SGU Episode 1064

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SGU Episode 1064
November 29th 2025
Unable to acquire caption for image from OpenAI.
SGU 1063                      SGU 1065
Skeptical Rogues
S: Steven Novella
B: Bob Novella
C: Cara Santa Maria
J: Jay Novella
E: Evan Bernstein
Quote of the Week
"It is easy to get international agreement in science. Scientists have all the same standards - they are set not by beliefs, but by what works best. Of necessity, there is therefore universal unity. And unity makes for goodwill.” Bernd Heinrich - professor emeritu, biology department, University of Vermont, author of a number of books about nature and biology. Heinrich has made major contributions to the study of insect physiology and behavior, as well as bird behavior.
submitted by Terry from American Canyon CA
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Intro

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

S: Hello and welcome to the Skeptics Guide to the Universe. Today is Tuesday, November 25th, 2025 and this is your host, Stephen Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella. Hey everybody. Jay Novella. Hey, guys. Evan Bernstein.

E: Good evening everyone.

S: And we have a guest, Andrea Jones For Andrea, welcome back.

C: Thanks for having me back, always love hanging out with you guys.

S: So how's it going?

C: Oh, you know, everything in the United States and the world is totally fine. So it's all good. Nothing interesting to report. Yeah. No, this is. Fine, this is fine. Yeah, I'm hanging in there despite I'm making an apple pumpkin bread as we speak, so once. A year. I don't cook, but once a year I'm seized with the desire to do so, and today was a. Medical day for that so.

J: Do you happen to have a good recipe?

C: No, I just found something online. I was going to just make a pumpkin bread, but I had two apples that were going to go bad. And so I was like, we're having apple pumpkin bread. Nice. Yeah. If it's any good I'll give you the recipe and if it's not I'll keep it to myself.

J: You, you had me at Bread, so I'm intrigued. At least take take a picture of it and send it to me.

C: I will. All right. Excellent. How are you all doing?

S: Good. So Andrew, we have 4 episodes in. We recorded 4 episodes of our Political Reality podcast.

C: Yes, yes, 4 episodes and some intro material.

J: Yes, that's right.

C: Yeah.

J: And what's funny is like, you know, because we couldn't record the last two weeks because Steve was in Dubai. And it's really good that nothing like impactful or interesting or noteworthy has happened in the United States over the last two weeks. I'm glad we don't. We're not behind the 8 ball on anything. Very.

S: Slow, very slow news cycle, yeah.

C: The administration had the courtesy of not doing anything.

B: Yeah, my God, Are you guys going to release those four? Are they just like hopelessly out of date at this point?

C: It's a. Good question, Bob.

B: No, the podcast is largely Evergreen.

S: Yeah, that's not news. It's not like, yeah, it's, it's although sometimes we reflect what's going on in the news. But the topics are more, yeah, they're more Evergreen.

C: Yeah, the hope is that they're Evergreen. I suppose if we undergo a massive political change, things will stop being Evergreen. But if the world continues, then that it's Evergreen, Evergreen enough. But it is something that we, you know, we've all been talking about is like to what extent do we need to tether to the news? And I think to do anything political that's current it, it all but has to be a Daily Show, I think, because they change too fast.

J: The point of this show is, you know, in the, IT could be in the context of things that are happening on a weekly basis, you know, 'cause there is so many different things happening that that it would bring up a lot of different topics. Like for example, with the Epstein votes going through the House and the Senate. That would be a great episode to discuss just how a bill is created and how what's its pathway to being approved or denied.

S: Didn't we see that on Schoolhouse Rock already?

E: David.

J: But you get the idea. The point is like, we can't be sitting on top of the news like as it comes out because that would mean that we're Youtubers that like are recording, you know, 6 hours a day. And that's not the point here.

C: Yeah, I mean, and some of the topics, you know, we're we're choosing them with an eye to what's relevant. So one of the I don't know if we're allowed to reveal what we of.

B: Course, yeah.

C: Yeah, so one of the episodes is about voting systems. And, you know, where does ranked choice voting fit in the other types of systems out there? What are the pros and cons of them? And ranked choice voting is something that has been in the news because New York City uses it locally, It's been used in different elections around the US It certainly has has legs overseas as well. And so it's something that's both in the news but also not like the most cutting edge news ever in the world. But I am reading that Democrats are thinking about using ranked choice voting for more elections in the future in the US So it's. Yeah. Yeah. Well, yes, Steve and I disagree about about ranked choice of voting, but but it would be better than what we have. I can.

S: Tell yeah being I'll tell you the best possible option, but a lot better than what we have.

C: That's right.

B: OK.

S: I'd love to see it at the presidential level at national elections.

B: Oh jeez.

C: Yeah, I mean, that's the thing.

B: It's history.

C: I've, I've only participated in it in very local elections. And apart from the mayoral race in New York City, there were a lot of races where I didn't know who any of the candidates were, never mind knew how to rank them. And so for something like president or Senate or governor, it's, it's a little more fun, I think because you know more about the candidate. You can really, you know, think through third party candidates and other things. Like that?

S: So you didn't agonize over your fifth choice for Comptroller?

C: I did because I'm an A dedicated. It is in, but one one might not. I did actually sit in the booth forever because the service was terrible and I was Googling all the Comptroller choices. I couldn't tell you the name of a sing. I couldn't even tell you who I ranked first. But I'm sure they're doing a great job. Nope. They haven't even been sworn in. Yeah, I I'm not sure what's going on.

E: Well then they are doing a good job.

C: Yeah, I just can't believe they spell controller wrong all the time. So embarrassing.

Quicky with Bob (05:15)

Helion Fusion Update https://www.helionenergy.com/polaris/

S: All right, well, let's get to some Science News. Bob, give us an update on the Helion fusion. Is it Helion or Helion? Probably Helion.

B: Yeah, probably I'm.

S: Just I'm guessing.

B: Thank you, Steve. This is your quickie with Bob. Back in Episode 932, I talked about the company Helion Energy, which was working with Microsoft to commercialize fusion energy and their design was interesting. It was a hybrid technology. Jay say it the hybrid they call it Magneto inertial fusion, which is a hybrid of magnetic and inertial confinement, which we've talked about on the show. Also a marvel, you know, many times and it basically bars the ideas of of magnetic confinement like iders or is it eater? I think it's eater right eaters Takamak and inertial compression like the the laser implosions at Lawrence Livermore that actually had some notoriety of God. That was a bunch of years ago now a few years ago night where they hit hit ignition. But in their process, which is interesting, electromagnetic field smashed deuterium and helium 3 plasma together to fuse some of it right. So you got some fusion going on and then the then the motion of the expanding fusion plasma pushes on the surrounding magnetic fields and they're taking that energy that's inherent in the magnetic field when it's being pushed. They take that and converted directly into electricity and it's it's this direct conversion into electricity that's one of the more interesting attributes of their technology. This cuts out the inherent inefficiencies that come along with using heat to make steam and then to run turbines and then do using that to generate electricity. So it cuts out a couple of the middle men in the middle there. And this goes kind of directly into electricity, which is really interesting. So all of this ties into their general strategy. They want energy production to be so efficient that they don't need to chase ignition like every other everyone else is doing. And ignition is the the point where you've got basically a self-sustaining fusion reaction going on. And also there's other little attributes as well, but that's the main thrust of ignition so that they think they don't need to really chase that. So back then they were, I talked about, hey, they're working on, they have their 6th generation fusion generator and it reached 100,000,000°C and rah, rah, rah wasn't that awesome. And they were talking about that they will create their 7th generation fusion generator called Polaris and it should be ready by 2024. And they said with this first prototype, they wanted to demonstrate electricity produced directly from fusion, potentially even net electric. OK, so that's what they were, that's what was happening a few years ago in 2023. So now we're seeing Helion back in the news and they, they have in fact created their Polaris fusion generator and it, and it's a doozy. It's a, they have monster. They have a monster capacity, delivering 100 gigawatts into the machine. So think about that. 100 gigawatts. That's like grid scale power, right in one building. Of course, it's only for microseconds, but it's still quite impressive. Their CEO says it runs at 100 million degrees. I thought that's what Trento was doing. So that didn't really increase at all, it seems, if these numbers are right. But that's fine. 10 times the sun's core temperature, that seems like enough, enough, right there, isn't it? And they also mentioned that their coaxial cables can carry these pulses. Those coaxial cables are 720 miles long if you put them all to get laid, them end to end. So that's a lot of cables, a lot of coax. This is now this is one thing that was that was kind of a discouraging. The details of their progress are only kind of minimally and cautiously available, right? Because they and they, they that's because ostensibly because they had Chinese competitors steal bits of their intellectual property in the past. So that that theft of course, is totally believable, right? We read about that in the news all the time. But it does make it hard for the scientific community to properly assess their chances of success. And it's also seems like, oh, really, you can't give us a lot of information. That's just it's, it's a it's a definitely a red flag, But I understand if it truly is because of that, you know, Chinese competitors stealing their intellectual property, then I would understand why they would be, you know, so reticent. Let's see also in the also in the news, they're still aiming for this idea of minimal fusion, which actually wasn't very. I don't think it was. They clearly discussed that a few years ago, because that really would that wasn't in my notes When I looked at them from a few years ago. They were just pushing for fusion. It didn't seem like they, I didn't we hear the term or the phrase chasing ignition that they're not chasing ignition. So if they didn't make it clear a few years ago, they're definitely making it clear now that this is that they're going to rely on these efficiencies. So here's a quote from Helion CEO and Co founder David Curtly. He said we can recover electricity at high efficiency. We require a lot less fusion. Fusion is the hard part. My goal, ironically, is to do the minimum amount of fusion that we can deliver a product to the customer and generate electricity. So very interesting, of course the question remains, you know, is it, is that going to be enough? Is a little, is a little fusion enough? So Helion has also broken ground and started work on their Orion plant. They did, they mentioned that a few years ago that they were going to do that. So they they're on track for that. The Orion plant has been worked on and that this is going to be their first commercial plan. The technology, the idea is that the technology that they develop in Polaris, which has been running for most of 2025, I believe that technology will be ported into Orion at a grind. It's going to be the plan is to have a 50 MW class plan online, they predict by 2028. So that's when they, a few years ago they were saying 2028 as well. So it's kind of, I don't know what to make of that. It's, it's, it's, I'm encouraged that they, that they're not saying, well, it's going to be 2030 or 2032 now, which is what, which is what we would expect, right, Steve? You'd expect these initial dates that are over that are a few years old to be pushed back. So they're still saying 2028 and it's going to be when it's done, it's going to be under a power purchase agreement with Microsoft so they can feed their hungry data centers. But Helion's competitors are of course skeptical that they're going that their that their competitors are going to hit the 2028 goal. I got one quote from Ben Levitt. He's head of R&D at Zaps Energy. He said, Ben said, I don't see a commercial application in the next few years happening. There's a lot of complicated science and engineering still to be discovered and be applied. He says he doesn't see it happening in the next few years. Does that mean it could potentially happen in in five years or is he thinking more 1010 years or more? I don't know. I couldn't find any of the quotes around that. Other people are worrying that if helium screws up badly, it could embarrass and taint the whole industry. So yeah, that that's a concern as well. I mean, that's that's something that we seem to be making such cool progress in the past decade. I'd hate to have a, you know, what was that called? The AI winter where where you know, resources dry up.

