SGU Episode 1052

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SGU Episode 1052
September 06th 2025
"Exploring the future of robotics with this intricate flying insect model."
SGU 1051                      SGU 1053
Skeptical Rogues
S: Steven Novella
B: Bob Novella
C: Cara Santa Maria
J: Jay Novella
E: Evan Bernstein
Quote of the Week
"If you torture the data long enough, it will confess to anything."
Ronald Coase
Links
Download Podcast
Show Notes
SGU Forum

Intro

E: 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, September 3rd, 2025 and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella.

B: Hey everybody.

S: Cara Santa Maria.

B: Howdy.

S: Jay Novella.

B: Hey, guys.

S: Evan Bernstein.

B: Hello everyone.

S: Aunt George Robb.

US#05: See you in September. It's September. Hi, everybody.

S: It's great to have you on the show.

US#05: Oh, nice to be here even though I'm here and you're there. But still, the idea of us being here together is what it's what it's all.

S: Virtually here basically.

E: I'm really way over here.

US#05: It's true.

E: I can see you from here. I can see your house from here. Is Sarah Palin Rep. It's a very old joke.

S: So George, we wanted to have you join us just partly because we love having you on the show and you're going to join us for the whole show. But 2 1/2 weeks from now, 2, two weeks from when the show comes out, we are going to be together in Lawrence, KS. Kansas, Can you believe it in a while? It's going to be a lot of. Fun.

US#05: OK, who amongst us has been to Kansas before? Because I have not I.

S: Think I have.

J: I don't quite remember though why and.

US#05: You were there and you were there. Seriously, right? How many Wizard of Oz references can we throw into this trip? I'm excited. I'm excited. I think it's going to be really cool because it's like the kind of place you go where I think the people that are going to be at these shows are going to be really into it and appreciative of this, of this kind of science. Island arriving. Perhaps, you know, much like the Wizard in the balloon stopping by for a few minutes to be like you're, it's OK, we're all on the same team. Yay.

S: Yeah, So we're doing a extravaganza.

US#05: That's the nighttime show.

S: That's the nighttime show. We, we, we change that every time we do it. We change at least one little thing about it. We keep iterating it and it keeps getting better. People ask us like, what is this show? What do you guys do?

J: Basically it is a improv show where George has all these different things that he throws at us that we we we know the game, but we don't know the specifics of what it is. So, for example, would be we do a thing called Freeze Frame, which George and the audience secretly pick out a movie and then all of us but one no, we're going to be told what the movie is and they have to freeze their bodies in a position. So the person that doesn't know what the movie is, let's say it's Bob, he's backstage, he comes out and he sees all of us standing in this weird position. He has to figure out what the movie is. It's so it's like we don't know what the movie is going to be and we don't know what any of it's going to be. And it's crazy and it's awesome and it's fun for us and it's fun for the audience because you know, we're doing some, you know, some crazy stuff. Steve, remember when your pants fell down that year? It was, it was great. And then also we are teaching the audience about how they cannot trust their own senses, and we fool the audience in so many different ways there's. A lot of audience participation there is.

US#05: Yeah, we're gonna have you doing all kinds of interesting stuff. The whole, to me, the whole show is about showing you how your brain is really good at some things and your brain is really bad at some other things and doing it in the most fun and interactive way we possibly can. Audiences love it. I mean, we get a really good response when we do it. We're always excited when we do it, and people seem to really dig it. And like, like Steve said, it's different every time. It's different every time. Even the same games that we do, because the games are set up to be different. Even if you've seen the show before, it's a very different experience every single time.

S: And then we're going to do a private show. But it's really more than a private show. We call it the Private Show Plus it's at least three hours, but it'll be more than that. And in the middle we record a live recording of the SGU. But around that we do just a whole bunch of interactive stuff with the audience, and that changes every time too. We just sort of decide what are we going to do this time, you know? But it's always fun sort of interactive games. And George, you're going to give us a little bit of a demonstration of one of the games that we played during this episode.

US#05: Yeah, Later on in this episode, we're going to play a little bit just to give you sort of a hint of what's going to be happening. It's and it's, it's like, like you said, there's this chunk of it that is just a regular podcast. Not that there's anything regular about this podcast. It's a little, it's just a, yeah, it's a, it's a sort of off the rails recording of the show, which is really fun to see because out of the two plus hours, let's say that is recorded, it usually ends up being in an hour and a half show. Why? So there's all this extra little sort of behind the scenes stuff. And then we have on top of that some games that we play, stuff that also involves the audience in, in a cool way. It involves the rogues in a cool way. And it's it's a lot of fun. And we're going to have a little sneak preview today in this in this episode.

S: Yeah, those shows are a lot of fun.

US#05: So. So get your tickets while you can because there's still how much space is left if they're going quick. Jay, how do they go in quick?

S: People get tickets.

J: Well, there's, there's one particular way, George, that people get tickets here. You, it's a little complicated to see if you can follow along. You're very slowly, you gotta go.

US#05: So you go or I go or just one goes.

J: They it's always there.

US#05: They OK, they go.

J: They have to go to theskepticsguide.org, the website OK and then not the physical store, the website.

E: Yeah, not the store.

J: Yeah, now they go there. There is a link there for both of these shows. The the private show plus is going to happen. I think our start time's at noon and that'll run from noon to 3:00-ish. And then the night time show starts at 8 PMI think VIP starts at 6:00. But all this will be clarified in emails that I'll be sending out to everyone soon. Tickets are absolutely available. We would love to have you out there. You know, the private show plus situation, though, George. Yeah, that one. You know, this is the thing I tell people, but they don't really know it until they've come. And then they go, oh, yeah, Now I get it. The thing is, we do a show, sure. We do a live recording of the SDU, but everything is off the rails from the gecko, you know, because we're in the space with people and it's a more intimate situation. Like we're joking around more. We're saying things that we don't say while we do. Well, we record at home individually over here. Like it's just, you know, when we're in the room together, there's a lot more chemistry happening and it's a ton of fun. Plus, you're you know you're there, which is going to make it even more entertaining.

US#05: Well, that's very sweet of you to say. It's it says it's a behind the veil kind of look at the process of the whole thing. Plus, I mean, look, just one segment that we're doing, you've all been to Q And as before, you know, you have the podcast Q and as you have the celebrity Q and as we have AQ and A that is going to be the most original, different, fantastic Q&A you've ever been involved in. We are guaranteeing this is going to be the most interesting Q&A. We came up with this the other day. It was it was like a bolt of lightning hit all of us. We went, Oh my gosh, this is the way we're going to do it. So if if for nothing else, come to that Q&A that's going to be really, really special and different. We're excited for that.

S: All right, let's move on with the show. We got a lot of great content for you coming up, Bob. You're going to start us off with real interstellar techno signatures.

B: Yes, thank you. Steve.

Quickie with Bob: Real Interstellar Technosignatures (06:47)

• What technosignatures would interstellar objects have? 

B: This is your quickie with the Bob guys. You know, You know, there's so much nonsense out there lately, but interstellar comets and asteroids being alien technology, and I'm just getting increasingly frustrated with people like Avi Loeb and now also apparently, apparently Michio Kaku, who's also now chiming in with similar nonsense. It's like so ridiculous. Didn't.

E: He learn anything from us when he was on our show many. Years ago.

B: Oh my God, no, there was. It was therefore therefore very refreshing just recently to see a paper out there spelling out the actual red flags that would make me and real scientists sit up and take notice. Like, whoa, what's going on over here? So this is a new paper was recently published in the archive server called Techno Signature Searches of Interstellar Objects. Very straightforward. So this was led by James Davenport from the Dirac Institute of at the University of Washington. So ultimately this is a search for techno signatures, right? Direct evidence of tech technology being used by some extraterrestrial life, some alien life out there. Now this paper specifically addresses for techno signatures for Isos. ISOS that stands for interstellar objects. OK, so that's the context. So this is a quickie. So let's just cut to the chase and I'll stop rambling here. The first category here is described as acceleration anomalies. And this is this is I think is one of the one of the most important, important ones. So this is primarily deviations from an expected orbital path, right, unexplainable by known natural processes like out gassing, radiation pressure. And there's lots of other other subtle, you know, subtle ways that objects in space can move non gravitationally that don't imply an engine pushing something. It's just like slightly weird trajectories that are but they are easily explainable. They are real. So one famous example for this is 1 IO. This. This had a weird seemed to have a weird trajectory and we really just didn't get enough observing time to pin down exactly what was happening. Of course, Avi Loeb was chiming in saying that this was a major example, a major red flag for this to be an alien ship, which which is ridiculous. Nobody, no one reasonable in my mind thinks that Omur Amur was not natural. This was just something we caught at the tail end of its of its orbit, you know, that we could easily observe and we just didn't have enough time. We we don't know exactly what was going on, but we have we have a decent idea. OK, Now the, the hallmark of this, of this option, this category, this, these acceleration anomalies isn't subtle in my mind, right? Any subtle motions that we can't immediately explain are probably going to be natural, right? There's something that will we'll figure it out. It's just very subtle. I mean, what was that probe that we sent out?

S: Yeah, just thinking about that Pioneer, yeah, 1 of it took probes years, had anomalous acceleration we couldn't figure out for years. Yeah, the slight subtle accelerations like a MUA, MUA had, which was probably just outcasting, we just didn't know where it was coming from.

B: Right, exactly that.

S: You don't need to hypothesize alien nuclear engines to explain that. But if it's doing major course corrections in a way that right beyond what what, even beyond the possibility of a natural explanation, then that is convincing.

B: Right. So that that to me that would be the hallmark of this note this first category, this acceleration anomalies, a sudden non gravitational acceleration that's clearly unnatural 'cause, you know, perhaps caused by some advanced thruster who knows, you know, seeing this. And I mean, if it like changes its orbit or speeds up or even slows down dramatically, I think that would be enough to say, whoa, this could seriously be something artificial because this was dramatically beyond anything we would expect naturally. So that's so that's category one. Number two was strange colors or Spectra. So here we're looking for non natural colors or reflectance. OK, this could this could indicate some weird coatings or paints or even, or even glass. Another option in this category would be something like if we see an extra infrared glow, this could be suspicious waste heat, you know, for example, to detect this kind of stuff. Spectroscopy could help help us with this category potentially define unknown chemicals or even alien laser emissions potentially would be in this category. That was two number three was odd shapes in space. This one was an interesting category. So if something that we detect is incredibly thin, like a solar sail, say, or even even something that was shaped like a cylinder, then this would be, this would be be a huge clue. Unfortunately, though, I don't think at these distances that we're talking about, we might not even if it was a solar sail or or a cylinder, we might not get close enough to have that one image that clearly shows that. But there are other clues or hints that we could get if we saw something like unusual brightness changes or unusual rotation patterns or even light curves, weird light curves. Any of those could indicate that we that we may have an object out there that has a that has an artificial shape that is those anomalies. So that's number three. Number four, this final one is transmissions or emissions. So this would probably be one of the easiest techno signatures to detect from an ISO in, in our solar system. I mean, we're talking about detecting potentially just EM radiation. Like for example, the, the classic one is the narrow band radio transmissions that SETI often is looking for. Now this would, this would be trivial for trivial for us. We've been doing this for, for many, many decades. So these signals, these narrow band radio transmissions are prioritized because these, these would be ideal communication frequencies for long distance with minimal interference from the interstellar medium. It just sails right through with very little interference. So we've looked for those frequencies because it's ideal. If you're, you know, a technology that uses electromagnetism to communicate and study the, the, the universe, that's probably what you would use. But of course, if this is an alien spacecraft and it is communicating in something like sub neutrino axion feels oscillating at Planck scale harmonics, then we would never detect it and we would never, we would never know. So I'll end with that. This has been your non Avi lobe quickie with Bob. Back to you, Steve.

S: Bob, what about a warp signature?

B: Oh my God, You know, maybe we'll add, maybe we'll add a category 5 or maybe would that fit under? Yeah, that would probably fit under acceleration anomalies.

S: Or they're hailing us. I guess that's hailing. Transmissions.

B: That's category four. Yeah. Transmissions or emissions. So, yeah. So this is the stuff we should be talking about. None of this nonsense. My God. Look, it's going by Jupiter and Saturn. That's got to be intentional. And that is clear signs of an intelligence. Give me a break.

