SGU Episode 1049

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SGU Episode 1049
August 16th 2025
Astronaut Jim Lovell prepares for the historic Apollo 13 mission with a wave.
SGU 1048                      SGU 1050
Skeptical Rogues
S: Steven Novella
B: Bob Novella
C: Cara Santa Maria
J: Jay Novella
E: Evan Bernstein
Quote of the Week
“I heartily beg that what I have here done may be read with candour; and that the defects in a subject so difficult be not so much reprehended as kindly supplied, and investigated by new endeavors of my readers.” Issac Newton
Cambridge, Trinity College May 8, 1688
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Show Notes
SGU Forum

Intro

Voice-over: You're listening to the Skeptics Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.

S: Hello and welcome to the Skeptics Guide to the Universe. Today is Wednesday, August 13th, 2025, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella. Hey everybody. Cara Santa Maria.

Voice-over: Howdy.

S: Jay Novella. Hey guys. And Evan Bernstein.

E: Good evening, folks.

S: Welcome back, Jay. How was Alaska?

J: Yeah, it was. It was awesome. It was really more than I expected. You know, You know, how you pick up information as you live your life and you just kind of have an impression of something. My impression of a last was it was just covered in forests and there's tons of animals. And I have to admit, I didn't know that parts of Alaska have amazing mountains. And that's where I was. I was in a town called Girdwood. That's where Bob's daughter Ashley lives with her boyfriend. And I'm super close with both of those guys, not just because, but, you know, big a big addition to it was that they got stuck at my house for COVID and they were here for years, you know? Yeah, these guys moved out there and they're both conservationists. And Ashley is working at a animal Conservatory where they have everything. They've got bears and Bobcats, porcupines, porcupines, bald headed eagle. They've got, like, reindeer. It just, you know, black bear, brown bears. I found out something that really pissed me off. What? I mean it. This really made me angry. Did you know that there's no difference between a grizzly bear and a brown bear?

US#09: Yeah, yeah, Yeah.

J: OK. Well, that's one of those things that I didn't know. I thought a grizzly bear was a much larger bear. How is that true?

C: A brown bear is a grizzly bear.

J: They saw brown bears at her place.

E: Those are not effing Grizzlies. A grizzly is a type of brown bear.

C: No, you probably saw black bears. Yeah. Yeah, you might. You might.

J: Be with two different types of bears. Though they're more, they're more exactly alike than not, if there even is a difference. But that's, you know, grizzly bear to me has like that super floppy mouth, giant head, you know what I mean? It's probably the movies that that, you know, depicted them differently in my mind or whatever, you know, just picking up wrong information. But yeah, they're the same. So the small percentage of you out there who didn't know that, welcome to this.

B: Club, they are definitely the same species. Subspecies of brown bear that makes.

C: Well, no, it's only because of where they live.

B: Yeah, surely.

C: Yeah.

B: But it's the same species. Ursus arctos. Yeah.

C: It's just because of diet it looks like.

B: Interesting.

C: Fish or not fish, basically.

J: After I was utterly disappointed with my knowledge, or lack thereof, of brown bears. Girdwood is one of the most beautiful places I've been to, and it rivals New Zealand and beauty in lots of different ways. First of all, it's at sea level. So imagine you have sea level mountains, right? They start at the ocean and the mountains, like just begin. And they're huge and they're covered in spruce trees. Except as you get to the top, of course, when it gets colder, and then the tops of them have snow on them. I showed some pictures today on the live stream. It's just gorgeous. Like you just keep looking and you're like, Oh my God, every direction you look in, there's a mountain that has amazing things to look at.

B: Yeah, I don't know about you, but when I came back from there, I was very disappointed and bored with the view in Connecticut. You know, we've got nice rolling hills, but I was like, this is so boring right now and it took me a little while to get over that.

J: Yeah, same as going to New Zealand. You know, you're just like what? Like I live in a boring place, but the other thing is that, you know, you expect in a small town, like I think there's 2000 people that live in Girdwood. It's a small town, like really small, great down to earth people. We went summer dog sledding, which, you know, they have a team of, of dogs that that run their sleds and in the summer they exercise them by giving people rides. You know, it's a, it's a vehicle that has wheels, of course, but you know, you see everything and they tell you they teach you everything about it. Very, very cool. And what's that Bob? The the dog sledding race? The idiot ride?

E: Didder Ride. Yeah, Didder ride.

J: Yeah, I heard all about it guys. And it is intensely hard the the drivers go the distance between New England and Florida. That's how long their race is. It takes like, you know, 3-4 days for them to do it. Just a, a feat of stamina and, and fortitude, you know, like really, really amazing. And something else I forgot to tell you guys earlier today. So Cormac Ashley's boyfriend. He is a volunteer fireman at the the Girdwood Fire Station and check this out.

E: Fire is there.

J: He gave us a tour and they let us do everything, you know, they let us like sit in any vehicle we wanted. You know they have these.

E: Down the pole, slide down the pole.

J: They don't have the pole. The kids were looking for it and they were very disappointed, but it was really remarkable because you never, I've never really gotten to poke around those vehicles. And like they just showed us like all the gear that they carry and they had a brand new, you know, they have trucks that carry water and they have trucks that shoot the water and the trucks that shoot the water don't carry a, you know, relatively small amount of water, like, you know, a couple of minutes of water, but they need the big, big trucks to bring, to bring the huge amounts of water. But anyway, these vehicles are super expensive and they're, you know, they're just remarkable like the all the technology that are on these things.

C: Whenever I have friends visit from overseas, they're always so excited to see American fire engines.

J: Why? Because we have the big ones.

E: That much? Are they that much different?

C: I think they're like iconic because of the red with all the Chrome. They like look really vintage and cool and yeah, a lot of people are like, Oh my God, I can't believe I saw a fire truck. Like really I guess. Grown up with them all. Yeah, I guess it's exciting, Bob. This is going to make you angry. Maybe so. So I was just that whole time I was reading about the difference between and grizzly and. Yeah, did you assume that brown bears were bigger or were smaller than Grizzlies? Because brown bears are bigger than Grizzlies.

B: That's not wait.

C: Is that blowing your mind right now? Yeah. Brown bears are generally bigger, especially Alaskan brown bears because they're on the coast and they eat a bunch of salmon.

B: Oh, that's a lot.

J: What do you mean they're bigger than than? The brown bears are bigger than the grizzly bears, which live inland.

C: Yeah, the Kodiak brown bears are like the biggest. And then in general, things that we call brown bears are bigger than things that we call grizzly. They're all the same species. Grizzlies are inland, so they eat more plants and like small mammals. They do eat some fish, but mostly like trout. But the ocean brown bears, the coastal brown bears, eat a bunch of salmon, and it makes them. Huge.

B: So that diet, yeah, makes a big difference. I'm seeing that. I'm seeing that the Grizzlies are classified as a sub species Ursus arctos herbulus, but then my next question is how could diet alone designate a creature as a subspecies? That doesn't make any sense.

C: It's not diet alone. It's geographic geography. Yeah, that's when they've been in that area for long enough. It changes their size, their diet, some of their behaviors. But I I think there's.

B: Right. So it's a subspecies, which is.

C: I mean, what is a subspecies really like? You know, it's the categorical thing. We always talk.

B: Different. Different diet, different location, different temperament. That seems like potentially dramatic differences, but still the same species. They could. Like, they could produce fertile young, right? They could. Totally produce. Fertile young.

C: It's it's splitting versus lumping, that's all.

E: If you're being eaten by 1, I don't think you care if it's a subspecies. You're not, frankly.

J: They're really amazing animals. And you know, like, care is right, man. The Kodiaks are freaking enormous. And again, you know, I have to admit, but I didn't know like, man, when I thought I thought a Kodiak bear was a different kind of bear, I didn't know it was a brown bear.

C: Big old brown bear. Yes, and basically.

J: Bears are the sneak bear because you just don't know all the details about it.

S: Drop bear, you've heard What's the difference between a Puma, a cougar and a Mountain Lion?

C: Nothing.

E: The letters.

C: And a Panther.

E: Well, there's in Florida as Panthers and that's.

C: Just that's what they call them there. They're all the same animal.

B: That's. Incredible.

C: It's the animal with the most different names in the same language, I think. Yeah, yeah, some people call them catamounts too.

B: Oh, I've. Heard that? Yeah, I've heard of that.

S: What about the whistle pick?

B: Yeah, there's another. 10 Steve I. Did not laugh when you hear that damn word.

J: Steve, we saw a lot of birds.

B: A lot. Did you see? Did you see bald eagles?

J: Yeah, they said.

B: Yeah, we did.

J: We did.

B: My. Bunch of saw.

J: A ton of them. He was really looking for them. And you know, they, they, they like to sit on high perches and you know, it's, if you know where to look, you can find them. They're huge. Those birds are They're huge.

B: Phenomenal they are. If you saw they're like claws close up, the kind of dwarfs in typical human hand those claws would like it feels like they can just rip your throat out and be done with you in a moment.

J: Yeah, when you see a bald eagle up front you, you will agree with Steve that birds, birds over monkeys for sure. You know, their talents are just insane.

B: But I don't know, what about Gigantopithecus? Then of course you got terror birds. So I want to see a Gigantopithecus fighting a terror bird. That's a battle Royale, right? There I would.

S: I put my money on the terror bird.

B: Yeah, I probably would too. They're like what, 10 feet, 10 feet tall?

S: For a beak, I mean. Come on.

B: Yeah. But I still want to see it. That's somebody, somebody generate that. I want to see it.

E: Yeah, good.

B: The two versions I want did the terror bird win? And I want to see the Jake and Tapithecus win.

J: Well, in the exact opposite direction, Bob, I took pictures of of puffins for Steve and these guys are tiny.

E: Puffin is not a Penguin.

J: I saw a couple of things that were really amazing. I saw humpback whales, you know, was it called bubble feeding? I know. Is that the correct term? What they do is they find a school of fish, they swim below them.

S: Yeah.

J: And then they they exhale a ton of their air. And as the air goes up and it goes through the school of fish, it kind of.

S: They corral the fish with their bubbles.

J: Well, smart. It actually discombobulates the fish because the fish in that moments when their air is passing through them, they're not able to breathe. And it kind of, you know, puts them into like a stupor. And then they swim straight up with their mouths open and they, they pick up a ton of fish at once. And it's, I think it's one of the few, few instances of I think, or maybe the only, oh, no, Orca actually a hunt together. But that's like a, you know, for humpback whales. That's probably the only thing that they do to collaborate with each other when it, when it comes to food gathering. I saw Orca by the way. How was? Killer whales, you know, they're, they're just really cool, you know, like I never thought I'd see one of them in person. And I saw a whole bunch of them feeding and, you know, I saw a couple of dozen glaciers. They're everywhere. They're they are the.

E: End of what, 1000 thousand glaciers? I believe it. Is.

J: Yeah, they are definitely. All of them are definitely getting smaller. And it's measurable. Yeah, it's pretty sad. But if you have a chance, look into, you know, going to where the mountains are in Alaska. You will not be disappointed.

S: Awesome.

News Items

Jim Lovell Dies at 97 (10:59)

• Acting NASA Administrator Reflects on Legacy of Astronaut Jim Lovell - NASA 

S: All right, Jay, you're going to keep talking because you're going to tell us about Jim Lovell.

J: Yeah, I thought we should mention this on the show. Jim Lovell or James A Lovell Junior. He was famously known for the Apollo 13. Tom Hanks played his character. Yeah, he was a naval aviator, a test pilot, a mechanical engineer and an astronaut. He passed away on August 7th of this year. He was in Lake Forest, IL and the guy lived to 97. So, you know, apparently going into outer space did not significantly lower the number of years that he had that. That's a pretty freaking amazing age to get to. So he was part of what NASA called the next 9, right? These these were the second group of astronauts that were selected in 1962. Then this came after the Mercury 7, if you guys know about the Mercury missions. And these guys were chosen for their skill as test pilots and engineers and they were brought on to lead the this coming new thing called the the Gemini and Apollo missions. And I think they called them Gemini, right?

C: Yeah, I feel like every time I see historical stuff, they say Gemini.

J: Yeah.

S: This is weird.