S: Bob, let me ask you a couple questions really quick. So I I'm reading that they have not achieved net energy production.

B: Yeah, I didn't see, I didn't see, like I said, I didn't see too much information about what the status is. And because they're, they're saying that because they, you know, they're trying to. Yeah.

S: But that's just even saying like that's not information, that's not technical information that could be stolen. Just saying we have achieved net energy or be this is how close we are to net energy. That's sort of the bottom line here. That's like a big thing that so.

B: It is and I am discouraged.

S: That they're not saying.

B: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's definitely, that's definitely, you know, a red flag right there. And they've been running this thing apparently, from what I could tell Polaris, they've been running this thing like all year, like every day, they say every day. So.

S: Here's the other thing. So the question I have, so this is producing electricity directly, right? It's not going to steam and turn a turbine like like the other reactor. It's just there's the fusion will create a, you know, magnetic field that can induce current directly in, you know, their coils, right?

B: As a plasma is expanding because, yeah, plasma is going to be energized by the by the by the by the fusion that's happening inside, right. So the fusion is going to be happening within within the plasma and that's going to expand the plasma field and the magnetic field around it is going to kind of try to hold it in. It's going to be it's going to be, you know, expanding. So the energy that the plasma is putting into the magnetic field to expand it is what they tap into Yeah, and convert directly into electricity. So that's one of their is.

S: That work that thing theory or is that actually happened? They have a proof of concept there.

B: Yeah, I think they prove that with with with Generation 6, I think. But how, you know, but how efficient it is is another question. I'm pretty sure that that's actually happening. And that's one, that's one of the the key interesting aspects of their technology. And but I don't know how well, I don't know how well it's happening. You know what I mean? Yeah, so, so, yeah. But like I said, I'm fascinated by their approach of not chasing ignition. But will it be good enough? You know, is, is that, is that going to be enough if not having ignition just just because it's your whole entire process is super efficient. So you're kind of like making the maximum use of what little fusion is actually happening, happening. I, I will say I'm, I'm optimistically skeptical about this. You know, I've even burned too many times. Some of this looks really interesting, but I'd like to have some, some other people, some other real scientists looking at this because we had some I I looked at, I remember a few years ago, some scientists were skeptical. So check out that episode for some of those, some of their quotes. So yeah, so they were skeptical a few years ago. I haven't come across too much of that right now, but it's still kind of, you know, it's still kind of early in terms of this, this Polaris. I mean, it's been running for a while, but I haven't read too much about it. But if this works, this this would be a hell of a coup. And they they could actually say, you know, our fusion is on your power bill. There were, there were actually be power bills going out that that might list fusion. That's one of the sources which would be really cool.

S: All right. Thanks, Bob.

News Items

CRISPR Wheat Can Source Its Own Nitrogen (15:11)

• CRISPR wheat that makes its own fertilizer 

S: Jay, we have another sort of cutting edge Science News item. You're going to tell us about using CRISPR to make GMO wheat.

J: Yeah, this, this is really cool. So wheat draws almost everything it needs from, of course, the soil, right. It's roots take up minerals. Like what? What would it be? Steve, do you have any idea of what we would need?

S: From the soil, nitrogen, phosphorus.

J: That's pretty good. Anybody. Yeah. Potassium, zinc, iron, right.

S: Yeah.

J: So. So the soil microbes and the fungi, are you guys like fungi or fungi?

C: Fungi.

E: I don't know, man. I go back and forth. Yeah, it depends on the time of day. I don't.

C: Know what about evenings, Evan?

J: You might even think.

E: Oh, definitely fungi.

C: Yeah, that's right.

E: Yeah, more of. A fun.

J: So you have the, the soil microbes and you have the the fungi and they help unlock these nutrients that the wheat roots, you know, either physically can't reach on our own or can't use in the form that's present in the in the soil, right? And water acts as this delivery system that moves those nutrients, you know, into the roots as, as you know, the the water is moving around in the soil or if someone is watering, you know, that helps distribute these nutrients around the roots. Now, the atmosphere contributes carbon dioxide for photosynthesis, right? But there is one critical nutrient we cannot access directly from the air even though it surrounds the plant. Now I will ask you again, do you guys know what nutrient that is?

S: Talking about nitrogen.

J: Steve, you're so smart. I'm so proud of you. Yeah, it is nitrogen. So nitrogen is the main ingredient wheat uses to build the proteins in health in in the healthy leaves. Now protein, as you may know, is is present in in wheat and gluten is a protein, but gluten doesn't improve the flavor. It only improves The Chew. And and there's other reasons why Baker's want it. But that's that's a side note. We can't use atmospheric nitrogen because it's locked up as N 2. And This is why modern agriculture has to rely heavily on nitrogen fertilizers, right? And there's a ton of money in that. The problem is that wheat is not an efficient user of it, meaning that, you know, wheat, your typical wheat field takes up to about 30 to 50% of the nitrogen that is fertilized to it, right? Or that's applied to it. And the rest goes into, well, the problem is, Bob, that there's, there's, there's downstream effects literally like run off into waterways.

B: You can run up OK. Yeah, yeah.

J: It's a terrible groundwater.

S: It really is a big problem.

E: Do other plants have a more efficient use of the nitrogen?

J: I did not check all 3,000,292. No, I'm sure, I'm sure some do EV. But, you know, wheat being a massive crop like this is like a, a worldwide unbelievably necessary crop. It's used for so much. Yeah. It's, it's just one of our most important crops. And in fact, it was one of the crops that let humans not be, you know, not have to be nomadic and let them stay and, and, you know, and grow wheat and, and then, you know, there's a yeah, without a doubt. There's a couple of other things that happen. It converts into nitrous oxide, which is a greenhouse gas. And there is a, a, a process called volatilization, which means that the, the nitrogen goes into the air as ammonia. So there's lots of different things, lots of chemistry happening here. And of course, they're a real monetary downside here is that farmers lose money because they're buying a lot more nitrogen than that is actually being applied to the, the thing that they're trying to fix. And like I said, waterways will get polluted, atmosphere picks up more nitrous oxide, just a lot of nasty things happening with all that fertilizer. The good news here is that, like Steve said, these researchers at UC Davis found a way to push wheat into working with soil bacteria that can convert atmospheric nitrogen into a form that the plant can actually use. So this is not a full replacement for fertilizer, but it changes how the plant interacts with the microbial world around its roots. And this is really interesting. So let me get into some of these details here. Their work is built around a pretty simple idea. Instead of trying to convert the wheat into something it's not like a bean that grows nitrogen fixing nodules, right? You know, they, you know, sure, they could, they could borrow some programming from a bean and try to, you know, push it into the DNA of the wheat and all that. But that's a big deal, and it's really difficult called and, you know, it's expensive, time consuming, and there's no guarantee that it's going to work. So they decided to make a small change in the wheat that influences the soil microbes. And they decided that if they could pull this off, that bacteria would do most of the work here. And that's what the study actually tested. The researchers started by first testing thousands of natural plant chemicals to see which ones could influence the bacteria that live in the soil. And this was, of course, like a very time consuming process. But they scroll through all of these different chemicals. Only a few of the chemicals actually panned out, and one in particular called apinigen. Apinigen, a pigeonen, It's a pigeon in there.

