exact thing. And then they outlawed smoking in the bars. And it was like, I have my voice at the end of the night and my car doesn't smell like smoke. It's so great. Oh my gosh.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' George, remember like a lot of the speakers that we used to buy, they would literally be covered in like a carpeting.<br />
<br />
'''G:''' Yeah, yeah, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' And that carpeting was like a sponge for that smell.<br />
<br />
'''G:''' Every case that you have, a soft case that you put your drums in or your speaker case or whatever, yeah. It was just, it was like this nicotine delivery system. Yeah, awful.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' This is why I think it's really cool when you see fast food places or like different jobs where I think they're thinking about these things. And so they'll have like locker rooms. There's a handful of like In-N-Out I think does this where that you have uniforms that are issued to you. And then you change at work, you leave the clothes at work and they launder them.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Oh, that's awesome.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So you get, you don't have to take that home with you which I think is actually really empowering.<br />
<br />
'''G:''' What was the worst pizza and what was the best pizza that they had there?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' They have macaroni and cheese pizza.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And which was that?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Kind of amazing.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That was the best one?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I thought so. Well, I don't like tomato sauce. ''collective Whaaaaat?'' So most pizza is gross to me. I know.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That's a deal breaker. Oh my God. Yeah, I don't like tomato.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Not even marinara?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No.<br />
<br />
'''G:''' Do you like ketchup?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Tomato and basil?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I like barbecue, maybe that's the closest thing I'll get to tomato sauce.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That's very Texas of you.<br />
<br />
'''G:''' All right. Out of you five. Now we can have multiple people but whoever thinks has the best answer to this. What's the best story about you getting a scar? Who's got a good one? Who's got a good one?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' The best scar story.<br />
<br />
'''G:''' The best scar story.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' When I was five, when I was five years old I was jumping on the couch and my mom had a glass coffee table right next to the couch.<br />
<br />
'''G:''' Of course.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' And you know. So I got cut right here and it got really bad. And you know, your head blood was coming out. So my mom lost it. And I remember them driving to me, driving me to the ER. I had like a rag on my head and it got soaked with blood. And I'm in the backseat of the car with my mom and she's losing her mind. And my dad, I don't remember this part but my dad told me that. I said, mom, it's okay. I'm going to be fine, mom. I'm going to be fine. So I'm like telling her everything's going to be okay. Then I remember they didn't knock me out but I remember like having a big white piece of paper over me and I could feel the tugging on my the doctor's voice is here. And my mom's over here. You know, like I hear all that going on. Yeah. So there you go.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' When I was young, I did something similar where I was we had a tire swing in the front yard but it wasn't actually tire. It was like a big O-ring like hanging from the tree. And I used to like, when I would concentrate really hard I'd stick out my tongue. And so I ran and landed on my belly but then I went through the swing and my chin hit the ground. So my teeth went through my tongue. Yeah. And same thing. Like we went to the ER. I had a big rag in my mouth. I was spitting out a lot of blood but really interestingly, they didn't they were like, it's already healing. And so they were like, come back tomorrow. And if it looks as good as it looks now we don't have to do any intervention. And so I just slept that night with a rag in my mouth because I was so uncomfortable. And it was still like sensitive. And then the next day we went back and it was fine but it was really like traumatic for a lot of people.<br />
<br />
'''G:''' Were you like going after tomatoes while you were falling on the thing?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But when you stand over the toilet and a lot of blood is coming out of your mouth it's a little bit scary. And I was very young, but my more recent scar story is that I got bit by a Korean Jindo.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' What's a Jindo?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's a dog that is, I don't want to paint a broad brush cause he was a sweet dog, but he was aggressive. And they're very attached to their owners. And they kind of look like big Shiba Inus. They're like, they look like sled dogs like brown sled dogs.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' They look like what?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Like brown sled dogs.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Okay.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' You know, and Shiba Inu, Korean Jindo. And it bit my knee and I was dating. We'll put it this way. I was dating somebody who's much older than me. Who's very famous, who has some issues, fill in the blanks.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Tom Cruise?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, it was when I was dating Tom Cruise. And I got bit in the knee and I was like, oh my God, oh my God, this is horrible. And, but we were supposed to go to the Playboy Mansion for a party and I was wearing pantyhose and it bit a hole in my pantyhose cause it was like a pajama party. And he was like, but we can still go to the party, right? And I was like, okay, fine. So I went to the Playboy Mansion with like a gaping puncture wound in my knee and made it through the night. Finally, I was like, it hurts like really bad. Went home, cleaned it, wrapped it and didn't go to the doctor until the next day where they gave me a tetanus shot.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, if a dog bites you, you got to go to the ER right away.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. And the good news is I did-<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Unless you have a Playboy party then, you know.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No, but I cleaned it really well and it made me feel good cause I went to the doctor and I was like, this is what I did and blah, blah, blah. And he was like, you did everything I would have done. I was like, oh. That makes me feel better. But yeah, I probably should have gone sooner.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You should go soon.<br />
<br />
'''G:''' Do you have, is there a scar still from the puncture?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, on my knee. And there's still a scar on my tongue too, but you can only see it if I eat like a lollipop that changes your tongue colors. There's one spot that doesn't change colour.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, cool.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, it reveals. It's nice.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Here, suck on this. I want to see your scar.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' This is yellow. It won't work.<br />
<br />
'''G:''' I have two. One was when I was, as a camp counsellor, I was showing kids how to carve soapstone. And I sort of was standing over the crew and I said, now make sure that like as you hold the stone, you want to be careful because you want to have your thumb sort of as the, ah! And I totally, I totally sliced my hand open. It was like a red marker. And I just kind of went like that and I walked out of the room and all the kids were like, ah! That was good. So yeah, that's a little thing. But then the other one was a year ago, I was at the gym and I was doing jumps up onto a box, but they didn't have the regular boxes at my gym. They have these like metal stools, basically.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' With spikes in the middle?<br />
<br />
'''G:''' So yeah, with spikes and yeah, and broken glass on top. Just to really effectively motivate you, yeah, yeah. No, so I, so I was, it was after a workout and I was doing extra stuff afterwards and I jumped up and I missed. And so on the edge I did, I did this, you know.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Ow!<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yikes!<br />
<br />
'''G:''' And I knew, and so I jumped up and I did it and I landed and I'm like, I'm not looking down. I'm like, I'm not looking down. And I look over and Coach Jim, like the nicest coach, his name is Jim. He looks at me and the audio's not gonna really work, but he looks at me and he shakes his head and he goes. Oh.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' To this day, George has still not looked down.<br />
<br />
'''G:''' Yeah, yeah. So I don't know if you can see it. So it's still, I still got a little bit of bone there.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Let me see, let me see.<br />
<br />
'''G:''' So I finally looked down. So it was about, it was about a quarter size and you can see the bone underneath right there.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Ooh!<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, was that bad?<br />
<br />
'''G:''' It was that bad, yeah. It was, yeah, it was bad. The one side was okay, the other side was really bad.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Isn't it amazing when you-<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Well, there's not much skin there. I mean, there's not much meat there.<br />
<br />
'''G:''' That's the thing.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's true.<br />
<br />
'''G:''' It all just like accordioned up into itself.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And it's so crazy when you do it to yourself.<br />
<br />
'''G:''' Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Like you're like, I have the power to peel off my own skin to the bone.<br />
<br />
'''G:''' Yeah, so it went up. So luckily there was a little emergency center, like literally like to, it's an industrial park. So we went to this emergency center and they were like, they had to like pull the skin out because it was jammed up.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, it folded under.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It was like folded.<br />
<br />
'''G:''' Yeah, it was totally folded. And then he's sort of like, they sewed it, they sewed it done. And of all the places to have a gash like that, it was really good because there's no torsion here. So you can't really like mess with it.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, your palm is horrible. That's a great place to do it.<br />
<br />
'''G:''' Yeah, that was a great place. So the next morning I went back to the gym, I grabbed the box and the first thing I jumped up onto that goddamn thing. So I was like, you're not getting in my head. I was like, dun, kunk. Good. Let's go down the line starting with Bob.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, no.<br />
<br />
'''G:''' Real quick, real quick. What's something you did as a child that your parents still talk about?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So many things.<br />
<br />
'''G:''' Give one. One. What pops in your head?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh yeah, okay. Steve, is it you and I in the bathroom? I mean, in the room and the outlets? Or is it, who was that?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That was all of us.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' All of us. Well, okay. This is the story.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We can just stop there and let them fill in the blanks.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' So apparently I got under the door. The door was shut and I was like, fire, fire. My parents come in. We had peed in the sockets and sparks were coming out.<br />
<br />
'''G:''' Whose idea was it to pee in the sockets?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Who remembers?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, it made sparks fly out.<br />
<br />
'''G:''' Oh yeah, that's a good, okay.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Who's that? Probably Steve's.<br />
<br />
'''G:''' All right, we'll come back to that. We'll come back to that. Cara?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I'm a girl, so I never like, I don't have any like pee in socket type stories to tell.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It's hard to aim.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I know, that's not.<br />
<br />
'''G:''' Could be a good thing. Could be something.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, I think my mom always tells this one story and I really heavily question its veracity, but she says that when I was a kid, I was delayed in speaking. Like I wasn't ever speaking in words and they were worried. And then one day she came into my bedroom and she caught me practising talking. So she said that I would, I said, shut up, goggy. Like I said, a whole sentence was my first word, which I feel like is impossible, but that is what she tells everybody. So I was yelling, the dogs were barking a lot and I was like, no.<br />
<br />
'''G:''' Oh, doggy, okay, gotcha.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, shut up, goggy. Like to the dogs.<br />
<br />
'''G:''' All right, Steve.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, so apparently when I was like three, they, it was like two in the morning, I wasn't in my bed, they found me in the front yard eating dirt.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' How was it?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Apparently, I wanted to know what it tasted like. So I did a first person experiment.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I'm gonna let Bob tell mine.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Ooh, which one?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' The one that you were involved in, where I almost killed you.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' So last week.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' The gas tank?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' No, when you were standing in the window.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' He goes, the gas tank. No, not the gas tank. The other time.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' So I'm upstairs, I'm upstairs, I'm upstairs in my room, looking down, second floor. So I got a window here, I'm looking down. There's another, my bed was there, another window. So I see Jay in the backyard, little shit, like this big. And he's got a bow and arrow. So that's scary.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Wait, what's your age difference, by the way?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Five years.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Five years, okay.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' So, so I see Jay do this. So Jay's back was to me. So I see Jay's back, and he does this. Bow and arrow. And then, and let's go. Let's the arrow go. It goes through the window over here, through that window, and I'm standing at the other window, like 10 feet away. Like, holy shit, if it hit the other window, he could have killed me. It would have probably, at least, impaled me. And apparently, you were trying to get it over the roof, but you got it through the window. So Jay almost killed me that day.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' How well do you remember that episode?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Really well, really well.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Really?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I used to go out. Like, you guys would be coming home a lot of times on the school bus and stuff, and I was out playing in the yard, and I would be out. Remember when I used to put on the Bruce Lee jumpsuit?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Wait, how old were you? Jay, how old were you?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Wait, you put on my Bruce Lee jumpsuit?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Oh, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' The yellow one?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, the yellow one, black stripes, all the time.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Your parents let you play with a legit bow and arrow?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Oh, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But you weren't old enough to go to school?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Cara, this was the 70s.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Archery was a backyard sport, Cara. Yeah, everyone had a bow and arrow.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's a backyard sport for four-year-olds?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Well, I was a little bit older than four. I was probably like eight when this happened.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, I see.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' And I'm sure he did not ask permission.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' No.<br />
<br />
'''G:''' So Bob, did you say, did you run to mom and say, this just happened?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I have no memory of what happened after, just almost getting killed. That's when my memory ends.<br />
<br />
'''G:''' You didn't get in trouble?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' No, you didn't get in trouble for shit like that. That was just like, hey, stop that. It was the 70s.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Don't do that again.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Heaven. Eight years old, my parents, my whole family, my two sisters, my mother, my father, they're in the room, I don't know, watching TV or something. I come running from one end of the house through that room into the next room, slam the door behind me, and I go into the bathroom. Like, ran into the bathroom. So they all come to follow me. The door locked in there. They're like knocking on the door. Evan, what's wrong? Evan, what's wrong? I didn't say anything for five, for like, to them it must have seemed like 10 minutes. I don't know how long it was, a couple minutes maybe. And they have no idea what the hell is going on. And they, from what I'm told, all I could mutter was the word bee, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, and they're trying to figure out what's going on. Eventually I could get it out. Bat, bats, bat, there's a bat in the house. And they just like all cracked up, like laughing at me outside the bathroom. I felt so awful. I just felt like humiliated, but I was so frightened.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' There was a real bat in the house?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' And there was a bat in the house.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, that's kind of scary.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's cute.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' When does the family capture the bat?<br />
<br />
'''G:''' These stories still come up, so like, you'll be talking, like Thanksgiving or something, and it's just they eventually come up, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's the bat story.<br />
<br />
'''G:''' My mom always tells this thing that I, I was a very light sleeper. But I didn't cry, I didn't make noise. But whenever she wanted to check to see if I was asleep, I would just be at the crib, kind of like standing. Standing in the crib on the thing, just like watching the door, just like.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Creepy.<br />
<br />
'''G:''' Yeah, yeah, totally creepy, yeah. And just like, be curious. And she could barely, apparently, from what she could barely open the door, and I would just hear it, and just get up and be like, what, what? So yeah, she tells that all the time. You'd always be standing, you'd always be standing there. You were so quiet, you were so good, you never made a noise. Yeah, meh.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Wow.<br />
<br />
'''G:''' Open to anyone, best answer? If you could have any fictional character as a friend, who would you have?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I mean, Spock comes to mind.<br />
<br />
'''G:''' Spock comes to mind. What would you do with Spock? Like, what would you suggest?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I feel like he's not a friendly kind of guy.<br />
<br />
'''G:''' What would you suggest, like, if he shows, if he's like, he wants to hang out with you, what would you go do with Spock?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I don't know, go to a museum?<br />
<br />
'''G:''' Go to a museum, okay, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Would you LARP with Spock?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' LARP with him? If he would.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I'd LARP with him. If he would.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I'd pick Q from Star Trek Next Generation.<br />
<br />
'''G:''' Q?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I mean, you're gonna pick a friend, pick a powerful friend. Really powerful, like godlike. It's also a little scary. But imagine, if he's your buddy, man, hey give me a car, give me a mansion.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' He's a technical friend, though, yeah, but he could also decide.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' The premise, well, he didn't say fickle, he said friend.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, but Q is fickle.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Like, would Q be a good friend to you?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I know, it's a risk. It's a risk. I bet you there's somebody better that I could pick.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And also, think about what.<br />
<br />
'''G:''' Jesus.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' You like to hang out with your friends, you have fun with your friends, right?<br />
<br />
'''G:''' Right, right, like someone that you could, you know, that you'd want to chat with and hang out with or whatever, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I think Jeff Spicoli. I mean, that would be a lot of fun.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Who's Jeff Spicoli?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Past times in my mind.<br />
<br />
'''G:''' Sean Penn's first major film.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I mean, I wouldn't want to be hanging out with him all the time. But yeah, that'd be fun.<br />
<br />
'''G:''' I think for me, it's Oprah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' She's not fictional.<br />
<br />
'''G:''' Is she Cara? Is she Cara? No, I mean, Picard comes to mind. It's just I want to have dinner with Picard. I mean, actually, it's actually Patrick Stewart, so there's no real difference between the two.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That's an impossible question to answer because there's so many fictional characters I'm in love with. I'm trying to think which ones would be fun because it's not like if you like Arnold Schwarzenegger as the Terminator, like, what are you gonna talk to him about? I'd like to meet him for about 10 seconds and then I'd be done with him.<br />
<br />
'''?''' Or he'd be done with you.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' You talked to him about drapes in the last movie.<br />
<br />
'''G:''' Oh, here's a good one. This sort of goes along with the previous question. And maybe it follows up, but who was the worst boss you ever had?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It has to be in the past? ''(laughter)''<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I didn't say that.<br />
<br />
'''G:''' Well answered, well answered.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's mean.<br />
<br />
'''G:''' I'll start this one. I actually had a boss that sued me.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' What?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's bad.<br />
<br />
'''G:''' That was the worst. That was the worst boss.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' What do you gotta do?<br />
<br />
'''G:''' I was working at a college and I wrote a song that she claimed was about her.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Was it?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Was it called Bitch on Wheels?<br />
<br />
'''G:''' She claimed it was about her.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' What do you claim?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Was it?<br />
<br />
'''G:''' She claimed it was about her. ''(laughter)'' And I said it was open to interpretation.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's not in denial.<br />
<br />
'''G:''' She sued me for $50,000 for defamation, evasion of privacy.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' What did you say about potentially her in this song?<br />
<br />
'''G:''' Actually, in the song, there's actually no real lyrics. Yeah. One could interpret. One possible interpretation is that the syllables that were sung out of order could, in some way, be placed in an order that could be someone's name. I mean, like someone could not that that was the intention.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But what was the context around it?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' But wait, was it a total disorder or just a mild disorder?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Come on, George, grab the guitar. Let's hear it.<br />
<br />
'''G:''' It started initially as a disorder. But once this, it's a 30-second song. It's a 32-second song.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Let's hear it.<br />
<br />
'''G:''' Oh, fuck it. Okay, I took the syllables of her name.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Statute of limitations have expired. You're good. You're fine. You're fine.<br />
<br />
'''G:''' So it starts, and the first syllable of her name kind of just starts repeating. So if her name was, let's say, Sarah, which it wasn't, it just went, Sarah, Sarah, Sarah. And then there was another chorus. It starts going, rah, Sarah, rah, Sarah, rah. And then, like, the rest of her name, just for 30 seconds, it kind of plays out. And then at the end, everybody that was singing says, sucks.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's it? And she sued you for that?<br />
<br />
'''G:''' That's it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You can't sue for that.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I know.<br />
<br />
'''G:''' I know!<br />
<br />
'''E:''' You can sue for anything, whether you get an award or a dismissal.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's not a factual claim. That's clear hyperbole.<br />
<br />
'''G:''' Right?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''G:''' You would think. I had a judge. It was Judge Simpson. I was like, well, that's a good sign. Simpsons, cool. All right.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I would say that the fact that she-<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Did they play the song?<br />
<br />
'''G:''' They did play the song in court, which actually was worth everything. Because they had to get it in the records. So we're sitting there in the Lehigh Valley Court of Records, or whatever it is, and my lawyers, this amazing organization called the Philadelphia Lawyers for the Arts represented me for free. Because you had to show that you had no money, and they represented artists and musicians and stuff like that. So they were representing me, and she had hired this attorney and was spending who knows how much. And we're sitting there, and it's like, to enter into the record, can we play this thing? So they're playing the thing, and I'm just like, the sheer Python level of awesomeness that was happening at the time. I'm like, you know what? It's almost worth all the pain in the ass now. Because now it's in the public record, which means you can actually talk about it, and you can't, it's in the public record. The case was about, the whole trial was less than an hour, about 45 minutes. She had witnesses, I had a witness or two. And the thing ended, the judge was like, I don't think there's gonna be a judgement, but we're gonna go for a summary judgement. We're like, oh, it's a good sign, it's a good sign. Okay, cool. Judgement comes back, $50,000 in her favour. Which we thought, he did that because he didn't want, the judge didn't want to make a decision. He figured we would appeal, and then it wouldn't be his football, it wouldn't be his problem.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, what?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, messed up.<br />
<br />
'''G:''' Yeah, well then my attorneys missed an appeal deadline.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' What?<br />
<br />
'''G:''' So they said, to their credit, they were like, you should sue, to me they said, George, you should sue us, because we totally effed up. I'm like, I'm not gonna sue anybody, I'm not gonna sue you guys. So then-<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It should be 50 grand.<br />
<br />
'''G:''' Well, the 50 grand, I was like, I don't have 50 grand, hello. So we ended up settling for a much smaller number, that was still thousands of dollars, which I did not really have to my name when I was 27 years old. Yeah, and I looked into, I wanted to find a couple thousand dollars worth of nickels, because she insisted on cash, because she didn't want me to be able to see her bank account number, because she thought that if I gave her a check, I would be able to somehow trace and figure out-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Steal her money.<br />
<br />
'''G:''' Steal her money somehow, so I was like, you want cash? Fine. I inquired to like three banks, like how long would it take for me to get a couple thousand dollars worth of nickels, or pennies, is that possible? And I couldn't get the schedule wise in the deadline, so I ended up giving her, I had 50s, I gave her 50s, and I wrote on each 50 some words. Mostly just Shakespeare insults, I would just write, I found all these great Shakespeare insults that I threw out all his work, and I would just write Tempest, act two, blah, blah, blah, and then the next one I just wrote all these like Shakespeareans about wenches, and about whatever. Which wasn't that great. So that was my worst boss.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Wow.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So your lawyers were totally incompetent, I have to say this, because first of all.<br />
<br />
'''G:''' They messed up, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, so they messed up, objectively. First of all, you cannot sue for libel for opinion. Can't. And $50,000 is the threshold to trigger a change of venue to the federal courts where you were not gonna get a shitty state judge who's gonna rule a certain way just to get it off his docket. So there were multiple ways out of that for you, if you had lawyers who knew what they were doing.<br />
<br />
'''G:''' I actually, on my podcast, because I got the transcript of the whole trial, I did an audio version of the trial. So you can go to my podcast. It's like episode like 100 or somewhere down there, and it's called The Trial, and I did every voice, and it's about 48 minutes, and you see this.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Wow.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Did you perform the song?<br />
<br />
'''G:''' Well, yeah, I played the song at the point where it happened in the trial.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I gotta hear it now.<br />
<br />
'''G:''' I performed the thing.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That reminds me of when I was sued by the quack. He entered into evidence during the hearing, a clip from the SGU, right? And this was to show, I think what he was trying to establish something, about that we talked about him on the show or whatever. But in the clip, we were trash talking him for like five minutes. And this is being played in the courtroom, and it literally was all the things that my lawyer and I wanted to get into the record, but we couldn't. And now this jerk is playing it for us. In the middle of the court, my lawyer was just smiling at me the whole time. I was on the stand when this was happening. And he's like, is that you? Yep, that's me. You know, it was like, what are you doing? Yeah, they were making our case for us. It was fantastic. It was one of those same moments.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I have a bad one.<br />
<br />
'''G:''' A bad boss?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, I saw a guy used to work for a pistol whip someone in the office.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Pistol whip?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' With an actual pistol?<br />
<br />
'''J:'' With an actual pistol.<br />
<br />
'''G:''' What?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''G:''' All right, give.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I was a real estate agent in New York City. This guy was trying to collect money from the boss that used to work there. And there was a really small office that was like where the fax machine was and all that stuff back then. And I heard a little like, what hey and I come out, and the guy standing there, the guy that I used to work with, and he's arguing. So then my boss just marches out of the room. And I'm like, holy shit, man, what's going on? And he's like, look, he owes me eight grand or something and he's paying me and that's it. So I turn and talk to a couple of other people and like about five minutes goes by. And then you just hear this noise and I turn around and he's hammering him on the head with the gun.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Your boss?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Wow.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' And it was so violent and so completely effed up that me and the two people, I was standing, we were like frozen in fear. Because it was a gun. And I'm and I'm like, is it loaded? I'm like, all this stuff is going on. It was very dramatic. And then it was over. And then he did, the boss disappears again to hide the gun, right? So he, find out later, buried the gun in there. So in New York City there.<br />
<br />
'''G:''' I gotta be honest, it turned me on a little.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah. But he ends up burying it. I did get information later on.<br />
<br />
'''G:''' Was there any indication he was capable of that before you saw him do that?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' No. No, the guy was kind of unhinged a little bit, but not in a violent way. He was a weirdo. He was very weird. You know, and there was just a lot of things that happened. Like as I'm going back and thinking through like my experience there. I'm like, yeah, like I should have picked up on things. I was very young. You know, I'm like 20 when this happened.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And this was real estate?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''G:''' Anybody beat a boss with a gun? Can anybody, does anybody have a worse boss than that?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But I had a bad boss who is not violent, but honestly probably should have gone to jail. But I was young and new in the industry. I worked on a live daily show. I might've mentioned it on the show before. I worked on a live daily show for about a year and a half. And I had this boss who was also pretty young. I think he was like 38 and I must've been 30, 28, 29, 30. And I was the co-host of a show with my very good friend, Jacob Soboroff, who is now doing awesome on MSNBC. And we had a boss who is incidentally dead now, which is kind of weird. So that was like a complicated situation who was the most, like he was like the king of sexual harassment and like gaslighting in the grossest possible way. So like, if I walked out on set in a dress, like in my ear, he would be like, you look really good today. But then if I wore, one day I wore like a tie and he like petitioned to the network to not let me dress like that anymore because I look too masculine. And in our meetings, he would tell me that none of the staff liked me. Like he would pull me to the side and be like, you know when you talk, people cringe. And so like, probably don't speak up as much in meetings and probably, and I like believed him for a long, like he gaslighted me for like nine months where I was like, I don't, okay. And I became very timid and I became very like afraid to speak my mind and ultimately a situation where I was a co-host with my co-host became like, he was the host and I was the sidekick, even though that's not what our contracts were and that's not how we were meant to run the show. And ultimately I worked with a therapist and kind of like regained a little bit of confidence, but what ended up happening that's really messed up is that everybody got fired from the show and they retooled it, but they let me go first. And he was in the room and he looked like so smug and sanctimonious. And it was a really tough situation because I just decided that day, because they were like, we'd love it if you'd finished the season. I could have just walked out out of anger and been like, I'm not going to, but I was like, of course I'm gonna finish the season. I wanna keep making money, but I'm doing it on my terms. And so then I started to like not let him bully me around for the last few months of the season. Two weeks later, he got fired too, which was a little bit like, I don't know. I don't like wish ill on people, but it was a really, really hard situation. It took a lot for me to learn how to advocate for myself in that situation. And really what came was that my crew, like all of the producers that I worked with, I would start saying, I know that you guys think sometimes when I say, and they're like, what are you talking about? And they like helped me see that it was just this guy gaslighting me. And like, it wasn't actually like that. They're like, we're like huge, like we're friends. We're like, here, we like go out for coffee and stuff. Like, we don't not like you. Like we like it when you talk to us like that. So yeah, it was a really tough thing. But the good news is at the time, that's when I went on Joe Rogan a lot. I had been on his show like twice and he had told me that I should start a podcast because it's like my own thing. And like, I'm my own producer and blah, blah, blah. So Talk Nerdy was actually born out of a very dark time when I was feeling very like not in control of my career and like not really knowing what would happen. So a good thing came out of it, but it was like a brutal. And it makes me think about how probably so many women.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' How easy it is to [inaudible] into women.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Especially like, I consider myself to be like, one of the things I'm proud of, if you were to say, Cara, what do you have going for you? Like, what can you actually say? Is like, I'm a smart person. Like, I know that about myself. You know what I mean? There are a lot of things that women, I think we compare ourselves to other people in society. We're really socialized to think, but I'm like, whatever, I'm smart. And the fact that like, I could have been dismantled systematically by my boss because he was in a position of power and he would just the little things every day. I mean, it got to a point where I wasn't allowed to lead the panel. We had a section where it was like a panel discussion. I wasn't allowed to lead panel because nobody liked me and I wasn't good at it, according to him. And there was a panel on women in STEM and I had to be the sidekick to my male co-host leading the panel on women in STEM. And it was just like, and even he was like, what the fuck is happening?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That's so amazing, Cara, because I never, you are so strong. You have, you are like a force of nature.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But that's the thing about gaslighting a woman to make her think that she's a bitch because then she is like, oh, but when I'm being strong, people don't like me. So I need to be like more soft and demure.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I love when you're strong. I mean, really.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But that's how you gaslight a strong woman. You know what I mean? Is you tell her that nobody likes her when she acts like that and that she's not gonna be effective.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' If you don't want to have any ill will towards someone, let me know, I'll have the ill will for you.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Jay will pistol whip him.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' He knows how.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, it was intense, it was a bad time.<br />
<br />
'''G:''' One more quick one, right down the line. Evan, I'm gonna go straight down. Would you rather have won a $10 million lottery or live twice as long?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Live twice as long.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Live twice as long.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Twice as long, no question.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Am I twice as old?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' No, you're healthy, you're healthy.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I don't know, you can't.<br />
<br />
'''G:''' Oh, you mean, oh, do you age?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' What's the quality of life<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Do I age? Like, am I 100 and then I live to 200?<br />
<br />
'''G:''' I would say you're not gonna be commensurately like 200 years old, but you'll be old.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And then that makes it easier. Of course I want to live twice as long, but if I'm ageing that much, I might want to die.<br />
<br />
'''G:''' You'll be ageing, but I would say, yeah, I think.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I don't want to be 200.<br />
<br />
'''G:''' Proportionally, ageing proportionally.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I don't want to be old like a 200-year-old.<br />
<br />
'''G:''' I think you'll be, yeah, you're right. You'll be like Yoda, yeah. You'll be like an 80-year-old for the last 100 years, let's say.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, that's different. I would be down for that. But if I was like 160, I don't want to be 160. Then I would take the million.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Don't even ask Bob. Don't even bother asking Bob.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Bob wants to live forever.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Not forever, just for 2,000 years.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Time is more valuable than that.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Time is the most precious commodity.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I don't know, though. I'm sitting here thinking everybody else in my life is dead. I'm gonna take the money.<br />
<br />
'''G:''' I don't know, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I'm gonna take the money. I could do a lot of good with that money.<br />
<br />
'''G:''' What about 100 million? Would that change?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, then I'll definitely extra take the money.<br />
<br />
'''G:''' 100 million versus living twice as long. Is there a point? Is there a?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, I don't think there's a point.<br />
<br />
'''G:''' No?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' There is a point.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' No. No, there isn't.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I will say there's a point.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Well, maybe, because I know what Bob is saying.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Jay knows exactly what I'm saying.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Because Bob's going, okay, if you're gonna give me a few trillion dollars, and you can.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, yeah, then you can, right.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But I mean, that's not true. Bob's living in a fantasy land.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' What?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' There's no amount of money right now that you could, with technology, that you could, yeah, that you could have a high probability of living twice as long.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' But I look at it like this. I started my family older.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, maybe before we were younger.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I want to see my kids get married. I want to see what their lives are like. And that's worth.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I want to see movies in 100 years.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, whatever. I want to see my kids' lives. I want to. I want to be like the way, my parents got to see everything with their kids. And I want.<br />
<br />
'''G:''' We're doing this Star Wars series one more chance. And then that's it.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Episode 94.<br />
<br />
'''G:''' Episode 75.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It's not going to be movies, Steve.<br />
<br />
'''G:''' I swear this is the last one.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, it's going to be virtual reality. Total immersion.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
{{anchor|theme}} <!-- leave this anchor directly above the corresponding section that follows --><br />
== Science or Fiction <small>(1:31:10)</small> ==<br />
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|episodeNum=761<br />
|fiction= first computer<br />
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|science1 = oldest theatre<br />
|science2 = betsy ross myth<br />
|science3 = <!-- leave blank if absent --> <br />
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|answer1= oldest theater<br />
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|rogue2=cara<br />
|answer2=betsy ross myth<br />
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|rogue3=jay<br />
|answer3=oldest theatre<br />
<br />
|rogue4= evan<br />
|answer4= first computer<br />
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|rogue5= george<br />
|answer5= first computer<br />
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|clever= y<!-- each item was guessed (Steve's preferred result) --><br />
|win= <!-- at least one Rogue guessed wrong, but not them all --><br />
|swept= <!-- all the Rogues guessed right --><br />
}}<br />
''Voice-over: It's time for Science or Fiction.''<br />
<br />
<blockquote>'''Theme: Philadelphia'''<br>'''Item #1:''' The Walnut Street theatre is the oldest theatre in continuous operation in the English speaking world.<ref>[url_from_SoF_show_notes publication: title]</ref><br>'''Item #2:''' There is no evidence Betsy Ross stitched the first American Flag, a myth concocted 100 years after the alleged fact.<ref>[url_from_SoF_show_notes publication: title]</ref><br>'''Item #3:''' The first general computer, ENIAC, was built in Philadelphia. It weighed 27 tons and when fully turned on the lights in the city would dim.<ref>[url_from_SoF_show_notes publication: title]</ref></blockquote><br />
<br />
'''S:''' So we're here in Philadelphia, right? George, your band is the Philadelphia Funk Authority.<br />
<br />
'''G:''' That's true.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You live in Bethlehem, but this is pretty much your hometown.<br />
<br />
'''G:''' This is the home-ish, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But if you say you're from Philly, he'll like defend. He'll say I'm from Bethlehem.<br />
<br />
'''G:''' Ish. I mean, I'm a Jersey guy at heart. So yeah, so I'm a, yeah, I'm a, I'm a, I'm a.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But it's within.<br />
<br />
'''G:''' It's within my zone.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's within your domain.<br />
<br />
'''G:''' My, my, yes, yes.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It's your backyard.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' What about the rest of you? You guys spend much time in Philadelphia before?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. When I lived in New York, for a year when I was working on my, the first time I tried to do a PhD. So it was 08, 09, 08 to 09. And I lived in Queens. And my friend was in med school here at Drexel. And I came here every weekend for a year. I love like, cause we were like, at first we traded off weekends and then we're like, let's just do Philly every weekend. I love Philly. I think it's a great city. And I love where we are like in center city right now. It's so fun.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So, so you know that you can't, when you order a cheesesteak, you don't say I want a Philly cheesesteak.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. You don't say I want a Philly cheesesteak.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's kinda redundant.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I had a guy in a, I ordered...<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I wanna here cheesesteak?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Well, I did it. I came down here for, well it was like, a high school trip and I'm like walking. Like, well, there's two places you gotta go. And I walk in in one of them and I'm like, I want a Philly cheesesteak. And he goes, no uh uh uh uhh.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh boy.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Then he told me, he gave me an explanation of why that is not correct. But then I hear from people, you're lucky he didn't kick you out. Really?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, you don't go into a pizza shop in Manhattan, so I'd like a New York pizza, please. I guess you could but yeah, but it would but you're branding yourself as a tourist.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, which is and with the with the camera around your neck?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And here we go. Right, science or fiction. Are we ready?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yes?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah? What do you think the theme is?<br />
<br />
[talking over each other]<br />
<br />
It's about Philadelphia. Okay, so here. We are three items. Yep, two of these are real one of these are fake. Are you ready? All right item number one. The Walnut Street theatre is the oldest theatre in continuous operation in the English-speaking world. Number two there is no evidence Betsy Ross stitched the first American flag a myth concocted a hundred years after the alleged fact. And item number three the first general computer ENIAC was built in Philadelphia. It weighed 27 tons and when fully turned on the lights in the city would dim. All right, we're gonna pull the audience only after I get the rogues votes.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Why is that?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Because they live here. Yeah, so we're gonna start with Bob.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' What was the first one?<br />
<br />
=== Bob's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''B:''' So I Walnut Street theatre, never heard of it. Oldest theatre. Betsy Ross yeah, I mean sure there's so many things that we have just we're so wrong about that sounds like something we could be wrong about. ENIAC any act that kind of sounds right. That's ringing some bells here. So I'm gonna go with their Walnut Street theatre. Fiction.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay, Cara?<br />
<br />
=== Cara's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I hate it when he does. Cuz it's like you the most obvious wrong one is often right. And he picks the most crazy thing to be a truth and then a more subtle thing to be a fiction. ENIAC built in Philly 27 tons fully turned on the lights would dim. I could see that I mean the first general computer is probably really old like over a hundred years old now.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I didn't put the date in there, but it was 1947. I'll throw that out there. That wouldn't have made a difference.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Really? When did NASA become net? Oh, there was a 60s. Yeah, and they were just getting the big IBM ones. Yeah, I could I buy it. It might be fiction, but I buy it. I also buy the Betsy Ross thing like maybe she didn't stitch it. Maybe she like I don't know. Maybe wasn't the first one. She just fixed one. Added some stars. That's all she did is add some stars. I don't know. Walnut Street theatres the oldest theatre in the continuous operation in English-speaking world. The thing the reason that's so hard to believe is our country is not that old. And so when you think of like well how long has like England been in existence like or like you think of like theatres that were performing Shakespeare? And then they're gonna keep performing, but that's just a continuous operation and like England was bombed during World War two and they had to rebuild and there might have been shutdowns of all these places so maybe I'm starting to think that the fiction is not the Walnut Street theatre, but it's. Maybe it's fucking Betsy Ross, and she actually did do that, and that's why we all learned it in school. So I'm gonna go Betsy Ross is the fiction. It's like the unification fiction.<br />
<br />
=== Jay's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I haven't heard Betsy Ross's name in a long time. And I'm trying to remember like I have some vague memory of like she took the remnants of some old flag and then made the new one and that I don't know then I've got like a schoolhouse rock coming. The Walnut Street theatre is the oldest theatre in continuous operation. That just seems wrong, but that's so such a good one.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So it's obviously right.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, I mean because you just got to think like what's going on with the you know European countries that speak English, and you know no theatre survived that long. I don't know that's. That's a tougher. So I'm just gonna take any act off the table and say that's science. I mean the Betsy Ross one sounds like an urban legend, doesn't it? I'm gonna say that one. Wait. There is no evidence that Betsy Ross stitched the first American flag. I think that's science Walnut Street Theatre is the fiction.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay, Evan?<br />
<br />
=== Evan's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Walnut Street theatre, I think the key word here is continuous operation that would seem to indicate that that one's gonna be science. The next one about Betsy Ross. I seem to recall reading something about this not, the Betsy Ross Ross myth and this seems to be in line with that. That leaves the computer. ENIAC. Was that really the first? It might have been way 27 tons when fully turned on the lights in the city would dim? I kind of find that part of this hard to believe I mean the lights and the whole lights in the city in night. We're talking 1947. Not like 1899.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But the city lights just turned on in 1899 in most places.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I understand that but but still I mean I mean think about I mean 1947 that that that would be a huge huge draw. If it was drawing that much? I mean wouldn't other there be other problems like wouldn't the machine shut down or something before it even was able to pull that that amount of power. Something's wrong there. The computer one I think is the fiction.<br />
<br />
=== George's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''G:''' One of my favorite Stan Freeberg sketches is when George Washington goes to Betsy Ross to get the flag and George Washington shows up, and he's like you're having a little fun at our country's expense stars with stripes. How's that supposed to work design-wise? They go in this great song and he hates it he hates it, and she's like he wants polka dots. I deliberately said polka dots.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Do you notice that in every rendering of Betsy Ross like cartoon kind of or like on stage place? She's always like wearing a star-shaped bonnet or like a star flag printed bonnet. Yeah, all the time.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' All best stories are [inaudible]<br />
<br />
'''G:''' Everybody wants to be an art director. Everybody wants to call the shots. Anyway, I think the Wall Street thing is true. I think that Betsy Ross thing is true, or it's no evidence is true. I'm gonna say that the ENIAC thing is correct, but it wasn't Philly I for some reason in my mind it's like Baltimore or something. It's like it's not Philadelphia, so I'm saying the computer is the fiction.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Polls the Audience ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well at least we know we didn't sweep Steve.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You didn't sweep me, that's correct. So let's see what the audience thinks. The the locals. How many people are you here from Philadelphia?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That's most of them. Fred are you not from Philly?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Let's see what you guys think. So if you think that the one about the Walnut Street theatre is the fiction. Do the guys know the single clap method. You clap when I get here. We'll do one practice, ready? ''(audience claps)'' If you think the Walnut Street theatre is the fiction clap. ''(lots of claps)'' If you think that Betsy Ross being a myth is the fiction clap. ''(a few claps)'' And if you think that the ENIAC is the fiction clap. ''(a lot of claps)''<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Shit.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's very interesting.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #1 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Alright, so let's take them in order. The Walnut Street theatre is the oldest theatre in continuous operation the English-speaking world. Bob and Cara you guys both think this one-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No, I think that is-<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Oh, yeah, but Bob. You're the only one.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' No, me and Jay.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I said ENIAC.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Bob and Jay said this one is the fiction. And this one is science. This one is science.<br />
<br />
'''G:''' Really?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. 1809. 1809 continuous operation awesome, so that's it as that's the critical word all the other ones they shut down, and they open up they were. So absolutely.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #2 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So let's go to number two. So when you look up Walnut Street theatre like the first ten hits are all about tickets like it's, anyway. Number two, there is no evidence Betsy Ross stitched the first American flag. A myth concocted a hundred years after the alleged fact. Cara, I think you're alone in thinking on stage with this one is the fiction everyone else thinks this one is science and this one is science.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No evidence at all?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' None. It's in fact there is evidence that this myth was completely concocted out of whole cloth by her family like a hundred years later.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So what did she do?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Nothing.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Why do we know her name?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Because it was a completely fabricated.<br />
<br />
'''G:''' It's the same time when they were doing like the George Washington cherry tree myth. There was all this like historical stuff.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But George Washington was the president so like.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' She existed.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, but why do we care about her?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It was propaganda.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's so weird though because we learned it in school.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I know, it's complete nonsense, and there's like no there's no provenance before a hundred years after she lived.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' She's like one of the disciples.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Holds a place in the pantheon. Undeserved. Undeserved.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' She did some shit.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' She's Philadelphia history. Just not just not that part.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #3 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Number three, the first general computer ENIAC was built in Philadelphia. It weighed 27 tons and when fully turned on the lights in the city would dim that is fiction. There's a lot of pieces in there, so what part is the fiction?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' The city.<br />
<br />
'''Audience:''' The lights.<br />
<br />
'''G:''' The lights, okay.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So it was built in Philadelphia, but was moved to Baltimore. After a year of operation. It was built, it was designed to. So it's okay so first general computer meaning prior to that computers were built for one thing. You had to put yet to do one type of operation, and it wasn't reprogrammable. This was reprogrammable, not easily-<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Hundreds of calculations per hour.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It would take weeks and weeks to reprogram it, but you could. Once you designed, once you said I wanted to now do this problem. You could do that, but you can't cuz they're pulling out cards and stuff like that. The original purpose for which it was designed was to calculate ballistic trajectories for World War two. But it wasn't completed until after World War two was over so the scientists were like great. We'll use it for-<br />
<br />
'''G:''' Keep bombing.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' What we want to use it for.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' What good is this thing just put it in the warehouse.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' The world will only need three computers.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Think about it. Calculating trajectories, what else is that good for?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Orbits?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Nat for NASA for orbits, and so this could do like 20,000 hours of human calculation in a minute. You know so that was over a person this was a huge advance.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But NASA didn't even exist yet.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, but this was for the space program and for the whatever the precursors of that etc.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So it wasn't 27 tons?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And it was used up until 1956 or something so we used up until we were doing that. Not in 47, but okay. So some other facts about this that are interesting. It weighed 27 tons.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It did?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, that was correct.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And then they moved the whole thing to Baltimore?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' They moved the whole thing. Some amazing stats. 20,000 vacuum tubes, 7,200 crystal diodes, 1500 relays, 70,000 resistors, 10,000 capacitors.<br />
<br />
'''C:'''Who designed it?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And approximately five million hand soldered joints. Five million hands on a massive massive-<br />
<br />
'''B:''' And this thing is probably hundred million times better.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Steve isn't it true that they ended up shutting ENIAC down because it became conscious?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I feel pain.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Just became obsolete.<br />
<br />
'''G:''' Betsy Ross is a myth.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Turn it down! Shut it down! Unplug it!<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Electronic numerical integrator and computer. It was built at the time as a as a machine brain, an artificial brain. And at the time it was. A lot of science fiction from the time which I've read a lot of science fiction over time like even Isaac Asimov who was a visionary, but they said-<br />
<br />
'''B:''' He called them univac and multivac.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well univac was a next actual. When they thought about like what are things gonna be like in a hundred years, in 200 years. They envisioned computers that were the size of cities. They thought the computers would get bigger and bigger and bigger.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I'm not aware of any sci-fi author that really predicted.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Predicted that they would get small.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I mean, but guys think about. Miniaturization is in and of itself an incredible-<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Right, but it wasn't anticipated in this context.<br />
<br />
'''G:''' Transistor.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But there there were rumours which became mythology that when you turn the machine on fully that the area would dim. The university where it was housed and then that spread to like the city would dim. But it was never true, and it was actually investigated and found that nope. It was complete mythology. That was the part that was total myth.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's funny. That seemed like the most true to me.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, that's why.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Good job Steve.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And also that like it would never actually be at full capacity, so don't have to worry about it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' If you fired the whole thing I mean it was 160 kilowatts. A lot of juice but not enough to brown out a city.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Does anybody in the room know did ENIAC make noise when they turned it? I would love to know-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I'm sure it hummed.<br />
<br />
'''G:''' Billy Joel sang about it when he said ENIAC-AC-AC.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' George I totally love you, man. Such a humor. I was like every time you tell a joke. No, but you know I would love to use that for who's that noisy. I wish that there was a recording of it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' There might be.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It's interesting though that power consumption is a huge concern for the next generation of super computers. They would literally use the power of an entire city to run? I mean, that's a major concern.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Absolutely. As energy efficient and powerful by comparison computers are the amount of computer computing power in the world-<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Trillions of times faster.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, but it's, the power output of countries relative to the whole world is powering our computers. And in fact there's a lot of concern about Bitcoin. Running a cryptocurrency like if the world ran on cryptocurrency it would be a massive increase in power output just to run the computers.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's only the mining. It's just the mining of the Bitcoin that takes so much power. Not the utilization of it.<br />
<br />
'''G:''' Literal electrical power?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, oh yeah, yeah, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' There're like whole farms.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It's funny there's bin gimps in availability of GPUs because they are designed to do that kind of processing better than a CPU. The calculation that you got to do to figure out the algorithm for a Bitcoin.<br />
<br />
== Skeptical Quote of the Week <small>(1:47:54)</small> ==<br />
<br />
<!-- For the quote display, use block quote with no marks around quote followed by a long dash and the speaker's name, possibly with a reference. For the QoW in the recording, use quotation marks for when the Rogue actually reads the quote. --> <br />
<br />
<blockquote>Nanotechnology will let us build computers that are incredibly powerful. We'll have more computing power in the volume of a sugar cube than exists in the world today.<br>– {{w|Ralph Merkle}}, American computer scientist</blockquote><br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, all right, Evan. Do you have a quote for us?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, I do. I actually have two. One's a fake quote and one's an actual quote. Here's the fake quote. Ready? "Here lies WC Fields. I would rather be living in Philadelphia." Anyone heard this? It's supposedly what's written on his epitaph on his gravestone? It's very famous.<br />
<br />
'''G:''' [inaudible]<br />
<br />
'''S:''' [inaudible]<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, that's a version of it, but it has a lot of fake. Not not real, no no. So obviously famous Philadelphian. So I was looking for Philadelphia related quotes and that one pops up all over the place. So you know WC Fields was yes native son of Philadelphia. But often use Philadelphia as a joke as a gag as reds the foil and it's humor and stuff. So I was looking for some things that were a little bit more positive, and then I came across some like real fluffy bleh non-science related stuff. So I went a whole different direction.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So you went with ''eh, yo Adrian''.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' He's just not funny anymore, I guess, you know?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' All right, but here's the actual quote and this one's dedicated to Bob. "Nanotechnology will let us build computers that are incredibly powerful. We'll have more power in the volume of a sugar cube than exists in the entire world today."<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I think I know who said that.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Who?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Eric Drexler.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' No.<br />
<br />
'''G:''' Betsy Ross.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' No, Ralph Merkel.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, he's awesome.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' There you go Bob. Ralph Merkel. No, not from Philadelphia. But he is a computer scientist. One of the inventors of public-key cryptography. The inventor of cryptographic hashing and more recently a researcher and speaker of cryonics.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' And often eater of Philly cheesesteak.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Or cheesesteak.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' He'll never learn.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, well, thank you guys for joining me.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' You're welcome brother.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's Steve.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And thank all of you for joining. ''(applause)'' Hopefullly we'll have an opportunity to return to Philadelphia, it's not that far for most of us, and it's a great city.<br />
<br />
== Signoff/Announcements == <!-- if the signoff/announcements don't immediately follow the QoW or if the QoW comments take a few minutes, it would be appropriate to include a timestamp for when this part starts --><br />
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'''S:''' —and until next week, this is your {{SGU}}. <!-- typically this is the last thing before the Outro --> <br />
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}}</div>Hearmepurrhttps://www.sgutranscripts.org/w/index.php?title=SGU_Episode_70&diff=19099SGU Episode 702024-01-15T06:32:45Z<p>Hearmepurr: </p>
<hr />
<div>{{Editing required<br />
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{{InfoBox<br />
|episodeNum = 70<br />
|episodeDate = November 21<sup>st</sup> 2006<br />
|episodeIcon = File:Einstein.jpg<br />
|caption = Einstein, in a 1946 letter, may have mentioned a certain pseudoscience...<br />
|rebecca = y<br />
|bob = y<br />
|jay = y<br />
|evan = y<br />
|downloadLink = http://media.libsyn.com/media/skepticsguide/skepticast2006-11-21.mp3<br />
|forumLinktopic = 682.0<br />
|qowText = A Hubble Space Telescope photograph of the universe evokes far more awe for creation than light streaming through a stained glass window in a cathedral.<br />
|qowAuthor = {{w|Michael Shermer}}, American science writer<br />
|}}<br />
<br />
== Introduction ==<br />
''You're listening to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.''<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Hello and welcome to the {{SGU|link=y}}. Today is Tuesday, November 21<sup>st</sup>, 2006, and this is your host, Steven Novella, President of the New England Skeptical Society. And joining me this week are Bob Novella... <br />
<br />
'''B:''' Hello 9000 people!<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Rebecca Watson... <br />
<br />
'''R:''' Hey, hey. <br />
<br />
'''S:''' Evan Bernstein... <br />
<br />
'''E:''' Hi everybody. <br />
<br />
'''S:''' ...and Jay Novella. <br />
<br />
'''J:''' Good evening guys, what's up?<br />
<br />
'''R:''' So 9000, is that a...<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You did break 9k.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' Is that our number now? That's not enough. Why aren't you people telling your friends?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' 10k is looming on the horizon though.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' See, Steve, you're saying 9000 people have downloaded any one of our podcasts.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's correct.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That's pretty awesome.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' You know, I think I was talking to Steve earlier in the week. I was listening to some earlier shows and I think it was episode number 38. We made an announcement that we were ranked 67.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' On iTunes, on the science category.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' That's kind of cute.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' 67.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, we sucked.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We've been as high as 8.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, thanks to you.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, well thanks to all our listeners out there.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, definitely.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Thank you all.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Thank you very much, listeners.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We do appreciate it.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Keep listening.<br />
<br />
== News Items ==<br />
=== Global Orgasm Day <small>(1:16)</small> ===<br />
{{shownotes<br />
|weblink = https://web.archive.org/web/20120414053932/www.sweetness-light.com/archive/global-orgasam-day-aging-hippies-call-for-love-in<br />
|article_title = Global Orgasm Day – Old Hippies "Love In"<br />
|publication = Sweetness & Light<br />
|redirect_title = <!-- optional...use _Redirect_title_(NNN) to prompt a redirect page to be created (consider using an anchor!); delete this parameter when redirect is created --><br />
}}<br />
'''S:''' So, the first day of winter this year is going to be a very special day.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' I can't wait.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You guys heard about this?<br />
<br />
'''R:''' Heard about it. It's on my calendar.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's going to be Global Orgasm Day.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Oh, I like to say sexy times.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Which has, of course, the great acronym of God. I don't know if that was intentional or not. Probably.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' I'm very excited by this.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Steve, what do they do? They have like a, at 9.30 everybody get it on. You know, like what happens?<br />
<br />
'''R:''' They actually don't even specify a specific time. Apparently, it's come as you will. I didn't even plan to say that.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' So is that kind of like the analog to World Jump Day? Was it World Hump Day?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Basically, it's a couple of ageing hippies who think that if everyone has an orgasm on the same day that it will actually promote world peace.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' I think they're onto something there.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It's worth a try.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' If everybody in the world had an orgasm on the same day, I think it'd be a pretty good day.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' You know, most people do have an orgasm on the same day.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, but the problem is that they probably won't achieve the actual peace because there will be so many fake orgasms going on that day that it will bring down the total.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' Well, speak for yourself.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It will bring down the total.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Evan, do you know a lot about fake orgasms?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I know nothing of them.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' As far as you know.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Just what you're telling, Jay.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' What I'm worried about is that if everybody has an orgasm at the same time, it might push the earth off of its orbit around the sun. You have to be careful.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' I'm not sure that's the way it works, Jay.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' These two peace activists, Donna Sheehan, no relation to the other Sheehan, and Paul Reffel, whose goal is for everyone in the world to have an orgasm on December 22nd. While focusing, here's the key though. While having the orgasm, this is the challenging part. You have to focus on world peace.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' Because really nothing gets me off like Gandhi.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' World peace.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' They think that this mental energy, the positive energy will actually bring more peace around the world. They say mass meditations have been shown to make a change.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Well that's the key right there. There you go.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' Well yeah, they kind of haven't. They're referring to that Princeton group of crazies that are the egg people. Didn't we talk about them before? They study a random number of generators to look for anomalies around major world events. All of it's extremely subjective, pointlessly subjective. Because it's funded by Princeton though, it's always kind of been seen as something that's got some sort of credibility, which it really doesn't, and I think actually that they just closed down the program.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But it's one of those things, it is no real scientific validity there, but it gets into the public consciousness that people are like, oh meditation works, scientists have proven it, but that's actually not the case.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' And so that's where global orgasm today is hitching their wagon to, which is kind of pathetic. I say we forget about that, and a month later after that shows to have no result, we have Screw for Science Day.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Screw for Science Day? You get to work on that Rebecca.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' Oh I will.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I think you can. If any one of us can put that together, it's you Rebecca.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' I think so.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That is your mojo.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Pick Masters and Johnson, we'd be into that.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So basically the theme is grab a piece for world peace.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Basically.<br />
<br />
=== The Science of Deception <small>(5:03)</small> ===<br />
{{shownotes<br />
|weblink = https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn10615-your-eyes-can-deceive-you-dont-trust-them/<br />
|article_title = "Your eyes can deceive you; don't trust them."<br />
|publication = New Scientist<br />
|redirect_title = <!-- optional...use _Redirect_title_(NNN) to prompt a redirect page to be created (consider using an anchor!); delete this parameter when redirect is created --><br />
}}<br />
'''S:''' Onto some serious science, some scientists have been investigating the actual mechanism by which magicians deceive their audience, and this is actually some cool research. This is coming out of the University of Durham in the UK, Gustav Kuhn, who's a neuroscientist and also a magician. What he did was he showed 38 students the vanishing ball illusion. This is where a magician pretends to throw a ball up into the air. 68% of the people watching a competent magician doing this illusion believed that they perceived that they actually saw a ball leave the magician's hand and then vanish in air. Now of course the magician never lets go of the ball. So how is it that two thirds of people roughly are so fooled into believing this illusion? One of the things that they discovered was that people tend to not only focus on the hand gesture, and there's also of course the expectation of what is supposed to happen. You expect that the ball will fly up, but of course there is no ball so it must have disappeared, but also that the audience looks at the magician's eyes and takes sort of social cues from the magician, and what magicians do is they pretend to follow the predicted path of the ball with their eyes, and that enhances the illusion. So if you see someone reacting to the trajectory of the ball, it's more believable and it's more effective illusion. So I thought that was very, very interesting, deconstructing and figuring out how that works.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' Yeah, interesting for you and annoying for us magicians who would prefer that you people not know that. It's kind of nice when we can just do that stuff and everybody doesn't care.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I'll tell you what, even though sometimes I know things are obviously a trick and an illusion and I'll still look at it, I'll still be deceived by it. So don't...<br />
<br />
'''R:''' It's a really powerful thing. Actually we had Richard Wiseman on the show a few weeks ago and I went and saw his show in New York, and part of his show is doing a simple vanish and doing it again and again. And even though you know that the coin is really still in his right hand, say, instead of his left, you still find yourself looking at his left hand because of his actions. And he actually goes through that step by step and he shows, I'm looking here, my hand is moving here, that is why you're looking here. It's a really nice little breakdown of it. <br />
<br />
'''S:''' But a lot of magicians have sort of given away the really basic secrets, and even Penn and Teller sort of do that a little bit, and Randi has done that a little bit, just a little tidbit of how magic works as part of the show. Of course they always save the more sophisticated stuff for performing magicians.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' Mostly when you find a magician who's showing an audience how something works, normally the method that they're showing is something that's outdated. The actual gimmick that they're using is either outdated or it's just not something anybody uses at all.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' But there's always new people coming along, kids they have no idea, that's why kids are just fascinated with these tricks, even the old classic ones, they'll keep going forever.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I still love to see tricks I've seen done a hundred times.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Me too.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I still am fascinated by the the artistry is amazing, and I still don't know how they're all done either.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' Right. That's what I'm saying, like the classic tricks are still around that have a great trick could be a hundred years old and people don't know how it's done, it's just, it's all about the magician who's doing it, who's performing it.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, there's so many different ways to pull it off.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' You ever see that sleight of hand trick where the magician is throwing, like, tissues over the person's head?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Close up magic.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It's really cool, very, very cool to see someone being duped just by their perspective is different, obviously, from where you're standing, and you see the tissue obviously going over their head, but they're like, where are they going? It's a really cool illusion.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' David Copperfield used to do a nice version of that with eggs, and he would have somebody scrambling around behind the person catching the eggs before they hit the ground. Good stuff.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Of course, the lesson for skeptics and all of us is that we can never forget how easy it is for all of us to be fooled. You can never use as a premise of an argument, well, I can't be fooled, it's impossible to fool me, so therefore I know that this is true. That is a type of argument from authority that magic nicely destroys.<br />
<br />
=== MoD warns of Aliens <small>(9:44)</small> ===<br />
{{shownotes<br />
|weblink = https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-415514/Aliens-attack-time-warns-MoD-chief.html<br />
|article_title = 'Aliens could attack at any time' warns former MoD chief<br />
|publication = Daily Mail<br />
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'''S:''' One more news item. The former Minister of Defense in the UK, this is Nick Pope, has warned that aliens could attack us at any time. His concern is, well, while he was Minister of Defense, he became convinced that aliens are visiting the Earth and that we need to be on the ready, on the lookout, and he is concerned that the governments of the world are not taking the UFO phenomenon seriously. They're not following up credible eyewitness reports. He says, frankly, we are wide open. If something does not behave like the conventional aircraft now, it will be ignored.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' Maybe he was privy to certain secret information that we don't know.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well he's not the MOD anymore, now he can tell us, right?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I think he's still under restrictions.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' Right, he could get vaporized by the men in black.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, if that were true, if that were true, would he be saying what he is saying? I mean, would he come out with these statements about...<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Does he have a book coming out or something?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Actually he does.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, I wonder why he's saying these things.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' But I think he's still couching it in ambiguous terms.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' I look forward to seeing his evidence.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Right, he has no evidence. If he had evidence, he would come out with it. And if he... You can't be causal. I have the secret evidence that I can't show you. Okay, well we can't believe you either then.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' I have data that's going to completely change the world, and I have evidence that shows that we are in imminent danger of attack from aliens, but you're going to have to wait until HarperCollins is releasing it in September. Sorry.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' And really, I mean, you've got these aliens coming how many light years to the earth. If they want to be aggressive and do something against us, there's really nothing we could do.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Exactly. That's his weakest premise.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I mean, we're just like bacteria.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Like it matters if we're ready or not ready.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' He's got a board with a nail in it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We would be at the tender mercies of any alien to arrive at our planet. That's the bottom line.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' At absolute best, we might be able to allow ourselves to know a tiny bit ahead of time that they're about to destroy us.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Like in Hitchhiker's Guide.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It would be like the Hitchhiker's Guide. We would be blissfully ignorant of what was happening. We would know what they would want us to know, basically.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' He throws out some old standbys, like a lot of these UFO guys, regarding the triangular shaped craft that was flying over the RAF base, as he said. Most of the witnesses were police and military personnel. Like they're more authoritative in their observations than anybody. I don't care what you do. Anybody could be fooled by an optical illusion.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Absolutely. And that's exactly what I was referring to with the magician piece. It's a staple of the UFO shtick. There are credible witnesses out there. Credible military, airline pilots. No one's a credible witness.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Right. If they're human, they're not credible.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's right. No one is beyond illusion. We all have the same brains, the same optical systems, we're susceptible to the same deception, the same optical illusions. No one's a credible witness. And also, being a police officer in the military or a pilot doesn't mean you're skeptical. It doesn't mean you know how to think logically about evidence. It doesn't mean you don't have a strong desire to believe something and could fool yourself. Look at this guy. I mean, he again, the article about him and his claims often cite that he's credible because he has credentials because of who he was and because he spent, he was the head of the UFO project between 1991 and 1994. It doesn't mean that he's being logical or that he's being scientific or skeptical at all. It doesn't mean that he should be believed.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Now, if Randi was saying that stuff, I'd sit up and take notice. You know, somebody who's schooled in that who knows how we're deceived.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' Well, no, no, be fair. You just said that there's no such thing as a credible witness.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' If it depends on what he's talking about, you're saying if Randi says or if I saw a UFO if I had an experience where I saw a UFO, that wouldn't be any more credible than anybody else because I could be it could have been a hypocrite. Hypnagogical hallucination or right. I could have just misperceived something that was.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' He could have just gone nuts.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' But I would tend all else being equal. I would tend to believe somebody who's familiar with how people see themselves within somebody who wasn't.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' If someone who has pretty good credentials as a skeptic says, hey, I have evidence that there are aliens or UFOs, then I would take that seriously. At least I look at the evidence. They still have to show me the evidence. They're worth for anything. You still have to come forward ultimately with the evidence that the credibility is not never, ever, ever enough.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Right. And it's like the Bigfoot professor the past couple of weeks and this guy, they said they have the evidence. You know, put it out there. Come on. Let's take a look at it. And for whatever reason, they don't or they can't or whatever, you know. It's like, come on. They don't even mention the evidence if you can't even really present it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So in the end, that's what it comes down to, and he doesn't have any new evidence to put forward. Well, let's go on to your emails.<br />
== Questions and E-mails ==<br />
<br />
=== Wonders of the World <small>(15:10)</small> ===<br />
{{shownotes email <!-- delete this template if no email is given in the shownotes or read in the episode --> <br />
|text = First, I want to compliment the panel on the consistent high quality of your podcast. I've been listening to back episodes so quickly that I'll soon run out, and short of re-listening to your show was wondering what podcast your panelists listen to regularly.<br/><br/>Second, I would like your input on what I think in an interesting question. ABC News Good Morning America has been running a series called the "New Wonders of the World." Their list is interesting, but seems a bit tired (the internet and the great migration in Africa were bold choices, but Jerusalem?). Aside from giving Robin Roberts the opportunity to make really asinine statements such as "The Mayans invented the calendar we use today," they didn't really explore much that is really wondrous and mind-expanding.<br/><br/>I'd like to put to your panel: what do you consider the greatest wonders of the world (and "world" can be interpreted in its larger context, not just Earth)? As this is a skeptical show, the wonders should be limited to the physical universe, and those things that - if speculative - have at least a decent chance of being explained by science someday. To get the ball rolling, to me the greatest wonder of the world is the mystery of consciousness itself. How does the gravitationally-aggregated ash of star explosions organize itself to the point where it can understand what it is made of? It's a controversial question, even among scientists, but one that I do think can be addressed.<br/><br/>How about it, guys? What gives you goosebumps?<br />
|sender = Brad Reed<br />
|location = Botkins, Ohio<br />
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'''S:''' First one comes from our message board. This one comes from Brad Reed in Bodkins, Ohio. And he writes, "First, I want to compliment the panel on the consistent high quality of your podcast. I've been listening to the back episode so quickly that I'll soon run out and short of relistening to your show was wondering what podcast your panelists listen to regularly." That's not his question. I do listen to the Are We Alone? We interviewed Seth Shostak last week. I do like his podcast. I listened to the Scientific American podcast. Those are also excellent ones. And the other skeptical podcasts, of course, like Point of Inquiry and Skepticality. So if you're looking for more of a skeptical fix, those are good ones.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' Ricky Gervais and Penn Jillette both have podcasts that are classed as comedy, but they are obviously really skeptical people.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Now Gervais, he's the guy in the British version of The Office?<br />
<br />
'''R:''' Yeah, yeah. He's a comedian. And they did a really successful podcast through The Guardian a while back. And it was so great that they brought it back for a few more episodes. They've already got one out. And I think they've got two more coming out in the next few weeks. And they are hysterical and extremely skeptical and very funny. So check those out.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Good combination.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' He writes, "Second, I would like your input on what I think is an interesting question. ABC News Good Morning America has been running a series called The New Wonders of the World. Their list is interesting, but a bit tired. Aside from giving Robin Roberts the opportunity to make really asinine statements such as the Mayans invented the calendar we use today, they didn't really explore much that is really wondrous and mind-expanding. I'd like to put it to your panel. What do you consider the greatest wonders of the world? And by world, can be interpreted in the larger context, not just the Earth. As this is a skeptical show, the wonders should be limited to the physical universe." Of course they will be. "And those things that, if speculative, have at least a decent chance of being explained by science someday." How about it guys, what gives you goosebumps?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Elves and Eskimos.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' Eskimos are actually real. I hate to break that to you.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Sorry, that was a Simpsons quote. Get up to speed please.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' Oh, sorry. I missed it. Oh, the technically Eskimos aren't real because they're not, never mind, come on.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' They're Inuit, right?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' All right, so we'll do the first one, Steve. Greatest scientific wonders of the universe?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yes.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' For me, the greatest scientific wonder of the universe is the reality that quantum mechanics describes. I mean, when you start looking at quantum mechanics and you read about things like the wave-particle duality light is definitely a particle, but it's also definitely a wave depending on the experiment, both at the same time, superposition quantum scale phenomena are actually in all possible orientations until interacting with the environment or decoherence, entanglement, particles sharing particular histories together are instantaneously correlated, even if separated by light years. Tunneling. Particles tunneling through seemingly impossible barriers. You look at this stuff, I mean, that's what fills me with awe and wonderment, and a lot of people think that science and reductionism and even skepticism they boil the world down to dry, uninteresting facts they diminish nature's beauty, whereas Richard Dawkins puts it unweave the rainbow, but, I mean, if you think there's no magic and awe and wonderment in science, I mean, just look at quantum mechanics, it's totally amazing.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You don't know science.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Right. Yeah, you don't know science and you definitely don't know quantum mechanics.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' At its fundamental level, nature is a probability wave. That is an incredible concept.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' Technically Dawkins wasn't the one who said unweaving the rainbow.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' No, he didn't really. I mean, didn't he? He wrote the book, Unweaving the Rainbow, didn't he?<br />
<br />
'''R:''' Yeah, but the quote is from a poet. It's from a poem from somebody criticizing Newton, I think, for overly explaining things.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Well, I was basically referring to his book, but yes, I sit corrected.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' Sorry. I agree with you, though. Quantum mechanics. Awesome.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Anyone else want to contribute something?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Beat that.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' It's tough to beat that, and it's hard to pick just one thing but given it just a little bit of thought, I'd say one thing that regularly gives me goosebumps is just the thought of nebulae. I just really love, first of all, we get beautiful, amazing images of these distant nebulae that they're just gorgeous just to look at and then to imagine that that's where new worlds are being birthed. I think that's just a beautiful idea, and it's just a beautiful, violent kind of imagery that always manages to kind of catch my breath.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Well, Rebecca, I hope I don't burst your bubble a little bit with this, but you know, if you were actually standing next to a nebula, it really wouldn't look that way?<br />
<br />
'''R:''' Oh, really?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, the color is all computer generated.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Bob, you're a dream killer, man.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' Excuse me while I go slip my wrist, thank you.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Just unweaving that damn rainbow.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Nice.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Well, Steve, I thought about this a little bit. If it's terrestrial, I would say the aurora borealis. Just for the...<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Just for beauty.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' They're pretty cool.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, it's almost deific, you know? It's just huge. It makes a very eerie noise. It changes all the time. It's just beautiful. It's amazing. But I think the coolest thing, one of the coolest things that I try to wrap my head around is the Big Bang. That's so strange to me, and it kind of gives me anxiety when I think about it. Like, oh my God, that event happened. What was the universe before that happened?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Maybe.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It was nothing.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' Damn skeptic.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Jay, the thing about the Big Bang, a lot of people, I think, a lot of people still think of it as like an explosion in space, and they don't really understand that. It was an explosion of space and time, so there's no way you could look outside and see the Big Bang.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I know. I know that.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, I know you know that, Jay, but it's just something that, I don't know, people... I don't know, it just seems like a lot of people don't really... They just think of it as a firecracker going off in space.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I read a thing about the Big Bang, and it was really interesting, I guess a scientist was talking about the physics of the Big Bang, and he was saying at 0.05 seconds, this is where matter these pieces of matter were forming, and they broke it down, like in the first five seconds of the Big Bang, like all these things in physics that were happening.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' They break it down by billions, trillions of seconds. I mean, it's really just tiny, tiny fractions of seconds. They could break it down.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' Simon Singh wrote an entire book called The Big Bang, which is highly recommended.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' My favorite part of the Big Bang is what's called photon decoupling, when it was dispersed enough such that light could actually start zipping around in straight lines, and that's really as far back as we may be able to look at that point when photons electromagnetic radiation was able to not just careen off everything, but just kind of go in straight lines. At least in visible light, that's the farthest we can go.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' That's kind of a sexy term, photon decoupling.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I like it.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' I like that.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' But even better than that, the Big Bang, I think that Global Orgasm Day should be renamed Big Bang.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' Best bang since the big one.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I was tripping out on this thought. I think about it every once in a while. Imagine if you were in a spaceship, or let's say you didn't need a spaceship, let's say you occupied the space where the Big Bang occurred, and you were there three or four seconds after the Big Bang happened.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' And you could withstand the temperatures.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, you could just visually see what was going on. I mean, would it appear to you as if you were in just like a globe of incredibly white light? Or what did that look like when all that matter and energy was pushing outwards from the same point? Or what did it look like a year after it happened? Was all the matter still like in a balloon form?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Well, I mean, how would human eyes interpret that kind of information? I mean, you couldn't directly see it. You'd have to...<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I'm romanticizing it, Bob.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' I hate to burst your bubble, but if you were actually there, it wouldn't look that cool.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, you'd be sad.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' That's what they're trying to say. Hey, they did it to me.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Now, one cool thing about the Big Bang is that Stephen Hawking speculated that it's possible that the Big Bang never actually happened because just as the physical universe is finite, right? The universe is not infinitely big. It's finite, but it's unbound.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Like the Earth.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, like the surface of a sphere. There's no beginning or ending, but it's finite. It's not infinite. So the age of the universe, time, may also be finite but unbound. Unbound meaning there's no beginning or end. No beginning meaning there's no actual point in time when the Big Bang happened, even though it looks that way to us because we're within this finite but unbound stream of time.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Steve, I can never wrap my head around that. So what happened 13.7 billion years ago when all space and matter was close together?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I don't know. ''(laughter)''<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I feel better now because I still can't fully appreciate that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I don't think it's possible to wrap our mind around it. I think it's something you could really only understand mathematically and any attempt at putting it into words is really not doing it justice.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I don't know, Steve.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We're not capable of conceiving it.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' If you get really, really drunk, you get it, man.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, you get deluded into thinking that you understand it.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That's good enough for me, right, Rebecca?<br />
<br />
'''R:''' Yeah, you also spend like 20 minutes staring at your own hands.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Right.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Then when your brain functions again, you realize that that made no sense whatsoever. It's like remembering a dream.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' I've turned in a lot of term papers like that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Evan, you got something?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Steve, did you ask about the greatest scientific discovery of all time?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's next. That's next.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' Why did you say that?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Well, because as far as scientific wonders, I was going to mention the Big Bang. Certainly quantum mechanics is up there. Another thing I try to wrap my mind around, and I only learned this recently, is that hydrogen comprises 90% of the known universe. The lightest element out there attributes for 90% of it. That means there's so much hydrogen, so much more hydrogen than anything else, that that's pretty mind-boggling.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Now, actually, there's a funny quote about hydrogen from Duane Gish, who is the creationist.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' This is such a random start to a quote, okay?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Gish meant this to be critical of science, but actually it's true. Because it's true, it's actually an incredible observation. And Gish said that hydrogen is an odorless, invisible gas that, given enough time, turns into people. And that's...<br />
<br />
'''R:''' That's the only true thing.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's actually true, although he meant it as an argument from incredulity. That's impossible. But actually, it is an incredible but true thing. Of course, there are processes that can explain how that could happen over time, but that's funny. All right, so I have two things for this.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' You would.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Just one very quickly, which is related to a lot of things we've been talking about so far, is black holes. I mean, you have matter squashed into an infinitesimal point, literally no dimensions. So it has, essentially, infinite curvature of spacetime at that point, and the gravity is so strong that it can actually suck in light. That's a pretty mind-blowing concept. I wanted to give something from biology as well, since we've been doing a lot of cosmology. It's always amazed me that a single cell with this long, curled-up molecule of DNA can, just following its own internal rules, can grow into an entire person with billions of cells all in the right place doing the right thing. That is absolutely mind-blowing that life can create that much complexity from a little tiny little cell.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' From a mustard seed.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That is cool.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' You know, and the human brain is only one piece of that too, because I would say the human brain is one of those things, you know.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, consciousness is up there too. That's part of the whole life gig.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Just think of what other life forms are sprouting up all over the universe. Almost incomprehensible.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' And buffalo wings, you know.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Buffaloes don't have wings, Jay. We've been over this.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' What's the Hitchhiker's Guide quote about the whole mishmash?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, the whole general sort of mishmash.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The WGSMM or something?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, that's how we just describe the whole all of existence, the whole general sort of mishmash or something like that. Rebecca, help us out here.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' I don't know that one off the top of my head.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The whole general sort of mishmash.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' Although I do find it humorous that I've become the expert of Hitchhiker's Guide.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' No, I wouldn't say expert.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' I'm queen nerd here.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Fellow expert.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' My wife bought the book last week. She just started it, so I'll be re-familiarizing myself with it.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Tell her not to read it. Tell her not to read it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You have to listen to Douglas Adams read it himself.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yes. He brings it to life. I've got like 200 books on tape. I listen to books on tape all the time, so I'm familiar with narrators and their style. He is one of the best. He is incredible. I'm not taking anything away from reading it. I've actually never sat down and read The Hitchhiker's Guide, but I've listened to every book like 10 times. This guy, he's utterly amazing. Obviously, he knows the material and he knows how he wants to get it across. He's got that advantage that he actually wrote it, but he is just such an awesome narrator. I recommend it to anybody who's even sat down and read it 100 times, listen to him once and you will fall in love with it all over again.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The other thing that was asked of us on the forums was to name our votes for the most significant scientific discoveries of human history. This is tough. It's also tough to come up with a short list, but it's interesting to think about what makes a scientific discovery better than the others, what makes it an incredible and worthy of note.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' I'm going to go with fire.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Fire, I think there's a lot of very important civilization altering technological innovations. The wheel, fire, the basic machines and agriculture, et cetera. Let's talk about scientific discovery, something that actually changed the way we think about ourselves, about the world, about reality. One of the criteria that I would use would be a scientific discovery that didn't just teach us something new about the universe, but it actually gave us a new way of explaining reality, a new intellectual tool by which we could even think about the universe. Those to me are the most influential and impactful scientific discoveries.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Like Kepler.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Explain.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Kepler's laws. Well Johannes Kepler was the first to figure out that planets go around the sun in elliptical patterns, not perfect circles, and also that they vary in their speed as they get faster as they're closer to the sun and slower as they're further away from the sun. He was the first one to figure it out, and it holds true throughout the universe as astronomers view planets everywhere, that those laws are obeyed everywhere.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, he figured out something very basic about the geometry of solar systems, of how gravity affects how objects orbit around each other.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Despite his strict religious upbringing, of course, and God creating the perfect universe and so forth he had to throw away his personal belief system to embrace the truth.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So what was the paradigm shift that he made, I guess, is the question. I think it's that he had to give up this paradigm that the universe was constructed on aesthetic principles, like there would be these regular solids, who would regulate the orbits of the planets around the sun, and rather than following some abstract aesthetic design, it followed just simple mechanical geometric rules. So that was a very important paradigm shift. I think that's a really good example.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I would say the evolution.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' Yeah, that's what I was going to go with, too.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's absolutely on my short list, absolutely. What do you think is a huge paradigm shift that occurred?<br />
<br />
'''R:''' Well, I mean, it basically, it took us from, it completely changed the way we view humans.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Humans are animals now. We're not some special.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' Being something holy and separate and moving that into us being a part of something larger, of showing us where we came from and where we may be going. It's just huge. It's incomprehensible, I think, to people today to imagine how it would be to try to accept something like that back then, to wrap your mind around just a complete change in the way you think of yourself. We're not even talking about the way you think about the world around you, but the way you view yourself, your family, where you are in the world.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I like T.H. Huxley's reaction. His reaction was basically, duh, which he was a little bit more eloquent. He said something to the effect of how silly am I that I did not think of that? But very eloquent. T.H. Huxley, of course, was Darwin's bulldog. He immediately was won over by Darwin's theory and he became his most vociferous and eloquent proponent. But the thing about evolution is also that it gave us a new way of explaining nature. It was not just that it explained the origin of life. Suddenly, everything was evolutionary. Geology was evolutionary. We began to look at everything as sort of evolving. And that, again, just became a new, to the point, in fact, where it almost became overapplied. It actually became like our default explanation for things, even when it was not completely appropriate. So it was a very significant change in how we approach problems in nature and explaining nature.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Steve, what about the germ theory of disease?<br />
<br />
'''R:''' It's a good one.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Of course, that was a tremendous breakthrough. But you know, it's, and this is, again, one of the things on my short list. A lot of people actually don't realize that, and this is why I think it's so incredible to try to put yourself into the mind of sort of earlier times, especially pre-scientific societies and how they thought about the world. And the paradigm shift there was, and this was, I think, solidified by the germ theory. Before that they didn't even really have a concept of a disease. Now we think of, well, people get diseases, and a disease is some specific part of your down or not working, or you have some genetic defect, or you have, again, your body's being attacked by some outside infection. And then that has a certain disease, and diseases have a natural history. They have a certain list of symptoms and findings on exam and test results, and they have certain treatments that may or may not affect them for symptoms or to alter the course of the disease, right? That's basically the paradigm of modern medicine. Well, there was a time when that concept didn't exist. People didn't have diseases. People had their own individual illness. One of the things that the germ theory did was really usher in the age of just disease. Forget about that this was a huge new category of diseases. It also helped solidify that paradigm shift. There were other things that did it as well, but I think that that was the biggest, that is what brought medicine into the scientific age, not to be underestimated.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I have another one. Well, computers and the internet. I know that's not on, I don't know, to me, it's one of the most defining things of humanity is the freedom the internet gives us for an exchange of information, but computers are going to be the tool that we use to reach, dare I say, infinity, you know? Computers are going to allow us to create things that are going to let us hit the absolute peak of the physical universe, nanotechnology as an example.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Jay, you made a good point, and it is a tool, but it's not just a tool, it's also one of its defining characteristics, I think, is that it is the most versatile tool that's ever been developed. I mean, think of the applications of computers, I mean, it's not like a wrench that can do a handful of things. You can literally have a computer pull off any task you want to automate, it's applicable to so many different things, and that's one of the things that I think is so interesting about it, it's so universal. And Jay, of course, you mentioned nanotechnology, but Steve, now, depending on how, I wasn't really thinking about it the way you mentioned about changing the way we think about reality and new tools to think about the universe, but off the top of my head, a new tool, something like Newton developing calculus, I mean, what a tool that was. Another way to think about reality, and this ties into quantum mechanics, is the discovery of the dual nature of light back in the early 1900s. At that time, people were thinking, this is the end of physics, I mean, we've only got a few i's to dot and a few t's to cross, and we pretty much got it all. And of course, it turned out that those few i's and those two t's turned into quantum mechanics and relativity and things like that, so it just opened up huge new vistas that are still ongoing. In terms about changing how we think about reality and things, that discovery in the early 1900s, Max Planck and all that, that was pretty defining. The other one, of course, you could say antibiotics, that was pretty huge, but these are in terms of the impact on lives and economies, like antibiotics is one, J.J. Thompson's discovery of the electron and Faraday's work that laid the foundations of electro technology with the electric motors. Think of how huge that is, where the hell would we be without electricity? Come on. Forget it.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' I think your brain is starting to overload.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Imagine that, but my number one choice, and Jay hit upon it, hey, calm down here, is nanotechnology now.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' That's what we're hoping you do.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' What technology really is cooler than nanotechnology?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Nanotech, we're at the beginnings of it now, but I think the discovery that molecular engineering and manufacturing is worth pursuing, I think it's going to be one of the most important discoveries ever. We're seeing the fringes of it now, but in 40, 50, 60 years, everything is going to be nanotech. Everything, you name it, our entire economy, 90% of our GNP will be based on some sort on nanotech. It will literally change, it'll change everything, and it's going to make the industrial revolution look like a firecracker going off.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' So we can all enjoy this nanotechnology.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Right. We're going to see a lot of incredible stuff in the next few decades, and so for me, that is one of the-<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Bob and I have been speaking about nanotechnology virtually about 10 minutes after it was created in Drexler's mind.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' And you haven't stopped since.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' No, we-<br />
<br />
'''B:''' And Jay, remember in 85, I was talking about it to you, and nobody knew about it, and slowly it comes out in the news, and now it's all over the place.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's hard to pick something, though, that we're at the beginning of.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It is. It's very hard.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Of course, to assess the impact and importance of things from the benefit of historical hindsight. So nanotechnology certainly may turn out to be revolutionary in terms of manufacturing.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, come on. May? Can't you be a little more positive than may?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Steve, get a clue, pal.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I think eventually, I think it probably will be, although it may be supplanted by something else.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' We're not talking timeframes here. I'm just talking feasibility.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's hard to say. People have a tendency to overestimate short-term progress and extrapolating from current trends.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I'm not even talking about timeframes here. I'm talking whether it's 30 years or 500 years, the impact is going to be incredible.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, but the problem is when you start to get out beyond 50 or 100 years, then you don't know what the impact other technologies we haven't even envisioned yet might be, and that may, in fact, make nanotechnology obsolete before it really even hits its stride.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I admit that at some point we could all just jack into the internet and just totally waste away. That's a possibility right there.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That's my goal.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Create your own reality. Who needs nanotech when you could be having sex virtually?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Wait a second, Bob. Are you saying that everything revolves around porn on the internet?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' At least initially.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Every new medium is first conquered by porn.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' They just figured out that porn consists of 1% of the internet. Did you see that study?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Really?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I did see that study.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Was that it? In terms of what?<br />
<br />
'''R:''' I think they missed a decimal place here or there.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' In terms of content.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Maybe now, but 20 years ago, it was 50% or 60%. It was. Initially, it was a much huger chunk.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' I think the first message ever sent over the internet was, show me your boobs.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Steve, I have a quick question before we change the topic. You mentioned before about creating trigonometry. How does someone go about creating a school of math? I don't understand math well enough to understand how someone would actually say it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's an internal system of logic. It's just a manner of building on itself and figuring out how to solve problems.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So what is it? Is it a series of equations?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, basically.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' That's what math is.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I understand that, but when you say something like, this person created trigonometry.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Ways of describing concepts within mathematics and manipulating them by developing relationships and equasions.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I would think it would start with some insight. You're not just going to be pushing around numbers and say, oh wow, I discovered calculus. I think it would start with an insight that you explore and eventually...<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I think it starts with a problem to be solved. We need a way of solving this problem, and the math we have now can't do it. So I need to invent a new math, like Newton needed to figure out a way to figure out...<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Changing rates of change.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, how to describe the new mechanics that was being developed. They didn't have the equations to describe acceleration and things like that. So it's born out of necessity. So let me give you my choice. You guys covered a lot of things that I was going to mention, like Darwin and diseases and things like that, but I do have to give a nod to Einstein specifically. It's so obvious it's cliché.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Ah, the photosynthesis effect.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Photoelectric effect.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, photoelectric effect, sorry.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' You are so stupid, man.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' It's not quite it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But here's the thing that impresses me about Einstein and why I think he deserves his reputation of being a true genius. For two decades, there was an unsolvable problem within physics. Maxwell basically came up with the equations which said that electromagnetic waves propagate at C, at this speed. But nobody could figure out what they traveled at C relative to. They figured out that maybe there was an ether, but then they realized through experimentation that we are not stationary with respect to the ether and we are not moving with respect to the ether. And therefore, there has to be no ether. But if there's no ether, what is light propagating through? What's it moving at C with respect to? Nobody could figure that out because it just didn't make any sense. And Einstein, and actually there was also this Scottish guy whose name I can't remember who came up with these equations.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Lorenz? Lorenz contractions?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Was it Lorenz? Yeah. Who figured out basically the mathematics that you would have to go through in order to make it all work out. But even though he had the answer in front of him, he couldn't make that intellectual leap. And Einstein was the first person to consider the possibility that light moves at C with respect to everything, all the time, everywhere at the same time.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' And then everything came from that, everything after that, time dilation, all that stuff of ramifications.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The only way it's possible for that to be true is if space and time were variables, if they were not absolutes. And that was the leap that he made to think that the universe could actually be constructed in such a way that space and time could flex, but the speed of light was the absolute constant. And that was absolute genius. That was thinking outside of anything that any human before him had ever conceived.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It's such a profound thought that sometimes I wonder, was he really capable of wrapping his mind around it or did he feel as mystified by it as we do? Was he so intelligent that he actually was able to feel comfortable with that idea and<br />
<br />
'''B:''' understand it? Eventually, sure. Initially, he was like, holy crap.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I think initially, it was mathematical.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It all started though.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' These equations work. What if space and time actually are the variables here? The speed of light is the constant.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' And Steve, what kicked it off? Now, I don't know if maybe this might be an apocryphal story, but it's been said that it all started with him envisioning riding along with a light beam, what it would be like if he could keep up with light and what would happen. And he realized that if you can't, you can't possibly keep up with it. So therefore, and then everything you said, that speed of light is absolute and everything else is malleable.<br />
== Randi Speaks <small>(46:54)</small> == <br />
* The Uncompromising Observations of a Veteran Skeptic<br/><br/>Each week James Randi gives a skeptical commentary in his own unique style.<br/><br/>This week's topic: Courage<br/><br />
<br />
JR: Hello, this is James Randi. Our good friend {{w|Daniel Dennett}} in one of his recent books, ''Breaking the Spell'', has expressed himself as usual, very forcibly and very frankly. In quite the same way and in quite the same tone, {{w|Richard Dawkins}} has also done this in his latest book, ''The God Delusion''. Several critics, in reviewing both these books, have said that the authors are, and I quote, insulting and unnecessarily belittling. What these two gentlemen are being accused of, frankly, is calling their shots. They're speaking their minds, as they have a perfect right to do in any book that they write and publish. They're saying what they honestly believe to be true in perfectly plain language. Frankly, I find that refreshing. A recent edition of "{{w|South Park}}", the very popular TV cartoon series, portrayed Richard Dawkins as some sort of strident hateful character. That's not Richard at all. It appears that truth and candor are being mistaken for bad temper and for cruelty. Now, in the day of {{w|Jonathan Swift}}, an author who was one of my very favourites, methods of authors were obviously much more subtle. In ''{{w|Gulliver's Travels}}'', Swift managed to create a suitably fictional country, or series of countries actually, in which he could express himself much more freely, but not being obviously rude. I frankly think, folks, that it's time for us to get realistic. To continue to pussyfoot around and pretend that our feelings and our emotions are somewhat different from the way they actually are is, I think, a big mistake. Frankly, I don't give a damn whether people are offended by what I write or not. I admit that my association with Richard Dawkins and my exposure to his works has made me much bolder than I used to be. I now embrace any opportunity to express myself frankly and strongly. I have always been an atheist and I've always been very proud of it. But inspired by Dawkins, and perhaps by my advanced age as well, I must admit, I now speak much more loudly and openly. I'd like to see more of us doing exactly that. Hopefully, the faith-based administration won't be with us for very long, and we are of course limited by what we can say. In order to be politically correct we have to be very careful. I suggest to you that it's time that we're able to subject the sacred to scrutiny, to criticism, to examination. Now, to some people, that's unthinkable. Religion, they try to tell us, is something you must not question, and you must not ask others to question either. To borrow a phrase from my good friends {{w|Penn & Teller}}, bullshit! Any idea or philosophy should be subject and must be subject to questioning. Why is religion and superstition given a special category? Folks, I can't figure that out at all. It's an idea; it's a way of living; it's a way of thinking. And if it tends to have any impact whatsoever on my life, and the lives of my loved ones, I most certainly have the right to question it. When I give my talks at schools, universities, colleges around the world, almost always the first question that I get asked after my one-and-a-half-hour tirade, is "Mr. Randi, do you believe in God?" Well, I've been at this business for many decades now, and I have what I think is a pretty good answer. I respond by saying "oh, yes. Oh, yes, {{w|Minerva}} is one of my favorite goddesses." From some in the audience that'll get a slight laugh, but from the questioner, I usually see a great deal of flustering, saying, "no, no; I mean God." I respond, "oh, you mean {{w|Loki}} or {{w|Thor}}, do you?" Of course, that generates a discussion on just how many gods there are, and hopefully somebody in my audience will get the message. Yes, it takes a certain amount of nerve, but then I've got that amount of nerve. This is James Randi.<br />
<br />
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== Science or Fiction <small>(51:54)</small> ==<br />
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''Voice-over: It's time for Science or Fiction.''<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Each week, I come up with three science news items or facts. Two are genuine and one is fictitious, and then I challenge my esteemed panel of skeptics to tell me which one is the fake, and you, of course, can play along at home. Now, I have another alternate version this week, so I have a theme for this week, and I'm also going to do four items. A science magazine, I'm not going to tell you which one yet, asked top scientists, top scientists to make predictions for 50 years from now, and below are four of the predictions, but of course, only three of them are true predictions and one I made up, so you have to tell me which of these four predictions is the one that I made up is fake. The other three are predictions that were actually made by top scientists, and I'll tell you who they were. Are you guys ready?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Ready, Doc.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Number one, astrobiologist Paul Davies made the following prediction. I'm paraphrasing here, not quoting, because I'm just trying to condense about a paragraph or two. We may find life on earth that is the product of a separate origin and evolution, what he calls aliens on earth. Neurobiologist Steven Pinker predicted, and again, this is a paraphrase, we will use a combination of genetic engineering and breeding to evolve, in quotes, dolphins, chimps, and other intelligent animals to human-level intelligence. Item number three, biologist Daniel Pauly predicted, we will learn how to read animals' minds and then everyone will become a vegetarian. And item number four, Simon Conway Morris predicted, the brain alone is not the seat of consciousness and that we'll discover that rather, it is an antenna embedded in a hyperdimensional matrix.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' What? You're going to have to read those again.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, so very quickly, astrobiologist Paul Davies will find that life on earth is the product of a separate origin and evolution. Steven Pinker, we're going to uplift dolphins and chimps to be as intelligent as humans. Daniel Pauly, we're going to learn how to read the minds of animals and then everyone will have to become a vegetarian. And Simon Conway Morris will discover that the brain is not the sole seat of consciousness but is just an antenna embedded in a hyperdimensional matrix. Rebecca, why don't you go first?<br />
<br />
=== Rebecca's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''R:''' Oh, God. This is insane. The only person that I'm really familiar with in that group is Steven Pinker. And that doesn't sound like the sort of thing that he would say for some reason. That just doesn't sound right to me. So I'm going to go with that one, I guess.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' Something about chimps and dolphins. I don't know.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Evolve chimps and dolphins to become as intelligent as humans, right? All right, Bob, why don't you go next?<br />
<br />
=== Bob's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Okay. Okay, let's see. Astrobiologist, he says that life on earth, there could be life on earth that's from a separate origin. I'm going to agree with that one. Genetic engineering, dolphins and chimps to human. You know, it reminds me, of course, of the Uplift series written by David Brin. Great series of books. That's totally feasible, I think. Especially much more so than 3 and 4. So let's go to 3 and 4. ead animal's minds and everyone will be a vegetarian. I mean, I thought that was my choice until you came up with 4. The brain is not the seat of consciousness. It's an antenna in a hyperdimensional matrix. So then how come drugs can affect your consciousness then? I guess that messes with the antenna.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' Just pick one.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I'm thinking, I'm stalling here. What, you got something to add?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I'm just pointing out that these things don't have to actually be true. You're just telling me which one were the actual predictions. So some guy predicted that this was going to come true. You don't have to believe that it's going to come true.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' No. No, I just can't think anyone would be stupid enough to make these suggestions.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Oh, yes you can, Bob.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Especially in a magazine. Well, these guys, well, all right.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Because everybody knows that if it's written down, it's more true.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Brain, the brain, Steve.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay, hyperdimensional matrix. Jay, go.<br />
<br />
=== Jay's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I'll take the one where chimps evolved the life on earth, so it's actually alien life.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's 2, Jay.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I'm just kidding. ''(laughter)'' I'm definitely going to take the brain in your spine and ass or an antenna.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I'll take that one.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, Evan.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' So what's the knob then, Jay?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I'll show you that later, Bob.<br />
<br />
=== Evan's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I would love to say that I even understand the last one regarding the brain and the antenna and this matrix and so forth. It's likely that that one is the made up one. However, I'm going to guess for the sake of this game that being able to read animals' minds when we all become vegetarians is the fiction, is the one you made up, Steve.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' Oh, come on. That's totally within the realm of possibility.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' There we go.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' I'm sure that's why I'm a vegetarian.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #1 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Let's start with number one, astrobiologist Paul Davies, who, he's an astrobiologist who thinks about alien life. And he says that it's possible that there was more than one origin of life on earth. And that by looking at bacteria, you can't really tell that they're related to all other bacteria just by looking at them. You actually have to look at their biochemistry. And we've only really begun to explore the biochemistry of all the little microscopic organisms that exist on earth. We may find, he says in the next 50 years, that some of these microscopic organisms are actually the product of a completely separate origin and evolutionary tree of life. And that we therefore might find that there is "alien life" right here on earth. He also says that if we do, that that would increase the number of times that life arose that we have evidence for and would vastly increase the probability that the universe is teeming with life.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Right. Steve, I actually came across this article online today. I read about seven or eight of the 70 entries. And of course, this was the only one I read, unfortunately. But yeah, I think that's pretty interesting, especially some of the extremophile bacteria oh my god, they are just so, they are more different than to any other life form. They're utterly unique.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But when we look at this, they still have DNA.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Right. But I would think that if we do find something like that, like he's suggesting here, that it would be some sort of extremophile bacteria that has this incredible metabolism. It's just so different from anything else.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It would be absolutely fascinating if that actually turns out to be the case. Of course, he also mentions that there are good candidates, such as other bodies in our solar system, like Europa and even maybe possibly Mars. And if we find life on those bodies, the probability that there are different evolutionary branches is much greater, although it's not 100%. It's possible that life could have been cross seeded in the solar system.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Pan-spermia.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' What?<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #4 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Let's go on to number four. I'm going to bounce around a little bit.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' You bastard.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So who said the hyperdimensional ray matrix? That was Bob and Jay.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yes.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Some guy really thinks this?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' This is Simon Conway Morris, who is a paleo biologist. He is the one who made an extensive study of the Burgess shale fauna, which was written about by Stephen Jay Gould. His prediction was written in the guise of a Nobel Prize being handed out in 2056 for discovering that our brains are actually embedded in a hyperdimensional matrix and that this is an explanation for such things as precognition.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Wow. Precogs.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' This guy's a scientist.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Apparently.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' He's a Spielbergian.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' For some definition of the word scientist.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #3 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Let's go on to number three.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It's only a game.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' By Daniel Pauley. We will learn how to read animals' minds and then everyone will have to become a vegetarian because we can't eat animals when we can feel what they're feeling and know what they're thinking. And that is true. That was a prediction made by Daniel Pauley.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' We already know what some animals think and feel in general terms. We still eat them. How would that stop us from eating the animals?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Right. So there's sort of two claims and one there. One is that we'll be able to develop the ability to tap into the fleeting sort of emotions and proto thoughts that animals are having and they'll be able to resonate with our sort of ideas and emotions in a way that we can sort of empathize with the animals. And then he further predicts that if we did do that, that it would make sense for us to make everybody a vegetarian because nobody would want to eat an animal if you could feel what it's feeling.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' On the contrary. I think we'd find out what a bunch of assholes' animals are and we'd all eat them.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Perry is outraged right now, by the way.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' If I find out that my dog is deliberately shitting in the house, I'm going to kill him.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #2 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Now, which means that the prediction I attributed to Steven Pinker is fake. I made that one up.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' I think that means I win.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You got it, Rebecca. You did. Would you like to know what Steven Pinker actually predicted? He wrote, I absolutely refuse even to pretend to guess about how I might speculate about what hypothetically could be the biggest breakthrough in the next 50 years.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' That's my Steven Pinker.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' This is an invitation to look foolish, as with the predictions of domed cities and nuclear powered vacuum cleaners that were made 50 years ago.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' For telepathic animals.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' He refused to make a prediction, but he did say, I'll stick my neck out five to ten years, because that's as far as you can in science. He talked about breakthroughs in understanding evolutionary psychology, which is a big thing that he's a proponent of. I was struck by that, and that's why I wanted to use him as my fake one.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' All he could say was there's going to be a breakthrough?<br />
<br />
'''R:''' Basically, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' A new serial will come out in three years.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, in evolutionary psychology. Understanding the evolution of... When I read through most of these predictions, a couple of things struck me. One was that there really were very few... I mean, I had to dig. I really had to read deeply to find the two ones that sounded kind of nutty. Most of them were really very humble extrapolations of current research. Nobody really did stick their neck out too far. When you read them, and it's stuff that we've all thought about and talked about...<br />
<br />
'''R:''' Yeah, like telepathic animals.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I said those are the only two. I really had to dig deep to find those two. Most of them were like, there will be machine brain interfaces. Sure, there are. There already are now. The best is yet to come for psychology, says Philip Zambardo. Oh, Ray Kurzweil, Bob. I'm sure you read Ray Kurzweil.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' No, I actually didn't get to him. I'm sure he... Usual stuff for him.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Ray, who spends a lot of time thinking about the future, says, By 2020, computational power sufficient to simulate the human brain, about 10 million billion calculations per second, will be available for $1,000. And basically says that by 20... At some point, by this time, a computer will pass the Turing test. By 2029, he predicts that. The Turing test is the test where you have an evaluator who's blinded to the entity that they're interrogating and that they won't be able to distinguish a human being from a computer by interrogating them and asking them questions. That's the Turing test. He's saying a computer will be able to pass the Turing test by 2029.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Man, I hope I see that. Because once you have a computer that is artificial intelligence, that's as intelligent as a person, nothing's going to stop you from making one that's a thousand times more intelligent.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Right, right.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' How awesome would that be? Imagine, I'll do a century of research in the next week. I mean, things are just going to change so fast.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's true. To some extent, that's going to be true. So I was actually pleased that the scientists, true to the way scientists should be, were trying to be respectable and not speculate wildly beyond the evidence.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Except for the antenna hyperdimensional matrix guy.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, those are the ones that stuck out. Read the other 70 because most of them are very, very mundane.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Did you read all of them?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Pretty much. But it stands in stark contrast to psychic predictions for the next year, which everyone is world-altering. These were responsible. Well, good job, Rebecca.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' Thank you.<br />
<br />
{{anchor|puzzle}} <!-- leave anchor(s) directly above the corresponding section that follows --><br />
== Skeptical Puzzle <small>(1:05:11)</small> ==<br />
<blockquote>This Week's puzzle<br/>Albert Einstein<br/>John Locke (philosopher)<br/>Herbert Hoover (31st US president)<br/>Robert Boyle (father of modern chemistry)<br/>Gen. George S. Patton<br/><br/>Each of these famous people have had a hand in this pseudoscience.<br/><br/>Name the pseudoscience.<br/><br/><br/>Last Week's puzzle<br/><br/>He began in Lebanon, and ended in Belfast.<br/>He tinkered in clocks, and invented saws.<br/>His consumption almost got the best of him, until he used the healing<br/>power of his own mind.<br/>He would often have new thoughts pertaining to the health of mind,<br/>body, and spirit.<br/>His main friends would go to the park to seek his advice.<br/>He had a great distrust of doctors and the disease theory.<br/>He believed disease was only a disturbance of the mind.<br/>He believed everything in the natural world had an origin in the<br/>spiritual world.<br/>He called himself a doctor, though he had no formal education or<br/>training.<br/>He peddled the wares, to show the world his methods were sound.<br/>He is still revered today, and his theories continue to influence New<br/>Age thinking.<br/><br/>Who was he?<br/><br/>Phineas Parkhurst Quimby</blockquote><br />
<br />
'''S:''' Evan, you have a new puzzle for us. But first, let's give the answer to last week's puzzle.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' There we go. Last week's puzzle. He began in Lebanon and ended in Belfast. He tinkered in clocks and invented saws. His consumption almost got the best of him until he used the healing power of his own mind. He would often have new thoughts pertaining to the health of mind, body, and spirit. His main friends would go to the park to seek his advice. He had a great distrust of doctors and disease theory. He believed disease was only a disturbance of the mind. He believed everything in the natural world had an origin in the spiritual world. He called himself a doctor, though he had no formal education or training. He peddled the wares to show the world his methods were sound. He is still revered today, and his theories continue to influence New Age thinking. And he was?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Dr. Seuss?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Close. Phineas Parkhurst Quimby.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Of course, Phineas Quimby.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yes. And we all know who Phineas Quimby was.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, for those who may not, we enlighten us.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Sure. He was one of the advocates of mesmerism and new thought in the 19th century. And he influenced people such as Mary Baker Eddy and the founding of her Christian science movement among some others. But that was the most prominent, most well-known. And just once again a well-intended but unfortunately wrong.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Was he well-intended? Was he well-intended? I don't know. With a name like Phineas.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' You could probably argue. With a name like Phineas. I do love that name. Phineas Quimby is a great name.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' It's a trustworthy name. We should mention that Cosmic Vagabond on our forum once again got the answer right.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The first one to get the correct answer, yes. Congratulations again, Cosmic.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' I think he has promised to wait to save the answer to the next one. But you people need to hurry. As soon as you download this, you need to send the answer either email it to us on the website or go on the forum. And post it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' If you want to get your mention on the podcast, we're getting it right first.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' But here is this week's puzzle. And I think it'll be a stumper. Ready? All right. Albert Einstein. John Locke. Herbert Hoover. Robert Boyle. General George S. Patton. Each of these famous people had a hand in this pseudoscience. Name the pseudoscience.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Interesting.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Good luck.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, thanks. Thanks for that, Evan.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Sure.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You're getting to be quite a good puzzle master. Off to a little bit of a rocky start.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' You stopped rhyming, which I think we can all agree is good for humanity.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I will not be dissuaded.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But when you do rhyme, your rhymes have actually gotten better.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yes, thank you. Well, I've made two attempts at that, a bit of poetry.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' Steve, don't encourage him.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' And there will, god willing, be more poetry in the future for you all. But we'll save it for a while.<br />
<br />
{{anchor|qow}} <!-- leave anchor(s) directly above the corresponding section that follows --><br />
== Skeptical Quote of the Week <small>(1:08:29)</small> ==<br />
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|text = A Hubble Space Telescope photograph of the universe evokes far more awe for creation than light streaming through a stained glass window in a cathedral.<br />
|author = {{w|Michael Shermer}}<br />
|lived = 1954-present<br />
|desc = American science writer, historian of science, executive director of {{w|The Skeptics Society}}, and founding publisher of {{w|Skeptic (American magazine)|''Skeptic'' magazine}}<br />
}}<br />
'''S:''' Well, that is our show for this week. Bob, you're going to give us a quote to close out the show?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Sure. This one is from Michael Schermer. <br />
<br />
'''S:''' Who's that again?<br />
<br />
'''R:''' I think I've heard of him.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I think I've heard of him. A skeptic guy, right?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' A Hubble Space Telescope photograph of the universe evokes far more awe for creation than light streaming through a stained glass window in a cathedral.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's the awe of science, something that we should never forget. Well, thank you again, everyone, for joining me. It was a hoot.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' Thank you, Steve. A hoot and a holler.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Good episode.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I had fun this week. I think the discussions were very interesting.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It was. Lively.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' As always, I appreciate all the email and all the feedback. I do read every single email that we get. I don't have the time to answer every email, but I promise you, I do actually read all of them, and we do discuss the feedback, and it is very helpful for us to continue to bring you a great show.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' Also, I'd like to send a shout out to JD, our forum moderator, who's doing a great job.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yes, thank you, JD. We appreciate it.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Thank you, JD.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And we also wanted to mention before we end, actually, that the five of us, the ones who were on this week's podcast, are all going to be at TAM5 this year. So if you haven't signed up yet, this is The Amazing Meeting five in Las Vegas, Nevada, January 18th to the 21st. You could sign up for it on the JREF website. And the Skeptics Guide, Rogues and myself, will be there, and you'll have a chance to meet with us. We'll have some events. Obviously, there's going to be a lot going on, but we'll definitely be having a get-together for our loyal listeners while we're there.<br />
<br />
== Signoff == <br />
<br />
{{Outro61}}<br />
== References ==<br />
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{{Navigation}}</div>Hearmepurrhttps://www.sgutranscripts.org/w/index.php?title=SGU_Episode_826&diff=19098SGU Episode 8262024-01-14T20:06:28Z<p>Hearmepurr: episode done</p>
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<br />
== Introduction ==<br />
''Voice-over: You're listening to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.'' <br />
<br />
'''S:''' Hello and welcome to the {{SGU|link=y}}. Today is Wednesday, May 5<sup>th</sup>, 2021, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella... <br />
<br />
'''B:''' Hey, everybody!<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Cara Santa Maria... <br />
<br />
'''C:''' Howdy. <br />
<br />
'''S:''' Jay Novella... <br />
<br />
'''J:''' Hey guys. <br />
<br />
'''S:''' ...and Evan Bernstein. <br />
<br />
'''E:''' Where were you 16 years ago?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yes. Happy 16th birthday to the SGU and to all of my fellow hosts.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, wow.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Wow.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' 16. We can drive a car.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' 16 years.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's bananas.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So this is episode number 826.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Whoa.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. Less than three and a half years or so, we'll be at up to 20 years and 1,000 episodes right around the same time.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' When you think about it, would you guys say that there are a lot of things in life where you can say like who would have thought type of sentiment like you meet someone, you get married, you thought, yeah, I'm going to get married I should be married to this person my whole life. But this is a milestone I look at and I'm like, for real, I never thought that this project would have taken off, that we would have kept going like five years, I remember and I'm like, wow, we did it for five years. I wonder how much longer we're going to go. And I was always thinking back then, yeah, probably get three more years out of it, four more years out of it, whatever.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I don't know. I never had any doubt.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Really? You would just-<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It's not the doubt. It's more just about the staying power. Like we keep going. It's more important.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I kind of figured I was in for the long haul. No, I mean obviously, we didn't have any idea. I just didn't know like what the scope of podcasting was going to be and how just the industry was going to sort itself out. But once we decided to do this, I figured we were just going to keep doing it forever. You know, as long as it wasn't a complete failure. Anything other than just like a complete flop and like going nowhere, which I wasn't counting on. I figured it would be at least reasonably successful. I'm not surprised that we're still going 16 years later. But not to minimize it or to say that it isn't cool. It does take a tremendous amount of staying power. Putting the show out every week, obviously.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Every week. Come whatever.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's been a huge chunk of our life for the last 16 years of our lives, you know.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Absolutely. Rachel turns 18 this month.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Wow. Our whole life almost was –<br />
<br />
'''E:''' And so she was one going on two.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, my gosh.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' When this happened.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. It's been my daughter's entire lives, basically.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's amazing.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Since you joined, Cara, we've had a – you know, we've had a lot of growth and we've had a lot of cool things happen, right? You know, like we started the extravaganza, which I think is a ton of fun. You know, our listenership is doing very well. Our Patreon is doing very well. You know, everybody – every one of us contributes but I also want you to know, Cara, like I really love having you on this show and co-hosting with you. You're a great friend.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, thanks. I think I've now been then – I'm right around a third of the lifespan. Does that sound about right? Right around a third.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yep. 2015.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's amazing.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Wow.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It's been great.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' And Evan, God. I met Evan playing a LARP.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' OK. Now we're delving into antiquity.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yes. It was so long ago. But I mean when you think about like where you meet people in your life and what becomes of certain friendships it's just funny. You know, look at the pathway. We met Perry. We met Evan. You know, and then Cara, we met you at a conference and like I just tucked you away in the back of my mind. I like her. I like her a lot. I want to –<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, we all thought the same thing. Yep.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's so sweet. That conference is now defunct of course and we've lost James Randi too.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I know. Well, so many people have been lost.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So much has changed.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' We really started in 1996 is when the Connecticut Skeptical Society was founded.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yes. It's been 25 years. We've been doing this for a quarter of a century.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Twenty-five years. We've been skeptical activists for a quarter of a century now.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Wow.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' How old were you back then, Cara?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Twenty-five years ago?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yep.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I was 12.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' She was a 12-year-old.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Going on 13. Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, gosh.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Probably would have done well on the show back then.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That's a real – that will screw with your head though when you think when we started doing this, someone that we would co-host the show with was 12. Like what? Oh my god.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's weird. And when you started doing the podcast, like Steve, was your daughter even born?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, yes. Yeah. Both my daughters were born.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' They were just born, right?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's amazing.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' They would have been like three – four and one.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Wow.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. When we started podcasting. So they've known it their whole life. They just grew up with it.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I was a completely different person in a completely different life. I was still in a band. I was still in a band where we were playing twice a week. That is just a complete life changer.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Jay, it was almost half of your life ago. Think of it that way.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Wow.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I got you all beat. I was the kind of person who would say for the first time ever, hello. What kind of person does that?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Who do you have to be to vocalize that, right, Bob?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That has legs. I can't believe, you know. We still refer to that –<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Not really.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Don't even say – Bob, I have not fully exploited that yet. There's the hello sticker. There's the hello T-shirt. It's all coming, people. Just wait.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' All those tags people wear at those conferences, say it right on – hello, my name.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I like to think I contributed a lot more than just one stupid, weirdly pronounced word.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' You have, Bob, no doubt, but nothing was as funny. Nothing was-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' You peaked at hello.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' How come nobody laughed when I said hello back then, huh?<br />
<br />
'''J/E:''' Because nobody was listening to you.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' We had an audience of five.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Actually, our audience that first year was about 200 people.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Wow. That's amazing. And just that's the – it's the activation energy. That's the hard part. It's just keeping going when you know that it's such a small group because I've known a lot of people to start podcasts. They were like, I did a podcast for like a year. Nobody really listened, so I gave up.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, that's right. Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Well, we were happy. I don't remember ever being disappointed by the amount of listeners because we had-<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Never.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' -before that we had the Skeptical Society, we'd spend a lot of time crafting a newsletter and we'd mail it out. What did we mail out, Steve? A few hundred? A couple hundred of them?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. It was a lot more work for a lot fewer people, so we were used to it. The podcast was an upgrade even though it was relatively small by our current standards. We were happy. When we hit 1,000, we were ecstatic. That was like off the hook for us in terms of reach.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But yeah, it's been a wild ride. I think perhaps what's the most surprising part of it I think is just all the cool people that we've been able to meet and interview and everything.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' The learning never stops. It's been a fantastic, fantastic learning vehicle. I consider it my continuing education.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It is. I mean, it's true that there's no better way to learn than to teach. So having to be able to explain even just a science news item every week or a topic or anything like that is just the best way to learn new information.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Absolutely.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And of course, having it be crowdsourced by 150,000 people doesn't hurt either. We're always pointing out and learning new stuff from our listeners. It's fantastic.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I remember early on, we were covering mainly those skeptically oriented items because it was a skeptical podcast. So I remember thinking, damn, it's going to be tough to find a new and unique item to cover after a while because how deep is it? And in terms of having a news item, like a skeptical news item come out, that was also not very common. And then I remember that aha moment when I was like, screw that, I'm going to cover science. I mean, that's what I love talking about anyway. And I remember making that transition in my head. I mean, it's still a skeptical podcast, but it's a science communication thing. And I remember that made me very happy because that's an unending pit of awesomeness.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Absolutely.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, but we did science news from the beginning. That was more of a change in your head.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' So be it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Did you become more like space nerdy as the years went on, Bob?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, God, no. I've always been. I remember talking to a girl 40 years ago, talking to her about colliding galaxies. And I was like, I just love that shit. I mean, I loved it since before high school. So I always loved talking about it.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' And she said, oh, I love that band.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' So I've always loved doing communicating science. So that was just such a natural fit for me.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' And of all the hobbies that I've had in my life my love for science at this point just so profoundly dwarfs everything else. And it's luckily I got my podcast got to be about something so important, right? So science and critical thinking really are like a freaking cornerstone in my life. Critical thinking is so in the in my absolute core of who I am. You think about that, guys think about just how much critical thinking is your bedrock.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Mm hmm.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, gosh.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Completely.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' But imagine, like, what would it have been if we didn't do the podcast? Like, where? How deeply would it have been seated? I think it wouldn't be anywhere near where it is.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You mean, the skeptical activists in general?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' But just the overall skills of just skills of being a critical thinker. I have to thank this podcast for making it be so alive in my mind.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Oh, certainly. I mean, yeah, we learned a tremendous amount in terms of critical thinking. I mean unfortunately, you can be a physician without being a critical thinker. You know.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' True.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Just my profession by itself wouldn't have done it. I'm definitely a better physician. I think a better clinician because of critical thinking. I think that part of it, it's just hard. I can't imagine living my life without critical thinking. It's like I would feel so vulnerable. I believe so much stupid shit, you know. How can you exist without the ability to sort out what to believe in and what not to believe in? That would be scary to me.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' You would need a supernatural power or something to fill those gaps, Steve.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' There you go.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well we don't want to spend too much time reminiscing about 16 years of the SGU, but thanks for indulging us a little bit. It has been a fantastic thing to be part of our lives. We're happy to keep doing it, keep putting the show out. I'm really glad we got to write our first book. That was quite a milestone. That's the thing that took longer than I thought it was going to take, honestly. But it's hard. Writing a whole book is freaking hard.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's a lot of words. But I think the timing was good. I think in terms of where we were in our education, it was good. You know what I mean? I think we had a lot to say at that point. And who knows? Maybe there'll be another one coming out at some point. We'll see.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' You never know.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Don't be silly.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. Let's move on with some news items.<br />
<br />
== News Items ==<br />
=== Experimental Electric Plane <small>(11:37)</small> ===<br />
* [https://gizmodo.com/nasa-s-experimental-electric-airplane-edges-closer-to-i-1846383952 NASA’s Experimental Electric Airplane Edges Closer to Its First Flight]<ref>[https://gizmodo.com/nasa-s-experimental-electric-airplane-edges-closer-to-i-1846383952 Gizmodo: NASA’s Experimental Electric Airplane Edges Closer to Its First Flight]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' Jay, you're going to start us off by telling us about an experimental electric plane.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So we might have electric cars on the road, but electric planes are a completely different thing. It's not just adding in that third dimension, but the danger levels go way up and the complexity of just building aircraft that are based on electricity and not on jet fuel. It's a paradigm shift. Did you guys know that electric planes have been around since the 1970s?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I did not.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I didn't know.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah. So that's when the first one was created and flown. And in 2015, do you guys remember the Solar Impulse 2?<br />
<br />
'''S/C:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yes, that I remember.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Now, that was collecting energy from the sun and powering its motors, and it flew solely on electric power. So there's two major problems with electric airplanes. I'm sure everyone can easily think of the first one, that's batteries, right? The weight of batteries, the energy density of batteries, because both of those two issues are a very big problem with batteries alone. And there's this cyclical thing like we've talked about with sending things into outer space. In order to send more cargo into outer space, you need more jet fuel, but adding jet fuel requires more jet fuel, right? And you get to a point of diminishing returns where you can't... You keep adding, adding. The same with batteries. If you keep adding a bigger battery, you need a bigger battery to support the bigger battery. So we clearly need batteries to have more energy density, and it's slowly happening. Again, no sudden breakthroughs. Also though, electric planes, and here's the big one, they have to be certified in the United States by the Federal Aviation Administration, the FAA. And this is largely due to they have to be safe for passengers. This is a huge undertaking because every freaking component has to be tested and proven airworthy. And specifically, the batteries, they're an issue because they're a safety issue because they can catch on fire, legit. It does happen. You can watch videos on YouTube of people, their battery in their phone just catches on fire, something happens. So they have to mitigate these problems, but things are getting better. So in 2016, the FAA approved electric airplanes for up to 19 passengers. So and it's not a coincidence that in the same year, NASA has been developing an electric plane called the X-57 Maxwell. So right now, the number of commercial electric airplanes is incredibly low, like incredibly low. And I think we're talking about very small airplanes. I don't think there is a 19, I couldn't find an example of a 19 passenger electric airplane. I think they simply just don't exist yet. And part of this is that the incredibly long and difficult process of getting the FAA to say, yes, this aircraft is approved for commercial flight. So let's go back to the X-57 Maxwell. So the plane will make use of NASA's research in electric powered flight that goes back to 2014. So back in 2014, they started something called LEAP Tech, the LEAP Tech project. And this stands for a leading edge asynchronous propeller technology. So in essence, this is what this means is that they're figuring out different ways in places to put engines on aircraft because it's not going to follow the same ways that we create jet fuel based aircraft. As an example, this plane has 14 engines and the engines are on the wing, on the wings. That's it.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It's on the wing.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah. So, all right. So it's an experimental plane. It's centered out of Edwards Air Force Base in California. And the basic premise here is that it's 100% electric powered. Its first flight is actually scheduled this year, and you might recognize the name of the plane, right? It's the X-plane, right? There's been lots of X-planes with NASA. They use that to name their experimental aircraft. And typically those experimental aircraft either turn into real planes or at least parts of it become something that turns into real aircraft. So this plane comes, like I said, with 14 motors. Now, the cool thing about it is that not only does it have the engines on the tip of the wings, meaning there's a big engine on each side of the plane, on the very tip, the very end of the wing, but there's six engines on each side, smaller ones. And I was trying to find out details, like why they put the big ones on the outside, what does that mean versus the small ones. Why wouldn't you just have a lot of smaller engines? But apparently that as they were experimenting, doing the LeapTech project, they figured out that they can get the most bang for the buck if they have the bigger engines on the far outside of the wings. They call this distributed electric propulsion. And apparently this is going to be something that is very common with electric airplanes. The fuselage that they're using comes from an existing plane called the TECNAM P2006T. And they've repurposed it for the X-57. Now you might ask, why are they repurposing a fuselage? Can any of you guys guess?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It's already certified fuselage.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Exactly. Because of how unbelievably difficult it is to get these components and new designs approved, they had to start with something that has already been made flight worthy. It's interesting to note that in the history of aircraft, we've only had one real major shift in propulsion. So what is that? What was our major shift in propulsion?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, propeller to jet, right?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, so piston to jet.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' But what about rocket?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Well, I'm talking about aircraft, like passenger aircraft. So yeah, they started out with piston engines. You think of the old fighter planes and the bi-wings, all that stuff. Those are running kind of like a car engine, just a piston-based engine in the front of the plane. Then they went to jet engines, which is a completely different design, completely different way of functioning. And now we have electric motors. And this is coming soon. So now we're at the third major shift in propulsion. So a big consideration is that electric planes have to be designed specifically to be electric planes. So even though they repurposed the X-57 fuselage, it's a prototype. That's not the way it's going to be. They're definitely going to be building planes from the ground up because of certain things like fundamental changes, like where is the energy source going to be stored? And so on. And a jet airplane, the fuel is stored in certain places, and it's based off of weight, and it's based off of-<br />
<br />
'''B:''' The wing.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Right. But think about it. Like when a jet is flying for a long time and that fuel goes away, if the fuel wasn't put in the exact right place, the balance of the plane would change dramatically, right? Imagine if you had all that fuel in the tail of the plane, and then you burn up three quarters of it. The plane, the weight distribution completely fluctuates.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That's true.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So it's the same with batteries, and batteries are really heavy. What they're doing is they're distributing the batteries evenly throughout the plane, or at least one company is working on that right now, and it's looking like this is going to be something that they do. It's not going to be like the batteries only exist here. They're going to put them in many different places. The X-57 now will be tested with a crew later this year, which is really cool because it's going to be flight worthy to actually put people on it. The one thing to think about here is that electric motors are much, much lighter than jet fuel-based motors. So this whole thing is now coming into being, and there's many companies that are working on it. Right now, we have a lot of companies that are out there that are retrofitting, using old fuselages to get their technology to the point where they can get some approval and get more experience in the air. I did find a company that's actually building a plane from the ground up, but it's sitting there waiting to get all the testing done through the FAA. So again, even if these planes are built and they're ready to go right now, the approval process could take five years, 10 years. It could be an incredibly long amount of time.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So do you think that this will replace prop planes that do like short distance travel? You know what I mean? Like for cities that are not that far apart.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Puddle jumpers, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Puddle jumpers, right.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I don't know how often you guys have had to fly on those. It's not a pleasant experience.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, it's a white knuckle.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' They're incredibly noisy.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, there's a lot of things about those small planes that are no good. Like remember when we flew from the South Island of New Zealand to the North Island and the wind shear was so bad, the plane wasn't completely flying sideways, but it was turned to an angle that made you go, what is happening? I don't like that. I don't think that electric planes are going to solve that type of experience, Steve. It's all about weight and distance right now. How far can an electric plane fly? So they could fly, I think the max distance they're getting right now is somewhere around 500 miles.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's pretty low for that niche.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' But one interesting thing I found out was that when you look at the amount of power output, this is really where the tires hit the pavement here. Right now, batteries just flat out are not even close to being able to put out the energy that they need to. That's it. You know, we're very much below what a jet engine can do. We need the energy.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, jet fuel has a specific energy of about 12,000 watt hours per kilogram, 12,000. The current batteries are like 250.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' In fact, Steve, I don't think a battery technology will ever match that energy density. I think it might be physically impossible.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Bob, do you realize what show you're on?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' What about supercapacitors?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Battery powered jets.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That's just an old memory from something I read years ago. So yeah, we could get emails on this.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I don't agree with that. I think we will steadily increase and at some point I'm hoping that we have a couple of heavy hitter innovations that leap us forward. But even if we don't, I mean, we're making steady and good progress with batteries. You know, Bob, and also don't forget, they might be able to come up with more efficient engines and there's all sorts of ways to make the energy demands go down other than just make the plane light. But we'll see. Look, we're not going anywhere. This is just an update to this particular test this X-57, the ongoing test, but they're flying people in it. It's made good progress over the last year. And I'm really excited to see how far that they can take this.<br />
<br />
=== Website Diversity <small>(22:22)</small> ===<br />
* [https://theconversation.com/we-spent-six-years-scouring-billions-of-links-and-found-the-web-is-both-expanding-and-shrinking-159215 We spent six years scouring billions of links, and found the web is both expanding and shrinking]<ref>[https://theconversation.com/we-spent-six-years-scouring-billions-of-links-and-found-the-web-is-both-expanding-and-shrinking-159215 The Conversation: We spent six years scouring billions of links, and found the web is both expanding and shrinking]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, Cara. This is kind of a different news item talking about the diversity of the World Wide Web.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. So some computer scientists and computer engineers from different Australian institutions just published a research article in PLOS One called The Evolution of Diversity and Dominance of Companies in Online Activity. And you know, a little bit of it, I have to admit, is a little over my head because it's a really cool multidisciplinary article. So these computer scientists really pulled a lot of information from economics to try and make sense of some of the data that they were able to amass. I think just, what was it, multiple terabytes of data looking across 10 billion posts spanning more than a decade. And what they were trying to do is kind of use this data that they pulled mostly from Reddit and from Twitter, but also from a common crawl data set to serve as a proxy for how much attention different sites receive on the Internet. So they basically said, we're going to pick a data set. We're going to look at what people are posting on Reddit. We're going to look at what people are posting on Twitter. And we're also going to look across this common crawler. And we're going to try and make some sense of where are they pointing to? What are they linking to? And to answer these big picture questions, which is, is the Internet becoming more diverse? Is it expanding or is it shrinking? So I have a quick question for you guys. How many .com domain names do you think there are as of today? We're recording this on Wednesday, May 5th, 2021, on the Internet.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' 100.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Just about 100.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' About 100.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' .com.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I own three of those. Yeah. How many .coms do you think there are?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' 1.8 billion.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' No.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' 1.8 billion.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Was it 120 million?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. Bob's a lot closer. It's 155 446 212.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's a lot.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. Or 155,446,212. That's a better number.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' My number was bigger.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Your number was bigger. And so price is right rules. You lose. Bob wins all the laundry detergent. Yeah. So there are a lot of .coms. There are fewer .nets. This also pulls for some reason. VeriSign tells you there are only 13 million .nets, 13 and a half million .nets. And these are active domain names. And so these resources are available on the Internet. And we want to see how things are changing over time. And really we want to look at the economics of who owns this Internet real estate. And where are people spending their time online. So a couple of interesting things that they found. I mentioned before how much data. 5.6 terabytes of data that they dug through. And so Reddit data went back to 2006. And their Twitter data went back to 2011. So they ended up with 5.6 terabytes of data. 6 billion user comments on Reddit. 11.8 billion Twitter posts. I love this, they said that this data set is more than 4 times the size of the original data from the HUbble space telescope. That's pretty cool. So what they did is they looked at all of the links to other sites to other online services. That ended up being about more than a billion in total. And what they wanted to know is how unique is this link. So they did a scale here where we've got maximum diversity, meaning that all links have their all domain versus minimum diversity meaning all of this links go to the same domain. So when we're talking about domains we're talking like Twitter.com/, YouTube.com/. So minimum diversity means that all of the links would have been from the same place. Maximum that they're all from different places. And they found something really interesting. Ten years ago there was a lot more diversity across Reddit. So for every 100 random links that users posted there were about 20 different domains. Now, for every 100 links users post on Reddit, there're only about 5 different domains. So we're seeing that these big websites are carrying a lot more of the traffic that people are spending time at. Here's an interesting fact, between 60 and 70% of all attention on key social media platforms—I'm pulling this straight from the write-up that the authors wrote in the conversation—between 60 and 70% of all attention on key social media platforms is focused towards only 10 popular domains. And we know, based on their publication—I'm just switching back to the actual article—that the vast majority of internet data in the West is split between Apple, Facebook, Google, and Amazon, and in the East, their counterparts Alibaba, Baidu, and Tencent. So we're seeing that the vast majority of this kind of internet traffic is in these specific areas. They also looked at linkage patterns, building these different linkage trees, and what they found was similar. The kind of richer getting richer, the idea that the big kind of mega sites are carrying more and more. But an interesting thing is that this doesn't necessarily mean that innovation has gone down per se. They're actually finding that still at this point, the web is an increasing source of innovation, that technology is ratcheting up, that there are more apps than ever, they're more diverse than ever, but it's also making it harder for people to get ahead and it's making it harder. There's like an activation energy that's required that a lot of individual programmers, individual users aren't able to overcome because the big players are dominating the field. So we're seeing that even though the diversity of sources is in decline, there's an actual continually increasing functionality within new services. So we're talking about new niche things that we didn't have before, like being able to stream music, like being able to pull from RSS feeds, but actually we've had that for a really long time. But just think about all of the innovation that's occurring on websites day by day. We're able to stream more terabytes of data. We're able to have more functionality within these different websites that we couldn't have before. Like Spotify couldn't exist back in the day. We didn't have the technology for Spotify to work the way it works now. WhatsApp, Snapchat, these are things that are built on the backs of technology increases and vice versa. They also talk a little bit about, the researchers talk about these three kind of like ages. So they do a lot. It's interesting because these are computer scientists, but they must have like backgrounds in ecology and biology because they're constantly comparing or using metaphors for evolution. So they're always talking about kind of species and diversity and ability to overcome selection pressures. Yeah, it's kind of an interesting metaphor that they use. But then they talk a little bit about what we think of as like infancy development and maturity. So think about an organism, for example, in its infancy during development and then at maturity. And when we think about the health of nations, we often talk about things like infant mortality. And so they sort of reclaim that term infant mortality. And they found that there's been a dramatic increase over the last couple of decades of the infant mortality rate of websites. So for example, across their data set, while 40%, almost 40% of the domains that were made in 2006 were still active five years later, only 3% of those created in 2015 were active in 2020.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' 3%? That's all that has survived?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. So we know that there's a heavy staying power of early adoption, probably back when there was less competition, when the web was less diverse, and once people could get their foots in the door. And you see this a lot with like YouTubers. You see it even with the Skeptic's Guide to the Universe, right? These early adopters are able to bring a lot of eyes, they're able to have that time scale to innovate. And if you stick with it, and you're able to overcome certain odds and certain hurdles, we see that the staying power is there, whereas now the field is really, really diluted. And it's become harder. The online competition is obviously really intense. But because of that, unfortunately, there's a loss of diversity. So they talk about the implications for this. They talk about how this plays nicely with what we understand about basic economics and basic kind of capitalism, right? That we know that competition leads to innovation. But we also know that when monopolies come into play, oftentimes that actually can block innovation. And so we're sort of at this interesting precipice, where online companies have a lot of opportunity, right? We no longer have some of the traditional rules of capitalist economics, like go into an area that's been lesser served, like a physical geographical area, because the web reaches all corners of the earth. But we do have, we can tap into some economic principles, like tap into niche needs. There's increasingly more and more needs for individuals that are small and specific. And so companies that are trying to get a foot in the door, whereas you may not be able to compete with a Facebook or an Amazon right now, if you can address a problem that those companies don't address, or you can reach a consumer base in a way that they don't, you may be able to get your foot in the door and actually find your area within this kind of interesting global competition.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah. And then they'll just buy you out.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, unfortunately. I mean, that is sort of, right, the end stage here. So there is something, I don't know, this kind of research, I think, is fascinating, because of course, these individuals are coming at it from a computer science perspective, and they did some really interesting computer science juju to try and understand, like, what is the state of the internet today in terms of both its diversity, but also its homogeneity. But I do think it has so many implications for economic scholars, for neuroeconomics, for psychologists, for business interests, that this is just a fascinating study. And because it's on PLOS One, that's the Public Library of Science, it's an open access journal. Anybody listening right now, you can go and read it. Again, it's called The Evolution of Diversity and Dominance of Companies in Online Activity. It's fascinating.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. Thanks, Cara.<br />
<br />
=== Evolution of Multicellularity <small>(32:40)</small> ===<br />
* [https://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/evolution-of-multicellularity/ Evolution of Multicellularity]<ref>[https://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/evolution-of-multicellularity/ NeuroLogica Blog: Evolution of Multicellularity]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, guys, let me ask you a question. When do you think the first multicellular creature evolved?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Multi?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Right before the second one did.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It was that day that one...<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It was a Sunday, I think.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Like Thursday, a billion years ago?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' One unicellular engulfed another.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' About how long ago do you think it was?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Billions.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Billions? I don't know about that.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Is it like a billion?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I was thinking one billion.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' One billion?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I think less than a billion.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Maybe one billion years ago.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' 700 to 800 million years?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' A billion is a really good guess. That's really good.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Excellent.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So what is it?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So it's probably a billion years ago. So 3.77 billion years is the oldest evidence we have for a single-celled organism, 3.7. So it may have existed before then, but it's at least 3.7 billion years old. So for about 3 billion years, life on Earth was all single-celled creatures.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' What happened?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Although there was a lot of evolution going on at that time. Modern extant single-celled creatures and the cells in multicellular creatures are really complicated because it took 3 billion years to evolve that complexity. But at what point did they start... Did they evolve into a multicellular creature? So we know when the Cambrian explosion happened, there was, again, this massive adaptive radiation of all different kinds of multicellular creatures and different body plans, etc. But that's not when multicellular creatures appeared. That's when they first developed hard structures that fossilized. That was when the light turned on. That wasn't when the creatures came into existence. The creatures came into existence. And there was the previous period, the Ediacaran period, right? You have the Ediacaran fauna, which we don't know what their relationship is to the Cambrian creatures. There's some evidence. We talked not too long ago about the fact that there was some evidence that indicates that at least some of the Ediacaran fauna evolved into some of the Cambrian fauna. But it's still not clear. But we don't have a lot of fossil windows into this period of time. And we don't have any documentation of the evolution of multicellularity itself. Because this is when there were no hard parts. There's nothing to fossilize. There's very rare conditions. But there is one place, and there's a few places around the world where we do have the right conditions. There's one Lough Torridon in Scotland. The so-called Torridonian Sequence. It's a large array of microfossils from about a billion years ago. So it's right at that point of time when multicellular creatures may have been first appearing. And there's a particular fossil that they've been studying called Bicellum brassieri. This is basically a sphere of cells, right? It's just a blob, a spherical blob of cells. But a recent examination of this spherical blob of cells from a billion years ago indicated that there are two different kinds of cells in there. There's one kind of cell on the outside and one kind of cell on the inside. So that means it's a candidate for a multicellular creature. But it doesn't have to be because it could just be a colony creature. And this is one of those things...<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Or it could have been eating, the sphere could have been eating the interior.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The cells on the outside are eating the cells on the inside?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Engulf and devour, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, that's another question. Did multicellular creatures evolve out of colony creatures or not? But in order to be a multicellular creature, you need one cell to develop into at least two different kinds of cells, right? It can't just be different kinds of cells getting together. That would be more of a colony. But how do we know if these two different types of cells developed from the same progenitor cell? And that's what the new study shows. Because we basically catch the cells in the act migrating from the center to the outside and changing their shape as they do.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That's incredible.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The cells in the middle are more spherical. They're more rod-like on the outside. And so we see these transitional cells that are migrating to the outside and becoming more rod-like. So it looks pretty good that this is two different populations of cells developing from a single progenitor cell type which would make it a genuinely multicellular critter.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Wow.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And pretty much the simplest one that you could possibly imagine, it's a sphere with a center and a shell and it's like two different kinds of cells. But that's all it takes. Once you have that bifurcation, once you have the mechanism of taking different pathways in development turning some genes on and other genes on versus off, that's it. Once you have that, then evolution can run with that.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh boy, run baby, run.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, because then you have that diversity.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Then everything else is just a tweak on that process. And of course we don't know if this creature is an actual ancestor to any multicellular creature. It doesn't matter. It's related to it. Yeah, it's at that time when it's plausible and it's part of a population of things living at that time that were evolving multicellularity. So the question is, you have single-celled creatures replicate but they don't necessarily go on their own way. You could have a population like bacteria exist in colonies and collaborate and cooperate.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Biofilms, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, exactly. So at some point, some clump of cells figured out a way to specialize. You go to the outside and you do your thing and we'll be on the inside. Multicellularity has its own machinery separate from the machinery necessary for a single cell to go about its business. And that includes things like they have to stick together. Like there's cell adhesion, right? So that's a huge part of multicellularity.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' And they found that too, didn't they?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yes, they did. They did find that as well.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That's big.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So there is evidence for the mechanism by which so these cells have cellular adhesion mechanisms which means that goes along with multicellularity as well. They're not just clumped together. They're stuck together. And also that the path of development that they take depends upon where they are three-dimensionally in the organism. So they're sensing chemical gradients, for example. They're sensing the cells around them. And based upon what cells are around them will determine what genes they turn on and off and what kind of cell they become. This is just sort of the basics of multicellularity. So we're seeing this being evolved in a very primitive form.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, because this is way back at the beginning of that process.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, exactly.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's cool.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, it's very, very cool. But we're just getting a glimpse. We're getting a glimpse of a very complicated evolutionary process.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Could this really be one cell that like at the end of its life migrates from the interior to the exterior of the sphere but it's still one cell but it just kind of like just goes there to die type of thing? Like dead skin cells?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Are you saying could the cell have morphed itself as it extended outward?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, so I think what you're saying is do you mean like this isn't two populations of cells, it's one population of cells of different ages?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yes.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Like looking at young cells in the middle and old cells on the outside?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yes.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, the way we do with paleontology.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, that's an interesting idea. I don't know how they would distinguish those two things with the data that they have.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I hope I'm wrong.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, it took a long time to figure out about two different T. rexes or a young T. rex and an old T. rex.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, exactly.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Either way, does this sound like a Nobel Prize to you? This sounds pretty big.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I don't know. Yeah, it's pretty big. I mean, but it needs a lot of confirmation.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' First multicellular life?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It's huge.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But keep in mind, it's not like they found a fossil. This is a huge bed of fossils. There's tons of fossils in this location that they have to go through.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, wow. They must be so excited.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's been for years. This is not new. I mean, we've known about this for years. But this is just a treasure trove of this soft-bodied fossils from a billion years ago.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' How was it preserved?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's just the environmental conditions were such that-<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Superfine?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, they preserved these fine, soft structures.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Wow. We've got to vet the whole planet for stuff like that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' There's a few of these around the world of different ages where there's soft fossils are preserved. And every time we find ones, a whole new window opens up into this part of evolution. And again, we're just getting these very brief glimpses at a very long, complicated process. It's just amazing to think there was 3 billion years of evolution that is like a blip to us.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right. But it was so important. It doesn't seem like it because we think of it as being so simple. But it was so important to lay those foundations for the explosion later.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, exactly. That's why I like when creationists say, oh, what's the probability of a single cell coming together at random? It's zero because that didn't happen.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, it's not random.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, that was 3 billion years of evolution to get to a modern cell. Nobody believes a modern cell popped up into existence spontaneously. 3 billion years of evolution.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' 3,000 million years.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Which a lot could have happened differently over the course of that 3 billion years. That's for sure.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Right.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's cool. But then you also think that it probably would have independently happened multiple times. Like you said, we don't know if this is actually any direct ancestor.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Oh, yeah. I mean, think about all the side branches that we'll never know about.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It kills me, man.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So cool.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I still hope there's an alien probe out there that documented everything.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's right. Put it up on YouTube.<br />
<br />
=== NASA Solar Probe <small>(42:56)</small> ===<br />
* [https://www.cnet.com/google-amp/news/nasa-solar-probe-becomes-fastest-object-ever-built-as-it-touches-the-sun/ NASA solar probe becomes fastest object ever built as it 'touches the sun']<ref>[https://www.cnet.com/google-amp/news/nasa-solar-probe-becomes-fastest-object-ever-built-as-it-touches-the-sun/ CNET: NASA solar probe becomes fastest object ever built as it 'touches the sun']</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' Bob, talking about probes, you're going to tell us about NASA's solar probe, the fastest human object ever.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' The Parker Solar Probe. Yes, Steve, as you say, it's a record-breaking machine, having just broken its previous records for fastest man-made object and closest ever approach to the sun. And it's not done breaking these records. And there's other juicy bits of science related to this news item that I'd love to go into. So yes, the NASA Parker Solar Probe. What is it? Why is it? Who is it? It was launched August 12, 2018, a day after Jay's birthday. It's the weight of a grown man, say, 160 pounds, but it's as big as a small car or a very, very, very large meatball, depending on how you look at it. So it's the first NASA craft actually named after a living person, astrophysicist Eugene Parker. He was the first guy who theorized the solar wind, so he very, very much deserves this honour. The mission is part of NASA's LWS, or Living With a Star program, which I just love that program name so much. Living With a Star, because that's what we're kind of doing. LWS investigates those aspects of the sun-earth system that have a direct link to life and society, basically. And why do we want to do this? Why do we care about this relationship? I mean, it's pretty obvious. I mean, just the science is fascinating. But it potentially could do wonderful things. Like, here's for an example, we could potentially predict the next gargantuan CMB geostorm, like the Carrington event from the late 1800s, that the Carrington event was a coronal mass ejection that came out of the sun and was barely noticed on Earth. But if it happened today, it would be a travesty. Basically, imagine almost every circuit on the planet getting fried. Satellites not literally dropping out of the sky, but completely burned out. I mean, it could be horrific. This type of research could potentially help us predict events like that, which would be nice because it's going to happen, kids. Actually, that event could be the most dangerous event in our near future. More likely over short time frames than almost anything you can imagine from a super volcano to an asteroid hit. It needs a lot of attention. And this is the kind of research that can do it. Okay, so Parker was made to study the corona and solar wind of the sun so we can learn more about space weather. So to accomplish this, Parker has some very cool instruments, four of them on board. It's got a wide field imager called Whisper. Cool name. And it's got three distinct instruments to study particles in the solar wind. They're mostly electrons and protons, by the way. Plus, they can also inspect the powerful electric and magnetic fields around the sun. So very cool, very precise, very advanced instrumentation for all of that. But to discover what it needs to discover and really break new ground, it's going to have to get really, really close to the sun because we've been fairly close to the sun before. But we need to get really close with this instrumentation to really get some good detail. So close that some say that this will be the first time a craft actually touches another star, which really isn't that much of a hyperbole since the corona is part of the sun's atmosphere and it will be, eventually, it will be in the corona. Now, the tech and the science that makes this happen is where some of those real juicy bits I refer to of science are. And I'd like to talk about those. The first challenge, which is just fascinating, is getting close to the sun. What do you do? What does it take to get close to the sun? It's actually really, really hard, harder than you might imagine. So who knew this? Did you know that it takes 55 times the energy to go to the sun compared to Mars? 55 times.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Why?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Because it's farther away? Because it's hotter?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' No.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Because it's more radiation?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' None of that.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' The solar wind?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It's all about orbital mechanics. So everyone...<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You've got to lose all the velocity of the Earth.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah. Everyone, put on your orbital mechanics hat. Jay, not that hat. Put the other one on, Jay. I like that one. It's really cool. Thank you, Jay. So the sun has a lot of gravity. I mean, it's like, what is it, 98.9 or 99 point blah blah of the mass of the solar system.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Solar system, yeah. It's all of that.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It's an amazing, it's a huge gravity well just pulling everything in. So it seems like if you just leave the Earth, just fling yourself off of the Earth in the general direction of the sun, it'll just suck you in. No. Like Steve said, you are, we are in orbit. The Earth is moving at 67,000 miles an hour, about 108,000 kilometres per hour around the sun, which is basically sideways to the sun, right? You're basically going sideways to the sun. So if you launch straight to the sun, you're going to miss it. Totally miss it because of all of that sideways motion. So what you have to do is you have to cancel all of that orbital velocity that Earth gives you if you want to actually hit the sun. And actually, from what one researcher was saying, right now we do not have the technology to hit the sun. It would, we would have to take away all of that sideways motion, which we said we really can't do right now. The Parker probe, though luckily, only wants to get very close to the sun. So it only needs to remove about 80% of that 108,000 kilometres per hour speed. And that's incredibly hard as well. So now going to the outer planets is a lot easier because instead of canceling almost all of the velocity that the Earth gives you, you just need to add a little bit to it that you already have. So if you escape the Earth at the usual 40,000 kilometres per hour, right, you leave the Earth, escape velocity, you've got 40,000, you're going 40,000 kilometres per hour because, just because the sun, the Earth is, in orbit around the sun, all you need to do is go from 40 kph to 46.6 kph.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Just the acceleration.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That's it. Just go a little bit faster. Just increase your speed by 6,000 kilometers per hour and bam, you go to Mars. And then, or, hey, you want to go to Pluto? Go from 40, go from 40 to 58,000 kph. That's it. 18,000 kph and you're at Pluto. But you want to go near the sun? You've got to wipe out 86,000 kilometres of velocity from the sun, from the Earth that the Earth gives you and that's what's really, really hard. That's why it's so hard to get to the sun. Now, of course, God forbid we just build a nice nuclear engine to do most of that hard work for us with just pure brute force but I suspect it would still be hard but it would be a lot of course. It's a nuclear engine. It would be awesome. But instead, we have to work with what we currently have. So what they do is they're sending the Parker Solar Probe to Venus for a gravity assist maneuver and that gravity assist eats away at that sideways motion. Every time it goes around Venus, it takes away some of that sideways motion. It just reduces it incrementally every time it goes around. So as a result, you have less and less of that sideways motion every time you get that gravity assist from Venus and that tightens the probe's elliptical orbit each time letting it get closer and closer to the sun as the probe's perihelion or closest approach to the sun. But not only that, not only do these gravity assists of Venus help you get closer to eat away at that sideways motion but it also you have the sun pulling you in every time you go back towards the sun and that just adds to your speed. So two things are happening. You're getting closer and closer to the sun and you're going faster and faster and faster faster than anything we have ever launched. And knitting and knitting.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' So the vehicle has to be able to take the stress of that.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh yeah, not only that, I mean, talk about the heat which I will be talking about. So months after its lunch, so 2018, a day after Jay's birthday, just a few months later, and Parker's already breaking records. The records were held by the Helios 2 spacecraft. I think that was in the 70s. That spacecraft also went very close to the sun and it went very fast but Parker blew those records away just after a few months. It was already going faster and closer and I don't even want to tell you the records back then because who cares? They've already been broken multiple times. But I'll tell you the record that was just broken. and that's why this was in the news this week. Right now the Parker Solar Probe is the fastest human-made object, 330,000 miles per hour, 532,000 kilometres per hour. We've made nothing that's gone faster than that. No material objects. And then the closest a spacecraft has ever gotten to the sun, it was just recently 6.5 million miles or 10.4 million kilometres at perihelion. So it's the closest and fastest ever. But of course, if you've been paying attention, those records are ephemeral as well because there's more Venus gravity assists in the future and ultimately, it's going to get even closer and even faster. So how close and how fast is it going to get? Okay, Christmas Eve, Christmas Eve 2024, it will achieve its, or around that time, it will achieve its fastest and closest. So it will achieve 430,000 miles per hour, which is 692,000 kilometres per hour. That is fast. Nothing, of course, nothing has gone faster. That is 0.064% the speed of light, which actually is pretty awesome. It's 192 kilometres per second. That means it could go around the planet. If you could travel at that speed around the planet, very close to the surface, you could go around the planet in three and a half minutes. Bam, three and a half minutes around the world. That is fast. And then, in terms of proximity to the sun, that Christmas Eve in 2024, it's going to be 7 million kilometres or 4.3 million miles from the sun. Mercury is 46 million kilometres away. And this is going to be 7 million kilometres away. Super close. Within, it will be within the corona for sure, I think, at that distance. That will be amazing. Okay. So one other thing that really piqued my interest when reading about this, the Parker Solar Probe has the most sophisticated heat shield that I've ever heard about, I've ever devised.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I would hope so.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Super cutting edge. Yeah, right? It's got to be, right? It's called the TPS, Thermal Protection System. Not very creative there, but kind of very, very descriptive. It's eight feet. It's an eight, got an eight-foot diameter heat shield and it protects everything within its umbra from the intense heat, of course, the intense heat, but also the hyper-velocity dust particles that's in the sun's corona. So it does dual job of protecting that and radiation too, as well. The shield itself is a carbon foam sandwiched between two layers of superheated carbon-carbon composite. Really cool. And it also, of course, has a special white outer coating, right? That makes perfect sense. You want to reflect as much as you possibly can. So it's got a very special white outer coating. I couldn't find out any details of what makes it so special besides being white and of course, that will reflect the sun's energy and imagine, I couldn't help but thinking, it's going to be black on that side of the heat shield. Not a smart idea. And then, when the probe eventually has its closest encounter that Christmas Eve, it will be exposed to 2500 degrees Fahrenheit, which is 1370 degrees Celsius. Crazy, crazy hot. But, NASA thinks, while it's 1370 degrees Celsius on one side, the happy side of the shield is going to be 85 degrees Fahrenheit or 29.4 degrees Celsius on the other side. It's going to be very nice. In fact, it's going to be so cool on the instrument side of th heat shield that the scientists put heaters, they put some heaters on some of the instruments. Can you imagine that? That's to me that was hilarious because they're so good at making that shield that they actually had to put some heaters on some of the instruments because it wasn't quite hot enough. I guess for maximum efficiency. So I'll just close with my final perception of this heat shield was that this would make, what? A perfect dragon shield. Right? You're going up against a dragon I wanna carry the carbon foam sandwich between two layers of superheated carbon-carbon composite. That's what I'm going to be carrying.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Is it heavy Bob?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I don't know, I don't care. I'll just stay put. Wait till the dragon goes away. Then I'll make it a sphere of that stuff so I just can stay in there. Then the dragon will probably kick me. But whatever. I won't get burned. That's all I got kids.<br />
<br />
=== Chinese Space Program <small>(55:36)</small> ===<br />
* [https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/china-rocket-falling-news-long-march-5b-b1841771.html Chinese rocket tracker - live: Falling spacecraft falls to Earth over Indian Ocean, reports say]<ref>[https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/china-rocket-falling-news-long-march-5b-b1841771.html The Independent: Chinese rocket tracker - live: Falling spacecraft falls to Earth over Indian Ocean, reports say]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, Evan we've got one more space related news item. This one is about Chinese space program.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, it is. You know the old Chinese proverb. What goes up, must come down.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, this one kind of pissed me off.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, in the case of China's Long March 5B rocket we're witnessing that proverb come to fruition. This is the fifth iteration of the long march rocket family named for the Chinese red army 1934-1945 long march during the Chinese civil war. The letter "b" is used there, I'm not 100% but the "b" appears to be designating it as a single stage rocket whereas the non-b has a second stage. And I think a third stage as well. Also, the "b" slightly lighter and slightly shorter than the non-b the the 5B is LEO-specific. Low Earth Orbit. The rocket's coming down, I think a lot of people have been following this on the news. It's been big news all this week. So they launched it because the Chinese are putting a space station together. And this rocket put up one of the key pieces of the space station. However it unfortunately was not equipped with equipment to control its descent. And it actually reached orbit and now you can't control it. So it's going to come crashing down. But when is it going to hit? That is the $29 million question. So these rockets, there haven't been many launches. There's been seven launches of these types of rockets in the past. And the first one occurred in 2016 so fairly new. The 5B variant, this is only the second time the 5B has launched. That space station that they're construction is scheduled to be completed in late 2022. It'll be a scientific research outpost that China will use for the next decade and perhaps beyond. But the rocket itself that got it up there, well, this is a big thing. Big, because it's over 30 meters long. It has a 5 meter diameter. And because it reached orbital velocity like I said, it's going to come crashing down because they can't control it. This will be one of the, if not the largest man-made object to hit the Earth or come back in as an uncontrolled re-entry. It is, well, it's not quite Bob up to the speed of Parker probe but it's travelling around the Earth once every 90 minutes which is respectable. 4 kilometres every second. So that sound pretty impressive. It passes just north of New York and Madrid, also Beijing and as far south as Chile and New Zealand. They say that it's going around the Earth between the latitudes of 42 degrees north and 42 degrees south. By the way, do you know where Connecticut is on that? We are 41 degrees north. So we are inside the zone.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It could land on our heads.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It could, but you know what the chances of that happening Bob?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Nice job. I don't care.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Statistically?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I don't care.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Pretty darn low.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But higher than my chances.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Sure, the odds are low, but what is it? A one in three chance it could land on land? Sure, it'll probably land in the water the thing is, they don't know.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' They don't know.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' How did they not build this in?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' This is 90 feet by 15 feet. I mean, this thing is huge. I've heard they've had some stuff for, in previous launches, like on villages. Like, were they in China or whatever?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Ivory Coast had a, yeah, some debris came down the last time.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I mean, this is bad. This is irresponsible.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, and that is the point, Bob. And Jay touched on it as well, is that China's, well, as one person put it, they're taking shortcuts that they're not supposed to be taking. You're supposed to take responsibility for the things that you're putting up in space, and you try to mitigate these kinds of things from happening to the best of your ability. But they're just not equipping the rockets with the technology needed in order to bring these things in so that they burn up in the atmosphere, as opposed to come crashing down onto the planet.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' So this isn't even just like a mistake. This is like intentional, like, yeah, we're not gonna do this.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, China, unfortunately.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That's even worse.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, and they're pretty tight-lipped about kind of what's going on. They really haven't even had much in the form of details to say and inform the rest of the planet about kind of what's going on here. But I guess, fortunately, other space agencies around the planet are keeping an eye on this and trying to come up with the best determinations as to exactly when it will happen. Now, when you're listening to this, this podcast is going to launch on Saturday, the 8th of May.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' You said it's gonna launch. I love that.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, yeah, yeah, thank you.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Sorry.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' So it's possible that by the time you're listening to this, it has already come down and, well, may have to do a follow-up next week on it. But it could still be up there because it's a moving target. I've seen estimates anywhere from May 7th. The calculations by Russian experts are saying as early as May 7th, but I'm also seeing other agencies say as late as May 10th. I've seen some estimates for May 10th.<br />