E: I sell books, Bob. It's about selling those books.

B: Yeah, that's what it seems like to me. It's a so frustrating dude. Come on. Please do some listen to our podcast. How about that? Listen to that. Get some critical start.

News Items

Sexless Seeds (13:44)

• Is this the future of food? 'Sexless' seeds that could transform farming 

B: There, belt. Yeah.

S: All right, Jay, tell us about sexless seeds.

J: Well, Steve, I have a question for you.

S: Yes.

J: Do you know how the Cavendish banana crop has grown?

S: Yeah, I do.

J: Well, go ahead.

S: So because. Each but each but each banana plant is a clone, right? So you have to take actually a clipping from the quorum, you know of one banana plant and plant that and that becomes another banana plant.

J: Those are the offshoots, and they're called suckers.

S: Yeah.

J: And I didn't make that up. Yeah. So that's essentially similar to what I'm about to talk to you about. There is a, there's a nice and obvious benefit to doing this one because, you know, you can pretty pretty much predict what the flavor is going to taste like. It's consistency. How long will it take to, you know, how long will it last during shipping? You know, they know all these numbers now because they're dealing with the same exact fruit every time. But, and I know you know this, Steve, there's a dark side right downside too. The downside is really bad. And it's not as bad. It's not quite as bad as Steve's cats peeing in his banana plants in the SDU studio. That and that that almost destroyed George's live stream show that we were doing that night. But I won't digress. I don't need to go there because George knows what the hell I'm talking about.

US#05: I do.

J: It was bad. I do. So in the mid 1900s, there was a fungus called Panama disease, and it nearly took out all the Gros Michel bananas, which were the bananas that people were eating before they decided to switch over to the Cavendish. And now there's a new strain of the same fungus. It's called Tropical Race 4. And it's spreading around the globe because every Cavendish is genetically identical. So once the fungus strikes, you know, once the fungus figured out what, what version of itself was going to work, it's starting to tear through plantations like wildfire around the world. And there's no diversity to slow it down. That's bad. Right Now, scientists are trying to create that same kind of situation on purpose, but with more guardrails up. So the idea is, and it this starts in eastern Australia, there's a crop of of sorghum, which it will soon sprout. It's under a mesh tent, and it looks pretty ordinary. But these plants are nothing but groundbreaking, and there's a massive modification to them because they will reproduce without sex. Now, this is plant sex. I'm sure you can find that, like other kinds of sex on the Internet. If you're interested to see about it, the process is called Catch Me Am I right here, Apomixis, Steve.

S: Apomixis.

J: Apomixis. OK, so their seeds grow without fertilization. They produce perfect genetic clones of the parent plant. And it's pretty much the same outcome as the bananas, right? But the seeds form rather than like these offshoot cuttings. And that that's the way that they would reproduce those plants. A scientist called Anna Colatunao, she's at the University of Queensland, and she's been working towards this for three decades. She began studying mild plants like dandelions that naturally reproduce this way, which I didn't know. I think that's pretty cool. So her team has actually engineered the process into a major food crop. Their experimental strain is called high gain sorghum. And if it works, every flower head could produce thousands of cloned seeds. And there are major players involved in this. They're circling, right? You have a company called Carteva Agriscience. This is one of the world's biggest seed companies and they happen to be a partner in the project. And also the Gaines Foundation is backing similar efforts. Because there's a huge potential here here to help, you know, small, small scale farmers, you know, in the sub-Saharan Africa region where access to reliable seeds could mean the difference between feeding people and survival and and a famine which happens over and over again. Most commercial seeds today are actually hybrids. That was Jay yourself. Basically not say it.

S: As I'd like to point out, before the 1st GMOs came on the market, like 98% of seeds planted in the US. Were hybrid it's a hybrid that's right.

J: So farmers, Steve, come on, get serious. Farmers buy them. They buy them because they deliver high yields, which is exactly what farmers want. Those benefits though, disappear in the next generation due to genetic reshuffling right. So you can't it's not like going to last forever. It happens during that that one season of planting and then it you know, they start to lose the traits that you want. This forces farmers to buy new seeds every year here, which, you know, isn't really a bad thing if you think about it. There's a big, you know, business around seeds and the companies are involved and there's genetic patents and all this stuff. It's a whole other story that we could go into at some point. But, you know, it does require farmers to buy seeds every year. APO mixes, like I said, changes the rules. Farmers could save seeds and they can replant them without losing the performance, which is the desired traits that they want from the plant. And this would break them free of an expensive seed buying cycle. So for companies like Corteva, it's a chance to to rapidly fix these desirable traits into new varieties, which would speed up development. It'll cut costs. It all seems really, really nice. And you know, so again, this isn't just science. There's a lot of economics mixed in with this. And I dare say that there's always economics mixed in with big science. O the banana story. Getting back to that, it is like a dark cloud that hangs over all this. So when every plant is genetically identical, a single pester disease can devastate those plants. It could be in an entire region or it could be globally. So this uniformity can bring stability on one hand at which a lot of things we that we want again like I said, the size of the fruit and the taste and the shipping and all that stuff. But it also creates a new vulnerability that we have to calculate into this, but.

S: It's not a new vulnerability. It already exists. We already have monocropping, we're already planting uniform hybrid seeds. They're just difficult to make and they only last that 1st generation. The hybrid traits don't breed true because now you get a random assortment of, you know, a match up of genes. This is really just going to leave us in the same place. Just a lot cheaper to propagate these hybrid plants. You don't have to hybridize them each generation. Once you make them, they just clone themselves indefinitely. The hope is. So there's, the way I see it, there's two real benefits here, as you said, for farmers who don't have the money to buy seeds every year, they could potentially save and replant their own seeds.

J: And, but also the hope is that they just get new, a new genetic strain every season.

S: Exactly that they the, it makes it so much cheaper that we could have a lot of different hybrids so that we're not all planting the same one, right. So if you lower the the cost of generating new seeds, that increases the genetic diversity of the plants that we that we plant, of the crops that we plant, right. If it's really expensive that a few companies dominate and they have their signature seeds, they don't have as much biodiversity. I think the same is true of GMOs. Most of the cost is in the regulation. And you know, by having the regulation so intense it really makes it only profitable for a few mega corporations you want. You know the small startups have a hard time, so making the development and marketing process as cheap as possible actually opens it up to a lot of smaller. Companies and increases the variety of seeds that are out there.

J: Yeah. And hopefully as they develop this technology they will do a thing. Maybe it's every it's on its cycle. Maybe every three or four years they sell them a different strain. You know what would you call that cultivar? A different cultivar, which is essentially is different genetics that would be variable enough that maybe wouldn't be susceptible to the same thing that the previous one did. And if they, if they can make that happen, this could, you know, put farming in the hands of more people. It could lower the prices. It could, you know, it could streamline a lot of things. And again, another big fear that I have after learning about all this is that, you know, these big corporations don't want that because they want to make the money and they want to make a lot of money. You know, it's not like let's do what's best for for the. People in the world, it's what let the companies are going to do what's in their best interest.

S: So yeah, but companies, they don't own the plants and the cultivars and the seeds that are already out there. But if they make a new hybrid, which is hard to do that, then they own, they have a patent on that for a while. But again, if you lower, if you lower the threshold so that say a university or a government or an organization can make a hybrid with, with a stable trait that then all you to make more of them, all you got to do is plant them and collect the seeds, right? Because the the hybrid traits are stable because you're just cloning it again. That's the point. Now you can just seeds reproduce themselves, right? You can just mass produce them with the stable hybrid traits and it won't be it won't be. It would actually break the monopoly of the big corporations. Mm hmm. Which is a good thing in that, you know, it's again gives us greater diversity, more competition, more startups, more other opportunities to do this. So anything anytime you know, you lower that cost in that threshold for getting something to market, getting it in the field, you know that that's it might that seems to me that that's a good thing.

US#05: Jay, there was one word you mispronounced with that. It's a sorghum. Sorghum. Yeah. Whenever you have to say it that way. Sorghum. No, you just in Pennsylvania here whenever like there's fields and fields of stuff, it's corn. There's like sunflower. It's like and but whenever I drive by a field and I see it, I point at the field and I go, oh, sorghum, why? I don't know why. It just makes me very happy.

J: It just makes me very so that's. Why? And that makes me think, do you even know George? This is a guy that has infected me over and over and over again.

US#05: Well, this is a new infection, and I hope that whenever you see a field of anything, you'll go, oh, sorghum.

J: I don't say the number 7 anymore. I say sad. I can't. I can't say it any other.

S: Way georgified.

US#05: It's been georgified. So folks out there, please pronounce it sorgum.

S: You know what it's used for Sorgum.

US#05: Sorgum for for gingham. No, I don't know. Yeah, for for filler.

E: Right feed.

S: Yeah, it's, well, it's animal feed, ethanol production, biofuel, but also just it's a gluten free grain, which could be used in any way that grains are used, you know, flour for prep breads or whatever. OK, It's got a lot of use. It's actually a really important crop, you know, even though you don't like you never order sorghum at the restaurant, you know what I mean? Like, it's not like.

US#05: Never.

S: Order What Sorghum. Sorghum. Sorghum. That's.

US#05: OK. Thank you.

S: Yeah, I've never gone to the store and purchased a bag of sorghum.

US#05: Yeah, at the store.

S: But it's in a lot of the stuff that we eat. Right, Right. All right.

US#05: Right.

S: Thanks, Jay Cara.

Spouses Share Psychiatric Disorders (24:55)

• Spouses tend to share psychiatric disorders, massive study finds 

C: Yeah.

S: You ever had that friends, like a couple, a married couple? And you know they have the same personality type.

C: Yeah, definitely.

S: And maybe sometimes even more than that, you know, tell. Is that a thing? Tell us about.

C: That's definitely a thing we're going to talk about a very specific study. But to broaden out, I guess we could point to some really interesting research that as a psychologist, I had to study quite a lot of like why people are attracted to each other. And it does seem to be the case that while the number one predictor of attraction is. Can anybody tell me the very first number one?

B: Face. Face smell.

S: Physical attractiveness. Age.

C: Proximity.

S: Oh yeah, that's. Right.

E: Yeah, that's kind of yeah.

C: If you are around somebody a lot, you are more likely to be attracted to them.

S: Also imagine there's with them too.

E: I imagine there are evolutionary pressures involved in.

S: That the one you're with, right?

C: And there are others though, right? There are people are attracted to people who are like them, right? People tend to be attracted to people who look like them, who sound like them. There's even, unfortunately, a sibling. Do you guys remember? Oh, God, I'm getting into the weeds here, but there's a documentary about this very unethical physician who donated his own sperm to a lot of women in his community. And like, there are rules about how much sperm you can donate. Yeah. Yeah. For for that reason, there are all these children in the community, many of whom are related without knowing it, and many of whom found themselves dating and then had to obviously take these DNA tests and learn about this. But there is some good research that shows that people who are genetically related are do tend to be more attracted to one another, very likely for the same reason, right?

S: But then is there also like the exotic factor where you could also be attracted to somebody who's very different from you?