E: It's a pigeon.

J: Yeah, not an easy word to pronounce. For people like me, this one stood out as the best. And a pigeonem is a natural compound that many plants make, and it belongs to a family of chemicals called flavones, right? And flavones are are substances plants used to for communication. It's kind of like they're pheromones. And they also use it for defense and dealing with stress in the soil. These chemicals connect. They can act like messages that guide or influence nearby microbes. When wheat roots release apogen into the soil, certain nitrogen fixing bacteria respond very strongly to it. So the bacteria that responds, it actually draws them towards the roots and encourages this bacteria to form a protective biofilm. And this is crucial to this whole thing. The biofilm gives the bacteria the low oxygen conditions that they need to convert nitrogen that's in the air into a form that the plant can use. So the team used CRISPR gene editing and what they did was they increased the amount of apogenic that wheat produces in its roots. And it's, you know, it, it actually worked it, it, it was brilliant how they figured this out. The roots will then release extra apogen into the surrounding soil and epigen. And they know what I mean. Under these nitrogen limited conditions, though, the edited wheat performed actually better than regular, you know, quote UN quote normal wheat. It had higher nitrogen content in its leaves and the roots. It had stronger photosynthetic activity and better grain yield, which is fantastic. Yeah, the soil, Right. I mean, I was really surprised to read about that, that it didn't just equal and solve a problem better.

E: Yields, I mean all, all across the board with everything we need it.

S: And to clarify, that's under what they called limited nitrogen fertilization conditions. So that's with less fertilizer than you would normally give.

J: So the soil around the engineer plants, it also showed increased nitrogen conversion activity when they measured it using standard isotopes and biochemical tests. The pattern actually held across all their experiments and more apigen in the minimum in the root zone, Apigenin there's more of it in the root zone and allowed more bacterial nitrogen fixation, which leads to healthier plants. When you know, it's let's say fertilization is scarce, so the farmer can't, you know, afford it or whatever the problem is, the plants can survive more more likely to survive with with a lot less fertilizer. And there is of course a practical angle here. So the wheat plant supplement part of its nitrogen requirements through this coop bacteria, this is a really big deal. It doesn't eliminate the need for fertilizer, but it really does reduce how much it needs. And of course the downstream effect, like I said, all of that decreases when you use less fertilizer. So the crisper wheat stayed productive when they cut the nitrogen to half or even to 30% of the normal application, it continued to function perfectly fine. And under under those low fertilizer conditions, it still outperforms conventional wheat by a wide margin. Of course, you know, we have to be cautious here. You know, these are controlled experiments. They're useful. But, you know, putting, you know, trying this in in the real world to feel a lot more. Complicated. Yeah, they, yeah, these field trials, there's a lot more variables in the soil. There's unpredictable weather, you know, there's complex microbial communities that are, that are all working with each other and the ends maybe even sometimes competing with each other. You have soil ecosystem shift, you know, not just from no global warming, but like just as you go, you know, throughout a region, the, the the ecosystems this are different from here to there could be even 50 miles away. You have a totally different scenario going on. And of course these bacteria might not behave consistently from season to season, but but you know, again, you know, this is the beginning. Like they, they found something, it works. It's you know, it's, it's a definite thing. The mechanisms work. You know, it's it's one of those things that I it seems likely to pan out. I know that they're going to have to make modifications and it's going to take some time, but this is a real win here. So just to clarify a.

S: Couple of things that you said, but I just wanted to emphasize them a little bit. So there are crops that fix their own nitrogen. They all do it through these bacteria right there. The plants aren't doing it but it's always bacteria like the legumes you mentioned. The nodules with the nodules do is they create the low oxygen environment that for the bacteria to thrive and fix their nitrogen there. There are programs to try to identify the set of genes necessary to make that happen so that we could then make fully nitrogen fixing crops, like out of the ones that aren't right, including wheat. This is like a all right. They found an easy way to do a partial fix where, Yeah, again, it's rather than these complicated nodules, it's going to create the biofilm to to to create the lower oxygen environment. And we'll see. Remains to be seen how much they'd be able to whack back fertilizer. But even like reducing nitrogen fertilizer by 10% could save a billion dollars a year, yeah.

J: Yeah, and also it, you know, this is this is the beginning of this study doesn't mean that they couldn't even make it more productive, you know, with a lot more experiment and everything. But this, you know, and this is the reason why I picked this news item is, you know, we talk a lot about these types of things like, hey, there's a cool thing that happened. You know, it's it's in play. They're they're studying it. But I think it's important for us to recognize here that like CRISPR, which is a platform, you know, is, you know, when you think about what it takes to create a platform like Chris, CRISPR and how many years and years and decades it takes to, you know, just get scientists to start using it. So CRISPR was discovered essentially in 1987. I think it took until like, you know what, we're going like 2010 plus before it started to kind of hit the science scene and people were really using it to do stuff. And then of course, since then, we've made tons of advancements on it. It's incredibly powerful, it's incredibly useful, and we need scientific funding to let scientists just experiment and try different things and see what we can do with it. Now, particularly in a situation where we have global warming, which is which is going to change so many things about, you know, where arid land even is on the planet, let alone how productive it's going to be. We do need advancements to help us continue to feed the 8 billion plus people that we have and you know, and more as the decades go by. So I think it's an important reminder that we we show some respect to the scientists who created this and who are working with it now. And and, you know, realize that it is important that money is leveraged this way to find out these discoveries. Andrea, I noticed that you're quiet here and I'll take that as disrespect. Do you not like crisper?

U: No, I like Chris.

C: Some of my best friends are crisper. J No.

U: I.

C: Literally was like, oh, I have two questions, but both of them might be things you've already covered on the podcast. So 1 is a really simple one, which is, is there such thing as wild wheat or have we domesticated all of it? You know how like there's no more wild cows. And then my other one is what sorts of things happening with CRISPR are you all covering on the show that like that you're super excited about? Because this seems awesome. And I, I remember being super excited about CRISPR when it came to malaria and when it came to a couple of other sorts of like like infectious disease related things. And this is I'm not familiar with it in agriculture. So I was just kind of curious what else, what else I should be excited about. Well, there is wild.

J: Wheat and it's still out there.

C: Can we?

J: It's. One of the ancestors of domesticated wheat. I'm. You probably can. I Corn, wheat is, yeah.

S: Take a look at it.

J: To see what the see what the you know, to see what the head of it looks like, to see if there's actually anything there that you can, you can turn it. I only thought of.

C: It when you were talking about, you know, the importance of the agricultural revolution, I was like, Oh yeah, did we just find it and make it into something and then we cultivate? The question, you know.

S: Way way. More, you know, nutritious and right, just like.

J: A lot of other things that we eat today, guys, like it can't survive all the all the wheat that we rely on, right? Yeah, it will. Not soy, probably.

C: Yeah, it won't.

J: Continue to exist if if people don't grow it, you know like it has to be grown it has to be fertilized it has to be taken care of it's not the type of thing that we know just keep going on its own if we didn't tend to it like it really does need us now we have a we have a codependent relationship I mean I also was.

C: Was thinking about the the various uproars from the non-GMO side of things. And Jay, you raise a good point, which is we've been modifying these things forever. Yeah. Oh my God, Thousands of.

S: Years. Thousands of years, right?

E: Yeah, yeah, there's almost.

S: Nothing that you eat that's not massively altered from Carl Sagan said just.

E: Look around you. Everything you see is artificially enhanced. Yeah. All right.

LLMs and Collective Intelligence (29:22)

• https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/26339137251367733 

S: Andrea, this is interesting. You're going to talk to us about our LLMS, large language models. Are they changing how we think as a group? Let me look that up real quick.

E: Let's. See. Yeah. So it's.

C: Evan, are you going to look up the answer? Yeah, yeah, I'm going to chat.

E: GPT that one and yeah, perfect, perfect.

C: That's great. Yeah, I'll just read that out loud in my voice and we'll call that good. Yes, Steve. So I'm I have come to the show and every now and again I managed to muster some research that is not squarely political science. This is social science. And I'm going to talk about political science briefly, but it's not exclusively political science by any stretch. So there's a paper that came out in late August that I'm super into. Full disclosure, the author is my pH D advisor, Scott Page at the University of Michigan. And I'm a big fan of his and he and I work together. And so a lot of this research is stuff that I work on with him. And so big, big bias alarm bells going off. But it also means that it's something that that I think is super interesting and wish more people knew about South. OK, so he he published a paper the end of the summer called Everyone Everywhere All at Once, LLMS and the New Physics of Collective Intelligence. And if you didn't get excited at the movie reference, I hope you got excited by the phrase physics of collective intelligence 'cause that's just the coolest phrase I've heard in 2025, except for that word that Jay mispronounced 200. I'm not even going to try to say it. So, so there's that. All right, so, so this is a paper about how we can use large language models to change the physics of collective intelligence. I'm going to come back to the physics part, but first I want to ask you all do you are, are you familiar with the term collective intelligence? Is it a term or or do you have a a guess as to to what it might mean I mean.

S: I've seen that reference to just trying to accomplish things in groups, basically like the crowd is smarter than the individual, right? Right.

B: And sci-fi is like a kind of like a hive mind, which is a collection of multiple many minds that's.

U: Right.

C: Are you all watching Pluribus, by the way? Oh my God.