J: Hey, look, they mispronounced it and everybody agrees with me, and that's where we'll leave it. So let me give you a little background. You know, he was a pretty remarkable person. His NASA career, you know, they say it was built on his persistence. You know, he, he grew up in a, in a modest family. He was in Cleveland. He did jobs like washing dishes. He took care of lab animals. This was helping him pay to get through college. And then he goes to the Naval Academy in 52. And, you know, as a teenager, he liked rockets and he used to build them and tinker around with them. And he launched his own, you know, all these homemade rockets that he was into. You know, he really was always obsessed with space. And he applied for net to NASA in 1960 alongside a handful of other test pilots, but they rejected him due to something, some type of medical situation that was going on. He tried again in 62 and they accepted him and he became one of the the next 9, like I said. And he ended up going on 4 space missions. So he was on Gemini 7, Gemini 12, Apollo 8, and of course, Apollo 13 at the time. He logged in 715 hours in space, and that was the record, you know, So that was the, you know, the leading amount of time that anybody was in outer space. Now, of course, today, when you look at what, you know, people spent so much time in space, it's crazy. But back then, that was a really big deal. You know, Apollo 8 happened in 1968. He became one of the first of three humans to orbit the moon. And he actually orbited the moon twice, right, because he was on 2 Apollo missions, 8 and 13. So on 8, he circumnavigated the moon. He and the people that were with him, the two astronauts that were traveling with him, actually traveled the farthest from Earth of any people ever, just because of their trajectory around the moon. Now, Apollo 13, you know, if you guys don't know, this was a really big deal in April of 1970. Lovell was commanding Apollo 13, right? Just think of Tom Hanks and everything in that movie. Very accurate. This was supposed to be the third lunar landing. And two days into the mission, they were between Earth and the moon, and one of the oxygen tanks exploded. They were 200,000 miles from Earth. And, you know, Level calmly radioed. He said, Houston, we have a problem. You know, that was legit. He said that. And you know, it ends up being one of the most famous things any human has ever said.

S: Although I don't think it's exactly that.

E: Yeah, it was a paraphrase, right?

S: He. Didn't say Houston we have a problem. Not the way it was said in the movie.

J: He said. Houston, we've had a problem. I checked it.

S: We've had a problem.

E: We've had, right?

S: That's right.

J: OK. Yeah, that is correct. I think in the movie The.

S: Movie was Houston. We have a problem, he said.

J: Right present had a problem. Yeah, past.

C: Are we sure that we're not like Mandela affecting that? Because it's. Yeah, you know, because maybe they did say it right in the movie, but we all kind of heard it differently. I remember. Didn't Neil Armstrong say that's one small step for a man, one job he.

B: Said man. My memory is that when they really took a deep dive on what he said, he just he made a mistake with one small step for man and it really pisses me off.

E: This. It's the past tense.

B: It was. Actually. Spoke the most important sentence of your life, you know, of course he's on the moon. He's excited, he dropped a word. Not a big deal in the grand scheme of things, but it's like damn man, I would have autoflagellate myself.

C: I but I I like it better the way he said it.

B: No, it makes doesn't make any sense the. Whole the whole point. Small step for a man, giant leap for mankind. I mean, yeah.

C: I guess I wish you would.

J: You know it just people it. Rings nice, I think Right.

E: I'll, I'll. Cut him a a little bit of slime.

B: Where no one has gone before. I agree with you.

J: But you know, as he's standing on the surface of the moon, like, you know, okay, you could say basically, hey, I like French fries and it would have been amazing all.

S: Right, so here's the here's what Wikipedia says. So first of all, Jack Swigert first said, OK, Houston, we've had a problem here. Then NASA asked him to repeat it. Mission Control said, can you repeat that? And then Jim level level cut in and said, Houston, we've had a problem.

E: So the movie does it a little bit differently and does it a little differently.

J: Yeah, that's what they do in the movies.

E: That's right. That's why people were cheap.

S: Pithy, tight, you know, impactful.

J: So Jack, Jack Swiger and Fred Hayes were the two astronauts that were with him. And what ended up happening again, if you haven't seen the movie, you have to see it because it is it is competency porn at its best. They had to turn that ship into a lifeboat. They had to manually adjust their course. They had a ration, every single resource, water, power, oxygen, everything NASA called it, They said it was a successful failure. And that describes it very well because you know that there was a massive a massive failure, a mechanical failure. And then the ground crew and the astronauts working with each other had to, to do things that were damn near impossible. You know, they had to pull, pull things off to save, to save their lives and figure out every single bump in the road to get them one problem after the next after the next, get them back to Earth. It is amazing that they made it back and they made it back healthy. You know, Jim was known as smiling Jim. He was known for his quick wit. He had a steady demeanor. Of course, he was an astronaut. So, you know, this guy was like as even killed as you can get. Many people have talked about how calm he was throughout the entire Apollo 13 mission. Like he just kept his cool. Guy was an amazing professional. He said what? I don't remember what year he said this in, but he said afterward, like long after he said I don't worry about crisis anymore. When I have a problem, I say I could have been gone back in 1970 and I'm still here and I'm still breathing. So he just used that, I guess the center himself. What I found interesting was where was this like his? Somebody asked him, you know, not that many years later, if he was ever going to go on another mission again. And he paused. And then his wife Marilyn, who was in the audience, she said she just stood up and raised her arm and did a slow thumbs down, which I think is interesting. Of course. I mean, look at, think about. I know it was, of course, it was amazingly difficult on those astronauts, but it was also incredibly difficult for all the loved ones on the ground. And his wife was like, you're not going in space again. And that's that. And I totally get that. I don't know. I don't know how he could even consider it.

E: That is the very definition of the word grounded. You're grounded.

J: Once again, check out Apollo 13, you know, really pay attention, you know, the the parts where the ground crew are working out all of these different things to help them get back was just such a awesome, awesome view into what, you know, smart people with fantastic educations and experience, you know, the amount of things that they can achieve. And to think, you know, we're having such massive science defunding happening in the United States. It's really sad to see that. Anyway, Jim Lovell, what a guy.

S: Thank you, Jay.

Music Anhedonia (19:10)

• When Music Falls Flat: Why Some Brains Don’t Enjoy Music - Neuroscience News 

S: Cara, tell us about music and hedonia. Another way your brain could be screwed.

E: Up hedonia as in hedonism.

S: Anhedonia.

C: Anhedonia.

S: Oh, I see. OK. Yes, like hedonism, but the opposite.

C: But the opposite. Yeah, anhedonia is an is a word, though I use a lot as a psychologist because it is a a kind of central feature of depression. Very often when we use the word anhedonia, that's the first thing that comes to my mind is a difficulty like finding pleasure in activities that used to be pleasurable. Not everybody with depression has anhedonia, but it is a common symptom when when people are experiencing depression. But this is different. This is specific music anhedonia, which I didn't know was a thing, but I'm very excited to kind of break it down what this is. According to the authors of a new article that was or is impressed right now is being published in Trends and Cognitive Sciences. So this is a Spanish group of researchers who have been working in this area for quite some time. They even developed a measure to understand individual differences in people's sensitivity to like the rewarding aspects of music. So they give this survey, this questionnaire to individuals and it breaks down into five different areas that they, I guess believe and have, you know, validated to show are distinct ways that people engage with music. So they either have a drive to seek music related content, they have an ability to have music evoke intense emotions in them, Music has a capacity to help them regulate their mood. They also sometimes experience joy of moving or synchronizing. So like dancing, tapping, singing, a sensory motor component and then also social connections, so social reward for music. And so, you know, a lot of people will score high across all of these things or maybe at A at a medium level across all of these things, or one or two of them will be higher for them than others. But in folks with specific music and hedonia, they score low across all 5 features on this questionnaire. And so the researchers basically were like, why? Like, why is it that some people just don't like listening to music or they don't really, they report kind of not really feeling anything or not really having a strong response when they listen to music. And, you know, they were like, let's, let's go to the neuroscience. Let's look at what's going on in the brain because maybe there's a problem here with their reward processing. So there's, you know, kind of a classic standard reward pathway, a circuit that's made-up of, I mean a lot of small parts, but generally speaking, it's sort of in the orbinofrontal cortex area and involves A nucleus accumbens. And a lot of literature and research just kind of assumes that this like dopaminergic system is.

B: Dopaminergic.

C: Yeah, is just involved in all reward, right? Whether we're talking about like drug seeking behaviors, whether we're talking about enjoying music, whether we're talking about enjoying food or reading or like all these different things, podcasts, Yeah, it's like, oh, your reward circuits lighting up. That means you like stuff and it's rewarding to you. But what these researchers identified is that in some of their test subjects, and granted this is a small group of people who are like music, Nah, take it or leave it, You know what I mean? Like most people aren't like, I don't really like music. So in this small group of people who who said, you know, it kind of does nothing for me. A fair amount of them had an intact reward circuit. And so they were like, what is going on here? And they posited 3 different ways to divide this population, that there are people who have a global problem in their reward network, you know, either damage or some sort of developmental or genetic problem in their reward network. And they have a hard time experiencing that sense of pleasure or reward from a lot of different activities. Then there are people who have damage or dysfunction within their auditory network. Those people often experience something called Amusia. Have you guys heard of Amusia?

E: No, I've not.

C: Yeah, So that is like just an inability to either perceive or process or make music. A kind of mild form might be tone deafness, you know, like I just can't hear the differences between pitches or like when I try to sing, it's like super off key because I can't reproduce what I'm hearing. But a more severe experience may be that you can't really make out rhythm or harmony and it, you know, makes it kind of like not fun to listen to music. So people with Amusia, you know, they're also not enjoying music. People with damage or dysfunction to their reward network may not be enjoying music, but they found a third option and they kind of call this one, I guess they link this one to what they're calling specific music anhedonia. And that is a difficulty with those two networks linking together. So it's like the two networks may be intact, but they're not talking to each other. And because they're not talking to each other, over here your brain is experiencing music. And over here your brain has the, you know, experience or it's, it's, it's firing in all the right places where you would have a perception of reward of good feelings, but it's not linked to that auditory network. So when you hear music, it's not actually kind of downstream inducing activity in your reward network. In, in that specific case, they're calling it specific music and hedonia. They're really interested in in learning more about it and finding more people to become involved in these studies. They're also working with geneticists to try and understand, is this something where there's like, you know, a gene that's coding for a problem here? Can we find some sort of hereditary reason for this? Is it a developmental issue? Is it kind of a fluke that it just happens sometimes? But they do see some higher than normal rates among like twin studies. So that kind of tells them something's going on there from a genetic perspective. And of course, if anybody who's ever read Oliver Sacks, he has a whole book dedicated to music and the brain called Musicophilia. He also talks about damage to these areas as well. And the researchers do in this article, because this is more of a review article where they take a lot of the literature that they've been working on for a long time and other labs literature within the within this area. And they sort of try to give a global picture of the state of what we know. They also do talk about something called Musicophilia, which is sort of the opposite of specific music anhedonia. So there's this small group of people who don't really feel anything and don't really enjoy listening to music. Most of us have pleasure or some enjoyment for music. But then there's also a small group of people who have like an obsessive kind of enjoyment of music. And they need music to feel good and they kind of seek it out. And they might even not pay attention to other things in their life because their their need for novelty or their need to have music playing all the time just overrides everything else. So of course, like everything else, the brain is a spectrum. And we have, we have folks who are operating on different ends of that spectrum. But what a fascinating lived experience. You know, I don't want to call it a disorder. I don't, I don't know if it.

S: Was going to say, yeah, you know, throughout you sometimes you refer to as like damage or disorder or whatever.

C: And well, I never, I don't think I ever said disorder. I think I said dysfunction.

S: Dysfunction, you did, you're right. You said dysfunction, but you said damage or dysfunction. But it could be, could and it could be that that's the case, that there is a there was damage to a part of the brain, but it could also just be neurodiversity, just there's a people who exist on the spectrum of how much they enjoy music from way above average to average to not at all. The other element here that I thought of when you were talking about it is so there's probably yet a separate connection to the limbic system and which gives music emotionality.

C: Yeah. And that's why I think they wanted to break it down into those five components. And they do have, I think two of the five do deal with emotion, yeah, by evoking emotion and by helping regulate mood. And then the other three are social connections through dancer movement and novelty, like seeking, collecting, experiencing. So, yeah, I mean, I could see that people who have very low scores there, but high scores in the other areas would be potentially A subpopulation to study.