<br />
== Who's That Noisy? <small>(1:00:52)</small> ==<br />
* Answer to last week’s Noisy: _brief_description_perhaps_with_link_<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, Jay, it's Who's That Noisy time.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Okay, guys, last week, I played this noisy.<br />
<br />
[_short_vague_description_of_Noisy]<br />
<br />
All right, you get the idea.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Smooth jazz.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Smooth jazz, baby. You guys have any ideas?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I don't know, but it got faster as it progressed.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That actually is very relevant.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, interesting.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I mean, it sounds like, I would guess, it's some kind of phenomenon translated into drumming.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' All right, well, I mean, that's not that smart of an answer because obviously you're hearing drums.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But yeah, so what's making the drumming sounds? It doesn't sound totally random either, so I'm thinking there's some kind of phenomenon.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, yes, you're correct. I'll give you that, you're correct. All right, let's get into what the people said. So Phil Sumo, he said, "Hi there, love the show. Is this week's noise the Thai Elephant Orchestra?" And I was really surprised to find out about this Thai Elephant Orchestra. What is it? It's an elephant orchestra. Check this out. [plays Noisy] The orchestra is a whole bunch of elephants playing different kinds of percussive musical instruments, drums, clackers, hitting steel pipes and whatnot. It's fascinating, so just look it up. It's a fun watch, and it's really funny that these elephants are standing there and they're doing it, which I think is just so freaking cool. But Phil, it's not the Elephant Orchestra, although I have to thank you for that. We will move on to Ostrich Man, and he says, "Hey Jay, I think this noisy is a monkey playing the drums. Best wishes from Lithuania." No, this is not correct. It is not a monkey playing the drums, but it might as well be, and you'll find out why, because it's pretty nutty. You're not as far off as you think. This next one's from a listener named Antonius Deboer,<br />
and he says, "Hi Jay, long time, first time. This sounded like a drum kit left out in a hail storm."<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's funny.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Clever.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Lots of people guessed that, like weather-related, the hail. That could be it's not a bad guess at all, but Evan did say something very key here, and it's that it seems to get more louder as it goes. I'm gonna go down to a new listener wrote in, and this is another clue. Abigail Lubin-Weismer, and she said, "Hi Jay, my name is Abigail. I'm a nurse working in Jerusalem, Israel. Been listening to the show since the early days, and I still get excited every Saturday for a new episode. I actually have a guess this week. Yay me. Is it very slow popcorn?" It's not slow popcorn. It is popcorn. It's popcorn that when it pops, it keys a drum kit. The winner for this week, Christian Barrage. "Hi Jay, long time listener, first time guesser. I think I have heard this week's noisy. It's a drum set connected to a frying pan filled with popping popcorn. Thanks for the great show." So yeah, so they hooked up this rig to a frying pan that has popcorn in it with oil, and it's cooking, and as the popcorn pops, it hits different pressure plates above the pot, right? So like a popcorn hits this one, and it hits the kick drum. A popcorn hits this one, and the cymbal gets hit, right? So every single thing about the drum kit can get triggered, and then as Evan said, as it goes on and on, it gets faster and faster. Now I didn't want to play the whole thing because it's actually quite a long sound file, but I will play this popcorn jazz for you. I will play it later on in the file. [plays Noisy] It kind of does sound like popcorn, right?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Sure, it has that cadence.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' And I love this noisy because when you listen to it knowing what it is, your brain instantly maps the drum sounds to popcorn kernels popping. But anyway, thank you very much. This original one was sent in by Miklos Bolza. I really appreciate it. That was a lot of fun.<br />
<br />
=== New Noisy <small>(1:05:46)</small> ===<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I have a new noisy for you guys this week, and this noisy was sent in by a listener named Simon King.<br />
<br />
[_short_vague_description_of_Noisy]<br />
<br />
So I'd like you to identify the person speaking and any other relative information that you think goes along with that. Some of you will know instantly. Some of you will have no clue. Some of you will not make my meatballs this week, which is wrong. Right, Evan?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Wrong answer.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Wrong answer. All right, so if you think you know what this noisy is, you can email me at WTN@theskepticsguide.org, and don't forget to send me any cool sounds that you heard as well. I have a few announcements. I made a mistake last week. I said the Apollo 11 mission had the astronauts on the moon for eight days. The entire mission was approximately eight days. How much time did they spend on the moon? Does anybody know?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' A little over a day.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' 21 hours.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' 23 hours.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' 21.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' 21 hours?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' We have a series of SGU events. We actually have some really cool stuff happening right now, but there's more than one extravaganza, and there's more than one private show, so go to [https://www.theskepticsguide.org/events theskepticsguide.org/events] to see all the details, and that's it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, guys. We have a great interview coming up with Andy Weir, so let's go to that interview now.<br />
<br />
== Interview with Andy Weir <small>(1:07:20)</small> ==<br />
* https://www.andyweirauthor.com/<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Joining us now is Andy Weir. Andy, welcome back to the Skeptics Guide.<br />
<br />
'''AW:''' Hey, thanks. It's great to be back.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' If you recall, we interviewed you a few years ago about your first book, The Martian, which was awesome of course. Somehow, we missed you for Artemis, your second book, but we managed to get you back on the show for now your third book, Project Hail Mary.<br />
<br />
'''AW:''' That's right.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Which is going to be released very soon, I understand. I got an advanced copy and read the whole thing. Let me just say, it was awesome. I think it's fair to say that if you liked The Martian or if you love The Martian, you'll love this book as well.<br />
<br />
'''AW:''' How often do you talk to a writer and say, like, hey, I read your book, it sucked?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, that's true.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Occasionally we do interviews with people who are not aligned with our skeptical philosophy. But that's not the case here. So let me just open up with, I'm sure this is like a very common question that you're getting. So how, like, consciously is Project Hail Mary in your mind, like, in the same genre as The Martian? How much were you trying to recapture the same sort of feel of The Martian?<br />
<br />
'''AW:''' Well, I mean, I wasn't going out of my way to do it. I guess that's just the kind of story I turn out. But it shares the concept of, like, an isolated scientist, right? And a lot of problem solving. And of course, there's space and stuff. But really, I mean, it deviates from that and not isolated for long, and it deviates from that and becomes basically a buddy comedy, sort of.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, I could see that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, absolutely.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So it's very different in a lot of ways, especially no spoilers right now. But yeah, it ends up in a different place than The Martian by far, which I thought was really cool. And I did not expect that at all.<br />
<br />
'''AW:''' Cool. Well, I'm glad you were caught off guard.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So yeah, for our listener, the first part of this interview, we're going to remain relatively spoiler free. But we have to talk about the book, of course. And then we'll let you know when there are big spoilers coming. So it's no surprise just looking at the cover of the book, you have an astronaut, so you know that this is going to be some kind of a space saga. And there are other characters involved. So let me ask you about what was the original concept for this book? How did you sort of conceptualize, like, where you wanted to go with this story?<br />
<br />
'''AW:''' It was actually pulled largely out of the junkyard of my mind. Basically, I have a mental list of a bunch of ideas for stories or plot twists and stuff like that, that either aren't good enough to be an entire story, an entire novel on their own. Or in a couple of cases, when I tried to write a novel, I got about 70,000 words in, and then had to back burner it, and then put it in the fridge, and then put the fridge underground. And basically, I gave up on that book. It was called Jacques, and I wrote it between The Martian and Artemis. And it didn't work out, but it had some nuggets of good plot and character ideas. So although it seems like a single cohesive story, Project Hail Mary was actually made of a collection of unrelated story ideas that I had that kind of really fit well together. So Jacques had the concept of a mass conversion-based spacecraft fuel, and then Jacques also had a character that was very much like the character of Strat in Project Hail Mary. That's where Strat's personality came from. Then I had another story idea where a guy wakes up with amnesia and finds out he's aboard a spaceship. And then I had another story idea about – there's just a bunch of stuff that were kind of unrelated. So it wasn't this linear, like, I'm going to figure this out and make this story. It was like, oh, I had this idea, oh, but I need an explanation for that, oh, this other idea would explain that, oh, okay, wait, wait and so on. And it came together really well, but it was a series of shower epiphanies of hooking up tubes to other tubes of ideas I'd already had.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' At the very beginning of the book, obviously, this is not a spoiler because this is like page one. You know the story starts with someone who wakes up with complete autobiographical amnesia, although retaining their procedural memory. They still know stuff. They just have no idea who they are, where they are, how they got there, what's going on. That's a great literary device because then you get to simultaneously-<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, Next Generation did that in the 90s. But it was a great episode.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Obviously, nothing's new. Forget that idea. There's nothing new. But as devices go, it worked well for this story because the character is a scientist. So you have a scientist starting from nothing trying to figure out what's going on. So it allowed for that to unfold, which was fun. And then it also, as his memory comes back, we get flashbacks, right, which is also, yes, of course, that's a super old literary technique. But it works. It kind of made it all came together well.<br />
<br />
'''AW:''' Those two were required. The reason he had memory loss – well, we find out the actual plot-related reason he had memory loss toward the end of the book. But the reason I did it that way with memory loss and then flashbacks is because if I told the story linearly, it would be really weird. The first third of the book or so would be all about them building the ship, and then they'd launch it, and you would never see any of those characters again. And then a fairly critical character wouldn't be introduced until after that. And then it would just be this really – and also the first part, the parts on Earth would be like skimming through time, like, okay, here's a scene, and the next scene is two years later. And then we have – it would just be this really – it would be like a five-year-old telling you a story. And I just – I didn't want to spend a huge amount of time on the Earth segment, so flashbacks was a really convenient way for me to just give the interesting tidbits.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. It worked really well. And again, you always want to start in the middle of your story, right? You don't want to – like, oh, here's the day one and lead up – yeah, the linear model would not have worked for the story.<br />
<br />
'''AW:''' Born in 1972.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, right, exactly. So yeah, the best stories always start, like, in the middle of the action where you don't know what's going on. You kind of have to figure it out as you go along. All right, so let's transition to the more spoiler section of the interview. So if you don't-<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Please.<br />
<br />
'''AW:''' We are at spoiler level two.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, we're at spoiler level two. So if you don't – for the listener, if you really don't want to hear any spoilers beyond what we've already said, I highly recommend the book. Just get it and read it, and then you can listen to this at a later time. It's a quick read, too. I mean, it's very breezy once you get into it. I think I read it in, like, three or four days.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Or alternatively, you can listen to this entire interview, but then erase your memory.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, you could do that.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So Andy, your protagonist is very different than your protagonist in The Martian. So this is someone who really didn't even want to be there. Like, the attitude is very different.<br />
<br />
'''AW:''' Yeah. He was not anyone's first choice for this mission, especially not his own. He would rather not be there, and the powers that be would rather he weren't there. But he was really – it ended up – events conspired that he had to go. He was the one who had to be on it, mainly because – since we're in pseudo-spoiler. So basically, it's an interstellar mission. I guess, go back a little bit further. Since we're in spoiler, I can lay out the premise. An alien microbe that human scientists end up naming astrophage enters our solar system and starts breeding on the sun. This is how astrophage works. It lives on a star, the surface of a star, and it collects energy. There's a lot of energy.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' What part of the star? Like, within, like, the chromosphere, or closer?<br />
<br />
'''AW:''' Near the surface. So, kind of in the corona. I guess you could say it's a coronal virus.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Nice. No. That's a –<br />
<br />
'''AW:''' I'm pretty damn funny.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' No, I like that.<br />
<br />
'''AW:''' By the way, I wrote this whole book before COVID happened. Like, I was done before the virus – before the pandemic happened. Anyway. So, it lives on the surface of the sun, and it's a microbe. It's like the size of a bacteria. And it gathers a lot of energy and stores it, actually, as mass internally. So, it's converting heat into mass. And then it turns that mass energy into light that it uses as propulsion, because light actually – you know, light has momentum. If you shine light out the back of your butt, if you're a microbe, then you will be pushed forward, although not very fast. But they are doing mass conversion, and that turns out to be a good amount of force. And so, where do they go? Well, they go to a planet nearby that'll have carbon dioxide, whatever the nearest major source of carbon dioxide is. And they go there, and then that's how they reproduce. They do mitosis, because the star itself will just have hydrogen and helium. It needs heavier atoms to be able to make a copy of itself. So, it does that, and then the parent cell and the daughter cell both go back to the star, and that's the cycle of life. Also, frequently, the astrophage will just shoot out away from the star instead of doing the normal breeding, it'll just shoot out in a random direction and just go. And this is how it spores, and it'll spread from star to star this way. It can actually survive an interstellar trip. So, it's basically like algae in the ocean. It just breeds. It's not intelligent. It doesn't have an agenda. It's just doing its thing. So, astrophage ends up growing on our sun, and this causes a very significant problem, because it's growing out of control. It's just doubling its population every whatever time period, and the sun is starting to get dimmer. Scientists notice, initially, that the sun's getting dimmer, and then they realize that astrophage is doing it. I mean, I'm skimming over a lot of stuff here, but then they realize that, okay, all the stars in our local area of stars are getting dimmer, except Tau Ceti. Why isn't Tau Ceti getting dimmer? Well, they decide to make an interstellar mission to find out why, because they hope to be able to reproduce that here to save all of humanity, because if the sun gets too dim, life on Earth is going to die. So, astrophage is the cause and solution to this problem, because they can harvest astrophage, farm it, and use it as a propulsion for an interstellar ship. So, that's what they do, and our hero, Ryland Grace, is aboard the Hail Mary. That's the name of the ship, because this is a desperate attempt to save humanity. Where he wakes up, he's in the Tau Ceti system. For anybody who decided, hey, I want to ruin this book, I'm going to blow through the spoiler warning, well, that's the premise. There's a lot more that happens. It's not too late to fuck off and go read the book.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But I do need to introduce one more spoiler, because we didn't want to talk about this.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I have like five. I don't know how far you guys can go.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The one I really want to talk to you about is Rocky.<br />
<br />
'''AW:''' We are entering spoiler level three.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's definitely spoiler level three. So, in Tau Ceti, our hero, Ryland Grace, encounters an alien who is from another nearby star, Epsilon Eridani, who's also dying. Was that the right one, Epsilon Eridani?<br />
<br />
'''AW:''' Not Epsilon Eridani. It's 40 Eridani.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Oh, 40 Eridani. Oh, yeah, sorry. But it's Eridani. They're also sending their own Hail Mary to the same system to figure out the same problem, and then the two of them end up working together. So, I have to tell you what I love about Rocky is that he's an actual alien alien, right, which is a big-<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Like not a humanoid with two arms, two legs.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' He's not a humanoid alien. Yeah, so you must have set out to create like as different an entity as you possibly could. I mean, how deliberate was that?<br />
<br />
'''AW:''' Deliberate. Yeah, totally. I'm sick of like, oh, hey, what do you know, this alien life form that evolved on another planet with no correlation with Earth happens to be perfectly comfortable in Earth's atmosphere, atmospheric pressure, temperature, radiation levels.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' You should have just made him exactly human except for a weird thing on his nose and maybe his forehead.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' And a moustache.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Good enough.<br />
<br />
'''AW:''' I was thinking female, blue skin, not a lot of clothing, needs to learn more about this thing you call lovemaking.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's the 1950s version of your book.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, and it also happens to be my current fantasy, but go on.<br />
<br />
'''AW:''' Here we go.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So, we got two life forms within, two space-faring life forms within 17 light years of each other. That's pretty good.<br />
<br />
'''AW:''' Yeah, well, that is pretty unlikely. And so, I do explain that somewhat in the book in that we find out that life, all of the life, they actually find three biological worlds, for lack of a better term. Three life worlds. There's Earth, and then there's Rocky's home world of which the, Rocky's language is not pronounceable by humans. And so, our protagonist Ryland has to name everything. And so, Rocky's home world, he names it Erid because it's in Eridani. And he calls the species Iridian. And so, also, there's a planet in orbit around Tau Ceti that they name Adrian. And Adrian, Earth, and Arid are all each have their own complex, full biosphere that are incompatible with each other's biospheres. But they were all…<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Defeated each other?<br />
<br />
'''AW:''' Well, Tau Ceti, the planet Adrian is where life evolved originally. And a progenitor species to astrophage, an ancestor, like four billion years ago, was spreading out similar to how astrophage does, but not nearly as effectively. And it ended up seeding a bunch of planets with life. It wasn't like it had an objective. It was just, it would fan out and try to breed on stars and stuff like that.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Panspermia.<br />
<br />
'''AW:''' And it was a panspermia. So, it's nice for me, the writer, because I didn't have to invent life because I'm not God. So, I could just say like, oh, yeah, they astrophage and Rocky, if you look at their cells, they have mitochondria, ribosomes, DNA all the same building blocks. And so, in terms of their being life so close together, that's why the life is so close together. There was only one genesis. And they also say, like, Rocky and Ryland at one point are talking, and they speculate on, like, why is it that we're both here? Like, how come both of our species are at almost the exact same level of development? Like, if you think about it, we had like a couple billion years, or several billion years with no contact, and now here we are. And we have very, very similar levels of technology. In fact, the Iridians are significantly behind. They're a couple of centuries behind us in terms of technology, really. It's just they have some spiky bits of technology in terms of material science. And Rocky answers with his own theory, which I won't try to say it with his accent, but he basically says, well, there could be lots of intelligent species encountering astrophage. And the ones who are a few centuries behind us technologically don't have the technology to address it this way. They're just going to stay on their planet and probably die, right? And the ones who are a few centuries ahead of us in technology would probably be able to, yeah, solve the problem without having to come here. So it's sort of a filter. The only people who would come to Tau Ceti are the species that have this narrow range of technological advancement.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' No, it makes sense.<br />
<br />
'''AW:''' So there.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's as good an explanation as anything, yeah. But that's what I like about the book. It's like obviously you have to make some concessions to the narrative. Like Jay and I were talking about that. I think why Rocky is extremely alien, he has to be relatable enough. You know what I mean? He's got to think enough like a person that he can be a character. The hardest thing to do is to make aliens that think alien, you know? And it's hard to tell stories about them because they're kind of inaccessible.<br />
<br />
'''AW:''' Yeah. And so what I decided was I just kind of when designing iridians in general, I had to design their physiology, which was a lot of fun because I actually started that. I'll tell you about that in a minute. But that was really cool. But then I also needed to design their kind of what their personalities are like. Exactly like you said. It's like what are their alien thought processes? How do they think? What is their society like? So I start off by in terms of social stuff, I start off by making a list of everything that is required for a life form to develop space travel. I'm like, okay, well, first off, they need a certain minimum intelligence, right? They need to be able to understand things, look at things, build on that understanding. They also need language because no one or unless they're unbelievably intelligent, it's not possible for a single entity to work all this stuff out, right? And they also need to have some sort of pack instinct so that they can have a civilization so they can't be like bears who just avoid each other all year except for when mating, right? And so I started working on stuff like that. And you end up with the idea of like just having a pack instinct at all, you get an awful lot of the behaviors that you think of as being human. And you see that in the animal kingdom everywhere. You see like dogs will have kind of their best friend dog, you know? And primates, of course, are the primates because we're primates, so no surprise there. But everything that has packs, they'll hang out so they have a pack, that's their little civilization. And then they will have favorites within the pack and so on. And it's the same pattern over and over again each time individually evolved. So I think it's reasonable to say, all right, the aliens do it too.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Andy, did you crowdsource at all for this like The Martian?<br />
<br />
'''AW:''' I didn't. And also it's kind of overstated how much I crowdsourced The Martian. I didn't like – it's not like we played a big game of round robin. As I wrote The Martian, I was posting my chapters to my website, and my readers would tell me where my science errors were. So I guess you could say I crowdsourced the fact checking.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, that's great. I think that was really smart of you to do it because you have 100 people look at it with different expertise, and that made a lot of sense.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We do that with every episode of our show.<br />
<br />
'''AW:''' 100 nerds.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' You must have had more latitude with a book like this because it obviously has thing, whereas The Martian could be more of a contemporary piece, but this one obviously takes place in a more distant future.<br />
<br />
'''AW:'' No, this one takes place modern day.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, it is. It's contemporary as well?<br />
<br />
'''AW:''' Yeah. Well, this is a thing that happened to Earth.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' So what was the toughest thing to research? What bit of the science to you was the most interesting but also what was hard?<br />
<br />
'''AW:''' It's funny because the thing that was hardest to research and most interesting, the answer to your question is quantum physics, which I had to study a lot of because I went way down the rabbit hole going all the way down as to design inside of the astrophage. And so I decided how they store energy is they turn kinetic energy of protons colliding into each other. That kinetic energy is turned into neutrinos. So they basically turn heat into neutrinos. Then they have the ability to contain the neutrinos, which requires their cell membrane to be something that can't be quantum tunneled through. So it experiences something called super cross-sectionality. And so here I am like all the way down in the quantum realm, and this is all for like what ends up being like one sentence in the book.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It's worth it. It's worth it. I mean, containing neutrinos that could travel through light years of lead without hitting anything. That's a feat.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's impressive.<br />
<br />
'''AW:''' Super cross-sectionality.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I got to look that one up.<br />
<br />
'''AW:''' All right. No, I made it up.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I won't find it anywhere then. That's good.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' You'll win the Nobel prize for that.<br />
<br />
'''AW:''' I'm sure I would.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Invent your own branch of quantum mechanics. I love it. But the astrophages, I'm just so fascinated. I mean, the whole industries would be built up around those damn things. That's your power source. What other power sources do you need?<br />
<br />
'''AW:''' Right. Exactly.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Screw fusion. Screw fusion.<br />
<br />
'''AW:''' Exactly.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh my God. It's epic.<br />
<br />
'''AW:''' I was, yeah, there's a character in there who's just this kind of crazy Canadian space probe designer. And the character's name is Steve Hatch. I usually have a tough time remembering my minor character's names, but I remembered him. And he's this bubbling optimist in the book. I mean, he's only in one scene, but he's like, astrophage is the greatest thing ever. And people are like, it might kill all of humanity. He's like, well, sure, that. But this is like, if we get a handle on this, it's like, that's it. We have basically an unlimited supply of clean energy.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, it's super efficient. How efficient were they?<br />
<br />
'''AW:''' They do mass conversion.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, I mean, but I remember reading about mass conversion and how people say, oh, it's 100% conversion. It's not, it's not 100% efficient. It's from what my research was. So we could never use it to really get super, super close to the speed of light, but it's just still incredibly efficient.<br />
<br />
'''AW:''' Well, if you're saying efficiency in terms of what percentage of the mass is turned into energy.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Right.<br />
<br />
'''AW:''' For astrophage, it's way up in the nineties because they're storing the energy as neutrinos. Neutrinos are much arena particles, which means they are their own antimatter.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yes.<br />
<br />
'''AW:''' If two neutrinos collide, which doesn't happen often, they'll annihilate. And so just by storing it as neutrinos and then forcing them to collide because of super cross-sectionality, shut up. They annihilate and turn into two photons because you have to turn into two photons to keep the momentum balance correct on the equation. And then, and what's cool is I even went like, oh, okay. If they're going to annihilate and turn into photons and those photons of the propulsion, what wavelength are those photons? Well, that's based on the amount of energy in a neutrino. That's based on the mass of a neutrino. And so I called my friend Chuck Duba who is Dr. Charles Duba, who was on a team that won the Nobel prize for dramatically narrowing down the known weight of a neutrino.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah. But what does he know? Go ahead.<br />
<br />
'''AW:''' He's a high school buddy of mine, which is-<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh my God. Awesome.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So that's where the Petrova frequency came from. That was a real number?<br />
<br />
'''AW:''' That is a real number. That is, if you were able to mass convert a neutrino into a photon, well, two neutrinos into two photons, then you would get that frequency of light. It's in the infrared band.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Cool.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Andy, what if you had like a jet pack with a trillion of those damn things in the jet pack? Could you, how much lift would you get?<br />
<br />
'''AW:''' Well, you'd die because.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, but before you died, what kind of lift would you get?<br />
<br />
'''AW:''' It depends on, it's just how many of them do you want to activate at once?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' All of them.<br />
<br />
'''AW:''' But their propulsion is light. So in order to get any sort of reasonable amount of force, you've got to be throwing a lot of light out the back. And if you do that in an atmosphere, you're just going to make a big fireball that vaporizes everything. Well, everything except the astrophage. It likes heat.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' So it'd make a really good weapon then.<br />
<br />
'''AW:''' Again, if you like the idea of, I mean, it could make a pretty good bomb, but it wouldn't make a very good gun because if you're shooting really, really incredibly huge amounts of infrared light out the front of your gun, you're just going to ionize the air right there and vaporize yourself.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, I hate when that happens.<br />
<br />
'''AW:''' Yeah, no, it's, I mean, last Thursday I did that. It sucked.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Andy, do you remember, what was your first inspiration for the book? Like where did the idea of the whole thing start in your head?<br />
<br />
'''AW:''' So the book that I was working on between The Martian and Artemis was Jacques, as I mentioned earlier. And in Jacques, there was, I mean, Jacques was a soft sci-fi space opera style story, and there were aliens all over the place and stuff. And there was this alien technology called black matter, and black matter would do that. It would mass convert, and it would actually propel a ship with, like, cosmic rays or gamma rays or whatever. So the propulsion itself, the photons that it used, would just pass harmlessly through you and stuff. But it had a feature of any electromagnetic radiation that hit it, it would convert into mass. And so they would farm up. If you had any black matter, you could farm more black matter and stuff like that. So when I was working on Project Hail Mary, I was like, well, that's a cool technology, but humans would never invent it. However, what if they found it? Well, they could find it, but then, like, why does it exist? Was it made by aliens? Oh, no. You know what? It sounds a lot like life. It uses energy to make more of itself. That's the same thing we do indirectly. And so, yeah, so it'll be a life form, and that's kind of where that came from.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, I thought it was really cool of you to take the risk of having your protagonist not necessarily be an incredible boy scout, right? It was a very different person that you put up in front of us, but I thought that was a really good and ballsy thing of you to do.<br />
<br />
'''AW:''' Thanks. I'm always trying to get better as a writer, and my characters are where I'm weakest, I think. So I'm trying to make them deeper, more complicated, more flawed, complex, et cetera.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' All right, now, two words, audio book and movie.<br />
<br />
'''AW:''' Audio book, it's already been recorded. It releases the same time as the main book, May 4th.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Who narrated it?<br />
<br />
'''AW:''' I don't know when this is going to get aired, so May 4th may have already happened.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, it'll be next week, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''AW:''' Okay. And the narrator is Ray Porter.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, my God, oh, my God.<br />
<br />
'''AW:''' Oh yeah. Yeah, a little bit came out, didn't it?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I'm so there. He is a god of narration. I wasn't daring to hope that it was going to be Porter. I'm just so psyched.<br />
<br />
'''AW:''' That's right, Darkseid will be narrating.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Awesome.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And it's been optioned for a movie?<br />
<br />
'''AW:''' Not just optioned, but bought, which means they put more money into it. And so it means they're probably taking it more seriously, I hope. But anyway, it was bought by MGM, and we have Ryan Gosling attached to play the lead.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Oh, my God, that's so cool.<br />
<br />
'''AW:''' It is cool, because he has the same initials as Ryland Grace. He could bring his own cufflinks to the set.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, my God.<br />
<br />
'''AW:''' We have Phil Lord and Chris Miller set to direct.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That sounds awesome.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That is awesome. Andy, this is…<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The whole time I was reading this book, I'm thinking, I can't wait to see this rendered in a movie, because it's going to be awesome.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Andy, you didn't fly out to the set for The Martian, right, because it was too far away, but I hope you go this time.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Mars is far away, man.<br />
<br />
'''AW:''' I will for sure this time. I have not conquered my fear of flying. I was very much afraid of flying, but now I have pills that make it okay.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yes, that's what I do. Medicate yourself into oblivion, and you're good.<br />
<br />
'''AW:''' I become a non-entity.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' We had MGM interested in our book, but then Ryan Gosling dropped out and, like, the whole thing…<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Well, Andy, good luck. We will go see the movie a couple of times to show our support. I'm sure it's going to be awesome, and we are looking forward to your next project.<br />
<br />
'''AW:''' Thanks so much.<br />
<br />
== Science or Fiction <small>(1:36:03)</small> ==<br />
{{SOFinfo<br />
|item1 = Recent research finds that bats are born with an innate sense of the speed of sound, and judge distance entirely by time.<br />
|link1 = <ref>[ https://www.pnas.org/content/118/19/e2024352118]</ref><br />
<br />
|item2 = A new study in mice finds that the mammalian brain is able to process olfactory information much faster than previously thought, with mice able to detect a 10ms odour pulse. <br />
|link2 = <ref>[https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03514-2]</ref><br />
<br />
|item3 = While previously thought to be colourblind, octopuses have recently been found to have six distinct photoreceptors for colour vision.<br />
|link3 = <ref>[https://octolab.tv/octopus-vision/]</ref><br />
<br />
|}}<br />
{{SOFResults<br />
|fiction =octopuses <!-- short word or phrase representing the item --><br />
|fiction2 = <!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
<br />
|science1 = bats <!-- short word or phrase representing the item --><br />
|science2 = mice <!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
|science3 = <!-- leave blank if absent --> <br />
<br />
|rogue1 =Bob <!-- rogues in order of response --><br />
|answer1 =octopuses <!-- item guessed, using word or phrase from above --><br />
<br />
|rogue2 =Jay<br />
|answer2 =mice<br />
<br />
|rogue3 =Cara<br />
|answer3 =octopuses<br />
<br />
|rogue4 =Evan <!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
|answer4 =octopuses <!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
<br />
|rogue5 = <!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
|answer5 = <!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
<br />
|host =steve <!-- asker of the questions --><br />
<!-- for the result options below, <br />
only put a 'y' next to one. --><br />
|sweep = <!-- all the Rogues guessed wrong --><br />
|clever = <!-- each item was guessed (Steve's preferred result) --><br />
|win =y <!-- at least one Rogue guessed wrong, but not them all --><br />
|swept = <!-- all the Rogues guessed right --><br />
}}<br />
''Voice-over: It's time for Science or Fiction.''<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Each week I come up with three science news items or facts, two real and one fake, and then I challenge my panel of skeptics to tell me which one is the fake. We have a theme this week, although these are all news items. The theme is animal senses. Happen to be multiple news items dealing with animal senses. All right, here we go. Item number one, recent research finds that bats are born with an innate sense of the speed of sound and judge distance entirely by time. Item number two, a new study in mice finds that the mammalian brain is able to process olfactory information much faster than previously thought, with mice able to detect a 10-millisecond odour pulse. Item number three, while previously thought to be colourblind, octopuses have recently been found to have six distinct photoreceptors for colour vision. Bob, go first.<br />
<br />
=== Bob's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''B:''' So bats with an innate sense of the speed of sound. Makes sense, I think. I could buy that one. Then we got the, let's see, I don't really hear this full thing. New study of mice finds that the 10-millisecond odour pulse. Yeah, I mean, humans' olfactory is crap, but other mammals, I mean, I remember reading once, 70% of the genes that encode the sense of smell have like been mutated beyond function for humans. It's just like pathetic. So yeah, so that one, I can 10 milliseconds? Sure. This one though, the next one though, the octopus is colourblind. I mean, they found how many? Six distinct photoreceptors. I mean, I would have think they would have found that by now. So I'm going to call bullshit on that one. Say that's fiction.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay, Jay?<br />
<br />
=== Jay's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Nuts. Okay, let's go to the first one. Research finds that bats are born with an innate sense of the speed of sound. I think that makes perfect sense, right? That they factor that in to their movements and being able they have to eat insects that are super tiny. Like, yeah, they need that kind of precision. That makes total sense. That's science. The mammalian brain is able to process the olfactory information much faster. All right, this is cool. So if I paint the picture of this in my head, like they would change the odour and they can register it in 10 milliseconds. They feed them an odour and in 10 milliseconds their brain deciphered it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, that's not how long it takes. It's the odour itself only lasts for 10 milliseconds and they can detect it.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Whoa, that's even cooler. Super brief odour.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That also means that the odour could be changing that quickly and they'll be able to detect it.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah. Okay. All right. That's very cool. That's fast, man. I could totally see the advantage to that. So makes kind of makes sense. Okay, to move on to the last one. This is octopuses have recently been found to have six distinct photoreceptors for colour vision, which means that they have amazing colour vision. Now, I'm thinking of things like the depth that they exist at and the fact that colors get muted when you are at depth underwater. I'm going to say that that one is science and that the mice mammalian photoreceptor, I mean, smell receptor one is fiction.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay, Cara.<br />
<br />
=== Cara's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I think I'm going to maybe go with Bob on this. I think I agree with both of the guys that bats need from the time that they're very young and ability. I just don't see how that could be a learned thing to be able to echolocate. You know, you need to know speed and sound and learning something like that seems really complex. And so it's really between the mice. And so the 10 millisecond pulse, that is interesting, this idea that they can switch. I don't think people could do that. I do know that olfaction is relatively fast because it doesn't go through the thalamus the same way or doesn't always go through the thalamus the same way that almost every other sense does. But this idea of like fast switching is interesting. And then I'm like, ah, that wouldn't work for people. I don't think. But then I'm like, whatever. Mice are awesome. And people suck when it comes to smelling. Like half of a mouse's brain is their olfactory bulbs. So not quite half, but it's a huge chunk of it. So that one kind of seems reasonable. The thing that bugs me is like, why would an octopus need to be able to see colour? Like a ton of colour. They're like deep under the water. That doesn't like grok for me in terms of an evolutionary trait. I would think being able to have really awesome rods would be important to see motion, hugely important to see shades of gray, hugely important. But like lots of just retinal space dedicated to cones seems wasteful from an evolutionary perspective. So I'm going to say that one's the fiction.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And Evan.<br />
<br />
=== Evan's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Plus, how do you go from you thought it was colorblind to suddenly six distinct photoreceptors? That's a leap. That's a huge leap. I mean, how could they have gotten that so possibly wrong? But for all the reasons Cara said, right you don't need it under the water like that. So octopus one is fiction.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #1 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So let's start with number one since you all agree on this. Recent research finds that bats are born with an innate sense of speed, of sound, and judge distance entirely by time. You all think this one is science. And this one is science. Yeah, this is pretty cool. So again, they judge distance by time, meaning that the bat's brain is saying that bug is 0.2 seconds away. It's not 10 feet away. It's this number amount of time away. They think in terms of time, because they're just thinking in terms of echolocation, if that makes sense. Which means that they need to have, as a standard, they need to know how fast the sound is moving at baseline. So, yeah. And it makes sense. Yeah, echolocation is extremely important for them. So, yeah, they demonstrated that definitively.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #3 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay, let's go on to number three. Well, previously thought to be colourblind, octopuses have recently been found to have six distinct photoreceptors for colour vision. So, a little surprised at some of the comments you guys are making about that. So, you're aware, right, that a lot of octopuses can actually change their skin colors.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yes, of course.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' For signaling, and they use it for mating. So, there's a lot of reasons why they would need to have colour vision.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' They don't have to be able to see what colour they're changing to.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, they do if they're using it to signal for mates.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I don't think, I don't know, colour can actually present as different shades, though.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Why don't you just tell us?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Like shades of gray.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Right.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, just tell us what's going on.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' And under the water, too.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' What's happening?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' In the dark.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' This one.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' We got it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Is the fiction, but not for the reason you think it is.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I love it when they get it right for the wrong reason.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It is true.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I was writing about the polarized light sensitivity.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, there are critters under the water that can see polarized light.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Mantis shrimp.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The mantis shrimp.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right, but the question is, is it in their lens, or is it an actual photoreceptor?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It's cone, cone photoreceptors. I'm looking at it right now.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Cool. That's nice.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Do you know how many different kinds of photoreceptors mantis shrimp have?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' 15, 14 to 16.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's cool.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' They're underwater.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' They rock. They're awesome.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's the other thing, why would you think it's unusual for the octopus to have six when the mantis shrimp has 16.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I don't know. I didn't know the mantis shrimp had 16.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I thought it was unusual, because I thought we would have known. They have a huge eye. No one took it apart and looked at the photoreceptors. It's the first thing I'd do.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Then why do you think they were colourblind?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We did think they were colourblind, and we did figure out that they do see in colour.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But they see in colour completely differently than we do.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' How? How?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' How do you think?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' There's the rub.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' They have one type of photoreceptor, but they're able to see colour with one photoreceptor.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' What?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' What can it do?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Blue-yellow?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I wonder if I can figure it out.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, you said it was completely different, so I don't know.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's a completely different way than we do. You remember what their pupils look like? They have these W-shaped pupils.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' U-shaped pupils.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Or U-shaped pupils, so it's related to that.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Weird.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' But you say here six distinct photoreceptors. That's the lie. They don't. That's what makes it the fiction.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' [inaudible] they only have one.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' They have one photoreceptor which is why we thought they were colourblind. But then we're like, oh, wait. But it didn't make sense, because they definitely behaviourally see colour. They behaviourally absolutely see colour. So we had to figure out how they were seeing colour, and then we did. And it has to do with the shape of their pupil. What do you think the pupil's doing to the light?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's bending it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's splitting it into different coloured light.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, a prism.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's a prism?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It's got a prism in there.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's cool.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So they only need one photoreceptor because they can split the light into red, green, blue.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, if you've got a prism in your eye.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's way cooler [inaudible].<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I'm now convinced that octopi are aliens. They're aliens.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But here's the thing. Here's the thing. They can choose to see in colour or black and white by the way they reshape their lens and their cornea, right? Their pupil. And so when they do split the light in different colours it does make it a little blurry. So they could see a wide field in colour but a little blurry, or they could focus in a narrow field in black and white and be really sharp.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Super sharp.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' For hunting or whatever.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's how they can adjust their vision. But that's cool, they evolve a way to see colour in a completely different way than vertebrates.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That's wicked.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #2 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So all that means that a new study in mice finds that the mammalian brain is able to process olfactory information much faster than previously thought, with mice able to detect a 10ms odor pulse is science. And that was surprising because that's a lot faster than we had previously thought. They also say that, so they were looking at the brain reaction of the mice. It was 10ms. But when they were looking at conditioning they could respond to 40Hz changes in odour. So it's 40 times per second. So it's down in the milliseconds. And so this would give them the ability, being able to process odour that quickly means they could have a very complicated odour map of their environment. They could actually map out three-dimensionally where different odours are coming from. And would give them very complicated three-dimensional map of their smell environment. What they call very fast temporal features in the odour stimuli.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That is awesome.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, that's fascinating. But back to octopusses. You said that we got it right for the wrong reasons and that's incorrect.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well I said I don't see why they would need to be able to see under the water at all.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' My point was there's no way that they have multiple photoreceptors and we didn't know it. So I was right for the right reasons. Just throwing that out there.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That part was correct, Cara was completely wrong. What I found surprising was your whole discussion why would they need to see colour which is wrong, they do need to see colour. Why are all the fish so brightly coloured in the first place?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Now that I think bout it, in tropical reefs and in shallower waters. Deep see fish will look like horrible skeleton monsters. But of course, octopuses are usually like you go tide pooling for octopus. Like that's where you're gonna see them.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, they're shallow.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, come on, it's late, and I'm tired. I'm feeling very achromatopsic today.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, but octopuses are cool. They are-<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Octopi?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' They're the most intelligent invertebrates.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. They're fascinating.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Primates of the sea, they call them.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, basically.<br />
<br />
== Skeptical Quote of the Week <small>(1:48:14)</small> ==<br />
<blockquote>‘Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind.’ – William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act 3 Scene 1</blockquote><br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, Evan, give us a quote.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Okay, so tonight's quote needs a little bit of context. So 16 years, guys, right? 16 years. You know what I did? I looked up 16-year anniversary online. You know that there are gifts that a spouse will give to each other, right, depending on the year? You know, we've probably read about it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's all scam, but yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Exactly, right. It's an excuse to sell product.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' What'd you get me, Evan?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' All right, well, what do you think the 16-year anniversary gift is?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, Bob said cardboard. What was that, Jay?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Not cardboard.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Carpet. Vacuum cleaner. Oh, no. It's usually some sort of material, right? Copper.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Packing bubbles.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' 16 is copper.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Well, Bob is kind of getting on with it.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' What?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Packing bubbles? Plastic? Is 16 a plastic?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Unobtainium.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Jay, any guesses?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I said wood pulp.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Wood pulp. Not bad, not bad. The answer is wax.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' What?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, wax.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I guess, like, see it as a candle.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' But why?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Exactly, right. Or go polish your car.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Why? Jay, because they're all made up.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Exactly, right. Who knows?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Why? There is no why. There's only buy.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's so good. That's our next T-shirt.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' So I scoured the internet for quotes having to deal with wax. And that came up very short. Because it's slim pickings out there for things having to do. OK, but if I expanded my search a little bit to include how the word wax is used. So not just the material, but like a waxing moon, right? The waxing moon.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, I like that.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' So I expanded it. And I came across a few other things. But so here's a quote with wax in it. And it's just for the four of you from me. "Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind." That's from Hamlet. Act three, scene one. Ophelia talking to Hamlet.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I really like that.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah. So a little bit of waxing poetic, as it were, for you.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Ophelia was a snarky wench.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' All righty, then.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' She was. I like the quote because it reminds you that it's about, look, you have to be kind. The quality of the person is what's important. If you get a gift from someone who's a jerk, OK, they're still a jerk. And you shouldn't judge them by the gift they're giving you. It's about the person, the quality of the person. That's what that quote means to me. And to me, you are, the four of you are some of the most quality people I've ever had the pleasure of knowing in my entire life.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Thank you, brother.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Thank you.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Thanks, bro.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Thank you, Evan. It has been a lot of fun going on this skeptical journey with all of you guys.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Absolutely. Wouldn't have traded for anything else in the world. And I'm so looking forward to the next 16 years and beyond.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I think so. Why not? Yeah, we'll keep going. Sure.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Sign me up. As long as my brain still works, I'll be here.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Absolutely.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' And that's key.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, guys. So thank you all for joining me for the last 16 years and this week.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Sure, man.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' You got it brother.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Thank you, Steve and everyone.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Thanks, Steve.<br />
<br />
== Signoff/Announcements == <br />
<br />
'''S:''' —and until next week, this is your {{SGU}}.<br />
<br />
{{Outro664}}{{top}}<br />
<br />
== Today I Learned ==<br />
* Fact/Description, possibly with an article reference<ref>[url_for_TIL publication: title]</ref> <!-- add this format to include a referenced article, maintaining spaces: <ref>[URL publication: title]</ref> --> <br />
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== Notes ==<br />
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}}</div>Hearmepurrhttps://www.sgutranscripts.org/w/index.php?title=SGU_Episode_804&diff=19097SGU Episode 8042024-01-14T08:34:41Z<p>Hearmepurr: episode done</p>
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|episodeDate = {{month|12}} {{date|5}} 2020 <!-- broadcast date --><br />
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|qowText = If you think back on all the movies you've ever seen with goodies and baddies, you always remember the baddie.<br />
|qowAuthor = {{w|David Prowse}}, English bodybuilder and character actor<br />
|downloadLink = {{DownloadLink|2020-12-05}}<br />
|forumLink = https://sguforums.org/index.php?topic=53098.0<br />
}}<br />
<!-- <br />
Note that you can put the Rogue’s infobox initials inside triple quotes to make the initials bold in the transcript. This is how the final statement from Steve is typed at the end of this transcript: '''S:''' —and until next week, this is your {{SGU}}.<br />
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== Introduction ==<br />
''Voice-over: You're listening to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.''<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Hello and welcome to the {{SGU|link=y}}. Today is Wednesday, December 2<sup>nd</sup>, 2020, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella... <br />
<br />
'''B:''' Hey, everybody!<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Cara Santa Maria... <br />
<br />
'''C:''' Howdy. <br />
<br />
'''S:''' Jay Novella... <br />
<br />
'''J:''' Hey guys. <br />
<br />
'''S:''' ...and Evan Bernstein. <br />
<br />
'''E:''' Evening, folks.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' God, it's December already, man. In a way, the 2020s seemed like forever, but always at the same time, yeah, these years always seem like they're flying by at the same time, because we mark the date every week and we're like, it's always like, oh, it's December already. But yeah, this is definitely one year I won't be sad to see put into the history books.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's for sure.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' In the rear view mirror, you know?<br />
<br />
== COVID-19 Update <small>(0:48)</small> == <br />
<br />
'''S:''' So just a very quick COVID update this week. The bottom line is the pandemic is raging, at least in the US, worse than it ever has been. Worldwide as well, but I mean, it's country by country, but in the US, it's worse than it's ever been. We broke 200,000 cases in one day. Some areas are going back into shutdown of one degree or another. I'm sure there's going to be a surge on top of a surge because of Thanksgiving, and the cold months are coming, Christmas is coming.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, multiple hospitals are back at capacity. It's dangerous. I know, Jay is laughing because you said Christmas is coming, not because of COVID.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Right, of course.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Just to be clear.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, but I was just waiting for one of you guys to say it, you know?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Say it.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I wasn't going to say it during the COVID segment.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Say it, Jay. Get out of the way.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' What with Christmas coming and all?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' There you go.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. But talking about Christmas and COVID, how many of you guys have heard that there is an increase, an uptick in suicides during the holidays?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, during the holidays, yeah, for sure.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I've heard of that, but I don't know if that's ... Has that really been proven?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's a complete myth.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Really?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yes. In the United States, the CDC tracks these numbers, so if you go month by month, December is 12 out of 12. It actually has the lowest suicide rate of any month. Number two is November. Number three is January. So the three lowest months are November, December, January.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Why is that?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's a separate question. The peaks are actually-<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Because they're still happy from Halloween, you know.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's complicated. Actually, if you have a decreased energy, like the seasonal sadness thing, that actually could make you too depressed to do that, to have the energy.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's why I was wondering if there was a rebound effect. Just like you often see that with suicides in bipolar individuals, is when they are coming up from a depressive swing, that's when they complete.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's when they could be at highest risk, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's why I figured that maybe post-holiday, but you're right. It's still cold. It's still that seasonal affective problem in January.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Some years, it's like spring, fall, but then some years, summer, like 2018, the three highest months were over the summer, June, July, August. So it's kind of flipped to what people think, but the holiday suicide risk thing is a complete myth. There's never been a correlation there. I'm not really sure where that came from.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' The idea that it would be a risk is also kind of strange. Even if there had been a change in the numbers, like it being the holidays does not lead to suicide.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's not a risk and there's no correlation, so there's nothing to explain there. But the question is, what has the suicide rate been due to the COVID pandemic? The short answer is it's too early to tell because they're still sort of gathering information, but we do have data for the spring, when it started, when the shutdown was occurring. In fact, during the shutdown, at least in the countries for which we have good data, which is like the US and other Western or industrialized nations, the answer is there was either no change or a decrease, if anything, in the suicide rate. No increase, so no increase. There's data for Japan over the summer, so Japan had a 12% decrease in the spring and then a 13% increase over the summer, and experts are still debating on why that occurred. And then in terms of other parts of the world, we're still gathering data, so maybe in a month or two we'll start to get published studies looking at like the summer and fall. Certainly there is an increase in things that are known to be risks of suicide, like depression and anxiety and isolation and stress and socioeconomic stress and all those sort of things. So it wouldn't be surprising. We just haven't seen it yet, and if it is happening, we haven't gathered the data to document it yet. So that's where we are right now, but again, no holiday thing, that's a myth, but probably the effect of the pandemic is going to be complicated, and we'll see what it comes out.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right, but there's no denying that it has a severe, it's having a significant impact on mental health.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yes, absolutely. That's why, that's what's expected, and it may just be that it, there might have been like a, oh, let's all band together kind of effect in the spring when it was first happening, but as it lasts longer and longer and longer and people get pandemic fatigue and the isolation starts to wear thin and the economic stress starts to really start to, and you know, in the U.S. again, we're sort of getting to the end of the subsidies and we don't know what's going to happen there, so that could have a huge impact.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, I think I read somewhere that the stimulus package that was originally offered to, individual Americans at this point amounts to something like $4.35 a day.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Oh my God.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's where we're at right now. Yeah.<br />
<br />
== News Items ==<br />
<br />
=== Have Archaeologists Found the Home of Jesus? <small>(5:46)</small> ===<br />
* [https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/archaeology/a34826099/jesus-childhood-home-unearthed/ Archaeologists Believe They've Unearthed Jesus's Childhood Home]<ref>[https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/archaeology/a34826099/jesus-childhood-home-unearthed/ Popular Mechanics: Archaeologists Believe They've Unearthed Jesus's Childhood Home]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, so let's, we're going to go right into some news items, and we're going to start with something that we've sort of spoken about before, but I had to talk about it, the reporting on it was just so bad. So most of the headlines are saying one of two things. The better ones are saying this, has the childhood home of Jesus Christ actually been found in Nazareth? They basically put it as a question mark.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, gosh.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Is the answer no?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The other ones are just saying archaeologists says they found Jesus's home and even like Popular Mechanics and the BBC did horrible write-ups of this. I just haven't found anything yet. Maybe the more skeptical ones will come in a bit from more academic sources, but all the mainstream reporting on this has been horrible.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Sounds more like a Christmas fluff piece kind of thing.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, well, it's it's a serious archaeological researcher who's been working on this for 14 years, and there's, it's a legitimate archaeological site. It's just that the claims here are just ridiculous. This is an archaeological site that is under a convent in what is believed to be the Nazareth of the Bible, of the New Testament. Nazareth was supposed to be the place where Jesus was, where his family lived and where he grew up. Remember, his parents had to be in Bethlehem for the census, and he was born there, according to the New Testament. But he's really, his family's from Nazareth.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Jesus of Nazareth, right.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. Exactly. And then this is, that's one of the lines of argument that scholars say there, this wasn't a story that was made up out of whole cloth because the prophecy was that, he had to be born in Bethlehem. And so in order to make the story work for somebody who was from Nazareth, they just had his parents just go to Bethlehem for a census and give birth there. And so why would they do that if they weren't trying to make it work for a real person, you know? Which I think is a very weak argument. I think it's more likely that they were just making different narratives work together, you know? They could all be fake. But in any case, so we have the potentially historical location of Nazareth. And apparently the even going back hundreds of years, the nuns in the convent said, yep, this is Jesus's home that underneath us where we're built, you know? So the new evaluation is not a new excavation. And this is a Ken Dark, Ken Dark is the archaeologist, he said, I didn't do a new excavation. I just re-investigated the existing evidence and the existing excavation. And there was, I think, one of the floors caved in, so he was able to get access to some new material, but he didn't do any new excavation. And here's his line of argument. So what they're finding was, yeah, definitely underneath there was a Roman era home, right? And Nazareth was supposed to be a Jewish settlement during Roman occupation. So you would expect there to be Roman structures and maybe evidence that it was Jewish people who were living there. And he said, yeah, that the construction's limestone. And at the time, the Jewish people liked to build their homes out of limestone because they believed it protected them from the vapours or whatever. So okay, whatever. But now here is his argument for why this is not only a home, not only a home in Nazareth from 1 AD, despite the fact around that time, the first century AD, despite the fact they haven't been able to carbon date anything, but the home of actual Jesus. Are you ready? Here's his line of argument. In the Bible, it says that Jesus's father, Joseph, was a carpenter, although the word that they use could actually just mean craftsman. So he was some kind of craftsman. And the house they found had pretty good stonework.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Compelling.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Wow.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's it. That is it. So maybe Jesus's father was the one who worked that stone. And since the Bible says he was a craftsman, there you go. Because how else could you explain decent stonework, you know?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I can think of a few things wrong with this.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' In a Roman structure. Like the Romans weren't known for stonework, were they? Or precision or any of that stuff.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Wow.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, that's it. There you go.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's the whole thing?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's the whole thing.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That's good enough for me.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Jesus lived here, this I know, cause the Bible told me so.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The rest, honestly, is just that over time, there were rumours that this was Jesus's house. That's it. But he said, this doesn't prove it actually was Jesus's house. Yeah, no kidding. Really? But he says, basically, he does the, but it's a plausible hypothesis, and you can't prove it wasn't.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, gosh.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But how is that worth publishing? But did he not know there was good stonework before?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Published it in a book, apparently. Not necessarily peer-reviewed.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' But this is the culmination of 14 years of study, Steve?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, there you go, boy.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, my gosh.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And unfortunately, nothing could be, they couldn't, not only could they not carbon date it, they couldn't even date it based upon pottery. Because pottery is a really good way to date a find. You can create, essentially, a timeline of pottery traditions, and then when you find a piece of pottery, you could then place it in time based upon the details of its craftsmanship and design, the material used, et cetera. But unfortunately, the site was never excavated by archaeologists. It basically was dug up by nuns who had no idea what they were doing. So they essentially destroyed all the evidence and took it out of context. It was no longer in situ. So we don't really, we don't know what, this could be from 500 AD. We don't even know that. We can't really even say it was from the first century AD.<br />
<br />
'''C:'' But why can't they use radio isotopes to date it?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' They just haven't done it. I don't think they have anything they could say, this was from this house, and this can be carbon dated.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' You'd think they could do it with some of their stonework.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I don't know if there's enough, you need organic material.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, you're right. But I wonder what they used for the mortar and the stonework.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. So we'll see. This popularization may garner actual attention from archaeologists now that could do a real excavation and maybe some dating and stuff. But even if it was from a home from the first century AD, and even if this was Nazareth, that doesn't mean it was Jesus's house. And that argument that, well, the stonework was really good, is so thin, it's essentially useless. And it's amazing how every single piece of reporting takes that argument seriously without any pushback.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh my gosh. Says like Shroud of Turin feel to it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Totally.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Absolutely.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Totally.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I mean, Steve, what's it going to take, man? I mean, you don't believe in anything at this point.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's going to take more than this line of argument. And the other thing is a lot of, most of the reporting, including from Popular Mechanics, which is terrible for them, start with the premise that, well, we know that Jesus was a real guy because scholars basically say that he really existed. It's like, well, no. I would not say that that is. Even if that might be the majority opinion.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's not universally accepted, right?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It is not universally accepted. And I don't really think that they have a good argument. Because again, as I've said previously on the show, their best argument was two things. One was, well, why would they have Jesus born in Bethlehem? If they were going to make up the story, why wouldn't they just have it be somebody from Bethlehem? Why make it this Nazarene guy whose mother had to travel to Bethlehem? It's like, OK, so there was some crossing of the streams. That doesn't mean that it was a real person from Nazareth. Could be two stories got their streams crossed.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Totally.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, which we know, right? We have many, many modern examples of how these stories get fabricated and altered, and how new details get woven in, and how people keep reworking it and reworking it, and traditions meld and everything. So that's just naive, in my opinion. Incredibly naive to say that, well, it must be a real guy because why would they do that? And the other thing is the way that Christ was crucified. They said, why would they crucify their Savior? That was the most humiliating thing to have happen. Again, they probably didn't write the story out of whole cloth. They are weaving together different people. I'm sure there were a lot of... First of all, we knew that there were tons of self-proclaimed prophets walking around the Middle East at that time. And probably a lot of them got crucified.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' A lot of scholars that I've read make the argument that it's likely that the Jesus persona is an amalgamation of a lot of storytelling. Multiple people, some myth, some truth, all sort of mixed together.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. And the other thing is, I'm sure that there are real people in there. Absolutely. But the thing is that everything significant about the story of Jesus in the New Testament is almost certainly all mythology. Because it falls in line with the mythology of that time and place.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right. That's been recapitulated.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The pre-existing mythology. Not in the little details, but in the broad brushstrokes. So you've got these random details, probably woven in from real people or just other stories, overlaid on top of a narrative structure that was pre-existing. Again, it would be like somebody in modern day claiming to be Batman. And that gets crossed with, was Elon Musk Batman? You know? And then we get real details about Elon Musk mixing with the Batman mythology. <br />
<br />
'''C:''' His kid had a weird name.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. A thousand years from now, people think that Elon Musk was, like Batman was a real guy, because there are details from a real person's life mixed in with the mythology. But the mythology is all DC comics. You know what I mean? That's basically what we're dealing with here. So I just don't find any of that argument compelling. It's just too on the nose of the pre-existing mythology. So anyway, so they're starting with the premise that it was a real person. And of course, if it wasn't a real person, then the details in the New Testament, which again is not really a historical document, if they are again, just this reworking and reworking of mythology with zero reliability when it comes to actual details, then it becomes ridiculous to claim that you found the house of somebody who may be mythological, right?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I found Odin's barn out back.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, you're using a detail like the father was a craftsman. I mean come on. I mean, that is like so razor thin. It's incredible.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. It's like we found Noah's Ark. There's some boat boards and some shit on the ground. It must have been Noah's Ark.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, that's literally the truth, Cara. I don't know if you're making that up or not, but that's literally. Did you ever see that movie, like Finding Noah's Ark, where the big evidence at the end was, yeah, they found a plank. Yeah, they found like a plank on Mount Ararat, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So they found just like this animal poop?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, they found a hunk of wood, you know?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. Oh, so I even added something more, like, oh, wood next to animal shit. Must be Noah's Ark. It wasn't even that good.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, it wasn't even that good. But very disappointed in the reporting. No real scholarship even, let alone skepticism.<br />
<br />
=== Ancient Seeds <small>(17:59)</small> ===<br />
* [https://www.newscientist.com/article/2232464-extinct-date-palms-grown-from-2000-year-old-seeds-found-near-jerusalem/ Extinct date palms grown from 2000-year-old seeds found near Jerusalem]<ref>[https://www.newscientist.com/article/2232464-extinct-date-palms-grown-from-2000-year-old-seeds-found-near-jerusalem/ NewScientist: Extinct date palms grown from 2000-year-old seeds found near Jerusalem]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' But Jay, you're going to tell us about another story that dates back about 2,000 years. And this one is real and has to do with seeds. So tell us about this.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Because the seeds exist and people have held them. This isn't somebody's fantasy.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Are they Jesus' seeds?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' They are Jesus' seeds. How did you know, Steve? Let me ask you guys a question. So how long do you think seeds will last if they're well preserved?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Forever.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Hundreds of years, thousands, maybe?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' At least 2,000 years.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I mean, if they're in resin or amber or something.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Well, we have seed vaults, don't we?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, if they're dry and cool, they could maybe last indefinitely. Probably for the half-life of the DNA that's in them. So we're probably talking about hundreds of thousands of years, but not millions.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But even if the DNA was degraded, I think something about the seed, like the husk around it or something, might still persist.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But we're talking about germinating.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, he didn't say that. He just said, how long can a seed last?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, I think— Yeah, you mean germinate, right, Jay?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Then germinate, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, and be able to then plant it and grow something from it.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Well, yeah, I mean, the protons wouldn't decay for quintillions of—<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, I was like, hello.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Last a real long time.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, well, I think, yeah. Or if they're cryo, like, yeah, seed vaults are usually, they freeze them. Or actually, it's not the seed itself. It might be these little germinations of the seed. But yeah, or dried or something like that. I don't know, maybe thousands.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Did we wreck your surprise, Jay?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' No, it's just an interesting question because there's a lot of answers to that question. You know, for example, like typical fruits and vegetable seeds, they really don't last more than five years in normal operating conditions.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' You mean like on the forest floor?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, even if you went and bought seeds from a professional, you go to the hardware store and they're professionally packaged, whatever you buy, like those seeds just don't last a long time. And I ask you guys because we are, this news item is about seeds that are 2000 years old that they were able to get date palm trees out of. So the scientists, like I said, they found, there's two different reports that I'm reading. One article says hundreds, another one says thousands. I think it's more likely that it's hundreds of date palm seeds. These seeds are 1800 to 2400 years old, and they found them in an old desert ruins near Jerusalem back in the 1960s. So those seeds were in storage since then. And Dr. Sarah Salon decided she wanted to try and grow the seeds. And this was in the early 2000s. So she did end up picking a seed and she grew it and she was able to get this seed to germinate. But earlier this year, she started a new batch of seeds. So what she ended up doing was she recruited the help of Dr. Elaine Soloway, who is an expert on arid agriculture. So she knew what to do. So they used radiocarbon dating to ensure that they knew the age of the seeds. And like I said, the seeds were from 1800 to 2400 years old. And they selected the best seeds that they can find out of the batch. And they settled on 34 seeds that seemed the most viable. And then one of the seeds they ended up using as a control, and then they had another seed that got damaged. So out of the remaining 32 seeds, six ended up growing into trees. So Dr. Soloway prepared the seeds by soaking them in water that had enzymes and fertilizer in it. And this helped the seeds to germinate. And they actually took root in a greenhouse. Once the date palms grew enough, they planted them outside. This never happened with Steve's banana plants, I'll remind you, over those seven or eight years.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Cats didn't like them.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Now, as a point of interest, these were the oldest seeds ever grown to ever germinate and become trees again, or whatever the plant is. So this is not the only interesting part of the story. So they studied the fruit of the trees that they grew. And they genetically analysed them. And they found that several of the female trees were pollinated by male palm trees from different areas. And when I say different areas, I'm talking back in 2000 years ago. They determined that there was an exchange of genetic material from Eastern date palms from the Middle East and Western date palms from North Africa. And this shows that the ancient Judeans were selectively breeding the trees to enhance the quality of the fruit. And they also determined that their cultivation of the date palms was very sophisticated, which I think is fascinating. So the historians say that the date palms that grew back then in this region, 2000 years ago, they were sweet. They were large. And the people ate them at the time to promote health. And the dates from back then also were considered superior to the Egyptian dates because they had a longer shelf life, allowing them to be distributed throughout the Roman Empire. So they had all of these traits that they were breeding for. And they achieved it. And they made a, from what the historians say, these were very sweet, very, very delicious date. So the new date palm trees that they grew bore larger than normal fruit. They measured up to 11 centimetres, 4.3 inches. The ancient seeds that they found were 30% bigger than the modern date seeds. And those seeds track with what the historians say. And when they grew the trees and ate the fruit, the scientists said that they tasted sweet like honey and that they were very large and juicy date palms. So these historically very much match up with the records that the historians have. So all of the date palm crops from 2000 years ago, straight up died after the fall of the Roman Empire. And they were able to track through the historical writings and everything, when they were no longer available. And also we have physical evidence as well. So the seeds that they now grow in the new trees can help scientists figure out how and why the seeds were able to survive.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Wait, so the date palms we have right now are not... I mean, they're related, but they're not directly... I'm a little confused. So all the date palms died.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Not from that cultivation. They come from the other cultivations.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Cool. Oh, wow.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' So this is like an island unto itself.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's bringing back something that we didn't have access to until we brought it back. That's awesome.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Gone forever until...<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Now the scientists are just studying them now, but I'm hoping somebody says, hey we want to grow them. You know, they're that good.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I know, I want to eat them<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I know they sound delicious. So they're analysing the trees and they're using the seeds, the new seeds that they grow and the trees themselves. And they're trying to figure out, like, why did the seeds survive? What is it about these seeds genetically? You know, they're trying to reconstruct the phenotypes of these trees and identify their genomic regions. So what they're trying to figure out is how did they make this cultivar? What did it take for them to do it? Where did they come from? Where did all of the genetic material come from? Which they have a very good idea about now, but they want to really get down to specifics. And they really do want to know why did these seeds survive? They were in the desert, so they were very dry. And like I said earlier in this news item, most fruit and vegetable seeds just typically don't last long. And you'll have a very hard time germinating seeds that are over five years old. Now you might have thrown them in your toolbox or just put them in your garage or whatever. So, of course, this isn't under ideal conditions. But seeds just aren't built to last that long. You know, the other cool thing about this, really, it is just grabbing something from history. Now, we're having examples of this because of all the ice that's melting, right? They're finding lots of stuff. You know, they're finding corpses of animals and they're finding, artefacts, objects, weapons, all sorts of stuff is turning up. And I'm wondering if they're going to find more plant life that, or if there's anything that could be viable. I would love to imagine that they just like, hey we found some fruit that we didn't even know existed or whatever, that would be fantastic.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But this seems like the perfect storm in that it was in the middle of an empire that had far-ranging connections, that was able to cultivate different cultivars together to make a particularly, sweet and juicy fruit. And it was lost, but the seed survived. Like, I don't know how, if that's going to ever get replicated, like that combination of features where we're going to resurrect a great fruit from the past that was lost to history, you know.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' This is a big deal. You know, this is actually pretty significant find. And the fact that they were able to germinate these seeds and pull it off is fantastic. It's amazing.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' We need to find some banana plants or banana seeds from way back when.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Banana phone.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The bananas we eat don't have seeds. So they're cultivated with clippings. But the Gros Michel banana that was the previous cultivar that was distributed and then was wiped out by a fungus, it's not extinct. It's just not growable at commercial scale. And in fact, for the upcoming 12-Hour Show, we may have access to some Gros Michel bananas to try for the first time live during that show.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I can't wait.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh my gosh.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Can't promise you at this point, but if the timing is right.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Promise me.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' You guys are so funny about bananas. I love it. Hey, Jay, can I be pendantic for a second?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yes.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Dead animals aren't corpses.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' What are they?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Carcasses. Corpses are only human.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' All right. That's good.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Did you know Cara, so an autopsy is only a human.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, it's a necropsy.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's a necropsy.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' What?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Doesn't that sound dark and like Halloween-y?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Oh man, that is awesome.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Necromancer.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Look at this necrotic tissue from the necropsy I did.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Necro.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So Steve, while we're talking about words like this, so if you have, what's the difference between laparoscopic and what's the one, like there's surgery in your torso and there's surgery in a limb?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So endoscopic just means you're using a camera to look inside a body part, right? Body cavity of some sort, right? But then there are different cavities in the body and then that name would then apply to whatever cavity you're in. So a laparoscopic is in the abdominal cavity specifically, right? Like thoroscopic would be in the thorax. Arthroscopic would be in a joint, right?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' You know, it's kind of like they developed like a science of medicine, you know?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Like there's all these different words for everything.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Sometimes multiple words for the same thing.<br />
<br />
=== Treatment for Progeria <small>(28:47)</small> ===<br />
* [https://www.sciencenews.org/article/fda-approved-first-drug-treat-rapid-aging-disease-progeria The FDA has approved the first drug to treat the rapid-aging disease progeria]<ref>[https://www.sciencenews.org/article/fda-approved-first-drug-treat-rapid-aging-disease-progeria ScienceNews: The FDA has approved the first drug to treat the rapid-aging disease progeria]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, well Cara, talking about science and medicine, there's potentially some good news for a very terrible and very rare disease, progeria. Very interesting. Tell us about this.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, progeria has long fascinated me and I think this is a topic that I was excited about when I came across this FDA announcement. It's not as kind of game-changing as we would hope, but I think that it gives us hope. So how many of you know about progeria?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah [inaudible].<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I've never heard of it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' You've never heard of it, okay.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I've heard of it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I think you have, Jay, you just forgot. We've talked about it before.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Okay, so—<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Pictures of people.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, you may have seen photos. There's a brilliant documentary that I highly recommend to everybody called Life According to Sam about Sam Burns who died of progeria and it's a really beautiful, fascinating, life-affirming film about his journey. So progeria is a really interesting genetic disease and it seems to be a spontaneous genetic disease. So there's a tiny bit of evidence of like one Indian family passing it down to multiple children, but it seems unlikely that somebody actually carries it and it's more likely that the gene mutation occurs spontaneously. It's incredibly rare, like Steve said. The Progeria Foundation estimates something like 160 cases.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Oh, I just read like 300 to 400 around the world.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right, so it's 160-some-odd that are known. I guess I shouldn't have said estimates. It's 160-some-odd known cases, but the estimation is that it's closer to double that in sort of undiagnosed or unknown cases. So, I mean, think about that. Think about how rare that really is. I think there was a study in the Netherlands, where they're showing an incidence rate of about 1 in 20 million births. Very rare.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's rare.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Because of that, as we often talk about on the show, very rare diseases often just don't get the funding that's necessary to develop therapeutics, to develop treatments. It's there's not a hot market for these drugs because so few people have it. But there are some programs here in the U.S. that do try at least to account for that. There are orphan drugs. There's an orphan drug designation. And an orphan drug is kind of specifically a drug or biological product that treats a super rare disease or condition. And usually they need to be sponsored. There's also Rare Pediatric Disease Priority Review voucher program as part of the FDA, which additionally helps with funding for these very rare childhood diseases. So let me kind of describe progeria a little bit. First, for those of you who are like, what are you even talking about? It's got a very specific look to it. So progeria is a rapid ageing disease. That's how it's often identified. And if you actually break down the word progeria into its Latin roots, it's sort of pre or early ageing.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But Cara, we should know, I don't know if you're going to get into this, but it's not a perfect analog of ageing.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No, not at all. Because you don't get cataracts. You don't get like whatever.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, but it's pretty good.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's pretty good. And there are progeria-type disorders too that are sort of within the family. But the specific type of progeria that I'm talking about is actually called Hutchinson-Gilford syndrome or Hutchinson-Gilford's progeria. But of course, there are progeroid syndromes as well. Hutchinson-Gilford syndrome, so the progeria for short, does approximate rapid ageing better than some of the other ones. And so let's talk about sort of what some of the overt symptoms are. When you see a child who has progeria, and the reason that I say child is because often around puberty age, a lot of the symptoms that come along with this that cause early death start to become really, really apparent. They're there throughout childhood. But around puberty age is when things start to get critical. And most kids with progeria don't live to be 20. I think the median age of death is around 14. So when kids are first born with progeria, they usually seem pretty normal. Within the first year, their growth slows down. They have a little bit of failure to thrive. And they start to lose their hair. And then as they develop more, you see these classic symptoms, which is a very short stature, low weight, very little muscle mass, a narrowed face, a beaked nose, a large head, like a disproportionately large head that usually has a thinning of the skin, and you can see the vessels underneath it. And then often there is hair loss across both the eyebrows, eyelashes, and the head hair. And so the look is, and also a very, very high pitched voice, kind of a squeakier sounding voice. So it's a pretty specific look when somebody has progeria, although it is sometimes misdiagnosed, because apparently there are some other conditions that show some similar symptoms. But it's not actually just a, "rapid ageing disease". That's sort of a, like we mentioned, an approximation. What's actually happening is that there's a gene called LMNA, which produces a protein called Laminae. And they're often used interchangeably. LMNA codes for Laminae, Laminae. And that protein is involved in scaffolding the nucleus of a cell. So through a series of steps, the protein is produced, it connects to the nucleus of the cell, and then portions of it break back off and are involved in nuclear activity within the nucleus. But what happens in progeria is that instead of Laminae, they actually produce progerin. And progerin, unfortunately, doesn't break off at the right places. And it sticks to the nuclear membrane. It continues to build up and it causes the nuclear membrane to bleb. There's these like outpouchings of the nuclear membrane where it's bulging a little bit. And strangely, and scientists don't really understand how, this buildup of this protein within that nuclear membrane leads to all of these really detrimental downstream effects. Most people, not only those physical traits that we talked about, but ultimately premature death, usually by cardiac problems. Yeah, so you'll see heart attack, you'll see heart disease, you'll see stroke. A lot of classic causes of death in the elderly, but you're seeing it at a very, very accelerated rate. Now, there are other things that don't happen. Kids don't often get cataracts in their eyes, for example. They do get wrinkly, they do get fragile bones. It's not uncommon to break or dislocate hips in these children. But there are-<br />
<br />
'''B:''' No Alzheimer's?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, no Alzheimer's. One thing that's really interesting about kids with progeria, you're right, Bob, is that they tend to have average or higher than average intelligence. And their cognitive capabilities don't seem to be affected at all. The FDA has approved a new drug, it's called Zokinvy, or that's the brand name. The generic name is lonafrinib. And this has been approved to, as they say, reduce the risk of death due to Hutchinson-Gilford progeria syndrome. And also a few progerioid laminopathies, but not all of them. The trial was very small, and it was kind of a different trial than we're used to hearing about. There were only 62 patients in it. Of course, they were not matched because there are so few people who have this disease. And in a case like this, they're not going to not give patients who want the drug, who want to be in the trial, the drug. So they were comparing it actually to previous evidence that was collected, previous data that was collected from untreated patients before the drug was available. And they found that during the short period that they were following these patients over several months, that there was a significant increase of on average three months of an increase in lifespan. But then when they followed the patients over 11 years, they found that the average increase was two and a half years. This drug did not completely reduce the protein from building up, but it was able to kind of take some of that protein out of the picture. Obviously, it wasn't able to treat the underlying mechanism, but it was able to minimize to some small extent that mechanism. Interestingly, this drug was first developed as a cancer therapy. And then they found that it acted on the steps between the precursor molecule and the ultimate protein being developed. And so they were able to test it with this population. Unfortunately, there's also a pretty high amount of side effects, vomiting, diarrhoea, nausea, fatigue, decreased appetite, which is already a problem often with progeria patients. And there may be some liver toxicity. There may be some eye toxicity that was seen in animal models, but they haven't seen that yet in human beings. So I think for a lot of these kids, they have to weigh the quality of life as well against the increase in the years that they get. But for some of these kids and their families, an extra two and a half years with their kids, a potential extra two and a half years is life altering, you know? I mean, especially when your life is so short. So I think what's really exciting about this breakthrough is less the initial iteration and more the potential that it opens up for secondary therapeutics, co-therapeutics that could potentially be developed along the same pathway and work in conjunction. But this is the first ever drug that's ever gone to market to treat progeria. Up until this point, patients only could get supportive care. Obviously, there were drugs available to help with some of the secondary or the comorbidities that they deal with because of progeria, but there's no treatment, no cure. So most of the time, it was just supportive care. So it's really great to see that this option is available to the families who want it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, this would be called a disease-modifying treatment. So this is the first disease-modifying treatment. So Cara, because this is a genetic disease, I wanted to know if there's anyone researching using CRISPR to treat it.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Of course.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' In fact, there is.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, I'm not surprised. I know that gene therapies are being developed right now, so I wouldn't be surprised if as soon as CRISPR was made available, they were like, well, that's going to make our lives easier here in the lab.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, so there was one study it's at the mouse level. So they studied it in a mouse model of progeria using CRISPR-Cas9, using an adeno-associated virus, so a viral vector, and basically just to snip that gene just to stop the buildup of the progerin, not to replace it, just to stop the buildup.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Just to prevent the progerin, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, just to reduce the total burden of progerin buildup. And it had a significant improvement in the mice that were studied. So now they just need to port that over to humans. They also did... So what they did was they used the CRISPR to not only disrupt the gene, but to insert a reporter gene so that they could tag all the cells that got it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, cool.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So they knew how much it was getting into the cells. So they need now to figure out how to get more types of tissues affected.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, so they weren't able to get it into all of the different body tissues?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, just certain types of cells. Obviously, the more you get it in there, obviously, the greater the effect will be.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right, because this affects the whole body.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It would be totally complementary to the drug. So yeah, this would have hopefully an additive benefit.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It also potentially... I mean, Bob, you'd really be interested in this, I think. Progeria, because of its association with ageing, because there is very good evidence that progerin, which is naturally occurring... So I might not have made it clear at the beginning because I was talking about how Lamin A is what we all want. And progerin is the defective version of that. But Lamin A, even in its form, starts to break and become damaged and build up within our nuclei. And so we see higher levels of Lamin A in the elderly than we do in young people. Like we're better able to recycle it. We're better able to process it. But as we get older, just like with a lot of functions of ageing, Lamin A does seem to build up. So it would be interesting to see how some of these treatments for progeria might then be modified or developed in the kind of quest to understand ageing a little bit better as well.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That's interesting, because I thought that it just wouldn't be of any help because I wasn't aware of any specific type of ageing that matched that closely. But apparently there is.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So yeah, when you look at the amount of Lamin A within the cell of an elderly person and some of the damage to the nuclear membranes that you see in elderly people, yeah, it's significantly higher than in young people.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Okay.<br />
<br />
=== Protein Folding <small>(42:30)</small> ===<br />
* [https://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/ai-mostly-solves-protein-folding/ AI Mostly Solves Protein Folding]<ref>[https://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/ai-mostly-solves-protein-folding/ Neurologica: AI Mostly Solves Protein Folding]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' And speaking about protein, so this, so far this week, every news item has had a really good segue to the next one. And this is no exception. Because Bob, you're going to tell us about the science of protein folding. Apparently there's been a bit of a breakthrough.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, I'm so excited about the story, Bob.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh my God.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's so good.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' There's been a break in. I made a breakthrough. So yes, this looks like a holy grail of biology. Predicting protein folding has, for all intents and purposes, been achieved using a deep learning AI network called AlphaFold. Now with it, we can now predict with extreme accuracy, the 3D shape of many proteins as they curl up into their complicated shapes. This could change medicine and medical research as we know it. Now this is big kids. And if you're not excited, please pretend to be. This is not an incremental improvement that typifies so much of scientific advancement, frustratingly for me. According to many scientists who have looked at this, the 50-year-old mystery or the mystery of how protein folding works has had a major game-changing breakthrough. Now the quotes that I've come across, I do quotes every week. I read science news all the time. I don't see stuff like this very often. John Molt, computational biologist, University of Maryland. He said, this is a big deal. In some sense, the problem is solved. Pushmeet Kohli is the head of AI for science with DeepMind. He said, the implications are immense. How diseases progress to how you discover new drugs, it's endless. And finally, evolutionary biologist Andre Lupus at the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology said, it's a game changer. This will change medicine. It will change research. It will change bioengineering. It will change everything. So I mean, these guys they're not x-ray technicians. These are, these guys are in the game. They know what they're talking about and they sound extremely optimistic. So it's really, it's all about proteins here. You know, when you think of life on the earth, you have to think of proteins. You know, they're basically strings of hundreds or thousands of amino acids are among, if not the most abundant biological molecule in the solar system.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Bob, you know what the biggest, the biggest human protein is?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' The biggest human protein.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And how many amino acids long is it?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Well, the biggest number I've heard is thousands of amino acids.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, so the biggest, that's true. But the single biggest one is called Titin. T-I-T-I-N.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Of course it is.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' We're so creative.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The human variant has 34,351 amino acids.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Jeez.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' 51?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' All folded up in an intricate pattern.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Imagine predicting that bad boy. So, but yeah, proteins are endlessly fascinating. Their range of functions, it's really astounding. They can, they're used within biology for so many things. They could be purely structural. They could be protective. They could be used as transport or storage, as membranes, enzymes, even toxins. When you look at a cell, most of what a cell does involves proteins, it's just protein machines. And in fact, evolved earth life, the only life we know, is in many ways, interacting proteins. But you know, interacting proteins, that's the bottom line. So of course then, knowing as much as we can about proteins can have a dramatic impact on health and medicine and so many things. And don't forget, when proteins go bad, they go really bad. Look, for example, at SARS-CoV-2. 1.5 million people are dead in the world as of this recording, because of one very specific protein, the spike protein on SARS-CoV-2. So why is it so hard to know how proteins fold? We can see the recipe, right? We can see the recipe for any specific protein in a DNA's genes. That's what genes do. <br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, but have you ever looked at a protein?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Well, I mean, but it's, we see, yes, of course.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's bananas.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I know, but the recipe is right there. You put this amino acid next to this one, next to this one. You got 20 different amino acids. You make a chain, like I said, of a hundred, hundreds of them or up to apparently 34,000. Then, but then the real interesting thing happens. It folds in on itself like Jay when he eats too many meatballs. And that's the hard part.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Too much gravity, Bob, in my stomach?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yes, that's the hard part. Because you have some parts are attracting to other, are attractive to other parts. Some parts repel other parts. Some parts of the amino acids are hydrophobic and they want to get inside so they can't get wet and so on and so on. It could, that line, that chain of amino acids can assume any one of literally trillions of potential shapes. And that's what's so hard is to figure out, well, which shape is that? How do you calculate this? How does it work? And the bottom line here though is that shape is critical. It's all about the shape. The specific shape is what determines what that protein can do.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So just to, because I do, I'm a little sensitive about when we're hyping how big a discovery is, overhauling our previous ignorance. And so to be clear, and what experts have said about this is there's actually three things, three kinds of things to know about protein folding. One is how the specific amino acids affect how a protein folds. We pretty much totally understand that. The other is the mechanisms in the cell that make folding happen. We pretty much understand that. And the third is predicting how a protein will fold just from its amino acid sequence. And that's what this advances. And on this score, we weren't starting from zero. We were two thirds of the way there, pretty much.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, I totally agree with that. And some of my talk is definitely going to cover that, but although not quite in that detail when it comes to the folding. Now, we actually, we can determine what a protein looks like very, very clearly. And that uses techniques like X-ray crystallography or cryo-electron microscopy. And that's like, that's the gold standard. We could really determine what it looks like very, very well using these methods. But the problem is they're very expensive and they're very time consuming and they don't always work. And so right now we've only solved about 170,000 protein shapes, but we know that there's at least 200 million proteins in nature. So that's about a 0.085%. And that's really pathetic. We could do a lot better. And there was just no way that we were going to actually solve a significant number of those proteins since we've only done 170,000. There's so many more. So how could we get there more quickly? And that's where computers can come in to predict the shape based on the sequence alone. And that's exactly what we've been trying to do for decades, literally for decades. We've been trying to do this and it's been just so difficult for the reasons I talked about. So now this is where CASP competition comes in. Now CASP is an acronym for Critical Assessment of Structure Prediction. And it's essentially the Olympics of protein folding. Every two years, about 100 teams get together for a protein structure prediction challenge using their programs. Now they're given a series of amino acid strings that have been solved experimentally, but have not been made public.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Cool.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' And so they can't know, they can't know based on the amino acid sequence what it's going to look like. So each team's computational predictions are compared to the actual protein shape and given a score. And that score is called the GDT score, Global Distance Test score. If you get above 90, then that's pretty much comparable to the gold standard using the expensive slow processes like X-ray crystallography. That's an amazing score. Anything above 90 and you pretty much, it's considered to be a solution for that protein. You've pretty much nailed it. So in the last CASP in 2018, two years ago, it's biannual, every two years, last time the AlphaFold AI system was the best. Number one. Now this is the team from DeepMind. Remember DeepMind? They're the ones who used AI and deep learning to create the greatest chess and go champions ever. No human, no un-augmented human can ever even think about challenging these.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I was wondering if these were related, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh man. And if you wanna read about that DeepMind chess AI champ, go to episode 704. So now back then, two years ago, back then AlphaFold dominated. They beat everyone by at least 15%, but their best score was only about 60. So that's where your two thirds is coming in, Steve. But 60 is essentially useless for really helping with protein folding and really making solid progress. Sure, it was incremental and 60 was a really good score two years ago, but it's still not what we needed. There's really not a lot of utility in that until you get much higher.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's close, but no cigar.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, so that was then. Now the most recent CASP challenge recently ended and after two years of tweaking AlphaFold, they won again, but boy, did they win. Their median score was a whopping 92.4. That's 25 points greater than the second best, still dominating head and shoulders above second place and everybody else. And it really was an astounding achievement. And so, but this puts their computational predictions in the same class as the gold standard techniques. So just from the amino acid sequence using that technique, they can predict what the protein is going to look like in many, many, many, many cases. Now, remember my quote above by the computational biologist. He said, this is a big deal. In some sense, the problem is solved. Some are saying also that it's the first use of AI to solve a serious problem. In fact, DeepMind, DeepMind was very proud of their chess champions and their Go champions and they really were amazing achievements. But this is the one they're really proud of because this is the one that could seriously help a lot of people. And then this next bit, I love this next bit. So AlphaFold did so well. They did so well that some of the organizers-<br />
<br />
'''S:''' How well did they do?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' How well did they do? Some organizers of the challenge had some trepidation about, they were thinking, did they cheat? I mean, this is just so good that they were concerned that they cheated. So evolutionary biologist, Andre Lupus, he gave them a special challenge. A membrane protein from an archaea microbe. And now for 10 years, Lupus and his team have been trying to get a good x-ray crystal structure from this and they have failed every time. Tried and tried, could not do it. So I'll give you a quote that Lupus said afterwards. He said, the model from group 427, which is DeepMind's AlphaFold, gave us our structure in half an hour.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's what I wanted to know, Bob. How did they compare time-wise to the other competitors in this competition?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I don't know. They didn't tell us how fast they did it compared to the other ones.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But compared to old school techniques like x-ray crystallography, it's like half an hour to like years.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Actually, they couldn't do it using x-ray crystallography. It's not infallible. They tried for 10 years. They said they could not possibly have cheated on this. I don't know how they do it. So that was an extra special test that they passed with, can you imagine, a half hour? And this guy has been working on it with his team for a decade.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, I think that's what everybody felt like when PCR came out. And then again, when CRISPR came out, they're like, God, damn it.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, this is on the scale of that. But it's not perfect yet anyway. There's some types of proteins that alpha-fold has some difficulty with. There was one specific one that it didn't do nearly as well with as the other proteins.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, interesting.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' But I haven't come across any reason why people don't think that eventually will be solved. And there are certain classes of proteins that are different, that fold differently than other ones. And those are kind of like on the outskirts of conventional proteins. And so it can't do those really that well either. But I'll throw one other quote your way. This is Mohamed Al-Qarashi. He's a computational biologist at Columbia University. He was also a CASP participant. He said, I think it's fair to say, this will be very disruptive to the protein structure prediction field. I suspect many will leave the field as the core problem has arguably been solved. It's a breakthrough of the first order. Certainly one of the most significant scientific results of my lifetime. That's a hell of a quote right there.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Ooh, you smelling a Nobel Prize?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yep, could be. You just read my mind. This will definitely, I think this will definitely win a Nobel Prize fairly soon too. So what does this mean? What are some of the benefits? So I'm just gonna throw out just some quotes I came across regarding what could the future might bring with this technology.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Really smooth ice cream.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' So yeah. Oh my God. And beyond even that, Steve, people are saying, I'll just throw the quotes out. Huge boon to life sciences and medicine. Vastly accelerate efforts to understand building blocks of cells. Dramatically speed the creation of new medicines. Could help illuminate the function of thousands of unsolved proteins in the human genome. Make sense of disease-causing gene variations that differ between people. How about making biofuels and the ability to degrade waste plastic. And finally, this quote said that this could potentially enable drug designers to quickly work out the structure of every protein in new and dangerous pathogens like SARS-CoV-2, a key step in the hunt for molecules to block them. So that's kind of it for now.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I'm kind of disappointed they completely missed all the culinary implications.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, what the hell were they thinking? But Steve, this is the kind of advance that I was hoping to see from AI and deep learning. It's a true breakthrough that will probably be remembered for generations. And as I have here in my bullet points, I definitely see a Nobel Prize for this. And as these techniques get more sophisticated and powerful, I think I expect similar advances to come along with increasing frequency. How often, I don't know, nobody knows, but I'll be waiting to pounce on them and geek out as usual.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I love that some of the quotes that you pulled from some of these scientists were basically like, I may not have a job soon, and I'm sort of excited about that. This is how it's supposed to be. We're supposed to make such amazing technological advances that we no longer need the human hours to go into something. Now that we have a new tool, we can put those human hours somewhere else that they're needed. And that's the greatest thing about iterations or even paradigm changes in science.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And Cara, since you say that, I have to point out that you're right, science is often about creative destruction. We're trying to make certain specific applications or researches or medical treatment modalities obsolete. And then those resources get repurposed somewhere else. But that's a key difference to pseudoscience because pseudoscience is like acupuncture or homeopathy. They're locked in. A homeopath will always be a homeopath. And they can't allow their pseudoscience to be debunked because then they don't just go shift over to something else. They're out of a job.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, in some ways you see that too as a key difference with sort of political ideology. This idea that I want things to be the same because this is what I'm used to them being and it serves these different purposes, these different interest groups. And sometimes-<br />
<br />
'''S:''' My tribe can't lose.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right. And sometimes progress disrupts in a way that's uncomfortable. But to fight against that discomfort actually means to prevent individuals from having their lives improved.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, and disruptive technologies, those are the things that we are going to start to see. And I think in the relative near future, things that are such game changers that they call them disruptive. Like nanotech, artificial intelligence, these things are disruptive. And but it's a good disruptive, I think. These are the things that are going to make people nervous because they're big change. They're not incremental changes. They're going to make people nervous. But they're on the horizon. We see them coming. Hard to say when they're going to be here, but they will come eventually. And they have the potential to be very disruptive.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I want my fishmato.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I think we as a species need to, just like we often talk about, needing to be in front of the ethics on really intense changes like CRISPR and human cells.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Be ready for it, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' We need to have some sort of psychological training in how to adjust and adapt to rapid technological advancements. Because I do think that a lot of human nature is to say, I don't like this new thing. It scares me. I want to do it the old way. But that sort of lack of will could potentially be detrimental, you know? So yeah, it's an interesting problem to have.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, I think AI will be integral to these types of disruptive changes. Because essentially, you're automating some aspects of human intelligence and the ability to do research and to make scientific advancements. And at some point, I mean, we may see changes that are so fast that people will get freaked out. They're really freaked out at the pace that some of these things are coming. But we just got, yeah, we got to talk about it now, be ready for it, and anticipate it. And just so that we can guide them to the best, most possible outcomes. Like not creating an AI that will think that we're just an infection that needs to be removed from the surface of the planet. You know, that type of thing.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, but Cara, I don't think most people are going to really even notice because they're going to be too busy enjoying their really smooth ice cream.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That was served to them by their badass robot.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Agree.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, let's move on.<br />
<br />
=== ISS Longevity <small>(1:00:13)</small> ===<br />
* [https://room.eu.com/news/russias-energia-says-iss-is-close-to-ruin-nation-should-build-its-own-space-station-instead Russia's Energia says ISS is close to ruin, nation should build its own space station instead]<ref>[https://room.eu.com/news/russias-energia-says-iss-is-close-to-ruin-nation-should-build-its-own-space-station-instead ROOM: Russia's Energia says ISS is close to ruin, nation should build its own space station instead]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay, Evan, you're going to finish up the news items talking about the International Space Station. I've been hearing some bad things about it.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, I've been reading some bad things about it. And some people have been speaking some bad things about it. We love the International Space Station though, ISS. I think it's as recognizable as any other name in astronautic history. You know, it's right up there with Apollo, Soyuz, Space Shuttle, Mir and the ISS.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Totally.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Absolutely. An incredible feat of science and engineering. Perhaps more as importantly though, it's a feat of cooperation and unity among nations. So throughout the 1990s, as we learned and read more about this ambitious project as it was coming online, it sort of stirred the sense of optimism that we had. And we had lost for a little time. We were still sort of recovering from pain and loss of the Challenger explosion. The late 80s was a very dark time for us in the US, specifically in space exploration. We were not quite sure of the future. But this plan for the ISS represented something new and fresh, sophisticated and sort of romantic, but also peaceful. Because if you think about it, the threat of nuclear war deteriorated with the dissolution of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s. So to think that the US and the Russians would come together and finally start cooperating on one of the most ambitious projects in human history, that was an optimistic time. And then it came to fruition, 1998. Segments of ISS went up into orbit and they connected. And then by the end of 2000, it was hosting its first crew and conducting its first experiments and has been doing so ever since. But that was 20 years ago. Today, International Space Station, it still captures the imagination, but like anything in life, it ages. And in this case, it does age before our eyes. Space stations are no exception to this rule. They can be improved upon, upgrades made, systems added, but it's machinery. And it eventually needs more work than just routine maintenance can keep up with. And something as complex as a space station, it makes it even more inevitable. So it was unfortunate to hear the news report that came out last week, a report from a Russian manufacturer, RSC Energia, who is the primary developer and contractor of the Russian crewed space flight program. They reported that a number of elements aboard the ISS are on the verge of catastrophic failure. That sounds like hyperbole, but here's what they're actually saying. Too many of the systems on the station are not fixable, not upgradable, and not worth the continuing effort. And they predict an avalanche of failures by the year 2025, which is pretty much right on cue with when the current international agreements governing the station expire. And that's kind of important to remember. Now, these thoughts were expressed by the flight director of the Russian segment of the ISS. His name is Vladimir Solovyev. And he said this to a meeting of the Russian Academy of Sciences Council on Space. And at that meeting were many top officials from various Russian academies of space, science, and astronautics. Estimates to fix the problem aboard the ISS would range to around 10 to 15 billion rubles. And they deem that a cost too high.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' How much is that in US dollars?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' 200 million.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, yeah, that's a lot of money.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' So it's a lot. I don't know if it's insurmountable, but they're saying that that's too much.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Evan, can I ask, what was the sort of age that the ISS was supposed to make it to?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' The original time span was 15 years, but they always say that's the original mission plan. But you design it so that it could go about double that. So they said, realistically, if you put more money into it and you renew your contracts and everything and you keep up with things, you can get 30 years out of the space station without a problem.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And when did it launch?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' The first modules went up in 1998, and it's been connected and hosting people since 2000. So we're 20 to 22 years in. Okay, so yeah, I mean, we're definitely into this extension phase. But this is not...<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Sort of lines up with their numbers, no?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, well, and it does. It's not unusual for a project like this to get to this point, in which you're sort of most of the way through its useful lifespan, and you have to start thinking about maybe some other things. So the fellow Solovev stated that it was necessary to revise the terms of further participation in the program, which essentially is calling for a rearrangement of funding of the program at that point. So they're kind of saying two things at the same time. Is it irreparable? Is it really on the verge of catastrophic failure? But also at the same time, they're saying, well, we'll participate, but not at the terms that we're otherwise contractually obligated to. But maybe there's another possibility that they would rather see their funds diverted to the implementation of something called the Russian Orbital Service Station, ROSS. And this is a new space station, all Soviet, sorry, this is a new space station, all Russian built, with replaceable modules. The idea being is that you can swap out the modules as they deteriorate over time. So it'd be something that had a much longer lifespan to it. So this was the news that came out. And on the heels of this being said at this conference, within a matter of hours, there's a Russian company which has oversight of Russia's space missions. It's called Roscosmos. The Roscosmos spokespeople were forced to issue an official denial of the information. And again, this was just within a few hours of these words having been reported. And they said that the quote of RSC engineer, first deputy design general for flight operations, Vladimir Solovyov, contradicts the reality of the situation. And they added that his comments were of an informational nature, did not contain proposals to terminate participation in the ISS. So what are other people-<br />
<br />
'''S:''' They walked it back.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, they basically had to walk it back. Now, some other people that they've interviewed about this subject involved with the ISS or in the field of astronautics, what are they saying? It's a bit of a mixed sort of review, depending on who you speak to. For example, there's a fellow Martin Barstow, who's a professor of astrophysics at Leeds University. And he chairs a group that oversees British science experiments on the space station. And he basically said, look, such extensions are normal in space missions, as long as the machinery keeps working. The original estimated mission life was 15 years, but with extensions and funding, they could stretch the life to 30 years. It's not unusual. Echoing that was space analyst and former NASA engineer, Keith Cowing. He edits something called NASA Watch. And he said that many non-Russian systems on the space station also routinely suffer malfunctions. I'll get to that in a second. But these malfunctions and things are part of the mission. They're sort of anticipated ahead of time. You do have to deal with these things when you're building things like space stations. You know, you understand that these parts are gonna either deteriorate over time, there may be some problems along the way, but that's also part of the mission. Then you have someone, his name is Gennady Padalka. And they hold the record of 787 days, the longest stay on the ISS. And they told the Russian media news outlet, RIA Novosti, that the Russian half is wearing out and all the modules of the Russian segment are exhausted. So he's kind of throwing shade on the Russian components because the station is pretty much half Russian built and the rest is the international, the United States among a few other countries, their components. And they've been having some problems that have been occurring in the Russian segments. For example, there was an air leak and that air leak started in 2019 and it was a problem right up until October of this year. In which they had trouble exactly identifying where the leak was coming from, but it wasn't a problem sort of at first because it was a very small leak, but it became larger and larger and they couldn't ignore it anymore. They were just losing too much air. So they actually figured out how the leak was occurring and that the fix they used was Kapton tape. That's K-A-P-T-O-N, which has a high tolerance for very extreme environments, both hot and cold, and it's used in aerospace design and among other things. But when you think about it, it doesn't leave the nicest image in a person's mind of a space station sort of relying on tape and patchwork like that in order to fix, "these problems".<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Oh yeah, it's scary.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, it's kind of a scary thought. So what do you think or what do you do in a situation like this? I think the gist of the story though is that because Russia is working on their new design with their new station, it sounds like they're looking for a way to sort of shift their responsibility, their funding, or their commitment or whatever away from ISS and into their new project. That's kind of what it boils down to me.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But isn't that in a way what we should be doing too? Like ISS is old.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, I disagree, Cara. So first of all, NASA is acting like they are still fully committed to the ISS. And for example, they're just wrapping up completely swapping out all of the batteries from nickel metal hydride to lithium ion batteries. So that's one just upgrade that they're just finishing right now. But also remember, we spoke about this. They're planning on adding entirely new modules to the US section. The Axiom Space, which is a commercial company, is going to be adding three modules. And in the Axiom Habitation Module 1 will be going up, they say no earlier than 2024. So sometime around 2024, 2025, we're going to be having brand new modules attached to the space station. And their lifespan will be beginning then. And we could build off of those.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Do you give credence to the Russian claim then that the parts that are in existence right now are beyond repair?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I think, no, no, I don't think they're beyond repair. It's more a matter of how much do you want to spend to repair them or to maintain them? But I do think, and this may be, and the thing is, they're touting their station they want to build as being modular. Well, the space station already is modular by definition. And the thing is, OK, so fine, we may have to retire older modules. But there will be newer modules on the station.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And I didn't realize that you could do that. I thought that basically the argument here was that there's a core that's crumbling, that's being held together by space tape and adding shit to a space tape core. It's kind of like, oh, I'm going to put a new addition on my house, but my house is falling apart. Why would you do that?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Coat of paint on it. Look great.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Like, let's add a fourth floor, even though the third floor is falling into the second floor. Like, let's not do that.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, because half of the station is Russian built. How much of it can you really swap out and can you eventually get to a point where you might be able to swap outall of the Russian components, if that's your concern?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, if it's completely replaceable, then that's a totally different view.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I couldn't find anything that stated that, that it would be essentially that modular in which you could remove, take half of it apart effectively and put it back together.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' And don't forget that, you know, I don't remember how long ago it was. Was it six months? I did an article on the fact that they were going to be adding these new modules to the space station and that they were going to leave the space station and become a new space station.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' OK, OK. Yeah, because to be clear, I mean, and I'm not being flip here. I'm literally saying, I thought this thing was not supposed to last this long.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I agree. I've been trying to figure that out just in preparation for this specific news item. And they're not really saying, but when it says, what are NASA's long term plans? They talk about adding these new modules.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' OK.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So I don't know if, and maybe they're just not committing to like 100 years from now, what's what's going to be going on. But once you're you have the ability to add new modules, they will have connectors. You could add new modules onto them. You probably will end up migrating over to an entirely new space station. I don't see any.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And then you can retire.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, I don't see any reason why there has to be any discontinuity, though. Like, you know what I mean? Like, in other words, it will always be the ISS. But over time, it'll be entirely replaced.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' You've just thrown out the old pieces.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Or just shut it down and leave it attached as a museum. You know, just close the hatch and you don't go there anymore.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. So long as it the detritus, like the falling apart of it doesn't negatively affect the good parts of it, because I don't know. I just I grew up in the early 80s. I was born in 1983. So actually, I grew up in the late 80s and I grew up with images like New Yorker cartoons of the Mir falling apart in my head. Like that was the big joke was that mirror was like being held together by duct tape. And so I'm going there in my head with ISS. Is it the same?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I hope not. And I would say not necessarily. If we want to continue to add to it, replace, swap out parts, maintain it. It could be indefinite. And also like these new modules, the concept of them that I'm seeing, they have their own solar panels. You know, I don't know. They're probably very independent. So they could be self-sufficient in and of themselves. So again, I think that just adds to the modularness, if you will, of this station. And maybe they're moving in that direction specifically so that they can just keep building on what they have. But we'll see if at some point they want to start from scratch with something that will be have a better infrastructure to build off of. Fine. But maybe they don't have to. If they take this approach, who knows? Well, obviously you can only plan so far ahead because it's all budget dependent. And it always comes down to what do we want to spend our money on, you know?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And who's in charge of that money at the time.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. Let's move on.<br />
<br />
== Who's That Noisy? <small>(1:14:53)</small> ==<br />
* Answer to last week’s Noisy: _brief_description_perhaps_with_link_<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Jay, it's Who's That Noisy time.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Last week I played this Noisy.<br />
<br />
[_short_vague_description_of_Noisy]<br />
<br />
All right. Any guesses?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's a chirping noise.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Frog?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Let me guess. It's not a bird. It's not a plane.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It's a T-Rex.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Evan, you are correct. It is not a bird. That would have been so obvious. I got so many varied guesses here and I had to like hone them down to the ones I like the most. But the first one I got, Tracy Melinda wrote in and said, "Hi, Jay, I think today's noisy is the signal at an intersection for deaf people to know that it's safe to cross."<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, it does kind of sound like that.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It does, but it goes faster. It's faster than that. Yeah, it makes a noise, like the signals.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' You're right. You're right, Evan. Yeah, it's for blind people. It's for blind people, not deaf people.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Oh, my God. That's what they wrote. They wrote deaf people.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' They meant blind.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' They did mean blind. They did. And it's funny. My brain just transposed it to blind.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You know what they meant, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, you filled it in.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' You just don't even know what reality is. OK, that's incorrect. But that's not a bad guess. It does kind of sound like that. A listener named Kay McCreesh said, "I'm going to guess a baby badger or some old guy kissing his missus." I thought that was funny. He's like smooching. That'll be me. That's not it. But I've never heard a baby badger, so I don't know. But it's a high pitched thing. There's lots of things that make those kind of noises. Another listener named Gary Sturman said, "Second time guessing, hopefully not the last. Thought it was at first a Japanese pedestrian crossing. But then he listened with his headphones and he said, it sounds like a clockwork mechanism that's making the chirp." That is also not correct. And then I got one from Visto Tutti. He said, "I think that chirping sounds like a guinea pig." And that is not correct. I have one more guess. David Roach said, "I'm guessing this week's noisy is a chirping gecko."<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, a gecko, not a frog.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' We're getting a little bit closer here. The winner for last week, Richard Smith wrote, "This week's noisy sounds like the chirping of a cheetah cub." It is a cheetah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No way.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Listen again. [plays Noisy] That noise does not belong in a cheetah's throat.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But if it's teeny tiny.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That's why I played it because I'm like, that's a cheetah? Like, you got to be kidding me. But apparently that is it. That is the truth. I saw a video, so I believe it. You know, if it's in video form, whatever it shows me, I believe it. So thank you for sending that in. Katie, I appreciate it. That was very interesting. You guys could look up the video of that if you want to take a look.<br />
<br />
=== New Noisy <small>(1:17:40)</small> ===<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I have a new noisy this week that was sent in by a listener named Tumas Makin. Here's that noisy.<br />
<br />
[_short_vague_description_of_Noisy]<br />
<br />
All right. Now I will tell you right now, this is not Benny Hill slapping the head of the short, bald guy on his show.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That was my guess.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' And for those of you who know what I'm talking about, I'm sure you just laughed because that was one of the funniest damn things I ever saw in my life. Remember that? So if you think you know what that is, email me at WTN@theskepticsguide.org and also email me if you heard something cool this week. And if you have anything that is this holiday specific that you think would make a good noisy, send it in.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. Thanks, Jay.<br />
<br />
== Questions/Emails/Corrections/Follow-ups <small>(1:18:32)</small> ==<br />
<br />
<blockquote><p style="line-height:115%"> _consider_using_block_quotes_for_emails_read_aloud_in_this_segment_ with_reduced_spacing_for_long_chunks –</p></blockquote><br />
<br />
=== Follow-up #1: {{w|Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica|Principia}} ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So we're going to do one email this week. Cara, we got approximately three million emails.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh my God. I know. Let me take this, Steve.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Correcting you.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right at the top. I'm going to say 100%. Last week I did this really deep dive on the Principia. And of course, as I was doing the deep dive on the Principia, I read the full Latin title and then later proceeded to be like, old English is hard to read. And of course, Principia was not-<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Really old English.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, so old it's Latin.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Thank you, Evan. Yeah, of course, it wasn't translated to English until the third edition. And also that wasn't old English. It was modern English. Apparently Shakespeare is also modern English. So don't listen to me when it comes to anything about literature. It's obviously I'm not well versed in this area.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' If you want old English, read the Canterbury Tales.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And yeah, I'm reading all these things about how impenetrable the writing is. And weirdly, my head just went to like, yeah, it was written in English that we can't even understand. It's like, no, it was written in Latin. And that's not why it was impenetrable. It's because the math and science was, really hard for a lot of people to read at the time. But apparently not as much as we thought. And that was the whole purpose of the piece was that popular collectors were probably reading it as well. In Latin, not old English. Sorry.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Actually, the Canterbury Tales were in middle English, apparently.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, see, old English is like, I don't know the difference.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Did you already get an email on that, Steve?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I better double check that myself right now before I get more into the middle.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Here we go.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' What's interesting is why Newton decided to publish it in Latin. And how did that... Actually, the thing that I was kind of annoyed by is that that was kind of important to the core of the discussion. It wasn't a small little fact. In other words, wouldn't that have affected whether or not it was popularized or who was buying and reading the book that it was in Latin?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, I guess I wonder how much did Enlightenment-era academics speak Latin? Was that just a fundamental part of your education?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It's a good question.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, I think so. I think that's the answer.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And that probably also makes sense why so much kind of early medicine and these early biological studies, it's all Latin. Like all the anatomical directions and all the names for things, so many of them are based in Latin. Yeah, taxonomy. You're right, Evan. Yeah, a lot of that was just... It was Latin-based.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, interesting.<br />
<br />
== Name That Logical Fallacy <small>(1:21:07)</small> ==<br />
* Slippery Slope<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay, we're going to do a Name That Logical Fallacy. This is based upon an email we got from Bjorn Matzen from Switzerland. Bjorn as in like Bjorn Borg, right? Same first name. And he writes, "You talked about slippery slopes in relation to video surveillance and facial recognition. I do agree with your conclusions, but I was wondering where you draw the line between the slippery slope as a logical fallacy and its use as a valid argument. I think it should, again, have something to do with the principle of charity and steelmanning the other side's argument, but I cannot quite put my finger on it. Anyway, thanks for your brilliant work." Very well, thank you, Bjorn. So the logical fallacies that we talk about are informal logical fallacies, meaning that they're not always one way or the other. It's not ironclad. It's not like every time you make a slippery slope argument, it is a fallacy. It's more that there's a fuzzy line depending on how you use it. It's very context dependent. And so there really aren't any hard and fast rules about when it is a fallacy and when it's a valid argument, but there are some guiding principles, right? So what is the slippery slope? That's essentially when you say, well, if we allow a situation to go this far, it will necessarily go farther.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And you almost take it to like an absurd conclusion when you're making a slippery slope argument.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So there is also the argument ad absurdum, which I think you're bleeding into a little bit. So the argument ad absurdum is when you use the absurd conclusion in order to invalidate someone's argument. And again, they both operate the same way. They're valid sometimes, and then they can be a logical fallacy depending on how you use them. So I think the slippery slope logical fallacy is, if we allow research using embryonic stem cells, then eventually they're going to be involuntarily harvesting stem cells from women against their will.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So the arguments that we're hearing right now.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' If you legalize marijuana, then they'll be legalizing cocaine and heroin. Or if we furlough people from jail, we'll just be letting murderers out of prison.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So can I ask though, what was the slippery slope that we were discussing with regards to AI? I don't remember.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It was the giving up security for convenience. And we're saying if we allow using facial recognition in some cases, we're giving power to companies, to the government to use our data, to use our information. And we're worried about where that will lead.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right. But this isn't new.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I think Jay actually said slippery slope. No, you're right.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' We're already on that slide. We're already halfway down that slide.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's where you tell the difference between a logical fallacy and a valid argument. So if you're saying that, that for example, if we give up our freedoms for convenience, then that can lead to surrendering even more freedoms. And we don't know where that will end, or it may go farther than we think is optimal. That's a valid argument, right? And we do have to hold the line somewhere. But if where it becomes a logical fallacy is in a couple of ways. One is when you say that it will necessarily lead to going further when it doesn't. Or another one is when you go to the absurd extreme. So like, for example, you say, well, if we allow regulation about fully automatic weapons, they'll be confiscating all our guns. You know?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's what I was going to say.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's the classic, that's probably, that's like the classic slippery slope arguments. Like, well, no, we can have regulations without completely banning something.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' We do have them.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We don't have to go all the way.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, we already do. Exactly.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' There's plenty of counterexamples. It's like, yeah, we regulate lots of things without going all the way to banning.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right. Or if we have a public option, then all of a sudden we'll be socialist. And it's like, we already have the mail, and firemen, and school.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, they said that about Medicaid. Once the government's paying for health care, we're going to have socialized medicine. We'll set aside the argument about whether or not that's a good thing or a bad thing.<br />
<br />
[talking over each other]<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's right, but that's not happening.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So it's been 60 years, and it hasn't led to socialized medicine. That right there is evidence that it doesn't necessarily lead down the slippery slope. That's when it becomes a logical fallacy, when you say it absolutely will happen, or when you say it's going to go to ridiculous extremes. But just saying that we have to be careful not to let this go too far, or to set limits on how far this will go, or we have to realize this is what we're doing. We are trading security for convenience, or freedom for convenience. And we have to think about that trade-off.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Is there something where, because it has the same name as an argument, so if we say, ooh, we don't want to fall down that slippery slope, and then somebody else says, wait, is that a slippery slope fallacy? It's like, no. Is there a name for that fallacy?<br />
<br />
'''S/E:''' The fallacy fallacy.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' The fallacy fallacy, OK, yeah. So just because we use the terminology to paint a picture or to make an argument doesn't mean we are falling victim to utilizing a fallacy.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, it's like falsely charging a fallacy, but again, without putting it into the proper context.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right, OK, that's the fallacy fallacy.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, and almost every fallacy can be used that way, where you can frame somebody's argument in a fallacious way. And that's why he mentioned steel manning as the opposite of straw manning. You could straw man anyone's argument. If we say, well, we should listen to scientists, somebody could say, that's an argument from authority. Is it, though? Is it really? It really isn't. I'm not saying they have to be correct because they have authority. I'm just saying we should take what they have to say seriously because they're actual experts who know what they're talking about and have dedicated their life to whatever.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' And they've got a pretty good track record.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, they have a pretty good track record. Or for example, if we say, well, I'm very dubious about what this person is saying because they've been convicted of fraud in the past. That's an ad hominem. No, it isn't.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' No, it's not.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's legitimate concern about the reliability of somebody who's a proven fraudster, a con artist.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right. You didn't say, I'm dubious about what he's saying because he has ugly shoes.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Right, right. Or that he has to be wrong. I'm not saying he has to be wrong.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I don't like his opinion.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Or he's definitely wrong because he was—<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, I'm just saying I am more cautious about the claim coming from somebody who has a history of being a con artist.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah. John Edwards is going to tell— Right. John Edwards is going to tell me something. I'm going to be more skeptical about it than probably someone else.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It could be to his advantage to tell the truth in this particular case. Who knows? But I'm not going to take his word for it, you know? So all of these fallacies can be portrayed in a way to make them seem like a fallacy. A legitimate use of an argument can unfairly straw man into a fallacy. And that's the fallacy fallacy.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Steve, while we're talking about this, I get this on Facebook a lot. There are people that just refuse to be contradicted. It's not really a fallacy, but there's definitely something going on there.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' What do you mean by they refuse to be contradicted?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Well, they can't be wrong. You can't say to them something like, it would be good if you had some evidence to back up what you're saying because you don't have any evidence. And then they just go off on a tirade because you've put up a wall in front of them that requires something from them.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right. I think in order to commit a logical fallacy, you still have to be at least attempting to argue logically.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You have to make an argument. Not all bad arguments are logical fallacies. Because there could be other problems with arguments, right? One just being incoherent or stupid or just using bad facts.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Or just going, nuh-uh.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, that's the ultimate logical fallacy of the non-sequitur. It just doesn't even follow. But some people are not even wrong. You know what I mean? They're not even making an argument. You have to make an argument in order to commit a logical fallacy. Some people are not even doing that. So what a lot of people do or what we see a lot online is that people make an assertion and then treat it as if they made an argument. It's like, no, you didn't actually make an argument in support of your position. You just asserted your position. And then they just keep reverting to their assertion, saying it over again in different ways or more emphatic ways. You're still not making an argument. You're just saying, I'm right. This is the fact. This is the case. That's not an argument.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, that's pretty much it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, guys. Let's go on with science or fiction.<br />
<br />
== Science or Fiction <small>(1:31:39)</small> ==<br />
{{SOFResults<br />
|fiction = personal finances<!-- short word or phrase representing the item --><br />
<br />
|science1 = cared for animal rights<!-- short word or phrase representing the item --><br />
|science2 = assassination attempts<!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
|science3 = <!-- leave blank if absent --> <br />
<br />
|rogue1 = jay<!-- rogues in order of response --><br />
|answer1 = assassination attempts<!-- item guessed, using word or phrase from above --><br />
<br />
|rogue2 =bob<br />
|answer2 =personal finances<br />
<br />
|rogue3 =evan<br />
|answer3 =personal finances<br />
<br />
|rogue4 =cara <!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
|answer4 =personal finances<!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
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|rogue5 = <!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
|answer5 = <!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
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|host =Steve <!-- asker of the questions --><br />
<!-- for the result options below, <br />
only put a 'y' next to one. --><br />
|sweep = <!-- all the Rogues guessed wrong --><br />
|clever = <!-- each item was guessed (Steve's preferred result) --><br />
|win =y <!-- at least one Rogue guessed wrong, but not them all --><br />
|swept = <!-- all the Rogues guessed right --><br />
}}<br />
{{Page categories<br />
|SoF with a Theme = <!-- redirect(s) created for Adolf Hitler - SoF Theme (804) --><br />
}}<br />
<blockquote>'''Theme: {{w|Adolf Hitler}}'''<br>'''Item #1:''' Unscrupulous in amassing power, Hitler was, however, fastidious about personal finances, and had modest personal income and wealth from his government salary.<ref>[url_from_SoF_show_notes publication: title]</ref><br>'''Item #2:''' Although there is some debate about how consistent he was, Hitler was a vegetarian based on principles of animal rights.<ref>[https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/animals-and-us/201111/was-hitler-vegetarian-the-nazi-animal-protection-movement Psychology Today: Was Hitler a Vegetarian? The Nazi Animal Protection Movement]</ref><br>'''Item #3:''' Historians document at least 42 assassination attempts against Hitler, all of which were foiled, failed, or had to be abandoned.<ref>[https://www.history.co.uk/article/killing-hitler-the-many-assassination-attempts-on-adolf-hitler Sky History: Killing Hitler: The Many Assassination Attempts on Adolf Hitler]</ref></blockquote><br />
<br />
''Voiceover: It's time for Science or Fiction.''<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Each week I come up with three science news items or facts, two real and one fake. And I challenge my panel of skeptics to tell me which one is the fake. You know, sometimes I come across an interesting fact that I think, huh, that would make a good science or fiction. And then I build a science fiction theme around it. And so that's what I did this week. Now, the theme's a bit unusual. I don't want you to read too much into it. It just happens to be a piece of information that I came across. The theme of the science or fiction this week is Adolf Hitler.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' OK. Don't read too into it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, don't read too much into that. Just three things about Adolf Hitler.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That doesn't get anyone upset or anything.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, it's a non-controversial topic.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Nah, not a trigger person.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. So three things about Adolf Hitler. Here we go. Item number one, unscrupulous and amassing power. Hitler was, however, fastidious about personal finances and had modest personal income and wealth from his government salary. Item number two, although there is some debate about how consistent he was, Hitler was a vegetarian based upon principles of animal rights. And item number three, historians document at least 42 assassination attempts against Hitler, all of which were foiled, failed, or had to be abandoned. Jay, go first.<br />
<br />
=== Jay's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''J:''' All right. So three things about Hitler. All right. So unscrupulous and amassing power. But Hitler was, however, fastidious about his finances. OK. So I don't know that much about Hitler when it comes to how he made money before he pulled his Hitler maneuver. I know that he liked to paint.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That like the Picard maneuver?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' You know, he liked to paint and wanted to be a painter, but then he was basically told don't do that. And he wasn't that bad, actually. But wealth from his government salary. OK. So he worked for the government. That makes sense. OK. So let me go on to the next one. So Hitler was a vegetarian. I thought, did I hear something about that? I don't remember. I would argue that it probably wasn't about animal rights, though, just because, you know. And then the last one here, 42 assassination attempts against Hitler, all of which were foiled. Yeah, I don't know. 42. And it's that number 42. You know, really? Is it going to be 42? These are really hard.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's not a bad, you know.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I mean, there was a lot. I didn't think there were 42 seems dramatically high to me. I would think I thought it was like seven or something like that. Seven? You know, I'm going to go with the last one as the fake, the number of assassination attempts.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' OK, Bob.<br />
<br />
=== Bob's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''B:''' The fact that he was fastidious about personal finances. I mean, maybe. Who knows? I guess you do. Then there's the.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's so funny, I don't know why.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' And then he's a vegetarian because of animal rights. Come on. Really? I mean, that's just too, too ironic. And then the next 142 just seems, yeah, it's an awesome number, but that just seems way too high. So screw it. I'm going to go with the other the one that seems the most reasonable. I'll say the personal finances. I'll say that's fiction. The other ones are just like they've got inherent problems that set them and set them aside, make them stand out. So that makes number one stand out for me. All right. Personal finances, fiction, whatever.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' OK, Evan.<br />
<br />
=== Evan's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''E:''' All right. I'll go reverse order, I guess. The 42 assassination attempts. I think that's right. I think the number was in the 40s when last I recall there were a lot against him, a lot. So I think that one's actually right. Yes, he was number two. Yes, he was a vegetarian. But was it based on principles of animal rights? I'm thinking, yes. It's sort of one of the ironies in a way that and he had and he loved his dog and stuff. I know about that. He had a lot of weird some health issues as well. So I don't know if that if it's more about his health and stuff. But this one about the first one about being fastidious about personal finances and had modest personal income, you can think that one also might be true, because when you're that person, you've amassed that much. You can just sort of order people to do whatever it is you need. So money becomes sort of irrelevant in a way. I think it's between the animal rights one and the personal and the personal finances one. I'd not heard much about him in his personal finances. So that's the one I kind of know the least about. I'll have to go with that one being the fiction.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' OK, and Cara.<br />
<br />
=== Cara's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, I think I'm going to follow suit with the last two. To me, I would assume that Hitler was probably like rich as shit. Like he was a super powerful guy and he probably did all sorts of horrible, corrupt things to make a ton of money off the backs of people. So this idea that he had modest personal income and wealth to me seems I would just assume he was like filthy rich. I think the others are seem true simply. I do know I read that he was a vegetarian. So you're going to this is going to be the got me one if it's like one of those great myths that we all believe. But it's actually not true. So there's a part of me that's a little concerned about that. And then the last one about 42, I have no idea. The number to me sounds low, but I know how you are with numbers. And I don't think it was 420. So I'm going to say that people hated that man.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It was 4.2.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right, yeah, 4.2. Some people loved him, but a lot of people hated him. So yeah, I'm going to say people hated the rich guy who loved animals, but hated people.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #2 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay, so you all agree on the second one. So we'll start there. Although there is some debate about how consistent he was Hitler was a vegetarian based on principles of animal rights. You all think this one is true, but ironic. And this one is science. This one is science. Hitler was a fanatical animal rights activist. And he was a vegetarian based upon principle. In fact, Goebbels wrote in his diary, the Fuhrer is a convinced vegetarian on principle. His arguments cannot be refuted on any serious basis. They are totally unanswerable. Hitler thought that eating meat was a major factor in the decline of civilization, and that vegetarianism would rejuvenate society. Now, the Nazis were very activist in animal rights, and they innovated a lot of animal rights practice.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, my God, that's so crazy.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The irony here is great. So they, in fact, outlawed Jews from owning pets, because they thought they wouldn't take care of them well. And if somebody was mistreating an animal, they thought that they should be put into a concentration camp and tortured and murdered. So they literally had no compunctions about torturing and murdering people, and would justify that based upon the fact that they committed animal cruelty, which is ironic. But yeah, they were put forward actual legislation about animal rights and humane treatment in animal husbandry.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Do you think that Hitler was the full architect of that? It was such a pet, no pun intended, but like a pet project of his?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, I think so.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' The entire Reich. Yeah, okay.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And then, of course, everyone had to agree with him, right?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Of course, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' He apparently was very obsessed over the suffering of lobsters in restaurants.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No, are you serious?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, I'm seriously, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, my God.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Asshole.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Talk about compartmentalization.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, talk about compartmentalization, exactly.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' You can't explain everything.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #1 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, let's go back to number one, unscrupulous in amassing power. Hitler was, however, fastidious about personal finances and had modest personal income and wealth from his government's salary. So, Jay, you think this one is science. The rest of you think this is fiction. And I guess the question here is, when you have all the power and you basically have all of the resources of a country at your disposal, o you actually need personal wealth? The example would be like if you're a priest, a Catholic priest, technically you own no property and you're poor, but still you have everything you need, right? So would it work like that? He had all the houses and everything he needed. He didn't need money because he owned the country.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Money became irrelevant, but...<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But Cara's right. Despite that, the guy amassed billions of dollars.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Billions?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Marks.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Billions.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And when you say amassed, you mean like pilfered and stole?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' He was worth the equivalent, they believe, of about $5 billion.<br />
<br />
'''B/J:''' Wow.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' He was very good at using his power to amass wealth. And some historians think that because he was poor when he was a starving artist, that he became afraid or just really didn't like the idea of being poor. And so he became also obsessed with amassing as much wealth as possible. And he was corrupt as hell. I mean, it was pay to play in every possible way. He would take "donations" from companies, obviously for special privileges. I mean, just...<br />
<br />
'''J:'''I wonder what happened to all that money.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' He would make the government buy hundreds of thousands of copies of his books to give out to people.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, that's true. It was the Bible. It was the Bible of Germany at the time.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, yeah. He must have made a ton of money off that book.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Absolutely.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It was estimated worth of about $5 billion.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That is so much more money than I would have ever guessed.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, and also think about it. He systematically murdered and exterminated a massive portion of his population. That portion of the population themselves had their own personal wealth. Did he not? I mean, was there not some sort of plan to...<br />
<br />
'''E:''' But did he use that to fund his armed...<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I mean, I wouldn't be surprised if they just took the money of these people long before they actually killed them.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Rip the fillings out of their teeth.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, they literally took the fillings out of their teeth. They confiscated everything of value that these people had.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But I mean, long before concentration camps, there was a systematic disenfranchisement.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Totally.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Well, plus there was theft everywhere of the art world and gold and so many things that he sent his henchmen out to get.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So gross.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I mean, Hitler was an artist, and he was obviously very interested in art. And his goal ultimately was to build a massive Führer Museum in Austria that was going to just be filled with the world's art that he plundered. That was his ultimate plan. So Jay, to answer your question, actually, it says, after the war, his estate was given to Bavaria. So that's where it went.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That's good.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Bavaria basically ended up with it.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #3 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So all of this means that historians document at least 42 assassination attempts against Hitler, all of which were foiled, failed, or had to be abandoned. That is science. It is amazing how this guy survived.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' When you read each, you could read each and every attempt and what happened. It's like, how did this guy possibly survive all these attempts?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' So it's like Inspector Clouseau.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, many of them, the Gestapo foiled. So the Gestapo was really good at their job, apparently, because they managed to foil a lot of these plots. And of course, they executed all the people involved. But a lot of them were like, there was a bomb in a wine bottle on a plane with him, but it froze and didn't go off. Or a shooter was blocked by somebody else and couldn't get a good shot. Or somebody was ratted out. They poisoned a letter that was sent to him, but he was ratted out by somebody else.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' He had food tasters, that's for sure.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. So from one point of view, you're reading through all this, like, oh my God, he came so close to death so many times. But on the other hand, I think what's probably the case is that he made it so hard to kill him that you had to use some kind of elaborate scheme that was highly prone to failing or to being discovered.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Wait, isn't there a movie about this?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Valkyrie.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, yeah, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No, like a comedy movie. About like all these foiled attempts to... Was Brad Pitt in a movie about... Am I amalgamating something?<br />
<br />
'''S/E:''' Well, you're talking about Inglourious Bastards.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I don't know, I've never seen it.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' But that's Brad Pitt.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' See it. It's good.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Is he trying to kill Hitler?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It was about one attempt. It was one specific attempt. But it's a lot of it. A lot of the attempts were by soldiers, by his own people, by people who infiltrated the SS. I mean, there was a lot of, as you say, lots of his own people wanted him dead.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Hated him, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I mean for lots of reasons. They thought he was going to destroy Germany. They were correct. You know, they thought that this path that he set the country on was not going to lead to a good place. And others were like, he's just losing the war. You know, he's just incompetent and just... And which he was. He was... We would get obsessed with decisions and like, we have to take this city. And his generals were like this he's just... He's losing the war. He's making horrible decisions. And also, this is a funny one. Apparently, his name was almost Adolf Schickelgruber.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Oh my god.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Wait, why? How do you change your last name?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' He didn't change his last name. His father changed his last name when he was 40. So his father, Alois, A-L-O-I-S, or how would you pronounce that, Evan?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' A-L... I'm sorry. Alois?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I don't know if that's French or whatever.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' How are we spelling it?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' A-L-O-I-S.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' O-I-S.<br />
<br />
'''S:'' That was his father.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Aloy?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Aloy. So he was born to Maria Anna Schickelgruber, and his name was Alois Schickelgruber, which he changed at age 40 to Alois Hiedler, H-I-E-D-L-E-R, which then Adolf changed to H-I-T-L-E-R, changed the spelling of the name, but close to the pronunciation. So that's how he became Adolf Hitler. But he was born Adolf Schickelgruber.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Also, hey, let's face it, it's too Jewish sounding, too. It just is.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Would history be different if he was Adolf Schickelgruber versus Hitler? I mean, it's funny to think about that.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But it is interesting how small things like that really can be the difference between winning the election or not. Because remember, he was democratically elected at the beginning.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' With intimidation tactics, among other things.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But still, he had massive support.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Not initially. He got really low scores in his first couple of runs at it. Then he struck at the exact right vulnerable time for Germany and just eked in and took over from there.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But if you think about how much something as simple as somebody's last name or the way they carry themselves in a speech or whatever, that's politics, man.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Sure. Yeah, that's why you've got to be so careful.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, good job, guys. Jay, sorry, this was a tricky one. What I like about ones like this and the real reason why I wanted to do it, I love it when there's something that you think you know a lot about. Like, how much have we heard and read and seen about Adolf Hitler over our lifetime? There's so many nooks and crannies of this guy that you may never have heard. It's interesting.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And also so much lore. It's like, what's actually real and what kind of got spun out?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Totally. I mean, somebody may refute the vegetarian thing, but I thought I found enough objective sources that sounded, yeah, this is pretty solid.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' And I have to remind myself of that. Even when I'm watching these documentaries, because I've seen a lot of them on Hitler, and you can't help – I mean, they must have gotten some things either incorrect or misconstrued or – I can't imagine everything I've seen is exactly 100% correct. So tough to suss out, though, exactly what's what.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, I think it all is based on the sourcing, too, who produced this thing. How scrupulous were they?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I mean, they had some quotes there that would seem pretty good, so. All right. Evan, give us a quote.<br />
<br />
== Skeptical Quote of the Week <small>(1:46:56)</small> ==<br />
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<blockquote>If you think back on all the movies that you’ve ever seen where there are goodies and baddies, you always remember the baddie.<br>– {{w|David Prowse}} (1935-2020), English bodybuilder and character actor (including {{w|Darth Vader}})</blockquote><br />
<br />
'''E:''' So not all of our quotes every week have to do with science or skepticism, and this is going to be one of those exceptions. "If you think back on all the movies that you've ever seen where there are goodies and baddies, you always remember the baddie." David Prowse, the actor. Darth Vader himself. He died last week. COVID-related.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's what I heard.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Really?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, unfortunately.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So I was sad to hear about David Prowse's death, obviously, but it did send me on this little tangent thought because everyone said, like, this is the actor who portrayed Darth Vader. And, of course, he was acted in the costume. But the voice was James Earl Jones. And so who was Darth Vader? Was it David Prowse or was it James Earl Jones? It was obviously both of them in a way.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It was definitely both, Steve, because you have, I mean, of course, James Earl Jones, his voice had effects on it. But he did a brilliant voice acting job. I mean, utterly brilliant.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, let me ask you.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' But wait, I'm not done. Let me finish. But David Prowse, though, was the physicality behind Darth Vader and the way that he walked and his hand gestures, even having to turn his head certain ways. You know, that all added to the gravitas of the character. So, I mean, I wouldn't want to take it away or give it to either of them.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I agree. But there's one point I want to make that I thought of, and that is if either of those actors were replaced, which would you notice more?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Well, James Earl Jones.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, I think you would notice James Earl Jones a lot more.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Was it the same guy when they took the mask off?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' No, that's a third actor.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' How about this thing, guys? And then there's the quote by James Earl Jones himself who said that if he had to pick one person that epitomizes Darth Vader, he picked Prowse.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' He has to say that.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' He said his movement, he said typified Vader more than his voice.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right. And that's beautiful. But he's not going to say, I pick me.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, I disagree with him. What can I say? And he might just be being humble. But I mean, I'm not trying to not to take anything away from what Prowse added to that character. He was amazing. It's just that I think James Earl Jones is a little bit more amazing is all I would say.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Steve, did you know that David Prowse was in A Clockwork Orange?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, it's Julius.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Very cool.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, he didn't have many acting roles. But I mean, when you played the bad person, the bad guy of all time in movie history, I mean.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And I agree with that quote. Yeah, that a good villain is unforgettable.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Like Darth Vader, I think, is the ultimate villain. I mean, he's definitely on my short list, if not number one.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Prowse went in to play either Chewbacca or Darth Vader. And he was hoping to get Vader because he was the baddie.<br />
<br />
== Signoff/Announcements <small>(1:50:14)</small> == <!-- if the signoff/announcements don't immediately follow the QoW or if the QoW comments take a few minutes, it would be appropriate to include a timestamp for when this part starts --><br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, guys. Well, thank you all for joining me this week.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Sure, man.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Thanks, Steve.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' You got it.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Thanks Steve.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Hey, before we go, Jay we're going to set up a website so people can vote for all of their favorites of the year so that we can discuss them in a couple of weeks on our review show, our year end wrap up show. So check that out. That'll be up by Saturday, Jay?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, it's up now.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Oh, great. So you'll see all the categories like your favorite news item, your favorite bit, your favorite interview, all that stuff. So please, please, please take a look. Give us the feedback that we need. And then because we really do enjoy doing these wrap up shows at the end of the year.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, they can go to wrap up 2020. Right. So it's the skepticsguide.org/wrapup2020. And we have what, about 10 questions on there that you could you don't have to answer all of them. Just put in anything in there. We're asking questions like the typical ones, like what's your favorite episode? What was your favorite bit?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Please, please help us people because I don't remember any of these shows.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It all blends together.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. So thanks for doing that. Again, thank you guys for joining me.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' —and until next week, this is your {{SGU}}. <!-- typically this is the last thing before the Outro --> <br />
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}}</div>Hearmepurrhttps://www.sgutranscripts.org/w/index.php?title=SGU_Episode_852&diff=19094SGU Episode 8522024-01-11T17:17:43Z<p>Hearmepurr: episode done</p>
<hr />
<div>{{Editing required<br />
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{{InfoBox<br />
|episodeNum = 852<br />
|episodeDate = {{month|11}} {{date|6}} 2021<br />
|verified = <!-- leave blank until verified, then put a 'y'--><br />
|episodeIcon =File:852_countess-elizabeth-bathory.jpg<br />
|bob = y<br />
|cara = y<br />
|jay = y<br />
|evan = y<br />
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|qowText = We must learn to set our emotions aside and embrace what science tells us. GMOs and nuclear power are two of the most effective and most important green technologies we have. If – after looking at the data – you aren’t in favour of using them responsibly, you aren’t an environmentalist.<br />
|qowAuthor = {{w|Ramez Naam}}, American technologist<br />
|downloadLink = {{DownloadLink|2021-11-06}}<br />
<br />
|forumLink = https://sguforums.org/index.php?topic=53537.0 <!-- try to find the right ?TOPIC= link for each episode --><br />
}}<!-- <br />
** Note that you can put each Rogue’s infobox initials inside triple quotes to make the initials bold in the transcript. This is how the final statement from Steve is typed at the end of this transcript: '''S:''' —and until next week, this is your {{SGU}}.<br />
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== Introduction ==<br />
''Voice-over: You're listening to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.''<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Hello and welcome to the {{SGU|link=y}}. Today is Wednesday, November 3<sup>rd</sup>, 2021, and this is your host, Stephen Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella...<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Hey, everybody...<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Cara Santa Maria...<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Howdy.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Jay Novella...<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Hey, guys.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' ...and Evan Bernstein.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Good evening, everyone.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Bob, are you in your post-Halloween funk?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I'm doing okay considering the party is a few days from now, so I'm kind of just focused on that and it's going to be awesome.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, you extended the season by having your Halloween party after Halloween.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yes, because nobody has a Halloween party after Halloween, so they're not busy.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' There's a reason for that, you know.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yes, so that they don't conflict with my Halloween party.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I look at it like this. Bob is pushing the bounds of Halloween past where they're supposed to be.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But don't you guys feel, in all seriousness, after a holiday is over, that holiday spirit evaporates almost immediately?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Exactly, Steve. Exactly. Oh, my God.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Like cotton candy on the tongue, gone.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That's such magical thinking, Steve. What's the matter with you?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I'm 100% in the Christmas spirit the day after Christmas. It's over. It's completely gone.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Smoke and mirrors, next.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Pack it up.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, I hear you. I hear you. There's something to that. I wouldn't deny that.<br />
<br />
== COVID-19 Update <small>(1:31)</small> == <br />
<br />
'''S:''' Before we go on to the news side, I just wanted to give a quick COVID update. I published an SBM article today looking at a couple of studies. So we've been talking about the boosters a lot because we're in booster fever now, everyone's got to get their shot. I'm getting mine tomorrow, actually, my third day was my booster. And there was a study that came out, it was an observational study out of Israel that has a very large and thorough data set, database of public health. So they were able to look at a massive number of people and they essentially compared two cohorts, one group of people who had two doses of either the AstraZeneca or the Pfizer vaccine with the second dose more than five months ago. And then the other cohort had a third dose at least seven days ago, right? So basically one group had two doses, but the immunity probably has waned by now. And the third group had their third dose with enough time to get an antibody reaction from it. There was 728,321 people in each arm. So big stuff, lots of data.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Big arms.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And it covered the July 30th to September 23rd during the Delta wave. This is data out of Israel, so this is during a wave dominated by the Delta variant, so it's very relevant. And what they found was that in the three dose group, their infection rate decreased by 93% compared to the two dose group.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Wow.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Hospitalizations by 95%, severe disease by 92%, and death, COVID related deaths by 81%.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Wow.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So that shows the third dose is, the booster dose is pretty damn effective compared to just two doses.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Wow.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So they did some population level data and they found that after an age group became eligible for the third dose, their infection rates decreased. And that happened with each age group as they became eligible. So it's pretty good real world data that a third dose is extremely effective.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Are we still talking about small numbers though? I know it's a big study and we looked at a massive portion of the Israeli population, but is, when comparing the hospitalizations of two doses versus three doses, yes, there's a significant difference and yes, it's better with the three doses, but it's still an exceedingly small number of people that are going to the hospital that are dying, that are having these really, really negative outcomes from COVID after being vaccinated, regardless, right?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So for example, for hospital admissions, there was 157 in the two dose versus 17 in the three dose. That's 140 hospital admissions. That's a lot of hospital admissions.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It is. Out of how many people though?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, it doesn't really matter. What's the hospital? I mean, it does matter to some extent, but if you're looking at stress on the system, that's 140 fewer hospital beds being used up or ICU beds.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Agree. All I'm saying is that we're looking at data within the tails right now, right? So the truth of the matter is if you are vaccinated at all, you're in a way better place than being unvaccinated.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, absolutely.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Although the data is showing that for the Delta variant, the two doses, the efficacy decreased from 95% down into like the 60 to 80%. So it's still good, it's still good, but it's not great. And is it enough to get to herd immunity? Probably not. And so these numbers are big enough that they could make the difference between herd immunity and no herd immunity, assuming we get to high enough total vaccination rates. So yeah, there is still the question, which I don't think this answers, although it gives us information. It doesn't answer the question for us. Is it better to give people a third dose or to give people who haven't had any doses a first dose? And again, the US's answer at least is like, we're going to do both. It's not an either or situation. We're going to do it. Here's a billion doses to the world. There you go. That's what we're going to do, which I think is a reasonable answer. But they're facing it. And at first it was vulnerable populations, then people who are having high risk, front line workers. They're sort of rolling it out based on that, not just to everybody high risk individuals.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, but Steve, can we believe these bastards?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Nice one, Jay.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And the other big, big change here in the US is that just within hours, right, we now have approval. I've been seeing like all of the alerts that the Pfizer, is it just Pfizer so far or is it Pfizer and Moderna for kids? Like they have like a baby dose now, not baby, but a kid dose, can't call it baby dose. I think it's 5 to 11.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, 5 to 11. That's great. That was just what, yesterday? The day before? That's very recent.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I know. There's a lot of things coming out. So I think it was like, I think the approvals process is a multi-tiered process. So it's like, I'm not sure when it's going to be available.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I heard it could be available as soon as like in a week, within a week.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Steve, how vulnerable is the 5 to 11 population if with no shot, with no inoculation?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Depends on where they are and what they do. There's no one number for that. But they're less vulnerable than adults, they're less vulnerable to get it. And also they're less vulnerable to have severe illness and die from it, absolutely.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But if they do get it, they can spread it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' They can still spread it. Yeah. They can still pass it on. And again, even if the percentages are low, it's a worldwide pandemic. The absolute numbers are still pretty significant. So the thing is, it's very easy to get confused by these numbers. But if you go by like, what's the cost of doing this? What is the risk versus benefit to the individual? What's the number needed to treat, et cetera, et cetera? This is such a massively good public health program. The cost benefit is better than probably any other single thing that we do in medicine or public health, especially during a pandemic.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Even though the numbers feel low, for example, between ages of 5 and 11, 170 children in the US have died. Yes, only 170, but 170. That's a lot of kids have died from COVID between the ages of 5 and 11. And if you think about how often kids between the ages of 5 and 11 die, that puts COVID as a leading cause of death among that age group. Because kids don't usually die between the ages of 5 and 11. Sometimes they do. They're not at great risk of death. So I mean, the fact that COVID is a leading cause of death among that age group, yes, this is an important thing to do to vaccinate them. And not just that. Think about the interruption of their lives. I don't know about you guys, but anecdotally, I can tell you that I hear constantly from whether it be friends, whether it be patients, whether it be individuals that I know who have kids who are in school, that there are just, oh, the COVID exposure had to pull them out. Oh, there was a scare that they got exposed and had to pull. I mean, their lives are being so interrupted. Their academics are being so interrupted by COVID right now.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Cara, literally, my son today, this has never happened before. We've been emailed by the school, hey there was one kid in this other class and contact tracing has been done, everybody's fine. My son had to come home from school today. Every third grader in his school had to come home today because there was a major exposure and he's home for the rest of the week.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And you think about what does that do to families who don't have childcare? What does that do to the kids' ability to consistently learn the lessons that they're learning in school, for socialization, just for their baseline anxiety? God, what is this doing to kids? Anxiety about germs, about disease. Yeah, it's a lot.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It's a ton.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So I'm really glad that they've got like a little dose now.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Think about how much anxiety parents have about their children being abducted by a stranger and the precautions that are taken, et cetera. And the risk of that happening is orders of magnitude less.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, it's exceedingly low.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Getting COVID, getting a severe illness or dying from COVID. I know. So people don't put risks into perspective. They worry about things that are very unlikely to happen. And then they blow off risks that are actually pretty real. It's just hard for us to think inside these massive numbers. And it's hard to put things in perspective. But physicians, health care experts public health experts, this is what they do is think of ways to put these numbers into some kind of meaningful, pragmatic perspective.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It helps a lot.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' These are the people that are saying, yeah, no matter how you look at this, this is a good idea to get vaccinated. Absolutely. Again, the only thing that I think is controversial at this point is just the priority of third dose versus get everyone a first dose. And which I get, I totally get that.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Controversy is about the means, though. It's not about the end result. The end result is everybody should be vaccinated. Nobody is in disagreement about that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Totally.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So it's really about how do we get to that number? What is the most equitable way and actually the most efficient way to get to that number? And yes, there's always going to be argument about implementation.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, exactly. That's it. But not about whether it works or not. And the other thing is, so like a few months ago, if you listen to the experts, even Fauci or the CDC, FDA, they were saying things like, well the third dose or the booster dose increases the antibodies. But we don't know necessarily that it increases your resistance, your clinical real world resistance. Now we do know. Now we have the data. Now the evidence is strong that a third dose is effective, a booster dose. The other thing is that there's a study out of Oxford. It's in pre-print, but so far it looks pretty solid. They looked at the risk of transmissions, not getting the disease, but of transmitting the disease. So they looked at the contacts of people who were diagnosed with a positive test of COVID. And they found that just that the double dose, that if you've had two doses of Pfizer or AstraZeneca, it reduced the risk of one of your contacts testing positive. So for Pfizer, the odds ratio was 0.18, which means 0.18 to one compared to one risk of becoming positive if you were a contact of somebody who tested positive. For AstraZeneca, it was 0.37. That's for the alpha variant. For the delta variant, it was 0.35 versus 0.64. So that tells you right there about half, right? So the delta variant, it's about half as effective as for the alpha variant. But also they found that the longer people were away from their second dose, the greater their risk of catching, of spreading it. So it showed clinically the risk of the waning immunity from from the double dose. So all the evidence was lining up in the same direction. Effective immunity does wane over time. The third dose does work. It does prevent transmission. All of these things where they're saying, like, we think this is true, but we haven't absolutely proven it's true. Now that we have more real world data, it's all lining up and everything we thought was true turns out is true. So again, it all points to get vaccinated. You know, just just do it. Just get vaccinated.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I love Israel. Thank you, Israel.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, well, they were a combination of having good records and also being one of the first countries to have a super high penetration of vaccination. So they were just they're the canary in the coal mine, if you will. They were just ahead of the curves that we could learn from their experience.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' The canary in the coal mine that was willing to get vaccinated.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's not a great metaphor. It's something that Bellwether picked-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' A super, super immune canary in the coal mine.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, let's go on to some news items.<br />
<br />
== News Items ==<br />
<br />
=== Organic Fail <small>(13:41)</small> ===<br />
* [https://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/the-sri-lanka-organic-experiment/ The Sri Lanka Organic Experiment]<ref>[https://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/the-sri-lanka-organic-experiment/ Neurologica: The Sri Lanka Organic Experiment]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' I'm actually going to start with a story about Sri Lanka. We don't talk about Sri Lanka a lot. I don't know that it's come up on the show ever before. Yeah, but Sri Lanka this year engaged in an experiment, if you will. In April, the president announced that they were going to convert the entire country's agricultural system to 100 percent organic.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Wow.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' How?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' What a horrible decision.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So how did it go Steve?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Well, for them, not for them, a horrible decision, not necessarily for the rest of the world.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Now, there's always again, what's interesting is I've done a lot of reading on this. I wrote about it on Neurologica. So I've been engaging with a lot of people in the comments, which always leads to other references. I like to write about it before I talk about it on the show, because then I get a much more rich sources of information. So there's essentially two narratives here that I found when depending on the source of information. So it's a good it's also a good story. Like the meta story here is like, how do you know what's really going on? Because the media, even like, again, no conspiracy. This the mainstream media is basically lazy. I don't think that there's a conspiracy going on here. Even remember Christopher Hitchens, we were interviewing him and that was his criticism. He said, yeah, if you read the papers, you don't learn the real information. You learn whatever the narrative is that day. You have to go digging for your own information yourself. So how do we do that? We're not full time investigative journalists. How do we find out the real information? So what you'll see is you'll see the one or multiple dueling narratives about any given item. So you have to read all sides to try to sort of triangulate to what bits of information seem to be in common or incontrovertible or non-controversial. You have to understand the editorial filters that you're reading and adjust for that. Calibrate for that. You always try to get primary sources as much as possible. And one thing that I do, I always like I base my opinions on facts rather than people's other people's opinions or analysis. So if somebody said something and they're directly quoted as a video of them saying it, then I'm not relying upon a secondary source to tell me what they said. You could see them say it on video. That is an ironclad piece of information because we have video documentation of them saying X. So that's so I see what can I build off of the bits of information that are that are objective and not there's no filter between me and that information. Anyway, when I did that with this story, I found that there were two narratives. One is the Sri Lanka totally screwed up by trying to go full organic and now it's biting them in the ass. And the other one was don't blame organic just that Sri Lanka dropped the ball on the implementation of it. But it's this is all just but, all of the anti Sri Lanka press over this is just anti is just Western media making fun of or carrying water for the big ag industry and whatever. So it was then there's a Western corporate conspiracy against Sri Lanka and against organic. I'm not saying that these narratives are equivalent. I think that one is basically right. And the other one is basically propaganda. And you could probably guess which one that is. So but digging down myself as much as I can to what are the objective pieces of information there. So the president of Sri Lanka said we're going to go full organic because we're seeing all this cancer in the country and it's probably coming from all these chemicals and and just touting straight up pro organic propaganda and unscientific tropes. He's saying it directly. So, again, I don't need anyone to interpret that for me. I'm going based upon what the guy is saying. And then what he did objectively was a hundred percent ban on all agrochemicals. <br />
<br />
'''C:''' Wait, what? How did they grow anything?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, I mean, you could only use organic. Right. So in other words, you can use you can use manure for fertilizer. You can use compost for fertilizer, but you can't use any, "artificial fertilizer".<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Did that crater their economy?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yes, it did in fact. But of course, there's you can say, oh, it's the pandemic. It's this it's the other thing. And so, yeah, I'm not going to that's where I'm not in a position to objectively interpret the causes of their economy cratering or this dramatic reduction in their agricultural food output and their farmers, basically their crops, withering before them.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But all of those things did happen.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But all of those things did happen. And yes you can make reasonable arguments like I would have taken longer. If this were 100 percent due to this shift, it would have taken longer for the all the negative effects to come into play, whatever. OK, fine. So I'm sure there was multiple effects. Yes, their economy is bad. And then you could also blame there are lots of economic things going on here, like they can't really afford to outsource all of these chemicals from other countries and fine, whatever. That doesn't mean that their choice was a good one or that their fix was effective. And it also doesn't mean that they're not buying into unscientific organic appeal to nature, complete and utter nonsense. So but to and to me, the core lesson here is one of the fundamental things that's wrong with the pro-organic lobby who says we should do all the worldwide farming should be 100 percent organic. And Sri Lanka is showing why that can't work on a national level. And it would be, of course, even worse the more you try to scale it up. So about 50 percent, just a little bit more than 50 percent of the food that we grow is fertilized with manure and compost. And it's basically organic sources of nitrogen. The other half roughly half is with chemical fertilizer, artificial fertilizer, like industrial fertilizer. But with the the Bosch reaction, you're fixing nitrogen from the atmosphere and and getting into the system that way. Yeah. And the other thing is, you have to keep in mind here, and I dinged Sri Lanka for this, is like, didn't they realize that manure is already a worldwide commodity and it's basically already spoken for? It's a it's a valuable commodity. And it's not like it's it's not being 100 percent utilized already.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So, Steve, are you saying like I'm trying to clarify like this, the manure situation, are they trying to get their hands on a lot more manure than is available to them?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, they they did what Germany did with with nuclear power. They shut down the nuclear first and then said, let's replace it with wind and solar. And when that didn't work out, they ended up burning more coal. So what Sri Lanka did was now, if all they said was we want to be independent of foreign sources of inputs to our agriculturists, we're going to maximize our organic sources of fertilizer that we make in the country or in the region or whatever. Fine. I don't care about that.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That wasn't the argument.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' First of all, they expressly made a health argument and an environmental argument, which is not true, and then did something stupid, which was to first ban the fertilizer and then worry about how he's going to replace it. Which didn't work, of course, because you can't magically materialize twice as much fertilizer as already exists. So what they ended up doing was he he went back and he relented and imported some fertilizer from another country. And then they just labeled it organic fertilizer. But it was just chemical fertilizer. They had to. They had no choice. They had to do it. It's all propaganda. So they had no choice. They had to they had to import fertilizer.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' And lie about it. Great.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So, Steve, I have a quick question to interject and I don't mean to complicate things, but basically all we're talking about so far is fertilizer. But of course, for something to be labeled, at least here in the U.S., USDA organic, it also can't use synthetic herbicides or pesticides.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' They banned all those two, 100 percent organic. So they're all banned as well.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So when we talk about how 50 percent of the food supply there or globally comes from actual organic fertilizer, manure versus non-organic synthetic fertilizers, were how much of that percentage of the organic manure fertilization is also not utilizing synthetic pesticides? I mean, what percent?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Not much. Only about one point five or something like less than two percent of our food is grown organically. So it's very small.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So they're like, I want to go from 99 percent to one percent overnight.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, I don't know if it's one percent of Sri Lanka's agriculture before this decision. That's just worldwide. Maybe it was five or 10 percent, even like in the heavily pro-organic parts of the world. It's like eight percent. You know, that's like the that would be a large chunk of it. So, yes, it would be like they try to overnight going from a small percentage to 100 percent. And so even those multiple mismanagements here, like the farmers didn't know what they were doing that they didn't have they didn't source their fertilizer before they banned it. You know, banning herbicides and pesticides means what? You can't do no till farming. So now we need to hire a whole bunch of people to pull weeds. And you could argue, well, they have the labour. But, yeah, you really want to use all your labour now just as for farming. Is that what you're locking in that system for your country? Is that really what you want to do? And but the other thing is the land use organic farming on average. And there's been multiple studies to show this now uses about 20 percent more land than conventional farming. Where is that land going to come from? Yeah, so it would just if we tried to implement this on a large scale, it would be an absolute disaster. Half the world would starve. And, of course, which half do you think is going to starve?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' The poorest of us.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The poor half. It would be an absolute disaster.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It takes me to like an analogy in my head of like, of course, it sounds like a good idea to just stop using fossil fuels overnight. But the reason we haven't done that is because we know that the entire world would collapse. We wouldn't have energy.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Right. Right. Of course. Like we're very, very much pro fixing anthropogenic global warming. But we would never say just shut down all the oil and fossil fuel sources.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And then we'll just figure it out.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Figure it out later. Of course.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, it's insanity.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You increase.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That would be stupid.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, you increase the non fossil fuel sources of energy and you render the fossil fuels obsolete and unnecessary. So again, if they wanted to maximize their native fertilizer from compost or whatever, do it. Go just do that. But banning all agricultural chemicals was just a disaster. It was an absolute disaster. Listen, organic produce is a boutique option for a reason. It's inefficient. It has lots of it's labour intensive. And the reason why people do it, the reason why most farmers do well, it's like 90 or 95 percent of farmers do some organic farming. They do it because you get to charge a premium.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' What an important argument, because I have this, I'm constantly butting heads with a handful of my friends here in L.A, what do you expect, about this very topic. And of course, what a basic but fundamental like fundamentally obvious argument. Why do you think organic food costs more?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, I can't argue with economics.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right. It costs more because it costs more to make it. It's not as efficient. It doesn't give us the yields that we need.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Probably have an answer for that, though.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Even when they grow organic food in Africa, they export it to Europe. Because it's it's it's food for rich white people. That's what it is.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And I think people confuse organic agriculture as an industry with like heirloom family farming.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yes. Exactly.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Like they literally think that no. But what this means is just that every home in Africa has their own little patch in the backyard and they're growing all the food that that family needs. And it's like, what world do you think we live in where we can all just farm our own food all day and not have other jobs?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Didn't we do that in the Middle Ages?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's not the same thing as industrial organic agriculture. We don't feed people with backyard farms.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The other thing is they deliberately confuse it with sustainable farming. That's just all organic branding. So they deliberately want it to be like it's sustainable. It's local. It's heirloom. It's all these good things.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No, it's just farmers market food.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's just the pseudoscience. All it is is just the pseudoscience. And it's sustainable farming is its own thing. You can have sustainable farming that's not organic. And it's also this false dichotomy. So organic is this brand that has a specific list of things that you technologies you can't use, basically. No GMO, no irradiation on all these bunch of things.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' No disintegrations.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. And this is why I have these dear friends who are super anti-GM. And when we really start to get to the crux of the argument, it's because they're pro-organic. It's not because they're anti-GM. There's actually nothing that they can argue. They like the idea of what's happening in the lab. So it's so frustrating that they're not seeing the forest for the trees. And I think I see this a lot with anti sort of mainstream. I hate even using that word, but medicine too, because this is a common problem in L.A., is that they're mixing up the sort of what they think of as the medical machine with managed care. So they have problems with insurance, duh. And then they're sort of like mixing up that argument. And they also are mixing up the idea of preventive care. Like, they think that they are the champions of preventive care and that mainstream medicine is just all about fixing you when you're already sick. And doctors don't really care about preventing disease.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The analogy is a hundred percent. You're absolutely correct.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's the same.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And get this, get this. Do you know who one of the biggest funders of Joseph Mercola is? The Organic Consumers Lobby.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Of course.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So there's literal cross-fertilization between the pro-alternative medicine and the pro-organic lobbies. It's the same, because you're right. It's the same appeal to nature. You know, it's pseudo-scientific nonsense. It's the same. We're going to try to brand ourselves as preventive or we're going to brand ourselves as sustainable or as the other health halo. It's all branding.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' They want to make you sick so you can pay them to fix it later. That's their argument.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's all a racket. It's a con. It's a giant con. And it's amazing the success of their marketing campaign, how successful it's been. They duped this poor president of Sri Lanka into making a horrible decision. And yes, the politics are complicated. I'm sure they have lots of real things to deal with, whatever. It doesn't justify this stupid decision, which is now biting them in the ass. Absolutely does not. And again, but my hope is, and I want to amplify this message.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Other countries will learn.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' This is yes, let's use this as an object lesson because the object lesson is real. You can't go a hundred percent organic, even at a national level, let alone regional or worldwide, it would be mass starvation. It would be horrible for the environment. We'd end up using up more land. It'd be like Germany scrambling and burning coal because they shut down their nuclear plants. It'd be the same kind of thing. We'd be scrambling and doing even worse things because we made these dumb decisions. And again, I'm not saying there aren't problems with mainstream agriculture. There absolutely are. We're trying to grow enough food to feed 8 billion people.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And that's what we're doing in the lab is trying to fix those problems.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Exactly. Exactly. GMOs is the most likely path out of all this.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I really feel like what's missing here is, and I hate to be all ooshy-gooshy about this, but there's a very lack of basic humanity when these lobbies and these different interest groups and really these, this propaganda, oftentimes when I talk to my friends about this stuff, one of the questions I'll ask them is, have you ever talked to a farmer?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. Please, talk to a farmer.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Like somebody who farms for a living. Or have you ever talked to your doctor and asked them these questions about, do they believe in preventive care? Do they want to see, like if you actually have a human conversation with these boogeymen, you'll realize that they agree with you about all of these arguments. But again, what we're talking about is how, how do we get there? And I'm sorry, but these are the people who are dialed into it, who are doing it every day. You're on the outside screaming about some solution that doesn't exist. It makes me insane. Okay. Enough of that. I'm going to stop ranting.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, it's true. But the anti-agriculture, anti-GMO side, for whatever reason has gotten into, they've convinced themselves of their own ideology to such an extent, they are willing to say things that are just downright terrible. Like Vandana Shiva actually said that she would rather have millions of Indians starve to death than to feed them GMOs and Greenpeace would rather have children in poor countries go blind and die from vitamin A deficiency than eat GMO rice. They just can't bring themselves. They're so anti-GMO. They don't care what harm happens in the way.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And then at the same time, they say, they say, you scientists, you're the ones who are trying to kill us, kill us with all your poison. Like that's the really gross thing.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's how detached they are.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. It's like, you know what? In medicine and agriculture and all these things, there are tough decisions to make. There are trade-offs that we have to think carefully about, like also with the energy sector as well. There are trade-offs and we are trying to chart a pathway to a better future. You can't just wave a magic wand and make these problems go away.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. You gotta do it pragmatically.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So yeah, all these things, I think, share these same logical fallacies in common. And again, literally the organic and alternative medicine worlds are totally overlapping. All right. Let's move on. That was my rant for the day.<br />