C: Well, sure, I mean, every anybody can be attracted to anybody. But what we're talking about is not so much, let me figure out the variance for you personally, but let me look at like global trends, right? And so when I look across the board, people who are near each other tend to get together. People who have things in common tend to get together. Opposites actually actually don't tend to attract as often. But that's only a part of what we're talking about today, because a new study that was published in Nature Human Behavior looked at almost 15,000,000 people. They looked at the records of many, many people in Taiwan, Denmark and Sweden because they wanted to ask a simple question. When somebody is diagnosed with a psychiatric disorder, are they more or less likely to to be partnered with somebody who also has a psychiatric disorder? And they found that across the board, whether we're talking about different age cohorts, whether we're talking about Asian versus Scandi communities, that people are significantly more likely to be diagnosed with the same or another psychiatric condition of their spouse. Yeah, so wow, yeah, it's really interesting. So, so when one partner is diagnosed with so they looked at 9 different conditions. They looked at schizophrenia, bipolar, depression, anxiety, ADHD, autism, OCD and substance use disorders and also anorexia nervosa. And they found that spouses are more likely to have the same condition as their as their significant other than to have different ones. But people are more likely to also have another psychiatric condition than not when comparing all of these different couples. Now this was a trend that was noticed in the literature, noticed by some researchers in Nordic countries, but nobody had looked at it globally. And so researchers from across those countries and here in the US, US, namely in Tulsa, in San Diego, and in Los Angeles, looked at these large databases from Taiwan, where else did I mention Sweden and from Denmark? And they compared those databases to each other and they found that not only does the pattern hold across countries, across cultures, it also holds across generation. So they they looked at Taiwan specifically because they had access to richer data there and they divided it into like 10 year cohorts. So like the 1930's, the 1940's, the 1950s all the way to the 1990s. And they found that the chances of partner sharing a diagnosis actually increased a little bit with each decade, especially around substance use and substance use disorders, but that the pattern really did tend to hold. The only place where they found some differences in Taiwan, married couples were more likely to share an OCD diagnosis than in Nordic countries, for example. But for the most part, they found that this held. And so, you know, they didn't answer the question why, but they speculated, as many researchers do, where they dig deep into an important question and they do a complex statistical analysis and they say we we can see this pattern, but now we've got to explain this pattern. This is what we think and maybe we should do more research to figure that out. So I would ask the panel, the Rogues, why do you think that people with a psychiatric diagnosis are more likely to be partnered with somebody with a psychiatric diagnosis?

US#05: Well, my question is, does it develop overtime? Like the longer you are with someone, is your environment similar so that those kinds of behavioral things can emerge? Or is it because if you have some condition within you, you inherently find another person equally attractive or like you were brought up in a similar way like the whole nature nurture?

C: Right. And you're touching on on two of the reasons that the researchers did speculate. One of them, they said, is that here's psychiatric geneticist named Jan Fullerton at the University of NSW in Sydney. She said that, you know, social environmental stressors can contribute to a new diagnosis in a in a partner who is unaffected before, especially if they had mild or undiagnosed symptoms. So let's say they had a tendency towards and then being around their partner who maybe was either untreated or was manifesting certain symptoms that may kind of have pushed them into a diagnostic category. Another thing mentioned by the researchers is that obviously we're just attracted to people who are like us. And so, you know, I tend, I struggle with depression. I tend to do well with people who understand that about me. Maybe they understand that about me because they've dealt with it as well.

S: Cara, what about just the propinquity thing again? Like literally meeting in the waiting room, you know, seeing a therapist. I you know my personal experience, like when I know a couples who both have psychiatric diagnosis, that's almost always how they met.

C: Yep, and that's they mentioned that as well. Shared environment is a way to meet people, but also once you are in a shared environment, people tend to converge. They just become more like each other the longer they're around each other. And then finally, what about social stigma, right? I mean, it's one thing and when we're talking about depression, anxiety, you know, but if we're talking about more what we might call severe mental illness like schizophrenia or bipolar one disorder, it can be difficult to date. Just telling people that you're dealing with those conditions may make them, you know, concerned or there may be so much stigma that they don't want to engage. But when you know other people, again, who are dealing with the same thing, who might take the same medications as you, who, who understand what it's like to live with these mental health conditions, you may be more likely to be interested in sharing that time and space with somebody. So, and this just reminds me of like just a very basic thing that almost every student of psychology is exposed to And, and I think physicians as well, Steve, which are these different models of thinking? The first one, which it's almost like I never think to use the word anymore because it's so ingrained in me. But this idea of a biopsychosocial model of, of Wellness or of health, right? That we are all made-up of our biology, our psychology and our social experiences. And it's very hard to tease those things part because they all influence each other. And then finally, in psychology, we often talk about there being something called a diathesis stress model, which means that yes, it is likely that we have predispositions, whether they be genetics, differences in our brain chemistry, personality types, early childhood experiences. And then there is the stress portion. So you've got a diathesis already and then you experience some form of stress, whether that's trauma or a chronic stress like poverty or, you know, discrimination or maybe drug use or some other form of stress. And those things combined often lead to the onset of a mental health disorder. And so you can see how having both the diathesis portion and the stress portion of that could also come into play when two people are spending a lot of time together. But so it's really interesting. I think the thing that surprised me the most, I don't think it actually surprised me that this was the outcome of this study. I think the thing that surprised me the most is that it didn't, it hasn't seemed to change over time, even with massive, I mean, they looked, the first cohort was 1930 to 1940. We didn't have antipsychotic drugs then, like massive advances in mental health treatment, and yet these trends tend to hold. So that's pretty interesting.

US#05: So the Madonna song I'm Crazy For You is more clinically accurate than we previously presumed it.

C: Could be.

US#05: Yeah, not that it's pejorative, sorry. And this also, I mean like, because now you have the whole idea of dating and finding, finding mates is very different now than it was in the 30s and 40s and even the 60s and 70s in terms of online dating and.

C: And like, yeah.

US#05: And it still doesn't, it still doesn't matter. You still find people that.

C: Well, if anything I would think it would get even more.

US#05: Even more.

C: Yeah, I think. So because with online dating, and this is something I have quite a bit of experience with lately, you can, you know, you do sometimes open up about certain things early on. And especially the older that you get, the more you're like, I don't want to deal with somebody who's not like aligned with me politically, ideologically, who doesn't understand like these, you know, things about my life. And so people do, they kind of share those things early. Like there are check boxes on dating profiles for things like neurodivergence. You know, people just think they wear those labels sometimes very proudly and they want to meet other people who get it. And so I think that that probably does have a lot to do with this.

S: And if you go to like a big college or university, which most people who go to university do, by definition, there's tons of these sub communities, right? You will find your group of people who, you know, are really in your very narrow, narrow sub niche, you know?

C: Yeah.

S: And that, you know, could also align with psychiatric disorders.

C: Absolutely. I think it's what's surprising to me is not that this is the case now. It's surprising to me that this was the case in, like, the 30s and the 40s, right, when people were mostly marrying somebody who lived down the street, you know, or who they met. Yeah. At work.

S: Interesting. All right, Thanks, Cara.

CRISPR Improvement (36:34)

• CRISPR's efficiency triples in lab tests with DNA-wrapped nanoparticles 

S: Guys, I have more CRISPR news for you. Oh, we got, and it's good news.

B: Thanks for saving it, not saving it for science or fiction.

S: Yeah, I always did, But no. All right, so you know what the big limiting factor is on CRISPR and for those who need remembering.

E: What the acronym means?

S: Yes. What is the acronym Evidence? Did you bring it up?

E: No, no. Cluster you.

C: Can't do that.

S: Mustard regularly.

C: Regularly.

E: Regularly. That's the one.

S: Short palindromic repeats, right?

E: Yeah. OK, so right Steve, you are right.

S: Thank you.

E: Thank you. Good. Good job, Steve.

S: Thank. Good job. That was from memory. I don't have that in front of so Chris Burrows. If you do, reminding is now it's like 10 years old or something. Technology.

C: Nuts don't say that. I know, right? It's. To.

S: To more efficiently and cheaply edit genes, right? You can silence a gene, you can make a snip, you can insert a gene. You could do all kinds of things. And it's really made it easier to do a lot more genetic research. And there's the potential for genetic treatments. There's already 2 FDA approved CRISPR treatments, both for bloodborne diseases like sickle cell and thalassemia, both of which have something in common, which I've mentioned before. You can take the cells out of the body, right? The bone marrow, do the CRISPR and then put them back. Why is that the case? Why are the 1st 2 therapies targeting cells that you can remove from the body?

C: Because then you can just inject it.

S: Yeah, it's it makes it easy to target those cells.

C: Yeah, you don't have to worry about a vector and something you know.

B: Where they are, you know where they go.

S: Bam, right. If you're trying to do CRISPR on tissue inside a living Organism and you can't remove that tissue and put it back, you have to get the CRISPR to those cells.

C: Yeah, so you have to use a vector, but it needs to be specific.

S: To the tissue, yeah, that this is the big limiting factor. So we have this huge problem tool, but we can't get it to the cells we want to get it to. It's got to get to the right organ, it's got to get to the right tissue within that organ. It's got to get to the right cells within that tissue. It's got to get into the cell, it's got to get into the cell, the nucleus, and it's got to make the genetic change.

C: And not just that, you don't want it to go to the cells, you don't want it to go target.

S: You don't want off target changes and each step of the way you lose a big chunk, right? So you end up with sometimes less than 1%, you know, of the cells that you're targeting actually get the, the genetic change you're looking for something very tight and therefore that could limit the effect, the effectiveness of therapeutics. And it also means that there are some things you just can't target. So it narrows the scope and it and it really limits the effectiveness of CRISPR. The CRISPR itself is an amazing tool, but we can't get it to the cells we need to get it to but now.

B: They solved it. They totally solved that problem. They didn't say it.

S: I mean, it's never a total solution, but there's been 80 percent, 80%. Give me a high number, significant advance. There's been a significant advance. So you remember I've spoken before about LNPS. What does that stand for?

B: Large Magellanic?

S: No people lipid nanoparticles remember lipid nanoparticles, which is.

B: NP. I thought you said NP no.

S: LNP, LNP, lipid, lipid nanoparticles. So this is a technology for delivering stuff to tissue in the body, right? And you can use this to deliver drugs to cancer cells. You can use it to deliver CRISPR.

B: So see the cells. Pieces of fat.

S: Yeah. They're little fat bubbles that can be designed to to go to where you want them to go to. They have the proteins on them that will bind to the receptors or whatever. LMP, huge technology. There's another technology that's similar that's that is not been approved for any specific use yet, but is in stage phase two clinical trials and that is SNAS. What does that stand for? There are a lot of acronyms that stands for spherical spherical, spherical nucleic acids. So this study involves LNP hyphen SNAS. And what they did was they take the CRISPR, they put it inside an LNPA lipid nanoparticle, and then they wrap the LNP in a spherical nucleic acid.

B: Oh, I thought it'd be the other way around, but OK. No, it sounds better.

S: So you have, you have basically all the tools you need, right? The CAS 9 enzymes, the guide RNA DNA repair template, whatever you need to deliver to the cell in order to do the genetic change that you're interested in wrapped in an LMP, right? So that's the sort of capsule that delivers it all. But then you coat that in the SNA, A spherical nucleic acid, and know what that does is that targets the cell that you're interested in and also helps it get into the cell because the spherical nucleic acid, right, it's nucleic acid, It's DNA.

B: Yeah, it's code.

S: Yeah, it's programmable. You can, you could make it into whatever you want. So that means once you have this technology, you can program that DNA theoretically to target any cell population that.

B: But how does it get there? But I mean, how does it move? What's the motility? How does that?

S: Work you well that's different ways if you just inject it into the blood if that's way to where you could, if that's work so you can inject it into the organ or into spinal fluid or whatever you inject it into whatever the cavity is that you want it to get to but then.

B: Get it nearby and it goes the final, yeah, the final mile. All right.

S: All right. So in this proof of concept study, they found that the LNP SNA's entered cells three times more effectively than LNP's alone, and they increased the success rate of the CRISPR more than 60% compared to current models.

E: There's your number, Bob.

S: Yeah. So it's three times the the ability to target the cells, three times the ability to get in, and a 60% improvement in the final, making the final edits that you're interested.

B: In, yeah, but 60% better than 1%, I mean, wait, is that what we're talking about here?

S: Yeah. So, yeah, I know. So it's it's, but that's still low. That is still that's that's clinically significant, I mean.

C: Yeah, I mean, when you take a pill, what percent of the active ingredient is actually binding to where you need it to be?

S: Yeah, it gets distributed throughout the whole body and only yeah. A small portion.

C: It's probably a teeny tiny bit of that, yeah, that you actually need.

S: It needs to be tested in specific like specific formulations need to be tested in specific diseases.

C: Yeah. I was wondering, did you, did you mention that what disease were they? Are they just looking at the mechanism? They were just looking at the mechanism.

S: It's just again, proof of concept. So now they need to go to animal studies to to, you know, disease models, right? They need to do the actual.

B: Yeah.