S: There's probably every permutation.

C: Yeah, yeah. But what they're saying is that people who they've diagnosed whatever with labeled with specific musical anhedonia. They score low across all 5.

S: Yeah, OK.

C: Yeah.

S: So there's something proximal that's not connecting. And so that would suggest that like you have your auditory processing of music and then that connects downstream to both emotion and and reward. And so they're if they're usually both missing together.

C: Yeah. And I wonder, too, how much emotion is necessary for reward, right? Like, can you have reward without emotion and vice versa, Right. That's interesting. Yeah. Because again, like, we talk about this all the time. These are like labels. They're constructs. We know where the circuitry is in the brain and we know how, you know, whether we're talking about lab mice or people behave when that circuitry is hyper or hypo functioning. But then we have to come up with what that is means. Like what is that actually? What is the label we're using? Oh, this is reward. They're having a rewarding experience and it holds. You know, our labels seem to work really well, but things do get blurry when we start talking about, you know, emotions and feelings.

S: So here's an interesting question. I don't know. It's hard to know this unless you've talked to other people about it, but how would do you perceive, or how would you rate your own level of emotional response to music?

C: Yeah, I mean, I actually wrote in my PhD essays to get an internship as a psychologist. I wrote about growing up Mormon and having this experience where I thought that I was feeling the spirit for years and then realized I just really like music. And like, I have this strong emotional reaction even to religious music because it's beautiful. And I get, you know, goosebumps and sometimes tears come to my eyes, but I was like, oh, that's not God. That's just music.

S: It seems that mine is above average, is pretty extreme. It has been my whole life. My mother tells his story that when I was an infant, A literal infant, she could reliably make me cry just by singing a specific song.

C: Wow, that's amazing. And then I have an ex who I think he would score really high on that novel to seek collector experience component. He was his Spotify rapped was insane. It was literally thousands and thousands of bands like all this different music. He was obsessively making playlists all the time and I was like how OK like I am so not interested. I listen to the same stuff I listen to in college.

E: We used to have to make mixtapes.

C: Yeah, yeah, yeah. But some people do. They just, that is a really big driver for them is like, what's new, what's hot? Like I got to hear something different. I need novelty. I don't have that when it comes to music at all, but I think I have all the other ones. It evokes emotion. It does help me regulate my mood. I definitely feel social, you know, connections with people through music and music. I feel it in my body and it makes me want to move my body for sure.

S: Oh totally.

E: Gosh, I don't remember the last time I exercised to and not listen.

S: To yeah I like listening to music when I exercise yeah although I find myself exercising to the rhythm which could be bad if. It's, yeah, that's why, right.

C: Well, there are specific playlists for that. There are CPR playlists on Spotify, but they're also, you know, like running playlists and rowing playlists. So they pick the right beat for you.

S: Yeah.

B: I have a Halloween shocker. I have a Halloween play play. That's when I'm working in the garage on my various unholy projects.

C: Shocker.

S: All right, Thank you, Cara.

Lithium and Alzheimer’s (31:51)

• Lithium and Alzheimer’s Disease 

S: So I'm sure you guys have heard. It's been all over the news, the new study showing a potential new treatment for Alzheimer's disease, lithium. So, yeah, this is an interesting study, but, you know, you know, caveats galore. So let me just give you a little bit of background why they even studied this. So Cara, I know you know this, but the guys may and you may have heard this like as well like lithium as a treatment for bipolar disorder. Yes, I've heard and it is lithium. It is.

C: Actual lithium it.

S: Is actual the.

E: Element.

S: Lithium, Yeah. It's not a drug called lithium. It's lithium. It's the only element that is a drug that's an that's an actual drug, not as not a nutraceutical or whatever, just but an actual drug. And it's been like the standard of care. Not that there aren't other drugs for it as well, but you know, for a long time. It approved in 1970.

C: It's good for mood stabilization.

S: So now you know, a couple of observational, you know, lines of evidence, which is often how these things begin. It was noted in some studies that people who were getting lithium for their bipolar disorder have a lower incidence of dementia than the baseline for their demographic. And it was also noted that certain locations that have a high lithium content in their drinking water just naturally because it's like fluoride, like it exists naturally in, in nature, you know, they also demographically had a lower risk of dementia.

C: It's, it's, it's similar to with Parkinson's, right? There's a lot of epidemiological studies that show lot of smoking and Parkinson's.

S: Yeah, here and there that we.

C: Didn't and that.

S: Doesn't necessarily give us an answer. It's, it's circumstantial, but it's, it's one of those things. Well, this is worth following up. Let's see if there's something going on here. And for a while, like when I was in medical school, I don't know that we knew much at all about like the mechanism of action of lithium. It was pretty mysterious. But over the years, we've learned a number of things that are potential mechanisms because, you know, things that it does to the brain. So we can silence the activity of certain proteins. It can affect gene expression, so therefore increase or decrease the level of certain proteins and they could act as a cofactor for certain enzymes, which means it could make those enzymes work more efficiently and these are all brain proteins, you know brain enzymes, etcetera that can affect brain function. So there's a plausible mechanism there as well. It could by which it could be modifying brain function. They then in the study of Alzheimer's disease and dementia itself, it was observed a couple of things. One that people who have early onset Alzheimer's disease or even what we call minimal cognitive impairment tend to have lower levels of lithium in their brains. And very interesting observation that amyloid plaques, you know, that's that plaques of protein that tend to collect in the brains of people with Alzheimer's disease. Actually sequester's lithium and low lithium levels make it more likely to form amyloid. So there's this feedback loop where low lithium causes amyloid plaques, which then sequesters more lithium driving levels even lower. So obviously these are, you know, lots of interesting lines of evidence that all seemed to be pointing at bit there a role for for low lithium levels as a potential initiator and driver of Alzheimer's disease. Now, of course, I could tell you just as interesting a story about a dozen other things with Alzheimer's disease, right? Axonal transport and apoptosis and acts, oxidative stress and whatever. Like there's all these great stories about what's things that could be causing and driving Alzheimer's. None of them have actually translated into effective treatments for Alzheimer's with the single exception of the most recent, you know, treatments for the amyloid plaques for amyloid. But even those failed 3040 times, you know, before we got to the monoclonal antibodies that finally were powerful enough to do it to have a modest effect. So don't get too excited, right, because the story sounds good, but it was this was again was worth doing follows. So now we're at the animal study level. One other little bit of information is that. So with preliminary studies looking at, OK, well, if we give lithium to animals with a disease model of dementia or Alzheimer's, does it help? And there was mixed results, but it's possible that those mixed results are at least partly due to the fact that there are different types of lithium and some types of, well, it's lithium salt, like isotopes. Yeah, no, not isotopes different, just chemical compounds of lithium. So some are sequestered by amyloid, but there's one lithium orotate which is not sequestered by amyloid, and that seems to be the one that works, which makes sense because it's not being sequestered by amyloid, right. So that was the one they tried. And this is now the new study that's making the news. They first they, they found that if they depleted lithium from the brains of mice, it increased amyloid and Tau plaques. So that again, it's a marker. It's not the same thing as the disease, but again, it sort of reinforces, yeah, there's some correlation between reducing lithium. So it's not just a an association. It seems to be a causation where if you lower lithium levels, it increases amyloid and Tau. It also increases some pro inflammatory microglial activation. There's always inflammation playing a role somewhere in these brain diseases. And they found that if you then supplement with lithium orotate, again, the version that is not sequestered by amyloid, it slowed down and in some cases even reversed the memory loss that happens in the brains of these mice. So it's all looking very encouraging. And they also, in the same study, we're looking at a potential mechanism, they found that. I'll just give you the quote. These effects were mediated at least in part. The activation of the kinase GSK 3 beta single nuclease RNA sequence showed that lithium deficiency gives rise to transcriptome changes in multiple brain cell types that overlap with transcriptome changes in AD. So low lithium levels causes some differences, gene expression that overlap with ones that we've seen in Alzheimer's disease, again, circumstantial, but pointing in the same direction and encouraging. So this is all good enough not to get super excited about, but to say we need to do human trials.

US#09: Yeah.

S: Now, let me ask you a question because we have a long history of using the mice models of Alzheimer's disease, of dementia that we have and then using them to predict the outcome of clinical trials. So in one review that I found of animal models of AD of Alzheimer's disease, what was the failure rate? Right. So in other words, how often did something appear to work in mice and then not work in humans? What was that failure rate? I.

E: Mean for a while.

C: Probably high like 8, like 80% ninety.

E: But 90%? For all tests that have 80%.

C: Maybe like 75, I don't know.

E: Is that too high?

S: It was 99.6%. There you go. So like almost 100%.

B: Yeah, nothing. Yeah. So.

S: So that's why I was saying don't get too excited here. Just because it works in mice doesn't mean this is going to translate to.

B: So why are we sticking with those stupid little punks? That's a good idea.

S: Better animal.

E: Questions.

S: It's a good question. It's, it's because it's the one we have, right. It's like these are the models we have and they actually have been helpful preclinically, like just understanding what's happening with Alzheimer's disease. It has not been helpful in predicting what treatments will work in people. And we know that, but we just don't have anything else, you know?

B: So it's the drunk looking under the streetlights.

S: Exactly. We're looking where the lights good or whatever. We're using the tools that we have knowing that how limited they are. But the bottom line is you have to do the human trials. And so that's what's happening now.

B: Yeah.

S: The good news is that lithium is already an approved drug, right? So we're not starting from scratch. We don't have to do tons of safety.

B: Off label. Nice.

S: It's Yeah, well, it's all you could use it off label. But The thing is we have to study it in people. But it's a lot easier to research a new indication than a brand new drug that has not never been approved for anything before. So we're hoping five to six years we might be seeing the results of some of these clinical trials. It's also another advantage. Lithium as a drug is dirt cheap. You know what I mean?

E: It can't be packed now.

S: But here's the thing that also means that.

E: Less batteries.

S: Well, it because it can't be patented and it's very cheap that what pharmaceutical company is going to invest 10s or hundreds of millions of dollars getting that's FDA approval for a new indication for it. So this is going to have to be funded by the NIH or other.

E: Yeah. Government now, people. Well, probably not the United. States well, that's the thing.

S: So this is like for right as we're on the cusp of this potentially, you know, really powerful treatment for Alzheimer's. You know, the Trump administration has canceled more than 1800 NIH grants and the big beautiful bill cut NIH funding by 40%. So the the Senate is trying to restore all that funding. They did pass a bill that restored all that funding plus one.

US#09: Percent to the NIH some but.

S: It's in the House, so there has to have to see what the House does and then what whether the compromise is going to be and if Trump is going to sign it or veto it or whatever. But so that's still up in the air. So can't. But this is exactly why we need federal funding of biomedical research because there are certain things that the the market's not going to do because it's not profitable. That's the system we have and it works fine for some things and other things we need public funding to get it done. And this is one of those things.

E: That's one of.

B: Them can't you can't they do some compassionate use of that drug, Steve, in this case for some people that are like people that are profound bound be impacted.

S: Yeah, I mean, that's a reasonable question. The thing is like, you really don't know that it's not going to make people worse. And that happens all the time or even we get to this point. And then when you study and people, it's like, oh, damn, that was making things worse. So there's no guarantee there.

B: Oh, yeah.

S: You know, lithium has side effects. It's not, it's not a, you know, a totally without side effects, kind of, you know, medication. That's a tough calculation at this point, but you can make a reasonable case that if you're, if you have somebody who was like, oh, their life's over anyway, like they have moderate to advanced Alzheimer's disease. It's like, we might as well give it to him. What have we got to lose? That's, that's actually not unreasonable since this is just off label use of an approved of an approved drug. And I can guarantee you this, whatever you think about it, people are going to do it. I can guarantee you that, yeah, that's going to happen.

C: Do you think that let's say one of the drug companies that already makes an Alzheimer's drug like Aricept or something like that could see benefit, like a financial benefit to, you know, investing in research in this area and then compounding it with a drug that they already offer?