<br />
=== Are Viruses Alive? <small>(32:58)</small> ===<br />
* [https://www.sciencenews.org/article/viruses-alive-coronavirus-definition Are viruses alive, not alive or something in between? And why does it matter?]<ref>[https://www.sciencenews.org/article/viruses-alive-coronavirus-definition Science News: Are viruses alive, not alive or something in between? And why does it matter?]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' Jay, are viruses alive? Go.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' What an easy question to answer.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That's a good question. It has a convoluted answer. So we have to consider quite a lot in order to even make sense of the question.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' What is alive?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Exactly. So scientists have discussed and debated how to classify viruses for hundreds of years, and science has described viruses very differently over the last two and a half, 200, 250 years. In the 1700s, scientists thought that viruses were poisonous. That was the way that they defined them.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' They knew what viruses were in the 1700s?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, they didn't know. No, they did not know that viruses exist. I think you mean they thought viral illnesses were due to poisons.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Because all they could see under the microscope was bacteria. Viruses are too small.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, viruses were technically discovered in 1892 by Dmitry Ivanovsky. So he used a filter that would filter out anything bacteria size or larger to remove the sap from diseased tobacco plants, but it was the filtered sap was still able to transfer a disease, and he so he figured there has to be some substance left behind that's even way smaller than a bacteria, and he called that substance a virus. So that's where that's where the whole concept came from. 1892, before then, the idea that there was anything smaller than a bacteria that could transfer an infectious disease was not known.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So now we get to Evan's point, like we have to talk about the definition. So most definitions of life require some kind of metabolism, and this means that in order for the creature to produce energy, a chemical reaction or two or a thousand has to occur, right? Viruses, for the most part, don't metabolize anything. In fact, viruses don't have cells and they can't reproduce independently. They need a host cell in order to replicate. So you can't really can't define a virus as something that is clearly and very definitively alive. I think it's clear that you can't just say it's alive, but you also can't define viruses as inert because they're not inert because they're packed with DNA and RNA. You know what I mean?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And they do stuff.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' They do stuff. Exactly. So so the virus that most of us are acquainted with, unfortunately, but is the coronavirus. We know the coronavirus. We've all seen it. You see what it can do. We know how catchy it is. So when examined, you'll find.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Catchy.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It's not a dance.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's so catchy.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It is. It's damn catchy. So when we when you examine it, you will find that it has a tiny nanoscale sphere that actually is made up of genes that are wrapped in a fatty layer and the outside is covered with spike proteins, right? You've seen the pictures. That's what it looks like. We were aware of what the thing looks like. So even still, viruses do have some aspects, though, of living creatures, because when you look at a virus, it doesn't really look like anything that we're familiar with as far as being alive. It looks it looks like an alien and a lot of them look kind of creepy. So the thing is that viruses actually evolve and they replicate themselves. So when a virus infiltrates a cell, they make their own. It's like an own alien going to to another planet and terraforming it.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' They take you over.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' They do. So they tell the cell what proteins and genes they wanted to make. That's pretty interesting. For something that's not alive, it takes over a living organism and then does things. That's crazy. So like so many things on our planet, viruses come in many different forms and can sometimes step outside of the of the norms that we've set up for them. So let me tell you something that's a little strange and interesting here. There are the giant size virus and these larger ones have genes for proteins that are used in metabolism. What do you think about that? Does that make does that make you think that they're alive?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Giant viruses, a giant size virus.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' A giant virus sometimes referred to as a gyrus.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Gyrus.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Gyrus. Not to be confused with a gyro, which is delicious.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Or a giraffe, which is an animal.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's a very large virus, which is larger than a typical bacteria.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, they're larger than bacteria.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, here we go. All known giant viruses belong to the phylum Nucleocytoviricota.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' See how hard that is to pronounce?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, I see it because they're literally called giant virus. Wow, I had no idea.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' But, Cara-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Do you know it's larger than 300 kilobases.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, they're huge. And they have weirdly some odd form of metabolism. Now, that's not typical among viruses, though. So again, nothing is-<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Are we incorrect in calling those viruses?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' No, it's a virus. It's a virus. So let me give you some more details here. So Mark H.V. Van Regenmortal, he's a virologist at the University of Strasbourg in France, he defined viruses as, and I'm quoting him, nonliving infectious entities that can be said at best to lead a kind of borrowed life. Oh, God, I love it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I love that.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Borrowed life. Awesome.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So other scientists argue that viruses can exist in both a living and a nonliving state. Another cool way to look at it when they are outside of a cell, they're inactive and they're not really living. They're not doing anything. But when they enter a cell, they become metabolically active. And you could actually you could argue that they're now alive because they're there are doing something. Kind of.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I look at them. How about this? I look at their stripped down life. Yes, they're parasitic, parasites are are stripped down because they're reliant upon the thing that they're the host. And viruses are the extreme version of that. They are stripped down just little chunks of replicating DNA or RNA with a protein code, and that's it. And they're completely dependent on the host. But the meta thing here is that I think this is the big lesson, is that life is not a dichotomy, right? Like all the categories that we have, there's no clean dividing line. It's a messy continuum. And there's always going to be something on the fringes which stresses any definition.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Because that's biology, because that's how crazy biology. And the other thing to keep in mind, too, is that a virus does we don't want to say die, but it does become inactive and never to be active again. Like there is an end time for a for a virus as well.<br />
<br />
'''C:'' Viruses. Whether they're alive or not alive, stripped down life, inert life, whatever you want to call it, they're not a nerd, actually. So parasitic life or non life. We know that viruses are drivers of evolution. We know that viruses infect literally everything on the planet, everything, plants, animals, fungi, archaebacteria. Viruses infect archaebacteria. So do we know evolution from an evolutionary perspective, when and how viruses fit into the like abiogenesis? The viruses come first?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' The answer is we kind of know. I mean, we know we absolutely know that in the tree of life, in the in the process of evolution, that viruses played a key role.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So did they have to be there at the beginning?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I don't know about the beginning, Cara. I don't even know if we know that.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I don't know if we can. I don't know if we do. I think as the more I'm looking online as we're talking about this, the more that's like a really big debate within science is like.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I'll cover that in a little bit.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' My understanding of the current understanding is that viruses and bacteria evolved from a common ancestor. You can't really say that one came first.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But they co-evolved.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, they co-evolved.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Interesting.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So getting back to to what I was saying, so the reason scientists now argue over how we define a virus is because it's important, right? It's important how we define things. So the way we define a virus impacts how they're investigated, how we treat them and how we eventually do and continue to try to get rid of them. So in science, the way that we classify things actually has a dramatic impact on how we handle those things. It's very easy for humanity to talk about viruses as if they're all bad and they and they should be eradicated. But like Cara was saying, actually, the virus is we have viruses among us that don't do bad things and the viruses that have the most success, meaning the ones that persist the longest happen to be benign and they can enter a cell and stay there for a long time and mostly remain dormant or reproduce really slowly and deliberately. So they don't damage the cell. So, interestingly, benign viruses are barely studied and we sadly don't know that much about them. But these benign viruses have what scientists consider to be a very long standing impact on the on their hosts. And looking at the history of living things, it's understood that viruses have, like Cara said, significantly impacted evolution. And some scientists look at it as a symbiotic relationship. This is what I was trying to get to. We have a symbiotic relationship with viruses. Now, you can't say we have a symbiotic relationship really with the bad ones because we're aware of it and we're trying to get rid of it. And we don't want our DNA to be impacted by them. But it's already happened. We already have DNA that has been that has been impacted by viruses. And now without those changes to our DNA, we wouldn't be what we are. So we've already turned that corner where like we they're in us. They're a part of us. They're a part of our history. They're a part of our origin. And viruses, man, they're dynamic creatures. They can infect one cell. They can infect the giant, the largest organisms on the planet. They're all over living in the world's oceans. And there is a significant part about how matter gets recycled in the ocean. Here's a cool thing. Viruses destroy about 20 percent of the ocean microbes and bacteria every day. And then that that bio matter gets released back into the into the ocean. And that inserts an incredible amount of carbon which other organisms rely on to grow.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Why didn't you do this story the same day that Steve did that science or fiction all about viruses that we-<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I know Cara. Isn't it funny? You look back.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But then I wouldn't have.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That's true. Yeah, that's very meta. All right. So let me cut to the chase here. Viruses leave behind genetic material. They pass on their DNA. They replicate themselves and they change their hosts. Their genetic material, without a doubt, can and does frequently does find its find its way into other species. Other scientists argue that viruses are the number one origin of genetic innovation. Check that out. What did I just say? I read that in my head almost fell off. Some scientists believe that this is really cool, guys. Some scientists actually think that viruses are the origin of genetic innovation. Think about it. That's where the-<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Origin or they're just spurred on or?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' No.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's one origin. It's not, you can't say ''the'' origin.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No, but viruses are thought to be the largest driver of evolution.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' They're constantly throwing new bits of DNA.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. And they work faster than mutagens do.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Viruses nurture biodiversity.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So we don't know if they're alive. We know that they've had a dramatic impact on life on our planet. We know that they're not all bad. We know that there's gray areas where sometimes they maybe they have some type of metabolism or not. You know, they're not walking, living, breathing, but they do things. And they're there and they want equal pay.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Question, Jay, about whether we know that they're alive. That assumes that to be alive is something that exists beyond a construct. The idea of life versus non-life is just a construct.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I know you're right. You're right.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' We don't know if they fit into that bucket or not, because we haven't decided among ourselves how to define it. But not there's not some existing idea of living or non-living that we just haven't figured out.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It's not metaphysical. There isn't some some definition up in the stars or whatever. I mean, it is what we say it is. But go in and you'll find this interesting. Go and look up the definition of life. And you'll find that there's about 120 different definitions of life. They all kind of circle around the same stuff, but there's a lot of a lot of wiggle room in there. And you'll learn a lot about that, that definition and that concept. And you'll be able to think about this in a different way.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I'll look it up right now. The meaning of life.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Don't do that.<br />
<br />
=== Memes Ease Stress <small>(47:20)</small> ===<br />
* [https://theconversation.com/go-ahead-enjoy-your-memes-they-really-do-help-ease-pandemic-stress-170518 Go ahead, enjoy your memes – they really do help ease pandemic stress]<ref>[https://theconversation.com/go-ahead-enjoy-your-memes-they-really-do-help-ease-pandemic-stress-170518 The Conversation: Go ahead, enjoy your memes – they really do help ease pandemic stress]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, Cara, you're going to tell us about a different kind of virus.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' This is a quick and dirty story. It was written up by Jessica Merrick. I hope I'm saying that right. Dr. Merrick, who is a professor of media studies at Penn State. There is a paper that was published in The Psychology of Popular Media. That's the name of the journal just recently because her forward facing write up, I think, was just published yesterday as of this recording by researchers at UC Santa Barbara and Penn State. Consuming memes during the covid pandemic, effects of memes and meme type on covid related stress and coping efficacy. What a gross title. Sorry, guys. But the title that she put of her forward facing article was go ahead, enjoy your memes. They really do help ease pandemic stress. So you got the thesis right there. They did a study where they participants recruited from Amazon's Mechanical Turk. So this was a random kind of recruitment across the Internet, around eight hundred seven hundred ninety nine, to be exact. People filled out a questionnaire and they looked at a bunch of different things. They showed them two different types of memes. They showed the memes that were covid related and memes that were just random and not covid related. And then they also, as any good study has, had a control group where they just use text like ugly text to describe the takeaway of the meme. Yet there was no humor because the the meme itself wasn't there and there was no imagery. So they define memes throughout their article as as either being humorous or cute, which they said typically humorous or cute, because obviously some memes are horrific. But they focused on cute or humorous memes. And they wanted to know if you look at memes, a does it make you feel good? Which that is kind of a more obvious question, right? Like, what do you guys think? Silence.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Sure.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Like somebody took the time to make a meme because they thought it was funny or adorable, and then they spread it all over the Internet. And then people actually passively, people took it and spread it and spread it and spread it. That happened because somebody else looked at it and goes, that's funny or how cute. Like this is this happened. So we engaged.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' A little psychological experiment.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It is. And there is something to be said about this sort of hypothesis that we engage with them because they make us feel good. Like it seems kind of obvious, but they wanted to look at that scientifically. But they also were interested. And I think a bigger question, which was, is it good for you? When you when you look at memes during the day, if you're kind of scrolling through Instagram or something like that or reddit and you're looking at different memes, is it like psychologically healthy? Is it good for you? Are you getting something a benefit out of it? Or is it actually pretty detrimental? Because the narrative and we perpetuate it sometimes on the show, because sometimes it is accurate and should be perpetuated, is that the Internet can be a somewhat detrimental place. That people can find themselves doom scrolling. They can find themselves having a negative psychological outcome from obsessively looking at things on the Internet.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Right, Jay?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah. But I don't think memes play a part in that.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, and that's what these researchers wanted to know. Right. So they set up this experiment with these different people. They gave them a bunch of self-report questionnaires and then they showed them a bunch of memes. And then they asked them questions about things like how they feel, about whether they're in a good mood, in a bad mood. And then they asked them questions about their ability to cope with stress, about how they feel about covid, et cetera, et cetera. And they found some pretty interesting outcomes. So they found number one, that looking at the memes versus the non memes, regardless of whether whether they were considered cute or whether they had to do with like covid, like they were like funny covid related memes, was associated with a stronger cuteness response. Yes, this was one of the domains that they measured. Higher levels of reported humor, more positive emotions and what they called lower levels of information processing. But they didn't see any sort of like anxiety coming out of them. So these negative emotions like anxiety was not associated with looking at memes. And then when they did a more sophisticated path analysis, they actually found that looking at memes as opposed to not looking at memes actually had a positive benefit on people's ability to cope with the stress from covid-19. So seeing something, yeah, that sort of conceptualized it. And they put some examples in their write up, like there's a meme here of a little baby looking tough and it says, stayed home, saved lives. And like me, when I order a pizza during the pandemic and it's like a movie still, a black and white movie still of a guy with a Tommy gun. And he's like, leave it on the doorstep and get the hell out of here. So different things like that. Just kind of dealing with or this one, us in January. This month is so long, us in March. And it's like, I think it might be even Rose from it might not. It's just very, very old looking.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, I think it's Rose.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, it is Rose. That's what I thought. And it says it's been 84 years. No, Rose from Titanic. Titanic. Yeah. So, oh, this month is so long. It's been 84 years. So, yeah, this idea, right, that it's taking something that's so traumatic and sort of lightening the mood, encapsulating it with humor. It helps people cope with it. It helps reframe their perspective around it. It doesn't mean I think that it's minimizing it or that it's making it glib, but it's helping it become manageable in people's minds. And so there is actually the psychological benefit that can be said about memefying massive trauma and making it bite sized and people spreading it around and sort of sharing a little chuckle or sharing a little smile.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, little humor nuggets.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, these littlenuggets that if you take them, day by day, can be really good for you.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Take two memes and call me in the morning.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Exactly. The idea here is go ahead. Enjoy your memes. Do it, because it might it might help you get through the day a little bit. And you shouldn't feel guilty about that at all.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Right. No calories, no side effects.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Exactly. Love it. And now we have data to back that up. So if somebody argues with you can cite this study. You can say, Miric et al. 2021 says I can look at my memes all I want.<br />
<br />
=== Extragalatic Planet <small>(54:01)</small> ===<br />
* [https://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/possible-extragalactic-planet/ Possible Extragalactic Planet]<ref>[https://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/possible-extragalactic-planet/ Neurologica: Possible Extragalactic Planet]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, Evan, you're going to tell us about the possible first extra galactic exoplanet.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Ooh, exciting news, huh? Because we've talked a lot about exoplanets, talk a lot about them on the SGU. These are the planets that orbit other stars in our galaxy. And they're very, very cool. And we've talked about how over the past, oh, a couple of decades or so, astronomers have come up with brilliant means of detecting our exoplanets. Astronomers have confirmed over 4000 such planets, and there are thousands of other candidate planets. And given that there are billions of stars in our Milky Way, boy, how many undiscovered exoplanets are there? Hundreds of billions, trillions. That's an amazing thought. So there are methods by which we are able to find the exoplanets in our galaxy. We've talked about the transit method. That's probably the most popular one, the one that has discovered the most exoplanets in which that exoplanet passes between its star and the Earth and our telescopes can measure the dip in light blocking the exoplanets star. There's the wobble method, and that's when the star and its exoplanet, they move around a common center mass and you can measure the wobble and therefore infer that there is a planet going on around that particular star. Sometimes we can directly observe the planet itself by carefully taking a look at that star so that the planet's reflected light can be seen free from glare of the sun. And then there's microlensing, which is a more recent technique, exploiting Einstein's gravity lens principle. So when the planet passes in front of a distant star, the light from that star can be briefly made brighter. That's probably the most challenging method because they are unpredictable events. But as Steve, as you said, this is the new news item for the week. Astronomers have detected what could be the first extra galactic planet, a planet in orbit around a star in a galaxy that is about 28 million light years away. Although I've read estimates that it's as much as 31 million light years away. I don't know why there's a discrepancy there. But in any case, it's the M51 galaxy, also known as what?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Whirlpool.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' The Whirlpool Galaxy.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' My third favorite galaxy.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Milky Way, Andromeda, M51?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Hey, that's personal.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It's called the Whirlpool Galaxy, because Whirlpool bought the branding rights to it. And it is now next to the Coca-Cola Galaxy. Just kidding. Now, when it was first observed, it was observed in the 1700s. Oh, they didn't know there were galaxies back then. But they were able to describe it basically as this swirl, which looked like kind of a Whirlpool. There you go. Whirlpool Galaxy. But the team of astronomers, they analysed X-ray data from a binary star system in M51. And a binary system is where an ordinary, using quotes, ordinary star orbits either a neutron star or a black hole. And matter from the ordinary star will feed into that companion neutron star or black hole. It creates a disc and releases gravitational potential energy in the form of X-rays. There you have it, your X-ray binary system. And they are good search targets for extragalactic planets. The observation of X-rays, much like visible light, can be blocked by another large body, such as another star or a large planet moving in front of it. So that planet in the distant galaxy may cause a dip in the observed light of that bright X-rays that it's otherwise putting out. And in this case, they were able to. Well, I think it's entirely blocked it out for a course of about three hours when they went back and they looked at the data. And they believe that this dip might indicate the first known extragalactic planet as a result. And here's a quote from the abstract of the paper. It was published in Nature.com. This is from the authors. We examined a range of explanations for the observed X-ray dip, including a variety of transiting objects and enhancements in the density of gas and dust. The latter are ruled out by the absence of changes in X-ray colors. Save any with sharp density gradients that cannot be probed with our data. Instead, the data are well fit by a planet transit model in which the Eclipser is most likely to be the size of Saturn. We also find that the locations of possible orbits are consistent with the survival of a planet bound to its mass transfer binary, meaning that the planet is far enough away in which it's not getting sucked in by the stars themselves. And they calculated about 70 years is the orbit of that Saturn sized planet around that binary system.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' So it's going to be a while before we can confirm it.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Isn't that the point? We're not going to be able to confirm it with that one. However, they're going to start looking at the data for a lot more places out there and see if they can detect this pattern of X-ray dipping and see if they can determine more extra galactic planets. I mean, it's I think it's pretty safe to say that we can assume that there would be no reason. I don't think why wouldn't we assume that there are planets orbiting stars in other galaxies. I don't see a reason why we wouldn't make that assumption. But again, it's another thing to actually measure it and use our instruments to make those confirmations. So they were able to rule out basically all the other possible things, dust and other things getting in the way. And they said that when they put in the the planet model, it actually fit the fit the observations beautifully. And therefore, that's what they're going with.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So they mentioned that the there's two reasons why the X-rays work really well. One is that the source is very small. So yeah, point source. Yeah. The transiting planet can completely obscure it, which is what happened in this case. Rather than just a little dip it's like a one percent dip in the light. There's like a hundred percent dip in the X-ray.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Blot it out.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's easier to see. The other thing is that there aren't that many X-ray sources. While there's billions of stars in a galaxy all crowding each other, there's maybe a dozen X-ray sources like this. And so it's easy to separate them out. But of course, this limits us to seeing transiting planets circling binary stars with a neutron star or a black hole feeding off of a main main sequence star. So it's got to be lined up with us and it's got to be in that configuration. So it's obviously a very limited situation that we're looking for. But there's lots of galaxies out there. So we were bound to find more of them.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I mean, that's 28 million light years is amazing.<br />
<br />
=== Superconducting New State of Matter <small>(1:00:40)</small> ===<br />
* [https://physicsworld.com/a/superconductor-reveals-new-state-of-matter-involving-pairs-of-cooper-pairs/ Superconductor reveals new state of matter involving pairs of Cooper pairs]<ref>[https://physicsworld.com/a/superconductor-reveals-new-state-of-matter-involving-pairs-of-cooper-pairs/ Physics World: Superconductor reveals new state of matter involving pairs of Cooper pairs]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, Bob, tell us about superconducting new state of matter.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' OK, scientists report yet another new state of matter. I have lost count of the new states of matter. I was tracking it for many years and now it's just like we there's like so many. I don't even know what to think about it. This is still extra fascinating. This time it has to do with four electrons creating something akin to superconduction, but still quite different. But it's still so mysterious and new. We can't we're not sure exactly what's happening. And we're not quite sure yet what this new state of matter might mean for us. This is reported in Nature Physics recently. This was created by Professor Egor Babaev. It was a physicist at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden and Vadim Grinenko of TU Dresden in Germany. And of course, many other colleagues. So now we've all heard of superconductors, right? We've said it on the show. We've read about it. We pretty much all know about it. And by that, of course, I don't mean train conductors who are super at their job. The quantum state of superconductivity is what I'm talking about. So this was discovered in 1911 by Dutch physicist Heike Kamerling-Oens. It occurs when some materials reach a critical low temperature in which all electrical resistance drops to zero. And as a bonus, magnetic fields are expelled from the material as well. Amazing properties that we've taken advantage of in many different types of technologies. Fascinating stuff. There's no energy that's being lost as heat in this process. So if you created a loop of superconducting wire, it would hold a current forever, essentially, with no external power source. Now, in a subsequent discovery. Now, this won the Nobel Prize in 1972 quite a few years later. But it took that much time. It was determined that this amazing state of superconducting occurs when pairs of electrons team up and condense into a superfluid. So of so-called electron-cooper pairs. So the two electrons pair up, they create Cooper pairs and they condense into the superfluid. And that is what superconductivity is at a very basic level. Now, why are they bound together instead of repelling each other as they normally do? That's a that's a very good question. Howare these these like charges doing this? The answer to that is because they exchange quasi particles called phonons. Look them up. I'm not giving you any more details on that one. So now I could talk for three point one five hours about superconductivity, but that's not what this topic is about. This is about something that's closely related, but very different, it seems. So now 20 years ago, Professor Egor Babaev predicted that four electrons could also team up, creating what he calls electron quadruplets. So the Cooper pairs are only part of the story. You can have four of these electrons joining forces. And in 2013, he predicted that that you would that we should be able to see this in a special iron based super superconducting material. And that's exactly what he and his team have now accomplished. This guy is on a 20 year roll. So now this material is a compound of barium, potassium, iron and arsenic doped with negative charges. Now, their observations point to a pairing of not two electrons, as I said, but four of them. It's called fermionic quadrupling, creating a new state of matter that's never been seen before. Some people are describing it as two sets of Cooper pairs joining forces. You can think of it that way, although that might be a little bit problematic. This feat was thought to be likely impossible because they had to create they had to prevent the creation of the typical Cooper pairs and it had to prevent them from condensing into a superfluid. They had to prevent all that from happening. But somehow they got four of them to get together and create this new state of matter. So in some ways or in a lot of ways, actually, this appears to be the opposite of superconduction, because when they reach this state in their experiments, frictionless flow is destroyed. So the friction is still there. You don't have that kind of superconducting state where you've got the free flowing Cooper pairs. So that states gone and spontaneous magnetic fields appeared out of nowhere. So in some ways it is the opposite of superconductivity. Now, the other bizarre aspect of this experiment that needs mentioning is that the material breaks time reversal symmetry. I don't think we've ever talked about this, maybe only a couple of times on the show. So this is the observation that many laws of physics often apply, whether time is going forward or backward. Right. So if you look at some formulas or equations that have expressions of time in them and you just slap a negative onto that, you are what you're essentially doing is running time backwards or you're reversing motions. So Jay, for example, if you saw this reverse, you would see Jay would grab the meatball with a fork from his mouth and put it back on the pasta, for example. But that's clearly but looking at that, that's clearly going backwards in time because that never even happens in real life, because why would that happen? A better example that's often used is billiard balls hitting each other. If you run that forwards or backwards, it makes sense. You can't tell if it's done correctly. You can't tell which which way time is actually flowing. So that's kind of one example that you will hear most often when it comes to this time reversal symmetry. So when time is negative, the basic, as I said, the basic laws of physics still often hold. This works for normal superconductivity as well. Essentially, if you run time in reverse, all the laws that apply to super superconducting will still be in a superconducting state, which is kind of expected. But this electron for some is different. Time reversal puts the system into a different state. So this does not this breaks the time reversal symmetry, which happens. It's not common, but it happens. And it's a very interesting effect to happen with something that seems to be based on Cooper pairs or some type of superfluid activity happening with this new state of matter. So Babaev says it will probably take many years of research to fully understand the state. The experiments open up a number of new questions revealing a number of unusual properties associated with this reaction to thermal gradients, magnetic fields and ultrasound that still have to be better understood. So that all means that there's still so much going on here and there's so many possibilities that they just need to do a lot more research to really get a better handle on what's happening here and what can be done with this new state of matter, if anything, in the future. So regarding the future, the researchers plan to look into other superconductors that could support this type of four electron relationships. And also they can also exhibit broken symmetries as well. And who knows what perhaps even other states of matter or other other types of superconductivity will be found. And so many of these options that they that they want to explore will occur at very high pressures in hydrogen, deuterium and hydrides, for example, and then another rich vein they believe could be thin films of superconductors that do not break the time reversal symmetry. So those are just some of the things that they're going to start looking at into the future. So I'm really excited about this field and this new state of matter. I can't wait to see what we might be able to do with it, because, I mean, just looking at superconductivity it's all over. You look at MRIs, quantum computers, maglevs, tokamaks, particle accelerators and on and on. They all take advantage of superconductivity and they're critical to those technologies. You couldn't do them without those technologies. So even though this new state of matter seems very different, who knows what kind of technologies we can use or develop because of that new state of matter. So let's see what happens.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, pretty cool. I got pairs of Cooper pairs.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, right.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's pretty neat. And superconductivity is that thing that we've been talking about for decades now. And of course, we hope we'll crack it to the point where we have-<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Room temperature. That's a holy grail, of course.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Temperature and and one atmosphere, one atmosphere of room temperature.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, right. Yeah, we learned our lesson with that one. Yeah, room temperature at a million, at a billion peskets or whatever.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. But just having it above the temperature of liquid nitrogen is still massively useful.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, but that happened in the 80s, man. What have you done for me lately?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Just just basic science.<br />
<br />
== Who's That Noisy? <small>(1:08:50)</small> ==<br />
{{anchor|futureWTN}} <!-- this is the anchor used by "wtnAnswer", which links the previous "new noisy" segment to this "future" WTN --><br />
<br />
{{wtnHiddenAnswer<br />
|episodeNum = 851<br />
|answer = [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U05VXQRFhns Bees bumping into each other ]<ref>[https://www.newscientist.com/article/2121275-honeybees-let-out-a-whoop-when-they-bump-into-each-other/ New Scientist: Honeybees let out a "whoop" when they bump into each other]</ref><br />
|}}<br />
'''S:''' All right, Jay, it's Who's That Noisy Time.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' All right, guys, last week I played this noisy.<br />
<br />
[crackling whir in background, with animal-like squeaks and squawks, then higher-pitched whirring and hissing with pattering drops/beats] <br />
<br />
All right, guys, so let me get this out of the way. Lots of people thought that rubber ducks were involved. There are no rubber ducks in this in this noisy.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Rubber chicken?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' And we cleared the- thank you, Evan. I was waiting for you to say that. So Visto Tutti wrote in. You guys have heard this this man before. He said "This week's noisy is so gruesome and sad. He's being serious. I recognize this sound as that of a penguin harvester. Governor Macquarie, who Macquarie Island is named after, made his fortune hurting millions of tuxedo clad little dudes into the maw of his sinister penguin oil processing apparatus." Yeah, so evil. So sad. I checked it out. Apparently there was a penguin oil industry. So that is not correct, though, which I'm happy to say I would never play that noisy. I got another listener here, Lenka Kuglerova. Lenka, I am so sorry about what I just did to your last name. "Hey, Jay, what I am hearing is that in this who's that noisy is a baby or kid taking a bath and occasionally squeezing a rubber duck." Now, I included this even though I disqualified ducks already. I included this because of her next sentence. "There's also water running. I don't have kids on my own, but the noisy is something I can only imagine the horror of washing kids must be." You are correct about the trouble with washing kids. Parents will know what I'm talking about. There is good experiences and there is very bad experiences washing children. And I've had them both.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I just put them in the gentle cycle and a little fabric.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Never thought about that. Give them a little scuba mask and they're good. Ashley Pratt wrote in, "Hi, Jay, this is my first time guessing who's that noisy because I recently started listening." And then she goes on to say a bunch of nice things. And we chit chat, talk about COVID. But I got to get to the to her answer. "This week's who's that noisy sounds like some kind of release valve. The honking noise is the release valve. And then the hissing at the end is the full pressure release. I don't know what is under pressure, but I will guess it is some form of industrial pressure cooker in the food industry." Not correct.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Good guess.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I'm going to stop right there because that's pretty much it. I got a few other guesses. There was lots of joking guesses. A lot of people were amused by this one and wrote in all manner of different funny things that they thought they were hearing. Some of them were vulgar in a good way. Thank you. You know who you are. Nobody guessed it. There's a pattern forming here, guys. I haven't had a winner in quite a while.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Either you're getting very hard or nobody cares anymore.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I think there's a third option. I'm going to blame Steve.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' OK, I like this.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' And I promise all everyone that I will this week should be a little bit easier. So let me give you the reveal just so you know what we were listening to. This was originally sent in by Samuel Walker. He said, "Hello, this is Samuel Atticus Walker. I'm from UT", which I think is Utah, right? He's 22 and he enjoys all the content that we create. So then he says, "these are bees that are bumping into each other." And he included the MP3 with the YouTube video so I could see it. It's called Bees Whoop. Let's listen to it again. [plays Noisy] I think that's that might be the handler, the beekeeper, like doing something. Now, listen, there's clearly I thought this one was going to be so easy. There's clearly a swarm of bees, like right there in the audio. I hear it so clearly. I guess it's not.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But what is squeaking?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That's the bee. Those are bees going, ouch.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's why it's not obvious.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Bees squeak?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, bees don't squeak.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Who knew bees did that?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That's the point of who's that noisy to discover the world that we live in. I thought this was so cool. I don't know. I thought it was going to be easy.<br />
<br />
{{anchor|previousWTN}} <!-- keep right above the following sub-section ... this is the anchor used by wtnHiddenAnswer, which will link the next hidden answer to this episode's new noisy (so, to that episode's "previousWTN") --><br />
=== New Noisy <small>(1:13:15)</small> ===<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I have a new one for you this week. I really think that somebody is going to guess this one. This was sent in by John Carabake. Steve, I need to warn everybody this thing is going to come out hot out of the gate. So you might want to lower the volume, take one pull your headset off a little bit or stand back from the device that's emitting the noise.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Stand back from your ear buds.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' OK, ready? I'm going to do it in three seconds. Three, two, one.<br />
<br />
[air horn-like squeaks/squawks of different lengths and pitches]<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Bob's chair.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Totally Bob's chair.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah. All right. So if you think you know what this week's noisy is, or if you heard any noises, please do send those in to me at WTN@theskepticsguide.org.<br />
<br />
== Announcements <small>(1:14:07)</small> == <br />
<br />
'''J:''' Steve, in two weeks from right now, we will all be in debt for most of us. Cara will be flying in in two weeks in one day. <br />
<br />
'''C:''' OMG, how exciting. I don't know why you keep saying that. I'm flying in the same day as you.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' You are. I forgot George is flying in the next day. I don't know why, Cara. Come on I get these things in my head.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' George and I are very easy to confuse for one another. I get it. We both wear glasses.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' In one week, everybody who is on this show will be in Denver preparing for the extravaganza, which will be happening two weeks from tomorrow as we record this. So please consider if you're in the Denver or Fort Collins area in Colorado, United States, join us because there's seats left. We're going to have a ton of fun. We will be bringing SGU swag with us. So if you want to buy something, you want to buy a signed book, we're going to bring a certain number of them. And we still have this is remarkable, but we still have hardcover books.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's true.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So we will bring some hardcover books with us and we will be signing them and personalizing them for whoever would like. But you have to attend the show or one of these two shows. So go to [https://www.theskepticsguide.org/events theSkepticsGuide.org/events]. And you'll see links to both of these private shows. It's a live recording. It's a lot of fun and we get silly. We'll see you then.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. Thanks, Jay.<br />
<br />
== Questions/Emails/Corrections/Follow-ups <small>(1:15:23)</small> ==<br />
<br />
=== Email #1: Elizabeth Bathory - Serial Killer? ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We're going to do one email this week. This actually we got a ton of emails because so the science or fiction last week, I mentioned Elizabeth Bathory in passing because we were talking about the serial killer was the fiction. And it was the the guy I said was worked under Washington when actually he was he worked with Joan of Arc. And that's what made it the fiction. And then it said, oh, in my research, I came across these other serial killers like Elizabeth Bathory. A lot of people emailed to say that actually the story is is probably not true. The whole thing is probably not true.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Or at least got blown out of proportion.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, that's that's a third possibility. Yeah. So it's again, it's a good meta lesson on how do you know something is true from your research on the Internet. And this is one of these cases this comes up every now and then. Again, this wasn't a science or fiction. It was it was incidental. So I didn't do a deep dive on it. I didn't use do my usual vetting. But I read six, seven different sources about this, some pretty reasonable. I don't use something like cracked or whatever as a as a source. But if it was like Britannica or history.com or whatever, like some somewhat reasonable sources were all telling a range of stories. And the most skeptical of which was that the accusations against Elizabeth Bathory are exaggerated and there are certain aspects of it which are almost certainly not true, like the whole bathing in blood thing. That part of the story didn't come out until 100 years after she died. And it was almost certainly part of the legend and had nothing to do with reality. But the main story is that she and her husband were cruel to their servants and the peasants that worked for them. And after her husband died, she went on a murderous rampage, basically luring young women to her castle where she would kill them.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And not bathe in their blood.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. But well, yeah, the whole bathing in the blood is not only just impractical, there's no evidence it actually happened. And then so digging deeper into the story it took me a while to get beyond that story, I just found more details essentially about that story, such as when she was accused of murdering young women, the magistrate went to her castle and apparently caught her in the act. You know, so in 1610, she was accused of these gruesome acts. The magistrate went there and apparently caught her in the act of torturing a young girl. She wasn't actually ever put on trial. It was just an investigation, an inquest. She wasn't put on trial because she was a noble, powerful noble family in Hungary at the time. But there was something like three hundred and eighty witnesses who were brought, although the vast majority of them only had hearsay to report. But even if you filter those out, there was still 30 or so direct eyewitnesses that her three servants all confessed to the whole thing and they were all executed.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, God.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So it sounds like a pretty good story. And but what the email is referring to was again, it took me a long time to find this independently, one paper that was written a few years ago by historians who basically asked the question, is this really true and what do we actually know and what are the facts? And of course, being in the sixteen hundreds, legal cases were not too modern standards in terms of rules of evidence and testimony and documentation, et cetera. And there wasn't a lot of historical documents to go by. It's not like she kept a diary where she reported what she did, right?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Or she was blogging about it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Right. Seriously.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Didn't have an Instagram with pictures of deead bodies. So what these researchers found is that you can get you can get the paper online. I'll link to it. They found essentially there's no hard evidence that any of it is true. It's not like they dug up a hundred bodies around the castle or something like there was there was no hard evidence. They also say that if the specific claims that you can resolve with historical records don't stand up. She was accused of killing one girl when it's documented that she was in Vienna at the time. So she wasn't even in country when it happened. They also say that a lot of the deaths, a lot of women did die at the castle. A lot of the servants did die. But those deaths all happened during epidemics. And so it's actually not unusual. People were dying there when they were dying everywhere. You know, it wasn't like it didn't stand out. Also, very interesting. I find this fascinating. These historians said again, they're basically saying here's the evidence. It's pretty thin and you can interpret it a number of ways. You know, one way is that, yeah, she was cruel. She did some horrible things, but then a legend built up around her. And then a lot of stuff got added to it. And then everything bad that happened was blamed on her even when it was just dying of natural causes or an epidemic or whatever. And then the legend grew like the vampire legend grew out of that. But there is a core of but she did probably murder some girls. That's one interpretation. And even the authors admit we can't rule that out. We don't have enough evidence to say 100 percent. But they say, well, there's this other interpretation where it's perfectly consistent with all the facts that that she's completely innocent. So one of the angles was the fact that epidemics were killing people and that explains a lot of the deaths. People died. It was sixteen hundreds. But the other thing is that she was into herbal medicine and the medicine of the day, which when you think about it the 17th century medicine was pretty much poison and torture. They would use hot pokers to treat blisters and and boils and stuff. So then there are stories of her poking people with hot pokers, yeah, because she was treating a boil or people dying of mercury poisoning, which was the treatment of choice for venereal disease at the time, and died of mercury poisoning. But then that becomes a story of her poisoning somebody.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So some of these people might have been going to her of their own accord because she was a healer.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's what they were saying. She was a healer and she was into herbalism and she was into the healing of the time and she had people come to her court who were also if you were teaching her this and were doing this, et cetera, she was it was a big interest of hers. And so a lot of the stories may have evolved out of the medicine of the time, which is funny to think how easy it is to interpret that as the sadistic torture, right? That was essentially the medicine of the day.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, my gosh, you were better off not going to the doctor.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Totally, totally. She was theodoric of York, absolutely. So the other thing is that the historians bring up is that you could make a good historical case for all of this being a conspiracy against her because her family was wealthy. The royal family actually owed her a lot of money and they wanted her her lands. Her cousin died and left her a castle that was in a strategic position militarily. And then they were supposed to buy it from her, but they never gave her the money. And they order a lot of money. So there were essentially lots of reasons why they said, let's just take her out of the picture. Hf her husband's dead. We can get rid of her and then we get all her stuff.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Because she was she was a woman with a lot of power. And that is very threatening.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, exactly. That's absolutely part of it. And so then they just trumped up this whole thing.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Because back in the day, you could be like-<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Because you could do it back then.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, you could be like a woman, uterus, witch.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, she was a witch. She was brewing potion.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' ''(laughs)'' She was brewing potions.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Totally. She was.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And all the men are like, I buy it, witch, succubus, killer.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So that's basically what happened is that that's actually the most parsimonious interpretation of the whole scenario. And it was basically just an invented conspiracy against her to take to take her land. But she did something very clever, like a week before she died. She left everything to her kids, she transferred all of her wealth to her kids. And since she was never actually convicted of anything because they didn't want to put her on trial, that's the other thing. No trial.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' They just convicted her without a trial?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So no actual conviction. They didn't convict her. That's why she wasn't executed because she was a noble woman. The peasants, they executed, they executed her servants because you could do that. You don't need to give a trial. It's just a noble person says you're guilty and kills you. That was it. But but as a noble woman, they would have had to go through an elaborate trial and they didn't want to do that. So why didn't they want to do that? Maybe because it was all bullshit. And this way, they just said, we're just going to do an inquest and inquiry. They besmirched her reputation. They accused her of all these horrible things. They confined her to her castle. And then they didn't send her to prison or execute or anything. They just said, you got to stay in your castle. And they were just planning on taking all of her stuff when she died. But she she gave it all to her kids before she died and screwed them over. So she was actually clever. So you could almost like reimagine the whole story with her as a hero, as a smart woman who was a healer, even though the medicine of her time is horrific, but who was trying to do well by people and who was the victim of this conspiracy. And now, 400 years later, people still equate her with this horrible vampiric blood loss.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' So in a way, the relatives won.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. Yeah. So it's really interesting.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Why isn't there a great movie about this?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I know. I was thinking that myself. This would be a great movie. It's so tragic.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah. But how do you show the real nasty, awesome stuff that everyone wants to see, but probably didn't happen? You got to still show it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You do it in like you do it as people imagine, right?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Telling the story of those stories.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' You have to do that.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And then you mirror it with what was actually happening.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Anyone from Netflix listening, we can talk to you about writing a story.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Totally. We'll co-write it with you. So anyway, the bottom line is we don't really know which of these three narratives that it was all true, that it was only partly true, but most of it was fake or that it was all a conspiracy. We don't know which one of those is true, but there's no evidence for all the horrible things she was accused of. She definitely wasn't guilty of all the things she was accused of. And the whole thing is very suspicious. And so these historians, I think, had a good case to make for the fact that this probably was just a conspiracy. But the other skeptical lesson here is it took me a long time to get to this level of the story and only after people pointed me in that direction. And a pretty moderate, fair level of honest research, a half an hour of poking around, but trying to find reasonably reliable sources didn't dig down to that level and all told what is probably a fake story about what happened. So just keep in mind, unless you really get to some good scholarly primary sources, you just don't know. You don't know even something that seems like a reasonable source like history.com or whatever. May not be telling the real story.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Wonder what they're going to be saying about us in 2421.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, I wonder.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Bob who? What? Not even there, except for the ancient Internet archives.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Supposed podcasts that they allegedly recorded.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We are we are leaving behind quite the digital record if it survives.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' True.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Survives what?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Talked about that before.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' You don't think it'll persist?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I don't know.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Information is not permanent that way.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' We may not have the means to read this data.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Will it be migrated over to the quantum Internet?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Exactly.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Or the metaverse?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Will we wither wither as the the Betamax?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, gosh, here we go.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We've backed up all of our episodes on Betamax. All right, guys, let's move on to science fiction.<br />
<br />
== Science or Fiction <small>(1:28:34)</small> ==<br />
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|fiction = government didn't poison booze<br />
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|science1 = cowboy's derby hat<br />
|science2 = tall medieval Europeans<br />
|science3 = <!-- leave blank if absent --> <br />
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|answer1 = tall medieval Europeans<br />
<br />
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|answer2 =tall medieval Europeans<br />
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|answer3 = cowboy's derby hat<br />
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|answer4 =government didn't poison booze<br />
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''Voice-over: It's time for Science or Fiction.''<br />
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<br />
|item1 = The iconic cowboy hat was introduced in 1865 and did not become popular until the 20th century. The most popular hat for cowboys in the 19th century was the derby.<br />
|link1 = <ref>[https://www.ripleys.com/weird-news/cowboy-hats/ Ripley's: Cowboys in the Wild West Didn't Wear Cowboy Hats]</ref><br />
<br />
|item2 = The US government never actually poisoned alcohol during prohibition. Poisonings were due to contamination from poor quality stills. <br />
|link2 = <ref>[https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/06/30/fact-check-u-s-government-poisoned-some-alcohol-during-prohibition/3283701001/ USA Today: Fact check: It's true, U.S. government poisoned some alcohol during Prohibition]</ref><br />
<br />
|item3 = The average height of Europeans in the Middle Ages was actually greater than in the 16th-19th centuries, with average height not returning to Middle Age average until the late 20th century, and still only slightly less (about 1 inch) than modern Europeans.<br />
|link3 = <ref>[https://news.osu.edu/men-from-early-middle-ages-were-nearly-as-tall-as-modern-people/ Ohio State News: Men From Early Middle Ages Were Nearly As Tall As Modern People]</ref><br />
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''Voice-over: It's time for Science or Fiction.''<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Each week, I come up with three science news items or facts, two real, one fake. And then I challenge my panel of skeptics on which one is the fake. You have a theme this week. What do you think the theme is?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Blood.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Vampires.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, but close. It does relate to that news item, history myths, things that you may think are real about history, but are not true. But what I'm saying, but the statements that are making are either true or false. Like one of them is false. And that's the fiction.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, thank you for I'm going to need you to remind me of this as we go.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I will, I'll remind you.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Thank you.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. So what you are voting on is which one of these three, as stated, is wrong. It'll become more obvious when I say them. All right, here we go. Item number one, the iconic cowboy hat was introduced in 1865 and not become popular until the 20th century. The most popular hat for cowboys in the 19th century was the Derby. Item number two, the U.S. government never actually poisoned alcohol during prohibition. Poisonings were due to contamination from poor quality stills. And item number three, the average height of Europeans in the Middle Ages was actually greater than in the 16th to 19th centuries, with average height not returning to middle age average until the late 20th century and still only slightly less about one inch than modern Europeans. All right, Bob, go first.<br />
<br />
=== Bob's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Cowboy hat. Yeah, I totally believe that. So, yeah, I don't have a problem with that one. The government poisoning alcohol. I've never heard that before. And it seems in my mind to be, I mean, the government poisoning alcohol. Nope, never heard of it. It seems much more likely that that if there were poisonings, it was due to poor quality stills, but now, of course, Cara's what has me thinking. So let's see, the European one, I mean, whatever. I'll say that one's fiction. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' See, it's confusing.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I was confused too.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That seems reasonable to me, too, but maybe not. So that one's fiction.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Wait...<br />
<br />
'''S:''' European height is fiction?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, whatever.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' OK, Evan.<br />
<br />
=== Evan's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''E:''' So two of these, I think I've kind of heard before. The US government never actually poisoned alcohol during prohibition. Poisonings were due to contamination from poor quality stills. And I have that. That's true. Isn't that true? What is it? Instead of alcohol, it was methanol. Is that what was being made instead of the stuff that makes you go blind and poisons you. So that's I believe that that one is correct. This one about the average height of Europeans in the Middle Ages is actually greater average height of Europeans, greater than in the 16th to 19th, in the Middle Ages, greater than the 16th to 19th century. I might be conflating this with another sort of time period that I'm thinking about, maybe more modern times with average height not returning to the Middle Age until the late 20th century and still only slightly less. Why is this one striking me as science as well? The one I don't. Again, I don't know if we've touched on this or if I've just touched on it, not on the show, but this has been discussed. I know I've been part of a discussion on that. The one about the cowboy hat, I have no idea. I have no idea when it was introduced. And the most popular hat for cowboys in the 19th century was the Derby. You do see Westerns in which there were people in those times in the Westerns wearing Derbies, definitely. Bob, you chose the last one, the European one, right, as the fiction?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, gosh. All right.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' After I chose it, I said whatever.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, it's either that one or the hats. I think I'm leaning towards that one as well. I'm misremembering something about this. It's throwing me off, whereas I have no idea if I'm, I don't know anything about the cowboy hat history. So I guess I'll go with the fact that I think I'm misremembering the European one. I go with Bob, say that one's fiction.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' OK, Cara.<br />
<br />
=== Cara's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''C:''' OK, so I agree with the guys that the US government didn't poison the alcohol. I do think that poisoning happened. And I think that the government was aware of the poisoning and didn't do anything about it. But I don't think that they actually actively put methanol into and, yeah, Evan, I think you're right, it's methanol. That was like one of the big causes of toxicity at the time. So it's really between it's between the damn hat and the height, the hat and height. OK, so I just one more time I have to reread this. The average height of Europeans in the Middle Ages was actually greater than in the 16th and 19th centuries, with average height not returning to Middle Age average until the late 20th century and still only slightly less than modern Europeans. That is so-<br />
<br />
'''E:''' A bit convoluted.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I know, that's why, I know that. And so there was a lot of information I was trying to pack into one paragraph.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Because I think most of us go to Napoleon, right? We say, oh, Napoleon wasn't actually short. He was the average height for his time. And that's like a myth that we've busted and we're comfortable with that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But what I'm saying here is that if you map out the average height of Europeans, it was in the Middle Ages, it was only a little bit less than the average height today. It then dipped for 300 years and then recovered, but not really getting back to Middle Age height until the late 20th century and then slightly exceeding the Middle Age average height in now in the 21st century. Does that make sense? As opposed to the myth, then, therefore, is that people in the Middle Ages were shorter than people today.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right. I'm wondering if that one isn't true because of drought and serious events, historical events that have caused, like nutritional events that have caused dips, but that like humans are humans. And unless there's an external cue, we haven't evolved that much in 400 years. There hasn't been a big change in our DNA. It's really like these are epiphenomena. And so was the diet in the Middle Ages so poor? Did it gradually improve or have we had had these dips where there were these global food shortages and people just dramatically shrunk because of these effects, like these grandfather effects of that or grandmother effects, and then came back around? That one could be true. So the cowboy hat thing, it was introduced in 1865. It did not become popular until the 20th century. Most popular hat for cowboys in the... And to be clear, OK, so I grew up in Texas and I think of the cowboy hat as a very Mexican thing, like Vaquero, like Caballero, like like these bros wore these hats during all these wars and during like I thought that the Mexican farmers and like cattle herders brought us the cowboy hat and that would fly in the face of this. So maybe I'll say that that one is the fiction, but I don't know if I'm right. I think that, yeah, I think we got it from Mexico.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' OK, and Jay.<br />
<br />
=== Jay's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yo, so OK, the iconic cowboy hat seems to be counterintuitive because of movies. But I agree that the I mean, was it the Derby? And I'm pretty sure that they wore. I'm not sure if it was a Derby or not, but I'm pretty sure I'm pretty sure that cowboys weren't wearing like what we consider to be cowboy hats at the time, the last one about the average height. I think that makes perfect sense. And I think Steve is I think what Steve wrote is actually correct. And I'm pretty sure that the U.S. government poisoned alcohol in one way or another.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Pretty sure. So I'm going to say that one is the fiction. Two is the fiction.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Whoa, so we're spread out.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #1 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All spread out, which I love. So I guess there's no reason not to take these in order. So we'll start the first one. The iconic cowboy hat was introduced in 1865 and did not become popular until the 20th century. The most popular hat for cowboys in the 19th century was the Derby. Cara, you think this one is the fiction. Everyone else thinks this one is science. And this one is science. This is true.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Who introduced it? Was it Mexico?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Stetson.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Right. Stetson hat. Know that name.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Denbury, Connecticut.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Danbury, Connecticut. And yeah, that's an introduced a hat in 1865 that they called the boss of the plains. That was their brand of the hat, the boss of the plains. But it was the sort of prototype of what we now think of as a cowboy hat. It then evolved-<br />
<br />
'''B:''' What year?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' 1865, but it was it didn't have like the dimple at the top and it had a flat brim. And then over the years, it evolved so that you'd had like that dimples at the top so that you could hold the hat easier. And the brims were curved up at the side so that you could swing a rope around without getting caught on the brim.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Ah, cool.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. So it evolved into now what we consider to although there was some variation, obviously, there's like a range of styles. But what we consider within the scope of a "cowboy hat" didn't really come out until the 1890s and didn't really become popular until the early 1900s. The the most popular hat for cowboys throughout the 19th century was the Derby, also called the bowler hat. But they did wear other hats. Sombreros were on the short list. They were up there a lot.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I thought the sombrero maybe was like the precursor. I wonder if Stetson wasn't influenced by the sombrero because of that wide brim to block the sun.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, there probably was. So the 10 galon hat was Spanish. And it's actually not a G-A-L-L-O-N. It's a G-A-L-O-N meaning braid. Galón was a braid and a hat with 10 braids was a 10 galon hat. It interpreted a 10 gallon hat, but it had nothing to do with the volume.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, you could have done a whole science or fiction about hats.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That explains so much like my God, there's been so many times in my life where I didn't understand that and wonder why I never looked it up.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. Like, could it hold 10 gallons of water?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Look at all these old pictures of cowboys in the 19th century. None of them are wearing a cowboy hat. And again, the most common one is the Derby or bowler hat. But there's other ones. There's these flat rimmed hats or other little types of different times had sometimes top hats were worn, but, yeah, no cowboy hats. They were that was a that was a late invention. Pretty much everything you think you know about cowboys is a late as a 20th century myth.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, like pirates.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, exactly. So that's a fun one.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #2 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I'll go to number two. The U.S. government never actually poisoned alcohol during prohibition. Poisonings were due to contamination from poor quality stills. Jay, you think this one is the fiction. Everyone else thinks this one is science. And this one is the fiction. The government, the U.S. government deliberately poisoned alcohol.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Bastards.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And they resulting in about 10,000 people dying.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Holy moly.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Their direct actions.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Wow. And they meant to do it. This was one of their strategies for prohibition, for disincentivizing people, for making illegal alcohol. Now, the word alcohol in that sentence is unmodified, and that's critical because there are essentially two different kinds of alcohol that are made. There's drinking alcohol and industrial alcohol. The U.S. government didn't directly poison drinking alcohol. What they did was poison the industrial alcohol that use the moonshiners were using to make into moonshine, and so they knew it was going to get into drinking alcohol. And that was their intention. But they did it through the back door. They didn't like go to stills and pour poison in. And they just at the industrial level, they introduced poisons that would then contaminate the moonshine that was made from.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' But it would still be usable for its industrials.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yes, wouldn't hurt its industrial use, but if you tried to make moonshine out of it, it would be poisoned and would kill you.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's effed up.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That was a deliberate policy of the U.S. government during Prohibition.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That's disgusting.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' And with no warning to basically say, hey, we're poisoning this. You can't use it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well I didn't read that specifically one way or the other. I'd have to do some more research to know because you would think if it was a disincentive, they would so they would tell people or either that. But then, of course, they would be admitting to what they were doing.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, but it also helps if you say it out loud and out front, then all the sudden you're probably less liable if you're like, we told you if you drank that you would die.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yes, yes.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, but then a good lawyer could say you knew people were going to going to die because of that, regardless of what you said.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But we warned them. Yeah, it's like Evan. You remember the scene in Dr. Strangelove? It's like, what's the point of having a doomsday machine if you don't tell anybody about it?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' The concept of the doomsday device is lost. You keep it a secret.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #3 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All this means that the average height of Europeans in Middle Ages was actually greater than in the 16th and 19th centuries, with average height not returning to Middle Age average until the late 20th century and still only slightly less about one inch than modern Europeans is science if complicated and verbose. So, yeah, so basically what I said previously is to say, yeah, Middle Age people were not short, they were just they were slightly less on average than than modern Europeans, about only about one inch shorter. There's two reasons for that. And so you guys mentioned, especially Cara, talked a lot about nutrition and that definitely was a big factor. And the speculation is that during the Middle Ages or there was a Middle Age, there was a warming period during the Middle Ages. It was also the mini ice age. But during the warming period, they would have had on average more crops available. And so they might have had a longer growing season. They would have had better nutrition to get them through the winter. And therefore they would be healthier and they would be taller. So that's one factor that they think might have played a role. But the bigger factor may be that during the Middle Ages, people weren't very mobile and they because of that, there wasn't a lot of infectious diseases spreading around.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Other than the big one.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But even that that spread from from like Port City to Port City, you know?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And there were actually multiple plagues.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, but the 16th to 19th century were plagued by plagues. And that probably had a huge impact on the declining height over that period of time during the 16th and 17th century, even 18th century. Average height actually declined probably because of the just the really significant increase in infectious diseases. Not that it didn't exist in the Middle Ages. It was just orders of magnitude worse once there was much more global travel later on. And then when essentially sanitation kicked in around 1900, that's when things started to recover. But not really even getting back to the Middle Age average to the late to the second half of the 20th century. And it's only slightly greater now than it was in Middle Age time. So the myth of the that all people in the Middle Ages were really short is a myth. That's not true. You mentioned, Cara, you mentioned Napoleon. Napoleon was slightly above average height for a French male at that time. Five foot seven. Five foot seven is almost average height today. <br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, that's that's why I that's why that one sat in my head is probably science because for that reason that like we all the myth is that Napoleon was tiny and had a Napoleonic complex, but he actually wasn't. He was like a normal sized dude.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' He was slightly above average height. So that was another myth. I thought that was too well known to you.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, I think so.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, yeah. It's in George's song, right? I mean, George's song on things that aren't true.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Now he's going to have to add some stuff about the cowboy hat and the prohibition.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. Good job, Jay. Solo win for you.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I think that was the first one this year and it probably will be the last one.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' There's a Thanksgiving one coming up, maybe.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' They're hard. We'll see.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' You'll have a big advantage on that one.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Thank you.<br />
<br />
== Skeptical Quote of the Week <small>(1:45:22)</small> ==<br />
<br />
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<blockquote>We must learn to set our emotions aside and embrace what science tells us. GMOs and nuclear power are two of the most effective and most important green technologies we have. If – after looking at the data – you aren’t in favour of using them responsibly, you aren’t an environmentalist.<br>– {{w|Ramez Naam}}, American technologist and science fiction writer</blockquote><br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, Evan, give us a quote.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' "We must learn to set our emotions aside and embrace what science tells us. GMOs and nuclear power are two of the most effective and most important green technologies we have. If after looking at the data, you aren't in favor of using them responsibly, you aren't an environmentalist." Ramiz Nam. And he is an American technologist and science fiction writer best known as the author of the Nexus trilogy, which, Bob, I don't know, have you read that?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I have not. Is that about our annual conference?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Different nexus.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' N-E-X-U-S. Award winning.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Evan.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yes?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So I'm wondering I don't usually have something to say about the quote. At the end of the show, we're all very tired. We want to go to bed or eat dinner. But sentences two and three of this quote I heavily agree with. But I worry about the dichotomization that we see a lot in skepticism, that it's like we have to just look at the facts and not let our emotions come into it. And emotions and facts are two different things. We have to trust the thinky part of our brain, but not the feely part of our brain. I sometimes feel like, A, that's a false dichotomy and B, it's a dangerous preposition because it doesn't take into account the fact that we cannot set our emotions to the side, our emotions, our cognitions and our feelings are are our thoughts.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' However, he puts it in this particular quote, compare comparing the emotions to what the experts and what the scientists and what the science itself is saying. So that's the comparison that he's making.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's aspirational to say that science is completely devoid of these things. But I think it actually is to some extent saying that science shouldn't be humanistic if we take the conversation about emotion out of it. I actually think it's a dangerous proposition because, A, it's impossible and it sets up a false kind of goal. But B, I don't think it's representative of a way that we should be thinking about how we do science. I don't think we should be making emotion the enemy. That's not the enemy. Irrationality might be the enemy, but not emotion.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's interesting. Yeah, I didn't see it that way.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's it. Yeah, I think that's valid. But at the same time, I do think it's a good exercise to say if we do look objectively at the hard facts and try to remove all filters, what does it say? What are the hard, objective, pure facts as close as we can get to them? Not to say that we're done with the process, but just as a thought experiment to help inform the process.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Totally agree. I think the emotion like we shouldn't make emotions the boogeyman. They're not the thing that is getting in the way of objectivity. But we so often blame them.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But getting back to this quote, though, I like this quote because I think what it's saying to me is that ideology is the problem here.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's what I came away with.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Agree. I wish you would have said that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, I know what he's saying. He's saying that if people who are environmentalists, who are anti-GMO and reflexively anti-nuclear are actually putting ideology and not allowing science to inform what they're trying to accomplish. And when you do that, like Sri Lanka or Germany, whatever, when you do that, you're going to end up accomplishing the opposite of what you're trying to. You're going to end up being worse for the environment, being worse for public health, increasing our carbon footprint, etc., because you didn't follow the science because you were following your narrow ideology. And that is rife within environmentalists. You know, unfortunately, look at Greenpeace. Greenpeace is the poster child for that. Their anti-GMO stance is unscientific and it's hurting their reputation. It's hurting their cause. It's achieving the opposite. I think they're all good people who want good things, but they're doing it wrong and they're and they're they're actually bringing about the opposite of what they're hurting. It's tragic. It's tragic. But if we don't learn that lesson, we're going to keep doing it. We're going to just keep doing it. And this is the big problem with the world today. You know, from my perspective, it's that we keep we keep getting in our own way. You know, just if we need to shift the balance more towards again, I'm not one of those people who thinks that science answers all questions or that we could run the world based entirely on objective science. You can't. Judgment calls come in. Value judgments come in.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And morality matter. Yeah, and it matters.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It all matters. But science should inform it as best as we can. And but if you're willing to cherry pick and distort the science to fit your ideology, then you might as well throw it all out. Then you're unscientific. At some point you can just you distort science to the point that you are now just anti-science, even if you think you're even if you think you're following it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Agree wholeheartedly. I think that the boogeyman here really is tribalism. It's ideology. It's in-group out-group mentality. It's not having-<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Following a narrative instead of evidence.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, but it's not having feelings or having emotions. I think that emotions are actually important and we shouldn't. You know, we shouldn't be striving to be emotionless automatons. That's actually absolutely dangerous proposition.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I've often said, embrace your humanity, embrace the human condition, embrace the emotions, all of that. But keep it in in context of facts and logic and reason. You can you can have a balance of these two things each to its own.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' They're not two sides of the same spectrum.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We don't have to be Vulcans to be rational. Absolutely.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Completely agree. And it's such a narrative. It bums me out that that's like such a narrative.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Almost a meme.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Screw the Vulcans.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' There is a personal angle of this for me, which I will I will say because people because I tend to be so hyper rational, people assume I don't have emotions and like even people close to me who should know freaking it's so compelling the notion that this this narrative, that the more rational you are, the less emotionally you are, is so overwhelming that people ignore the evidence in front of their face of what an emotional mush I am at my core. Because of the ways that I show it and the and the ways I don't show it. And you know what I mean? It's just anyway.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' So it's not paying attention.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, I know you guys know because you're the closest people in the world to me, but people who are close enough to me that they really should know still get blinded by this narrative that, oh, Steve's being rational, he's not an emotional robot.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' He's unfeeling.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Unfeeling.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' How sad.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, it's the opposite of what's true.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' And Steve, that can that can be one hundred and eighty degrees turned around.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yes, you're right. If someone is emotional, they're not rational.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, you're right.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' You and I are. Yeah, we are like opposite kind of in that way because I feel like I'm being judged so much just on the emotions that pour out of me because that's the first thing that happens. You know, so I know exactly how you feel like kind of like Obi-Wan did from a particular point of view.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' And sometimes I think I'm in this in the spectrum between these two punks.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And that's a good place to be because I think the idea here is to not fall victim to the false narrative that feelings are on one side of the of the spectrum and and thoughts are on the other. They're two separate entities that interact. Yeah, they work well together, of course.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And they're both part of the human condition, which we can't get away from. We are human. All right.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' If you're frustrated, make some homemade meatballs, slow down, have some pasta, homemade sauce.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Eat the meatball, reverse the time equation and then eat it again.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I promise you that if you do what I say, you will feel better. I promise you.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' This is not a guarantee. All right.<br />
<br />
== Signoff <small>(1:52:14)</small> == <br />
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'''S:''' Thank you all for joining me this week.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Thanks Steve.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Well said, sir.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We'll see you on the on the live stream and until next week, this is your {{SGU}}. <!-- typically this is the last thing before the Outro --> <br />
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}}</div>Hearmepurrhttps://www.sgutranscripts.org/w/index.php?title=SGU_Episode_823&diff=19093SGU Episode 8232024-01-11T10:52:55Z<p>Hearmepurr: episode done</p>
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<br />
== Introduction ==<br />
''Voice-over: You're listening to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.''<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Hello and welcome to the {{SGU|link=y}}. Today is Wednesday, April 14th. 2021, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella... <br />
<br />
'''B:''' Hey, everybody!<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Cara Santa Maria...<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Howdy.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Jay Novella... <br />
<br />
'''J:''' Hey guys...<br />
<br />
'''S:''' ...and Evan Bernstein. <br />
<br />
'''E:''' Hello everyone.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' This was one of those heavy news weeks, heavy science news weeks. I suspect that two of the news items we're going to talk about this week are going to be two of the biggest science news items of the year. If not one and two, I think they'll both be in the top five. They're big. We'll get to them in a minute.<br />
<br />
== COVID-19 Update <small>(0:45)</small> == <br />
<br />
'''S:''' But first, there's another sort of big item that's a follow-up to last week. Last week I gave the follow-up to the AstraZeneca blood clot issue. This is the main European vaccine, AstraZeneca, for COVID, and there has been some reported blood clots. Most of them are probably not above background. However, there was one subset of clots in young people, like less than 50, mostly women, specifically in the brain, CVST, cerebral venous sinus thrombosis, associated with thrombocytopenia, low blood platelets, which are the clotting elements in the blood. So that was unusual.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Steve, isn't another factor that the symptoms arose within two to four weeks after the shot?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, within like 16 days or something. So they were within the time frame of the vaccine.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' How could you have clotting and low platelet count? So I'm sure that's in your description somewhere.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, yeah, because their dysfunctional platelets is the problem, right? So there's low number, but they're causing clotting.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' All right.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, and then there's been a couple of different publications, including one recently in the New England Journal of Medicine, looking at potential mechanisms. It's certainly plausible that it is a vaccine-induced autoimmune disease causing this clotting situation. But the numbers are extremely low, the absolute numbers, and there's still some heated debate about the risk versus benefit. You're going to be saving thousands of lives with the vaccine, and one or two people will die, that sort of thing. But we're comparing that to, but we don't want to freak people out about the vaccine, and we want to make sure we're being transparent, and yeah, so it's like this total mess. Well, the mess just got doubled because the Johnson & Johnson vaccine has the same thing now. There have been six reported cases of CVST, cerebral venous venous thrombosis, with thrombocytopenia in women between the ages of 18 and 48. So the same demographics, the same kind of clinical picture, the same blood clot, same time frame, one to two weeks after the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. Also, the Johnson & Johnson vaccine and the AstraZeneca vaccine are both adenovirus vaccines. So they're similar. They're not the same. The J&J is a human adenovirus, AstraZeneca is a chimpanzee adenovirus, but they're both modified adenoviruses. They took that virus, they weakened it, they made it produce the protein from the COVID virus. So the immune system...<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It's old school. It's not mRNA.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Right. It's old school. These are both old school.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Ah, sure.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But fine. They're perfectly cromulent vaccines.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I was worried for mRNA, though, so I'm not worried anymore.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, no, no. The two mRNA vaccines are kicking ass. I mean, they have the highest...<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It's the future, baby. It's the future.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' They have incredibly high efficacy. They're incredibly safe. There's been no problem... Just to be absolutely clear, like the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines, there are no problems with them. 100 million doses and more in the U.S., and there's really no issues, and they've been out longer than the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But to be clear, with the J&J vaccine, we are seeing... It's a very, very, very, very, very, very, very rare.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' One in a million.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, so the numbers are similar to the AstraZeneca vaccine in sort of order of magnitude. So there have been, with almost seven million doses, there have been six cases of the clot, one death. So that's a million to one of developing the clot, and seven to a million to one of dying from it. Although...<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And all in youngish women?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All in women 18 to 48, 100% in women 18 to 48.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Here's my concern, and this comes up because earlier today, on my 900th job, because apparently I'm not doing enough, I also do a live daily hit for my local PBS station every day. And our reporters today covered the fact that Governor Newsom has decided to suspend use here in California. And I think we're starting to see this across a lot of nations, right? And it's like, okay, well, we've got enough other vaccines, we're probably okay. We know that kids can only take the Pfizer one, 16, 17-year-olds can only take the Pfizer one, so we're covered there. But the concern is that we have such a large population of unhoused individuals, and the one-shot vaccine is so important for public health. And to completely suspend it, even though the vast majority of individuals who'd be receiving it are older and men, it worries me that those people might not end up getting the coverage that they need because they might be hard to track down for a second dose.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' So why can't they just order a limitation on who can receive the Johnson vaccine?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' To be clear...<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I think it's that much more complicated.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Hang on, to be clear, the CDC and the FDA presented a joint statement where they recommended pausing the vaccine. The FDA did not pull its emergency use authorization, they didn't ban it, they didn't stop it, they basically left it up to the states with their recommendation of pausing until they have a chance of investigating these reports. And so the states can do what they feel is necessary depending on how their vaccine rollout is going. So you're correct. So one sort of niche for this vaccine, the J&J vaccine, are the poor because they, as you say, think it's a one-shot vaccine, it's easier for that to happen than to schedule two shots. It also doesn't need the cold chain, you can refrigerate it for rural areas, it's better for rural areas.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's just more convenient. It's way more convenient.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Absolutely. However, this is complicated. If you look at the big picture, it's less than five percent of the total doses given have been J&J. So it's a very tiny part of America's vaccine rollout. The other thing is there was a huge problem, they tried to shift their manufacture to Baltimore, to the United States, I think it was in the Dutch factories making it, and there was a problem with contamination and millions of doses had to be thrown away. So we're actually in the middle of a shortage of J&J vaccine right when this happened. So already people were not able to get the J&J vaccine, so that's interesting just coincidence. And if you crunch the numbers, I know there might be subpopulations that this could affect, but if you look at the numbers, between the Moderna and the Pfizer vaccines, they are putting out enough vaccines, more than three million a day, to keep up with our ability to get shots in people's arms and to keep up with demand. So this is probably not going to delay.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It seems like here in California, the demand is fine, the issue is are there people who we won't be able to reach? And would we have been able to if we had a single shot vaccine available to us?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So you have to factor all this together. And again, if you run the calculation, those seven million people who got the J&J vaccine, that saved thousands of lives compared to one person who died from the side effects. So risk versus benefit is on the favor of giving the vaccine, and we do this all the time. The FDA will approve a drug that has a one in a million death toll, that's not a deal killer for a drug, you just get a black box warning. And then they wanted physicians to be fully aware of the side effect that you don't treat it like you normally treat blood clots, they wanted patients to report symptoms. So this is partly for public awareness, it's partly for transparency, and each state has to make a decision about whether or not what the risk versus benefit is. I do unfortunately think that this is going to lead to increased vaccine hesitancy, but it was going to do that no matter how they handled it. Just the mere fact of it was going to do that no matter how they handled it.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, it's very tough to do this right PR wise.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So you have to kind of spin it, you have to say, well, this is proof that the system is working, we have a very careful monitoring system in place, it picked this up with very few numbers, we're being very cautious, this vaccine hasn't been out nearly as long as Pfizer or Moderna. And so that those two vaccines have had many more doses over a longer period of time with nothing showing, no red flags cropping up. So the system is working and your faith in the system should be pretty high. And we could quibble about this decision, because it's a hard one, and there are people who are praising the decision and people who are criticizing it for the reasons that we just reviewed, because it's a no-win scenario, so it's just got to pick the lesser of two evils here. They did the best job they could, I think, in terms of making decisions. Again, you could argue that, but again, they didn't pull it, just to be clear, they just made a recommendation of pausing it, the states are deciding whether or not to pause it. And I think that, and most states are, but like in Connecticut, we don't need the J&J vaccine, we're doing fine with the other two, and it's not going to delay anyone getting a vaccine who wants it at all. So for states like that, fine, and definitely there's no downside to pausing it. But in rural states and poor states, it may cause some delays.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Isn't the downside that the people whose lives would have been saved, that's not going to happen?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' What I'm saying is, in a state where they can just substitute Moderna and Pfizer with no delay in vaccination, then you avoid that. In states where you can't do that, they have to think very carefully about how much of a delay it's going to cause.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Right, okay.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's what I'm saying. You're right, in states where that matters. But again, there are definitely some states where they have plenty of Pfizer and Moderna vaccine, and some of them are even saying, if you were scheduled to get a J&J vaccine, they'll give you a Moderna vaccine. Just show up and you'll get your vaccine. There's no delay.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Awesome.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, and in a lot of places, you can't even choose.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, yeah, but I'm saying if you were already scheduled for the J&J, they don't even have to reschedule you. They'll just give you a different vaccine. Yeah. But sometimes some states have to reschedule, and we'll see. We'll see how it plays out in every state. It's unfortunate, but it's not, hey, think of how many different vaccines we cranked out in a year?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' When you study it in 10, 20, 30, 40,000 people, and then you give it to millions, of course things are going to crop up when you give it to millions. What's going to crop up are these rare things that happen one in a million. You're not going to see a one in a million side effect when you study 40,000 people. This is, there's no way to avoid this. That's why we have the monitoring system that we do to pick this up when it happens. I also think the FDA said they're acting out of an abundance of caution. I wonder how much they adjusted their standard operating procedure to the fact that we're in the middle of a pandemic. You know what I mean? Because if there was not a pandemic, this is a no-brainer. This is easy. You pause it. You collect the data. You study it. Pausing it can cost thousands of lives. Then the calculation is different. Just like with the European countries, they made a bunch of different decisions. I think the UK nailed it where they didn't pause it. They waited for the data, and then once it came in, they said, all right, we're not going to give this to young women or people who are low risk for COVID. We're going to just give it to older populations. They kind of slipped right into, I think, what the best risk management scenario that there is. But anyway, we're totally Monday morning quarterbacking all of this, absolutely. But hey.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, we have all that.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Best we can do.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I mean, we still don't actually have all the information, and that's the interesting thing about this unrolling in real time.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Steve, I heard that they were going to have a big meeting today and really talk about... Did anything come out of that specific meeting today?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I haven't seen it. I think they were going to start meeting today. I don't know if they were going to issue statements today. Probably later this week or early next week, I would expect. I mean, they're definitely fast tracking it. So more cases are going to come forward just because of underreporting, but also there are people who are still in the window. They got their vaccine three days ago, and they're still in that two week window. So there definitely will be more cases. The current count is an underreport. But it's still going to be, I think, similar to what we're seeing now. Single digits per million people vaccinated. But the other thing is, and when I wrote about this in Science-Based Medicine, this is sort of my conclusion. It's like, yeah, this is unfortunate, but it's par for the course. This is what it's like to roll out new medications, and we monitor them, and we respond appropriately. Everything is playing out exactly as it should when you really think about it. The real vulnerability is the epidemic, the pandemic of misinformation that's out there, and the fact that this is happening on a background of an anti-vaccine misinformation campaign playing out over social media. And so they're really causing a lot of havoc. And that is a vulnerability for our society. We talked about this last week, and I want to get into it again, but we've got to deal with that. We have to deal with it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Absolutely. Yeah. If we're already struggling with distrust, and then something that we totally expected could have potentially happened, happens, but we communicate it or we telegraph it poorly, then in many ways, simply how we contextualize this can contribute to that distrust, so we have to be very careful.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. I mean, the challenge is we need seven and a half billion people to all make rational decisions at the same time.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Exactly.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' And it's just no problem.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, it's hard.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' We'll need a day or two.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's a high bar.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Do we have any sort of good evidence yet based on the growing numbers and these more controlled places like college campuses or closed places of where herd immunity looks like it needs to net out?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' What I do know, you actually read a study today, but of course, this data is always months behind by the time the data gets collected, analysed, published, is that so far, so far that we could tell that social distancing and mask wearing is having a greater impact than herd immunity, so the herd immunity piece hasn't kicked in yet.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So we're not quite there yet in terms of the percentage.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But the data is, of course, lagging behind the reality and the ground. We probably won't know that we're there until six weeks after we are. You know what I mean?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, and even as of today, aren't we only like 25% or something fully vaccinated?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Fully vaccinated?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, fully. I think it's still pretty low, like I wouldn't think herd immunity would be, we'd be anywhere close to it quite yet. I'm just wondering based on modeling, where do we need to be? Is it 80%? Is it 60%? Is it 90%?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We don't know. We don't know that number. We'll know that number in retrospect.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' When we get to it.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I've heard 80%, but we'll see.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's a good, it's a good guesstimate, but we don't really know. And unfortunately, if you look at the number of new cases per day, it's starting to turn back up.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, I've seen that, especially in like specific pockets as well.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, we're not out of this yet.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Now that millions of people have it, we're seeing something. What happens when we get over a billion people get the vaccine? You think anybody could be like a superhero? Too soon?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' What's the billion to one reaction? Superpowers? Maybe that's what we should tell people. Hey, one person in a billion is going to be getting superpowers.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Make it a lottery.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Don't miss out on your chance.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's right.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' You could be the one.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Can't win if you don't get inoculated.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, but then people will get it multiple times.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Oh my god. Oh damn.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Now we have to tell them that that will undo it if you get it.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, that's right.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The vaccine will nullify your chance of getting it.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Gives you evil superpowers.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, more. I mean.<br />
<br />
== News Items ==<br />
<br />
=== Possible New Force <small>(16:38)</small> ===<br />
* [https://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/possible-new-force/ Possible New Force]<ref>[https://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/possible-new-force/ NeurologicaBlog: Possible New Force]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. Well, me and Bob, we have some really exciting news. I'm just talking about this week. You're going to start us off with the possibility of a new particle or force.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' No way.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, this is over. This is everywhere. I've seen this so many times. Definitely had to talk about this. So potentially big or at least very interesting news from the world of particle physics this past week. Particles called muons have been observed behaving in a way not predicted by the incredibly successful standard model of physics, which you've talked about a lot on the show. Does this mean finally that there's a major update for physics, a major cool new discoveries or perhaps is this just a minor tweak or is this probably nothing? So what's going on? So this comes from Fermilab's long awaited experiments on muons and recently published in the journal Physical Review Letters. Now at a high level, what's happened is scientists have accelerated muons in a magnetic field and the high precision measurements confirm and extend the and greatly refine previous measurements that don't agree with theory. The superficial excitement here, of course, is that this could portend to new physics that could finally give some insights into some of physics biggest mysteries, dark energy, dark matter, combining general relativity and quantum mechanics. I mean, who knows? I mean, that's best case scenarios are very, very exciting. First of all, though, I would like to congratulate the hundreds of scientists all over the world who collaborated on this extraordinary feat. And like for decades, they've been working on this, literally, they've been working on this specific outcome for since the 1990s measuring muons in this way. And it really was a tour de force of awesomeness. So regardless of what happens, bravo, brava to all the men and women who have worked on this. So what are the facts? More specifically, what the hell is a muon? And is it called a muon? Or is it a muon? I think it's pronounced muon. A lot of scientists I listened to the past few days are saying muon. So I will say that.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Is that because of the Greek letter mu?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah. And so, yeah, so I've been calling it muon for God knows how long, but oh well.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So muon?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Muon.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Oh, muon.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yes.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Muon. Like mew, mew, mew.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' So you can think of a muon as essentially a corpulent cousin of an electron. Same thing, but just more massive, like over 200 times as massive. They are truly elementary particles, meaning that there is no internal structure. It's a point particle, unlike an atom or even a proton. They all have internal structure. There's also a third cousin as well, and he or she is called tau. And that's even more massive. She's the most corpulent-licious version of these bad boys. And together they are leptons. They are part of the family of leptons. You may have heard of that. Leptons are fascinating. So there's three. Electron, muon, and tau. And those are the charged leptons. There's three others and they are uncharged. Can you guess what they are? Yes, Bob, you are right. They are the neutrinos. Neutrinos are leptons and very distant third or fourth cousins to electrons and muons and tau particles. And, of course, to fill out the lepton family, you've got to throw in the antiparticles because they're in there. They're in there as well. So now you're probably wondering, well, if these other electron cousins could orbit atoms, like the normal electrons, is that real? Does that happen? Yes, they can. You can have an atom with a tau or muon orbiting instead of a regular electron, but these are exotic atoms, but they are very short-lived. Muons and taus are unstable. They decay into electrons, which fortunately are extremely stable. But yeah, any cool atoms like that, if they are created, don't last beyond microseconds. So that's unfortunate. Or maybe it's fortunate because who knows what kind of weird universe we live in with exotic atoms everywhere. So, okay, kids, it's time to put on our imagination hats. If you want a mental image, think of a muon as a tiny ball of charge that's spinning. And a spinning charge like this behaves very much like a common bar magnet, a straight piece of metal with a red north and a white south on the bottom. I haven't seen one of those in a few dog's ages. Now remember, though, mental images like these can definitely help, but remember, these are imperfect mental analogies, but that's probably the best our baseline human minds can do right now. So, okay, so this is player one. The muon is player number one in this experiment. Muons have a magnetic field and angular momentum. And our limited minds can think of that as spin, like it's often compared to a spinning top or a gyroscope. That's a good way to think about it. See, then after player one, now we've got player number two. And in this experiment, player number two is an intensely controlled external magnetic field that is exposed to and surrounds the muon. So these two guys are kind of like in the same space. The muon with its magnetic field and this external magnetic field. Now when you have, when you introduce this external magnetic field, it causes the two magnetic fields to interact, and that causes the muon spin to process. The spin axis processes, and that's roughly, procession is roughly analogous, again, to the axis of a spinning top moving how it moves in circles. The ends of the axis move in circles. That's a good way to think about it. And it's this procession that is the focus of this experiment. And it's this value that is called the g factor. And that this is what they're trying to calculate or trying to use this, this procession to infer the very extremely precise value of the of the magnetic moment of this muon. So yes, the speed of that procession tells us precisely how strong the muon's magnetic field is. We can then measure the strength and compare it to theory to see if they match. And if they match, then the theory is correct. And that's awesome. We have confirmation of this amazing theory yet again, more confirmation. But if it doesn't match, we may have some new physics. So it's always an interesting possibility. Now there is a third player here making this kind of like a quantum threesome. And these are called virtual particles. We've mentioned this on the show, and I love virtual particles. We know that a vacuum is anything but empty, right? You think the vacuum is the epitome of emptiness. No, not at all. All sorts of particles appear from apparently nothing. But really, it's really they're appearing from the energy inheritance space time itself. They disappear and they appear and disappear too quickly for the universe to really care. But also, some of these particles, some of these virtual particles we can't make in any collider that we have on any drawing board. They are just like too massive. They exist for such a brief period of time, we really can't directly examine them, which is unfortunate, but we can investigate them indirectly.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' How do they exist in nature then?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' At the quantum level, these virtual particles appear out of nowhere. They kind of you can have a particle and antiparticle appear out of nowhere and then hit each other and annihilate and disappear. So yeah, they pop in and out of existence and they interact. They can interact with particles and this is what's so important in this context. So these virtual particles surround muons. If you could look at a muon, you would just see them all over the place. And they can interact with the muon and have an impact on this G factor. So we have to take that into account. Okay. So all right. We have muons which are revealing to us the exact strength of its magnetic field because of the way an external magnetic field and virtual particles affect its procession. That's the big picture of this.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Bob, do you know what subatomic cows say?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Muons. Good one, Steve. Okay.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' We were all thinking that.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' So now the standard model though just laughs at all this complexity. It takes into account all of this and predicts a very, very, very specific value for the G factor and it's called G minus two, which is actually the name of this entire experiment. The accuracy of the prediction in the standard model is 400 parts per billion. Very, very accurate. Now the Fermilab Muon G2 experiment is designed to be accurate to only 150 parts per billion. That's like measuring a football field accurate to a tenth the width of the iconic human hair that's always used in these comparisons. So amazingly accurate. When this initial measurement from Fermilab is compared to theory, it does not match. And this is exciting obviously because it means that there could be some unknown virtual particle that smacked the muon in the face and changed its procession in a way that an amazingly accurate landmark theory knows nothing about it. So that's why this has so much potential because this is something that the standard model just has not predicted. So this is why this could be something tiny and insignificant in some ways, but it also could be the other end of the spectrum, something huge and amazing. Fermilab physicist Chris Polly told the New York Times, this is our Mars rover landing moment and Rene Fatemi is a physicist at the University of Kentucky and is also a simulation manager for the Muon G minus two experiment said recently that this is strong evidence that the muon is sensitive to something that is not in our best theory. That's a really good way to put it. And I can't disagree with these scientists, mainly because I'm stupid compared to them, but I can put this in a context that could be that you may find interesting. So as usual, it's premature to celebrate. Do not break out the bubbly for this. I mean, you could do it just for the raw accomplishment itself, but don't start, don't pull out your new particle/new force bubbly. I'm going to wait on that. And that's mainly because of our buddy called Sigma. We've mentioned that on the show many times, experiments, anything that has experiments typically will use Sigma to measure standard deviation, right? And that's used to express how likely is a result. Is it just random chance or what? And the Sigma can really help us wrap our head around it. Now Brookhaven National Laboratory did the very first experiments with G minus two in 2001. I mean, two decades ago, and they found this G factor anomaly. They found this difference between observation and theory. And they calculated Sigma at 3.7, which is it's okay, not anywhere near the gold standard of five Sigma. Now the first result from Fermilab, the thing that we're talking about right now, this is the first result, the initial result from Fermilab that combines with the Brookhaven because they're using most of the same equipment they're using. They actually transported the entire ring to Fermilab. So when you combine the Fermilab results with Brookhaven, it brings it up to 4.2. Now that's 99.7% probably accurate. There's a 97.7% chance that this is real and not just bad luck one in 40,000. That's good, right? That's good. One in 40,000, but that's still nowhere near the gold standard, which is five Sigma. That's one in 3.5 million. So if you're not at five Sigma and you're making a huge claim, well, I'm sorry, talk to me when you get to five Sigma because we cannot assume that this is right even though there's only a one in 40,000 chance that it was a coincidence.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But Bob, let me point out at this point, though, that this assumes that there's no experimental error, right? This is just, if the data is correct, what's the probability that this data was occurred by chance alone, one in 40,000, one in 3.5 million. But this has nothing about there being some systematic error in the experimental setup or the way they're measuring things. So like, for example, I believe if you remember like the faster than light neutrinos, they were up to six Sigma with that. But that doesn't matter because they had a bad cable the Sigma doesn't account for things like, you know.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, are they trying to falsify the hell out of this thing?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' A hardware problem. So it's not just that when we hit five Sigma, it's proven. We also need to replicate this with different equipment in different labs to know that there isn't some systematic problem there.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Right, right. And that's definitely part of the process. And that kind of relates to my next quote by Bruce Shum, he's a professor of physics and he's the author of a popular book on the standard model itself. He said, there's a little bit of skepticism that's been cast on it. When you make a measurement and you compare the expectation based on everything we know, the standard model, there's a little bit of concern that maybe the calculation wasn't done quite right. And yes, the standard model has been amazingly almost unparalleled how successful it's been over decades. I mean, it basically lays out all of the forces and particles that we are aware of in physics and its predictions. I mean, we found the Higgs boson based on purely on theory, on the predictions of the standard model. We knew that it had to be around this energy regime and we found it at the LHC purely because of the standard model. So when you tell me, when you come to me and say, hey, it looks like the standard model got this one bit wrong, and we're at 4.2 sigma, it's like, well, okay, that's great. But you know, chances are, there's probably been a mistake. That's what you got to assume at this point. And sure, look really hard and bring up sigma as high as you can. But until that, until sigma gets really good, then you can't really make too many assumptions because standard models is too amazingly successful to think that it's made some big mistakes here or that there's such an important chunk of it is not there regarding these types of particles and forces. And don't forget, though, Steve, Fermilab has gone over 6% of its experimental results. What we are talking about today is because of its 6% of what it's gone over. So we're going to have to wait a couple of years before it analyses all the data. And maybe they'll shoot what you know, maybe they'll hit five sigma, maybe they'll go to six, who knows, but we're going to have to wait until until that happens. If they do get over well over five sigma, and they still and they could replicate it and all that good and we say, yep, this looks we have to think that this is real, then then that of course, that would be fantastic. And as my my smart friend Leonard Tremille says, he's recently described, he said, when an experiment overturns theory, and that does happen, it has happened in the past, an experiment actually overturns a theory that usually leads to a couple of possibilities. In this case, the overwhelming likelihood is that the standard model would be tweaked, but essentially remains the same. And that would be kind of like a disappointment. But you know, this is what I'm expecting to happen, that they're going to find that you're going to find this particle and force and that a new force, that's a reason to get drunk right there. You find a new particle and force like this, absolutely start drinking. That's wonderful. I mean, Cara will be telling her kids when she's in 80s, like I remember when Bob first talked about this on the show. Absolutely. And that would be great. But there's a much less likely but a very real possibility that this opens up whole new concepts and models for physicists to use to potentially explain things that the standard model definitely cannot deal with, like gravity, like dark matter and how Jay's meatballs can taste so damn good. The standard model goes nowhere near as any of that stuff. And so there's definitely gaps in the standard model that we need theories for that we don't have. So those are the kinds of theories. Those are the kinds of breakthroughs worth waiting for. So keep your eye on this one.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Jay's secret ingredient is muons.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Muon balls.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. So, I mean, I wouldn't be surprised if we learned that there was some kind of experimental error, a calculation error, like the sort of the way that they're calculating or measuring the result is off. Because this is tricky.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Because it's happened before.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And it's happened so many times before that that's a good first assumption. And then if this is real, I think it's most likely that we're going to get a tweak to the standard model. But the same model is correct as far as it goes, but it's missing a little piece. And I think the major change in fundamental physics is the least like the outcome here. But of course, that would be the most exciting.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' And it's still possible. And don't forget, this isn't the first experiment. This is a follow up on the Brookhaven experiment from 2001. And this just refined it and made much more refined results, much better results, still pointing to this anomaly. So that's so that's kind of like a second confirmation here.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, that's all exciting, Bob. But I think I may be able to outdo you.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Try.<br />
<br />
=== CRISPRoff <small>(33:45)</small> ===<br />
* [https://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/a-crispr-genetic-on-off-switch/ A CRISPR Genetic On-Off Switch]<ref>[https://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/a-crispr-genetic-on-off-switch/ NeurologicaBlog: A CRISPR Genetic On-Off Switch]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' So we've been talking about CRISPR for a long time now.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' CRISPR.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' CRISPR. So CRISPR was actually discovered when? When do you think that?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Ten years ago.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' 2005?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, five to ten.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It's in the odds.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Ninety three.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Ninety three?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Really? That first paper came out in the early 90s, huh?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Wow.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But we're talking about the technique.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's 14 years before the iPhone.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, but obviously it wasn't being utilized the way it's being utilized.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' No, the birth of the worldwide web.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So in 2013, that's when they figured out how to use the CRISPR-Cas9 system as for gene editing. That's what you guys are thinking of. But really, that was 20 years after the discovery of CRISPR, which is that's how things work in science, right? The basic science is usually some cool application comes decades later. And CRISPR, which stands for.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' We've been through that before.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Repeats! I picked up the Rs. Damn it.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I just memorized a goddamn acronym yesterday. I looked at it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's hard to keep in your head.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I don't want to forget this. I don't want to forget this the next time Steve asks.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But which is which is we had so we had recombinant DNA technology in the 70s, 80s. And then in the 80s, we discovered the zinc fingers. And that was that was the first programmable.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Jay, put my zinc finger.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That was the first programmable sort of genetic modification. But it takes a long time to do. It's expensive. And then in 2011, there was Talon, which was faster and cheaper. And then it got eclipsed by CRISPR in 2013, which is much faster and cheaper. And that's really what revolutionized programmable gene editing, because you have the CRISPR itself, which is a way you can compare that. You can pair that with an RNA targeting sequence. And the CRISPR can find and match that sequence of DNA. So you could say, I want to go to the part of the DNA that has this sequence in it, and the CRISPR will go there. And it can also deliver a payload. The Cas9 is the payload. And what that does is it makes a double it make it cuts both strands of the DNA. And so we can use that to knock in or knock out genes. You know, the knock out means you make it so that the gene doesn't function. Knock in means you're adding a gene that you want to be functional. Knocking out is a lot easier. All you got to do is make that double stranded cut. And then the most common natural repair mechanism called non homologous end joining or NHEJ will put the two ends together, but usually in such a way that the gene no longer functions because it makes some kind of a frame shift where the code gets scrambled. At the at that area where it was cut.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, I never realized that, Steve, because CRISPR does the hard work of cutting. And then it just like walks away and it's like, yeah, yeah, the maid will clean this up.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, let's the cells own repair mechanisms take over. If you want to knock in a gene, however, you have to use the much less common form of cellular repair. That's a lot slower. But this is the homology directed repair HDR. And that, if you do it correctly, can maintain the structure of the gene so that it will still function. That's more complicated to pull off. But with CRISPR, you have targeted a programmable targeted way of either knocking out or knocking in a gene wherever you want in the DNA. Obviously, there could be off target changes. We always talk about that. That's not perfect. Researchers have learned how to sort of dial up and dial down the speed and specificity of CRISPR. So we're sort of really learning. We're still on the steep part of the curve. We're really learning how to control it a lot better. Well, all right. Now comes to well, a pretty significant advance in CRISPR technology, pairing CRISPR with a new payload. This is a single dead Cas9 fusion protein, whatever that means. That's the payload now. And this doesn't cut the DNA. It doesn't change the DNA at all in fact, what it does is methylate the DNA.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yes, methylate, baby.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, it adds methyl groups to the base pairs. And this is a natural mechanism that is used, like an epigenetic change that that can affect transcription. So the methyl groups basically get in the way of the transcriptase enzyme so that it's not able physically to turn that DNA into into a protein.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right. But it's reversible, right?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Into an mRNA and then into a protein. But yeah, but since it doesn't alter the sequence of the DNA, it's reversible because the structure of the gene is intact. So so what does this mean? It means you can use CRISPR with this with the single dead Cas9 fusion protein, which they're calling CRISPR off. You can do that to turn off a gene. I want to turn this gene off, methylate it and turn it off. Now, going into the research, which established that the effectiveness that the CRISPR off works, the assumption was that this would only work in about a third of the genes. Because there's something called canonical CPG islands.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Like dead zones? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The islands.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The canonicals are CGI's and the CGI's are where the methylation happens normally. So they figured, OK, so it's only going to work on the third or so of genes that have these CGI's. But when they did the study, they found that, no, it works on almost every gene. It's not limited. It's not limited to the to the CGI's.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' They got drunk that night.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I don't understand, Steve. Why did they think they would only work on a on a fraction of them? Because previous evidence suggested that this methylation process only works on genes that contain these CGI's. So this is just based on previous research. So this this basically contradicts that previous research, which means that what we thought was true about CGI's isn't true. They're not necessary for methylation to work. And therefore, this methylation CRISPR off technique works on almost all the genes that they tested.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Why almost though? Is there a little holdout of a few percent?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, it's not 100 percent. It doesn't work. They didn't work every single time, but basically on most genes.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' So we can turn off some pretty nasty stuff.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, we'll get to the applications in a moment, but potentially, yes. The other thing they found was they didn't know how long this was going to last. Maybe it would last just in the cell that they did it to. But in the the the descendant cells, if that cell copies itself, the copies would would revert back to the un-methylated, active gene state. And what they found is, no, it persists pretty much as long as they studied it. It's semi-permanent.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Talk about a best case scenario.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Did they do this in somatic and germline cells?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So that I don't know if they did in germline cells.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So when you say that, Steve, it means that they make a change and the change stays forever.<br />
<br />
'''S:'' As long as they've said, as long as they've looked at it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, forever is strong. Because if it is an epigenetic phenomenon, it's very likely that it would go away eventually.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, exactly.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But through are multiple rounds of division it's sticking around.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, exactly.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's cool. That's really cool.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So that makes it really useful, right?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And the truth is, if it does go away, you just do it again.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, but it doesn't go away immediately. It lasts for quite a long time. So this means that you can cause reversible turning off of a gene that it pretty much applies to almost any gene and persists for a long time. And they made CRISPR on to turn the gene back on. So now we have an on off switch.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's awesome.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Is that incredible or what?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. Now my question is, how incredible is this? Why is that? Why are we getting so excited about this? So first of all, for just genetic research-<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Superheroes, hello.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, for genetic research itself, the ability to cheaply, quickly, semi permanently and reversibly turn off and on genes is a huge boon.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Holy grail.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, yeah. This is instead of breeding an animal that knocked out animal and then like having to rear the animal and then do experiments with it. You can just knock out the gene in in a fully function. I mean, that's amazing. Then you can have these perfect control groups right next to them. I mean, everything about this changes the game.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, my God.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' This is rocket fuel for genetics research. And this is why our knowledge of genetics has really been taking off in the last 20, 30, 40 years, because our knowledge of genetics is improving the technology of genetics research. This is a great example of that. So there's a positive feedback loop in genetic research. That's why sequencing a genome today is thousands of times cheaper and faster than it was 30 years ago. It's like computer transistor progress level. It's geometric. It's not linear. So it's absolutely amazing. All right. But what about clinical applications?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Bring it. So let's hear it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, so this has exciting possibilities. But it but this is tangential to it doesn't solve the biggest limiting factor with with clinical applications of CRISPR, which is how do we get the CRISPR into their cells we want to get them into. We still need a vector. So it's this is great if you're doing in-vitro fertilization and you want to alter the genome of the embryo. That's great. Or if you're doing it in a cell line in a Petri dish for research. Fantastic.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Because then you can just inject it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, exactly. And if you want to do it on something in the blood or the bone marrow or something where we can get access to it very easily.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, maybe in your eye or.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, exactly. Vitreous humor of the eye. You can inject it there. We can inject it into your spinal fluid. We can take your blood out, do it to your blood, put your blood back in. We could do the same thing for your bone marrow. So anything like that. But for your liver, like we can't take your liver out, CRISPR it up and put it back in.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right. Your brain.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' We can take it out, though.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' For solid organs, for solid organs, we just don't have a really good way of getting CRISPR to the cells we want to get them to. So that vector problem is still a huge limiting factor on all the exciting clinical applications for this. But we're working on that. But remember, in the 1990s, we were we had a vector problem with with with gene therapy. This is pre CRISPR.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Cause of death.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Retroviruses.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Remember that kid died.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, exactly. We ran into problems there. And it took 20, 25 years to sort of get to the same point, where we were then to sort of to fix these hurdles. So it's really hard to predict like how much of a hurdle this is going to be. We may solve it tomorrow or it may be 30 years now. I'll be like, oh, we're still waiting for that CRISPR, you know.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And the distinction needs to be made between treating a child or an adult who has a genetic disease and preventing genetic disease in an embryo. And that's where a lot of the ethical questions come in.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Because it's much easier to. I mean, not easier. But the vector problem is less of a problem if we're talking about putting it into an embryo.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Totally.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Or putting it into a single fertilized cell.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's not an issue at all. Yeah, that Chinese scientist, Dr. He, I always forget which one of this. I think Dr. He. He did it. He did it right. He's done. So that's not a problem. It's it's getting it into an adult. You know, you have an adult who has a pancreas problem. We want to fix your diabetes in your pancreas. How are we going to get the CRISPR into your pancreatic islet cells? You know, that's what we need to figure out, for example. And that's tricky. And so that's we're still waiting on that. When that breakthrough happens, then then the gloves are off on CRISPR. Then it's incredible.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Because then it reaches every aspect of medicine.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Totally.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Literally. I mean, it revolutionizes drugs.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So, for example, for example, they're already talking about, like, as one potential application, Alzheimer's disease, part of which is overproducing tau protein. Well, we can turn the tau protein off, CRISPR off. No worries. We just need to get the CRISPR to your all your brain cells. I wonder if like if we just put a lot of it in the spinal fluid, if enough of it will get to the surface of the brain to that, it would be if I don't know.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Or maybe it's worth it to open up the skull?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, you can inject it into your, you could just stick a needle through. You just put it into your, you know. So, yeah we'll see. I mean, I wouldn't again, if you're somebody who's slowly degenerating from Alzheimer's disease, that justifies aggressive research. So I wonder how long it will be before we start seeing some research there. But again, we just don't know how well it's going to penetrate, how many of the cells it's going to get to and how clinically effective that's going to be. So there's still years, probably decades of research ahead of us. But this is really exciting potential.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. It's sort of like my concern not to put a wet blanket on it because it's so exciting. And again, it's almost like the way that gravitational waves are revolution. It's a new type of astronomy. This is like a new type of intervention. It's different than drugs. And when you think about drugs as an entire class, all drugs is a type of intervention. I mean, think about how the multitude of drugs that exist and how many lives they've changed.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Powerful tool.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's huge. But the thing that worries me-<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's epigenetic therapy. That's how cool is that?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's so cool. I think the thing that I'm most concerned about when I to temper my excitement a little bit, just so I don't get overly, overly excited, is that much like cancer, there are certain situations in which unless you get them all, they just keep coming back. And my concern would be about treating some sort of genetic, whether you're turning off an expression or you're turning on an expression, if you can't get to all the cells or you can't get to a certain number of the cells, does it just are we just chasing our tail over and over?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So that is clearly going to be an issue disease by disease. But I'll tell you, Cara, I think that just my general medical knowledge that so many things that the negative clinical effects come in when you start to affect 60, 70, 80 percent of the cells.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's so good to hear. It's like a herd immunity.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You lose 70 percent of your kidney function, and then you start to notice kidney disease. There's a lot of reserve built in to so many parts of your body. Like you could lose a lot of your liver and be fine.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Something like Alzheimer's, where it's cumulative. It builds up. The proteins build up over time.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Exactly. So slowing that down would slow down the progression of the disease. And may be so much that because it progresses over decades. If you slow it down so that you're probably going to die of something else before it becomes significant.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And we see that with targeted cancer treatments. Now, when we have a molecular marker on a tumor and we're able to treat with a targeted oral chemotherapy, a pill as opposed to radiation or intense chemotherapy, that's sort of not as targeted. We see people who have metastatic cancer living for decades, certain types, because they're able to keep the tumors at bay. It doesn't mean they go away all the way. But if they can keep them under a certain threshold.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, they're not cured, but they're in remission to the point that that's not what they're going to die from.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, they're just carrying the disease. They're keeping the disease in check.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So a lot of things like when I think of the diseases and what I know about them, most of them would respond very well to this kind of treatment, even though it's partial. It would have a significant effect, even like sickle cell. You don't need to make every single blood cell normal. You just need enough of them to be normal that you don't go into a sickle cell crisis.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, can you imagine like the mental health applications to like expressing more or less of a neurotransmitter? I mean, there's so much cool stuff here.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Imagine how about this? Imagine you get this deployed somehow to every cell in your body. Just waiting, just waiting for you to tweak it, to methylate some genes.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But you have to do that. It's still targeted. You have to tell it what to methylate.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I know. I'm assuming I'm assuming we've we've solved the problem of delivery. And then you have an app, you get an app and you say, I want this. I want to deactivate this gene and soup up this gene. Do you activate that one?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' See, when you go to your techno-optimist place, I get horrified. And I'm like, no, we don't want this. We don't want this.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It is a moment to pause.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Steve, what do you think would be the early applications?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, in research, this is going to be used for research first. Absolutely. Clinical, I think, will be, again, things where CRISPR can target the tissue, like in the blood and whatnot.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And also probably like severe life threatening, like cystic fibrosis, like these very specific types of diseases, right? That's where we're going to see research applications.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' For cancer, what if we can get enough of it into the cancer that it turns off the cancer mutations? You're no longer a cancer cell, you know?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I know. Yeah. I mean, it would be insane. I mean, I just think of all the like, especially all the genetic diseases that we know are a simple switch. It's like my body produces too much of this one single gene. Yeah. Like those are, oh, my God, like phenyl ketoneuria. I don't know if that's single gene, but it's like it's such a specific thing. It's like just I turn this one compound into another compound and that builds up. So if I can just stop doing that or I can't clear a compound or my liver produces too much of something. Like you look at all of those types of applications and it's just like, it's amazing. It's amazing.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It'll be easier for things where we're like for mutations, where you don't produce something, then that would this would not be that would not be as obvious an application. Because this is turning something off, right?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, but they have the on switch now, too.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But that's only to turn back on something they turned off.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Maybe, but I bet you soon we'll figure out how to turn things on that weren't there, because I bet you it's in your DNA.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Not if you have a mutation in a gene and the gene is off, not because it's methylated, it's off because there's a there's a frameshift mutation.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' You're right.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Just to snip it out, but there might be knock it back in.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, now you're talking about knocking in a gene. That's not CRISPR on off. That's right. That's that's Cas9. That's some other application of CRISPR. Just want to keep things in their lane.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Which we already have.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, that's it. They're just different CRISPR applications that we would use in different things. I don't think they would be using this for GMOs, because you want to make permanent genetic changes in a GMO stable GMO line. You don't want to just make epigenetic changes. Although what I said when I was writing about this is like, wouldn't surprise me if they figure out how to make an epigenetic change to make a crop better. And of course, it goes away after a while. So it's like built in patent protection because it's not.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, brilliant.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But they already have that with hybrid seeds, by the way, before you get all anti-corporate. The hybrid seeds can't be you can't breed them again, because that's only for one generation. Do you get that perfect mix of genes? So this would be the similar kind of thing.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But this gives you like a slightly longer lease. I love it.<br />
<br />
=== US Power Half Way to Zero Carbon <small>(54:04)</small> ===<br />
* [https://techxplore.com/news/2021-04-power-sector-halfway-carbon-emissions.html US power sector is halfway to zero carbon emissions]<ref>[https://techxplore.com/news/2021-04-power-sector-halfway-carbon-emissions.html TechXplore: US power sector is halfway to zero carbon emissions]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, Jay, this is I've been reading about this. I'm not really sure if this is good news or not, but apparently our carbon emissions are down. Tell us about that.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' You don't know if it's good news or not?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, go ahead, tell us what's going on and we'll dig into it.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So as climate change becomes more and more of a looming mess around the world, the United States seems to be starting to actually try to get their carbon emissions under control. So so far, 17 states, Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico have enacted laws that will enable reaching the goal of getting to 100 percent carbon free electricity production over the next two decades. Now, two decades puts us into 2040. And a lot of times you'll hear the date 2050 thrown around as the goal. According to this study, that's 10 years before that 2050 date that has just been thrown around for the last few years. So this is really good news. And it's also supported by historical data that shows that it's definitely possible to have significant reductions in carbon emissions. People just have to do things. The Department of Energy released new research outlining how things have progressed in the last two decades. This is actually goes back to 2005. If no measures were put in place to reduce carbon emissions, there would have been an increase from 2400 to 3000 million metric tons from 2005 to 2020. So that's 2400 to 3000 million metric tons. That was the expected increase. The actual emissions reduced to 1450. So they were saying that we were going to go from 2400 to 3000 in those 15 years. And we actually went down to 1450 million metric tons. That's 52 percent below the projected level that we expected to get to. So this reduction in carbon emissions, it's left a significant impact in different ways. And this is all good. First, the number of jobs in electric electrical power production increased by 29 percent. Of course it did, because look at the explosion of solar panels and wind farms and everything over the last decade and a half. They also saw an 18 percent drop in consumer electricity costs, that's also significant where how come people are using less electricity? We have more electronics now than we ever did. This this resulted in an 86 billion dollar savings per year. So these changes were due to a couple of things, better governmental policy and technological advances, like efficiency as a big factor.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' LED lights.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Right. Exactly. So the the total demand for electricity didn't change much between 2005 and 2020. Back in 2005, they predicted that there would have been a 24% increase in electrical demand by the year 2020, but it never happened. So in part, like I said, this was because of more energy efficient products, advancements in technology and improvement in government policy. In 2020 wind and solar generated 13 times more power than they predicted we would be at in 2005. Now, I can give the version of us in 2005 a break because we didn't realize just how fast the technology was actually going to take off, which is an incredibly huge factor in and how much we've we've purchased into or bought into solar and wind technology. But the technologies have just really exploded. And that's why we're using them much more than we ever thought we were going to. Another significant factor in the report about lowering carbon emissions was moving from coal to natural gas. Now, you might ask, what's the big difference? There's a huge difference.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It's a big difference.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Because coal is so much more dirty than natural gas. I mean, it watches all the bad porn, the bad stuff. So natural gas is is just a cleaner fuel. That's it. So it's a better way to go. Because less oil products were being burned, there was a reduction in sulfur and nitrogen compounds. This has been incredible because it led to a decrease in respiratory disease and way more impressive is that there were there was a decrease in premature deaths. It dropped from thirty eight thousand to thirty one hundred per year. That's fantastic. Yeah. So apparently if we stop burning poison and stop putting poison into our atmosphere, people live healthier lives.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' What are you trying to say?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Look, I'm not trying to take a positive here. I'm just reporting. But this was a fantastic report. So wind, solar and battery technology are going to have are going to have a significant role in lowering carbon emissions moving forward, many projects are in the works to help get down to zero carbon emitting power sector. But of course, what it's going to take real legitimate vigilance to make sure that it actually happens. We've talked about this on the show many times, but the infrastructure requirements are going to skyrocket in order for us to support having renewables be supplying the vast majority of our power. And again, having electric cars and everything that we want to do, our entire grid has to change. The grid will have to be able to ensure electricity is delivered. Look at what just happened in Texas. They they didn't spend some money to to winterize their windmills and they got smacked with a massive thing. Lots of people lost their lives. Tons of damage to property and everything because they had a cold spell. We have to be willing to spend the money. We also need to build a new transmission infrastructure. The grid itself has to be redone, re-engineered. And this is no small feat. The way that the grid operates will have to be, it's going to have to be incredibly more efficient. We're going to have to have a new management system for the grid. You know, it has to be able to be operated in a different way than it's operated now. You know, we have ways of passing electricity from from place to place and things like that. But we're really going to have to have the grid be intelligent. It has to have a real intelligence behind it. We have to use more nuclear energy, solar thermal, geothermal energy, longer duration energy storage can be could possibly be achieved by using hydrogen, bioenergy, synthetic fuels. I mean, there's all these different things that we can do to not just collect the energy in better ways, but to store it and to have it be on demand. And these have to be the engineers have to get to work. Because this is going to take a Herculean effort in order to to change the grid as quickly and as seamlessly as possible. The past 15 years have clearly shown us that we are terrible at predicting the future. I think I know a couple of people who are writing a book about how bad people are at predicting the future. So what we do know is that technology and governmental policy are essential in order to make these changes happen. Now, the technology, of course, it's happening. The market is making it happen. The market driven demand is always going to push technology forward. Look at cell phones. In summary the technology presented itself about 15 to 20 years ago. We took it and ran. Things have gone extraordinarily well, particularly in in the United States, because this is the report that I just read. It's going well in a lot of places around the world. But we've just started. This is we're nowhere near where we want to be. We want to get to 100 percent carbon neutral, which is that even possible? I think, of course, it is. But is it likely? Probably not. Not in anybody's reasonable lifetime. But but still, the work has to be done for the next generation.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. Now it's my turn to be a wet blanket. Ready?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Go ahead. Here you go. So we obviously cannot extrapolate into the future. That's what they did in 2005. And they were wrong. And I think that these trends are not going to be easy to sustain because I think that they represent picking a lot of technological, low hanging fruit. For example, a big part of this is replacing coal with natural gas, which was caused by fracking, making natural gas cheaper. That's pretty much it. Not really any plan or policy or anything. It's just well, except for allowing fracking. But there's nothing to replace natural gas with that is the equivalent of replacing coal with natural gas. And once you've done that, all we could do is just further get rid of coal. But then once we have a lot of natural gas, which releases methane and also releases some carbon, it's not going to be as easy to transition away from natural gas as it was to go from coal to natural gas. Also, the nuclear power, the big win in nuclear energy in the last 20 years was that they were able to extend existing nuclear power plants. But that's limited. They're only going to be able to do that for so much longer. In order to keep nuclear at 20 percent of our total generation, they're going to need to build nuclear power plants. And that's not happening. So we just delayed the inevitable with nuclear unless we significantly invest in next generation nuclear technology and renewables. Renewables are increasing wind and solar because they're super cheap, but they get more and more expensive as they get higher and higher percentage of our electricity production because you need more and more overcapacity or you need massive grid storage, which we don't have. So none of these trends that we've seen in the last 15 years are going to continue into the future. We need all new solutions going forward and we don't have them. And that's why I think we cannot just extrapolate. We're going to have to engineer to keep these trends going. We're going to have to build nuclear to get, in fact, expand our nuclear to get off of natural gas, because that's what natural gas can go to. We're going to need to update the grid, put in grid storage and build a lot of renewables. And we're going to need to keep pushing efficiency higher so that we keep demand under control. And then that's not I don't think any that's going to happen automatically. But as you say, it's hard to predict because other technologies might come into play that we're not factoring in now, and that will help. But we can't just count on that. You know what I mean? We need to engineer it.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' What does it say that we've had many of the warmest years and on record over the course of this decrease in emissions?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's not well, it's just we're still putting carbon into the atmosphere.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' You know, we've also got more people.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We've just putting less. There's just less more carbon in the atmosphere than we thought we were going to have.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And remember, it accumulates of and it's not like it goes in and then it goes out. Every time we add carbon, it's accumulating because the oceans can't sink at all. The forest can't sink at all.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I suppose my point is that even despite these better habits that we seem to be getting into in some ways, it's still not having the impact on the environment that we need it to have.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Evan, to put it into perspective, if we had zero carbon emissions starting today, temperatures are still going to rise for decades from the carbon we've already put into the atmosphere.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Right.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Right?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And so we have to be coming up with efforts that actually actively reduce. When Jay said like, yeah, like Jay's like, I'm a bit cynical that we're going to get to carbon neutral. We need to actually be carbon negative.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, of course.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's the only way this is actually going to level out.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But I'll take carbon neutral over putting more carbon.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Me too, me too.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, well, sure. Yeah, you want to slow it. Yeah.<br />
<br />
=== Sea Meadows Carbon Sink <small>(1:05:39)</small> ===<br />
* [https://www.reuters.com/article/us-climate-change-seagrass/shrinking-sea-meadows-store-more-carbon-than-forests-scientists-are-racing-to-track-whats-left-idUSKBN2BV0MV Shrinking sea meadows store more carbon than forests. Scientists are racing to track what’s left]<ref>[https://www.reuters.com/article/us-climate-change-seagrass/shrinking-sea-meadows-store-more-carbon-than-forests-scientists-are-racing-to-track-whats-left-idUSKBN2BV0MV publication: Shrinking sea meadows store more carbon than forests. Scientists are racing to track what’s left]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. And Cara, you have a quick sort of related news item about talking about carbon sinks, right? Because carbon carbon needs a place to go. And we think about trees and whatnot. But the ocean's a big carbon sink, too.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. So we know that the water itself is a carbon sink and we'll kind of get into that. But there's one aspect of the ocean that I don't think we often talk about, and that is seagrasses. Seagrasses are everywhere. They're on six of the or they're around six of the seven continents. And they make up these basically sea meadows or these sea forests. And the interesting thing is that seagrasses are enormous carbon sinks. They can store more than twice as much carbon per square mile as land forests do. And globally, their roots are thought to trap over 10% of the carbon that's buried in ocean sediment every year. Seagrasses also buffer against ocean acidification. We know that this destroys the calcium carbonate shells of a lot of species, including coral. And that's a huge and devastating result of carbon being sunk into the ocean, because obviously, once it is added to water H2O, it forms carbonic acid. So the oceans actually acidifies. The pH gets lower. And so they buffer against that. There is a study in 2021, just this year, that showed that along the California coast, seagrasses could potentially reduce local acidity by up to 30 percent across extended periods. And they also help with other things. They can help clean water. They can help support fisheries produce nurseries, protect coast from erosion, even trap microplastics. And they're literally everywhere. The problem is, when it comes to seagrasses, we have really limited data. There are huge holes in the data. Like when you look at maps, there are just whole areas that have never been mapped. So we really don't know how much seagrass we have on the planet. Really old estimates that are also incomplete say that maybe 300,000 square kilometers, so that translates to 115,000 square miles of seagrasses exist. Again, I mentioned six of the seven continents not including Antarctica. So it's about an area the size of Italy, if you were to add that together. But there could be much more that we haven't discovered. But here's the sad part. Human activity like pollution from mining, damage from fisheries, dredging, acidification, like I mentioned before, it destroys the equivalent of a soccer field of seagrasses every 30 minutes around the world.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh my gosh.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. According to the UN environmental program. And so here, here's an example. If we look at the last century, so the last hundred years in the UK, 92% of seagrasses disappeared and estimates show that if they were still here, 400 million fish could be supported and 11.5 million tons of carbon would have been captured. That's the same as 3% of their total emissions within the year. It's thought that seagrass meadows are being lost at a rate of 7% per year globally. And again, this is based on incomplete data. It could potentially be worse. So this is an example of a mitigation effort, a neutralization, maybe even a negativization. Yes, I made up that word effort that we have right in our backyard, but because of human activity, the same activity that's causing the climate crisis to begin with, we're also losing the very organisms that could help us buffer against our activity. And so A, we need to recognize this B we need to enact legislation and work very hard to protect the seagrasses that we have left. We spend a lot of time thinking and talking about the Amazon rainforest, which is fundamentally important to biodiversity. And it's fundamentally important to carbon sequestration. And of course, we're destroying it with gold mining, among other things, habitat loss, et cetera, et cetera. We can't also ignore these forests that exist within our oceans that are even potentially better at sequestering carbon. We can't let them fall by the wayside because they are not technologies we have to develop. They're already here. And so we need to protect them.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' One more thing to worry about.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But also one more thing that if we do it the right way, it could be a boon.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's true. Every problem is something that can be fixed that could make it better.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And the cool thing is if we, yeah, if we fix this problem, not only is the problem of the seagrasses going away fixed, but it also contributes to correcting some of the wrongs of climate change.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. All right.<br />
<br />
=== Pharoah's Curse <small>(1:10:14)</small> ===<br />
* [https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/myth-pharaoh-s-curse-dismissed-egypt-prepares-ancient-mummies-parade-n1262959 Myth of 'pharaoh's curse' dismissed as Egypt parades ancient mummies]<ref>[https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/myth-pharaoh-s-curse-dismissed-egypt-prepares-ancient-mummies-parade-n1262959 NBC News: Myth of 'pharaoh's curse' dismissed as Egypt parades ancient mummies]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' Evan, you brought this up to me, this next news item, and you said, you don't think we've ever talked about this on the show. And I, yeah, I don't remember that we have. Have we ever talked about the pharaoh's curse?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Good question. And I couldn't think of a time that we did, Bob, Jay?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, I'm already scared.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' You should be scared. Well, when the documentary titled Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy hit the silver screen in 1955, it brought up more questions than answers. Questions like what exactly is the pharaoh's curse and can the dead become animated? And did they really turn the tomb into a nightclub at the end of that movie? Well, we're going to put, so thank goodness we are now discussing this. We're going to put this long dry spell to rest and we can give thanks to recent news developments. Earlier this month in April, 22 mummies were transported from the Egyptian Museum in Tahir Square to their new home, the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization. And this was an elaborate royal procession. I don't know if you guys saw any video of them moving these mummies, but this thing was, well, they, they dubbed it the Golden Parade and it was elaborate to say the least. Spotlights everywhere, honor guards on horseback.There was a philharmonic orchestra to greet the royal remains as it arrived. The president of Egypt was performing the ceremonial duties and okay, it was, it's designed to spark and rekindle interest in Egypt's rich collections of antiquities. And certainly their tourism has almost entirely stalled because of what's happened with the coronavirus pandemic. So time to get people interested again and what better way than make a big celebration out of it. But moving the mummies is not without peril. Now I'm not talking about the physical remains or the sarcophagi in which they were contained, which is actually an interesting process. They, they put them into oxygen-free nitrogen-filled capsules on trucks with special shock absorbers to limit any damaging effects of actually transporting them and risking, and risk of humidity contamination or bacteria and insects and other things. So they really did a good job of keeping these things protected. But the ceremony has reignited talk of the Pharaoh's Curse. This curse is legendary. It is omnipresent and very much alive, even in the age of social media. For example, remember the ship that clogged up the Suez Canal for a week?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, how could we not?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Just a couple of weeks ago, social media says, hey, this is part of the Pharaoh's Curse. And you can see all kinds of tweets and other things about people speculating that, yep, because they were getting ready to have this big ceremony and moving the mummies around, Pharaoh's Curse comes up again. Oh, also there was a tragic, a train crash occurred in the country and it killed a lot of people. This was just a few weeks ago. And what did they attribute that to? Yep, the Pharaoh's Curse. And a recent building collapse in central Cairo. There it is, the curse again, all in anticipation of these mummies being disturbed. So there was a lot of news surrounding it and about the Pharaoh's Curse as well. Now, NBC News, and I looked at a whole bunch of other news organizations, they all reached out to this gentleman. He seems to be the prominent Egyptian archaeologist, Zahi Hawass, former minister of state for antiquities affairs for Egypt. Dr. Hawass, who's an expert, has declared there's no Pharaoh's Curse. Okay. Well, that's a relief, but all right, what is the Pharaoh's Curse? And since we haven't talked about it, I'll go into it a little bit. Now, it's sometimes called King Tut's Curse, which maybe we've heard in, at some point, maybe in a Bugs Bunny cartoon a long time ago. King Tutankhamun's tomb was discovered in Egypt's Valley of the Kings back in late 1922. Wow, we're coming up on a hundred years. Time goes by quickly. But that incredible and historic discovery with it came a dreaded curse, which befell all those who dared disrupt the ancient kings buried over 3,000 years prior. So say it the legends and therefore it must be true, right? Now, is there any evidence though to back up the claims of a dreaded curse that lay upon all those involved in the discovery? Well, there is. First of all, they're all dead. So explain that. You can't. No, there are actually stories that helped develop the curse myth. This is back in 1923 in the following few years. So in the 1920s, this all sort of gelled together. We're familiar with the name Howard Carter? I would hope. He's the one most heavily credited with the discovery of King Tut's tomb.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, wow. Cool.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yep. Yep. So there's him, but he's not one of the, although eventually they attributed the curse to his death, which took place like 16 years later. But in any case, Carter had partners and a lot of people who obviously helped in the effort among them was, oh boy, George Edward, Stan Hope, Monteux Herbert, the fifth Earl of Carnarvon. Oh yeah, that's a mouthful. Now he, this guy was a British aristocrat as if I needed to explain that, but he had a more than passing interest in Egyptology. He was actually quite essential in making sure that this happened. Probably wouldn't have been possible without his backing. Now the Earl died on March 25th, 1923. This is very shortly after the discovery was made public. So how do we explain that? Must've been the curse, right? Well, he actually died from a mosquito carried disease, as did lots of people around the world at that time in history, but the Earl's half brother, Colonel Aubrey Herbert, who also entered the tomb at one point. Well, he died, died a few months after the Earl and towards, so how do you explain that one? Well, towards the end of Herbert's life, he became totally blind and he received some very bad medical advice, which persuaded him to have all of his teeth extracted to help restore his sight.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' What?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, so maybe he died as a result of infection from tooth removal?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I just, I find it hard that anyone would believe that.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That was a really common treatment for mental illness too. I mean, not common common, but yeah, it happened in asylums a lot.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It's horrific. Also led to a lot of health problems and death, obviously for people. There are, I won't bore you, but there are plenty of others. And in, within a few years, there were no fewer than nine people whom they associated either directly or through affiliations with the discovery of the tomb, who what they say is either died under mysterious circumstances or led to some sort of premature death. You have to understand, you can't underestimate what people will believe in any given age or time. I mean, a Pharaoh's curse, we think about it today. It has almost a cartoonish sort of feel to it. Who really even talks about the Pharaoh's curse anymore, but actually people do, they are out there and they are passing along that information and then at that level of belief. And it's not that strange because you still have people who believe in things like astrology and demonic possession and ghosts and lucky charms and superstitions and all sorts of things. So there's that on that background, maybe though, more importantly, number two, to give it in the proper context, the 1920s, this was a time where spirituality, seances and interest in the occult and paranormal were on the rise in a lot of Western societies and Britain in particular, which was just coming out of the horrors of World War I. The journalism at the time was sensational. Certainly there were false reports that started to emerge from the tomb. And of course that sold newspapers. So they ran with it. There was reasons to believe that there were booby traps on the tombs themselves, that they were poisoned and anyone who got near there was actually becoming poisoned or received some sort of microscopic infection. And this was all properly planned out by the Egyptians or the people who put them in the tombs from years ago, a trap waiting to go off. But obviously none of that bore any fruit or turned out to be truthful at all. Now, Carter himself, Howard Carter himself might bear some responsibility about the curse and its prevalence. Because he would remind people that curses were through both ceremonies and rituals and written warnings upon the tombs, the sarcophagi themselves, that these curses were in place. But there was a practical reason for that 3000 years ago, as it was in Carter's time when he made the discovery. And that was to what? Prevent looting, grave robbing. You had to concoct stories to get people to stop going in there to take these artefacts and things. So there's sort of this practical reason as to why you would want there to be a curse. But obviously people will take that to various degrees of seriousness. And then finally, when they've looked into it to declare that any significant number of people associated with discovery died prematurely or through mysterious means, it's nonsense. The numbers do not bear it out. It has been studied. In fact, one particular study in the 1930s, I believe, showed that they tracked 58 people who were present when the tomb and the sarcophagus were open. They tracked them over the course of their lives. And only eight had died within a dozen years. And statistically speaking, for the time that was right on par for the course, in fact, even a little bit better than average for what people were expected to live without the need for calling into effect a curse to make that explanation. So the curse of the pharaoh or the pharaoh's curse alive and well and still comes up any time you talk about mummies and these sorts of artefacts. And amazing to think that 100 years later, it's still prevalent.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, it's one of those just iconic things that's never going to go away.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Never.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The pharaoh's curse. And of course, there's a lot of cognitive bias behind it. The pattern recognition look, bad things happened. Like bad things don't happen. We don't need a pharaoh's curse to make bad things happen. That's just life.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right. But we also we approach this from like a purely kind of secular scientific perspective. And of course, there are probably a fair amount of people who for whom spirituality and religion is like fundamental to their worldview. So it probably doesn't seem quite as bananas to them. It's so imbued in culture and society. They've been hearing it from the time they were born.<br />
<br />
== Who's That Noisy? <small>(1:21:15)</small> ==<br />
* Answer to last week’s Noisy: _brief_description_perhaps_with_link_<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, Jay, it's Who's That Noisy time.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' All right, guys, last week, I played this Noisy.<br />
<br />
[_short_vague_description_of_Noisy]<br />
<br />
Pretty cool, huh?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I love it.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' You guys have had any idea?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, gosh, I mean, it's a it's not. I don't think it's Orson Welles.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It's a dog making weird noises.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Wouldn't that be crazy? It's like a parrot. It's a parrot reading a news.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It's definitely it's from a time, a time that you get right. It's like from what what decades would you say this could possibly be?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Forties.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's the radio?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yes. Totally got that old school radio.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Totally.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' All right. Well, we have some guesses. We haven't heard from Visto Tutti recently, and here's his guess. He says "This one is confusing. Had me analysing for ages. The recording may be old, but not as old as it seems. The musical theme is late 1960s, but the audio is artificially made to sound like the 40s. The actor affects a slight British tone in places, but inconsistently. So not natural. So I roll the dice. He's saying that it was Kolchak, the Night Stalker from 1974."<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I love that show.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Wow.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, pretty, pretty cool guess. Not correct. But I do like the effort that you put into it. So you are still a warrior as far as I'm concerned. Michael Blaney wrote in and said, "Hi, Jay, it really sounds like the Twilight Zone, but with a skeptical twist, which is neat. The kind of show where there's some one on the wing." This is what he wrote. Something, remember? No? "If I had a hazard a guess, I'd say it's Rod Serling recording that never made it to the air, because sadly, no one wanted to see a skeptical version of the Twilight Zone." That is also incorrect, but a very fun guess. I have another guess. And this one happens to be the winner. Check this out. Michael Collier wrote in and said, "Hi, Jay, this week's noisy is a liar bird repeating an old recording from the Batman Mystery Club."<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I just said, is it a bird?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It has nothing to do with the bird. He was just joking when he said that, because liar birds can mimic anything. So the answer is this is a recording from a radio show that never made it to the air called the Batman Mystery Club.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Cool.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So I will now defer to the person who sent this in. Octavio wrote in and said, "Back in the 1950s, there was an attempt to make a Batman radio show as a spinoff of The Adventures of Superman from the old radio show website article in 1950, an audition program was recorded, the Batman Mystery Club. Although Batman and Robin were featured in the program, it had little to do with the characters fans had come to know and was never broadcast." So that's really cool. Very interesting idea that they made a skeptical Batman and Robin Mystery Club radio show back then. You know, when I heard that voice, I'm like, oh, my God, this is really just it's so perfectly old school radio, and I just wanted everyone to hear it. So thank you, Octavio, for sending that in. Thanks, everyone, for your guesses.<br />
<br />
=== New Noisy <small>(1:24:26)</small> ===<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I do have a new Noisy. This Noisy was sent in by a listener named William Gru Mullins, and check this one out.<br />
<br />
[_short_vague_description_of_Noisy]<br />
<br />
It's got a long tail on there. So please be specific when you send in answers for this, because if you say that it's like a loud noise, that's not going to actually do anything for you. You can email me in at WTN@theskepticsguide.org. So I did see on Reddit that someone was asking like where they should submit emails to me, can you do an attachment? What's the ideal everything? So let me just give you the quick Who's That Noisy cheat sheet. One, email me at WTN@theskepticsguide.org. If you send it anywhere else, you have a very small chance that I'm going to actually use it, because I just go through my email at the appropriate time when I'm preparing the segment. Number two, you can absolutely send an attachment when you send an email to me to that email address. Number three, if you want to be nice, you could convert whatever it is into a WAV file for me, but you don't have to do it. I've never asked anyone to really even do that before. But if you want to, you can. That is the ideal state in which I prepare these. But someone on Reddit was asking. So there are all the answers. Please do send me in any cool noises you heard this week. And again, that's WTN@theskepticsguide.org.<br />
<br />
== NECSS <small>(1:26:06)</small> ==<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, so, guys, we have NECSS coming up. And to help us talk about NECSS is the MC, George Hrab. George, how you doing, man?<br />
<br />
'''G:''' Hi. Oh, I'm the MC. I'm the MC. That's right. Oh, my goodness. So exciting. How's everybody?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Good, man.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Hi George.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So we have a couple of things to talk about. I know we've been mentioning like a save the date for NECSS, but we have some actual updates. But George is going to start. We're actually going to solicit some things from our audience for the conference. George, tell them about it.<br />
<br />
'''G:''' Yeah. So we were like thinking of doing something. We always do something on the night before NECSS. We always do the Friday night. There's like a preview thing. And even when and when we're in the virtual world, we still wanted to do a preview. Last year, we had a game show and some fun stuff. And this year, we're going to have a special keynote. But in addition to having a special keynote, we thought, wouldn't it be interesting? Wouldn't it be cool to get all of you out there involved and not you five on the SGU, but you out there listening, you with the headphones on right now? Maybe we can get you all involved. And we had this thought of over the last year. We've all been locked away. We've been in our homes. We've been we've been quarantined. And we're we're sure that some of you have come up with some interesting things over this time period, some interesting problem solvers, maybe an invention, maybe some kind of a art project, maybe some kind of a something that you finally had time to work on that thing you always wanted to work on. And you did it. Maybe you solved some problem that was happening in your garden. Maybe you designed some kind of rocket ship that could take you in safely to the grocery store to get jello, whatever you may have invented. We want to hear about it. And we're going to hear about it from you folks. And then we're going to feature the ones that we think are the most interesting and maybe the most sort of special. So basically Friday night, we're going to have a feature of cool stuff that you all out there in the wonderful SGU audience have invented. And the way you can get and be a part of this is sending us a video. Send us a two minute long video showing your invention, your fix, your your something that you cobbled together to make work better. Maybe that symphony that you wrote, maybe that that mural that you worked on in your kitchen or whatever it may be. Send us a two minute video. You can upload it to [NECSS.org/pandemicprojects]. And we're going to pick a bunch of you. And the coolest ones will feature on the Friday night pre-NECSS show. And we'll have you on live as well. And we'll chat with you. Won't that be fun? Guys, I am so excited for this.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, it could be a lot of fun. So what cool thing did you do during the pandemic that you otherwise would not have been able to do?<br />
<br />
'''G:''' Yeah, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And it could be anything.<br />
<br />
'''G:''' It could be anything.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' George, I figured out how to gain a lot of weight.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Same.<br />
<br />
'''G:''' The how to efficiently make cookies is pretty much what I was doing for last year.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' And consume them.<br />
<br />
'''G:''' And consume them. Right. Without even chewing. It's like a duck. I just sort of. Yeah. Entire tubes of cookies.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I've been doing a longitudinal study in binge watching. It's coming very well. I have all my data gathered.<br />
<br />
'''G:''' OK, OK.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So wait, are these things supposed to be solutions to problems?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' No, it could be anything.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It could be whimsical. They could be whimsical.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Think of it as your pandemic magnum opus. What's the coolest thing you created in the past?<br />
<br />
'''G:''' That's really good.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' And listen up. So we have speakers that I'm going to announce now. So we have Lena Tripathi, Dr. Robert Levy, George Church, Pete Echols. We're going to have someone from NASA come talk to us. And we have quite a few others coming. And on top of that, we have Paul Offit and Kevin Folta are going to be joining us. We're really excited. And on top of that, we are upgrading the technology. That's all I'm going to say. It's going to be cooler than last year.<br />
<br />
'''G:''' How could it be cooler than last year? How is it even possible? How is it even possible!?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Ian and I didn't stop trying to improve it after after NECSS 2020. We kept talking about it and we kept coming up.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That was our pandemic challenge.<br />
<br />
'''G:''' Yes, I hear you. Oh, cool. That'll be meta<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We are looking for one particular speaker that we want our listeners help with. If anyone out there in SGU-<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Can kidnap him?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' -listening to this. No, but what we what we do need to either it could be you or you might know somebody who works for Boston Dynamics. We need an inside contact because we want somebody from Boston Dynamics to give us a presentation at NECSS. And it's kind of a hard nut to crack into without having knowing somebody or knowing somebody who knows somebody. So we're just we've decided to reach out to to our audience. This is really the last piece to the NECSS puzzle that we need to put into place. Everything else really is shaping up great.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' And Steve, you know what? We never announced we actually have a title for NECSS 2021. It's called The Future Has Landed. That is our theme. The science and technology of today, that's amazing. That's what the whole conference is going to be about. We know you're going to love it. I'm super excited. I don't think I've ever been more excited for a NECSS conference than this one. So please join us. Go to [https://necss.org/about/ NECSS.org] and NECSS.org and register today.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. And the conference is August 6th and 7th. It's Friday and Saturday, August 6th and 7th. All right. Well, George, thanks for popping on the show to to help us talk about NECSS.<br />
<br />
'''G:''' Oh, you know me. I'll always pop on to whatever I can.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, we do know that about you.<br />
<br />
'''G:''' Thanks guys.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. Take care, George.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Thanks, George. See you.<br />
<br />
== Name that Logical Fallacy <small>(1:31:49)</small> ==<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. We're going to do one Name That Logical Fallacy. This one comes from Alec, who writes, "I've listened to your podcast for a while now and love it. I got a question about a potential logical fallacy that I can't quite pinpoint. Living in Maryland, there are often discussions around the murder rate in Baltimore. Because of this, people will inevitably criticize any non-murder related legislative political actions for not addressing the murder problem. While this may be a valid way to criticize the city council's priorities, I don't believe it is a logical way to criticize the individual pieces of legislation as they were never designed to address the murder problem. Aside from this, the city council is certainly capable of addressing multiple issues at once. A current example of this is a proposal to add speed cameras along a major highway that enters the city. Personally, I've seen a few people criticize the proposal itself and said most people criticize it for not addressing the murder problem. This feels like a logical fallacy to me, but I'm not sure. Specifically, it makes me think of a false dichotomy. But again, I'm not confident in this assessment. Could you provide some insight?" So what do you guys think about this kind of fallacy?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's a straw man. No?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' You can chew gum and walk at the same time.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, see, I was reading it as it's not fair to criticize a piece of legislation that was never designed to solve that problem anyway. That would be a straw man argument.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, but they're saying that's part of it. Again, these are informal logical fallacies. They all blend into each other. But he's focusing on the fact that it's not just that you're criticizing it for not doing something it wasn't designed in the first place. You're criticizing it because it's not addressing this more important problem. So nothing is valuable unless it's fixing the murder problem in Baltimore. But of course, this could apply to a lot of things. It's like, why are we sending people to the moon when there are hungry people?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Is that moving the goalpost? No. Which one is that?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' No, no.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Which one is that?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I'm just blanking. I know exactly what this is.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I wrote an article about this fallacy because it often gets applied to skeptics like why are you debunking Bigfoot? Aren't there more important things to do out there? So this is called the fallacy of relative privation. That's the name of the fallacy, relative privation. And because there's always something more important that you could point to out there. And again, where it gets tricky is when you're applying it to an individual person or group or specific bill or whatever. It's one thing to say that as a society, we need to have our priorities and we need to decide where we're going to put our resources. But if you're saying like, why are you doing this? Aren't there more important things to do? It's you know, it is a fallacy. It's ridiculous. So everybody should be trying to cure childhood cancer. Nobody should be doing anything until we decide what the one most important problem is in the world. And we all should focus on fixing that before we move on to the next thing. There's a lot of reasons why you might choose to do other things like opportunities, talent, skill-<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Desire.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' -desire. Yeah, it's all fine. And because something is not as important as something else doesn't mean it's not important. As Evan was getting close to it with the the false choice thing, there's a yes, we can walk and chew gum at the same time. We can fix more than one thing or address more than one issue at the same time. But it's often just a lazy way of criticizing something that you may not like for other reasons to say, well, there are more important things that you should be spending your time on. Or that we should be spending our resources on or whatever. And it's like, yeah, we could do multiple things. And they just if it's valuable, it's valuable. If it's a good idea, it's a good idea. It doesn't matter that there are that there are relatively more important things out there. And then importance can often be subjective, not absolute. And again, there are other criteria that might determine where it's best to put your efforts. So relative privation. Another manifestation of this might be, Cara, I think you'll appreciate this, is that like, oh, why are you worried about this form of racism or sexism? We're not hanging people anymore. Yeah, it's like there are the like systematic discrimination is gone now. So you're complaining about smaller and smaller problems. It's like, yeah, but that doesn't mean these aren't real problems. Just because they were just because there were worse problems in the past.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, or I should even say just sometimes more obvious problems.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, whatever. But even if there were like, yes, yes, yes. Slavery was worse than whatever we have today. Yes, absolutely. But just because we're not fighting slavery anymore doesn't mean that there's nothing worth fighting today, right?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And it's the same with, I think, a lot of social progress is that, yeah, it will we will focus on relatively smaller and smaller problems. That's a marker of progress. It doesn't mean they're not worth addressing just because they were even worse problems in the past. That's a relative privation fallacy as well. All right. Let's move on with science or fiction.<br />
<br />
== Science or Fiction <small>(1:36:54)</small> ==<br />
{{SOFinfo<br />
|item1 = A review of data from 2020 finds that death by suicide fell by 6% in the US, with similar numbers in other developed nations.<br />
|link1 = <ref>[https://www.voanews.com/covid-19-pandemic/us-suicides-dropped-last-year-defying-pandemic-expectations]</ref><br />
<br />
|item2 = The Princeton Plasma Physics Lab has developed a room temperature plasma for consumers that can kill 99.99% of bacteria on surfaces.<br />
|link2 = <ref>[ https://www.pppl.gov/news/2021/04/plasma-device-designed-consumers-can-quickly-disinfect-surfaces]</ref><br />
<br />
|item3 = A recent fMRI study of the brains of violent criminal psychopaths and healthy controls could find no significant difference in brain function.<br />
|link3 = <ref>[https://www.utu.fi/en/news/press-release/new-study-reveals-brain-basis-of-psychopathy]</ref><br />
<br />
|}}<br />
{{SOFResults<br />
|fiction = brains of violent criminals<!-- short word or phrase representing the item --><br />
|fiction2 = <!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
<br />
|science1 = death by suicide fall <!-- short word or phrase representing the item --><br />
|science2 = room temperature plasma <!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
|science3 = <!-- leave blank if absent --> <br />
<br />
|rogue1 =Evan <!-- rogues in order of response --><br />
|answer1 =brains of violent criminals <!-- item guessed, using word or phrase from above --><br />
<br />
|rogue2 =Cara<br />
|answer2 =brains of violent criminals<br />
<br />
|rogue3 =Bob<br />
|answer3 =brains of violent criminals<br />
<br />
|rogue4 =Jay <!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
|answer4 =brains of violent criminals <!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
<br />
|rogue5 = <!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
|answer5 = <!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
<br />
|host = <!-- asker of the questions --><br />
<!-- for the result options below, <br />
only put a 'y' next to one. --><br />
|sweep = <!-- all the Rogues guessed wrong --><br />
|clever = <!-- each item was guessed (Steve's preferred result) --><br />
|win = <!-- at least one Rogue guessed wrong, but not them all --><br />
|swept = <!-- all the Rogues guessed right --><br />
}}<br />
''Voiceover: It's time for Science or Fiction.''<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Each week, I come up with three science news items or facts, two real and one fake. And then I challenge my panel of skeptics to tell me which one is fake. Just three news items this week. No theme. Is everyone ready?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Let's do it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. Here we go. Item number one, a review of data from 2020 finds that death by suicide fell by six percent in the U.S. with similar numbers in other developed nations. Item number two, the Princeton Plasma Physics Lab has developed a room temperature plasma for consumers that kill ninety nine point nine nine percent of bacteria on surfaces. And on number three, a recent FMRI study of the brains of violent criminal psychopaths and healthy controls could find no significant difference in brain function. Evan, go first.<br />
<br />
=== Evan's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''E:''' 2020 death by suicide fell six percent in the U.S. OK. I mean, we're talking about the year of coronavirus, obviously, and a lot of mental health issues that came hand in hand with that. So this would run perhaps counterintuitive to that. But that doesn't necessarily mean that that that is what actually happened. Suicide may have fallen because other parts of society, as the coronavirus shut it down, meant that people weren't, say, being bullied as much because of the lack of social interaction and other things that lead to suicide. So perhaps that one's right. Then this the next one, Princeton Plasma Physics Lab, a room temperature plasma killing ninety nine point nine nine percent of bacteria on surfaces. Room temperature plasma. I bet you Bob will have some interesting things to perhaps say about that. And then the last one, the FMRI study of the brains of violent criminal psychopaths. Ouch. And healthy controls could find no significant difference in brain function, no significant differences, I suppose, in any aspect of brain functions is how I'm interpreting this. I'll go with the fMRI study. They must have been able to detect some perhaps some significant difference in brain function. It just seems too broad how it's worded here. So I have a feeling that somewhere in there, there's the truth. So that one's fiction.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' OK, Cara.<br />
<br />
=== Cara's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I absolutely agree with Evan. I've seen too many studies that show the difference. So, yeah, maybe one study showed it. I mean, that's the hardest thing when you word them this way. A recent fMRI study of what? Like three people? Sure. Any study is going to show no no difference or a significant difference. It's when you actually look at all of the literature together. So it kind of is like, I don't know, that's a red flag to me. But absolutely, psychopathy is characteristic. Absolutely. I think plasma plasma is like a gas, right? Or not quite a gas, but like a liquidy gas, which I did think was supposed to be hot. But maybe there's like a super concentrated gas or something as a plasma. Yeah, why not? I mean, we can kill stuff with light or with certain UV measurements. And yeah, I have a feeling that we're going to see, sadly, a really big spike in suicides in 2021 as as things start to go back to "normal". I actually wouldn't be surprised if there were fewer suicides during lockdown, but that the rate would actually go up and maybe even go up past what we're used to seeing this year and next year, which bums me out. But I think that that's that's what the data probably will bear out. So, yeah, I'm going to go with Evan. I just there's just so much evidence to show that their brains are different.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' OK. And Bob.<br />
<br />
=== Bob's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Death by suicide fell by six. I thought I thought I read somewhere that it went up in 2020 and it just didn't make any sense. Or maybe it was maybe that was just murders. I don't know. Something went up. Let's look at the plasma plasma is basically atoms that have been ripped apart, like charged particles free, electrons and and other particles and and protons. So, yeah, that's like the most common matter in all of the universe. Stars are made out of plasma. But yeah, cool plasma. I think, yeah, I think that trying to. So, yes, it seems counterintuitive. How could something that could rip apart atoms be kind of room temperature? But I think that can be done trying to think of specifically how they would do that. But so I think that that is possible. It's meant to throw us off. So, yeah no fMRI. I mean, that could at first blush. It seems kind of like like a coarse kind of way to observe the brain doesn't necessarily can show psychopathic brains. But I think Cara and Evan kind of swayed me in this direction. I'll do a GW EC. So I'll say fMRI is fiction as well.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And Jay.<br />
<br />
=== Jay's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah. So quickly going through these the death by suicide fell by six percent. I'm curious to know if that's true. Like, what would be the reason? You know, I'm just thinking very even though the pandemic has been really stressful, people have been a lot less stressed out about their work situation. So, yeah, I don't know. That's interesting. I mean, I would tend to think that the less time people are actually physically at work, the happier they are. So that's probably true. The plasma one sounds really cool. I'd like to know exactly how it's used. Like, what do they do with it? You know, if it's for consumers, like, what do you just leave it? I don't know. What do you do with it? Do you rub it on your hands, rub it around? What do you do?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Spray it on stuff.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' You spray plasma on stuff. OK, but just don't drink it. That's interesting. I'd like to know what it is that makes it antibacterial. And then this last one. I mean, I would tend to think that there would be a very significant difference between violent criminals and people who aren't violent criminals, at least something that would be detectable.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Not just violent, psychopathic.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, psychopathic violent criminals like that. An fMRI, you'd think if there's ever an instrument that we would be able to measure that it would be that one. So out of the three, that's the one that definitely stands out to me. So I will say that one is the fiction.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #2 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. So you guys are all in agreement. So let's start with number two here. The Princeton Plasma Physics Lab has developed a room temperature plasma for consumers that killed 99.99% of bacteria on surfaces. You all think this one is science and this one is science.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Cool.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That sounds awesome. Is it expensive?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Didn't say anything about price. This is just sort of a proof of concept kind of study. They also say if you combine it with hydrogen peroxide, it kills 99.9999% of bacteria.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, but you could also just wipe things down.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. Well, it's not going to kill. If you just wipe things down with like water, you're just going to move it around. You're not going to kill all the bacteria.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No but like bleach. We have bleach.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Lysol.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Lyson will do it. Yeah, Lysol will do it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But yeah, it's like you can already just spray a can of Lysol on stuff.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, but plasma.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' This is plasma. Lysol plasma.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Why do the plasma route, Steve? Did they say like why they invented it?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, I think they're just trying to come up with another consumer product. That will do the same thing. This is a, it's room temperature and normal atmospheric pressure. They still are good. They haven't tested it for viruses yet, but they suspect it will also be affected for viruses. Obviously, that would be a nice thing to have during a pandemic, a viral pandemic.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #3 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But all right, let's go to number three. A recent fMRI study of the brains of violent criminal psychopaths and healthy controls could find no significant difference in brain function. You guys all think this one is the fiction. So clearly there are differences. I mean, there's no one could reasonably argue that there isn't a difference. It's a personality disorder. The question is, is it a difference that could be imaged on fMRI scan?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, it has before.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And specifically with the paradigm that they used in this study [inaudible].<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right. I mean-<br />
<br />
'''S:''' -looking for that's the question.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And that's a shot in the dark. Maybe, maybe not.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So this one is the fiction.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' OK.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Nice.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yes, yes, yes, yes.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. For the reasons that you said. So what the study found was really big differences. So they looked at anatomically and with fMRI scan. They did regular MRI and they did fMRI. And they found that they watched. Yeah. They watched videos of violent bad things happening. Their emotional centers did not get activated in the same way that healthy controls did.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That makes sense.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' On fMRI. Yeah, it makes perfect sense. This study also found differences in well functioning individuals who have personality traits associated with psychopathy. So even if you're not a violent criminal, but you had you like score high on the psychopath test, you still will have differences in your brain. And so to clarify what they found. So it was the control of the emotional areas that was compromised. So their emotional reaction was actually higher because they lacked the the brain regions that would moderate and control the emotional.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So they couldn't inhibit a reaction to violence.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' They can't. Yeah, they couldn't inhibit it. That's why they tend to be impulsive and callous. They don't have the the inhibitory control.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right. Like, why did you shoot that person? They were in my way. That kind of.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Why did some brains develop that way?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I mean, that is a really interesting question. Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Everything that can go wrong in the body goes wrong.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. Just read some Oliver Sacks. By the way, have you guys seen the documentary on PBS?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I haven't seen it yet.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' About Sacks?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, about Sacks.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I bet that's good.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's great.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That I would want to see.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. Check it out. It's out now.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #1 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All this means that a review of data from 2020 finds that death by suicide fell by six percent in the U.S. with similar numbers in other developed nations is science. And yeah, there was a lot of speculation about what was what the suicide rate was going to do during the pandemic because there's a lot of a lot of psychological stress associated with it. But in fact, it went down and I stress this was in, like developed nations with the exception of Japan where there was, I think, a slight increase.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But there's also a lot of weird exceptions with Japan and suicide. Cultural exceptions.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, exactly. They're they're an outlier baseline. And the U.S. had the biggest drop of six percent. But again, other similar nations. The idea is that it was probably when any kind of catastrophe or or a bad situation hits, there's an initial heroic stage where everyone sort of banding together.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And that's why I think this year next year is probably not going to look good.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. So there's definitely worry about a rebound. But also people may have been spending more time with family members and being under more careful observation just because they're not going out.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. And there's a protective mechanism. I mean, there's a protective factor of being around friends and family. The problem is that the people who are really isolated and who maybe are experiencing anhedonia and who are experiencing like low energy, that kind of pandemic fatigue that a lot of us are dealing with. I mean, you see similar things in the course of a bipolar disorder. If somebody sadly does die by suicide, it's often not as they're going down, it's as they're coming back out of it. And so, yeah, that's something similar here.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But they also here's one thing that may be sustainable is that they say it may also be the dramatic increase in the availability of telehealth services.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yey! Hurray!<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So if that's the case, if that turns out to be the case, that's something that should persist.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Expand it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, totally.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's wonderful.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, it's the best single thing to come out of the pandemic was the explosion of telehealth services in my completely biased opinion.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Mine, too. Mine, too.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But, yeah, it's been great. And so that would be if they can focus, if they could identify that as a significant factor here, that would be a further boost.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So many more people. Yeah. So many more people are able to be reached if they don't have to drive across town or get a babysitter all those different reasons.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's also what my wife did, her Ph.D. in tele-mental health. And basically her research found that it's just as effective as in person.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' You're so biased.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Great. That's great.<br />
<br />
== Skeptical Quote of the Week <small>(1:49:37)</small> ==<br />
{{qow<br />
|text = Common sense is a very tricky instrument. It is as deceptive as it is indispensable.<br />
|author = {{w|Susanne Katherina Langer}}<br />
|lived = 1895-1985<br />
|desc = American philosopher, writer, and educator<br />