S: And then once the animals disease model studies are done, then they will be ready to do human trials. So we're still years away from this being in the clinic, but this is an important technological advancement. And it's, again, it's not one thing. It's not like this is only going to be useful for one disease. We're talking about a technology that could be used for. Yeah, like CRISPR, CRISPR, LNP, SNA. This is just a general platform, yeah, that could theoretically target any cells in the body and make any genetic change that we want. So this will massively increase the scope of targets for CRISPR and also the success rate of making the genetic changes.

C: And we'll only know it as CRISPR the same way we only know cast 9 or cast.

S: 10 CRISPR, it's all different from the Yeah, but it's CRISPR. But actually, you know, this LNP SNA technology is as important as the CRISPR. And again, it's used for other things, not just delivering CRISPR. It could be used to deliver drugs to cancer cells. Yeah, for example, getting chemo.

B: Chemo. Directly the cells.

C: Wow, great.

S: It's a it's a really important technology.

B: So what is this going to roll?

S: Out, Steve. Well get it. It's this is. Just 10 years. Proof of concept study. Yeah, I remember all those steps I talked about. It improved performance every step of the way. Every step in that chain was better with the SNPs.

US#05: Who developed this, Steve? Which is it?

S: So this was developed by a team of researchers.

US#05: But like American or. Yeah.

S: So this is Merkin's lab is at Northwestern. Merkin is the main doctor working on it, and it's at Northwestern. That's where most of the work is being done.

US#05: So they'll lose their funding soon, which is good.

S: Yeah, Yeah. I mean, this is exactly the kind of research that needs. I mean, you know, there is a company called Flashpoint Therapeutics which is commercializing the technology. So that's good too, that sometimes you get that start-ups will spin off out of a university, they get a patent, they spin off your startup and they commercialize it and there you go. So that seems to be what's happening, which is good. You know, again, you don't want it to be dependent on government funding.

B: Some universities are optimized for spin off technology like that which I love. Absolutely man. Turn it into tech that I can get to. Come on.

S: So this is great. I'm I've been paying attention to this technology. This is a massive improvement. This, this is the kind of thing like 10 years from now, we'll be looking back and thinking, wow, this was a, this was a huge milestone. You know, like all the things that are be, it'll just be in the background, you know, of of so many therapeutics, I suspect, yeah.

B: Steve I mean, I forgot it's been a few years now or more. We're we talking about other advances, other, other types of CRISPR. And one was that instead of actually, you know, snipping, you know, the, the, the, you know, the genome, it actually would turn it on and off. So yeah, that's still in play. That's still in play, absolutely. OK, Yeah, that's, that's pretty awesome.

S: You could turn genes off and turn them back on again.

C: Yeah, CRISPR is like a big tent now.

S: Oh. Totally.

C: Yeah, yeah.

B: I just don't come across it.

C: It's because it's all just included like they just call it but but everything even cast 9 and cast 10. Like I mentioned, those are different techniques, but we just kind of assume that that's there's other. Casts. Too. Yeah.

S: Yeah, right, right.

Robotic Bee (47:06)

• MIT develops robotic bee that can flip and hover, and could pollinate plants on other planets someday - Yanko Design 

S: All right, George, tell us about this robotic bee.

US#05: OK, so I have a question for all of you. If you were to design a robotic bee, or what they call a micro aerial vehicle, an MAV, what do you think would be the most difficult thing to power source?

S: Yeah, probably power source light too, I guess.

US#05: Control.

S: No, we could make things that fly. I think making things that fly is not that big a deal.

B: It's all about the power source.

S: Yeah, something really tiny would be power. I would suspect. Power, I mean.

C: Yeah, I would think that if it's so small, solar could help. I think it would just be that like dying, I don't know, like getting damaged. It's it's expensive and you have to make a bunch of them.

US#05: Well, you're sort of, Yeah, you're sort of. You're all in the ballpark. I mean, it all feeds off of each other. But the biggest challenge, it's not the maneuverability, it's not the size. They can get these things very tiny. They can make them maneuver. They can fly. The problem is flight time, which in essence is energy. So, you know, building something into the system that allows it to fly for more than 10 seconds. So like in, in 2021 MIT robotics, they developed this little guy. It was less than a less than a gram. That's what's considered an MAV, any kind of flying thing that's less than a gram, which is super tiny, but they developed one and this because they were working on it. This had in essence 8 wings and four little like bodies on this thing. And it, it was very maneuverable, but it could only fly for about 10 seconds because it would basically get up. And the more, the simpler the flight, the longer it would last. The more complex the flight, the less long it would last. But on average about 10 seconds. Well, they've gone back to the drawing board and basically redesigned this little MAV to be much more reminiscent of nature in terms of one body, like a bee's body and two wings. And what they did is by using this and then combining with some other little, little modifications, they're now capable of having this thing fly for 17 minutes. Wow, So it's 100 * / 100 times more efficient you?

E: Can do a lot within that time, right?

US#05: Which you can do a lot within that time. So from the the precis they had this of the study, they said most sub gram MA VS So yeah, so that's considered a thing. Less than a gram are limited to hovering for less than 10 seconds or following simple trajectories at slow speeds. Here we developed a 750 milligram flapping wing MAV that demonstrated substantially improved lifespan, speed, accuracy and agility with with transmission and hinge designs that reduced off axis torsional stretch and deformation. The robot achieved a 1000 second hovering flight, 2 orders of magnitude longer than existing sub gram Mavs, which is really cool. Now, what's neat about these little guys is not only could they give bees a break, and if, you know, there's sort of the bee population it's in, it's, it's it's in danger, then it's not in danger, then it's in danger and it's not in danger. What these little flying Mavs could act as pollinators, but they could act as pollinators in environments that bees don't really work well. So you could have vertical farms with fluorescent lighting, let's say. Now bees don't like vertical farms. Bees don't. And they especially don't like vertical fluorescent lighting. But these can these little guys can, can do the gig. They can also be in like harmful environments, like in space or in areas that let's say we're contaminated with radiation or poisons or who knows what to kind of help reestablish and fix crops or fix whatever kind of thing you might need fixing. So it's not, it's not to replace bees, but to sort of be an, an extra artificial pollinator. While they were developing this little bee, this little guy, they also worked on a grasshopper like little robot, which I thought was really cool. This is smaller than a human thumb and it can hop 20 centimeters. At about 30 centimeters a second, it jumps into the air and it can land and be effective on all kinds of surfaces from grass all the way up to ice. And it can even land on a like a tiny leaf and stuff. The grasshopper, which they're calling the grasshopper. They can also hover like a drone using 60% less energy than flying robots that are similar to it. So the robots the size of a bee and a grasshopper, scientists believe can also be helpful in rescue missions during earthquakes or inside pipelines where large counterparts cannot get into or reach. So it's like much like the CRISPR news, it's good news on the front. You know, like with the, there was always the problem with jetpacks, right? What's the main, The major problem with jetpacks is fuel flight time. Well, it looks like they're getting way, way closer to having significant increases in flight time for these little tiny Mavs that again, picture a gram and all the tech that's in this little tiny, less than a gram device flying around, doing complex flying for right now. We're at 17 minutes and it should increase. It's pretty cool.

B: Love it. It's cool. You had a thousand of those buggers. Could they lift me up? Buggers. For so you.

US#05: Yeah, probably they could.

J: Legit like is this an experiment or like what would they use these for I wonder?

B: Well, besides pollinating plants, like George said, I mean, what else could? Yeah, what else could they do? You know, they could assess, you know, nooks and crannies in an in disaster sites and report back. I found some people down here. Come over here.

US#05: You could sense, you could, you know, get them to be sensitive to any kind of so like they could, they could search for oxygen, let's say in some kind of a Piper search for CO2, which means that survivors are breathing off CO2. So they send in these little bees or these little grasshoppers. You could build large farming facilities that wouldn't need to rely on natural pollinators. So you could have, you know, like like when you have those sort of the idealized city buildings that have the large towers of fruits and vegetables and flowers kind of growing. These guys would would be great in those environments, especially with fake light because bees don't like the fake light apparently. So, yeah. So that's kind of a thing.

B: See if I wonder if you could GMO some plants that are so weird and foreign that regular biological bees just don't want to pollinate it or can't pollinate it. Then you just throw these mechanical buggers in and have them do it because the normal bees are just too too afraid of the GMO plants that don't make any any sense to to the real bees.

S: Why would you want to do that?

US#05: Well, let's say you have some kind of like space crops that have to be resistance to who knows what radiation or, you know, maybe you have to develop here. We can't use bees. We'd have to either genetically modify bees to be able to do this kind of stuff, or just use these little guys. Yeah, OK.

S: You're saying that they inadvertently can't be pollinated by regular bees? That wasn't done on purpose.

B: Right. Well, yeah, I mean, it's a cool plant, but like, hey, bees don't like this. We got to pollinate this these these weird GMO plants some different way. And like, let's use them. Let's use the robot bees.

S: All right, Thank you, George.

Tin Man Syndrome Retracted (54:07)

• ‘Tin Man Syndrome,’ five other case studies retracted following Retraction Watch coverage – Retraction Watch 

S: OK, Evan, tell us about Tin Man syndrome. What is that?

E: Well, yeah, file this news item under How the hell did we miss this 110 years ago? This is actually a current news item, but as always, there's background. So I have to go back 10 years to fill you in here. It's March 31, 2015. The website iscalledradiopedia.org, which is described as a well known and widely used radiology reference site and they published a case titled Ectopia Cordis Interna or Tin Man Syndrome, and this is where a patient's heart was depicted as being located entirely in the abdominal cavity beneath the diaphragm. It was written by or case contributed by. I should read it directly from the site, Matt Scalasky. And the systems involve the chest, the gastrointestinal, gastrointestinal and cardiac. I guess those are the areas of concern. Here's the story. A patient went to a radiologist as part of a pre employment screening, apparently because the patient had a long history of gastro esophageal reflux. The case starts with an X-ray picture of the man's chest with this descriptor. Frontal and lateral chest radiographs demonstrating absent. Absent cardiomediastinal shadow. No aortic outline is evident. Bilateral ectopic inferior pulmonary veins. Basically it's a chest X-ray. Now the next image is that of an MRI of the patient's torso. And that descriptor reads selected coronal images show the intra abdominal heart, closely related to the stomach, distal transverse colon and pancreas. This vascular congestion is a common feature. And then there's one more image, a drawing by Leonardo da Vinci titled Organ Networks of the Thoro.

S: Thoraco Abdominal. Thoraco Abdominal.

E: Thoraco abdominal Thank you, Steve. The thoraco abdominal cavity drawn in 15-O2 and they just they say there remains academic debate as to the weather. This was based off of a corpse with ectopia, ectopia cortis internal or whether the heart's location was a deliberate distortion of reality by the artist. Here's the case discussion O Tin Man syndrome. It's a rare variant of ectopia cortis in which the heart is located completely within the abdominal cavity. It's almost always an asymptomatic condition found incidentally on imaging, or less often detected by physicians when attempting to osculate. I mean, guess what's that stethoscope?

S: Auscultate, yeah. Or in Vulcans, apparently.

E: Oh, yeah, yeah. When they when they're attempting to hear what's going on in the chest or the abdominal palpitation or abdominal palpitation, and they talk a little bit about the history, they talk about the Leo da Vinci drawing there. Now. They also say the first ever description of the condition in the medical literature was a controversial monograph submitted to the Royal Society in 1874 by Doctor Nohir Lubdub entitled An Unusual Case of Ectopia Cardia in a High Rihanna Boy I. Guess wait, his last name was Love.

C: Dub did.

E: You say get, I'm getting there. No here love dub.

J: No here love dub.

E: I mean what I'm reading to you and. This is this. This is. Verbatim from the from the from the article and the monograph was later retracted when accusations were made that the images accompanying the text had been doctored. It was not until 19 O 8 that Doctor Lubdub's work was vindicated when the existence of the condition was confirmed during the early years of chest radiography. Unfortunately, Doctor Lubdub had fallen into deep depression following his expulsion from the Royal Society. Only occasionally seen wandering the streets of Shenangdar mumbling and yet it beats his death was unrecorded.

B: Yeah, laptop. Laptop.