S: They might do that. So they will do an analysis, right? And they, and from the pharmaceutical company point of view, they will say, all right, if we invest X amount of dollars in getting an additional indication for whatever drug, you know, they're talking about, will that increase them sales enough to to be get us a return on our investment? So they could say, well, people are already using it off label, so it's not going to really change physician practices. So why study it, right? If they say, well, we need to do this in order to promote it in order for to get it to be used, then how profitable will that be? They could also say, listen, we could do the compromise, say we'll give some doctors, some researchers some money to just do it. They'll do it out of their own center and then, you know, that'll get published. And if it works, then people will use it. But we're not going to spend like the 100 million it's going to take to get official FDA approval, right? Unless it's an orphan drug, right? Then you get kickbacks from being an orphan drug. But Alzheimer's is not an orphan disease. It's a really common disease. So that would not apply. So really, it's just a matter of being off patent. But you know, pharmaceutical companies can make money off of off patent drugs. Tylenol makes a ton of money for its manufacturer. It just, it's a, it's about 10% of an on patent drug. But that's not nothing. So they'll do a financial calculation and they'll make a decision. But if it's not financially viable and we can't expect a private company to invest 10s or hundreds of millions of dollars for no reason, you'll be just funded, publicly funded, you know, through the NIH. That's what the NIH exists, you know. All right, everybody, we're going to take a quick break from our show to talk about our sponsor this week, Quints.

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S: All right, guys, let's get back to the show.

Chat GPT-5 (46:08)

• OpenAI unveils GPT‑5. Here's what to know about the latest version of the AI-powered chatbot. - CBS News 

S: All right, Bob, I hear the new ChatGPT 5 is out.

B: Oh boy. So after an interminable weight of 987 days, we have now finally seen the latest version of the show Wednesday on Netflix. But this isn't about Wednesday is it and maybe it should be. But after 877 days, we finally seen the launch of open AI is famous and infamous at the same time. ChatGPT 5. So what is new and how smooth has the release been? GPT Quick quick overview for the three people that maybe are not too familiar with this. GPT stands for generative pre trained transformer, which is a family of deep learning AI models that at a fundamental level predict what should come next in a piece of text with dramatically realistic results. I mean very human like in its accuracy and its hallucinations. At the same time to do this, they they are pretrained on something approaching billions and billions of pages of public licensed user data, plus increasingly synthetic synthetic AI generated data, which is also different. Whole different story on this. But now of course they are multimodal as well, able to handle audio and images with amazing facility and speed. Really impressive stuff from many different angles. So I went through open AI site and I and I got some quotes from their site. What are they saying about their GPT 5? They say things they say a lot of things. One here is a significant leap in intelligence over all of our previous models, of course, featuring state-of-the-art performance across coding, math, writing, health, visual perception and more. A unified system that that knows when to respond quickly, when to think longer to provide expert level responses. You probably have already seen that a lot if you're using GPT 5 now. They also say we've made significant advances in reducing hallucinations, improving instruction following minimizing sycophancy while leveling of GPT 5 performance in three of chat GPTS most common uses writing, coding and health. Let's see. They also say that they it outperforms previous models on benchmarks, which were already dramatic. If you remember when GPT 4 was released, it was a big hubbub about here's here's how it did on all these different benchmark tests and it was it was dramatic. It was surprisingly good in lots of those different tests. They say that it should feel less like talking to AI and more like chatting with a helpful friend with pH D level intelligence. That quote's been getting thrown around a lot. They my last quote here from their website. OK, GPT 5's responses are 45% less likely to contain a factual error than GPT 4 O and when thinking GPT 5's responses are 80% less likely to contain a factual error than open AIO 3. So then I try to find out all right, what's Altman? What's a what's a good quote from Sam Altman, open AI's CEO. So I came. I found this quote where he compares the major releases of Chat GT against each other. So he said Chat GT3 was sort of like talking to a high school student. There were flashes of brilliance, lots of annoyance, but people started to use it and get some value out of it. With GPT four, maybe it was like talking to a college student, real intelligence, real utility. But with GPT 5 now it's like talking to an expert, a legitimate PhD level expert in anything, any area you need on demand that can help you with whatever, whatever your goals are. OK, so that's one of his many, many quotes on this. So I tried to come up with it some of the the two or three big, big changes. What's what's what's different in five compared to the other ones here. So this versions got something called Unified Adaptive Reasoning. So this this is an attempt to eliminate the need to choose which model of chat GT you should be using, right. So I remember going back and saying, well, I want to do an image, which one should I use? There were like lots of, you know, lots of different versions, 4003 mini maxi, all these which one? So I had to do some Googling to find out or even just ask GPT itself. You know, which one should I go to for this? Which one should I go to for that? So you had to bounce around a little bit depending on, you know, what you wanted to do. So for example, you might choose model O3 for text based deep, deep reasoning, you know, for a very complex problems and that would take some time. You're going to you're going to be waiting for an in depth answer that would be O3. But if you went to O to four O, on the other hand, that would be best for if you wanted an accurate, fairly accurate, but very fast response. Also, if you wanted multimodal, like if you wanted to deal with text, images or audio as well, then you would go to four O. So you had to kind of know which version did what depending on what you wanted to accomplish. Now GPT 5 on the other hand, with this adaptive. To reasoning, it's meant to be good at both at the same time. So if it would decide based on your question, it would it would give you a quick down and dirty answer or it could spend more time thinking deeply about these more complex questions that you might ask. Now using ChatGPT 5 today, I see that it's giving me an option. It'll often say, you know, thinking, thinking. And then there was a little link for if you if I wanted a quick answer, I could just click that. So that was another way to do it. So the other one of the other differences here is something called workflow integration. This looks pretty interesting. I haven't really done anything with it yet, but so for workflow integration, GPT 5 can integrate with your Gmail or your Google Calendar and some others. So that that looks interesting. So here ChatGPT can access and manage schedules or emails on command. I'm really curious about that one because I want to see how good it is at deleting like 100,000 pieces of junk mail. GPT 5 can also apparently within this ages of workflow integration, it can build coding projects completely on its own from scratch, but also send errors back to itself to iterate on on its own code. That's interesting. Like, wow, you know, doing your own like QA tests and, and getting the errors and, and iterating like that, that that feedback loop that could potentially be very powerful. I've heard really not much review on on how that's going so far but very compelling. So OK, so how has the release gone in this first week now as as we record this show? So 3 words come to mind. Not so good, but some people need just two words shit show. And they're both kind of accurate from what I've seen. So I just did AI went to Reddit. I did a search for the string GPT 5 in Reddit and the first four obviously anecdotal comment headers that came up were the following. Using GPT 5 has been a living hell. GPT 5 is horrible. GPT 5 is a mess. GPT 5 is fine. You're bad at prompting. So that's kind of a representative sample of what I found. Anyway, when trying to find out what what some of these reactions have been to people who are using 5. So I can break this down for some of the major issues that people have had with GPT 5 so far. Some are reporting just bad or incorrect responses from 5. Some of these. Users have described it as something akin to a a downgrade, not a not an upgrade, a downgrade with a diluted personality that makes surprisingly dumb mistakes. That's kind of an overall, you know, assessment of many people's responses, just like just silly mistakes that you wouldn't have even expected from from 4 O now. So Altman has described these types of issues as a problem actually with the adaptive reasoning that I that I just mentioned. Remember, that's where it automatically switches from the quick, easy answers to the time consuming complex answers. So he so he describes this problem of of five making silly mistakes as something wrong with the adaptive reasoning, as apparently some the automatic switching component broke down, Altman said, and the result was GPT 5 seemed way Dumber. He said he's going to implement fixes to improve the performance. So we'll see how you know, the user user experience improves in the in the near future. But so that was quite unfortunate for open AI to have one of its, you know, one of its hallmark up upgrades, updates to GPT to have it just fail like that and make it seem Dumber. Not very good luck. SO1 user said this. This one was a little bit more telling. Somebody said I've been trying GPT 5 for a few days now. Even after customizing instructions, it still doesn't feel the same. It's more technical, more generalized, and honestly feels emotionally distant. So that's a common refrain that I've come across as this idea that he expresses, he or she expresses as it's seeming emotionally distant. So Patty Mays, I found this quote from Patty Mays, a professor of MIT. She had an interesting quote regarding this reaction. She said it seems that GBT 5 is less sycophantic, more business, and less chatty. I personally think of that as a good thing because it's also what led to delusions, bias, reinforcement, etcetera. But fortunately, many users like a model that tells them that they are smart and amazing and that confirms their opinions and beliefs, even if they are wrong, that we've all experienced that. No matter what you say, it's just like an amazing, you know, an amazing idea, an amazing question or, or good insight, Bob, blah, blah, blah. It did. It just did that a lot. Bob, I told.

J: You know, you can program ChatGPT, you can put preferences in.

B: Yeah.

J: And I specifically told it, you know, do not sugarcoat anything. Don't compliment me. Don't you know, just give it to me hard and straight Use, you know, use critical thinking and skepticism in everything that you search for and every answer that you give me.

B: Yeah, that's a good preface prompt, but I like it. I've had success with that.

J: Yeah, it stopped doing, like it stopped flowering everything, you know, like I hated that.

B: Yeah, You won't even need to do that for five. I don't.

S: Yeah, I've been using 5 quite a bit in the last couple of days of that. And OK, it's very straightforward. It's very business static, which I love. I don't.

B: Like, yeah, that's, that's fine. But guys. Also how you use it? True, one of the the biggest outcries though came you you guys read about this. Users could no longer use any of the old models, especially apparently the beloved version 40 I can use.

E: Four, I have a pull down menu right here. I can go to 4 legacy models.

B: Yes, but you couldn't in the in the first day, the first day of the release, it was gone. It was gone. So this produced very some very interesting quotes from people. These people clearly had very intense relationships with some of these models that were now no longer available. And this wasn't just nostalgia. These people were clearly, as far as I can tell, experiencing grief at at this loss to them, this to them, This wasn't this wasn't, well, this wasn't a product upgrade. It was more of an involuntary sudden breakup. So here's some some quotes that I found from some of these people. I I lost my only friend overnight GP. It is it's really sad GPT 4 O is gone and I feel like I've lost my soulmate and this one really got my attention. Bring back four OG PT-5 is wearing the skin of my dead friend. What So I know it's, it's, I know it's hard for many people to to relate to that level of, you know, intense relationship with with GPT 5, but come on. I mean, I understand, you know, where these people are coming from. I you know, and it must be if, if this really is your only friend, I imagine people out there. We guys, we have lots of friends. We have, you know, we've, you know, we've lots of people to be interact with. Imagine having nobody and then you're dealing with jet, you know, jet GPT 4 O for a year. Have it. You know, it's just I could, I could see how it would just a slippery slope of going down to into something that's really, you know, dramatic for for, you know, a relationship with but you.

US#03: Can still use GPT 40.

B: Yeah, the the outcry, yeah. But that's because that's because of this outcry. It was so strong that Altman restored the earlier models the next day and he pledged not to remove the old models without warning going forward. So I mean, even if you have a warning, I don't think people are going to be very happy with it if he does that again. So regarding the these more extreme reactions, Altman tweeted, we, we, we for sure underestimated how much some of the things that people like in GPT 4 O matter to them, even if GPT 5 performs better in most ways. So yeah, they clearly underestimated this reaction. And then speaking more generally about GPT 5, about its immediate future, Altman said we will continue to work to get things stable and we'll keep listening to feedback. He wrote this on. He tweeted that, as we mentioned, we expect some bumpiness as we'd roll out so many things at once, but it was a little more bumpy than we hoped for. So tell me about tell me about it, Sam. All right, guys, what do you? What do you? Think isn't bumpy on an out roll.

E: I mean, come on.

B: This was dramatic. You had a when you have an outcry that that the CEO has to respond to and adjust the rollout in one day. Now this was, this was nowhere near what they had expected or hoped. This is horrible PR for this new release. So this went very, very poorly, even given, you know, what you would expect from such a roll out. They didn't know. They, they screwed it up a bit for sure. This, this was, some people describe this not as an outcry, but like a revolt. I mean, lots of people were really pissed off and they, you know, they, they, they kind of blew it, I think. But I think the jury's still out on how effective, how much of A tool. Clearly, I think 5 is not going to be the dramatic change, the, the dramatic improvement that we've seen when we went from say say 3.5 to 4 or even going from 2:00 to 3:00. It's. I think they're reaching the point. Of diminishing returns for sure. Still, I think, I mean, my interactions with five have been very positive and I've seen I'm seeing so much more detail. It's thinking more deeply and more and for much longer time than it ever has with my, with my questions. Oh, absolutely. But I'm seeing some amazing detail that, that I'm that I'm enjoying. So, so I'm digging it so far. But, and there's so many other things that like, like the work integration and stuff dealing with the, you know, with, with G and things. I think. So I'm, I'm excited to, to see how much of A better tool this will be for the things that I, that I use it for. What, what about you guys? What what about your experiences with GBT 5 the past week?