}}<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, Evan, give us a quote.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' All right. Before I say the quote, I want to have each of you kind of give me your quick opinion on what you think about this quote, because I've had some thoughts about this very point over my years. "Common sense is a very tricky instrument. It is as deceptive as it is indispensable." And that was written by Suzanne Katharina Langer. She was an American philosopher. She was born in 1895. She died in 1985. She was a writer and educator well known for her theories on the influences of art on the mind. She was one of the first women in American history to achieve an academic career in philosophy and the first woman to be popularly and professionally recognized as an American philosopher. She was elected as a fellow to the AAAS in 1960. So perhaps a forgotten superhero of science there. But at the same time, the quote itself, this is something I've thought about as well. And common sense for me is kind of an OK, a fair starting point, but you can't rely on it to make any final conclusions on things. How do you feel about that?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, I agree that I think it's a very, a very wise quote. Because common sense, it's like what Cara, like what we would call face validity, right? Like it's it's a starting point.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's like you need that first.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. Like if somebody doesn't have like make even basic sense at a fundamental level, you should be very skeptical of it. But it could be very deceptive because "common sense" could just be a manifestation of your cognitive biases. It could all be confirmation bias.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's like are we talking about common sense or critical common sense?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's kind of like intuition. Intuition can get you 90 percent of the way there a lot of the time. But you have to back it up with with analysis, with critical analysis, because it's often quite deceptive as well.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Also, it reminds me of humor. No one wants to think they don't have a sense of humor. And similarly, I don't think anyone wants to think or will believe that they don't have common sense.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah. I mean, I think it would take an enormous amount to convince someone that they don't have common sense. They'd have to have like they would have to have proven to themselves over and over again. But typically people can't see that or admit that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But if you have a complete absence of common sense, it makes you vulnerable to things like believing the world is flat. Things that you should be rejecting on their face. You will. You could say, hey, maybe this is true. No, it's true.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. Like so many types of like pseudoscientific treatments or devices where so often we're like, well, how would that even work? Like, it's so easy to just be like, that doesn't sound right. But many people like that doesn't make scientific sense, but many people who don't have that basic filter wouldn't know that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. All right, guys. So we will be doing a Friday live stream going forward. We're still continuing to do that. Thank you guys for joining me this week.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Sure, man.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' You got it, brother.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Thanks Steve.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Thank you, Steve.<br />
<br />
== Signoff/Announcements == <br />
<br />
All right, guys, so we will be doing a Friday live stream that going forward to do that. Thank you guys, for joining me this week. Your man, you got a brother named Steve<br />
<br />
'''S:''' —and until next week, this is your {{SGU}}. <!-- typically this is the last thing before the Outro --> <br />
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{{Outro664}}{{top}}<br />
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}}</div>Hearmepurrhttps://www.sgutranscripts.org/w/index.php?title=SGU_Episode_799&diff=19092SGU Episode 7992024-01-10T19:04:32Z<p>Hearmepurr: episode done</p>
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<div>{{Editing required<br />
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{{InfoBox <br />
|episodeNum = 799<br />
|episodeDate = {{month|10}} {{date|31}} 2020<br />
|verified = <!-- leave blank until verified, then put a 'y'--><br />
|episodeIcon = File:Water under the surface of the Moon.jpg <!-- use "File:" and file name for image on show notes page--><br />
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|qowText = <p style="line-height:125%">Science is not perfect. It can be misused. It is only a tool. But it is by far the best tool we have, self-correcting, ongoing, applicable to everything. It has two rules. First: there are no sacred truths. All assumptions must be critically examined; arguments from authority are worthless. Second: whatever is inconsistent with the facts must be discarded or revised. ... The obvious is sometimes false; the unexpected is sometimes true.</p><br />
|qowAuthor = {{w|Carl Sagan}}, American luminary<br />
|downloadLink = {{DownloadLink|2020-10-31}}<br />
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|forumLink = https://sguforums.org/index.php?topic=53054.0<br />
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Note that you can put the Rogue’s infobox initials inside triple quotes to make the initials bold in the transcript. This is how the final statement from Steve is typed at the end of this transcript: '''S:''' —and until next week, this is your {{SGU}}.<br />
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== Introduction ==<br />
''Voice-over: You're listening to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.''<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Hello and welcome to the {{SGU|link=y}}. Today is Wednesday, October 28<sup>th</sup>, 2020, and this is your host, Stephen Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella...<br />
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'''B:''' Hey everybody.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Cara Santa Maria...<br />
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'''C:''' Howdy.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Jay Novella...<br />
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'''J:''' Hey guys.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' ...and Evan Bernstein.<br />
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'''E:''' Good evening, everyone.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' First thing I want to say is happy Halloween to those that have downloaded this podcast the day it was uploaded.<br />
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'''C:''' Ooh, Halloween.<br />
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'''E:''' Scary.<br />
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'''J:''' You know what's funny? I hate that whole thing that you guys just do.<br />
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'''C:''' You don't like spooky sounds on Halloween?<br />
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'''J:''' It's like the most not spooky thing in the world.<br />
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'''S:''' It's not spooky, yeah.<br />
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'''C:''' This is what a ghost sounds like according to the movies.<br />
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'''E:''' Sound like Bela Lugosi.<br />
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'''J:''' That had to come out of the 50s, right?<br />
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'''E:''' It is. It is a paper cut out from the 50s, no doubt about it.<br />
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'''C:''' I have the cutest Ruth Bader Ginsburg costume and I have nowhere to wear it to. I got like the great like pearl, lacy necklace thing and these wonderful earrings. And of course I am already a brunette and wear glasses.<br />
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'''E:''' That's right. That's right.<br />
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'''B:''' It's not hard to do her, is it?<br />
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'''C:''' It's a very easy costume.<br />
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'''E:''' Zoom or treat just call people around.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Just call people randomly?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' FaceTime this person. Trick or treat.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I go, look at my costume. Okay, bye.<br />
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'''J:''' So did you guys hear that Alex Jones was on the Joe Rogan podcast?<br />
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'''B:''' So we're done with Halloween now?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' There's some kerfuffle.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, right Bob, poor Bob.<br />
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'''J:''' Yeah, so we're going to talk about it more on the live stream on Friday. But oh, my God, Joe Rogan formally fully jumped the shark about 10 times in a row on this one.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But he's had it. This isn't new. He's had Alex Jones on before. This is like a new thing. It's just the new. It's the first time since he did it on Spotify after his hundred million dollar contract, after Spotify said, Alex Jones, you can't have a show here. So that's a thing. But at the same time, I don't know, what do you guys? Well, I guess we're going to talk about it. But what do you guys think of the internal emails of the guys being like, listen, we can't start dictating who he does and doesn't have as a guest on his show?<br />
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'''J:''' Yeah, that's them just walking it back.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' You think?<br />
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'''J:''' Well, I mean, look, if you're going to say that the information that Alex Jones conveys is not proper and they don't want to support it's really just a ridiculous technicality to say, but it's okay if he's a guest on anybody that has a podcast on our platform..<br />
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'''E:''' Not just any podcast, but ''the'' podcast.<br />
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'''C:''' But there I will say you're right, because it's a huge platform. But there is a big difference between just spouting whatever drivel you want to spout, unfiltered on your own show and somebody interviewing you.<br />
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'''E:''' It's not an infomercial, right?<br />
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'''C:''' No, you're getting pushback. You're getting people somebody saying, wait, wait, wait, wait, but I thought it was this way. And you're right. It is giving him a massive platform. But at a certain point, when does it become I understand saying we don't want your show because your show is full of misinformation on our platform. We're not going to condone that because that makes us look bad. But at a certain point, when does it become like censored, like really bad censorship? I don't know.<br />
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'''J:''' I don't think it's, I really don't look at look at it as censorship when someone has been classified as completely full of bullshit, completely full of lies and manipulation. I mean, this is a person that talked about the shooting that happened literally in the town that I was living in. And he said it didn't happen. He said that the parents were hired actors. He said the kids don't exist. All these ridiculous statements, this isn't this is way beyond like, hey, let's have have this semi-controversial person on and dig into the weeds with them. That's one thing. This is someone whose thoughts are dangerous.<br />
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'''C:''' Oh, yeah. And he has a direct line, not a direct line, but his thoughts have directly made it into the mouth of the president of the United States.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, it's not worse than that.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It was a massive audience for him.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We don't know if he believes anything that he's saying. I mean, worst case scenario. And I think this is a reasonable interpretation.<br />
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'''B:''' Sure.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Is that he's a con artist who's making it up to to con people and to sell crap.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Of course.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' To sell his junk.<br />
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'''C:''' Well, yeah, he sells so much doomsday-<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So, yeah, let's have a con artist on the show to sell their con, you know.<br />
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'''C:''' But he does that all the but Joe does that all the time. I mean, this is not that's the thing. This isn't new. Nobody should have been surprised if they really wanted to say, Joe, you can't have this guy on. That should have been part of the crazy contract they signed with him. They should have looked through his guest list and said, OK, but we're going to have some stipulations, my friend. I don't know. I don't agree with it. But it is censorship, Jay. It's not a First Amendment issue. This is a private company, but it is censorship.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I wouldn't call it censorship, but that's the definition of censorship. But it's their platform. They can just like just like us, we choose to not interview a lot of people on this show. We get we reject way more requests than we ever let through the gate. Is that really censorship or is that editorial policy?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's different.<br />
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'''S:''' It's not really, it's an editorial.<br />
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'''C:''' No, it is different because you're saying we choose to. But Joe chose to interview him.<br />
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'''S:''' Yeah, we're criticizing that choice.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Spotify would be censoring that.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' The actual news story here is that Joe Rogan is credulous and he's guilty of spreading horrible information. He is a very, very low research kind of guy like he'll do it on the spot research. Literally look things up as it's happening on his show. I mean, we do that to fact check certain things here and there. He's like, look doing this for an entire premise.<br />
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'''C:''' And we would never give, like you just said, an interview to somebody who we know is going to spout not just pseudoscience, but very dangerous misinformation during a very delicate political period where sowing distrust within the public actually has legitimate ramifications of harm.<br />
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'''S:''' I also think it's different if they're not acting in good faith.<br />
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'''C:''' In good faith, yeah.<br />
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'''S:''' If you suspect that they're not in good faith, then it doesn't matter what they believe. That's disqualifying. And I think there's a fuzzy line there. I see what you're saying about Spotify censoring Rogan versus Rogan's own editorial policy, unless they have an editorial policy that they impose upon their people. But if they don't, then-<br />
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'''C:''' Then that's a weird thing.<br />
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'''B:''' They've got to suck it up.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' In fact, censorship.<br />
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'''C:''' Yeah. And that's the weird thing, too, because they're like, he can't have a show on Spotify. But Joe, go ahead and interview him.<br />
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'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
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'''C:''' So that's where I think it gets complicated legally. And I think that's why people are talking about this, honestly, because they're like, what just happened?<br />
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'''S:''' Well, listen, outlets are allowed to have quality control and an editorial policy. If a university doesn't have a professor who spouts conspiracy theories. Is that censorship? That's that's quality control.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No, I know.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's having standards. That's academic standards.<br />
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'''C:''' But just the definition of censorship is just silencing something. Well, that's all it is. I'm not talking about First Amendment issues.<br />
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'''S:''' Are you silencing it because you are not giving it space on your own platform? No, I think it's censorship when an outside body tells you what you can have on your platform. If you're making decisions for your own platform, it's not censorship. It's quality control.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Like, I don't care if he if Joe Rogan has an editorial policy. I don't care if Spotify has an editorial policy. They both failed. Joe Rogan should never have had that guy on his show unless he was going to go mano a mano with him and try to and really tear him down and make him stick to certain points and actually try to get somewhere. But he didn't. He gave him a pass. He let him spout his bullshit. He did really a really lame ass attempt.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, it wasn't a debate. He platformed him.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' He platformed him.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' He absolutely platformed him. He said, welcome to my show. I will give you a cushy throne and you can say all the nonsense you need to say because nobody's been listening to you lately.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Right.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And that's not OK.<br />
<br />
== COVID-19 Update <small>(8:25)</small> == <br />
* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEJsAHRIie0 YouTube: Yale University School of Medicine’s Steven Novella says we’re not out of the woods yet with COVID-19]<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Let's pivot to the pandemic a little bit since we didn't even talk about it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, fun. Just throw some more on the dumpster fire.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Although I was up. I want to start by saying that I was on a radio. I was interviewed for a radio show this morning. This was Morning Answer Chicago for local Chicago radio station. So I'm getting a lot of requests for radio interviews. And most of them are because I wrote a blog about it. It comes up on the search. And so they all this guy wrote about X. Let's interview him. So this was about the article I wrote recently, which I talked about last week on the show about the declining case fatality rate of the pandemic. Like, why are not as many people dying? And so I don't bother researching local radio stations before I go on them, because it's not a radio station. I call in five minutes before I'm supposed to go on. I'm on hold. So I'm listening to the live broadcast for five minutes. While I'm waiting to go on. And it's immediately obvious that this is a right wing outlet in full pandemic denial.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That's interesting, though.<br />
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'''C:''' Weird. Wait, was it an AM station or an FM station?<br />
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'''B:''' Now I really want to listen to it. Or your interview anyway.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. Well, I tweeted a link to the interview itself.<br />
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'''C:''' Steve, was this AM or FM?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' FM. It was fine. I mean, the interview itself went fine. You could tell that they're like trying to shoehorn all the information into their narrative. And I just was like just the facts. I didn't editorialize much. I just tried to be as factual as I could. So I think it came off well in the end. But it is amazing. It's a good just listening to them even before the interview and during the interview. It's a great example of motivated reasoning. They have a narrative. Their narrative is this pandemic is no big deal and they will endorse any point of view and take anything out of context in order to to make the point that it's no big deal. And that's the narrative. There's no balance. There's no exploration of things. It's just this. There's just hysteria and this pandemic is nothing. Really amazing. So that is so it's always it's interesting to get these little windows into the alternate information ecosystem that is out there. And you realize again, this is part of why half of America cannot even imagine how the other half of America is voting the way they are.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I don't think it's half and half. But I agree.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I'm just saying whatever, whatever it just represents, I'm not delving into it. But it's close. You know, it may not be half and half, but it's damn close. And because it's not that we have different opinions or that we have it's not just that we have different opinions or different ideology. It's tribal and it's because we're living in different universes of information. Every time I find myself saying, how can somebody possibly believe that I have to remind myself, it's because they are full of a completely different set of facts than I am. That's why. Because they don't have the information that I have, or if they've encountered it, it was from a hostile secondary source. As we say, it was from a source that was just portraying that was belittling that information.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Steve, what did they ask you and what did they what did they like or dislike about what you were saying?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So, I mean, again, I think you should listen to it, but it was like why so the death rate is dropping significantly from like March until August. We talked about this on the show and like, see, the virus isn't such a big deal. Like, well, it's still high. There was one study out of the UK that came out since we talked about it showed that the death rate of people who get admitted to the ICU with COVID dropped from 41 percent to 21 percent. That's a significant drop, but it's still 21 percent. That's a high death rate for any diagnosis that you get you get into the ICU with.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' One in five.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. And then and it's still high for any for hospitalizations. It's like three percent, three, four percent. For anyone who goes into the hospital with a diagnosis, that's really high. And then I went through the various reasons why it's decreasing and they want that. It's just a matter of focus. Like that's because of all the great therapeutics we have now. It's like, well, it's only partly due to that. I did I acknowledged it was accurate regardless of the implications politically. Yes, that's accurate. But it's also due to all these other reasons like wearing masks reduces the severity of infections, not just the probability of getting it. And we've already killed off all the old sick people, the pandemic is moving on to healthier people at baseline. So, of course the the death rates going. I think that surprised me, though, because, again, it shows you like how motivated they are to make the case the way they want it to be. They came to schools. We're talking about kids going back to school. And again, I was like, yeah, kids should go back to school. The American Pediatrics Association said it's really important for young kids to be back in school and that we just need to give schools the resources to do it safely. And they were like, kids are great at wearing masks and social distancing.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I don't think so.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Have you like have you met kids?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, like, have you been around a child?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So that was that they were they were going to die on that hill. But I'm like, yes, kids are great at wearing masks.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, my gosh.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's weird to me, too, that it's like literally are. So they're not COVID deniers, per se.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's like a flu.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' They want to talk about the minutiae.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's a bad flu. We didn't go crazy. We didn't have all this. They kept using the word hysteria when the swine flu came out or when this flu happened, it's just the flu. It's like, no, we have two hundred and thirty six thousand deaths in the United States with everything that we're doing, with everything that we're doing.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's also not a flu. I hate it when people argue like this.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Right. But they don't know how else to equate it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And again, they were taking the point of it's not going away, right? We're not going to eradicate it. So we have to learn to live with it. I'm like, yeah, you're right. We're not going to eradicate it. But we can minimize it until we get a vaccine. That's really the goal. The goal is to minimize death and spread of this virus until we can get a vaccine. And that as long as that takes. So let me just go over the numbers a little bit, because it's really amazing. Again, it's like we've been saying all along, we won't know where we are in this pandemic until we can look back. And so like we had that first spring surge. And again, it's like the graphs keep changing scale, to accommodate the new case. So it's like if you looked at the graph back in April, like there was this big hump of new cases happening in March and April. And then it kind of decreased a little bit in June in the US and the world it was pretty much still going up. But now that is that's a teeny tiny bump, because then we had this huge summer surge again in the US and around the world. And now we're having an even bigger surge. So this fall surge that we are now in the midst of worldwide and in the United States is bigger than the previous two surges. And that spring surge that was overwhelming at the time is now a little blip on the graphs that have to accommodate the current numbers. The worldwide bigger we're getting up to like five hundred thousand cases per day. In the US, we just had like last Friday, less than a week ago, we just had the greatest one day total of new cases-<br />
<br />
'''E:''' About 90,00?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' -in the whole. Over 80,000 so far for the pandemic. We were breaking new ground even even today. We're over 80,000 today. And today is not over yet. We may even break more ground before this day is out or this week is out before this podcast goes up. At least two hundred and twenty seven thousand deaths in the US. And now hospitalizations are starting to pick up because there's always a delay. You know, cases are going up now, hospitalizations. And now even the death toll is in terms of new new deaths per day, it's going up. Until we can look back with hindsight at the whole thing we won't really know like where we are in this whole thing. The worst is probably yet to come. And a lot of health professionals, health professionals. I happen to know a couple of professionals, but publicly are saying that this is going to be a rough winter. If this is where we are now at the end of October, this is, we have to really prepare ourselves for a rough winter.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's so odd to me that people who think this is just a bad flu and that we just have to learn to live with it aren't willing to do the things that you have to do when you're living with a disease.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, but they think we don't do anything every year for the flu, which is wrong. First of all, we have a vaccine program. You get vaccinated. And also, it's already baked into the health care system, for example, that if you have flu like symptoms, you stay home. You do not go to work. So there already are things that we do to minimize the flu, but not as much as we probably should do. And now we have a more virulent, more deadly virus without a vaccine. Of course, we we have to do things again. Two hundred and twenty seven thousand dead in the U.S. If we did nothing, if we treated this like a flu, we would have two million dead rather than two hundred thousand dead. And if we want to keep it from getting to four hundred thousand half a million by the time we get a vaccine, it probably will get there. But if you want to keep that number down as much as possible, we got to do these things. Mask wearing, social distancing, that's a no brainer. We just have to do that until we have a vaccine. Everyone needs to be prepared. You're going to be wearing a mask in public for the next year. Just just accept it. That's it.<br />
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'''C:''' And we're used to it. It's not that hard.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's not that big a deal.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Plus I love my Jack O'Lantern mask.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And then in terms of the "shutdown", that's the other thing they were like ranting about the shutdowns like, well, first of all, there's a lot of things that happen under that one label. It's not just you either completely shut down the economy or nothing. You could just ban large events that could otherwise be super spreader events. Or you could say restaurants have to have limit people or happy only be outdoors or whatever. There are things that there were different phases of the rules, different and that has to be married to what's happening in the community. What's happening in in the state, in the in the area it's not just like all or nothing. But again, their goal was to portray as this is nothing. It's just a bad flu. Don't worry about it. And anything else is hysteria.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I've already informed my clients this coming tax season and will not be seeing them in person. It will all be telephone and zoom. Yeah, that's it. So we already shut down. I mean, that's the spring. And we've already closed our office effectively. Yeah, because that's it. We're just not going to take any chances whatsoever there.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' This is a bad virus. And we are not clearly we are not even seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. We are still in the midst of this. Now we're heading into a third surge bigger than the previous two. It is really just ravaging certain states in the US. And it does correlate with states that have less restrictive laws, states that don't require mask wearing, for example, or social distancing. They're the ones that are being devastated now by this. It's not a mystery what's happening. All right, guys. Well, let's go on to some news items.<br />
<br />
== News Items ==<br />
<br />
=== Holiday Gatherings <small>(20:30)</small> ===<br />
* [https://www.wired.com/story/what-should-you-do-about-holiday-gatherings-and-covid-19/: What Should You Do About Holiday Gatherings and Covid-19?]<ref>[https://www.wired.com/story/what-should-you-do-about-holiday-gatherings-and-covid-19/ Wired: What Should You Do About Holiday Gatherings and Covid-19?]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. And, Jay, the first news item is actually a COVID related one as well. We're coming up on the holidays. We've got Halloween the day the show comes out, which is the most important holiday. Right, Bob?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Of course.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Thanksgiving, our Thanksgiving plans are in flux right now. We honestly don't know what we're doing because of the of the pandemic. And then Christmas, Festivus, Hanukkah, all of those holidays, the seasonal holidays. What are people supposed to do during these holidays during the pandemic?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, the question is should we stay in your current bubble or whatever you use to refer to the people who you are co mingling with? Should you mix with other friends and family that you haven't before? And if you are going to do it, what does that mean? So the answer is there isn't really a crystal clear answer. There's going to be I'm going to tell you some things that are obvious. And then hopefully I'll tell you some things that maybe you haven't thought of that might help navigate the holidays. Really, it could be any reason that you have to get together with people. But we have two or three major holidays coming up in a very short amount of time. And it's good to think about it now before they happen. So right out of the gate, the best thing you can do is do nothing. Stay home, celebrate remotely and with just the people who are already in your current bubble. But if you have to do something else outside of that, what do you do? I think a lot of us are going to end up doing it to some degree over the holidays. So if you think there's a chance you're going to be seeing more people, then you got to start talking to them now, start talking to your friends and family who you're going to visit and be around right now about the whole thing. It was easier to make a decision about who you were going to feel safe with being around if you know what everyone thinks, right? If you really understand and know all the people in your in your extended family and all your friends and you're all on the same page and I'm saying like following the rules and doing what you need to do to be safe, then that's one thing. But if you're going to visit family, family and friends and you don't really know where everyone is, do you have a crazy uncle who refuses to wear a mask or do it, whatever it is you get what I'm saying. To avoid the huge fight at the event at whatever the holiday is, make the phone calls now. I recommend that you start a very friendly conversation with your friends and family, send out a mass email and avoid the confrontation and just say, hey you know, really thinking maybe it's a really good idea if we just follow what the CDC says or whatever, whatever the health organization is in your country. Kind of put the heat on them, take the heat off of yourself and say, just to be safe because of maybe it's because of young kids in the family, maybe it's because of people who have preexisting conditions that this type of disease would hurt, or maybe it's because of the older people in your life, make sure that you give them that information so they're thinking about those other people as well. I also recommend you bring extra masks if you're going to see people and you're at a holiday, people like Bob said earlier, people forget their masks. But just spend 30 bucks, buy a bunch of a handful of masks and hand them out to anyone that needs them. Just just to ease people's anxiety and make it easy on the person who doesn't have the mask, here you go. So if you can have the gathering outdoors, that's also highly recommended. So if you're not in a really cold climate, just do it outside, make it work. Or you could pick a meeting location that simply has more space. Get out of the kitchen and go into the living room in your house. Or figure out of all the people who are involved in that holiday, just who's got the biggest house, who's got the biggest room that you could do this party in and ask them if they'd be willing to do it there. That right there. That could save a life just by moving the event to a bigger space. Now, in the United States, different states and also countries, if you want to just add that in there they have different rules and different suggestions as to how many people can or should come together. So as an example, California health officials are suggesting that you limit gathering to three households, right? That means that three separate families in the groups that are contained in those families should get together. Other states have a lower number saying two. And even though your friends and family, if they aren't already inside your current bubble or your current immediate family, then you should treat them the same way that you would treat a stranger at the supermarket. Think about that. It doesn't matter that you know them. They should still be that guy at the supermarket that you're like, I'm going to stay six feet or more away from that person. That's the way you got to think about it. And it's hard to do because we love these people. We want to be around them. We want to talk to most of them.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Now we've done a lot of Zoom gatherings, and of course, they're not as good, but they're not bad. You know, they're it's you still get to talk with people and you'd have a bunch of people on at the same time.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That's one of the things I recommend. You should definitely if you can, or if you opt out of the holiday, you could say, hey, but maybe we can get together with a Zoom meeting. You could have some fun events over Zoom. You can have parties. We just had my mother-in-law's 70th birthday party over Zoom, and we invited everybody and a ton of people showed up. And it was actually a really beautiful and wonderful event that we did. So here's another thing that I recommend that you do. The the COVID tests now are available. A lot of people are getting them. You could call your doctor up and say, I'd like to get a test at the latest possible date that I can before the holiday. Schedule it now. Talk to your doctor about that now.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I'm getting one tomorrow.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Bob, that's great. And you should you should encourage people to do it. Even if you test negative, that doesn't mean that you're not infected. It could take between five and seven days to be able to actually test positive for COVID after you are infected. So that's a really big amount of time that you could be walking around infecting people and you don't even know it. So, like I said, get tested as close to the event as you can. One of the best things about the holidays is the food. You're going to want to continue talking to people while you're eating. Now, it's possible that while you're eating and talking to someone, that something comes out of your mouth and it travels up to six feet away from you. A little piece of food or spit could easily travel six feet when you're talking. If you see in the right lighting, when you see people talk, they are spitting the entire time. You'd laugh, Cara, because I know you know.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, it's gross.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It's constant spit.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' A cloud.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Try not to be over overly judgemental of your friends and family either way. If they're mask wearers or not. Just keep it cool. It's a holiday. Just keep your distance. That's what you got to keep in mind.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, let me push back a little bit on that, Jay. I think that one of the biggest mistakes that people make is they think, well, because I'm distancing, I don't need to wear a mask. Well, we have good ventilation, so we don't need to distance. These are not one, you don't have to do one of the above. You have to do all of the above. If you're going to be inside, you need to keep your distance, wear a mask and have good ventilation and have good surface hygiene. I think don't think that because you're six feet apart that you then can take the mask off. Six feet is with a mask. It's really 12 feet without a mask. If you really want to be safe. So just don't fall into that fallacy of thinking that if you're doing one thing, you don't have to do the others. You really should be doing everything.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right. And just because you've gone outside doesn't mean rip the masks off and stand close to each other. I see this all the time. The second people leave the store, they don't wash their hands. They're just ripping the mask off their face and still walking through a crowded parking lot. And this is not safe. But I mean, Jay, I'm my concern would be if you do have the crazy uncle who thinks it's a hoax and isn't following any of the guidance. This might be the year that you don't see the crazy uncle.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' You know what I mean? Like, at a certain point, there is nothing you can do, and it's only going to cause trouble and heartache. I think one of the biggest concerns that I see, it's like a cognitive bias that a lot of us have, too. And I noticed myself having it with a friend just the other day. One of us said to the other, well, I trust you. And then we realized, oh, that doesn't matter. The virus doesn't care how much you trust each other, how good of friends you are, how much you love each other or how close you are. Because the truth of the matter is you could be doing everything right and still catch it and still put other people at risk. So the important thing here is that it's a numbers game. The higher the number of people in a space together, the higher the likelihood that you're going to contract the virus. If there are only two of you, your likelihood is significantly lower than if there are five of you. And then there are tipping points. Once you get past, I don't know, 10, 20, 50, it becomes almost a 100 percent guarantee, it becomes very likely that somebody within the group would have been exposed and potentially expose others. So we just have to think statistically. Now is the time to think like skeptics, more than anything, which isn't easy when we're like, oh, but it's my cousin. I love him and I trust him. He's not going to get me sick. It doesn't matter. It has nothing to do with that.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' First off, thanks for clarifying those points, guys, because I was talking more about just don't be a jerk. Try to keep it civil. A lot of us are going to run into people who don't want to wear masks and politically might be in a different place than you.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I think the solution there, Jay, rather than saying don't be a dick about wearing the mask is instead have have an understanding beforehand. You don't want to hash this out on Thanksgiving. It's like if you're if you're getting together saying, I want everyone to understand what the agreement is, we're all going to be wearing masks. And if someone says, I don't want to wear a mask, then make other plans. Plan accordingly, I'll say.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But you get to sit at the kids table outside.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Don't leave it. Don't just sort it out on the day. I would say just pre plan everything.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' What do you think the sales are going to look like for, like, sad TV dinners of like turkey and potatoes and cranberry sauce? Because I bet you there's going to be a lot of people like me who are like, I live alone. I'm not going to be with people. I'm not going to cook a damn turkey. I want the taste, you know?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Well, Cara, I'll tell you something. So when we go to Colorado and visit my sister and brother-in-law, sometimes we we actually cater Thanksgiving because of the amount of people and just the amount of the difficulty of having to cook that much turkey. There's only one oven in anybody's house, and we couldn't possibly cook enough turkey. But I bet you that you could buy a wonderful and complete Thanksgiving meal or special meal.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' For one, because they just make like, yeah, that's probably true. There are probably a lot of restaurants that are doing like stay at home Thanksgiving dinners.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, Cara, Cara, they have the loser Thanksgiving special. Just ask for that.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, exactly. That's all I need, because I'm telling you, I am not going to slave away in the kitchen for like eight hours to sit alone and eat my and have so many leftovers that I'm just going to throw away.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Cara, if you're lonely on Thanksgiving, if you're really alone, I will get an iPad and I will see you at the table with us and we can have dinner together.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's really cute. Thanks.<br />
<br />
=== Water on the Moon <small>(31:40)</small> ===<br />
* [https://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/water-on-the-moon/: Water on the Moon]<ref>[https://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/water-on-the-moon/ Neurologica: Water on the Moon]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, Bob, this is actually, I think, the big news item of the week, is an update on our knowledge about water on the moon.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Two two studies recently released show not only the best evidence for water on the moon, but evidence for far more than we thought. Not only is it a new shadowy hidey holes, but also out in the sun every lunar day.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' How's that possible?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Don't don't get your hopes up for that last one. OK, so now these two studies were recently published in Nature Astronomy. So check that out if you want to read the details. For the longest time, the moon was synonymous with the expression bone dry, right? I mean, when especially when we went there, actually physically went there in the 60s and confirmed all that nasty regolithic moon dust that was everywhere. That's the you know, that's what dry means. When there's dust everywhere, it's dry. How could water be there or or any other form of water? But that changed the past decade or so when we found evidence of water and permanently shadowed craters. So now it's just like if you're up on this stuff, you're just like, yeah, there's water on the moon. You just you just take it for granted now. But now there's more stuff that you're going to be taking for granted and in some surprisingly new locations. So we know that there's ice in some of the big craters, right? Because they're they're they're permanently shadowed and it gets there from whatever asteroid comets. And if it gets there, it stays there because the sun never hits it. But what about on a smaller scale? So using the NASA robot Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and its temperature observations, plus other mathematical models, they have shown that smaller craters and indentations that they call micro cold traps from basically from the size of, say, a penny to a yard or so could hold ice just as well, but just in smaller amounts, right? So these traps could be consistently frigid at, say, minus 260 Fahrenheit or below. The temperature can keep ice on ice, if you will, and it could remain unchanged for a billion years. So what these micro traps lack in size, you might think, oh, a penny, a yard, big deal. But what these micro traps lack in size, they apparently make up for in their plethora index, which is a term I made up just today, and I kind of like it. So they estimate that 15,000 square miles of the moon surface could be covered with them. Lead author Paul Haynes of the Department of Astrophysics at the University of Colorado said if you were standing on the moon near one of the poles, you would see a whole galaxy of little shadows speckled across the surface. I like that imagery. So now the second study is even more interesting in some ways. The observational instrumentation this time was not an orbiter, but SOFIA, which is an acronym for Stratospheric Observatory For Infrared Astronomy. Now, it's this is a dish. I think it was a two and a half meter dish that's on this modified Boeing 747 airplane that flies high in Earth's atmosphere, above 99 percent of the atmospheric water, which is critical, depending on what it's actually looking for. And it's looking at the reflected light from the moon. So within that light is an emission line, a specific colour, if you will, that we can't see with our native eyes. It's the far infrared with a wavelength at six microns. And only one thing we know emits it, water. Other studies before that may I think they were looking at, say, three microns, which is good, but it's not as diagnostic as six microns is. That's the one where we just literally if you see that, yep, there's water there and not some other some fake out of other elements or other molecules. Now, this water was found in the Clavius Crater near the Southern Pole and it's exposed to the sun. They were looking at it when it was when it was sunlight. The sun was shining. I was not hidden away from all the photons like some like some of the other water. So the water concentration is about 10 to 400 parts per million, which is really big. I don't think there's anything observable in the solar system that has more of a concentration. Maybe there are a couple of things, but it's close to the most concentrated amount of water outside of Earth that we know of in the solar system. Casey Honable of the Hawaii Institute of Geophysics and Planetology said in a NASA press conference, that's roughly equivalent to a 12 ounce, 350 milliliter bottle of water within a cubic meter of volume of lunar soil. That's pretty good. That's not too bad for such a dry, dusty place. But and you knew a but was coming. This isn't actually water or ice. It appears to be just scattered molecules. Didn't see that coming, did you? So, yes, just molecules, not water, not ice. So how did this happen? So one theory, one possibility, and we actually covered this on the show not too long ago, was that the solar wind from the sun carries away some of our atmosphere and deposited some of the H2O on on the moon. And actually, that's what devastated the atmosphere on Mars. But more likely than that, probably, but this is probably the reason the water probably came from micrometeorites and tiny, tiny pieces, really tiny, like you need a you need special help to see them. They're so tiny microscope or whatever. They come off of asteroids or comets, which can have a lot of water in them, even the asteroids, not just the comets. And if they impact the moon, if these micrometeorites impact the moon or the or the larger bodies impact the moon, the impact can melt some of the material, right? Forming glass beads with the water molecules inside. So researchers point out that it's also possible, if less interesting, that these watery molecules are distributed in the empty areas around the dust grains of the regolith. But I think the consensus, though, here for at least these scientists is that it's in these glass beads. So that explains why we're seeing this water on the surface when the sun is shining, because the waters in these glass beads probably were hidden between the dust grains. But it also means something else that's not fun. We're probably never going to use this as a water source, picking up molecule at a time, even though even though there's a lot of it, it's just not a good way to do this.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's like Bob, can we find some way of extracting it, like heating it and just evaporating all the water molecules?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I think the effort is just all right, I'll give you an analogy. It's picking it up when it's just molecules. It's like downloading porn on an old 14-4 baud modem instead of a cable modem. Sure, you can do it. But why when there's actually ice, there's actual ice ice in craters that are not too far away. So this is not a convenient way to do this. Unfortunately, at the NASA conference, they were talking about how this is motivation for going going back to the moon. And it's not. This discovery is interesting scientifically, but it's not motivation for going back to the moon. And it sounds like a total political spin on which is which is sure, you got to bring in politics for some of this stuff. But science is science. And it's in a lot of ways it should be inviolate. And and that kind of stepped over a line there, I think. So now what's the benefit? Oh, big deal. We found there's a lot more water on on the moon. Well, yeah, this is this is this is huge because think about it. I mean, it's still in 2020 costs us thousands of dollars for every pound that that we launch out of our nasty little gravity well to the moon or anywhere else outside out of the earth. So that's a lot of money. And if our moon base alpha people, they're going to need they're going to need water not only to drink, but you could also make it into rocket fuel. How convenient is that? So if the water is already there and a lot of it, it seems, a tremendous amount. It's really a no brainer to save the countless millions that we'd otherwise spend having to launch water when it's already there. And now there's even more than we thought, even if some of it is kind of inaccessible. There's still you've got those little those little micro crater things could be all over, not just they they found it by this one crater near the southern pole. But this could be in far bigger areas around the surface of the moon. So, yeah, very interesting stuff. I can't wait to see step two of this research and see how ubiquitous is it? You know, what's the plethora index for the rest of the moon surface, not just this one crater?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You're right. It may not be the lowest hanging fruit for water on the moon. But the more we try to have a sustainable colony on the moon, I think at some point they'll probably be extracting every molecule of water they can get would be my guess. But it's hard to predict.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I mean, a low hanging fruit is pretty big and heavy now. So, yeah, at some point they may start dipping into that.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, but some city on the moon, how much water do you need?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, but yeah, there is a lot. There's there's a lot there. But yeah, I don't I don't know if it'll ever be feasible to to make it really efficient. Who knows?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
=== Murder Hornets Murdered <small>(40:35)</small> ===<br />
* [https://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/murder-hornets-found-and-destroyed/: Murder Hornets Found and Destroyed]<ref>[https://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/murder-hornets-found-and-destroyed/ Neurologica: Murder Hornets Found and Destroyed]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' So, guys, quick update on the murder hornets. You guys remember those guys, right?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Murder.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So if you recall, they found-<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Pandemic stole their thunder.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' -giant Asian hornets on the west coast of the United States. But no nests. They had not discovered any any actual established nests. And the question was, were these just individual interlopers, that hitched a ride on produce or whatever.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Clearly, that's the case.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Clearly, that's not the case.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' We don't have to worry about nests.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Although it is true that some people did discover a giant Asian hornet or a murder hornet nest in British Columbia in Canada, which they destroyed. But there but there haven't been any in the United States. Entomologists were on the job. They wanted to know for sure whether or not there were any of these nests established. So they kept their eye out for any sightings of any individual hornets. They're pretty distinctive because they're so huge. They have a wingspan that can be up to three, three and a half inches. And they have a stinger that is six millimeters long. You don't want that. They could they could sting you through a beekeeper suit. And you said the pain is like getting hit with a sledgehammer.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Fun.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, the venom that they inject you with is extremely venomous. It's very painful. And it's a lot of it, right. They just inject you with a lot of very caustic venom that hurts a lot.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, and there are deaths reported. It's probably not the biggest concern is that people are going to get stung and die. That's actually very, very low risk. But they wipe out apiaries. That's the problem.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The concern is that just a few, a few of these hornets can wipe out an entire honeybee nest in a few hours. Each individual one killing hundreds, they have these giant mandibles and they just go around just decapitating every bee in their in their wake. And then not only bees, they also kill mantises and they kill lots of other insects as well. They are like really the apex predators of the insect world. The scientists recently found a living murder hornet in Washington State. As you know, they did.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' They followed it?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' They didn't follow it directly, but what they did was they tied a teeny tiny little radio transmitter.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' They tagged it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Oh, and then they let it fly back to its nest nest.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Nest?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And then they followed. They followed the signal back to the nest. Then they took a vacuum and they sucked all the hornets out of the nest. They killed most of them. They did keep a few living specimens for genetic analysis or whatever. And then for a good measure, they cut down the tree in case there were any other nests in that tree.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Geez.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Wow.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' And then they brought in a back out.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Bomb.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, right. Dug a 30 foot crater.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I mean, eradication was the goal. If we miss one nest for any significant period of time, it's going to spawn other nests.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, boy. It's like cancer.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Once it gets beyond a certain point, it's going to be impossible to eradicate it. They'll propagate faster than we could locate and destroy them. This is really the kind of thing you have to nip in the bud. The thing is, we don't know if we've done it. Yeah, they found and destroyed one nest. We don't know if it's the only one. If there are more, it may already be too late. And this could be devastating, devastating to the pollinators in North America because it's an invasive species. And that means that it doesn't have any natural predators to keep its population at bay. And also the native pollinators have real no defenses against it. Honeybees are basically defenseless against it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Except for the bee ball that they make.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, yeah, they do have a defense, right?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, it's just not, it helps. But at scale, I think they still are facing like a pretty big predator.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, I mean, it's just a just a pressure. Another pressure against a nest that added to everything else. Colony collapse disorder is going to just could be devastating. And as we've discussed previously pollinators are kind of important to our food supply.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Just kind of.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' So do we have a responsibility to eradicate this species? I mean, is there justification in that if we could?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' In the U.S.? Yeah, absolutely.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' In North America. Yeah, because they're not native to North America. In Asia, I mean, they're native to Asia. They've kind of already reached their equilibrium there. So not that they're not an issue. Obviously, it wouldn't be the same kind of problem that it would be by introducing this kind of aggressive species to an environment that's not adapted to it. It was like the European starling, which I know I've said on the show before. I totally despise because there's are very aggressive birds that displace a lot of native birds and they were introduced. And then still almost a century later, the local populations have not really adapted to this invasive species, and they're taking over. They're really devastating local bird populations.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' They're here in Connecticut, right?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' They're everywhere. They're all over the U.S. That's the bird, Steve, that I have on my shelf because I taxidermied it. Because it's really easy to get specimens since they're abatement animals to taxidermy.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' One down a billion to go.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But yeah, Evan, like it's very common to have national eradication efforts for invasive species that are, throwing the ecological balance off. So we do I think it is a moral imperative and you see it as a function of conservation quite often to have to go in and actually kill or cull is the word usually used species that are detrimental to native populations.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, absolutely. Just ask Australia.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Where those frogs go, I brought in.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The cane toad, right? They love the cane toad. So, yeah just flying in and out of New Zealand. They are obsessive about protecting themselves from any kind of invasive organisms. You can't have dirt on your shoe when you go into New Zealand.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But they have I have lots of things made out of possum from New Zealand because they're invasive there.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's right. And you're expected to if you see one while driving your car, you're expected to kill it with your car.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right. So it's it's very easy to get your hands on like nice possum gloves and hats and things. And they're very warm.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Possum jerky.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I'm wearing possum socks right now.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Nice. How random.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Because they're it's getting chilly up here.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yes, it is. Might be snow on Friday.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' By the way, possums in New Zealand are very different from what we call opossum. We call them possums, but it's spelled opossum here. Different species, totally different animal.<br />
<br />
=== High Value Plastic <small>(47:31)</small> ===<br />
* [https://theconversation.com/most-plastic-recycling-produces-low-value-materials-but-weve-found-a-way-to-turn-a-common-plastic-into-high-value-molecules-148506: Most plastic recycling produces low-value materials – but we’ve found a way to turn a common plastic into high-value molecules]<ref>[https://theconversation.com/most-plastic-recycling-produces-low-value-materials-but-weve-found-a-way-to-turn-a-common-plastic-into-high-value-molecules-148506 The Conversation: Most plastic recycling produces low-value materials – but we’ve found a way to turn a common plastic into high-value molecules]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, Cara. This is a follow up news item on our war on plastic. Not really a war on plastic is plastic is fine. But we've got to do something with all this plastic. And maybe there's some light at the end of the tunnel here.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So we all know that plastic is a massive problem. And maybe we can visualize how massive that problem is a little bit. I've found a couple of sources that have, I think, done a good job of helping put this into context. So plastics came on the scene about six decades ago. Since then, we have produced globally about 8.3 billion metric tons. That might not be a meaningful number because it's just massive and hard to hard to visualize. One way to visualize it is that each year we throw away, just throw away enough plastic to rebuild the Great Wall of China, just rebuild it in plastic. It's estimated that that number is going to be high by 2050 it'll be 12 billion. I actually think it's going to be higher than that.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' [sing Barbir Girl tune] ''Life in plastic. It's fantastic. I'm a Barbie girl.''<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So by 2050, estimate 12 billion metric tons. So we're talking, oh, and that's just in landfills. 35000 times as heavy as the Empire State Building. There's a lot of plastic, a shitload of it ends up in the ocean. A big study came out in 2018, one of the first of its kind that kind of analysed how much plastic we're throwing away and what's happening to it. And they found that of the just over 8 billion metric tons that have been produced so far, about 6.3 billion metric tons went into the waste stream. So that's a big percentage. It's well over half of the plastic that had been produced was already being thrown away. And only 9% of that total had been recycled and not the gross total, the net total, just the plastic that had been thrown away of the 6.3 billion metric tons, only 9% had been recycled. Close to 80% was in landfills or in the environment. So litter, ocean, plastic breaking down to form those small plastic particles that fish and other marine life see as plankton and eat. You've heard conversations about the Anthropocene actually being demarcated in the future by plastic conglomerate, which is a word that some people have coined for the fact that there will be plastic in the rock. That is how they will know the plastic age. I mean, it's horrible.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, there's plastic in us, right? I mean?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, yeah, there's plastic in us. There's tons of plastic in us. I pitch Steve a plastic story like every other week. I think there was one last week about like baby bottles and microplastics and just it's horrible. So the problem, one of the biggest problems with plastic, as we know, is that it doesn't break down. It's an amazing material. And so I do think sometimes when we're like plastic is evil, we should take the time to talk about why plastic is so ubiquitous. It's solved so many problems. Plastic allows for sterile packaging. It's lightweight, so it's more energy efficient to ship plastic, products in plastic than in glass and sometimes in metal. Plastic is obviously really important for biomedical sciences. It's really important for patient care because you can sterilize it again and you can make things disposable cheaply.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It's not like we can have our modern society without it. We cannot just be done with it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, not to this extent. But obviously, there are many places where it's absolutely unnecessary, like in single use plastics for like consumption, not for medical purposes. I personally believe there's no reason that water or soda or anything of that nature should ever be packaged in plastic. But this is a regulatory issue. It's not on the shoulders of consumers wholly, even though the plastics industries have done a brilliant job of putting the onus on us. But that's beside the point. The point of this news article that I'm interested in diving into is how are we solving the problem, right? And there are multi-pronged approaches. Some of them are working, some aren't. It's not the brightest of futures right now, which is why we need really brilliant people who are doing brilliant things in the laboratory. In enters Susanna Scott from the University of California, Santa Barbara, along with her colleagues at Illinois, Urbana-Champaign and Cornell, who are chemists. And they are like, OK, usually when we reuse plastic, reduce, reuse, recycle, right? When we talk about reuse and recycle, what we're really talking about is taking plastics that have a particular quality and melting them down and then reforming them to make something else out of the plastic. The problem is every time we do that, it degrades. So unlike glass and metal, which tends to be, to a large extent, indefinitely recyclable because you can break it down and put it back together and break it down and put it back together, the quality of plastic gets worse and worse and worse every time you do it. And eventually it becomes useless. And it definitely is not useful for the high quality utilization that it came with before. And part of that is because when you melt plastic, a whole bunch of nasty stuff happens. You guys have seen before you've thrown plastic on a campfire, right?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Not deliberately.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' You've seen what happens. Sure. Yeah, because it smells horrible. Or you've seen in developing countries where they actually burn plastic for cooking fuel and it's really, oh, it's very dangerous.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I love the smell of carcinogens in the morning.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' No kidding.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But I mean, it's horrible, but it's also in some ways the only option that they have because it's a cheap and to them, renewable, sadly, resource because it's washing up on their shores.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Right, right. Oh, gosh, some of those shore pictures are just nightmarish.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And so so you guys hit the nail on the head, right? I love the smell of carcinogens. It smells really bad. There's a lot of toxic stuff that's coming off of that. And of course, it's breaking it down in sort of a willy nilly way. But what these chemists realized is that what if we actually, instead of grossly breaking down the plastic, broke it down at the molecular level with intention so we could take these polymers, these big, long chains which actually make up the plastic composition. And of course, there are lots of different kinds of plastics. They specifically are working with polyethylene. And they said, what if we develop a process by which we actually like knock out some of the carbon molecules or at least release their bonds that hold the thing together and break it into teeny tiny pieces that way, then when we can recombine them, they still maintain their shape and their structure. So they'll be able to maintain some amount of integrity for use. And one of the biggest problems with this catalytic reaction is that usually it takes more energy to do it than it's kind of worth in the end. But they sort of developed a process that actually utilizes hydrogen to then remove the hydrogen from the polymer chain. So it's like the hydrogen itself is what's cutting the bond and then it's released and then it cuts more bonds and then more is released and it cuts more bonds. But it's self-limiting because once it gets to be too small, it no longer functions. So it replicates multiple times, but then it actually finds sort of an equilibrium point where it can't do it anymore because the molecules are too small, which is great. It just breaks down or slows down naturally. And what ends up happening is that the solid plastic that you're used to seeing turns into a liquid, but it doesn't escape a lot of gases. And that's really the problem with a lot of breakdown processes for recycling plastic, is you melt them at high heat, a ton of gases come out, they're aerosolized, there's all these benzines and as you mentioned, carcinogens that come out into the air. And the polymer chains themselves are all like warped and they lose their integrity. But if they use just the right amount of low heat in this very specific plastic where hydrogen is an important part of the catalyst, they're actually able to recover the liquid and the liquid that's recovered is mostly what are called alkylbenzines, which alkylbenzines are benzene derivatives. And they're like a big subset of aromatic hydrocarbons, like you might have heard of toluene, and that's a really like a kind of common one that most people have heard of. But the cool thing about it is that they have a commercial use. They can be used as detergents and those detergents have a pretty big market value. I think it's something like nine billion dollars annually. And so a large these researchers think, of course, they haven't done this yet at scale, but at least in terms of proof of concept, which they are able to physically do this process, they think that they're going to be able to recapture a lot of this polyethylene or what was originally polyethylene and aromatize it into these long chain, what they call alkyl aromatics. So alkylbenzene groups and actually be able to sell those things commercially. They call this upcycling. It's not a new concept. Upcycling has been around, but they think that they've developed a really useful way to do it that actually provides a good marketable product that has an economic value and will hopefully clear some of this waste plastic that really is useless. It really is doing nothing except gunking up our rivers and streams and roads and taking hundreds, sometimes thousands of years to break down and pollute the environment. So it's one of many tools that I think scientists are slowly but surely working on developing. And hopefully, like we mentioned in the past, when we talk about space junk and satellites and when we talk about a lot of other changes to regulatory changes to industry, hopefully these kinds of mitigation efforts can be worked into the planning at the forefront for plastics manufacturers. I think that's a long way down the line. I do think that's a little bit of wishful thinking since we don't even yet have the political will to push back and say, no, like, don't put coke and Sprite and bottled water in plastic. Like, we just need to ban that out. But we haven't been able to do it.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Do we really need those?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right. Exactly. We've banned plastic bags in L.A. We polystyrene containers like foam takeout containers you can't really have in most places. So there are certain places that are a little more out in front of this than others, but at least this is a problem that's being worked on. And at least it does seem like there are some small scale, maybe eventually they'll be scalable solutions that are actually friendly to the market too, which I think is really important to have that economic piece as part of the puzzle.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, I agree that at the end of the day, there's got to be an economic stream that works, otherwise it's not going to happen.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Otherwise, yeah, the plastics manufacturers, they're just going to keep lobbying and they're just going to keep I mean, they're going to do it anyway. But their lobbying efforts are going to work because they're going to be able to say, look, I'm adding to the economy because I'm making these products and what else is there? So, yeah, it's a multi-pronged effort, I think, of prevention. And that's one of the things that we're not doing enough of, but also mitigation after the fact. And at least I'm seeing some hopeful news on that front.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. Thanks, Cara.<br />
<br />
=== Exoplanet View of Earth <small>(59:31)</small> ===<br />
* [https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/10/201021140931.htm: Smile, wave: Some exoplanets may be able to see us, too]<ref>[https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/10/201021140931.htm ScienceDaily: Smile, wave: Some exoplanets may be able to see us, too]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, Evan, finish up with this item. This is something we've mentioned before, but it's another sort of take on exoplanets, can their view, their ability to view the Earth.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah. Yep. And how can you not love a report that starts like this? Three decades after Cornell astronomer Carl Sagan suggested that Voyager 1 snap Earth's picture from billions of miles away, resulting in the iconic {{w|Pale Blue Dot}} photograph, two astronomers now offer another unique cosmic perspective that some exoplanets have a direct line of sight to observe Earth's biological qualities from far, far away. I love that. That is a romantic thought. I mean we talk about exoplanets regularly on this show, but almost always from the perspective of Earth. To just wonder what other potential people or whatever out there are capable of detecting the Earth and what they might see. I mean, that's just that's really an incredible thought. But there are also practical questions that arise from the thought of Earth being an exoplanet. And we've talked on the show before about how an exoplanet's orbit must be aligned with our line of sight in order to observe these transits. But reverse that, you ask the question, from which stellar vantage points would a distant observer be able to search for life on Earth in the same way? Well, Lisa Kaltenegger, who's the associate professor of astronomy at the College of Arts and Sciences and director of Cornell's Carl Sagan Institute. I didn't know there was a Carl Sagan Institute. That's wonderful. And Joshua Pepper, associate professor of physics at Lehigh University, have thought about this question and they've endeavoured to answer it. They put out a paper and it has identified over a thousand main sequence stars, which are in some ways similar to our sun, that may contain Earth-like planets in their own habitable zones, all within 300 light years of Earth, which should be able to detect Earth's chemical traces of life. And their paper is called Which Stars Can See Earth as a Transiting Exoplanet. It was published October 21st in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. So, yeah, signs of a biosphere in the atmosphere of a transiting Earth, such as the oxygen we have, our ozone, methane, could have been detected, get this, for about two billion years of Earth's history. That's a nice chunk of time. That's a nice chunk of time for other potential civilizations out there to have had a chance to detect the chemical qualities of Earth.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Wow. Yeah, that's a good chunk of time.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, big chunk of time. By the same right, we should also, those also become prime candidates for us as well, knowing that it takes, well, we have one set of information to work off of our own Earth. We know that it took billions of years sort of to get to a technological state. So you can eliminate certain stars based on their short lifespan. You can probably, in some ways, make some eliminations there. They created this list of these thousand closest stars using NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or TESS, and we've talked about the amazing work that TESS has done on the show before, but they have more precise measurements and they've been using latest data analysis. It's called the Gaia Mission Data Release 2, or the DR2 Gaia Collaboration from 2018. And basically what they've done is they've been able to exclude certain stars that have evolved in a certain way or those that have poorly measured stellar parameters. They've been able to basically refine and focus in on more of these candidates. And as the lead author says, if we're looking for intelligent life in the universe, that could find us and might want to get in touch. We've just created the star map where we should look first. So I think that's maybe the takeaway here is that we've come up, is that they've come up with a way to focus our searches a little more carefully and with a little more enthusiasm to these places that are able to see us and aren't thousands or millions of light years away, but simply hundreds. In fact, the closest one that they identified is only 28 light years away from our sun. Twenty eight years, hardly anything.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, that's not far at all.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Twenty eight times, was it six trillion miles? Not too bad.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Well, in a cosmic sense, not bad at all. It's just a real cool and different way of thinking about exoplanets and that we are an exoplanet to a lot of other to a lot of other planets out there.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' To every other one.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Well, the ones in our plane.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Well, not just that, assuming their life is similar to ours, they could be so foreign that they look at us and be like, oh, look at those waste chemicals in the atmosphere. Who the hell wants that stuff? No, no, that's that's our type of life.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' They've categorized it by the types of stars such as cool red M stars and K stars and G stars. Our star is a G star, by the way. So they've been able to identify some of those candidates as well. But that's cool. You know, what would they say? Three hundred years ago. Where were we three hundred years ago? Think about every how different the world was then. We're like all our modern technology has happened since then.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. Thanks, Evan. Jay. It's Who's That Noisy time.<br />
<br />
== Who's That Noisy? <small>(1:04:05)</small> ==<br />
* Answer to last week’s Noisy: {{w|Preterm birth|Preemie}}<br />
<br />
'''J:''' All right, guys. Last week, I played this Noisy.<br />
<br />
[_short_vague_description_of_Noisy]<br />
<br />
So any guesses?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I love it.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Anybody?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I mean, I think I know what it is.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Some A.I. that's been designed to mimic a baby bird.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So a listener named Rachel-<br />
<br />
'''B:''' No?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Benasia, Benasia, Benasia.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Ignored.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I watched this is what she wrote. I watched The Lion King too many times as a kid. So I'm going to guess these are baby hyenas. It's kind of funny. They're not baby hyenas, but I got to laugh out of that. A listener named Kate wrote in, "Hey, Jay, I think this week's Noisy involves pandas. The vocalizations sounded very similar to me, perhaps two individuals involved in courtship or one responding to the advances of another."<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I know pandas only sneeze. I saw a video on YouTube about that.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Not correct, but that is an interesting guess. Richard Owen wrote in and said, "Hi, Jay, love the show. Keep up the good work. I think this week's Noisy is a Kea that's spelled K-E-A. It's a cheeky New Zealand mountain parrot", not a parrot. So what do we got now? We got a we got a hyena. We got a panda and we have a parrot as guesses. And then this guess is the first one that sent in this guess. And this guess was sent in by dozens of people and little variations, but all revolving around the same idea. This is Ed Beals. And Ed wrote, "Hello, I hope this message message finds you well. We are doing remarkably remarkably well here in Nova Scotia." And then he goes on to tell me about COVID. But I will go fast forward to where he talks about the Noisy. He says "near the end of this week's Noisy, I started to imagine I was hearing a loon call trying to emerge. Could it be a young loon learning to call?" So I did a little research because I was curious as to why so many people were writing in this particular bird. And I did find some examples of a baby loon and an adult loon. And I think you're going to recognize the adult loon sound.So take a listen, you're going to hear the baby first and then some adult variations on the adult call. [plays Noisy] That's the one you might recognize.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Very forlorn, almost scary, very good for Halloween. So, yeah, it's you know, I'm not hearing it. A lot of people guess that I'm not hearing it. But I just thought it was interesting that so many people guess the same thing. So nobody won. Nobody got it last week. And I really thought this is funny how I always try to play the game in my head, like how many people are going to be able to guess this. I thought that there would be a certain job that people have where they would guess it. So, Steve, what's your guess?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I think it's a preemie.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It is a premature human baby. Listen again. 30 week old.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, because I've heard that.<br />
<br />
[plays Noisy]<br />
<br />
'''B:''' The hell?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Now that you say that, now that you say that, Steve, I've heard that noise, too. I can't remember where, but I do believe when my wife and I had our our son that there was a premature baby that I heard crying.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' And then once you kind of hear it, you'll attach that sound to a human baby and it'll start to kind of make sense.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. And some of them, some of the the cries sound more human than others, and definitely you get fooled by animals that sound more human than they have any right to.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Like two turtles having sex. I kid you not.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So the Grace Holland wrote in, and she said that she predicted that people are going to guess it's a baby animal. She said, "I am a neonatal ICU nurse, and this is a recording I made of a one day old baby who was born at 30 weeks gestation, weighing 2.5 pounds. The background noise is the sound of the suction tumming. But she said this was the sound. It was one of those moments that hit her of how incredible her job is. And God, thank you so much. Like, this is a prime example of a wonderful Noisy that you just don't get to you know, I would never stumble on the situation where I'd have the wherewithal to whip out my phone and make a recording. She thought of me, I guess, when she heard that. And I was whatever, either way, it ended up at Who's That Noisy. I think it's wonderful. And it's it's also an interesting sound to me because it represents the fact that that child survived in a situation where 50 years ago, they probably wouldn't have, which makes me happy for science and modern medicine and critical thinking. And Randi and Carl Sagan and so many other people.<br />
<br />
=== New Noisy <small>(1:10:05)</small> ===<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So anyway, I have a new Noisy this week. The sound was sent in by-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Wait, wait, Jay.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Before you tell that Noisy, are you going to like what? Do we get to know why a preemie baby sounds like an animal? Why is it so different at 30 weeks versus 34 weeks?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Well, I mean, Steve could probably answer better than me. I did think about that. And I'm just assuming it's because the the biology is so much smaller. There's a really big difference between a 30 year old, 30 week old baby.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Huge difference.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So it's literally that their vocal cords are tiny?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's small and weak. And remember, it's breathing. The lungs haven't fully formed at that point. That's right on the verge of them being able to breathe at all. Their ability to make surfactant is like just coming online at that point in time. And sometimes they have to provide it for the for the preemie, if they're really premature. So, yeah, just a really, really just not fully developed respiratory system.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Sweet thing.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' All right. A listener named Devin sent in this week's Noisy. This one is very cool. Take a listen.<br />
<br />
[_short_vague_description_of_Noisy]<br />
<br />
I love this Noisy so much. I love this Noisy. And when you find out what it is, it's just a fun sound. And you're and I think you'll really like the way it was created. And that's what I want you to tell me. Don't don't name the style of music, please. Tell me how was it specifically created? Like what is doing this? Right. Just either or you don't. But take a guess. You could email me at WTN@theskepticsguide.org with guesses and any cool noises that you heard.<br />
<br />
== Questions/Emails/Corrections/Follow-ups ==<br />
<br />
=== Correction #1: Superconductors and Computers <small>(1:12:16)</small> === <br />
* Follow up on [[SGU_Episode_798#Room_Temperature_Superconductivity_.28.29|discussion about the impact of superconductors on computers]] <!-- any link to the #798 segment will need to be updated when the segment gets its timestamp --><br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. A couple of quick emails. We have to do a correction from our discussion of the room temperature superconductors. Jay, you mentioned the fact that this would keep computers from heating up. And about 30,000 people emailed us to point out that's not true, right? That computers that the heat generated by computers is coming largely from just to oversimplify the fact that they're using semiconductors. And when they changing the information for flipping the gates or whatever, however they refer to it, generates some heat. And that's sort of unavoidable in the design of the computers themselves. And there's like no part of the computer that you would make a superconductor that would keep that from happening.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, that was definitely just a gap in my knowledge. I have no excuse. And I did beat myself in the bathroom before the show to get his penance for making this mistake. I'm sorry.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, I think we were thinking of electronics in general, which it is true. And we extrapolated to computers without really thinking it through. And then once they said, oh, yeah, yeah, of course, semiconductor, right. You know, but yeah, it's just it was like not. It was just one of those off the cuff comments. That is usually where we get in trouble. Yeah. But it is always a good opportunity to learn. It's always a good opportunity to learn and to point out, in this case, how computers work, or at least a very, very quick point about it.<br />
<br />
=== Question #1: Beef and Climate Change <small>(1:13:50)</small> ===<br />
<br />
<blockquote><p style="line-height:120%">You have talked about the destruction of habitats and how biodiversity is going down because of this. Isn't one of the biggest contributors the demand for meat, and especially beef, because many acres of rain forest get burned down to plant soy and corn to feed livestock? Wouldn't phasing out meat consumption be the "low-hanging fruit" regarding biodiversity and climate change? I think grass-fed cattle is carbon neutral, but what percentage of all the beef consumed is that? We can talk a lot about the missing political will to change things or about greedy corporations, but in my opinion it has to start with the consumer.<br><br>– Andreas Kleim, Germany </p></blockquote><br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. And we got this other question. We don't have that much time for the for the Q&A. So I wanted to just do a couple of quick ones. A question comes from Andreas Klein from Germany. And Andreas writes, "You have talked about the destruction of habitats and how biodiversity is going down because of this. Is it one of the biggest contributors, the demand for meat and especially beef, because many acres of rainforests get burned down to plant soy and corn to feed livestock? Wouldn't phasing out meat consumption be the low hanging fruit regarding biodiversity and climate change? I think grass fed cattle is carbon neutral. But what is the percentage of all the beef consumed? Is that we can talk a lot about the missing political will to change things or greedy corporations. But in my opinion, it has to start with the consumer." So I disagree about it having to start with the consumer, because I think that the problem with that's a trap, as Cara was pointing out, the corporations are happy. They're happy to have to focus on the consumer because it takes the onus off of them. And it's really you have to take a political, corporate and consumer approach sort of combined in one system. You can't just shift focus onto the consumer. But it doesn't mean that doesn't absolve consumers of responsibility. t just means it's more complicated than that. I do have a very specific answer to the to the to the question. I'm going to change the question a little bit. It's not just how much is grass fed, how what percentage of the calories that are fed beef or fed cows that we will turn into beef. What percentage of those calories comes from food that people could eat that's edible to people? Or what percentage comes from inedible sources? And the answer is, you guys want to throw out a guess before I give you the answer for one?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Probably a lot of it is.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, 90 percent.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Eighty six, very close. Eighty six percent of calories is from nonedible sources. And so that's partly grass. It's partly what they call silage or just the nonedible parts of crops. And so most of the calories that cows get are going to be from those sources. And then the grain part comes mostly from the finishing lot right before they're ready to go to market. They want to pack on those last 10 to 15 percent of calories. That's the high grade grain that they'll get. So think about that cows are actually a good way of converting nonedible calories into edible calories. And if we took those calories out of the system, they would have to come from somewhere, right? If you say, let's just get rid of all beef. OK, so that's now a lot of that's 86% of those calories were coming from nonedible sources that they will have to be replaced. You could argue that maybe not all of them need to be replaced because we eat too many calories. All right. Fair enough. But that's not certainly all of them. You could also argue that some parts of the world over consume beef.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Our part of the world.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, I agree with that as well. That's fine. So but it's but the premise here that wouldn't this be the low hanging fruit because it's mostly waste. And it's just not true. It's not the low hanging fruit. Again, whenever we talk about agriculture or these kind of, ecological questions, you have to think about the system. You can't talk about any one piece of the system without talking about the system. What's important? Again, we we also got feedback of like, oh, it's that Cara and I were saying that fixing the global warming problem is is easy. What we meant was that it's simple. It's not easy. It's hard. It's politically hard. But it is simple in that we know exactly what we need to do. And it's not that many things that we need to do in order to significantly reduce our carbon footprint.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right. We're just not doing them.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We're just not doing them. When it comes to agriculture, it is complicated. There is no one simple thing. Everything is a trade off. You pull on any thread, it's going to have a lot of effects. Every this is a complicated web of trade offs. And there is no low hanging fruit or anything that's terribly simple. And beef is a great example of that because it's a lot of what's important is that we use each lot of land to to its maximal, optimal, most efficient use. Sometimes that's grazing cattle. And if you just take that away, that's not a good thing. We want to we want to think about like we certainly don't want to be grazing cattle on land that could be better, that could grow more calories as food, as crops. But that's generally not happening. That's generally not happening. Farmers are using land efficiently. So this is a case.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But that's land that has already been clear cut. And that's, I think, where like the devil's advocate question comes in, which I do think what you're saying is like 100 percent valid, right? That like if we remove the cows, we need to utilize the space to grow the highest number of calories possible in whatever source we do as efficiently as possible.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But a lot of a lot of that can't be a lot of it is not arable for crops.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And so I think that there's there's a two pronged question here. One is, are we ethically doing the right thing with cows? Because we're talking as if most cows are free range and they're just not like most of the cows in our country are like packed in on themselves in factory farm settings. And yes, it's highly efficient. But from an ethical perspective, obviously, there's there's a question.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's a separate question. But you're right to bring that up. But it's just to be clear, it's a separate issue.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It is a separate issue that I think is important.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Ethically farming cows versus are we efficiently in terms of the environment?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So in terms of efficiency, I wonder if and the reason I'm playing devil's advocate here is that the story that we were telling when this listener wrote in was not a story about utilizing land for food. It was a story about wild spaces for wild animals and ecology to be able to thrive. And so I'm wondering if his question is less about if we've removed the cows, what are we going to put in their place to feed people and more about if the cows were gone, there would be more rewilding.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, I don't know that that's true. That's an interesting question. And I don't know that necessarily that is true.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I don't either. Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. And I wouldn't assume that. And I don't think that's a low hanging fruit is my point. But I certainly agree that we shouldn't be chopping down rainforest to grow more food, whether it's to eat directly or to feed to cattle. And that's a political, economic, social problem that we need to that we need to solve. People are doing it not because they're not because of market forces or whatever. It's more just because they're desperate and because of political forces. So that's this is complicated. But the other thing to always keep in mind when you're talking about beef is that again, you have to think of the whole system. That grass and that sillage is not only converted into edible calories, it's also converted into manure, which provides fertilizer for half of the food that we actually do grow-<br />
<br />
'''B:''' And farts.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yes. Well, the farts aren't a good thing.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Farts are bad.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' But they're funny.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And so you also then have to replace that fertilizer. And so, again, you have to think of the whole system. You can't just take out one piece and think it's going to make it better. But definitely, I agree with the one premise here that I agree with is that we do need to find ways so that people are not motivated to cut down forest to farm, however they're doing it, because that is bad for the environment and it's not very efficient. It's not really not a long term sustainable solution, even for the people who are doing it. And that's that's an issue that we need. <br />
<br />
'''B:''' Right. And if it's a rainforest, the loss of diversity is-<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's massive.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It's horrific.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And that's really right. And that's what the story we were talking about that prompted this email came in. I mean, I do think that, though, some areas of maybe you want to call it low hanging fruit, maybe you don't come into this question of are we eating the source material or are we using the source material to then make more? And like you said, 89 percent of their feed or 87 percent?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' 86.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' 86 is not something we would eat anyway. But is that the crux of the issue? Why wouldn't we eat it? Why is it that we are standards for what we're willing to eat?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' This is not edible to humans.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' OK, gotcha.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' This is not. Oh, that's a that apple isn't as pretty as I want it to be.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, so it's not like with fish.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's stillage. It's like corn stalks. It's not stuff that is edible to humans.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, we would need a lot of different bacteria in our gut to digest that.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right, right, because we do. There are situations where there are fixes like when we talk about, for example, fish, we've we've discussed this on the show before. Like we're not eating the high calorie, smaller fish that are really, really prevalent in the ocean. Instead, we're feeding that to other fish that we're then farming and then eating the larger fish. And it's actually highly inefficient and contributing to these massive problems. So there are situations where, of course, we could cut down on our flesh consumption, right, just our animal protein consumptions or change the way that we're consuming animals to make it more efficient. But you're right, it's not as simple as like everybody just stop eating meat tomorrow and all of our world hunger problems are going to be solved because proteins and fats are highly efficient molecules.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And I have to point out that the form of this claim that bothers me the most is when we say, yeah, the problem with organic farming is that it uses 20 percent more land and land use is the most important factor in terms of a negative effect on the environment. And they say, yeah, but we'll fix that problem by just getting rid of meat, and then that'll take off. I was like, no, it won't. It's like, where are you getting all your organic manure from? If you get rid of all of me and also most again, 86 percent of those calories are from non-human edible sources. And so it actually would exacerbate the problem. It'd make it worse. And but they're just it's like just becomes I can't tell you almost 100 percent of organic proponents say that to me when I bring up that point. It is baked into the propaganda and it doesn't hold up to even superficial scrutiny.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's like how they conflate GMOs with monocropping completely and totally.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Completely.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Their arguments are with monocropping-<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Pesticides.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' -or with pesticides.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All about overusing pesticides. No, they're not. It's a technology that could be used in many different ways. But again, there's there are kernels of legitimacy in all of this. It's like, yeah, we have to think about ethically about what we're how we're producing, animals. And we have to think about definitely factory farming in a way that is not not optimal in many ways. And we probably are consuming too much meat. And there's a lot of territory between the typical Western diet and a vegetarian diet or a vegan diet.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, there's a lot in between. There's a lot in between, probably for health reasons, we should be consuming more plants and less meat protein. But it's actually optimal from a health point of view to eat some animal protein. But anyway, this gets into a lot of complexities very, very quickly. All right.<br />
<br />
== Interview with (and in Memoriam) {{w|James Randi}} <small>(1:25:13)</small> == <!-- The use of "in memoriam" as a preposition is correct here. It means "as a memorial to." --><br />
<br />
'''S:''' As we mentioned last week, James the Amazing Randi, one of the founders of the skeptical movement, died last week at the age of 92. He was a great friend of the show and of skepticism in general. This week, I just want to include a an excerpt from an interview we did with him in 2013. This is a bit of an interview where we discuss his legacy at that stage of his life at the time. So take a listen. I hope you enjoy this interview with Randi.<br />
<br />
'''JR:''' My good friend, the late Martin Gardner. Oh, my, how I miss the presence of Martin. He died at the age of 94, but he was a delightful soul, wonderful man, a great, great thinker. And my library is just full of his books, all of which are gigantic accomplishments, I can tell you. But Martin Gardner, as rational as he was, I think about three or four years before he died, he told me on a phone conversation, he said, but you should know, Randi, you know that that I'm a deist. And I sort of stopped on the phone. I said, I heard that, but I didn't know whether to believe it or not. Now, a deist is a different thing from a religious person. A deist. He explained it. He tried to explain it to me. He said a deist is somebody who believes that there is some overarching, overpowering force that brought all this into existence and that has some sort of influence and is in the background. And I said, Martin, do you have any evidence for that at all? And he said, no, I freely admit it. You've got all the evidence on your side, Randi. I don't have any evidence whatsoever. And I said, well, why do you believe it then? And he answered me, now, this is charming and it's typically Martin. He says, because frankly, it makes me feel better about myself. That's all I need, guys. I don't need him to give me some big philosophical thing and quote all the famous philosophers of time. The whole I don't need that. If it made Martin Gardner feel a little more secure and he realized he was reaching the end of his life and I accepted it with a certain amount of a little twinge of, oh, boy, I wish he hadn't said that kind of thing. But nonetheless, it was my good friend Martin and bless him. I have great memories of him.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I can accept that without a problem. I know a lot of people that are in that zone. My personal feeling is that when I realize that I don't believe in God, that I felt that I knew that I was going to die and it was going to be oblivion. It changed me. And I went through a process that I would not be the person I am if I didn't go through that realization.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Became a hedonist.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Well, no, no, no, no. And I will argue. I hate to say this, and some people might not agree with this statement at all. But I think I appreciate things on a level that someone that never faces their mortality gets to because I do think everything is precious and every good person that I meet in my life is precious. And I mean, I'm extending love to a lot of people. And it's the most important realization of my life, I think, is that I'm going to cease to exist.<br />
<br />
'''JR:''' Would you close your eyes for the last time, whether you know it or not, or it comes suddenly, you don't know, of course, in advance. Thank goodness. But when you close your eyes for the last time, if you do it quietly and in peace and in bed, as we might prefer to do it. As I do, I think you'll smile. Knowing that you did the best you could while you were here and that you're not going to be here any longer. But what you've done will outlast you. It will stay behind. Now, I'll have 11 books out and they'll be around not in the form of paper, because paper goes away eventually. But they'll be there someplace, I think. Or at least the thoughts.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Randi, a lot of people might say, well, that's easy for you to say, Randi, because look at you. You're world famous. And you have all this stuff. But I think everybody could get there. Everybody could feel that way.<br />
<br />
'''JR:''' Absolutely. Yes.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' You know, it's you know, you can if you just changed the immediate friends and family around you, that's good enough.<br />
<br />
'''JR:''' Yeah. Yeah. And even if you just had two kids or something like that and they're going to go on and you know, they're going to be successful in life and happy and they're going to accomplish something. That's all you need.<br />
<br />
'''J:'' Randi, are you afraid to die?<br />
<br />
'''JR:''' Oh, no, not at all. No, I'm going into an operation in a few days, as a matter of fact. And it's a critical operation. But I know I've got the best medical help in the world that are going to be looking after me. And I'll go under the anaesthetic and I'll just hope. Oh, I hope I come out of this. Hope I come out of this.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Were you ever afraid to die in your life?<br />
<br />
'''JR:''' Oh, no.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Even when we were hanging every Niagara Falls.<br />
<br />
'''JR:''' Oh, no, no. I had a lot of rope on me. Let me tell you, steel cables and the whole thing. That wasn't going to fall anywhere. But I have twice in my life. I have come very close to death. And both times I thought this is this is the end. This is it. Damn. I was angry. I was totally pissed off. I was saying, oh, I had so much to do. You know, and I hated the fact that people would be sorrowing over me, only two. But the people would be would be regretful of the fact that they didn't have me around anymore. Yeah, that's but I have no fear of death. I really have no fear of death.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Do you have any regrets?<br />
<br />
'''JR:''' Oh, yes. I got regrets. Oh, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Any you want to share?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Hey, hey, come on.<br />
<br />
'''JR:''' I had two opportunities to hear Pavarotti sing in person. And I couldn't take advantage. And I was in South Africa twice and I begged and begged and begged to be enabled to touch the hand of Nelson Mandela. And I never got that either. There are a couple of other things that I've missed over the years, too. And yeah, but these are small. Pavarotti did fine without me.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Those aren't I mean, those if you get to the end of your life and those are your regrets, I think that's pretty good.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That's an awesome regret.<br />
<br />
'''JR:''' Yeah. Well, that's the worst regrets I've got. And if those are the worst, I'm doing OK.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But you look back and you're comfortable that it was a life well spent.<br />
<br />
'''JR:''' Oh, I'm happy with what I got done. Yeah. Because, hey, I've got over a thousand people out there in the auditorium. And they seem to think that I'm OK. That's enough to get me going.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Randi, what's your biggest achievement?<br />
<br />
'''JR:''' Well, my book, Flim-Flam!, was my first book. I haven't turned out version two because it really hasn't been necessary. And that covers the whole spectrum very well of the paranormal. And what's the technical term that Pen and Teller? Bullshit.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Randi, you were one of the primary inspirations for the Skeptics Guide podcast to to come into existence.<br />
<br />
'''JR:''' Oh, really?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Absolutely. Absolutely. You were before we started the podcast. If you remember we had you speak for the NESS a couple of times. You were one of the you. Absolutely. You and Carl Sagan was you and Carl Sagan that did this to all of us. And so my greatest achievement, other than my relationship with my wife and my child, of course, I'm talking about, like, the work that we do is absolutely is the SGU, is the podcast. And you started that for us.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So the ripple effect from from your influence is incalculable, I think.<br />
<br />
'''JR:''' You know, I will ripple off the place today.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, you're it's like the butterfly effect with skepticism.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, I see a good way of putting it.<br />
<br />
'''JR:''' Well, I hope I'll be smiling. I suspect I will be when I close my eyes. That's not for a long time yet. And when they ask me my age, I always say 84 going out 100 because I'm very optimistic.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So, Randi, if there is an afterlife, I want you to contact me. From the other side.<br />
<br />
'''JR:''' You got an address and email address?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So let me finish with a metaphor that I think you'll particularly appreciate. So I think what we're saying is that you are one of the giants upon whose shoulders we all stand. And so we do appreciate the role that you played in the greater skeptical movement in the world today. I mean, really, again, I was just sincere. I don't think we can really calculate all the number of people you talk to and the people that they influence, the people that they influence that really spreads very, very far. So no end to our appreciation for you.<br />
<br />
'''JR:''' Steve, that makes me all gushy.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Randi, has anyone called you a giant before?<br />
<br />
'''JR:''' No, he said it was a metaphor. If I stand on the chair, maybe.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Randi, congratulations on your marriage.<br />
<br />
'''JR:''' Well, thank you, sir.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' And I wish you well with your surgery. I'm sure you're going to be fine.<br />
<br />
'''JR:''' Oh, yeah. Yeah. Just go easy with that scalpel. No fancy work.<br />
<br />
== Science or Fiction <small>(1:33:53)</small> ==<br />
<br />
{{SOFResults<br />
|fiction = dark matter fields<!-- short word or phrase representing the item --><br />
|fiction2 = <!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
<br />
|science1 = remotely canceling fields<!-- short word or phrase representing the item --><br />
|science2 = magnetic switch 100x faster<!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
|science3 = <!-- leave blank if absent --> <br />
<br />
|rogue1 = cara<!-- rogues in order of response --><br />
|answer1 = dark matter fields<!-- item guessed, using word or phrase from above --><br />
<br />
|rogue2 =jay<br />
|answer2 =dark matter fields<br />
<br />
|rogue3 =evan<br />
|answer3 =remotely canceling fields<br />
<br />
|rogue4 = bob<!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
|answer4 = dark matter fields<!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
<br />
|rogue5 = <!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
|answer5 = <!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
<br />
|host = steve<!-- asker of the questions --><br />
<!-- for the result options below, <br />
only put a 'y' next to one. --><br />
|sweep = <!-- all the Rogues guessed wrong --><br />
|clever = <!-- each item was guessed (Steve's preferred result) --><br />
|win = y<!-- at least one Rogue guessed wrong, but not them all --><br />
|swept = <!-- all the Rogues guessed right --><br />
}}<br />
''Voiceover: It's time for Science or Fiction.''<br />
{{Page categories<br />
|SoF with a Theme = <!-- redirect(s) created for Magnetism (799) --><br />
}}<br />
<blockquote>'''Theme: Magnetism'''<br>'''Item #1:''' Scientists have defied a 178 year old theory by developing a technology for remotely canceling magnetic fields.<ref>[https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-10/uos-pcc102820.php EurekAlert!: Physicists circumvent centuries-old theory to cancel magnetic fields ]</ref><br>'''Item #2:''' Astronomers observing distant galaxies have found evidence that the source of mysterious large-scale magnetic fields is likely dark matter.<ref>[url_from_SoF_show_notes publication: title]</ref><br>'''Item #3:''' Researchers have demonstrated a magnetic switch that uses 6 {{w|Second#SI_multiples|picosecond (ps)}} electric pulses, about 100 times faster than current devices.<ref>[https://www.nature.com/articles/s41928-020-00488-3 Nature Electronics: Spin–orbit torque switching of a ferromagnet with picosecond electrical pulses]</ref></blockquote><br />
<br />
'''S:''' Each week, I come up with three science news items, or facts. Two real and one fake, and then I challenge my panel of skeptics to tell me which one is the fake. This is one of those weeks where there's a theme, but there are three news items. These new I just happen to find three news items within a theme. And that theme is magnetism.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Shit.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Oh, boy.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Are you ready?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Are you positive, Steve?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. Here we go. Item number one, scientists have defied a 178 year old theory by developing a technology for remotely canceling magnetic fields. Item number two, astronomers observing distant galaxies have found evidence that the source of mysterious large scale magnetic fields is likely dark matter. And item number three, researchers have demonstrated a magnetic switch that uses six picosecond electric pulses about 100 times faster than current devices. Cara, I think you haven't gone first in a while.<br />
<br />
=== Cara's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''C:''' God, of course. I mean, it makes no difference what order I go in with this. Magnets are like the bane of my existence. Like sometimes I actually really identify with that Insane Clown Posse. You remember when they were like, oh, yeah, like black black magic or something. Yeah, I get it.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Bill O'Reilly, how did the tides work?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No, how did the tides come in?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I'm like, I've read books about this. I've tried to learn about it, and I'm still always like, say, what now? OK, so 170 year old theory. But they defied it because they were able to remotely cancel the fields. Didn't know there was an old theory that said you can't do that. And I learned a long time ago that the test question when the test question says always or never, the answer is false. So this one might be science. Observing distant galaxies, source of mysterious large scale magnetic fields is likely dark matter. Oh, dark matter is a cool black box. It could explain anything.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And just just to explain, OK, by large scale, I mean, like galactic scale or bigger.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So it's coming from like outside of that-<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Cosmological scale. Yeah, maybe I should say cosmological scale magnetic fields.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And then a magnetic switch.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Basically, what this means is that you could write information magnetically at the six picosecond scale.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Write information. This is why that made it way more confusing than it already was.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, you could you could you could flip a magnetic field on a medium so that it's one way or the other. A picosecond, by the way, is a trillionth of a second.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' OK, so basically like utilizing, I'm assuming this is electromagnetism. So like using electro electric pulse, the magnet switches one direction or the other. But it's doing it like crazy fast, like crazy, like way faster than we've ever been able to.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' 100 times.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' All right. These all sound like science. Crap. Is there anything sticking out to me? OK, so the middle one is about like large scale theory. The two that are bumping it are about technology and utilization of magnets. I have a feeling that those kinds of things happen more rapidly and are more likely to have incremental changes. But the dark matter one is big. That's like cosmo, like you said, cosmological. This is a massive theory. It would upend a lot of things. So maybe I'll say that that one's the fiction because it's it's just a really big thing. And I may have heard about it, but didn't. I don't know.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' OK, Jay.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Take it away guys.<br />
<br />
=== Jay's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''J:''' All right. So this first one here, the 178 year old theory essentially saying that they came up with a way to cancel a magnetic field. And I have thought about that in the past. If you could just like, I guess use the opposite magnetic field with the two cancel each other out. I still don't quite understand it, but I could see I could see people figuring something out like that. I mean, that one doesn't seem that crazy to me. The second one, though. Wow. This one is like it's just so it's such a profound concept. So from my understanding, it's saying that magnetic fields, large scale magnetic fields could be made in part, I guess, by dark matters existence. And that could be a way to prove that dark matter exists is by reading those magnetic fields. Of the three this one seems the most likely to be false I think. I'm just going to go with the dark matter one.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' OK.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That's it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, Evan.<br />
<br />
=== Evan's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, I was thinking kind of the opposite, maybe.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Crap. <br />
<br />
'''E:''' Not because I have some great insight into this. I mean, this is why Bob's going last, clearly. But that why couldn't dark matter be the source of it? I don't know why it couldn't be. I mean we're talking large scale magnetic fields. You can't attribute it to anything else. We know that dark matter does exist. So many inferences and examples. So why couldn't it be? So I don't think it's implausible to fight a hundred seventy eight year old theory of developing a technology for remotely canceling magnetic fields. Sure, I don't have a problem with that one. And then the six picoseconds. I just don't think Steve would have made that particular one up, frankly, is what I'm feeling about that one. So I'll buck the trend and I'll say that the dark matter one is science. And I'll go with the the hundred seventy eight year old theory. I'll say that one's the fiction.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And Bob.<br />
<br />
=== Bob's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, I didn't read any of these. These are good.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Damn.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, yeah. I'm kind of annoyed, too. But in some way, it might be helpful. So let's go with the picosecond. Yeah, I totally buy that. Talk to me when it's six attoseconds, OK? That's fine.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You just wanted to say attosecond.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' You know I love that shit. But it's true. Six pico, trillions of a second. Been there, done that. I mean, sure, that would be great. If it truly is two orders of magnitude faster than current, that's awesome. And I hope and I want that to be true. But it just doesn't seem like if you said like yattasecond is some crazy crap. I would totally say that was fiction. The the magnetic field one. Damn, I normally I would just jump on this one and say that that was fiction. That just sounds wrong. But I can't really put any good thoughts behind really valid experience behind that. I can't think of a way. It just sounds I mean, remotely sounds doesn't sound that awesome because it's like magnetic fields can be remote. I mean you don't need contact, but it just that doesn't seem right. But what seems even less right is this this dark matter one. I did look at the news the past couple of days. I didn't take a huge dive like I normally do because Halloween week and all. This would have been at the top of my of my feet. This is huge. I mean, dark matter interacts with everything through its mass. That's it. It's dark for a reason. It does not interact in any other way. This would be huge, even if it was even if you need such gargantuan scales to make it manifest, that still would be like on the on the news. I mean, on the TV. I mean, I don't know. It sure should have been. But I think I would have seen as I'm going to I'm going to pull that card. And I want that to be true so badly. So I will happily be wrong on that one, because that would be the chink in the armour that we've been waiting for. Some little breakthrough that could really just give us some damn insight into this stuff. So, yeah, I'll say that one is probably fiction.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #3 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. So you guys all agree with number three. So we'll start there. Researchers have demonstrated a magnetic switch that uses six picosecond electric pulses about one hundred times faster than current devices. You guys all think that one is science and that one is science.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Sweet.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' A hundred times faster, man.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And hey, hey, Bob.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' One of the stories I pitched this week, which I'm so surprised you didn't do. But yeah, water on the moon. OK, that's pretty important. Was that scientists have timed the shortest every event. Do you know how fast it was?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Blinko second.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Probably attosecond.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Two hundred forty seven zepto second, zepto second.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Nice.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Sorry, I had to.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And if I recall, it is the amount of time it takes for light to traverse the diameter of a hydrogen nucleus. Wasn't that it?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I don't remember. I don't know.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I was off only by three orders of magnitude. Ten to the minus twenty one zepto. Nice.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Pretty amazing.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Zeptoseconds.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Trillions of a billionth of a second. That's right. Yeah. Photons journey through a hydrogen molecule.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So, yeah, so this is research of the headline here. Researchers break magnetic memory speed record. So the the actual article itself is spin orbit torque switching of a ferromagnetic with picosecond electrical pulses.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Nice.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And yeah, they got it. They went from basically hundreds of picoseconds down to six picoseconds. They using a common, thin cobalt film. Cobalt is one of the ferromagnetic metals. Cara, do you know what the three ferromagnetic metals are?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Copper?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Pfft, then no. Cobalt?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Iron, cobalt, and the third one's nickel. Iron, cobalt, nickel.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Damn.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So anyway, the other thing that's really good about this is that it consumes very little energy.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, that's huge.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Less than 50 picojoules. So, yeah, the obvious application here is that you could make super fast, magnetic memory that uses very little energy, which both of which being fast and using a little bit of energy. Both good things. It's just, yeah, this is amazing how this technology is is improving. All right. We'll just keep going in reverse order.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #2 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Astronomers observing distant galaxies have found evidence that the source of mysterious large scale magnetic fields is likely dark matter. Evan, you think this one is science and everyone else thinks this one is fiction. And this one is...<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Say it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The fiction!<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, OK.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yes!<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Cara, you got there with some metal logic there about. This would be big by definition. Yeah. But yeah, there is a mysterious large scale magnetic field that we don't know where it's coming from. Galactic scale and bigger, like in between the galaxies, there are these thin tendrils of magnetic fields that we don't know where they're coming from.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Some dark matter.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But Bob is correct. And I pretty much knew that Bob was going to hit upon this. Dark matter has no interaction with magnetic fields. So it does not. It's not a magnetic material. It doesn't produce magnetic fields. And that's why it's dark, because electromagnetism is light. And so if you don't do. Yeah, you don't have any interaction with electromagnetism that you would be dark and only we only feel it through its gravitational effect, through its mass. However, Bob, when I was researching, I always had to make sure my fictions are fiction. You know?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yes, that would be nice if they really were fiction.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, because, yeah, because when I'm thinking of plausible fiction, it's amazing.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Right. Right.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I make up shit that turns out to be true. It's always one notch beyond what I know. And it's like, oh, that's that has been discovered. OK. Or it's too ambiguous to be a clean fiction. So here there was only one little wrinkle that I'm like, all right, is this going to be too too ambiguous? But there are theories that dark matter could, there could be a dark matter monopole that could affect magnetic fields. It doesn't produce magnetic fields. Dark matter is still not electromagnetic. But there is these theories that it could like these dark matter monopoles might affect electromagnetism in a way that we could detect its presence. And this might be another way of detecting dark matter and also understanding what the hell it is, because you have no idea what it is. At this point. So but yeah, I thought it was that was different enough than what I was saying that no one was going to get confused by that. If you mean, again, it's also a really esoteric speculation that I came upon when I was when I was researching this piece. But the mysterious large scale magnetic fields, as far as I know, remains mysterious. What I did find, I was one of the things that may have inspired that a little bit. There was a news item about dark matter, but I didn't have to do electromagnetism. So I didn't use it. Is that a the most updated map of dark matter finds that it is maximally randomly distributed in galaxies. What's the technical term that they used?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Entropic distribution?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, there we go.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' No way, I'm right?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yep. Maximum entropy. That's it.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, baby.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Neat. Go Bob.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So again, that will that's a little clue about it. But how it about where it comes from and how it behaves. But yeah, it's just it's distributed with maximum entropy throughout a galaxy.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Throughout a galaxy?<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #1 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. All this means that scientists have defined a one hundred and seventy eight year old theory by developing a technology for remotely canceling magnetic fields is science. And I don't know if you guys appreciate how cool this is, but this is this would have some direct applications. So remotely means like in places that are otherwise inaccessible, like inside bodies, you know?<br />
<br />
'''C/B:''' Oh.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. And so essentially this could be used as magnetic noise cancellation.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' You mean magnetic noise, as in this makes like a Faraday cage?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yes. Not not not not not the noise that results from magnetism, but always in the magnetic field itself.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' OK.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' In other words, if you're trying-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Interference.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Magnetic interference. So if you're trying to use magnetic imaging, for example, this could cancel out any non signal.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' You can clean it up and increase the resolution.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You clean it up. Exactly. So this will have applications maybe for quantum computing, they're saying, because you could eliminate any kind of noisy field [inaudible].<br />
<br />
'''B:''' For MRIs.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' For neuroimaging and for biomedicine. So you could also use it to maybe control magnetic nanoparticles within a body, for example. It's interesting. First of all, it was like a hundred seventy eight year old theory said that this should be impossible, but they found a way around the reason why it shouldn't be possible.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Can it mess with light? Can it mess with electromagnetism? Like just like regular light? I guess it would must it must be able to.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I don't know. So actually the thing that this isn't the first time that people have been able to do this, but this is the first time they've been able to do it at biologically important frequencies. So, yes, at frequencies that have all these practical applications. Previously, they were able to do it. I think at just really high frequencies. You know, this this actually more directly could lead to practical applications.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Sweet.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Magnetic field noise cancellation. All right, guys. So good job.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' You got it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' This was I know this was a sort of a tricky one.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, it was a good one.<br />
<br />
== Skeptical Quote of the Week <small>(1:50:10)</small> ==<br />
<br />
<!-- For the quote display, use block quote with no marks around quote followed by a long dash and the speaker's name, possibly with a reference. For the QoW in the recording, use quotation marks for when the Rogue actually reads the quote. --> <br />
<br />
<blockquote>Science is not perfect. It can be misused. It is only a tool. But it is by far the best tool we have, self-correcting, ongoing, applicable to everything. It has two rules. First: there are no sacred truths. All assumptions must be critically examined; arguments from authority are worthless. Second: whatever is inconsistent with the facts must be discarded or revised. ... The obvious is sometimes false; the unexpected is sometimes true.<br>– {{w|Carl Sagan}} (1934-1996), American luminary </blockquote><br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, Evan, I know you lost this week. You were the sole loser. You were out completely on your own in not getting this one correct this week.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' OK?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' But not a bad choice though.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' What's going on here?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But as a consolation, you get to read the quote.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, it is an honour. "Science is not perfect. It can be misused. It's only a tool, but is by far the best tool we have. Self-correcting, ongoing, applicable to everything. It has two rules. First, there are no sacred truths. All assumptions must be critically examined. Arguments from authority are worthless. Second, whatever is inconsistent with the facts must be discarded or revised. The obvious is sometimes false. The unexpected is sometimes true." Carl Sagan, that's from Cosmos.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, I remember that.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, I remember it vividly.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I've almost memorized that series. I've watched it so many times.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, gosh. Yeah. You know, when something's I do, at least I know when something's right from Cosmos. I read it or I'll hear it and boom, there it is. Yeah, it's still a beautiful. The original Cosmos, still a beautiful series.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, it was the only thing that's disappointing about it is that the style of Cosmos didn't become more the standard for science documentaries.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I completely agree.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, it did have an effect. I mean, I have seen it has influenced other similar documentaries. But I do think that a lot of them reverted to the talking head kind of disjointed format that is more common. I guess it's easier just have having a single narrator walk you through the science like as a journey.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's much more common in the UK. Like that, that's a much more common, like natural history, with like David Attenborough, like that in the UK and what's his name, Brian Cox. But you're right, it's actually and of course, as somebody who goes on castings and is always like talking about shows and development and stuff. That's not the model that a lot of networks want to use here in the US. That's why it's so cool that Nat Geo and Fox did bring Cosmos back with with Neil. Because it's we know it worked. But I think that a lot of people think that the American television audience is needs more than that or something.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I hate when they underestimate.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Me too.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Agreed, agreed.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, I hate that. The other documentary that I really love that also followed this format is The Day the Universe Changed with Burke. Excellent, excellent series if you've never seen it. And it also gave me the same kind of vibe as Cosmos, where you have somebody really knows what they're talking about sort of leading you on a journey through this fascinating information. It's all about the history of science and how A leads to B leads to C leads to D and how one idea can literally change the universe because the universe is what we think it is in a way. It's like we have a model of the universe. And for us, that model is real, right? That is your universe is what you think it is. And when something flips our understanding of the universe, our conception of the universe actually changes. And now we're living in a different universe than what we were living in before we knew that.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Isn't psychology cool?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. Well, thank you all for joining me this week.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Thank you.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Sure man.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Thanks Steve.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' You got it Steve.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yep. We're going to be doing a live stream this week. This will be the day before the show comes out. We're continuing to do the live streams going forward. I'm not sure what our holiday schedule is going to be like, but we'll keep you updated.<br />
<br />
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'''S:''' —and until next week, this is your {{SGU}}. <!-- typically this is the last thing before the Outro --> <br />
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}}</div>Hearmepurrhttps://www.sgutranscripts.org/w/index.php?title=SGU_Episode_816&diff=19091SGU Episode 8162024-01-10T13:12:14Z<p>Hearmepurr: </p>
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<br />
== Introduction ==<br />
''Voice-over: You're listening to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.'' <br />
<br />
'''S:''' Hello and welcome to the {{SGU|link=y}}. Today is Tuesday, February 23<sup>rd</sup>, 2021, and this is your host, Stephen Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella...<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Hey, everybody.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Cara Santa Maria...<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Howdy.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Jay Novella...<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Hey, guys.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' ...and Evan Bernstein.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Good evening, everyone.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So it's finally warming up in Texas. We touched a little bit on the energy woes, the electricity woes that we're having there. Last week's show, but now we've had a full week for the whole story to unfold.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Steve, before we get into the details, can we just say, listen everyone in Texas, it was really a hard thing to watch. We had our friend on that lives there. It was scary. It was horrible for so many people. And anything that we say is not judging the people that went through that. We're going to chit chat today about what went wrong in Texas, but we're in no way pointing fingers at citizens who suffered in all this.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, they're the victims for sure.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So here's the interesting bit of misinformation that's going around. So immediately people start pushing their political agenda, right? Because that's what people do.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's what they do.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. So the Republicans were blaming the wind turbines. They said that they were freezing up and that's why there was the rolling blackouts and there was the basically the electrical grid was failing. And that's nonsense. The quick story is there's three electrical grids in the United States in the lower 48, I should say. There's the Eastern grid, the Western grid and Texas. Texas is its own grid. It did that specifically to avoid regulations on selling electricity across state lines.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Imperial entanglements.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, and by the way, not all of Texas. El Paso happens to be slivered into the Western grid. And just-<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Oh, is that right?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. So compare how El Paso did. They didn't lose power.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Well, yeah, you can't really compare it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' If you get into a problem, you could buy electricity from another neighbouring state. That's kind of the bigger the grid, the better. And the more renewables we have in the system, we want the grids to be even bigger. We may need to connect the Eastern and Western grids. And if we really want to maximize renewable, because over capacity is one of the ways that you deal with the intermittent nature of it. But in any case, Texas is its own grid. And they also have a very, very deregulated system. So what that meant practically was that the energy companies were not required to winterize their facilities. So they didn't, even though they had some like a cold snap 10 years ago with-<br />
<br />
'''B:''' 2011. Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And with hearings saying we need to ensure that this never happens again, you guys need to winterize your equipment. And they were like, no.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And they didn't. It was voluntary. So they chose not to spend money to do it. And they did that to keep their prices down, partly, inevitably we got it. It happened again. And so it wasn't just the wind turbines. Every single energy source failed, coal, natural gas, nuclear-<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Fusion, all of it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I mean, I saw some-<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Perpetual motion machines were stopping.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I saw some officials from the actual energy companies saying we were literally days, maybe even hours away from a blackout that could have lasted months.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Months? Can you imagine that?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' They said minutes, maybe seconds is what they actually said.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Minutes, maybe seconds?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' But wait, what does that mean? What was happening? Like, Cara, what was the situation that would have made it a lot worse?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' They were close.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So this is the problem. When part of the electrical grid goes down because it fails, then other parts have to kick in to take over, then they overload. So they shut down to keep from overloading. And so it's this cascading shutdown across the grid. That's what happened.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Which is why they do intentional rolling brownouts and blackouts on purpose to try and relieve the pressure off the grid.<br />
<br />
'''B:'' Plus, it wasn't so much rolling, though, was it?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' They did it right before the grid failed in a way that would have caused damage that would have taken a long time to repair. So they just barely avoided that. They did that with rolling blackouts. And then there were actual blackouts when, again, you have that cascading failure.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, but the other angle there, Steve, is some of those rolling blackouts weren't rolling at all because it's like the wealthy communities had it all the time and the not so wealthy communities didn't.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Really? Is that documented?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That's what I read.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So what happened was they spared critical infrastructure like hospitals. Where do you think the hospitals are located? So the neighbourhoods that had – and again, it's totally reasonable to not cut power to a hospital, but they couldn't just pick out the hospital. They had to spare the entire neighbourhood. And so that difference, like the wealthy versus the poor neighbourhoods, had to do with that's where the hospitals were, you know. But that was the end result was, yes, some of the more wealthy neighbourhoods were spared, the rolling blackouts. But there were actually permanent blackouts in some locations for days caused by just the overload. Because the thing is, no matter – remember, with coal, natural gas, and nuclear, they all ultimately do the same thing. They make steam and they turn the turbine. And it was those components, the moving the water around, that froze because they didn't have heaters on them. And the other thing is we have wind turbines in New England. They don't freeze here because we have heaters on them. They're just winterized.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' They're winterized, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So the problem was that all of the energy production modalities were not winterized. To pick out wind turbines and say they failed and they were the problem is pure nonsense. That is just political propaganda.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' The first problem was that their grid, which they is unregulated and is privately owned was not winterized. The second problem, and with that all the other problems we talked about, not being able to borrow energy from other parts of the country, not being able to distribute the need. So the second problem is that on this unregulated market in Texas, people are allowed to sell wholesale energy. They're allowed to sell variable weight wholesale energy. And unfortunately, that also disproportionately affects poorer people because the rates are significantly lower. They come with a greater risk, but they're more affordable in the day to day. And since Texas, by and large, doesn't deal with this, except it just did 10 years ago, basically, most everyday people think I'm going to look at these rates, they are significantly lower if I take a variable rate because usually we're not in the hot box or the cold box as it were. Unfortunately, there was no mechanism in place. So when like one particular, I read a deep dive about one particular variable rate company called Gritty who buys wholesale and sells off directly to the customer. They actually saw what was happening, basically the bubble bursting right in front of them. And they frantically reached out to their customers saying, you need to dump us now. If you don't dump us now and get with a flat rate energy company within the next day or two, you're going to be hit with bills that are thousands of dollars, 15,000.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That was actually nice of them to actually do that.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Because ultimately they're unregulated. They're doing what the market allows them to do as a business, whether you want to say an ethical practice or not is a point, but it's beside this point. Ultimately, when they saw that this had a terrible backlash effect for themselves and for their customers, they were like, we don't have any safeties in place. The only way to avoid getting hit with a $15,000 electric bill is to dump out now. But what are you going to do? They're going to be able to call and wait on hold with the electric company in the middle of this blackout. So many people didn't get the option.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Worth a shot.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, exactly. It was worth the shot.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' They could email for two days.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Exactly, because they didn't either have electricity or they were too busy trying to like board up their windows.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. I mean, some people have described, though, the wholesale market as predatory and that seems to be reasonable because they acted the same way that like variable rate mortgages were predatory.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Absolutely.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Up front, it sounds great. You get this low rate, but the thing is by getting the cheap upfront wholesale electricity, you're basically not paying for insurance, right?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Absolutely.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's really cheap to drive without insurance because you get into an accident and then the other person gets screwed, not just you. So in this case, the federal government's having to bail out Texas.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, because Texas themselves didn't regulate. And this is the part that pisses me off because who keeps winning in these schemes? The people who keep getting money regardless of what they do to protect the consumers. And that's why this story makes me angry because what we're talking about here is not a luxury item. We're talking about a necessity to live. Electricity keeps people alive.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, that's what creates perverse incentives, right? The system exists so that people can take a risk to make a lot of money. But if the risk bites them, they ask somebody else pays for it. That's what we call the perverse incentive. That's a setup for for bad stuff to happen.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So that's why regulation exists.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, but I don't mind free market solutions and having the free market. That's great. I think you need to balance that with regulations, obviously, but you can't build in perverse incentives where it's a win-win that the investors make all the money and they never lose because they get bailed out because of whatever. They're critical or they $10,000 bills to their customers and the customers need to get bailed out.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, and that's a classic example of the freest of free markets. That's the problem. When you really look at laissez-faire economics, what you're saying is any time there's a demand we're going to because supply is low and the demand increases, the costs are going to shift.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Like when that guy, Scavelli, whatever that scumbag was, raised the price to thousands of dollars for that medicine.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, but even that's a slightly different example because in this case, the algorithm was set in advance.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And we knew this was going to happen.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' We knew this was going to happen and they weren't price fixing. They were doing the opposite. They were saying, no matter what, we're never going to cap. And so ultimately, without a cap, the free market was doing exactly what it was designed to do, which is to basically enable or enact these perverse incentives and put all the burden on the consumer so that the people at the very, very top made their money anyway. And then when there was still a problem, a regulatory problem, what ends up happening? The federal government, so our federal taxes, end up paying off the place where the state taxes aren't being collected. And that's frustrating.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, that really sucks.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And the bottom line is it was the lack of winterizing because nobody wanted to spend the money to invest in it. That was the ultimate problem. The thing is, it's so fixable.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And prevention is so much cheaper. It's so much cheaper.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You need to be living in the real world.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I wonder if the public pressure now will be on to do this and they'll finally get their acts together.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Well, why? Why would the pressure be on? Because next time it happens, then everyone else's taxes will pay for this to bail them out again, right?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, I think it's because people died. There's a certain point where money doesn't even matter anymore when people's lives are on the line.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Well, I think the jury's out whether we cross that line in terms of what these people do. I mean, you know how people are. The weather's in the 70s. People are going to forget about this and move to the next thing. And then in 10 years or five years or next month, it's going to happen again.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Gosh, I hope not.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, that's the other question is nobody knows the answer to this is what's the relationship between events like this, like this ridiculously cold weather in Texas and global warming, extreme weather events like this, are they going to be coming more frequently?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Definitely.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, I mean, it seems that way. It seems that way. I don't know that that we have enough evidence yet to say for sure, but it certainly is plausible that we might be seeing more extreme events like this. We certainly can no longer be confident that past experience is going to predict future experience.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' But that's what the science predicts more extreme weather events.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's true.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But pointing to you're right, pointing to a specific example, my hope is just that individuals within their communities organize. That people who had to put up with this and who were, damaged, some of whom irreparably, some of whom lost limb or life, see this as something that's beyond the pale, because they're the only way that change is going to be affected is if pressure is put on by the constituents, it's the only way you're going to see change.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, totally. OK, let's move on.<br />
<br />
== What’s the Word? <small>(12:45)</small> ==<br />
* Word_Topic_Concept<ref group="v">[https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/WORD Wiktionary: WORD]</ref> <!-- we recommend having an in-line link to the Wikipedia or Wiktionary entry in addition to the Wiktionary vocab group reference. So, before the Wikitionary reference, put either {{w|word_topic_concept}} or [https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/WORD WORD] --> <br />
<br />
<blockquote> _consider_using_block_quotes_for_emails_read_aloud_in_this_segment_ </blockquote><br />
<br />
'''S:''' Cara, you're going to do a What's The Word this week.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I am. So this word was recommended or suggested by Michael Viau. Hopefully I'm pronouncing that right from St. Louis. He said, "I work in electromagnetic compatibility and came across this word when researching lightning formation. The word is percolation. This is the fun one for the whole team specifically because it can be tied to fractals and coffee." It's it's all of our buttons. "Percolation theory or my profession's application of it, at least, is a statistical way of modeling current paths through composites made up of various materials with different properties." And I was like, what is that? So I started to to reach research a little bit more. And what I love, oh, the title of his email was What's the word? I've got a fun one because I say that every week. I got a fun one. OK, so percolation. When we think of the word percolation, maybe we should do this backward and look at the etymology first.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Shun. Yes, you said work. Look at it backwards.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Gosh, it's too dense.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I thought you were going to get it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Do you notice that I probably laugh more, Evan, when it's somebody else's story and you do one of your funny Evan jokes because I'm not as invested in like, what am I going to say next? What is the depth of this? I don't want to screw this up.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's right. Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's funny.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Otherwise, I'm throwing you off your game.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' As the one who edits the show, I can tell you that Cara and Evan giggle at every joke and Bob and Jay do not.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Someone has to.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Everything funny in the show.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' For the record, Jay and I laugh at the good ones.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yes. Yeah, Bob, you're selective.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Evan and I just we just humor is an important part of our life. That's all.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I mean, yeah, I mean, it's good to wear rose coloured glasses because you're just happier. Life is pain, man.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Life is pain. We see the absurdity and the suffering. Welcome to my existential world, Jay. All right. So percolation. The PIE of the first root, the Proto Indo-European root, per means forward. And in this case, they're kind of taking that as through. And then colade, this is an interesting suffix in that we don't really know where it came from, but we do know that the whole word together, percolationum, came from the Latin. And so the colade part translates to strain. So it comes from colum, which is a strainer or like a sieve. So to percolate is to strain through, to sieve through. And that's really what the word means, right? That's the usage that we're all used to. If something percolates through something, it's moving through a permeable substance. Sometimes it's to extract the solute out of it. Sometimes it's to take just the liquid component out of it. So with coffee, we're percolating through, but we're just keeping the water that has had the coffee grounds percolated. We're not keeping the grinds, we're throwing those away. In other cases, we're percolating something in order to pull out the solute. Does that make sense? It's like diffusion.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Jay, remember when we were building my house in Oxford and the surveyor went out there and did the PERC test on the land to measure how fast the land would absorb water?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. And so you will see that. You'll see the word used more specifically in like engineering, surveying, geology. You'll see percolation through rock, through soil. You also will see it in a more literary sense, right? This idea is percolating right now, just letting it kind of simmer, letting it sort of move through my brain juices and eventually it's going to settle. So that's kind of the typical term that we use. But of course, my interest was piqued by Michael when he talked about percolation theory. So I started to do some deep dives. It's complicated, very complicated. And it does have to do with fractal geometry. It also has to do with statistical physics and math. We see it in material science. We even see it in like network theories. So the best way that I found for somebody to describe percolation was talking about, a piece of foam, for example, or really any somewhat porous structure. Let's say a big chunk of terracotta. If I was to pour water on top of a piece of terracotta, how would I calculate where the water would end up as it's seeping through? What would its path be? Because they're all these little random holes. So we don't have perfect nodes. We don't have perfect links. What we have is this porous substrate that's random. So this is a theory that uses these different structures to try and describe phenomena passing through in this random graph. And it's fascinating as you start to dig deep and you start to see all of these little schematics of percolation theory. You can see representations of percolation theory using these really complicated and beautiful graphs. And so in a way, not even in a way, pretty directly, it relates back to that route beautifully. But if you didn't know what percolation theory is, your head might not go to that place. So I guess Michael's profession, which he didn't say what it is, they use percolation theory to model current paths through composites made up of various materials with different properties. So he may be in more of a material science or engineering example of that, but you also see the modeling used kind of more theoretically. You might see it used in fractal geometry. You might see it used more in other versions of mathematics where there is no actual substrate, but instead we're modeling what would happen with a random substrate. And it's fascinating. So thank you for the opportunity, Michael, for me to dig into percolation theory and to percolate a little bit on this fun word.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, like when you think you know what a word means, but it really has so many more meanings.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Mm hmm. Very cool. And in this case, it's really fun because it's one of those words where the root stays there. You know how sometimes we're like, okay, this word is used here, here, here, and I still can't figure out why this is the word that this field shows to describe this phenomenon. But in this case, it all comes right back to that beautiful root of basically putting something through a sieve of something moving through pores.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And the etymology is highly conserved.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It is. I am saying that.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Cara, do you ever think of all the animals that can fly, the fly got the name?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' You're right.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Why would they give the most insignificant thing that flies, like that and a gnat, you know? But why would they? There should be a giant bird called the fly, you know what I mean?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No, I like that it's such a little one. I like that because then everything else would be the fuzzy fly or the beaked fly. See, why didn't we do that? That's the question. There are more kinds of flies. I mean, there are a lot of flies, but they're all flies. They're not a lot of different things that fly.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Why don't they call a flying squirrel a glide?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It's not flying, it's gliding.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' There are sugar gliders.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Sugar gliders?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, they're related to flying squirrels.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' They're little bats.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No, sugar gliders aren't bats. They're mammals.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' No, you're right. They're little, I'm sorry, they're little, like they're little guys. They're like squirrels.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Why don't they call bats flappies?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' They should.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Inexplicable.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Snakes, danger noodles, and raccoons, trash pandas. What are some of the other ones? I love them.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Whistle pigs, yeah.<br />
<br />
== News Items ==<br />
<br />
=== Perseverance <small>(20:52)</small> ===<br />
* [https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/ Mars 2020 Mission Perseverance Rover]<ref>[https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/ NASA: Mars 2020 Mission]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, Jay, tell us all about the Perseverance.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yay, not the perseverance, which so many people have said I've spoiled them.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' You know, science has completely kicked ass. It has for a very long time, but this mission has really impressed the hell out of me with everything. Once you start reading about what was achieved here. The Mars rover mission that we just saw, it's called the Mars 2020, and this rover mission by NASA's Mars Exploration Program is a mission that was originally announced back in 2012, and it includes or included three major components. So, there's the cruise stage that was used to travel between Earth and Mars. There's the entry, descent, and landing system, EDLS, that includes the aeroshell descent vehicle and heat shield. And then we have the sky crane that was needed to deliver Perseverance and Ingenuity safely to the surface. And just so you know, the Ingenuity is the test helicopter. I'll give you a little bit of information about it in a minute. So, Mars 2020 mission, this was launched on an Atlas V launch vehicle. It took six months to reach Mars, and it landed just a few days ago, February 18th, 2021. So, the Perseverance rover has a slate of missions, primary objectives that I'll list off to you. This is exactly what NASA had on their website. It's to explore a geologically diverse landing site, assess ancient habitability. And they do this, and this is me talking, by investigating its surface, the geological processes and the geological history. And when they're saying assess ancient habitability, they're talking about did things live there previously and what was the previous habitat? Seek signs of ancient life. They wanted, they're looking for these things and rocks and different places that they would expect there to be signs of life. That's where the rover is going to be looking. Gather rock and soil samples. This is amazing. So this is going to be, the rover is going to be gathering soil samples, putting them into a test tube and leaving them on the surface of Mars for a later pickup mission, which I'll tell you about, and demonstrate technology for future robotic and human exploration. So let me get into some details here. The rover is gathering samples on the Mars regolith, right? Does that sound sexy? It's cool, but let me tell you the sexy. The samples are going to be stored in tubes and then it's literally going to leave them on the ground as it rolls through its path. So it's going to leave a path of tubes behind it. Perseverance can't pick up the samples once it puts them down. And eventually though, the goal is to return these samples back to earth. And this mission, and I have to do a side step here and just quickly tell you about this mission. It's scheduled in 2026 and the preparation of the samples is a key part of the Perseverance mission because in 2026 we're sending something called the sample retrieval lander. And like I said, it's slated to leave earth in 2026 and it will be picking up the samples on the sample fetch rover. It's going to be like a little dog that runs around. They know exactly where the samples are with satellite information and they're measuring distances between objects and they're calculating exactly where they are. The rover is going to go pick them up. It's going to be designed and built by the European Space Agency. And then that rover is going to deliver them to another thing that's going to shoot it like a soccer ball with all the samples stuck into it. It's going to shoot up out to another thing that's going to send it back to Earth. So that mission is really cool. I'm dying to read all the details about that.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Wait, how is it actually lifting off of Mars to send it back to earth?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That soccer ball payload gets put on a little spaceship that launches it back into orbit and then another thing takes it home.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That sounds like that'll be the very first thing launched off of Mars then, right?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It's going to be the first thing that is bringing back samples from Mars. Absolutely.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Something has to land and then take off again.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That's right. You're right, Bob.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That's a big deal.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Perseverance is also responsible for scoping out the landing site for the next phase of the sample return mission, which they're using it to find a really flat area. But they also, keep in mind, they want that sample return mission to be near where the rover is to pick up all the doodads. So it's going to land right in that vicinity again. So NASA designed the rover with its past rover Curiosity in mind, which was very smart because many of the components developed for Curiosity were used in Perseverance. So it was a very low cost way of reusing technology that has already been proven and they added only the things that needed to be added to help this mission achieve its goals. As an example, they added the core drill that takes samples and some new instrumentation. The rover has 19 video cameras and two microphones, which means they're ready to make rock and roll videos, which I think is awesome. The rover is also going to test technology in the Martian dust to see how it possibly could interfere with technology, right? They want to know, is this dust going to get into stuff and do nasty things? Because we know that the moon has a really nasty sharp edged regolith. So they want to know like, okay, what is this Martian terrain going to do and what's the dust like? Is it dangerous? Perseverance will also test technology and this, I think this is the one that really blew my mind the most. They'll take Martian carbon dioxide and do what, guys? What do you think they're going to do with it?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Smoke it?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Martian carbon dioxide.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Make oxygen out of it.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Right. They're making pure oxygen out of it. And what is pure oxygen good for? It's good for-<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Breathing and for rockets.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Exactly. Oxygen is one of those things you could use it in so many different ways, but the two main things is it's for rocket fuel and for people to breathe. So that's awesome. So I guess in the future, they're going to put instrumentation out there and machinery that could slowly process oxygen, which is great. Just pull it out of the CO2 that's in the atmosphere. The rover is also going to try to find subsurface water or at least prove that it's there. Improve future landing techniques and study the weather. And in particular, they want to know what's in the air. They want to know what particulate makes up the air. This information is vital to send actually people there and other robots. So this will help them determine how they need to build habitats. It'll determine how they will need to build future technology, other robots and things like that. Another interesting upgrade in the mission is a guidance and control system called the terrain relative navigation. So if you watched Perseverance get deployed by the sky crane, you may have noticed that it made some lateral movements to find better land, to find a better landing site. So the new system allowed the sky crane to change its heading during the last moments of the landing process. And past missions didn't have this. And what happened in one of the past missions, they landed in a bad place that was suboptimal. And that's bad because you have all of this money, all these people, all this human effort and you land in a crater and you're kind of screwed.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Wouldn't water be suboptimal?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Absolutely, Bob.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Sub-aquatic.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, they're building rovers, not boats. Of course, they don't want to land in a mushy area.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Not much chance of that on Mars.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Water would be optimal for a sub, so it would be suboptimal.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Oh, you idiot. Oh my God.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, Bob was doing the fun.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I will move on, Steve.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I liked it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's a thinker.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, jokes are extra funny when they're explained.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Just move on, just move on.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Bob, the little helicopter, please let me talk about this guy. He deserves a little love. So, he's a little robotic helicopter, ingenuity, and he will test or she will test powered flight in Mars' extremely thin atmosphere. It's a big deal, guys.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Wait, is she a helicopter or is she like a drone?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Well, they're calling it a robotic helicopter because I don't want to talk about stuff I'm not an expert on. Like, what's the difference between a helicopter and a drone? I think it's...<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, helicopters are piloted, usually.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I think it has to do with the blades.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' A self-flying helicopter.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Okay. That's a good one.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' All right, so this little guy is going to be used to be first, it's going to be the first thing that has ever flown on an alien planet and it has five planned flights. Each of them is going to last about 90 seconds. It'll go up about three to five meters. In those three to five meters as it goes up, it's going to be flying around, of course, and man, I'm hoping that it has a couple of cameras on it. It's got to have a camera.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It better.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It would bum me out if they didn't stick a GoPro on there.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, but at least Perseverance will be shooting it. We'll see what it does. But it's going to take off, it's going to fly around, it's going to do some manoeuvring, it's going to land, and what are they going to find out? How much energy did it take? Did the atmosphere interfere or play nice with the way they designed the blades? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. They're going to do all these things that are going to tell us awesome information. So when we want to put a real flying machine down on that planet, we'll know how to build it. Now, one last thing. I thought this was really, really cool. If you look at the parachute that was used to slow down the sky crane and rover on the descent, it had a secret message encoded in it. The parachute had a series of red and white stripes that were put in a pattern that was some internet users, air quotes, internet users discovered the hidden message. It was written in binary language, which is a computer language, and once they decoded it, it said...<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Send more Chuck Berry.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Of course. You know, anybody that watched SNL back in the 70s knows that one. No, it said, dare mighty things, and this happens to be a key phrase at NASA's JPL.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That's awesome. I love it.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So somebody sat around and said, hey, I know you guys are working on the super important stuff, but let's not forget that we've got to send some humanity to Mars. Let's send a message along with the parachute that's sitting on the surface of Mars now and probably will be there for a very long time. It says, dare mighty things. I love that.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Didn't they do something similar with Curiosity where the wheels in Morse code said JPL?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I think you're right.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. It's like they couldn't be so overt by actually writing that, but they coded it, which makes it extra fun.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' They totally should have put human footprint marks on the wheels as it rolled around.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, my God.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, great. Yeah, that's what we need.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Now, guys, of course, please do more reading. There's so much I left out. There's so much more detail to this. And read about that retrieval mission as well, because this is a really cool thing that they're doing. It's in the works. It's not like something they're cooking up. Like it's in the works. We're going to do it. And that at some point in the next six to eight years, I don't know how long it's going to take. Maybe it'll all happen in 2026. The whole mission might be resolved. We might have Martian regolith on Earth that we could study and do all the analysis that we need to to find out what it's made of. Is there microbes in it? I mean, think of these these samples that are being collected are important samples because the team at JPL is going to tell the rover when to take a sample.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Jay, this is the 46th mission to land something on Mars. Guess how many of them were complete failures out of 46?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I think they've only landed, like, eight things, right?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' 30.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Could be a lot like in the 20s.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I think it's in the 30s.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, there's so many failed missions.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' There were 22 complete failures, two partial failures.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, OK. So as bad as I thought.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So more than half.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So this utter success, you got to think about-<br />
<br />
'''S:''' This is a complete success.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' We have an incredible amount of data of what parts wore out and when on the previous rovers, right? And again, I remind you, the other rovers lasted way longer than they even intended, like remarkably longer. People were doing things with these rovers they never intended to do with them. So now we have a rover on there that landed without a hiccup. They have it, reinforced all the things that wore out on the other rovers. This thing's going to last a long time. They have a one-year plan for it. And then they go, yeah, and if it lasts longer than a year, you know it's going to last longer than a year. This thing is going to be kicking around for a long time.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, cool. All right. Thanks, Jay.<br />
<br />
=== Communicating While Dreaming <small>(33:18)</small> ===<br />
* [https://theness.com/neurologicablog/communicating-while-dreaming/ Communicating While Dreaming]<ref>[https://theness.com/neurologicablog/communicating-while-dreaming/ Neurologica:Communicating While Dreaming]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' Bob, let me ask you a question. Do you think it's possible to communicate with somebody while they're dreaming?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I know it is.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Absolutely. Wake up. You're dreaming. Hey. There you go.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Without waking them up. Without waking them up.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Does it have to be verbal?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yes. Your communication to them is verbal.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, so not like putting their hand in warm water. See what happens.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I don't know if that counts as communication.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So this is an interesting question that researchers set out to answer. It tells us a lot about what the dreaming state actually is. Obviously, dreaming is something we all experience. Even if you don't remember your dreams, you dream. Everybody dreams. The dream state, as you know, is rapid eye movement or REM, REM sleep. We call it that because when you're dreaming, your brain stem basically paralyzes everything below the neck so you don't act out your dreams, right? But you can still move your eyes. You can still move your face a little bit. So your eyes are undergoing rapid movement while you're dreaming because that's one of the body parts that's not paralysed.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Unless you have certain parasomnias and then you do act out your dreams.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. People can, "sleepwalk". That's a parasomnia. It's something wrong with the wiring for sleep.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, but is sleepwalking happening during REM? I thought it was non-REM.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, it's usually non-REM.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's interesting. Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So did you know that you dream during other parts of sleep? Just not as much.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Really? So non-REM?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. Some dreaming happens in other stages of sleep. Yeah, non-REM stages of sleep. So what is happening in your brain when you're dreaming? If you look at an EEG, do you think you could tell the difference between somebody who's dreaming and awake?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Not easy. It's subtle. It's largely the same.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, it's almost the same.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Dreaming and awake? OK.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Dreaming and awake. Your brain is really active when you're dreaming, which makes sense. If you look at an fMRI, which is a little bit more detailed than an EEG, most of the brain is active.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' What about other areas?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' What about motor cortex? Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The motor cortex is active, but it's just being paralysed on the way down.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Okay. That makes sense.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So that's brainstem, right?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. All the sensory areas are being active. The only part of the brain that's less active is the frontal lobe, which kind of makes sense.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Makes sense, yeah. You're not really doing a lot of checking and balancing on yourself when you're asleep.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. There's not a lot of reality testing going on.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. Not a lot of inhibition.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Look at the talking elephant. Who cares?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. Right. Probably because if you were, you'd wake up. You'd realize you were dreaming. And then we've spoken many times on the show about lucid dreaming, which is a dreaming state when you have awareness of the fact that you're dreaming.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah. It's pretty wicked.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' This is a slightly different state than normal dreaming, obviously, because you have enough awareness to tell that you're dreaming. It's very unstable. You tend to either dream you wake up or actually wake up when one of those two things happens. Of course, you dream you wake up you lose your lucidity. You go back. You think you're awake, so now you don't know that you're dreaming. What the researchers did was they actually looked at people who can get into the lucid dreaming state. And there's things you could do to trigger that and to train yourself to make it more likely. And then while subjects were lucid dreaming, they tried to communicate with them. Previous researches have done this, but they've essentially relied upon the subject reporting what happened after they woke up.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Which is sort of like has all the same problems as like near-death experience.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' But that's not true. But that's not true, because I know in the 80s, 1981, Stephen LaBeer relied on EEGs to detect eye movements as a method of communication. He used EMGs to catalog things like you could fist clench in your dream and you can create a detectable signal in an EMG. It's subtle because you're paralysed, but it's detectable. And they've also communicated over breathing. If you hold your breath or breathe rapidly in a lucid dream, that is detectable outside of a lucid dream. So this is one of the reasons why I'm very disappointed with this research on the verge of disgusted, because this was 40 years ago LaBeer was doing this. The only difference that I could tell is that this is now, oh, it's in real time. You don't have to look at an EEG and see what these people within a lucid dream were saying a few hours ago, or an hour ago, or 10 minutes ago. They're doing it in real time. Big whoop.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, but that is exactly the incremental thing that they're doing.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' A 40-year incremental leap. Wow, good job, guys.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I think it's a little bit more than what you're saying.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Bring it then, tell me.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's not just that the person who's lucid dreaming is communicating out.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I'm telling you. I'm telling you that's what they were doing. They figured out a way to communicate.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Hang on. It's what they demonstrated. You tell me if they did this 40 years ago, and maybe they did. I don't know.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' They sent messages. Go ahead.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, it's not just sending messages out. They were able to respond to the information that was being given to them while they were lucid dreaming. My understanding is that's the new bit.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yes, that's the new bit.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So it's not just while you're asleep, make sure you clench your fist really hard.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' No, no. Yeah, that's it. It's responding.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' While you're lucid dreaming, it's not just responding. When they ask you a question, you have to understand the question. You have to formulate an answer and then communicate your answer back to me.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yes. And that is an incremental advance. But 40 years ago, they were agreeing, okay, when you recognize you're lucid, you do this pattern of saccades with your eye so that we could see it in your EEG. You go left, right, left, left, right. And then that will mean you started lucid dreaming. And then they had a lucid dream. They remembered what they planned to do and they did it. And then they read that back out in the EEG or the EMG. So yes, it's an improvement. My beef is that after 40 years, this is all we got.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I get it. It took 40 years to do this. They could have done it 40 years ago. But this is different. This means, though, that while lucid dreaming, you can hear, understand, and absorb something somebody is saying. That's new, Bob.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I'm not surprised at all. I'm not surprised at all.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Did you guys both say earlier that lucid dreaming and the alert awake state are imperceptibly different on scans?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, looking at scans. They're very, very similar.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' How do you know the person's actually asleep?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' We all dream. We all dream. Some of us lucid dream. If you're a lucid dreamer, you know when you're lucid dreaming. I mean, they're not going to be fooling themselves, that's for sure. If they're charlatans and they're trying to trick the researchers, then yeah, that's possible. But that's so remote. I don't even think it's a word to consider.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Sorry. The subjects in this study are known and self-described lucid dreamers. They're not just people who were in REM. Oh, that's a different thing.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, if you're going to do research on lucid dreaming, you almost have to get someone who has some facility with lucid dreaming. Otherwise, you'd be waiting a month for a lucid dream.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' To be clear, I know that's your area of interest, Bob. I wasn't sure that the study had anything to do with lucid dreaming. It sounded to me like the study was just, can people hear and respond even when they're asleep?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But it was on people who were in the lucid dreams.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Okay, sorry. That wasn't clear to me. You probably did make it clear.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I said it. I said it. You just missed it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Okay. Because that would be a massive problem with their study. You'd need to make sure people were actually asleep.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, but also they're doing EEGs on the people. They're making sure they know what sleep stage they're in, et cetera. This study was done by four different labs at the same time using slightly different methods.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's pretty cool.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I like this. They basically did internal control. It was replicated four times before, and they all published together just to make it more robust. Because otherwise, you could ask a lot of questions about, was this a fluke? Was this somebody who was punking the researchers or whatever?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' So it was good science, yes.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So scientifically, I liked that internal control thing. It was a little bit more robust. It does make you think about where theoretically this could go. Maybe we'll wait another 40 years, Bob, and do another incremental study. But for example, if we could figure out some way to really stabilize the lucid dreaming state, then could you...<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That'd be awesome.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' What kind of experience could you have at that point? Could it be like Inception where you have this hyper real movie adventure kind of lucid dreaming thing that lasts for hours? That would be...<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Okay, here's the thing. I don't want to work or play or whatever that is that you're talking about doing while I'm asleep.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Then sit on a beach and drink a cocktail.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I want my brain to do what it needs to do while it's asleep. I don't want to tell it what to do.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Tom Hardy shows up.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I don't think you're shorting yourself on anything by lucid dreaming.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I don't think you know that yet, Bob. I don't think any of us know that yet.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, the question is, would that interfere with memory consolidation?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And maybe not even just memory consolidation, but the other restorative cellular properties, like all the things that happen during sleep. If we're forced to kind of...<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That probably happens during the deeper stages of sleep.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, you're probably right.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' This is the REM sleep when your brain is super active anyway. It's already almost as active as when you're awake.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I still wonder if there's some sort of mechanism by which the way that our dreams play out. As we know, they do aid in memory consolidation, but we still don't know how. And I wonder if interrupting that mechanism by giving it more order wouldn't be detrimental in some way.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Cara will do that study in 80 years.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, exactly. We don't know yet, which is why I might, in this specific case, use the precautionary principle. What I do know is that animals who are sleep deprived die horrific deaths.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' This has nothing to do with sleep deprivation, because if you extend your REM, you will actually increase your sleep hygiene, I think. I mean, that's what you need, REMs. REM is what you need.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But we don't know yet if that's also true if you do it through induced dreams.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, if you have extended lucid REM though.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, I don't know. Is that restorative? Is that possible? I don't know.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' My guess is that it would be, but I think we would know if we actually did more research in the past 40 years. We'd probably know that by now.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I do have to say, though, there's a part of me that is still highly, not skeptical of the results of these types of studies, because I think there's a lot of value and a lot of validity in them, but I still wear a skeptical hat when any study biases towards a very particular type of group that already does a lot of interesting brain stuff on their own.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You're correct.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' What?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You're correct. I agree.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, yeah, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' There's a selected population of lucid dreamers.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's so selective, and they already are probably profoundly different than non-lucid dreamers in the way that their brain works during REM.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Right, but they have to be lucid in order for the study to work.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Then maybe you could train to be a lucid dreamer. There are techniques that you could do to facilitate that.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, then right there, that tells me their brains are different. Because if you have to train for something, you're reducing change.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Is training lucid or even inducing lucid dreamers introducing an artifact? That's the question.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's what I'm saying.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Can we generalize from the lucid dreaming brain to just the regular dreaming brain? We don't know.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Exactly.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I mean, they're still in REM sleep. I mean, I think there's still a lot to be learned by that state, even if it is somewhat specialized in terms of people who have a natural facility for it or people that train for it. I think there's still a lot to be learned.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, we just have to be clear that the lucid dreaming state is different than the regular dreaming state. It's two different states of mind, that's all. And we don't know what's closer. Is lucid dreaming to being awake closer than lucid dreaming to regular dreaming, non-lucid dreaming? We don't know that question. I don't think we could assume that lucid dreaming is more like non-lucid dreaming than it is than being awake. Maybe you're mostly awake when you're lucid dreaming.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, I mean, I'm all for this research, obviously.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's a hybrid.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I think there's a lot that could come out of this. I mean, lucid dreaming is, first off, it's fun as hell. The most fun I've ever had dreaming is when I've done lucid dreaming. It's an amazing time. Secondly, you can do things in your dream that you can't do in real life. You could be like therapy. You could practice doing things in a dream that you might be too frightened to try when you're awake, and you could actually build confidence in a dream to do something that you maybe never would try when you were awake because you're just too afraid to do it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We don't know if that would work. The virtual exposure therapy doesn't really work.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It works to some extent.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, it depends. I mean, it's a buildup to the real thing always.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, but I read that there was at least one study recently where they did the virtual exposure therapy, and it wasn't as good as real exposure therapy.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, I would guess it wouldn't be as good. My assumption would be it would require more trials, or you might have to go more extreme in the virtual world than you would in the real world.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Anyway, we're getting a little off the main course of this discussion, and we need to move on.<br />
<br />
=== Phage Viruses and Antibiotics <small>(47:21)</small> ===<br />
* [https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/world/2021/01/how-a-virus-antibiotic-tag-team-managed-to-overcome-a-deadly-superbug.html Phage Viruses and Antibiotics]<ref>[https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/world/2021/01/how-a-virus-antibiotic-tag-team-managed-to-overcome-a-deadly-superbug.html Newshub: How a virus-antibiotic tag-team managed to overcome a deadly superbug]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' Bob, tell us about phage viruses and antibiotics.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' This was an interesting article I saw a little while ago. I haven't had a chance to talk about it. So researchers report in a study of a new surprising advance using viruses and antibiotics together to actually remove the antibiotic resistance of some superbugs, some bacteria, bacterial superbugs. So this was a fascinating partnership that was so cool. So this is published in Nature Microbiology earlier this year. Now, we all know about the fight against superbugs. We've talked about it on the show a bunch. Now, these superbugs are bacterial strains that we have stupidly evolved faster than necessary to become huge, huge problems now and potentially devastating problems in the near future. I mean, we're talking worst-case scenarios where humanity goes back to a pre-antibiotic era when no antibiotics work at all. I mean, this is something that's possible. And imagine you get a cut, a little cut, and you're like, oh crap, I hope this doesn't kill me. Imagine if that was a daily fear and something that needs to be taken seriously. So this takes me to Acinobacter baumanii, which is a bacteria. It's a superbug. This is one of the superbugs I'm talking about. It's responsible for up to 20% of the infections in intensive care units. I'm sure a lot of people in the IC dealing with COVID, not only are they dealing with COVID, but they're also probably dealing with the superbugs, a lot of them. And it's really insidious. The superbug attaches to medical equipment like ventilator tubes and catheters. If you have an infected wound, it's quite bad. Lungs, it can infect your blood. It's absolutely horrible. And they call it a superbug for a reason. It really is super. I mean, if the Marvel universe had superhero bacteria, this would be one of them. A. baumanii would be one of them. It actually produces enzymes that nullify whole families of antibiotics. Bam! None of you were getting near me just because of these enzymes. And then if the antibiotic actually survives the enzymes, it doesn't get past its sugar coating. And it actually is made out of sugars. This is a sticky, thick thing around the bacteria called a capsule. And some strains of this bacteria can shrug off the strongest and most toxic antibiotics. No matter what we throw at it, nothing makes any difference for some of the strains of A. baumanii. Now, the WHO says that it's a critical priority and we need new ways of treating this. And the CDC calls it an urgent threat. So we really got to start taking these seriously. So enter bacteriophages. Now, this is a virus. But not all viruses are like COVID. Some are our friends. Like this. The word bacteriophage itself means bacteria eater. And it's very apt. All they do is kill bacteria. That's all that these phages do. Just Google bacteriophage right now. Look at it. They look like aliens.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, they're badass living.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' This is my favorite virus.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' They look like Hydra kind of.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Right. So they look like an alien or some alien mech. I don't know. They're wonderful. So these were discovered over a century ago. But they lost favor when antibiotics came into power. We knew about them. I think we tried using it. I think the Soviet Union really used it a lot. And I think they may still use phages now. I mean, it's funny to think that if modern antibiotics were not discovered in that Petri dish, we may very well have a whole infrastructure of infection care based on bacteriophages right now. It would be really interesting to see how far that would have been taken in a century. But these phages are serious. I mean, real tough. The real toughest bacteria that laugh at people, they shit these little bacteria bricks when they see a phage because phages are very specific. Typically, one phage is meant for just one type of bacteria. It can get past only one type of bacteria's defences, or maybe it's the very close family of one type of bacteria. Now, of course, that reminded me of the classic Trek episode, that which survives. Steve, Jay, Evan, I'm sure you remember that, where an alien computer defends a planet by creating an image of a woman, Losira, I had to look that up to remember her name, to specifically kill one crew member. Remember, she'd say, I am for you, Jim Kirk.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' You are the one.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' And she couldn't kill anyone else, but if she touched Kirk, he was toast. So the researchers came up with a great plan. Their plan was really inspired. They found specific types of phages that could kill A. Balmanyi. And so they went to the areas like sewers, and really like sewers and other nasty places where some of these phages are. And so they got the virus, and they got the phages, and they threw them at Balmanyi, and most of them died, as you would expect, because they're really tailored to kill this specific bacteria. But not all of them died. Some of the bacteria adapted to the phage and survived.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, and that's really problematic.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, that's a huge problem. But in this case, it was a fantastic opportunity, because when the researchers looked at those bacteria that survived, they saw something amazing. There was no longer a capsule. That sticky outer coat was gone. So what the phage did was it realized that, I mean, the bacteria realized that, oh, damn, this phage needs this, really it needs the capsule to get inside, because that's how the phage gets past all the defences of the bacteria. It basically has a key into the capsule. And so the bacteria said, well, okay, I'll get rid of the capsule. And they no longer have the key. And that's exactly what happened. When it shed its sticky coating, the phage was helpless. It couldn't gain entry into the bacteria. But that's where our antibiotics come in, because now without that sticky outer coating of the capsule, now our antibiotics can get in, because that capsule was the thing that was preventing our antibiotics from getting in. That was actually the resistance, the armour that the bacteria developed over the years based on our antibiotics. So they would throw the phages at it. It would shed its capsule. And then the ones that survived had no capsule. Then they threw our antibiotics at it, and they tested like nine or 10 different antibiotics. And I got varying numbers here, but probably something like seven of the antibiotics now, the resistance was gone. So what they did was they essentially reverted the antibiotic resistance by using the phage and our most powerful antibiotics one after the other, like a double tap. And it really, really worked. And this worked in animal studies, and they actually did some real-world situations with people that had fatal infections, and it was successful. Now, I don't think this was a really huge study, but they did it on a handful of people, and it worked. To me, this is a great new angle for dealing with superbugs. You find the phages that are specifically tuned to that bacteria. You hit them with the phages, and then you hit them with the antibiotics once they've shed to the survivors so that they can get past the last defense that the phage couldn't. So it's a great way to temporarily reverse this resistance that we've been accelerating the evolution of. So pretty exciting. And I would like to see more phage use in the future, because one of the benefits the phages have over antibiotics is that phages are so specific. Now, you've all heard of broad-spectrum antibiotics, right? Yeah, that's great. But because it's broad-spectrum, you're killing a lot of the good bacteria. And you know, if you listen to the show, most of the bacteria around are really good. In fact, a lot of it in the human body is critical. You don't want to be messing with that. So something that can be specifically targeting that really bad bacteria and sparing the good stuff is great in my book.<br />
<br />
=== Goop the Pandemic <small>(55:44)</small> ===<br />
* [https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/02/it-took-a-year-but-gwyneth-paltrow-figured-out-how-to-exploit-the-pandemic/ Goop the Pandemic]<ref>[https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/02/it-took-a-year-but-gwyneth-paltrow-figured-out-how-to-exploit-the-pandemic/ arsTeechnica: It took a year, but Gwyneth Paltrow figured out how to exploit the pandemic]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, Evan, I understand that Gwyneth Paltrow has finally found a way to exploit the pandemic.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, yes, the queen of quackery, the duchess of dubiousness, the matriarch of malarkey. According to a recent blog post in which she is being pilloried for, correctly so, Gwyneth Paltrow claims she had COVID-19 very early on, apparently. She's not specific with things like exactly when she had it, which is a little unusual when I speak to people who have had COVID. They can tell me with precision when they tested positive for it. But that aside, let's take her to a word. Well, here are some words from her directly from her advertisement. I mean, her blog post the other day. These are her words. I had COVID-19 early on, and it left me with some long-tail fatigue and brain fog. In January, I had some tests done that showed really high levels of inflammation in my body. So I turned to one of the smartest experts I know in this space, the functional medicine practitioner, Dr. Will Cole. After he saw all my labs, he explained that this was a case where the road to healing was going to be longer than usual. We, meaning she and the doctor, have a version of a protocol he outlines in his forthcoming book, Intuitive Fasting. It's keto and plant-based. Will also got me on supplements, most of them in the service of a healthier gut. There's butyrate, which Will says supports healthy microbiome. And then in my daily Madam Ovary supplement, I get fish oil, B vitamins, some vitamin D3, selenium, and zinc, all of which Will says are critical for me right now. I even get more zinc and selenium along with the antioxidants, vitamin C and resveratrol in my detoxifying super powder, which I mix with water. All right, those are the highlights of the blog post. This is a shameless promotion basically, telling her readers to buy all sorts of goop-related and sponsored products, everything from, well, including hiking accessories and an infrared sauna blanket. Did we talk about infrared saunas recently?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, yeah, we did.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Well, it didn't take long for those skeptical of Gwyneth to raise some keen observations about some of her comments. For example, there's Bruce Lee at Forbes. Yes, Jay, his name is Bruce Lee.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Now I don't believe anything you're saying.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' No, that's his name, Bruce Wyatt Lee.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's probably a good thing. Don't believe anything she's saying, Jay.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Here are some of his points. She didn't specify which tests she took, where the inflammation was occurring or what really high levels of inflammation even mean. Inflammatory, inflammation is a very vague and general term. So did she go to a medical doctor who has actual knowledge of COVID-19? Is Cole a COVID-19 expert? Has he done any research or published any scientific studies on COVID-19? Well, he searched the PubMed for Cole and COVID-19 and nothing really came up. So Cole was originally trained as a chiropractor, and on his website he asks himself the questions, are you a medical doctor? To that he responds, no. I do not practice medicine and do not diagnose or treat diseases or medical conditions. So isn't long COVID a medical condition, he asks? Yeah. So it's not clear what specific knowledge Cole has regarding COVID-19, but he says my services are not meant to substitute or replace those of a medical doctor. So there's your trapdoor disclaimer that you see with every good quack.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Also, functional medicine is bullshit, whether it's an MD or not.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Functional medicine.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Steve, give us a quick definition of that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's basically like massively overinterpreting lab results, like testing for shit and saying some really hand-waving explanation for what it means. But it's just another umbrella term for just non-science-based, made-up shit that I want to promote.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So these are the people who will tell you that you have too much metal in your gut and you need to chelate or too much fungus in your gut and then prescribe all of these drugs and then you have to chelate the drugs.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Or you have borderline thyroid dysfunction, or normal, either one, take your pick.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, boy. I mean, there's so many relentless sort of attacks right now on Gwyneth, nd like I said, rightly so. Here's another small sample. I'll give you two more quick ones. Sarah Fielding from VeryWellMined.com. With much still being discovered about COVID-19 and its short- and long-term effects, a breeding ground exists for misinformation and exploitation. The latest example comes from Gwyneth Paltrow's lifestyle site, Goop. Oh, yeah. Paltrow uses her COVID-19 experience as an opportunity to promote unsubstantiated detoxes and cleanses while plugging Goop brand products under the guise of relieving discomfort. Oh, yeah. And he interviewed Tim Caulfield, Timothy Caulfield.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, he's great.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' We've had on the show before. He's a professor of health, law, and science policy at the University of Alberta. And he's probably done more research on kind of the damage that Gwyneth and Goop have done to Western society, where Tim points out, it's a good example of how misinformation is going to continue to be pushed out in the context of COVID-19. We often think of misinformation as the hoaxes or the conspiracy theories and anti-vax rhetoric. But there's also this kind of misinformation, which is subtler, and still trying to leverage this moment in time, trying to leverage the pandemic in order to sell products to further a brand to even sell kind of an ideological position as to how we're supposed to be with our health. Absolutely correct. And a good observation by Tim.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. Thanks, Evan.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yep.<br />
<br />
== Who's That Noisy? <small>(1:01:39)</small> ==<br />
* Answer to last week’s Noisy: Ice Skating<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Jay, it's Who's That Noisy time.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' All right, guys. Last week, I played this noisy.<br />
<br />
[_short_vague_description_of_Noisy]<br />
<br />
All right, guys, any guesses on those sounds that you just heard? Go ahead.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' All right. So to me, that sounds similar to the testing they did was back in the 70s or the 80s for sound effects in which they took metal screwdrivers and hit them against high tension lines.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yep.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That was Bill Burr making sound effects for Star Wars, the very first film. You are not incorrect in that it sounds exactly like that.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' OK, good.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' But that's not it.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I got a hint of a classic Star Trek episode, Cat's Paw. You know, it was like the Halloween episode. And the creatures at the end when their true form was revealed, they made these really surreal noises. I got a little bit ahead of that. A little bit ahead of that.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Oh, my God. As soon as you said Star Trek, Bob, my brain heard what you heard. Yes, I know exactly what you're talking about.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yes, right?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Now I have to go back and hear them. Now, it's not that, but I know exactly what you're talking about. But I know exactly.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Is it Ice Jay?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Oh, my God. Let's go through what the people say here, Steve.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Let's go through. So Jill Crookshanks. Does that remind you of the bad guy in...<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's the name of Hermione's cat.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, that's Hermione's cat in Harry Potter.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' But what was the name of the king from...<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Braveheart.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Braveheart.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' What was the name of the king in that movie?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, King Edward Longshanks.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Longshanks. Oh, God, I love that.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Longshanks.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Oh, you guys have done such a good job in that role. Okay, anyway. This is from a listener named Jill Crookshanks, and she said, "It sounds like someone playing Galaga in an arcade. You can hear the joystick and clearly the blasters. Thanks." I'm like I kind of think she picked up something here that might be there. So I said, yeah, I kind of hear that, but I want to hear what it sounds like. So I went and I listened to Galaga, and I downloaded some sound effects from there that were as close to what she was saying here. So listen to this. [plays Noisy]<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, my gosh, that brings back memories.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Right, Evan? All right, so it wasn't Galaga, but thank you so much, because just hearing those sounds always just makes me smile, and I can warp myself back to when I was in there playing that game. So we got another guest from a listener named David Barlow, and he said, "Hi, everyone, my guess is some sort of high tension cable snapping. Keep up the great work." So, yeah, Evan, you mean you're not alone. A lot of people guessed some type of cable, high tension cable. There were lots of guesses about the telescope crashing, which is not this is not anything to do with the cable. But my God, does it sound like cables rattling against each other? Again I've said this many times. That's why I love Who's That Noisy, because bacon sounds like rain, frying bacon and everything sounds like something else, which I find remarkable. Now, here is the winning guess. This was from a listener named Logan Callan. He says, "Hi, Jay, the noise from this week's Who's That Noisy is someone ice skating on a frozen body of water. It looks beautiful, but you wouldn't catch me on that ice." Now listen again. [plays Noisy] Now, to be fair, lots of SGU listeners guessed correctly or mostly correctly on this one. Ice makes this noise. If you throw a rock onto a frozen lake under the right circumstances, it'll make that high pew-pew sounds, you know. But in this particular circumstance, we have an ice skater that's skating on a lake where the ice is under pressure. So think about the ice kind of like pushing out against the land, and it's like pushing back in on itself. So first, let me tell you about the person that created this. The person wrote, I made this sound recording of a frozen lake in the winter of 2005 or 2006 in the area around Berlin. Frozen lakes are known to give off most of the noise during major fluctuations in temperature. The ice expands or contracts, and the resulting tension in the ice causes cracks to appear. Due to the changes in temperature, the hours of morning and evening are usually the best times to hear these sounds. And then he goes on to talk about the acoustic phenomena. It has an elastic type of sound. But another listener wrote in and gave a description of this. Glenn Ellert said the Who's That Noisy, episode 815 of The Ice Cracking. He said possibly due to a person skating. He was correct, but he was not the first. So he said the speed of a wave in a medium often depends on the frequency of the wave. This is known as dispersion. In the case of sound waves in ice, the higher frequency waves travel faster than the lower frequency waves. This is the explanation for the pew, the pew-pew sounds, which are the higher frequency sounds. And they arrive first, so you hear them first. And then the low frequency sounds is like the eww that follows. So it's pew-pew, right? So let's listen again.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, cool.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So we have sounds being made, and the higher frequencies get to you first because they move faster in the medium than the lower frequencies. And it's a collection of sounds that makes that effect, right? It's a really good analogy to sound effects and Foley made in movies where they layer effects. So as an example, the Millennium Falcon engine sound of it starting up or having problems with the warp drive and all that stuff is six or seven different sounds layered over each other to create the whole effect, which I find fascinating because an expert sound engineer can create these soundscapes from different things that become something else. And I think it relates to this idea that all sounds, a human voice, is like chords being played. It's not one note. Our voices are made up of chords. Sounds are made up of collections of different kinds of sounds.<br />
<br />
=== New Noisy <small>(1:08:12)</small> ===<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Let's move on to this week's new noisy. All right, so there's a funny story here. So Charlie Ross has been a longtime contributor, supporter, patron of the show. We went out and gave a talk at Google. Many moons ago, Charlie set it up for us. We had a great time hanging out with him at Google. He gave us an awesome tour. And many times throughout the years, we've seen Charlie at conventions and everything. So Steve and I, this past weekend, we are doing our game show. We premiered our game show. It was a very soft release. We're still testing and still improving the show. We have a ton of things that we're going to be improving on it. But we're very happy to announce that Boomer versus Zoomer. Boomer v Zoomer dot com, if you're interested, is launched and Charlie is monitoring the chat, right? It's my job to monitor the chat while we're doing the show. And I see Charlie's name come up, so I read the chat real quick and he said, he says, I have a bag of meat in my refrigerator that's labeled Jay's balls. And I took a screenshot and I immediately texted it to Bob because I'm like, this is awesome. I know Bob would laugh at that and then I emailed Charlie and I'm laughing so Charlie has a great sense of humor and he's a great contributor and he also sent in a really provocative sound this week that I thought was vaguely similar to this week sound and that's I think why I was attracted to it because it is vaguely similar a little bit. But it is very different thing. So let me get to that real quick. So here is the sound that Charlie sent me:<br />
<br />
[_short_vague_description_of_Noisy]<br />
<br />
So what is that?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I don't like it.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' What is going on? I know Cara I had the same instinct it made me uncomfortable.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I no like it. I feel like my dog would bark at that sound.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, so there is a single answer to this I know that you're hearing other stuff going on and you you could talk about that. But I'm of course I'm talking about the the high-pitched noises that you hear now. What what is this sound? What's generating it? What's making it? Where is it coming from? If you have an answer, please email me and if you have a cool sound that you heard you can also email me at WTN@theskepticsguide.org<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right coming up. We have a great interview with Philip Goff. He is the philosopher that we talked about recently on the show in our discussion of the inverse gambler's fallacy and inferring the multiverse from the fine-tuning problem. We have a very interesting discussion. This is actually only part of it. The full one hour unedited discussion that we have will be available to our premium members if you want to skip ahead because you want to listen to the full version then just go to the 1 hour 39 minute mark that will take you to the end of the interview, but for everybody else let's go to that interview now.<br />
<br />
== Interview with Philip Goff <small>(1:11:16)</small> ==<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Joining us now is Philip Goff. Philip, welcome to the Skeptics Guide.<br />
<br />
'''PG:''' Brilliant. Thanks for having me. Good to be here, Steve.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, thanks for joining me. So Philip you are a philosopher you are the author of the book [https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/43069288 Galileo's Error: Foundations for a New Science of Consciousness] which we were just talking about is probably I'm going to have to interview you at a separate time about the whole consciousness hubbub. But the interview today is a follow-up to a discussion that we had on the SGU recently about the multiverse and the alleged fine-tuning problem and some of the logical claims surrounding that. I talked a bit on the show about an article you had written. And I disagreed with your ultimate conclusion. Now I think the goal of this conversation is to see if we could work out our differences. Basically, I want you to convince me that I'm wrong. Not just show that I'm wrong, but convince me that I'm wrong because that's that's the tricky part. So why don't you just set the stage for us? Tell us about the fine-tuning issue and how you came to write this article.<br />
<br />
'''PG:''' Yeah, okay. Well, I'll do my best. That's it. That's a big big order to persuade you, but I'll do my best. So that the fine-tuning is the surprising discovery of of the last few decades that certain of the constants of basic physics such as the strength of gravity and that the mass of electrons, in order for life to be physically possible, the values of those constants had to fall in a certain really narrow range. And that was quite surprising in some way. Of course We always knew that our universe was compatible with the existence of life because we're alive. But we didn't know how balanced on a knife edge That was that in order for that to be a physical possibility these constants had to be as it's as it's referred to finely tuned. They had to have these very precise values. So it's a kind of interesting surprising fact. Some people react and say, okay, we got lucky, not not more to say about it. But many scientists and philosophers the last few decades have suggested that this is actually strong evidence pointing to some kind of multiverse. So that the thought is if there are a huge number of universes each with the constants in their physics a little bit different. So, you know in some gravity is a bit stronger and some it's a bit weaker and some electrons are a bit heavier and some they're a bit lighter then if there's enough variation then you then it might become sort of statistically highly likely even perhaps inevitable that one of the universes is gonna fluke the right numbers to allow for the compatibility with intelligent life. So that's the thought. And I was actually really persuaded by that but for a long time actually, but I uncovered this work of of certain probability theorists. Philosophers of probability. It's actually a few decades old now and I think it's part of the problem of things are so specialized now that there's been this debate for decades and it hasn't got out of the narrow confines of theory of probability theory. Even though there's such huge interest in these fine-tuning issues among scientists and the general public. But anyway, the claim is that that inference from the fine-tuning to the multiverse commits a kind of logical fallacy. We can actually identify what the fallacy is and I thought about this for a long time read read the literature around it. And yeah, I mean, I'm actually quite persuaded that the claim is correct here.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. So my understanding of it is and correct me from wrong is that whether or not there are many universes doesn't alter the probability of our universe being fine-tuned for life.<br />
<br />