E: OK, I left out a couple of key things here. The title of the I, I I doctored the title of this paper which actually reads April Fools 2015, Ectopia, Cortisol 10 Man Syndrome, and the first paragraph of which says this case is fictitious and the described condition is not a real diagnosis. The images in this case have been digitally altered. It gained attention back in 2015. Apparently some medical professionals initially mistook it as real pathology. They began citing or sharing it as authentic. And I guess they say that's perhaps understandable because radiopedia's trustworthiness has a reputation. But this was clearly and there were so many indications like Doctor Lubdub Cara.

S: No here, no here. Love dub?

E: No here, love.

C: Dub, right, But to be fair, don't publish an April Fool's Journal article.

E: They have a they have a doing. Yeah, yeah. No, I get it. They have a history. It's kind of their, you know, their thing. I agree with the Internet take you.

S: Can't do it anymore. Social media has ruined it. You can't do that anymore.

C: Well, not just that AI has ruined it like we. It's not always people who are scrubbing the Internet for this stuff. It's.

E: Bots among their other April Fools pranks because it's an annual thing. Apparently they do. Von Schlapp syndrome, obviously. Tin Man syndrome, Cactus disease, something called Apple Eye. I mean, I haven't read into all. Apple Eye. Apple Eye is one of them. We'll, we'll talk about that one.

C: Maybe this reminds me, did you guys ever, do you remember when Stephen Colbert used to do The Daily Show and he had a character named. It was called, it was a segment called Cheating Death with Doctor Stephen T Colbert, DFA. Oh, God. And he was like, and he was like with Prescott Pharmaceutical. Yeah. And he would always have like a weird side effects of all of the drugs that he was pushing and like, like, I don't know.

E: Hilarious.

C: Wandering fungus and.

E: Right, so that's your background, but how does it relate to the contemporary news on skeptics guide to the universe? Because over at Retraction watch Cara, we love retraction watch We do they have a report from about two weeks ago and also another one that came out the other day. But here's the 1 from 2 weeks ago that reads Tin Man Syndrome case plagiarized from hoax, sleuths say. And they describe a group of researchers say they encountered Tin Man syndrome in real life in a 22 year in a 22 year old patient. They claim that had no significant medical history. The researchers, based in Iraq, published their rare case report in the journal Medicine. This was in July of 2025. The journal Medicine Steve That that sounds that's a legit journal, yes. No. Are you familiar with it at all?

C: Medicine.

E: No medicine? Well, I looked it up. The journal Medicine is published by Lipnicott, Williams and Wilkins, a reputable peer reviewed medical journal. However, it is a mega journal with a broad scope and a lower impact factor compared to highly selective top tier journals like the New England Journal of Medicine. Its reputation is valid, but its status has changed over time, so take that you know, for what it's worth, here's the title of the paper that was published there. Asymptomatic young male with ectopia cortisinterna. A rare case report. I'll read you a couple highlights their rationale. Ectopia cortisinterna is a rare congenital condition that occurs when the heart is found within the abdominal cavity. Patient concerns A 22 year old Iraqi male with a chest infection presented to the clinic with a chest infection during which the anomaly was incidentally discovered. Just like the original paper diagnosis. Although there are no clear symptoms, the anomaly can lead to potential risks during any abdominal procedures interventions. The patient got a chest X-ray for his infection which revealed the anomaly. Outcomes and lessons The case highlights the importance of early detection of this condition through imaging modalities and the need for focused research into its long term implications and management strategies. So a sleuth came across the paper I'm reading. Going back to retraction Watch here. A sleuth came across the paper and after running the images through Google Lens. That's a tool I've never used before, but apparently what, You take a photograph of something and then you ask Google to find the original source and it will do it. That it linked them back to the April Fool's publication and radiopaedia way back when. This, the sleuth, as a physician, was asked to remain anonymous. They sent Retraction Watch the tip out of concern that the misrepresentation could mislead healthcare providers, potentially leading to incorrect surgical planning or treatments for patients with similar conditions. Retraction Watch went over to David Sanders, who is an expert image expert and biologist at Purdue University. He said the images indubitably originate from the same source. He says it's very obvious they overlap in the images otherwise. The overlap in the images otherwise is so extensive as to be impossible to represent different patients. So they absolutely pulled it directly from the original source material. He also pointed out the first reference in the paper with the which the authors used to to find the condition is actually a paper about ectopia cordis, not ectopia cortis interna. And ectopia cortis is the a rare condition where the heart grows outside of the body.

J: That's.

E: A real thing that's awful. So the author Retraction Watch also reached out to Scholarsky, who was the original author of the satirical paper. And he said, I'm not sure how this made it through peer reviewer, why anywhere in the right mind would think to publish it. The authors maintain, the authors of this paper maintain the validity of their case. The lead author is Ashraf Basalia, and he's a researcher at Hadraumet Hospital in Yemen. And he called the similarities to the Radiopedia case entirely coincidental. The case report is one of six that Basilia had recently published in the journal Medicine. So that was back on August 15th of this year. One week later, August 22, the journal Medicine says that they're retracting it. None of the pay. Yeah. So here's what they said. The art. This is their response. The article A symptomatic young male with ectopia cortis interna. A rare case report which appears in volume one O 4 issue 30 of Medicine is being retracted. After publication, a concerned reader contacted the editorial office, alleging that the images in the case appeared to be direct reproductions from a satirical online. Publishing, which they are. Yep, the authors were asked to provide supporting documents for their case in response, including the original radio graphic images, and they were unable to provide the necessary documentation, which cast doubt on the credibility of the presented case. So the journal Medicine went back and they also looked at the five previous submissions by Vasilia and his group and they retracted them all. Something tells me that these doctors publishing careers have maybe come to an ignominious conclusion.

US#05: Well, they you think they were publishing just to be just to say they were published or like, would there be some other?

E: Here's the reason that's a good question because because Retraction Watch actually reached out to the doctor to say, hey, we need your, you know, opinion on this. And he said he did reply in e-mail. He said, I admit that Ectopia Cordis is not a real case based on our investigation and it was faked. That's his own words, but it was faked to destroy the author's reputation. That's what he said said the doctor said the paper was a trap. There's a, quote, a trap made by someone who wants to destroy my career intentionally. And that person in Yeah, right. And that person in question, who the doctor says is not a medical professional, provided the researchers with quote all the case details and documentations regarding the ectopia cordis in turn.

S: And they didn't do their work, they were fooled. The fact that they were fooled. OK, I think he's just making shit up to cover it right is the easiest explanation. But even even the story he's telling doesn't let him off the hook. He basically means he didn't do due diligence. He didn't do you know what academically is like the minimum necessary. So by coincidence, I wrote about predatory journals in on science based medicine today and it it dovetails nicely with this news item. You know, there was a study looking at using AI to basically screen for predatory journals. And so right now there's over 1500 Open Access journals and 13 AI flagged about 1300 of them as being probably predatory. And then human evaluators went through them and said over 1000 of them were were truly predatory. So there were 250 or so or 300 false positives by the AI. So it's possible, you know, they wanted because The thing is, they're just human evaluators are overwhelmed by the sheer number of these fake journals. And when they and when one does get outed as being predatory, meaning they don't have legitimate peer review, they don't have legitimate editorial policy, they're just taking money from researchers to get published. And once you know, if they get out, they just, you know, make a new website with a slightly different name, right? The barrier to entry is so low that you can just keep making more and more and more fake journals and start collecting money. And, you know, the researchers specifically said that a lot of, you know, countries that don't have a well established infrastructure of science and academia are what they're who they're targeting. And so a lot of, you know, papers coming from places like Iraq, you know, do end up in these lower tier or sometimes outright predatory journals and they're crap. And they're doing it just to get recognition, you know, and just to get buff their CV and get promoted and whatever and try to establish themselves.

E: Yeah.

S: So it's a huge problem. It's just gumming up the whole system with terrible papers. And we really need to do we really need to get a handle on it, you know, in, in multiple ways like this, this can't go.

US#05: So at the very least, stop at the April Fools crap.

S: Yeah, again, like we.

E: Just I guess.

US#05: Yeah, at the very least.

S: Yeah, we just, we won't live in that world anymore.

US#05: Right.

S: All. Right.

E: I still want to look into Apple Eye though.

Super Wood (1:08:11)

• What Is ‘Super Wood’? New Material Strong as Steel Nears ... - Newsweek 

S: All right, Bob, tell us about Super Wood. Jokes aside.

B: Super wood in the news. I'm not talking about an improved version of tadalafil, but regular tree wood that's been chemically and mechanically treated to be far stronger and tougher than any other type of wood before. Researchers claim it's even stronger than steel and could be used as a structural load bearing material similar to steel or concrete. This was licensed for a start up called Invent Wood, which plans to start a commercial run of this wood this year, this year actually, they said this summer, but the summer is almost over, so maybe they're running a little late. OK, you might not know this about me, but I love wood. I've actually been working, working with a lot of a large old heavy planks of wood because we're building our pirate ship for this year's haunt. So I'm I'm just like, you know, wood is just wood. I just love it. It's just it's supposed to get really old wood. It's got so much character. All right, steel and concrete are great, but the beauty of wood is just so far superior in so many ways, but it's not strong enough to replace those other materials for many of the you know, the many of the areas that we use them for and attempts have been made in the past to make wood stronger. They would treat, they would pre treat the wood with chemicals and then they would squeeze it to make it denser. And that helped a little bit, but it actually it wasn't enough because the wood would often expand and weekend. So it really wasn't ideal. This new technique is very similar, but it adds a novel removal process first. So it's removing components before it does the squeezing. So wood contains 3 components. There's, you know, there's cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin and they basically bathe it in chemicals to reduce the hemicellulose and and the lignin. So it's really just mainly just the cellulose is left. So this raw wood is is treated to remove these, the lignant and hemicellulos and that allows this next step to reach levels that it's never reached before. So they, they mechanically treat the wood to be, to be hot. They use a hot, they call the hot press and they, I think it's at about like 100°C. So it's really hot. They're squeezing the crap out of it. And what that does is that completely collapses the cell walls in a process called surprisingly densification. Actually, I don't.

US#05: Mind are these are these like boards Bob, or is this like chopped up like it's like fibrous?

B: It's they don't, they don't go into detail in the paper on on what they they just said. They they describe it as as raw, raw wood.

S: But Bob, they say it's specifically not chopped up wood bound by.