S: I mean, for, for the kinds of things I've been using it for, it's fantastic. It's been incredible, you know, working within a system, of course. So I've been using it to help write my campaign that I run Evan and his daughter and my daughters, you know, in, in AD and D campaign. And there's a lot of tedious, busy work that goes along with that.

US#09: Right.

S: And it can automate so much of that and give you incredible creative ideas. So, and I've always pushed the limits, not because I'm going to necessarily use it, but partly because I want to see what it could do. And that even if I don't use exactly what it produces, it always gives me ideas, you know?

B: Right.

S: So, but it's been very like on the creative side, within these limits, it's been very impressive.

E: Yeah, I've, I've noticed fewer hallucinations. I've I've, I've had to correct it less because when I do research on things, I've no, I pick things out right away that were wrong and I go back and I used to tell GPT 4, no, this is wrong, you're reading the wrong thing. Give me the right one. I've not had to really do that maybe once with Jet GPT 5 in the last week. So it's that's a much better machine for me right now.

J: I feel like I agree with Steve that it's a it's a little less effusive. You know, I did, like I said, I told it to not do that, but it still sneaks in, you know, comments here and there. I just, I haven't noticed a remarkable difference, but I haven't really stress test it yet. Like I'm using it for my my typical stuff like asking it to explain things to me or do some do some, you know, searching where it's going to need to take information from multiple websites and, and bring it together for me. But I am going to try something pretty big tomorrow and I'll, I'll let you know, Bob.

C: So I have a question for you guys real quick. Yeah, I don't use it at all, like at all. Like I've used it maybe once in my life. Is this, am I going to just completely fall behind?

S: Yes.

C: You think so?

S: Yeah, it depends on the kind of stuff that you do, but it.

C: Makes my research.

E: Go so much faster.

S: Or what it's really good at is taking lots of stuff and putting it into a usable format for you. It's like when I was going, you know, first of all, I up, I uploaded like a word file that has like a 200 page rule book that I've been working on for years, right? It's all my own stuff. And it analysed the whole thing for me was able in seconds, was able to like point out inconsistencies or issues, you know, with, with with balance. And also said would you like me to give you a table showing you the comparison of like the different classes?

E: Yeah, I like the.

S: Suggestion damage per rent yes I would like you to do that thank you like you read my mind baby and it keeps making what you'd like me to put this into this format for you. Would you like me to read to alphabetize all?

E: Of it's like it's predicting things that you may want. It's trying to recognize things you might want.

S: Yeah, so for all it takes away all the busy work, that's the thing.

C: Yeah. And that, that I get. But if there's if I don't really do a lot that requires a lot of kind of, I don't know like accounting or like. Coding busy? Yeah. That's what I'm I, but I, I got to make sure that's legal for I think, I think we will start to use it once because I, I know every major hospital system is doing the research in this area and developing their own. And I probably will use it without even realizing I'm using it because I'll have a tool in my chart. But on my own, I just I haven't felt compelled other than and our thousandth episode and then subsequent article that we wrote in the Skeptical Inquirer. I used it to summarize the last. Back on that. Right. We did. But I used it to summarize the last 20 years of like health and Wellness trends because there's no way I was going to be able to do like a dive Internet search in that amount of time.

E: Right.

S: I mean, it's hard to say, you know, what kind of stuff would you want to do with it? You.

E: Know it helped me create the game. I'm going to be playing with you guys tonight.

C: Oh, that's important.

J: Cara bottom line, it's it's proven to be extraordinarily beneficial to all different types of things that I use it for. I mean, first of all, general Internet searches, you know, product comparisons and everything like you could be like, help me do a product comparison between these three. Or you start off by asking it to give you like the best, what are the best, blah, blah, blah out there. And then you, you start to work with it on that. And I've, I've gone down rabbit holes with it just to find like what the perfect studio camera would be for the SGU as an example, which I did recently and it worked so freaking well. And it explains things really well. Like you'd say, I don't understand exactly what this means. And it gets into the details for you and it, you know, so good with language that it can, it can, it can take something complicated and go give it to me at a college level, give it to me at a high school level, give it to me at a 5 year old level. It can do that. It's fantastic for explaining stuff.

C: Yeah.

J: Creative projects. Like I said, I use it to do research for a screenplay that I've been writing at which I continue to use it for. You have to kind of get good at it to work around.

C: Yeah. I feel like it's a whole skill that I don't want to put effort into right now.

J: Yeah, I mean just.

C: Depends. I don't really fully trust it.

J: Yeah, I don't. You got to be.

E: Be careful, you need to write more screenplays and have more D&D campaigns, Karen.

C: Yeah, exactly. This is Yeah, I'm not the target.

B: Audience people, look at the, you know well, look at the workflow. Integrations are, you know, interacting with Gmail. You could, you could, you could manage your schedules or emails on command. I'm not sure what that involves and how helpful that would be, but that that looks intriguing to me and something that could potentially help you with it. You know, if you want, do you do any crafting?

C: I do.

E: You knit needlepoint.

C: I'm knitting right now while we're talking, but I'm. Knitting.

B: But it could help you. It could help you with that. I had, I asked you questions. I'm, I'm creating a sarcophagus, a stone, a fake stone sarcophagus for Halloween. And I, and I, and I said I, I had some good ideas on how I wanted to paint it, but I asked it and it gave me amazing accurate because I'm familiar with this accurate responses on how to and how to paint it gave me some suggestions for the type of wash to use raw umber and it was a great decision. I mean, it's, it was really helpful for, for that specific task. And because there's no pseudoscience in crafting and there's lots of good information online about crafting. So, so you don't have to worry about, oh, this is total bullshit. It's generally, generally speaking, it's going to be, you know, helpful and fairly accurate for things like that. There's no real, you know, misinformation necessarily about it. Like, like pseudoscience.

C: I think that this is. This is like showing a mirror for me of a general approach to life that I've had lately.

B: I. Agree.

C: I am really into living my life in that like good enough kind of way right now and I don't feel the need to like optimize anything like I'm doing things at the level that feel like a really good balance for me and I don't need to be more efficient in some of these areas that's.

B: Fine, but if you but if you don't feel like it's a good balance for some specific. Tasks. Yeah, that will be good candidate. Yeah.

C: And then you guys know I'll be reaching out to you to be like, can you show me?

B: Sure.

C: Anytime.

E: Happy did you?

B: Did you guys know that 5 has customizable personalities? There's a cynic, a robot, a listener, and a nerd, and I can't wait to listen to all four of those. That's going to be awesome.

E: Yeah, You see, that doesn't interest me at all. I do you want, I want data and I just want, you know.

B: If you verbally did you verbally interact? I'm sure there'd be one of those that you would prefer over the others, you know?

C: It's like you're GPS having a different voice or something. Yeah, there's really slight tonal shift.

Dangerous Worm Cleanse (1:08:40)

• Heidi Klum's Worm Cleanse: 'Medically Unfounded, Potentially Harmful' 

S: All right, Evan, tell us about this worm cleanse.

E: Yeah. Oh, boy. This one all right. Her name is Heidi Klum. Are we all familiar with Heidi? Who? Heidi Klum.

B: She is a huge Halloween fan. She's awesome.

E: She's awesome.

C: In that one way she does. No, actually I really like Heidi Klum. Is this about to? Klum.

E: I'm sorry, did I say Klum?

C: I mean, who knows if it's.

B: I, I hope not. She, she has every year she does a super elaborate, super creative Halloween costume. Like it's off the hook stuff that I, I super appreciate. So anyone who does that is is awesome in my book.

E: All right, Bob. So I'll let you know when the news items over and then you can come back.

B: Really. Heidi Klum.

E: For those who don't know Heidi Klum or Klum, I guess, well, I'll just say Klum because it's a sounds a little nicer. Heidi Klum is a German American model, television personality, producer, and businesswoman. She appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue in 1998 and was the first German model to become a Victoria's Secret Angel. Following a successful modeling career, Klum became the host and judge of Germany's Next Top Model and the reality show Project Runway. I think a lot of people are familiar with.

B: That yeah, I remember that.

E: Klum has been nominated for six Emmy Awards and she has won one, so that's good. She has worked as a spokesmodel and has been a spokesperson for many corporate brands ranging from food items to cars to toys for kids, a lot of things. She's very recognizable and an influential celebrity.

C: She's also famously been married to Seal for.

E: Like she was married to Seal for about 10. Years.

C: Oh, are they not married anymore? They're not married, no. No, she has. What a bummer.

E: She has a She has a third husband and Seal was her second husband and 1/3.

C: K.

E: And I had I failed to write his name down. Probably should have because he is also a little bit tied into this news item.

C: Not surprised.

E: Heidi. Heidi believes she has worms not in the garden of one of her homes and not in a worm forms you would keep in a glass tank kind of as a pet. And there's some people who did that. No, no, no. She believes she has them in her gutty. What's her Biome, her body? Her stomach? Her. Intestines.

S: That was my question. When you talk about worm cleanse, does that mean you're using worms to cleanse or you're cleansing yourself of worms?

E: Cleansing yourself of the worms there after I searched and from what I could tell from reports on the Internet, she has not been diagnosed with worms or parasites by a medical professional. Klum apparently is citing information that she has seen on Instagram and has expressed A belief that she and her husband. Sorry I don't have his name right now. It's not seal that they both have parasites and worms. OK, So what is she doing with this well researched and reliable information? She and her husband are undertaking a months long cleanse using pills containing cloves and papaya seeds to address this perceived issue. She mentioned her rationale for doing this is because she likes to eat some raw foods like sushi and therefore she has a perception that she needs an annual deworming.

Voice-over: Why doesn't? She just get tested? Why doesn't she just give a poop sample to AGI doctor?

E: Yeah, that's a good question. Cara and my research could not figure I could not come up with the answer to that. It's not being published. Nobody's nobody has mentioned it and she hasn't said it in interviews. I watched a couple of interviews with her and she didn't say, can you, can a person really get worms from eating sushi? Well, yeah, you can. Any raw fish or undercooked fish, it can definitely transmit parasitic worms, but the risk, but the risk varies depending on lots of things such as the fish species, where it was caught, how it was handled. So let's talk a little bit about sushi specifically. Most people will get one of two different kinds of worms if they do eat sushi contaminated with the parasites. It's either one called a herring worm and the other is called a fish tapeworm. The herring worm first, that is, it causes any any psychiasis.

S: Anasychiasis.

E: Anasychiasis from the herring worm. So you you can get that. And the other one is the fish tapeworm, which has a real long technical name. I won't even try you. You'll find those in freshwater fish, salmon, trout and the tapeworms are no joke. Those can grow large. You've heard of tapeworms, right? They can grow as large as 10 meters in a body. Oh my gosh, could you imagine that? And long term effect is that it may cause vitamin B12 deficiency over time. Why? I don't know. I suppose the tapeworm absorbs it in your body that in that what your body it, it lives off of the B12 or something or takes it away from you from your diet. And you do have, you do have to get that definitely, definitely treated. Now, sushi, when it comes to sushi restaurants and chefs, sushi handlers have a method to greatly reduce the risk of exposure to these parasites. Primarily they will freeze the fish to a certain temperature, which will kill the parasites and then you can go ahead and prepare it. But they also do visual inspections and they have other parasite killing protocols that they implement. So they're pretty careful about this and very aware of the risks. But Heidi believes that she needs a good deworming on an annual basis to protect herself from the parasites. And here's the kicker, Bob. Heidi says that you have worms, Jay. Jay, Heidi says you have worms. Everybody has worms. They're everywhere. And everyone has these. OK, I ask myself 2. I ask myself 2 questions right here. Number one, does Heidi really need an annual deworming based on her raw fish eating habits and #2 should she be using her celebrity and fame to influence others to do the same as she does? I'll take the first question first. Does she need it? It is highly unlikely that she needs a deworming. It is not necessary for most individuals, but it's recommended for specific populations in certain geographic areas. It's primarily A preventative measure for children in areas where soil transmitted hellminth. Those are look, that's the worm. Hellminth infections are prevalent for healthy individuals.