'''PG:''' Yes, so the the basic accusation is what what's called the inverse gambler's fallacy, the inverted gambler's fallacy. So the regular gambler's fallacy that some listeners might be familiar with is where, you've been playing the casino all night. You've you've had a terrible run of luck. You just keep rolling you trying to roll a double six and you just keep having terrible rolls. But you think well, I'm gonna have one more go because I'm surely gonna do well now. I'm surely gonna roll a double six now because I'm do some good luck. It would be really improbable if I rolled badly all night. So given that I've rolled badly up to now surely I'm gonna roll well now. Well, of course, that's a fallacy because any individual role, including your next one has has the same odds one in 36, if it's trying to get a double six. So no matter how long or how little you've been playing the odds of getting a double six on the next roller are exactly the same. So that's the classic gambler's fallacy that everyone is agreed on. Now the inverse gambler's fallacy goes like this. You walk into a casino and you see someone have an incredible role. Let's say you know to make it more dramatic, they're playing a game where you've got to get sixes and you're they roll 20 dice and all of them come up six. And so you think wow, what an incredible role. They must have been playing all night because if they just had one role then it's incredibly improbable they'd get all sixes with 20 dice. So they must have been playing all night and then it's more probable. Now that's a fallacy as well because all you've observed is one role. That's the only row you've observed and as is the case in the in the original gambler's fallacy, the odds of of getting all sixes on that individual role is the same as for any other role. It doesn't matter if you've been playing all night or if that's your first role. The odds of getting all sixes is the same for any individual role. So for the same reasons essentially that's a fallacy as well. And the claim is that the multiverse theorist or at least someone arguing from fine-tuning to the multiverse is essentially making the same committing the same fallacy. So they're saying, look around that they did this fine-tuning phenomenon thing. Oh my god, this is so improbable. There must be loads of other universes where the numbers didn't come up right? So our numbers fluke early came up right in our universe. There must be loads of other universes where they where they didn't come up right. And thought it's the same fallacy because all we've observed is our universe and seen that the numbers came up right in our universe. No matter how much the other universes that are it doesn't make it any more likely that our universe will have the right numbers just as when you've only seen one role. No matter how many times that guy's been playing tonight. It doesn't make it any more likely that that one role you saw is gonna be an incredible one. So that's the basic idea.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Alright, so I understand and agree with that fallacy that that is a fallacy. Completely get that. My counter is that it doesn't apply to the situation, but let me finish setting up the background a little bit. So just for clarity. The fine-tuning argument assumes that the constants of the universe are variable. That they don't have to be what they are. There was no other meta law that makes them what they are. So that's one assumption. You could make certain assumptions about what the probability distribution is but one physicist said, yeah, the probability of all the constants being within the narrow range they would have to be in to allow for complex life is one in ten to the two hundred and twenty nine. Which is you know, basically a gajillion, right? We'll just call that a gajillion from this point forward. That's like almost zero. It's such a teeny tiny teeny tiny number. So but that's a lot of assumptions going into that. I personally don't think those assumptions are warranted. I think that the answer it probably is something else but for the sake of this argument going forward, let's say that the fine-tuning premise a variability and that kind of distribution is roughly correct and therefore. Then that means the probability of our universe containing life being compatible with life is one in a kajillion, right? Do you agree with that so far?<br />
<br />
'''PG:''' Yeah, that's and I agree also there are lots of one things one could question along the way. I mean, you know one thing is the evidence could change this good we're developing science and so yeah, so yeah. But I agree with that the setup.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, it's a thought experiment. A thought experiment. Will assume for the logic, the statistical logic point of this will assume that that's correct. Do you think it's likely there will be one universe compatible with life, again, assuming the fine-tuning assumptions. If there is one universe or if there's a kajillion universes.<br />
<br />
'''PG:''' Yeah, I follows from the fine-tuning that the probability of other universe compatible with life is very very low. That's right. That's right.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, but if you had if there were if there were many many universes, it would be more likely, right? So I think this is one thing that there was- because I wrote two blogs about this and there's been over 1,500 comments, which is a lot for my blog. And there seemed to be some debate about whether or not you were saying that the multiverse is even a solution to the fine-tuning problem. Which is different than saying we can infer the health diverse fine-tuning. And some were saying that you're saying that you can't even-the multiverse wouldn't even solve the fine-tuning problem, but wouldn't it?<br />
<br />
'''PG:''' All right, I see good. Oh, I didn't know you had two blogs in it. I only saw one. I should it would have been-<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I'm sorry. There's a follow-up.<br />
<br />
'''PG:''' Mm-hmm. No, so so here's what I think. I think if on independent evidence we had independent evidence for a multiverse of the right kind then I think the fine-tuning problem would go away. And that's simply because that would change the probabilities because it would no longer be very improbable. And so some people say well isn't there independent evidence for a multiverse? And this is actually what I'm writing about in in in the academic paper I'm working on for this which is on my website. Actually this philosophy discussion and probability theories discussions begun on for decades and no one's connected it up to the scientific discussion. And that's what I'm also trying to do. It's absolutely unbelievable. Everything's too specialized. I'm jealous of the 16th century when you could sort of know everything. Yes, so so but I although there is arguably and this is all contentious tentative evidence independent evidence for a multiverse. I don't think it's it's evidence for a multiverse of the right kind. But that's a separate question too. When all we're observing is one fine-tuned universe. Does that give us a right to a multiverse? That's what I'm saying is fallacious.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, although that's where I think a lot of people have difficulty including myself because if the multiverse again put all empirical evidence and other independent arguments aside just from purely logical point of view. If the multiverse solves the fine-tuning statistical problem, then why can't that? Why can't we at least say that it's more likely that the multiverse is therefore more likely than one solitary universe?<br />
<br />
'''PG:''' Because so I just think these are two different things and I mean we could look at it in terms of the theoretical reasons. In terms of kind of Bayesian inference or we could look at it just by analogies. I mean maybe start for analogies as you know, I've given a lot of monkeys on typewriters analogies. So, I mean not going into the whole Joker thing. But you know if you wake up and there's a monkey on a typewriter typing perfect English. Wow. That's weird, that needs explaining. But I don't think you would have the right to say oh, there must be loads of monkeys. There must be trillions of monkeys in different rooms in this building all writing rubbish. But if you started off knowing you were in a room with trillions, a building with trillions and trillions of monkeys and let's say the person whose monkey wrote English was gonna get woken up in that scenario. So, you know then you'd say okay. I just got lucky. Someone was gonna get lucky. I got lucky end of story. So I think that's the difference. So if you already know there's loads of monkeys on typewriters the problem wouldn't arise.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. So here is here's where I think your analogy is a little wrong. And I'm gonna try to fix it and I think if you agree with my fix then then our two approaches come together. So I think here's been my problem. I tried to articulate this at least in one in one of my blog posts. Is that you're not adequately dealing with the selection process here because we are not existing in a random universe. We only could exist in a universe that is compatible with life. So like for example, I would argue if in your gamblers analogy, a better analogy which has no selection at all. Rather than walking up to a table and somebody rolls 20 6s, I agree, that's the inverted gamblers fallacy. Rather let's say you're blind and you but you love gambling. And you know how slot machines work, but you walk into a casino that you've never been to before you have no idea how many slot machines there are. But that there's a one in a kajillion chance that any slot machine will win and you also know that... Let's just say make it more plausible that on average any one slot machine will give a jackpot once a month and it sends off a very specific jackpot alarm when it does. You walk into a casino and the moment you walk into a casino you hear the jackpot alarm goes off. Now is it more likely that there's one slot machine in that casino or that there's a thousand slot machines in that casino? Because you would hear any slot machine that hit the jackpot. This is where this is where I think the rubber is going to meet the road is which analogy is better. In terms of your Joker monkey typewriter analogy, here's my fix. Because I think you're trying to fix the selection process there because you only get woken, you only get awakened to whatever woken up if your monkey types English. Within whatever at the 10-minute time frame. But you existed before that experiment and you're still being biased by considering the probability of you winning which I think is the lottery fallacy. I think that the application of the inverse gambler's fallacy to the multiverse problem is an example of the lottery fallacy because it's not adequately dealing with the selection process. Again this is my understanding can please convince me if I'm wrong. So this is how I would fix your your Joker analogy. Let's say the Joker is actually Loki right the God the Norse God Loki. I know we're mixing Marvel and DC.<br />
<br />
'''PG:''' That's OK.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, will mash those up and so he has godlike powers. And what he actually did was he had a monkey in front of a typewriter and if that monkey types English in 10 minutes he will create a person out of nothing. So that person gets magicked into existence. Now you wake up. You pop into existence in this room. And Loki is sitting there and he says you can ask me anything about what's happening in this room. But you can't ask me anything about what's happening beyond this room and you say okay. What's that? It's a typewriter. How does it work? Fine. What's this creature? Explains monkeys. And what they can do, what they can't do. He explains the whole setup and when you fully understand the setup and you realize how magnificently improbable it is that that monkey typed I like yellow bananas would it be reasonable for you to infer that Loki has a kajillion rooms with monkeys and typewriters and you just you are the one who was magic into existence because your room is the one where the monkey typed English. Wouldn't that be reasonable?<br />
<br />
'''PG:''' So in your sit in your scenario, are you imagining? Whichever monkey on typewriter typed English you would have been saved, or are you imagine-<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Some person would have been magicked into existence. That person, that individual would be incredibly improbable. But that someone got magic into existence would be probable if there's a kajillion monkeys. It would be incredibly improbable if there's one monkey and one typewriter, isn't that fair?<br />
<br />
'''PG:''' So coming back to, so I think there are two different things here we need to distinguish. So we've got two analogies. So just take each of them in turn. So the one you started with the slot machine and you go in and one of the slot machine, whichever slot machine goes off wins the jackpot. The alarm goes off and then your thought is you've got good reason to think there must have been lots of slot machines than just one because then it's more likely. So I agree in that case you certainly do have evidence that there are more people playing on the slot machines. But what is dis analogous about that case to fine-tuning is that there's a kind of mechanism there that ensures that whoever wins in the whole casino you're gonna hear about it. So I don't think that's analogous to the fine-tuning. So this is what Roger White who wrote the key paper on this pointed out. He said that would be analogous to the following kind of sci-fi example where you know, we were once disembodied spirits floating through the multiverse looking for a fine-tuned universe and then when we find it we slip into it. Now in that sci-fi scenario, which ever universe turns out to be fine-tuned we're gonna observe it. And and in that scenario, I think that's analogous to your slot machine example. Yeah, we would have evidence. But that's not our universe. In our universe there is no such mechanism. All we know about, all we observe is is our universe and our universe just had one shot of its numbers coming. It could, if another universe a few doors down was fine-tuned there would be no mechanism to make to allow us to observe that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, there would be people in that universe who would observe it. So I think you're just moving the lottery fallacy one step back again. I don't have to be the person observing it. It's just that if whatever universe is compatible with life will evolve and the life in that universe will observe their own universe. So I agree that the casino analogy isn't perfect. But I'm trying to fix your analogy or whoever's analogy that is I wouldn't come up with that analogy, right? Let's let's shift to it. I still think I'm correct, but I think you're right. It's confusing. So let's go to the Loki analogy. I think that's pure. There is no outside observer. You get magicked into existence. You have no prior existence. Once you understand the rules of the room you find yourself in you realize that your existence is fantastically improbable and isn't it reasonable and logical and not a fallacy to say Loki must have a kajillion monkeys at a kajillion typewriters and if any one of them were successful somebody would have been magicked into existence in that room and found themselves to be an highly improbable event.<br />
<br />
'''PG:''' Yeah, I guess my intuitions go the opposite way there. So yeah, so that was why I objected the other analogy. But coming back to what you're focusing on I guess is a point another point a lot of people have drawn my attention, the pre-existence case. So the worry in the Joker case is you you already exist so we've got a focus for your attention. So I actually I actually came up with my own analogy to try and get around this. Let me tell you that and then let's see if you if you have a different intuitions than in the Loki case. And then we could try and work out. I'm not trying to dodge the Loki case. We could try and work out what's going on here. So I thought right suppose I'm the product of IVF. My conception came about through IVF. And then suppose as an adult I discover that the doctor who did the IVF made a kind of sick joke. They decided that they were gonna roll 20 dice to decide whether to fertilize the egg and they were only gonna fertilize the egg if all 20 dice came up sixes. And they did. And they fertilized the egg, right? So I discover that my existence, that this depended on this kind of problem event. Now does that give me reason to think, so it's kind of like the Joker case, but you could say it's the Joker. Does that give me reason to think the doctor's done this quite a lot. I mean you might think what he did it once he might have done it again. But the fact that that I've discovered that my conception depended on this improbable event as kind of all conception does doesn't seem to me to give me any reason to think the doctor did it many times. What do you think about that one? So that's analogous to the fine-tuning case. We discover that our existence depends on this improbable event. But that doesn't give us reason to think oh there must be lots of other universes where the the numbers didn't come up right.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Doesn't rub me the right way. I think there's details in there that are distracting from the core logic. But I'm trying to, it's the first time I'm hearing of it, so I'm trying to wrap my head around it. So let's say he had to roll a thousand dice, and they all had to come up with sixes. Let's just make those statistics more intuitive. I would have a problem thinking that that was a one-off random event because it's just so close to zero in probability. And so but with that, if you strip it down it's like yeah, for anyone, for there to be let's say anyone born of IVF and the doctor had to roll those dice and come up all sixes. And you're the IVS success. You'd say yeah, that probably happened a lot of times for there to be anyone. I think the the lottery fallacy is thinking about I think you agreed with this when we were sort of pre-gaming this a little bit. The lottery fallacy is when you think what's the probability of me existing, which yes, it's fabulously unlikely. Versus the probability of anyone existing. The probability that our universe exists with the fine-tuned parameters is extremely low, but that the probability of any universe existing with the fine-tuned parameters could be very high if there's a multiverse. And anyone who evolved in that universe would be lucky and would see themselves as the recipient of a fabulously unlikely event. But because there's that selection process being that person doesn't require a special explanation. It actually isn't a low probability event if there's a multiverse. If you ask it correctly. What's the probability of anybody existing, any fine-tuned universe, anyone magicked into existence by Loki, anyone being the product of IVF, anyone winning the lottery. It's it's fine to me. That's what it ultimately comes down to.<br />
<br />
'''PG:''' The lottery fallacy is certainly a fallacy, but there are just different lottery cases. What goes on in the standard lottery case again is no matter who wins you're gonna know about it because you're gonna see it on TV. So the media provides a mechanism such that ensures that whoever's gonna win you're gonna know about it. And anything like that I think is not analogous to fine-tuning.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I agree. I agree. That's why if you had a cosmic lottery like the God lottery and whoever wins the lottery gets magic into existence that's the fine-tuning.<br />
<br />
'''PG:''' But so the question is and I think we're agreeing on this the question is how we should construe the evidence of fine-tuning should we say our universe is fine-tuned or our universe is fine-tuned. And this is a deep problem in their theoretical probability about how we're it's permissible to construe the evidence. And I think we can both agree that there are some lottery cases where you shouldn't take your evidence to be somebody won the lottery. So the lottery case were you've just played the lottery for the first time you put your numbers in and you don't watch the TV you don't read the newspaper. So you wouldn't know if anyone won unless it was you. And you win. So I think it's it's pretty straightforward in that case that you don't have any reason to think lots of people played the lottery. All you know is you won your numbers came up and no matter how many people played it doesn't make it any more likely that your numbers would come up. So I think we can both agree that I think this is pretty uncontentious that in that case your evidence shouldn't be someone won the lottery. Your evidence is I won the lottery.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, but that doesn't apply.<br />
<br />
'''PG:''' So the question is what is the fine-tuning situation? Analogous to that or analogous to something else? And it seems pretty clear to me it's analogous to that. Unless you're worried about pre-selection but then we can move to the IVF case and I think, we just have to work out, we could also white office some theoretical principles that are slightly more complicated about why we could perhaps talk about. But I would just say that the the IVF analogy is closest to the fine-tuning cases.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Think about my Loki analogy<br />
<br />
'''PG:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Really think about that.<br />
<br />
'''PG:''' And you think about the IVF case.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Absolutely. But the ultimate lesson here again, whichever one of us is constructing this correctly doesn't matter in my opinion.<br />
<br />
'''PG:''' Absolutely.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' What matters is the point of all this is actually how damn difficult and counterintuitive statistics. Are our brains are not really optimized for this kind of thinking. I cannot wrap my head around why my position is not correct. And I don't think I haven't been able to explain my position to you. You haven't been able to explain your position to me in a way that is ultimately compelling. There's some there's some bit of logic that's separating us that we have not been able to identify and because just this is damn counterintuitive.<br />
<br />
'''PG:''' Absolutely, we can agree on that. I mean that's that's I mean, I'm a philosopher. And I mean, this is what it's like all the time that we just somehow can't manage to persuade each of these issues. But it's having the conversations and I think you make progress by developing the difference even if you don't ultimately persuade the other person. And that's what it's all about I think.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay. Well, thank you so much for having this conversation with me. I definitely want to get you back on the show at some point to talk about consciousness because that's your area of expertise and I an area where I'm very interested in it as well. So thanks for joining us.<br />
<br />
'''PG:''' Brilliant.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yep, and hopefully we'll have you back sometime.<br />
<br />
'''PG:''' Thanks a lot Steve. I really enjoyed this conversation.<br />
<br />
== Science or Fiction <small>(1:38:54)</small> ==<br />
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|science1 = 90% small farms<!-- short word or phrase representing the item --><br />
|science2 = 28% works in agriculture<!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
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|rogue1 =Jay <!-- rogues in order of response --><br />
|answer1 =5 plants <!-- item guessed, using word or phrase from above --><br />
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|rogue2 =Evan<br />
|answer2 =5 plants<br />
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|rogue3 =Bob<br />
|answer3 =90% small farms<br />
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|rogue4 =Cara <!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
|answer4 =5 plants <!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
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|host =steve <!-- asker of the questions --><br />
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|clever = <!-- each item was guessed (Steve's preferred result) --><br />
|win = <!-- at least one Rogue guessed wrong, but not them all --><br />
|swept = <!-- all the Rogues guessed right --><br />
}}<br />
''Voice-over: It's time for Science or Fiction.''<br />
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<blockquote>'''Theme: Agriculture stats''' <!-- <br />
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--><br>'''Item #1:''' 90% of farms in the US are considered small farms, representing 52% of farmland. <ref>[ https://stacker.com/stories/3554/50-fascinating-facts-about-farming-america publication: title]</ref><br>'''Item #2:''' Globally 28% of the world’s population works in agriculture.<ref>[ https://blog.resourcewatch.org/2019/05/30/map-of-the-month-how-many-people-work-in-agriculture/ publication: title]</ref><br>'''Item #3:''' 75% of the world’s food comes from just 5 plants. <ref>[http://www.fao.org/3/y5609e/y5609e02.htm publication: title]</ref></blockquote><br />
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'''S:''' Each week I come up with three science news items or facts. Two real and one fake. And I challenge my panel of skeptics to tell me which one is the fake. We have another theme this week. We've been doing the show on Tuesdays because of Cara's schedule.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Boo Cara.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And well, there's fewer news items to choose from, it's having a hard time. So I'm doing a lot of themes while we're doing our Tuesday shows.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And then we are suffering the consequences.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yes, that's exactly correct. So it's all your fault Cara. So the theme this week is agriculture stats. Statistics about agriculture. Okay, you guys ready?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Item number one 90% of farms in the United States are considered small farms, representing 52% of farmland. Item number two, globally 28% of the world's population works in agriculture. And item number three. 75% of the world's food comes from just five plants. Jay go first.<br />
<br />
=== Jay's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''J:''' All right, the first one Steve you said 90% of farms in the US are considered small farms representing 52% of farmland. I mean that seems to make a lot of sense that 90% of the farms would be small. But I think that they, my gut is telling me that they don't represent half the farmland. So that's my gut telling me that right there. The second one globally 28% of the world's population works in agriculture. That seems to be about right. Roughly a quarter of the world's population is working in agriculture to feed the world. I think that sounds right. And 75% of the world's food comes from just five plants. This is one of those ones where I'm like, I'm pretty damn sure that this is correct. It's really the number. I mean, I would think that if there's any change to this it would even be higher might be 90% of the world's food comes from five plants. Okay, I'm gonna go out on a limb here because I my gut was telling me to go with the first one but I'm gonna say that the 75% of the world's food comes from just five plants. It's it's higher than 75%.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay, Evan.<br />
<br />
=== Evan's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, good point Jay. 90% of farms in the US are considered small farms and it's it represents 52% of farmland. Yeah, I mean I suppose so. I wish I kind of knew what a small farm was by definition but I don't think there's any problem with that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, I'll tell you.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, thank you.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' After you give me your answer. During the reveal I will give you a operational definition of what is considered a small farm.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Globally, a second one, globally 28% of the world's population works in agriculture. It's of 2 billion people working in agriculture. It's a lot but when you take India and China into account.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, right? It's what I'm thinking too.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I mean you have to think about it if you're gonna go with this statistic you have to figure out what they are doing. India have that much agriculture. I mean gee whiz they just don't have that much of land. And is it agriculture? Boy, that one's tricky. But as Jay said 75% of the world's food comes from just five plants. Rice, wheat, what else?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Just two plants.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Two plants! All of the world's food. I'll go with Jay. I think he made some good points, which I don't refute and sounds solid to me. So I'm with Jay 75% of the world's food fiction.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay, Bob.<br />
<br />
=== Bob's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''B:''' 28% of the world's population works I mean, it's just hard I can make an argument in my head either way. So I'm just gonna just go with my gut and say that number one that 52% of the United States farmlander from small farms. That just seems too high. I mean 90% maybe I could buy but not 52% I'll say that's fiction.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay, and Cara.<br />
<br />
=== Cara's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So it's between the one and three from what you guys answered. So 28% of the world's population works in agriculture. I buy it for sure. 90% of the farms in the US are small, representing 52% of farmland. Well, that would make sense, right? Because if they're small more of them will take up the same amount of space as 10% potentially of like industrial ag farms. I think that I buy that. A lot of people grow their own food. A lot of people do local farming and community farming. And then there's probably not that many big massive industrial ag farms that have cornered the market. So that one seems likely to me. The 75% of the world's food coming from just five plants seems very unlikely to me mostly because-I'm not questioning that we don't have a lot of biodiversity in our food sources. That it probably is only like five plants, but where's the animal protein? It can't 75% of the world's food. You're saying is completely plant-based and I don't buy that. People eat too much meat.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' And fish.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And fish. Yeah. I mean I kind of meant fish with meat, but you're right. Yeah, too much animal protein. Obviously it is true that in poor countries I do think that plants probably make up more of the diet. But I still think that in rich countries where people eat a lot of meat that's gonna muscle into that 25% figure. So yeah, I'm gonna say that one's the fiction because where's the beef?<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #2 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, all right. So you all agree on number two. Globally 28% of the world's population works in agriculture. It's more than a quarter of people on the planet are just growing food. You guys all think that one is science and that one is science. That is correct. At least that was the figure as of 2018, which is the most recent figure I could find. Originally actually found references that said 40% so but I when I did deeper dives like yeah 40% that was true in 1990.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Whoa, it's changed that much in twenty years?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, it dropped from 44% to 28% from 1991 to 2018 at least. What's the percentage in the United States?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That that works in agriculture?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's still gonna be pretty high because there are a lot of farm workers .<br />
<br />
'''S:''' 1%.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I was gonna say unfortunately probably a lot of them are undocumented. No, it's true. So I do wonder how much they actually show up on censuses.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. I don't know if that one percent includes undocumented workers.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, I'm not sure.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Probably it's an estimation of it. There's a massive, the point is there's a huge difference between developed nations and developing nations. It could be as high as 69% in like the Democratic Republic of Congo that's the figure. And 1% in the US and then it averages out to 28%.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And is that because they're mostly doing subsistence?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Okay.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah a lot of that is. It's also just because they're just not as efficient.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #1 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Let's go back to number one. 90% of farms in the US are considered small farms. Representing 52% of farmland. Bob, you think this one is the fiction. Everyone else thinks this one is science. So Evan let me give you that definition for you. First of all in order to be considered a farm you need to be selling a thousand dollars worth of agricultural products a year. Or you would have under normal conditions if you like whatever you get wiped out or something. You're still a farm. But if you grew enough food that you would have made a thousand dollars selling what you produce. If youdon't sell any food like if you're subsistence farming you don't count as a-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' What if you're a community garden, a community farm? Where you don't sell it but you're actually growing it for lots and lots of people.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I don't know. A small farm makes less than $350,000 a year. So that's a very specific. So it's all based on how much money you produce by farming.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' There's some good change there.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. But farm costs are so high. You might make 350 but spend 300.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. So gross income less than 350 and 90% of the farms fall into that category. And they represent 52% of the farmland so that is science, but they produce only 26% of the food. So what does that mean? They're half as productive as right the other 10%.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That makes sense.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well that or or or or...<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' They are also could just be more sustainable.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's a non-sequitur. Even if they are-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No it's not, they can be very efficient and productive but in doing so completely like extract everything out of the land.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's still twice as productive. The reason is separate from the fact.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's twice productive in the moment, but not necessary in the long term.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Sustainability is a very interesting question and it's complicated, but don't assume that large farms are not sustainable.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I'm not assuming it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' They have to grow food year to year, too. I mean they don't-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' They do but they have a lot of tools at their disposal to do so.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, they just replace all everything. The only issue is with leasing farms where like you lease land for a number of years. Because then you don't care about the sustainability as much. If you own the land you want it to be sustainable. Nobody could survive by destroying their own land that is the source of their income. So sustainability is sort of an issue that everyone, unless you're leasing somebody else's land for a few years and then you're leaving. But other than that model sustainability is not this black-and-white thing.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And so because we're just talking about farmland not pasture.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' This is just farmland, not pasture.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Not animal farms. OK.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And then the other 10%, the large farms are mostly family farms, but they're large-scale family farms. They represent 2.5% percent of the farms but account for more than 50% of the produce.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, wow.<br />
<br />
'''s:''' Yeah, that's interesting.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, that's surprising actually.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #3 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, so let's go to number three. 75% of the world's food comes from just five plants. So Cara, Jay and Evan you thought this was fiction. This is the fiction but who's correct? Is it more than seventy five percent or is it more than just five plants?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Definitely more.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I think it's more than five plants in but I definitely think there's meat. There's got to be meat that eats up more than 75.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The person or persons who are correct here is Cara. Cara's correct. So you're right. I left out the meat. So actually what the truth is 75% of the world's food comes from twelve plants and five animals. So it's still-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' 5 animals really? Yeah, not like just three of them. Oh, I guess that makes sense.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. If you take the twelve most important crop plants and the five most productive animal species, that represents seventy five percent of the calories that humans consume. It's still impressive but I just made it like crazy, and got rid of the animals. That was that was the big tell so Cara did key in on that. So that's still a lot when you think about.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Goats and sheep we forget about in the US because we don't eat that much but a lot of countries eat goats and sheep.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Exactly. Yeah, I think was it chickens, cows, goats, sheep, pigs. So I think that's not a lot of biodiversity for 75% of our food. Think about that. Just twelve plants and five animals.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And I guess that's based on like where you live, right? Like in the US we eat so much corn and in certain parts of the world they so much rice or they so much of a certain type of wheat. Yeah, those are the big three staple crops corn, rice, wheat. But there's also 40% of the world's population relies heavily on a staple bananas. Plantain like bananas like, starchy bananas. Potatoes are another one. Think about potatoes, that's a huge staple crop. And then there's lots of beans and lentils and think other things you have to mix in. So yeah that produces responsible for a lot of the calories that we eat. And also we get again, we're in developed nations that are part of the global economy we get a very distorted view because we have such a we do have a diverse diet. But a lot of parts of the world, where they're food insecure they eat the same thing every day. They're really really relying. Yeah, they have overwhelmingly rely on a very narrow set of food, right?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, we totally take our food for granted here. Absolutely.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right good job guys. That was a tough one.<br />
<br />
== Skeptical Quote of the Week <small>(1:51:40)</small> ==<br />
<br />
<blockquote>What is the capital of North Dakota?<br>– Groucho Marx (1890-1977), an American comedian, actor, writer, and singer. </blockquote><br />
<br />
'''S:''' Evan, give us a quote.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' This quote comes with a bit of a backstory. So I'll give you the quote first and then I'll tell you the little story. "What is the capital of North Dakota?" That is a quote from Groucho Marx. Now, what's-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I don't get it.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Right. Okay.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I instantly recognize that story.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Absolutely. Legendary in skeptical lore.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' This is pre-Cara days.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' All right, Cara, you know who Groucho Marx was right?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I do, yes, I do.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Marx brothers brilliant comedian and whatnot. He was friends with Dick Cavett. Do you remember who Dick Cavett was?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I remember the name.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Television show hosts, especially popular in the 60s and 70s. So Dick Cavett in the year 2007 he wrote an article about Groucho Marx and re-told a story that Groucho was involved with and I'll give you the highlights basically of that story. Back then and he was referring to, many years prior when Groucho was still doing stage performances among other things. There was a prominent trans medium holding forth and her devoted disciples solemnly offered to take the man-born Julius Marx, that's Groucho with them to a seance. Always intellectually curious Groucho was glad to be asked along. Though he told me and this is Groucho telling Dick Cavett. He was vaguely insulted when his new friends solemnly cautioned him to show the proper reference. He replied I'm not a clown 24 hours. I can also be serious. The seance was held in the darkened parlour of some wealthy believers apartment. Groucho reported a heavy air of sanctity about the place "and not entirely from the incense". Lights were low and the faithful conversed in hushed tones. The medium began to chant unintelligibly and then to emit a strange humming sound eventually achieving her trance state. She says I am in touch, I'm in touch with the other side she intoned. Does anyone have a question? Groucho arose and asked what is the capital of North Dakota? He recalled being chased for several blocks, but escaped injury. Yes, so that quote definitely comes from the famous Groucho Marx incident incident of him attending the seance and supposedly this is what was said. Which is brilliant and who knows about the chase for several blocks thing, but it's so perfectly Groucho and absolutely stabbing them in the eye figuratively. When it came right right to it, does anyone have a question? What is the meaning of life? What what's the capital of North Dakota? Game over.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Classic.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's funny.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, she knows all sees all.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's right.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' As long as you ask a vague subjective question. All right, well, thank you all for joining me this week.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Sure man.<br />
<br />
'''E/J:''' Thanks Steve.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Thank you.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We'll see everyone on the Friday live stream.<br />
<br />
== Signoff/Announcements == <br />
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}}</div>Hearmepurrhttps://www.sgutranscripts.org/w/index.php?title=SGU_Episode_816&diff=19090SGU Episode 8162024-01-10T13:11:22Z<p>Hearmepurr: episode done</p>
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<br />
== Introduction ==<br />
''Voice-over: You're listening to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.'' <br />
<br />
'''S:''' Hello and welcome to the {{SGU|link=y}}. Today is Tuesday, February 23<sup>rd</sup>, 2021, and this is your host, Stephen Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella...<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Hey, everybody.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Cara Santa Maria...<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Howdy.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Jay Novella...<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Hey, guys.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' ...and Evan Bernstein.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Good evening, everyone.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So it's finally warming up in Texas. We touched a little bit on the energy woes, the electricity woes that we're having there. Last week's show, but now we've had a full week for the whole story to unfold.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Steve, before we get into the details, can we just say, listen everyone in Texas, it was really a hard thing to watch. We had our friend on that lives there. It was scary. It was horrible for so many people. And anything that we say is not judging the people that went through that. We're going to chit chat today about what went wrong in Texas, but we're in no way pointing fingers at citizens who suffered in all this.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, they're the victims for sure.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So here's the interesting bit of misinformation that's going around. So immediately people start pushing their political agenda, right? Because that's what people do.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's what they do.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. So the Republicans were blaming the wind turbines. They said that they were freezing up and that's why there was the rolling blackouts and there was the basically the electrical grid was failing. And that's nonsense. The quick story is there's three electrical grids in the United States in the lower 48, I should say. There's the Eastern grid, the Western grid and Texas. Texas is its own grid. It did that specifically to avoid regulations on selling electricity across state lines.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Imperial entanglements.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, and by the way, not all of Texas. El Paso happens to be slivered into the Western grid. And just-<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Oh, is that right?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. So compare how El Paso did. They didn't lose power.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Well, yeah, you can't really compare it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' If you get into a problem, you could buy electricity from another neighbouring state. That's kind of the bigger the grid, the better. And the more renewables we have in the system, we want the grids to be even bigger. We may need to connect the Eastern and Western grids. And if we really want to maximize renewable, because over capacity is one of the ways that you deal with the intermittent nature of it. But in any case, Texas is its own grid. And they also have a very, very deregulated system. So what that meant practically was that the energy companies were not required to winterize their facilities. So they didn't, even though they had some like a cold snap 10 years ago with-<br />
<br />
'''B:''' 2011. Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And with hearings saying we need to ensure that this never happens again, you guys need to winterize your equipment. And they were like, no.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And they didn't. It was voluntary. So they chose not to spend money to do it. And they did that to keep their prices down, partly, inevitably we got it. It happened again. And so it wasn't just the wind turbines. Every single energy source failed, coal, natural gas, nuclear-<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Fusion, all of it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I mean, I saw some-<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Perpetual motion machines were stopping.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I saw some officials from the actual energy companies saying we were literally days, maybe even hours away from a blackout that could have lasted months.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Months? Can you imagine that?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' They said minutes, maybe seconds is what they actually said.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Minutes, maybe seconds?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' But wait, what does that mean? What was happening? Like, Cara, what was the situation that would have made it a lot worse?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' They were close.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So this is the problem. When part of the electrical grid goes down because it fails, then other parts have to kick in to take over, then they overload. So they shut down to keep from overloading. And so it's this cascading shutdown across the grid. That's what happened.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Which is why they do intentional rolling brownouts and blackouts on purpose to try and relieve the pressure off the grid.<br />
<br />
'''B:'' Plus, it wasn't so much rolling, though, was it?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' They did it right before the grid failed in a way that would have caused damage that would have taken a long time to repair. So they just barely avoided that. They did that with rolling blackouts. And then there were actual blackouts when, again, you have that cascading failure.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, but the other angle there, Steve, is some of those rolling blackouts weren't rolling at all because it's like the wealthy communities had it all the time and the not so wealthy communities didn't.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Really? Is that documented?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That's what I read.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So what happened was they spared critical infrastructure like hospitals. Where do you think the hospitals are located? So the neighbourhoods that had – and again, it's totally reasonable to not cut power to a hospital, but they couldn't just pick out the hospital. They had to spare the entire neighbourhood. And so that difference, like the wealthy versus the poor neighbourhoods, had to do with that's where the hospitals were, you know. But that was the end result was, yes, some of the more wealthy neighbourhoods were spared, the rolling blackouts. But there were actually permanent blackouts in some locations for days caused by just the overload. Because the thing is, no matter – remember, with coal, natural gas, and nuclear, they all ultimately do the same thing. They make steam and they turn the turbine. And it was those components, the moving the water around, that froze because they didn't have heaters on them. And the other thing is we have wind turbines in New England. They don't freeze here because we have heaters on them. They're just winterized.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' They're winterized, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So the problem was that all of the energy production modalities were not winterized. To pick out wind turbines and say they failed and they were the problem is pure nonsense. That is just political propaganda.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' The first problem was that their grid, which they is unregulated and is privately owned was not winterized. The second problem, and with that all the other problems we talked about, not being able to borrow energy from other parts of the country, not being able to distribute the need. So the second problem is that on this unregulated market in Texas, people are allowed to sell wholesale energy. They're allowed to sell variable weight wholesale energy. And unfortunately, that also disproportionately affects poorer people because the rates are significantly lower. They come with a greater risk, but they're more affordable in the day to day. And since Texas, by and large, doesn't deal with this, except it just did 10 years ago, basically, most everyday people think I'm going to look at these rates, they are significantly lower if I take a variable rate because usually we're not in the hot box or the cold box as it were. Unfortunately, there was no mechanism in place. So when like one particular, I read a deep dive about one particular variable rate company called Gritty who buys wholesale and sells off directly to the customer. They actually saw what was happening, basically the bubble bursting right in front of them. And they frantically reached out to their customers saying, you need to dump us now. If you don't dump us now and get with a flat rate energy company within the next day or two, you're going to be hit with bills that are thousands of dollars, 15,000.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That was actually nice of them to actually do that.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Because ultimately they're unregulated. They're doing what the market allows them to do as a business, whether you want to say an ethical practice or not is a point, but it's beside this point. Ultimately, when they saw that this had a terrible backlash effect for themselves and for their customers, they were like, we don't have any safeties in place. The only way to avoid getting hit with a $15,000 electric bill is to dump out now. But what are you going to do? They're going to be able to call and wait on hold with the electric company in the middle of this blackout. So many people didn't get the option.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Worth a shot.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, exactly. It was worth the shot.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' They could email for two days.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Exactly, because they didn't either have electricity or they were too busy trying to like board up their windows.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. I mean, some people have described, though, the wholesale market as predatory and that seems to be reasonable because they acted the same way that like variable rate mortgages were predatory.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Absolutely.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Up front, it sounds great. You get this low rate, but the thing is by getting the cheap upfront wholesale electricity, you're basically not paying for insurance, right?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Absolutely.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's really cheap to drive without insurance because you get into an accident and then the other person gets screwed, not just you. So in this case, the federal government's having to bail out Texas.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, because Texas themselves didn't regulate. And this is the part that pisses me off because who keeps winning in these schemes? The people who keep getting money regardless of what they do to protect the consumers. And that's why this story makes me angry because what we're talking about here is not a luxury item. We're talking about a necessity to live. Electricity keeps people alive.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, that's what creates perverse incentives, right? The system exists so that people can take a risk to make a lot of money. But if the risk bites them, they ask somebody else pays for it. That's what we call the perverse incentive. That's a setup for for bad stuff to happen.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So that's why regulation exists.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, but I don't mind free market solutions and having the free market. That's great. I think you need to balance that with regulations, obviously, but you can't build in perverse incentives where it's a win-win that the investors make all the money and they never lose because they get bailed out because of whatever. They're critical or they $10,000 bills to their customers and the customers need to get bailed out.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, and that's a classic example of the freest of free markets. That's the problem. When you really look at laissez-faire economics, what you're saying is any time there's a demand we're going to because supply is low and the demand increases, the costs are going to shift.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Like when that guy, Scavelli, whatever that scumbag was, raised the price to thousands of dollars for that medicine.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, but even that's a slightly different example because in this case, the algorithm was set in advance.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And we knew this was going to happen.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' We knew this was going to happen and they weren't price fixing. They were doing the opposite. They were saying, no matter what, we're never going to cap. And so ultimately, without a cap, the free market was doing exactly what it was designed to do, which is to basically enable or enact these perverse incentives and put all the burden on the consumer so that the people at the very, very top made their money anyway. And then when there was still a problem, a regulatory problem, what ends up happening? The federal government, so our federal taxes, end up paying off the place where the state taxes aren't being collected. And that's frustrating.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, that really sucks.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And the bottom line is it was the lack of winterizing because nobody wanted to spend the money to invest in it. That was the ultimate problem. The thing is, it's so fixable.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And prevention is so much cheaper. It's so much cheaper.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You need to be living in the real world.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I wonder if the public pressure now will be on to do this and they'll finally get their acts together.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Well, why? Why would the pressure be on? Because next time it happens, then everyone else's taxes will pay for this to bail them out again, right?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, I think it's because people died. There's a certain point where money doesn't even matter anymore when people's lives are on the line.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Well, I think the jury's out whether we cross that line in terms of what these people do. I mean, you know how people are. The weather's in the 70s. People are going to forget about this and move to the next thing. And then in 10 years or five years or next month, it's going to happen again.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Gosh, I hope not.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, that's the other question is nobody knows the answer to this is what's the relationship between events like this, like this ridiculously cold weather in Texas and global warming, extreme weather events like this, are they going to be coming more frequently?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Definitely.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, I mean, it seems that way. It seems that way. I don't know that that we have enough evidence yet to say for sure, but it certainly is plausible that we might be seeing more extreme events like this. We certainly can no longer be confident that past experience is going to predict future experience.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' But that's what the science predicts more extreme weather events.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's true.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But pointing to you're right, pointing to a specific example, my hope is just that individuals within their communities organize. That people who had to put up with this and who were, damaged, some of whom irreparably, some of whom lost limb or life, see this as something that's beyond the pale, because they're the only way that change is going to be affected is if pressure is put on by the constituents, it's the only way you're going to see change.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, totally. OK, let's move on.<br />
<br />
== What’s the Word? <small>(12:45)</small> ==<br />
* Word_Topic_Concept<ref group="v">[https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/WORD Wiktionary: WORD]</ref> <!-- we recommend having an in-line link to the Wikipedia or Wiktionary entry in addition to the Wiktionary vocab group reference. So, before the Wikitionary reference, put either {{w|word_topic_concept}} or [https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/WORD WORD] --> <br />
<br />
<blockquote> _consider_using_block_quotes_for_emails_read_aloud_in_this_segment_ </blockquote><br />
<br />
'''S:''' Cara, you're going to do a What's The Word this week.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I am. So this word was recommended or suggested by Michael Viau. Hopefully I'm pronouncing that right from St. Louis. He said, "I work in electromagnetic compatibility and came across this word when researching lightning formation. The word is percolation. This is the fun one for the whole team specifically because it can be tied to fractals and coffee." It's it's all of our buttons. "Percolation theory or my profession's application of it, at least, is a statistical way of modeling current paths through composites made up of various materials with different properties." And I was like, what is that? So I started to to reach research a little bit more. And what I love, oh, the title of his email was What's the word? I've got a fun one because I say that every week. I got a fun one. OK, so percolation. When we think of the word percolation, maybe we should do this backward and look at the etymology first.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Shun. Yes, you said work. Look at it backwards.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Gosh, it's too dense.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I thought you were going to get it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Do you notice that I probably laugh more, Evan, when it's somebody else's story and you do one of your funny Evan jokes because I'm not as invested in like, what am I going to say next? What is the depth of this? I don't want to screw this up.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's right. Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's funny.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Otherwise, I'm throwing you off your game.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' As the one who edits the show, I can tell you that Cara and Evan giggle at every joke and Bob and Jay do not.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Someone has to.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Everything funny in the show.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' For the record, Jay and I laugh at the good ones.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yes. Yeah, Bob, you're selective.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Evan and I just we just humor is an important part of our life. That's all.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I mean, yeah, I mean, it's good to wear rose coloured glasses because you're just happier. Life is pain, man.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Life is pain. We see the absurdity and the suffering. Welcome to my existential world, Jay. All right. So percolation. The PIE of the first root, the Proto Indo-European root, per means forward. And in this case, they're kind of taking that as through. And then colade, this is an interesting suffix in that we don't really know where it came from, but we do know that the whole word together, percolationum, came from the Latin. And so the colade part translates to strain. So it comes from colum, which is a strainer or like a sieve. So to percolate is to strain through, to sieve through. And that's really what the word means, right? That's the usage that we're all used to. If something percolates through something, it's moving through a permeable substance. Sometimes it's to extract the solute out of it. Sometimes it's to take just the liquid component out of it. So with coffee, we're percolating through, but we're just keeping the water that has had the coffee grounds percolated. We're not keeping the grinds, we're throwing those away. In other cases, we're percolating something in order to pull out the solute. Does that make sense? It's like diffusion.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Jay, remember when we were building my house in Oxford and the surveyor went out there and did the PERC test on the land to measure how fast the land would absorb water?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. And so you will see that. You'll see the word used more specifically in like engineering, surveying, geology. You'll see percolation through rock, through soil. You also will see it in a more literary sense, right? This idea is percolating right now, just letting it kind of simmer, letting it sort of move through my brain juices and eventually it's going to settle. So that's kind of the typical term that we use. But of course, my interest was piqued by Michael when he talked about percolation theory. So I started to do some deep dives. It's complicated, very complicated. And it does have to do with fractal geometry. It also has to do with statistical physics and math. We see it in material science. We even see it in like network theories. So the best way that I found for somebody to describe percolation was talking about, a piece of foam, for example, or really any somewhat porous structure. Let's say a big chunk of terracotta. If I was to pour water on top of a piece of terracotta, how would I calculate where the water would end up as it's seeping through? What would its path be? Because they're all these little random holes. So we don't have perfect nodes. We don't have perfect links. What we have is this porous substrate that's random. So this is a theory that uses these different structures to try and describe phenomena passing through in this random graph. And it's fascinating as you start to dig deep and you start to see all of these little schematics of percolation theory. You can see representations of percolation theory using these really complicated and beautiful graphs. And so in a way, not even in a way, pretty directly, it relates back to that route beautifully. But if you didn't know what percolation theory is, your head might not go to that place. So I guess Michael's profession, which he didn't say what it is, they use percolation theory to model current paths through composites made up of various materials with different properties. So he may be in more of a material science or engineering example of that, but you also see the modeling used kind of more theoretically. You might see it used in fractal geometry. You might see it used more in other versions of mathematics where there is no actual substrate, but instead we're modeling what would happen with a random substrate. And it's fascinating. So thank you for the opportunity, Michael, for me to dig into percolation theory and to percolate a little bit on this fun word.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, like when you think you know what a word means, but it really has so many more meanings.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Mm hmm. Very cool. And in this case, it's really fun because it's one of those words where the root stays there. You know how sometimes we're like, okay, this word is used here, here, here, and I still can't figure out why this is the word that this field shows to describe this phenomenon. But in this case, it all comes right back to that beautiful root of basically putting something through a sieve of something moving through pores.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And the etymology is highly conserved.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It is. I am saying that.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Cara, do you ever think of all the animals that can fly, the fly got the name?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' You're right.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Why would they give the most insignificant thing that flies, like that and a gnat, you know? But why would they? There should be a giant bird called the fly, you know what I mean?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No, I like that it's such a little one. I like that because then everything else would be the fuzzy fly or the beaked fly. See, why didn't we do that? That's the question. There are more kinds of flies. I mean, there are a lot of flies, but they're all flies. They're not a lot of different things that fly.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Why don't they call a flying squirrel a glide?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It's not flying, it's gliding.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' There are sugar gliders.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Sugar gliders?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, they're related to flying squirrels.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' They're little bats.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No, sugar gliders aren't bats. They're mammals.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' No, you're right. They're little, I'm sorry, they're little, like they're little guys. They're like squirrels.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Why don't they call bats flappies?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' They should.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Inexplicable.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Snakes, danger noodles, and raccoons, trash pandas. What are some of the other ones? I love them.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Whistle pigs, yeah.<br />
<br />
== News Items ==<br />
<br />
=== Perseverance <small>(20:52)</small> ===<br />
* [https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/ Mars 2020 Mission Perseverance Rover]<ref>[https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/ NASA: Mars 2020 Mission]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, Jay, tell us all about the Perseverance.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yay, not the perseverance, which so many people have said I've spoiled them.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' You know, science has completely kicked ass. It has for a very long time, but this mission has really impressed the hell out of me with everything. Once you start reading about what was achieved here. The Mars rover mission that we just saw, it's called the Mars 2020, and this rover mission by NASA's Mars Exploration Program is a mission that was originally announced back in 2012, and it includes or included three major components. So, there's the cruise stage that was used to travel between Earth and Mars. There's the entry, descent, and landing system, EDLS, that includes the aeroshell descent vehicle and heat shield. And then we have the sky crane that was needed to deliver Perseverance and Ingenuity safely to the surface. And just so you know, the Ingenuity is the test helicopter. I'll give you a little bit of information about it in a minute. So, Mars 2020 mission, this was launched on an Atlas V launch vehicle. It took six months to reach Mars, and it landed just a few days ago, February 18th, 2021. So, the Perseverance rover has a slate of missions, primary objectives that I'll list off to you. This is exactly what NASA had on their website. It's to explore a geologically diverse landing site, assess ancient habitability. And they do this, and this is me talking, by investigating its surface, the geological processes and the geological history. And when they're saying assess ancient habitability, they're talking about did things live there previously and what was the previous habitat? Seek signs of ancient life. They wanted, they're looking for these things and rocks and different places that they would expect there to be signs of life. That's where the rover is going to be looking. Gather rock and soil samples. This is amazing. So this is going to be, the rover is going to be gathering soil samples, putting them into a test tube and leaving them on the surface of Mars for a later pickup mission, which I'll tell you about, and demonstrate technology for future robotic and human exploration. So let me get into some details here. The rover is gathering samples on the Mars regolith, right? Does that sound sexy? It's cool, but let me tell you the sexy. The samples are going to be stored in tubes and then it's literally going to leave them on the ground as it rolls through its path. So it's going to leave a path of tubes behind it. Perseverance can't pick up the samples once it puts them down. And eventually though, the goal is to return these samples back to earth. And this mission, and I have to do a side step here and just quickly tell you about this mission. It's scheduled in 2026 and the preparation of the samples is a key part of the Perseverance mission because in 2026 we're sending something called the sample retrieval lander. And like I said, it's slated to leave earth in 2026 and it will be picking up the samples on the sample fetch rover. It's going to be like a little dog that runs around. They know exactly where the samples are with satellite information and they're measuring distances between objects and they're calculating exactly where they are. The rover is going to go pick them up. It's going to be designed and built by the European Space Agency. And then that rover is going to deliver them to another thing that's going to shoot it like a soccer ball with all the samples stuck into it. It's going to shoot up out to another thing that's going to send it back to Earth. So that mission is really cool. I'm dying to read all the details about that.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Wait, how is it actually lifting off of Mars to send it back to earth?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That soccer ball payload gets put on a little spaceship that launches it back into orbit and then another thing takes it home.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That sounds like that'll be the very first thing launched off of Mars then, right?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It's going to be the first thing that is bringing back samples from Mars. Absolutely.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Something has to land and then take off again.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That's right. You're right, Bob.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That's a big deal.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Perseverance is also responsible for scoping out the landing site for the next phase of the sample return mission, which they're using it to find a really flat area. But they also, keep in mind, they want that sample return mission to be near where the rover is to pick up all the doodads. So it's going to land right in that vicinity again. So NASA designed the rover with its past rover Curiosity in mind, which was very smart because many of the components developed for Curiosity were used in Perseverance. So it was a very low cost way of reusing technology that has already been proven and they added only the things that needed to be added to help this mission achieve its goals. As an example, they added the core drill that takes samples and some new instrumentation. The rover has 19 video cameras and two microphones, which means they're ready to make rock and roll videos, which I think is awesome. The rover is also going to test technology in the Martian dust to see how it possibly could interfere with technology, right? They want to know, is this dust going to get into stuff and do nasty things? Because we know that the moon has a really nasty sharp edged regolith. So they want to know like, okay, what is this Martian terrain going to do and what's the dust like? Is it dangerous? Perseverance will also test technology and this, I think this is the one that really blew my mind the most. They'll take Martian carbon dioxide and do what, guys? What do you think they're going to do with it?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Smoke it?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Martian carbon dioxide.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Make oxygen out of it.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Right. They're making pure oxygen out of it. And what is pure oxygen good for? It's good for-<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Breathing and for rockets.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Exactly. Oxygen is one of those things you could use it in so many different ways, but the two main things is it's for rocket fuel and for people to breathe. So that's awesome. So I guess in the future, they're going to put instrumentation out there and machinery that could slowly process oxygen, which is great. Just pull it out of the CO2 that's in the atmosphere. The rover is also going to try to find subsurface water or at least prove that it's there. Improve future landing techniques and study the weather. And in particular, they want to know what's in the air. They want to know what particulate makes up the air. This information is vital to send actually people there and other robots. So this will help them determine how they need to build habitats. It'll determine how they will need to build future technology, other robots and things like that. Another interesting upgrade in the mission is a guidance and control system called the terrain relative navigation. So if you watched Perseverance get deployed by the sky crane, you may have noticed that it made some lateral movements to find better land, to find a better landing site. So the new system allowed the sky crane to change its heading during the last moments of the landing process. And past missions didn't have this. And what happened in one of the past missions, they landed in a bad place that was suboptimal. And that's bad because you have all of this money, all these people, all this human effort and you land in a crater and you're kind of screwed.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Wouldn't water be suboptimal?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Absolutely, Bob.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Sub-aquatic.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, they're building rovers, not boats. Of course, they don't want to land in a mushy area.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Not much chance of that on Mars.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Water would be optimal for a sub, so it would be suboptimal.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Oh, you idiot. Oh my God.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, Bob was doing the fun.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I will move on, Steve.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I liked it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's a thinker.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, jokes are extra funny when they're explained.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Just move on, just move on.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Bob, the little helicopter, please let me talk about this guy. He deserves a little love. So, he's a little robotic helicopter, ingenuity, and he will test or she will test powered flight in Mars' extremely thin atmosphere. It's a big deal, guys.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Wait, is she a helicopter or is she like a drone?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Well, they're calling it a robotic helicopter because I don't want to talk about stuff I'm not an expert on. Like, what's the difference between a helicopter and a drone? I think it's...<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, helicopters are piloted, usually.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I think it has to do with the blades.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' A self-flying helicopter.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Okay. That's a good one.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' All right, so this little guy is going to be used to be first, it's going to be the first thing that has ever flown on an alien planet and it has five planned flights. Each of them is going to last about 90 seconds. It'll go up about three to five meters. In those three to five meters as it goes up, it's going to be flying around, of course, and man, I'm hoping that it has a couple of cameras on it. It's got to have a camera.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It better.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It would bum me out if they didn't stick a GoPro on there.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, but at least Perseverance will be shooting it. We'll see what it does. But it's going to take off, it's going to fly around, it's going to do some manoeuvring, it's going to land, and what are they going to find out? How much energy did it take? Did the atmosphere interfere or play nice with the way they designed the blades? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. They're going to do all these things that are going to tell us awesome information. So when we want to put a real flying machine down on that planet, we'll know how to build it. Now, one last thing. I thought this was really, really cool. If you look at the parachute that was used to slow down the sky crane and rover on the descent, it had a secret message encoded in it. The parachute had a series of red and white stripes that were put in a pattern that was some internet users, air quotes, internet users discovered the hidden message. It was written in binary language, which is a computer language, and once they decoded it, it said...<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Send more Chuck Berry.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Of course. You know, anybody that watched SNL back in the 70s knows that one. No, it said, dare mighty things, and this happens to be a key phrase at NASA's JPL.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That's awesome. I love it.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So somebody sat around and said, hey, I know you guys are working on the super important stuff, but let's not forget that we've got to send some humanity to Mars. Let's send a message along with the parachute that's sitting on the surface of Mars now and probably will be there for a very long time. It says, dare mighty things. I love that.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Didn't they do something similar with Curiosity where the wheels in Morse code said JPL?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I think you're right.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. It's like they couldn't be so overt by actually writing that, but they coded it, which makes it extra fun.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' They totally should have put human footprint marks on the wheels as it rolled around.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, my God.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, great. Yeah, that's what we need.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Now, guys, of course, please do more reading. There's so much I left out. There's so much more detail to this. And read about that retrieval mission as well, because this is a really cool thing that they're doing. It's in the works. It's not like something they're cooking up. Like it's in the works. We're going to do it. And that at some point in the next six to eight years, I don't know how long it's going to take. Maybe it'll all happen in 2026. The whole mission might be resolved. We might have Martian regolith on Earth that we could study and do all the analysis that we need to to find out what it's made of. Is there microbes in it? I mean, think of these these samples that are being collected are important samples because the team at JPL is going to tell the rover when to take a sample.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Jay, this is the 46th mission to land something on Mars. Guess how many of them were complete failures out of 46?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I think they've only landed, like, eight things, right?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' 30.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Could be a lot like in the 20s.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I think it's in the 30s.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, there's so many failed missions.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' There were 22 complete failures, two partial failures.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, OK. So as bad as I thought.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So more than half.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So this utter success, you got to think about-<br />
<br />
'''S:''' This is a complete success.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' We have an incredible amount of data of what parts wore out and when on the previous rovers, right? And again, I remind you, the other rovers lasted way longer than they even intended, like remarkably longer. People were doing things with these rovers they never intended to do with them. So now we have a rover on there that landed without a hiccup. They have it, reinforced all the things that wore out on the other rovers. This thing's going to last a long time. They have a one-year plan for it. And then they go, yeah, and if it lasts longer than a year, you know it's going to last longer than a year. This thing is going to be kicking around for a long time.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, cool. All right. Thanks, Jay.<br />
<br />
=== Communicating While Dreaming <small>(33:18)</small> ===<br />
* [https://theness.com/neurologicablog/communicating-while-dreaming/ Communicating While Dreaming]<ref>[https://theness.com/neurologicablog/communicating-while-dreaming/ Neurologica:Communicating While Dreaming]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' Bob, let me ask you a question. Do you think it's possible to communicate with somebody while they're dreaming?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I know it is.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Absolutely. Wake up. You're dreaming. Hey. There you go.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Without waking them up. Without waking them up.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Does it have to be verbal?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yes. Your communication to them is verbal.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, so not like putting their hand in warm water. See what happens.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I don't know if that counts as communication.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So this is an interesting question that researchers set out to answer. It tells us a lot about what the dreaming state actually is. Obviously, dreaming is something we all experience. Even if you don't remember your dreams, you dream. Everybody dreams. The dream state, as you know, is rapid eye movement or REM, REM sleep. We call it that because when you're dreaming, your brain stem basically paralyzes everything below the neck so you don't act out your dreams, right? But you can still move your eyes. You can still move your face a little bit. So your eyes are undergoing rapid movement while you're dreaming because that's one of the body parts that's not paralysed.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Unless you have certain parasomnias and then you do act out your dreams.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. People can, "sleepwalk". That's a parasomnia. It's something wrong with the wiring for sleep.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, but is sleepwalking happening during REM? I thought it was non-REM.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, it's usually non-REM.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's interesting. Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So did you know that you dream during other parts of sleep? Just not as much.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Really? So non-REM?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. Some dreaming happens in other stages of sleep. Yeah, non-REM stages of sleep. So what is happening in your brain when you're dreaming? If you look at an EEG, do you think you could tell the difference between somebody who's dreaming and awake?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Not easy. It's subtle. It's largely the same.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, it's almost the same.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Dreaming and awake? OK.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Dreaming and awake. Your brain is really active when you're dreaming, which makes sense. If you look at an fMRI, which is a little bit more detailed than an EEG, most of the brain is active.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' What about other areas?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' What about motor cortex? Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The motor cortex is active, but it's just being paralysed on the way down.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Okay. That makes sense.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So that's brainstem, right?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. All the sensory areas are being active. The only part of the brain that's less active is the frontal lobe, which kind of makes sense.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Makes sense, yeah. You're not really doing a lot of checking and balancing on yourself when you're asleep.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. There's not a lot of reality testing going on.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. Not a lot of inhibition.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Look at the talking elephant. Who cares?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. Right. Probably because if you were, you'd wake up. You'd realize you were dreaming. And then we've spoken many times on the show about lucid dreaming, which is a dreaming state when you have awareness of the fact that you're dreaming.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah. It's pretty wicked.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' This is a slightly different state than normal dreaming, obviously, because you have enough awareness to tell that you're dreaming. It's very unstable. You tend to either dream you wake up or actually wake up when one of those two things happens. Of course, you dream you wake up you lose your lucidity. You go back. You think you're awake, so now you don't know that you're dreaming. What the researchers did was they actually looked at people who can get into the lucid dreaming state. And there's things you could do to trigger that and to train yourself to make it more likely. And then while subjects were lucid dreaming, they tried to communicate with them. Previous researches have done this, but they've essentially relied upon the subject reporting what happened after they woke up.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Which is sort of like has all the same problems as like near-death experience.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' But that's not true. But that's not true, because I know in the 80s, 1981, Stephen LaBeer relied on EEGs to detect eye movements as a method of communication. He used EMGs to catalog things like you could fist clench in your dream and you can create a detectable signal in an EMG. It's subtle because you're paralysed, but it's detectable. And they've also communicated over breathing. If you hold your breath or breathe rapidly in a lucid dream, that is detectable outside of a lucid dream. So this is one of the reasons why I'm very disappointed with this research on the verge of disgusted, because this was 40 years ago LaBeer was doing this. The only difference that I could tell is that this is now, oh, it's in real time. You don't have to look at an EEG and see what these people within a lucid dream were saying a few hours ago, or an hour ago, or 10 minutes ago. They're doing it in real time. Big whoop.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, but that is exactly the incremental thing that they're doing.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' A 40-year incremental leap. Wow, good job, guys.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I think it's a little bit more than what you're saying.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Bring it then, tell me.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's not just that the person who's lucid dreaming is communicating out.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I'm telling you. I'm telling you that's what they were doing. They figured out a way to communicate.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Hang on. It's what they demonstrated. You tell me if they did this 40 years ago, and maybe they did. I don't know.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' They sent messages. Go ahead.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, it's not just sending messages out. They were able to respond to the information that was being given to them while they were lucid dreaming. My understanding is that's the new bit.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yes, that's the new bit.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So it's not just while you're asleep, make sure you clench your fist really hard.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' No, no. Yeah, that's it. It's responding.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' While you're lucid dreaming, it's not just responding. When they ask you a question, you have to understand the question. You have to formulate an answer and then communicate your answer back to me.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yes. And that is an incremental advance. But 40 years ago, they were agreeing, okay, when you recognize you're lucid, you do this pattern of saccades with your eye so that we could see it in your EEG. You go left, right, left, left, right. And then that will mean you started lucid dreaming. And then they had a lucid dream. They remembered what they planned to do and they did it. And then they read that back out in the EEG or the EMG. So yes, it's an improvement. My beef is that after 40 years, this is all we got.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I get it. It took 40 years to do this. They could have done it 40 years ago. But this is different. This means, though, that while lucid dreaming, you can hear, understand, and absorb something somebody is saying. That's new, Bob.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I'm not surprised at all. I'm not surprised at all.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Did you guys both say earlier that lucid dreaming and the alert awake state are imperceptibly different on scans?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, looking at scans. They're very, very similar.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' How do you know the person's actually asleep?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' We all dream. We all dream. Some of us lucid dream. If you're a lucid dreamer, you know when you're lucid dreaming. I mean, they're not going to be fooling themselves, that's for sure. If they're charlatans and they're trying to trick the researchers, then yeah, that's possible. But that's so remote. I don't even think it's a word to consider.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Sorry. The subjects in this study are known and self-described lucid dreamers. They're not just people who were in REM. Oh, that's a different thing.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, if you're going to do research on lucid dreaming, you almost have to get someone who has some facility with lucid dreaming. Otherwise, you'd be waiting a month for a lucid dream.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' To be clear, I know that's your area of interest, Bob. I wasn't sure that the study had anything to do with lucid dreaming. It sounded to me like the study was just, can people hear and respond even when they're asleep?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But it was on people who were in the lucid dreams.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Okay, sorry. That wasn't clear to me. You probably did make it clear.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I said it. I said it. You just missed it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Okay. Because that would be a massive problem with their study. You'd need to make sure people were actually asleep.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, but also they're doing EEGs on the people. They're making sure they know what sleep stage they're in, et cetera. This study was done by four different labs at the same time using slightly different methods.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's pretty cool.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I like this. They basically did internal control. It was replicated four times before, and they all published together just to make it more robust. Because otherwise, you could ask a lot of questions about, was this a fluke? Was this somebody who was punking the researchers or whatever?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' So it was good science, yes.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So scientifically, I liked that internal control thing. It was a little bit more robust. It does make you think about where theoretically this could go. Maybe we'll wait another 40 years, Bob, and do another incremental study. But for example, if we could figure out some way to really stabilize the lucid dreaming state, then could you...<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That'd be awesome.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' What kind of experience could you have at that point? Could it be like Inception where you have this hyper real movie adventure kind of lucid dreaming thing that lasts for hours? That would be...<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Okay, here's the thing. I don't want to work or play or whatever that is that you're talking about doing while I'm asleep.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Then sit on a beach and drink a cocktail.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I want my brain to do what it needs to do while it's asleep. I don't want to tell it what to do.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Tom Hardy shows up.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I don't think you're shorting yourself on anything by lucid dreaming.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I don't think you know that yet, Bob. I don't think any of us know that yet.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, the question is, would that interfere with memory consolidation?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And maybe not even just memory consolidation, but the other restorative cellular properties, like all the things that happen during sleep. If we're forced to kind of...<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That probably happens during the deeper stages of sleep.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, you're probably right.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' This is the REM sleep when your brain is super active anyway. It's already almost as active as when you're awake.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I still wonder if there's some sort of mechanism by which the way that our dreams play out. As we know, they do aid in memory consolidation, but we still don't know how. And I wonder if interrupting that mechanism by giving it more order wouldn't be detrimental in some way.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Cara will do that study in 80 years.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, exactly. We don't know yet, which is why I might, in this specific case, use the precautionary principle. What I do know is that animals who are sleep deprived die horrific deaths.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' This has nothing to do with sleep deprivation, because if you extend your REM, you will actually increase your sleep hygiene, I think. I mean, that's what you need, REMs. REM is what you need.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But we don't know yet if that's also true if you do it through induced dreams.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, if you have extended lucid REM though.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, I don't know. Is that restorative? Is that possible? I don't know.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' My guess is that it would be, but I think we would know if we actually did more research in the past 40 years. We'd probably know that by now.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I do have to say, though, there's a part of me that is still highly, not skeptical of the results of these types of studies, because I think there's a lot of value and a lot of validity in them, but I still wear a skeptical hat when any study biases towards a very particular type of group that already does a lot of interesting brain stuff on their own.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You're correct.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' What?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You're correct. I agree.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, yeah, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' There's a selected population of lucid dreamers.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's so selective, and they already are probably profoundly different than non-lucid dreamers in the way that their brain works during REM.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Right, but they have to be lucid in order for the study to work.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Then maybe you could train to be a lucid dreamer. There are techniques that you could do to facilitate that.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, then right there, that tells me their brains are different. Because if you have to train for something, you're reducing change.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Is training lucid or even inducing lucid dreamers introducing an artifact? That's the question.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's what I'm saying.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Can we generalize from the lucid dreaming brain to just the regular dreaming brain? We don't know.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Exactly.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I mean, they're still in REM sleep. I mean, I think there's still a lot to be learned by that state, even if it is somewhat specialized in terms of people who have a natural facility for it or people that train for it. I think there's still a lot to be learned.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, we just have to be clear that the lucid dreaming state is different than the regular dreaming state. It's two different states of mind, that's all. And we don't know what's closer. Is lucid dreaming to being awake closer than lucid dreaming to regular dreaming, non-lucid dreaming? We don't know that question. I don't think we could assume that lucid dreaming is more like non-lucid dreaming than it is than being awake. Maybe you're mostly awake when you're lucid dreaming.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, I mean, I'm all for this research, obviously.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's a hybrid.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I think there's a lot that could come out of this. I mean, lucid dreaming is, first off, it's fun as hell. The most fun I've ever had dreaming is when I've done lucid dreaming. It's an amazing time. Secondly, you can do things in your dream that you can't do in real life. You could be like therapy. You could practice doing things in a dream that you might be too frightened to try when you're awake, and you could actually build confidence in a dream to do something that you maybe never would try when you were awake because you're just too afraid to do it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We don't know if that would work. The virtual exposure therapy doesn't really work.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It works to some extent.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, it depends. I mean, it's a buildup to the real thing always.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, but I read that there was at least one study recently where they did the virtual exposure therapy, and it wasn't as good as real exposure therapy.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, I would guess it wouldn't be as good. My assumption would be it would require more trials, or you might have to go more extreme in the virtual world than you would in the real world.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Anyway, we're getting a little off the main course of this discussion, and we need to move on.<br />
<br />
=== Phage Viruses and Antibiotics <small>(47:21)</small> ===<br />
* [https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/world/2021/01/how-a-virus-antibiotic-tag-team-managed-to-overcome-a-deadly-superbug.html Phage Viruses and Antibiotics]<ref>[https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/world/2021/01/how-a-virus-antibiotic-tag-team-managed-to-overcome-a-deadly-superbug.html Newshub: How a virus-antibiotic tag-team managed to overcome a deadly superbug]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' Bob, tell us about phage viruses and antibiotics.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' This was an interesting article I saw a little while ago. I haven't had a chance to talk about it. So researchers report in a study of a new surprising advance using viruses and antibiotics together to actually remove the antibiotic resistance of some superbugs, some bacteria, bacterial superbugs. So this was a fascinating partnership that was so cool. So this is published in Nature Microbiology earlier this year. Now, we all know about the fight against superbugs. We've talked about it on the show a bunch. Now, these superbugs are bacterial strains that we have stupidly evolved faster than necessary to become huge, huge problems now and potentially devastating problems in the near future. I mean, we're talking worst-case scenarios where humanity goes back to a pre-antibiotic era when no antibiotics work at all. I mean, this is something that's possible. And imagine you get a cut, a little cut, and you're like, oh crap, I hope this doesn't kill me. Imagine if that was a daily fear and something that needs to be taken seriously. So this takes me to Acinobacter baumanii, which is a bacteria. It's a superbug. This is one of the superbugs I'm talking about. It's responsible for up to 20% of the infections in intensive care units. I'm sure a lot of people in the IC dealing with COVID, not only are they dealing with COVID, but they're also probably dealing with the superbugs, a lot of them. And it's really insidious. The superbug attaches to medical equipment like ventilator tubes and catheters. If you have an infected wound, it's quite bad. Lungs, it can infect your blood. It's absolutely horrible. And they call it a superbug for a reason. It really is super. I mean, if the Marvel universe had superhero bacteria, this would be one of them. A. baumanii would be one of them. It actually produces enzymes that nullify whole families of antibiotics. Bam! None of you were getting near me just because of these enzymes. And then if the antibiotic actually survives the enzymes, it doesn't get past its sugar coating. And it actually is made out of sugars. This is a sticky, thick thing around the bacteria called a capsule. And some strains of this bacteria can shrug off the strongest and most toxic antibiotics. No matter what we throw at it, nothing makes any difference for some of the strains of A. baumanii. Now, the WHO says that it's a critical priority and we need new ways of treating this. And the CDC calls it an urgent threat. So we really got to start taking these seriously. So enter bacteriophages. Now, this is a virus. But not all viruses are like COVID. Some are our friends. Like this. The word bacteriophage itself means bacteria eater. And it's very apt. All they do is kill bacteria. That's all that these phages do. Just Google bacteriophage right now. Look at it. They look like aliens.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, they're badass living.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' This is my favorite virus.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' They look like Hydra kind of.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Right. So they look like an alien or some alien mech. I don't know. They're wonderful. So these were discovered over a century ago. But they lost favor when antibiotics came into power. We knew about them. I think we tried using it. I think the Soviet Union really used it a lot. And I think they may still use phages now. I mean, it's funny to think that if modern antibiotics were not discovered in that Petri dish, we may very well have a whole infrastructure of infection care based on bacteriophages right now. It would be really interesting to see how far that would have been taken in a century. But these phages are serious. I mean, real tough. The real toughest bacteria that laugh at people, they shit these little bacteria bricks when they see a phage because phages are very specific. Typically, one phage is meant for just one type of bacteria. It can get past only one type of bacteria's defences, or maybe it's the very close family of one type of bacteria. Now, of course, that reminded me of the classic Trek episode, that which survives. Steve, Jay, Evan, I'm sure you remember that, where an alien computer defends a planet by creating an image of a woman, Losira, I had to look that up to remember her name, to specifically kill one crew member. Remember, she'd say, I am for you, Jim Kirk.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' You are the one.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' And she couldn't kill anyone else, but if she touched Kirk, he was toast. So the researchers came up with a great plan. Their plan was really inspired. They found specific types of phages that could kill A. Balmanyi. And so they went to the areas like sewers, and really like sewers and other nasty places where some of these phages are. And so they got the virus, and they got the phages, and they threw them at Balmanyi, and most of them died, as you would expect, because they're really tailored to kill this specific bacteria. But not all of them died. Some of the bacteria adapted to the phage and survived.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, and that's really problematic.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, that's a huge problem. But in this case, it was a fantastic opportunity, because when the researchers looked at those bacteria that survived, they saw something amazing. There was no longer a capsule. That sticky outer coat was gone. So what the phage did was it realized that, I mean, the bacteria realized that, oh, damn, this phage needs this, really it needs the capsule to get inside, because that's how the phage gets past all the defences of the bacteria. It basically has a key into the capsule. And so the bacteria said, well, okay, I'll get rid of the capsule. And they no longer have the key. And that's exactly what happened. When it shed its sticky coating, the phage was helpless. It couldn't gain entry into the bacteria. But that's where our antibiotics come in, because now without that sticky outer coating of the capsule, now our antibiotics can get in, because that capsule was the thing that was preventing our antibiotics from getting in. That was actually the resistance, the armour that the bacteria developed over the years based on our antibiotics. So they would throw the phages at it. It would shed its capsule. And then the ones that survived had no capsule. Then they threw our antibiotics at it, and they tested like nine or 10 different antibiotics. And I got varying numbers here, but probably something like seven of the antibiotics now, the resistance was gone. So what they did was they essentially reverted the antibiotic resistance by using the phage and our most powerful antibiotics one after the other, like a double tap. And it really, really worked. And this worked in animal studies, and they actually did some real-world situations with people that had fatal infections, and it was successful. Now, I don't think this was a really huge study, but they did it on a handful of people, and it worked. To me, this is a great new angle for dealing with superbugs. You find the phages that are specifically tuned to that bacteria. You hit them with the phages, and then you hit them with the antibiotics once they've shed to the survivors so that they can get past the last defense that the phage couldn't. So it's a great way to temporarily reverse this resistance that we've been accelerating the evolution of. So pretty exciting. And I would like to see more phage use in the future, because one of the benefits the phages have over antibiotics is that phages are so specific. Now, you've all heard of broad-spectrum antibiotics, right? Yeah, that's great. But because it's broad-spectrum, you're killing a lot of the good bacteria. And you know, if you listen to the show, most of the bacteria around are really good. In fact, a lot of it in the human body is critical. You don't want to be messing with that. So something that can be specifically targeting that really bad bacteria and sparing the good stuff is great in my book.<br />
<br />
=== Goop the Pandemic <small>(55:44)</small> ===<br />
* [https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/02/it-took-a-year-but-gwyneth-paltrow-figured-out-how-to-exploit-the-pandemic/ Goop the Pandemic]<ref>[https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/02/it-took-a-year-but-gwyneth-paltrow-figured-out-how-to-exploit-the-pandemic/ arsTeechnica: It took a year, but Gwyneth Paltrow figured out how to exploit the pandemic]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, Evan, I understand that Gwyneth Paltrow has finally found a way to exploit the pandemic.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, yes, the queen of quackery, the duchess of dubiousness, the matriarch of malarkey. According to a recent blog post in which she is being pilloried for, correctly so, Gwyneth Paltrow claims she had COVID-19 very early on, apparently. She's not specific with things like exactly when she had it, which is a little unusual when I speak to people who have had COVID. They can tell me with precision when they tested positive for it. But that aside, let's take her to a word. Well, here are some words from her directly from her advertisement. I mean, her blog post the other day. These are her words. I had COVID-19 early on, and it left me with some long-tail fatigue and brain fog. In January, I had some tests done that showed really high levels of inflammation in my body. So I turned to one of the smartest experts I know in this space, the functional medicine practitioner, Dr. Will Cole. After he saw all my labs, he explained that this was a case where the road to healing was going to be longer than usual. We, meaning she and the doctor, have a version of a protocol he outlines in his forthcoming book, Intuitive Fasting. It's keto and plant-based. Will also got me on supplements, most of them in the service of a healthier gut. There's butyrate, which Will says supports healthy microbiome. And then in my daily Madam Ovary supplement, I get fish oil, B vitamins, some vitamin D3, selenium, and zinc, all of which Will says are critical for me right now. I even get more zinc and selenium along with the antioxidants, vitamin C and resveratrol in my detoxifying super powder, which I mix with water. All right, those are the highlights of the blog post. This is a shameless promotion basically, telling her readers to buy all sorts of goop-related and sponsored products, everything from, well, including hiking accessories and an infrared sauna blanket. Did we talk about infrared saunas recently?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, yeah, we did.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Well, it didn't take long for those skeptical of Gwyneth to raise some keen observations about some of her comments. For example, there's Bruce Lee at Forbes. Yes, Jay, his name is Bruce Lee.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Now I don't believe anything you're saying.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' No, that's his name, Bruce Wyatt Lee.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's probably a good thing. Don't believe anything she's saying, Jay.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Here are some of his points. She didn't specify which tests she took, where the inflammation was occurring or what really high levels of inflammation even mean. Inflammatory, inflammation is a very vague and general term. So did she go to a medical doctor who has actual knowledge of COVID-19? Is Cole a COVID-19 expert? Has he done any research or published any scientific studies on COVID-19? Well, he searched the PubMed for Cole and COVID-19 and nothing really came up. So Cole was originally trained as a chiropractor, and on his website he asks himself the questions, are you a medical doctor? To that he responds, no. I do not practice medicine and do not diagnose or treat diseases or medical conditions. So isn't long COVID a medical condition, he asks? Yeah. So it's not clear what specific knowledge Cole has regarding COVID-19, but he says my services are not meant to substitute or replace those of a medical doctor. So there's your trapdoor disclaimer that you see with every good quack.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Also, functional medicine is bullshit, whether it's an MD or not.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Functional medicine.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Steve, give us a quick definition of that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's basically like massively overinterpreting lab results, like testing for shit and saying some really hand-waving explanation for what it means. But it's just another umbrella term for just non-science-based, made-up shit that I want to promote.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So these are the people who will tell you that you have too much metal in your gut and you need to chelate or too much fungus in your gut and then prescribe all of these drugs and then you have to chelate the drugs.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Or you have borderline thyroid dysfunction, or normal, either one, take your pick.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, boy. I mean, there's so many relentless sort of attacks right now on Gwyneth, nd like I said, rightly so. Here's another small sample. I'll give you two more quick ones. Sarah Fielding from VeryWellMined.com. With much still being discovered about COVID-19 and its short- and long-term effects, a breeding ground exists for misinformation and exploitation. The latest example comes from Gwyneth Paltrow's lifestyle site, Goop. Oh, yeah. Paltrow uses her COVID-19 experience as an opportunity to promote unsubstantiated detoxes and cleanses while plugging Goop brand products under the guise of relieving discomfort. Oh, yeah. And he interviewed Tim Caulfield, Timothy Caulfield.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, he's great.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' We've had on the show before. He's a professor of health, law, and science policy at the University of Alberta. And he's probably done more research on kind of the damage that Gwyneth and Goop have done to Western society, where Tim points out, it's a good example of how misinformation is going to continue to be pushed out in the context of COVID-19. We often think of misinformation as the hoaxes or the conspiracy theories and anti-vax rhetoric. But there's also this kind of misinformation, which is subtler, and still trying to leverage this moment in time, trying to leverage the pandemic in order to sell products to further a brand to even sell kind of an ideological position as to how we're supposed to be with our health. Absolutely correct. And a good observation by Tim.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. Thanks, Evan.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yep.<br />
<br />
== Who's That Noisy? <small>(1:01:39)</small> ==<br />
* Answer to last week’s Noisy: Ice Skating<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Jay, it's Who's That Noisy time.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' All right, guys. Last week, I played this noisy.<br />
<br />
[_short_vague_description_of_Noisy]<br />
<br />
All right, guys, any guesses on those sounds that you just heard? Go ahead.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' All right. So to me, that sounds similar to the testing they did was back in the 70s or the 80s for sound effects in which they took metal screwdrivers and hit them against high tension lines.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yep.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That was Bill Burr making sound effects for Star Wars, the very first film. You are not incorrect in that it sounds exactly like that.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' OK, good.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' But that's not it.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I got a hint of a classic Star Trek episode, Cat's Paw. You know, it was like the Halloween episode. And the creatures at the end when their true form was revealed, they made these really surreal noises. I got a little bit ahead of that. A little bit ahead of that.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Oh, my God. As soon as you said Star Trek, Bob, my brain heard what you heard. Yes, I know exactly what you're talking about.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yes, right?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Now I have to go back and hear them. Now, it's not that, but I know exactly what you're talking about. But I know exactly.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Is it Ice Jay?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Oh, my God. Let's go through what the people say here, Steve.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Let's go through. So Jill Crookshanks. Does that remind you of the bad guy in...<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's the name of Hermione's cat.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, that's Hermione's cat in Harry Potter.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' But what was the name of the king from...<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Braveheart.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Braveheart.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' What was the name of the king in that movie?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, King Edward Longshanks.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Longshanks. Oh, God, I love that.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Longshanks.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Oh, you guys have done such a good job in that role. Okay, anyway. This is from a listener named Jill Crookshanks, and she said, "It sounds like someone playing Galaga in an arcade. You can hear the joystick and clearly the blasters. Thanks." I'm like I kind of think she picked up something here that might be there. So I said, yeah, I kind of hear that, but I want to hear what it sounds like. So I went and I listened to Galaga, and I downloaded some sound effects from there that were as close to what she was saying here. So listen to this. [plays Noisy]<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, my gosh, that brings back memories.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Right, Evan? All right, so it wasn't Galaga, but thank you so much, because just hearing those sounds always just makes me smile, and I can warp myself back to when I was in there playing that game. So we got another guest from a listener named David Barlow, and he said, "Hi, everyone, my guess is some sort of high tension cable snapping. Keep up the great work." So, yeah, Evan, you mean you're not alone. A lot of people guessed some type of cable, high tension cable. There were lots of guesses about the telescope crashing, which is not this is not anything to do with the cable. But my God, does it sound like cables rattling against each other? Again I've said this many times. That's why I love Who's That Noisy, because bacon sounds like rain, frying bacon and everything sounds like something else, which I find remarkable. Now, here is the winning guess. This was from a listener named Logan Callan. He says, "Hi, Jay, the noise from this week's Who's That Noisy is someone ice skating on a frozen body of water. It looks beautiful, but you wouldn't catch me on that ice." Now listen again. [plays Noisy] Now, to be fair, lots of SGU listeners guessed correctly or mostly correctly on this one. Ice makes this noise. If you throw a rock onto a frozen lake under the right circumstances, it'll make that high pew-pew sounds, you know. But in this particular circumstance, we have an ice skater that's skating on a lake where the ice is under pressure. So think about the ice kind of like pushing out against the land, and it's like pushing back in on itself. So first, let me tell you about the person that created this. The person wrote, I made this sound recording of a frozen lake in the winter of 2005 or 2006 in the area around Berlin. Frozen lakes are known to give off most of the noise during major fluctuations in temperature. The ice expands or contracts, and the resulting tension in the ice causes cracks to appear. Due to the changes in temperature, the hours of morning and evening are usually the best times to hear these sounds. And then he goes on to talk about the acoustic phenomena. It has an elastic type of sound. But another listener wrote in and gave a description of this. Glenn Ellert said the Who's That Noisy, episode 815 of The Ice Cracking. He said possibly due to a person skating. He was correct, but he was not the first. So he said the speed of a wave in a medium often depends on the frequency of the wave. This is known as dispersion. In the case of sound waves in ice, the higher frequency waves travel faster than the lower frequency waves. This is the explanation for the pew, the pew-pew sounds, which are the higher frequency sounds. And they arrive first, so you hear them first. And then the low frequency sounds is like the eww that follows. So it's pew-pew, right? So let's listen again.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, cool.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So we have sounds being made, and the higher frequencies get to you first because they move faster in the medium than the lower frequencies. And it's a collection of sounds that makes that effect, right? It's a really good analogy to sound effects and Foley made in movies where they layer effects. So as an example, the Millennium Falcon engine sound of it starting up or having problems with the warp drive and all that stuff is six or seven different sounds layered over each other to create the whole effect, which I find fascinating because an expert sound engineer can create these soundscapes from different things that become something else. And I think it relates to this idea that all sounds, a human voice, is like chords being played. It's not one note. Our voices are made up of chords. Sounds are made up of collections of different kinds of sounds.<br />
<br />
=== New Noisy <small>(1:08:12)</small> ===<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Let's move on to this week's new noisy. All right, so there's a funny story here. So Charlie Ross has been a longtime contributor, supporter, patron of the show. We went out and gave a talk at Google. Many moons ago, Charlie set it up for us. We had a great time hanging out with him at Google. He gave us an awesome tour. And many times throughout the years, we've seen Charlie at conventions and everything. So Steve and I, this past weekend, we are doing our game show. We premiered our game show. It was a very soft release. We're still testing and still improving the show. We have a ton of things that we're going to be improving on it. But we're very happy to announce that Boomer versus Zoomer. Boomer v Zoomer dot com, if you're interested, is launched and Charlie is monitoring the chat, right? It's my job to monitor the chat while we're doing the show. And I see Charlie's name come up, so I read the chat real quick and he said, he says, I have a bag of meat in my refrigerator that's labeled Jay's balls. And I took a screenshot and I immediately texted it to Bob because I'm like, this is awesome. I know Bob would laugh at that and then I emailed Charlie and I'm laughing so Charlie has a great sense of humor and he's a great contributor and he also sent in a really provocative sound this week that I thought was vaguely similar to this week sound and that's I think why I was attracted to it because it is vaguely similar a little bit. But it is very different thing. So let me get to that real quick. So here is the sound that Charlie sent me:<br />
<br />
[_short_vague_description_of_Noisy]<br />
<br />
So what is that?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I don't like it.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' What is going on? I know Cara I had the same instinct it made me uncomfortable.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I no like it. I feel like my dog would bark at that sound.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, so there is a single answer to this I know that you're hearing other stuff going on and you you could talk about that. But I'm of course I'm talking about the the high-pitched noises that you hear now. What what is this sound? What's generating it? What's making it? Where is it coming from? If you have an answer, please email me and if you have a cool sound that you heard you can also email me at WTN@theskepticsguide.org<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right coming up. We have a great interview with Philip Goff. He is the philosopher that we talked about recently on the show in our discussion of the inverse gambler's fallacy and inferring the multiverse from the fine-tuning problem. We have a very interesting discussion. This is actually only part of it. The full one hour unedited discussion that we have will be available to our premium members if you want to skip ahead because you want to listen to the full version then just go to the 1 hour 39 minute mark that will take you to the end of the interview, but for everybody else let's go to that interview now.<br />
<br />
== Interview with Philip Goff <small>(1:11:16)</small> ==<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Joining us now is Philip Goff. Philip, welcome to the Skeptics Guide.<br />
<br />
'''PG:''' Brilliant. Thanks for having me. Good to be here, Steve.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, thanks for joining me. So Philip you are a philosopher you are the author of the book [https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/43069288 Galileo's Error: Foundations for a New Science of Consciousness] which we were just talking about is probably I'm going to have to interview you at a separate time about the whole consciousness hubbub. But the interview today is a follow-up to a discussion that we had on the SGU recently about the multiverse and the alleged fine-tuning problem and some of the logical claims surrounding that. I talked a bit on the show about an article you had written. And I disagreed with your ultimate conclusion. Now I think the goal of this conversation is to see if we could work out our differences. Basically, I want you to convince me that I'm wrong. Not just show that I'm wrong, but convince me that I'm wrong because that's that's the tricky part. So why don't you just set the stage for us? Tell us about the fine-tuning issue and how you came to write this article.<br />
<br />
'''PG:''' Yeah, okay. Well, I'll do my best. That's it. That's a big big order to persuade you, but I'll do my best. So that the fine-tuning is the surprising discovery of of the last few decades that certain of the constants of basic physics such as the strength of gravity and that the mass of electrons, in order for life to be physically possible, the values of those constants had to fall in a certain really narrow range. And that was quite surprising in some way. Of course We always knew that our universe was compatible with the existence of life because we're alive. But we didn't know how balanced on a knife edge That was that in order for that to be a physical possibility these constants had to be as it's as it's referred to finely tuned. They had to have these very precise values. So it's a kind of interesting surprising fact. Some people react and say, okay, we got lucky, not not more to say about it. But many scientists and philosophers the last few decades have suggested that this is actually strong evidence pointing to some kind of multiverse. So that the thought is if there are a huge number of universes each with the constants in their physics a little bit different. So, you know in some gravity is a bit stronger and some it's a bit weaker and some electrons are a bit heavier and some they're a bit lighter then if there's enough variation then you then it might become sort of statistically highly likely even perhaps inevitable that one of the universes is gonna fluke the right numbers to allow for the compatibility with intelligent life. So that's the thought. And I was actually really persuaded by that but for a long time actually, but I uncovered this work of of certain probability theorists. Philosophers of probability. It's actually a few decades old now and I think it's part of the problem of things are so specialized now that there's been this debate for decades and it hasn't got out of the narrow confines of theory of probability theory. Even though there's such huge interest in these fine-tuning issues among scientists and the general public. But anyway, the claim is that that inference from the fine-tuning to the multiverse commits a kind of logical fallacy. We can actually identify what the fallacy is and I thought about this for a long time read read the literature around it. And yeah, I mean, I'm actually quite persuaded that the claim is correct here.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. So my understanding of it is and correct me from wrong is that whether or not there are many universes doesn't alter the probability of our universe being fine-tuned for life.<br />
<br />
'''PG:''' Yes, so the the basic accusation is what what's called the inverse gambler's fallacy, the inverted gambler's fallacy. So the regular gambler's fallacy that some listeners might be familiar with is where, you've been playing the casino all night. You've you've had a terrible run of luck. You just keep rolling you trying to roll a double six and you just keep having terrible rolls. But you think well, I'm gonna have one more go because I'm surely gonna do well now. I'm surely gonna roll a double six now because I'm do some good luck. It would be really improbable if I rolled badly all night. So given that I've rolled badly up to now surely I'm gonna roll well now. Well, of course, that's a fallacy because any individual role, including your next one has has the same odds one in 36, if it's trying to get a double six. So no matter how long or how little you've been playing the odds of getting a double six on the next roller are exactly the same. So that's the classic gambler's fallacy that everyone is agreed on. Now the inverse gambler's fallacy goes like this. You walk into a casino and you see someone have an incredible role. Let's say you know to make it more dramatic, they're playing a game where you've got to get sixes and you're they roll 20 dice and all of them come up six. And so you think wow, what an incredible role. They must have been playing all night because if they just had one role then it's incredibly improbable they'd get all sixes with 20 dice. So they must have been playing all night and then it's more probable. Now that's a fallacy as well because all you've observed is one role. That's the only row you've observed and as is the case in the in the original gambler's fallacy, the odds of of getting all sixes on that individual role is the same as for any other role. It doesn't matter if you've been playing all night or if that's your first role. The odds of getting all sixes is the same for any individual role. So for the same reasons essentially that's a fallacy as well. And the claim is that the multiverse theorist or at least someone arguing from fine-tuning to the multiverse is essentially making the same committing the same fallacy. So they're saying, look around that they did this fine-tuning phenomenon thing. Oh my god, this is so improbable. There must be loads of other universes where the numbers didn't come up right? So our numbers fluke early came up right in our universe. There must be loads of other universes where they where they didn't come up right. And thought it's the same fallacy because all we've observed is our universe and seen that the numbers came up right in our universe. No matter how much the other universes that are it doesn't make it any more likely that our universe will have the right numbers just as when you've only seen one role. No matter how many times that guy's been playing tonight. It doesn't make it any more likely that that one role you saw is gonna be an incredible one. So that's the basic idea.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Alright, so I understand and agree with that fallacy that that is a fallacy. Completely get that. My counter is that it doesn't apply to the situation, but let me finish setting up the background a little bit. So just for clarity. The fine-tuning argument assumes that the constants of the universe are variable. That they don't have to be what they are. There was no other meta law that makes them what they are. So that's one assumption. You could make certain assumptions about what the probability distribution is but one physicist said, yeah, the probability of all the constants being within the narrow range they would have to be in to allow for complex life is one in ten to the two hundred and twenty nine. Which is you know, basically a gajillion, right? We'll just call that a gajillion from this point forward. That's like almost zero. It's such a teeny tiny teeny tiny number. So but that's a lot of assumptions going into that. I personally don't think those assumptions are warranted. I think that the answer it probably is something else but for the sake of this argument going forward, let's say that the fine-tuning premise a variability and that kind of distribution is roughly correct and therefore. Then that means the probability of our universe containing life being compatible with life is one in a kajillion, right? Do you agree with that so far?<br />
<br />
'''PG:''' Yeah, that's and I agree also there are lots of one things one could question along the way. I mean, you know one thing is the evidence could change this good we're developing science and so yeah, so yeah. But I agree with that the setup.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, it's a thought experiment. A thought experiment. Will assume for the logic, the statistical logic point of this will assume that that's correct. Do you think it's likely there will be one universe compatible with life, again, assuming the fine-tuning assumptions. If there is one universe or if there's a kajillion universes.<br />
<br />
'''PG:''' Yeah, I follows from the fine-tuning that the probability of other universe compatible with life is very very low. That's right. That's right.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, but if you had if there were if there were many many universes, it would be more likely, right? So I think this is one thing that there was- because I wrote two blogs about this and there's been over 1,500 comments, which is a lot for my blog. And there seemed to be some debate about whether or not you were saying that the multiverse is even a solution to the fine-tuning problem. Which is different than saying we can infer the health diverse fine-tuning. And some were saying that you're saying that you can't even-the multiverse wouldn't even solve the fine-tuning problem, but wouldn't it?<br />
<br />
'''PG:''' All right, I see good. Oh, I didn't know you had two blogs in it. I only saw one. I should it would have been-<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I'm sorry. There's a follow-up.<br />
<br />
'''PG:''' Mm-hmm. No, so so here's what I think. I think if on independent evidence we had independent evidence for a multiverse of the right kind then I think the fine-tuning problem would go away. And that's simply because that would change the probabilities because it would no longer be very improbable. And so some people say well isn't there independent evidence for a multiverse? And this is actually what I'm writing about in in in the academic paper I'm working on for this which is on my website. Actually this philosophy discussion and probability theories discussions begun on for decades and no one's connected it up to the scientific discussion. And that's what I'm also trying to do. It's absolutely unbelievable. Everything's too specialized. I'm jealous of the 16th century when you could sort of know everything. Yes, so so but I although there is arguably and this is all contentious tentative evidence independent evidence for a multiverse. I don't think it's it's evidence for a multiverse of the right kind. But that's a separate question too. When all we're observing is one fine-tuned universe. Does that give us a right to a multiverse? That's what I'm saying is fallacious.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, although that's where I think a lot of people have difficulty including myself because if the multiverse again put all empirical evidence and other independent arguments aside just from purely logical point of view. If the multiverse solves the fine-tuning statistical problem, then why can't that? Why can't we at least say that it's more likely that the multiverse is therefore more likely than one solitary universe?<br />
<br />
'''PG:''' Because so I just think these are two different things and I mean we could look at it in terms of the theoretical reasons. In terms of kind of Bayesian inference or we could look at it just by analogies. I mean maybe start for analogies as you know, I've given a lot of monkeys on typewriters analogies. So, I mean not going into the whole Joker thing. But you know if you wake up and there's a monkey on a typewriter typing perfect English. Wow. That's weird, that needs explaining. But I don't think you would have the right to say oh, there must be loads of monkeys. There must be trillions of monkeys in different rooms in this building all writing rubbish. But if you started off knowing you were in a room with trillions, a building with trillions and trillions of monkeys and let's say the person whose monkey wrote English was gonna get woken up in that scenario. So, you know then you'd say okay. I just got lucky. Someone was gonna get lucky. I got lucky end of story. So I think that's the difference. So if you already know there's loads of monkeys on typewriters the problem wouldn't arise.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. So here is here's where I think your analogy is a little wrong. And I'm gonna try to fix it and I think if you agree with my fix then then our two approaches come together. So I think here's been my problem. I tried to articulate this at least in one in one of my blog posts. Is that you're not adequately dealing with the selection process here because we are not existing in a random universe. We only could exist in a universe that is compatible with life. So like for example, I would argue if in your gamblers analogy, a better analogy which has no selection at all. Rather than walking up to a table and somebody rolls 20 6s, I agree, that's the inverted gamblers fallacy. Rather let's say you're blind and you but you love gambling. And you know how slot machines work, but you walk into a casino that you've never been to before you have no idea how many slot machines there are. But that there's a one in a kajillion chance that any slot machine will win and you also know that... Let's just say make it more plausible that on average any one slot machine will give a jackpot once a month and it sends off a very specific jackpot alarm when it does. You walk into a casino and the moment you walk into a casino you hear the jackpot alarm goes off. Now is it more likely that there's one slot machine in that casino or that there's a thousand slot machines in that casino? Because you would hear any slot machine that hit the jackpot. This is where this is where I think the rubber is going to meet the road is which analogy is better. In terms of your Joker monkey typewriter analogy, here's my fix. Because I think you're trying to fix the selection process there because you only get woken, you only get awakened to whatever woken up if your monkey types English. Within whatever at the 10-minute time frame. But you existed before that experiment and you're still being biased by considering the probability of you winning which I think is the lottery fallacy. I think that the application of the inverse gambler's fallacy to the multiverse problem is an example of the lottery fallacy because it's not adequately dealing with the selection process. Again this is my understanding can please convince me if I'm wrong. So this is how I would fix your your Joker analogy. Let's say the Joker is actually Loki right the God the Norse God Loki. I know we're mixing Marvel and DC.<br />
<br />
'''PG:''' That's OK.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, will mash those up and so he has godlike powers. And what he actually did was he had a monkey in front of a typewriter and if that monkey types English in 10 minutes he will create a person out of nothing. So that person gets magicked into existence. Now you wake up. You pop into existence in this room. And Loki is sitting there and he says you can ask me anything about what's happening in this room. But you can't ask me anything about what's happening beyond this room and you say okay. What's that? It's a typewriter. How does it work? Fine. What's this creature? Explains monkeys. And what they can do, what they can't do. He explains the whole setup and when you fully understand the setup and you realize how magnificently improbable it is that that monkey typed I like yellow bananas would it be reasonable for you to infer that Loki has a kajillion rooms with monkeys and typewriters and you just you are the one who was magic into existence because your room is the one where the monkey typed English. Wouldn't that be reasonable?<br />
<br />
'''PG:''' So in your sit in your scenario, are you imagining? Whichever monkey on typewriter typed English you would have been saved, or are you imagine-<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Some person would have been magicked into existence. That person, that individual would be incredibly improbable. But that someone got magic into existence would be probable if there's a kajillion monkeys. It would be incredibly improbable if there's one monkey and one typewriter, isn't that fair?<br />
<br />
'''PG:''' So coming back to, so I think there are two different things here we need to distinguish. So we've got two analogies. So just take each of them in turn. So the one you started with the slot machine and you go in and one of the slot machine, whichever slot machine goes off wins the jackpot. The alarm goes off and then your thought is you've got good reason to think there must have been lots of slot machines than just one because then it's more likely. So I agree in that case you certainly do have evidence that there are more people playing on the slot machines. But what is dis analogous about that case to fine-tuning is that there's a kind of mechanism there that ensures that whoever wins in the whole casino you're gonna hear about it. So I don't think that's analogous to the fine-tuning. So this is what Roger White who wrote the key paper on this pointed out. He said that would be analogous to the following kind of sci-fi example where you know, we were once disembodied spirits floating through the multiverse looking for a fine-tuned universe and then when we find it we slip into it. Now in that sci-fi scenario, which ever universe turns out to be fine-tuned we're gonna observe it. And and in that scenario, I think that's analogous to your slot machine example. Yeah, we would have evidence. But that's not our universe. In our universe there is no such mechanism. All we know about, all we observe is is our universe and our universe just had one shot of its numbers coming. It could, if another universe a few doors down was fine-tuned there would be no mechanism to make to allow us to observe that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, there would be people in that universe who would observe it. So I think you're just moving the lottery fallacy one step back again. I don't have to be the person observing it. It's just that if whatever universe is compatible with life will evolve and the life in that universe will observe their own universe. So I agree that the casino analogy isn't perfect. But I'm trying to fix your analogy or whoever's analogy that is I wouldn't come up with that analogy, right? Let's let's shift to it. I still think I'm correct, but I think you're right. It's confusing. So let's go to the Loki analogy. I think that's pure. There is no outside observer. You get magicked into existence. You have no prior existence. Once you understand the rules of the room you find yourself in you realize that your existence is fantastically improbable and isn't it reasonable and logical and not a fallacy to say Loki must have a kajillion monkeys at a kajillion typewriters and if any one of them were successful somebody would have been magicked into existence in that room and found themselves to be an highly improbable event.<br />
<br />
'''PG:''' Yeah, I guess my intuitions go the opposite way there. So yeah, so that was why I objected the other analogy. But coming back to what you're focusing on I guess is a point another point a lot of people have drawn my attention, the pre-existence case. So the worry in the Joker case is you you already exist so we've got a focus for your attention. So I actually I actually came up with my own analogy to try and get around this. Let me tell you that and then let's see if you if you have a different intuitions than in the Loki case. And then we could try and work out. I'm not trying to dodge the Loki case. We could try and work out what's going on here. So I thought right suppose I'm the product of IVF. My conception came about through IVF. And then suppose as an adult I discover that the doctor who did the IVF made a kind of sick joke. They decided that they were gonna roll 20 dice to decide whether to fertilize the egg and they were only gonna fertilize the egg if all 20 dice came up sixes. And they did. And they fertilized the egg, right? So I discover that my existence, that this depended on this kind of problem event. Now does that give me reason to think, so it's kind of like the Joker case, but you could say it's the Joker. Does that give me reason to think the doctor's done this quite a lot. I mean you might think what he did it once he might have done it again. But the fact that that I've discovered that my conception depended on this improbable event as kind of all conception does doesn't seem to me to give me any reason to think the doctor did it many times. What do you think about that one? So that's analogous to the fine-tuning case. We discover that our existence depends on this improbable event. But that doesn't give us reason to think oh there must be lots of other universes where the the numbers didn't come up right.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Doesn't rub me the right way. I think there's details in there that are distracting from the core logic. But I'm trying to, it's the first time I'm hearing of it, so I'm trying to wrap my head around it. So let's say he had to roll a thousand dice, and they all had to come up with sixes. Let's just make those statistics more intuitive. I would have a problem thinking that that was a one-off random event because it's just so close to zero in probability. And so but with that, if you strip it down it's like yeah, for anyone, for there to be let's say anyone born of IVF and the doctor had to roll those dice and come up all sixes. And you're the IVS success. You'd say yeah, that probably happened a lot of times for there to be anyone. I think the the lottery fallacy is thinking about I think you agreed with this when we were sort of pre-gaming this a little bit. The lottery fallacy is when you think what's the probability of me existing, which yes, it's fabulously unlikely. Versus the probability of anyone existing. The probability that our universe exists with the fine-tuned parameters is extremely low, but that the probability of any universe existing with the fine-tuned parameters could be very high if there's a multiverse. And anyone who evolved in that universe would be lucky and would see themselves as the recipient of a fabulously unlikely event. But because there's that selection process being that person doesn't require a special explanation. It actually isn't a low probability event if there's a multiverse. If you ask it correctly. What's the probability of anybody existing, any fine-tuned universe, anyone magicked into existence by Loki, anyone being the product of IVF, anyone winning the lottery. It's it's fine to me. That's what it ultimately comes down to.<br />
<br />
'''PG:''' The lottery fallacy is certainly a fallacy, but there are just different lottery cases. What goes on in the standard lottery case again is no matter who wins you're gonna know about it because you're gonna see it on TV. So the media provides a mechanism such that ensures that whoever's gonna win you're gonna know about it. And anything like that I think is not analogous to fine-tuning.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I agree. I agree. That's why if you had a cosmic lottery like the God lottery and whoever wins the lottery gets magic into existence that's the fine-tuning.<br />
<br />
'''PG:''' But so the question is and I think we're agreeing on this the question is how we should construe the evidence of fine-tuning should we say our universe is fine-tuned or our universe is fine-tuned. And this is a deep problem in their theoretical probability about how we're it's permissible to construe the evidence. And I think we can both agree that there are some lottery cases where you shouldn't take your evidence to be somebody won the lottery. So the lottery case were you've just played the lottery for the first time you put your numbers in and you don't watch the TV you don't read the newspaper. So you wouldn't know if anyone won unless it was you. And you win. So I think it's it's pretty straightforward in that case that you don't have any reason to think lots of people played the lottery. All you know is you won your numbers came up and no matter how many people played it doesn't make it any more likely that your numbers would come up. So I think we can both agree that I think this is pretty uncontentious that in that case your evidence shouldn't be someone won the lottery. Your evidence is I won the lottery.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, but that doesn't apply.<br />
<br />
'''PG:''' So the question is what is the fine-tuning situation? Analogous to that or analogous to something else? And it seems pretty clear to me it's analogous to that. Unless you're worried about pre-selection but then we can move to the IVF case and I think, we just have to work out, we could also white office some theoretical principles that are slightly more complicated about why we could perhaps talk about. But I would just say that the the IVF analogy is closest to the fine-tuning cases.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Think about my Loki analogy<br />
<br />
'''PG:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Really think about that.<br />
<br />
'''PG:''' And you think about the IVF case.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Absolutely. But the ultimate lesson here again, whichever one of us is constructing this correctly doesn't matter in my opinion.<br />
<br />
'''PG:''' Absolutely.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' What matters is the point of all this is actually how damn difficult and counterintuitive statistics. Are our brains are not really optimized for this kind of thinking. I cannot wrap my head around why my position is not correct. And I don't think I haven't been able to explain my position to you. You haven't been able to explain your position to me in a way that is ultimately compelling. There's some there's some bit of logic that's separating us that we have not been able to identify and because just this is damn counterintuitive.<br />
<br />
'''PG:''' Absolutely, we can agree on that. I mean that's that's I mean, I'm a philosopher. And I mean, this is what it's like all the time that we just somehow can't manage to persuade each of these issues. But it's having the conversations and I think you make progress by developing the difference even if you don't ultimately persuade the other person. And that's what it's all about I think.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay. Well, thank you so much for having this conversation with me. I definitely want to get you back on the show at some point to talk about consciousness because that's your area of expertise and I an area where I'm very interested in it as well. So thanks for joining us.<br />
<br />
'''PG:''' Brilliant.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yep, and hopefully we'll have you back sometime.<br />
<br />
'''PG:''' Thanks a lot Steve. I really enjoyed this conversation.<br />
<br />
== Science or Fiction <small>(1:38:54)</small> ==<br />
{{SOFResults<br />
|fiction = 5 plants<!-- short word or phrase representing the item --><br />
|fiction2 = <!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
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|science1 = 90% small farms<!-- short word or phrase representing the item --><br />
|science2 = 28% works in agriculture<!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
|science3 = <!-- leave blank if absent --> <br />
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|rogue1 =Jay <!-- rogues in order of response --><br />
|answer1 =5 plants <!-- item guessed, using word or phrase from above --><br />
<br />
|rogue2 =Evan<br />
|answer2 =5 plants<br />
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|rogue3 =Bob<br />
|answer3 =90% small farms<br />
<br />
|rogue4 =Cara <!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
|answer4 =5 plants <!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
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|rogue5 = <!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
|answer5 = <!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
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|host =steve <!-- asker of the questions --><br />
<!-- for the result options below, <br />
only put a 'y' next to one. --><br />
|sweep = <!-- all the Rogues guessed wrong --><br />
|clever = <!-- each item was guessed (Steve's preferred result) --><br />
|win = <!-- at least one Rogue guessed wrong, but not them all --><br />
|swept = <!-- all the Rogues guessed right --><br />
}}<br />
''Voice-over: It's time for Science or Fiction.''<br />
<br />
<blockquote>'''Theme: Agriculture stats''' <!-- <br />
<br />
if there is a theme, make sure you suggest a redirect title next to the "SoF with a theme" category in the category list at the end. If no theme, remove "Theme" and the <br> before "Item #1" <br />
<br />
--><br>'''Item #1:''' 90% of farms in the US are considered small farms, representing 52% of farmland. <ref>[ https://stacker.com/stories/3554/50-fascinating-facts-about-farming-america publication: title]</ref><br>'''Item #2:''' Globally 28% of the world’s population works in agriculture.<ref>[ https://blog.resourcewatch.org/2019/05/30/map-of-the-month-how-many-people-work-in-agriculture/ publication: title]</ref><br>'''Item #3:''' 75% of the world’s food comes from just 5 plants. <ref>[http://www.fao.org/3/y5609e/y5609e02.htm publication: title]</ref></blockquote><br />
<br />
'''S:''' Each week I come up with three science news items or facts. Two real and one fake. And I challenge my panel of skeptics to tell me which one is the fake. We have another theme this week. We've been doing the show on Tuesdays because of Cara's schedule.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Boo Cara.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And well, there's fewer news items to choose from, it's having a hard time. So I'm doing a lot of themes while we're doing our Tuesday shows.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And then we are suffering the consequences.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yes, that's exactly correct. So it's all your fault Cara. So the theme this week is agriculture stats. Statistics about agriculture. Okay, you guys ready?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Item number one 90% of farms in the United States are considered small farms, representing 52% of farmland. Item number two, globally 28% of the world's population works in agriculture. And item number three. 75% of the world's food comes from just five plants. Jay go first.<br />
<br />
=== Jay's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''J:''' All right, the first one Steve you said 90% of farms in the US are considered small farms representing 52% of farmland. I mean that seems to make a lot of sense that 90% of the farms would be small. But I think that they, my gut is telling me that they don't represent half the farmland. So that's my gut telling me that right there. The second one globally 28% of the world's population works in agriculture. That seems to be about right. Roughly a quarter of the world's population is working in agriculture to feed the world. I think that sounds right. And 75% of the world's food comes from just five plants. This is one of those ones where I'm like, I'm pretty damn sure that this is correct. It's really the number. I mean, I would think that if there's any change to this it would even be higher might be 90% of the world's food comes from five plants. Okay, I'm gonna go out on a limb here because I my gut was telling me to go with the first one but I'm gonna say that the 75% of the world's food comes from just five plants. It's it's higher than 75%.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay, Evan.<br />
<br />
=== Evan's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, good point Jay. 90% of farms in the US are considered small farms and it's it represents 52% of farmland. Yeah, I mean I suppose so. I wish I kind of knew what a small farm was by definition but I don't think there's any problem with that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, I'll tell you.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, thank you.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' After you give me your answer. During the reveal I will give you a operational definition of what is considered a small farm.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Globally, a second one, globally 28% of the world's population works in agriculture. It's of 2 billion people working in agriculture. It's a lot but when you take India and China into account.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, right? It's what I'm thinking too.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I mean you have to think about it if you're gonna go with this statistic you have to figure out what they are doing. India have that much agriculture. I mean gee whiz they just don't have that much of land. And is it agriculture? Boy, that one's tricky. But as Jay said 75% of the world's food comes from just five plants. Rice, wheat, what else?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Just two plants.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Two plants! All of the world's food. I'll go with Jay. I think he made some good points, which I don't refute and sounds solid to me. So I'm with Jay 75% of the world's food fiction.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay, Bob.<br />
<br />
=== Bob's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''B:''' 28% of the world's population works I mean, it's just hard I can make an argument in my head either way. So I'm just gonna just go with my gut and say that number one that 52% of the United States farmlander from small farms. That just seems too high. I mean 90% maybe I could buy but not 52% I'll say that's fiction.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay, and Cara.<br />
<br />
=== Cara's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So it's between the one and three from what you guys answered. So 28% of the world's population works in agriculture. I buy it for sure. 90% of the farms in the US are small, representing 52% of farmland. Well, that would make sense, right? Because if they're small more of them will take up the same amount of space as 10% potentially of like industrial ag farms. I think that I buy that. A lot of people grow their own food. A lot of people do local farming and community farming. And then there's probably not that many big massive industrial ag farms that have cornered the market. So that one seems likely to me. The 75% of the world's food coming from just five plants seems very unlikely to me mostly because-I'm not questioning that we don't have a lot of biodiversity in our food sources. That it probably is only like five plants, but where's the animal protein? It can't 75% of the world's food. You're saying is completely plant-based and I don't buy that. People eat too much meat.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' And fish.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And fish. Yeah. I mean I kind of meant fish with meat, but you're right. Yeah, too much animal protein. Obviously it is true that in poor countries I do think that plants probably make up more of the diet. But I still think that in rich countries where people eat a lot of meat that's gonna muscle into that 25% figure. So yeah, I'm gonna say that one's the fiction because where's the beef?<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #2 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, all right. So you all agree on number two. Globally 28% of the world's population works in agriculture. It's more than a quarter of people on the planet are just growing food. You guys all think that one is science and that one is science. That is correct. At least that was the figure as of 2018, which is the most recent figure I could find. Originally actually found references that said 40% so but I when I did deeper dives like yeah 40% that was true in 1990.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Whoa, it's changed that much in twenty years?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, it dropped from 44% to 28% from 1991 to 2018 at least. What's the percentage in the United States?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That that works in agriculture?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's still gonna be pretty high because there are a lot of farm workers .<br />
<br />
'''S:''' 1%.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I was gonna say unfortunately probably a lot of them are undocumented. No, it's true. So I do wonder how much they actually show up on censuses.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. I don't know if that one percent includes undocumented workers.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, I'm not sure.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Probably it's an estimation of it. There's a massive, the point is there's a huge difference between developed nations and developing nations. It could be as high as 69% in like the Democratic Republic of Congo that's the figure. And 1% in the US and then it averages out to 28%.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And is that because they're mostly doing subsistence?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Okay.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah a lot of that is. It's also just because they're just not as efficient.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #1 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Let's go back to number one. 90% of farms in the US are considered small farms. Representing 52% of farmland. Bob, you think this one is the fiction. Everyone else thinks this one is science. So Evan let me give you that definition for you. First of all in order to be considered a farm you need to be selling a thousand dollars worth of agricultural products a year. Or you would have under normal conditions if you like whatever you get wiped out or something. You're still a farm. But if you grew enough food that you would have made a thousand dollars selling what you produce. If youdon't sell any food like if you're subsistence farming you don't count as a-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' What if you're a community garden, a community farm? Where you don't sell it but you're actually growing it for lots and lots of people.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I don't know. A small farm makes less than $350,000 a year. So that's a very specific. So it's all based on how much money you produce by farming.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' There's some good change there.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. But farm costs are so high. You might make 350 but spend 300.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. So gross income less than 350 and 90% of the farms fall into that category. And they represent 52% of the farmland so that is science, but they produce only 26% of the food. So what does that mean? They're half as productive as right the other 10%.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That makes sense.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well that or or or or...<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' They are also could just be more sustainable.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's a non-sequitur. Even if they are-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No it's not, they can be very efficient and productive but in doing so completely like extract everything out of the land.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's still twice as productive. The reason is separate from the fact.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's twice productive in the moment, but not necessary in the long term.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Sustainability is a very interesting question and it's complicated, but don't assume that large farms are not sustainable.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I'm not assuming it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' They have to grow food year to year, too. I mean they don't-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' They do but they have a lot of tools at their disposal to do so.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, they just replace all everything. The only issue is with leasing farms where like you lease land for a number of years. Because then you don't care about the sustainability as much. If you own the land you want it to be sustainable. Nobody could survive by destroying their own land that is the source of their income. So sustainability is sort of an issue that everyone, unless you're leasing somebody else's land for a few years and then you're leaving. But other than that model sustainability is not this black-and-white thing.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And so because we're just talking about farmland not pasture.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' This is just farmland, not pasture.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Not animal farms. OK.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And then the other 10%, the large farms are mostly family farms, but they're large-scale family farms. They represent 2.5% percent of the farms but account for more than 50% of the produce.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, wow.<br />
<br />
'''s:''' Yeah, that's interesting.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, that's surprising actually.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #3 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, so let's go to number three. 75% of the world's food comes from just five plants. So Cara, Jay and Evan you thought this was fiction. This is the fiction but who's correct? Is it more than seventy five percent or is it more than just five plants?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Definitely more.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I think it's more than five plants in but I definitely think there's meat. There's got to be meat that eats up more than 75.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The person or persons who are correct here is Cara. Cara's correct. So you're right. I left out the meat. So actually what the truth is 75% of the world's food comes from twelve plants and five animals. So it's still-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' 5 animals really? Yeah, not like just three of them. Oh, I guess that makes sense.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. If you take the twelve most important crop plants and the five most productive animal species, that represents seventy five percent of the calories that humans consume. It's still impressive but I just made it like crazy, and got rid of the animals. That was that was the big tell so Cara did key in on that. So that's still a lot when you think about.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Goats and sheep we forget about in the US because we don't eat that much but a lot of countries eat goats and sheep.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Exactly. Yeah, I think was it chickens, cows, goats, sheep, pigs. So I think that's not a lot of biodiversity for 75% of our food. Think about that. Just twelve plants and five animals.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And I guess that's based on like where you live, right? Like in the US we eat so much corn and in certain parts of the world they so much rice or they so much of a certain type of wheat. Yeah, those are the big three staple crops corn, rice, wheat. But there's also 40% of the world's population relies heavily on a staple bananas. Plantain like bananas like, starchy bananas. Potatoes are another one. Think about potatoes, that's a huge staple crop. And then there's lots of beans and lentils and think other things you have to mix in. So yeah that produces responsible for a lot of the calories that we eat. And also we get again, we're in developed nations that are part of the global economy we get a very distorted view because we have such a we do have a diverse diet. But a lot of parts of the world, where they're food insecure they eat the same thing every day. They're really really relying. Yeah, they have overwhelmingly rely on a very narrow set of food, right?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, we totally take our food for granted here. Absolutely.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right good job guys. That was a tough one.<br />
<br />
== Skeptical Quote of the Week <small>(1:51:40)</small> ==<br />
<br />
<blockquote>What is the capital of North Dakota?<br>– Groucho Marx (1890-1977), an American comedian, actor, writer, and singer. </blockquote><br />
<br />
'''S:''' Evan, give us a quote.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' This quote comes with a bit of a backstory. So I'll give you the quote first and then I'll tell you the little story. "What is the capital of North Dakota?" That is a quote from Groucho Marx. Now, what's-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I don't get it.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Right. Okay.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I instantly recognize that story.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Absolutely. Legendary in skeptical lore.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' This is pre-Cara days.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' All right, Cara, you know who Groucho Marx was right?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I do, yes, I do.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Marx brothers brilliant comedian and whatnot. He was friends with Dick Cavett. Do you remember who Dick Cavett was?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I remember the name.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Television show hosts, especially popular in the 60s and 70s. So Dick Cavett in the year 2007 he wrote an article about Groucho Marx and re-told a story that Groucho was involved with and I'll give you the highlights basically of that story. Back then and he was referring to, many years prior when Groucho was still doing stage performances among other things. There was a prominent trans medium holding forth and her devoted disciples solemnly offered to take the man-born Julius Marx, that's Groucho with them to a seance. Always intellectually curious Groucho was glad to be asked along. Though he told me and this is Groucho telling Dick Cavett. He was vaguely insulted when his new friends solemnly cautioned him to show the proper reference. He replied I'm not a clown 24 hours. I can also be serious. The seance was held in the darkened parlour of some wealthy believers apartment. Groucho reported a heavy air of sanctity about the place "and not entirely from the incense". Lights were low and the faithful conversed in hushed tones. The medium began to chant unintelligibly and then to emit a strange humming sound eventually achieving her trance state. She says I am in touch, I'm in touch with the other side she intoned. Does anyone have a question? Groucho arose and asked what is the capital of North Dakota? He recalled being chased for several blocks, but escaped injury. Yes, so that quote definitely comes from the famous Groucho Marx incident incident of him attending the seance and supposedly this is what was said. Which is brilliant and who knows about the chase for several blocks thing, but it's so perfectly Groucho and absolutely stabbing them in the eye figuratively. When it came right right to it, does anyone have a question? What is the meaning of life? What what's the capital of North Dakota? Game over.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Classic.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's funny.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, she knows all sees all.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's right.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' As long as you ask a vague subjective question. All right, well, thank you all for joining me this week.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Sure man.<br />
<br />
'''E/J:''' Thanks Steve.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Thank you.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We'll see everyone on the Friday live stream.<br />
<br />
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}}</div>Hearmepurrhttps://www.sgutranscripts.org/w/index.php?title=SGU_Episode_797&diff=19089SGU Episode 7972024-01-09T12:00:17Z<p>Hearmepurr: episode done</p>
<hr />
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|episodeNum = 797<br />
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|evan = y<!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
|perry = <!-- don’t delete from this infobox list, out of respect --><br />
|guest1 = BW: {{w|Brian Wecht}}<br />
|guest2 = PT: Paul Thibado<ref name=thibado>[https://fulbright.uark.edu/departments/physics/directory/index/uid/thibado/name/Paul-Thibado/ University of Arkansas Department of Physics: Paul Thibado]</ref><br />
|qowText = All models are wrong, but some are useful.<br />
|qowAuthor = {{w|George E. P. Box|George Box}}, British statistician <br />
|downloadLink = {{DownloadLink|2020-10-17}}<br />
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|forumLink = https://sguforums.org/index.php?topic=52949.0<br />
}}<br />
<br />
== Introduction ==<br />
''Voiceover: You're listening to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.''<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Hello and welcome to the {{SGU|link=y}}. Today is Wednesday, October 14<sup>th</sup>, 2020, and this is your host, Stephen Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella...<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Hey everybody!<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Cara Santa Maria...<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Howdy.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Jay Novella...<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Hey guys.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Evan Bernstein...<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Evening folks.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' ...and we have a special guest this week, Brian Wecht. Brian, welcome back to the Skeptic's Guide.<br />
<br />
'''BW:''' Hi, thanks so much for having me back.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So Brian, tell us how you went from being a physicist to a rock star.<br />
<br />
'''BW:''' Yeah, so I was a career academic, did the whole grad school, post-doc, faculty route, and in the middle of actually in grad school I started performing at improv clubs in San Diego. I went to UCSD and kind of started this whole side career as a comedian and musician. I have an undergraduate degree in music and when I was a post-doc in theoretical physics at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and I started collaborating on this kind of two-man comedy music act with a guy I met and it became a legit thing and cut to, I don't know, what it was, four, five years later. We had a big enough following that I could quit my job as a professor in London. I was at Queen Mary University in their Center for Research in String Theory and kind of transitioned to doing music and comedy full-time.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Wow.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So you're like, oh, these guys are nerds, I'm going to do that other thing, that music thing that I like.<br />
<br />
'''BW:''' Yeah, it was, I mean, it was really just that I had a fun kind of thing on the side that started taking up more and more and more time and so around, let's say in 2014, my daughter was born and I didn't have enough time to be a dad and a researcher and a teacher and a ninja.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So one thing had to go and you weren't going to get rid of your daughter.<br />
<br />
'''BW:''' You know what, I've said that exact same thing, yes.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Brian, I remember talking to you, it was very near when you made the decision and I remember hearing in your voice that this was not an insanely safe jump. You took a little leap of faith because you wanted to go do this thing, right?<br />
<br />
'''BW:''' Yeah, it was terrifying. I mean, because from my perspective, I'd worked for, depending on how you count, close to 20 years to get this permanent faculty job in physics and I was rolling the dice on moving to Los Angeles, where my partner Dan was, to do this thing. The trends were moving in the right direction, but it was far from clear that it would actually make enough money to live off of. It seemed like a calculated risk, but a big risk. I told the other faculty members at Queen Mary that I was going to leave. I timed it wrong because I told them on April Fool's Day, which was in retrospect, a stupid idea.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Did you tell them why you were leaving to join Ninja Sex Party full-time on April Fool's Day?<br />
<br />
'''BW:''' I told them that I was going to go work at a YouTube channel. Some of the older people were like, what's a YouTube channel? They'd heard of YouTube, but they didn't know it had channels. Reactions ranged from, especially the older people, people who were 60-ish and up, were very, very confused by what any of that even meant. The people who were closer to my age, which was early to mid-40s, were like, I wish, yeah, that sounds nice. I could use a change of pace.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Just to reinforce, your band is Ninja Sex Party, right?<br />
<br />
'''BW:''' Ninja Sex Party.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I always wanted to say Teenage Ninja Sex Party.<br />
<br />
'''BW:''' Yeah, sometimes we get Ninja Sex Turtles people.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's in our brains. It's hard to get that out there. You have a new album coming out, right?<br />
<br />
'''BW:''' Yes, we have an album that came out. This is going up on Saturday, the 17th, is that right? Our album came out yesterday, Friday the 16th.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, wow.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Congratulations.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Very cool.<br />
<br />
'''BW:''' Thanks. It's our fifth original album, our eighth album overall.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So, not to reveal anything, but we have been working with Brian and George on a secret project.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I have not heard of this.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It's a secret?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' So much for that.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It is, yeah. We haven't really said anything about it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Secret even from Cara.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That's true. I know. I guess it's unbelievable. I actually didn't tell someone a secret that I know.<br />
<br />
'''BW:''' Wow. Congratulations.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I'm shocked, shocked!<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Don't worry, Cara. I don't know what the hell he's talking about either.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Well, whatever. There's no reason why we can't say anything. What we're doing is we did a game show at NECSS, right? That was this Friday night. We decided, yeah, let's do something fun on Friday night. Okay. Well, this isn't an in-person conference. What could we do? And all of us, me, Steve, George, Brian, and Ian put our heads together. I'm like, we're going to do a game show. It seems like the most perfect thing for us, this collection of people that we had. And it turned out that we loved the game show. It was a lot of fun and the audience really liked it. We got incredible feedback. So we said, let's make this better by an order of magnitude. So we're working on that project right now.<br />
<br />
'''BW:''' Trying to develop a cool online game show thing.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And it involves music?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, there'll be some music stuff, but not Brian sitting there being the only keyboardist in the band playing music. The music elements will be incorporated into the game as part of the quiz show.<br />
<br />
'''BW:''' And of course, we have George part of it too. So far, any of the musical stuff, he's really handled the heavy lifting on. I mean, he's handled all of it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, George Hrabb. He's the host, basically. If George gets to fulfill his lifelong dream to become a game show host.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Best dressed game show host out there, I have to say.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So we'll update everyone on that project as it comes to fruition. We're actually getting pretty close.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Brian, where can people go see you online?<br />
<br />
'''BW:''' They can go to our YouTube channel, which is, there are a couple of ways of getting there. They can go to [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCs7yDP7KWrh0wd_4qbDP32g youtube.com/NinjaSexParty], youtube.com/NSP, or I also bought the domain [buttsex.info buttsex.info] that they can go to.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I gotta see that one.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's what you got to add an explicit rating to the episode.<br />
<br />
'''BW:''' That's B-U-T-T-S-E-X dot info.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So before we go on to the news items, you might remember a few weeks ago, I said that I'm seeing a lot of wildlife in my backyard, but I haven't seen a coyote yet. But damn, if right within a week I saw a coyote in my backyard.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Chasing a road runner.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Middle of the day, broad daylight, right in my backyard, just strolling around, clearly a coyote. Yeah, a coyote. And I found, and I'm bringing it up because I found a study today that said that there is absolutely an increase in wildlife and predator interaction with humans. And they studied trying to figure out why, and they found that predator populations like bears, bobcats, coyotes, and foxes, especially foxes, not as much bobcats apparently, are now eating a lot of human food. So yeah, it's like 50%. Like for foxes, it was like 50% of the food that they're consuming is human derived. And so that is garbage. And it's also pets, unfortunately. And small critters that you might have in your backyard, like rabbits and stuff. So yeah, that's not my imagination that I'm seeing all kinds. Brian, I saw a black bear.<br />
<br />
'''BW:''' I heard. Yeah, I heard that episode recently. It's amazing, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' A fox and now a coyote, Bob saw a bobcat.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Bob saw a bobcat.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Two bobcats, they were magnificent.<br />
<br />
'''BW:''' I didn't even realize there were coyotes in Connecticut.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I've always seen them like quick flash on the side of the road kind of thing, but this was the first time it was like full daylight right in front of me, long view, being able to look at the thing. Because my backyard borders woods, so it's not surprising.<br />
<br />
'''BW:''' We see them all the time here in LA.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' All the time. I was wondering from you, because you're in the valley, right?<br />
<br />
'''BW:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Are there a lot of coyotes where you live?<br />
<br />
'''BW:''' We don't see them that often. I mean, we're in a very, like we're pretty near the highway. So we're in a very flat not a lot of canyons or anything. But I did see one last year. I was driving my daughter to school and one just straight up walked through the middle of a very busy street. And for a second, I was like, is that a wolf? I had no idea what it was because it was like 7:30 in the morning or something like this. And this very large animal that I then realized was a coyote was just crossing the street. So it's not super common, but we definitely see them.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' We get them all the time here because I'm so close to so many parks and because I'm like more on the East side up by the National Forest and Griffith Park. And one of the big problems that we see in LA and Steve, I think this speaks exactly to what you're talking about is that the coyotes have become way too comfortable around people. And so they'll walk, they'll stay. I mean, I was walking my dog going on a hike the other day with a friend. So we each had our dogs with us and there was a coyote 20, 30 feet from us. He was just sitting there just staring.<br />
<br />
'''BW:''' Wow.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Animals are adapting to human civilization.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Did you see the recent footage, viral footage of the cougar stalking that jogger?<br />
<br />
'''BW:''' Yes.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Followed him for like 20 minutes at least.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Oh, I don't think he was stalking him. I think he was escorting him out of his territory.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I think so too.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You came near my cubs.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' If he wanted to kill him he would have gone up in a tree. That's how they attack. He wouldn't have been probably attacking him from the ground with no element of surprise. That's not how they hunt.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And he would occasionally leap at him just to scare him and then would still just trot behind him at a certain distance. I think it was just move along.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Did the guy know? The guy knew it.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh yeah, he filmed it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, the whole time.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. And I think the guy did, I mean, at least towards the end, pretty much everything right. I just don't like the coverage of these things. I hate when these things go viral. They're like, look how scary cougar wants to eat man. And it's like, no, man in cougars.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Territory.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Man should leave.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' He went up to his cubs. He went up to investigate his cubs. Don't freaking do that.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Don't do that ever.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You see predator cubs, you leave. Yeah. All right.<br />
<br />
== News Items ==<br />
<br />
=== Excess Deaths from Pandemic <small>(10:48)</small> ===<br />
* [https://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/excess-deaths-from-pandemic-higher-than-official-numbers/ Excess Deaths From Pandemic Higher Than Official Numbers]<ref>[https://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/excess-deaths-from-pandemic-higher-than-official-numbers/ Neurologica: Excess Deaths From Pandemic Higher Than Official Numbers]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, we're just going to go right to the news items because my first news item is about COVID. And so this will be our discussion of COVID for the week. Brian, we've been covering the pandemic pretty much every week because it's it's still very, very active. The numbers are still going up. The numbers in the US are going up. The numbers worldwide in terms of daily new cases is going up. Some countries are starting to worry that we're seeing the beginning of a second wave. This is still a very, very active issue. What I want to talk about is a study that was published recently looking at excess deaths, a topic that we have brought up previously with respect to the pandemic. But this was the largest study to date looking at the entire United States. So not a regional study. What they did is compiled, just the, all deaths, all cause deaths in the United States from March 1st to August 1st. That's when this data covers. And they just asked the question, how many excess deaths have there been during this pandemic? The number of deaths per year in the United States is remarkably consistent. It's very, very consistent because it just all averages out, you know. And so this, when there's a huge deviation from that very stable baseline, it's pretty easy to detect. And what they found was that the increase in the background death rate in the U.S. was increased by 20%.<br />
<br />
'''BW:''' Wow.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Increased by 20?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's 20%.<br />
<br />
'''BW:''' Wow.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Wow.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So that's 225,530 excess deaths over that period. Now, if you extrapolate that to the entire pandemic, that comes out to about 319,402 excess deaths, right? So the official number is 215 now for the U.S. And this says that the real number might be closer to 320,000 excess deaths. But here's the other part of this, is that all the pandemic deaths, deaths attributed to COVID, only account for 67% or two-thirds of those excess deaths.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' The rest are a combination of other things?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The rest are a combination of other things. And I'll get to that in a second. But in researching this topic, I wanted to answer the question, well, how are they counting COVID deaths? Because we hear a lot of conspiracy theories about coding wrong or over-coding or coding to get more money, or including probable cases, and they're calling everything a COVID death, et cetera, et cetera. Just short answer is, that's whole nonsense. But the reporting of deaths due to COVID is in the United States is complicated, because every state has their own rules. And this is another manner in which there has been a lack of leadership at the federal level. It would be nice to just say, all right, guys, we're all going to use this method, just so every state is reporting it thesame way. And there's two different ways in which states can report numbers differently. So let me just quickly describe what those are. States could report deaths based upon either the death certificate. That's one method. Whatever is reported on the death certificate, if COVID is listed as in there's a first order and second order causes, the first order is anything acute that led directly to the patient's death, right? So they might say, their heart stopped due to pneumonia due to COVID, right? So if COVID's anywhere in that chain of events, that's considered a COVID death. The secondary ones are like, yeah, you had chronic hypertension and that didn't help. That's just a chronic underlying condition. That might have made it more likely to die, but didn't directly contribute to their death. So these are basically, if you have COVID listed, I think it's fair to say you would not have died had you not contracted COVID, right? So those are pretty, I think, straightforward. But some states don't go by the death certificate. They report deaths in people who were diagnosed with COVID. So technically speaking, if you had COVID and you got hit by a car, you would get coded as a COVID death. Does that make sense?<br />
<br />
'''BW:''' Is there a time limit on that? It's like, if you die within...<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's like while you have the diagnosis, I think. So it's basically by case, it's COVID case deaths versus the cause of death by death certificate. I think most states use the death certificate method, but some are using the COVID case method.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Wouldn't it be nice if we had like a national policy when you did it the same way?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, just what I just said. Now, the other way that states differ is some states only report confirmed cases of COVID as a COVID death. And some states, a minority, but some states allow for probable cases to be coded as COVID deaths. So these are people who meet two criteria. They clinically have a picture consistent with COVID-19 and they epidemiologically fit as a case of COVID-19, meaning that the timing works out and there's no reason why they would have died of anything else, et cetera. So if you meet both clinical and epidemiological criteria for probably having COVID, then some states will include that in their numbers. So again, some people point, they go, oh, they're just calling anything probable cases of COVID. That's not true. You have to actually meet strict criteria. It just means that they never got around to getting a laboratory test.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And also you would think that early in the spread of this disease, we didn't have access to a lot of tests. And so we probably did have to code we, the royal we, probably did have to code a lot of these early ones.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But actually that's not reasonable assumption, but that's not true. So I looked into it and essentially only about 5% in states that include probable cases, they only represent about 5% on average, it's very state to state of their total cases. So 95% of the cases are still laboratory confirmed. So we're only talking about a 5% variance. So that means if every single case of probable COVID was wrong, was a false positive, that would only reduce the numbers by 5%. But chances are, the vast majority of them were actually COVID. Again, yeah, it would be nice if we're all using one method, but the bottom line is the vast majority of the numbers in that official 215,000 Americans dead with COVID were people who had laboratory confirmed COVID and died from COVID. That's still the vast majority of those numbers. There's no huge overreporting or overestimating these deaths. Now getting back to this data. So if official COVID deaths only account for 67% of the extra 320,000 people who have died this year so far, what are the other 33% coming from? Now, some of them are people who died from COVID, but never went to the hospital. So they died of COVID at home. I think that was happening a lot more at the beginning of the pandemic, but it still happens that people think they don't bother, they're just not gonna...<br />
<br />
'''R:''' Or they mistook it for flu or something else, not as deadly.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But they never, for whatever reason, they never got COVID put on their death certificate, right? Or they never got tested and they come from a state that doesn't include cases that were not laboratory confirmed. So that's probably a huge chunk of that number, but the rest they say are probably mostly people who died because of the disruption in healthcare that's happening during the pandemic. So people who don't go to the hospital because they're afraid of COVID and they die at home of a heart attack. Also, people are missing or delaying doses of chemotherapy, for example, or they're not getting their dialysis on time, or they're just not following up with their primary care doctor about their hypertension or whatever. So there's a lot of just disruption in the system. So that's probably another big chunk of it. And they said a third piece of it is an increase in suicides and overdoses that is happening because of the economic effects of the pandemic. So those are the three things that are probably the main contributors to that extra third of people who are dying during the excess deaths during this pandemic.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's kind of weird that they contributed only to economic effects, the last one. There's a lot of-<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, there's a lot of stressors that happen, but certainly economic stress is one of them. They didn't just say it was economic stress.<br />
<br />
'''BW:''' Is there any data to indicate there's some effect that goes the other way, like there are fewer than expected, "normal deaths", because people aren't driving as much, so there are fewer car accidents, something like that?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Totally. Yeah. So traffic accidents are down 8% this year. Traffic deaths are down 8%. So what that means is that there's 8% more excess deaths that are being hidden by the fact that there's fewer traffic deaths. So interestingly, yeah, interestingly, there's a greater accident deaths per mile driven, but fewer miles driven. So people are driving recklessly, more recklessly, but because there's such a decrease in how many people are driving, the total number of traffic accidents are down. And we don't know why that is, but the speculation is people see empty roads and they speed.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, that makes sense.<br />
<br />
'''BW:''' People have been maniacs here in LA. I mean, especially, I don't know if you raised this to Cara, but especially in March, it felt like every time you drove on the highway, someone was doing 100 miles an hour and weaving in and out everywhere.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Because they're used to going 10 miles an hour on the highway.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I don't know. I never got in the car in March. I literally just locked myself in my house. Yeah, Steve, and also probably infectious diseases and other things are lower as well, right?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. We cut off the tail of the flu season in the spring. So absolutely. So yeah, and then homicides were down, but then they're up. I don't know what the net is for the year.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And domestic violence is up, right?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, domestic violence is up. Yeah. It's complicated, obviously, but I think most of those excess deaths are caused either directly or indirectly by COVID. And then there was some discussion about, well, do we count these as pandemic deaths, even if they weren't due to the infection by COVID? It's like, well, it doesn't matter how you answer that question. There's deaths due directly to infection with COVID. And then there is the extra deaths caused by the pandemic, but not related directly to an infection, just the disruption in our society. So there's 300,000 extra people dead this year. That's more than Vietnam. That's a lot. That's a lot of people. And they're projecting that we'll get that number, not the COVID deaths, but the excess deaths are going to break 400,000 by the end of the year, 400,000 additional Americans dead due to this pandemic.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' We've got ways to go.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Steve, you've seen these listicles where they're like, I know it's hard to imagine 250, 300, 400,000 people. So let's break it down. And it'll be like, that's the same population as this city, or that's 10% of that city, or three times the population of this city. And when you really start to think about it that way, it hits in a way deeper way.<br />
<br />
'''BW:''' For sure.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's brutal.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And I also wrote today about the fact that, and I know we discussed this, I think, a little bit last week, again, like Trump said, hey, maybe this herd immunity thing is not a bad idea and it'll just go away, like natural herd immunity. The World Health Organization had to come out with an official statement saying, no, trying to control this pandemic through natural herd immunity is unethical and unscientific. That is not the way we want to go. We want to keep, flatten this curve until we get a vaccine.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' When is there ever a case for that kind of a means of treating a virus?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Never. That's giving up. It's just letting it run.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I've never heard of it before.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And there are more and more cases. It's still rare, but there are more and more individual cases reported of people coming down with COVID the second time confirmed. They were positive, they were negative, and then they were positive. And so if that becomes more frequent as more time goes by, if it turns out like in year two of this pandemic, if more and more people are getting it for the second time, that's a bad indication that natural immunity may not last long enough.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' So much for those antibodies.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. And there are experts who are now predicting that this is going to become endemic. That's it. We're never going to really get rid of this. It's just we're going to have to live with this. Even with the vaccine, we live with this like we live with the flu. It's going to be like we live with HIV.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' We can only minimize it, never eliminate it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And the thing is, regardless of if herd immunity were even possible, which it's not, I mean, or at least not with the amount of death that we would, no amount of death is okay. So I shouldn't even say that we'd be comfortable with. We still have literally no idea what the long-term effects of having been infected with this disease are. And we're hearing not good things from people who are still struggling with symptoms, who have had negative tests multiple times.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, the long-term health consequences could be huge.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh my gosh.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Could be a massive cost. Imagine the increased cost of health care, of having to take care of millions of people who may have now a chronic illness because of this infection. Again, you're right. We don't know enough about this virus to really know what the full risk is. We have to minimize this any way that we can. Okay, let's move on.<br />
<br />
=== When Satellites Collide <small>(25:28)</small> ===<br />
* [https://www.newsweek.com/russian-satellite-chinese-rocket-space-collision-1538954 Russian Satellite and Chinese Rocket at 'Very High Risk' of Colliding, Could Make Big Mess in Space]<ref>[https://www.newsweek.com/russian-satellite-chinese-rocket-space-collision-1538954 Newsweek: Russian Satellite and Chinese Rocket at 'Very High Risk' of Colliding, Could Make Big Mess in Space]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' Completely different news, Bob. You're going to tell us about satellites colliding.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh no.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, an alert was made this week by space debris tracking company, Leo Labs, that two large chunks of space debris have a significant chance of striking each other this week, like Thursday night. So when this podcast is uploaded, we will know what happens. But now a worst-case scenario called the Kessler effect, which you've mentioned a couple of times on the show, is possible in which widespread debris prevents any access to space for generations. That's not a good worst-case scenario. So that would be just a wonderful exclamation point on 2020 now, wouldn't it? So this alert came from Leo Labs based in California. They track satellites and debris. They have some pretty slick visualization software. I was checking it out. You could zoom in. You see basically the earth surrounded by a swarm of all this debris and satellites and functional equipment as well. You could zoom into each one and it tells you what it is. So space junk is generally defined as man-made debris in low earth orbit that no longer serves any function. And that's, of course, the vast majority of what's up there. And it could be anything from dead satellites and spent rocket stages to wrenches and paint chips and anything in between. What are we talking about? How much debris? It's a lot. There's 20,000 pieces of debris they estimate larger than a soft wall orbiting the earth. There's a half a million pieces of debris the size of a marble or larger. And if you consider things that are so small that are there but they can't be tracked, we're talking millions of pieces of debris. Pretty much essentially traveling at speeds up to 17,000 miles an hour. It's crazy fast. And the threat and danger from these collisions are, of course, they're real. Even small debris is nasty because it's just traveling so fast. Look at the paint flecks, literal paint flecks from other machinery in orbit that have repeatedly cracked space station windows. They go, oh boy, look at this crack. We've got to replace this window now. How do you even do that in space? And bigger collisions are getting more real all the time. In the past year alone, there was another near collision just this past January 2020. Two satellites, two good sized satellites that almost collided. And in this past year, the International Space Station had to do emergency maneuvers to avoid collisions three separate times. I picture this klaxon going off with some guy wearing a helmet with a flashing light saying, we got to move and there's something approaching us. So it started this week with Leo Labs tweet. They said, we are monitoring a very high risk conjunction between two large defunct objects in LEO, Low Earth Orbit. Multiple data points show misdistance are less than 25 meters and percent chance of collision between one and 20%. And the combined mass of both objects is 2,800 kilograms. So one of the two large defunct objects in LEO is a defunct Russian Paris navigation satellite launched in 1989. That's the year my first marriage. The other is a spent Chinese Cheng Zheng 4C rocket stage that launched in 2009. So these are in the middle of Low Earth Orbit, about 990 kilometers up. And the combined mass, like I said, 2.8 metric tons. This is heavy weights. These are big. That's a lot of weight, a lot of kinetic energy. And their modeling suggests that they will miss each other by less than 82 feet. Now, 82 feet. You talk about it a bullet grazing your temple. To give you an idea how close this is, spacecraft often take evasive maneuvers to avoid objects within 60 kilometers. It's like, oh boy, 60 kilometers. Let's move this guy. This is only 82 feet. So that tells you how insanely close this is. Also, the relative velocities between these two objects, that's what gets you. This isn't like two cars on the highway traveling in the same direction. No, pretty much the opposite. They've got relative velocity of 14.7 kilometers per second. That's 9.1 miles per second, 10 times faster than the fastest bullets. The kinetic energy uses mind numbing. So the real fear, though, is not just these two satellites bashing each other. Not satellites. One is a spent stage and one is a dead satellite.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But isn't anything that's orbiting the earth technically a satellite?<br />
<br />
'''BW:''' It's technically a satellite, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, you were right.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, I mean, it's a satellite. But when you think satellite, you're not thinking of a wrench in orbit around the earth. You're thinking of a functional satellite, a mechanism that was launched to communicate and do stuff. So just going with the common usage. So the real fear here, though, is what's called the Kessler syndrome or the Kessler effect, or more descriptively, collisional cascading, which is I think a little bit better. So this term came about in 1978 by NASA scientist Donald J. Kessler. He proposed this idea that low earth orbit could become so common. It could be so filled up that collisions could happen frequently, relatively frequently, enough to create a feedback loop of collision debris causing more collisions and so on until low earth orbit is essentially filled with debris. It's like that scene from Wall-E, right? Remember when you're blasting off the earth and they fly through-<br />
<br />
'''E:''' A cloud of satellites.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah. I mean, that's a real nightmare scenario in so many ways. Imagine no space missions of any kind because nothing could get past that gauntlet of space debris. No moon or Mars or Pluto launches. And that's just the almost tolerable end of the spectrum. Far worse is dealing with life with no satellites for years, decades, or potentially generations. I mean, that's in a real worst case scenario. That is, I mean, you can't-<br />
<br />
'''E:''' How will I call you, Bob?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' -wrap your head around it. Oh, dude, yeah, we'll be doing a lot of faxing, believe me.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' When you say they're going to be 80 feet away from each other, what are the error bars? Are they saying that there is actually a threat that they might hit each other?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' There's a one to 20% chance of them hitting. So potentially one in five chance of them actually hitting. That's not insignificant at all, at all. So yeah, that's scary. But Jay, think about no satellites for potentially years. I mean, that's just like... You got to really think about it to think of how much satellites improve our lives. No satellite imaging or communications. All of this are granted. No weather satellites. Hey, Siri, what's the weather going to be like next Saturday? No, that's not going to happen. No satellite GPS. No Google Maps navigation. I refuse to ever buy maps and navigate by maps. Oh my God. Can you imagine doing that again? No environmental monitoring. Telephone and data transmissions will be limited to landlines and submarine cables. Imagine that. And what about your broadband and multimedia links? You don't even want to know what's going to happen with that. So yeah, it would just be... I mean, people certainly will be dying because of this lost technology, but it would... I mean, it would be... Our lives would be very different. Absolutely, amazingly different. And that would be pretty much the only thing people are going to be talking about if it happened, if that worst case scenario happened, of course. Now imagine... Now I said previously that it was like a 20% chance, right? One in five potentially. Now if a collision happens, what are then the chances of this Kessler effect happening if these two objects collide? I mean, I don't know. I don't think anybody knows. I think it's probably pretty hard to put good numbers to that because it's such a complicated interaction.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' They haven't run it through a bunch of computers to come up with simulations to figure out what the scenarios would be?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Not that I'm aware, but I think it would be hard to tell you if this is going to be the Kessler effect that's going to cascade to... I mean, this is low earth orbit, but it can knock objects into a higher orbit. And then there's the fact of how do we actually clean out the orbits? And there are companies that are taking steps to try to minimize this, but there's so many of them. Like I said, there's just so many of these that it's so hard to deal with. I don't think we're ever going to get a handle on it.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' You wouldn't need to clear the whole field, just enough of it to minimize the future potential damage, right? Get it down to a much more tolerable, reasonable sort of number.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Exactly. Yeah. So you're not going to get rid of every paint chip in orbit, but you can get rid of the ones that can initiate this cascade of debris creation. So at the very least, we should be at least thinking about it and coming up with plans, serious plans, because this is just like, these worst case scenarios are... All right. It's not as bad as a vacuum decay where everything basically will just be gone. But the change to our civilization would be horrible and long lasting.<br />
<br />
=== Humans Evolving Extra Blood Vessel <small>(34:43)</small> ===<br />
* [https://www.livescience.com/extra-blood-vessel-found-humans-evolving.html More humans are growing an extra blood vessel in our arm that 'feeds' our hands, study shows]<ref>[https://www.livescience.com/extra-blood-vessel-found-humans-evolving.html Live Science: More humans are growing an extra blood vessel in our arm that 'feeds' our hands, study shows]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. Cara, are humans continuing to evolve?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, I think that's a big question. And I think the basic takeaway answer is absolutely humans are going to evolve because humans are alive and we have genetic information and we can't not evolve. But I think it raises a few other interesting questions that I want to get to. But before I do, I want to tell you guys about an artery. So we have arteries in our arms and our legs and our trunk and our brains and all over our bodies. In your arms, coming from the shoulder area, you have the brachial artery and then that splits to create the radial and the ulnar artery. So those are named for the bones that they're over, right? It makes sense. So the radial one is splits and kind of follows towards the thumb side of the forearm. The ulnar artery splits and follows towards the pinky side of the forearm. And I came across, by the way, this has nothing to do with anything, but it's so interesting, an anatomical term that I had never heard before. I was reading a little bit more about the radial artery because, of course, this is the one that you feel when you're feeling for somebody's pulse. You've felt your pulse in your arm.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's your radial pulse.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's your radial pulse. You're feeling it from your radial artery. That makes sense. Did you know that there is an anatomical region? Steve, you might know this, but it makes me laugh so much.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The snuff box?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yes, it's called the anatomical snuff box.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Wait a minute.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' What?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And I had never heard, and I taught A&P, but we never got this specific. Yeah, it's where sort of the hand and the wrist join. And if you flex your thumb out all the way, you'll see a little indentation there. People used to snort snuff off of their hands. Named it the anatomical snuff box.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' And they used to then wipe their nose on their sleeves, which is why they put buttons on their sleeves to kind of prevent people from actually doing that after they took their snuff.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' What?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Is that really true?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I don't know.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That sounds apocryphal.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But the anatomical snuff box is not apocryphal. This is a thing.<br />
<br />
'''BW:''' I have a friend who does that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I do nerve conduction studies, and that's one of the lead placements. When you look at the radial nerve, like the radial sensory study, one of the electrodes goes in the anatomical snuff box.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I love that. So I don't know why. I was laughing for like five minutes straight in my head when I saw that. <br />
<br />
'''BW:''' I have a friend who's a professor at Cambridge, and he told me that one of the old Cambridge dons told him that this precise thing was the way to do snuff properly in a Cambridge common man.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Wow. Snuff.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Out of your anatomical snuff box.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I see my snuff box now. Cool.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, you can see it. It's very easy. It's going to push your thumb back.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I think a lot of people are going to be sharing this with friends and family.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I don't know what you mean. I push my thumb back and do what?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No, don't push it back. Make a big L.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Extend it all the way back. As far back as the thumb will go.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Oh, there's a little dip there.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' A little dip at the base of the thumb. That's it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Hold it up to your nose and snuff box. Anywho, that's not even what we're talking about today. What we're talking about today is that there's a percentage of people who actually have a third major artery, because there are a lot of small arteries, but a third major artery in the lower part of their arm, not the radial, not the ulnar, but the medial artery.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' So the brachial artery splits for them into three parts?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, it comes off the ulnar. The brachial breaks into the radial and ulnar, then the ulnar splits into the median.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right. So the brachial artery is up high. It splits to those. And for some people, the median artery is in between the two. Now, how I stumbled across all this anatomy stuff is I was trying to figure out, can you see any of this stuff? But I think it's all too deep. I think you can only see superficial veins and arteries underneath your skin. So that makes a bit of sense why this new study had to look at cadavers to learn more about this median artery. And what the new study claims is that humans may be evolving to have a median artery because they were able to look up historical data from autopsies, from different ways that individuals collected data using cadavers and compiling that data and compare the prevalence of the median artery around the turn of the century to the prevalence of the median artery, not quite today, but recently, because, of course, they were looking at cadavers within the last several years of people who were born quite a while ago. I want to say their range was pretty decent. It was like ages 50 to 101 or something like that. But these researchers didn't only look at their own sample of cadavers, they also compared this information to as much data as they could possibly find online. So they really just dug deep into the data, all the published data about median arteries that they could find, and tried to compile all that information to come up with a relatively valid count of how many people have this artery. What they found is that historically around the turn of the century, the prevalence was reported to be, oh, here's the exact date, around the mid-1880s, if you were born then, the prevalence was about 10% of people had this artery. Based on the cadavers that were studied for this study, so it wouldn't be people that were born today, but people that were born 50, even up to 100 years ago, that prevalence had grown to 30%. This is a big jump, a statistically significant increase, any way you slice their data.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' In 50 years?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' 1880 to 1930?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No, but that's on the old end of the sample. Their sample wasn't like, their median age or their mean age wasn't 90.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, so it could be 100 years.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, it's closer to like 100 years. So I'd say, in terms of human generations, what is that, three? Or do we measure it by 20s now?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' 20 years. 20 years of generation.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' 20 years, okay, so like five generations, maybe four or five generations, they're seeing that there's a significant increase, right, from 10% to 30% relatively short period of time. Now, there's a couple of things that I found were troublesome in the study. I mean, the main one is that they even state overtly that, "the focus of this study was not to analyze the prevalence of the median artery in relation to ethnicity, geographic origin, or variations by sex, but to identify the global trends in its occurrence". That said, they only looked at white people from Australia. That's not a global trend. And I think that's something that's really important to point out. So you can't say, oh, we're not interested in looking at ethnicity, we just want to see how it's trending globally and then look at a tiny sliver of the population. So let's keep that in mind, too. This is a global trend in white people from Australia.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Right. But although they probably, I was thinking they would have to do that, though, or at least have that data, because otherwise, you could just be seeing migration trends.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Exactly. The problem is, so they collected a bunch of data online. Okay, so their sample was only 78 upper limbs. And then they decided, okay, we want to broaden this out. And we want to see if there's more data on the subject. So we can compile everything that exists and do some statistical juju and figure it out. One of the things that they had to do was eliminate a bunch of data, because one of the study's authors, who has published a lot of other studies, was specifically looking for what's called a secular trend. That's an area of interest to that researcher. So a secular trend in development is that over time, people are getting bigger, and they're like hitting puberty sooner. And so they were looking for secular trends. And in doing so, they feel like they probably were biasing the outcomes of their studies, because they had a very particular question that they were trying to answer. So they removed a lot of those studies. But really, that's kind of besides the point. The problem is that I couldn't find any ethnicity data at all in this publication. So basically, they're saying we're not interested in ethnicity. We just want to find global trends. They did say all of their people were Australian of European descent. And then they said there are other cadavers too. And so it's very hard to know. We just don't know. So you're right, Steve. This could be a migration situation. It could be a bottleneck evolutionary event. It could be an evolutionary event, sure, but that's only happening within a small percentage of people, especially because the time span is so short. Like we said, we're only talking about 100 years, 50 to 100 years. We're only talking about, let's say, two, three, four, five generations. Oftentimes, people will stay put in that amount of time. So this could all just be people from a very specific region as well.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I also wonder if it's just developmental, not really evolutionarily. Is it just because of changing diet and whatever nutritional status or something to do with hormonal status? And is that just affecting? Because again, a couple of things. So first of all, variations like this are very common. If you look at "normal anatomy" in a book, you're seeing what's present 60% of the time and 80% of the time. Everyone has variations.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' There's whole muscles. There's whole muscles that other people have, these other muscles that people that can wiggle their ears, right? They've got some muscles that people don't have.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And also persistence of fetal anatomy is also very common. That's one of the common variants that people have. This is present when we're the fetus and then a lot of things change after we're born. But in some people, they don't. Some people, they have the... I read this all the time. They have the fetal origin of this or that, you know what I mean? So that's very, very common. That's what we're seeing here because this is like a normal fetal anatomy.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, that's an important point to make.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It just withers away in most people, but in some people, it persists.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So yeah, the median artery is found in a lot of fetuses and then it goes away in most adults. And so I think that to break that down a couple of different ways, yes, a persistence of fetal anatomy is developmental. But in a way, I think you could also argue that this could be an evolutionary phenomenon if the general population is shifting over time. So why is it that more people are maintaining that artery? And there are different questions like, oh, is it contributing and giving us more blood supply? You need it as a fetus because you're growing. So you need all this blood in your extremities to help grow. But they're saying maybe we are doing more dexterous things with our hands and that's requiring that we have more blood flow. Other people are arguing, wait, but that's a concern because apparently people, there is like a correlation between having a median artery and being more likely to have carpal tunnel, which could be a problem with having more of a median artery every combination under the sun. So to say, I think to make an argument that because 30% of people today, which 30% of a very small segment of the population today has a median artery versus 10% based on historical evidence from the 1800s from dissections of cadavers to make that huge leap and say, this is happening because it is benefiting us from an evolutionary perspective. I think that that's a big leap. It really is. It's an interesting question. I think that there are a lot of really cool studies that can come out of it. And apparently there are other, I guess, I don't know if you would call them organs. What's one, there's like a bone in our knee, the favela, which I'd never heard of either.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Is that near the near the patella, I guess?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, right. And that's three times more common today than it was about a century ago. But I think truth be told, I may be selling these researchers short, although some of I think the claims that I've seen, not just in the source article, but in some of the interviews, like direct interviews with the studies authors are a little kind of wild. In my perspective, they're not quite conservative enough. I think what they're kind of saying is exactly what Steve pointed to earlier. There's always weird variation, right? And so we have anatomical standards. And when something only exists in 10% of the people, it's not written into the textbooks. But once we start to see it, or if we start to see it in 50% or more, that becomes normative. And so then it starts to become a part of the medical education, not saying that Steve never learned about the median artery in med school, but it's not in your anatomy books mostly, because it's rare.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It depends on how deep you're diving. Because I do nerve conduction studies, and just to get back to that, I learn all the variants that somebody who doesn't do that, a physician who doesn't do that, wouldn't learn. They learn the basic stuff. But I have to know about every little variant because I will encounter it in people, in patients. And it will affect the studies that I'm doing. So if you're a surgeon, if you're a surgeon who might have to operate on that, you'll know, yeah, some percentage of the people are going to have an artery right there. You got to know about that. It depends on what you do.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And you've probably experienced it firsthand if you're a surgeon who works on the forearm. But if I were to open up my-<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Wrist?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Wow.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Coming in hot. My cadaver atlas. It probably wouldn't have one, for example. Or if I were in medical school and I were doing gross anatomy lab if there were 10, or now, I guess, if there were 10, three of the people in the room may have one, as opposed to in the 1880s, one of the people in the room. But even that, I don't 100% trust.<br />