B: Yes. OK, no sport of premise. All right, small.

C: Small side, but that is exactly the the hive mind piece. So, so, yeah, so that's exactly the idea. So it's it's this idea of the wisdom of crowds. And how can we make it such that groups of people working together become smarter than, say, the sum of those people? Or ideally, you know, smarter than and, you know, not just more knowledge, but more innovative, more adaptive, more creative, all kinds of interesting things that that an individual could never come up with. Sort of the idea of like you're all sitting in a room and you're brainstorming and you all come up with really great ideas because you've been bouncing those ideas off of one another as opposed to if the five of us all sat in a separate room and thought of things by ourselves. That said, you may also be thinking about every single time that the crowd is maybe not so wise, right? You know, we think about herd mentality and we think about people all rushing to false information or to to political views or religious views or whatever, or homeopathy or whatever it is that that we would consider not so intelligent. But it's definitely part of that groupthink. So this is a whole area of research, basically, that that crosses a number of social sciences that says, what can we do to make it so that when we put a bunch of people in a space together and they have some kind of common problem to solve, that they do it intelligently as opposed to not so intelligently. And so this is where I'm going to crowbar a teeny tiny bit of political science. And so if you're thinking about collective intelligence in economics, you're probably thinking about how do you design A market so that people can trade things and exchange value and innovate and all that stuff in political science. And Steve, you and I talked about this on the Political Reality podcast already. The idea of how do we get a group to make a good decision or come to some kind of agreement is pretty much what's happening every time we think about what does an election system look like? How do jury deliberations work? What are the ways that Congress, you know, deliberates with one another before they have a vote? And so all that stuff in politics is also collective intelligence. And there's all kinds of other ways that, you know, a community might come to to some kind of agreement as a group. I spent a lot of time with Scott working in the space of companies. So companies are very interested in collective intelligence. So if I'm going to put together A-Team to solve some problem, you know, a tech problem or a CRISPR problem or whatever it is, it's not enough to just get a whole bunch of smart people and put them in the room and hope for the best, which is what most of us tend to do. What you want to do is be thoughtful about how those people interact and, and what are the processes by which they bring different bits of information, Deliberate over those pieces of information and then select the best one. And immediately you should be thinking and, and I don't know, maybe anyone listening who's ever been in a work meeting. I can certainly speak to faculty meetings at NYU and pretty much everywhere. It's I don't feel like a lot of those meetings lead to collective intelligence. Usually what happens is someone comes in with a strong opinion, that person, if they're also the loudest person, will dominate the conversation for a while. Perish forbid, they're also the most senior person in the room and so no one really feels comfortable pushing back. A couple people might ask a few questions and then everyone nods. And then we just do the thing that the guy who's called the meeting wanted you to do, or you try to introduce new ideas and say, well, actually you brought me in because I have a different perspective. And I think there's XY and Z problem. And then the rest of the room says what? No, that's silly and shuts it down. And so again, it's like, why even bring this outside expert into the room? And so all of that is to say is that there's lots of things that we can do. And this can be in our own work, in our own lives, in our own communities to make our groups smarter. This article is about how we can use LLMS in a way that I at least I'm curious if you all have seen this, but in a way that that I don't normally see people talk about the use of LLMS. So the idea here is a picture of meeting that you're going into. We got to solve this problem. We got to go through, you know, whatever decision making process that we have to go through, how are we going to get to collective intelligence? Well, there's three steps. One, we want to have as many independent inputs as possible. So if we're all sitting around trying to solve a problem, we need to hear from Bob and Evan and Jay and Steve and me and we all need to talk it through and, and, and get that information out there. We then need to also be able to consider all the options and then we need to choose over those options. The problem is that those three things take forever. If we were all sitting down to say, you know, in a meeting today, This is why we do it before the podcast and said, well, what should we talk about on the podcast tonight? It's like Evan will say his idea is for 10 minutes and then Jay will say his idea is for 10 minutes. And I'll say my idea is for 10 minutes. And before we know it, an hour has gone by and we haven't even gotten to the deliberation. So the idea in this paper is what if before the meeting, before anyone gets to the room where we're going to talk about whatever it is each person talks to an you can type it, you could talk it talks to an LLM about what their ideas are. So, you know, maybe it's us brave and storming for the political reality podcast. So I'll say 10 minutes into my phone, I think we should do this da, da, da, da, da. Meanwhile, Steve is somewhere else doing that into his phone. Jay's doing it and we're doing it. And then while we're walking to the meeting and while we're sitting down and saying, hey, everyone, how are you get some coffee, blah, blah, blah. And LLM is summarizing all the key pieces. And so then by the time we start the meeting, we start from Step 2, which is let's deliberate over what the different ideas were. And there's a bunch of benefits to that. One is obviously you're saving a ton of time of having to sit there and listen to everybody. The trade off is you don't hear all the nuances. You hope that the LLM summary is correct. And so obviously depending on the importance of the conversation or the level of nuance and and privacy, you wouldn't want to use it for everything. But for pretty standard stuff, this could get you pretty far. And the other great thing is that one of the best ways to generate collective intelligence is to have these independent inputs that are truly independent. It doesn't work. And we've all seen these psychology studies where you sit in a room and, you know, and you show a participant a circle on the wall and every everyone else in the room says, ah, it's a square. And then the person who's the subject, like, kind of doubts themselves and says, yeah, I guess it's a square, even though it's a circle. Like we are so quick to say, oh, yeah, I agree with what this person said. Or you all have been podcasting longer than I have, so let's do what you say. Or just to agree with the majority that these independent inputs that we submit before I hear anyone else's ideas, and I just say it to an LLM that's going to get much richer information from me and take more advantage of each of our individual perspectives as well. So it's just a teeny tiny paper. Oh, and the reason it's it's about the physics of collective intelligence is because if we think about physics, we think about the constraints on groups working together. And those constraints are often around space and time. We all have to get to the same place to have the conversation and we all have to be free at 4:00 PM. In this case, we we saw during COVID and we've seen ever since that the constraints of space have really gone away. Not completely, but largely, right. We can, we can do podcasts from Beirut and we can do podcasts from Tokyo and we can do podcasts from Connecticut. But the time issue has been a problem. And so this, this idea that we could use LLMS to speak simultaneously to have meetings, not at the same time, but then have a separate meeting where we actually talk about you basically get to start meetings halfway through, but have the full amount of time you always had. So I just thought it was a super cool idea. It's not, you know, a heavy duty experimental research paper in that sense. It's more of a, a thought piece that says like we, we've been thinking about LLMS as, you know, more of an individual tool. You know, I sit and it's my sidekick and it helps me. But we could actually really get group minds working a lot better and faster and more creatively if we we start to think about them at the group level as well. But you're basically.

S: Laundering your ideas through a chat bot, Yeah. But so, yeah, I would be interested in how that might distort, correct the everyone's ideas, you know? Yeah, well, what you would wanna?

C: Do, and this is where you would hopefully, you know, work with a, an LLM that is either tailored to your organization or, you know, if it's a bunch of doctors in the room, you know you, I wouldn't just use mass available ChatGPT or something like that. But yeah, you would also, and especially early on, you would also want to go through and make sure that the the summaries of what you've said are correct. There's certainly issues where if someone speaks with an accent or speaks in a slightly different style that their, their input would not be measured exactly the same way. And I certainly wouldn't use it for big decisions around like should we fire somebody or promote somebody. But I don't know about you, but a lot of meetings that we go to are really. Not that high stakes. And so, you know, I have 1:00 tomorrow morning where it's like, yeah, rather than each of us recap, what if we we did the recap separately and then read a bullet point in summary right before we started. And then over the course of the meeting, you can then say, oh, is this what you meant? And and, and go back, Yeah. And dig in. But it's certainly not perfect. It's certainly not for every conversation. And there's also plenty of conversations where the murky middle of like saying a bunch of stuff and then saying, well, actually, maybe I disagree with myself, or let me restate that. That might spark an interesting idea and you would lose some of that. But, you know, think of your average insufferable corporate meeting there. There are some ways to improve them, I think.

S: Yeah, no, just you. Know someone I know not too long ago had a meeting where they had to like approve bylaws or something, right? And they, they, they have to have a public comment period. So literally they had a meeting where 100 faculty members all could, every one of them if they choose, could state their opinions about that. And it took forever. They had to actually have a separate meeting because it took twice as long as they were planning on it taking and it was just interminable. So I think that's the kind of thing where anything is better than that, you know, I mean, think about.

C: Voting right in the United States, voting is largely simultaneous. Yes, we have early voting and mail in voting, but for the most part, within a very contained bit of time, we all show up and we we turn in our ballots. And if we did it sequentially, which is how most meetings and most public hearings are done, we would still be going through our first election. You know, like, OK, you can't go until Steve is done. Like, OK, am I trying? It can't happen that. Way.

S: Yeah. So it's like so.

C: What are the sorts of things, and I think it's a great question, is like, what sorts of meetings or gatherings or, or what types of collective intelligence are we trying to capture here? If what we really want to do is just get a sense of what everyone's perspectives are? Yeah, it could work well if we're trying to sit down and say like, let's talk through our ideas for a new title, maybe we want to be in the room and hear all of the ideas, not just the shiny one we got to at the end. I don't think this is.