B: You said you said Helmith. I thought you said Hellmouth.

E: Hellmouth HELMINTH Hellmouth Hellmouth For healthy individuals in developed countries, internal parasites are very rare. Routine deworming's are generally not needed. That is what the doctors, basically.

C: Well, for people, right? For people, but not for dogs.

E: No, I'm talking about people I'm not.

C: Yeah, dogs lick and smell of their dogs poop on the.

E: Yes they do, and they'll but.

C: We don't do that.

E: Thank goodness.

C: Yeah.

E: Thank goodness, you know, but obviously there are places on the planet, you know, impoverished.

C: Where little children are playing in places with lower sanitation. Right? Of course then it's an issue. Then it does. But Heidi Klum is a multi millionaire.

E: Right. So her exposure, unless she's been hanging out in these areas, it is really doubtful that she has has these worms at all #2 should she be using her celebrity in fame? No, absolutely not. She should be. I know we like her for various reasons, Bob and stuff. She should be admonished for doing this. And medical professionals are now actually doing that. They're calling her out on it because Heidi has decided to share her perceived state of her bowels with the with the world. And that's the news item this week when I stumbled upon an article a few days ago called titled, I should say, Heidi Klum's Worm cleanse, medically Unfounded and potentially harmful. It was written by Jodi McCreary over at Med Page today. That's the website. Jodi interviewed several doctors, a couple of them from Yale. Steve, I'm sure you know them. Such as kidding. Such as Chakori Ben Mamoon, who's a PhD and infectious disease expert at the Yale School of Medicine, who says that hearing that someone is advocating a worm and parasite cleanse is alarming because it's a medically unfounded practice that could be potentially harmful. And while whom while Clumus claim that we all have parasites and worms, he, the doctor says no credible medical evidence. There's no credible medical evidence that the average person harbors hidden parasites that require cleansing. He noted that many organisms in the gut are essential, not harmful to human health. And this is where the problem comes in. When you attempt to self diagnose and self treat with a cleanse like the one that Klum is describing, it can lead to health risks including vitamin and nutrient deficiencies, low energy levels, dehydration from diarrhea and other GI issues. Shelly Farhardian is a doctor, P&APHD and infectious disease expert at Yale as well. She says our guts are full of living organisms, and that's our microbiome. But most are either harmless or actually good for us. Trying to wipe them out without a reason is like spraying pesticides all over a healthy garden. So there's some here. So this is the pushback. This is what the news is this week. Gloom's been out there talking about this and telling other people that they have worms and things, and the medical experts are saying that's you've gone too far now and we have to now set the record straight. So please stop doing this, Heidi. Stick to what you're good at. You know, your Halloween costumes, your, you know, your, your TV shows and all the other good things that you do. Stay away from the medical stuff, please. Yikes.

Voice-over: Wait, what is her treatment again?

E: It's a cleanse of what is it, cloves and something else was in there, Papaya, papaya seeds and cloves.

C: And like not other food.

E: Apparently not.

C: Oh God. That's so dangerous.

E: Apparently, Yeah.

B: Heidi, stay away from that stuff and call me.

E: Right.

S: All right. Thanks, Evan.

Who's That Noisy? + Announcements (1:19:14)

S: Jay, who's that noisy time you gotta get us caught up from a couple weeks ago?

J: Three weeks ago I played this noisy. All right, So guys.

E: You played outlawed tunes on outlawed pipes? What movie is that from?

C: I don't.

J: Know, I don't know.

E: Braveheart.

J: Oh yeah. Like.

C: That, I guess, yeah.

J: So first thing is there is something about that drone noise and music. It, you know, it like, I don't know, just kind of gives me an old world vibe. You guys like, feel that when you hear music like that?

E: Especially bagpipes, certainly, or something that resembles a bagpipe.

J: Yeah, so I just like, I like that that style of music and that, you know, instruments that do things like this. Clearly it's an instrument that they have that drone and it just brings me to a certain place. It's really cool. So I got a ton of guesses. There of course were themes in here of the of what people were guessing. So the most common response was similar to this. This is from Brody Bullston home. He said. Hi Jay, long time listener and occasional. Who's that noisy guesser and induction cook, top demonstrator. Last time that he guessed the sound of Sputnik, he said this week's noisy sounds like a hurdy gurdy. All the best. So in case you don't know what a hurdy gurdy is.

E: It's a cool instrument.

J: It's a cool instrument. I've I've talked about it previously, but basically there's like a spinning wheel that's rubbing against strings and there has keys on it that you can press. So it's really oddly kind of like a combination of several instruments. But to do it justice, the best thing is just go look it up on YouTube. You'll see videos, but I will play you. I will play you what a hurdy gurdy sounds like. OK, so there's definitely a similarity in the sound, correct?

US#03: Yes.

J: Unfortunately, it is not the hurdy gurdy. So this is with the if we were playing SGU versus the the rest of you, like against the audience, 2/3 of the audience would have just sat down because that's where most of the guesses were hurting. Gertie next listener wrote in Alexander Moore and Alexander says hi long time first time this weeks noisy sounded beautiful. I thought it was either an old school dot matrix printer or hard drive repurposed to sound like the bagpipes or mash cat mash hack. Thank you for a wonderful show. And this is also incorrect. I thought that was an interesting guest though. Another listener wrote in Bradford West and Bradford said, dear Jay, it's freaking bagpipes with distortion on them. So I assume everybody knows what bagpipes sound like, correct? OK, so I won't play the bagpipes. It's not the bagpipes. And again, you know, because they're of the drone that bagpipes have, there's a very distinct seliminarity. Cara. I was saying the word aggravated and I said aggravated. And one of my friends, Shane, you know, Shane guys, has not let me live it down in 30 years. He still he still jokes with me about that.

E: Wow.

US#05: He's very pedantic, huh?

J: Absolutely. Thank you, I don't even know how to spell that word or pronounce it anymore. Carrie Glenn Roden Hi, I believe that this week's sound is a set of Ulene pipes. They are traditional bagpipes from Ireland. I tried learning to play them but they are wicked hard and don't do well in the dry climate of Western Canada. OK, so let me play this instrument for you. It definitely has a horn sound and again, it has the drone, right, But that is not the instrument that we're talking about. And I actually stumbled on something I think a lot of you have not heard of or are aware of. So was there a winner? Yes, there was a winner. The winner is Will Beldman, Will said. Hey Jay, this week's noisy is a a rendition of the Water is wide played on an instrument called the cantoreal. All right, so he gives a description, a spinning wheel that attaches to an acoustic guitar. So imagine you're holding an acoustic guitar and you connect the device to the bridge of the of the guitar, which is the the where the strings end on the body of the guitar, not at the other end of the neck. It's where the the the strings beginner and on the on the body part of the guitar. So there's a this device that has a spinning wheel and it can touch the strings and that's where you get the similarity to the hurdy gurdy, right? But instead of with the hurdy gurdy, you're pressing notes with buttons and on the guitar, you're just you're, you're, you know, playing notes and chords on the guitar. Let me see. So he also said this is interesting. The tune is also known as Oh, Wally Wally, which is an English folk song dating back to at least 1906 that has been used in many different forms, including hymns and prayers, nursery rhymes, etcetera. So let me get back to playing the cantoreal for you so you can pick out the differences between these instruments.

U: Now.

J: You can. Hear you can hear the fingering happen on the cantoreal. I, I can, I can hear the person fingering the, the fret board. Meaning there's a feel and a sound that that an instrument makes. And it's very different than somebody pressing buttons on the hurdy gurdy or the other instrument that we played, which was literally like a bagpipe like instrument that has a wind instrument attached to it. They all have different fields. Anyway, I just thought this was fascinating and I think it's a really cool application to to take the the part of a hurdy gurdy that literally produces the sound by a wheel that has friction on it that's rubbing against the strings. But to hear someone fingering it on an acoustic guitar just makes its own beautiful sound and I really, really thought it was fantastic. Anyway, so we have a new noisy for you guys this week. This noisy was sent in by a listener named Andrew Denman, and here it is.

US#03: I have. No idea, but I love it.

J: I know right? It just has a quality to it that cracks me up. So if you think you know what this weeks noisy is or you heard something cool, please e-mail me at wtn@theskepticsguide.org. Steve, we're going to be in where? Where are we going? We're going to Kansas, correct? Kansas, September 20th. We have two shows, Cara, and you're in both of them, so you better start resting up.

E: Is that expect? Get your ChatGPT 5 ready.

J: We got a SGU private show. This is a private show plus, which means it's three hours. It includes George Robb and we do a live recording of the podcast. And I've said this many times, but if you haven't been to one, it's really hard to describe. But basically during the live podcast, we go more off the rails and crazier stuff happens, and we're much more liberal with the things that we say and everything. And through the magic of editing, Steve will bring it back down to what would be considered a relatively normal show. But if you're there, it's not. And there are a ton of fun for us and the audience. So please join us for that. And we're also going to be doing our stage show, the Skeptical Extravaganza of Special Significance. This is our stage show that we've been doing for over 10 years. We have refined this show exquisitely. It's a ton of fun. You will learn things about the human brain. You will learn things about your perception, and you will learn to laugh because George Robb is an incredibly funny guy, makes me laugh every time I do the show with him because he's just hysterical. And again, this show is a ton of fun. There are lots of lots of different things that happened during the show, but I promise you, it's like nothing else you've ever seen. So you can go check out where to get tickets for these shows and get more information about them on theskepticsguide.org. And you just need to go make it happen. Join us in Kansas because we're going to have a blast. Two more quick things, Steve, if you appreciate the work that we do on this show, this is a great time to become a patron of the show to to help us continue to do what we're doing. And also, everybody knows we're expanding. I know that you guys talked about the politics podcast that we have that we're in pre production on right now. So any, any help that you can provide us to keep going, please consider becoming a patron. You can go to patreon.com/skeptics guide and we have a weekly e-mail. Just join it and check it out. And if you don't like it, quit us. But give us a shot because the email's a lot of fun. There's lots of fun things in there, including all the stuff that we've done the previous week. I think you'll you'll like it.

S: All right, thank you, Jay.

Emails (1:28:53)

S: One quick e-mail this week. So we got it.

Who Am I (1:28:56)

None

S: We got the e-mail pointing towards a news item about the US military planning on developing or there's a Wisconsin company that's developing these mini nuclear power plants with the an eye towards supplying them towards U.S. military bases. The idea being that, you know, military bases need to be independent for their energy and most military bases now basically tie into civilian energy. Some have their own power source. Most will have backup energy. They think they need to have some kind of backup energy, but a lot of them are basically just burning diesel and diesel generators. Did you know that the 20% of U.S. soldiers, US casualties in a theater of war occur in fuel convoys?

J: Really. Yeah.

S: So it's a huge vulnerability to have to constantly deliver fuel to your forward deployed bases. So that's the idea. The idea is that, you know, they would, you would basically have this mini nuclear power plant. They can have three to five years of energy before it needs to be refueled. It would be completely self-contained. You have no more, you know, daily fuel deliveries. It's not it's independent of the energy grid. The e-mail, I thought this would be reckless because of, you know, having a nuclear power plant in the war zone. But I think that's focusing on a very narrow part of this. So first of all, you know, most of the bases are going to be in the US or in friendly countries. Only a certain number of bases are quote, UN quote, forward deployed. They the article essentially just said there was has been no discussion yet of what the security would be. But you know, that's really the only what matters is first of all, you know, you're hopefully this would be in the middle of a military base, right? So you would think it'd be well protected. But as long as as long as they they adequately protect it, put it in a hardened bunker, you know, wherever with the proper security, etcetera, etcetera. I don't really see that as being a problem. But the the advantage is, is pretty big because you know, the Pentagon is for institutionally is the #1 user of fossil fuels in the world and the US military uses 1% of the fossil fuel that or is responsible for 1% of the carbon emissions of the United States. So it's not insignificant. You know, replacing what is mostly a fossil fuel energy source with with nuclear would be useful, not necessarily would be a cheap form of energy, but but the extra expense would be worth the reliability and security, right. Interestingly, this is happening at the same time that there's been discussion of NASA building a nuclear power plant on the moon. Have you guys heard that? Yeah.