<br />
'''BW:''' Do they say what the benefit is supposed to be? Is it just increased blood flow? Is that it?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, increasing blood flow to your extremities, which is why developing fetus needs that because they're growing so quickly. But I don't think anybody's done a study to show that people who have it have more dexterity or any sort of like-<br />
<br />
'''BW:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I wouldn't want one. I wouldn't want one. It's just another way to bleed out.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Increase your risk of carpal tunnel syndrome.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Can increase your risk. They did say there's a correlation with carpal tunnel syndrome.<br />
<br />
== Who's That Noisy? <small>(49:30)</small> ==<br />
* Answer to last week’s Noisy: _brief_description_perhaps_with_link_<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, Jay. It's Who's That Noisy time.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' All right, guys. Last week, I played this Noisy.<br />
<br />
[_short_vague_description_of_Noisy] <br />
<br />
Would you guys like to guess?<br />
<br />
'''BW:''' Sounds like a rain stick to me.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, like something raining.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, good one.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Something solid, almost like one of those coin games.<br />
<br />
'''BW:''' Yes.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' In like the casino.<br />
<br />
'''BW:''' Yeah, like you push them down the little thing.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. And then if a bunch of them fall at once, it's like pfrrrt.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, plinko.<br />
<br />
'''BW:''' It definitely sounds like a cascade of some kind, right?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Well, okay. So not horribly wrong. Let me throw out some guesses from, this is from a listener named Alexander. And Alexander said, "Hey, Jay, taking a shot in the dark on this one sounds like water is running in the background. So I'm going to start by saying it's an amphibian. A frog wouldn't be cool enough to guess. So I'm going with some kind of skink." Guys, what's a skink?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' A combination of a skunk.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' My daughter has a skink.<br />
<br />
'''BW:''' It's like a big chubby lizard, right?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Tell her I'm sorry. I hope she's allright.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's a lizard. It's a lizard.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' They're slimy though. They're like snake.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, they're not slimy.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, they're not slimy. Sorry, sorry. I shouldn't say they're slimy.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' They're lizards. My daughter has an Indonesian blue-tongued skink. Very cute. They're just a regular old lizard.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But certain species of skinks people think are snakes with legs.<br />
<br />
'''BW:''' Yes, because they're like real thick, right? And they've got these little kind of like chubby little lizard legs.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And like whippy tails.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' All right. Well, I don't know what you guys are talking about with lizards and skinks, but I'm going to go on to the next one. This is from a listener named Jillian Roarda. And she said, "My name is Jillian R. My dad listens to this. And he played the Who's That Noisy. And my guess is an alligator mating call."<br />
<br />
'''C:''' What?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' And you know what? It's not that bad of a guess. If you guys remember the noise from weeks ago, there was an alligator noise where they vibrate the water. And it does have a little bit of that vibration noise in there. So this was not a bad guess, although it is not correct, which is fine, because most people send in wrong guesses anyway. So don't feel bad. Anthony Murphy wrote in and he said, hi. He said "Anthony Murphy in Ireland, very longtime listener. Is it something kind of undersea soundscape? I think I can hear shrimp in there. Keep up the great work, Anthony." God damn Anthony.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I think I hear shrimp.<br />
<br />
'''BW:''' That is great. Wow. I would not be able to identify a shrimp by sound.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I find it funny that Cara was laughing because Anthony is closer than anybody that sent in.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's amazing. I just love that he's like, sounds like it's underwater. Definitely shrimp. Yeah, those are the shrimps.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Without a doubt, this is under the sea. It is a soundscape from under the sea. And there probably is shrimp in there because going back to the original submission from Nick and Mariana Bankovic, they said, "Hi, Jay. I was reading the latest issue of National Geographic in which they talk about the sounds of a healthy coral reef. So that is the sound of a healthy coral leaf". Take a listen. [plays Noisy] That is really cool.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I definitely hear the water now.<br />
<br />
'''BW:''' Yes.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, right. So there's water, there's there's cooing, there's shrimp playing bongo drums.<br />
<br />
'''BW:''' I mean, once you listen for it, you can really hear the shrimp.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So all right. So thank you so much for that. Now, before I go on to the new Noisy, I just want to play, I want to play a sound for you guys. This was really cool. This guy sent in a socially distant candy delivery shoot for trick or treaters. And essentially it's like a flexible PVC pipe that he rigged up to go down the stairs like that. He kind of taped it down, I guess, the railing so he could give kids candy from 15-10 feet away, say. I don't really know how far away it was, but it seemed to be about that far away. So take a look at this. Listen to this. Can you hear it?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That reminds me of the matchbox cars and the orange track you used to send it down.<br />
<br />
'''BW:''' Yes. Yeah. Yeah. With a little loop to loop.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yes. Well, this is a ribbed pipe like the kind that you would use in for dry your yard for drainage. So I thought that was really neat because the guy rigged it up. He knows that kids are going to come and he rigged it up so he can give them the candy at a distance. And it was really cool. I just thought Bob would really like that. So I had to play that.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, thanks Jay.<br />
<br />
=== New Noisy <small>(53:49)</small> ===<br />
<br />
'''J:''' All right. So I have a new Noisy for this week. This is a Noisy that was sent in by a listener named Simon Toothill. And he specifically said it is pronounced Tooth-hill, Tooth-hill. So I did not mispronounce it. Here is the Noisy.<br />
<br />
[_short_vague_description_of_Noisy]<br />
<br />
I hope you guys, I want a lot of guesses on this one because this one is really fun and interesting and I'm really curious to see what everybody thinks because it could be so many things, but it really it's actually one very specific thing. So if you have an idea what this is, send it to me at WTN@theskepticsguide.org.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. Thanks, Jay. So listen, we have a really interesting interview coming up with Dr. Paul Thibodeau, who was the lead author on this study about the graphene making energy that we talked about last week. And I want to say, give a special thanks to SGU listener David Thompson for setting us up with this interview. So let's go on to that now.<br />
<br />
== Interview with Paul Thibado <small>(55:03)</small> ==<br />
* [https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/10/201002091029.htm Physicists build circuit that generates clean, limitless power from graphene]<ref>[https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/10/201002091029.htm ScienceDaily: Physicists build circuit that generates clean, limitless power from graphene]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' Joining us now is Paul Thibodeau. Paul, welcome to the Skeptics Guide.<br />
<br />
'''PT:''' Thanks. Glad to be here.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So Paul is a professor of physics at the University of Arkansas, and he is the lead author on a study that we discussed last week about building a circuit that, at least as far as the press release says, generates clean limitless power from graphene. And we thought we sort of hit the ceiling on our technical understanding of the paper, and one of our listeners, as we requested, hooked us up with the lead author so we could get into a little bit more detail. So Paul, just give us a quick background on who you are and what your research is about, just so we know what your history is, and then what this study showed.<br />
<br />
'''PT:''' Okay, yeah. So I've been at the University of Arkansas now since 1996, actually, and I got my PhD in physics at the University of Pennsylvania. And around the time I was starting my PhD, the Nobel Prize in physics was recently handed out for this invention of the scanning tunneling microscope. And I'm like, oh, I want to do that. So in my PhD work, I built a scanning tunneling microscope, and I became kind of an expert in scanning tunneling microscopy, and I continued that work on, well, to this day. And then started probably 2010, I started looking at graphene, and we could make the graphene freestanding. It was suspended over like a picture frame. And it's a very unusual, very special material, and that's really what led to the discovery that we published in the paper here. Although, actually, I should say I have probably 10 to 20 other papers on freestanding graphene. It's a very complicated system, and there's a lot of interesting phenomenon there. This is just kind of the culmination of all of that work up to this point.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay. And just to get further quick review for our listeners, graphene is a single molecule layer, two-dimensional material of like a chicken wire of carbon.<br />
<br />
'''PT:''' Yes.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. What your most recent study showed, and it's good to hear this wasn't a one-off, this is like the end of a line of research that you're doing, shows that the graphene, the freestanding graphene, as you say, sort of undulates spontaneously. Is that right?<br />
<br />
'''PT:''' Yeah, that's exactly right. So we I often use the analogy of looking at the ocean that's kind of a on a heavy windy day as well. Not the calm ocean, but a kind of more violent ocean. So there's a lot of dynamic motion, and there's a lot of up swells and down swells, and the graphene seems to be doing this all the time, because it's at room temperature. Even at low temperatures, it's still moving similar to this.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And was it accurate to analogize that movement to Brownian motion?<br />
<br />
'''PT:''' It is, in fact, Brownian motion. Yeah, I heard that on the show. That was excellent. So it is Brownian motion, but let me tell you this, because I think you're going to like this, that it's Brownian motion unlike anything else. It's pretty special. So if you think about, yeah, so if you think about the molecule, they're, of course, undergoing Brownian motion, just as a simple primer. So when you say something is at a certain temperature, let's say we're at 300 Kelvin right now. Well, what that means is there's basically that much energy is the equivalent to the kinetic energy of each atom in the room. So each atom has a velocity, and that velocity is its temperature. So if you're going to say something's hotter, what it means is the atoms are moving faster. You know, if it's colder than the atoms are moving slower. So temperature and velocity, they're the same thing.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So I mean, I was going to get to like sort of the key question that we couldn't really answer ourselves, which is, so this latest study is you figured out a way how to generate a small electrical current from this motion of the freestanding graphene. Is that accurate?<br />
<br />
'''PT:''' Yeah, right. Exactly. So that's related to this Brownian motion. So in the atoms in the room, they're all moving at a high velocity because they're at room temperature, but they're all moving in different directions simultaneously. And it's very difficult to pick one of them out and steal its energy from that one because there's just so many of them all in the same space. And if you looked at the, even though they're free to move along across the room, if you looked at a solid, a solid has a bunch of atoms all locked in a lattice, but they're vibrating very quickly in their lattice positions, but they don't move very far. They don't move many lattice spacings across. Well, now imagine graphene, maybe like a sheet hanging on the clothesline. And it's a, and it's like the chicken wire. If you like, it's just a whole thing is waving back and forth and it's moving huge distances and it's all connected together by the lattice. So all the atoms have to move coherently together. So at certain times, a large number of atoms a hundred thousand atoms are all moving exactly in the same direction together. If that was happening in the room with us now, we would say there's a breeze. And if you had a breeze in the room, you could harvest energy from that.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' So, so my question then is, what does that say about Richard Feynman's very famous assertion that Brownian motion cannot do work? Is he wrong? Is this a special case? What's going on with that?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Is there a loophole?<br />
<br />
'''PT:''' No, that's a great question. I'm glad you brought that up. I've watched Feynman's lecture because well, that gets reported to me frequently. So I had to go watch it. And the interesting thing, if you watch his lecture, he starts off with, okay, let's say we know the air is moving around, there's Brownian motion there. And let's say we have a little paddle out there and the paddle gets kicked around. And at the end of this paddle, there's a long arm and we hook it up to this ratchet with a pinion so it can only turn one way. And so he constructs the whole instrument and has the Brownian motion knocking the rack and pinion. He's fine with all that. The part where he starts getting worried, and you guys mentioned this on your show, is when he says, well, the ratchet's going to start heating up. If the ratchet starts heating up, now we have energy flowing from a cold area to a hot area. It's going from the room to the rack and pinion system. And now there's a problem. So the second law of thermodynamics says that, well, if you build a fire, of course, when you're outside, then the heat will flow from the hot to the cold. And you never see it flowing from cold to hot. And if it did, well, if you said you're observing something like that, you would say, I'm violating the second law of thermodynamics. So he was really illustrating a violation of the second law in that video, if you look at it. I don't think he was so worried about the Brownian part. But anyhow, that may be a technicality, but that's a good start. There's the temperature, things flowing from cold to hot, heat, a hot particle flowing from cold to hot. That's not going to happen. If you do that, you're going to violate the second law.<br />
<br />
'''BW:''' Well, my question was, is this something like, so there's this famous thing now for non-equilibrium systems, right? You can have these like little violations of the second law, right? The fluctuation theorem, stochastic thermodynamical kind of stuff. So is that what's going on with what you guys are doing? Or is it something else?<br />
<br />
'''PT:''' No, it's definitely is that. So yeah, let me just say one other thing. I do think that Feynman took his lecture. Well, I should also just mention it's just a lecture to like a freshman class that he's giving some illustration about some topic. But I do believe there's a paper that came out in the fifties by a guy named Bruon. And he's a big shot physicist that, you classify him in the genius category. I mean, he has Bruon scattering and there's the Bruon zone and crystal lattices. I mean, there's a million Wikipedia pages dedicated to the discoveries of this guy. Well, in the fifties, he wrote a paper. He said the diode had kind of recently been discovered. It's an odd device. And he's like, hey, is the diode a Maxwell's demon? You know, will allow, will allow particles to flow from cold to hot. And so he wrote a paper saying, no, it can't do that. But the problem with that is the mathematics was not available to him at that time to undergo that investigation. So he really just makes an argument. He says, well, let's say it does flow over there and now it's going to get hot. And then now we're going to have some kind of back force, that's going to push on this thing because we can't violate the second law of thermodynamics. And so therefore, no, it won't work. And I think this is really what Feynman was trying to say too, by his illustration was that the ratchet was like a diode in the ratchet was heating up. And then this was where the second law was going to fall apart. So we used, the area you mentioned, the stochastic thermodynamics, it's a new area of physics that has really just kind of started its getting traction in the 1990s. And it allows you to incorporate what we call nonlinear effects into these complicated equations. Whereas you could only deal with linear effects. Like, so a resistor would be a linear device, but a diode is a very nonlinear device and Bruon couldn't mathematically handle the diode for that reason, but now we can. And so we did precisely deal with the diode and we in fact put two in there. I mean, the symmetry is actually a bit better if you're going to let it flow down one path, one way, let's let it go back the other way, but just to make it take a different path. So the symmetry is nicer. We in fact found that the diode does not suppress this Brownian current that gets induced. And in fact, it enhances it significantly. The rate of change, this nonlinear rate of change in resistance, in fact, amplifies how much power you can pull from the thermal environment. So there's lots of stuff to process there, but basically I think the thing is that Bruon was wrong and Feynman, I think was just kind of using his example in his lecture. And so people attributed a lot to Feynman because he's so famous, but in fact, it wasn't really till recently that one could actually solve these problems. And I, we teamed up with the top theorists from Madrid. He's on the paper there, Louis Vanilla, who really pulled that off for us.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So I like the breeze analogy. I think that helps me wrap my head around this. Could you also say, and would this be maybe a little more of a direct analogy that the undulating of the graphene is like the waves on the surface of an ocean where we can harvest energy from waves? Is that similar?<br />
<br />
'''PT:''' Yeah, exactly. So a lot of the experiments we were doing before this experiment, we call it like point mode STM. But what that really, you could visualize that as if you stuck a buoy in the ocean and that the buoy was only allowed to go up and down as the swells went up and down. So we were tracking the movement of the freestanding graphene, just like that buoy would track the movement of the ocean. And it's like a random walk, but in one dimension, it's kind of going up and going down and going up and going down. And this is just happening continuously in time. And in studying that signal, we discovered that what has kind of special Brownian motion, it turns out that there's a thing called levy flights. It's kind of a step beyond Brownian motion. It says that the object will move like with a normal Brownian motion, you have a range of distances the particle can take jumps at. And in some phenomenon, well, if something jumped, let's say, 20 times further than the standard deviation, you'd say, well, that would happen maybe once in the universe. Well, what we found is those types of jumps were happening all the time, like every second. So it has what's called a heavy tail distribution. And it's an extension of Brownian theory. And so it has even more special mechanics behind it. But the idea of the buoy in the ocean is a good picture of what's going on.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' But doesn't that analogy fall apart, though, because we know what causes waves, right? You've got wind, you've got perhaps tidal forces. But so at what point does this thing need to have energy put into the system in order to harvest more from it? I mean, you can't-<br />
<br />
'''PT:''' OK, so that's a great question. So I'm going to just go back to that earlier thing that I said that temperature is velocity. So when the graphene is at room temperature, it's all the atoms are moving at a really high speed. And here they're kind of going in the wrong direction. But then sometimes they kind of buckle and move together in the same direction because they're all connected together. So just because it's at room temperature, that's that means that these atoms have kinetic energy and they're constantly moving. So that's the source of energy. <br />
<br />
'''B:''' Right. So you are cooling the room then very, very very small increments, but you are cooling the room then.<br />
<br />
'''PT:''' Yeah, so that's exactly right. So basically, if you think of like even the simple Brownian particle like a dust particle. So the dust. So if you had a dust particle, let's say you kind of push the dust particle into the room. It's moving quickly. What it's going to do is going to bang into the air molecules and transfer some of its kinetic energy to the to the room. It's going to heat the room up by cooling itself down because its velocity will go to zero. So now it's transferred energy heat, because that's just kinetic energy. And now it's sitting there at rest. Well, guess what the atoms in the room start hitting it and making it speed back up again, and then just in different directions. And so now the room is taking its energy and transferring it to the dust particle and giving it temperature and taking temperature from the room. So that's just called thermodynamic equilibrium. If energy being lost by this particle and being gained by the particle are equal over a long time average, then we're in thermodynamic equilibrium. So you can steal in little bits. And that's what we're doing.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Hey, Paul, earlier today, when you and I were talking on the phone, you said that you actually did build the circuit.<br />
<br />
'''PT:''' The first two figures in the paper are experimental data. So here's it's kind of a funny story. So I did this. I've been doing this experiment since 2010. I mean, elements of it. So I tried to publish this paper three years ago, just the experimental data. And I just honestly, you get a lot of pushback that, well, that would violate the laws of thermodynamics. So that, we need to have a model. You have to better understand your data. You can't publish your data. So it got basically got rejected. This started re teaming up with these kind of top theorists and statistical mechanics. And that took two years to figure out the theory to basically build a model that represented the circuit. And they wouldn't have done that unless I had this data and nobody would have revisited Bruon's problem that he said the diode won't rectify unless I had this data. And I went to these theorists and said, hey, look, we're going to have to revisit this problem, because I've got some really cool results here. But unless I've got a theory explaining it, I can't get it published. So we worked on that for two more years. And finally, we got the whole piece figured out. And that's what this paper represented.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay, so if assuming all that's correct, how much can a device like this be scaled up?<br />
<br />
'''PT:''' Yeah, so we are working we're working on that too. Because while these theorists are busy for two years, I'm kept working. So what we can do is basically the graphene is just kind of suspended over a bunch of holes. And inside those holes are little electrodes that are fixed electrodes so that when the graphene is waving up and down, it's waving up and down over these electrodes. And then we can induce an alternating current. So what we've done is we've built, you can design circuits what's called a process development kit for these different foundries around the world. They have the they give them to you develop a circuit, and then you email it to them basically, and then they build those chips, they send them back to you. And then we can do some additional post processing on those where we can add the graphene. So we're working on that. Because the and let me just back up a little bit. So we have these regions we're collecting energy from, we didn't collect that much energy, but it's also not from a very big space. So if you looked at the power per unit area, it's actually comparable to wind power farms, and solar power farms. And so what we're doing is scaling on a chip having millions of these kind of like a computer chip might have a billion transistors, we have millions of these little harvesting areas on a chip all adding together to scale it up.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And so what would give us an idea, like if you had a one centimeter by by one centimeter square chip, how much energy are we talking about? Can I run a pacemaker? Can I recharge my phone off of that? What how much energy are we talking about?<br />
<br />
'''PT:''' Yeah, so so if you if you look at actual production from from, there's a study that's been done on wind farms, like thousands of wind farms around the planet, and thousands of solar farms, in fact, around the planet as well. And the power per unit area that they take up is point five watts per meter squared for wind in five watts per meter square for solar and those and they've already picked the best spots in the world this paper talks about, which is interesting. So the numbers only going down from here. And so actually, we're on that same scale, we're on this that same scale, like one watt per meter squared, you can stack these in the third dimension as well it doesn't rely on the sun shining on it, or the wind blowing on it. So you can step you can have a power per unit volume for these things as well. So it's there. We're not totally sure if we're going to achieve all that. But I'm just you're asking that kind of what we're doing and why we're doing it to some extent. So that's what we're doing. And it's also true that graphing is it's more flexible than anything because flexibility depends on the thickness. So if you looked at like a 15 nanometer cantilever, they're extremely flexible, whereas this is 10 times thinner. So it's going to end up being to the third power. So it's 1000 times more flexible than the silicon nitride cantilevers for like mem devices. So you could also have this graphing device in your car in the cars going along shaking it, that's just going to grab more energy because you can physically shake it and make it move. Or you could heat it up, it'll have it'll move faster. Or you could shine light on it'll absorb light and heat up as well. So it has a lot of nice opportunity there. So it's worth pursuing.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' What if I had one as big as my car? Give me some limits. Where does it fall apart? How big how big can you scale this up? A big is a house? Can I can I put it in my basement or run my house for for a few generations?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Well, Bob, I would imagine that you're not it's not like one giant sheet of graphene, you're going to have billions of little tiny sheets of graphene.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I'm talking about trillions and quintillions of them. How far can we go with this?<br />
<br />
'''PT:''' Yeah. So there's not technically a problem there. But let me give you a different picture, different mental picture. Instead of building this, this billion dollar cube, it's like a computer chip, basically, you have foundry made, and you it's very expensive. And it's got to be secure, you got to protect it, you got to hook some power lines up to it. So you can deliver this power out to the city, you got to kind of put those in and man them and protect those two, you got to charge all these people. Why don't you just put the power right where you're using it. So if your mouse needs power, stick some power there. If your keyboard needs some power, stick some power there whatever needs the power, you just give it the power right, right the processor puts some power on the processor. So we look at it more as as distributed power is what we're interested in near term.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That makes a lot of sense.<br />
<br />
'''BW:''' As a physicist, I was a particle theorist, and I'm so jealous that you can like, go like come up with this data and go to a theorist and in two years, get a model that works to support the data like I worked on theoretical supersymmetry and stuff like that, there was no chance that would ever ever happen in the kind of stuff I did. And it's amazing that you're doing the kind of experiments that can have this back and forth with theorists on these pretty short timescales. It's just really wonderful.<br />
<br />
'''PT:''' Yeah, yeah I there were there were particle physicists in my grad program. And I felt sorry for them, too, because it's, it's a tough, you're kind of, you're kind of at the nice edge of physics right there. And, you can only pull experiments from these multi billion dollar machines I mean, we're a pretty small group working in a small lab. And I think nobody was interested in freestanding graphing, it's messy and it was doing these weird things, it's hard to characterize it. So I could I'm in Arkansas, so I don't want to compete with MIT and Harvard. So I just go, well, I'm going to just pick this one that no one's interested in, and just study the death out of it. And then sometimes you turn over enough rocks and you find something. Yeah, I did want to mention that the second law of thermodynamics. So when this graphene is waving back and forth near electrode, and it's inducing current to flow like an AC current in the circuit, which we can then rectify with diodes now, and then it goes into a load resistance. So load resistance is doing something for you, maybe that's your phone or whatever. The thing that's important to realize is that when this brown the electrons are just like air molecules, they have Brownian motion too. So they're moving around all the time, and they're moving around with a charge attached to them. And so they're creating these voltage fluctuations all the time. So what we did is instead of having this crazy current, we made it direct DC, and it kind of controlled it to get it to lower frequencies. So it's more useful. And this current flowing through the resistor, normally you think, oh, if I'm running a lot of current through a resistor, well, the resistor will get hot. But in this case this current is always flowing in the wires and the resistor. It's just the Brownian motion. And so it doesn't get hot. In fact, if you took this current away, if you stopped everything from moving, it would cool down. Just like if you stopped all the air in the room moving, it would be only if you cooled it down, made it basically turn into a liquid. So it's the same idea. So even though we're kind of taking this thermal energy from the environment and stealing it in order to stay in thermal equilibrium, the resistor has to dissipate back to the environment, the same amount of energy. It can't get hotter. It can't get colder. So everything's in thermodynamic equilibrium. I mean, we wanted to study that as a special case, but that's the special case that everybody's interested in. And that's the one if there's a temperature gradient, people kind of know what's going to happen. So anyhow, I just want to point that out because it was talked in your show. And if there are any questions, I can answer that too, if you want, but that was the idea about the heat in the resistors.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, I think you answered our question. So again, it's just a clever way of harvesting small amounts of heat at a small scale, basically.<br />
<br />
'''PT:''' Right. Coming from fluctuations instead of averages is kind of the key buzzwords. Yeah, exactly.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Great. Well, Paul, thank you so much for giving us your time. This has been really fascinating. I think it got us to another level of understanding of the research that you've done.<br />
<br />
'''PT:''' Yeah. Yeah. Glad to do it. Thanks for inviting me.<br />
<br />
== Questions/Emails/Corrections/Follow-ups <small>(1:18:56)</small> ==<br />
<br />
=== Email #1: Time <small>()</small> ===<br />
<blockquote>{{tnote|We normally lightly edit the text of original emails, but given this one's general kookiness, we're leaving it unedited.}}<br><p style="line-height:115%"> I send this information to journalists/editors worldwide and I hope that you will share it as well, the students/public/governments don't realize that millions of physicists are fooling humanity. The Nobel Prize in Physics 2020 is the second Nobel Prize in Physics for something that cannot exist (gravitational wave and a massive black hole), and that is a disgrace. Even a layman can see that the following is correct, nobody will be able to refute this. I can claim that gravity affects you because I can see or detect you, because I know what you are, because I know that you exist. If I cannot see or detect you then I cannot claim that gravity affects you, that claim would be a lie. Physicists cannot see or detect time, they don't know what time is, and that means that they don't even know if time exists. So physicists must not claim that gravity affects time, that is a lie. Millions of physicists/astronomers claim that spacetime is a merger of space and time while they don't even know what time is, so can physicists explain and prove what time is? (NO). Look around you, milions of physicists know that they cannot see or detect time. So they cannot know what time is and they cannot know if time exists, and that means that physicists must not claim that time dilates or that spacetime exists. Many theories and millions of papers are incorrect if time doesn't dilate and if spacetime doesn't exist, and a lot of research is based on those incorrect/fraudulent papers. Einstein didn't know what time was, he used clocktime and that is not real. Physicists claim that many experiments prove that time dilates, but that is impossible if they don't know what time is. When a clock runs faster in an experiment then physicists claim that time dilates, but when I ask them if time stops if I remove the battery during that experiment then they are silent. They realize that a clock doesn't represent real time, a clock represents non-real time. So theories like Einstein's theory of gravity and general/special relativity (including E=mc2), time dilation, spacetime, GRAVITATIONAL WAVES, MASSIVE BLACK HOLES, string theory, dark matter, etc are incorrect if time doesn't dilate and if spacetime doesn't exist, a lot of research and education is based on incorrect/fraudulent theories (for more than 100 years). Investigate my claim, it only takes one simple question. Ask physicists if they can explain and prove what time is, that is impossible because they cannot detect time. Millions of physicists are lying because they act as if they know what time is, but they lie because they were brainwashed with fraudulent claims/theories when they were a student. So it's important that physicists admit that they don't know what time is for the sake of the students and humanity, they need to break that devastating vicious circle. Physicists/universities/institutes purposely ignore me, they are silent because the truth undermines their interests but their silence undermines the interests of humanity. Don't fool yourself, nobody knows what time is.<br><br>– Best regards, Peter Raktoe</p></blockquote><br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. So we've got a couple of interesting questions. Brian, this one is just for you. This one comes from Peter from the EU. And Peter writes, "I send this information to journalists, editors worldwide, and I hope that you will share it as well. The students public governments don't realize that millions of physicists are fooling humanity."<br />
<br />
'''BW:''' That's what we do.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' "The Nobel prize in physics 2020 is the second Nobel prize in physics for something that cannot exist. Gravitational wave and a massive black hole. And that is a disgrace. Every layman can see that the following is correct. Nobody will be able to refute this. I can claim that gravity affects you because I can see or detect you because I know what you are, because I know that you exist. If I cannot see or detect you, then I cannot claim that gravity affects you. That claim would be a lie. Physicists cannot see or detect time. They don't know what time is. And that means that they don't even know if time exists. So physicists must not claim that gravity affects time. That is a lie." He then goes on to basically say the same thing about six different times. So I'm not going to read the rest of his email, but that's the key of his claim. Physicists have been lying to us because in secret, they really know that time doesn't exist. Brian, you've been deceiving humanity. Fess up. This is your time to fess up.<br />
<br />
'''BW:''' I mean, what can I say? But he got us. This is it. Guilty as charged. First of all, when you're a theoretical physicist, you get emails like this several times a week. I mean, back when I was starting out, even as a beginning grad student in particle physics, you would show up at your mailbox at the university and there'd be some letter there because they would look through anyone who was a professor or a researcher in that field and just dump them in there. So I'm sure that doesn't surprise you guys. This is like pretty par for the course in terms of-<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Standard. Yeah, this is pretty standard. So yeah, this guy's a crank, right?<br />
<br />
'''BW:''' Complete crank.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yes, that's a pretorative, but I think crank is a very specific definition. It's somebody who has, they're usually not professional, but they might be, but they do have a high level of scientific knowledge in one area, let's say. But their major malfunction is that they're not engaging with the scientific community, combined with the fact that their thinking is a little off. There's just something a tad off about their thinking. And because they're not meaningfully engaging with the scientific community, they kind of drift off into fantasy land. But they have this complete lack of humility where they think that they are correct on something and the entire scientific community is wrong. And this usually evolves into a conspiracy because nobody will give them the respect that they know that they deserve, where nobody will even listen to them.<br />
<br />
'''BW:''' What's interesting about this guy is he's not, I mean, so a lot of physics cranks in particular, it's not just, hey, this is wrong. It's, hey, this is wrong and look at my theory, right? Here's the thing I've been working on. This guy doesn't seem like he has a competing theory. He just thinks that everything is bullshit. I mean, this guy, there's actually a sentence you didn't read in this email, Steve, that I really liked. I just want to excerpt this. "Physicists claim that many experiments prove time dilates, but that is impossible if they don't know what time is. When a clock runs faster in an experiment, then physicists claim that time dilates. But when I ask them if time stops, if I remove the battery during that experiment, then they are silent."<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, that stuck out to me as well. He also brings up Einstein. If you mentioned Einstein in your email, it's a 99% chance you're a crank or Galileo.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Steve, one quote came to me reading this, this famous maxim, the perfect is the enemy of the good. So yeah, he's right. We don't know exactly what time is, but so what? You don't need a perfect theory about something to advance our predictive powers and understanding of the universe. It doesn't have to be perfect. Look at classic physics. It's incomplete. It is not complete, but we can still land a probe on Pluto using just classical physics. You do not need quantum mechanics to land a probe on Pluto. So that, I think, is what he's missing.<br />
<br />
'''BW:''' Well, and one thing that is kind of drilled into you as a young physicist is, so you're absolutely right. There's a germ of an interesting question here. What is time? But at a fundamental level, physics isn't philosophy. I mean, obviously there's some interesting overlap, but physics really at its core models things and then makes predictions. And you can be a very successful modeler without having any idea about the deep reasons of why what you're doing is right. So physics is not going to really answer like why, I mean, maybe this is not totally impossible, but it's not going to say why is, why is there gravity? Or something like that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' On a metaphysical level, what is the ultimate reality of time? You don't know.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' But isn't the clock basically a model for time?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The clock is an instrument for measuring time.<br />
<br />
'''BW:''' That's right. And time and space are different in some pretty important ways, of course, right? And the whole time dilation thing, et cetera, is something that is a crucial part of special relativity. The real, like the technical thing that I would say as a physicist is the difference between time and space is a plus or a minus sign and how you're measuring distances in space time. That's kind of a technical answer, but yeah, like you can be a perfectly great physicist and not really care what the deep reason of time is. The other thing that this guy says that I think is really wild is he talks about, oh, if you can't measure it, then it doesn't exist. And he uses gravitational waves as an example, a thing that was indisputably measured many times now, like several times. And even if you don't believe in time, there's just no doubt that people measured ripples in space coming from black hole mergers. If you just had one, I guess you could maybe say, all right, we don't really know it, but now we have several of these. The evidence is just beyond any reasonable doubt as it was with the original measurement anyway. So the guy does not have a leg to stand on here.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah. And the other side of that coin, Brian, is the fact that gravitational wave, the theory makes predictions and they detected gravitational waves. And the theory says that there should be a visible electromagnetic component to that, to that event. They looked and there it was, and it was the first time they did the multimodal astrophysics, right? Where there was partially, they had a gravitational wave evidence and electromagnetic spectrum evidence. And one pointed to the other. So what does that mean? It means that they're onto something. It's making predictions that are useful. And that's what's wonderful about it. You don't need to know exactly what a gravitational wave is down to its minutest level.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' In philosophical terms, this guy is making what we call a category mistake. He is confusing, understanding how something works or that something exists, right? That something exists with a fundamental understanding of exactly how or why it exists. And not understanding the why does not mean you can't with very high confidence know that something does exist. We know time exists. Time has to exist.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Or nothing would happen.<br />
<br />
'''C:'''That's why it was so weird when Brian just said, even if you don't believe in time, I can't even wrap my head around-<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Time denial is now a thing?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' What he's saying is that this guy completely misunderstands how science works because science doesn't necessarily describe reality. It makes testable models that make predictions about what we're going to observe or whatever's going to happen. And models either work or they don't work. And we've had this discussion before, does a model have to actually describe reality in order to be useful or does it just have to make predictions? And what was that famous quote, shut up and calculate? Don't worry about whether it's real or not. Just shut up and calculate. You just do your calculations. So yeah, he's making more than one category mistake here. The analogy that occurred to me immediately when I read this was like, this is exactly what I hear from people who say, well, we don't know how consciousness works. It's like, okay, first of all, that's a black and white statement. We know a lot about consciousness, but we don't know exactly how the brain manifests as consciousness. Yes, that's correct. But that's different than saying we don't know that the brain manifests consciousness. We pretty much know that as much as you can know anything in science, even if we didn't know anything about how it did it. But we do know something, just not everything about how it does it. And this is the same thing. We know that time has to be in there somewhere. We can make predictions based upon it. We could measure it, measure the passage of time. And yeah, predictions about how that measurement will be altered in different situations. His taking the battery out of the clock thing was the lamest thing he said.<br />
<br />
'''BW:''' That may be one of the stupidest things I've heard in a very long time. And the fact that-<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, it's like if you break your instrument, does the phenomenon go away? I mean, come on.<br />
<br />
'''BW:''' And that he holds up as proof of people's incompetence that they stare at him blankly when he asks that question is not doing him any favors.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's not just that they're like, Oh God, somebody has to call security.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' There might be another reason for that blank stare.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. Okay. Let's go on to question number two.<br />
<br />
=== Email #2: Traffic <small>(1:29:01)</small> === <br />
<blockquote><p style="line-height:115%">I am a traffic engineer and love your podcast. Listening to your last podcast regarding electric cars, the impact of traffic on climate change, and the possible use of loan cars as part of the solution made me cringe a bit, especially the optimistic view of self drive and the timeframe of these vehicles being widely used. I suggest you do a deep dive into the world of traffic, as I think you will be surprised and find it quite interesting.<br><br>– Wayne Amos Mackay, Queensland, Australia</p></blockquote><br />
<br />
'''S:''' This one comes from Wayne Amos from McKay, Queensland, Australia. And Wayne writes, "I am a traffic engineer and love your podcast. Listening to your last episode regarding electric cars and impact of traffic on climate change and the possible use of lone cars as part of the solution made me cringe a bit, especially the optimistic view of self-drive and timeframe of these vehicles being widely used. I suggested you a deep dive into the world of traffic as I think you'll be surprised and find it quite interesting. Thank you, Wayne." I in fact did do, I mean, I have, I have read about traffic in the past, but I sort of redid a deep dive on it and I decided to make this the science or fiction. So we're going to go on to science or fiction. I'm going to ask you guys three questions about traffic, and then we'll use that as a jumping off point to discuss what the current science says. So let's go on with science or fiction.<br />
<br />
== Science or Fiction <small>(1:29:58)</small> ==<br />
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|science1 = increasing road capacity<!-- short word or phrase representing the item --><br />
|science2 = self-driving car service<!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
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|rogue1 = Brian<!-- rogues in order of response --><br />
|answer1 = cruising for parking<!-- item guessed, using word or phrase from above --><br />
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|rogue2 =Jay<br />
|answer2 =cruising for parking<br />
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|rogue3 =Cara<br />
|answer3 =cruising for parking<br />
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|rogue4 = Bob<!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
|answer4 = self-driving car service<!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
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|rogue5 = Evan<!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
|answer5 = cruising for parking<!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
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''Voiceover: It's time for Science or Fiction.''<br />
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|SoF with a Theme = <!-- redirect created for Traffic - SoF Theme (797) --><br />
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<blockquote>'''Theme: Traffic'''<br>'''Item #1:''' Careful examination of traffic patterns reveals that, on average, 30% of all traffic in New York City is cruising for a parking space.<ref>[https://www.parkingtoday.com/articledetails.php?id=2624&t=is-30-percent-of-traffic-cruising-for-parking Parking Today Media: Is 30 Percent of Traffic Cruising for Parking?]</ref><br>'''Item #2:''' Multiple studies indicate that increasing road capacity does not reduce traffic in the long run and in some cases may worsen it.<ref>[https://usa.streetsblog.org/2017/06/21/the-science-is-clear-more-highways-equals-more-traffic-why-are-dots-still-ignoring-it/ Streetsblog USA: The Science Is Clear: More Highways Equals More Traffic. Why Are DOTs Still Ignoring It?]</ref><br>'''Item #3:''' Research shows that self-driving cars as a service would significantly increase traffic congestion.<ref>[https://www.businessinsider.com/self-driving-cars-traffic-worse-research-2019-2 Business Insider: Self-driving cars could actually make congestion much worse]</ref></blockquote><br />
<br />
'''S:''' Each week I come up with three science news items or facts, two real and one fake. Then I challenge my panelists to tell me which one is the fake. Again, the theme here is traffic. I'm going to give you three statements about the science of understanding traffic, and you guys have to tell me which one of these is wrong. Ready? Okay, here we go. Item number one, careful examination of traffic patterns reveals that on average 30% of all traffic in New York City is cruising for a parking space. Item number two, multiple studies indicate that increasing road capacity does not reduce traffic in the long run and in some cases may worsen it. And item number three, research shows that self-driving cars as a service would significantly increase traffic congestion. Brian, as our guest you get to go first.<br />
<br />
=== Brian's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''BW:''' All right. So number one, careful examination of traffic patterns reveals that on average 30%, 30% of all traffic in New York City is cruising for a parking space. I mean, that's a pretty high number, but I have to say that tracks with my personal experience of driving in New York. If I had to guess that number normally, I probably would have put that a bit lower. Just even thinking about the size of New York and people, I mean, New York's pretty big and there's highways and stuff like that. So I don't know. That one seems high to me, although anecdotally it agrees with my experience has been driving in New York. Number two, multiple studies indicate that increasing road capacity does not reduce traffic in the long run and in some cases may worsen it. So road capacity means what here? Just number?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' More lanes, adding another lane, adding another road, just adding the increasing the capacity of the roadway.<br />
<br />
'''BW:''' I guess I could see that being true if, for example, maybe there's like kind of bottleneck effects if you're not doing it in a uniform way or something like that. So presumably you would take that into account, but it's not totally clear.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' This is in general. This is in general. This is not in a special circumstance. This is just pretty much any time you increase road capacity.<br />
<br />
'''BW:''' Oh, I see.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It doesn't reduce traffic in the long run. So that's a general rule.<br />
<br />
'''BW:''' Yeah. I mean, I guess the effect, if that's true, then would be if you increase the road capacity, more people drive and then the traffic kind of stays the same or increases, I guess even. So that one I'm kind of all of these are, I don't know about research shows that self-driving cars as a service would significantly increase traffic congestion congestion. So that one I could see also like the other two, maybe being true. If self-driving cars put more cars on the road, then I could see traffic going up. On the other hand, maybe if there's self-driving cars that can pick up multiple passengers, et cetera, that might decrease it. All right. I'm going to go with, this is really a crap shoot here. I'm going to go with, go with number one, 30% gut just seems high to me for New York.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay, Jay.<br />
<br />
=== Jay's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I'll take these backwards. So research shows the self-driving cars as a service would significantly increase traffic. You know, the word I don't like is significantly. I do think that when we introduce self-driving cars into a mostly driver car situation, right? So it's like most cars are being driven by a human being. You add driverless cars, it's a totally different behavior. It's a totally different way to drive. The driverless cars will not drive like people, which means that they don't follow normal people patterns.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And so just to clarify, this is not just all driving cars, self-driving cars. This is self-driving cars as a service. Where you call a car, it comes and picks you up.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Johnny Cab.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. Johnny Cab.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah. I mean, I'm not sure about this, but I do think even just inserting, I don't there's no numbers here. I don't know what percentage of these, the traffic is going to be considered self-driving. And you know, it's just a statement that says self-driving cars would significantly increase traffic conditions. So it's a little hard to guess without numbers and all that, but I'm thinking that this one is true in the beginning of it. It would increase traffic congestion. Significantly? I don't know. Multiple studies. This is the second one. Multiple studies indicate that increasing road capacity does not reduce traffic. So from my understanding, when you increase road capacity, traffic increases. So like the supply and demand kind of are in lock step with each other. So I think that one is science. And this last one here, which is the first one saying that 30% of traffic in New York city is crazy. I just don't, this one has to be the fake because I mean, not that this qualifies me to know the exact right answer, but I used to live in New York city two different times and I've been there a million times and I've been one of those people cruising for traffic spaces. I absolutely don't think that 30% of the traffic is looking for parking, but they're flat out just isn't that much parking in the city. And most people know it and most people are not going there looking for a park looking for, if you drive a car there you're not just going to wing it. Most of the time you have an idea what neighborhood you're going to be in and is there a place to park? Because I'll tell you right now, every time I tried to wing it, I turned out to be ugly. So I just don't think 30% of the traffic, that's an amazing number of cars. There is no way that that one is science.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay. Cara.<br />
<br />
=== Cara's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. I mean, I think I gotta agree with the guys to keep it short and sweet. I think when you pointed out that you were saying self-driving cars as a service that changed things for me, because at first I was like, no way self-driving cars are definitely going to make traffic better. But you're talking about like Ubers and Lyfts being self-driving, like pick them up people. Well, that's just, I think people are just going to people who don't have cars now who might take the bus are going to be like, well, just call a self-driving Lyft. Like I think ride share services add to traffic. So that one seems like it's true because of that. The thing about increasing road capacity, not reducing traffic is annoying to me, but I could see it being some sort of weird counter intuitive truth. Kind of like Brian was saying before, you were saying before that, like even though road deaths have gone down, the amount of accidents hasn't, or it's maybe gotten worse because people are just like, bah, free lanes. I'm going to drive like an idiot in them. So I don't know. I think it could actually make people worse that they're driving. And that bad driving is in a lot of ways what contributes to traffic. You said when people breaking on the highway, oh, it kills me. It just kills me, you guys. And then so that would say that the fiction is this one about 30% of all traffic in New York being cruising for parking spaces. The reason that I think that that's fiction is A, because Jay's right. If you have a car, you're probably already paying for a space. So unless you're going to a public place, you're going to be looking for space outside of a shop or something like that. But B, I think the vast majority of New York City traffic is cabs. And I don't think cabs are looking for parking spaces. So I don't see that being comporting with truth.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay, Bob.<br />
<br />
=== Bob's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Okay, so 30% traffic. I'm totally buying that. I've spent so much time just looking for a parking space that I'm totally buying it. Road capacity, increasing road capacity. I'm buying that as well. It's like a hard drive. Keep giving me a bigger hard drive, I'm going to keep filling it up. So Jay agrees with me on that one. And number three, self-driving cars as a service. I think you'd be surprised that once we get a certain amount of self-driving cars on the road, I think that's going to do the opposite and decrease traffic congestion because it'd be so efficient. So that's fiction.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And Evan.<br />
<br />
=== Evan's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Well, so people raised really good points all over the place. I shared the same thoughts with many of the people, which I will not repeat. But I'll go with most of the group here and say the New York City one is the fiction. And I'll add a reason why to that that hasn't been touched on yet. So we talked about cabs. Certainly I thought there were a lot of trucks making deliveries and stuff. I don't know if you would consider that parking or not. There's a lot of truck moving in New York. But also the reason this one is fiction is because even if you just take cars and people looking for parking, they're also leaving the city, leaving their parking spots. So any traffic that's departing from the city cannot be considered looking for parking. And we're talking about all traffic in New York City. And that's a big chunk of traffic right there. So that 30 percent just kind of gets really inflated in that context. So I think that one's fiction.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #2 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' OK. So you guys all agree on number two. So we'll start there. Multiple studies indicate that increasing road capacity does not reduce traffic in the long run. And in some cases may worsen it. You all think that is science. And that one is science. So the magic phrase there is induced demand, induced demand. And you build it and they will come. If you increase road capacity, people will then start driving in that pathway. So if you think about it this way, each individual driver is going to take the pathway of least resistance whenever they have to get from point A to point B. That's one factor. And also people will, once traffic gets beyond a certain point, people will just not drive. They'll either just go at a different time or they'll do it something else.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Back roads or whatever they got to do.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. So if you have this shiny new opened up highway, people will drive on there and they'll do that until you basically get to the same level of traffic that you had before. So initially it decreases traffic congestion. But after even two years, most of the benefits gone and by five years it's back to where it was or maybe even a little worse, depending on the study. But on average-<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Steve, I actually read about a town that said, screw you guys. And it went from something like a four lane highway and this major highway going through the city and made it like a two lane highway and said that you're going to get used to this. This is better. And it's also better for just like for the environment and the countryside and all that stuff. And it was just not worth it. They found out, they did this study and they like, no, it's not going to help. We're going to actually shrink the size of our highway. And everyone's like, oh, traffic is going to be horrific, but it goes both ways, right? If you make it smaller, the demand will shrink.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It absolutely goes both ways. The other thing that happens, once you start to get more traffic along those highways, because you increase capacities, then people are going to put stores there and they're going to put other things there that then people will attract more drivers. And so that's where you can get sort of the makes it even worse than it was before. So it's totally counterintuitive. But the bottom line is we can't solve the problem by just expanding road capacity. Now, the only real question here is, are there limits to this? What if I added 20 lanes?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right. And it's a small town.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' At some point do you-<br />
<br />
'''B:''' And then you have no town left. Then you have no town.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, but no one does that. So there's no natural world experiment where somebody did something ridiculous like that. But within the realm of like what's actually happening in the real world, increasing capacity, it's almost a one to one. It's really uncanny how people just fill the demand. This is actually interesting because I experienced the same thing with booking patients in my clinic, that there's an induced demand phenomenon going on. It doesn't matter how many attendings we add, the wait time is always the same.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That's awesome.<br />
<br />
'''HW:''' I thought your hard drive analogy was awesome, Bob.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It goes down temporarily. Yeah, sure. The hard drives too. I've induced demand on my hard drive. The wait time goes down initially, then goes right back up. People will wait that long. People will tolerate so much traffic.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #1 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, let's go back to item number one. Careful examination of traffic patterns reveals that on average 30% of all traffic in New York City is cruising for a parking space. Bob, you think this one is true. Everyone else thinks this one is the fiction. This one is very interesting because that 30% figure is widely reported as being true. It turns out this is based upon studies that were done in the 1920s.<br />
<br />
'''BW:''' Wow.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' There are more modern studies which also show that similar figures, in fact, the range is anywhere from 20 to 70%. However, it depends on the city, depends on the location within the city, but this one is the fiction. Sorry, Bob.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yes, yes.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I thought I was going to get more of you on it because this one is so widely reported. I thought that we've-Bob, you've probably said this before, but here's the thing. This is why it's the fiction. The data is looking at streets with parking and you can't extrapolate to the whole city. Yes, if you're looking at a street that has roadside parking, 30% or more of the cars circling that street are looking for a parking space, but most streets like in New York City don't have parking. You can't extrapolate this to all traffic in the city.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yes, so that's why... We actually don't really know because imagine how hard it would be to... How would you do this study? You have to follow cars and see how long are they in the road and do they eventually park? It's kind of tricky to get at this data, but they also look at data where they... When a parking space becomes available, how many cars will pass it before somebody will park in it? There's different ways to get at this data and it is high, but it's only high in those locations where there is parking. The "problem", there's no question that it significantly contributes to traffic. It is a problem. It is significant. The 30% figure is fake, but it is a significant problem. The question is, how do we solve it? Again, just making more parking spaces is the same thing as adding more road capacity. You're going to have induced demand. The problem with parking space is actually the same as the problem with roads, and that is that they're both free. I'm talking about a parking garage. We're talking about parking on the street. Street parking is usually free.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Not in New York.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' If you have something that's free or cheap or really cheap, so it's so cheap that it's not a negative motivator, but it's also scarce, then that produces the congestion where people are trying to get the scarce, cheap, or free resource. What's the solution? First of all, there's no one simple solution to either the parking problem or the congestion problem. There's multiple things that you have to do. One interesting thing, probably one of the few things that actually there's evidence to show that it works, is you have to charge for it. If you have congestion prices, you have to pay to enter New York City during high congestion times, for example, or if the street parking that is causing congestion becomes more expensive, that's what will motivate people not to do it. You charge a toll on this road during rush hour.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Parking in LA is almost exclusively not free. It is very rare.<br />
<br />
'''BW:''' That's right. That's the big difference is, yeah, for sure. A lot of cities, like London, for example, have those congestion zones, which work great.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #3 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Let's go on to number three, and then we'll talk more about the whole issue in general. Number three, research shows that self-driving cars as a service would significantly increase traffic congestion. That one is science. There's multiple studies which show that that's the case. Now, this is just self-driving cars without doing other infrastructure changes or other changes that would mitigate it. This is just if we just went to what we currently have, but with self-driving cars as a service. The problem is that the cars end up spending 40% or more of their time between drivers, so they're on the street, getting to the next driver or waiting to be called. Also, there's a motivation for a self-driving car, and this is the same thing with Uber drivers and Lyft drivers, so it's the same exact problem, is that they're motivated, one, not to park because parking may cost them money, and two, they're motivated to drive slowly because they don't want to drive very fast. You have slow-driving cruising cars waiting to be called upon or that are going to the next customer, and that significantly increases congestion and traffic. That's not a good thing. If we do want to go to a car as a service model, we need to actually change the infrastructure to make it work. Even if somebody brought up, what if they take multiple passengers? Even when they pick up multiple passengers, it reduces the problem, but it's still worse than people owning their own cars in terms of the traffic. Yeah, it's still worse. That effect is massive. Now, what you were talking about, Bob, is different. That is self-driving cars coordinating with each other in order to make decisions about where to go, what path to follow, and taking that decision-making out of the hands of people.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Why wouldn't this include that?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, again, even with that effect, the problem is spending 40% of their time with no person in the car. That's the problem. That effect is so huge, it's not mitigated by anything else.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, but my car sits in the parking lot at work when I used to go to work for eight hours not doing anything.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's parked. It's not cruising around the street waiting for you to call it to go home. That's the difference. We talked about this actually recently on the show. When a certain percentage of cars are self-driving, they could actually coordinate with each other and direct the flow of traffic to optimally use roads. The problem is that drivers are making individual decisions. Everyone's trying to minimize their own travel time, but that creates a meta-pattern, an emergent pattern of traffic that's not optimal. That's where you get congestion, because everyone's trying to use that most efficient path. But then, of course, it becomes congested, and there's no way for people to coordinate. But if you had self-driving cars that were all networked together and cars could be directed in order to maximally spread them out, that could have a significant reduction in traffic and congestion. But again, it's a matter of taking that decision-making out of the hands of individual drivers and putting it in the hand of a coordinated network.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' If it was coordinated to, Steve, they could minimize that 40%.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, you could reduce it, but you probably wouldn't eliminate that. But that's an interesting thing. We have to see, could it actually eliminate that negative factor?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I think it could in a city like LA or New York, because Uber and Lyft basically don't have that issue now. My driver will already have chosen a pickup before I've even gotten out of his car, and it's like a block away from me, because they do it based on location.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's great, but the studies that have existed, there are studies out there. The one I just looked at was in Chicago. So again, you're right, this is all very city-specific. But at least in the Chicago one, Uber and Lyft significantly increased congestion for the same reason. And there are other studies as well. It'd be interesting to do an LA study. So then the question is, how do we fix all this? Again, self-driving cars can help. First of all, we have to get out of this loop of, let's just build more lanes, build more lanes, because that's not going to do it. What we have to do is change behavior. You change behavior basically with money. You have to make it the things we don't want people to do more expensive, and the things we do want them to do less expensive. But also designing cities. So here's another question, and that is, what about just public transportation? So buses, trains, subways, won't that help? Won't that help decongest it? And it does help, but actually people prefer to call Uber than they do to take the subway.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Of course.<br />
<br />
'''BW:''' Especially now.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So just putting public transportation into place doesn't really fix the problem either. Again, you're just getting another form of induced demand.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And it also is, again, like you said, city-specific. Public transit in LA is getting better, but we just can't have the same infrastructure that New York has, because we're big. Yeah, it just doesn't work the same way.<br />
<br />
'''BW:''' The trains here are great if you go where they go, and the buses are... You get one bus an hour most of the time on major routes. It's just unusable.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But you're so right about the trains if you need to go where they go, which is not that many places yet.<br />
<br />
'''BW:''' That's right.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's the hard thing. If you do, they're fantastic. You end up having to drive to the train a significant amount.<br />
<br />
'''BW:''' We do that all the time. We drive to the train. I mean, not now, but we used to drive to the train, then take it downtown because it just took less time.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, so basically what a lot of the experts were saying that I was reading is each city has to come up with a plan that works for them. And one other factor that might help is spacing out work start and end times. If everyone has to be at work at nine, that's a problem. But if some people go in at eight, some at nine, some at 10, and at least it spreads it out a little bit, how do you get people to use the roads when they're not used and decompress the rush hour?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right. You can make the tolls cheaper. There are all sorts of... One thing that I really like about LA's traffic mitigation efforts, because they have crazy smart traffic people on the case, is that they do things in the city that I never had seen anywhere else in the country until I moved here. There are lights at the on ramps and off ramps to the freeway, which most cities don't have.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, that's another one, is metering entry into high traffic areas. So you only let one person in every 20 seconds or something. And you would think that while you're just being slowed down at that point, but it actually keeps the rest of traffic moving. And so the transit time for any individual driver goes way down.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's a huge help. And then we also have these anti-gridlock zones all over the city where you can't turn left, because we don't have that many left arrows, and where you can't park between seven and nine, and again, between four and six on that street. So it opens up an entire lane to traffic, which I know we just talked about this problem. But at least you're not driving around parked cars.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Nobody cruising for parking, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Exactly. And then the other thing that I think the other meta lesson here is whatever you do, you've got to study it and see what the effect is. Because there's counterintuitive effects, there's complicated, unintended consequences. You have to do something, see what happens. If it works, great. But if it doesn't work or if it makes things worse, come up with something else. But you can't just be stuck in a feedback loop that's not working.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Which is so hard when you're pouring literally millions of infrastructure dollars into something. That's why we have to have evidence-based policy. Don't do the study after you've put the plan in place.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Or you do a pilot.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Study the plan beforehand.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, but you could also do a pilot. Let's try it here and see if it works. And then if it works, then you could open it up to other locations. All right. Thank you, Wayne, for that email, which spawned the science fiction. I think that's the first time I've done that is basically use a question as a basis for a science fiction.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So Steve, we talked so much, I forgot, who won?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' All of us but Bob.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' What was that again? I didn't hear that. What?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Stop it. Stop it. Jay, your turn will come.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' What did Jay say? I'm playing a game here. What's going on?<br />
<br />
== Skeptical Quote of the Week <small>(1:54:41)</small> ==<br />
<br />
<!-- For the quote display, use block quote with no marks around quote followed by a long dash and the speaker's name, possibly with a reference. For the QoW in the recording, use quotation marks for when the Rogue actually reads the quote.--><br />
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<blockquote>All models are wrong, but some are useful.<br>– {{w|George E. P. Box|George Box}} (1919-2013), British statistician </blockquote><br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, Evan, give us a quote. In this quote, I think by a little bit of a coincidence, tracks back to something you were just talking about.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, exactly. Exactly. It was suggested by a listener. I want to read the quote and then I want to read the little message you sent with the quote. Okay. Here it is. "All models are wrong, but some are useful." And that's a quote from George Box. George Edward Pelham Box, FRS, was a British statistician who worked in the areas of quality control, time series analysis, design of experiments, and Bayesian interference. He's been called one of the great statistical minds of the 20th century. And here's the quick little read from the message that came along with this quote. He said, "This is a well-known quote often referenced by statisticians to remind them that inevitably our best attempts at modeling the real world are wrong. We should always keep this in mind when drawing conclusions. I think this meshes very well with the idea of science as a whole. That is that it is an error correcting process, which at any point in time seeks the least wrong answer as Steve often reiterates." And that's from Will in London. Thank you, Will.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Right. And as we were saying before, that's like the ultimate test of a scientific model, if you will, is how useful it is. And we all know that everything is an approximation of reality. Nothing is the actual reality.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Hey, Brian.<br />
<br />
'''BW:''' Yes.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I just want to say good luck with the new album, man.<br />
<br />
'''BW:''' Oh, thanks so much.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''BW:''' Thanks guys for having me on. This was awesome.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, it was fun. It was great having you as always. And I look forward to working with you and the other guys on our game show thing. Well, hopefully we'll have an announcement to make about that soon.<br />
<br />
'''BW:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. Well, thank you all for joining me this week.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Thanks Steve.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Thank you, Steve.<br />
<br />
'''BW:''' Thanks Steve.<br />
<br />
== Signoff/Announcements == <!-- if the signoff/announcements don't immediately follow the QoW or if the QoW comments take a few minutes, it would be appropriate to include a timestamp for when this part starts --><br />
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'''S:''' —and until next week, this is your {{SGU}}. <!-- typically this is the last thing before the Outro --> <br />
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}}</div>Hearmepurrhttps://www.sgutranscripts.org/w/index.php?title=SGU_Episode_857&diff=19088SGU Episode 8572024-01-08T18:40:40Z<p>Hearmepurr: </p>
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|qowText = We are all delusional to some extent. Human brains were not selected to perceive reality. They were selected to reproduce.<br />
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== Introduction ==<br />
''Voice-over: You're listening to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.''<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Hello and welcome to the {{SGU|link=y}}. Today is Wednesday, December 8<sup>th</sup>, 2021, and this is your host, Stephen Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella...<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Hey, everybody.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Cara Santa Maria...<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Howdy.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Jay Novella...<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Hey, guys.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' ...and Evan Bernstein.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Good evening, everyone.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So is everybody caught up on their holiday shopping.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Which holiday?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Festivus?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' What?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Not even a little bit.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I know not of it.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Hanukkah's done. Done and done.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Don't you have like eight nights of gifts or something?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, yeah. Eight nights. Eight nights. And my family got the exact same thing all eight nights.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' What'd they get?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Not a damn thing.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Freshly laundered clothes?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' No, I tell you what, in all honesty, for example, my daughter, Rachel, she likes to go to concerts, as you know. So instead of kind of waiting for Hanukkah or some kind of calendar-determined celebration to come along, we just kind of gift her over the course of the year as those events kind of come up. So it's much less formal in our house. We've never really been so into the whole must-give-a-present-on-a-specific-day-or-holiday kind of routine.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, that's very healthy.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Never took hold.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I'm a big fan of giving gifts that people want rather than a surprise gift.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Screw that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I mean, you could do a mix if you see if you come across something or if you really know. But I would much rather, I totally err on the side of, I know that you want this, here you go. Tell me what you want me to get you. There's actually literature to this. It's very inefficient to buy gifts that you're not sure somebody wants and needs because you tend to value it more than they do. And it's actually an inefficient way to expend resources, which I know is like the most un-<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Christmas-like.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I know.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Christmas-like idea possible. Your gift-giving is inefficient. But it's a very easy fix. It's just, you know-<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yes, you give her a receipt with it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Prioritize. Well, those gift receipts are wonderful. But prioritize knowing what people want, even if you have to ask them. I remember, like just talking to my wife about this, she said the best gift she got as a child from her parents was when they opened up the Sears catalogue and said, pick what you want.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, see, I'm the opposite. I hate that. That's how my friend Kelly's family does their gift-giving. And it drives me crazy.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Really?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' When we were kids, they used to go shopping together. She would pick it out. They would, she would watch them buy it. And then she'd be like, can I have it? And they'd be like, no, and wrap it and put it under the tree. And I'm like, there's no surprise.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But here's the here's the compromise that I do now. It's like, give me a list way longer than you possibly will get. And then at least you won't know which of the things on the list I'm going to pick from.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's all right.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The only downside is that it puts a lot of the burden on the person. But hey, if you want to get the gifts that you want, put a little bit of-<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Gotta earn it.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' There's a price you got to pay. But that, of course, reminds me, I distinctly remember, Steve will see if you remember this like I do, my mom and dad gave gave Jay that choice, Jay, here's a catalogue. Jay must have been, I don't know, eight, ten, somewhere around there. Jay, here's a catalogue. Circle what you want. I swear to God, almost everything in that catalogue.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I remember that.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Almost everything. It was endless.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I think the best thing to do, but it requires usually it's for like the your partner or like your best friend, like somebody you're very close to, is I just kind of listen, notice throughout the year.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Totally.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' If I come across something that they I remember they pointed out or that reminds me of them, pick it up so that you're not stressed in December.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Totally. I always prefer to do that. But if I just if that event didn't happen, like I didn't come across the thing and I get behind the eight ball, it sucks. Of course, also, like after being married for 30 years, it's just a lot of the the range of things has narrowed significantly because a lot of the one off gifts have been used. So now, like this year, my wife and I got each other a new refrigerator for Christmas and it's wonderful.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yes. Be practical.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's smart.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, absolutely.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Why not? Yeah. Jennifer and I got each other this year for our holiday, a new roof and a solar panel system. That was that was our that was our gift to ourselves. That cost a lot of money and we're very happy.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Buy the things you need by not wasting money on crap.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Things that who knows what you'll do with. But we know what we're doing with a roof and a solar system.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But I have been doing some online shopping and, oh, my goodness, you guys if you search for curated lists of gift ideas online, it's half pseudoscience. It's so frustrating. Now, to be fair, I did accidentally type into Google best holiday griffs. But even when I corrected, for example, you have the acupressure, matt and pillow. There's a lot of that stuff of the alternative medicine pseudoscience.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Of course.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All of the-<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It's huge.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The Reiki stuff and the reflexology is everywhere and aromatherapy and detox just rife in all of these curated gift lists.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Well, Steve, then I'll jump off that and tell you about what I found, which is similar. So this caught my attention, as you might imagine. It was said futuristic patch that uses nanotech to relieve your pain like, oh, what is this? So this company, KAILO, K-A-I-L-O, they raised almost one and a half million in under 30 days in their crowdfunding campaign. So this is what it says. Kailo works with the body's nervous system. Each Kailo contains nano capacitors that work as a bio antenna, which in turn assists the body in its reaction to pain. So basically you put it on and pain goes away. I can't wait to get this.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I'll buy two.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Nano capacitors and just and it says reuse it. Keep reusing it. Wow.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Here's one from a recommendation from Forbes.com of all places on their hot holiday gifts. The vital red light elite. Yep. For one thousand three hundred forty nine dollars, you too can step into the world of light therapy and experience health benefits like never before. It is the best kept secret used by top Hollywood celebrities, professional athletes, beauty experts and doctors to help with skin health, anti-aging, mental sharpness, pain and muscle recovery. Thirteen hundred bucks.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Whoa. Why? Why? I'm seeing a list where it's all just this weird like pseudoscientific pain management stuff. First of all, none of this works we know that I've seen the same thing, the Kailo. I'm also seeing this thing called AccuLeaf, which is literally a plastic. It looks like a plastic bag chip and you stick it in that webbing between your forefinger and your thumb. Acupressure. It's supposed to it's supposed to give you migraine relief by hitting this pressure point. But also I'm like, why are these gift guides all just like things for people who are in pain? I wouldn't want to open up like a weird plastic acupressure chip clips and knee sleeves and pain patches. What a sad Christmas present. That's rough.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Everyone's in pain. Everyone's hurting.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Hey, Evan, do you want to improve your gas mileage by improve your gas mileage by 35%?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Who wouldn't, Steve?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Apparently cars are programmed to be massively fuel inefficient and all you have to do is change their programming of the fuel in doohickey with the connecticazoid and 35% improvement of fuel efficiency. Automakers apparently either don't know about this or are unwilling to spend $5 on a new computer chip to make their cars massively more competitive in the marketplace.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' What? What do they do? Tweak the fuel injection system so it only puts 35% less fuel into the engine? I don't what?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It does nothing.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Holy crap. I just saw the price for this Kailo Nano patch pain reliever $99 for one, a hundred dollars for one reusable pain minimizing bullshit.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Well, that's a lot less than this red light $1,300 gizmo that you have to stand next to all day apparently.<br />
<br />
== News Items ==<br />
<br />
=== Treating the Unvaccinated <small>(8:33)</small> ===<br />
* [https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/treating-the-unvaccinated/ Treating the Unvaccinated]<ref>[https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/treating-the-unvaccinated/ Science-Based Medicine: Treating the Unvaccinated]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. Let's move on to some news items. We have actually some interesting news items this week. I'm going to start by asking you guys a question, a provocative question. Should we prioritize medical treatment to people who are vaccinated over people who are unvaccinated?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh boy.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' If ICU beds and ventilators are in limited availability and we have to triage who's going to get that ICU bed, should we penalize people who are sick with COVID because they were unvaccinated?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I defer to medical moral codes for the answer on that one.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, triage is tricky because typically when there are enough resources, triage is about who is the sickest, right? Who needs the most help? That's the person who gets at the front of the line. But in mass casualty situations, in wartime, triage also involves who is the most likely to recover. And so there is framing it like should we penalize people who didn't get vaccinated I think gives you the answer. But there is sort of a question when resources are incredibly limited as to like, is this person so sick that venting them may not help? And would we put, would we utilize that vent when there's another person who needs the vent but has a better chance of recovery? And whether I think vaccination calculates into that, but it's obviously not the whole part of the equation.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. So what you're talking about Cara is the principle of utility, right? Which is the primary way in which these medical triage decisions are made. We also have to say that there are, there's the normal context of medical ethical decision making. And then there is the crisis context when you have, as you say, like you're in a war situation or pandemic situation where there is a critical lack of resources and you are deciding who gets the limited resources or the way organ transplants work because they are always limited. You are always deciding who's going to die on the wait list, who's going to get bumped up to the top of the list.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And that's a great example. If somebody smokes, they're not going to get that lung transplant.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, that's not true. That's not true actually.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Really?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, it really isn't. So there are very specific published rules about how to decide who gets the priority.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I was almost positive that if you have cirrhosis of the liver due to alcohol, if you so much as drink a drop of alcohol.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But that's about utility. That's about utility.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right. But I mean, I thought that those were the actual transplant rules here in the U.S.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But if you look at the published, it's not though. It doesn't say that. All it says is who's most likely to benefit. The number one is the tricky part about the transplant rules are, I mean, it's really, really utility based. And as you say, there's a positive and there's a negative to utility. It's who's the most likely to benefit and who's the most likely to be harmed by not getting the resource. So like with the transplant, it's like who's going to die the quickest without the transplant. But also who's most likely to benefit the most from getting the transplant in terms of doing well, being healthy, surviving for a long time, not rejecting it, having a healthy organ.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' 20 year old versus a 70 year old.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, but there's a long list of things there. That's where the smoking and the drinking comes in, Cara, because it's like, if you have not proven that you're not going to go back to drinking alcohol, we're not going to give you a liver that you're then going to destroy with alcohol. It's not because you damage the liver that you're losing with alcohol, it's that you'll damage the one we're going to give you with alcohol. That's still a utility question. That's still a utility question. And with transplants, we also take into consideration distance from the donor and the center where the transplant is going to be done, because that affects how well you're going to do, how the success of the operation. But that then bleeds into this number two. So number one is utility. Number two is the principle of justice, which is mostly common sense. It basically means everyone's got a fair shot, right? And you can't have rules which systematically discriminate against somebody based upon their location, obviously their race or gender, or on their socioeconomic status, right? Which is obviously the trickiest one, unless you have just a universal health care system or something that is completely divorced from socioeconomic status. But with the organ transplant, as an interesting aside, the principle of utility and the principle of justice were in conflict because if you go based entirely on utility, it disadvantages people who are in regions that have a relative paucity of organs to people who need organ donation. Right? And people who live in places where there's lots of organs and less demand are privileged. And so you have to balance these two things. You don't want to sacrifice too much utility, but you've got to make some sacrifices to make sure that the principle of justice is reasonably adhered to. And then the third basic one is respect for persons as individuals, and that means you're treating people as an end unto themselves, not as a means to some other end. And that you respect their autonomy, their ability to make decisions for themselves, their ability to refuse care, et cetera. Those are the core principles in terms of triaging limited medical resources. But there's a couple other of ethical principles underneath the justice header that are worth specifically pointing out, because these are the ones that come into play when it comes to vaccination. And one is the principle of reciprocity. And that means that the health care system, like many things in our society, is a contract between society and the health care profession. And part of that contract of reciprocity is that it's sort of the do unto other things. Whatever you expect or would want to expect from society, you also have to give to society. And so some people have argued that people who are voluntarily unvaccinated have broken their contract with society, and that based upon the principle of reciprocity, it's fair to use that as a criterion for lowering their priority in terms of getting health care, especially if it's related to an outcome related to the fact that they're unvaccinated. So from a practical point of view, we could talk about two common scenarios that are happening right now. One is a hospital system is in an area that is experiencing a surge in the pandemic. This is happening. All the ICU beds are getting filled up with COVID patients. So they have to defer semi-voluntary surgeries, right? So let's say a woman has a breast cancer, and I'm not talking about cosmetic surgery or quality of life or lifestyle surgery. Woman has breast cancer and they need mastectomy. Can we delay that for a couple of weeks so that we could treat the surge of COVID patients? Or somebody has coronary artery disease, they need a bypass operation. Can we delay that bypass operation for a couple of weeks until the surge passes? Or do those mastectomies and bypasses, even though it means taking ICU beds away from people who have COVID pneumonia and are going to die without those ICU beds. There is an increased risk of death. If you delay your mastectomy by four weeks, that's an 8% increase in your risk of death. So it's not like it's just an inconvenience.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's not benign to do that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's not benign to do it. People will die because they were made to wait for weeks for their bypass surgery or their mastectomy. All right. So that's one scenario in which you're choosing among patients to prioritize, but you're not just saying we're not going to give you care. We're saying we're giving care to these other people. The other time is, of course, if you have COVID patients, there's more COVID patients in a region than that region has ICU beds and ventilators. Do you give a ventilator to patient A, who was a breakthrough infection, but they were vaccinated versus patient B, who was voluntarily unvaccinated? So there's, I think, an emotional reaction to that scenario. I think most people's minds immediately go to, well, the voluntarily unvaccinated person made a choice that put other people at risk. That's the reciprocity argument. However, there was a recent editorial, which I wrote about science-based medicine by Dr. William Parker, who said, you also have to consider the principle of proportionality, which is another ethical principle under the justice header. Proportionality means that the consequences fit the act, right? So was the choice not to get vaccinated enough of a violation of the principle of reciprocity that it deserves death? Essentially, it's worth one full life. You could argue, statistically, the answer to that question is no. If you make it a pure mathematical question, again, Dr. Parker estimates that that decision is worth like 0.01 lives, if you just look at it mathematically. Not one life.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' What is that based on, though?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I mean, just some calculation of the probability of whatever, somebody dying because of your choice or something.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right. But if you were to look at the probability of somebody dying in, let's say, a health care vacuum where vaccination were the only line of defense, that person would likely die or has a chance of dying.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, but we have to apply these rules to the real world and not hypothetical situations. But the other point you just bring up some other good points under the proportionality argument that I think do help put this into perspective. One thing is the sum total of a person's value is not determined by that one choice that they made, whether or not to get vaccinated. And like, for example, again, if you give a situation where what if somebody is a career criminal who abuses their spouse and lives a horrible lifestyle where they ruin their health, but they got vaccinated, but they get a breakthrough infection and it's really severe because they don't take good care of themselves. They have obesity, hypertension, they smoke, they drink, whatever, versus somebody else who's a good citizen in good health, but decided not to get vaccinated. Do we focus on just the one decision whether or not to get vaccinated-<br />
<br />
'''E:''' How are these differences weighted?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's the thing, too. We can't focus on any of those things. You have to give the best care possible to everybody, regardless of their background.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Exactly. So the thing is, it is a slippery slope argument, but it's legitimate. Once we say we're going to decide based on something other than pure utility, then that's a can of worms. It's like, then how are we going to decide how to proportionately weight these calculations about reciprocity and who's taking care of themselves and who's putting other people at risk? What if you were a drunk driver that killed somebody in an accident because you were speeding drunk? Do you still get treated for your injuries? I mean, yes, the answer is yes, you still get treated for your injuries. So I do think it's important for the healthcare profession to, first of all, it's an ethical principle that we are not judgemental of our patients, right? It's not our position to be judgemental, to question your life choices, to whatever. We're here to treat you and to be your advocate and to give you advice, certainly, but not we are non-judgemental. And I think the medical profession has to be that way. As soon as we cross that line to saying you don't deserve to be treated because I don't like the choice that you made. The other point that I think is really, really illuminating is that you have to look at the full spectrum of why somebody might have chosen not to get vaccinated.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's what I was going to bring up, this idea that you can just assume that you understand somebody's motivations and that you can make decisions based on that is incredibly dangerous.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, but I mean, let's not overcomplicate it. I mean, if somebody has a legitimate medical reason to not get vaccinated.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We're not talking about that. We're not talking about that. Legitimate medical exemptions aside, right?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' What if they have a terrible abuse history? What if they have psychological problems?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' What if they're part of a group of people who have been misled and abused in the past?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It reminds me, Steve, sorry to interject, but I just this morning, I had the opportunity to interview a woman on Talk Nerdy. It hasn't even aired yet. It won't have aired yet by the time this comes out, who wrote a book about health care decision making. She's a social psychologist who studied under Daniel Kahneman and so sort of like the behavioral economic side of things. And she wrote a whole book about how do we make decisions, how can we be empowered? How can we when do we want to know everything? When do we not want to know things and how as patients can we navigate this? And one of the things we talked about, she was saying she was consulting for a company whose job was to try and help people with medication adherence. And she was saying that the number one thing that they it was like a website. And the first thing they wanted to do was like send reminders. And then they were like, OK, we're done. And she's like, if you assume that the reason that people don't take their meds is simply because they don't remember, they're only going to hit like 10 percent of people. There are so many reasons that people are not med adherent. And really, you start thinking about the rich diversity of patients. And why do so many people get a prescription and then never fill it? Or why do they fill it and then never finish it? I mean, there's a laundry list of reasons. And if we just assume that everybody falls in the same bucket, we're failing.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's right. So, yeah, so there could be a member of a racial minority who believes that they could not trust the system. For example, complicated issue. But whatever, they may have legitimate reasons to not be trustful of the system or you're in an abusive relationship. Like, there are cases where like the husband that won't let their wife get vaccinated or parents that won't let their children.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' We see that all the time with kids writing us emails.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, for example. Here's the other thing. Even if you are a a wealthy, privileged individual under no duress or anything and you decide because you buy the the misinformation not to get vaccinated, you're still a victim. Remember that we've talked about this quite a bit in quite a lot of context. Don't blame the person who got conned.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No, don't blame the members of the cult. Blame the cult leader.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And yes, it's frustrating. Yes, it's a burden. But the people who buy into all this, they're at least partly victims. And we can't blame the victim because think about it. It's like there's a demographics to this. It's like blaming somebody for being the religion that they were born into. Really? We know that that's the way they are because they were born into that religion. It's not, you know what I mean? And this could slide into the free will argument. You know, do people really have free will? Are they just following along with the determinative factors of their culture and their environment and their genetics, et cetera, et cetera? But even if we don't go all the way that far, put that aside, it's still it's like, yeah, people are making this decision for tribal reasons because they got sucked down a rabbit hole of misinformation because of the social milieu that they're in, et cetera, et cetera. I mean, again, if we're going to start blaming people for that and to the point that we're going to let them die, it's just it's really not professional and ethical. I don't think we can go there. Now Dr. Parker left one sliver of exception. He said you can make an argument. I think this is reasonable. You can make an argument that if everything else is really completely even, that the vaccination status can be a tiebreaker. Like if it's really that's the only difference between two people, one only one of which can get on a ventilator. And you use that as the tiebreaker. You could you could defend that decision. But that's about it. That's about as far as it would go.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That will translate into hard numbers of what very, very small-<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Hopefully nobody like that. That's a pretty specific situation.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But that's the thing. That's not a real world scenario. Real world scenario is, let's say there's a specific state that's hit really hard. There's only so many vents. There is a situation in which triage has to take place. And yes, we can grapple with these ethical things all we want. But what happens if there are four people waiting to be seen and there's only one vent?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I think from a practical point of view, if you just make the best utility decision, you can. And that will be your justification for choosing one person over the other. The idea that people are going to be exactly the same is like so contrived. You could get out of it by just finding some reason to say this person is more likely to benefit than that other person.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Then I guess the question is, is vaccine status predictive of positive outcomes?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It is. It is. It is. So if you use it as a predictive utility factor, that's fine. And that's where the all other things being equal. You can kind of make a utility argument for facts, because people who are vaccinated are more likely to benefit from their treatment than people who are vaccinated. But but not a reciprocity argument. He basically was just trying to remove the reciprocity. These people don't deserve limited resources because they they made their decision to not get vaccinated. And that argument falls apart, I think, when you really dig down. And I think as physicians, we can't really make that. And I think as skeptics, we have to be careful not to blame the victim. And I think this is a case where that applies.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's one of those places where I think we just have to be pretty hard lined. And like you said, you see this in health care. We see it in psychology. Every life is worth the same amount. You just have to stand there and say it doesn't matter who does so and so deserve. That's not even a question coming into this calculation. Everyone deserves-<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's third principle. Every person deserves respect. And they're not a means to an end. So some people argue along those lines that but if we do do this, that's a great incentive to get people to be vaccinated. It's like, yeah, but you can't use patients as a means to an end. They have to be the end unto themselves. But here's the thing. If that's your goal is to get the most people vaccinated, then that's not a physician's job to do that. That's not the medical profession's job to be the stick to make that happen.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' If anything, that's just going to cause more distrust with the medical profession.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's the other thing. And it probably would backfire. But if you want more people to get vaccinated, do it with education. And if that doesn't work, you do it with carrots and sticks. You do it with mandates. You do it in other ways.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' With incentivization.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That doesn't involve their medical care.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right. Not like if you go to the ER, they're not going to treat you. Jesus.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Charge them more for their insurance. Don't let them fly. Whatever. Mandate it any way you think is reasonable. That's where sort of reciprocity and proportionality come in, not health care. I think that that doesn't work. But it's interesting. There's a very lively discussion going on on science based medicine when I wrote about this today, because it's it provokes a lot of emotion. And it takes a lot to sort of wrap your head around all these arguments.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I do think and not to open up a whole new can of worms, because I know you and I have slightly different views about this. But I do think that like you kind of set it off the cuff, like charge more for their insurance is actually a health care decision. Ultimately, that does negatively impact people's health care. And so, I mean, this is why a managed care system is really tricky with with those kinds of mandates and things, because health care is directly related to health care reimbursement in this country.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, that's fair. Context there is very important. Yeah, it's obviously not to the point where people are not going to be able to get health care.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Exactly. We're sadly we do see these institutional barriers for people who can't afford their health.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But workplaces that are self-insured, like if you get your health insurance to your company and your company is self, they're paying for their own health insurance. They absolutely do this. They will charge you more if you're a smoker.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Absolutely. Sadly, they charge you more if you're if you're of childbearing age, which is frustrating. But yeah, it's based on actuarial tables. It's literally just based on data. You're likely to cost the system more.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' OK, interesting.<br />
<br />
=== DNA Storage <small>(29:26)</small> ===<br />
* [https://phys.org/news/2021-12-dna-storage-nanoscale-electrode-wells.html Storing information in DNA: Improving DNA storage with nanoscale electrode wells]<ref>[https://phys.org/news/2021-12-dna-storage-nanoscale-electrode-wells.html Phys.org: Storing information in DNA: Improving DNA storage with nanoscale electrode wells]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' Jay.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yes.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' How close are we? This is one of those technologies that we're going to see a long way down the road. How close are we to using DNA for information storage?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Well, according to Microsoft, Steve, it's not that far down the road. Let's go to let's start with this. Let me let me ask you guys a question here. See if you agree with this sentiment. Have you ever wondered how companies like Google or Amazon or Apple, these big companies that have these big cloud systems, how do they keep up with their memory storage needs?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Data centers.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' You've got to keep up-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But they just buy more hardware.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Of course. Yeah. And it gets to the point like they are successfully keeping up with those needs. But it's increasing and it's becoming much more of a problem. And also data centers, you may or may not know, they're incredibly power hungry and they produce a lot of yes. So as Steve said, a team of scientists have developed a DNA data storage system. This isn't the first time that companies have been working on this type of thing. But this particular effort that has been made actually got somewhere. I think it's a milestone and it's very significant. So first, why would we even need to store computer data using DNA? That's, I think, a good question. And I'll answer that in a very roundabout way. Everybody essentially has a high quality camera on them at all times. This is one of many examples I can give. Now we're including all of the web content that's created every day. You think about all of the people out there that have unique content that they're creating and how much gets published every day, every week and also in general, the need to archive huge stores, stores of information. As an example how about storing all of the information that we the scientific information that a company has gathered in the 50 years that it's been around or the Library of Congress or information from museums. There is an amazing amount of information that needs to be archived. Doesn't need to be accessed every day or whatever, but something that we want to always exist. There's a ton of that more than more than I think the average person would realize. You really have to think about it. So how will tech companies keep up with the demand for data storage, especially moving forward, knowing that the average person is now moving into, I would consider the average person moving into the terabyte range. I'm like a 10 terabyte guy right now. Steve, you've got to be 10 to 20 terabytes.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Oh, yeah. Yeah. 15, I think.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' But I would give I would give most people the average person somewhere between a half of a terabyte up to a terabyte. That adds up, man. The world used to only use mechanical spinning drives. You guys know what these are. These are the hard drives that have a stack of magnetic coated disks in them. They're spinning 7200 rpms in order to read or write data. Those drives have a physical arm that has to hover over the disk to read and manipulate the stored binary information. And every once in a while you would hear crunching noises coming from these drives. Remember that? Cara, do you even remember that?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, yeah, yeah. For sure.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Just checking. Yeah. The ones that that exist today are even better. They're even faster. But still, I wouldn't use one of those old drives. That's because not long ago, solid state drives started to become affordable. Now, these drives have no moving parts. They store data by using something called floating gate transistors. It's hardware, though. It's just a stationary gear like a CPU in a sense. It's not moving. There's no moving parts. It just has a bunch of transistors in there. If you open up one of these drives, you'll be shocked at how small they actually are. They're tiny. Like when you open up the casing of a solid state drive, you think the whole thing is filled up with. No, it's not. It's like this nub that's sticking off the front. It's not the size of that case at all, which means this technology is very small. So to compare the price of both of these drives, the old style mechanical drives cost about $100 for a four terabyte drive. So I'm talking about the ones that have the disks in them with the arm. That's $100 for four terabyte drive. The same size solid state drive is about $500. So it's roughly five times the cost. And again, though, I think you should only be using a solid state drive. They're faster, a lot faster. They're more durable and they're less prone to losing data. They're just a better storage system altogether. Now, when we talk about storing data size, we use the following measurements. We've been through this a million times. I can clearly remember Bob teaching me this, right? Yes. Bytes, kilobytes, megabytes, gigabytes, terabytes. And now we're moving into the petabyte zone. So to give you some reference here, because I really want you guys to understand, just how much data is when we talk about these measurements or the measuring volume of data. One DVD holds about four point seven gigabytes of data. That's a movie and a whole bunch of extras and whatnot. But it's roughly the size of like one to two movies, say. One terabyte of storage could hold two hundred and eighteen roughly DVD quality movies. One gigabyte is about one and a half to two movies. One terabyte is two hundred and eighteen movies. One petabyte, two hundred and twenty three thousand one hundred movies. Think about that. How much bigger a petabyte is than a gigabyte, which there's a lot of people who only have gigabyte storage. In their home right now.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Six orders of magnitude.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, it's a phenomenal amount of data that is being stored in one place. So, of course, there's no single petabyte drive that exists for consumers. When these big data centers go out and buy drives, they're buying mega drives. They're not buying like a one terabyte drive. They're buying a drive that that has tens of of terabytes, if not more. But there is no petabyte drive for a consumer. Now, the future of data storage might come from something like I said, like this DNA storage. This isn't the first team, like I said, but the team that I am discussing today, Bishlian H Nugin and the team of scientists from Microsoft and the University of Washington, Seattle, U.S. have developed a nanoscale DNA storage writer that can function faster and store more data in a smaller space. So when we talk about storing data at a very and on the very small scale, we want to know how much data can be stored, say, in one cubic centimetre of space. This is a way that they can discuss, well, how much data? What's your data density? Right, Bob? Yeah. So so if we think about this as like a cubic inch or a cubic centimetre of space, how much data can you store in that space? This technology can store over 60 petabytes per cubic centimetre, 60 petabytes.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Qubit centimetre?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So going back to how many DVDs this could store, it could hold quickly guess in your head. Now I'll tell you the number. It can hold 13,386,000 DVDs.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Wow. That's the entire ER series, right there?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Exactly. I mean, Evan, I got to have that. I got to have that whenever I need it. No, but if you think about about that amount of data, that is an incredible amount of data to be stored in such a small space. This is exactly what science fiction movies have predicted for decades, right? You know, just incredible amounts of data in a very small amount of space. Well, it turns out that DNA storage is a viable solution for this. So on top of incredible density, the materials that they use are durable under extreme conditions. And on top of that, it would use a lot less energy. And now they're switching to enzymes instead of using fossil based materials. Because because the DNA that they're creating is created by using enzymes and not oils things that are going to damage the environment. Enzyme reactions also happen to be much faster than current chemical processes, which is another boon for this system. The data is encoded in sequence using the four natural DNA bases, right? A, C, T and G. And if you want to know what those are, you look them up.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Adenine, Cytosine, Thymine, Guanine.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' There you go.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Or you just ask Bob right now.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I couldn't even I couldn't even finish it without him getting to it Cara. The researchers say that they could add in more base pairs, which is really cool, which makes that system much more complicated. But there's no reason for them to stick to those four. It just happens to be the ones that we evolved to use. But they could just add in more. They can create DNA sequences that store data and then they can read these sequences and turn them into digital signals that a computer can understand. So the team's goal was to increase the throughput. So their system could be used for commercial applications. So when I say throughput, I'm talking about how much data can they write and how fast and how much data can they read and how fast. That's the throughput in this specific example. So, of course, they had to translate, like I was saying, this digital information in two strands of DNA. So that right there, what I just said, is about 10 feet the paper that I read on this. It's incredible what they're doing and what they're going through in order to pull this thing off. And it's very complicated. And if you're interested you should just go read, read their paper, because it's fascinating if you even understand it. It was one of those things where I was constantly looking upwards and that type of thing. It was it was fascinating, though. The complexity is extraordinary to pull this off. Then they have to go back and read and decode the DNA information and transform that back into digital information. This new system is a huge technological step forward. They're able to increase the read and write speeds by using parallel processes. So this means that as an example, instead of writing to one DNA strand, you would be writing to 10 or 100 or a thousand or maybe in the future could be tens of thousands of strands at the same time. That's the way that they're going to be able to scale up the speed of this thing. And again, it's a complicated process. And the more strands that you're adding to, in this parallel process, meaning processes that are happening at the same time, if they're all storing, say, the same piece of data, like let's say you're taking a huge book and you want to put it into a DNA encoding and you're going to take a strand of DNA for each page that's in the book and you do it all at the same time. Well, of course, it's going to finish much, much faster than doing it all from front to front to back. ut the coordination involved in order to distribute that data storage and writing it and everything, it's very complicated. And of course, so this is this team is filled with biologists all the way to software engineers. They have such an incredible spectrum of proficiencies that are needed to come up with these processes. And they have to be perfectly coordinated. And another factor that makes this type of data storage important is lifespan. And this is one that I was a little surprised to hear. So today, the longest that we could store data without actually having to worry about it. What would you guys guess?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' We're having to worry about it. It could be just a decade or two.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I mean, before it starts to decay and become unreadable?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Exactly.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' 25, 30 years.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Evan hit it on the nose. 25 to 30 years. Very good. And that's what the tape backup tape backups, if they're in a cool and dry environment, could last a pretty long time. There's other new backup systems that companies have come up with. There's a lot of them out there. You could read about many of those as well. But this type of storage could last hundreds of years or longer. I mean, think about how long DNA has lasted in the environment. Right, guys? <br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah. And I could talk a little bit about that. I mean, yeah, you could have that potentially last for hundreds of years. There's some evidence that mammoth DNA has remained at least partially intact for a million years. But that's you know, that's at the low end of partially intact. The latest thing that I could find researchers calculated that DNA has a half life of five hundred and twenty one years.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's better than 25.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yes, it is. It is better. So yeah, so it's on it's on the order of a century or two. So, yeah, it's definitely better than anything we have now.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Right. Good enough. Right. I mean, because let's say you have to rewrite all of this data every 500 years, even go down to 400. Who cares? Think about what technology will be like in 500 years. I'm sure we'll be blowing past this anyway. It's just a good it's a cool it's a cool way to store data. It's also a very sci-fi way of storing data. And I remember there was a Star Trek episode. I don't remember what show it was from. I think it was Worf who had DNA encoded data in his bloodstream. And they took his blood and then they were able to read the data. And I remember thinking like, oh, my God, could you imagine like someday if we could do that and it hasn't been that many years-<br />
<br />
'''B:''' [inaudible] from Next Generation.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Right, Bob?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah. So the thing is, though, another angle, Jay, is that in the future, we're not going to have VHS readers or CD readers. But they call DNA, though, DNA is different in that they call it eternally relevant because it's going to be around for a really long time. And if there's technology around, then it will likely be just getting better and better at reading DNA the decades or even centuries into the future. Although you could argue against that. I mean, I think DNA is great. But I think if we continue on this track that we're on, I think even DNA could be artificially replaced. But yeah, it definitely has a much better life and it will be readable for long into the future, I would say.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Jay, the thing is that when I was reading some background material on this and what I read, but the big limiting factor is that it's really expensive to manufacture DNA. We can do it. We can do it with with the sequence that we want. But the cost would be about one trillion dollars per petabyte, which is huge. We have to bring down the cost by six orders of magnitude before it's really going to be practical, which probably is going to take decades. So even if we fix these other problems, that one is a deal breaker until we make that six order of magnitude improvement in cost.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, no doubt, Steve. I mean, of course, like like we've seen with like lab grown meat, as an example, the first one that they made, it was three hundred thousand dollars. And now it's eleven bucks. Even like I think it's seven dollars now for a lab grown hamburger. Once they refine the process, once they they optimize everything that needs to happen and scale it up once they once they start manufacturing this and big companies start investing heavily into it, the costs are going to dramatically drop and we'll see efficiencies. But you're right, Steve, it could be decades. You know, it just depends on how much time and energy they put into it to develop it. I mean that's why it takes a company like Microsoft to be sitting at the top of this thing to make it feasible. But I found out there's like 40 companies that do this.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' 40?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, it's out there.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Nice.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It's happening and they're all working together. I think at this point, at least in some type of fashion, they're all throwing some info into the ring to make something happen. So I just think it's really cool. It's one of those things. It's definitely something that I think if you like this type of stuff, this is one of the ones that you should look at because it's really interesting. It's very possibly going to be a big problem solver for the future data storage needs. So even if it does take 10, 20 or 30 years to get there, just like the fusion reactor.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, I was going to say this. I feel like we're talking about fusion in the 1980s. You know what I mean?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But it's a cool technology to watch.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' And think about it. But by then, though, Steve, Bill Gates will be controlling all of us with the microchips that are floating in the air.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' With the vaccines.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' But those won't last, though.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Actually, that's his. I just figured out his end game. He's going to use us as the batteries, as the as the data storage unit.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We're the data storage. Yeah, there you go.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Data is people.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Data is people.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, my nice, nice.<br />
<br />
=== MLM Exploiting Women <small>(45:26)</small> ===<br />
* [https://www.stylist.co.uk/long-reads/women-joining-mlms-since-lockdown/579495 MLMs in the UK: how multi-level marketing schemes are using “feminist jargon” to recruit women since the pandemic]<ref>[https://www.stylist.co.uk/long-reads/women-joining-mlms-since-lockdown/579495 Stylist.co.uk: MLMs in the UK: how multi-level marketing schemes are using “feminist jargon” to recruit women since the pandemic]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' OK, Evan, tell us how multilevel marketing exploits women.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Right? Collective groan right from the onset. Well, I had not heard of this company called LuLaRoe before.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You got to watch the documentary. It's a great documentary.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yes, which I did start actually today watching. So today, really, as I stumbled on this news item is when I learned about this. And I suppose I should have at least heard about them this past summer when it was announced in Variety and Variety's an online magazine about Hollywood and movies and TVs and such. And Variety announced then that there was going to be this investigative docu-series about LuLaRoe, and it was going to come out in September of this year, which it did. So Jennifer First and Julia Willoughby-Nason are the producers of the show LuLa Rich. And according to Variety, LuLa Rich examines the pyramid scheme that was and shockingly still is LuLaRoe. The explosive growth of the clothing company, which began as a multi-level marketing scam in which people, mostly women, sold leggings to one another while also signing up new realtors to be beneath them in the pyramid. And it has played out as so many evil things do on Facebook, among other social media platforms. The docu-series features former retailers and LuLaRoe staffers as talking heads who have tried to dig themselves out from their ruined lives. So there are those dreaded terms that skeptics have been familiar with for a very long time, pyramid scheme and multi-level marketing. And we call those MLMs for short. So a very quick review of those, in case you are unfamiliar with the terms. A pyramid scheme is a recruitment scam. It starts usually with one person at the top. That person convinces, for example, six other people to buy into the business. That's your first level. Then it becomes the job of those six people at level one, each of them to recruit six more people to buy in. So that's six people from the first level trying to get a total of 36 people to buy in. That's level two and so on and so forth. And the six people at level one each get a cut of the 36 people from level two, but also the original person at the top gets a cut, and usually the lion's share. Money continually flows back to the top of the pyramid. It is unsustainable. Now, in a pyramid scheme, there's often no product or service being sold. Or if it is, it's total crap and worthless. But the recruitment of the others and getting their money is really the source of the revenue. Now, MLMs are technically different because they do involve a tangible product, such as leggings, for example. But the MLMs rely on their recruits to make sales to friends and family members, primarily, which are considered easy, sympathetic targets. It starts out as just a sale of the products to those friends and families. But the actual goal is to bring those friends and families on as the new sales force.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Am I hearing Tupperware parties? Am I hearing Avon?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, yeah, the Avon. Remember the Avon lady that used to come to the-<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Amway.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Amway.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Amway is probably one of the best known ones. But here's the main point about MLMs. And according to a report that studied the business models of over 350 MLM companies in the United States, this was published on the Federal Trade Commission's website. At least 99 percent of people who join MLM companies lose money. And it's really more like 99.6 percent. So, I mean, you're talking about everybody, except for the people at the very point of the pyramid. So in plain English, MLMs are a scam. They are filled with promises that can never possibly be realized by anyone other than the one or the very few people at the top of the scheme. So with that basic understanding, and I stumbled across a link to this article in Stylist.co.uk. And I admit that is not on my list of go-to sites to find news stories about science and skeptic topics. But here's the headline, MLMs in the UK, how multilevel marketing schemes are using feminist jargon to recruit women since the pandemic. And they talk a lot about the LuLaRoe or the LuLaRich series. And that series reveals that their success was primarily built upon what they're calling the cheap language of feminism. It inspired legions of women, often stay-at-home mothers, to elevate themselves into, and I'm putting air quotes in here, girl bosses and boss babes using jargon like that to hype them up and all these sort of feminist ideas and sayings and other things designed specifically to get these stay-at-home moms to be part of this company. One extra distributor tells the watching audience that we were empowered but then the husband was supposed to take over. So what does that tell you? They also said that I had a dream. I had achieved the dream. I was selling magic leggings. And in order for some women to do this, some women had to go so deep into poverty basically over this. They were selling their breast milk so that they could afford the startup costs that were involved. That's a horrible thought. Basically, women were targeted and recruited using this feminist empowerment communication. And if you visit the LuLaRoe website, I mean, that's what you see and feel essentially on page one. Very slick, very appealing website. Bold and vibrant pictures of women of all ages and sizes and ethnic groups supporting the fashions that they are selling. But it has this sort of goop-ish feel and tone to it, if you take my meaning there. This company went from zero to 100 miles an hour very quickly. 2013, they started this couple, married couple, who started the scam. 70 million bucks by the fall of 2015, two billion dollars by December of 2017. But the Stylist article goes beyond just this LuLaRoe story. It explains how many women, particularly women in the United Kingdom, and especially since the pandemic, the female involvement in MLMs is seeing a boom in participation. These are some statistics from the Direct Selling Association, whose members include well-known beauty and well-being brands. They reveal that growth across many of their members as a result of the lockdown saw a 32% growth in the first quarter of 2021. I suppose that is compared to the first quarter of 2020. I also grabbed this data from the Advertising Standards Authority, the ASA, and that's the United Kingdom's independent regulator of advertising across media. They say the most popular MLM products being peddled in the UK right now, and you tell me if this isn't skewed towards women, weight control products, beauty and cosmetics, aromatherapy, skincare products, and number five on their list is CBD, cannabinoid bright products. So, right, the first four, four out of the top five right there, all directly targeted at women.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I'd say the first top three. I think weight loss is also targeted towards men.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' You think so? You think it's even?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah, an exercise. Yeah, because you've got to include in that, like, exercise equipment, and all of the fads around weight loss have to do with both exercise and restriction of food. So, it's the diet pills, but also the stupid machines that you can buy at home.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Fair enough. Fair enough.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But you're right. You're right. Three out of the five are very...<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Now, for full disclosure, guys, I looked at these numbers, and I went back and looked at the history of MLM growth, or actually, frankly, decline in the last 20 years. It's been a pretty steady decline since the early 2000s. It really peaked in the early 2000s, and it's been declining. For example, in the US in 2019, MLM direct sales, that model shrunk in proportion to overall sales of products in the US. And in the UK, by comparison to the US, that percentage was even less. So, that's a good sign. But the fact that the MLM seemed to be on the rise again, you have to keep that in the context of the drop that they had been experiencing basically for the prior 20 years before that. So, when they say 32% increase it's because it did tail down. It's by no mean at the peak again. It's not back to those early 2000 levels. But again, it is on the rise. It is to be watched, certainly. And it's not all doom and gloom. And this is what I liked about this article as well. There's a new generation of skeptics that have come in, and of all places, through the world of TikTok. Oh, my gosh. We think of TikTok as this place where pseudoscience and astrology and all sorts of things are wreaking havoc. But there are actually people out there doing skeptical work. Hattie Rowe, she's a UK TikToker. Her account is devoted to researching MLMs. She has about 70,000 followers. And she tells in this article that the lockdown and increased job cuts had been used as a recruitment drive for those companies. She said, I'd go on Facebook and be bombarded by posts and messages about how I can be a boss bitch. And again, that's in quotes and earn money from home. But during the pandemic, the amount of recruitment messages that she received increased massively. So what did she do? She decided to look into it. She did research into the company, into these companies and realized, oh, my gosh, this MLM, it's a absolute scam. Now, she did start doing this a year ago, but now she's basically gotten a reputation of being the kind of this go to person who shares advice about her research and warns other people of the risks associated with the MLM. So good on her and good on other people using the current social media platforms to do that kind of work. And it's a ray of light, frankly, in the clouds.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It is always like a double insult when you're exploiting people on two levels simultaneously. Three, really. You're selling them pseudoscience. You're selling them on the MLM scam model itself. And you're taking advantage of the fact that they're a vulnerable population. It's a triple scam. It's really, really disgusting.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' And the destruction, the path of the destruction of all these people, the 99.6% of people.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So often these people are low income as well.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's right. Oh, my gosh. Yes. People who are living paycheck to paycheck and then they go out and they actually get business loans or open all these credit card lines just so that they can buy into it. And they never able to recoup their money.<br />
<br />
=== Binge Watching <small>(56:00)</small> ===<br />
* [https://www.sciencealert.com/being-actually-addicted-to-binge-watching-tv-could-be-more-real-than-you-think An Actual 'Addiction' to Binge-Watching TV Could Be More Real Than You Think]<ref>[https://www.sciencealert.com/being-actually-addicted-to-binge-watching-tv-could-be-more-real-than-you-think Science Alert: An Actual 'Addiction' to Binge-Watching TV Could Be More Real Than You Think]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:'' All right, Cara, can I get addicted to binge watching TV?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Are you? Should we compare notes? I am in season 13 now of ER.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, my gosh. I also realized when ER and all those shows, those were 26 episodes.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, they were full season and they're hour long shows.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Not 12, like you're used to kind of today. 26 hour long every year.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Wow.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I was like, this will be a nice pandemic project. Wow. Well, and so that is an important question, Steve, because I think there's long been a pretty vehement argument about what is the definition of addiction? How do we define it? Is addiction only something that is a chemical that binds to certain receptors in your brain that has a high affinity that's hard to unbind and causes all of these downstream effects because of that? Or are there behaviors that can induce similar neural states to some of these different molecules that bind in your brain? So I think the easiest thing when we talk about addiction is drug addiction. It's like the cleanest way to talk about addiction. It doesn't mean it's easy to fight. It doesn't mean it's easy to recover from. But it's sort of one of the cleanest models for addiction. And most of our addiction literature and also our addiction language is built around what we understand about drugs. And again, that has to do with binding affinity. And it has to do with downstream changes.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, we've spoken before on the show, Cara, about the distinction between an addiction and just a compulsive behavior.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right, yeah. And there is sort of a whole limit and a whole, or sorry, not a whole limit, a whole range and a whole language that we use around compulsions, addictions. And the truth is, I think from a psychological perspective, so often we utilize something called the biopsychosocial model. And the biopsychosocial model is exactly how it sounds. It's threefold, that behavior, emotions, feelings, thoughts, cognitions, that these things are all sort of affected or influenced by our biology, by our psychology, and by our kind of social milieu. And when it comes to addiction in terms of behavior, there's a researcher who has been studying this his entire life. He's published quite a lot. He the, let's see, a professor of behavioral addiction at Nottingham Trent University. And also, interestingly, the director of the International Gaming Research Unit, because, of course, he focuses quite a lot on gambling behavior, which if you've ever known anybody who is devastated, whose lives were devastated by gambling behavior, it's hard to argue that that person wasn't fighting against an addiction. And so he, throughout his career, developed what he calls the component model of addiction. So instead of looking at addiction from a purely biological perspective or neurobiological perspective and saying this chemical is binding to this receptor and this is what happens downstream in the brain, he decided to take a step back and say, what are many of the components of addictive behavior, of something that somebody would say, I am struggling here. This is a really intense issue. And he developed these six components. And it's his view, and did I even say his name? I don't think I did. Dr. Mark Griffiths. Probably important to give him his due. So in his view, you kind of need all six of these in order to qualify. And they include salience, mood modification, conflict, tolerance, withdrawal, and relapse. And so let's go through them. Salience. It becomes the thing that's out in front of everything else in your life. So whether we're talking about gambling, whether we're talking about binge watching television, or whether we're talking about getting your next fix, it becomes the most important thing in your life. It's out in front of everything else. Mood modification. You use it to reliably modify or change your mood. So this is where oftentimes we talk about people self-medicating, right? You're not feeling well. You're feeling depressed. You're feeling anxious. You're feeling fill in the blank. When I engage in this behavior, at least in the short term, my mood is modified. And I kind of return to what I think is a more comfortable baseline or a more manageable state of mind or feeling. Number three, conflict. It's starting to compromise important components of your life, your work, your education, your relationships. This is a factor that you see in the DSM, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, which is often kind of jokingly called the Psychiatrist or the Psychologist Bible, where almost every diagnosis requires this as a diagnostic criteria. It's sort of starting to get in the way of healthy relationships, of your ability to do your work, of your ability to be involved in your education. Tolerance, OK? Just like with drug tolerance, you need more to get the same effect. Here, you're increasing your binge watching behavior. So you started slow and now you need more and more each time you sit down or kind of on the whole, I guess you could say on average. Number five, withdrawal. So if you don't do it, you actually experience symptoms. And of course, there is a distinction between physical withdrawal and psychological withdrawal. We can make a firm distinction there. There are substances which when you take away that substance after enough time, you can die. Alcohol withdrawal can kill you. Benzodiazepine withdrawal can cause pretty intense reactions that could lead to death. And then there's the the psychological symptoms of withdrawal, which we often see as sort of a, when we talk about opiate withdrawal, it's sort of a combination of the two. You feel quite ill. There are physiological things at play, but it also really messes with your head. You desperately need the meds. And it's not just because it's not just because your receptors are crying out for the opiates, although they are, you're also psychologically hurting. And you think and you know you're going to feel better if you can get that hit. And we can kind of add binge watching to that list, or at least we can conceptualize it within that framework. And then the final one is relapse. You might be able to quit, but when you engage again, you fall right back into old patterns. So this is the difference between somebody who might drink mild to moderate amounts of alcohol socially and somebody who struggles with alcohol addiction is that I say, I used to smoke when I was a teenager and through my 20s. And one of my big pressures that I put on myself was that I can't even just have one, because if I open a pack of cigarettes, I will likely smoke the whole pack. I know this about myself. And not everybody sort of acts in that way. But that is what Dr. Griffiths here is saying is one of the six core components of this biopsychosocial model of addiction. And so he wrote an article for The Conversation. So he's like, let's grapple with this question. Is it an addiction? Is it not? How do we define it? What does it mean? What does it mean to have an addictive personality? What are these lines? And ultimately obviously from a med management perspective, I think the difference between a physiological addiction and a psychological addiction are important. Do we need to use drugs that reverse binding, right? Do we need to use Narcan or naloxone or methadone or any of these different drug treatments? But from a psychological behavioral treatment perspective, ultimately, does it qualify? Does it kind of fulfil these six components or some variation on those themes? If so, it is affecting somebody's life negatively. And I think that it's kind of hard to ignore the fact that that is a addictive behavior. And that could really run the gamut. Historically, I think the DSM really grappled and tried to obsess about and still to this day, these categorical themes. Oh, is it drug addiction? Is it sex addiction? Is it gambling addiction? Is it and let's have a laundry list of things. Well, basically many things can be behaviourally addictive, depends on the person. It depends on a lot of features about their life. It depends on a lot of features about their brain, about their background, about their bio, psychosocial experience and standing. But ultimately, is it out in front of everything? Is it giving you these negative? Are you are you doing it even though you're experiencing these really downstream negative effects? If so this researcher is saying and I would say from a psychological perspective and from a treatment perspective, yeah, that's an addiction. And it's something that you're going to want to work on. There's a lot of studies that this article is great. I recommend people look into it if they're curious about this topic. He does a nice review of the recent literature. During COVID binge watching is up. What are some of the historical studies that have shown correlates of addictive behavior? Again, not causality, but correlates in terms of things like the big five personality traits, low conscientiousness, for example. What are some of the other traits that are predictive of problematic or addictive binge watching, depression, social anxiety, loneliness? So there's a lot of research in this area and it's becoming a more important area of research. And you know what's something that wasn't mentioned in the article that I was thinking about, Steve and everybody else, I'm curious about this. So often these types of addictive behaviors are- They come to pass specifically or especially, I should say, in situations in which there's a marketing, a sort of social psychology, a selling to us of those behaviors. You think about smoking, you think about drinking, you think about gambling, you even think about binge watching. Everything is designed to keep us hitting play, to keep us lighting the next one, to keep pouring the drink, to keep pulling on the slot machine lever. So it's interesting how often addiction is a response to these cues that are actively trying to get us to engage. And that's not really something that was talked about much in the article, except when he gave some pretty good tips about how to try and get out in front if you find yourself having problematic binge watching behavior. And so even even if you don't qualify for a sort of according to his categorization for an addiction, but you're saying this is getting to be a kind of bad habit, setting realistic daily limits, making watching TV- So, like he has his own. He says for me, it's two and a half hours if I've worked the next day, up to five hours if I don't, probably because we're all just at home. Not a lot of people are leaving their houses or doing much. He also says make it a reward, like only after you've finished your work, only after you've engaged in your social obligations, after you've finished the email, sent the texts, whatever. And then one recommendation, which is a hard one, is leave in the middle of the episode, pause the episode, let's say 30 minutes in. And that's when you stop watching instead of waiting until the end, when there's going to be a cliffhanger, when you're going to be desperate to see what comes next.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That makes sense.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's one of my big problems with binge watching. I find myself going, no, no, just one more, just one more, because I'm like, I got to know what happens.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's how they get you.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. And that's that's the point I was making. Right. They get you. It's you know, this is by design.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Formulaic.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, it's super formulaic. So I'm curious, as a physician and a neuroscientist to boot, what do you grapple?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Are you talking to me?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, I'm talking to you. Do you grapple with these labels? Like, are you still like, nah, I wouldn't call that addiction.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I do think it's important to be. This is a thing where colloquially fine. Technically, we need to be very precise about what we're talking about. And I do think we interviewed the sex addict specialist, who's like, it's a it's a behavior. It's a choice that you're making. It's not addictive in the same way that medications are addictive. But but it's still yes, it has these features as a compulsive behavior. And we need to talk about the things that are leading you to this behavior, leading you to these choices. But if you, saying it's an addiction does kind of make it into a passive thing rather than an active thing, meaning that it's something that's happening to you rather than something that you're doing. And that may be counterproductive.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, I think I think so often there are these ideas that become codified the literature or even in our common parlance, like this idea of like addiction as a disease. Well, addiction is a disease. And I think that's a big part of this. And so it's something I have. It's not necessarily something I caught or something that I and not necessarily something where I have a lot of will. And I think that works for some people and it helps some people kick it. And it doesn't work for others. And so often there's not a one size fits all. So although I agree with you that from a sort of physician's perspective, it might be important to make those distinctions, I think, from a psych, which most people are getting psych treatment for addiction, although psychiatric treatment and neurological treatment is part of the part of the game. To me, the distinction doesn't matter. Is it impacting your life? How do we how do we work on it if it is?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. Oh, yeah. I mean, from a practical point of view. And I've noticed that during my career, the language has changed. Now it's a substance use disorder. It's like you're not an addict. You suffer from a substance use disorder. So, again, that's goes back to the non-judgemental thing.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. Reducing the stigma around these things.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. This is this doesn't define you. This isn't you. This is just a this is a disorder that we will treat together.<br />
<br />
=== Asteroid Monitoring <small>(1:10:29)</small> ===<br />
* [https://phys.org/news/2021-12-nasa-next-generation-asteroid-impact-online.html NASA's next-generation asteroid impact monitoring system goes online]<ref>[https://phys.org/news/2021-12-nasa-next-generation-asteroid-impact-online.html Phys.org: NASA's next-generation asteroid impact monitoring system goes online]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. All right, Bob, finish us up with a discussion of detecting asteroids that are going to smash into the earth and kill everybody.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yes. Actually, this is just cheered me up a little bit, this news item, because we seem to be making some progress in doing at least in doing our due diligence to find asteroids that could potentially be dangerous to us or to Earth. This is a new impact monitoring system that's now online that could calculate deadly asteroid orbits better than the one that's been calculating for us for the past 20 years. There's a new study describing this system called Century Two, and it was published in the Astronomical Journal this past December 1st. So let's first talk about what Century One had been doing ever since 2002. So the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, JPL, developed the software almost 20 years ago. What it can do in less than 60 minutes, basically, it could accurately tell you the orbit of a newly discovered asteroid for the next 100 years and, of course, whether it would hit the earth or not. Now, this wasn't a part time job for the software either, because we've detected something like 28,000 near-Earth asteroids, NEAs. 28,000 have been found and we find an average of eight more every day. Three thousand a year, every year, every day. Eight more, eight more, eight more.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' And how near is near Bob in this context?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' There's different classes, but near Earth is within relatively near, within millions of miles many millions of miles, which is actually kind of close if you think about it. So to deal with this clearly scary situation, as I as I describe it, JPL manages the Center for Near-Earth Object Studies, CNEOS. So now it's their job to run the numbers on every orbit for every near-Earth asteroid that's discovered. And it does this to support an office, probably the coolest office name ever, NASA's Planetary Defense Coordination Office. And I think we've talked about that, haven't we? I think we talked about that once. It's my favorite office of all time, right? Planetary Defense. It's like that. What's that company, General Atomics? It's just such a such a great 1950s ring to it. So what they do is they provide early detection for potentially hazardous objects. That's PHOs. And OK, so PHOs, they're within five million miles. If you're within five million miles, that's a PHO, which is a type of NEA. But they're clearly much more hazardous because you're only five million miles away within that. So that means, Evan, that near-Earth asteroids, I think, are you know, farther than five million, obviously. This Planetary Defense Office also categorizes the PHOs as 30 to 50 meters, because when you get to that size and at those speeds and the kinetic energy, you can you can do significant damage. This office also tracks and characterizes these PHOs and they issue warnings and stuff like that. So very, very cool. So the Center for Near-Earth Object Studies, they help the Planetary Defense Coordination Office, and they use this sensory software to assess the asteroid orbits. And they've been doing it for years. But the rate of discovery is going to be going up very, very soon as new and much more powerful survey telescopes. Or as my niece used to call them, skeletopes. That was such an awesome mispronunciation. So these new powerful telescopes are going to start looking for near-Earth asteroids, and they anticipate an influx of newly discovered asteroids. And they need to we need to be able to keep up with that. And we need to also be even more accurate because there's going to be so many that the chances we could find something that could potentially be nasty. So they came out with Century Two, which is essentially an upgrade. It's an upgrade to the Century software. So Century Two is obviously like number one in that it can accurately calculate orbits based on gravitational interactions. That's key. You might think that that's what orbits are all about. Gravitational interactions. And you'd be mostly right because the asteroid, any given asteroid, will interact gravitationally mainly with the sun. It's interacting with the sun gravitationally. But the orbit of the asteroid can also be impacted by by other planets. And including the Earth, of course. So that so that plays in, too. But there are non gravitational interactions that can happen to the orbit that can impact the orbit. They're not based on gravity at all. And Century One could not handle them. And what do you think that might be, guys? What would impact the orbit that's not gravitational?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Solar wind.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Kind of, kind of. It's called the Yarkovsky effect. So now imagine an asteroid spinning as you know, which they do. So as that happened, as it's spinning, the side that was heated by the sun eventually spins away from the sun and and faces the opposite direction and it cools down. So that infrared energy is released as it cools. And that minute thermal energy acts as a force. That's a kind of like a little mini engine, a little bit of thrust that over time can actually change the orbit of an asteroid. Now, day to day, of course, that is negligible. You could just completely discount it fully. But after decades or centuries, it could this Yarkovsky effect can actually make dramatic changes to an orbit. And they're very, very difficult to calculate. So difficult that Century One, which had some very slick mathematical algorithms, it couldn't calculate it. But this is what Century Two will be able to do. Now, do you guys remember Apophis, right? That's probably one of the most famous. Yeah, one of the most famous asteroids out there. And mainly because for a little while there, we actually weren't sure, if it was going to hit the earth at some point, more around 2068 when it came back again after the 2029. So we weren't really sure because we couldn't rule out that impact in 2068. And that's why so many people actually know about Apophis. Now, the reason why we couldn't rule it out at that time was mainly because of this Yarkovsky effect. They haven't fully nailed down that what the impact is on the thermal energy that's hitting that asteroid. Of course, we do know now we have fully fleshed out the Yarkovsky effect on Apophis. And we know that Apophis is not going to hit us for at least well over 100 years. So don't worry about Apophis. But that's the Yarkovsky effect right there. That's why people were so scared of Apophis, because we hadn't really nailed it yet. So David Farnokia is a navigation engineer at JPL, and he also helped develop Century Two. He said the fact that Century couldn't automatically handle the Yarkovsky effect was a limitation. Every time we came across a special case like asteroids Apophis, Bennu and 1950 DA, we had to do complex and time consuming manual analyses with Century Two we don't have to do that anymore. So that's a key advantage to to Century Two over Century One. OK, now, Century One couldn't calculate the orbital changes due to the Yarkovsky effect. It also could not deal with asteroid orbits that got really close to the Earth. When you have an asteroid that happens to get really, really close to the Earth and is gravitationally affected much more than normally. What it does is it creates all sorts of uncertainties in the future orbit of the asteroid. So it makes it much, much harder to to predict what's going to happen after the gravitational interaction with the Earth at such close range. You guys have probably heard of keyholes. So those are specific areas in space that if an asteroid went through the keyhole, it could direct, because it went through that keyhole in that specific position, then its next orbit or a subsequent orbit would hit the Earth because it went through that keyhole. So that so you'll often hear about an asteroid going through a keyhole. If it goes through that keyhole, we're kind of screwed in 20 years or 30 years or 100 years, whatever it is, when it comes back, because that keyhole made it change its orbit just enough so that next time it comes around, it gives us a whack. So that so that's kind of related to that. Now, century one could not could not calculate that. If an asteroid was going to come really close to the Earth, century one could not calculate in the future if it if it could hit the Earth with high confidence. Century two can do that. So that's another, a huge plus for century two. And century two is going is so exquisitely sensitive that it could tell you the odds of an impact, even if it's as low as three chances in 10 million. So it's very, very sensitive. And so I do feel a little safer now, but I won't be happy until we have that deflective beam obelisk from that classic Trek episode.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yes.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' What was it called? Paradise syndrome? That would be nice. But I don't think we're going to create a deflective beam obelisk in the ever, actually, ever in the ever.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Right. Yeah. And so this is obviously this is a two pronged approach here. We need to detect the asteroids and we need to work on the technology to deflect them.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' And the key is not to just detect it, but to detect it so far in the future that we have time to deal with it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Thanks, Bob.<br />
<br />
== Who's That Noisy? <small>(1:19:48)</small> ==<br />
{{anchor|futureWTN}} <!-- this is the anchor used by "wtnAnswer", which links the previous "new noisy" segment to this "future" WTN --><br />
<br />
{{wtnHiddenAnswer<br />
|episodeNum = 856 <!-- episode number for previous Noisy --><br />
|answer = llama <!-- brief description of answer, perhaps with a link --><br />
|}}<br />
'''S:''' All right, Jay, it's Who's That Noisy time.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' All right, guys, last week, I played this Noisy.<br />
<br />
[_short_vague_description_of_Noisy] <br />
<br />
All right. Any guesses, guys?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yes, Steve singing in the shower.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Oh, my God.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I don't sing that well.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Steve has become a bird. He has watched them so long.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' A bird imitating Steve singing in the shower.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yes.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I typically every week get some Who's That Noisy response where they say, like, it's Steve doing blah, blah, blah. It's a Steve related noise. First person that sent in a guest, Michael Blaney. And Michael said, "Hi, Jay, the trilling sound is very cool. It's either a fluffly, endlessly replicated device Kirk could use to identify a Klingon or more likely it reminds me of the song of the Tui pronounced like the number two followed by the letter E. This is a bird in New Zealand. Ciao, Michael."<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I think we saw one of those in New Zealand.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I thought we did. That's not correct. But this this definitely sounds like a bird noise. So that's not a bad guess. Another listener named Tassie wrote in and said, "I think this week's who's that noisy is a budgie. It's called a budgerigar from Australia, home of myself and Visto Tutti. That is not correct. Another bird. But like I said, going with a bird in that with that type of noise, I couldn't put you down for that at all. Kay Dingwell wrote in and said, "Is this week's Who's That Noisy a parrot, specifically a cockatiel singing along to a carol. My nearly 25 year old cockatiel seems to think it is because he was trying to call back to the clip", which I think is very funny that there was a bird somewhere that was responding to my Who's That Noisy. It's not a bird. So check this out again. This is a llama doing kind of like an alert call to the other llamas. [plays Noisy] I mean, it is so a bird noise.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Llama alarm.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' If I had a llama, I would have to call it Dolly. What one of you?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No, sorry.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Delay reaction.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, I heard that one before.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' There was no winner.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Again, Jay, you're failing.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I and I'm like picking now I'm picking ones that I think are really easy. It must be like the holidays are coming up and I'm losing my mojo over here. But no, you know that look, you can't win every time. Everybody does not get a reward or an award. What's the difference between a reward and a award?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' A reward is for doing something. An award is for winning something.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Earned versus given.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Isn't an award actually like a physical thing, too?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, like it's more like an object.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Like a magical thing.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's like or like a certificate or a trophy or something.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Anyway, so I will I will throw in a couple of what I consider to be very, very easy ones for you guys. But thank you anyway. This was that this was an interesting noise. I hope you guys learned something. I certainly did. I didn't I would never have thought a large land animal would make a noise like that.<br />
<br />
{{anchor|previousWTN}} <!-- keep right above the following sub-section ... this is the anchor used by wtnHiddenAnswer, which will link the next hidden answer to this episode's new noisy (so, to that episode's "previousWTN") --><br />
=== New Noisy <small>(1:23:03)</small> ===<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So this Week's New Noisy was sent in by a listener named Robert House. And I'm just going to give it to you right now.<br />
<br />
[_short_vague_description_of_Noisy]<br />
<br />
'''J:''' If you think {{wtnAnswer|858| you know the Noisy}}, if you think that you have a good Noisy, you email me WTN@theskepticsguide.org.<br />
<br />
== Announcements <small>(1:25:54)</small> ==<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Hey, Steve.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, Jay.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I've got one announcement.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' OK.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' You could go to [https://shop.theskepticsguide.org/ The Skeptics Guide Shop] and you could buy some some SGU exclusive gear. I'm adding new stuff. So if you've been there before and you're hearing this go again. So I'll be adding new things before this show airs. I'll have some cool stuff in there, some things that I think people might want for the holidays. So please do go to our website and just click the shop link and you will be brought right there and you can help us by helping you.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. Thanks, brother.<br />
<br />
== Name That Quote <small>(1:26:24)</small> ==<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Evan, you're going to do the Name That Quote bit again that you did previously.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, I guess I'm going to have to come up with a name for this segment. I wrote down a couple possibilities and I don't want me to run those by you real quick and see if you want to have any kind of-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Are they puney?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, a couple of them are, of course.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Can you give me the pun? I want the punniest one.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' All right. You want the punniest one? It's probably Quote Them Physics. I also I wasn't going to lead with that one. I also have Rock the Quote take on rock the vote. And but the other ones are a little more straightforward. There's Potent Quotables, Quotation Marks, And I Quote and the knockoff borrowed title, Who's That Quoty? So those are some thoughts. If you guys have some thoughts about what the segment should be, if we choose to continue to do this every once in a while, I'd be happy to take any and all suggestions. But let's get on with it. I've arranged five quotes-<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Evan, Quoting McQuote Face.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I prepared five quotes for all of you. We're going to play a game in which my four fellow rogues are going to each give a guess as to who they think said each of these quotes. And it is multiple choice. So three choices per quote. Ready? Number one, here's the quote. "The thing I'll remember most about the flight is that it was fun. In fact, I'm sure it was the most fun that I'll ever have in my life." So who said that? Was it:<br />
<br />
A) Jeff Bezos<br />
<br />
B) Sally Ride<br />
<br />
C) Chris Hadfield<br />
<br />
Bob, we're going to start with you. Who do you think the guess who are you going to guess?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I say Hadfield.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' OK, Steve.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, I was going to say Hadfield, too.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' OK, Cara.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Hmm. I guess I'll depart and say it was Sally Ride.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' OK, and Jay.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I agree with Cara.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' So you're also saying Sally Ride?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yes.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' And the correct answer is Sally Ride.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yey!<br />
<br />
'''J:''' There it is.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Good for Cara. Good for Jay.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That was my second choice.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Not Jeff Bezos?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' He was too easy.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Well, you know. All right. Quote number two, "To eat is human, to digest divine." Who said or wrote that? I should put it that way, because the three choices are:<br />
<br />
A) Julia Child<br />
<br />
B) Epicurus<br />
<br />
C) Mark Twain?<br />
<br />
This time, Jay, we'll start with you.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Epicurus.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' And Cara.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I'm going to say it was Mark Twain.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Cara says Mark Twain. Let's go with Steve.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, I mean, it sounds like Mark Twain. The reason why I wouldn't say him is because everything sounds like Mark Twain.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Right.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So it's a little bit. Could that be Julia Child? It sounds a little too clever for her. Maybe I'll maybe I'll go for the the radical one and say Julia Child.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Would she say the opposite?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' What, to digest is human and to eat is divine? And Bob, who are you guessing?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yes, Twain.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Twain. OK, the answer is Mark Twain. So Cara and Bob.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' This is so witty.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Got that correct. And yes, I did confirm it, because I have to look up every Mark Twain quote you come across.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So much falsely attributed to him.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' This is directly from the Mark Twain web page, the curator herself. So it is solid. OK, next, here's the quote. "Man is still the most extraordinary computer of all." Who said that? Was it:<br />
<br />
A) Alan Turing<br />
<br />
B) Steve Jobs<br />
<br />
C) John F. Kennedy<br />
<br />
Let's start with Steve.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Jobs.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Next is Cara.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, I was thinking Jobs also.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Next is Jay.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Steve Jobs<br />
<br />
'''E:''' And Bob.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, the others don't make sense. Got to be Jobs, but that's probably where I'm going to be wrong.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' OK, and the answer is John F. Kennedy.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, no way.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Why would he say that?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' A speech he made in 1963.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It does make sense that he would be calling people computers in 1963, though.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But the thing is, we didn't call computers computers in 1963. That's my problem with that.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, it might be that computers were just starting to be called them. That's why he said that.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Well, wait, wait, wait. When was the transition from people as computers?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' But the computer was a person, right?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' But that was like as well before the 60s, though, wasn't it?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Because even in Dr. Strangelove, which was produced in 1962, they refer to computers.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, OK. So it's more like the 40s that they were calling.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, I guess that's earlier than I thought.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, but that's why it didn't make sense.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' So swept you on that one. Two more to go. Here we go. Next quote. "When you look at the ingredients, if you can't spell or pronounce it, you probably shouldn't eat it." Was that:<br />
<br />
A) Dr. Oz<br />
<br />
B) Vani Hari<br />
<br />
C) Gordon Ramsay<br />
<br />
Let's start with Jay.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Who is the middle person?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Vani Hari.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The food babe.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Food babe.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Oh, yeah, sure. It was her for sure.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' And Cara.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I assumed it was the Food Babe, but I wouldn't put it past Dr. Oz, so I'm going to go on a limb and say that idiot running for the Senate is the one who said that, Steve.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I mean, I know the food babe said, if not that something almost exactly identical to them.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' And and I'll say definitely Vani. I mean, I remember she said that.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I feel like I remember it, too. But maybe it was slightly different.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, maybe, but it's not. It is Vani.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I got one.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Hold that for one of your blogs Steve.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I feel like that's some dumb thing that Dr. Oz would have like.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I think she told me that herself.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' The food babe, gosh, she's still around. And the last quote, here we go, the fifth. "There's just no coming back from biological death because that's the ultimate death and there's no coming back from that." Was it Bob Novella, Jay Novella or Steve Novella? Let's start with Cara.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It wasn't Jay. I don't think I don't think it would be Bob either. I think that's Steve.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' You think it's Steve. OK.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I think that's Steve.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Let's jump to Bob.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Really?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Don't go to me.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I'm going to you, Bob.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Bob said it.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' OK, Bob, thinks he said it. Jay?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It was Bob.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Damn.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' And Steve.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I knew it was Bob before you finished the quote. ''(laughter)''<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So so were you making the argument, Bob, that we got to get to a point where we don't have biological death?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, it was just distinguishing a definition of death, a true final definition of death, because the definition of death has changed over the centuries. A hundred years ago, if you stop breathing, oh, he's dead. Not today. So what is that point? And that point is biological death.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And what do you mean by biological?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Your cells die.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That is a point where even in science fiction, they could not resurrect you because the information that consists that that makes you you could not be inferred by anything that's left over. So that's biological death.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Have you said this multiple times?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' No, he just said it on Episode 144, dating back to what the two thousand two thousand and seven, basically.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, I get to I get to claim ignorance because I wasn't on the show yet.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' What? You haven't memorized our entire back catalog, Cara. My gosh.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Evan, not only do I actually remember Bob saying that it is such a Bobism, I would know Bob said that even if I didn't know he said it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' How he said it or because of the content itself.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Oh, it's the way he said it.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, it's the wording.<br />
<br />
''' The wording is so Bob.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' How he repeated it after.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yes. That's right.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Evan, that is actually a lot of fun to try to guess who said a quote on this show. That could be tricky.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I'll make sure I incorporate in future-<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Or for ridiculously easy.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Well, but fun, but fun. Good to look back. I'll remember to incorporate that in future contests like this. OK, so Cara and Steve each got two of them correct. Bob and Jay got three out of the five correct. So Bob and Jay tie for the win this game. Well done, gentlemen. Well done, everyone.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. Well, good job, Evan. That was fun.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Good.<br />
<br />
== Questions/Emails/Corrections/Follow-ups <small>(1:32:06)</small> ==<br />
<br />
<blockquote><p style="line-height:115%"> Hi all. I am pleased that you all are traveling again and it sounds like your audience continues to grow which is awesome. My 8 YO has been struggling this year. I have been stopping myself from writing to you for parenting advice specific to me but I wanted to share the thought holes I’ve been going down. 2 main points: I’m not sure I’m able to give an objective assessment of my own child for human emotional reasons. It’s also been tough to find available specialists to see him for some kind of CBT which tells me that he is not the only kid struggling. Second, I can’t seem to come up to a conclusion to what kind of intervention will be most helpful and what the state of understanding is for childhood psychology. “Did we screw this kid up already?” Is the urgent question and I’m probably just seeking reassurance. Looking forward to year end as I’ve been saving a pen-dantic comment about one of Steve’s predictions for 2021. Also, Evan: I’ve been racking my brain all week as to where we’re those aliens from Futurama from? I looked it up Friday. Thanks Y’all. Still working on my tourism reel for reasons to come to Minneapolis. </p>Nick</blockquote><br />
<br />
'''S:''' We're going to do one email. This will be a little bit quick. This is this comes from Nick and I'm going to skip to the meat of this. He says my eight year old has been struggling this year. I have been stopping myself from writing to you for parenting advice specific to me, but I wanted to share the thought holes I've been going down. Two main points. I'm not sure I'm able to give an objective assessment of my own child for human emotional reasons. It's also been tough to find available specialists to see him for some kind of CBT. That's cognitive behavioral therapy, which tells me that he is not the only kid struggling. Second, I can't seem to come up to a conclusion to what kind of intervention will be most helpful to what the state of understanding is for childhood psychology. Did we screw this kid up already is the urgent question. And I'm probably just seeking reassurance.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, so he specifically asked me, like, did I as the parent parents crew up my child.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' My eight year old. So that's why I wanted to just answer this email, because I wrote back to reassure him. No, like I said, unless you did something environmentally extreme.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, unless you like did something that's like on the adverse childhood experiences kind of scale.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, you lock him in a closet for eight years or something that would be considered abusive or neglectful or whatever.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, abuse or neglect.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I mean, yeah, if you're just yeah, if you're just worried, like, is your parenting style or whatever? Did you screw up your kid? You know, the evidence show this. The thing is, if you go back 50 years, that was kind of the default assumption of psychiatry and psychology, that any kid with mental issues or challenges was somehow screwed up by his mother.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' You know, it was always the refrigerator mother. Remember that? Yeah, like she was too cold.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Exactly. But we've you know, the research has sort of sort of like, no, it isn't bad parenting. A lot of these things are neurological issues or they're psychological, but they're a consequence of of mostly genetics or a lot of things. But it's not bad parenting. That's not the go to explanation. I know it's hard for parents and you feel like what we must have done something wrong. Why is my kid struggling with this or with that or with ADHD? Or and just like with the previous conversation, it's like, no, it's not your fault. It's not. And it's not about blame. Sometimes it's completely biological. Sometimes it's a combination and they and like as a family, you may benefit from from intervention of one kind or another. But it's not about blame and it's not and it's almost never about bad parenting.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, I think that the fear is that we're talking about the biopsychosocial model, right. And social is a part of that. And as when kids are really young, their only social experiences are in the home, which is why when kids are very, very young, adverse childhood experiences have an inordinate effect on their development. But I like to think of it more as I don't want to say bad parenting, but like neutral parenting little mistakes here and there. They don't take away from a sort of neutral place. Kids are pretty dang resilient. Obviously, neglect and abuse do. Good parenting is additive. It's protective. The more you nurture and love your child, the more that's going to be beneficial for your child, especially when they're very young. But, yeah, we have such a culture, especially around mental illness, of blame of like why like we want it's because we want an explanation. We even see it around biological illness, like people blame themselves or blame others for cancer, for diseases that they have no control over whatsoever. And I think it spills into mental illness where there's even more of a conversation about willpower and about and there's so much blame, there's so much guilt, there's so much shame. Yeah, unless you were like abusing your kid or neglecting your kid.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, we're not giving you a pass on parental neglect, but it's also like if you're talking about, oh, like there's maybe there's like not an optimal psychological dynamic in the family. And the other thing that comes up is the child is often the identified patient. I'm sure you know about this, Cara, where it's like, no, it's usually a family dynamic issue. And it's not the child's problem. And the family might benefit from family counseling or whatever. But that we're talking about mild things. If someone has something hardcore, you don't get like ADHD from bad parenting, right? You don't get obsessive compulsive disorder from bad parenting.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Or bipolar disorder.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, you don't get bipolar disorder. You don't get major depression. These are these are illnesses. Yeah. But then that also gets back to the stigma of mental illness. There are still a segment of society that doesn't like to think of mental illness as an illness. They want to think of it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No, they think they can just like smile their way through it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, right. Or whatever.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, just like will themselves out of it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Or that it's all a choice in some bizarre way. It's just it's silly.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It also sounds like the concern in the email was about how to seek treatment, what to what treatment to seek. Obviously, there are qualified professionals who specialize in child psychology. You definitely if it's a child, you want to take them to a child therapist.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, yeah. I think my advice is basically keep looking. You know, yeah, it can be challenging. I've had encountered this personally, very hard to find competent professionals in this area. And there's a lot of pseudoscience. I had to encounter a lot of practitioners throwing woo at me. I'm like, really? So you know who the hell you're talking to kind of thing. But you just got to keep looking unfortunately, just keep looking. All right, guys, let's move on to science or fiction.<br />
<br />
== Science or Fiction <small>(1:38:00)</small> ==<br />
{{SOFResults<br />
|fiction =Dimetrodon <!-- short word or phrase representing the item --><br />
|fiction2 = <!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
<br />
|science1 =Quetzalcoatlus <!-- short word or phrase representing the item --><br />
|science2 =Cricosaurus <!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
|science3 = <!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
<br />
|rogue1 =Bob <!-- rogues in order of response --><br />
|answer1 =Quetzalcoatlus<!-- item guessed, using word or phrase from above --><br />
<br />
|rogue2 =Evan<br />
|answer2 =Quetzalcoatlus<br />
<br />
|rogue3 =Jay<br />
|answer3 =Quetzalcoatlus<br />
<br />
|rogue4 =Cara <!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
|answer4 =Dimetrodon <!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
<br />
|rogue5 = <!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
|answer5 = <!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
<br />
|host =Steve <!-- asker of the questions --><br />
<!-- for the result options below,<br />
only put a 'y' next to one. --><br />
|sweep = <!-- all the Rogues guessed wrong --><br />
|clever = <!-- each item was guessed (Steve's preferred result) --><br />
|win =y <!-- at least one Rogue guessed wrong, but not them all --><br />
|swept = <!-- all the Rogues guessed right --><br />
}}<br />
{{anchor|theme}}<br />
''Voice-over: It's time for Science or Fiction.''<br />
{{Page categories<br />
|SoF with a Theme = <!--<br />
<br />
search for "THEME (nnnn)" to create a redirect page, then edit that page with:<br />
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#REDIRECT<br />
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}}<br />
{{SOFinfo<br />
|theme = Not a dinosaur <!-- delete or leave blank if no theme --><br />
<br />
|item1 = Quetzalcoatlus northropi, the largest flying animal ever with a wingspan of 10 meters, was able to take off from the ground by jumping directly into the air. <!-- item text from show notes --><br />
|link1 = <ref>[https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02724634.2021.1907587 Taulor&Francis Online: Morphology and taxonomy of Quetzalcoatlus Lawson 1975 (Pterodactyloidea: Azhdarchoidea)]</ref><br />
<br />
|item2 = While contemporary with dinosaurs and often mistaken for one, Dimetrodon is not a dinosaur and is more closely related to modern lizards.<!-- item text from show notes --><br />
|link2 = <ref>[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dimetrodon Wikipedia: Dimetrodon]</ref><br />
<br />
|item3 = Cricosaurus suevicus was a crocodile relative fully adapted to aquatic life, and looked like a cross between a dolphin and a crocodile. <!-- item text from show notes --><br />
|link3 = <ref>[https://www.palaeontologyonline.com/articles/2018/fossil-focus-thalattosuchia/ Paleontology Online: Fossil Focus: Thalattosuchia]</ref><br />
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|item4 = <!-- delete or leave blank if no 4th item --><br />
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<br />
''Voice-over: It's time for Science or Fiction.''<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Each week, I come up with three science news items or facts, two real and one fake, and I challenge my panel of skeptics to tell me which one is the fake. There's a theme this week. The theme of this week is not a dinosaur. So these are about creatures that were around during the time of dinosaurs, but are not dinosaurs. OK.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' OK.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' OK.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. Here's the first one. Item number one, Quetzalcoatlus northropi, the largest flying animal ever with a wingspan of 10 meters, was able to take off from the ground by jumping directly into the air. Item number two, while contemporary with dinosaurs and often mistaken for one, Dimetrodon is not a dinosaur and is more closely related to modern lizards. And item number three, Cricosaurus sufficus was a crocodile relative, fully adapted to aquatic life and looked like a cross between a dolphin and a crocodile. All right, Bob, you weren't here last week, so you get to go first this week.<br />
<br />
=== Bob's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''B:''' So the premise, though, is that these are not the premise is that they're not dinosaurs, right?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Just evaluating on OK.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, we're not deciding which one's not a dinosaur.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, that has nothing to do with which is science or fiction. It's just the category.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Quetzalcoatlus, basically the biggest thing that ever flew. On the earth. Really? Take off from the ground. Oof, I don't know about that. I think was almost as big as an F-15. OK, let's get the next one, Dimetrodon, not a dinosaur and is more closely related. Oh, so this. All right. So so then we have to believe when you say that Dimetrodon was not a dinosaur, we get by definition that has to be true.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Not saying that I could be lying about anything.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' OK, so then so then it's not the theme. Oh, you're really making it confusing. So it's not necessarily the theme. All right. More close to modern.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, that's not what is confusing. That's the theme. But the fiction is the fiction so. But go ahead.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' So, yes, I mean, if I remember, Dimetrodon is not a dinosaur. See, I don't think Quetzalcoatlus was able to take off by jumping straight from the from the into the air from the ground. Too heavy. Fiction.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, Evan.<br />
<br />
=== Evan's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, Bob, I wish you hadn't chosen that one as fiction because I was going to choose that one as science. But now that you talked about it, I think it might be fiction. I only know the name Quetzalcoatl from mythology, right? It's a god. So, I mean, but wouldn't a god be able to do things that would otherwise seem impossible to say a person? So I'm kind of going at it from that angle and like, yeah, no way jumping directly into the air. Absolutely not. But if you were this godlike creature, then yeah, then you would be able to do that.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Right. Why does God need a starship?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Exactly. So I'm thinking you might be right, though, Bob. It's whereas I don't really have no so much about the other two. Dimetrodon, not a dinosaur. That sounds OK, I suppose. And then the Cricosaurus. Cricosaurus, Cricosaurus, Cricosaurus.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I think Cricosaurus.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Cricosaurus. It sounds almost made up, right, Jay? That sounds made up to me.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, they're all made up. Their names are, at least.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Well, no, I understand someone had to name it, but Steve made it up on the spot.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Jokingly made up.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' A cross between a dolphin and a crocodile. Gee whiz. All right, Bob, I'm going to follow you into the darkness here. I'll say that's a quadle. I'll say that one is the fiction.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' OK, Jay.<br />
<br />
=== Jay's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I make this very easy on myself. Which one of these three sounds the most like a real dinosaur? And I would say that that is the second one. So therefore, that's the fiction, the Dimetrodon.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But none of them are dinosaurs.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Supposedly.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's the point.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Is that your answer, number two?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Wait, wait, wait. So wait, I'm sorry, Steve. The premise here is one of these is a dinosaur.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No, none of them are dinosaurs.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' None of them are dinosaurs. But all the rules are all bits are off with the fiction because it's the fiction. But the category is not a dinosaur.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right. These are all things that people often mistake for dinosaurs.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' All right. OK, gotcha. I still. Wait, we're picking the one that we think is fake.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You just say one of these things is not true. One of these things is not true. That's it. It's very simple. OK.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' You know what? When you said that, Steve, I thought that one of them. One of them is not a dinosaur.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No, none of them are.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' None of them are dinosaurs.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I got it. I got it. I got it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But just forget it. Forget about the category. Just pick the one, the statement that's not true.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, just go with the words. Forget about that. Just go with the words.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Don't think about the word elephant.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I'll go with the quesicado.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' OK. And Cara.<br />
<br />
=== Cara's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I am so glad you picked me last, and I think you picked me last because you know that I'm a nerd in this area. I'm obsessed with this stuff.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' In dinosaurs, but not these things.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No, I love not. I love non-dinosaur dinosaur, like non-dinosaur organisms. So here is what I think. I think Quetzalcoatlus probably could jump in the air because it's crazy looking because it has like it doesn't look like a bird. It doesn't have little bird legs. It has like dinosaur looking legs. It's got big, beefy legs. So I bet you it could jump. I also don't remember cricosaurus, but there are quite a few swimming reptiles, marine reptiles that are crocodilian. So why not? But I'm pretty sure that Dimitrodon is a synapsid, and synapsids are mammal like reptiles, mammal like reptiles. I think it is probably related to mammals. And I'm also pretty sure it was extinct long before dinosaurs came to pass. So I'm going to go with Dimitrodon's the fiction.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #3 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' OK, so you all agree with the third one.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That might be right.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I'll surrender right now. You don't even have to explain anything.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You all agree with the third one, so we'll start there. Cricosaurus suvicus was a crocodile relative fully adapted to aquatic life and looked like a cross between a dolphin and a crocodile. You guys all think that one is science and that one is science. Dolphin.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' A dolphin crocodile?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' There's a ton of really cool reptiles at this time with incredibly adaptive radiation of of stuff. So this was this is a group called the thalatosuchia, the thalatosuchia, which are crocodilians. And this one group did evolve to be fully adapted to the water. So they look like dolphins, but they have the heads of crocodiles.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's cool. So they're not they're not like related to mosasaurs at all.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, yeah, well, sure. Yeah, they are.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I mean, everything's related.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But yeah, yeah, not super closely. No, it's a separate-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I don't know if they're even considered crocodilians.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, yeah. Mosasaurs are different like the plesiosaurs, the mosasaurs. And there's the thalatosuchians. It's like just a different group. But yeah, they were around similar time. And yeah, there's a ton of stuff adapted to the water. You're right. A lot of reptiles adapt to the water. Cool looking thing. It looks like a dolphin with a crocodile head. It's really cool.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Because I think of mosasaurs as being a little dolphin like, but they're not really. They don't really look like dolphins.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's had a fluke and the fins and but the crocodile head. Very cool. Crycosaurus, again, the crazy sounding name. You got to go with that. All right, let's go back.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So weird. It had weird legs. It's like a dolphin with legs.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, yeah. But they're not walking legs, though. They are swimming fin.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' They're swimmy legs.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, they swimmy legs.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So creepy.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #1 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, let's go to number one, Quetzalcoatlus northropi, the largest flying animal ever with a wingspan of 10 meters, was able to take off from the ground by jumping directly into the air. A lot of things there that could be the fiction.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, crap.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' This one is. This is science.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' They're so cool. Quetzalcoatlus is so cool.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It is cool. So there was recently this is the inspiration for this theme, because there recently was a series of six papers doing a full evaluation of Quetzalcoatlus as a genus. So northropi is one of the species. But Quetzalcoatlus is a genus. There's multiple species. Northropi was the first discovered and it's the biggest. Ten meters. Man, that's a massive wingspan. This thing was a huge, huge animal.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' These things were the size of giraffes. They're freaking huge.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' How do we know that it took off from the ground? So a couple of ways. One is that we know it couldn't take a running jump because it's it couldn't walk with its wings because of the bone structure of its shoulders. It could not, propel itself with its forelimbs.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' And what? And it couldn't climb either? Is that what you're going to say?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, because its wings are army like they're like folded, like little front arms.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The way they walk was really weird. So they would like move like the left wing out to the side in order to make room for that to the leg to step forward. It may be leaned on its right wing when it did that. But then it would it would reverse it. It would bring the wing, the left wing down, bring the right wing up and take her step with its right leg. So then that's how they would walk. So they just had to move the wings out of the way. But they weren't able to, like, propel themselves with their forelimbs. So they're basically bipedal. They might have used them for a little bit of quadrupedal aid, but they were basically bipedal. But they couldn't run and take off. They were too big to climb, really. They were just too massive creatures. There's a lot of comparisons made to the other, like modern large water birds like storks that would take off in the exact same way. They would jump into the air. Now, why would they need to jump into the air? Because they couldn't flap their wings from standing still because they couldn't get a full down stroke. Their wings would hit the ground. They're too big. They would have to jump up in order to get a full downward stroke with their wings. And Cara's correct. Their legs were massive. Their hind legs were just really powerful, more powerful than they would have to be just for walking. But they but powerful enough that they could jump six feet into the air or whatever they had to do in order to get a full down stroke with their wings. So you put all that together. That was the conclusion of the analysis. That's that's how they must have taken off, just by jumping into the air and getting a full down stroke with their wings.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #2 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So all this means that while contemporary with dinosaurs and often mistaken for one dimetrodon, is it dimetrodon? Or you see we're saying demetrodon?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I'm saying demetrodon but I went I took paleontology. I took paleontology in college because I'm a nerd and I love this topic. I took it in Texas. And I don't know, we say things weird down there. But also, you guys say things weird in Connecticut. I will say that the minute you said the theme is non dinosaur or things that people confuse for dinosaurs in my head, I go, Demetrodon. This is the first thing I thought.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's why I see. That's why I said anything. Demetrodon is not a dinosaur and is more closely related to modern leaders. But there's two things that are wrong there. And Cara, you hit them on both of them. So first of all, dimetrodons went extinct 40 million years before dinosaurs evolved. So they were not contemporary dinosaurs. And they're not more closely related to lizards. So lizards and dinosaurs are all in one group. And then demetrodon is a synapsid, you're correct, which is in a separate group that is related to early mammals. So demetrodon is not an ancestor to mammals, but it is in the in the group of mammal like reptiles.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' They're so weird.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So it's essentially the same evolutionary distance from lizards and dinosaurs, right? Not more closely related to lizards.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' They think of them as like Spinosaurus was the really tall one that looks like T-Rex, but had a sail on its back. People mistaken that because he had a sail on his back. They're like, oh, like in kids bedsheets and stuff, they draw pictures of demetrodon. And they're like, look at the dinosaurs.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, totally. But the other thing is Cara. So the old picture of a demetrodon was with the legs out to the side, the belly on the ground. But the more modern reconstructions think that the legs were underneath and it was walking more upright, partly based upon the track, the footprint, the tracks that we have tracks of them.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That would make sense.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And they're narrow, like they're close together and there's no belly drag. But the paleontologists say, well, maybe they swing back and forth really extremely when they walk, which would bring their feet closer together when they in the path. But the tracks don't really support that. So it may be that they did walk more like with their legs underneath them rather rather than out to the side.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, but wouldn't see, but wouldn't the anatomy, wouldn't these the skeleton itself absolutely show the orientation of the legs under under the body?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's all about how you how you articulate the.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The short answer is no. And it would absolutely wouldn't necessarily because it's this quality of the completeness of the skeletons, but also you can make choices about how things fit together.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But if you look at old dinosaurs in museums, it's amazing what the mounts look like compared to now.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But here's the thing about the when I was reading like the updates on the Dimetrodon, they were saying this question, this is how it was reconstructed a hundred years ago. And no one's really questioned it since.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' And that's the problem.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. Take a fresh look. I was like, yeah, it makes more sense to have to have it this way. Actually, Dimetrodon-<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That's what I mean. Yeah, they could have to find that from first principles instead of like going with what it was.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Let me ask you guys a question of these three Quetzalcoatlus, Dimetrodon and Cricosaurus. Which one do you think was discovered first? Like how long ago.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Cricosaurus.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Dimetrodon.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, what would be the giveaway?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, it could be Dimetrodon, because I think it's-<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Cricosaurus, that that group among the first really ancient reptiles discovered was from that group.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Huh?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' There were at least if not specifically that species or at least the group that it belongs to the crocodilian swimming crocodiles.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Do you do you know where they were? Oh, Germany, three skulls in Germany. Interesting. Dimetrodon, I know, is an American.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, although that has also been recently discovered in Europe.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, OK. Cool.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It is mostly American, the fossils. But there were some recent finds in Europe. Yeah. And Quetzalcoatlus is also like near Mexico. That's why it's based on having the Mexican Quetzalcoatl, which is a flying god, although it had feathers which doesn't really fit with the pterodactyls. But that's where the name came from.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. And they're cool. If you've never seen a skeleton in person. Go see a Quetzalcoatlus. It blows your mind how big they are.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. Yeah. The thing is and part of why I like this this theme is that we do get like over and over again exposed to the same few species. Everybody knows T-Rex and Brontosaurus.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Triceratops.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And Triceratops. But there's so many amazingly bizarro things out there that we know about. And these aren't even the most bizarre. There are just some you see some pictures of like, what the hell is that? So it really is worth exploring just the number of different groups, the entire groups of animals alive at the time of the dinosaurs or whatever, even at any time in the past, that you're not even aware existed. And some of them are really bizarro to modernize. So definitely just tool around the Internet and look for weird crap like that. You'll be amazed at what's out there.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I'm going to Google weird extinct species.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Careful. You might wind up binging.<br />
<br />
== Skeptical Quote of the Week <small>(1:54:15)</small> ==<br />
<br />
<blockquote>We are all delusional to some extent. Human brains were not selected to perceive reality. They were selected to reproduce.<br>– {{W|Shankar Vedantam}}, journalist, writer, and science correspondent</blockquote><br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, Evan, give us a quote.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' This quote was suggested by a listener, someone named Visto Tutti. Never heard of him before. Thanks for listening. "We are all delusional to some extent. Human brains were not selected to perceive reality. They were selected to reproduce." And that was said by Shankar Vedantam, who is a host and creator of Hidden Brain. Very popular podcast.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So that's I agree with that quote, except it's a little reductionist meaning-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Interesting. Yeah, it's sort of making a false dichotomy there.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Maybe this is the reproduced part, but I think the perception of reality, I think-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, that's true. We in no way. Yeah, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It kind of misses the point, though, as a neuroscientist, is what I would say. It's not that it wasn't our brains are not selected to perceive reality. It's that our perception is optimized for things other than being completely accurate. But it's not all about reproduction. It's also about survival, you know?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Well, yeah, so it's kind of related because it was optimized to show us just enough reality so that we can't the brain can reproduce.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, but it's not it's not how much reality to it. It's the way it it reconstructs reality. You know what I mean? It was adapted to the things that favour our survival, which is not necessarily being the most accurate or the highest fidelity. And in fact, sometimes it's wrong. It's deliberately wrong. But in a way that favours our reproductive success.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But in a pithy way, isn't that kind of what he said?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, I agree. So I'm saying I agree with it in general. It is pithy. It's a fun quote. But I just it's a little as stated, it's a little reductionist. And it takes a lot of explanation to really say what it what it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, I bet you that came at the end of a longer explanation.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Probably. Or before or before.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Almost Michio Kaku esque.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Almost. Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Almost as bad as him.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Except not at all.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' But except, right, except not. Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I wouldn't go that far. But yeah. All right. Well, thank you all for joining me this week.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' You got it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Thanks Steve.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Sure man.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Thank you, Steve.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Last, next week is our last regular show of the year.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, my gosh.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Weird.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The week after that will be a show we pre-recorded recently when we were in Colorado.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right. So don't send us email.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. Why are you publishing a whole show? And then the next one after that will be our year and year in review.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, boy.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' End of the year show.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Wow.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' What a year.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. So we'll see you guys all next week.<br />
<br />
== Signoff/Announcements ==<br />
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}}</div>Hearmepurrhttps://www.sgutranscripts.org/w/index.php?title=SGU_Episode_857&diff=19087SGU Episode 8572024-01-08T18:38:56Z<p>Hearmepurr: episode done</p>
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<!-- note that you can put the Rogue's infobox initials inside triple quotes to make the initials bold in the transcript. This is how the final statement from Steve is typed at the end of this transcript: '''S:''' —and until next week, this is your {{SGU}}.--><br />
<br />
== Introduction ==<br />
''Voice-over: You're listening to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.''<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Hello and welcome to the {{SGU|link=y}}. Today is Wednesday, December 8<sup>th</sup>, 2021, and this is your host, Stephen Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella...<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Hey, everybody.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Cara Santa Maria...<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Howdy.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Jay Novella...<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Hey, guys.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' ...and Evan Bernstein.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Good evening, everyone.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So is everybody caught up on their holiday shopping.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Which holiday?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Festivus?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' What?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Not even a little bit.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I know not of it.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Hanukkah's done. Done and done.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Don't you have like eight nights of gifts or something?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, yeah. Eight nights. Eight nights. And my family got the exact same thing all eight nights.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' What'd they get?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Not a damn thing.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Freshly laundered clothes?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' No, I tell you what, in all honesty, for example, my daughter, Rachel, she likes to go to concerts, as you know. So instead of kind of waiting for Hanukkah or some kind of calendar-determined celebration to come along, we just kind of gift her over the course of the year as those events kind of come up. So it's much less formal in our house. We've never really been so into the whole must-give-a-present-on-a-specific-day-or-holiday kind of routine.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, that's very healthy.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Never took hold.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I'm a big fan of giving gifts that people want rather than a surprise gift.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Screw that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I mean, you could do a mix if you see if you come across something or if you really know. But I would much rather, I totally err on the side of, I know that you want this, here you go. Tell me what you want me to get you. There's actually literature to this. It's very inefficient to buy gifts that you're not sure somebody wants and needs because you tend to value it more than they do. And it's actually an inefficient way to expend resources, which I know is like the most un-<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Christmas-like.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I know.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Christmas-like idea possible. Your gift-giving is inefficient. But it's a very easy fix. It's just, you know-<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yes, you give her a receipt with it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Prioritize. Well, those gift receipts are wonderful. But prioritize knowing what people want, even if you have to ask them. I remember, like just talking to my wife about this, she said the best gift she got as a child from her parents was when they opened up the Sears catalogue and said, pick what you want.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, see, I'm the opposite. I hate that. That's how my friend Kelly's family does their gift-giving. And it drives me crazy.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Really?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' When we were kids, they used to go shopping together. She would pick it out. They would, she would watch them buy it. And then she'd be like, can I have it? And they'd be like, no, and wrap it and put it under the tree. And I'm like, there's no surprise.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But here's the here's the compromise that I do now. It's like, give me a list way longer than you possibly will get. And then at least you won't know which of the things on the list I'm going to pick from.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's all right.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The only downside is that it puts a lot of the burden on the person. But hey, if you want to get the gifts that you want, put a little bit of-<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Gotta earn it.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' There's a price you got to pay. But that, of course, reminds me, I distinctly remember, Steve will see if you remember this like I do, my mom and dad gave gave Jay that choice, Jay, here's a catalogue. Jay must have been, I don't know, eight, ten, somewhere around there. Jay, here's a catalogue. Circle what you want. I swear to God, almost everything in that catalogue.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I remember that.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Almost everything. It was endless.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I think the best thing to do, but it requires usually it's for like the your partner or like your best friend, like somebody you're very close to, is I just kind of listen, notice throughout the year.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Totally.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' If I come across something that they I remember they pointed out or that reminds me of them, pick it up so that you're not stressed in December.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Totally. I always prefer to do that. But if I just if that event didn't happen, like I didn't come across the thing and I get behind the eight ball, it sucks. Of course, also, like after being married for 30 years, it's just a lot of the the range of things has narrowed significantly because a lot of the one off gifts have been used. So now, like this year, my wife and I got each other a new refrigerator for Christmas and it's wonderful.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yes. Be practical.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's smart.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, absolutely.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Why not? Yeah. Jennifer and I got each other this year for our holiday, a new roof and a solar panel system. That was that was our that was our gift to ourselves. That cost a lot of money and we're very happy.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Buy the things you need by not wasting money on crap.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Things that who knows what you'll do with. But we know what we're doing with a roof and a solar system.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But I have been doing some online shopping and, oh, my goodness, you guys if you search for curated lists of gift ideas online, it's half pseudoscience. It's so frustrating. Now, to be fair, I did accidentally type into Google best holiday griffs. But even when I corrected, for example, you have the acupressure, matt and pillow. There's a lot of that stuff of the alternative medicine pseudoscience.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Of course.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All of the-<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It's huge.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The Reiki stuff and the reflexology is everywhere and aromatherapy and detox just rife in all of these curated gift lists.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Well, Steve, then I'll jump off that and tell you about what I found, which is similar. So this caught my attention, as you might imagine. It was said futuristic patch that uses nanotech to relieve your pain like, oh, what is this? So this company, KAILO, K-A-I-L-O, they raised almost one and a half million in under 30 days in their crowdfunding campaign. So this is what it says. Kailo works with the body's nervous system. Each Kailo contains nano capacitors that work as a bio antenna, which in turn assists the body in its reaction to pain. So basically you put it on and pain goes away. I can't wait to get this.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I'll buy two.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Nano capacitors and just and it says reuse it. Keep reusing it. Wow.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Here's one from a recommendation from Forbes.com of all places on their hot holiday gifts. The vital red light elite. Yep. For one thousand three hundred forty nine dollars, you too can step into the world of light therapy and experience health benefits like never before. It is the best kept secret used by top Hollywood celebrities, professional athletes, beauty experts and doctors to help with skin health, anti-aging, mental sharpness, pain and muscle recovery. Thirteen hundred bucks.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Whoa. Why? Why? I'm seeing a list where it's all just this weird like pseudoscientific pain management stuff. First of all, none of this works we know that I've seen the same thing, the Kailo. I'm also seeing this thing called AccuLeaf, which is literally a plastic. It looks like a plastic bag chip and you stick it in that webbing between your forefinger and your thumb. Acupressure. It's supposed to it's supposed to give you migraine relief by hitting this pressure point. But also I'm like, why are these gift guides all just like things for people who are in pain? I wouldn't want to open up like a weird plastic acupressure chip clips and knee sleeves and pain patches. What a sad Christmas present. That's rough.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Everyone's in pain. Everyone's hurting.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Hey, Evan, do you want to improve your gas mileage by improve your gas mileage by 35%?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Who wouldn't, Steve?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Apparently cars are programmed to be massively fuel inefficient and all you have to do is change their programming of the fuel in doohickey with the connecticazoid and 35% improvement of fuel efficiency. Automakers apparently either don't know about this or are unwilling to spend $5 on a new computer chip to make their cars massively more competitive in the marketplace.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' What? What do they do? Tweak the fuel injection system so it only puts 35% less fuel into the engine? I don't what?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It does nothing.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Holy crap. I just saw the price for this Kailo Nano patch pain reliever $99 for one, a hundred dollars for one reusable pain minimizing bullshit.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Well, that's a lot less than this red light $1,300 gizmo that you have to stand next to all day apparently.<br />