B: No, it's not OK. It's it's not the like the that crack composite, that OBS wood where yeah, it's not little chips that are that are put together. OK, so I know it's definitely not that, but but I'm not sure how how it looks, you know, during in the middle of this process. So alright, so it's it's densified, it's densification. So what's happening is that these strong cellulose nano fibers are all like pressed really close together, closer, closer than ever than ever before. And it's this reduces, this is the the woods thickness by what percent do you think it's it's it's reduced too late. You guys took too much time, 80 percent, 80%. So and it increases its density threefold. So as you might imagine at this point that this, this super wood has some amazing mechanical properties. So, but before we did discuss that, we, we probably need to discuss strength and toughness. What we've mentioned it only a couple times on the show before, because this involves strength and toughness and things. So what, what does that actually mean? Strength is the ability to withstand forces without permanently deforming or fracturing. Toughness is the ability to absorb energy and deform before breaking. OK, so the I for me, an iconic strength, an object that's pure strength with very little toughness is glass, right? It resists force fine, but it just shatters easily. It's not going to bend, it's not going to deform. It's just going to shatter. The other end of the the scale here is toughness. If you have that without strength, it's like I, I try to think of this one. I think Plato is a great example of toughness without strength. It absorbs energy quite well, right? But it, it really, it does not resist forces before permanently deforming, which is the hallmark of, of, of strength. So now remember though, as part of this though, there's a, this classic trade off between, between strength and toughness. Most of the, most of the time, if you increase one, you're going to diminish the other. And there's really no way to get around that if it doesn't want to get around that. So if you make something stronger, it's going to, it's going to become more, more brittle and less tough. And conversely, the the opposite is also true. So a particular type of strength needs to be mentioned here. I'm doing this for Steve because we, he specifically mentioned this and he's right. It's often the most important strength rate or type of rating for, for how strong something is. And that's called specific strength. This compares strength to density. You could think of this as, and I'm sure you've heard of this, the strength to weight ratio. That's a that's essentially specific strength. So how was this super wood? How strong was this? So they had, they threw it not there were a lot of numbers in the paper. First off, remember that trade off I mentioned between strength and toughness? Well, that didn't even apply here, they said in the paper. Interestingly, the large increase in tensile strength of the densified wood is not accompanied by a decrease in toughness. So looking at the strength of the Super wood, it had a high, it had a record high, Steve, a record high tensile strength, 587 megapascals. That's 11 1/2 times higher than that of just untreated natural wood. The toughness didn't go down. The toughness was actually 8.3 times higher than that of of natural wood. So stronger and tougher, which is which is pretty epic. But what about the specific strength? Because actually that could often make or break a, a new material. The paper we're going to have right. The regarding, regarding the specific strength, the paper said the intrinsically lightweight of cellulose also result in a specific strength of the densified wood 451 megapascals per cubic centimeter per gram. That's, that's higher than lightweight titanium alloy. So the specific strength is very, very high here. It, it, it's really good. So this is not a deal killer for the, for this at all. They say in the paper also that our, our processed wood has a specific strength higher than the most structural metals and alloys, making it a low cost, high performance, lightweight alternative. And that's kind of the crux here is like, sure, this is very strong, but can we really use this as a structural metal that will be as, as a structural component that will be as strong as some metals and alloys that that we use? And it seems like it can, you know, you know, the, the, the, the proof of the pudding is in the tasting, right? Let's just see what it really can do. Let's have some, some engineers look at this and see and do their own tests and see if it really can, can be structural and and load bearing. That would be that would be great folks. Person from Inventwood recently said, and remember, this isn't from the paper. This is basically marketing, but they said super wood is specifically engineered to be up to 50% stronger than steel in certain applications with a strength to weight ratio up to 10 times greater. So clearly some strong ass wood we got here. So what are the, what are the benefits? Here's one that I hadn't considered. Just the purely environmental. The densest and hardest woods are found where what do you think they're they're found tropical? Yeah, very. You're very good. Yeah. Tropical like teak and mahogany. We've all heard of those. Those are some of the the most beautiful and dense and and hardest woods out there. If if super wood is actually a viable alternative, then environmental cost could disappear with teak and and mahogany like over harvesting is a problem and also trading biodiversity for monocultures, right. Could all be minimized. So that would be that would be wonderful. So we wouldn't be depleting teak and mahogany and potentially, you know, over harvesting and all that other stuff. The other side of this coin though, is that the concrete and steel we use in so many buildings in our infrastructure, you know, we love our big beautiful concrete and steel, right? But. Carbon footprint. Yep, making steel and cement, which is the the critical component of concrete that I look this up that causes 10% of our world's total greenhouse gas emissions. Is that in the ballpark, Steve? Yeah. Is my was my source right. 10% if it, it, you know, it may be a big if at this point, but if renewable super wood can replace some of that for for some of the things that steel and cement do and concrete do, that could make even if it goes down a few percent. That would be just, you know, yippee for us, you know, good job for us if we, if we can make that happen. We don't know. So basically I'm waiting for this to be released commercially and have real people using this and reporting on it. They said it was going to be released at commercial, you know, commercially this summer. And I tried searching for some of the latest news about this and I haven't been able to find find anything that's that's less than a couple of months old. So I'm not sure what's going on. Maybe they were delayed. Maybe it's just going to be released this year. Who knows what happened. But this one, I'm definitely want to follow this one. This is pretty cool. Super wood people.

S: Yeah, we've talked about this kind of thing before. We also talked about the idea of like building large buildings out of wood rather than steel because it becomes a carbon sink, right, not a carbon source. And it's. Making it yeah, if the wood is. Is preserved and it's high quality. It could last 100 years. You know, it could be locking up that carbon for a long, long time. So yeah, that could be, you know, one more way to to try to turn this huge ship around. All right, thanks, Bob.

Who's That Noisy? + Announcements (1:17:30)

S: Jay, it's who's that noisy time?

J: All right guys, last week I played this noisy.

Taxing Deductions (1:17:43)

None

J: Alright, what is this? Easy, it's baby Godzilla. So I I stuck with a theme here on the ones that I chose so I'll just go down this real quick. So a listener named Bradford W wrote in said Ciao Jay. Man do I love dogs. Some of them, though, are complete drama Queens about getting their nails clipped. So yes, you, you correctly identified this noise as coming from a dog, But I wanted more, a little bit more information. And I've clipped my dog's nails and he didn't make that noise, but maybe some do. So let's see what the next person says. So Robin 10 Kate said, hi, Jay, a longtime listener, rare. Who's that noisy guesser? I think this sound like a This sounds like a dog, specifically a Pomeranian about to get vaccinated.

B: I don't think it's a Pomeranian.

C: I think it's a French bulldog.

J: And then Robin did tell me how to pronounce her name, which is it's not Robin 10K, it's Robin 10 kata. So even when people tell me how to do it, I still screw it up, Ryan Skiba wrote in and said. I hope George is not on the next episode of the show.

US#05: He's a smart man.

J: What the hell? How did he?

US#05: Know that's weird? Yeah.

J: So he said.

US#05: Crap.

J: He said, is it a screaming French bulldog? Now my son and I love listening to freaky French Bulldogs make all the weird noises that they do and there is a massive array of crazy sounds that French Bulldogs make. So I highly recommend if you have any free time, go check that out. It's really crazy. Bob Coburn wrote in and said this week's noisy sounds like Little Fred, a TikTok dog who is a tiny little guy who loses his shit anytime a package is delivered. His life goal is to destroy any such package. He's my hero. I looked up Little Fred and indeed, he loves to RIP up packages. This is not the same dog.

E: Steve has a dog like or had a dog.

S: Yeah, my dog was a puppy. That was his favorite thing to do was to RIP up my freaking package.

E: With your camera equipment in it. Yeah, the thing.

J: So I have a winner. This is the person who guessed correctly. This is Jim Borzillan. Nope, Borzillary. Borzillary. Yes, sorry Jim, he said. Hi Jay, long time first time Patreon subscriber, etcetera. Sounds to me like a Beagle that was super happy to be reunited with an old acquaintance. Now that is technically correct. You correct. You selected the correct dog and I do believe the the correct circumstance. But there is a little bit more information that I that we need and someone did send that in as well. So I would consider this person a winner as well. This is Benzie Muller and Ben said, just started listening to Skeptics Guide podcast and I love it so far. Thanks for all the hard work. You guys are awesome. A long time ago, in a Galaxy far, far away, there lived a dog named Geraldine who made noises like a TIE fighter. I'm 99% sure this is it. So listen again. This dog indeed sounds exactly like a TIE fighter.

US#05: Yeah.

J: So yeah, this, we're talking about Star Wars, Cara Star Wars.

US#03: Stop it.

J: So, so I can't play it for you because you have to see it as well. So look up Geraldine Star Wars and you'll see a video where they take the noise that this dog makes and then they add a little sound effects to it and and show it over the Star Wars movie and it's remarkable this. Is why we have the Internet. Yes, exactly. Thank you.

US#05: This is why we have the Internet. Fantastic.

J: So good job everybody. I have a new noisy for you this week. This is sent in by a listener named Rob Shukroon. He did give me the pronunciation and trust me, I would not have gotten it correct. OK, so I played enough. Everybody knows how to play this game. You know what to do. E-mail me at wtn@theskepticsguide.org if you think you know what it is and if you heard something cool. This week, please. Take the take a moment, record it, do what you got to do and send it over to me. So if you want to become a patron of the Skeptics Guide, you can support the work that we do. Go to patreon.com/skeptics Guide. You can join our mailing list, go to theskepticsguide.org and we can send out an e-mail every week. We'll tell you everything that we did the previous week and some other fun stuff. You could give our show a rating. We're going to Kansas, two shows in September 20th. Go to the Skeptics Guide home page like we discussed if you want to get information or buy those tickets. And that's it, Steve. That's all I got for you.

S: All right. Thank you, Jay. Hey, George, it's time. You're going to do a bit that we do in some of our.

US#05: Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Yes. All right, all right, so I'm going. This is called taxing deductions. Taxing a little game we called taxing deductions. I'm going to present a statement and this is a statement that is historically true. This isn't like a a fictional thing or this is a thing that has occurred, but it's very vague and you 5 have to figure out what in the heck I'm talking about. I can basically say yes or no as you sort of query me as to what it is and you have to deduce what I'm referencing, what I'm talking about and why the statement that I have made is the way it is. Does that make sense to everybody? It does. All right, kids, this is a tough one, but I think you can do it. Here we go. Why did one of the world's most famous sculptures cause a bridge to be 3 times longer than it needed to be? Now if you happen to just know this answer, you have to recuse yourself because the fun is not in the destination, the fun is in the guessing. So again, I will say it again, why did one of the world's most famous sculptures cause a bridge to be 3 times longer than it needed to be?

J: My initial guess is it might be the Washington Monument.

S: That's not a sculpture, though. What is it then?

J: Are they carving stone? Obelisk. They're.

US#05: They're, well, it's not, it's not the Washington Monument, so I will.

S: Is it the Statue of Liberty?

US#05: It is the Statue of Liberty.

J: The bridge.

S: In order to get the bridge to get the statue to where it is, they had to to put a bridge in a certain location that was longer than than the most efficient location.

US#05: No, not as, not as relates to the not yeah.

E: So you want us to guess the bridge?

US#05: Well, you have to guess the bridge and the and the reason why I would.

E: Do with the transportation from France like the boat that? Carried no the piece.

C: Maybe it was so heavy that they couldn't make it that short. They had to like, Nope, OK.

US#05: So, yeah, so you're, you're already presuming something in terms of the relationship of the statue to the issue. So yeah.

C: For the traffic to get to her.

US#05: Nope.

C: Traffic. To get away from, Can we ask you questions?

US#05: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

C: Was this bridge in the US or in in France?

US#05: It is in the US, OK, yes, which is not a yes or no question, but I'll save some time.

C: Was this? Bridge in New York.

US#05: Yes. Is it the Verrazano Bridge? No, it is not the Verrazano Bridge.

E: The bridge still exists today.

US#05: Sort of. What the kind of answer is? That. Sort of.

J: OK, so the sort of bridge somewhere in the New York City?

US#05: Area, yeah, it's a little bit of a Gray, but yes, it it, it's sort of still exists.

C: Is it? Is it a bridge? Is it a car bridge?

US#05: Yeah, it's a car bridge.

E: Is it also a train bridge?

US#05: I don't know. There's no trains. I don't believe there's a train.

C: Does it have something to do with the trucks that had to bring pieces over? Nope.

J: Does that does the height of the bridge factor in?

US#05: The height does not factor in. No.

J: OK, but so there's a bridge related to the Empire State Building? That's right. Subway.

C: Liberty.

US#05: The.

J: Washington, I'm just checking to see if George is paying attention. All right, so this, so the Statue of Liberty was not brought in. It wasn't built. They brought it in in pieces. So I don't think.

US#05: It that that's true, does that have anything to do with this?

J: Probably not.

US#05: Probably not, no.

J: OK. So we we talked about traffic for people to see the statue. That wasn't the fact that we talked about height.

S: Does it have to do with ships getting to Ellis Island?

US#05: No.

J: So but how could a bridge three times longer than it needed to be, which means that the bridge would would start and stop way inland?

C: Or it bend. Not.

US#05: Necessarily, not necessarily.

C: Or or it like it, it has a hump in it.

US#05: Yeah. No, not, not. I think there is a little bit of a hump. Circuitous.

S: Route it was.

US#05: It was a bit of a meandering bridge.

S: They had to change the location of the bridge.

US#05: Or locate. Yeah, the location is is important here. Yes, it's the location of the bridge.

C: Was the statue in the way?

US#05: No. Is it the Brooklyn Bridge? It is not the Brooklyn Bridge. Damn you. So think about, OK, think about New York City bridges or New York bridges, I should say, that are sort of still there, but not really, but they are.

E: Oh, not that Tappan Zee Bridge. The old Tappan Zee, which is now the Mario Cuomo. Memorial Bridge which? Got rebuilt about 10 years ago.

US#05: Yes.

C: And it's longer than it needed to be.

US#05: Yes, but it's still there, they just redid the bridge.

C: Is it longer now than it needed to be? It's.

US#05: Still, it's still longer than it needs to be, Yeah.

E: And parallel it runs kind of runs parallel to where the old bridge was.