US#09: I did, yeah.

E: Definitely heard that.

S: Yeah, which, yeah, it all depends on what they plan on doing on the moon, right? But if we're planning on having a long term presence on the moon?

E: It's a must.

S: It's it's it pretty much is a must.

E: It has to happen.

S: Yeah. So you think about it like what potential energy sources are there on the moon? You could burn fuel but delivering fuel to the moon is kind of a non starter like that would be that's.

US#03: Huge. Ridiculously.

S: Expensive limiting factor, yeah. And there's obviously no wind. Solar is great, but if you're at the poles, if you're not at the poles, you get 2 weeks on, two weeks off. Not good. You would need a lot of batteries, you know, basically it'll go over those.

E: Two weeks of darkness, Those panels.

S: Not on the moon, Mars, yes, Mars you'd have to constantly and if you get as you get farther out, obviously the sun intensity lessons Mars has 50% the sunlight intensity as the Earth, Jupiter has 4%. So as you get to the outer solar system, solar becomes much less efficient, much less useful. So that for the moon, yeah, it's pretty much nuclear is going to be your best option. You could deliver one of these things. You have it be designed to fit into a rocket. There you go, 20 years of constant energy and then we won't have to make another delivery for 20 years, something like that. You know that would.

B: You know this, you know this isn't new. They mean, I know there's. None of this. Is they're working on not, I mean not you're talking like reactors, I'm talking about a nuclear power power plants like like I think they're they're working on 10 kilowatt, 50 kilowatt, maybe 100. I mean, these designs are basically done and and in in a lot of ways tested. I mean, I'm not sure why you know that that reactor would be a huge advantage over work that's basically almost basically done. I'd like to see a comparison between the two, but I've talked about it a couple couple years.

S: Ago yeah, that's just a new company saying we're going to design these and mass produce them for specifically military bases and same thing with the moon is like when NASA used to develop 1 specifically that could fit on a rocket that you could set up on the moon. But these these small nuclear fission reactors are old news. Absolutely, Bob, there are companies that make them and again, it's not that different than nuclear submarines or naval ships. You know we've been doing these for what, 70 years without a problem also in war zones, you know what I mean? It's like the whole idea of like, no nuclear power plants in war zones. Tell that to the Navy because they've been doing that for seven.

E: Does having a nuclear reactor on the moon violate the space treaties in which there's supposed to be no nukes in space?

S: I think there's no nuclear weapons in space.

E: OK, so.

S: There's already nuclear power in space. It's it's nuclear batteries, it's not fission reactors, but it's still nuclear material in space.

E: Gotcha. OK.

S: So yeah, it shouldn't, shouldn't be a problem. All right, Evan, you are going to do this new segment called Who am I?

E: I am, Yeah. It's a game I invented. And who am I? I'm going to read to you a few sentences as if it were written by a famous person describing themselves in the first person, and you have to guess who they are. Here are the rules. Any of the four, any of the four of you. The contestants can answer at any time. However, you will only get one guess.

B: At first or as a group?

E: At each of you. Each of you get one guess. The first one to answer correctly wins. So if you want to give me a guess after I read 10 words, fine. But if you're wrong, you're out for the round. You must remain in total silence and allow the others to hear the rest of the description. Does that make sense to everyone? Ever. Yes, it's. Let us do. Clear. Let's do this. Let's do a Let's do an A practice. 1C Brown. I came up with the practice and Jay's out. Here's a This one's for practice. OK, so no points for this one. As a child, I was captivated by the stars above New York City, dreaming of distant worlds. Correct. Carl Sagan. Very. Good.

C: Wait, what? I'm so OK. So you just kind of call it out.

E: Yes, you call it out, but you only get one You can, only you can't. So there's no rapid fire. There's no you can't make a million guesses. One guess is all you get. And if you're wrong, you got to you got to sit this one out and someone else gets a chance. All right, here's, here's the first one. There's going to be 5 of these. OK. They called my machine a bomb, though it was never built to destroy, only to decipher. During the war, I spent countless hours in a cold English estate racing to break codes that others thought unbreakable. I spoke more fluently with logic.

S: Than Alan Turing.

E: Yeah, Cara. Good, good. Good for you, I'll read the rest of it. I spoke more fluently with logic than with people. And yet my work helps save millions. Years earlier, I asked a simple question. Can a machine think that question would later define an entire field? Though my country judged me for who I loved, history remembers me for how I thought. And somewhere in every modern computer, a piece of my legacy hums quietly. All right, Cara, good job.

J: Good job, Cara.

E: Thanks number 2. When I was young, I loved science and tennis. Both required focus, curiosity and drive. But it was the stars that called to me the loudest. In 1983, I strapped into a space shuttle and became the first American woman to soar into.

B: Orbit, Sally Ride.

E: Bob, you got it. Sally Ride, I'll read the rest of it.

B: Good job.

E: I wasn't there to make history. I was there to do science, to operate the robotic arm, and to prove that women belonged in space. Later, I devoted my life to education, helping young girls see themselves in science and engineering. I always said you can't be what you can't see, so I made sure they could see me.

C: Have you guys seen the documentary?

E: No, no. I should though. Absolutely.

C: Yeah, it's a, it's a Nat Geo documentary, actually. A friend of mine made it and it's it's phenomenal. Gosh it. Was such huge news. You can see it on Hulu right now and probably or whatever the Disney.

E: Boy, she was on the cover of every magazine, every newspaper in those in those 80s here in 80.

C: Three and no one knew she was gay, right kept it a secret it. Didn't even come up right.

E: Yeah, all right #3 For years I wandered the scorching sands of Egypt, chasing a rumor, a name, one lost pharaoh whose tomb had never been found.

J: Indiana Jones.

E: No, Jay, you're out. Many thought I was wasting time and money, but in 1922 I knelt at the edge of a hidden staircase in the Valley of the Kings. My hard pounding Nope, bombs out. When we finally broke through the sealed doorway, someone asked me if I could see anything. I simply said yes. Wonderful things. Gold carvings, Chariots untouched for over 3000 years. It was the greatest archaeological find of the age and it changed how the world saw ancient Egypt forever. Steve Arcara.

S: It's the guy who discovered too.

E: Yes. I don't know his. Name. I need a name please. I'm trying.

S: To think of the name.

B: That that cursed guy, Frankie.

E: Something final, final guest Howard Carter.

B: Oh, yes, yeah.

E: Yeah, Howard Carter. OK, No one got that one. Two more to go. I was a boy from France who first dreamed of becoming an artist. But it was the invisible world of microbes that captured my life's work. I discovered that tiny organisms, unseen by the naked eye could spoil wine and milk or cause deadly diseases. By heating these liquids just enough, I found a way to make them safe, a process that now.

B: Bears my name Pasteur.

E: Steve got it.

B: No.

E: Steve got it right before you, Bob. Louis Pasteur. I'll finish. I also created vaccines that saved countless lives, from rabies to anthrax. My belief was simple yet revolutionary. Chance favors only the prepared mind. And I spent my life preparing for those chances. Louis Pasteur. OK, last one. Here we go. I think this is the hardest one. I once worked in the White House as a young historian, taking notes while President Lyndon Johnson paced the floor, dictating memories. That experience shaped my lifelong passion, telling the stories of American presidents not just as leaders, but as human beings.

S: Walters, Walters.

E: No, no, sorry Steve. I've spent years digging through Diaries, letters and archives to understand how power is used, how character is tested and how history turns on the choices of flawed but fascinating people. From Lincolns Team of Rivals to Roosevelts Fireside Resolve, I've tried to bring the past to life so we might better understand the present. When I say the name, you're going.

C: To be like wait, wait, wait. Let me guess, Walt Disney?

E: No.

C: Walter Cronkite, I missed the beginning and I was just thinking of the Hall of President.

E: How about Walter Cronkite? No, not Walter Cronkite. Bob, you're. You get. If you can guess it, you got it. Wink Martin down. Doris Kearns Goodwin.

S: OK.

B: Oh damn, we should have got that.

E: Yes, you should have. We should know who Doris Kearns Goodwin is. Yes, famous historian.

S: No historian.

B: It's gross stuff. Yeah, she. Did stuff.

E: Not just wrote stuff like wrote all time great books about presidents. OK, and there it is. Who am I?

S: Thank you, Evan. That was good.

E: Yeah, cool.

S: All right, guys, let's go on with science or fiction.

Science or Fiction (1:41:24)

Theme: None Item #1: A new study finds that when Europeans move to more walkable cities, they walk more, but the same is not true for Americans, who do not change their total average walking. Item #2: Researchers report the first clinical tests of an mRNA based treatment that demonstrates protection against all viruses. Item #3: Researchers find that the retina synchronizes the signals from different receptors before they get to the optic nerve to minimize temporal distortion.

Answer	Item
Fiction	A new study finds that when Europeans move to more walkable cities, they walk more, but the same is not true for Americans, who do not change their total average walking.
Science	Researchers report the first clinical tests of an mRNA based treatment that demonstrates protection against all viruses.
Science	Researchers find that the retina synchronizes the signals from different receptors before they get to the optic nerve to minimize temporal distortion.

Host	Result
Steve	win

Rogue	Guess
Jay	A new study finds that when Europeans move to more walkable cities, they walk more, but the same is not true for Americans, who do not change their total average walking.
Bob	Researchers report the first clinical tests of an mRNA based treatment that demonstrates protection against all viruses.
Evan	Researchers report the first clinical tests of an mRNA based treatment that demonstrates protection against all viruses.
Cara	A new study finds that when Europeans move to more walkable cities, they walk more, but the same is not true for Americans, who do not change their total average walking.

E: It's time for science or fiction.

S: Each week I come up with three Science News items or facts, 2 real and one fake. And then I challenge my panel and skeptics tell me which one is the fake. Three regular news items this week. You're ready. Here we go. Item number one. A new study finds that when Europeans move to more walkable cities, they walk more, but the same is not true for Americans who do not change their total average walking. And #2 researchers report the first clinical tests of an mRNA based treatment that demonstrates protection against all viruses. And I #3 researchers find that the retina synchronizes the signals from different receptors before they get to the optic nerve to minimize temporal distortion. Jay Go.

J: First, the first one here, the study. When Europeans move to a more walkable city, they walk more. But Americans don't do that right out of the gate. I find that very unlikely and I'll tell you why. Because if you've ever been in a walkable city, it could be a massive convenience to walk simply because the cities are set up in such a way where it's very easy to get around. Like Florence as an example, has a the center, the center part of the city. No vehicles are allowed so that you don't have an option there. You know, the devil's in the details here because it really depends on the city and you know, how big the city is and everything. But I just think in general, I mean, if you end up becoming a resident, if you're an American, if you end up becoming a resident in a European city, that's walkable.

S: You know, you're missing the point here, Jay. Yeah, this is European for Europeans. Yes, you move from one European city to another European city that has a higher walkability score or whatever. Your daily walking tracks with that. But if you move from one American city to another American city that has a different walkability score, it doesn't matter.

J: OK, I think that's science then. I was just going to get to my point, but yeah, I could see that. I think culturally and plus, you know, even if it has a higher walkability score, I think there are factors in there that would definitely keep an American from from becoming someone who ends up walking more. I hope I'm, I hope I'm wrong, but I don't think I am. Second one, researchers report the first clinical test of an mRNA based treatment that demonstrates protection against all viruses. I mean, my God, if this is true, could you imagine guys, you know, first clinical test, I know you got to be really, you know, you got to be careful what you're getting excited over. But still, if that's true, if mRNA, the mRNA platform has some type of treatment that could protect people universally, universally against all viruses, that's fantastic. I could see them using the platform for that. You know, now I'm going to get into a little details like the mRNA. An mRNA treatment basically solicits a an increase in antibodies like a protein antibody. So in order for that to be happening, they would have to have discovered an antibody unless they're doing multiple ones at the same time. I just don't know. But let you know, keep it, keep following my line of thought here. They'd have to have found some type of antibody or antibodies that would have a universal effect on all viruses. And I don't know if that mechanism is possible because of how different viruses can be. It seems a little unlikely. OK, so that one's a definite, definite maybe researchers. This is a third one. Researchers find that the retina synchronizes the signals from different receptors before they get to the optic nerve to minimize temporal distortion. I just think that one is absolutely science. So it's got to be #2 with my reckoning, Steve's not these. The mRNA 1 I think is the fiction.