<br />
== News Items ==<br />
<br />
=== Treating the Unvaccinated <small>(8:33)</small> ===<br />
* [https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/treating-the-unvaccinated/ Treating the Unvaccinated]<ref>[https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/treating-the-unvaccinated/ Science-Based Medicine: Treating the Unvaccinated]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. Let's move on to some news items. We have actually some interesting news items this week. I'm going to start by asking you guys a question, a provocative question. Should we prioritize medical treatment to people who are vaccinated over people who are unvaccinated?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh boy.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' If ICU beds and ventilators are in limited availability and we have to triage who's going to get that ICU bed, should we penalize people who are sick with COVID because they were unvaccinated?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I defer to medical moral codes for the answer on that one.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, triage is tricky because typically when there are enough resources, triage is about who is the sickest, right? Who needs the most help? That's the person who gets at the front of the line. But in mass casualty situations, in wartime, triage also involves who is the most likely to recover. And so there is framing it like should we penalize people who didn't get vaccinated I think gives you the answer. But there is sort of a question when resources are incredibly limited as to like, is this person so sick that venting them may not help? And would we put, would we utilize that vent when there's another person who needs the vent but has a better chance of recovery? And whether I think vaccination calculates into that, but it's obviously not the whole part of the equation.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. So what you're talking about Cara is the principle of utility, right? Which is the primary way in which these medical triage decisions are made. We also have to say that there are, there's the normal context of medical ethical decision making. And then there is the crisis context when you have, as you say, like you're in a war situation or pandemic situation where there is a critical lack of resources and you are deciding who gets the limited resources or the way organ transplants work because they are always limited. You are always deciding who's going to die on the wait list, who's going to get bumped up to the top of the list.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And that's a great example. If somebody smokes, they're not going to get that lung transplant.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, that's not true. That's not true actually.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Really?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, it really isn't. So there are very specific published rules about how to decide who gets the priority.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I was almost positive that if you have cirrhosis of the liver due to alcohol, if you so much as drink a drop of alcohol.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But that's about utility. That's about utility.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right. But I mean, I thought that those were the actual transplant rules here in the U.S.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But if you look at the published, it's not though. It doesn't say that. All it says is who's most likely to benefit. The number one is the tricky part about the transplant rules are, I mean, it's really, really utility based. And as you say, there's a positive and there's a negative to utility. It's who's the most likely to benefit and who's the most likely to be harmed by not getting the resource. So like with the transplant, it's like who's going to die the quickest without the transplant. But also who's most likely to benefit the most from getting the transplant in terms of doing well, being healthy, surviving for a long time, not rejecting it, having a healthy organ.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' 20 year old versus a 70 year old.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, but there's a long list of things there. That's where the smoking and the drinking comes in, Cara, because it's like, if you have not proven that you're not going to go back to drinking alcohol, we're not going to give you a liver that you're then going to destroy with alcohol. It's not because you damage the liver that you're losing with alcohol, it's that you'll damage the one we're going to give you with alcohol. That's still a utility question. That's still a utility question. And with transplants, we also take into consideration distance from the donor and the center where the transplant is going to be done, because that affects how well you're going to do, how the success of the operation. But that then bleeds into this number two. So number one is utility. Number two is the principle of justice, which is mostly common sense. It basically means everyone's got a fair shot, right? And you can't have rules which systematically discriminate against somebody based upon their location, obviously their race or gender, or on their socioeconomic status, right? Which is obviously the trickiest one, unless you have just a universal health care system or something that is completely divorced from socioeconomic status. But with the organ transplant, as an interesting aside, the principle of utility and the principle of justice were in conflict because if you go based entirely on utility, it disadvantages people who are in regions that have a relative paucity of organs to people who need organ donation. Right? And people who live in places where there's lots of organs and less demand are privileged. And so you have to balance these two things. You don't want to sacrifice too much utility, but you've got to make some sacrifices to make sure that the principle of justice is reasonably adhered to. And then the third basic one is respect for persons as individuals, and that means you're treating people as an end unto themselves, not as a means to some other end. And that you respect their autonomy, their ability to make decisions for themselves, their ability to refuse care, et cetera. Those are the core principles in terms of triaging limited medical resources. But there's a couple other of ethical principles underneath the justice header that are worth specifically pointing out, because these are the ones that come into play when it comes to vaccination. And one is the principle of reciprocity. And that means that the health care system, like many things in our society, is a contract between society and the health care profession. And part of that contract of reciprocity is that it's sort of the do unto other things. Whatever you expect or would want to expect from society, you also have to give to society. And so some people have argued that people who are voluntarily unvaccinated have broken their contract with society, and that based upon the principle of reciprocity, it's fair to use that as a criterion for lowering their priority in terms of getting health care, especially if it's related to an outcome related to the fact that they're unvaccinated. So from a practical point of view, we could talk about two common scenarios that are happening right now. One is a hospital system is in an area that is experiencing a surge in the pandemic. This is happening. All the ICU beds are getting filled up with COVID patients. So they have to defer semi-voluntary surgeries, right? So let's say a woman has a breast cancer, and I'm not talking about cosmetic surgery or quality of life or lifestyle surgery. Woman has breast cancer and they need mastectomy. Can we delay that for a couple of weeks so that we could treat the surge of COVID patients? Or somebody has coronary artery disease, they need a bypass operation. Can we delay that bypass operation for a couple of weeks until the surge passes? Or do those mastectomies and bypasses, even though it means taking ICU beds away from people who have COVID pneumonia and are going to die without those ICU beds. There is an increased risk of death. If you delay your mastectomy by four weeks, that's an 8% increase in your risk of death. So it's not like it's just an inconvenience.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's not benign to do that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's not benign to do it. People will die because they were made to wait for weeks for their bypass surgery or their mastectomy. All right. So that's one scenario in which you're choosing among patients to prioritize, but you're not just saying we're not going to give you care. We're saying we're giving care to these other people. The other time is, of course, if you have COVID patients, there's more COVID patients in a region than that region has ICU beds and ventilators. Do you give a ventilator to patient A, who was a breakthrough infection, but they were vaccinated versus patient B, who was voluntarily unvaccinated? So there's, I think, an emotional reaction to that scenario. I think most people's minds immediately go to, well, the voluntarily unvaccinated person made a choice that put other people at risk. That's the reciprocity argument. However, there was a recent editorial, which I wrote about science-based medicine by Dr. William Parker, who said, you also have to consider the principle of proportionality, which is another ethical principle under the justice header. Proportionality means that the consequences fit the act, right? So was the choice not to get vaccinated enough of a violation of the principle of reciprocity that it deserves death? Essentially, it's worth one full life. You could argue, statistically, the answer to that question is no. If you make it a pure mathematical question, again, Dr. Parker estimates that that decision is worth like 0.01 lives, if you just look at it mathematically. Not one life.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' What is that based on, though?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I mean, just some calculation of the probability of whatever, somebody dying because of your choice or something.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right. But if you were to look at the probability of somebody dying in, let's say, a health care vacuum where vaccination were the only line of defense, that person would likely die or has a chance of dying.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, but we have to apply these rules to the real world and not hypothetical situations. But the other point you just bring up some other good points under the proportionality argument that I think do help put this into perspective. One thing is the sum total of a person's value is not determined by that one choice that they made, whether or not to get vaccinated. And like, for example, again, if you give a situation where what if somebody is a career criminal who abuses their spouse and lives a horrible lifestyle where they ruin their health, but they got vaccinated, but they get a breakthrough infection and it's really severe because they don't take good care of themselves. They have obesity, hypertension, they smoke, they drink, whatever, versus somebody else who's a good citizen in good health, but decided not to get vaccinated. Do we focus on just the one decision whether or not to get vaccinated-<br />
<br />
'''E:''' How are these differences weighted?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's the thing, too. We can't focus on any of those things. You have to give the best care possible to everybody, regardless of their background.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Exactly. So the thing is, it is a slippery slope argument, but it's legitimate. Once we say we're going to decide based on something other than pure utility, then that's a can of worms. It's like, then how are we going to decide how to proportionately weight these calculations about reciprocity and who's taking care of themselves and who's putting other people at risk? What if you were a drunk driver that killed somebody in an accident because you were speeding drunk? Do you still get treated for your injuries? I mean, yes, the answer is yes, you still get treated for your injuries. So I do think it's important for the healthcare profession to, first of all, it's an ethical principle that we are not judgemental of our patients, right? It's not our position to be judgemental, to question your life choices, to whatever. We're here to treat you and to be your advocate and to give you advice, certainly, but not we are non-judgemental. And I think the medical profession has to be that way. As soon as we cross that line to saying you don't deserve to be treated because I don't like the choice that you made. The other point that I think is really, really illuminating is that you have to look at the full spectrum of why somebody might have chosen not to get vaccinated.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's what I was going to bring up, this idea that you can just assume that you understand somebody's motivations and that you can make decisions based on that is incredibly dangerous.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, but I mean, let's not overcomplicate it. I mean, if somebody has a legitimate medical reason to not get vaccinated.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We're not talking about that. We're not talking about that. Legitimate medical exemptions aside, right?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' What if they have a terrible abuse history? What if they have psychological problems?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' What if they're part of a group of people who have been misled and abused in the past?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It reminds me, Steve, sorry to interject, but I just this morning, I had the opportunity to interview a woman on Talk Nerdy. It hasn't even aired yet. It won't have aired yet by the time this comes out, who wrote a book about health care decision making. She's a social psychologist who studied under Daniel Kahneman and so sort of like the behavioral economic side of things. And she wrote a whole book about how do we make decisions, how can we be empowered? How can we when do we want to know everything? When do we not want to know things and how as patients can we navigate this? And one of the things we talked about, she was saying she was consulting for a company whose job was to try and help people with medication adherence. And she was saying that the number one thing that they it was like a website. And the first thing they wanted to do was like send reminders. And then they were like, OK, we're done. And she's like, if you assume that the reason that people don't take their meds is simply because they don't remember, they're only going to hit like 10 percent of people. There are so many reasons that people are not med adherent. And really, you start thinking about the rich diversity of patients. And why do so many people get a prescription and then never fill it? Or why do they fill it and then never finish it? I mean, there's a laundry list of reasons. And if we just assume that everybody falls in the same bucket, we're failing.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's right. So, yeah, so there could be a member of a racial minority who believes that they could not trust the system. For example, complicated issue. But whatever, they may have legitimate reasons to not be trustful of the system or you're in an abusive relationship. Like, there are cases where like the husband that won't let their wife get vaccinated or parents that won't let their children.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' We see that all the time with kids writing us emails.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, for example. Here's the other thing. Even if you are a a wealthy, privileged individual under no duress or anything and you decide because you buy the the misinformation not to get vaccinated, you're still a victim. Remember that we've talked about this quite a bit in quite a lot of context. Don't blame the person who got conned.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No, don't blame the members of the cult. Blame the cult leader.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And yes, it's frustrating. Yes, it's a burden. But the people who buy into all this, they're at least partly victims. And we can't blame the victim because think about it. It's like there's a demographics to this. It's like blaming somebody for being the religion that they were born into. Really? We know that that's the way they are because they were born into that religion. It's not, you know what I mean? And this could slide into the free will argument. You know, do people really have free will? Are they just following along with the determinative factors of their culture and their environment and their genetics, et cetera, et cetera? But even if we don't go all the way that far, put that aside, it's still it's like, yeah, people are making this decision for tribal reasons because they got sucked down a rabbit hole of misinformation because of the social milieu that they're in, et cetera, et cetera. I mean, again, if we're going to start blaming people for that and to the point that we're going to let them die, it's just it's really not professional and ethical. I don't think we can go there. Now Dr. Parker left one sliver of exception. He said you can make an argument. I think this is reasonable. You can make an argument that if everything else is really completely even, that the vaccination status can be a tiebreaker. Like if it's really that's the only difference between two people, one only one of which can get on a ventilator. And you use that as the tiebreaker. You could you could defend that decision. But that's about it. That's about as far as it would go.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That will translate into hard numbers of what very, very small-<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Hopefully nobody like that. That's a pretty specific situation.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But that's the thing. That's not a real world scenario. Real world scenario is, let's say there's a specific state that's hit really hard. There's only so many vents. There is a situation in which triage has to take place. And yes, we can grapple with these ethical things all we want. But what happens if there are four people waiting to be seen and there's only one vent?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I think from a practical point of view, if you just make the best utility decision, you can. And that will be your justification for choosing one person over the other. The idea that people are going to be exactly the same is like so contrived. You could get out of it by just finding some reason to say this person is more likely to benefit than that other person.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Then I guess the question is, is vaccine status predictive of positive outcomes?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It is. It is. It is. So if you use it as a predictive utility factor, that's fine. And that's where the all other things being equal. You can kind of make a utility argument for facts, because people who are vaccinated are more likely to benefit from their treatment than people who are vaccinated. But but not a reciprocity argument. He basically was just trying to remove the reciprocity. These people don't deserve limited resources because they they made their decision to not get vaccinated. And that argument falls apart, I think, when you really dig down. And I think as physicians, we can't really make that. And I think as skeptics, we have to be careful not to blame the victim. And I think this is a case where that applies.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's one of those places where I think we just have to be pretty hard lined. And like you said, you see this in health care. We see it in psychology. Every life is worth the same amount. You just have to stand there and say it doesn't matter who does so and so deserve. That's not even a question coming into this calculation. Everyone deserves-<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's third principle. Every person deserves respect. And they're not a means to an end. So some people argue along those lines that but if we do do this, that's a great incentive to get people to be vaccinated. It's like, yeah, but you can't use patients as a means to an end. They have to be the end unto themselves. But here's the thing. If that's your goal is to get the most people vaccinated, then that's not a physician's job to do that. That's not the medical profession's job to be the stick to make that happen.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' If anything, that's just going to cause more distrust with the medical profession.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's the other thing. And it probably would backfire. But if you want more people to get vaccinated, do it with education. And if that doesn't work, you do it with carrots and sticks. You do it with mandates. You do it in other ways.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' With incentivization.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That doesn't involve their medical care.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right. Not like if you go to the ER, they're not going to treat you. Jesus.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Charge them more for their insurance. Don't let them fly. Whatever. Mandate it any way you think is reasonable. That's where sort of reciprocity and proportionality come in, not health care. I think that that doesn't work. But it's interesting. There's a very lively discussion going on on science based medicine when I wrote about this today, because it's it provokes a lot of emotion. And it takes a lot to sort of wrap your head around all these arguments.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I do think and not to open up a whole new can of worms, because I know you and I have slightly different views about this. But I do think that like you kind of set it off the cuff, like charge more for their insurance is actually a health care decision. Ultimately, that does negatively impact people's health care. And so, I mean, this is why a managed care system is really tricky with with those kinds of mandates and things, because health care is directly related to health care reimbursement in this country.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, that's fair. Context there is very important. Yeah, it's obviously not to the point where people are not going to be able to get health care.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Exactly. We're sadly we do see these institutional barriers for people who can't afford their health.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But workplaces that are self-insured, like if you get your health insurance to your company and your company is self, they're paying for their own health insurance. They absolutely do this. They will charge you more if you're a smoker.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Absolutely. Sadly, they charge you more if you're if you're of childbearing age, which is frustrating. But yeah, it's based on actuarial tables. It's literally just based on data. You're likely to cost the system more.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' OK, interesting.<br />
<br />
=== DNA Storage <small>(29:26)</small> ===<br />
* [https://phys.org/news/2021-12-dna-storage-nanoscale-electrode-wells.html Storing information in DNA: Improving DNA storage with nanoscale electrode wells]<ref>[https://phys.org/news/2021-12-dna-storage-nanoscale-electrode-wells.html Phys.org: Storing information in DNA: Improving DNA storage with nanoscale electrode wells]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' Jay.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yes.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' How close are we? This is one of those technologies that we're going to see a long way down the road. How close are we to using DNA for information storage?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Well, according to Microsoft, Steve, it's not that far down the road. Let's go to let's start with this. Let me let me ask you guys a question here. See if you agree with this sentiment. Have you ever wondered how companies like Google or Amazon or Apple, these big companies that have these big cloud systems, how do they keep up with their memory storage needs?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Data centers.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' You've got to keep up-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But they just buy more hardware.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Of course. Yeah. And it gets to the point like they are successfully keeping up with those needs. But it's increasing and it's becoming much more of a problem. And also data centers, you may or may not know, they're incredibly power hungry and they produce a lot of yes. So as Steve said, a team of scientists have developed a DNA data storage system. This isn't the first time that companies have been working on this type of thing. But this particular effort that has been made actually got somewhere. I think it's a milestone and it's very significant. So first, why would we even need to store computer data using DNA? That's, I think, a good question. And I'll answer that in a very roundabout way. Everybody essentially has a high quality camera on them at all times. This is one of many examples I can give. Now we're including all of the web content that's created every day. You think about all of the people out there that have unique content that they're creating and how much gets published every day, every week and also in general, the need to archive huge stores, stores of information. As an example how about storing all of the information that we the scientific information that a company has gathered in the 50 years that it's been around or the Library of Congress or information from museums. There is an amazing amount of information that needs to be archived. Doesn't need to be accessed every day or whatever, but something that we want to always exist. There's a ton of that more than more than I think the average person would realize. You really have to think about it. So how will tech companies keep up with the demand for data storage, especially moving forward, knowing that the average person is now moving into, I would consider the average person moving into the terabyte range. I'm like a 10 terabyte guy right now. Steve, you've got to be 10 to 20 terabytes.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Oh, yeah. Yeah. 15, I think.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' But I would give I would give most people the average person somewhere between a half of a terabyte up to a terabyte. That adds up, man. The world used to only use mechanical spinning drives. You guys know what these are. These are the hard drives that have a stack of magnetic coated disks in them. They're spinning 7200 rpms in order to read or write data. Those drives have a physical arm that has to hover over the disk to read and manipulate the stored binary information. And every once in a while you would hear crunching noises coming from these drives. Remember that? Cara, do you even remember that?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, yeah, yeah. For sure.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Just checking. Yeah. The ones that that exist today are even better. They're even faster. But still, I wouldn't use one of those old drives. That's because not long ago, solid state drives started to become affordable. Now, these drives have no moving parts. They store data by using something called floating gate transistors. It's hardware, though. It's just a stationary gear like a CPU in a sense. It's not moving. There's no moving parts. It just has a bunch of transistors in there. If you open up one of these drives, you'll be shocked at how small they actually are. They're tiny. Like when you open up the casing of a solid state drive, you think the whole thing is filled up with. No, it's not. It's like this nub that's sticking off the front. It's not the size of that case at all, which means this technology is very small. So to compare the price of both of these drives, the old style mechanical drives cost about $100 for a four terabyte drive. So I'm talking about the ones that have the disks in them with the arm. That's $100 for four terabyte drive. The same size solid state drive is about $500. So it's roughly five times the cost. And again, though, I think you should only be using a solid state drive. They're faster, a lot faster. They're more durable and they're less prone to losing data. They're just a better storage system altogether. Now, when we talk about storing data size, we use the following measurements. We've been through this a million times. I can clearly remember Bob teaching me this, right? Yes. Bytes, kilobytes, megabytes, gigabytes, terabytes. And now we're moving into the petabyte zone. So to give you some reference here, because I really want you guys to understand, just how much data is when we talk about these measurements or the measuring volume of data. One DVD holds about four point seven gigabytes of data. That's a movie and a whole bunch of extras and whatnot. But it's roughly the size of like one to two movies, say. One terabyte of storage could hold two hundred and eighteen roughly DVD quality movies. One gigabyte is about one and a half to two movies. One terabyte is two hundred and eighteen movies. One petabyte, two hundred and twenty three thousand one hundred movies. Think about that. How much bigger a petabyte is than a gigabyte, which there's a lot of people who only have gigabyte storage. In their home right now.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Six orders of magnitude.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, it's a phenomenal amount of data that is being stored in one place. So, of course, there's no single petabyte drive that exists for consumers. When these big data centers go out and buy drives, they're buying mega drives. They're not buying like a one terabyte drive. They're buying a drive that that has tens of of terabytes, if not more. But there is no petabyte drive for a consumer. Now, the future of data storage might come from something like I said, like this DNA storage. This isn't the first team, like I said, but the team that I am discussing today, Bishlian H Nugin and the team of scientists from Microsoft and the University of Washington, Seattle, U.S. have developed a nanoscale DNA storage writer that can function faster and store more data in a smaller space. So when we talk about storing data at a very and on the very small scale, we want to know how much data can be stored, say, in one cubic centimetre of space. This is a way that they can discuss, well, how much data? What's your data density? Right, Bob? Yeah. So so if we think about this as like a cubic inch or a cubic centimetre of space, how much data can you store in that space? This technology can store over 60 petabytes per cubic centimetre, 60 petabytes.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Qubit centimetre?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So going back to how many DVDs this could store, it could hold quickly guess in your head. Now I'll tell you the number. It can hold 13,386,000 DVDs.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Wow. That's the entire ER series, right there?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Exactly. I mean, Evan, I got to have that. I got to have that whenever I need it. No, but if you think about about that amount of data, that is an incredible amount of data to be stored in such a small space. This is exactly what science fiction movies have predicted for decades, right? You know, just incredible amounts of data in a very small amount of space. Well, it turns out that DNA storage is a viable solution for this. So on top of incredible density, the materials that they use are durable under extreme conditions. And on top of that, it would use a lot less energy. And now they're switching to enzymes instead of using fossil based materials. Because because the DNA that they're creating is created by using enzymes and not oils things that are going to damage the environment. Enzyme reactions also happen to be much faster than current chemical processes, which is another boon for this system. The data is encoded in sequence using the four natural DNA bases, right? A, C, T and G. And if you want to know what those are, you look them up.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Adenine, Cytosine, Thymine, Guanine.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' There you go.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Or you just ask Bob right now.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I couldn't even I couldn't even finish it without him getting to it Cara. The researchers say that they could add in more base pairs, which is really cool, which makes that system much more complicated. But there's no reason for them to stick to those four. It just happens to be the ones that we evolved to use. But they could just add in more. They can create DNA sequences that store data and then they can read these sequences and turn them into digital signals that a computer can understand. So the team's goal was to increase the throughput. So their system could be used for commercial applications. So when I say throughput, I'm talking about how much data can they write and how fast and how much data can they read and how fast. That's the throughput in this specific example. So, of course, they had to translate, like I was saying, this digital information in two strands of DNA. So that right there, what I just said, is about 10 feet the paper that I read on this. It's incredible what they're doing and what they're going through in order to pull this thing off. And it's very complicated. And if you're interested you should just go read, read their paper, because it's fascinating if you even understand it. It was one of those things where I was constantly looking upwards and that type of thing. It was it was fascinating, though. The complexity is extraordinary to pull this off. Then they have to go back and read and decode the DNA information and transform that back into digital information. This new system is a huge technological step forward. They're able to increase the read and write speeds by using parallel processes. So this means that as an example, instead of writing to one DNA strand, you would be writing to 10 or 100 or a thousand or maybe in the future could be tens of thousands of strands at the same time. That's the way that they're going to be able to scale up the speed of this thing. And again, it's a complicated process. And the more strands that you're adding to, in this parallel process, meaning processes that are happening at the same time, if they're all storing, say, the same piece of data, like let's say you're taking a huge book and you want to put it into a DNA encoding and you're going to take a strand of DNA for each page that's in the book and you do it all at the same time. Well, of course, it's going to finish much, much faster than doing it all from front to front to back. ut the coordination involved in order to distribute that data storage and writing it and everything, it's very complicated. And of course, so this is this team is filled with biologists all the way to software engineers. They have such an incredible spectrum of proficiencies that are needed to come up with these processes. And they have to be perfectly coordinated. And another factor that makes this type of data storage important is lifespan. And this is one that I was a little surprised to hear. So today, the longest that we could store data without actually having to worry about it. What would you guys guess?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' We're having to worry about it. It could be just a decade or two.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I mean, before it starts to decay and become unreadable?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Exactly.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' 25, 30 years.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Evan hit it on the nose. 25 to 30 years. Very good. And that's what the tape backup tape backups, if they're in a cool and dry environment, could last a pretty long time. There's other new backup systems that companies have come up with. There's a lot of them out there. You could read about many of those as well. But this type of storage could last hundreds of years or longer. I mean, think about how long DNA has lasted in the environment. Right, guys? <br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah. And I could talk a little bit about that. I mean, yeah, you could have that potentially last for hundreds of years. There's some evidence that mammoth DNA has remained at least partially intact for a million years. But that's you know, that's at the low end of partially intact. The latest thing that I could find researchers calculated that DNA has a half life of five hundred and twenty one years.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's better than 25.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yes, it is. It is better. So yeah, so it's on it's on the order of a century or two. So, yeah, it's definitely better than anything we have now.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Right. Good enough. Right. I mean, because let's say you have to rewrite all of this data every 500 years, even go down to 400. Who cares? Think about what technology will be like in 500 years. I'm sure we'll be blowing past this anyway. It's just a good it's a cool it's a cool way to store data. It's also a very sci-fi way of storing data. And I remember there was a Star Trek episode. I don't remember what show it was from. I think it was Worf who had DNA encoded data in his bloodstream. And they took his blood and then they were able to read the data. And I remember thinking like, oh, my God, could you imagine like someday if we could do that and it hasn't been that many years-<br />
<br />
'''B:''' [inaudible] from Next Generation.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Right, Bob?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah. So the thing is, though, another angle, Jay, is that in the future, we're not going to have VHS readers or CD readers. But they call DNA, though, DNA is different in that they call it eternally relevant because it's going to be around for a really long time. And if there's technology around, then it will likely be just getting better and better at reading DNA the decades or even centuries into the future. Although you could argue against that. I mean, I think DNA is great. But I think if we continue on this track that we're on, I think even DNA could be artificially replaced. But yeah, it definitely has a much better life and it will be readable for long into the future, I would say.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Jay, the thing is that when I was reading some background material on this and what I read, but the big limiting factor is that it's really expensive to manufacture DNA. We can do it. We can do it with with the sequence that we want. But the cost would be about one trillion dollars per petabyte, which is huge. We have to bring down the cost by six orders of magnitude before it's really going to be practical, which probably is going to take decades. So even if we fix these other problems, that one is a deal breaker until we make that six order of magnitude improvement in cost.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, no doubt, Steve. I mean, of course, like like we've seen with like lab grown meat, as an example, the first one that they made, it was three hundred thousand dollars. And now it's eleven bucks. Even like I think it's seven dollars now for a lab grown hamburger. Once they refine the process, once they they optimize everything that needs to happen and scale it up once they once they start manufacturing this and big companies start investing heavily into it, the costs are going to dramatically drop and we'll see efficiencies. But you're right, Steve, it could be decades. You know, it just depends on how much time and energy they put into it to develop it. I mean that's why it takes a company like Microsoft to be sitting at the top of this thing to make it feasible. But I found out there's like 40 companies that do this.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' 40?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, it's out there.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Nice.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It's happening and they're all working together. I think at this point, at least in some type of fashion, they're all throwing some info into the ring to make something happen. So I just think it's really cool. It's one of those things. It's definitely something that I think if you like this type of stuff, this is one of the ones that you should look at because it's really interesting. It's very possibly going to be a big problem solver for the future data storage needs. So even if it does take 10, 20 or 30 years to get there, just like the fusion reactor.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, I was going to say this. I feel like we're talking about fusion in the 1980s. You know what I mean?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But it's a cool technology to watch.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' And think about it. But by then, though, Steve, Bill Gates will be controlling all of us with the microchips that are floating in the air.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' With the vaccines.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' But those won't last, though.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Actually, that's his. I just figured out his end game. He's going to use us as the batteries, as the as the data storage unit.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We're the data storage. Yeah, there you go.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Data is people.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Data is people.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, my nice, nice.<br />
<br />
=== MLM Exploiting Women <small>(45:26)</small> ===<br />
* [https://www.stylist.co.uk/long-reads/women-joining-mlms-since-lockdown/579495 MLMs in the UK: how multi-level marketing schemes are using “feminist jargon” to recruit women since the pandemic]<ref>[https://www.stylist.co.uk/long-reads/women-joining-mlms-since-lockdown/579495 Stylist.co.uk: MLMs in the UK: how multi-level marketing schemes are using “feminist jargon” to recruit women since the pandemic]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' OK, Evan, tell us how multilevel marketing exploits women.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Right? Collective groan right from the onset. Well, I had not heard of this company called LuLaRoe before.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You got to watch the documentary. It's a great documentary.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yes, which I did start actually today watching. So today, really, as I stumbled on this news item is when I learned about this. And I suppose I should have at least heard about them this past summer when it was announced in Variety and Variety's an online magazine about Hollywood and movies and TVs and such. And Variety announced then that there was going to be this investigative docu-series about LuLaRoe, and it was going to come out in September of this year, which it did. So Jennifer First and Julia Willoughby-Nason are the producers of the show LuLa Rich. And according to Variety, LuLa Rich examines the pyramid scheme that was and shockingly still is LuLaRoe. The explosive growth of the clothing company, which began as a multi-level marketing scam in which people, mostly women, sold leggings to one another while also signing up new realtors to be beneath them in the pyramid. And it has played out as so many evil things do on Facebook, among other social media platforms. The docu-series features former retailers and LuLaRoe staffers as talking heads who have tried to dig themselves out from their ruined lives. So there are those dreaded terms that skeptics have been familiar with for a very long time, pyramid scheme and multi-level marketing. And we call those MLMs for short. So a very quick review of those, in case you are unfamiliar with the terms. A pyramid scheme is a recruitment scam. It starts usually with one person at the top. That person convinces, for example, six other people to buy into the business. That's your first level. Then it becomes the job of those six people at level one, each of them to recruit six more people to buy in. So that's six people from the first level trying to get a total of 36 people to buy in. That's level two and so on and so forth. And the six people at level one each get a cut of the 36 people from level two, but also the original person at the top gets a cut, and usually the lion's share. Money continually flows back to the top of the pyramid. It is unsustainable. Now, in a pyramid scheme, there's often no product or service being sold. Or if it is, it's total crap and worthless. But the recruitment of the others and getting their money is really the source of the revenue. Now, MLMs are technically different because they do involve a tangible product, such as leggings, for example. But the MLMs rely on their recruits to make sales to friends and family members, primarily, which are considered easy, sympathetic targets. It starts out as just a sale of the products to those friends and families. But the actual goal is to bring those friends and families on as the new sales force.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Am I hearing Tupperware parties? Am I hearing Avon?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, yeah, the Avon. Remember the Avon lady that used to come to the-<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Amway.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Amway.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Amway is probably one of the best known ones. But here's the main point about MLMs. And according to a report that studied the business models of over 350 MLM companies in the United States, this was published on the Federal Trade Commission's website. At least 99 percent of people who join MLM companies lose money. And it's really more like 99.6 percent. So, I mean, you're talking about everybody, except for the people at the very point of the pyramid. So in plain English, MLMs are a scam. They are filled with promises that can never possibly be realized by anyone other than the one or the very few people at the top of the scheme. So with that basic understanding, and I stumbled across a link to this article in Stylist.co.uk. And I admit that is not on my list of go-to sites to find news stories about science and skeptic topics. But here's the headline, MLMs in the UK, how multilevel marketing schemes are using feminist jargon to recruit women since the pandemic. And they talk a lot about the LuLaRoe or the LuLaRich series. And that series reveals that their success was primarily built upon what they're calling the cheap language of feminism. It inspired legions of women, often stay-at-home mothers, to elevate themselves into, and I'm putting air quotes in here, girl bosses and boss babes using jargon like that to hype them up and all these sort of feminist ideas and sayings and other things designed specifically to get these stay-at-home moms to be part of this company. One extra distributor tells the watching audience that we were empowered but then the husband was supposed to take over. So what does that tell you? They also said that I had a dream. I had achieved the dream. I was selling magic leggings. And in order for some women to do this, some women had to go so deep into poverty basically over this. They were selling their breast milk so that they could afford the startup costs that were involved. That's a horrible thought. Basically, women were targeted and recruited using this feminist empowerment communication. And if you visit the LuLaRoe website, I mean, that's what you see and feel essentially on page one. Very slick, very appealing website. Bold and vibrant pictures of women of all ages and sizes and ethnic groups supporting the fashions that they are selling. But it has this sort of goop-ish feel and tone to it, if you take my meaning there. This company went from zero to 100 miles an hour very quickly. 2013, they started this couple, married couple, who started the scam. 70 million bucks by the fall of 2015, two billion dollars by December of 2017. But the Stylist article goes beyond just this LuLaRoe story. It explains how many women, particularly women in the United Kingdom, and especially since the pandemic, the female involvement in MLMs is seeing a boom in participation. These are some statistics from the Direct Selling Association, whose members include well-known beauty and well-being brands. They reveal that growth across many of their members as a result of the lockdown saw a 32% growth in the first quarter of 2021. I suppose that is compared to the first quarter of 2020. I also grabbed this data from the Advertising Standards Authority, the ASA, and that's the United Kingdom's independent regulator of advertising across media. They say the most popular MLM products being peddled in the UK right now, and you tell me if this isn't skewed towards women, weight control products, beauty and cosmetics, aromatherapy, skincare products, and number five on their list is CBD, cannabinoid bright products. So, right, the first four, four out of the top five right there, all directly targeted at women.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I'd say the first top three. I think weight loss is also targeted towards men.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' You think so? You think it's even?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah, an exercise. Yeah, because you've got to include in that, like, exercise equipment, and all of the fads around weight loss have to do with both exercise and restriction of food. So, it's the diet pills, but also the stupid machines that you can buy at home.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Fair enough. Fair enough.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But you're right. You're right. Three out of the five are very...<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Now, for full disclosure, guys, I looked at these numbers, and I went back and looked at the history of MLM growth, or actually, frankly, decline in the last 20 years. It's been a pretty steady decline since the early 2000s. It really peaked in the early 2000s, and it's been declining. For example, in the US in 2019, MLM direct sales, that model shrunk in proportion to overall sales of products in the US. And in the UK, by comparison to the US, that percentage was even less. So, that's a good sign. But the fact that the MLM seemed to be on the rise again, you have to keep that in the context of the drop that they had been experiencing basically for the prior 20 years before that. So, when they say 32% increase it's because it did tail down. It's by no mean at the peak again. It's not back to those early 2000 levels. But again, it is on the rise. It is to be watched, certainly. And it's not all doom and gloom. And this is what I liked about this article as well. There's a new generation of skeptics that have come in, and of all places, through the world of TikTok. Oh, my gosh. We think of TikTok as this place where pseudoscience and astrology and all sorts of things are wreaking havoc. But there are actually people out there doing skeptical work. Hattie Rowe, she's a UK TikToker. Her account is devoted to researching MLMs. She has about 70,000 followers. And she tells in this article that the lockdown and increased job cuts had been used as a recruitment drive for those companies. She said, I'd go on Facebook and be bombarded by posts and messages about how I can be a boss bitch. And again, that's in quotes and earn money from home. But during the pandemic, the amount of recruitment messages that she received increased massively. So what did she do? She decided to look into it. She did research into the company, into these companies and realized, oh, my gosh, this MLM, it's a absolute scam. Now, she did start doing this a year ago, but now she's basically gotten a reputation of being the kind of this go to person who shares advice about her research and warns other people of the risks associated with the MLM. So good on her and good on other people using the current social media platforms to do that kind of work. And it's a ray of light, frankly, in the clouds.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It is always like a double insult when you're exploiting people on two levels simultaneously. Three, really. You're selling them pseudoscience. You're selling them on the MLM scam model itself. And you're taking advantage of the fact that they're a vulnerable population. It's a triple scam. It's really, really disgusting.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' And the destruction, the path of the destruction of all these people, the 99.6% of people.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So often these people are low income as well.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's right. Oh, my gosh. Yes. People who are living paycheck to paycheck and then they go out and they actually get business loans or open all these credit card lines just so that they can buy into it. And they never able to recoup their money.<br />
<br />
=== Binge Watching <small>(56:00)</small> ===<br />
* [https://www.sciencealert.com/being-actually-addicted-to-binge-watching-tv-could-be-more-real-than-you-think An Actual 'Addiction' to Binge-Watching TV Could Be More Real Than You Think]<ref>[https://www.sciencealert.com/being-actually-addicted-to-binge-watching-tv-could-be-more-real-than-you-think Science Alert: An Actual 'Addiction' to Binge-Watching TV Could Be More Real Than You Think]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:'' All right, Cara, can I get addicted to binge watching TV?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Are you? Should we compare notes? I am in season 13 now of ER.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, my gosh. I also realized when ER and all those shows, those were 26 episodes.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, they were full season and they're hour long shows.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Not 12, like you're used to kind of today. 26 hour long every year.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Wow.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I was like, this will be a nice pandemic project. Wow. Well, and so that is an important question, Steve, because I think there's long been a pretty vehement argument about what is the definition of addiction? How do we define it? Is addiction only something that is a chemical that binds to certain receptors in your brain that has a high affinity that's hard to unbind and causes all of these downstream effects because of that? Or are there behaviors that can induce similar neural states to some of these different molecules that bind in your brain? So I think the easiest thing when we talk about addiction is drug addiction. It's like the cleanest way to talk about addiction. It doesn't mean it's easy to fight. It doesn't mean it's easy to recover from. But it's sort of one of the cleanest models for addiction. And most of our addiction literature and also our addiction language is built around what we understand about drugs. And again, that has to do with binding affinity. And it has to do with downstream changes.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, we've spoken before on the show, Cara, about the distinction between an addiction and just a compulsive behavior.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right, yeah. And there is sort of a whole limit and a whole, or sorry, not a whole limit, a whole range and a whole language that we use around compulsions, addictions. And the truth is, I think from a psychological perspective, so often we utilize something called the biopsychosocial model. And the biopsychosocial model is exactly how it sounds. It's threefold, that behavior, emotions, feelings, thoughts, cognitions, that these things are all sort of affected or influenced by our biology, by our psychology, and by our kind of social milieu. And when it comes to addiction in terms of behavior, there's a researcher who has been studying this his entire life. He's published quite a lot. He the, let's see, a professor of behavioral addiction at Nottingham Trent University. And also, interestingly, the director of the International Gaming Research Unit, because, of course, he focuses quite a lot on gambling behavior, which if you've ever known anybody who is devastated, whose lives were devastated by gambling behavior, it's hard to argue that that person wasn't fighting against an addiction. And so he, throughout his career, developed what he calls the component model of addiction. So instead of looking at addiction from a purely biological perspective or neurobiological perspective and saying this chemical is binding to this receptor and this is what happens downstream in the brain, he decided to take a step back and say, what are many of the components of addictive behavior, of something that somebody would say, I am struggling here. This is a really intense issue. And he developed these six components. And it's his view, and did I even say his name? I don't think I did. Dr. Mark Griffiths. Probably important to give him his due. So in his view, you kind of need all six of these in order to qualify. And they include salience, mood modification, conflict, tolerance, withdrawal, and relapse. And so let's go through them. Salience. It becomes the thing that's out in front of everything else in your life. So whether we're talking about gambling, whether we're talking about binge watching television, or whether we're talking about getting your next fix, it becomes the most important thing in your life. It's out in front of everything else. Mood modification. You use it to reliably modify or change your mood. So this is where oftentimes we talk about people self-medicating, right? You're not feeling well. You're feeling depressed. You're feeling anxious. You're feeling fill in the blank. When I engage in this behavior, at least in the short term, my mood is modified. And I kind of return to what I think is a more comfortable baseline or a more manageable state of mind or feeling. Number three, conflict. It's starting to compromise important components of your life, your work, your education, your relationships. This is a factor that you see in the DSM, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, which is often kind of jokingly called the Psychiatrist or the Psychologist Bible, where almost every diagnosis requires this as a diagnostic criteria. It's sort of starting to get in the way of healthy relationships, of your ability to do your work, of your ability to be involved in your education. Tolerance, OK? Just like with drug tolerance, you need more to get the same effect. Here, you're increasing your binge watching behavior. So you started slow and now you need more and more each time you sit down or kind of on the whole, I guess you could say on average. Number five, withdrawal. So if you don't do it, you actually experience symptoms. And of course, there is a distinction between physical withdrawal and psychological withdrawal. We can make a firm distinction there. There are substances which when you take away that substance after enough time, you can die. Alcohol withdrawal can kill you. Benzodiazepine withdrawal can cause pretty intense reactions that could lead to death. And then there's the the psychological symptoms of withdrawal, which we often see as sort of a, when we talk about opiate withdrawal, it's sort of a combination of the two. You feel quite ill. There are physiological things at play, but it also really messes with your head. You desperately need the meds. And it's not just because it's not just because your receptors are crying out for the opiates, although they are, you're also psychologically hurting. And you think and you know you're going to feel better if you can get that hit. And we can kind of add binge watching to that list, or at least we can conceptualize it within that framework. And then the final one is relapse. You might be able to quit, but when you engage again, you fall right back into old patterns. So this is the difference between somebody who might drink mild to moderate amounts of alcohol socially and somebody who struggles with alcohol addiction is that I say, I used to smoke when I was a teenager and through my 20s. And one of my big pressures that I put on myself was that I can't even just have one, because if I open a pack of cigarettes, I will likely smoke the whole pack. I know this about myself. And not everybody sort of acts in that way. But that is what Dr. Griffiths here is saying is one of the six core components of this biopsychosocial model of addiction. And so he wrote an article for The Conversation. So he's like, let's grapple with this question. Is it an addiction? Is it not? How do we define it? What does it mean? What does it mean to have an addictive personality? What are these lines? And ultimately obviously from a med management perspective, I think the difference between a physiological addiction and a psychological addiction are important. Do we need to use drugs that reverse binding, right? Do we need to use Narcan or naloxone or methadone or any of these different drug treatments? But from a psychological behavioral treatment perspective, ultimately, does it qualify? Does it kind of fulfil these six components or some variation on those themes? If so, it is affecting somebody's life negatively. And I think that it's kind of hard to ignore the fact that that is a addictive behavior. And that could really run the gamut. Historically, I think the DSM really grappled and tried to obsess about and still to this day, these categorical themes. Oh, is it drug addiction? Is it sex addiction? Is it gambling addiction? Is it and let's have a laundry list of things. Well, basically many things can be behaviourally addictive, depends on the person. It depends on a lot of features about their life. It depends on a lot of features about their brain, about their background, about their bio, psychosocial experience and standing. But ultimately, is it out in front of everything? Is it giving you these negative? Are you are you doing it even though you're experiencing these really downstream negative effects? If so this researcher is saying and I would say from a psychological perspective and from a treatment perspective, yeah, that's an addiction. And it's something that you're going to want to work on. There's a lot of studies that this article is great. I recommend people look into it if they're curious about this topic. He does a nice review of the recent literature. During COVID binge watching is up. What are some of the historical studies that have shown correlates of addictive behavior? Again, not causality, but correlates in terms of things like the big five personality traits, low conscientiousness, for example. What are some of the other traits that are predictive of problematic or addictive binge watching, depression, social anxiety, loneliness? So there's a lot of research in this area and it's becoming a more important area of research. And you know what's something that wasn't mentioned in the article that I was thinking about, Steve and everybody else, I'm curious about this. So often these types of addictive behaviors are- They come to pass specifically or especially, I should say, in situations in which there's a marketing, a sort of social psychology, a selling to us of those behaviors. You think about smoking, you think about drinking, you think about gambling, you even think about binge watching. Everything is designed to keep us hitting play, to keep us lighting the next one, to keep pouring the drink, to keep pulling on the slot machine lever. So it's interesting how often addiction is a response to these cues that are actively trying to get us to engage. And that's not really something that was talked about much in the article, except when he gave some pretty good tips about how to try and get out in front if you find yourself having problematic binge watching behavior. And so even even if you don't qualify for a sort of according to his categorization for an addiction, but you're saying this is getting to be a kind of bad habit, setting realistic daily limits, making watching TV- So, like he has his own. He says for me, it's two and a half hours if I've worked the next day, up to five hours if I don't, probably because we're all just at home. Not a lot of people are leaving their houses or doing much. He also says make it a reward, like only after you've finished your work, only after you've engaged in your social obligations, after you've finished the email, sent the texts, whatever. And then one recommendation, which is a hard one, is leave in the middle of the episode, pause the episode, let's say 30 minutes in. And that's when you stop watching instead of waiting until the end, when there's going to be a cliffhanger, when you're going to be desperate to see what comes next.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That makes sense.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's one of my big problems with binge watching. I find myself going, no, no, just one more, just one more, because I'm like, I got to know what happens.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's how they get you.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. And that's that's the point I was making. Right. They get you. It's you know, this is by design.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Formulaic.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, it's super formulaic. So I'm curious, as a physician and a neuroscientist to boot, what do you grapple?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Are you talking to me?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, I'm talking to you. Do you grapple with these labels? Like, are you still like, nah, I wouldn't call that addiction.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I do think it's important to be. This is a thing where colloquially fine. Technically, we need to be very precise about what we're talking about. And I do think we interviewed the sex addict specialist, who's like, it's a it's a behavior. It's a choice that you're making. It's not addictive in the same way that medications are addictive. But but it's still yes, it has these features as a compulsive behavior. And we need to talk about the things that are leading you to this behavior, leading you to these choices. But if you, saying it's an addiction does kind of make it into a passive thing rather than an active thing, meaning that it's something that's happening to you rather than something that you're doing. And that may be counterproductive.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, I think I think so often there are these ideas that become codified the literature or even in our common parlance, like this idea of like addiction as a disease. Well, addiction is a disease. And I think that's a big part of this. And so it's something I have. It's not necessarily something I caught or something that I and not necessarily something where I have a lot of will. And I think that works for some people and it helps some people kick it. And it doesn't work for others. And so often there's not a one size fits all. So although I agree with you that from a sort of physician's perspective, it might be important to make those distinctions, I think, from a psych, which most people are getting psych treatment for addiction, although psychiatric treatment and neurological treatment is part of the part of the game. To me, the distinction doesn't matter. Is it impacting your life? How do we how do we work on it if it is?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. Oh, yeah. I mean, from a practical point of view. And I've noticed that during my career, the language has changed. Now it's a substance use disorder. It's like you're not an addict. You suffer from a substance use disorder. So, again, that's goes back to the non-judgemental thing.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. Reducing the stigma around these things.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. This is this doesn't define you. This isn't you. This is just a this is a disorder that we will treat together.<br />
<br />
=== Asteroid Monitoring <small>(1:10:29)</small> ===<br />
* [https://phys.org/news/2021-12-nasa-next-generation-asteroid-impact-online.html NASA's next-generation asteroid impact monitoring system goes online]<ref>[https://phys.org/news/2021-12-nasa-next-generation-asteroid-impact-online.html Phys.org: NASA's next-generation asteroid impact monitoring system goes online]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. All right, Bob, finish us up with a discussion of detecting asteroids that are going to smash into the earth and kill everybody.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yes. Actually, this is just cheered me up a little bit, this news item, because we seem to be making some progress in doing at least in doing our due diligence to find asteroids that could potentially be dangerous to us or to Earth. This is a new impact monitoring system that's now online that could calculate deadly asteroid orbits better than the one that's been calculating for us for the past 20 years. There's a new study describing this system called Century Two, and it was published in the Astronomical Journal this past December 1st. So let's first talk about what Century One had been doing ever since 2002. So the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, JPL, developed the software almost 20 years ago. What it can do in less than 60 minutes, basically, it could accurately tell you the orbit of a newly discovered asteroid for the next 100 years and, of course, whether it would hit the earth or not. Now, this wasn't a part time job for the software either, because we've detected something like 28,000 near-Earth asteroids, NEAs. 28,000 have been found and we find an average of eight more every day. Three thousand a year, every year, every day. Eight more, eight more, eight more.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' And how near is near Bob in this context?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' There's different classes, but near Earth is within relatively near, within millions of miles many millions of miles, which is actually kind of close if you think about it. So to deal with this clearly scary situation, as I as I describe it, JPL manages the Center for Near-Earth Object Studies, CNEOS. So now it's their job to run the numbers on every orbit for every near-Earth asteroid that's discovered. And it does this to support an office, probably the coolest office name ever, NASA's Planetary Defense Coordination Office. And I think we've talked about that, haven't we? I think we talked about that once. It's my favorite office of all time, right? Planetary Defense. It's like that. What's that company, General Atomics? It's just such a such a great 1950s ring to it. So what they do is they provide early detection for potentially hazardous objects. That's PHOs. And OK, so PHOs, they're within five million miles. If you're within five million miles, that's a PHO, which is a type of NEA. But they're clearly much more hazardous because you're only five million miles away within that. So that means, Evan, that near-Earth asteroids, I think, are you know, farther than five million, obviously. This Planetary Defense Office also categorizes the PHOs as 30 to 50 meters, because when you get to that size and at those speeds and the kinetic energy, you can you can do significant damage. This office also tracks and characterizes these PHOs and they issue warnings and stuff like that. So very, very cool. So the Center for Near-Earth Object Studies, they help the Planetary Defense Coordination Office, and they use this sensory software to assess the asteroid orbits. And they've been doing it for years. But the rate of discovery is going to be going up very, very soon as new and much more powerful survey telescopes. Or as my niece used to call them, skeletopes. That was such an awesome mispronunciation. So these new powerful telescopes are going to start looking for near-Earth asteroids, and they anticipate an influx of newly discovered asteroids. And they need to we need to be able to keep up with that. And we need to also be even more accurate because there's going to be so many that the chances we could find something that could potentially be nasty. So they came out with Century Two, which is essentially an upgrade. It's an upgrade to the Century software. So Century Two is obviously like number one in that it can accurately calculate orbits based on gravitational interactions. That's key. You might think that that's what orbits are all about. Gravitational interactions. And you'd be mostly right because the asteroid, any given asteroid, will interact gravitationally mainly with the sun. It's interacting with the sun gravitationally. But the orbit of the asteroid can also be impacted by by other planets. And including the Earth, of course. So that so that plays in, too. But there are non gravitational interactions that can happen to the orbit that can impact the orbit. They're not based on gravity at all. And Century One could not handle them. And what do you think that might be, guys? What would impact the orbit that's not gravitational?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Solar wind.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Kind of, kind of. It's called the Yarkovsky effect. So now imagine an asteroid spinning as you know, which they do. So as that happened, as it's spinning, the side that was heated by the sun eventually spins away from the sun and and faces the opposite direction and it cools down. So that infrared energy is released as it cools. And that minute thermal energy acts as a force. That's a kind of like a little mini engine, a little bit of thrust that over time can actually change the orbit of an asteroid. Now, day to day, of course, that is negligible. You could just completely discount it fully. But after decades or centuries, it could this Yarkovsky effect can actually make dramatic changes to an orbit. And they're very, very difficult to calculate. So difficult that Century One, which had some very slick mathematical algorithms, it couldn't calculate it. But this is what Century Two will be able to do. Now, do you guys remember Apophis, right? That's probably one of the most famous. Yeah, one of the most famous asteroids out there. And mainly because for a little while there, we actually weren't sure, if it was going to hit the earth at some point, more around 2068 when it came back again after the 2029. So we weren't really sure because we couldn't rule out that impact in 2068. And that's why so many people actually know about Apophis. Now, the reason why we couldn't rule it out at that time was mainly because of this Yarkovsky effect. They haven't fully nailed down that what the impact is on the thermal energy that's hitting that asteroid. Of course, we do know now we have fully fleshed out the Yarkovsky effect on Apophis. And we know that Apophis is not going to hit us for at least well over 100 years. So don't worry about Apophis. But that's the Yarkovsky effect right there. That's why people were so scared of Apophis, because we hadn't really nailed it yet. So David Farnokia is a navigation engineer at JPL, and he also helped develop Century Two. He said the fact that Century couldn't automatically handle the Yarkovsky effect was a limitation. Every time we came across a special case like asteroids Apophis, Bennu and 1950 DA, we had to do complex and time consuming manual analyses with Century Two we don't have to do that anymore. So that's a key advantage to to Century Two over Century One. OK, now, Century One couldn't calculate the orbital changes due to the Yarkovsky effect. It also could not deal with asteroid orbits that got really close to the Earth. When you have an asteroid that happens to get really, really close to the Earth and is gravitationally affected much more than normally. What it does is it creates all sorts of uncertainties in the future orbit of the asteroid. So it makes it much, much harder to to predict what's going to happen after the gravitational interaction with the Earth at such close range. You guys have probably heard of keyholes. So those are specific areas in space that if an asteroid went through the keyhole, it could direct, because it went through that keyhole in that specific position, then its next orbit or a subsequent orbit would hit the Earth because it went through that keyhole. So that so you'll often hear about an asteroid going through a keyhole. If it goes through that keyhole, we're kind of screwed in 20 years or 30 years or 100 years, whatever it is, when it comes back, because that keyhole made it change its orbit just enough so that next time it comes around, it gives us a whack. So that so that's kind of related to that. Now, century one could not could not calculate that. If an asteroid was going to come really close to the Earth, century one could not calculate in the future if it if it could hit the Earth with high confidence. Century two can do that. So that's another, a huge plus for century two. And century two is going is so exquisitely sensitive that it could tell you the odds of an impact, even if it's as low as three chances in 10 million. So it's very, very sensitive. And so I do feel a little safer now, but I won't be happy until we have that deflective beam obelisk from that classic Trek episode.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yes.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' What was it called? Paradise syndrome? That would be nice. But I don't think we're going to create a deflective beam obelisk in the ever, actually, ever in the ever.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Right. Yeah. And so this is obviously this is a two pronged approach here. We need to detect the asteroids and we need to work on the technology to deflect them.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' And the key is not to just detect it, but to detect it so far in the future that we have time to deal with it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Thanks, Bob.<br />
<br />
== Who's That Noisy? <small>(1:19:48)</small> ==<br />
{{anchor|futureWTN}} <!-- this is the anchor used by "wtnAnswer", which links the previous "new noisy" segment to this "future" WTN --><br />
<br />
{{wtnHiddenAnswer<br />
|episodeNum = 856 <!-- episode number for previous Noisy --><br />
|answer = llama <!-- brief description of answer, perhaps with a link --><br />
|}}<br />
'''S:''' All right, Jay, it's Who's That Noisy time.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' All right, guys, last week, I played this Noisy.<br />
<br />
[_short_vague_description_of_Noisy] <br />
<br />
All right. Any guesses, guys?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yes, Steve singing in the shower.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Oh, my God.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I don't sing that well.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Steve has become a bird. He has watched them so long.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' A bird imitating Steve singing in the shower.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yes.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I typically every week get some Who's That Noisy response where they say, like, it's Steve doing blah, blah, blah. It's a Steve related noise. First person that sent in a guest, Michael Blaney. And Michael said, "Hi, Jay, the trilling sound is very cool. It's either a fluffly, endlessly replicated device Kirk could use to identify a Klingon or more likely it reminds me of the song of the Tui pronounced like the number two followed by the letter E. This is a bird in New Zealand. Ciao, Michael."<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I think we saw one of those in New Zealand.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I thought we did. That's not correct. But this this definitely sounds like a bird noise. So that's not a bad guess. Another listener named Tassie wrote in and said, "I think this week's who's that noisy is a budgie. It's called a budgerigar from Australia, home of myself and Visto Tutti. That is not correct. Another bird. But like I said, going with a bird in that with that type of noise, I couldn't put you down for that at all. Kay Dingwell wrote in and said, "Is this week's Who's That Noisy a parrot, specifically a cockatiel singing along to a carol. My nearly 25 year old cockatiel seems to think it is because he was trying to call back to the clip", which I think is very funny that there was a bird somewhere that was responding to my Who's That Noisy. It's not a bird. So check this out again. This is a llama doing kind of like an alert call to the other llamas. [plays Noisy] I mean, it is so a bird noise.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Llama alarm.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' If I had a llama, I would have to call it Dolly. What one of you?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No, sorry.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Delay reaction.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, I heard that one before.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' There was no winner.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Again, Jay, you're failing.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I and I'm like picking now I'm picking ones that I think are really easy. It must be like the holidays are coming up and I'm losing my mojo over here. But no, you know that look, you can't win every time. Everybody does not get a reward or an award. What's the difference between a reward and a award?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' A reward is for doing something. An award is for winning something.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Earned versus given.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Isn't an award actually like a physical thing, too?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, like it's more like an object.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Like a magical thing.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's like or like a certificate or a trophy or something.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Anyway, so I will I will throw in a couple of what I consider to be very, very easy ones for you guys. But thank you anyway. This was that this was an interesting noise. I hope you guys learned something. I certainly did. I didn't I would never have thought a large land animal would make a noise like that.<br />
<br />
{{anchor|previousWTN}} <!-- keep right above the following sub-section ... this is the anchor used by wtnHiddenAnswer, which will link the next hidden answer to this episode's new noisy (so, to that episode's "previousWTN") --><br />
=== New Noisy <small>(1:23:03)</small> ===<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So this Week's New Noisy was sent in by a listener named Robert House. And I'm just going to give it to you right now.<br />
<br />
[_short_vague_description_of_Noisy]<br />
<br />
'''J:''' If you think {{wtnAnswer|858| you know the Noisy}}, if you think that you have a good Noisy, you email me WTN@theskepticsguide.org.<br />
<br />
== Announcements <small>(1:25:54)</small> ==<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Hey, Steve.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, Jay.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I've got one announcement.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' OK.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' You could go to [https://shop.theskepticsguide.org/ The Skeptics Guide Shop] and you could buy some some SGU exclusive gear. I'm adding new stuff. So if you've been there before and you're hearing this go again. So I'll be adding new things before this show airs. I'll have some cool stuff in there, some things that I think people might want for the holidays. So please do go to our website and just click the shop link and you will be brought right there and you can help us by helping you.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. Thanks, brother.<br />
<br />
== Name That Quote <small>(1:26:24)</small> ==<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Evan, you're going to do the Name That Quote bit again that you did previously.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, I guess I'm going to have to come up with a name for this segment. I wrote down a couple possibilities and I don't want me to run those by you real quick and see if you want to have any kind of-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Are they puney?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, a couple of them are, of course.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Can you give me the pun? I want the punniest one.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' All right. You want the punniest one? It's probably Quote Them Physics. I also I wasn't going to lead with that one. I also have Rock the Quote take on rock the vote. And but the other ones are a little more straightforward. There's Potent Quotables, Quotation Marks, And I Quote and the knockoff borrowed title, Who's That Quoty? So those are some thoughts. If you guys have some thoughts about what the segment should be, if we choose to continue to do this every once in a while, I'd be happy to take any and all suggestions. But let's get on with it. I've arranged five quotes-<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Evan, Quoting McQuote Face.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I prepared five quotes for all of you. We're going to play a game in which my four fellow rogues are going to each give a guess as to who they think said each of these quotes. And it is multiple choice. So three choices per quote. Ready? Number one, here's the quote. "The thing I'll remember most about the flight is that it was fun. In fact, I'm sure it was the most fun that I'll ever have in my life." So who said that? Was it:<br />
<br />
A) Jeff Bezos<br />
<br />
B) Sally Ride<br />
<br />
C) Chris Hadfield<br />
<br />
Bob, we're going to start with you. Who do you think the guess who are you going to guess?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I say Hadfield.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' OK, Steve.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, I was going to say Hadfield, too.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' OK, Cara.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Hmm. I guess I'll depart and say it was Sally Ride.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' OK, and Jay.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I agree with Cara.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' So you're also saying Sally Ride?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yes.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' And the correct answer is Sally Ride.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yey!<br />
<br />
'''J:''' There it is.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Good for Cara. Good for Jay.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That was my second choice.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Not Jeff Bezos?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' He was too easy.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Well, you know. All right. Quote number two, "To eat is human, to digest divine." Who said or wrote that? I should put it that way, because the three choices are:<br />
<br />
A) Julia Child<br />
<br />
B) Epicurus<br />
<br />
C) Mark Twain?<br />
<br />
This time, Jay, we'll start with you.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Epicurus.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' And Cara.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I'm going to say it was Mark Twain.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Cara says Mark Twain. Let's go with Steve.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, I mean, it sounds like Mark Twain. The reason why I wouldn't say him is because everything sounds like Mark Twain.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Right.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So it's a little bit. Could that be Julia Child? It sounds a little too clever for her. Maybe I'll maybe I'll go for the the radical one and say Julia Child.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Would she say the opposite?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' What, to digest is human and to eat is divine? And Bob, who are you guessing?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yes, Twain.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Twain. OK, the answer is Mark Twain. So Cara and Bob.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' This is so witty.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Got that correct. And yes, I did confirm it, because I have to look up every Mark Twain quote you come across.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So much falsely attributed to him.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' This is directly from the Mark Twain web page, the curator herself. So it is solid. OK, next, here's the quote. "Man is still the most extraordinary computer of all." Who said that? Was it:<br />
<br />
A) Alan Turing<br />
<br />
B) Steve Jobs<br />
<br />
C) John F. Kennedy<br />
<br />
Let's start with Steve.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Jobs.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Next is Cara.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, I was thinking Jobs also.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Next is Jay.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Steve Jobs<br />
<br />
'''E:''' And Bob.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, the others don't make sense. Got to be Jobs, but that's probably where I'm going to be wrong.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' OK, and the answer is John F. Kennedy.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, no way.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Why would he say that?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' A speech he made in 1963.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It does make sense that he would be calling people computers in 1963, though.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But the thing is, we didn't call computers computers in 1963. That's my problem with that.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, it might be that computers were just starting to be called them. That's why he said that.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Well, wait, wait, wait. When was the transition from people as computers?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' But the computer was a person, right?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' But that was like as well before the 60s, though, wasn't it?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Because even in Dr. Strangelove, which was produced in 1962, they refer to computers.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, OK. So it's more like the 40s that they were calling.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, I guess that's earlier than I thought.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, but that's why it didn't make sense.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' So swept you on that one. Two more to go. Here we go. Next quote. "When you look at the ingredients, if you can't spell or pronounce it, you probably shouldn't eat it." Was that:<br />
<br />
A) Dr. Oz<br />
<br />
B) Vani Hari<br />
<br />
C) Gordon Ramsay<br />
<br />
Let's start with Jay.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Who is the middle person?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Vani Hari.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The food babe.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Food babe.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Oh, yeah, sure. It was her for sure.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' And Cara.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I assumed it was the Food Babe, but I wouldn't put it past Dr. Oz, so I'm going to go on a limb and say that idiot running for the Senate is the one who said that, Steve.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I mean, I know the food babe said, if not that something almost exactly identical to them.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' And and I'll say definitely Vani. I mean, I remember she said that.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I feel like I remember it, too. But maybe it was slightly different.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, maybe, but it's not. It is Vani.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I got one.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Hold that for one of your blogs Steve.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I feel like that's some dumb thing that Dr. Oz would have like.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I think she told me that herself.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' The food babe, gosh, she's still around. And the last quote, here we go, the fifth. "There's just no coming back from biological death because that's the ultimate death and there's no coming back from that." Was it Bob Novella, Jay Novella or Steve Novella? Let's start with Cara.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It wasn't Jay. I don't think I don't think it would be Bob either. I think that's Steve.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' You think it's Steve. OK.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I think that's Steve.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Let's jump to Bob.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Really?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Don't go to me.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I'm going to you, Bob.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Bob said it.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' OK, Bob, thinks he said it. Jay?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It was Bob.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Damn.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' And Steve.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I knew it was Bob before you finished the quote. ''(laughter)''<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So so were you making the argument, Bob, that we got to get to a point where we don't have biological death?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, it was just distinguishing a definition of death, a true final definition of death, because the definition of death has changed over the centuries. A hundred years ago, if you stop breathing, oh, he's dead. Not today. So what is that point? And that point is biological death.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And what do you mean by biological?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Your cells die.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That is a point where even in science fiction, they could not resurrect you because the information that consists that that makes you you could not be inferred by anything that's left over. So that's biological death.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Have you said this multiple times?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' No, he just said it on Episode 144, dating back to what the two thousand two thousand and seven, basically.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, I get to I get to claim ignorance because I wasn't on the show yet.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' What? You haven't memorized our entire back catalog, Cara. My gosh.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Evan, not only do I actually remember Bob saying that it is such a Bobism, I would know Bob said that even if I didn't know he said it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' How he said it or because of the content itself.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Oh, it's the way he said it.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, it's the wording.<br />
<br />
''' The wording is so Bob.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' How he repeated it after.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yes. That's right.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Evan, that is actually a lot of fun to try to guess who said a quote on this show. That could be tricky.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I'll make sure I incorporate in future-<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Or for ridiculously easy.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Well, but fun, but fun. Good to look back. I'll remember to incorporate that in future contests like this. OK, so Cara and Steve each got two of them correct. Bob and Jay got three out of the five correct. So Bob and Jay tie for the win this game. Well done, gentlemen. Well done, everyone.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. Well, good job, Evan. That was fun.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Good.<br />
<br />
== Questions/Emails/Corrections/Follow-ups <small>(1:32:06)</small> ==<br />
<br />
<blockquote><p style="line-height:115%"> Hi all. I am pleased that you all are traveling again and it sounds like your audience continues to grow which is awesome. My 8 YO has been struggling this year. I have been stopping myself from writing to you for parenting advice specific to me but I wanted to share the thought holes I’ve been going down. 2 main points: I’m not sure I’m able to give an objective assessment of my own child for human emotional reasons. It’s also been tough to find available specialists to see him for some kind of CBT which tells me that he is not the only kid struggling. Second, I can’t seem to come up to a conclusion to what kind of intervention will be most helpful and what the state of understanding is for childhood psychology. “Did we screw this kid up already?” Is the urgent question and I’m probably just seeking reassurance. Looking forward to year end as I’ve been saving a pen-dantic comment about one of Steve’s predictions for 2021. Also, Evan: I’ve been racking my brain all week as to where we’re those aliens from Futurama from? I looked it up Friday. Thanks Y’all. Still working on my tourism reel for reasons to come to Minneapolis. </p>Nick</blockquote><br />
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'''S:''' We're going to do one email. This will be a little bit quick. This is this comes from Nick and I'm going to skip to the meat of this. He says my eight year old has been struggling this year. I have been stopping myself from writing to you for parenting advice specific to me, but I wanted to share the thought holes I've been going down. Two main points. I'm not sure I'm able to give an objective assessment of my own child for human emotional reasons. It's also been tough to find available specialists to see him for some kind of CBT. That's cognitive behavioral therapy, which tells me that he is not the only kid struggling. Second, I can't seem to come up to a conclusion to what kind of intervention will be most helpful to what the state of understanding is for childhood psychology. Did we screw this kid up already is the urgent question. And I'm probably just seeking reassurance.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, so he specifically asked me, like, did I as the parent parents crew up my child.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' My eight year old. So that's why I wanted to just answer this email, because I wrote back to reassure him. No, like I said, unless you did something environmentally extreme.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, unless you like did something that's like on the adverse childhood experiences kind of scale.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, you lock him in a closet for eight years or something that would be considered abusive or neglectful or whatever.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, abuse or neglect.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I mean, yeah, if you're just yeah, if you're just worried, like, is your parenting style or whatever? Did you screw up your kid? You know, the evidence show this. The thing is, if you go back 50 years, that was kind of the default assumption of psychiatry and psychology, that any kid with mental issues or challenges was somehow screwed up by his mother.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' You know, it was always the refrigerator mother. Remember that? Yeah, like she was too cold.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Exactly. But we've you know, the research has sort of sort of like, no, it isn't bad parenting. A lot of these things are neurological issues or they're psychological, but they're a consequence of of mostly genetics or a lot of things. But it's not bad parenting. That's not the go to explanation. I know it's hard for parents and you feel like what we must have done something wrong. Why is my kid struggling with this or with that or with ADHD? Or and just like with the previous conversation, it's like, no, it's not your fault. It's not. And it's not about blame. Sometimes it's completely biological. Sometimes it's a combination and they and like as a family, you may benefit from from intervention of one kind or another. But it's not about blame and it's not and it's almost never about bad parenting.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, I think that the fear is that we're talking about the biopsychosocial model, right. And social is a part of that. And as when kids are really young, their only social experiences are in the home, which is why when kids are very, very young, adverse childhood experiences have an inordinate effect on their development. But I like to think of it more as I don't want to say bad parenting, but like neutral parenting little mistakes here and there. They don't take away from a sort of neutral place. Kids are pretty dang resilient. Obviously, neglect and abuse do. Good parenting is additive. It's protective. The more you nurture and love your child, the more that's going to be beneficial for your child, especially when they're very young. But, yeah, we have such a culture, especially around mental illness, of blame of like why like we want it's because we want an explanation. We even see it around biological illness, like people blame themselves or blame others for cancer, for diseases that they have no control over whatsoever. And I think it spills into mental illness where there's even more of a conversation about willpower and about and there's so much blame, there's so much guilt, there's so much shame. Yeah, unless you were like abusing your kid or neglecting your kid.<br />
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'''S:''' Yeah, we're not giving you a pass on parental neglect, but it's also like if you're talking about, oh, like there's maybe there's like not an optimal psychological dynamic in the family. And the other thing that comes up is the child is often the identified patient. I'm sure you know about this, Cara, where it's like, no, it's usually a family dynamic issue. And it's not the child's problem. And the family might benefit from family counseling or whatever. But that we're talking about mild things. If someone has something hardcore, you don't get like ADHD from bad parenting, right? You don't get obsessive compulsive disorder from bad parenting.<br />
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'''C:''' Or bipolar disorder.<br />
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'''S:''' Yeah, you don't get bipolar disorder. You don't get major depression. These are these are illnesses. Yeah. But then that also gets back to the stigma of mental illness. There are still a segment of society that doesn't like to think of mental illness as an illness. They want to think of it.<br />
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'''C:''' No, they think they can just like smile their way through it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, right. Or whatever.<br />
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'''C:''' Yeah, just like will themselves out of it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Or that it's all a choice in some bizarre way. It's just it's silly.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It also sounds like the concern in the email was about how to seek treatment, what to what treatment to seek. Obviously, there are qualified professionals who specialize in child psychology. You definitely if it's a child, you want to take them to a child therapist.<br />
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'''S:''' Yeah, yeah. I think my advice is basically keep looking. You know, yeah, it can be challenging. I've had encountered this personally, very hard to find competent professionals in this area. And there's a lot of pseudoscience. I had to encounter a lot of practitioners throwing woo at me. I'm like, really? So you know who the hell you're talking to kind of thing. But you just got to keep looking unfortunately, just keep looking. All right, guys, let's move on to science or fiction.<br />
<br />
== Science or Fiction <small>(1:38:00)</small> ==<br />
{{SOFResults<br />
|fiction =Dimetrodon <!-- short word or phrase representing the item --><br />
|fiction2 = <!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
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|science1 =Quetzalcoatlus <!-- short word or phrase representing the item --><br />
|science2 =Cricosaurus <!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
|science3 = <!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
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|rogue1 =Bob <!-- rogues in order of response --><br />
|answer1 =Quetzalcoatlus<!-- item guessed, using word or phrase from above --><br />
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|rogue2 =Evan<br />
|answer2 =Quetzalcoatlus<br />
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|rogue3 =Jay<br />
|answer3 =Quetzalcoatlus<br />
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|rogue4 =Cara <!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
|answer4 =Dimetrodon <!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
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|rogue5 = <!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
|answer5 = <!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
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|host =Steve <!-- asker of the questions --><br />
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|sweep = <!-- all the Rogues guessed wrong --><br />
|clever = <!-- each item was guessed (Steve's preferred result) --><br />
|win =y <!-- at least one Rogue guessed wrong, but not them all --><br />
|swept = <!-- all the Rogues guessed right --><br />
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{{anchor|theme}}<br />
''Voice-over: It's time for Science or Fiction.''<br />
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|theme = Not a dinosaur <!-- delete or leave blank if no theme --><br />
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|item1 = Quetzalcoatlus northropi, the largest flying animal ever with a wingspan of 10 meters, was able to take off from the ground by jumping directly into the air. <!-- item text from show notes --><br />
|link1 = <ref>[https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02724634.2021.1907587 Taulor&Francis Online: Morphology and taxonomy of Quetzalcoatlus Lawson 1975 (Pterodactyloidea: Azhdarchoidea)]</ref><br />
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|item2 = While contemporary with dinosaurs and often mistaken for one, Dimetrodon is not a dinosaur and is more closely related to modern lizards.<!-- item text from show notes --><br />
|link2 = <ref>[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dimetrodon Wikipedia: Dimetrodon]</ref><br />
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|item3 = Cricosaurus suevicus was a crocodile relative fully adapted to aquatic life, and looked like a cross between a dolphin and a crocodile. <!-- item text from show notes --><br />
|link3 = <ref>[https://www.palaeontologyonline.com/articles/2018/fossil-focus-thalattosuchia/ Paleontology Online: Fossil Focus: Thalattosuchia]</ref><br />
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''Voice-over: It's time for Science or Fiction.''<br />
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'''S:''' Each week, I come up with three science news items or facts, two real and one fake, and I challenge my panel of skeptics to tell me which one is the fake. There's a theme this week. The theme of this week is not a dinosaur. So these are about creatures that were around during the time of dinosaurs, but are not dinosaurs. OK.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' OK.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' OK.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. Here's the first one. Item number one, Quetzalcoatlus northropi, the largest flying animal ever with a wingspan of 10 meters, was able to take off from the ground by jumping directly into the air. Item number two, while contemporary with dinosaurs and often mistaken for one, Dimetrodon is not a dinosaur and is more closely related to modern lizards. And item number three, Cricosaurus sufficus was a crocodile relative, fully adapted to aquatic life and looked like a cross between a dolphin and a crocodile. All right, Bob, you weren't here last week, so you get to go first this week.<br />
<br />
=== Bob's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''B:''' So the premise, though, is that these are not the premise is that they're not dinosaurs, right?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Just evaluating on OK.<br />
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'''C:''' Yeah, we're not deciding which one's not a dinosaur.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, that has nothing to do with which is science or fiction. It's just the category.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Quetzalcoatlus, basically the biggest thing that ever flew. On the earth. Really? Take off from the ground. Oof, I don't know about that. I think was almost as big as an F-15. OK, let's get the next one, Dimetrodon, not a dinosaur and is more closely related. Oh, so this. All right. So so then we have to believe when you say that Dimetrodon was not a dinosaur, we get by definition that has to be true.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Not saying that I could be lying about anything.<br />
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'''B:''' OK, so then so then it's not the theme. Oh, you're really making it confusing. So it's not necessarily the theme. All right. More close to modern.<br />
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'''S:''' Well, that's not what is confusing. That's the theme. But the fiction is the fiction so. But go ahead.<br />
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'''B:''' So, yes, I mean, if I remember, Dimetrodon is not a dinosaur. See, I don't think Quetzalcoatlus was able to take off by jumping straight from the from the into the air from the ground. Too heavy. Fiction.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, Evan.<br />
<br />
=== Evan's Response ===<br />
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'''E:''' Oh, Bob, I wish you hadn't chosen that one as fiction because I was going to choose that one as science. But now that you talked about it, I think it might be fiction. I only know the name Quetzalcoatl from mythology, right? It's a god. So, I mean, but wouldn't a god be able to do things that would otherwise seem impossible to say a person? So I'm kind of going at it from that angle and like, yeah, no way jumping directly into the air. Absolutely not. But if you were this godlike creature, then yeah, then you would be able to do that.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Right. Why does God need a starship?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Exactly. So I'm thinking you might be right, though, Bob. It's whereas I don't really have no so much about the other two. Dimetrodon, not a dinosaur. That sounds OK, I suppose. And then the Cricosaurus. Cricosaurus, Cricosaurus, Cricosaurus.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I think Cricosaurus.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Cricosaurus. It sounds almost made up, right, Jay? That sounds made up to me.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, they're all made up. Their names are, at least.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Well, no, I understand someone had to name it, but Steve made it up on the spot.<br />
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'''B:''' Jokingly made up.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' A cross between a dolphin and a crocodile. Gee whiz. All right, Bob, I'm going to follow you into the darkness here. I'll say that's a quadle. I'll say that one is the fiction.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' OK, Jay.<br />
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=== Jay's Response ===<br />
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'''J:''' I make this very easy on myself. Which one of these three sounds the most like a real dinosaur? And I would say that that is the second one. So therefore, that's the fiction, the Dimetrodon.<br />
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'''C:''' But none of them are dinosaurs.<br />
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'''B:''' Supposedly.<br />
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'''E:''' That's the point.<br />
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'''S:''' Is that your answer, number two?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Wait, wait, wait. So wait, I'm sorry, Steve. The premise here is one of these is a dinosaur.<br />
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'''C:''' No, none of them are dinosaurs.<br />
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'''S:''' None of them are dinosaurs. But all the rules are all bits are off with the fiction because it's the fiction. But the category is not a dinosaur.<br />
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'''C:''' Right. These are all things that people often mistake for dinosaurs.<br />
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'''J:''' All right. OK, gotcha. I still. Wait, we're picking the one that we think is fake.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You just say one of these things is not true. One of these things is not true. That's it. It's very simple. OK.<br />
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'''J:''' You know what? When you said that, Steve, I thought that one of them. One of them is not a dinosaur.<br />
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'''C:''' No, none of them are.<br />
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'''S:''' None of them are dinosaurs.<br />
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'''J:''' I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I got it. I got it. I got it.<br />
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'''S:''' But just forget it. Forget about the category. Just pick the one, the statement that's not true.<br />
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'''B:''' Yeah, just go with the words. Forget about that. Just go with the words.<br />
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'''E:''' Don't think about the word elephant.<br />
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'''J:''' I'll go with the quesicado.<br />
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'''S:''' OK. And Cara.<br />
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=== Cara's Response ===<br />
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'''C:''' I am so glad you picked me last, and I think you picked me last because you know that I'm a nerd in this area. I'm obsessed with this stuff.<br />
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'''E:''' In dinosaurs, but not these things.<br />
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'''C:''' No, I love not. I love non-dinosaur dinosaur, like non-dinosaur organisms. So here is what I think. I think Quetzalcoatlus probably could jump in the air because it's crazy looking because it has like it doesn't look like a bird. It doesn't have little bird legs. It has like dinosaur looking legs. It's got big, beefy legs. So I bet you it could jump. I also don't remember cricosaurus, but there are quite a few swimming reptiles, marine reptiles that are crocodilian. So why not? But I'm pretty sure that Dimitrodon is a synapsid, and synapsids are mammal like reptiles, mammal like reptiles. I think it is probably related to mammals. And I'm also pretty sure it was extinct long before dinosaurs came to pass. So I'm going to go with Dimitrodon's the fiction.<br />
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=== Steve Explains Item #3 ===<br />
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'''S:''' OK, so you all agree with the third one.<br />
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'''B:''' That might be right.<br />
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'''E:''' I'll surrender right now. You don't even have to explain anything.<br />
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'''S:''' You all agree with the third one, so we'll start there. Cricosaurus suvicus was a crocodile relative fully adapted to aquatic life and looked like a cross between a dolphin and a crocodile. You guys all think that one is science and that one is science. Dolphin.<br />
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'''C:''' A dolphin crocodile?<br />
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'''S:''' There's a ton of really cool reptiles at this time with incredibly adaptive radiation of of stuff. So this was this is a group called the thalatosuchia, the thalatosuchia, which are crocodilians. And this one group did evolve to be fully adapted to the water. So they look like dolphins, but they have the heads of crocodiles.<br />
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'''C:''' That's cool. So they're not they're not like related to mosasaurs at all.<br />
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'''S:''' Well, yeah, well, sure. Yeah, they are.<br />
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'''C:''' I mean, everything's related.<br />
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'''S:''' But yeah, yeah, not super closely. No, it's a separate-<br />
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'''C:''' I don't know if they're even considered crocodilians.<br />
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'''S:''' No, yeah. Mosasaurs are different like the plesiosaurs, the mosasaurs. And there's the thalatosuchians. It's like just a different group. But yeah, they were around similar time. And yeah, there's a ton of stuff adapted to the water. You're right. A lot of reptiles adapt to the water. Cool looking thing. It looks like a dolphin with a crocodile head. It's really cool.<br />
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'''C:''' Because I think of mosasaurs as being a little dolphin like, but they're not really. They don't really look like dolphins.<br />
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'''S:''' It's had a fluke and the fins and but the crocodile head. Very cool. Crycosaurus, again, the crazy sounding name. You got to go with that. All right, let's go back.<br />
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'''C:''' So weird. It had weird legs. It's like a dolphin with legs.<br />
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'''S:''' Yeah, yeah. But they're not walking legs, though. They are swimming fin.<br />
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'''C:''' They're swimmy legs.<br />
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'''S:''' Yeah, they swimmy legs.<br />
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'''C:''' So creepy.<br />
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=== Steve Explains Item #1 ===<br />
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'''S:''' All right, let's go to number one, Quetzalcoatlus northropi, the largest flying animal ever with a wingspan of 10 meters, was able to take off from the ground by jumping directly into the air. A lot of things there that could be the fiction.<br />
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'''E:''' Oh, crap.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' This one is. This is science.<br />
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'''C:''' They're so cool. Quetzalcoatlus is so cool.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It is cool. So there was recently this is the inspiration for this theme, because there recently was a series of six papers doing a full evaluation of Quetzalcoatlus as a genus. So northropi is one of the species. But Quetzalcoatlus is a genus. There's multiple species. Northropi was the first discovered and it's the biggest. Ten meters. Man, that's a massive wingspan. This thing was a huge, huge animal.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' These things were the size of giraffes. They're freaking huge.<br />
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'''S:''' How do we know that it took off from the ground? So a couple of ways. One is that we know it couldn't take a running jump because it's it couldn't walk with its wings because of the bone structure of its shoulders. It could not, propel itself with its forelimbs.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' And what? And it couldn't climb either? Is that what you're going to say?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, because its wings are army like they're like folded, like little front arms.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The way they walk was really weird. So they would like move like the left wing out to the side in order to make room for that to the leg to step forward. It may be leaned on its right wing when it did that. But then it would it would reverse it. It would bring the wing, the left wing down, bring the right wing up and take her step with its right leg. So then that's how they would walk. So they just had to move the wings out of the way. But they weren't able to, like, propel themselves with their forelimbs. So they're basically bipedal. They might have used them for a little bit of quadrupedal aid, but they were basically bipedal. But they couldn't run and take off. They were too big to climb, really. They were just too massive creatures. There's a lot of comparisons made to the other, like modern large water birds like storks that would take off in the exact same way. They would jump into the air. Now, why would they need to jump into the air? Because they couldn't flap their wings from standing still because they couldn't get a full down stroke. Their wings would hit the ground. They're too big. They would have to jump up in order to get a full downward stroke with their wings. And Cara's correct. Their legs were massive. Their hind legs were just really powerful, more powerful than they would have to be just for walking. But they but powerful enough that they could jump six feet into the air or whatever they had to do in order to get a full down stroke with their wings. So you put all that together. That was the conclusion of the analysis. That's that's how they must have taken off, just by jumping into the air and getting a full down stroke with their wings.<br />
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=== Steve Explains Item #2 ===<br />
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'''S:''' So all this means that while contemporary with dinosaurs and often mistaken for one dimetrodon, is it dimetrodon? Or you see we're saying demetrodon?<br />
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'''C:''' I'm saying demetrodon but I went I took paleontology. I took paleontology in college because I'm a nerd and I love this topic. I took it in Texas. And I don't know, we say things weird down there. But also, you guys say things weird in Connecticut. I will say that the minute you said the theme is non dinosaur or things that people confuse for dinosaurs in my head, I go, Demetrodon. This is the first thing I thought.<br />
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'''S:''' That's why I see. That's why I said anything. Demetrodon is not a dinosaur and is more closely related to modern leaders. But there's two things that are wrong there. And Cara, you hit them on both of them. So first of all, dimetrodons went extinct 40 million years before dinosaurs evolved. So they were not contemporary dinosaurs. And they're not more closely related to lizards. So lizards and dinosaurs are all in one group. And then demetrodon is a synapsid, you're correct, which is in a separate group that is related to early mammals. So demetrodon is not an ancestor to mammals, but it is in the in the group of mammal like reptiles.<br />
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'''C:''' They're so weird.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So it's essentially the same evolutionary distance from lizards and dinosaurs, right? Not more closely related to lizards.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' They think of them as like Spinosaurus was the really tall one that looks like T-Rex, but had a sail on its back. People mistaken that because he had a sail on his back. They're like, oh, like in kids bedsheets and stuff, they draw pictures of demetrodon. And they're like, look at the dinosaurs.<br />
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'''S:''' Yeah, totally. But the other thing is Cara. So the old picture of a demetrodon was with the legs out to the side, the belly on the ground. But the more modern reconstructions think that the legs were underneath and it was walking more upright, partly based upon the track, the footprint, the tracks that we have tracks of them.<br />
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'''C:''' That would make sense.<br />
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'''S:''' And they're narrow, like they're close together and there's no belly drag. But the paleontologists say, well, maybe they swing back and forth really extremely when they walk, which would bring their feet closer together when they in the path. But the tracks don't really support that. So it may be that they did walk more like with their legs underneath them rather rather than out to the side.<br />
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'''B:''' Yeah, but wouldn't see, but wouldn't the anatomy, wouldn't these the skeleton itself absolutely show the orientation of the legs under under the body?<br />
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'''C:''' It's all about how you how you articulate the.<br />
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'''S:''' The short answer is no. And it would absolutely wouldn't necessarily because it's this quality of the completeness of the skeletons, but also you can make choices about how things fit together.<br />
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'''C:''' But if you look at old dinosaurs in museums, it's amazing what the mounts look like compared to now.<br />
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'''S:''' But here's the thing about the when I was reading like the updates on the Dimetrodon, they were saying this question, this is how it was reconstructed a hundred years ago. And no one's really questioned it since.<br />
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'''B:''' And that's the problem.<br />
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'''S:''' Yeah. Take a fresh look. I was like, yeah, it makes more sense to have to have it this way. Actually, Dimetrodon-<br />
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'''B:''' That's what I mean. Yeah, they could have to find that from first principles instead of like going with what it was.<br />
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'''S:''' Let me ask you guys a question of these three Quetzalcoatlus, Dimetrodon and Cricosaurus. Which one do you think was discovered first? Like how long ago.<br />
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'''J:''' Cricosaurus.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Dimetrodon.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, what would be the giveaway?<br />
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'''C:''' Yeah, it could be Dimetrodon, because I think it's-<br />
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'''S:''' Cricosaurus, that that group among the first really ancient reptiles discovered was from that group.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Huh?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' There were at least if not specifically that species or at least the group that it belongs to the crocodilian swimming crocodiles.<br />
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'''C:''' Do you do you know where they were? Oh, Germany, three skulls in Germany. Interesting. Dimetrodon, I know, is an American.<br />
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'''S:''' Yeah, although that has also been recently discovered in Europe.<br />
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'''C:''' Oh, OK. Cool.<br />
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'''S:''' It is mostly American, the fossils. But there were some recent finds in Europe. Yeah. And Quetzalcoatlus is also like near Mexico. That's why it's based on having the Mexican Quetzalcoatl, which is a flying god, although it had feathers which doesn't really fit with the pterodactyls. But that's where the name came from.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. And they're cool. If you've never seen a skeleton in person. Go see a Quetzalcoatlus. It blows your mind how big they are.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. Yeah. The thing is and part of why I like this this theme is that we do get like over and over again exposed to the same few species. Everybody knows T-Rex and Brontosaurus.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Triceratops.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And Triceratops. But there's so many amazingly bizarro things out there that we know about. And these aren't even the most bizarre. There are just some you see some pictures of like, what the hell is that? So it really is worth exploring just the number of different groups, the entire groups of animals alive at the time of the dinosaurs or whatever, even at any time in the past, that you're not even aware existed. And some of them are really bizarro to modernize. So definitely just tool around the Internet and look for weird crap like that. You'll be amazed at what's out there.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I'm going to Google weird extinct species.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Careful. You might wind up binging.<br />
<br />
== Skeptical Quote of the Week <small>(1:54:15)</small> ==<br />
<br />
<blockquote>We are all delusional to some extent. Human brains were not selected to perceive reality. They were selected to reproduce.<br>– {{W|Shankar Vedantam}}, journalist, writer, and science correspondent</blockquote><br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, Evan, give us a quote.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' This quote was suggested by a listener, someone named Visto Tutti. Never heard of him before. Thanks for listening. "We are all delusional to some extent. Human brains were not selected to perceive reality. They were selected to reproduce." And that was said by Shankar Vedantam, who is a host and creator of Hidden Brain. Very popular podcast.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So that's I agree with that quote, except it's a little reductionist meaning-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Interesting. Yeah, it's sort of making a false dichotomy there.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Maybe this is the reproduced part, but I think the perception of reality, I think-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, that's true. We in no way. Yeah, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It kind of misses the point, though, as a neuroscientist, is what I would say. It's not that it wasn't our brains are not selected to perceive reality. It's that our perception is optimized for things other than being completely accurate. But it's not all about reproduction. It's also about survival, you know?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Well, yeah, so it's kind of related because it was optimized to show us just enough reality so that we can't the brain can reproduce.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, but it's not it's not how much reality to it. It's the way it it reconstructs reality. You know what I mean? It was adapted to the things that favour our survival, which is not necessarily being the most accurate or the highest fidelity. And in fact, sometimes it's wrong. It's deliberately wrong. But in a way that favours our reproductive success.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But in a pithy way, isn't that kind of what he said?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, I agree. So I'm saying I agree with it in general. It is pithy. It's a fun quote. But I just it's a little as stated, it's a little reductionist. And it takes a lot of explanation to really say what it what it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, I bet you that came at the end of a longer explanation.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Probably. Or before or before.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Almost Michio Kaku esque.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Almost. Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Almost as bad as him.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Except not at all.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' But except, right, except not. Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I wouldn't go that far. But yeah. All right. Well, thank you all for joining me this week.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' You got it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Thanks Steve.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Sure man.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Thank you, Steve.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Last, next week is our last regular show of the year.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, my gosh.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Weird.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The week after that will be a show we pre-recorded recently when we were in Colorado.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right. So don't send us email.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. Why are you publishing a whole show? And then the next one after that will be our year and year in review.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, boy.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' End of the year show.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Wow.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' What a year.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. So we'll see you guys all next week.<br />
<br />
== Signoff/Announcements ==<br />
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}}</div>Hearmepurrhttps://www.sgutranscripts.org/w/index.php?title=SGU_Episode_778&diff=19086SGU Episode 7782024-01-07T17:59:15Z<p>Hearmepurr: episode done</p>
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<br />
== Introduction ==<br />
''Voiceover: You're listening to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.''<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Hello and welcome to the Skeptic's Guide to the Universe. Today is Wednesday, June 3<sup>rd</sup>, 2020, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella...<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Hey, everybody.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Cara Santa Maria...<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Howdy.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Jay Novella...<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Hey, guys.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' ...and Evan Bernstein.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Good evening, folks.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' How are you all doing today?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Well.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' You know.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I'm trying hard.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's been a tough week, and a tough week. Lots happened since our last show. We're just going to do a little bit of COVID updates first, like we usually do.<br />
<br />
== COVID-19 Update <small>(0:42)</small> == <br />
<br />
'''S:''' So the numbers continue to increase, of course, but in the US, there definitely is a leveling off. The parts of the country that peaked first are starting to, or the new cases, the number of new cases are declining. Some other parts of the country that peaked later are still on the upswing, and some are even spiking a little bit. And so we're again, as I said before, we'll be getting that transition to the next phase where we're starting to partially roll things out. And I think the next month or two is going to really tell a lot about how things are going to go.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Do you think that's because the most populated cities did tend to peak first? And so even if the more rural areas or suburban or less populated areas are now starting to see their cases peaking, it's just in terms of gross numbers, fewer people.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. Yeah, I think so. Yeah, this is, and we're definitely getting into the more rural phase of the spread of the virus now.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Absolutely.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Plus also in the news, no zombies have showed up yet.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Mm hmm.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, that's good. Were they supposed to show up?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Bob, are you happy or sad about that?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' A little of both, Jay. A little of both.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' All right, Bob. One of these nights, I'll come over your house. I'll dress up. I'll do the whole thing.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But in a mask, of course.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I hit you in the head with my Noon Chuck.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Another hydroxychloroquine study came out, this one showing that it does not protect people from acquiring COVID-19.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Shocker.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So you can give it as a preventive to people who are not sick. It does not reduce their risk of getting it. On the good side, a study, the first study of convalescent plasma, so it's plasma from people who had COVID-19 and got better, showed that it was safe. This was an open-label trial, not a controlled trial. This was like a phase one safety trial, showed that it was safe, and I think it was like 20 people or whatever in the study, or it was more than that, but 19 of them recovered. So they did well.<br />
<br />
'''B:'' So the antibody test.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. This is for plasma with antibodies in it. So it wasn't an efficacy trial, so we can't say really that it works based on this trial.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But it didn't kill them.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, but it looked preliminarily positive, but now this will pave the way for an efficacy trial where we compare it to a control. So that's good. And now halfway through my second week working in the hospital.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' How are you holding up?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Have you had a recent test?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, I haven't been tested.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I feel happy.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' They're only testing symptomatic people. So initially, when we recorded the show last week, I'd only been there for a few days. And it is a bit of a shock after two months of being in lockdown, to be strolling around a hospital full of sick people was a different experience.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Cultured shock, sort of, in a way.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But now I'm sort of seeing the other side of it. I think we got this lockdown pretty tight in that the people working in the hospital are all really diligent. You know what I mean? Everyone's wearing a mask, wearing gloves, washing in and out of patient rooms, they're gowning the protective gear we're doing social distancing, and we've made lots of workflow changes we're not doing the on-mask rounds that we used to do, we've really changed how we're doing things.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And that'll probably be like the new normal for quite some time.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Absolutely.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' In fact, the next year's Paris fashion show is going to be gowns and masks and all sorts of protective equipment.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It might be. You never know.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' You know what? You might be.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I wouldn't be surprised.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's just how interesting that is.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So, I mean, this is not to say there isn't a risk of 450,000 people, health care workers have contracted COVID-19 around the world. So it's obviously it's a higher risk than not being in a hospital. I mean, you think about it, a hospital is the worst place to be for spreading disease.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' You don't even want to be there when you're pre-COVID.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, just think about it. It's a space, it's a building that's confined to some extent with tons of people, many of whom are sick, and your people, large groups of people are moving around the hospital, literally going into different patients' rooms. You know what I mean? It's a complete setup for the transmission of germs.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Germ clouds all over the place.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Totally. This is why the precautions have been increasing over the course of my career, over the course of historical time as infectious diseases get more menacing. And this is just the latest iteration of that. And I do think that there's going to be permanent changes to how hospitals function in response to COVID-19, probably because COVID-19 is going to be a permanent addition to our germosphere.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Did you feel like there were changes after MRSA started to become a really, yeah and now that's just how people are in hospitals?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, I mean, there's specific protocols. If someone's MRSA positive, there's a specific protocol associated with that. I have one patient on my service now who's MRSA positive. It's a gown and glove every time you go in. And that's always been the case since MRSA was discovered. And it's very common. So same thing, same things with other antibiotic resistant bacteria and also certain respiratory infections and tuberculosis, every time there's a new big infectious disease, it pretty much permanently changes the practice. So the thing is, I am feeling better, I think in a way is like, we got this, we're doing everything we can do, we're kind of minimizing it, the professionalism is definitely there. And I think health care workers are getting more experience with COVID-19 and we're learning a lot about it. So we're sort of getting a grip on it. But there's just no way around the fact that it's a risk and that already there's been a huge price paid by health care workers for being on the front lines, there's no question.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And until there's a vaccine, it's going to continue to be a risk, unless we get to a herd immunity point.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And even after.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But a lot of people are going to have to get sick and a lot of people are probably going to die if we're actually talking about getting to herd immunity.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah. How long before herd immunity? Two, three, four years?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I don't know. We may never get it.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' We don't know.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We may never get it.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' We may never get it, right?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It really depends on the number of variables. How protective are the antibodies? How effective is the vaccine going to be? What is going to be the compliance with the vaccine? How long is immunity going to last? And then also just what's going to be the long term virulence of this virus?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Bob, do we have computers crunching out those numbers and giving us scenarios?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, sure. But we don't have all the we don't have the baseline information. We still don't know some of the things that we need to plug in.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Error bars are huge at this point.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. Yeah. So it's like it's like extreme sensitivity to initial conditions, kind of chaos where sure. Yes, we absolutely have computer models for this sort of thing. But it's like, OK, you put in these 10 parameters, each of which has error bars and they multiply. So then the resulting error bar is massive.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's when you hear things like it could be two to 10 years.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Plus or minus 12 years.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Right. But things are chugging along. So we'll see. Again, I think that we're in a very tricky phase.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I think your optimism comes as a nice relief for some people, Steve, they'll be happy to hear that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I wrote my article on Science Based Medicine {{link needed}} today was basically optimistic. It was winning the covid marathon. It's like, yes, this is hard all the negative things about it. I reviewed the fact that in the last five months we have made massive scientific advances. Think about it. And within a couple of weeks, we seek when we identified and then sequenced the genome of the virus. We shared it with the world. We already were to have 100 drugs that we're testing. We have drugs in the pipeline. We're already working on a vaccine and we're working on the plasma thing. We're learning more. There's been 20,000. Was that the figure?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, something insane.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Of studies.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Studies published. We're sciencing the shit out of this. Now imagine and I said, think about it, compare this to 1918, where 50 million people died around the world. This virus really is not that virus is no worse than COVID-19 virus. That was, imagine how hopeless they must have felt.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' They couldn't even see viruses. They thought it was bacterial at the beginning.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, right. They really understood. That's what we're doing. In 100 years, we are in a completely different place with this pandemic and it's all due to scientific advances. The thing is, I think people take for granted and are complacent about it, but it's, even in the last few years, our ability to, no, we not only didn't, it's not that we just sequenced the virus. We're sequencing the different strains of the virus. the spread of the virus by the differences in the sequences of the different strains. Think about that.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It's a phenomenal set of accomplishments in the science, in the world of science. It's incredible.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Steve, can I take a complete right turn here and say something really cool and adorable I found this week? A positive thing?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Okay.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Are you guys aware that hermit crabs hermit crabs have to get a shell, right? They have to go find a shell that they fit in and when they get bigger, they have to abandon their old shell and find a new shell. Are you aware that hermit crabs organize a shell swap meetup?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, that's cute. I didn't know that. I only ever had them as pets.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So what they do is they line themselves up from biggest to smallest.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' God damn.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' And then the big guy starts first and starts the wave of the shell swap. So he's going to a new shell that's unoccupied. And then his shell goes to the guy behind him and his shell goes to the guy behind him. And of course, there's a bastard hermit crab that runs up and steals somebody's shell when they're out of the shell.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' There's always that bastard.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, they do that, huh? It's not this orderly uniform thing in which they're all behaving by the rules.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, there is, but there's always going to be the outlier jerk, the opportunist in every species.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, he snipes.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, you see that.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' A hermit crab will die without the shell because the sun will cook them very quickly. They need it.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' And also what a delicious end.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' They'll get eaten. But anyway, holy cow.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Holy crab!<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Holy hermit!<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I mean, talk about evolution, huh? Like this is a learned behavior, a social behavior that's genetically coded in there. When I saw it, I was amazed and also a little horrified what their butt looks like, because you never see that part of them.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, well, they have dignity, you know.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, they get very embarrassed. But anyway, I thought that was amazing. And then the other cool thing, which we're going to talk about during my news item a little bit, but we really haven't talked about the launch, guys, and the successful launch of the Dragon crew capsule. And it's successful, amazingly successful.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I watched it.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I mean, yeah, I saw it all. But we never seen it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, it happened since our last show. That's why.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, we're going to talk about it. We are going to talk about it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. But before we move on to the news items, we do have to mention the other big thing that happened in the past week.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, yeah, that little thing.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That was obviously the death of George Floyd at the hands of police officers. And obviously, this is a horrible thing. I'm sure we all watch the video. It's painful to watch.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It's murder.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. I mean and even I'm sure anyone can see that that was wrong. But as a physician, I'm like, holy crap, that he's literally killing that person. I mean, what is he doing? He's completely, he's clearly unconscious. Why are you restraining an unconscious person anyway?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And of course, those are the voices in the video. Those are all the people watching and filming. The bystanders are like, guys, I think you're killing him.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So and the end, the response obviously has been an appropriate, I think, level of outrage among many people.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Universal outrage.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And this, of course, is not just George Floyd. I mean, George Floyd was the straw at this point.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's a trigger. It's a challenging time for democracy in the U.S. But I, again, I tend to be hopeful. I think that protesting is a constitutionally protected, incredibly important part of-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Of the process.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Of the process. And it's actually good for me to see the conversation that's happening. I've learned stuff in the last week and I think that we did it. It is a time to listen. And we were just talking before the show. It's very reminiscent of the Me Too movement where when that really hit, I learned so much that I didn't know that I thought I knew about the experience of half the population. And it's another sort of moment where we could learn what the experience of a segment of our population.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Never stop learning.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And here's the thing. I think that's a really important thing to note is that it's imperative on us as, especially among these five individuals who are speaking right now, but anybody listening for whom this resonates, as white Americans, and even though I'm Latinx, I am my race, if you want to define race, is white. My ethnicity might be Latina, but I look white. It's important for us to do our research and understand our role in these systemic, racist problems in our country and not to expect Black America to educate us about this. That's not their responsibility. It's our responsibility to remain educated. You cannot be passive in this kind of conversation because to be passive is to allow the structures that are continuing to continue unabated. We have to educate ourselves.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I agree. As skeptics, as critical thinkers, like a lot of people say, what's our role in this? This is kind of political, sure, but what I think is important is whatever your gut, knee-jerk reaction to this is, it's probably more emotional and ideological than fact-based, no matter where you are on the spectrum. And I think this is a good opportunity to put your immediate reactions aside and question everything that you might think about what's going on and look for facts, look for critical thinking, and also look for the other perspective. We all could use, I think, this is a complicated area, there's actually a lot of science behind it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' A ton of literature.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' This will be studied.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Don't think this is all opinion. There's a lot of science here, there's a lot of sociology, a philosophy, everything of that. There's a lot of layers here.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Psychology.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, there's a lot of layers here. And we're going to be covering a couple of tiny slices on the show today. We may cover more in the future. We may find experts to bring on, depending on how things go. But I think it's a good opportunity to say, okay, I want to be more informed about this. I don't want to just go with my gut opinion here or my tribal opinion. I want information. I want to learn.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And I think if you're in what we call in the literature the ethnocentric, monocultural majority, and I know that's a big mouthful, but really it just refers to the fact that In America, the power structures tend to be white. And so that tends to be how we define things as normative. So ethnocentric, meaning white-centric, monocultural, meaning we tend to define white culture as normative and other cultures as other, which is obviously problematic. So if you find yourself in the ethnocentric, monocultural majority, then I think that one piece of advice that I'd like to give is that if when you hear things that threaten your previous beliefs and you find yourself feeling defensive or angry or shameful, listen to those feelings. Don't react. Start thinking, why is it that this offends me? Is it because I have been reinforcing some of these systemic problems? And how can I change that? I think one of the biggest problems is that change comes slow and that the evolution of awareness to anti-racism is actually a long process for a lot of people, especially if you grew up in a place where racist sentiment was codified. And so your initial reaction when you hear things that you may want to say, but not me or I'm not, don't tell me, it's not about you right now. So stop, think before you speak and educate yourself. I think that's a really important thing that a lot of white people can be learning right now.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Good time to enhance our listening skills.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Absolutely. Thank you, Evan. Absolutely.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It's amazing. Steve, after what you said because it was the Me Too movement and now we have this resurgence of the fact that black people are being abused in our country.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' You mean the resurgence of people being aware of it?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Being aware of it.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, yeah. Of course. Well, I guess you could say that during the protests it's been getting worse too, but the point is it's so easy to sit here and be reminded that this is happening because, I'm a white male and I don't have to worry about any of the things that happened to any of the people in the Me Too movement. I don't have to worry about the things that the average black person has to deal with. And it really bothers me that I just can go years without even thinking about any of these issues because they don't affect me. I don't have people and these two movements have extraordinarily opened my eyes.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' When people are hurting, it's important to listen to what they're saying.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So right, Evan.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And even still, we don't really know.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No. And the point that you just made, Jay, is a beautiful example of what it is in the literature and in larger social conversations that we're talking about when we talk about privilege. Privilege doesn't mean that bad things don't happen to you. Privilege doesn't mean that your life can't be hard. It means that you don't have the additional burdens of your blackness or your femaleness or whatever the case may be, and that you're not aware of the microaggressions and the experiences, the day-to-day experiences of an individual who doesn't have that privilege. And I think that the way that you just described your experience is a great example, Jay, of saying I'm lucky that I have this privilege. And so it's going to take me actually digging in and really trying to learn. And the best way to learn is to, as you said, Evan, listen and surround yourself with people who are different from you. Try and understand their experiences.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' One story that resonated with me this past week. So a story of a New England Ivy League school professor who was an avid birder who was out in the park birding.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Sounds like a punk.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Right? I might have a little bit in common with somebody who fits that profile. And they politely remind a passerby that you're supposed to have your dog on a leash. And this turns into a racial conflict.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh my gosh.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It was watch to me that's like, that would not, if I were that person doing that, it would have been a completely different interaction. I know from experience, it would have been a completely different interaction. That was it was so clear. It's, again, obviously, millions of things like that happen all the time.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' That's the important point. Just because we caught it on video this time and we're able to see it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It was caught and it was crystal clear. But it stands in representation for all the ones that are not on video and maybe are more ambiguous or whatever. But it's still the same basic phenomenon. Anyway, we will be circling back to some of this. We're just going to do a couple of regular news items first.<br />
<br />
== News Items ==<br />
<br />
=== More Accurate Time of Death <small>(20:44)</small> ===<br />
* [https://phys.org/news/2020-06-method-accurate-death-crime-scenes.html Phys.org: New method for more accurate determination of time of death at crime scenes]<ref>[https://phys.org/news/2020-06-method-accurate-death-crime-scenes.html Phys.org: New method for more accurate determination of time of death at crime scenes]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' Bob, you're going to tell us about a more accurate way to designate the time of death.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, this is a cheery topic I thought would be interesting. The scientists that have developed a method for determining PMI, or post-mortem interval, otherwise known as time of death, at a crime scene more accurately than ever before.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' So wait, someone just doesn't look at their wristwatch and say, note the time, it's 12.30.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And not if they're not there when the person dies.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Because all the TV shows have showed me that.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Crime scenes don't often have people ready to make note of that. But this comes from researchers from Amsterdam, UMC, the University of Amsterdam, and the Netherlands Forensic Institute. And if you want to read about it, it's in the journal Science Advances. So you might say, who cares? How accurate do you really need to be? It's often a critical issue in forensic and case investigations. And the exact time of death can be decisive evidence in court, very important. And obviously, for an example, if someone has an alibi for a narrow window of time, if you know the post-mortem interval, it can help support or invalidate an alibi. Now you've got to trust me on this. I know a lot about alibis and court evidence. I'm taking care of my 83-year-old mom during this pandemic. So I hang out with her a lot with the TV on. Did you know that Law and Order, SVU has 478 episodes, and Survival PD has 148, and Criminal Minds has 324? And I feel like I've seen every goddamned one. Somebody help. Please help. Some of those shows just suck you in. It's like, no, I can't go back to work. I need to watch TV.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh my god, I love SVU. I can't help myself.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It's amazing. All right. So full disclosure, [[SGU Episode 522|episode 522]] from July 2015, science or fiction. Steve said, a new technique allows examiners to extend the window in which the time of death can be accurately determined from 36 hours to 240 hours. So it's a related news item, not exactly the same. The gist of that was that they tested dead pigs, and they found that some muscle proteins degrade in a predictable way such that you could reliably determine time of death from 36 to 240 hours after death. Huge. So this is the window after death that's very difficult to calculate. There's other methods, like taking a body temp, which I'll talk about later, and also you could catalog the bugs that colonize a corpse, and you could use that time frame as like, oh, this person, this body has been dead for this many weeks because of this type of bug. So this is different. This is in a specific window that was not easy to calculate. So now that was five years ago, and that method is still considered an interesting approach and with potential, but they're still looking for things like, what's the best protein marker to use for a human? And so the bottom line is that this is not being used in the field yet, but it still has promise. So now the current process. So what am I talking about with this news item? So my news item is about that first window with a fairly new corpse found at crime scenes typically 1 to 36 hours. The gold standard for this, for determining post-mortem interval, is pretty simple. The big part is body temperature. The body temperature is determined rectally, right Jay? Why don't I just go to Jay when that comes up? So you take the body temperature, plus you've got body weight and the ambient conditions, and you go to a special table, and that table will tell you that a person of that weight in that environment would have taken X number of hours to cool to the temperature that you took. So that's kind of how it's done. That's kind of the gold standard. It's helpful. It's been very helpful, but there's some problems with that method.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Sounds like variables come into play here.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, right. There's many more variables. So according to Professor Maurice Alders, professor of forensic biophysics at the University of Amsterdam's AUMC and the Van Hoft Institute for Molecular Sciences, damn, the guy's got a big title. He said, however, these tables are far from ideal. For instance, in the cooling process, it can make quite a difference whether a person is built heavily or thinly. The model does not incorporate this. So with persons of equal weight, but with different body structures, the outcome is the same. This implies that the results are not reliable.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It sounds like the same problem with BMI. It gets a good indicator overall, but like an individual basis.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' If you're a bodybuilder, that number is going to be totally skewed. And the other problem with this method is that because taking the temperature is somewhat invasive, there's the potential that it could destroy some traces of evidence as well. So now the new method, the new method is non-invasive. It measures the body temperature in one to four places. So it could do four different places, and it's done with a thermal camera, or you can apply sensors to the body, which I guess is much less invasive. So you have that information, and then that information is entered into a much more comprehensive model which can handle details like what kind of clothing is a person wearing? Was he wearing a Speedo, or was he wearing a Parka, or you know, that can factor in. Was the body in water? Was it fully submerged? Was it only half or a quarter in water? And then the type of surface that the body was found on, et cetera, et cetera. You could plug all of this stuff in.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Can they also, would it tell you if they were dead or if they were just mostly dead?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Mostly dead. No. Mostly dead. This happens before-<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I feel better.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Before the PMI. So conventional tests with just, like I said earlier, with the temperature and a couple other variables, they're usually accurate within three hours. So that's often a helpful window, but that's big. It's still a big window. This new method that I just described was done on bodies with precisely known times of death to get a really accurate test result. And they were accurate on average to within 45 minutes and never more than an hour. So less than a third. So they knocked out a good chunk. It's a really huge improvement. Alder said this is a major step forward in forensic investigation. So as good as that is, though, they think they can do better. So of course, I love hearing about how they anticipate that the future is going to play out with this technology. How much better can it get? And they think they can make it even better. And one way to do this that they're actually looking into now is to capture a body at the crime scene in 3D using motion photogrammetry. Now photogrammetry is a science of making measurements from photographs, taking accurate measurements, just using the pictures. So what you do is you photograph the body from all directions. And you know how the way apps work, right? Take a bunch of images from different directions and it could stitch it together into a 3D image that's generated. And then you could plug that into the model and then it can be immediately used to calculate the cooling of the body. And the cool thing about that is that you could say the body was in this position. It had this posture. And you could get even more granular with the types of situations that the body was in while it was cooling to have an even more accurate estimate of the post-mortem interval. And who knows how accurate they can get that? So that's interesting. I like this idea of creating the 3D image. And I wonder, could they get it down to a half hour? Could they get it down to 15, 10 minutes maybe? So however that comes out, I can't wait to see this method used in a new Law and Order episode.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. I mean, Bob, it's pretty interesting that you said 45 minutes to an hour is this new method. How long?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Three hours. Three hours for the temperature.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So all those TV shows are bullshit because they always talk about like, oh, he was gone for 20 minutes. That's enough time to kill him. There's no way they could have known that, a 20-minute window.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah. Well, I'm not, yeah. That's not using methods that I'm familiar with.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, that exist.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah. Right. Right. And of course, these silly shows take lots of lots of liberties.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. They get their DNA results back in 30 minutes. And also, enhance. Click, click, click. Enhance. That's their favorite tool.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah. Oh, God. Yeah. Let's enhance information that's not even in the original picture, right? Sometimes they'll get an accurate estimate based on variables that they just got lucky enough to find out, you know? Like a video of it actually happening or because they can hack into these security cameras so well, right? There's always a security camera that's, oh, look at this. Beautiful.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' The watch gets broken as they're hit with a rock or something.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I just saw one episode where the wife who was murdered, she actually recorded her murder from her TV. Her actual TV could actually record video because there was a hidden camera embedded in the TV. I'm not aware of a TV that could do that. But that's-<br />
<br />
'''E:''' How did it know to record? Or what? Huh?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' No, she knew to record it because she wanted to record this because something sketchy was happening.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, she did.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' You clearly didn't see that episode Evan. It was a smart move for her to record. And then, of course, the cops found it and like, oh, okay, you're the murderer. We got it on TV video.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I recently wrote about forensic science because a lot of it is crap.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, my God. So much of it. So much more than we thought.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, I know. And a lot of it, unfortunately, is being, I think, falsely hyped on those very shows you mentioned, Bob. A lot of shows that have-<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Sure.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, they go to the lab and they come up with a nice forensic, they tie a forensic bow around it.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' In minutes.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. But a lot of it is relying upon stuff that we now know is just pseudoscience. But this is real. And this is the kind of thing that could have a significant improvement in informing these investigations.<br />
<br />
=== SpaceX and the ISS <small>(30:39)</small> ===<br />
* [https://www.theverge.com/21276881/nasa-spacex-iss-international-space-station-future-commercial The Verge: What the future of the space station looks like after SpaceX’s historic launch]<ref>[https://www.theverge.com/21276881/nasa-spacex-iss-international-space-station-future-commercial The Verge: What the future of the space station looks like after SpaceX’s historic launch]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, Jay, as you alluded in the preamble to the show, that we, since the last show, SpaceX docked with the ISS. So give us the update on that.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah. So I'm going to tell you, Steve, about the Dragon launch real quick, and then I'm going to tell you about the ISS because that is a big, there's a big question mark in the future of the International Space Station. So first we got to see the Dragon crew launch. This is the Dragon 2 capsule. Yeah, so the original launch was supposed to happen on Wednesday, May 27th, and that got scrubbed because there was some bad weather over Florida. So they moved it to Saturday the 30th. The launch went off about three in the afternoon without a hitch. My first observation was it was really amazing how fast that the just was over before you knew it. I'm used to watching shuttle launches where I guess the vehicle takes a lot longer to get up to speed and get out of the atmosphere but like nine, 10 minutes into the launch, they were in outer space, they were getting rid of the second stage. So 19 hours later, approximately, they caught up with the ISS. The cool thing was this was really done largely by the computer system. It's not that the pilots aren't really doing anything. Of course they are. But the computer assist on this is huge. And they went through a lot of procedures, right, Evan? You saw this, right, Ev?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yes.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' And they do all these procedures. They're testing air pressure and they're testing the telemetry, they're making sure that the wire, they were like not running a wired connection, then they were running a wired connection and then they hooked the clamps in and it was really cool. It takes quite a while. This isn't like quick, the thing comes up and they park it and they connect it and the guys are in there shaking hands. It took about an hour to go through all this stuff. And then they come out and they're hugging each other and it just felt so good. It was really like a feel good moment, I think, that everyone around the world needed just to see this something that seemed like normal, even though it hasn't happened a private launch like this hasn't happened. But I was so proud of everyone involved and proud to see that the success happened. It was a big tension reliever when they launched and it was good. And then when they docked and it was good. And now the mission is moving forward. I still haven't heard how long they're going to stay up there, but they they're moving the cargo out. They're doing all the basic stuff. I didn't be, was not able to find a detailed mission spec on exactly what they're going to be doing and when they're going to make the final decision on when they're coming home. But I'm sure that that information will be out soon. So then I'm sitting there going, hey, wasn't the International Space Station supposed to be decommissioned? And it turns out, yeah, but there's a cool history here and there's a lot of details about the fact that SpaceX is now successfully able to launch people into outer space. So since 2011, when the space shuttle program was retired, NASA turned to the country that had the best space program, it happened to be Russia, and they're paying Russia to bring astronauts to the ISS on the Soyuz rocket. It costs about 80 million dollars.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Per launch?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Per seat, per seat.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, per seat.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yes. But you get a movie with that.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, you do.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' You get some popcorn.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' You get a couple of snacks. Hey, be happy because now with the success of the Crew Dragon launch last week, NASA now has access to once again launch the astronauts into outer space again without having to go to a foreign country. So I loved, like I was saying before, I loved watching the whole thing from soup to nuts even before the flight. And I just like sitting there with this stupid smile on my face. I can't tell you how exciting this is for me. So what this means, though, is the ISS will be used a lot more than ever before, right? We're going to be shuttling people up a lot. This is just with SpaceX. You know, wait till Boeing gets their crew capsule ready to go. Then it'll be even more. And this is this is a profound change to not only the traffic that we're going to have in space, but it's also a profound change to the future of the ISS because we need to re-examine the usefulness of the ISS. We can't just say, hey, we're going to shut this thing down. So what's going on here is America's political relationship with Russia has been on the decline, right? The typical politics between the two countries. The one part of their relationship that has been doing great is this co-joining between NASA and the Russian space agency. As a matter of fact, the scientists that are part of those two teams, like these guys get along and they there's a lot of mutual respect there. And they're in both countries are benefiting Russia's benefiting because they're getting like Bob asked, it's 80 million dollars a seat. So there's a lot of money in it for Russia. And the US, of course, is benefiting by getting their astronauts into outer space and up to the space station to continue conducting all the all the science that they're doing and a huge amount of the science that they're doing is testing for deep space missions, farther away missions like to the moon and one day to Mars. So the relationship between NASA and Rosco Cosmos, unfortunately now, depending on your perspective, it's got to change because we're not going to be paying 80 million dollars anymore. The heads of the two agencies discussed this idea of trading seats on either of their two rockets instead of the US paying Russia. So they both agree that the two countries need to continue to work with each other for both countries to move forward in the changing developments in space. And this is great news because the more agencies that can send people to space, the better.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And we should also remember, too, that it's not the only like sending people to the ISS is not the only use of Soyuz or of like any of these capsules that are launched out of Kazakhstan. Satellites are launched out of there all the time. And lots of countries buy that time or they contract with Rosco Cosmos. And although we have the capability to launch from Florida or from areas in California, I still think that American countries contract with Rosco Cosmos. It's not like our relationship with them is like dead after this.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Not at all. It's not dead. I mean, the only concern here is that mostly they were making Russia was making quite a bit of money off of the purchases that the U.S. was making. And with that loss of income, we're not sure right now what's going to happen to their program. Their space program is nowhere near as funded as our current space program.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So and there was a little bit of tension back in 2014 when NASA announced that they're hiring these outside companies to develop space programs. And so it's funny, Dmitry Rogozin, who was the director general of the the Russian Space Agency said, what did he say, goes in 2014 after he goes, after analysing the sanctions against our space industry, I suggest to the USA to bring their astronauts to the International Space Station using a trampoline. So I think he was a little miffed because I he immediately knew what the result was going to be. And what was really funny was Elon Musk remembered this comment. And last weekend, after the successful launch, he said the trampoline is working. But it turns out that now Russia was motivated to keep their rocket program alive while NASA was paying for the seats. But back in 2018, the U.S. payments ended up being 17 percent of their overall budget. That's a lot of their budget.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's too many eggs in one basket.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So like I said, they're going to they're going to their space program is going to suffer to a certain degree, unless the country decides to pump money back into it. So the last seat purchase is going to be used this fall. And then from from this fall forward, it's going to be a trade. They're just going to trade seats.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' We've been talking about this for a better part of a decade now about this sort of expansion between the private and public.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, that's right.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' And it's happening before our eyes and paying dividends right now.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Finally, finally, this is exciting times to live if you if you enjoy space exploration. So, guys, so let me answer my original question. Where does this leave the ISS? So the ISS is a joint effort of space agencies from the U.S., Russia, Europe, Canada and Japan. These partners have agreed that the space station should operate through 2024 and then be decommissioned in 2024.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' What?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yep. So NASA has that-<br />
<br />
'''E:''' What the hell.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Four year, huh?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' They might extend that.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah. NASA's drifted from that original-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Do you think we wouldn't decommission it until we had a replacement?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Well, weren't we supposed to decommission Hubble like premature? I mean, there have been there have been examples of us having planned to decommission.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Exactly. Well, because we had James Webb coming to replace Hubble and we had the ISS coming to replace not to replace Mir, but to do the same thing that Mir did. Like we don't have another space station. We need another space station first.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Well, keep in mind, all of these countries are paying the billions of dollars it costs to maintain the station. So I can understand the other countries going, hey, United States, yeah, it's good for you. But you know, why are we paying to put your people up there? So NASA has drifted away from their decision for a 2024 end. And now they want ISS to function and be fully operational through 2028 to 2030. Now keep this in mind. This makes a lot of sense due to the Artemis program, right? This is the U.S. government funded crude spaceflight. Get back to the moon. Back to the moon. To the moon, South Pole in 2024. So we need the ISS up there to help as a staging and to it's just, it's just good to have something that's already in orbit in case of emergencies and resupply and all this stuff. Now, the ISS has a possible future being partly or completely funded by private business. Did you guys ever hear this? Because I heard it, but didn't know the details. Now this is what's happening. This would allow companies to send people to the station for various reasons, including private production, manufacturing or space tourism. And NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstone made it clear that funding will not be diverted from the ISS to support the moon missions so that it's a funding issue. And they're thinking if the other countries are going to back out of or they going to say, yeah, we're ending our financial support in 2024 and the U.S. wants to keep it going, that the U.S. could partially or largely fund the continuation of the ISS through getting private businesses involved. Those private businesses could literally send trained people up to the space station to do all those things that I listed. It's not that bad of an idea.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So they weren't going to decommission the space station because it's old and falling apart. They were going to decommission it because it's not economically viable to maintain it?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I think that both are a factor, Cara, because I remember them saying these modules can only stay in the depressurized outer space for so long. There is wear and tear on it. It's not incredibly old, but the ISS is not a new thing. You know, it's been around a long time.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I don't think 2025 marks the end of its safe life.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Gotcha. So that was more just like the end of the, like the funding or the budget.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah. The plan.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I think 2030 is when they're, they're worried about safety.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Then yeah, at that point, yeah, then something else, then it will have to go.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' And China is working on a private space station. And then, but the real thing too, and I read that they were, they were saying that the lunar platform that we've talked about before, that might be a replacement for the space station, even though it's much farther away. It's definitely going to be a place like, it's going to be a space station going around the moon.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' You got to have it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You may have both though. Maybe what we need to do, which we need to replace the ISS with a platform in low earth orbit that is designed to be a gateway to the rest of the solar system.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Right. Gateway one, gateway two is around the moon.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' They've thought about it, Steve.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' A companion around the moon.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I know. It's not a new idea.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Guys. One last thing. I've never said this with more truth and enthusiasm, like to infinity and freaking beyond, man. Let's keep this going. This is, this is amazing. And I really think that this is going to draw in kids I got drawn in in the seventies with the space program and it lasted my whole life. My kids watch this. My seven year old had his mouth open the whole time. He was blown away. It's so important. Talk about science communication. This is science screamification. You know what I mean? It's going to draw people in and people will become scientists because of that launch.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Thank goodness it was successful.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Geez.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. Thanks, Jay.<br />
<br />
=== Police Brutality Breeds Distrust <small>(43:19)</small> ===<br />
* [https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40615-020-00706-w Springer link: Police Brutality and Mistrust in Medical Institutions]<ref>[https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40615-020-00706-w Springer link: Police Brutality and Mistrust in Medical Institutions]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay, Cara. So you're going to tell us about this recent study, which looks at the effects of police brutality on trust in institutions.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yes. So a new study that was actually published early this year in the Journal of Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities, which is a Springer Journal, is called Police Brutality and Mistrust in Medical Institutions. And there's some crossover between this published peer reviewed study and an article that was written like two days ago in The Verge, which is a great outlet. It has a great science section called Police Violence Will Make It Harder to Fight COVID-19. And so the kind of thesis statement here is that going to the hospital, to a physician, basically having a medical encounter is contextualized by a lot of things. And people's lives are a big part of this. And we've known for a very, very long time that ethnic minorities in this country tend to have a greater amount of distrust in medical institutions. We also know that ethnic minorities tend to be victims more often of police violence. And there's a lot of good evidence to back that up. And if you want to look at good recent evidence, for example, there's a New York Times article that came out just in light of what's going on right now. It was just published today. Minneapolis police use force against black people at seven times the rate of whites. And that's just one example across a massive body of literature. So when you look at this published article specifically, what they did is they looked at some database surveys that were done using Qualtrics, which is like a very common way to gather database survey, and they gave two different surveys to individuals. One of them looked at how much they trust going to the doctor. And the other one looked at their experience with the police. And so and they were able to sort them using kind of a Likert scale. That's that like one to five or one to seven scale of like I find doctors completely trustworthy or I'm really distrustful you know, have prudent paranoia, whatever. And then the other the other survey that they gave basically broke it down into three different categories. So I've had no negative police encounters. I have had negative police encounters that were deemed necessary. And I've had negative police encounters that were deemed unnecessary because, of course, we know that sometimes the police have to get involved and sometimes it doesn't go well. And other times they it's again, self-report perceived negative police encounters. So keep that in mind. And they found that overall, what they call police brutality or operation, what they're operationally dividing as police brutality, which specifically is perceived negative, unnecessary police encounters are have a big impact on the amount that individuals trust, especially individuals of colour trust experiencing medical treatment or trust going to hospitals. And so that might seem like really disparate things. But when you dig deep into the literature, it starts to make a lot of sense. So we know that historically there are reasons that racial minorities don't trust medical institutions in this country. We can point to Tuskegee syphilis trials. We can point to Gila cells. We can point to trials on Native Americans without consent. I think there were early anaesthesia trials on black women without consent. There's been a long history of kind of especially with medical research, unethical situations. And so that is going to obviously contribute. But a lot of the sort of literature up to this point had only looked at these kinds of specific situations, like how much do these sort of historical injustices contribute to either lack of use of medical services or distrust using medical services? And then there's been a fair amount of literature looking at the actual experience in the medical facility, right? So is there systemic racism that individuals are feeling within the health care system? So are they treated differently by doctors? Are they more likely to have negative interactions with nurses or with individuals that are doing intake? And of course, we see that across the board. That's also the case. But this was the first study that these researchers know of where they actually wanted to look at something that exists in the social context. So these are interactions with police and see if there's almost like a transfer. I guess that would be a good way to look at it, like a cognitive transfer within individuals, because this is a system of authority and a system of power within American culture and American society. And the researchers are saying, yes, based on all of the evidence that we looked into on these surveys, there are significant differences between ethnicity and race in individuals who trust versus don't trust medical systems. So black people, by and large, and also Hispanic or Latinx and Native Americans tend to not trust health care systems significantly more than whites. And also individuals who have had negative experiences with the police, especially when those negative experiences were deemed to be unnecessary, tend to mistrust medical systems more. And of course, that's exacerbated by that racial variable. And so they've make a couple of really important notes at the end of their study where they say, of course, we've often talked about cultural competency. This is a big thing in psychology I can attest to. And Steve, you can probably attest to the fact that doctors are trained in cultural competency to some extent, but that their concern is that cultural competency is too narrow a focus, that it's not just about understanding sort of some of the needs of black patients or some of the medical issues that you see in black communities, for example, or understanding different socioeconomic status when you come in to see the doctor, but also this deeply entrenched systemic racism and the unequal treatment that individuals receive in many aspects of their lives can affect their experience within the health care system. And so they are calling for more anti-racism education and structural competency and not just this cultural competency. And they also are talking about, they also recommend more federally supported national data collection of police brutality and police related deaths because the data is still kind of squishy because a lot of police forces are able to not report certain aspects of these things. And so it's a little bit hard. The data is a little bit clouded right now. So calling for more clarity there. And then finally, something that is important that I didn't even think about was that hospital safety and security are obviously really important for health care workers. But again, this is my privilege showing I didn't even think about the fact that if there's a police officer standing at the door or if there's a uniformed police officer or a police officer with a gun handy who is in certain medical situations, that this is going to be an extra layer of contributing to potential distrust because if I'm already fearing the police and I'm already feeling uneasy, I might not be willing to enter into that building or I might not be willing to give an honest medical history et cetera, et cetera. And then to kind of really quickly relate that to this article in The Verge, where the reporter specifically talks about the link to COVID-19, they're talking about police violence, protests and COVID-19. So there's a lot of research and I even thought about maybe talking about this on the show, but maybe we could save it for another time as to why African-American individuals and Latinx and also Native American individuals are getting pummeled by COVID-19, are having health outcomes that are significantly worse than white Americans. There's a good amount of literature to show why some of these systemic institutional structures are contributing to that. So you've already got that information on the one hand. And now you link to it, protests where individuals are in close quarters, such situations where, for example, if tear gas is used or if other methods of crowd control like pepper spray are used, they induce coughing, which is a big problem and a lot of contributing to these respiratory means of transmission. And I would say I just want to do a quick like kind of I guess this is a self plug, but I recently was involved in a short series, documentary series that you can find on World Channel on YouTube through ITV. So this was a public American Public Broadcast Service documentary series about why people believe in conspiracies, kind of where does conspiracy thinking come from. And each episode is about a different specific topic within conspiracy thinking. And episode three is called Prudent Paranoia, and it specifically focuses on why African Americans are more suspicious of doctors than the rest of the country and why there are more conspiracy theories within African-American communities about things like HIV. And it goes to a lot of these different contributing factors within this short documentary, if you want to bone up on that. So it's a complicated issue for sure. But of course, the evidence goes to show that this is a real phenomenon. It's a phenomenon that can have that continues to have really devastating impacts for some of our most vulnerable citizens. And it's something that we kind of we know what tools we need to start working on fixing it. But it's got to be bigger than the medical profession as a whole. Public health has direct links to things like police tactics. And we need to understand that if we're going to affect real, real and lasting change.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, it is complicated. I want to make a couple of comments. One is just to point this out from the scientific point of view. Yes, this is a correlational study and we can't there's no cause and effect that you could get demonstrated from this. And in fact, it's plausible many different ways because especially since it was self-report, it could be that the mistrust in institutions in general lead to both. But I think there's probably just a very complicated web of self-reinforcing mistrust among all of these variables.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. And I think there's there's a fair amount of really good evidence to show that because we can see it, we have good evidence to show that systemic racism exists and disenfranchisement and discrimination exists across these different institutions. That even though this is a correlational study, it's very likely that it's the you know, that black people by and large are experiencing this and that's contributing to their prudent paranoia, as opposed to the prudent paranoia is somehow making the police more brutal towards them.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, yeah, I think I agree.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But I have seen this myself just in my practice and more when I was working in Washington, D.C., just because of the demographics than in Connecticut. But it is the only time in my life I've ever been accused of being a racist is in the context of health care, which and I being as self-reflective and humble as possible. I don't think that those accusations were fair, but I do understand the context of that it was happening. And essentially, there's many times when you tell patients things they don't want to hear. Or they want more intervention than is medically appropriate. That happens all the time. But but there were a couple of cases where I was telling a patient or a family member that we don't need to do this study or that is an indicator or whatever. And that, of course, you have to put a lot of trust in the system, in the physician and in order to accept that. And if that trust isn't there, it could easily be seen as, well, you just don't want to spend money on me or my family member because we're black.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, and also it's the sad and scary thing is that because by and large, there are plenty of studies that also show that, yes, black people disproportionately don't get the same treatment.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And it's true. I know.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And so when you have an example that reinforces that narrative, because the narrative holds up, then, of course, what do you expect for an individual to go in? I mean, if I feel like if I were in a young black woman's shoes in America, I might expect the racism instead of going in with the benefit of the doubt, because it's just what I experience every day of my life.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, absolutely. And I totally understand. I'm not criticizing that response. I'm saying it's unfortunate because there's enough of a reality to it. Just statistically speaking, when you look at it, you have people. If you're a member of a minority, you're less likely to get the interventions that you need or to get admitted or whatever. All those things are true. But of course, as you know, it's hard to apply that to an individual case. But the point is, it is counterproductive. So I saw people sort of subverting and not this is even in many contexts, not just in the racial context, but when there's that lack of trust, whether it's deserved in that individual instance or not, it does sort of short circuit the therapeutic relationship and the whole process of delivering optimal health care.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, absolutely.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And when it occurs, it's just it's just part of a background of mistrust, which is totally reasonable, given the history and the current reality. And so I see this as just another way that they get victimized because.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, it's a negative feedback loop.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's a negative feedback loop. Yeah. It's like, yeah, you're you haven't. We haven't earned your specific trust because of all the systemic racism. Therefore, you're unable to give the system the trust that would be necessary to have an optimal relationship.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But ultimately, they get harmed by that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' They're the ones who get harmed by it right now. I don't get harmed by it. They're the ones who get harmed by it. Absolutely. And so, yeah, it just it made me sad but it was just another just like I think in many contexts, like people who believe in conspiracy theories in general hurt themselves, you know. But it's tough when it's partly justified, you know.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Well, yeah, that's the thing is that here it's like so often, individuals aren't hurting themselves, but they're being hurt. And then in the in the rare examples or the non normative examples where they wouldn't be hurt, there's such fear. It's kind of like a learned helpless helplessness, right? There's such a fear of of becoming victimized or of becoming hurt that like, why try? And that's I mean, that's devastating. And the thing is, when you say like, you're right, you weren't harmed in this interaction, but the individuals might be harmed in this interaction. But as a whole, our society is harmed by.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, absolutely.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It affects everything from health care costs to just everyday humanity. And so I think that one of the recommendations that was made in the article that I actually didn't point to, which you've just reminded me of, is that it's really important. And we see this in psychology, too, right? By and large, most therapists are white, which is a problem, because if a black person wants to talk about the experience of living black in American society, they may want to talk to a black therapist because I'm not going to understand them the way. And it's not their job to teach me, you know. And so it doesn't mean that I'm going to be not as I'm not able to be an effective therapist for them, but it may be that for their comfort, they might want a black therapist. So we need to be elevating more people of colour into these medical and clinical positions. And we also need to be promoting and making sure that services exist so that there are liaisons in these situations. Individuals of colour who come from similar backgrounds, who have similar experiences, who can help communicate about these fears and talk about treatment options and things like that in a way that is less threatening, for example, or where the power dynamic is disassembled. And I think that's super important.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, I think the bottom line is it just it just shows you how racism poisons so much in society. The tendrils reach deep into places you never would have imagined.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Absolutely. And again, pointing back to what Jay said at the very beginning of the show, it's a good full circle, is that if you're not actively experiencing the outcomes of these things, you don't even notice they're happening. Your privilege allows you to not even know they're happening.<br />
<br />
=== Journalists and UFOs <small>(1:00:52)</small> ===<br />
* [https://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/journalism-without-skepticism/ Neurologica: Journalism Without Skepticism]<ref>[https://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/journalism-without-skepticism/ Neurologica: Journalism Without Skepticism]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. So, Jay, you sent me this next item. This is an interview that was published in Scientific American. The interviewer was John Horgan. You guys remember that?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, God, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' John Horgan.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I do.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Didn't he gave a speech once or so?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, yeah. John Horgan is like one of the editors, right?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And then he wrote he wrote an article trashing skeptics to certain extent.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' He wrote a book that I studied in my philosophy of natural science class when I was an undergrad called The End of Science that we ripped apart.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, I had to rip him apart on my blog as well. And so he was interviewing Leslie Keene. Do you know who she is? So she's a journalist. She published a couple of controversial, somewhat controversial articles. One was a kind of a soft treatment of UFOs. She wrote a couple of books, one on UFOs and one on life after death. So the interview basically was about why these topics are legitimate for journalists to address, which I have no problem with that basic premise. My problem is that her journalism, it was crap. That's the problem. And she may be a fine regular journalist. And this is kind of what I wrote about on my blog. I was like journalism without skepticism, even if you are a competent, even a very good journalist covering a wide range of topics. When you delve, it's like, but that doesn't mean you're a science journalist. And it doesn't mean does it mean you're a skeptical journalist.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But shouldn't you always be a skeptical journalist?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But we know, Cara, we know that scientific skepticism, not just like just skepticism and the check your sources and blah, blah, blah, just basic stuff like that. But you need to have a working knowledge of things like the philosophy of science, the difference between science and pseudoscience mechanisms of self-deception. And if you're going to go into a specific topic like UFOs, you probably want to know something or two about what skeptics think about that topic, because we've been thinking about this for decades and have been in the trenches addressing the claims and thinking through them for a long time. But so here's her problem, in my opinion. And this is what she in this this comes out, I think, pretty clear in this interview. She thinks she already understands what skeptics think. And so she didn't bother to incorporate their opinion into her journalism. And so she makes a string of rookie mistakes that I think many competent skeptics, especially those who are specifically familiar with the UFO area or the life after death area that they were just skepticism in general. They could have corrected for her. There's a lot that she could have learned. So she was she kind of Dunning-Krugered all over these topics. Because because because she's a journalist, she doesn't need to talk to skeptics. She's the skeptic. She knows how to answer these questions. Total fail.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And also, was this real reporting or was it like an op ed?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' This wasn't an op ed. It was it was it was commentary. It was an interview by Horgan in Scientific American. But her but her articles or New York Times articles were real reporting. They were a commentary. So about UFOs, for example, she writes, "The documentation goes back more than 60 years when no one on this planet had technology like this. In some cases, experts, such as officials from the French Space Agency, had enough data to rule out all conventional explanations, meaning it wasn't something natural or manmade. These cases present only a small fraction of those reported, but they are the ones that matter."<br />
<br />
'''E:''' So, yeah, there's nothing about human misinterpretation.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, there's a lot. There's a lot that's wrong in there. And like any skeptic could have pointed out to her why she's making some massive errors, even though they may be they may be subtle logically. So of course, she's prematurely concluding that the existing evidence shows the existence of real physical objects breaking the laws of physics or at least performing way beyond technology that currently exists, let alone the technology that was around 60 years ago. So she's already basically assuming the the conclusion. That's her starting point. This evidence shows this.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's not even good basic journalism right there.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No. Well, I would I would agree. But the thing is, if you only talk to UFO enthusiasts, you will get that impression or if you watch the videos or you might. It's also a false reliance. And journalists fall into this. If you could find an expert, somebody who has a reasonable claim to authority, then you can rely on what that one person says and you can quote them. And that's good enough. Or maybe you get a second person and you're golden. But that's not enough when the question is, are we being visited by aliens? Right? You have to explore the skeptical point of view, which she did not do. And the other thing is these it's not like this information is enough. It's like in her in her article for the New York Times, she was largely talking about the Navy videos that have now subsequently been fully debunked, completely debunked. And so that proves that everything she said to say that they were genuine and convincing and compelling is bullshit, because we know now that those videos are of birds and planes and mundane things. They're not these extraordinary things that she thought they were. How did she make such a big mistake? Because she didn't talk to skeptics. But I want to focus on the more subtle part of this. These cases represent only a small fraction of those reported, but they are the ones that matter. No, they are not the ones that matter.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, man. That's a bad one.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's a bad one. All of the cases matter. You have to look at it in the context of all the evidence. If you only look at the residue of unexplained cases, that's then you're putting blinders on and you're missing the big picture.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Do your magician analogy, Steve.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. So I wrote about what if, for example, the culture of magicians, this is not the case. Most magicians say that they're doing tricks. But what if just as a cultural phenomenon, magicians said, claimed that they were doing real magic, that their magic was real.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Some do.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Do you think you could address that claim by only looking at the five best magicians in the world? Or do you think it would be helpful?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' You want to look at the worst ones.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, exactly. You'd want to look at all the magicians and then you can put the best magicians into the context of they're at one end of the spectrum of the full range of the phenomenon of stage magic. So somebody in the comments, I can always tell, my blog sometimes get invaded by non skeptics who clearly are not familiar with me or my blog or my writing. And it's like they're only looking at this one article because it was probably somebody linked to it from a UFO site or something. So there's a lot of UFO apologists there. But anyway, somebody wrote this analogy. It's like, so are you saying that if you have like a wad of bills, the more fake bills there are in that wad, the less likely it is that any any of the bills in there are real. It's like, OK, so I always find it interesting to try to figure out exactly where somebody's thinking is going wrong. It's like that's just a false analogy on a couple of levels. But I said, let me feel this. So let me fix that analogy for him. What if someone has a wad of bill like pieces of paper that they're concealing from you and they're going to pay you, however, put some of this money in an envelope and pay you for something and to show you that the money that they're holding is real they will randomly pull out bills and flash them quickly in front of your face. So you can't see them well enough to identify if they're real or not. But occasionally it's slow enough that you do get enough of a glimpse where you could identify whether the bill is genuine or fake. And every single time you can identify the bill, it's fake. Every single time. Does that mean the ones you can't identify are more likely to be fake? If they flash one bill in front of you, that's fake. And then another bill that you can't identify versus flashing a thousand bills in front of you that are fake and one you can't identify, aren't those two situations different? The fact that there are millions of UFO sightings and experiences and reports or whatever, and that 99 percent of them can be identified as natural phenomenon. Does that doesn't that inform whether or not that one percent that we can't fully explain is probably just an extension of this overall phenomenon?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Occam's razor would tell you, yes.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Do you really think that that one percent is something completely different than the other 99 percent or is it just-<br />
<br />
'''E:''' So different requiring that you practically have to come up with a whole new physics to explain it? It's not just a subtle thing either.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We're not even getting into like Occam's razor and all that. I mean, just that that basic idea that I'm just going to focus on the residue. So the other way I look at this and I've wrote about this many times, do you think if we lived, if we lived in a hypothetical world, where we are not being visited by aliens, right? And that there is no craft flying around the earth, whether you think it's alien or from the future or whatever the hell ou think, another dimension doesn't matter, right? There is no technolo advanced technological craft, not of current day human manufacture flying around the earth. Would that residue exist? Of course, it freaking would. So therefore, the existence of that residue of unexplained observations does is not evidence for the existence of alien spacecraft or anything like it. It's exactly what we would expect if there were no such craft and there was just this massive psychocultural phenomenon. So it doesn't distinguish between the alien hypothesis and the psychocultural hypothesis. But the 99 percent that we can explain does. So the existence of that residue of unexplained phenomena, this goes with Blob Squatch or anything else. You're always going to have things that are easy to explain, things that you need to investigate, but you can ultimately explain. And then there are things like the more you investigate, the more you can explain. But there are some where you just don't have enough evidence. They're just really unusual, rare, coincidental things that you may not have enough evidence to be able to exactly explain what they were. But they're not definitively identifiable as the whatever the new phenomenon is. And then the other sort of big picture thing is and we talked about this not too long ago on the show about Blob Squatch. You know, it's like the fuzziness is not a bug. It's a feature. These things are fuzzy because the non-fuzzy things are identifiable as not being UFOs or Bigfoot or whatever. They have to be fuzzy because those are the only ones that leave open the possibility that it's something new and interesting. And so she misses all of that. And I could have explained all of this to her just like I did now if she had ever interviewed any skeptics for her articles or to her book or to her inform her understanding of this. But she clearly never did. Or if she did, I don't know who she talked to. It was never me or anybody that I know. But she she did. She missed it. She went in with blinders on or biased or she already had her conclusion. And so and I also don't think it's a coincidence that she is gullible of UFOs and the life after death. And she makes the same kind of mistakes for both. That sort of that crank magnetism. So very disappointing, very disappointing interview that it was in Scientific American.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah. What's with that, Steve? <br />
<br />
'''C:''' What is wrong? It's John Horgan. It's John Horgan. I mean, I shouldn't say only, I don't know. But I mean, by and large, that's where I find problems in that publication.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And there may be some things about what she writes that are perfectly fine.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' He's controversial at best.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Controversial at best. But when he he took it upon himself to lecture the skeptics movement and then every example he gave was a straw man, which means he didn't really understand what we were doing. Every single one is like a complete-<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It's pretty pathetic.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, it was totally pathetic. And then when he was called out on it by multiple people, including me, he doubled down. He did not use it as a learning moment. He did not go, oh, maybe I was wrong. Maybe I need to learn something more about what's actually going on in this intellectual movement that's been going on for decades. And that consists of philosophers and scientists. Maybe they know something I don't know. Nope. It's totally double down.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' He highlights on his website, Steve. So I just looked, he's not he's not an editor there. He's a science journalist there. He's the director of the Center for Science Writings at Stevens Institute of Technology. He's a former senior writer and he's written for a lot of outlets and he's written a lot of very good science. So we have to be clear about that. Like he's educated as a science journalist. But the third article down under selected works listed under skepticism is dear skeptics bash homeopathy and Bigfoot less mammograms and war more. And that's been one of his arguments from the beginning. But I think that he-<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Just won't let it go.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah. Yeah.<br />
<br />
=== Will Your Dog Rescue You? <small>(1:14:45)</small> ===<br />
* [https://www.studyfinds.org/bff-dogs-really-will-rescue-their-owners-or-at-least-theyll-try/ Study Finds: True Best Friend - Dogs Really Will Rescue Their Owners...Or At Least They’ll Try]<ref>[https://www.studyfinds.org/bff-dogs-really-will-rescue-their-owners-or-at-least-theyll-try/ Study Finds: True Best Friend - Dogs Really Will Rescue Their Owners...Or At Least They’ll Try]</ref><br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, Evan, you're going to finish up the news. This is a fun one. There's actually some interesting science to talk about here, but it's also kind of adorable. So tell us about would your own dog rescue you?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Question these researchers had from Arizona State University. Can a dog sense when their owner is in a perceived state of danger? And if yes, would the dog attempt to save their owner? Well, I'm not going to save the results for the end. I'm going to share with you right now the heartwarming conclusions that according to these tests.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Thank you.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yes, your dog will save you as long as the dog knows how to save you.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' OK.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' So the study was done by two folks, grad student Joshua Van Borg and experimenter Clive Wynn, both of the Department of Psychology. And we think of things like Lassie, OK. Oh, Timmy fell down the well. So Lassie went and ran and got the family right to get Timmy to survive. And this is what Van Berg calls a pervasive legend, effectively, that we have this perception that dogs want to help help their owners or help rescue their family their family members in times of peril. But how do you how do you test that? How do you simply observing the dog rescuing someone doesn't really tell you much. The challenging part, he says, is to figure out why they would do it. So here's the experiment they set up. They tested 60 pet dogs and their owners one at a time. Van Berg and Wynn observed what happened when each dog's owners was seemingly placed in a serious situation. And here are a few details about the protocol. First of all, none of the studied dogs had any prior experience of training in saving people. Right. These are untrained animals in this regard. The owner would go into a box with a sliding door in which the dog would need to either nudge or paw open in order to "rescue the owner". The owner, while in the box, the main experiment is designed that they would slap the box four times for four quick slaps and then let out cries for help. But they weren't allowed to call their dog by name. They would just say, help, help. You know, I'm trapped. Help. You know, exclamations, but not calling the dog per se. All right. To see what would happen. Here's here are the basic results. About one third of the dogs rescued their distressed owner. And according to Van Berg, he says, now, that doesn't sound too impressive on its own, but it is very impressive when you take a closer look. And that's because of two things. Number one, the dogs desire to help their owners. And number two, how well the dogs understood the nature of the help that was needed. Now, Van Berg and Wynn explored this factor in control tests. And they said what previous tests had been lacking were these controls in which you have to kind of figure out where you're starting with these dogs. So in one, for example, in one control test, when the dog watched a researcher simply drop food into that box, no person, they just drop some food in there to see what the dog would do. 19 of the 60 dogs managed to open the box to get to the food. When the owner was in there doing their help, help, help more dogs rescued their owners than retrieve the food.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Sid you look at the actual article because they said it was a third of that, which would have been 20 versus 19. So it's like one one more.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' 19 of the 60 dogs realized how the mechanism worked drop the food in. The dog had to figure out what it took to get in to get the food. And 19 of 60 were successful in doing so. Of those 19 dogs, 16 of them also in this same scenario, but this time in the rescue scenario, which the owners were crying for help, 16 of them also rescued the owners. Now, that's 84 percent of those dogs. So 84 percent of the dogs capable of opening the box or showing willingness to do so, they did it and they did it when it, quote unquote, counted. Now, the researchers are therefore concluding by this that most dogs or owners, their dog, the dog wants to rescue them. And if they know how, there's a very good chance that they will be able to do so. Now, I'm not sure. I think that's kind of a loose. I think there's I think that's subject to maybe some other interpretations. Not sure how solid really this is, or if you can really conclude that, yes, your dog wants to rescue you more based based on this. It's kind of a limited study in a way.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But showing that many dogs, like a majority proportion of dogs who basically have the choice of either getting food or giving attention to their owner in any situation would. I think that's kind of comforting. That my dog might choose to like help me over eating a steak that was next to me.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So, Evan, it was 20. I'm looking at it was 20. OK, so of the 60 dogs tested, 20 rescued the owner in the primary distress test, 19 successfully retrieved treats and 16 released the owner from the apparatus in the reading test. You didn't get there yet. But so the other control was instead of crying for help the owner was just reading.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yes.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And so 16 also opened the door to get the to get their owner when they were not in distress. So the thing is.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So it's really just that your dog wants to be with you.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, that's the thing. We don't know that it might be that they just want to be with you.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But that will still hopefully work in your favour if you are distressed.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Right. But the but the being in distress up the ante a little bit. It went from 16 to 20. But that suggests the majority of that is just the dog wanted to be with you, which I know we all have our anecdotal experience, obviously, with many pets. And my current my current dog, Sagan, is desperate to always be physically with like me and my wife. I could totally see the same him doing that. I mean, he's like jumps on my lap and lays on his bed. Oh, my God, such a baby. But it'll be by your feet. This always like wants to be as physically close to us as he can be. So I could totally see that he would be one of the dogs that would do it just to get in there.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But even that, I mean, it bodes well for if you are in distress, A because they could probably find you. But B like the fact that there's more of a drive for like interaction than for food seeking in a lot of dogs is a really I mean, that really does show how important that kind of human dog relationship is to the dog. That's great. It's not just us. They actually really like it, too.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' They do.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I also think my dog would tear that cage apart to get right to the food.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' They also said sort of as more of an aside, when the owner had was in the distress test, they called it the distress test. The dogs tended to bark more and they actually whined and they showed these other signs of sharing distress with the owner. They didn't like the pitch, the volume and the tone by which they could hear their owners crying for help. So they also sort of had more of an experience with the dogs who expressed those kind of feelings. Their owners are feeling that as well. And there is other studies that have been done that that correlate with that.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And we, of course, all have that anecdotal evidence, too, of like, you're having a really bad day or you're crying or something. You're not in a good mood. And your dog seems to be somehow like attuned to that. They know to like be less needy or they know to just come up and put their head on your lap or it's like, oh, thank you. Read your tone.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' They're better people than us.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I'm surprised it actually hasn't been a little more widely studied. These kinds of studies. I enjoy these studies. I do like learning more about it. And we do have to check our own biases, when it especially comes to our lovely, cuddly little animals.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's hard to infer their motivation. That's the bottom line. But I do think if you're going to get close to it, you do have to do many tests that control for as many different interpretations as possible. So this was a fun study because it did like a few tests. So you have at least some you could triangulate a little bit, you know.<br />