J: Strange at all, I think, you know, This Is Us interfacing with our latest and greatest technology. I mean, this is this is what we're supposed to be doing. Like, you know, it's worth even trying just to see if it works for your group or under what circumstances or whatever. But efficiencies are going to be found only if we look for them and I think to.

C: Jay that that maybe one thing that is, is potential real upside for this is, is again, thinking in the corporate world, it's like there's so many meetings where or there's so much research that shows that women are more likely to be interrupted. Someone who's a racial minority is more likely to be dismissed if their idea doesn't align with the ideas of the group. And I'm not trying to rattle, you know, woke slogans or anything like that. This is like actual research that typically, you know, people from different backgrounds, different preferences, introvert, extrovert, different, different levels of comfort speaking up in a meeting. We're missing a lot of people's perspectives because the dynamics of the meeting are such that someone's interrupted or someone's talked over or someone doesn't feel comfortable speaking up in the 1st place. Or like I said, you feel afraid to disagree with the majority. But if you all have to say your thing ahead of time, like I think this is a great idea, I think this is a terrible idea. I think we're missing XY and Z. You're going to get everyone's information equally as opposed to just hearing from the loudest or more confident person in the room. So I think that is potentially really powerful. That said, the opposite could be the case. It could be if we're, if we use the wrong aggregator or we use the wrong type of tool, we could be replicating those biases. But I think sort of like you, you said, Jay, it's worth giving it a shot to see if we could actually make meetings more inclusive this way. I think it's worth mentioning that.

J: You know, there is a lot of information out there about how, you know, working with LLM's is, is bad, right? There's a lot of, you know, we get a lot of emails from people and I've been having discussions with people. I think we should mention that, you know, yeah, they do consume a ton of energy. We don't know from a Big Brother perspective, like how much of our information is private and everything. So I mean, I think it's fine for us, of course, to talk about this stuff. I think those are legitimate concerns.

S: You know, we were facing a genuine dilemma. We have a useful tool that has some serious downsides. You know, one of the biggest being its energy use, which is, you know, we've had to revise all of our projections about energy and climate and everything to account for the AI factor. Yeah, there's no way around.

U: Not by a.

S: Little either, but but The thing is, I mean, it's a good point because if if it produces only like marginal advantages, it may not be worth it. But that's not typically how people think. I think if it's even slightly more efficient or, or people like doing it, a lot of people are going to do it, you know, regardless. Yeah, I think, Steve.

C: I I similarly it usually when I think about LLMS and how I see people using it or how various outlets on the Internet recommend streamline your workflow with Geminis, whatever, whatever. You're like, OK, and it, it doesn't really I'm like, is it really worth it? Like the the risks with the climate and the energy consumption. To summarize my emails for me, like this is shaving 30 seconds off my life. Maybe, but not really. It's mostly just bothering me, and I'm going to go read the emails either way. This one was one of the few instances of using LLMS that I was like, oh, this is a genuine change in how we do things. And if it's possible that this generates more collective intelligence, it could be that it is the sort of thing that helps get us more quickly to more innovative solutions, like the cool CRISPR stuff that Jay was just talking about. And even what Bob was talking about is, you know, like greater collective intelligence could really get us there. But, you know, I'm more excited about this than I am about like, oh, we're going to summarize, you know, emails. But. But yeah, no, it's a it's a huge concern. And if I could put it back in the bag, I would strongly consider it. Is this a current concern in other?

E: Words it will likely become more energy efficient in the future. So I mean kind of like we bring about something now in 2025, but by 2035 it'll be 90% more energy efficient, for example. We hope so not. They've been working on it for a. Long time, yeah.

S: So it's it's.

E: One of the things that it's.

S: Hard to say, but like a lot of things, if they do get efficient, they use that to make it more powerful. So we never actually get the savings. It's like as we as electricity gets cheaper, we get more electricity, we get more light and just as you get more devices to clean our house.

C: Our house has to be cleaned. Yeah, like multi terabyte hard drives. We just no.

B: Matter how big they get, we fill them up. But my other concern.

S: Here, though, is that, as you say, yeah, you should proofread the summary. No one's going to do that. Everyone, the most people are going to do lazy route and just read your terms and conditions. Yeah, right.

E: Yeah, right. Right, that's.

C: Just yeah, that's we.

S: Seek our lowest energy, right? We're not going to spend energy that we don't have to. Yeah, you can ask ChatGPT to summarize.

C: It for you.

B: That's right, Give me.

E: The second terms and conditions I've done that.

B: Well, everyone, we're going to take.

S: A quick break from our show to talk about our sponsor this week, Aura frames, guys, we've all been there right the.

B: Holiday season, you got to buy a million gifts for a million people. You run out of ideas. What can you get that's really good but also has a personal feel to it that the answer to that conundrum is aura frames? Yeah, this year I'm going to get aura frames.

J: For two of my friends and I'm going to load up a bunch of pictures on there of basically everything I have, which goes back, I don't know, 30 years at this point. It's, it's a really awesome thing to do because you're going to give them a bunch of pictures that they don't have and you're going to give them really awesome access to it. And to do that, you just download the Aura app, connect to Wi-Fi, and then you can upload an unlimited number of photos or video that your friends will instantly see for a limited time. Save on the perfect gift.

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Origins of Theia (48:43)

• https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ado0623 

S: All right, let's go on. Do you guys remember Thea? Yeah, yeah, sure.

E: I don't.

B: That's the. I don't I.

S: Don't remember I.

B: Wasn't there at the time but I read about it the the Mars sized.

S: Planet that crashed into the proto earth? Oh no. Is it OK creating 4 1/2?

E: Billion years ago.

S: Creating our current Earth and Moon system, right so.

E: Scientists. Leading theory scientists.

S: Have a question, And the question is where did Thea come from? Specifically, what part of the solar system did it come from over Thea? So how? Could they answer? This question So what so do you guys know like just generally how do scientists know where something in the solar system mineral composition yes and what. Specifically, ratio. Balance of minerals.

B: Would be and what specifically you're?

S: You're right up. Isotopes, isotopes, it's the isotope ratios exactly. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, I mean, so.

B: Apparently the isotope.

S: Ratios tell you like so much about the history of so much, so much of stuff in the solar system, including where like how close to the sun did it form? Because there's different isotope ratios in different locations in the solar system. So there's a recent study trying to address this question of where did Thea come from by looking at isotope ratios. Smart. But there's a problem. Where do you look?

B: Where do you look at Earth and Moon? Because when? It's.

S: It is believed that the moon is made mostly of Thea right, but the Earth is just a complete mishmash of Earth and Thea right mixed together and 4 billion years later, you know all kind.

E: Of you know, where do yeah, where do you find something that happens? Are we all made of Thea?

C: There's there's a little bit of Thea in each of.

S: Us that's right, Andrew, they.

C: So there's what?

S: They did, was they? Looked at a lot of mineral samples from different strata and they also looked at samples from from of moon rocks. Sure. So the Earth and the moon pretty much look the same in terms of isotope ratios. But by doing, you know, an extensive survey there, because you can't look at a piece of rock, I say this piece of rock is Thea, right? I mean, you just can't do that. But what they could they could do is they said, OK, if Thea came from the outer solar system, what would we expect, You know, a random survey of Earth rocks to look like. And we do have samples of those, right?

E: Well, yeah, we have. Yeah, it's Earth rockets.

S: All over the place, but samples of of.

E: Of non solar system material? Sure. Not non solar system material.

S: Non earth material, so we have as a reference. As a reference, we have samples of meteorites from all different places in the solar system, so we know we do we know what an.

J: Outer.

S: Solar system rock looks like in terms of its isotopic ratios, we know what an inner solar system rock looks like etcetera, etcetera. So we so the Earth and the moon obviously look like inner solar system rocks. They look pretty much the same with each other. So they they sort of addressed this question by saying what if Thea came from different places than solar system? What would you know a survey of Earth rocks look like in terms of its ratios? And they concluded. What do you think they concluded? Where do you think Thea came from? It's a local boy. Yeah, I'm with.

E: Inner I would say yeah it.

C: Would it would make?

E: Sense inner solar system like all the other rocky yes, inner solar, it did not come.

S: Screaming in from the outer solar system. It was probably our neighbor. They think this is a little speculative. This is like a statistical kind of thing. They think it's it was probably a little closer to the sun than the Earth. So you can imagine these two planets in very close orbits, but eventually they crossed, you know, and then and Thea smacked into the Earth or Earth smacked into Thea, depending on your. Oh yeah, your perspective is a please.

E: Report to find out Yeah, much what a day that was than the earth I know.

C: Right. Can you imagine? Would would Thea have had to be smaller than the Earth? And that's why the Earth hung on? And I mean, yeah.

S: It was.

C: It was like Mars.

S: Sized. Yeah, OK. Again, I think Bob's.

C: Correct in reality.

S: The best way to think about These two planets hit each other and merged and spit out the moon basically changed. The orbit of the earth changed. Obviously the mass of the earth gave us our satellite. What's really poignant, though, is that I.

B: Mean it's possible. We know. We know how early life arose on the earth. It's basically as soon as you know that the magma wasn't in a place, then life kind of started. It's really we push it back every, you know, millions of years all the time. So earth mark one right? The earth, the earth that was destroyed could have had life on it and then it was utterly destroyed in the gut. Let's try this again, shall we? Reset. Yeah, just hit a reset. Imagine that was there life on Thea could.