J: Yeah, I mean that bridge takes 2 curves on the water.

US#05: Yeah. So like, if you're unaware, the Tappan Zee Bridge was built in 1955, and then in 2017 they basically knocked it down and built a new one just a couple 100 yards off from where the other one was.

E: Yes, crosses the, so it's.

US#05: And it's now the Mario Cuomo. But still everybody calls it the Tappan Zee, so right?

J: So, but this is related to the Statue of Liberty.

US#05: It's related to the statue of Yeah. Why is it where it is?

E: Because you can see it from there.

US#05: No.

J: No, you can see New York City a little bit. You can't.

US#05: You can't. Yeah, you can't. I don't believe you can see the Statue of Liberty from there, but you can see New York City. Yeah, it's quite. Speaking of Kansas and Oz, it looks like it looks like Oz from out there. It's kind of interesting.

J: Yeah, it's pretty cool, yeah.

E: Is it a union thing? Like, hey, we got to build this bridge three times longer, three times the cost.

US#05: That is the closest, the closest so far. It's not, it's not because, but that, yeah, now you're thinking the right way.

C: OK, so the unions or the people involved are going to benefit?

US#05: I want to say not unions, but that's that's the direction we want to start thinking.

C: People involved in building this bridge, we're going to benefit from it longer.

US#05: Yes, and. What does that have to do with the Statue of Liberty?

E: Ohio did it? Did it? Was it? Was there some kind of budget that they had to use up and they had to sink into something so.

US#05: No, that's a good guess, but no. So, so also think about if you're familiar with the Hudson, there are portions of the Hudson that are very wide and there are portions of the Hudson that are not so.

J: Oh my God, you're right. I mean, it's not the widest part, but it's one of it is kind of wide. It is.

S: Oh yeah, they built it at the wide part.

US#05: Why did they built it at the wide? Why did they build it there?

S: That's what I said originally, George said. They built it at the wider part than what they had to because of the Statue of Liberty.

C: Yeah, but why?

S: But there's a specific reason I. Didn't.

US#05: Yeah, there's a specific reason. So yeah. Built it at the wider.

C: Part to benefit them somehow, that there's some financial incentive. There's they put it.

B: To the rich people, no, they were closer to the bridge.

US#05: No. So again, this is 1955 S the statue's there, the statue's established. It's it's done. If we think that the is it have to do with New Jersey, New York, sort of, sort of?

E: Like wiring the land on the other.

US#05: Side, not so much. Yeah.

C: Did they want it in a specific neighborhood?

US#05: No, I mean, it ended up being, you know, this place because it this fit what they needed it to be.

E: So they could charge a bigger toll, no?

US#05: They. No, but Evan.

C: Oh, so it needs to be long enough.

US#05: OK, so I'll tell you this so it.

E: Was close to George Washington.

US#05: Bridge the The Tappan Zee Bridge is 3 miles long because at the place it crosses over, it's 3 miles wide. If you go about 1/2 mile South, it could have been a mile wide. Yeah. Why didn't they build it a half mile South? So the Statue of Liberty is is a.

C: Marker for a marker. A landmark.

US#05: Yes, yes, it doesn't relate directly to the Statue of Liberty, but the Statue of Liberty influenced where the thing was built because of because of an organization.

C: Like airplanes?

US#05: No, no, but.

C: Voting.

US#05: Does it have to do with the? Ferry. All those, all those, all those, the state, What controls all those?

C: Transportation.

US#05: Administration, yes, OK, OK.

C: So they needed you to be like, turn left at the statue, no?

US#05: All right, there's two organizations. There's the, there's the Port Authority, OK.

J: Oh, I know George. They had like a oh God, I went to the Statue of Liberty and they told me about like how the the size of the island changed and there was like different organizations that were that were like vying over who owned what property and all that.

C: Is that it so? Like if it was at that .1 organization could take care of it, but if it was somewhere else. That's what. That's it, Cara.

J: That was it. That.

US#05: Yeah, it's like you're you're pretty much there. So. So there is the Port Authority. And the Port Authority controls the bridges, the tunnels, the insurance and outs of New York. They control a span that is 25 miles with the Statue of Liberty in the center.

E: Oh, that becomes the center of the radiation.

US#05: Center that becomes the center and everything that radiates out from that 25 miles of the Port Authority. When New York State was building the Tappan Zee Bridge, they didn't want the tolls to go to the Port Authority, they wanted it to go to the newly formed New York State Thruway Authority.

C: Oh my God. So it had to be outside of the 25.

US#05: So it had to be outside the 25 miles and exactly about 1/2 mile outside the 25 miles is 1 of the widest portions of the Hudson.

B: And it was.

US#05: And it was worth it because the economics of it was, even though it cost whatever five times more than it would have, even though it's three times longer, it was worth it because now every penny of the tolls that go for the Tappan Zee Bridge and the new Mario Cuomo go to the New York State Thruway. As opposed to.

C: The Port Authority and those tolls just go up, up, up, but the cost of the materials was the same.

E: And if I remember. Did is they moved the statue in mile north?

US#05: That's right.

E: Yeah.

US#05: Brought it in, gave her like a like playing guitar, like a mile long guitar.

J: The island a lot bigger than it originally was, and if I remember correctly, the Statue of Liberty is in New Jersey water, not New York water.

US#05: Yes, yeah, officially it's in New Jersey.

J: Yeah. OK.

US#05: Yeah.

J: All right. So we got, it's a tough one.

US#05: You got it's a tough one. But yeah, you did well. You did well. Well, that's the kind of brain brain melting fun that we have, we're going to have in Kansas.

C: I want everybody tonight to go on their phones and play a game of semantel and tell me if you had the same feeling and then report back. Semantic. Like semantics, but semantic.

S: All right, that was fun, George, but now we're going to go on to even funner game Science or fiction.

Science or Fiction (1:33:20)

Theme: Marine Mammals Item #1: Large whales build up ear wax in layers, forming rings which can be used to estimate their age. Item #2: The blue whale has the largest brain, in absolute terms, of any animal to have ever lived. Item #3: Otters have pouches near their forearms which they use to store rocks to use as tools, sometimes keeping a favorite tool for years.

Answer	Item
Fiction	The blue whale has the largest brain, in absolute terms, of any animal to have ever lived.
Science	Large whales build up ear wax in layers, forming rings which can be used to estimate their age.
Science	Otters have pouches near their forearms which they use to store rocks to use as tools, sometimes keeping a favorite tool for years.

Host	Result
Steve	clever

Rogue	Guess
George	Large whales build up ear wax in layers, forming rings which can be used to estimate their age.
Jay	The blue whale has the largest brain, in absolute terms, of any animal to have ever lived.
Evan	Large whales build up ear wax in layers, forming rings which can be used to estimate their age.
Bob	Otters have pouches near their forearms which they use to store rocks to use as tools, sometimes keeping a favorite tool for years.
Cara	The blue whale has the largest brain, in absolute terms, of any animal to have ever lived.

E: It's time for science or fiction.

S: Each week I come up with three Science News items for Facts. Too Real 1 fictitious. Then I challenge my panelists. Skeptics tell me which one is the fake Aruni. You have a theme this week. Bridges. This theme is in honor of Cara and the theme is marine mammals, so.

C: I will do very poorly on this.

S: OK, is everyone ready? Yes, here we go, item number one. Large whales build up ear wax in layers, forming rings which can be used to estimate their age. Item number 2, the blue whale has the largest brain in absolute terms of any animal to have ever lived. And item number 3, otters have pouches near their forearms which they used to store rocks to use as tools, sometimes keeping a favorite tool for years.

US#05: Those are good.

S: There they are, George. You know the rule, right?

C: Whoever talks first goes.

S: Whoever talks first goes first. OK, so George gets to go.

US#05: 1st or confirm you know OK yeah these are actually really fun so.

S: As advertised.

US#05: Yeah, we've got 2 whales and an Otter now. Otters are just the coolest. Have you seen otters? Like holding hands. They're adorable. And floating, it's just the coolest thing. So okay, I'm going to say that otters have the pouches they can hold. Stuff is totally true. I'm going to say the blue whale having the largest brain is totally true because when I was a kid, I used to go to the Museum of Natural History in New York and they have that gigantic floating blue whale, which is the one thing from my childhood. It's the one thing from my childhood which is as big as I remember it. Like I went back there when I was in my 30s. It's like, Oh my God, this is amazing. So I'm going to say that the ear wax having rings that you can sort of guess the age is the fiction.

S: OK.

US#05: Number one, yeah.

J: All right, So what do we got here? We got large whales that build up their earwax and layers, forming rings which can be used to estimate their age. You said that was a fiction, George.

US#05: I did, yes.

J: Apparently you don't have an earwax problem, because I can. I can.

US#05: Oh dude, like if if there's ever a urine and earwax shortage I am set.

J: OK, all right. I mean, this one is weird as it sounds. I mean, it doesn't seem like completely. Like that? Crazy, you know, like in there maybe their ear canals are so big too that like there could be many years that go by. That one's on the back burner as a maybe the the second item, the blue whale has the largest brain, brains in absolute terms of any animal to have ever lived. You know, I don't know any animal that ever lived. I mean, there's been lots of animals. I know it's currently isn't it the biggest animal or yeah, yes, I think, but I am correct. But ever lived. I don't know. So that's a question mark there. Butters have pouches near their forearms, which they use to store rocks or use as tools and sometimes hide Shanks in them. OK, I mean, that sounds weird too, but like, not crazy. That one's freaking weird, though. Pouches in their forearms. You know, RoboCop stored a gun in his leg, and I thought that was always cool.

US#05: Not nearly as cute though.

J: I don't know, I God damn it. All right, so the it's the largest brain. One is getting me because of of any animal that ever lived. Like what about you know, they're they're massive, but I don't know any animal that ever lived. How big did all right, I don't know. You see, I'm thinking here, Steve. I don't know. The pouches in the forearms is Rick wicked crazy weird too, and they keep tools. That's pretty sentient. There. Number 2 is definitely the fiction, Steve, because it doesn't have the largest brain. It might be a dinosaur or something.

S: OK, Evan.

E: Earwax and layers. Rings used to estimate age. That's trees. That's not whales. It's not earwax. What? No way. That can't be right. And the blue whale, what? The whales are the largest things that have ever lived. Not specifically the blue. I think the sperm whale is larger than blue whale, but still in absolutely absolute terms of any animal to have ever lived. And then the otters. I have to go with George. It can't be. It can't be. Rings of earwax no.

S: OK, Bob, I'm.

B: Going to go with my gut and just screw up as usual. So the ear, the earwax thing, yeah, weird, weird as hell, but not like beyond the pale. The blue whale is absolutely the largest creature that has ever lived on the earth, ever. So the fact, no, it's a blue whale and the fact that it has the claim here is that it's the has the largest brain of anything that's ever lived in absolute size. That makes perfect sense. But maybe that's what Steve wants me to think. So I'm just going to go with the one that just gave me a a reaction. And this was it was the pouches. I have seen otters messing with rocks and the rocks are decent size. They're not tiny pebbles. They are rocks and to think of a rock that size in a pouch and the forearm, it's kind of ridiculous. It's not a Little Rock. It would be a big weird thing that just doesn't is too big to make sense. So I'll just, I'm going to say that the Otter is fiction.

S: OK. And Cara.

C: So I am pretty confident that otters have pouches near their forearms. Forearms. Yeah, you mean like by forearms? You mean not their back legs?

S: Right their not their back arms.

C: Yeah, because I'm pretty confident they're sort of in their pity pits, like near their pity pits. And they do put rocks in them and they like and they love their little rocks and they hang on to them for a really long time.

J: So I like my Little Rock.

C: Pretty confident.

J: It's like a pet rock.

C: I'm less confident about the other two. The ear wax and layers at first blush sounds ridiculous, but I don't know. I could see that happening, right? If you're, if you're that long lived and you're not, how are you going to clean out your own earwax? If you're a whale, I don't know.

J: Yeah, that's a good. Point.

C: Yeah, and.

E: Then business we just. Relate to A, to A, to a year on a calendar.

C: Well, but it it doesn't have to be like 1 to one. It just you, you, you take enough cores out of whales ears. Then you can you compare I guess so it does say to other aging. Yeah.