<br />
== Who's That Noisy? <small>(1:23:14)</small> ==<br />
{{anchor|futureWTN}}<br />
<br />
{{wtnHiddenAnswer<br />
|episodeNum = 777<br />
|answer = {{w|Counter_rocket,_artillery,_and_mortar|CRAM Gun}}<ref>[https://www.military.com/video/defense-systems/air-defense/c-ram-system-in-action/1650968835001 Military.com: C-RAM System in Action]</ref><br />
|}}<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, Jay, it's Who's That Noisy time.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Guys, last week, I played this Noisy.<br />
<br />
[brief, vague description of Noisy] <br />
<br />
'''B:''' Damn.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I got a lot of guesses this week, and to start off, many people wrote in and said, that's a warthog. You know what a warthog is, guys?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Mm hmm.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I do.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It's a combat plane. A big plane.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Somebody that hoards all the warthogs.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I know what an actual warthog is.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Oh, that warthog.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It's got an amazingly big gun on it.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Cara, you're thinking of Africa.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yes, it's not a bad guess at all, because there's something very military about this sound. Glenn Elert, his last name is E-L-E-R-T, wrote in "This week's Noisy sounds like a liquid fueled rocket, a rock propelled something. It has those cracking sounds of a space shuttle only smaller. Blasting across the alkali flats in a jet powered monkey navigated" and goes on and on like this.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Why are there so many animal names in all of these things?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I don't know. William Steele wrote in. "Jay, my initial guess for this week's noisy is an A-10 warthog." And there it is. This was the first person to guess the warthog. "On a firing run with the iconic G-A-U-8 Avenger." He sent me a sample video. I watched it. Wow. You do not want to be on the wrong end of a warthog. "However, it seems like the sound played is way too long for a firing run. My guess now would be top fuel dragster event." That is also incorrect. But getting the edge in closer. So the winner for last week, Logan Callen wrote in. "Hi, Jay, this week's Who's That Noisy is a Taliban rocket being stopped by a C-RAM." You know what C-RAM is, guys?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' No.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Counter rocket, artillery and mortar system. He said-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Anti-aircraft? Oh, anti rocket.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yep.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' OK.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' He said he saw it on Reddit. That's where actually I saw it, too. And then the person that sent it in was originally found, I think, on Reddit as well. Reddit is a goldmine for wonderful Internet stuff if you don't know.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And also horrible Internet stuff.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yes. Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' All of the Internet stuff.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I mean, Reddit has a there's great communities on Reddit. And I avoid all the bad ones. So to me, it's a good experience. This this listener, Logan, said that it was great to see us all in Seattle, except for Evan. And we brought his wife, Christelle, up on stage. I didn't. Yeah. OK. That's great.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I remember Christelle. She was our.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I don't want to give away parts of the show.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah. Yes. Good. Thank you for reminding. Remember. All right. So, guys, the original person that sent this in was Carrie Harmon. Oh, yeah. So what you're seeing is I believe there are two guns that are shooting an incredible volley of explosive rounds at whatever is coming at this base or in this area. So listen again now that you know what it is. You know, it's anti. It's a CRAM. It's anti ballistic firepower. [plays Noisy]<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Wow.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yep.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It's just lots of them.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Now, I have to tell you guys, that like that was that initial blast sounds like from Steve from War of the Worlds.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' The Tom Cruise one. Yeah, there is something really deep and scary about that. That initial fire that just crawls up my spine. It's probably why the people that made the movie pick that sound effect. But I did say to one person that emailed in, it's really sad that we have to develop countermeasures like this. This thing that spits gigantic bullets at a phenomenally ridiculous, neck breaking rate to stop other people from shooting missiles at you to kill you. We live in a really screwed up world when we have these types of technology that can do these things. Anyway. Don't get me started. Let's get on to the next noisy.<br />
<br />
{{anchor|previousWTN}} <!-- keep right above the following sub-section ... this is the anchor used by wtnHiddenAnswer, which will link the next hidden answer to this episode's new noisy (so, to that episode's "previousWTN") --><br />
<br />
=== New Noisy <small>(1:27:27)</small> ===<br />
<br />
'''J:''' This was sent in by a listener who did not clearly give me their name. If you want to send me your name, I will happily announce it next week. And here is this cool sound. Check this out.<br />
<br />
[brief, vague description of Noisy]<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, there's a lot going on there. There's an obvious like exclamation point in that towards the end of that sound that I think is really cool. And that's really the action that I'm talking about. But there's I left in some other pre and post sounds that might help somebody guess. Email me at WTN@theskepticsguide.org. If you think {{wtnAnswer|779|this week's answer}} or if you have any cool noises that you heard, please keep sending those noises in, guys. I love picking them from listeners. I hate having to find my own. You want to know why? Because I'm exhaustedly done. I don't know where else to look. I need you. I need you. Evan it gets scary. There are some weeks where I'm like, what am I going to do?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It is. It's a challenge.<br />
<br />
== Announcements <small>(1:28:37)</small> ==<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Steve, there is something very serious I need to talk to you about.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Is it NECSS?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' NECSS, of course. I have so I have an announcement. So Richard Wiseman is going to give a talk on August 1st at NECSS. But on Friday, July 31st, we have the absolute honour of saying that Bill Nye will be joining us as one of the game show contestants. He is going to be on our game show. So this is going to be from like 8 to 10 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time. Bill is going to be one of our contestants, meaning that he will be one of the people receiving the quizzes. And he's he's a ton of fun if you guys haven't had the chance to catch him. And he did the extravaganza with us a couple of times. He is just off the cuff. Amazing because he was and still is a comedian. If you didn't know that, it's one of his skill sets. Oh, yeah, don't forget that Lianne Lord and Andrea Jones-Roy will be joining Bill as our contestants.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yay.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' What a crew.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' As you may know, Lianne has been the previous MC at NECSS for years. And she is also a comedian. And Andrea is also a comedian and a scientist.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Amazing.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, these guys are awesome. So for for that Friday night game show or the Saturday 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. string of events that we're going to have with a ton of speakers, a lot of other activities going on. More will be announced. You should go to NECSS.org and please join us and help support the spread of critical thinking and just fun, just fun, Cara.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I like fun and also critical thinking.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. Critical thinking is fun, Jay. This is a false dichotomy. All right.<br />
<br />
== Questions/Emails/Corrections/Follow-ups ==<br />
<br />
=== Question #1: Talking and Breathing <small>(1:30:22)</small> ===<br />
<br />
<blockquote><p style="line-height:125%">I hope you will make mention on your show of the killing of George Floyd. (And perhaps you already have, if you've already recorded this week's episode.) I think you could not just mention it as a topic that I think everyone basically needs to say something about in the current climate, but you could also discuss the pseudo-scientific myth that if you can talk, you must be able to breathe. Thanks. - Freeman Ng, Oakland, CA</p></blockquote><br />
<br />
'''S:''' One email, this one comes from Freeman in Oakland, California. But we got a few emails basically asking us to talk about the notion that if you can talk, you can breathe. Have you guys ever heard that? If you can talk, you can breathe.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. So why are we talking about that now? Obviously, because of the George Floyd thing, because when he initially when the knee was on the back of his neck, he was saying, I can't breathe.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I think he said it 13 or 16 times.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, he said it multiple times. And then, of course, he went unconscious and died. So some people are questioning whether or not he really couldn't breathe with the notion that, well, if you can talk, then obviously you can breathe. So maybe in fact, a Mississippi mayor went as far to say that he thinks he died of a heart attack or something else.And not because he couldn't breathe, because obviously he was talking.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' George Floyd's original autopsy came back to show that he had heart disease. And that it was a cardiac arrest. And then when a second autopsy was ordered, an independent autopsy that wasn't ordered by the police, they showed that it was a direct. The direct cause was asphyxia. So asphyxia, I'm sorry. So there was, I think, some confusion there as to whether or not he had these preexisting issues. Would he have died or not? Was it directly attributable attributable to not being able to breathe? Or was the fact that he couldn't breathe what sped up the cardiac event that he had? Did those things happen simultaneously? But if you actually look at the minute by minute account of what happened to George Floyd, the original police officer that was charged, the one who actually had his knee on Floyd's neck, I think in the video accounts kind of hinted to the fact that he was fine because he could talk. And that's where a lot of this like resurgence of this kind of thing comes up. Because, oh, yeah, I always heard that if you're choking to death, you can't actually you don't have enough airflow to get words out. So I think that's the myth, right? And that's probably what he was following.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. So, yeah, the mayor, this is the mayor of Petal, Mississippi, wasn't even talking about the autopsy or anything like that. It's a completely separate issue.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Interesting.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' He was specifically just talking about the fact that, well, if he could, if he could talk, then he could breathe. So that wasn't the cause of death. But in terms of when you asphyxiate, your heart stops, right? You do have a cardiac arrest. That's how you die from asphyxiation. If your heart's not getting enough oxygen, it fibrillates and then stops. Well, yeah, of course the underlying condition will make it happen sooner or later, depending on how healthy you are at baseline. But that's irrelevant. It was clear that the proximate cause of death was the asphyxiation, he didn't just happened to have a heart attack while it was laying on the ground there.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Right. The eight minutes and forty six seconds of a knee in the throat.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Right.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' And the other two men on his on his back, right?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' On his legs.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So let's talk about that that claim, though, that if you can breathe, you can talk because it's not true. It is demonstrably not true. I'll also say that it's come up.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' When I look, you said it backwards. If you can talk, you can breathe.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' If you can talk, you can breathe. Yeah. Yeah. But if you look that up, you'll see that this this came up with previous police brutality cases where a chokehold was involved. So this is also not the first instance where this is being raised as a point. So I'm not sure what the origin of this is, but it is a complete myth. I you know, the only time I've heard anything like that invoked in medicine that was legitimate was the notion that if you can make a noise, whether it's talking or whatever, then your airway is not obstructed 100 percent.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Gotcha. Like for Heimlich.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yes, exactly. Because then the reason for that is not that therefore the person's not in distress or not at risk. It just means that the Heimlich maneuver is going to be less effective. It may not work at all because that requires-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' You need that complete blockage.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. You need to build up pressure behind the obstruction to then expel it. And so that means you need to do something else.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' But that's only if you're choking, that's that is nothing. That's not just asphyxiation. Other other things can make you not breathe.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's what I'm saying. That's only valid in the context of choking and only to help you determine how effective the Heimlich is likely to be. It doesn't in any way tell you that the person is not in distress or at risk. And then, of course, there's many other reasons why somebody might have difficulty breathing, even to the point where that difficulty breathing will be life threatening, can be fatal. So the question is, can if you are being fatally threatened by either medically or physically or whatever impaired breathing, does that mean by definition, you can't talk? No, it doesn't mean that. And there's a very good reason for that in that is that when you're talking requires breathing out, right? Ventilating requires breathing in. And you could it's a lot easier to breathe out than to breathe in. Breathing in involves creating negative pressure in your lungs and sort of sucking the air in. And there's only so much force that can be brought to bear that way. Whereas when you're breathing out, you create positive pressure and you can create much more force on the exhale than you can on the inhale. On the inhale, you're limited by atmospheric pressure. On the exhale, you're not limited by atmospheric pressure. You can generate all kinds of pressure to exhale. And you could do this experiment yourself. Gently cover your nose and then try to breathe in. Do it just enough so that you can't breathe in and then exhale. Of course, you can exhale through the blockage that is preventing you from breathing out.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It makes a suction otherwise.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, right. And the other thing is when you at the end of your exhale, let's say you just breathe normally and then exhale and then hold your breath at the exhale, right? You still have about 500 millilitres of air in your lungs. You still have a lot of air. You still have about twice as much air in your lungs as you normally exhale. So that's a lot of talking that you can do before you completely run out of air. And maybe you're able to gasp a little bit of air in and to sustain it even longer. But you're not vent... That doesn't mean you're ventilating. That doesn't mean that you're able to blow off enough CO2 to maintain your metabolic equilibrium or that you're able to refresh the oxygen in your lungs enough that you're getting enough oxygen exchange. So especially for over a prolonged period of time, right?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Like eight minutes, unfortunately.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, like eight minutes. Yeah. Absolutely. So it's just complete medical nonsense, this notion that if you're able to grunt out one or two words, that you're breathing fine and that can't be the cause of your death. That's basically the implication. It's nonsense. So that's just basically a myth. Get it out of your head. It's only true in a very, very, very limited context. And it's only really important in the decision making about whether or not am I going to do the Heimlich or am I going to stick my fingers down this person's throat? That's what you're trying to get at forceps if you're in the hospital, whatever. All right, guys, let's move on to science or fiction.<br />
<br />
== Science or Fiction <small>(1:37:58)</small> ==<br />
{{SOFResults<br />
<br />
|fiction = maize no big deal<br />
|fiction2 = <!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
<br />
|science1 = artificial cells<br />
|science2 = flat universe<br />
|science3 = <!-- leave blank if absent --> <br />
<br />
|rogue1 =Cara <!-- rogues in order of response --><br />
|answer1 =maize no big deal <!-- item guessed, using word or phrase from above --><br />
<br />
|rogue2 =Bob<br />
|answer2 =maize no big deal<br />
<br />
|rogue3 =Evan<br />
|answer3 =maize no big deal<br />
<br />
|rogue4 =Jay <!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
|answer4 =maize no big deal <!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
<br />
|rogue5 = <!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
|answer5 = <!-- leave blank if absent --><br />
<br />
|host =Steve <!-- asker of the questions --><br />
<br />
<!-- for the result options below, <br />
only put a 'y' next to one. --><br />
|sweep = <!-- all the Rogues guessed wrong --><br />
|clever = <!-- each item was guessed (Steve's preferred result) --><br />
|win = <!-- at least one Rogue guessed wrong, but not them all --><br />
|swept =y <!-- all the Rogues guessed right --><br />
}}<br />
''Voiceover: It's time for Science or Fiction.''<br />
<br />
<blockquote>'''Item #1:''' For the first time scientists have developed functional artificial red blood cells that not only can carry oxygen, but also deliver drugs.<ref>[https://www.nanowerk.com/news2/biotech/newsid=55293.php Nanowerk: Synthetic red blood cells mimic natural ones, and have new abilities]</ref><br>'''Item #2:''' An unparalleled find of human remains at a site in South America spanning 9,000 years indicate that maize was only a minor contributor to overall diet until less than 1,000 years ago, when it eventually displaced other staples.<ref>[http://www.exeter.ac.uk/news/research/title_799398_en.html Exeter Research News: “Unparalleled” discovery of ancient skeletons sheds light on mystery of when people started eating maize]</ref><br>'''Item #3:''' Astronomers have made the most accurate measurements of dark energy to date, showing the universe is incredibly flat.<ref>[https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/06/200603120551.htm ScienceDaily: New test of dark energy and expansion from cosmic structures]</ref></blockquote><br />
<br />
'''S:''' Each week, I come up with three science news items or facts, two real and one fake. And then I challenge my panel of skeptics to tell me which one is the fake. You have three regular news items this week. You guys ready?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yep.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yes.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Item number one, for the first time, scientists have developed a functional artificial red blood cells that not only can carry oxygen, but also deliver drugs. Item number two, an unparalleled find of human remains at a site in South America spanning 9,000 years indicate that maize was only a minor contributor to overall diet until less than 1,000 years ago when it eventually displaced other staples. And item number three, astronomers have made the most accurate measurement of dark energy to date, showing the universe is incredibly flat.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' God, I don't even know what that means.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I'll explain that very quickly without giving anything away. There's three possibilities, right? The universe is either open, closed, or flat. And a closed universe means it'll eventually collapse in on itself. An open universe means it will continue to accelerate. A flat universe is the exact equilibrium point between those two, right?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Okay. So this has to do with the universe, whether or not the universe is expanding?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, no. In either case, the universe would be expanding. If it's closed, eventually it will slow down, stop, and contract and get the big crunch. If it's open, it's basically the mathematical curve by which it continues to expand. And if it's flat, it's kind of like decelerating asymptotically, but never quite completely stops. But it's approaching that. It's kind of flat is a very, very, very narrow point between being open or closed on either side. Does that make sense? Okay. And this all depends upon the cosmological constant created by dark energy. So we'll get into this more after I get your answers. But so the question is, in this statement, the most accurate measurements of that dark energy constant to date shows that the universe is really flat. Okay? All right. Cara, why don't you go first?<br />
<br />
=== Cara's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, crap. ''(Jay laughs)'' Okay. Functional artificial red blood cells. Wow. So they can help with this oxygen exchange, but they can also deliver okay, right? So they can carry oxygen molecules, but they could also deliver very small drugs. It's interesting. And they've just developed them. They've not started utilizing them or anything. So that's like, okay, I could be early in the process. Unparalleled find of human remains at a site in South America spending 9,000 years. Is that why it's unparalleled? Because it's such a big time span or because it's so large? What does that mean? It's unparalleled in what respect?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, definitely part of it, the fact that it's unparalleled is that it spans 9,000 years.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Okay.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yes, that is part of why it's unparalleled, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Cool. So it's basically obviously a settlement that stayed in the same place for a really long time and just kind of like how in Rome people talk about they'll be trying to put a basement or in Egypt, this will happen, where they're trying to put a basement and they're like, crap, antiquities. I got to call in the people. Found some crap down there. So okay, that makes sense. Indicate that maize, but the big thing here is maize was a minor contributor until only about a thousand years ago or less than then it displaced other stables. So they were just basically eating other grains and other main things there in South America. And then the flat, it's incredibly flat. I don't know. This wouldn't be wrong if it was just kind of flat, right? Like the word incredibly is not the operative word here.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I mean, it is, but it is operative because the question is, as we refine these measurements, which direction is it going in? Open, closed, or flat, right?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Flat, gotcha. Okay, so I don't know, flat sounds good to me. I don't know. I think the thing, maybe the fiction is the human remains one and that the real science here is that maize actually was a major staple across all those years. I think maybe I'll go with that because this is a total crap shoot. I love the artificial red blood cell. I really hope that that's science. So that's more of a, I hope so than I actually believe it. But yeah, I'll say the fiction is the archaeological site.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay, Bob.<br />
<br />
=== Bob's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Let's see. Artificial red blood cell. Yeah. Oh man. God, I haven't seen anything about that. I want that to be real, so I shall make it so by not selecting it. The flat universe, yeah, I could buy that totally. So that leaves then the South America site. I could have kind of bought it, but compared to the other two, I'd have to say that that one's fiction.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay, Evan.<br />
<br />
=== Evan Response ===<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Cara, I was also thinking the maize one. I think of the three as probably the least plausible. How's that? I did want to say though about the universe being incredibly flat. This will lead to more flat universe theories. Flat universers, I guess we have to call them, right? Flat earthers, flat universers. So I would not be surprised if that someday comes up. Yeah, I just don't know enough about that one. I mean, that's really Bob's expertise and he didn't go there. So that kind of narrowed it down for me as far as the maize one. Yeah, I think we're going to find out that, yeah, maize was important all this time, not just the last thousand years. That's fiction.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And Jay.<br />
<br />
=== Jay Response ===<br />
<br />
'''J:''' All right, Steve, the first one here about the human blood, like the synthetic human blood. I do remember seeing a TV show easily 10, 15 years ago where they did make a blood, something that could replace blood, which you might not be aware of. You might not be aware of it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I am aware of it.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Of the TV show?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, but if I remember, it was a TV show about, and they had a guy on that was talking about blood. But if I remember correctly, it wasn't red, which might mean it's not a red blood cell, which is why I still think this one is science. Going on to the corn one, you said that they found 9,000 years indicate that maize was only a minor contributor to overall diet. Now, where did I read it? I don't know. But I remember reading something that contradicts that, but then this could be an updated study. Oh, boy. But then we go on to the third one, which Bob didn't pick, which Evan helped me remember and realize. Because I always thought that we had an open universe, which means that it's just going to continue to play out and go out and out and out. But if it is a flat universe, that means it's going to stay, but we're still going to have a heat death. I agree with Bob that I hope it is flat, because that's a nice place that means that we could live forever maybe. I don't know. But anyway, number two, the one with the corn, I'm going to go with the group, because I want to sweep Steve this week. Oh, no.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Or he might have swept us.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Oh, shit. You see, it always goes both ways. You never, ever know, Cara.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #3 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. Well, let's take these in reverse order, since you guys seem to be the most confident about number three. Astronomers have made the most accurate measurements of dark energy to date, showing the universe is incredibly flat. You all think this one is science. And this one is science.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Oh, my god. So Bob, what does that mean, Bob?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh, thank goodness.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' What does that mean, Bobby?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I cannot tell you.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Why are you asking Bob?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Of course you can, Bob.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I figure Bob would know. But I mean, what do you got, Steve?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So here's, I always like to go to the original article, and it was incomprehensible.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, they're nasty.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We examine the cosmological implications of measurements of the void galaxy cross correlation at redshift z equals 0.57, combined with baryon acoustic oscillation data at 0.1 is less than z is less than 2.4. That was the first sentence.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' What? That was the first sentence?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yes. So in non-technical terms, they used a couple of techniques in order to make a far more accurate measurement of the strength, if you will, of dark energy, which, so you guys remember the whole cosmological constant thing where Einstein assumed that the universe was static, and then, but because of the gravity of everything should be pulling it in.So he said, well, therefore, all of that gravity must be exactly compensated by an outward pushing force, which we'll call the cosmological constant.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' His theory predicted an expanding universe, and he totally blew it. Probably his biggest mistake ever.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' He called it his biggest mistake. But now it seems that there is a cosmological constant in dark energy. There is this persistent outward force. It's not the same exact thing that he thought it was, which is interesting. We're trying to measure it using these things which you can't really understand unless you're an expert in this area. But as the measurement gets more and more accurate, the question has always been, is it going to be zeroing in on an open, closed, or flat universe? And it looks like more and more that the data is closing in on a flat universe, and this new data supports that.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' When you say flat, though, can you give me some specifics on what that means?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That means, Jay, that an equilateral triangle has internal angles of 180 degrees there.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I knew that.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Even if it's a really big one.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That doesn't mean anything to me.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' In a curved universe, those angles would not be 180 degrees if it were closed and open.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It would start to either cave in or they would open up.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, it would bow out.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, that's a good explanation. Thank you.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' In a square, it's 360.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, it's basically a description of space-time. But it does also relate to the fate of the universe as well. So, and that's one of the, Bob, I don't know if you've ever heard it invoked as a anthropogenic argument that what are the odds that our universe has exactly the cosmological constant necessary to make it precisely.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yes.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Pretty damn good.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's like being at the tip of a mountain. You're going to fall over to either side. You have to be perfectly balanced at the tip. Our universe is sort of perfectly balanced at that flat point.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Which makes it seem like we must be screwing up something because how could it be so perfect?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, right. So some people think, well, there you go. The universe was designed for us. But the other way to look at it is that there's something we don't understand about all this. And maybe the universe sort of has to be this way for some reason that we haven't figured out yet.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, maybe that's the only reason it's like stable right now or something.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. Or that the multi-universe theory is like, yeah, out of the trillions and trillions of universes, life is going to occur in the flat ones. You know, whatever. So let's go back to number one.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #1 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' For the first time, scientists have developed functional arterial red blood cells that not only can carry oxygen but also deliver drugs. You guys all want this one to be science. And therefore, you believe it is science. And this one is science.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yes!<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yay! It's awesome.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So this is one of those things like batteries and whatnot, where you have to have a suite of features all at once in order for it to be functional. And Jay, yes, we're talking about red blood cells, not just like blood substitute, like just a liquid that can carry oxygen. This is red blood cells, right? That's different. And so what you're talking about-<br />
<br />
'''C:''' It's like nanomaterials?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yes. Yeah, it's nano, of course. It's, yeah. Nanoworknews is the publication.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' So how did it evolve, Steve, if it needed a suite of attributes all working together at the same time?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Because it evolved with the blood vessels. So red blood cells need to be very flexible. They need to be able to squeeze through capillaries and come out the other end and could still function. They sort of bounce back to their old shape. But they need to be durable as well so they don't break down too quickly. And of course, they need to carry oxygen properly. So what they did was they started with red blood cells. Then they coated them. They coated them with silica. And then they covered them with positively and negatively charged polymers. And then it says they etched away the silica. So you were just left with the polymers. And that's the artificial red blood cell, right?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And that way they got the exact right shape.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, exactly.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' They almost cast a red blood cell. Oh, I love that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Then they coated the surface with natural red blood cell membranes. And the reason for that was because the red blood cells, so it needs to be strong, flexible, and does not provoke an immune response. And so red blood cells are coated with things which tell the immune system, I'm fine. Don't leave me alone. I'm part of you. Just ignore me. And so they needed to put that up there as well. So they did all of that. And for the first time, they got all of those features together in one artificial red blood cell. But the other cool thing is they can load them with haemoglobin if they wanted to carry oxygen. Or they could load it with drugs. Or they could load it with a talk, like chemotherapy, right? You could put the anti-cancer drugs in there. Or magnetic nanoparticles. Or toxin sensors. Or whatever. It's a delivery mechanism for many potential different things.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Cara, they could load it with mac and cheese, you know?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Or they could coat it with nanoscale mac and cheese.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, hell yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' They tested them out. Again, this is not obviously approved for people yet. But they were able to meet all of the physical attributes that they needed. And they lasted for more than 48 hours in mice. So in mice, they last for more than 48 hours. So with no observable toxicity to the mice also.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' I wonder, what is the life cycle of a single red blood cell? How long does it last before it's broken down?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's about 120 days.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, wow, that's long.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, that's long.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, that's good.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And then your spleen is the primary organ that filters out the ageing and damaged red blood cells.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And is that what, am I mixing things up? But is that what bilirubin is? It's like old red blood cells.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's the metabolic breakdown product in the liver of the haemoglobin.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' What's that Cara, the bilirubin?<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Bilirubin, bilirubin. Bilirubin is what makes your poop brown.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And biliverdin. And that biliverdin is what makes a bruise turn yellow and green after it lost the haemoglobin from the blood in the bruise.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #2 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' OK, that means that an unparalleled find of human remains at a site in South America spanning 9,000 years indicate that maize was only a minor contributor to overall diet until less than 1,000 years ago when it eventually displaced other staples is the fiction. And yeah, Carrie, you're right. The data showed the opposite. So this was an amazing find, but it wasn't a village. It was a burial chamber.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Oh, that makes sense why you have 9,000 years.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And it was over a period spanning about 9,600 years ago to about 1,000 years ago. So almost 9,000 year period. So we have a sequence of human remains in the same region over about a 9,000 year period. And so the researchers were like, this is an unprecedented opportunity to look at their changes in their diet over those 9,000 years.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Holy creepers.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, because they were able to tell from the proteins and the bones and everything what they were eating.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oh! Look at the bones!<br />
<br />
'''C:''' And it's safe to assume that they're kind of the same "peoples".<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, so there's probably cultural continuity there to some extent. So the oldest remains date to about between 9,600, 8,600 years ago. And they said they were basically eating herbs, fruits, and nuts. So they were hunter-gatherers with animal protein. So they were hunter-gatherer kind of a mix of foods that they were eating. By 4,700 years ago, maize was already a significant part of their diet, which is I think a little bit older than we would have thought just by other lines of evidence. So that was about 40% of their calories were coming from maize. And by 4,000 years ago, so only 700 years later, 70% of their calories were coming from maize.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' So that's really probably when they figured out how to cultivate it really well.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, cultivation goes back like 9,000 years, 10,000 years. So it starts its life as teosinte, right, which is a grass. And they cultivated it for thousands of years. But yes, sometime probably around 4,000, 5,000, maybe 6,000 years ago, they started to make it start to look like what we would recognize as corn. And they started shifting. But yeah, so 4,700 years ago, they were eating a lot of corn. But by 4,000 years, I think the switch there was that they shifted to an agrarian society. It wasn't just the maize itself. They shifted in from a hunter-gatherer to an agricultural society. And then that's exactly when you have all kinds of complicated political changes. You have the multiple subcultures splitting off. It gets much more complicated. And all the interesting stuff happens.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Yeah, it's probably because the population reached a point where they were like, we got to feed more people. We got to plant food.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And then, of course, the agriculture allows for a much bigger population. And of course, a sedentary population. And that's where you get all the things like government. You have people who don't have to just make food all day. They're free to do other things. So that's when the Mayan civilization took off, when they started growing corn. All right, Evan, give me some quotes.<br />
<br />
== Skeptical Quotes of the Week <small>(1:56:51)</small> ==<br />
{{anchor|two quotes}}<br />
<!-- For the quote display, use block quote with no marks around quote followed by a long dash and the speaker's name, possibly with a reference. For the QoW in the recording, use quotation marks for when the Rogue actually reads the quote. --> <br />
<br />
<blockquote>When you talk, you are only repeating what you already know. But if you listen, you may learn something new. <br>– {{w|Dalai Lama}}<br><br>Everything in writing begins with language. Language begins with listening.<br>– {{w|Jeanette Winterson}}, English writer</blockquote><br />
<br />
'''E:''' All right. Double quote tonight. Special double quote, too, for the price of one. "When you talk, you are only repeating what you already know. But if you listen, you may learn something new."<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Hear hear.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Supposedly said by the Dalai Lama. Which one I don't know. I think the 14th. Jay, caddyshack. I'm not sure which Dalai Lama. I looked it up. I tried to figure out which one, but it's just attributed to Dalai Lama. So one of the 14 Dalai Lamas. I think we're on the 14th right now. So and then the second one, second quote. "Everything in writing begins with language. Language begins with listening." Jeanette Winterson, who is married to Susie Orbach, who's a British psychotherapist, psychoanalyst, and writer and social critic. And OK, so the theme, I think, if you didn't pick it up already, it's about.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Shut up and listen.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' We need to listen, folks. It's so important and now more than ever, perhaps.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right. Thank you, Evan.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Thanks.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Thank you guys for joining me this week.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Sure, man.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' You got it.<br />
<br />
'''C:''' Thanks, Steve.<br />
<br />
== Signoff/Announcements == <!-- if the signoff/announcements don't immediately follow the QoW or if the QoW comments take a few minutes, it would be appropriate to include a timestamp for when this part starts --><br />
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'''S:''' —and until next week, this is your {{SGU}}. <!-- typically this is the last thing before the Outro --> <br />
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== References ==<br />
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=== Vocabulary ===<br />
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}}</div>Hearmepurrhttps://www.sgutranscripts.org/w/index.php?title=SGU_Episode_90&diff=19085SGU Episode 902024-01-06T19:53:26Z<p>Hearmepurr: episode done</p>
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<br />
== Introduction ==<br />
<br />
''Voice-over: You're listening to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.'' <br />
<br />
'''S:''' Hello and welcome to the {{SGU|link=y}}. Today is Tuesday, April 10<sup>th</sup>, 2007, and this is your host, Stephen Novella, President of the New England Skeptical Society. Joining me this evening are Bob Novella...<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Hey everybody.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Perry DeAngelis...<br />
<br />
'''P:''' Righto.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Jay Novella...<br />
<br />
'''P:''' That's right.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' ...and Evan Bernstein.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Happy birthday to the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, everyone. Founded in 1866. Happy birthday.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Our lovely Rebecca Watson is off tonight. She's unable to join us this evening, but we do have a special guest. We have a guest panelist this evening, one of our listeners, and an old-time friend, of the New England Skeptical Society, Jack Chudnicki. Jack, welcome to the Skeptic's Guide.<br />
<br />
'''JC:''' Thanks, Steve.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Hey, Jack.<br />
<br />
'''JC:''' Hey, guys.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' Jack, is it true that at one time I performed psychic surgery on you?<br />
<br />
'''JC:''' Ah, was it on me? Yes, I believe it is.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' I found a giant tumor, remember, in your gut, and I believe I excised it.<br />
<br />
'''JC:''' That is true. And you know, it hasn't returned since then. I've been much better, thank you.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' You're quite welcome.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It was therapeutic touch, not psychic surgery.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' I believe, whatever. Does it really matter?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No.<br />
<br />
'''JC:''' Steve, whatever it is, it worked.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' That's right, that's right, that's right.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' Evan, I want to thank you for that birthday notice for the ASPCN.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Well, we are all lovers of animals here on this show to varying degrees, but I think we do.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' I think we've proven that time and again.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Now, Jay, you have a correction from last week.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, last week I mentioned that Shakespeare created the prefix un.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Right, you were speaking off the cuff, as it were.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Well, I wasn't totally off the cuff. I got the information from someone that I know that shouldn't have the information correct or I thought. And then after the show, I got an email from someone that just wanted to know my source, and I was already in the midst of doing it. The prefix un was not created by Shakespeare. It predates Shakespeare. I guess it goes way back to Latin. And one of the things that one of the people wrote to me said that Chaucer used it, and he predates Shakespeare by 300 years. The thing that Shakespeare did do was create many, many, many words that use the prefix. So he did create words using the prefix. He just didn't create the concept of the prefix.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' Such as unpossible.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Right.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We have a few news items this week.<br />
<br />
== News Items ==<br />
=== Quantum Computer? <small>(2:40)</small> ===<br />
* www.nytimes.com/2007/04/08/business/yourmoney/08slip.html?_r=1&oref=slogin<br/><br/><br />
<br />
'''S:''' The first one, actually, Jack, you sent this one into us. This is a report of a company that claims that they have a working quantum computer. Now, we've mentioned quantum computing on the show a couple of times before. I believe there was at least one science or fiction that involved it. The basic concept behind quantum computers is using quantum effects in order to create computers that can do algorithms, et cetera. And they can function potentially thousands, millions of times faster than existing computers. But the technology to exploit quantum effects and use it in a computer, the reports that we've been reading makes it seem like it's many years off, maybe 20 years off or something. It's far enough out that no one's really sure how long it's going to take. Well, now a company claims that they have quantum computing now.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Well, Steve, there's a key distinction, though. There's been lots of labs that have created basic quantum computers that have solved very simple problems. But the key claim with this company, though, is that they are creating the first commercial quantum computer.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. I mean, you're right. And we've actually, in fact, that one science or fiction was the quantum computer that could do the calculation without even being turned on yet. Remember that one from a while ago? So yeah, I mean, they have been able to produce computing effects in a lab setting, but not produce a computer that could actually run applications, right? And so this guy's claiming that he has a computer that can use quantum computing to actually run applications.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Well, what is quantum computing, specifically, Bob?<br />
<br />
'''P:''' Yeah, I hate that word quantum. I really do. So many rogues and blaggards hide behind that word. Stick in front of anything. Quantum this, quantum that. I agree with you, Bob, but I mean...<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But you're right, Perry. It's like Deepak Chopra and quantum healing. That's all nonsense.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' Exactly.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But quantum computing is an actual legitimate concept. It's a technology concept. And the earliest we're at the beginning stages of this. Again, what this is, this is notable because he's claiming to basically have a product which seems to be a decade or more ahead of everybody else.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' A lot of the experts agree that it seems to be too advanced for what they thought was possible at this time. Jay, to answer your question real fast, one of the key concepts behind quantum computing is the concept of a qubit. Now, you're all familiar with bits, binary digits. That's how classical computers represent data. It's either a zero or a one. A qubit, however, can not only be a one or a zero. It could also be a superposition of both one and a zero. That's one of the things that makes quantum computers so different is this concept of a qubit. This quantum computer that this company claims to have created is supposed to have 16 qubits, which I believe is the most qubits that any quantum computer to date has ever had. 16 qubits will apparently allow a quantum computer to perform about 64,000 operations instantaneously. Now, the goal is to reach many hundreds and even thousands of qubits.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' That's Matrix World.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Once a quantum computer reaches that goal, then conventional computers will truly be left in the dust.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Well, are the computer manufacturers actually working? Are they actually working on real quantum computers?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Absolutely.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' This is Jordy Rose, the founder of the D-Wave Systems. That's the company we're talking about. This is an article in the New York Times talking about a recent demonstration that he did. He had a black box, which he said was a quantum computer, and it was able to do things like solve Sudoku puzzles.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' And determine the optimal seating arrangement for wedding guests.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Right, or search for protein in a database to find a close match. So basic things like that. But the problem here is that, yeah, so the black box did these tasks, but nobody knows what's going on inside. He hasn't told anybody how he's doing it, how the computer allegedly works.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Not in any detail.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And no one has seen the guts.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I think there's a cat in the box.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So nobody knows if his claims are real. And until he shows at least enough to convince the scientific community that his claims are legitimate, his claims deserve a certain amount of skepticism. It kind of smells a little bit of the sort of Pons and Fleischman cold fusion fiasco. Or this guy could be trying to just lure investors into his project and making claims that maybe are not legitimate yet. But we don't know.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Is he actually trying to obfuscate? Is he hiding things?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' He's making claims that he's not supporting with evidence.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' And he didn't go through the process.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Then the Raelians are obviously backing him. There's something fishy here.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' He didn't publish the steps leading up to it. These kind of technological jumps usually don't happen in a vacuum.<br />
<br />
'''JC:''' It is kind of a far-fetched claim to have a functioning quantum computer at that scale today. And there's a lot of people who have no idea how to do it. And these guys claim, oh yeah, sure, we have it working. But you can't look to see how we did it.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Is he afraid that someone's going to steal his model?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I think that's part of it. And that's probably why he's so reticent. Later this year, I think second quarter 2007, the computer is going to be available for many people to vet and to go over and to examine and to use with some of these real-world applications.<br />
<br />
'''JC:''' Well, something solved the problems. You don't know what was in there.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' What do you think? He's got a midget in the box, Bob? What are you saying? What are you getting at?<br />
<br />
'''JC:''' A laptop.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The test that he demonstrated actually represented much less computing power than your average desktop computer. So it wouldn't be far-fetched that there was a more conventional computer inside.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' Let's wait until it's vetted and see if it holds up as well as the Jesus Osuaries.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' But his point is, though, that brute speed right now isn't as important as the fact that his quantum computer did actually perform these calculations. And supposedly, his technology is very well suited for scalability, such that over the course of the next 12 months, he's going to create increasingly more robust quantum chip designs. And by 2008, I believe, he's planning on having one that can do about 1,000 qubits. So if it's as scalable as he claims, that would be pretty interesting.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So this guy, Rose, is saying that he's not going through the peer-reviewed published process that the marketplace will judge the value of his material. And in that sense, he's right. If he can deliver the goods, if it actually works, then he will have proven his point. If he can't...<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Right. In the meantime, he's got 44 million bucks to play with.<br />
<br />
'''JC:''' You know, if this thing really worked, and if he just patented it, that's a patent that would be worth a billion dollars easy. If you had the basis... It's like being the inventor of the transistor and having the patents on that, you know?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Absolutely. Absolutely.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Well, I hope it's true. I really do.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But there's a lot of red flags, though. I mean, seriously. When people have the black box, you can't look inside. They're making claims that seem to be a couple of generations ahead of where everybody else is. There's no trail. You know, it's like Iran curing AIDS without any kind of research trail. It's just... It doesn't...<br />
<br />
'''P:''' It's suspicious, to say the least.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's suspicious.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' The modern-day dynamizer.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Not quite that bad, but we'll keep an eye on it. And it'll be interesting to see how that plays out.<br />
<br />
=== Fermilab Flub <small>(10:29)</small> ===<br />
* www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article1626728.ece<br/><br />
<br />
'''S:''' The next news item also is in the area of physics. The Fermilab, which is a very prestigious physics lab, was contracted to build components for the Large Hadron Collider. And they made a boo-boo. They made a couple of calculation errors. And apparently these were so-called elementary mistakes in the design of the magnets that they were contracted to build did not get picked up on the multiple engineering reviews that occurred before these things were put in place. And basically, I think what my reading of what happened is that they did not calculate the forces properly. They made an error in figuring out how much force would be involved. So they didn't build the thing strong enough to handle the forces. And when they turned it on, it basically blew up.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Oops.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It didn't really blow up, Steve. There wasn't any combustion happening. It wasn't like a fiery explosion.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' It fell apart. It sort of collapsed.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It got ripped apart.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' You forget to carry a two, and there's four billion out the window.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It's like when they went to land one of those...<br />
<br />
'''P:''' It's true.<br />
<br />
'''JC:''' It's like the Mars probe.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, exactly. One of the Mars probes. They count metric versus classic.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Engineers are supposed to be good at this thing. That's the quote from one guy from CERN. There was a hell of a bang. The tunnel housing the machine filled with helium and dust, and we had to call in the fire brigade to evacuate the place. The people working on the test were frightened to death, but they were all in a safe place, so no one was hurt. Well, that's good. No one was hurt.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' Yeah, that is good.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It was bad.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' Peter O'Donnell, the director of the lab, said, "We are dumbfounded that we missed some very simple balance of forces. Not only was it missed in the engineering design, but also in the four engineering reviews carried out between 98 and 2002. I mean, cheapers.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Now, for you conspiracy nuts out there, this is pretty interesting. Fermilab was contracted by CERN to create these magnets. Now, Fermilab also has researchers running the Tevertron, which is the biggest running collider on the planet, I believe. And they're looking for one of the holy grails of particle physics, the Higgs boson, the hypothetical particle that confers mass to all matter. Now, whoever finds this Higgs boson will just go down in history. And it turns out that this delay that CERN is now going through might be just the right amount of time that Fermilab needs for its Tevertron to find the Higgs boson.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Isn't that convenient? Interesting. But the axiom goes, never blame on malice what can be more easily explained through incompetence.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' You expect more from them though.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So it's actually, you do, but you know what? It's very easy for me to imagine how that kind of thing can happen. Because you assume that people are doing their job, when you're reviewing the specs you should repeat all the math and everything, but you could certainly see how somebody would get lazy.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' Four engineering reviews. Well, let me ask you, Steve.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I'm sure they did the math correctly. They didn't bother to recheck the math, obviously. And you could just, you could easily see how that could happen.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' If you were in charge of Fermilab, would you fire these people?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Hmm.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It depends on how irrepleacable they are.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, that's just it. I don't know how many of these people are out there to be...<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, just a black eye for Fermilab. But if they discover the Higgs boson, it'll all be forgotten.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, it'll be tainted, though. It'll be tainted. Because they sabotaged their competition.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It's just very ironic.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's bad. It's all very bad, unfortunately. It slows down the progress of science.<br />
<br />
'''JC:''' That certain explosion, there was helium everywhere. So I wonder if those guys sounded like chipmunks when they were calling up 9-1-1.<br />
<br />
=== More Dieting News <small>(14:23)</small> ===<br />
* Dieting does not work<br/>www.newsroom.ucla.edu/page.asp?relnum=7832<br/><br/>No advantage to low glycemic diet.<br/>www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/04/070409082419.htm<br/><br />
<br />
'''S:''' There were a couple of dieting-related news items in the last couple of weeks that I wanted to talk about. We've talked about the diet fads in the dieting industry before on this show. Basically the bottom line is, our position, is that the only real proven way to lose weight is to burn more calories than you consume.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' Eat less, move more?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That formula, calories in versus calories out, is it. That's the bottom line, and there's no way around that formula. I noticed a couple of recent articles that basically support that position, that fad diets don't work and that you basically just have to exercise and eat less. There was one study out of UCLA, and they report basically that dieting does not work. Not that any particular diet doesn't work, but that dieting in and of itself doesn't work. They say that you can initially lose 5-10% of your weight on any number of diets. Basically, they all work about the same, and once you make the decision to diet and start thinking about your eating, yeah, you're probably going to lose some weight. But almost everybody gains it back. The diets do not lead to sustained weight loss or health benefits for the vast majority of the people that do it. So basically what they're saying is you have to just change your habits forever.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Lifestyle change, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, you can't go on a diet. It's kind of stating the obvious, but the thing is there is a multi-billion dollar industry that's dedicated to convincing people that that's not true, that there are ways around the calories in versus calorie out formula.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' Steve, isn't this also the study that found that vegetarianism causes Alzheimer's and makes you infertile?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, again, Perry, you're referring to your Fantasyland article, the journal of Perry's fantasies.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Steve, I've read this many times where they say it's unhealthy to lose weight and then gain it back.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' Yo-yoing, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Why is that bad? Why would it be bad to lose 15 pounds and put it back on?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' You're losing water and you're losing some muscle and you're losing some fat. And then, of course, when you gain that weight back, you're gaining primarily fat back so that at the end of the day, you pretty much can weigh the same except that now you have more fat and less muscle. And that seems to make intuitive sense, although I've never seen any studies on that. Now, one of the things they learned from doing these studies was that dieting was actually one of the best predictors of future weight gain. The fact that you may have been on a diet before any of these studies were done was one of the best indicators that you would more than likely gain weight in the future. I just thought that was pretty funny.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Wow.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' One study found that 50% of dieters weighed more than 11 pounds over their starting weight five years after the diet. So it is a bad predictor. It also does say, Jay, just to answer your question, that scientists do not fully understand how such weight cycling leads to adverse health effects. So there are documented ill health effects, but they're not really sure how that happens. The other study compared different diets, and basically this was a comparison of a high carb versus a low carb diet. Now, we reported recently on another study which compared, it was a real life comparison of some of the popular diets, like the Adkins diet versus others, and it showed that the people who were on the Adkins diet lost the most weight over the year of the study. But actually, again, like what we just talked about, people in the study lost the weight early on in the first three to four months, and then they gained some of that weight back, and they were actually in the process of gaining the weight back towards the end of the study. And the weight loss was very modest, like 10 pounds over a year for people who were significantly overweight. This study was conducted at the Eugene Mayer U.S. Department of Agriculture Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University, and they just compared a high glucose or a glycemic diet to a low glycemic diet. The new thing about this diet is that it's really the first large well-controlled study where they gave their subjects all of the food that they were supposed to eat. So they weren't just telling them how to eat. It wasn't a real life comparison. They wanted to know not how these diets behave in the real world, but is there any physiological difference to eating a high glycemic versus a low glycemic diet?<br />
<br />
'''P:''' Steve, does glycemic in this case mean sugar or it means carbs?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Carbs, carbohydrates. Yeah, it's not just sugar. It's also starches. Carbohydrates.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I love carbohydrates.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It's all sugar, Steve, right?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, starches are not sugar, and they're carbohydrates.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' But your body converts them to sugar, doesn't it?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, yes.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' But they're not sugar?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' In terms of what you're eating. So breads and pasta and grains and those kind of things, those are all carbohydrates too.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It's all good.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So that's the one thing is that they really wanted to control as much as possible what people were actually eating. They made the diets as equal as they could in terms of the appeal and fiber and volume and, of course, caloric intake. But they differed only in the high glucose diet was 60% in the low glucose and the low one was 40% glucose, which is not super low, admittedly. This is a moderately low, this is a 40% carbohydrate diet, not the super low carbohydrate diet, like 15% or 10% or something. At any rate, they also did another thing, which is very interesting, is that they used some biochemical markers to actually assess if the subjects were sticking to the diet or if they were cheating, so they did not rely upon self-reporting. And so they were able to show that, yes, both groups did cheat, about 16% in one group, 17% in the other, so it was very comparable. So there was no difference in them basically eating food and not being prepared for them as part of the study. So this is, so far, the best controlled study in terms of what the people were actually getting. And what they found was that there was zero difference between the 60% carb diet and the 40% carb diet. So this is significant evidence against the notion that adjusting the proportion of macronutrients, specifically in this case carbohydrates, makes any difference to weight loss. Again, weight loss is about calories. It's not about where the calories are coming from.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' Interesting. Good study.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It was a well-done study.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' Not relying on self-reporting seems like a very good control measure.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And the other thing is, my impression of this whole body of research, which I've been trying to follow closely for the last few years, is that the nutritionists, the people who are doing the real academic, cutting-edge nutrition research, they know this. This is what the research is showing. Yes, things like glycemic index and the kind of fat that you eat makes a difference in terms of diabetic health and heart health, etc. But in terms of weight loss and weight gain, it's all about calories. The popular low-carb diet or low-fat diet, whatever, that is all existing outside of the actual research that's being done.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' Does anyone here know how a calorie is calculated?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, I do.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' How, Jay?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' The amount of energy it takes to increase one cubic centimeter of water one degree.<br />
<br />
'''JC:''' Was it one gram of water or something?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, but that's a calorie in physics. That's a unit of energy. A calorie in diet is actually a kilocalorie. It's actually a thousand of those calories.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I would have gotten to that if you...<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Oh, sorry, Jay.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It's all right. Steve just sped up the process.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' He paused. I had to leap into the pause. All right, next news item.<br />
<br />
=== Time Travel <small>(22:13)</small> ===<br />
* seattlepi.nwsource.com/local//310821_quantum09.html<br/><br />
<br />
'''S:''' A physicist claims that he is on the brink of a breakthrough in a time travel experiment, and he just needs $20,000 to complete the experiment.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's all?<br />
<br />
'''P:''' If he could only get a quantum computer.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That'll take $44 million.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So, Steve, is the scientist legit? Is this guy for real?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The scientist is John Kramer. He's a physicist at the University of Washington, and he says all we need to keep going is maybe $20,000, but nobody seems interested in funding this project. Now, what he's doing is he's trying to set up an experiment to coax photons of light to travel back in time a bit. He's not talking about sending a person back in time or anything like that. He's just trying to establish the principle within physics, I guess specifically quantum mechanics, that photons of light can actually go back in time. It would certainly be very interesting.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Not only that they can, but the fact that they do, and that's part of their makeup. He has an interpretation of quantum mechanics that he calls the transactional interpretation of quantum mechanics, where he posits that light can in a way communicate with itself back in time, and he uses this to explain quantum entanglement and the double slit experiment and other paradoxes. So I see this time travel experiment as an extension of that belief.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, and this contradicts specifically the arrow of time hypothesis of Stephen Hawking, which doesn't make it wrong. It just means he is sort of going out on a theoretical limb, which is fine, and I think it would be especially in the area of quantum physics. It is really, I think, stretching the human ability to grapple with nature at its most fundamental level, and we need people who are thinking in new directions and thinking in ways that seem unconventional. Also, he has a testable hypothesis. He wants to do experiments. He's not just making these hand-waving explanations about what he thinks is going on. He's an experimentalist.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's good.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' We want guys like him doing stuff like this.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, who knows what it will lead to.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' Am I naive in my thinking when I say to myself, perhaps, when I say to myself that time travel will never be conquered, at least going in the past, because if it ever were, we'd have future guys walking around now.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Isn't that the classic Stephen Hawking argument? What did he call it? The chronology [inaudible]?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It always has to be that the universe conspires to keep us from traveling back in time, because it would cause paradoxes. That was one thing that Hawking said, which may be true. And the other thing is we're talking about sending photons back in time.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' I know, I know.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Hawking says that, yeah, there may be some way, some real exotic sort of conditions that you can create that theoretically can allow for the transmission of some fundamental particles or energy back in time, but sending a macroscopic object back in time is probably impossible. And I don't think that this guy's experiments, Kramer's experiments, would change that fundamental probability.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' He's not even claiming that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, no.<br />
<br />
'''JC:''' Well, I mean, how do we know that there aren't guys from the future walking around, you know?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I saw some weird dude at the grocery store.<br />
<br />
'''JC:''' They're with the aliens.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' They could be keeping themselves secret like the aliens in The Big Feet. It's true. It's true.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You could render that idea unfalsifiable, sure.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' It's not a bad theory. It's not a bad theory.<br />
<br />
=== More on Meta-analysis <small>(25:47)</small> ===<br />
* <br />
<br />
'''S:''' One more quick news item, and I just wanted to report on this, because we just recently talked about the whole idea of a meta-analysis, and I just happened to see an article published, again, analysing how meta-analyses are used. So basically, a meta-analysis is when you pool together multiple studies to try to see what does all the data taken together show, a positive effect or a negative effect? And one of the problems with a meta-analysis is that if there is any publication bias, then that will throw off the results of a meta-analysis. In other words, you're looking at whether or not a homeopathic remedy is useful for headaches. And there are 20 studies that are published, and some are positive, some are negative. You pool it all together. What if the chances of getting a study published are more likely if it's positive than if it's negative? That is a publication bias. And that would then foreskew the meta-analysis towards a positive result. In fact, it's generally considered that there is a positive publication bias within the literature, that journals are much more likely to publish an article that shows a positive effect than a negative effect. There's also the so-called file drawer effect, which means that researchers are more likely to submit a paper if it's positive, and they're more likely to put a negative paper into the file drawer, which means that there's a submission bias as well. Now, statisticians use a technique called asymmetry analysis where they try to take that into account. They say if the journals in general publish 60% positive and 40% negative papers, so we're going to assume that there's that publication bias in our meta-analysis and make a statistical fudge to take that into account. What this new paper is looking at is that specific thing, is looking at the use of statistical methods to adjust for this sort of asymmetry in publication. And what they basically concluded was that the methods that are being used are not adequate, that the publication bias is still a significant problem for meta-analysis, and bias is the outcomes of those meta-analyses, and that the asymmetry analysis is not adequate to account for that.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' You mean they should use a larger amount?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Oh, they should assume that the publication bias is greater?<br />
<br />
'''P:''' Is greater.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, I mean, I'm not sure if it was just as simple as that. It may be that, or it's just that it's inaccurate or it doesn't appropriately correct for the problem.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' Okay.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So I'll have the link to that. It was just reported. It's actually just a press release. It's not actually online yet, so I couldn't have the link at present, but hopefully I'll have it on the show notes by the time the show airs. So it's interesting. It's getting another taking meta-analysis down another notch, because it does seem that you can basically almost prove anything you want to with a meta-analysis. There are so many choices that you make in how you gather the data and analyse the data that you can kind of bias it one way or another, and they certainly are no substitute for a single, large, definitive, well-designed trial.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' You think meta-analyses themselves should be cast out, Steve?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, I think they serve a role. They're just hard to do, and they have to be looked at as preliminary. I don't think that they will ever or should ever have the weight of a single, large, definitive trial. So it's just evidence. It just needs to be put into its proper context, and this kind of analysis helps us understand what context to put it in.<br />
<br />
== Questions and E-mails ==<br />
<br />
=== Chiropractic Confusion <small>(29:18)</small> ===<br />
<blockquote>Dear Skeptics,<br/><br/>The interview with David Seaman, DC, has left me confused. When I was a kid and my parents took me to the Chiropractor, I thought he was just a doctor who specialized in the back. Since then I've heard about the woo-woo origins of Chiropractic, and figured that all chiropractors were quacks.<br/><br/>I think I learned from the interview that modern Chiropractors are physical therapists who specialize in bones and muscles of the back, and that the woo-woo chiropractors are to chiropractic what homeopaths are the pharmacology. But if that's the case, why wasn't that emphasized during the interview; why are modern Chiropractors still targets of the skeptical community?<br/><br/>I'm not saying that I believe in Chiropractic, but that maybe Chiropractic is not what we skeptics tend to believe it is. What you think?<br/><br/>Febo<br/>Philadelphia, USA<br/></blockquote><br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, let's move on to your emails. The first one comes from Fibo from Philadelphia, USA, and he writes...<br />
<br />
'''P:''' I'd just like to say I love this guy.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You're easy, Perry. He says-<br />
<br />
'''P:''' Well, he had some very nice things to say about moi on the forums. I happen to love him.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' "The interview with David Seaman, D.C., has left me confused. When I was a kid and my parents took me to the chiropractor, I thought he was just a doctor who specialized in the back. Since then, I've heard about the woo-woo origins of chiropractic and figured that all chiropractors were quacks. I think I learned from the interview that modern chiropractors are physical therapists who specialize in bones and muscles of the back, and that the woo-woo chiropractors are to chiropractic what homeopaths are to pharmacology. But if that's the case, why wasn't that emphasized during the interview? Why are modern chiropractors still targets of the skeptical community? I'm not saying that I believe in chiropractic, but that maybe chiropractic is not what we skeptics tend to believe it is. What do you think, Fibo." I wanted to address this just to maybe clear up whatever lingering confusion there was from the interview. The problem is that you're trying to put all chiropractors into one box. The premise of your question is, what are chiropractors? Are they legitimate or are they quacks or what? The problem is, and I think we did discuss this with Dr. Seaman, is that the term chiropractic or chiropractor is used to refer to a very diverse profession, a very diverse group of people. Included within them are total woo-woo quacks, those who believe that you can manipulate the spine and alter the flow of life energy and that you can cure basically anything by doing this, that one end of the spectrum. Then there are those who...<br />
<br />
'''P:''' So-called straights.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So-called straights. And there are mixers who believe that to some degree from anywhere from 0 to 99%. They may mostly buy into it, they may buy into it a little bit, they may change the jargon to say, well, it's nerve impulses, not life energy, but they still basically do the same thing. Or they may completely reject it. They also mix in a lot of other things. They mix in homeopathy, acupuncture, herbal remedies, applied kinesiology, magnet therapy, and lots of other things. The problem is we don't really have reliable numbers on the percentage of chiropractors who use these other modalities into what percentage. You can only really infer it by those few surveys that have been done by looking at advertising on the internet, by talking to chiropractors, et cetera. The sense that I have and that a lot of my colleagues in the health fraud or the alternative medicine skeptical community have is that the percentage of chiropractors who are either straight or who use a significant proportion of disproven alternative modalities like homeopathy or acupuncture is pretty high. It's like 80 to 90%. The percentage of chiropractors who directly reject subluxation theory and the more alternative aspects of chiropractic are really only a few percent. But chiropractors like David Seaman and others have argued that those chiropractors who think of themselves as scientific think that the rate is more like 30 or 40% are scientific. We don't really have any objective numbers to answer that question objectively, so I don't know. But when we criticize chiropractors, I always try to make sure that I'm clarifying it at least to enough of a degree to say those chiropractors who espouse this philosophy, this belief, or that some or most chiropractors. You can't really talk about all chiropractors in one breath because they're just too diverse. That will be a continuing source of confusion as long as such a diverse group is still referred to by that single unfortunate label.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' Steve, is there anything that chiropractors do that you cannot find an MD who does the same thing? I didn't ask that properly. What I'm trying to say is...<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I hear what you're saying. Do chiropractors do anything unique to them?<br />
<br />
'''P:''' Right.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And the answer to that is no. Anything legitimate that chiropractors do, there are other people other than chiropractors who do it.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' You can find an MD to do it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Spinal manipulative therapy is like the one real hardcore chiropractic intervention.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' So why choose a chiropractor? Why risk it? Why say, oh I don't know if he's going to be a 90%, a 10%? Just go to an MD.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That certainly is one option. You could choose a physiatrist. Physiatrists are probably the closest medical specialty to what chiropractors do. They're rehab physicians. Many physiatrists do spinal manipulative therapy and use other similar physical methods.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' I would have thought it's an orthopedist. What exactly is a physiatrist?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Orthopedists are surgeons. They operate. Physiatrists are not surgeons. They're rehab specialists, rehabilitation specialists. They're also physical therapists. They also work closely with physical therapists, and some physical therapists will do manipulative therapy as well. There are also osteopathic physicians who may incorporate manipulative therapy into their care. If chiropractors did confine themselves to that proportion of what they do that is reasonable and based on science, then I would have no problem with them. I do think, and I did start this conversation with David. I don't think we really got too far into it. I think that the ultimate solution, and I don't think this may never happen, but I think really the best solution would be to have chiropractors essentially merge with mainstream scientific medicine. Basically make it a subspecialty of MDs, of physicians. You could still do all the legitimate stuff that you want to do as a chiropractor. You could still be a physical sports medicine, physical therapy, rehab, whatever. You could even specialize in back pain. To be quite honest with you, I would love to have specialists in back pain that really had all the modalities at their fingertips and could really be comprehensive care of back pain because it really is a difficult problem. It's nothing easy about treating chronic back pain. But historically there's so much animosity there that chiropractors don't want to have anything to do with MDs basically.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Steve, could part of the problem also be money in that an insurance company would possibly pay a chiropractor less, right? So therefore insurance companies might want to push their clients to go see chiropractic instead of real doctors. There's two aspects to that. One thing is that do insurance companies prefer to send the people that they cover to alternative practitioners who are cheaper than MDs even though they're not legitimate and they don't work? The answer to that is yes. They would be happy to pay for whatever is cheapest and they don't care if it works or not. The other component though is when you actually compare the cost of chiropractic care to care by a physical therapist or an MD, there's no advantage. It actually is more expensive in some studies than non-chiropractic care. Part of it is, again, it's the philosophy of the chiropractor. If those chiropractors say, like David Seaman who was saying, I'm going to treat you for one to two weeks for acute care and that's it and then we're done, that's cheaper. But if they suck them into longer term care, then the cost could be anything. Again, sometimes they'll say you need lifetime preventive adjustments.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' You showed me a book once, Steve, or it was in one of your articles you put the cover of the book on there, How to Make a Patient for Life.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Right. This is one of the things that we referred to briefly. There are practice building seminars for chiropractors where they basically tell them how to suck people into becoming lifetime patients. That end of the spectrum really is just a scam, basically. I think the straight chiropractors have a lot of cultish features in terms of what they believe and how insulated they are in their beliefs.<br />
<br />
'''JC:''' Now, guys, do you think that the average person knows what chiropractor is all about? I think a lot of people just probably think that it's just a doctor that specializes in back pain.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, there's a lot of complexities to the whole story and I think the public, by and large, is not aware of the ins and outs of it.<br />
<br />
=== Death Star Conspiracy <small>(37:32)</small> === <br />
<blockquote>Hi all,<br/> Just thought you all might enjoy this send up of the 911 conspiracy theories:<br/><br/>www.websurdity.com/2007/02/28/uncomfortable-questions-was-the-death-star-attack-an-inside-job/<br/><br/>Matthew Kaplan<br/>USA / France<br/></blockquote> <br />
<br />
'''S:''' Let's go on to the second email. This one comes from Matthew Kaplan who gives his location as USA/France. So I guess he travells back and forth.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Canadian?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' He writes, "Hi all, just thought you all might enjoy this send up of the 9/11 conspiracy theories." And then he gives a website. Now, this is a very funny article published on WebCertity. And the name of it is, Uncomfortable Questions, Was the Death Star Attack an Inside Job? We'll have the link.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' Interesting.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Did you guys have a chance to read this? It's really funny. It talks about the Star Wars movie and the attack in the first movie on the rebel base where Luke Skywalker blew up the Death Star. And talks about it as if it were from an imperial citizen wondering how this band of rebels could have possibly destroyed the greatest weapon that the Empire ever developed. And what's funny about it, it's very clever. It's satire at its best. It really shows how you can use satire to expose the absurdity of someone's position or arguments. So I think what's most clever about it is that it shows how from a naive position that you can throw doubt onto anything. And that details that, so the article's written from the point of view of somebody who doesn't know the backstory, right? Who like didn't see the movie. Somebody who's actually like an imperial citizen who doesn't know the relationship between Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker and all the things that happened. He just knows this kind of superficial details, the kind of things that like they say that we would know about what happened on 9/11. And then from that naive position he draws all these correlations and asks all these questions that makes it seem like there's some inside conspiracy going on. Now, of course, reading the article, if you've seen the movies, you know that the questions are all nonsense because we know the backstory. We know what really went on. So again, I think it does a really good job of showing how when you are starting from a position basically of ignorance of not knowing what really went on and just looking at superficial details, you can make anything seem sinister just by sort of asking these naive questions. And that's what conspiracy theorists do. So give it a read. It's funny, especially if you like Star Wars. But when you read it, I mean, it does expose the kind of thought processes that conspiracy theorists go through. And I think in that way, it is satire at its best.<br />
<br />
'''JC:''' My favorite part of that is the picture of Emperor Palpatine reading the pet bantha to young students while this is all happening.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Young Sith students, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' A little parody on what George Bush was doing.<br />
<br />
=== Hugh Ross and Testable Creationism <small>(40:29)</small> ===<br />
<blockquote>Hello all! Wonderful show. I look forward to your podcast every week.<Enter obligatory comment regarding Rebbecca here>.<br/><br/>Steven, have you read Hugh Ross' 'testable model' regarding Creationism in his book 'Creation as Science'? This model is being shoved down my throat by my Creationist friend and, not being a scientist, I have no way to prove it right or wrong. I've chosen thus far to just smile and tell him I don't know enough about it; but I would love to know your thoughts as a skeptic and scientist.<br/><br/>I assume the model has not followed peer review, as it was released via a book. He does, however, have a credible education in physics and astronomy. Ross' education carries some real weight in an argument; but that doesn't make his theory correct.<br/><br/>Here are some links:<br/>en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_Ross_(creationist)<br/>www.reasons.org/resources/apologetics/testablecreationsummary.shtml<br/><br/>What are your thoughts?<br/><br/>Thank you and good job all!<br/>Greg Lloyd<br/>US<br/><br/><br/>Dr. Novella's blog entry about this: www.theness.com/neurologicablog/default.asp?Display=80<br/></blockquote> <br />
<br />
'''S:''' The next email comes from Greg Lloyd in the U.S. And he writes, "Hello, all. Wonderful show. I look forward to your podcast every week. Stephen, have you read Hugh Ross testable model regarding creationism in his book, Creation as Science? This model is being shoved down my throat by my creationist friend and not being a scientist I have no way to prove it right or wrong. I've chosen thus far to just smile and tell him I didn't know enough about it. But I would love to know your thoughts as a skeptic and scientist. I assume the model has not followed peer review as it was released via a book. He does, however, have a credible education in physics and astronomy. Ross's education carries some real weight in an argument, but that doesn't make his theory correct." And he gives some links. Well, yeah, we'll have the link on our notes page. This is to Hugh Ross's website, Reasons to Believe. And what he's trying to argue for here is a testable creation model. There's a lot of nonsense in here. We don't really have time to go into all of it. But there was a couple of things I want to cover because I think we haven't spoken about them specifically before. So we have criticized creationism and intelligent design on the premise that it's not science because they do not make testable hypotheses. And if your hypotheses are not testable, then you're not science, period. So I guess Hugh Ross decided that he needed to correct that deficiency by trying to phrase creationism as a testable hypothesis. First of all, Hugh Ross is an old Earth creationist. Creationism is sort of a big umbrella that includes people from young Earth creationists who think the Earth is literally 6,000 or 10,000 years old. Old Earth creationists like Hugh Ross think the Earth is billions of years old, but that the life on Earth was created by God. And there are even those who think that life evolved, but it was sort of pushed forward by God or that it unfolded in a way intended by God. So there's a huge spectrum of what could technically be called creationism. ugh Ross is an old Earth creationist. But what he does here, he makes a classic mistake of pseudoscientist, and he really demonstrates his utter and complete lack of understanding of what science is, how it works, and what a testable hypothesis is. He gives 20 ways in which the creation model, still telling that they use the word model and not theory, can be tested. But he's not making any predictions. That's the problem. He's not saying that if creation were true, this is what we would predict from that, and this is how we can test it. That's how science works. What he's doing is taking stuff we already know and then retro-dicting, or basically just shoehorning what we already know into creationism. That's not what science means about making predictions, about having a testable model. And of course, all of his specific components are wrong in that they do not support creationism, and they certainly do not distinguish. And this is the other thing he doesn't get, that if you're going to say that this piece of information supports creationism, then it has to be something that's compatible with creationism and not evolution. And none of the things that he lists are incompatible, either they're a false premise, they're wrong, or they're not incompatible with evolution. For example, he lists the Cambrian explosion, as if that is somehow outside of evolutionary theory. The Cambrian explosion was the first appearance of multicellular life. It took millions of years. That was very rapid geologically. Once the first multicellular animals started to appear, they basically were filling a new niche, and they rapidly diversified. So you had this explosion of animals and multicellular plants and animals. Also, part of this "explosion" was that when they first evolved hard parts that fossilize, then you're going to see the sudden appearance of many types of animals that fossilize in the fossil record. It's like the fossil record turns on. But that doesn't mean that there wasn't a longer period of evolving through soft body organisms before it got to that point. So anyway, that's a false premise. It doesn't distinguish between creation and evolution. It's also not something that was predicted by creation, that there would have been something like the Cambrian explosion in the fossil record. The frequency and extent of mass extinctions, again, how does that flow from creationism?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' He says Genesis is perfect fit with the fossil record.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, that's just a complete misreading of the fossil record. Molecular clock rates. So here's what he's saying about the molecular clock rates. This is the other component of this article that is utter nonsense. What he says is that mutations could not possibly account for the evolution of life. Now, one thing that he does is semi-legitimate in that he says we know what the basic mutation rate is, so we know how fast mutations can occur and how many differences there are between species. So could this mutation rate account for the rate of the evolution of life that's been documented in the fossil record and in our genetic diversity? And he does what he calls a crude mathematical model and comes up with the fact that we would have needed many more animals over a much greater period of time in order for life to have evolved.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' But it's not just mutation rate.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, right, of course, Bob. You hit upon the flaw in his calculations that he's assuming that mutations are the only thing.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' Well at first when you started talking about this guy, Steve, I said to myself, well, let's give him an E for effort. I mean, at least he's trying to turn creation into a test. But after listening to your explanations, he's not even doing that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, no, he's not.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' It's total garbage. It's garbage.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So what Bob was referring to is the fact that actually, once you get a certain complexity in the genome and you have sexual reproduction, actually a lot of biodiversity occurs through recombination, through the mixing of genes from different individuals, not through mutation. So he's assuming that all the biodiversity is coming from mutations alone when actually most of it comes from from recombination. So that's a flaw, a flawed premise from which he started. So his calculations are meaningless. The other thing he's doing here is he's saying that God create there was not one creation that God created things over time.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' Why, was he lazy?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' This is where he's he calls this God's step by step creation. So, again, he really is just rendering the theory unfalsifiable by saying that God created things over time so that they would appear in a more or less evolutionary pattern, which is nonsense. And just again, just really just renders his his model technically unfalsifiable. His attempt to argue that it's that it's that it's testable is false and backwards. He gets it totally backwards. Again, just reveals a profound, profound ignorance of the process of science, but is helpful as a model for teaching how science is supposed to work. It's actually the one useful thing that creationists do is provide endless examples of what science is not and therefore facilitate and sometimes teaching what science is.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' You simply cannot put a white coat on this smelly pile of crap.<br />
<br />
'''JC:''' You have to give him credit. He did manage to piss off both the scientific establishment and the creationists because they don't like his sort of take on a creationism either.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, he pissed off the younger creationists. Because he's because he allows for an old earth. He also does try to get some credibility by by arguing against some of their more absurd positions. Like the the Grand Canyon was created in a day.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' This guy, he's kind of like the the chiropractor guy that wants to be legit.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, giving him way too much credit.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' This is the only this guy he has religious views and he's desperately trying to dress them up as science, but he's too ignorant of science to do it well or he's just he has to be intellectually dishonest because his task is impossible. You can't make an unscientific or non-scientific scientific notion scientific. So given an impossible task, your only option is to fake is to be intellectually dishonest. So he is.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' And a fine job he's doing.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And a fine job he's doing.<br />
<br />
=== Near Death Experiences <small>(49:27)</small> ===<br />
<blockquote>Dear Steven, Robert, Rebecca, Perry, Evan, and Jay:<br/><br/>Hey you guys... In all 88 episodes you have not, to my knowledge, discussed my favorite pseudo-science of all: NDE's- Near Death Experiences!<br/><br/>As a reformed Art Bell cultist during the 90's, you've pretty much finished up my de-programing and returned me to the world of the living. However, one story has still stuck with me all these years and I have to admit, it still fascinates me beyond words despite the complete lack of empirical evidence.<br/><br/>I'm speaking of Danion Brinkley. Author of 'Saved by the Light' and 'At Peace in the Light' in which he chronicles his story of being struck by lightning while speaking on the telephone as it passed through an underground line. After which, he was pronounced dead at the scene only to revive on a hospital gurney some thirty minutes later with a sheet pulled over his head and a tag on his toe.<br/><br/>I don't believe these particular events are in dispute, however his recounting of where he was during that half hour is quite extraordinary. Since we have a practicing neurologist on the panel, I would be most interested to hear his discussion on the matter. Of course, everyone else will no doubt have their opinions, as well.<br/><br/>Please do a little background research on Danion and bring the subject up on a future show. (I have autographed copies of his books you can borrow!) I'll be the first to download it!<br/><br/>Thanks!<br/><br/>Jason Ferney<br/>Kansas City, MO<br/></blockquote><br />
<br />
'''S:''' The next email comes from Jason Fernie in Kansas City, Missouri. And Jason writes, "Dear Steve at all. Hey, you guys, in all 88 episodes, you have not to my knowledge discussed my favorite pseudoscience of all near death experiences. As a reformed Art Bell cultist during the 90s. You've pretty much finished up my deep programming and returned me to the world of the living. However, one story is still stuck with me all these years and I have to admit it still fascinates me beyond words, despite the complete lack of empirical evidence. I'm speaking of Daniel Brinkley, author of Saved by the Light and at Peace in the Light, in which he chronicles his story of being struck by lightning while speaking on the telephone as it passed through an underground line, after which he was pronounced dead at the scene only to revive on a hospital gurney some 30 minutes later with a sheet pulled over his head and a toe tag on. I don't believe these particular events are in dispute. However, his recounting of where he was during that half hour was quite extraordinary. Since we have a practising neurologist on the panel, I would be most interested to hear his discussion on the matter. Of course, everyone else will no doubt have their opinions as well." The whole notion of near death experience is very interesting. Basically, what multiple people have reported is that after recovering from a near death experience, whether they had a heart attack or a heart stop, they had to get CPR or they had a drowning or whatever, that they report a story where they felt like they were floating above their body. They may have seen a tunnel with a light. They may remember encounters with lost loved ones, family members who had died before them. This has been interpreted as the spirit having left the body, gone to heaven or wherever, and then sucks back into the body when the resuscitation is successful and the person is brought back to life. However, all of the components of the typical near death experience are pretty easily explainable neurologically. For example, the floating above the body. That can be reproduced chemically and electrically. There's a part of the brain that gives you your sense of being in your body. If you turn that off or disrupt it, then you feel like you're floating above your body. You don't just have a sense of being out of your body. You actually see your body. You feel like you are floating above yourself. You see your body in the room, in the world.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Your brain is creating that image?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yes.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Is it based on memory or is it based on what your eyes are seeing in your body?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's a combination. It's a combination of what you do see and also what you feel and also just an internal model you have of yourself. Your brain has a model of yourself. There's a part of your brain that says, yep, here is me. Here's where I am. I'm in myself and myself is in the universe. Lots of funky things can go wrong with that. There's a shadow anomaly where people think that there's somebody following them all the time. It's just an echo of their internal picture of themselves. here's a shadow self following them everywhere. All of the things are just disruptions in this very interesting part of the brain that gives us our sense of being inside of our bodies and being part of the world. We can reliably point to that part of the brain, disrupt it somehow, and create this experience. You can also pretty reliably create this experience with certain drugs. Also, some patients who have epilepsy and have seizures in this part of the brain can have similar experiences. In fact, I had a patient myself who had the absolutely typical textbook near-death experience during their seizures. Every time they had a seizure, they had an out-of-body near-death experience.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' Did the patient think that he was having a mystical experience, Steve?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' He had what we call hyperreligiosity, which is sometimes just like Joan of Arc. There's actually some speculation that Joan of Arc may have had epilepsy, and that was part of her visions and her hyperreligiosity. It's interesting that there's also parts of the brain where when you have a seizure in that part of the brain, it can make you feel as if you were in the presence of God or the universe or whatever, and that people who have epilepsy in that part of the brain tend to also have this hyperreligiosity. He knew that they were his seizures, and yet still it had a profound spiritual effect on him. We're just hardwired for that feeling.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' Just out of curiosity, did you try and dissuade him?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, I talked to him about the fact that that experience was his seizure, and he did understand that. I also just talked abstractly about typically what happens in patients who have epilepsy with that kind of seizure, which is appropriate for the therapeutic relationship.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Steve, was there medication to help him?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, yeah, he was treated with anti-seizure medication, and he stopped having seizures.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' How about that?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Anyway, it's pretty profound evidence that this is a brain phenomenon, not a spiritual phenomenon, not an out-of-body phenomenon. It's an experience that your brain has.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' Absolutely. If you can reproduce it, case closed.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. There are lots of reports of people who report seeing the CPR undergoing on themselves, and they may remember details of what happens and then report those details later, and that would seem to validate the notion that they were actually there while the CPR was happening, that they were seeing what was actually going on.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' The same with Daniel Brinkley. He said he saw the EMTs working on him from up above, but also there were some other interesting aspects to what he saw. Not only the dark tunnel, but a crystal city, a cathedral of knowledge where 13 angels shared 100 revelations with him about the future. Some supposedly came true. I listened to this guy, and I tell you, he was somewhat compelling to listen to. I can see how you can get swept into his narrative and to buy it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, and imagine if you were a believer how compelling it would be.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, forget it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' None of these things have been validated scientifically, and it's easy to see how these stories would be generated. You can pick up a lot of ancillary details that you might not be aware of and then incorporate them into your vague memory that happened at a period of time when your brain is only partially functioning and not really able to generate a full wakefulness.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Steve, I think that's what happened with this guy. He said all this happened to him in 28 minutes, but he was paralysed for days and days. He was partially paralysed for weeks and months. It took him two years to learn to feed himself and to walk again, and that's a lot of downtime where he had lots of time to think, and I bet, my guess would be that if you could somehow communicate with him soon after his first brush with death, that his story would be very different and much less elaborate than how he presents it today.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, exactly right. I blogged recently about the fact that we form our memories of events around the emotion and the meaning that we think those events happen, and then the details just morph over time in order to emphasize the emotion and the meaning that we impart to that event. So if you think you had an out-of-body experience, your memory of the details will change over time. And you'll actually start to remember that maybe the nurse who was taking care of you after the fact, you'll remember seeing them in the room when you were getting your CPR. You just fuse those memories together, and it'll become completely distorted.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' There's one quote I want to throw out there that I read on the website about this guy. It just really struck me and annoyed me. It said that after lying dead, dead for 28 minutes, now of course he wasn't really dead, most likely clinically dead.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' He was only mostly dead.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' We're not talking Good Friday here.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' After lying dead for 28 minutes on the hospital stretcher, Daniel had to navigate back to his stiffening body. Yeah, like rigor mortis is sitting in and this guy sits up. Come on, stiffening body?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, yeah, that's nonsense. I mean, the fact that it's actually, we talked about incompetence before with the Fermilab thing, and some things you may be surprised that can happen even to experts. It's actually not that hard to pronounce somebody dead who's not dead. And it happens more often than you might think.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I've done it like four times.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' If the heart really slows down and the breaths become very shallow, to a moderately detailed exam, somebody could look dead. But the heart could be beating just enough to be keeping their brain alive. They might be taking some shallow breaths. You don't need to breathe that much to get enough oxygen in your blood to keep the cells alive, again, over a period of time. And then obviously it was enough that it kept his tissues going until eventually he woke up. But he was not dead. He was never dead. He was never dead. Certainly it would not even be enough time for rigor mortis to end. No one has ever come back from rigor mortis. Near-death experiences are near-death. No one is ever actually dead where their cells were rotting away.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Mostly dead.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Which means that throughout these experiences, their brain cells are still capable of functioning to some degree, enough to create experiences and memories that they later get woven into this out-of-body or near-death experience story.<br />
<br />
== Science or Fiction <small>(59:21)</small> == <br />
<br />
Question #1: A new study shows that the number of male births in the US and Japan have been decreasing for the past 30 years.Item #2: New study suggests that human evolution is not only continuing, it is accelerating.<br />
<br />
Question #2: New study suggests that human evolution is not only continuing, it is accelerating.<br />
<br />
Question #3: New study shows that smoking actually has a protective effect against certain types of cancer.<br />
<br />
''Voice-over: It's time for Science or Fiction.''<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Each week I come up with three science news items or facts. Two are genuine and one is fictitious. And then I challenge my panel of skeptics to tell me which one is the fake. Is everyone ready?<br />
<br />
'''P:''' Oh, I am.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yes.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Jack, a lot of pressure on you, Jack. This is your first science or fiction.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Hey, Jack.<br />
<br />
'''JC:''' Oh, geez. I could be at [inaudible]<br />
<br />
'''J:''' You're actually my guide. Statistically, Jack could be in the lead.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' You can refuse to answer, too.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' All right, here we go.<br />
<br />
'''JC:''' I probably have like a one in three chance.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Number one, a new study shows that the number of male births in the US and Japan have been decreasing for the past 30 years. Item number two, new study suggests that human evolution is not only continuing, it is accelerating. And item number three, a new study shows that smoking actually has a protective effect against certain types of cancer. Bob, go first.<br />
<br />
=== Bob's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Let's see, number of male births have been decreasing in the US and Japan in the past 30 years. Evolution is accelerating. Smoking has a protective effect. Accelerating evolution, I can't buy that one.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' What do you say, Bob?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' It's too easy. Decreasing male births, that's slightly more believable. I'm going to go with one, decreasing male births.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' With the male births plummet. Okay. All right, Evan.<br />
<br />
=== Evan's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I'm tempted to agree with Bob here about the male birth rate decreasing. So I will say that that is fiction.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay, Jay.<br />
<br />
=== Jay's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Well, I think this one is pretty easy, to be honest with you guys. I'm going to pick the evolution one because we're not evolving anymore.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay, Perry?<br />
<br />
=== Perry's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''P:''' Yeah, this one's pretty easy. Smoking can protect it, of course. Smoking is one of the healthiest things you can do. I advocated all forms of illness and malady. So that one's clearly true. Evolution accelerating, absolutely. In fact, two weeks ago, I was a goldfish. So I'm going to have to say that decreasing the males, yeah, false.<br />
<br />
'''S:'' Okay. Jack, after listening to the rogue's keen analysis of the science of fiction this week, what do you think?<br />
<br />
=== Jack's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''JC:''' I'm going to go out on a limb and go with the cigarettes protecting against cancer.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay, as being fiction. All right.<br />
<br />
'''JC:''' Correct.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #1 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Let's start with number one. A new study shows that the number of male births in the US and Japan have been decreasing for the past 30 years. I believe Bob, Evan, and Perry all chose this one as fiction. And this one is fact. This one is science. This one is science. This is a University of Pittsburgh study shows in the past 30 years, the number of births has decreased each year in the US and Japan by basically reviewing all birth records. They note that the decline in births is equivalent to 135,000 fewer white males in the US and 127,000 fewer males in Japan over the past three decades. The pattern of decline in the ratio of male to female births remains largely unexplained. But they think there may be some environmental factor at work. Very interesting.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Environmental factor.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #2 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Now, Jay, you think that the second one, new studies suggest that human evolution is not only continuing, it is accelerating. You believe that that one is fiction.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Well, can I just...<br />
<br />
'''E:''' You should change your answer, Jay.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' No, I just don't get it. We're not evolving anymore. Isn't it the obvious one?<br />
<br />
'''P:''' Steve will get to it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It is the obvious one. That's why that one is science. That one is true.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Three? I read about three. What are you talking about?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So this is interesting. Actually, I believe I've reported on something along these lines before, specifically about the evolution of intelligence. In fact, there are certain genes that correlate with greater intelligence. These are genes involved in brain development that are actually increasing in frequency over historical time, which I found surprising. For the same reason that you guys do that, I thought that we were a large, outbred population that was stable and not changing over time. And in fact, if true, if this really pans out, this would be extremely surprising and would actually cause a "radical reappraisal" of evolutionary change in the context of large populations like homo sapiens.<br />
<br />
'''JC:''' Since there's like six billion people around now, just by the very fact that there is a larger population, wouldn't that allow for more variation within the population?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yes, it allows for more variation than we are a so-called outbred population. But the question is, can new genes or new variations of genes propagate through such a large population? And can selective pressures effectively work upon them? The conventional thinking is that you really need sort of small isolated populations for significant evolution to occur. But not that it's impossible in large populations. I mean, there still is gene sorting and sort of changes in gene frequencies over time can take place. If genes actually are advantageous, then you still will see that. But you won't see significant or rapid evolutionary change, more just like sort of changes in gene frequency over time. But basically there was a look at fossil records of humans over the last couple hundred thousand years. And they also looked at genetic information over more recent time, looking at gene frequencies. And they suggest that humans, that the homo sapien lineage has actually been continuing to change since its inception a couple hundred thousand years ago. And that in fact, if anything, the pace of that change has been accelerating. So this is pretty, pretty radical.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' Steve, does this mean we're all heading for the Tolosian form, the big brain ball headed guys?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's basically the X-Men. I think their mutant abilities are going to start popping out any day now.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' I want the big head. Oh, I want the big brain head thing.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So this research is being carried out mainly by Gregory Cochran of the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. So granted, this is a pretty new type of research, and it still has yet to really go through the meat grinder of scientific peer review. So we have to see how this all pans out, but that's what his research strongly suggests.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #3 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Which means that number three, a new study shows that smoking actually has a protective effect against certain types of cancer, is fiction. Now, the real article on which I based that fiction is a new study which shows that smoking and caffeine have a protective effect against the development of Parkinson's disease. Parkinson's disease is a neurodegenerative disorder, and this is actually not the first study to show a possible protective effect for smoking from a neurodegenerative disorder. Previous studies have shown that there's also possibly a similar effect for Alzheimer's disease, which is another neurodegenerative disorder. So it's not really certain what the effect is, what the biochemical basis of the effect is. And it's interesting that this new study also correlated it with caffeine, although it's hard to really draw a firm cause and effect conclusion from that. But you know, nicotine's a drug, and it can certainly have effects. It'll all have to be bad. It could have some effects that turn out to be protective. So it's not implausible. I certainly don't recommend that anyone start smoking, because these diseases are certainly less common than the diseases that cancer increases your risk for. The number one, two, and three killers, at least in this country, are heart attacks, cancer, and stroke. And smoking increases your risk of all three of those things.<br />
<br />
'''JC:''' Well, I guess if you die from one of those three, you're much less likely to develop Parkinson's.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's actually an interesting point. I don't think that that was a factor in this study, but that is one of those statistical things that researchers have to learn about early, that an intervention which causes people to die early may actually seem to have a protective effect against diseases which occur later. So that's one of the pitfalls of doing correlation studies and epidemiological studies, one of the things that you have to look out for.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's what Bob Perry and I were thinking when we guessed the other way.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' Clearly.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I'm sure. So Jack, your first time out, you are the sole victor.<br />
<br />
'''JC:''' 100%.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You are the sole victor.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' We just wanted to make Jack feel well.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Honestly, had you read that, or did you guess, or how'd you come to it?<br />
<br />
'''JC:''' No, no, I just, I guess.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' You had like a one in three chance.<br />
<br />
'''JC:''' Yeah, I mean I had a one in three chance, and it seemed like the most ridiculous one of the bunch.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' And Jay, you should have changed your answer after you heard the first one was wrong.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' No, I really thought I had it right there. I was wrong.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' Clearly.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That was the tricky one this week.<br />
<br />
== Skeptical Puzzle <small>(1:08:48)</small> ==<br />
<blockquote>This Week's Puzzle<br/><br/>I wrote 3768 lines of code using 4 different languages to be spread over a thousand years.<br/><br/>Who am I ?<br/><br/><br/>Last Week's Puzzle<br/>Please be still my beating heart<br/>For the best kiss of my life<br/>That tingling on my skin does start<br/>In vain my stress can cause much strife<br/><br/>What am I describing?<br/><br/>Answer: Polygraph<br/>Winner: None<br/></blockquote><br />
<br />
'''S:''' Evan, read last week's puzzle.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Last week's puzzle was the following. Please be still, my beating heart, for the best kiss of my life. That tingling on my skin does start. In vain, my stress can cause much strife. What am I describing? And I am in fact describing a polygraph test.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' Did anyone get it, Evan?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' No, nobody got it.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' That's two weeks in a row, huh?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah. Yeah, that's two weeks in a row. I thought for sure someone would pick up on that. So here's the, right here in Wikipedia, the first sentence under polygraph. A polygraph, commonly yet incorrectly referred to as a lie detector, is a device that measures and records several physiological variables, such as blood pressure, pulse, respiration, and skin conductivity, while the subject is asked a series of questions. Hence the four lines of the poem I put together, having to do with each of those, blood pressure, pulse, respiration, skin conductivity. The answer is the polygraph. So no winners this week.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' What's your puzzle for this week?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Here is this week's puzzle. I wrote 3,768 lines of code using four different languages to be spread over a thousand years. Who am I? So chew on that for a while and good luck, everyone.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Thanks, Evan.<br />
<br />
== Quote of the Week <small>(1:10:14)</small> ==<br />
<blockquote>'I respect faith, but doubt is what gets you an education.'- Wilson Mizner</blockquote><br />
<br />
'''S:''' Bob, do you have a quote for us this week to close out the show?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yes, I have a quote from Wilson Mizner, American playwright. He said, "I respect faith, but doubt is what gets you an education."<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Excellent. Well, thanks everyone for joining me again. It was a great show. Jack, thanks for standing in for Rebecca. We appreciate you being our first listener guest.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' Excellent.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We had fun. Maybe we'll do it again.<br />
<br />
'''JC:''' Anytime, guys. Sure.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' Good night. Good night, all.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Good night, everyone.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' —and until next week, this is your {{SGU}}. <br />
<br />
{{Outro61}}<br />
== References ==<br />
<references/><br />
<br />
{{Navigation}} <!-- inserts images that link to the previous and next episode pages --></div>Hearmepurrhttps://www.sgutranscripts.org/w/index.php?title=SGU_Episode_89&diff=19084SGU Episode 892024-01-06T10:28:18Z<p>Hearmepurr: episode done</p>
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{{InfoBox <br />
|episodeNum = 89<br />
|episodeDate = 4<sup>th</sup> Apr 2007<br />
|episodeIcon = File:fakefairy.jpg<br />
|rebecca = y<br />
|bob = y<br />
|jay = y<br />
|evan = y<br />
|perry = y<br />
|downloadLink = http://media.libsyn.com/media/skepticsguide/skepticast2007-04-04.mp3<br />
|forumLink = http://sguforums.com/index.php?topic=00000.0<br />
|qowText = If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it's still a foolish thing.<br />
|qowAuthor = {{w|Anatole France}}<br />
|}}<br />
<br />
== Introduction ==<br />
''Voice-over: You're listening to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.'' <br />
<br />
'''S:''' Hello and welcome to the {{SGU|link=y}}. This is your host, Stephen Novella, president of the New England Skeptical Society, and today is Wednesday, April 4<sup>th</sup>, 2007. Joining me this week are Bob Novella...<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Hey everybody!<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Rebecca Watson...<br />
<br />
'''R:''' Ahoy hoy.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Perry DeAngelis...<br />
<br />
'''P:''' Hey, we're here to give you the right view.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Jay Novella...<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Hey Rogues.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' ...and Evan Bernstein.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' And we'll wish all our listeners today happy International Day for Landmine Awareness and Assistance Day.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' Is that a Princess Di holiday?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You have to be aware of landmines.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' She was big into landmines before she went down.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, she was.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' Was she?<br />
<br />
'''P:''' She was.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Evan, throw that calendar away, we're getting tired of this, okay?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, you have some kind of special calendar of stupid holidays and commemorations.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' Obviously an English calendar.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yes, and for the low, low price of $20, you too can own it.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' Excuse me, there's going to be no pimping of any other calendars on this show, okay?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, your calendar was so 2000.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Rebecca has spoken. We have a lot of news items to get through this week, so let's get right to it.<br />
<br />
== News Items ==<br />
=== 9/11 Conspiracy Celebrities <small>(1:23)</small>===<br />
* L.A. Times: http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-goldberg3apr03,1,5017886.column<br />
<br />
Charlie Sheen might narrate Loose Change<br />
http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/march2007/230307Gibson.htm<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The first one has to do with more 9/11 conspiracy nonsense. There's a couple of celebrities getting into the game that I noticed in the past week. The first is Rosie O'Donnell on The View. Have any of you, by the way...<br />
<br />
'''P:''' Excuse me.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Now wait a minute, let's reserve our commentaries for the end of our discussion.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Have any of you, by the way, actually saw her, saw the show? I didn't see the actual episode.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' You can watch it on YouTube.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's on YouTube. Did you see it, Jay?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah. I watched part of it, then I threw up on myself and had to go clean up.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' Terrible.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' I read her comments on her blog. They've been going on for the past few weeks. And I figured eventually it would come out on The View, but she's ridiculous. She's such an idiot. She's basically just parodying the things that she saw on the loose change video that has been going around the internet that has been thoroughly debunked by multiple sources.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Well, the great quote she had really shocked me.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' Which one?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Regarding 9/11, of course. The first time in history that fire has ever melted steel.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' You know, that is something that they bring up again and again and again. People sit them down and explain it to them step by step how the buildings fell down, and they just refuse to listen. It's so frustrating.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Of course, for our listeners, as we brought that specific point up, let's not let it go by, the steel was not melted by the fire. It was weakened by the fire. The heat that was produced by that kind of fire was more than enough to reduce the strength of the steel so that it could not support the weight of the building above it. So it collapsed. Case closed.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' Exactly.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's that simple. And they refuse to listen to that. They do the typical dodge where they just go on to some other point and never actually acknowledge the point that you just made. You can sort of talk around in circles.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Is the underlying point that these people just don't like the United States on some level?<br />
<br />
'''P:''' She loathes the United States.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Don't you think it's more hating the administration rather than the country itself?<br />
<br />
'''R:''' Yeah, I think it's definite Bush hatred. And then there's a lot of them who are just I think that there are just some people out there who are just natural conspiracy theorists. They're paranoid.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Rebecca, she doesn't hate bush.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' Yeah, that's clever.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Well, on that note, I really like this piece written by Jonah Goldberg at the LA Times op-ed. This is one quote that just tickled me. He said that, "Regardless, it appears that not even the heat of ridicule can weaken O'Donnell's steely resolve to make an idiot of herself." I just love that line. That was great.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Puntastic. Well, in any case, this is a low for her. It does sound like she just, there's obviously nothing new to say. She is parroting, as Rebecca said, loose change and other sort of 9/11 conspiracy standard nonsense. It's already been debunked. If you're a public figure, you're going to be on national television giving your view I would think that you would do a little bit more due diligence and intellectual honesty. But hey, she's embarrassing herself and ruining whatever reputation she had.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' How many more embarrassing B-list celebrities are they going to sign on to their little cause? It's not helping them. It's not helping Rosie.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' What's ABC doing about this?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Barbara Walter. Wasn't Barbara Walter quite there? She's somewhat of a journalist.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' No she wasn't on that show Bob.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' She wasn't?<br />
<br />
'''P:''' But I think it is an interesting question. Not so much ABC, but it's the Disney company. They own ABC. And Disney's a family company and depends on family business. And when Rosie's talking about like what does it say in the article, expensive weddings, it's fine. But when she starts to slander, it'll be very interesting to see how long Disney will put up with it. I hope not long.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah. But what would they do, Perry? They would tell her off camera, hey, cut that out, you. And then you'd never hear about it again. She won't issue a retraction or clarify her.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' If the sponsors leave, she'll be fired.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' She'll be fired before she shuts up.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Although honestly, I don't know that this is something that the corporation should censor. I think rather for the editors or the journalists on the show should hold her to more factual position.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' Not censor.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' They are not journalists, first of all.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, Barbara Walters at least pretends to be a journalist.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' Yeah, by asking people what kind of tree they want to be. It's not a matter of censorship, right? It's a matter of dollars and cents.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' On the point, though, despite the fact that Barbara Walters is seen as a journalist, the rest of them, nobody is watching that show and thinking that they're watching an independent news program.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' They're TV personalities. I mean, they're there to entertain people who watch TV during the day.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' There's a reason why they are on when they're on.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' Right. I mean, and it's not, I don't think it's a thing of, I don't think it's censorship in the least if Rosie O'Donnell would be fired over this.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' Dollars and cents.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' Right.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' That's all they care about.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' It's an entertainment show. It's a chat show. She's there to do her job and to bring in the viewers, and if it's not working, it's not working.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' She's a ranting chimp.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' Fired. Yeah, I think she's lost all credibility at this point.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Chimp credibility?<br />
<br />
'''R:''' If she had any.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Rebecca, also don't forget, she's there on that show to make all the other women look thin.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The other celebrity who got briefly in the news over 9/11 is Charlie Sheen. Now, there's nothing official on this. From what I can find so far, he is in discussion, so it hasn't been decided yet, about possibly narrating a new release of the internet movie Loose Change, which is the famous or infamous web video promoting 9/11 conspiracy nonsense.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' Yeah, he's been publicly on their side for quite some time, so I wouldn't be surprised.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's terrible. It's terrible.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' Charlie Sheen is a disgrace. Absolute disgrace.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' He's another person that just, I mean, there's just no credibility there, so I mean, I find it really laughable when the Loose Change people sign on these idiots and trumpet it all over the place as though they're gaining ground.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Right.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' It's absurd.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' The last person that I'm going to listen to for a hot topic news item is a famous person.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Right. A celebrity.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, their opinion is meaningless to me.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Right. I mean, celebrities don't become celebrities because they're intelligent, because they're skeptical, because they understand science, because they're academic. You get to fame because you're good at pretending, and you also have other qualities that make you good eye candy on camera. That's it. So...<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, Steve, how about back in the 70s with those commercials? I'm not a doctor, but I play one on TV. Therefore, buy this drug.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Right. That became a cliché. It was so patently stupid. So, but it is still true that face recognition, name recognition, and celebrity does influence people, but it really shouldn't. They're probably going to still, all these dubious fringe organizations will happily sign on, again, like the B-list celebrities, to promote their cause when they can.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' I would like it noted that we got through that entire discussion on Rosie, and I did not use one vulgarity. Thank you.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Noted. Are you trying to keep track of your quota there, Perry?<br />
<br />
=== Holy Water for AIDS <small>(8:40)</small>===<br />
* Sky News: news.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30200-1258762,00.html?f=rss<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The next news story, perhaps worse, in Ethiopia, there's a controversial treatment for AIDS. Now, AIDS is a huge problem, of course, in Africa. And the governments of Africa have had less than a stellar history on dealing with the problem. They've ranged from denial to promoting pseudoscientific herbal remedies. And now a church in Ethiopia is promoting holy water, basically showering, bathing in holy water as a way of treating AIDS instead of taking proven medications. Interestingly, the people who are to be treated, you have to climb to the church, which is 10,000 feet above sea level. They make you take your socks and shoes off because you can't step onto holy ground except in your bare feet. And then they basically shower you with cold water. So not exactly the most helpful endeavour. And these people are all packed in. So, yeah, let's give all these immunocompromised individuals a good exposure to everybody. Make sure we spread those pathogens around. But they're touting this as a way of this holy water as a way of curing AIDS. It says that it's actually an Ethiopian Orthodox Church, which is some Christian domination, but I'm not sure if that's specifically what that is. So every day, thousands of people come to be baptized through this act.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Why are a couple of the guys in one of the pictures in chains?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Some of them in chains to prevent them escaping. That's what the story says.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' Escaping the cure?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Apparently. Boy, talk about, was it Jim Jones? That's what it smacks of to me in a way.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' One of the priests said that medicine and faith have a role to play in treating AIDS. He insists that the holy water is a proven cure.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But he doesn't have any proof. I don't have any evidence or anything, but this is a proven cure.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' He said that some of the patients are okay. They still have the sign of the virus, but the virus has no power on their body and blood because it is controlled by the grace of Our Lady.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' Right, and even though eventually they'll die of the virus, the virus really has no control, really.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Well, apparently their faith wasn't strong enough to save them, and that's why they died.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's always a good out from faith healing. If it doesn't work, well, the faith wasn't strong. Yeah, blame the victim.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Okay, I found out why they were chained together. Some of them are forced to submit to the ritual by their friends and relatives.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' And they're beaten with wooden crosses. They cry out for the demons to leave them.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' They have to strip down and have someone come with a big jug of water and splash it all over them.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' Yeah, and they're beaten with wooden crosses. Some cried out for the demons to leave their body while priests hit them with wooden crosses.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Having AIDS in Africa is a rough situation. It's no wonder it's such an epidemic there.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Thank goodness these religious organizations such as this one are out there trying to do something about it.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' Some people have been coming here for years in search of a miracle. Very elusive, apparently.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I wonder how they cover up the fact that all of those people end up dying.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, it takes years, though, for them to die.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' Father Gammer Medhin says that it's much more helpful if you're newly diagnosed. He says, "People who come here just after they discover they are HIV positive, before their bodies are damaged, are easier to cure."<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Because they'll go longer before they develop signs of symptoms.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' That's easier to cure. Says they cured about 1,000 people. It's not bad, 1,000 people.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' But statistically, that's not a lot of people, Perry.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' Well, by just throwing water on them, I'm impressed.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The other thing that's going on in Africa is that there's occasional rumours that not only was HIV sort of inflicted upon them by the West, but there have been rumours in some African countries that it's being injected into people through vaccines. That led to a resurgence of polio, in fact, although I think the governments have that under control now. So a lot of this is being driven by paranoia about the West. And that paranoia leads them to choose holy water over medications that are being pushed upon them by Western companies.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' But they don't allow just anyone to go waltzing in there for the cure. OK, if you're a woman with a wig, you can't get in because demons often possess such women. If you're menstruating, out, out. And if you've had sex recently, out. Now, they will allow you to go stand on a nearby hillside and they will eventually come out and douse you with water out there.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' You're saying they are not equal opportunity charlatans.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' Well, I mean filthy menstruating women. Come on, out.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' OK.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' No cure for you.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Steve, do we have other news items? Yeah, we have a few other news items.<br />
<br />
=== Astrology Fails Largest Test <small>(13:56)</small>===<br />
* Skepchick: http://skepchick.org/skepticsguide/viewtopic.php?t=2066<br />
<br />
'''S:''' A recent study published is the largest study to date of astrology. Now, I know astrology is old news. It's been so thoroughly debunked in every possible way. But this is an interesting study, partly because it's so large, involve 10 million marriages or 20 million individuals. This was published by David Vos from the Cathy Marsh Center for Census and Survey Research, University of Manchester in the UK. And basically, the question was, is there any correlation between different sun signs and married couples? Is there more of a tendency for certain signs to marry each other? And do they stay married longer? What's their divorce rate? We they census data from the UK to do this. When I first saw this, I'm like, that's an interesting study. But I would be concerned. Remember, we talked about data mining and about looking at car crash actuarial data. And if you look at these data sets and you're looking for any possible correlation, which is what this study was, it wasn't testing a hypothesis like, oh, Leos should be marrying Cancers. Let's go see if that actually happens. It was just basically mining the data for any correlation. But I was interested that there really weren't any. There were no correlations. The author says that that's because of the enormous size of the database. And that makes sense, because the larger the database, as your data gets more and more and more numbers, like you're flipping coins, it approaches statistical probability over time, as the data set gets larger. So if you have 10 million marriages, that's a big enough number that you're going to be at statistical probability and that any fluctuations would be so small that they wouldn't reach statistical significance. So that's why it was negative. But then as I read deeper into the study, actually, that there were fluctuations in the data that had to be further explored. And again, I thought this was interesting because it really highlights the difference between doing a very diligent, rigorous study and not doing that, just sort of accepting the superficial correlations and not really looking deeper. It turns out that there was a little fluctuation in star signs marrying the same star sign. So Leos marrying Leos. It was greater than chance. And there was also a slight increased chance of marrying from a neighbouring sign. So marrying the sign just before or just after yours. But it turns out that it's actually not a correlation within sun signs. It's a correlation within the month that if you were born in July, you have a higher probability of marrying somebody else who was born in July. And the way you can control for that because the star signs are not calendar months, right? They often end on the 20th or 21st or whatever. So if you look at, if you control for that and if you look at month to month correlations, actually that accounts for all of the increase. And the signs do not correlate that are not within the same month. So it's a very interesting way. So they basically saw correlation. They generated a hypothesis about what could account for that. They looked further at the data and showed that it actually was a month to month correlation. Of course, then you might ask, well, why is there a month to month correlation? Why would people in December be more likely to marry people in December? And they were able to explain that on the basis of basically errors in the database. Much of it was, for example, spouses putting their own birth date down for their spouse, which probably was just an error. So that accounts for, I think, about half of the extra cases of same month marriages.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Steve, that would bring it to be greater than chance, though, just a simple error like that of so many.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' In the database, there were like 10,000 people who did that. It's still out of millions, but still that was enough. Remember, it doesn't take that very slight fluctuation. It could still be statistically significant because of the power of such a large study. There was also a tendency to put down January 1st as the birth date. So that occurred much more than it should have. So that probably a lot of people put down January 1st when they didn't know the birth date at all. And then these things occurred much more in immigrants than in natives, which makes sense that they wouldn't have a lot of maybe they don't have the data. So if you basically filter out all of these sources of error in the database, the month-to-month correlation goes away. But in any case, it actually was not a star sign correlation. So the final analysis was no correlation of any kind within the database.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' So Steve, if a more superficial examination of the data was done, say by some paranormal researcher or something, they might look at that anomaly and say, ah, look at that. We've got a correlation that's above chance. So that's evidence for star signs in astrology. And they would end it right there without discounting these more prosaic reasons for the correlations.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' More likely than not. And then it would have been left to skeptics to look at the data deeper and say, no, actually, if you look at it more deeply, it's actually not a star sign association. It's a month association and explainable by these sources of error.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' What are you insinuating about parapsychologists, Bob?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh, nothing.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' They're bad scientists. That's why they come to different conclusions than skeptical, responsible scientists, because they're bad. They're not rigorous. They make logical errors. They make statistical errors. That's why. And this is good. This I thought was a good example of that, which is why I want to discuss it, even though it was about dry, old, boring astrology.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' There is no scienticians.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Surprise, surprise. Astrology is bunk. I haven't heard the rationalizations yet from the astrologers, but you know what? What some of them are going to say, and this is what you get to whenever you have a fairly well-designed definitive trial that's negative for any astrological correlation. Whatever subgroup of astrologers use a different method, say, well, that wasn't real astrology. So the star sign astrologers will say, well, the sun sign astrologers work. You have to do the astrology the way I do. And of course, when you disprove star sign or sidereal astrology, then the sun sign astrologers say, well, that's not classic astrology. That's the newfangled stuff. So you can't win because no matter who you disprove, and you can't simultaneously disprove every possible permutation of astrology. That would require multiple different studies. So that's what they're going to say. And again, they just do the dance. But yet again, no evidence for astrology.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' The paranormal dance. Jay, you've got to come up with an actual set of movements.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Me? You want me to come up with the dance?<br />
<br />
'''R:''' You want Jay to dance?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I'll start it tomorrow.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' He could do a lot of good funky little dance moves.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, basically what that means, Rebecca, is I can make an idiot of myself very easily.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' Oh, you don't say. I'm shocked.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' And then we'll sell those big mats with the numbered footprints on them.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' Yeah, yeah. Or at least you have to tape it so we can put it on YouTube. That'll go viral fast.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Look for that on YouTube, Jay doing the paranormal shuffle.<br />
<br />
=== April Fool Fake Fairy <small>(21:28)</small>===<br />
* BBC News: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/derbyshire/6514283.stm<br />
<br />
'''S:''' There was one April Fool's news item that I thought was really funny. A former Derbyshire resident. This is from the BBC News. Dan Baines, 31, who designs illusions for magicians, made a fairy...<br />
<br />
'''P:''' Kind of a fairy mummy.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' A fairy mummy as a prank.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's cool.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Now apparently, and then he put it on his website, and apparently he got 20,000 hits mostly from fairy believers. There are actually fairy believers out there.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Mostly godmothers.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And they believed it, and it was a real sensation. Actually, I have a picture on the news article, which I'll put on our notes page. It looks pretty cool. It's like a little tiny mummified fairy.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' It's a goodlooking mummy.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, it's a pretty good fake. And then he exposed it as a hoax. And of course, the fairy believers then said, well, the hoax claim is a cover-up. It's really a fairy, and the notion that it's a hoax is just the cover-up. <br />
<br />
'''P:''' It's just a new variation of you don't know your own powers when you reveal the hoax.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It happens so often. I mean, people do. They pull these hoaxes. They tell you at the end of it, yeah, this is a hoax. This is not real. Yet there's a gaggle of true believers anyways out there who still want to believe it.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That's the risk when you're coming up with a fake paranormal event and you're thinking you're going to show. Like, see, everyone will know that it's fake and how easy it is to make a fake and for people to believe. But you've got to be careful because people, there'll be a residue.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' Because their belief is not based on reason and logic. It's based on emotion and desire.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' So you've got to be careful when you do that.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Remember when Randi did the psychic surgery on the Johnny Carson show? And then Randi commented, he said after the show and they got calls to NBC, every call that they got was people wanting to get in touch with the psychic surgeon.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Even though we just thoroughly debunked it, the phone lines lit up with people wanting them in contact with the psychic surgeon he had just debunked. And Penn and Teller said too on their show that they used to do personal seances because they were really into that, the whole Houdini-style escape artist seances. But they stopped doing it because too many people believed it was real and they couldn't convince them afterwards that it wasn't real. Even when they said, this is a trick. It's a trick. We're magicians. This is how we do it. They wouldn't believe it. Baines is quoted as saying in this article that he's basically spending hours a day answering the flood of emails from the fairy believers. And he said, "I've had all sorts of comments, including people who say they've seen exactly the same thing." So that's how they know it's real, right? And one person told him to return the remains to the gravesite as soon as possible or face the consequences.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' The consequences?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Whether those are going to be magical or he's going to make those consequences happen was not clear.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' Tragic comment on society.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' That's that reminds me of the April Fool's joke. Do you guys know that the it's the it was the prank where the guy went on TV and it was like it was the astronomer, the British astronomer. So a guy went on TV and he told people that at a certain time the alignment of the planets would be such that gravity would be affected to the point where if you jump in the air, you'll get a really weird kind of floating sensation. And people all over England did it and called into the TV station and said, yeah, oh my God, I jumped and it was like I was floating. It was amazing. And one person even claimed that she jumped into the air and floated around the room with her sisters or something like like an adult said this. So, I mean, it's really amazing the way people will fool themselves so easily if you just give them a chance. It was astronomer Patrick Moore.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Patrick Moore?<br />
<br />
'''R:''' Yeah. On the BBC.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Right. As if we needed more evidence that people are pathetically gullible.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So it's not true?<br />
<br />
'''R:''' Yes, it's true Jay. It's actually happening right now.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I'm floating.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' Jump.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' It's impossible.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' It depends if you're Neil Adams.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We're getting to him. We're getting to him. All right. One more. We have a few more news items still. Busy week.<br />
<br />
=== Avoiding the Holocaust <small>(25:53)</small>===<br />
* BBC News: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/6517359.stm<br />
<br />
'''S:''' There's been a couple of news reports again from the BBC from the UK about schools avoiding talking about the Holocaust, meaning the Jewish Holocaust of World War Two, because they're afraid of the response they might get from students who are either anti-Semitic or who are being taught at home or in the mosque, a very different version of the story or that the Holocaust didn't happen. So they basically just avoid the whole topic in order to avoid any controversy within the classroom. So of course, it's reprehensible. You shouldn't rewrite the history books or avoid telling important parts of history that are in the curriculum just to avoid controversy.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' Well, they call them emotive issues, Steve. And it's not just the Holocaust. They also are questioning the teaching of slavery.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The Crusades.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' All kinds of things.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' I should mention in the interest of political correctness, because I bet we're going to get an email on it. I've heard people bulk when you call it the Jewish Holocaust, just because not everybody who was killed were Jews, particularly there were a lot of atheists and gypsies and homosexuals.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So what's the PC way of referring to the Holocaust then?<br />
<br />
'''R:''' I think everybody knows what you mean when you just say the Holocaust.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah. Well, OK, but here's the other end of the PC spectrum. If you call it the Holocaust, then then all of the descendants of the victims of the Armenian Holocaust at the hands of the Turks will write an email saying, what's this all about the Holocaust? It wasn't the only Holocaust. It was also the Armenian Holocaust. Are you denying that that existed? So you can't win. You can't win.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' African Americans call slavery their Holocaust.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' The Ukrainians were killed systematically by Stalin. 20 million of them.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So let's call it Hitler's Holocaust.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Hitler's Holocaust. I mean, I did say that solely for the purpose of identifying it unambiguously.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' I just thought I'd mention it because I know somebody will write in.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' Of course.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Well, thank you for saving them the trouble.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' No problem. Hey, I'm sure they'll write in anyway.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I mean, what's going to happen next? Are they going to stop teaching about gravity so as not to offend those students that are gravitationally challenged? I mean, is that where we're going?<br />
<br />
'''R:''' Don't joke about that, actually. There are Christian fundamentalists who believe that gravity is only there because God is holding you to the ground.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's right.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' I wish I were making that up.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' God is holding you to the ground. Why does that sound like a paedophile to me?<br />
<br />
'''R:''' Oh my God.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Because you have a dirty mind. There are fundamentalist tracks that basically say that the nucleus of an atom should fly apart because of all those positive particles repelling each other. So it's only the power of God that holds them together.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' He's a busy guy.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We shouldn't teach about the nuclear forces.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Just the intellectual dishonesty here about avoiding these lessons is distasteful.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' A school, an academic institution, should be a place where your thoughts, your views are challenged. You are challenged to think about things and to hear other points of view. And if you don't like it, that's just too bad. That's one of the things you just have to accept if you're in a public school room.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' When I read stuff like this, I always say to myself, what was going on in the room when the decision was made? You know what? We shouldn't talk about the Holocaust because we might anger people.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's just an individual teacher deciding in and of themselves not to do it, probably. I didn't hear any way that there was any policies at any specific school.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' Well, it says teaching of the Holocaust is already compulsory in schools at KS3. That means Key Stage 3, like when you're around 14.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It says some schools avoid teaching the Holocaust, schools, like the whole school.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, it's system-wide.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So it seems to be like an administrative decision. We're not talking about the Holocaust.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But now they're launching sort of new initiatives to basically make sure that these topics are taught.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' So there's definite evidence, though, of schools that aren't teaching the Holocaust?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yes, that don't teach it.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' Okay.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' That's ridiculous.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' According to the BBC, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' That's bad. Bad, bad, bad.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, we definitely have to protect academic integrity. All forms of historical revisionism or political correctness or ideology are threats on academic freedom.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' What do you guys think of political correctness? Do you think it's a bad movement? Do you think it's a good movement?<br />
<br />
'''R:''' Well, that's such a broad statement.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' It's too broad. Who's going to defend political correctness just in its whole? You can't.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I believe in Aristotle's philosophy of the mean, which for lots of things like that, there is a virtue which is the mean between two extreme vices. So, in other words, a little bit of political sensitivity is appropriate. And at either end, you could be insensitive or you could be politically correct. And politically correct implies an unreasonable extreme, basically, avoiding saying things for any appearance of insensitivity, even to an absurd degree. But there is a happy medium where you're sensitive without being politically correct.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' I think also if you strip the horrors of history from history, the flip side of that is you strip the nobility of rising above such horrors.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Sure. And the lessons of history.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Well said.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' There's a very important lesson to learn from Hitler's Holocaust. How could that happen? And that's arguably the most important thing to learn from history is how not to repeat horrible mistakes like that. If you just avoid teaching it, then what's to keep it from happening again?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Of course, my German friends, both of them were brought up in Germany. They've told me many times that we've talked about the Holocaust. The Germans take it very seriously and they educate their people in detail about it. And they're horrified by it. And, of course, if you didn't teach it, if it didn't have an effect on the society, it didn't permeate the consciousness and change the way people think about it, that's how we grow. That's how that's how civilization evolves. We have to look at these things.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Could you imagine not teaching about slavery in the context of U.S. history? It would be so incomplete. Just ridiculous.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It didn't somebody was one of us, I think our email prep, say that not teaching the Holocaust because you're afraid of offending Holocaust deniers or anti-Semites is like not teaching about slavery in the United States because you're afraid of offending the KKK, right?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' Right.<br />
<br />
=== Neal Adams on Fox <small>(32:44)</small>===<br />
* Fox News: http://www.foxnews.com/video2/player06.html?040107/040107_wl_adams&Weekend_Live&Fact%20or%20Fiction%3F&acc&Science&-1&News&215&&&new<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The other news item, again, a lot of news items this week that caught my eye was this was actually, I believe I first heard about this on our forums, on our boards. Neil Adams, who we interviewed before, Neil Adams is the famous comic book artist, perhaps most famous for his Batman comics, who we interviewed on our show. He was promoting his growing Earth hypothesis. And he was recently featured on Fox News. He was interviewed for a segment. They characterized him as an amateur geologist, which I found amusing. And the interview was totally credulous. I mean, they did not bring up really any points against what he was saying or point out that there is an enormous scientific consensus against him or any of the gaping logical flaws in what he was saying. He was basically just allowed to espouse his views. And the interviewer was like, well, isn't that interesting? That was basically the response, which is typically how-<br />
<br />
'''P:''' Very typical.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Very typically how a lot of journalists or news organizations handle the topics.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' The fluff pieces.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, which they perceive of as the paranormal or pseudoscience. They handle them as "fluff pieces", which is code word for you don't need to employ any journalistic integrity whatsoever in dealing with this piece. You just are putting it up there. It's a freak show. It's just there to entertain.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, kick back and relax.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Wasn't that diverting? On to the next topic.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Made me forget my worries.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Steve, did you listen to the... Was it even an interview or did they just give him a mic and run out of the studio and come back in a half an hour?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, it was short and it was an interview. They just set him up with softball questions.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' It was filler.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Did Neil actually say, I'm agreeing with you?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' No, he did, however, say that he's talking about real science. When he's talking about, it's real science. This is not fake stuff. This is real science. It's nonsense.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' No, it's not real science. It's Neil science.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' Oh, that's clever.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' It is. The very last place to get your science information is the mass media.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Or no, it's Neil.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' Last place.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It's Neil.<br />
<br />
=== Congress and the Singularity <small>(35:07)</small>===<br />
http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/treder20070401/ <br />
<br />
'''S:''' One more news item. Bob, you sent me this one. You wanted to talk about Congress talking about the singularity.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Tell us about that.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' This was interesting. Representative Jim Saxton of New Jersey, ranking member of the Joint Economic Committee of the United States Congress, published a report recently called Nanotechnology, The Future is Coming Sooner Than You Think. The paper was authored by Dr. Joseph Kennedy, adjunct professor at Georgetown University. In it, he talks about the accelerating rate of technological change and focusing primarily on nanotechnology, what it is, when we can expect certain advances and safety issues. He spent a decent amount of time on addressing the safety issues of things like nanoparticles and what it could do to the body and how we should handle that. That's probably been in the news more than most stuff about nanotechnology, all the safety concerns. But there were some interesting quotes from the paper. They actually addressed the concept of the singularity, which was very surprising, saying that some futurists now talk about an unspecified date sometime around the middle of the century when because of the accelerating pace of technology, life will be radically different from at any prior time. And there were some other quotes that were interesting. One was, whether or not one believes in the singularity, it's difficult to overestimate nanotechnology's likely implications for society. For one thing, advances in just the last five years have proceeded much faster than even the best experts had predicted.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So Bob, was there any bottom line recommendations for what we should be doing as a nation based upon this report?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, one thing that we have to do is...<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Did they actually say we should be putting billions and billions of dollars in? ''(laughter)''<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Well, they talked about the NNI, the National Nanotechnology Initiative, and how they do their research and how the funds are spread out and stuff. But a lot of it had to do with, I think, just realize that the changes are coming and they could be sweeping changes, and we just have to be ready for them and talk about them and deal with them. We've got to talk about it now because when it's upon us, it might be too late to deal with some of the safety concerns and some of the concerns that have risen, like the whole grey goo thing, which is actually pretty much almost a non-issue.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So it's on the radar?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, I mean, I was shocked.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' What about the private sector? I mean, how are they helping?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' They're doing good too, and in the future, there'll be more and more private companies dealing with it, and the government will really have much less control in the future because the private sector can take it in any direction they want. So that's one of the things this guy was talking about.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That always brings up the issue of should we just let the private sector deal with it and not try to kibbitz what the market forces are doing? If it works, the market forces will take care of it. I'm sure that's what all of our libertarian listeners will say.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Nanotechnology is in so many ways incredible and probably one of the greatest, if not the greatest things that humanity is going to create, in my opinion. But nanotechnology is a huge, huge security risk. If another country develops it and uses it for bad, it's really bad.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So you're saying we cannot afford a nanotechnology gap now?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' No, seriously.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Oh my God, I think we will reach a point in the not-too-distant future when the government will take it, in a very short period of time, they will take it in order of magnitude, more seriously. They're going to be like, whoa, wait a second, this is getting a little scary. We've got to dump billions of dollars, billions, billions more into this because the pluses can be incredible, but the negatives can also be. It's a double-edged sword. Security, you want to talk about security concerns. How about quintillions of bits of smart dust that can be lofted in the air? Each one can be a transmitter or a camera. I mean, that's just one possibility.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' I just want to point out here that we sound a little excitable here, and I want to make sure we're not going down the whole robot matrix thing again.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Perry, put it away. Technology is snowballing it.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' Yes, Perry, come on, what?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Read the news.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' I was right about the robot thing.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Perry, in our lifetime, we're going to see things that we can't even conceive of.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' Yeah, okay.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Perry, the evidence from science fiction is overwhelming. You can't deny it anymore. All right, let's go on to some emails.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Come on.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' Let's go on to emails.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' The evidence from science fiction. There's no science in this.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Let's move on to your questions and emails.<br />
<br />
== Questions and Emails ==<br />
=== Peanut Butter Disproves Evolution <small>(39:59)</small>===<br />
<blockquote>Hello Skeptic League of America!<br />
<br />
Love the show! I found that and thought you'd like it.<br />
<br />
http://www.alternet.org/blogs/video/50013/<br />
<br />
(Christian Right evangelist Chuck Missler.)<br />
<br />
It's hilarious. I was speechless. It REALLY made me rethink my position on evolution... This new theory is reminiscent of the Johnny Cochrane's Chewbacca defense:<br />
<br />
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eH5EblIjkrk<br />
<br />
Keep up the good work,<br />
<br />
Benoit Methot<br />
(Ben-wa May-taught)<br />
Montreal, Canada</blockquote><br />
<br />
'''S:''' The first one comes from Benoit Maytaut from Montreal, Canada.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' You think that's a real name?<br />
<br />
'''R:''' No, he made it up.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' He thoughtfully included the pronunciation. So Benoit writes, "Hello, Skeptic League of America."<br />
<br />
'''R:''' Oh, I like that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That kind of makes us sound like superheroes.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' Yeah, can I be Wonder Woman?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Rebecca, you are Wonder Woman. Here it goes on to say, "Love the show I found that and thought you'd like it." It gives us a link. "It's hilarious. I was speechless. It really made me rethink my position on evolution. This new theory is reminiscent of the Johnny Cochran's Chewbacca defense. Keep up the good work, Benoit." So we'll have the link to the video, of course, on our pod notes, the info page for this podcast. And this is a video of Christian right evangelist Chuck Missler.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' And just to prepare the audience, those of you who liked the banana video that we talked about a while back with Kirk Cameron, just prepare yourselves because this is almost as good if not better.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' This is as good.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Before you start, can I make an announcement?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yes.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Plays [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRBOgtp0Hac Peanut butter jelly time]<br />
<br />
'''R:''' That would be kind of funny.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Jay appealing to the 15-year-old group of our segment listeners.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Apparently creationists like to use food analyses in debunking evolution. So Kirk Cameron had his banana nonsense. And Missler is using peanut butter as his big example. He opens a jar of peanut butter and peels off the seal as if, behold, evolution is bunk. And his point is so old, it's crusty. First of all, he's basically talking about spontaneous generation, life spontaneously forming from non-life, which the creationists have been on about forever. It's been so thoroughly debunked. Again, this is a good prime example of their intellectual dishonesty when they don't alter your arguments in the face of disconfirmation and debunking. Basically, the first mistake they make is confusing, completely confusing evolution for the origin of life. Those are two entirely different topics. You could theoretically believe that God miracle the first organisms into being and then they went on to...<br />
<br />
'''R:''' He miracled? Did you just make miracle a verb?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yes, I made miracle into a verb.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' You don't miracle something.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Absolutely.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' Sorry, go on.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' He miracled life into existence and then from that point forward it evolved. You could theoretically believe that. So you can separate these two things. Whatever processes led to the first tiny foothold of bags of chemicals across that fuzzy line into being called life, whatever happened to make that happen, is different than subsequent evolution. They are separate, but they always try to confuse them together because they're always looking for the single master stroke that disproves evolution. In fact, in the video, the person who announces Missler says that if life can't come from non-life, that's like the premise and then everything that follows must be false. So all of evolution must be a fairy tale because that first initial piece is not true. That's a logical fallacy. So the whole premise of this video is completely false. And Missler just uses the word evolution when he in fact is talking about spontaneous generation. So he then confuses them in fact on his points. What he's saying is that if it's possible for life to form from non-life, then why isn't it still happening?<br />
<br />
'''R:''' To our peanut butter.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's right. In fact, the entire food industry is dependent upon the fact that contaminating organisms do not spontaneously generate within food. That's why we seal it closed, because we know that life won't spontaneously form in it. Then he uses a jar of peanut butter as an example. He says that in the last hundred years we've conducted millions or billions of individual experiments every time we open up a food jar and life has not spontaneously formed within it. That's sort of disconfirmation.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' Obviously he's never opened up a jar of food in my apartment. Seriously, I have a jar of peanut butter in my cabinet right now that has a lot of life that seems to spontaneously pop up inside of it.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Actually, I doubt that because of the high sugar content, bacteria has a harder time growing in there.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You're right, but I think the problem with peanut butter, this is a total aside, is more fungus than bacteria. In fact, there's lots of deaths occur every year to fungal contaminated peanut butter. That's after you open it.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' It was totally absurd watching the video. You see that guy sitting there in the suit. He's very serious and he has an unopened jar of peanut butter. It's like which one of these things does not belong with the other? This is not science, folks. This is an idiot.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' This is not science. This is an idiot. That's good.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I really have a problem with peanut butter used in this way. Let's just move on.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' This is disturbing you. Your peanut butter sensitivities. Now, just to be thorough, the reason why this is pure nonsense is because the conditions that existed on the early Earth that allowed for the emergence of single cells out of the so-called primordial soup don't exist in a peanut butter jar. And probably took millions of years.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' It's so sad that you even have to say that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I know, you have to say it.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' It's kind of depressing.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' You have to go one aisle over to get the primordial soup in a jar.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Does Campbell's make primordial soup, I wonder?<br />
<br />
'''R:''' Instant primordial soup.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I sense Iron Man is going to come up with a witty little picture for the forums.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' Isn't the point, though, that God's grace existed back then and in the peanut butter jar? Isn't that the point? I think so.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' Yeah, if God magically...<br />
<br />
'''S:''' What?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' We've lost Perry.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' I have no idea what Perry's on about. He makes a good point, though, possibly.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' He does?<br />
<br />
'''R:''' Just bear with me, bear with me. If God created life 6,000 years ago, then why isn't he doing it right now in my peanut butter jar? Isn't the lack of life inside my peanut butter jar just as much proof against God?<br />
<br />
'''P:''' Well, that's not a fair question, Rebecca, because you're a Satanist. God would not choose your peanut butter with which to work his miracles.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' What is wrong with my peanut butter? Come on.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You cannot question the mind of God. That's the answer to everything. But seriously, you're talking about a process that took place on the scale of a planet over millions of years.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' Maybe God just prefers creamy.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's true.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' I prefer chunky.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' This was a jar of creamy peanut butter. He did not test the creamy versus chunky hypothesis.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' That's important. See, that's why these people aren't scientists. They don't understand how to be rigorous. Sad.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, if you want to see another creationist make a total ass of themselves, watch the video. It's hilarious.<br />
<br />
=== Peloop <small>(47:56)</small>===<br />
<blockquote>This is so stupid that it boggles the mind: http://www.peloop.com/<br />
<br />
And it's being promulgated by Dr Omar Long. Far infra-red rays? Air vitamins? But perhaps it's worthwhile mentioning again why magnets have no effect on the blood or vessels. Or you could just have the rogues test the device for some empirical evidence.<br />
<br />
Jerad Zimmermann.</blockquote><br />
<br />
'''S:''' The next email comes from Jared Zimmerman, who writes, "This is so stupid that it boggles the mind." And he gives us another link.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I hear that so often.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' "And it's being promulgated by Dr. Omar Long. Far infrared rays, air vitamins. But perhaps it's worthwhile mentioning again why magnets have no effect on the blood or vessels. Or you could just have the rogues test the device for some empirical evidence." I think that's a good idea. I think that you guys, not me, but you guys should test this device.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Is that the Peloop?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' This is the Peloop. P-E-L-O-O-P. Penis enhancement made simple. Now, this is a ring. I think where you put it is obvious. That contains three pseudosciences in one.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' Through your nipple?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Steve, it has magnets.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Magnets.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Tourmaline and germanium.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's right.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Those poor germans.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' And if you go to the website, peloop.com.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' Isn't germanium a flower?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' And you look at the flash animation they have of it, it actually looks like the cock ring is having an orgasm.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' Really?<br />
<br />
'''R:''' Well, those are words that have not yet been spoken on this podcast.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' That never will be spoken again.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' Congratulations, Jay.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But let's address the core claim here that a magnetic field improves blood flow. And that's a common claim you'll hear from whatever magnet healing device you might see advertised. That it promotes or improves blood flow.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Because there's iron in the blood.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' You know, I have a very easy way that people can test this at home. Just take a knife, all right, stab yourself in the arm, hold a magnet over the blood that's pouring out, and watch as it leaps onto the magnet.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You could do the same test they did in the thing where you put your blood in a little Petri dish. And then you hold a magnet in there and see if it jumps out and grabs onto your face.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' The thing. Or South Park.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Or South Park.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I remember that.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, that was great.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That was good.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' Now, just for clarity, we don't actually recommend people begin stabbing themselves at home.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' Fine.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' Actually.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' Well, there's an alternate test you can do. All you have to do is go to the hospital and ask to have an MRI done. And when your blood is ripped out of your body and sticks to the machine, let us know how that works out for you.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' That's a really good observation, Rebecca.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' It is.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' The most magnetic devices on the planet.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Right. We routinely expose people to 1.5, 2, 2.5 Teslas in a magnet. You're talking like millions of times the magnetic field you're going to get from this little ring.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' At the very least, they should be cured of whatever you're giving them the MRI for anyway. I mean, if magnetic healing is it, then that's all you need to do. Stick them in the MRI.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So the specific scientific point here is that the iron in your blood is not ferromagnetic. It does not respond to a magnet, period. So any notions that the iron in hemoglobin in your blood cells is going to somehow respond to the magnet is BS. And that's exactly the claim that they make. They do add a wrinkle I hadn't heard before that rather than just saying it improves blood flow, they say that it improves the oxygenation of the blood cells. That it increases that normally the blood cells are all stacked up together and that that reduces their surface area. And then when they go pass through the magnetic field, that that separates all of the blood cells, the red blood cells. So that they have their full surface area to attract oxygen. So they get more oxygen and improves oxygenation to the tissue. That's like three kinds of nonsense. First of all, blood cells don't stack up like that, at least if you're normal. They don't do that.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' So you're saying that the magnets have absolutely no effect whatsoever on a man's erection?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's what I'm saying.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yes or no?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That's what I'm saying. There's no effect.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' Unless you're really turned on by magnets.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' The ring can, and I'm sure that's the effect people will see, the effect of the ring, because those types of rings have existed for quite a number of years.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It does say if it doesn't work you may want to add a little lubrication and then take it off and put it back on multiple times.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' This site is so funny. This site is so totally screwed up that everybody has to go look at it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I just have to finish, just to purge myself of the other reasons why this is nonsense, that also...<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Wait, Steve, wait, wait! The founder's name is Mr. Omar Long.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' He said that in the email.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So the blood cells don't stack up, it doesn't change when it goes through a magnetic field, and the whole idea about the surface area affecting the amount of oxygen that binds to the haemoglobin in the red cells is nonsense, because the oxygen tension, basically the red cells will bind as much oxygen as they can just by the oxygen being exposed in the blood. So it doesn't matter what configuration they're in. Then he says that basically the magnetic field lines up the little magnets inside each cell, because he's talking about the iron and the haemoglobin. Now, if that happened, wouldn't that make them stack up together if they were all pointing in the same direction? So it even doesn't make sense on that little bit of pseudoscience that he throws out there. It's just a concoction of stuff this guy made up off the top of his head. It's all BS.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' And he's going to be a millionaire because of it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And he'll make money from it. Yeah, absolutely. So he also then goes into the negative ions, which is the other pseudoscience he uses, and how the healing neutralizes acid levels in the bloodstream. Nonsense.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' So just so I'm clear on what the device is, though, itself, it's just a cock ring, right?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' So the cock ring will actually make you last longer and whatever.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' If you're not happy, you can return it and get a refund. Is he recirculating these things to other people?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Gross!<br />
<br />
'''E:''' He's probably spreading disease for all we know with these things.<br />
<br />
=== When Birds Attack <small>(54:09)</small>===<br />
<blockquote>Dear skeptics,<br />
<br />
I'm a dedicated listener and love every episode of the skeptic's guide that you produce. I thought you might be interested in a field report in the ongoing monkeys vs birds struggle. I recently traveled to Tanzania and went out on safari. It was an amazing experience and everything proceeded flawlessly... until we stopped to eat lunch. We got out of our vehicle, and almost immediately we were attacked by a species of African Jerkbird (actually Black Kites). They mercilessly swooped in on our lunches! In one case, they stole a piece of chicken out of my friend's hand as she was about to bite into it! We had no way to retaliate other than to jump up and down, make high-pitched noises and shake our fists at the sky. We promptly retreated to the vehicle, where we finished what was left of our decimated lunches.<br />
<br />
I'm sure Perry will be disappointed, but in this round of monkeys vs birds, the birds definitely had the upper hand.<br />
<br />
Thanks again for all you do!<br />
<br />
Matt N.<br />
USA</blockquote><br />
<br />
'''P:''' So I'd like to point out, before we go on to this next email, which is a pro bird email, I'd like to point out that Steve chooses which emails get on this podcast. And that he picked out this one pro bird email out of the millions of pro monkey emails that we get. Just want to make that point. Go ahead, Stephen.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Actually, I've been quite fair in the number of pro monkey versus pro bird emails that I have read and news items on the show. We've had lots of pro primate emails. We're way overdue for a pro bird piece, so here we go. This one comes from Matt N.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' Next podcast, it's all pro monkey.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' USA.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' Go ahead.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' "Dear Skeptics, I'm a dedicated listener and love every episode of the Skeptics Guide that you produce. I thought you might be interested in a field report in the ongoing monkey versus birds struggle. I recently traveled to Tanzania", that's in Africa, Jay, "and went out on safari. It was an amazing experience and everything proceeded flawlessly until we stopped to eat lunch. We got out of our vehicle and almost immediately we were attacked by a species of African jerk bird", actually black kites. Those are rafters.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' Jerk birds.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' "They mercilessly swooped in on our lunches."<br />
<br />
'''J:''' They swung down at me.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' "In one case they stole a piece of chicken out of my friend's hand as she was about to bite into it. We had no way to retaliate other than to jump up and down, make high-pitched noises, and shake our fists at the sky."<br />
<br />
'''E:''' And no choice.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' "We promptly retreated to the vehicle where we finished what was left of our decimated lunches. I'm sure Perry will be disappointed, but in this round of monkeys versus birds, the birds definitely had the upper hand. Thanks again for all that you do."<br />
<br />
'''P:''' I mean, how asinine.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Why, Perry, it happened.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' I mean, come on.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Perry, it happened. It took place, unlike this stupid stuff you say.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's anecdotal experience.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' And look at the guy's response. I jumped up and down and I shook my fist at the sky. Good job, Matt.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, they didn't do a very good job of holding up the primate end, I must say. But listen, this does remind me that the latest issue of Scientific American has a very interesting article.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' You damn bird.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The name of the article is Just How Smart Are Ravens? And it reviews recent research looking at the intellectual abilities of ravens, and it's very impressive. They have proof of problem-solving.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' Let me tell you something. If it was monkeys that came after their lunches, they'd be dead. They would have never made it back to their vehicle. Or maybe bloody husks out of the ground.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You do have a point, Perry. If a troop of baboons came up to them, I mean, they would have been much more trouble.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' They would have torn up to pieces.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Why do I have an image of this guy shaking his fist at the sky and throwing a bone in the air that goes up in slow motion and kind of spins around?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And then turns into a satellite?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yeah, yeah.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I don't know where that image comes from. So the author of the article writes, "What is more, we found to our astonishment that they can even distinguish one individual from another, and that way, too, they are much like humans."<br />
<br />
'''P:''' So humans are much more like birds than they are like monkeys.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' It's surprising. That's not my point. I'm just saying that how smart certain species of birds are is fairly surprising. You wouldn't think these little bird brains.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' Listen, tomorrow we'll fly out to lunch together and we'll talk about it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You know, one more email.<br />
<br />
=== Groupthink <small>(57:34)</small>===<br />
<blockquote>I am a subscriber of Skeptic magazine and I tend to seek out other media friendly to skeptics but I think your show violates the spirit of skepticism. All of the panellists think alike and don't seem to disagree much on anything.<br />
<br />
That, to me, is scary.. and unnatural.<br />
<br />
Also, don't get so stuck on "reason" alone... you should consider ethics as well. Reason without ethics is meaningless.<br />
Charles</blockquote><br />
<br />
'''S:''' This one comes from who just signed the email, Charles, location unknown. And Charles writes, "I am a subscriber of Skeptic Magazine and I tend to seek out other media friendly to skeptics, but I think your show violates the spirit of skepticism. All of the panellists think alike and don't seem to disagree much on anything. That, to me, is scary and unnatural. Also, don't get stuck on reason alone. You should consider ethics as well. Reason without ethics is meaningless, Charles." Well, I mean, I think that the kernel of legitimacy in this is that we're all skeptics. So, yeah when we talk about pseudoscience and the paranormal and utter nonsense, we're going to more or less agree on those, the major core points. If one of us disagreed with on that, then they wouldn't be a skeptic.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' Well, no, I mean, we do disagree every now and again, Steve.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Oh, come on. Anybody who listens to the show knows that we don't agree on everything.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I would say we agree more than we disagree, though, don't you?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I totally agree with you guys.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' Our thinking with regards to birds and monkeys are identical. In fact, I can't even tell them apart.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I don't know where I end and Perry begin.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' When I read this email, the first thing I thought to myself was, I wonder if Charles ever listened to the podcast.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' Can I just say that I hate you all and disagree with you all on pretty much a regular basis?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' You know, maybe he has a minor point. We do the show together. We probably unconsciously want to be in agreeance on a lot of these things. But we're talking about the topics that we talk about are things that are very easy to agree about.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' I'm certainly in agreeance with you, Jay.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Thank you.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' In fact, I like being in agreeance as often as possible. I'm an agreeance-able person.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' In agreeance? What is agreeance?<br />
<br />
'''P:''' I'm going with Jay here. I'm going with Jay. Just trying to cover for him.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Just roll with it, Rebecca.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' I refuse to just roll with this, all right? I'm sick of you guys making up words. Not by some jackass on a podcast, all right?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Perfectly cromulant word.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' I think Charles doesn't have a point.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We can make up words if we want to.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I think we all should right now.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' William Shakespeare made a career out of making up new words.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' No, he didn't. He made a career out of writing plays. Ridiculous?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' He would make up new words as needed.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' He came up with the prefix un, unhappy.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' What? No, he didn't.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yes, he did.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' That's unpossible.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' Shut up. He did not.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Jay, do you have a reference for that?<br />
<br />
'''R:''' You are full of it.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I'll find one.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' Yeah. Where's your evidence? Evidence. Evidence, Jay. Find it. Go on.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' You can't just throw things out off the top of your head on a show without some kind of dude doing it.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' Seriously, what is wrong with you?<br />
<br />
'''P:''' The way Charles had is on top of his head.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah. You're being such a flester. Please.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' What? Stop it. I see what you did there. I don't think I didn't notice that.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Rebecca, you point fingers at Jay because you've been throwing out the dubious references recently also.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' I have never done such a thing in my life.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I disagree with that statement.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' Thank you. Wait, do you disagree with Steve or with me?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Don't get all constriculated here.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' Stop it.<br />
<br />
== Name that Logical Fallacy <small>(1:00:49)</small>==<br />
<blockquote>I'm wondering if there is a particular logical fallacy which would cover the claim, "they would never do that", as in, "the U.S. military would never have dropped flares over a populated area," or "the Jewish priesthood would never have made up a story which portrayed one of their patriarchs in such a negative light, so the incident of the Golden Calf must really have happened."<br />
<br />
Peter Gaffney<br />
Los Angeles, United States</blockquote><br />
<br />
'''S:''' We do have a name that logical fallacy. This one comes from Peter Gaffney in Los Angeles, United States. And Peter writes, "I'm wondering if there is a particular logical fallacy which would cover the claim they would never do that, as in the U.S. military would never have dropped flares over a populated area, or the Jewish priesthood would never have made up a story which portrayed one of their patriarchs in such a negative light. So the incident of the golden calf must really have happened." Do you guys have any thoughts on this before I go forward?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' The illogical fallacy of personal incredulity?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' I think that is a part of it. There is some personal incredulity here, although I don't think that is the core fallacy. Actually, I think that primarily this is a false premise. It's not really a logical fallacy. If your point is those were not flares because the U.S. military would never drop flares over a populated area, that's actually valid logic. If the premise were in fact true that the U.S. didn't drop flares, or would never drop flares, then it's valid logic to conclude that therefore the lights over Phoenix, the Phoenix lights were in fact not flares.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' But since in this case they did drop flares.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The problem is it's assuming a premise. So it's making a huge assumption that's not validated and then taking that as a premise. It turns out in this case to be wrong. I guess you could also call that the ad hoc logical fallacy in that it's just making up a premise willy-nilly as needed in order to dismiss an alternate explanation. Those were flares. They couldn't be flares because the U.S. would never drop flares over a populated area. There's no basis for that because they do do that. Obviously they did do it. So that's it. I think it's the ad hoc fallacy. Just making up stuff as needed to dismiss inconvenient explanations or things you don't want to believe.<br />
<br />
== Science or Fiction <small>(1:02:44)</small> ==<br />
<br />
Item #1: A new study shows that in the workplace female sexual harassment of male co-workers is just as prevalent as male sexual harassment of female co-workers.<br />
<br />
Item #2: Recent psychological studies have shown that cartoonish video game violence was as much correlated with increased violent and aggressive behavior as is more graphic and realistic video game violence.<br />
<br />
Item #3: Recent research indicates that Japanese and American computer users use different emoticons for the same emotions, and this reflects differences in how the two cultures perceive emotions from facial expressions.<br />
<br />
''Voice-over: It's time for Science or Fiction.''<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Each week I come up with three science news items or facts. Two are genuine, one fictitious. And then my panel of esteemed skeptics try to figure out which one is the fake. We have a theme this week. We haven't had a theme in a long time. But I have a theme this week. The theme is psychology. Psychology.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yep.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Everyone ready?<br />
<br />
'''R:''' Ready.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' Parapsychology or real psychology?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Real psychology.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' What's the difference?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Actually it's meta-psychology.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Meta.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Or epi-psychology? Anyway.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' Now you're just making stuff up.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Just psychology. I'm just making words up now. A new study shows that in the workplace, female sexual harassment of male coworkers is just as prevalent as male sexual harassment of female coworkers. Item number two, recent psychological studies have shown that cartoonish video game violence was as much correlated with increased violent and aggressive behavior as is more graphic and realistic video game violence. Item number three, recent research indicates that Japanese and American computer users use different emoticons for the same emotions. And this reflects differences in how the two cultures perceive emotions from facial expressions. Bob, go for it.<br />
<br />
=== Bob's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''B:''' I think I'm going to go with three because facial expressions are, as far as I know, culture independent. The way you look when you're angry or shocked or surprised, that's pretty much universal for all humans. So I haven't even really thought about one and two yet, but that one just goes against everything that I've read about. I'm going to say that's false. Three. Yep.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Perry, you go next.<br />
<br />
=== Perry's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''P:''' Japs and Americans' different emotes? That sounds reasonable. By the way, for anyone who doesn't know, emoticons are like the little smiley faces and things like that you can stick in your emails nowadays. Okay, the second one, video cartoons. The cartoonish sniff. I don't believe any of it, and I don't think any of that stuff makes you violent. I watch plenty of Bugs Bunny beating the shit out of everybody. I'm fine. And then females harassing males nowadays? Of course. Females are totally out of control.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, but the question is whether or not they're equal to the number of harassments.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' They're clearly worse. So I'd have to go with...<br />
<br />
'''S:''' The video game violence?<br />
<br />
'''P:''' Yeah, the videos, that's fake.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay. Rebecca?<br />
<br />
=== Rebecca's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''R:''' I'm going to go with... This is a tough one. I'm actually... You've kind of got me here. Okay, yeah. I think that the females harassing males, I don't think that's true.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay. Jay?<br />
<br />
=== Jay's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Yeah, I'm going to go with that one as well.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay, Evan?<br />
<br />
=== Evan's Response ===<br />
<br />
'''P:''' Evan? Evan, are you okay? Evan?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, I'm here.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' Oh, I'm sorry.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' You get me with that.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' I heard a profound silence.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Japanese versus American emoticons. I agree with Bob. I just think that there's something too universal in the pattern and patterns in the brain of human beings. A smile is a smile. A frown is a frown. So I would say that one is fiction.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #2 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay. Well, we're really all over the board this week. So two, one, and two. Pretty evenly divided. So Perry, you're alone in thinking that the video game violence one is fiction.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' And I'm damn proud of it.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And that one is science. So this is a series of studies, actually.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' It's all nonsense.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Are you still proud of it?<br />
<br />
'''P:''' Is this bird science?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Comparing the reaction from video games which have cartoons, like cartoon characters, with big buffer weapons kind of violence. Nothing even realistic. And the response to that was pretty similar to watching teen rated violence where fleshy parts get blown apart and it's more realistic. And there was no difference. There was an increase in the aggressiveness of violent behavior in the subjects after viewing or playing either of these types of video games. And this is consistent with this very large body of research which does, in fact, show this also from TV watching, although the effects in most of the studies are short-term. It's harder to look at long-term effects. So that one was science. Perry, you're out.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #1 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Number one, a new study shows that in the workplace, female sexual harassment of male co-workers is just as prevalent as male sexual harassment of female co-workers. And that one is fiction. Jay and Rebecca got that one correct.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Bob, I can't believe you got the Japanese emoticons wrong.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' Yeah, really.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Believe it. I don't buy it.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Steve, he can believe I got it wrong.<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Formal request.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' Haven't you ever seen?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' We'll get there. We'll get there. Let's just talk about this one first. I made that up. Although I did base it on the study that prompted this one was looking at the differences in the way women and men perceive sexual harassment. And that comes from how they perceive power. Men perceive power as a position of formal authority. So a boss has power over their underling. So they see power leading to sexual harassment. And men tend not to think that you can have sexual harassment between people of equal formal status of co-workers. Whereas females tend to think that power comes from sexual harassment. And that therefore a co-worker who formally has equal status can use sexual harassment in order to exert power over them. So they may perceive sexual harassment occurring in situations where men do not perceive it as occurring. That's what the study showed that I was inspired by to make up the whole equal thing. The numbers are totally out of whack. Women are harassed in order of magnitude more than male. Male is almost non-existent.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' Thank God.<br />
<br />
=== Steve Explains Item #3 ===<br />
<br />
'''S:''' So, which means that number three, this was my tricky one this week. The recent research indicates that Japanese American computer users use different emoticons for the same emotions and this reflects differences in how the two cultures perceive emotions from facial expressions. Now, in the paper, in the research, they mention that this does fly in the face, if you will, of the conventional wisdom, which is that the expression of emotions, of facial emotions and the perception of them are universal. But what this is saying, and I was very careful in how I worded it, the perception of emotions from facial expressions. It turns out that the Japanese tend to look much more at the eyes.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' Yeah, haven't you guys ever seen anime, first of all?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Trying to figure out emotions and Americans look much more at the mouth. And it's what's interesting, if you look at the emoticons, they're cool looking. Now, we all know in America, we use the smiley face and the frowny face emoticons, right? Whereas, so the eyes are the same and then the mouth is either curled up or the mouth is curled down for happy or the mouth is curled down for sad.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' Right, but they use the O's and the zeros to make big and little eyes.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' In Japan, they're cool, and you can look at the article, have them on the notes page. They use the same mouth, the mouth is a line, it's like an underscore. And for the happy face, they use the two carats for the eyes. And for the sad face, they use semicolons, so it's like little tears below the eyes. So the eyes are different, but the mouths are the same.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' I can't believe that scientists are just getting, like, everybody knows this. If you chat online, like, there are the anime kids who use those specific smiley faces. I can't believe that people are just noticing this.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, well I think it's just, they're relating it to the fact, I don't think that that's the new bit. Oh gee, we use different emoticons. It's the fact that they did research which shows that Japanese will pay more attention to the eyes and Americans will pay more attention to the mouth.<br />
<br />
== Skeptical Puzzle <small>(1:11:06)</small>==<br />
This Week's Puzzle<br />
<br />
Please be still my beating heart<br />
For the best kiss of my life<br />
That tingling on my skin does start<br />
In vain my stress can cause much strife<br />
<br />
What am I describing?<br />
<br />
<br />
Last Week's Puzzle<br />
Take a rose<br />
Place it in lime<br />
The outcome is usually death<br />
<br />
I am mired by what Doctor Griffin would say<br />
A dimmer version of a baby's last breath<br />
<br />
What am I describing?<br />
<br />
Answer: Sirenomelia<br />
Winner: none<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Evan, do you have a puzzle for us this week?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I do.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' But first, let's hear the answer to last week's puzzle.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Okay, last week's puzzle. Take a rose, place it in lime, the outcome is usually death. I am mired by what Dr. Griffin would say, a dimmer version of a baby's last breath. What am I describing?<br />
<br />
'''S:''' And the answer is?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' And the answer is, there could have been one of two answers that I would have accepted as correct. Because I divided this particular puzzle up into two sections. So, let's take the first part first. Take a rose, place it in lime, the outcome is usually death. So, take a rose, A-R-O-S-E, place it in lime, I-N-L-I-M-E. And what do we have? A classic anagram. For the disorder called Sirenomelia, S-I-R-E-N-O-M-E-L-I-A, is a rare disorder in which the legs are fused together of a newborn baby. It's also known as mermaid syndrome. Which takes us to the second part of the puzzle that says, I am mired by what Dr. Griffin would say, a dimmer version of a baby's last breath. So, in that part, I have two anagrams, am mired, and a dimmer are each anagrams for mermaid. How Dr. Griffin fits into all of this is that Dr. Griffin is an alias of one of P.T. Barnum's accomplices, who was, of course, in the 1800s, supposedly the man who caught a mermaid. It was actually a mermaid made out of paper mache. But it was displayed and touted around the country as being legitimate and so forth. And, of course, scientists talked it down. But to the fascination of many people, yeah they get in the way of so many things.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Evan, I think you made this whole thing up.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Evan, did anyone get this?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' No. There were no winners in this week's puzzle.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' You stumped them all, Evan.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' This was a hard one.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Excellent.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Very hard.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' Wait, did you say that he made a fake mermaid of paper mache?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' That's correct, yeah. And it was a combination of paper mache, the torso of a baby orangutan.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' Oh, okay. Yeah, that's what I was going to say. It's a baby orangutan stitched onto a fish, right?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Right.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' That's the Fiji mermaid.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yeah, and there were a few fish and a few fish parts. Yeah, exactly. They called the Fiji mermaid.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' Yeah.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Hey, Evan.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Yes.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Could you make an easy one for me next week?<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I made you an easy one for this week.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Oh, you did? Okay, let's hear it.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' I did. So here you go. It's another poem. Please be still, my beating heart, for the best kiss of my life. That tingling on my skin does start. In vain, my stress can cause much strife. What am I describing? Good luck, everyone.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Thank you, Evan.<br />
<br />
== Skeptical Quote of the Week <small>(1:14:11)</small>==<br />
<blockquote>If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it's still a foolish thing.</blockquote><br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, Bob, do you have a quote for us this week?<br />
<br />
'''B:''' Yes, I have a quote from French writer Anatoly France. He said, "If 50 million people say a foolish thing, it's still a foolish thing."<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yes. A witty way of pointing out the argument at populism.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' Look, just shut up, okay? All of you.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Well, thanks everyone for joining me again.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' I've been sexually harassed on the podcast.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' You wish.<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Thank you, Steve.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' Thank you, Steve.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' By my co-equal.<br />
<br />
'''E:''' Thank you very much, Steve.<br />
<br />
'''P:''' Oh, it's the least you can do, Steve.<br />
<br />
== Announcements <small>(1:14:44)</small> ==<br />
<br />
'''J:''' Hey, Steve, so...<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yes?<br />
<br />
'''J:''' I'd like to thank everybody for our DIGG rating has gone up. I think we're almost at 300 now.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' Yeah, speaking of which, though, we're still only getting a tiny, tiny fraction of our listeners to actually bother to vote for us on DIGG. It's still lower, like 290 out of 15,000. I think we can shoot for a little bit higher. And we don't have to get that much higher before we'll be the number one science podcast on DIGG. And before we start to really crack into, like, the top 20 of all podcasts. So, please take a moment. If you like the Skeptics Guide and you want to help spread skepticism, please vote for us on DIGG. It does just take a moment.<br />
<br />
'''R:''' Totally.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' That is our show for this week.<br />
<br />
'''S:''' —and until next week, this is your {{SGU}}.<br />
<br />
{{Outro61}}<br />
<br />
== References ==<br />
<references/><br />
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