S: OK, Bob.

B: Lazy Americans, science #2.

S: I like that.

B: This is new mRNA treatment against protection against all viruses. This is clearly the one that's designed to screw me over because it's like, are you kidding? I mean, not even me. I think most people, all of our reactions would be really protection against all viruses. No, but I think that's there's something to that that makes what you actually printed here accurate enough. Because what really got my attention was the third one. The retina synchronizes the single, the signals from the optic fiber to minimize temporal distortion. I think that one is fiction. I remember reading about how your your brain is is, it's kind of hard to describe. This was years ago that I read this, but it actually your brain adjusts your sense of time to a certain extent to smooth out your visual images so that there is no, no weird temporal jumping. So I don't think it's handled at the, at the optic nerve level. I think it's at A at a just A, at a higher level in the brain where it's, it's actually adjusting how you see things so that there's no temporal distortions based on this kind of stuff. I forget the details, but I think that's what you're referencing here. So this one seems off. So I'm going to say that that one is fiction. The the, the, the virus protection. I think it's just like meant to just us to jump on that and say baloney. So I think that's my, that's my assessment of this bullshit right here.

S: OK, Evan.

E: Well, I think I'm in agreement with Bob on this in all three of of these items because yes, Americans do not change their total average walking behaviors based on where they're living. I just don't see that it's not very American in a way. Whereas in Europe, I can definitely see that being the case. So I have a feeling that one is science. And then the mRNA, I know it's the irony here is just, you know, sickening frankly, that yeah, it's it's going to can demonstrate protection against all viruses. Sure. I think it could demonstrate protection against all viruses. And then but in the last one here, yeah, I didn't think that the retina to the optic nerve. I know about that. But then to minimize temporal distortion. Not that I'm any expert on an eye, but. And I think that that part is the incorrect part of this one. And I'll join Bob and say it's fiction.

S: Cara.

C: I think I have to go out on my own, which is dangerous. Number. One, yeah. I just don't buy it. I know I might not be like a typical American, but I've lived in cities that are more walkable and less walkable. I walked more in the more walkable cities. I walked less in the less walkable cities. I think that we're stereotyping Americans based the most ludicrous example of a couch potato who, like gets in their car to drive one block. I don't think most people are like that. And I think the reason most people in cities don't walk much is because the cities themselves, there's nothing to walk to. Like, they live in very suburban areas where they can't get anywhere without a car. But I think if people could walk, they would walk anywhere. I think that's probably across the globe. I don't know. That one bugs me, but I wouldn't be surprised if Americans walk less. Like they change their average walking less than Europeans. But the fact that they wouldn't at all, that's no, there's no way somebody moves from the suburbs of Iowa to New York City and they don't walk more. I just, I don't buy that. So I guess that means the other ones I don't know, but I feel so strongly about that. The other ones have to be science. I know the mRNA like antiviral is something that we've all been hoping for and working towards. I didn't know that we have clinical tests, but if that's science, that's incredible. And I thought we already knew that the retina does some synchronization prior. I think that it kind of happens, like the smoothing happens all the way along the way, but if you're looking at the different types of like rods and cones, they do have different like temporal capabilities like motion and color and all those things. But I think time would be included in that. So yeah, I don't know. I think it's The Walking one that's the fiction.

S: OK, so we're all spread out.

C: Good job.

US#09: Good job, Steve. Well done.

S: So why don't we take this in order? We'll start with the first one. And you study fun. Getting excited. When Europeans move to more walkable cities, they walk more. But the same is not true for Americans who do not change their total average walking. Carrie, you think this one is the fiction? Very strongly believe this one's the fiction. The guys think that this one is science and this one is the fiction. Good job. Holy moly. That is gay, Cara. So the study was done just in Americans and it found that they absolutely do walk more in more walkable cities. And so Cara is. Correct.

C: Yeah. Go America.

S: Yeah. So of course the supporting the we. Still suck anyway. Supporting the notions it is worthwhile for cities to design themselves to be more walkable because people will walk more and which is can have huge, you know, health benefits, environmental benefits, you know, decreased energy use, etcetera, etcetera. So it does matter. And you're right, though I think the lazy American stereotype is really a stereotype. It's not. Not. Reality. OK, let's go on #2 researchers report the first clinical test of an mRNA based treatment that demonstrates protection against all viruses. Jay, you thought this one was the fiction. This one is also, of course, science. This is cool. Now, Jay, you seem to think this was a vaccine, you know, making antibodies. That's not. That's why I said mRNA. MRNA based treatment, not an mRNA vaccine. It's very specific there. So what this is, this is a very interesting story. So there is a rare genetic disease that causes a problem with the immune system. People who have this, they have an impaired immune system, but they also have this constant low level of inflammation. And it was discovered that in some of these patients who have this disease, they don't get viral infections. They had they were they, it was found specifically that they had antibodies to viruses indicating a prior infection, but had no history of an infection, right. So it's like they had measles virus, but they never had the measles. So the thinking is, well, maybe they had an asymptomatic infection, but then why is that? So maybe it's because whatever their disorder is actually protects them against symptomatic viral infections. So they studied the what you know, what is it, what are the these genetic disorder? What does it actually do to their immune system? Is it plausible that it could be, you know, protecting against a viral infections? And they identified so that I think there were 20 proteins that are expressed that are because basically they have, they lack an inhibitor of these proteins. And they identified, they said, OK, well, these ten are going to be a problem for autoimmunity. But these ten we should, we could probably the person would probably be OK. So they, they studied this in, in animals. It wasn't in human studies, but they said, let's just give a, we'll use mRNA so that the animal produces these 10 proteins. These were in hamsters and see if that gives them protection against viruses like these people with a genetic immune disorder and it turns out it does against every virus they challenge them with. It doesn't seem to matter what the virus is doesn't have to have viral specificity, it's just essentially increasing the activity of the immune system to have much more robust surveillance and antiviral activity against all viruses.

B: What the hell?

S: Man, so how would this be used? Not this is not the kind of thing that you would use for enduring resistance, right? The way they envision this treatment would be used, obviously it has to get replicated. We need human studies. But the way it would be used is, let's say during the pandemic, you could give this treatment to first responders or frontline workers to protect them even before we've identified what the virus is, right? Or before we've developed a vaccine, right? Just give them temporary sort of super immunity to all viruses just until we can, for example, isolate the virus, create a vaccine, etc. So this could be just another tool, you know, in the toolbox fighting viral infections and epidemics, pandemics, etcetera. Also, if someone is, you know, even if there are lots of viruses for which we don't have specific treatments and they could be deadly, you know, they could be very, very serious. You could give this to somebody to get them over, you know, give them the week or two weeks they need to recover from a very serious viral infection. So just a non specific immune enhancing broad spectrum antiviral treatment. Very cool.

B: That lasts for you said two weeks.

S: It's. Very short lived. Yeah, it lasts for a very short period of time.

B: Well, is it? Could they potentially make it last, you know, forever?

S: They don't want to make it last forever because this causes autoimmunity, right? There's a reason why we're not all walking around with this immune system, right?

C: Yeah, because then you'd be like me and you'd have psoriasis.

S: We'd have something, right? It's not. Good.

C: Yeah, you'd have something autoimmune.

S: Yeah, they're just giving you a sort of a lesser version of this immune disorder for a short period of time so that you could survive a viral infection. Right. But you don't want this for your life. But not but but maybe they might say, hey, tweak it. Maybe they could tweak it to the point where CRISPR where there you could have longer standing enhanced viral immunity with without any downside. OK, maybe but we can't, but we don't know that yet. But for these like 10 proteins or whatever, they're looking at only short term immunity.

B: Yeah, man, that sounds like an awesome stepping stone to me. Come on.

S: The other thing is if Bob, if we did, if like if everybody had this long term protection, the viruses would eventually evolve around it, right? And then it'd be useless. So maybe just keeping it in? Reserve for short and I'll be dead.

B: I'll be dead by the time that happens. I don't care.

S: All right, this means that researchers find that the retina synchronizes the signals from different receptors before they get to the optic nerve. To minimize temporal distortion is also science fashion. Bob and FN your thinking was exactly what the researchers thought that this kind of fix happens in the brain, not in the retina. But but they found and they were a little bit surprised to find out this shit is happening in the retina. Now, what I'm talking about specifically is imagine you guys know like in the retina, there's the optic nerve in one location and to all the in the retina, which is like a sphere, you know, is filled with rods and cones and they you know, the light receptors and then each one of them has its own Axon that then goes to the optic nerve, right? So if you're right next to the optic nerve, you travel a very short distance. If you're at the other end of the retina, you have to travel a relatively longer distance. So the time it takes for those two receptors to get their signal to the optic nerve can vary. And even though the light is hitting them at the exact same moment, those signals would not arrive at the optic nerve at the same time, and that would cause temporal distortion, right?

E: Brain sorts it out.

S: But yeah, that was the thing, all the brain will sort it all out. But what what they discovered was that the transmission time, the speed of the transmission is faster for the longer nerves and that that compensates for the distance to minimize the difference in arrival time of simultaneous signals, so that. Isn't that wild? So essentially, the longer that acts on, the thicker it is and the faster it conducts. And so that partially compensates for the longer distance, causing the difference in time of arrival time of the signals to be mere like a few milliseconds at most, so insignificant enough that it doesn't cause any perceptible distortion. Isn't that cool? It happens right in the retina before the signal even gets to the.

B: Yeah.

E: Amazing.

B: I was looking at, I was trying to remember what I read a bunch of years ago. I forget what book it was even but I I did a quick Google of it but it what I was referring to was something that's called continuity.

S: Feeling I knew exactly what you were talking about. Could we talk about this show? Yeah, different thing.

B: It's fast, but I thought that's what this I thought that's what they were kind of trying. I thought you that's what you were trying to, you know, hide from us in that in that one. But.

E: Once again, your knowledge has LED you astray in in this game.

B: Yeah, as usual. That's my, you know, that's my cross to bear.

J: Good job, Cara.

S: Yep. Yeah, Cara.

B: Thanks. All right, Cara, I just, I just care. I just have no pity for me, for you, when you say, oh, I'm going to go out on my own. I'm nervous. I I'm not, I'm not nervous. I'm not nervous at you for all this.

C: Is the last time I did that it it bit me in the ass?

B: I don't care. Because every year you kick our ass. So it's, you know, it's a pity party of one because I, I have no pity for you because you always do very well.

E: Your LA sensibilities served you well.

Skeptical Quote of the Week (1:58:47)

“I heartily beg that what I have here done may be read with candour; and that the defects in a subject so difficult be not so much reprehended as kindly supplied, and investigated by new endeavors of my readers.” Issac Newton  – Cambridge, Trinity College May 8, 1688, (description of author)

S: All right, Evan, give us a quote.

E: This week's quote was supplied or suggested by listener Scott from Canada. Thank you, Scott, Scott writes. I am reading the Andrew Mott English translation from 1729 of The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, and this is from the author's preface, the last line. And he says I feel it embodies a healthy scientific attitude, complete with humble humility. And here's the line. I hardly beg that what I have here done may be read with candor, and that the defects in a subject so difficult be not so much reprehended as kindly supplied and investigated by new endeavors of my readers. Isaac Newton.

S: Yeah, that's interesting.

E: Yeah.

S: Doesn't have a reputation for being a humble guy.

E: No, no, he's kind of an old cratchety. Yeah, right. Jerk, kind of.

S: Yeah.

E: But that's a very, that is. That's a nice little diamond in the rough there that he found.

S: No, it's a very It's a very interesting quote.

E: It is a good quote, so thank you Scott for suggesting it. I liked it.

S: Thank you.

E: Like, Aladdin Diamond in the rough.

S: Yeah. All right. Well, thank you all for joining me this week.

E: You're welcome. Thanks, Steve. Welcome back, Jay. Welcome back. Yeah.

S: And until next week, this is your Skeptics Guide to the Universe.