C: There have been, sure, sure, but.

S: We'll never know, yeah.

B: But we'll never know.

S: I didn't think of that one.

U: That's interesting.

B: And how long ago did all this?

C: 4 1/2 billion, yeah.

S: Give or take, give or take long time ago in the. Performance to go. Back. I'd love to go back.

B: Right after the moon formed. To see a moon, see it's 16 times the size.

E: And the yeah, 1516 times. Imagine.

B: A moon. Gargantuan. Just don't be near the water. The show right? Not be the tides. The tides. Tides were as big as a mountain. Mountainous tides, which actually I keep, I probably said this on the show 4 separate times over the years, but it's actually probably a good thing that happened because those immense tides we know went hundreds of miles into onto land and just scoured everything and brought it back into the ocean. And there's your, your, your classic, you know, primordial soup. Primordial soup.

S: So.

B: Probably a good thing.

S: All right, all right, Evan, tell us about.

Holiday Scams (54:51)

• Holiday scams 2025: These common shopping habits make you the easiest target 

S: Some upcoming holiday scams Tis the season. Well, Chris is coming at all exactly, exactly.

E: And every year around this time of year, the holiday season, as it were, cybersecurity researchers published their annual warnings about holiday scams. And they say that 2025 holiday season is shaping up to be one of the worst yet. Of course that they're going to say that because they'll always say that in the current year. But in any case, the company Malwarebytes, they are famous in a way for many things. But also every year they release a report on how cybercriminals adapt to our habits from year to year. And basically it's not so much about the fancy hacking or anything that kind of goes on. It's just about how to take advantage of human weaknesses, you know, kind of the, the weaknesses of our of our brains that they exploit predictable, measurable human behavior. Their report this year has very common shopping habits that they point out that make people the ideal targets. For example, one of the strongest risk factors is being a last minute shopper. Those are the people who wait until the final days for the holidays are nearly are, are very close and they're those people are nearly twice as likely to click on a fraudulent tracking link or fall for a fake delivery problem notification. You guys have received those, right? I mean, you know, emails. It was a very last minute shopper.

C: I didn't know I was in such a high risk category if you are.

E: Because when the merchandise, you know, it's either supposed to be on its way and you're tracking it, there is this urgency or an anxiety spike. And that's when people's decision making is becomes perhaps less than ideal. And they'll let their guard down sometimes. And the scammers definitely know this. And their phishing campaigns coincide with peak shipping windows. So that's why we see these fake emails and texts claiming, hey, the package can't be delivered or you need to update your payment information. That's a big one. And then they're designed to look like the, well, the big shippers, you know, Amazon, UPS, FedEx, United States Postal Service, even. And these imitation pages, they're using what AI generated layouts. Yep. So these things are becoming much harder to just detect upon glance. The wording is becoming neater, crisper, right? You can't find the typos or the bad verbiage verbiage that's going on in these things. They're they're cleaning it up and they're using AI to do it. So yeah, here's another major risk factor, impulse shopping from social media ads. So instant buy traps, they call it. Look, look out for things like limited editions and you know, phrases like that that will get you to a click on this because you know, it's going to be, you know, better, easier for you and just more alluring. So you see a list, you click it and you enter it and then what the store really never existed or you get some kind of knock off of what you were going to be buying. Kind of a bait and switch in that sense and FOMO, right? Fear of missing out. They definitely rely on that fear of losing a potential bargain is sometimes more motivating than the than the desire to avoid a possible scam. So you have to be able to, you know, kind of check yourself in in those in those instances. This year, the criminals are also exploiting a behavior that didn't used to be risky. They say price comparing across multiple tabs or apps. J Yeah, I know that from our conversations. You have done price comparing shopping before extensively. Yeah. Yeah, right. I.

J: Mean, you know, I thought of you immediately.

E: This. Not that you would fall for it because you're a good skeptic and you have defenses against this, but this is where this is another weakness where they where the scammers come in. You know you're flipping back and forth between what Amazon, Walmart, Target, TikTok, Timu and whatever looking for the lowest price, right? Nothing, nothing wrong with that. But in that rapid fire mode, they say that the consumer will become much more likely to mistake a fake storefront for a real one and then boop, falling right into that trap. Scammers are also capitalizing on this by cloning legitimate storefronts almost perfectly. Same fonts, same product listing, same color schemes. It's becoming much more difficult to identify. The only thing that changes is the URL. But how many people really look at the URL to make sure that they're going where they're supposed to be going? I have gotten myself into that habit, especially when it comes to things like banking, among other things. You know, I never, I, I, I have trained myself to get in the habit of looking at the URL to make sure and to use the built in security features that are in a URL. You know, if you site information and those kinds of things, they're right there. You know, you just need to just go and click on them. Take the extra second to protect yourself tracking. They're talk about package tracking updates. That is where they're really apparently making good inroads because people are getting more tracking notifications more than ever. And again, given it's the season that gives people, you know, just more activity in that area and it becomes an easy target for the scammers to exploit. So they also make some suggestions as to what you can do, how to prevent this, some easy habits to get into or easy, easy steps you can take to minimize this kind of damage. First, they say slow down even by two or three seconds, because studies have shown that when subjects deliberately pause before clicking the link. The rate of falling for a scam plummets and that micro pause interrupts the automatic emotional response scammers depend on. We have a friend. I won't name her, but we all Andrea. You don't know her, but the four of us like I'm right here, Evan Jeez. And.

C: And she it's not you.

E: And, and I've seen it, I've seen her do this in real, in real time. She will absolutely go nuts ordering stuff while she while she's on her phone and you know, definitely not take those pauses. Is that that's her habit? I've seen her do it many, many times. So you know, people there, this does happen. This does happen a lot. Another tip, don't trust links in the tracking messages. Instead, go directly to the retailer or carrier website through your own bookmark or app and if there's really a problem, you'll see it there. They're also suggesting do not buy directly from social media ads, especially the ones that promise, you know, rare items, scarcity items, exclusivity, or you know, big discount 7080% off electronics. Find it through a standard Google search not or or on a known retailer site, but not directly from social media ads. They also give a tip about re entering payment information on an e-mail notification. Retailers will not ask for that through e-mail or text. So if a message that claims your payment failed, you know, if you get that, you have to really log into the retailer's website independently to verify it. Do not ever click the embedded link. And that's something we've been talking about I think for years on all kinds of scams that they use through our electronic devices, smartphones and whatnot. So they're saying, they're pointing out this year that the biggest vulnerabilities are are not technical so much as they are behavioral, right. They're using our brains against us, and our brains make us an easy target to exploit sometimes in certain situations. And this happens to be one of them. Yeah. There's just so much noise now, like.

S: Especially like with the SGU, like between Jay and I were ordering a lot of stuff for the studio and sometimes he does it and so I can getting constant notifications, like two or three notifications per item that's ordered, you know, and so that creates the background noise that it would be, you know, hard to detect the scam one thrown in there. That's why I just don't click anything. I don't click anything in any e-mail ever. That's just you have to have universal precautions. It's yeah, especially if it's a number you don't know.

C: Or, you know, like, like Evan said, like usually if it's a tracking update, you the the store itself will send it. Yeah, as well as the, you know, the text. So I just do the store 1. But I just really, you know, I mean, this is something we've probably been talking about with related to scams forever, but people who are not particularly tech savvy or don't really realize that AI can replicate entire websites. Like I just, I could really see, despite the fact, Evan, that you said that this happens, you know, every year claims to be the worst year. I could see these really being a problem for. I'm just thinking of people in my own life who wouldn't know to double check the URL. Exactly. Yes. Yes, and as.

E: Always the old, you know, the older population is always the most vulnerable of the population when it comes to techno technology related scams. Definitely. So we got to watch out for our for our friends, our family members, you know, our parents, our grandparents help keep an eye on them always. Thanks, Evan.

Hypervelocity White Dwarves (1:04:00)

• Galactic cannonballs: The mystery of hypervelocity white dwarfs may just have been solved 

S: Bob, tell us about hyper velocity, white dwarfs, zombie bullet stars.

B: In the news. I'm already with you. Yeah, I'm already.

C: With you.

E: I I heartily endorse this. That's what I do.

B: Try to suck. You in and then I'm in. OK, you're in. Let's see if I can sustain this. That's good click bait. Probably not. Yeah. So a recent study and simulation offers what some consider the most compelling answer yet to what would cause hyper velocity white dwarf star stars traveling at 2000 kilometers per second, which is fast enough to leave the Galaxy. What would cause that? And if it verified, if this this theory is verified, that this would all happen because a heavier companion white dwarf blows up twice. So this was published recently in the journal Nature Astronomy. Now we all know about white dwarf stars, right? Stars around the mass of our sun eventually will Slough off their outer layers, right? Leaving behind a massive but Earth sized core but with a stellar mass. So this thing is quite a beefy dude. And if it's if it's solitary, just hanging out, it's going to cool very slowly over potentially trillions of years. But then in 2018, the Gaia Space Observatory discovered a handful of these white dwarf stars travelling at insane speeds that the very fastest that they detected were travelling at 2000 kilometers per second. That would get from the Earth to the moon in about 3 minutes. That's a what, 200 and 39249 thousand 1000 miles our money takes me to microwave my my.

E: Burrito right when, remember.