E: Does say estimate?

C: Yeah. And then I agree with Bob the Blue Whale because I, I think, I think I got slammed for this once on the show. It's like, clearly there's a dinosaur that's bigger. It's like, no, the blue whale is the biggest thing that has ever lived on the planet, you know, like extant or extinct. But that doesn't mean it has the largest brain. And as we know, true Chihuahuas have like a ridiculous brain to body ratio. It's like, no.

B: But he's talking that's. True.

C: That's true. OK, he's talking and.

US#05: Chihuahuas don't swim that great so.

B: They don't, but they do have pouches.

C: So their brains are small, but they're really big for little dogs, you know what I mean? And so maybe there is another huge whale. I, I don't think it would be a dinosaur. I would think it would be something similar, like another species of huge whale that has like a ridiculously big either the earwax is totally made-up or there's a different whale and I just don't think you'd make that up of a whole cloth. So I'm going to say the whale ones that are sorry that the they're all about whales. The Blue whale brain is the fiction.

S: All right, so we've got 2 for the earwax, 2 for the blue whale, and one for the Otter. So I guess we'll start with the Otter since that has the least amount of people for that one. Otters have pouches near their forearms, which they use to store rocks and to use as tools, sometimes keeping a favorite tool for years. Bob, you think this one is the fiction? Everyone else thinks that otters have pouches and this one is science. This is science. You got to watch the video. I have a link to it in the notes.

US#05: Adorable science. Adorable as hell. Adorable science is the. Best kind of. Science.

S: Yeah, they they shows like the keeper whatever working with this Otter and he hands them some food. They put food in there to eat later. Then he has this fairly big rocket. It just sort of squirrels it away and it's little axilla pouch, you know, near its forearm.

US#05: Come on, it's amazing. So good.

S: It is amazing. You knew that, George.

US#05: I did. I did. Yeah. I just it's like otters are. I could watch up videos of otters just floating on their backs holding hands for days.

C: Up with their babies, yeah.

E: Wait, wait wait. Are we saying there was selective pressure for an honor to have a pouch in its forearm, or is this just some kind of random thing?

S: Must have been.

E: Yeah, probably used it.

S: Probably both. It had something that it could.

US#05: Open shellfish. They open shellfish. They crack. They crack the little shells on their chest. They float on their backs. They grab the rock, they crack the shell. I've seen them so.

S: They find a nice rock, it's a good heft and the right shape. This is a keeper.

C: And then they made more babies that live longer and then.

US#05: Yeah, that's it.

J: They really are epically cute. I mean, the fact that they eat while floating on their back is genius.

US#05: It's like a vacation animal. It's just it's on permanent vacation, all right.

J: Oh, Steve, I just watched the video. Oh my God. Like it's nothing. He's a ground. There it is. I mean. Yeah. All right. Imagine like one of them is whips out like a birthday cake. One of those pockets, something else comes.

US#05: Out Swiss army knife.

S: So the other two are interesting, right? So The thing is, you know, ears are kind of self cleaning like you don't have to clean out your ears. The wax is a comes out by itself.

J: For most people.

S: And blue whales are the largest animals to have ever lived, but that doesn't mean that their brain is the largest. So these could go either way, even if whales do have wax tree ring dating. I mean, it's kind of weird.

J: Yeah.

S: Let's go. Let's do #2 OK. BA, Jay and Cara, you think this one is the fiction, correct?

J: Have a good day, Cara. We lost.

S: The blue whale has the largest brain, in absolute terms, of any animal to have ever lived. Jay and Cara, I think this one is the fiction. Everyone else thinks this one is science and this one is the fiction. Oh jeez Louise.

J: Now, jeez. Louise, OH. I got to feel so good if the blue.

S: Whale's the largest animal, Why doesn't it have the largest brain?

J: Maybe doesn't need it.

E: There there is. No, it's not always a correlation of brains.

J: Is it another? Is it a current living animal or an ancient animal? It's a current. Be like.

S: AJ Dinosaurs had tiny walnut. Brains.

J: Yeah. It's not a reptile. Got to be another.

S: It's got to be another whale, which OK, sperm whale. It is the sperm whale. The sperm whale is smaller than the blue whale. But why would the sperm whale have a bigger brain than the blue whale does?

C: It need to college.

J: Because it dives deeper and it needs more brain to manage all that air management.

S: It needs it. Needs more brain power to manage its lifestyle but has nothing to do with diving per SE.

J: OK.

US#05: Hunting.

S: Hunting. That's right, blue whales are baleen whales. They filt their feet. They just, they could filt the bitch sucking in their food. Sperm whales have echolocation and hunt and they have, they're way more social and cooperative and that requires more brain power here.

US#05: Wow.

S: Sperm whales have brains that are about 20 lbs, blue whales 1516 lbs. So it's not insignificant. It's a huge difference.

C: That feels very small though still.

S: Well, the human brain is what, 3 lbs. So it's.

C: Yeah, but.

S: A lot bigger than a human brain.

C: But are are those whales only five times bigger than humans?

S: Well, there, there are. So The thing is, you know, if you if you map out brain size to body size, it's not linear. As you get bigger, you don't need to. The brain doesn't grow as fast as the body does. So it actually makes sense for that curve. You know what I mean, with the sperm whales being a little bit above the curve and because they had their hunters and the blue whales being more typical on the curve. All right, that means that large whales built up earwax in layers forming rings which can be used to estimate their age is science. This is cool. Now what happens is it's actually an adaptation. The earwax builds up until it completely occludes the ear canal and you get a wax plug. And then that plug just grows bigger and bigger and bigger linearly as they age, right? So when you have a a wax ear plug from a, from a whale, you cut it sort of lengthwise and you can see the light and dark rings, dark rings from when they're migrating, light rings from when they're feeding because there's more lipids in the wax, so it's lighter in color.

US#05: Think of a size Q-tip. You need to do that.

S: I mean, you might. Think that that impedes their hearing, but it actually improves their hearing. Do you know why?

US#05: What?

S: Just.

B: Conduction through the wax?

S: Yeah, because the, the, the wax has the same conductive properties as water and so underwater. Underwater it actually aids in the sound waves communicating through to the inner ear. Yeah, cool. So and Cara's right, it's some way. It's the, the ratio of rings to years is not always one to one. It depends on their habits. Some whales have a seasonal migration and it's pretty much one year, 1 ring is one year, but not all whales. It depends on their, their migration patterns and feeding patterns, etcetera. But yeah, they have freaking rings. You could estimate their age from their earrings, these ear, these ear wax plugs, these giant little plugs that they that they recover from, from whales. Yeah, cool.

B: Steve, you said the wax conducts sound as like it's better because it's it's like water. But wait, without the plug it would be filled with water anyway, so wouldn't it be the same?

S: They said it'd be better than if it were filled with air. I guess there could still be a pocket of air in there. And yeah, that's what they said. But The thing is, it's not a detriment, right? Because it's water conduction to water conduction to the eardrum, basically.

US#05: Does the wax have like ambergris properties to it you think? I wonder if it's like has some kind of, you know, smell I.

J: Don't know. I don't.

S: I don't think so.

US#05: I think it only has, right.

S: It only has scientific interest, you know, Otherwise I don't see why.

US#05: No, I just mean literally like is it like is there some some use for it?

S: Did whalers back in the day.

US#05: Yeah, you know, we got making. Yeah, whatever, time to smoke. Well, as we've got the plug.

B: Four more candles for the light her up if you don't know. Ambergris. Stormed. Ambergris is like whale puke, right there's. Puke. Yeah, basically like perfume. It smells so good.

US#05: Right. So I wonder like if there's something there that.

S: Smells good. I think it's because of its physical properties. It helps it stick and stay on you longer.

E: Oh, it hasn't really.

C: No, I thought it was like Musk, like a really intense musky smell. And I thought it was pronounced ambergris. Ambergris.

E: Ambergris. No ambergris.

C: Ambergris. Ambergris. Ambergris.

S: So ambergris is used in perfume because it functions, it's a powerful fixative. See that making sense? Last longer on the skin, and it imparts okay. And it imparts a unique, complex, musky, sweet and marine aroma. So it's both, yeah.

C: It's a marine fecal aroma that sweetens with age. What?

E: People figured this out. That's remark like just random selection of doing a whole bunch of crazy stuff.

B: When you're slaughtering. When you're slaughtering big beautiful whales for your job. I know the whales. Smell some crazy shit from it so.

E: I suppose so, but of all.

C: But really, you guys always heard it as Amber Griz.

B: Yeah, yeah, you've.

C: Always heard amber gree. Because it's from the French, it means grey, amber, amber 3.

US#05: Well, there's the.

E: One of us is right and. You're wrong.

US#05: There's the patina. There's the patina, which is I think maybe that's called amber ambergris.

S: Internet, says ambergris.

C: Which Internet?

S: I'm just saying the first link that comes up.

US#05: It's a medical journal. Go.

E: To the French 1 googlay.

B: Care. I just listened to a pronunciation online and the guy was saying ambergris. That's.

C: Crazy.

B: But just just one guy who knows. I don't think I ever heard anyone actually say the word. I've just read it over and over and just pronounced it phonetically. It's just very simple ambergris.

E: It doesn't come up in conversation often, I'll grant you that.

S: Just say it already. Listen to this guy go on and on about how to press.

B: Oh my God no.

S: Even the French. Even though the pompous French guy says ambergris.

E: OK. All right.

J: You always make things so complicated, Cara.

E: Let's. Not be redundant here.

S: That is an example of what's called hyper foreignization, where you over apply a rule that you learn about a foreign language. It's like I which I and I learned the concept of hyper foreignization because of the coup de grace. It's like, no, it's coup de grace, Coup de grace. Coup de grace. Is blow of fat like like Mardi Gras coup de grace is the blow of grace but cache? People just think you always don't pronounce the S at the end of French words, but it's not true.

J: So, Steve, how awesome are me and Cara then?

S: Yeah, you guys.

E: Won. Oh, come on. Congratulations. We're having such a pleasant.

J: Conversation Osome. Osome.

S: Had to bring competition into it. Jay, listen, everybody won because everyone had fun and you learned something interesting, all right? Evan.

U: No, he's.

E: Not the correct pronunciation, Bowers. You would pronounce it ambergris.

S: Ambergris. All right, kiss my ambergris.

Skeptical Quote of the Week (1:51:29)

"If you torture the data long enough, it will confess to anything."  – Ronald Coase, (description of author)

S: Evan, give us a quote.

E: Tonight's quote is a cautionary quote. If you torture the data long enough, it will confess to anything.

S: I like that.

E: Now that was. I've heard this before. I had no idea from.

S: Where I'd say it all the time. Or some version of it.

E: Right. Torture the data.

S: Yeah, If you torture the data until it confesses, is another version of it that I, I.

E: Like that one? Ronald Harry Cose COASE, British economist and author, Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics and Sciences in 1991. So he is a Nobel Prize winner in in economics. And yeah, so there it is. That's where it came. And yes, so definitely a cautionary quote, I believe.

J: I mean, it says it all, you know, it's, it's really perfect for the right circumstance.

S: It's kind of about P hacking when you. Think about that.

J: That's why you got to pre register your studies.

S: Absolutely.

US#05: There you go. It's like that episode in Next Generation when Data was, you know, taken hostage. Yeah. So he was pushed so hard that he was gonna he was ready to kill the guy. He was ready to kill the guy. It was exactly something something happened in transport. So yeah, don't, don't push the data, George.

C: I was wondering what you're.

US#05: Doing, yeah.

S: So we've had two Star Trek and one Star Wars reference this episode. Just keeping track too.

J: Much, George. Thank you so much for joining us, brother.

US#05: I am so I'm going to be making the sound that that dog made when we and I see you guys at the airport. I'm so excited. I'm just going to be oh, wow, wow.

S: We'll see you. In just about just a little over 2 weeks.

US#05: Yeah, yeah, looking.

S: Forward to it. Looking forward to visiting Kansas for the first time.

US#05: Yeah, my goodness.

S: Gonna be a ton of fun. All right guys. Well, thank you all for joining me this week.

J: Sure man. You got it, brother.

S: Bye and until next week, this is your Skeptic's Guide to the Universe.