B: When we went to the moon, it was like 4, it was like 3 days. So 4300 minutes compared to 3 minutes. So this thing is booking now. Some of these white dwarfs, they weren't even just speedy, they also were very unusually hot and puffy, kind of like these puffed up surfaces. And some of them also had heavy elements which kind of shouldn't have been there. So 3 mysteries here. What did this? And no theory could explain all three of those unusual attributes until these researchers ran their simulations. So in the simulation, they had what they had. They created 2 binary white dwarfs and these were helium, carbon, oxygen white dwarfs. And they're, those are white dwarfs that can, that can be together in orbit around each other for a very long time and kind of evolving together. So that's why they selected these helium, carbon, oxygen white dwarfs. What? So what they are is essentially A helium skin over a carbon core. It's a good way to think about them. The primary, the biggest one in their simulation was about right around just under .7 of a Sun mass. So, so 70% of our Sun's mass, the secondary white dwarf was a little bit smaller. That was just a little bit more than 60% of our Sun's mass. So, so definitely similar to our Sun, a little smaller. So this is what the simulation described when they, when they ran it. Imagine you've got these two white dwarf stars in orbit around each other getting, you know, maybe getting closer and closer. Some of the helium from the surface of the smaller white dwarf is transferred to the larger white white dwarf. So that's number one. That's at first big step there. The smaller one is losing mass. This extra helium is building up on the bigger on the bigger white dwarf. So what happens is that causes a supersonic fusion detonation that races around their white dwarf meeting at the other side. So the surface essentially explodes. So this is the first explosion. Then those shock waves, remember those shock waves that met on the other side from where where the fusion started? They can that converges. Those shock waves converge at the core of this larger of remember, this is the larger white dwarf that's been siphoning off helium from the smaller 1. So that detonation converges at the on the far side of the white dwarf and then it go, it goes down to the core. And So what you're essentially having is a deeper carbon detonation in the core of the larger one and that annihilates the entire white dwarf. So that's that's the second explosion. So the first explosion is the helium helium skin igniting and the second an explosion is the rest of the carbon and the core of the white dwarf exploding the. White Dwarf. It's basically. Like no longer there. Okay, so this is what the simulation said is happening. So this is this is then the trigger. This is the trigger to turn the remaining core that remember the smaller white dwarf into this zombie bullet that it's the trigger that the forces that are created in this explosion of the larger one are on the scale of all the energy the sun releases in its entire existence. So we're talking about a tremendous amount of energy. I, I have to assume that these white dwarf cores are pretty Hardy because in this simulation, it actually survives the smaller dwarf survives the detonation of the nearby larger dwarf star that just blew up. And this is what flings it at these ridiculous velocities, sometimes over 2000 kilometers a second. OK, but as that is happening now imagine you've got this large white dwarf that explodes, that flings the smaller one away. As it explodes, it's impacting the smaller white dwarf. So it's it's, it's, it's stripping away some of its outer layers, but it's also heating the, the core, the surface of the core that that's exposed. And so that explains why we're seeing a very hot, puffy outer atmosphere to these to these hyper velocity white white dwarfs. That explains that. And this the the third, the final mystery seems to be solved because what's happening, you have you have a lot of fusion taking place on the larger white dwarf. You got the outer skin, the helium skin that detonated, you know, infusion fire, but you also have the interior that also had some, some fusion taking place. So you got lots of fusion taking place. So it makes sense then that the simulation would put this freshly forged heavy elements into the into the mix of the outer layers of the of this smaller white dwarf. And so that explains all three anomalies like like no other theory has. This isn't a home run, of course, this is just one, this is just a simulation that they ran. But it's the single best explanation for these three big anomalies, the extreme speeds, the puffed up heated state of these hypervelocity white dwarfs, and the odd compositions that all the other earlier models struggled to fit all of these at once. And none of them did. But this, this theory does fit all of these anomalies at once. So I thought that was a very, very interesting, pretty cool stuff. In the future, these researchers are going to use wide field surveys like the Varici Rubin Observatory to help put these theories to the test. A best case scenario, I'm not even sure how achievable it is, but a best case scenario would be to actually observe this happening in real time, which would be a hell of a coup. They'd be, that'd be a hell. What? That'd be what, what, three 20s in a row? Rolled Andrea? I think that's right, yes.

C: OK.

Voice-over: But in a sense.

B: This whole talk has been a preamble I think to answer the question that a lot of you are thinking, I, I hope some of you are thinking about it, what would happen to the earth if it was hit by such a hyper velocity white dwarf? So I have of course I had to go down that rabbit hole. So the question itself is actually technically wrong because a billiard ball like impact would not happen. It would not be like billiard balls hitting if a white dwarf hit the Earth at this velocity or even even smaller velocities. Just the fact that a white dwarf would be heading towards us, we would probably be spaghettified. But I think let me getting a little bit ahead of myself here. So as the as the white dwarf enters the solar system, our orbit would would drastically change. It would become more either more eccentric. We could be the Earth could be ejected. We could spiral right towards the white dwarfs. A lot of different things could happen. Lots of different variables going on here. We would not only have huge ocean tides, but they we would also have crustal tides. We'd had the crust of the Earth would form tides like it does right now, but they're super tiny. You can't even notice them, but it does happen. Well, we would have huge crust tides. It reminded me of the movie 2012 and what happens, You know, we'd have incredible volcanism. We'd have quakes. Yeah, It would be a very, very bad day on the earth when as we were approaching was a bad day as. Yeah, as we were. Approaching each other. And then we would hit the the infamous Roche limit. This is the limit the distance from a larger celestial object where a smaller object zone gravity no longer holds together. So once we approach the Roche limit of this white dwarf heading towards us, it's the Earth could not hold. It could no longer hold itself to together. Our gravity would kind of be like, I'm sorry, doing the best I can here, but I'm done. And the Earth would just kind of just start falling apart. And this is all at about 1,000,000 kilometers from a typical white dwarf. Depending on the size it could be it could be a hat, you know, it could be a few 100,000 kilometers, it could be 1,000,000 kilometers. But when we were still at a solid distance comparable to the to the Earth moon distance, the Earth would just start falling apart, couldn't, could no longer hold itself together. And this is all because of the tidal disruption that's happening, right? It's all about the tides and tidal disruptions are, are can be so powerful. And so what's happening is the near side and far side of the Earth would be, would feel dramatically different gravitational forces. And that's, that's the basically the essence of tidal disruption. The far side, because it's farther away, would be feeling significantly less gravity. And because the gravity is so huge to begin with, it's it's a dramatic difference. And that would basically tear the Earth apart. And this is where the spaghettification starts happening. It breaks apart into these glowing chunks and in short order, all of those glowing chunks would then become plasma and intense radiation like X-rays and ultraviolet. The plasma could form a disc around the the white dwarf and kind of slowly fall into it, or it could, it could form a stream directly spiraling right into it. You know, I'm not sure which one would happen, but luckily, luckily this is ridiculously unlikely. But it's, it's, it's a macabre and scientifically interesting at the same time, which of course appeals to me. It's a fun combination. So it's a lot of stuff slamming into Earth.

C: Yeah, right. I mean, yeah, but it's it's so.

E: Impound. It's so interesting.

B: To think of what would happen, but man, imagine scientists are like, yeah, we see a a hyper velocity white dwarf heading towards the Earth area. So basically you've got about I don't know how long, weeks or months before it's so close that it's just gonna RIP the Earth apart. So just so have fun and yeah, while while you can, you know, even if it didn't get that close, it probably.

S: Would fling us out of the solar system or into the sun or Oh yeah, if it would just be the. Outskirts of the solar system.

B: Yeah. Yep. Depending on where we were, you know, when our orbit around the sun and compared to our proximity to the white dwarf, yeah, it could just fling us out of the entire solar system or or send us right into its maw. Like the like the Star Trek episode, the which I'm gonna call it the doomsday machine. Nasty stuff. So luckily, hopefully, we'll never see that Star Trek the original. Series.

E: By the way, would we live if Earth got?

C: Flung out of the solar system. Like if we got clung into the sun, I feel like it's over instantly. Like, I think it would be pretty instant, Right? Yeah.

E: It would, yeah. It would be bad.

B: I recommend the short story called A Pail of Air. Essentially, our atmosphere would rain down as snow at different at different times because different gases in the atmosphere have different freezing, you know freezing points. Then we would become a rogue planet, right, Steve? We'd have a rogue planet and and hopefully.

E: Yeah, we'd probably.

B: If you live near a nuclear an underground nuclear facility, you could probably last the freezing. But yeah, things would be bad on the surface. Being a rogue planet sounds a lot more.

S: Fun than it actually is. Yeah, I'm free to do. What I want?

E: Oh no. All right. Thanks, Bob.

Who's That Noisy? + Announcements (1:15:52)

S: Jay, it's who's that noisy time? All right guys, last week I played this noisy.

J: Pretty weird, huh?

U: Yeah.

B: Any guesses about what's going on here?

J: I have a guess, just three people talking.

E: Isn't it obvious?

B: Go ahead.

J: It's it's George Krob.

E: Trying out new voices for his geologic podcast, which is that is so close it's awesome.

J: Yeah, that's not that wouldn't be. That would not be a strange, but, you know, correct answer. I like that. I have to talk to George about that. Andrea, I know you know what this is. Yeah, I know exactly what it is. It's the.

C: Background actors from Twin Peaks working out their lines. Oh, I like that that. That's good too.

B: Oh, good.

J: All right, let's dig into this one. Of course, you know, I love this one because it's so strange. OK, so we got a listener named Matthew Cutler and he said, I think this week's noisy is AI slop. I love this answer. Specifically, I think it's one of those audio generating AIS that has been prompted to make up a scene from a comedy TV show.

C: We live in a world.

J: Guys where that is an. Excellent answer. It's a solid guess, absolutely. It's a very.

B: Good answer, not correct but.

C: Much appreciated.

J: Another listener named Matt Soskins, he said it's Vladimir Putin duck and.

C: Yeah, it's a joke.

U: I. Get it?

J: But there was a little bit of a step in the right direction there, so we'll keep going here.

Emails (1:17:37)

J: Another e-mail from Visto, 2T. Visto says I could say a bird like I always do, but the language is definitely Slavic. So the parrot would freeze in the winter. I'm convinced it is an animal talking. So what animal can talk and survive the snow and ice? A walrus. Walruses can talk. I think it was a sea.

C: Lion that I had a.

J: Recording of where he could mimic his handler and it sounded like a human voice ways definitely I don't know I mean I wouldn't be surprised if walruses can can vocalize if somebody has has a sample of that send it to me. Here's a sample of AJ ready. Good. OK.

C: OK.

J: So I.

U: Got an?

J: Incredible number of correct guesses. Now every once in a while someone, well, people send me in things all the time that are recent, you know what I mean, that have like been in a lot of people's news feeds and stuff. This was one of them. But it was so good I had to play it anyway. So I know a lot of people had recently seen this one, but the first person who, who guessed correctly, this is absolutely the first person and only a couple of people admitted that they saw it recently. But I, I do know because it was out recent that a lot of people saw it, but I do believe this person guessed it. This is Dennis S and Dennis says hello, Jay. I'll skip the whole long time listener first time caller spiel because I'm too excited. I actually recognize this one as I'm sure all of your Russian speaking listeners did too. It's Carluccia, the Raven who got super famous about two years ago. I hope I guessed it before thousands of other Russians did. And thank you so much for your work and for the the bestest podcast ever. And that is Dennis second. Dennis, thanks so much for that. Yeah, I did get a ton of emails from people that can speak Russian. I'm sure a lot of them are in Russia. Yeah. This is exactly what Dennis said. This is a Raven that apparently was raised by people in Russia, and they taught it a bunch of different words and everything. And they're kind of having a conversation with it and it and it's definitely entertaining them, but it's really cool. You should look up the video to watch this because seeing a Raven talk is pretty weird. It's and and Yeah. And Ravens are Ravens seeming. Yeah.

E: Did the Ravens seem unusually? Large. It's a big Raven, yes.

J: I mean Ravens are large, the normal.

E: Yes, but. It's not within the normal. Range. Yeah, because I told you if it was, Ravens are bigger. Than. Crows, they're. Big. They're very big birds.

S: So I think it's more compelling because it's in a foreign language. Yeah, Right. So like there's, we wouldn't pick up on the nuances we're missing.

B: Yeah. Yeah.

S: Just it sounds like perfectly good Russian to us, so it sounds even more uncanny. But to a native speaker, they could tell that something was a little off. Yeah, I'm sure. Yeah, absolutely.

J: Steve, I agree. I thought of that on my own as well. And listen to it again. It's the male voice.

U: It even interrupts, right?

E: The flow is very human like definitely just kind of sounds like a kind of grumpy. Old guy.

C: It totally does. Yeah, yeah.

J: I don't know if there's much difference between a drunk Russian and a Raven, you know what I mean?

E: I'm just kidding. Come on.

J: All right. Guys I have a new noisy this. Week This was sent in by a listener named Aaron, and I'll warn you that this has some very high pitched noises in it that may bother some listeners. So this is your chance to turn down a little bit and here we go.

U: That is Han Solo trying to get the Millennium.

E: Drive in episode 5. It goes on a lot longer.

J: Than that, I mean, that's extended as hell man. That is a lot.

B: I thought it had such.

C: A cool series of.

J: Noises, all sorts of different things going on. So anyway, anyway, calm down. I know you're excited, but if you think you know this week's noisy or you heard something cool, you got to e-mail me at wtn@theskepticsguide.org. Steve, as we speak, the tickets for the Seattle show and the Wisconsin show, or shows I should say, are up. Now. We have 3 shows in both of these venues, right? So Seattle and then Wisconsin. In Seattle, we have three shows. Friday night we're going to have. A A very low number, very high profile meet and greet. It's it's going to be a small number of people hanging out with the SGU. I think we're going to have like 20 tickets for it. We're trying this out because we've gotten a ton of emails from people that just wanted something exactly like this. So we thought we'd give it a shot for a couple of different show weekends that we're doing. So if you're interested, go to the website theskepticsguide.org. You can see this Friday night show. I have to formally name it. I came up with something fun a few weeks ago. I can't remember. I'll look it up. But anyway, it's the Friday night hangout. Then we have Saturday starting sometime between 11:00 and 12:00 AM, we're going to be doing an SGU private show. Plus that's a three hour show. This includes George Robb, of course, and it's a live recording of the SGU. And then we have fun with the audience for about an hour. It's different every time. You got to come check it out to know what it's all about. And then Saturday night, which is that night, we're going to have a VIP, which is available if you're interested in buying tickets. This is for the extravaganza. And then there's the extravaganza itself. So honestly, there's four different things that we're doing in those two days. The extravaganza starts at 8:00 PM. All the details are on the ticketing sites, which are links are found on SG U's website. Please come, we'd love to see you. I'm getting tons of emails from people saying they missed it last time and they're coming this time. We have a great series of shows for you guys, so please join us. And then again, repeat everything in Wisconsin. The dates are up there. And then as a future mentioned, we're going to be doing all of this in New Haven at some point, hopefully maybe March or or April. We'll let you know when details come. All right. Thank you, brother. Just one quick.

S: Correction, on last week's show, I said that cellulose was a protein. I blame this, the jet lag on this. It was just a brain fart. I was thinking collagen. I was like in my mind I was thinking collagen, which is a different, that's a more for, you know, animal structural protein. Cellulose is a polysaccharide, right? It's a ribbon shaped polymer of glucose molecules. It is the, you know the most common, I think it's the most common structural molecule implants, whereas collagen is in animacules, right? So I just got that wires. Crossed. I'm still massively jet lagged, by the way. Still right? You guys could tell they do clever editing. I kind of hide it as much as possible. But you think there'd be a fix for that, you know?

E: Or routine something they've figured out people can do a hack of some kind that will help people but I after all this time they yeah end time you know melatonin may help a.

C: Little bit, but it's not.

S: It's just, it's not so much my when I'm sleeping, sleeping at night. It's just that I just haven't. Yeah. I just can't consolidate my sleep. Can't get enough sleep at once. I'm waking up at 2:00 in the morning, you know, thinking of things. I'm sure, Right. And then now.

E: I'm also. I have a.

S: Colonoscopy tomorrow so I'm prepping for that. And prepping means you're drinking. Valve you know you're basically drinking motor oil that begins right after I get off the. Show Steve you went with the go use Bob.

B: 'S toilet.

C: Yeah, I'll be over there, Bob.

S: Be right for the shove coming. Over there. Yeah, right. Got my bowel prep.

B: And.

S: My iPad, are you going? Which prep did you?

B: Go with the small liquid, all right?

S: Not the big liquid, there's a big liquid, there's a small liquid and there's a pills that pills once a year thing it's.

C: Typically, once every five years, it's 10.

B: Years if it's good, five years if they.

S: Want to follow stuff? For me it was three years.

U: Yeah, it.

B: Depends on what they found the last time.

S: They they say that's a little suspicious come back in three years, but everybody if it's a totally clean, I think you can go 10 years between that was Bob rolled to 1 Bob rolled.

C: Yeah. No one would have.

S: Been really bad. Yeah, really the worst.

B: It turns out the smaller liquid. Didn't work, didn't clean me up as much. You got to, you got to chase it with a ton. Of clear liquids.

S: That's the thing. You can't just drink that. I think you're done. You have to anyway. That's a goddamn fire hose. That's the night.

B: I have in store for me.

S: But in the meantime, let's.

B: For sharing, let's go.

Science or Fiction (1:26:35)

Theme: Scientific Fraud Item #1: The famous experiment in subliminal advertising in a movie theater, to increase sales of Coke and popcorn, never happened and was entirely fabricated. Item #2: A recent analysis finds the number of fake publications in biomedicine was at least 5.8%, with 15% being suspicious, amounting to over 100,000 fake papers published every year. Item #3: Researchers find that 40% of published peer-reviewed papers show signs of AI co-authorship, with 10% being fully authored by AI.

Answer	Item
Fiction	Researchers find that 40% of published peer-reviewed papers show signs of AI co-authorship, with 10% being fully authored by AI.
Science	The famous experiment in subliminal advertising in a movie theater, to increase sales of Coke and popcorn, never happened and was entirely fabricated.
Science	A recent analysis finds the number of fake publications in biomedicine was at least 5.8%, with 15% being suspicious, amounting to over 100,000 fake papers published every year.

Host	Result
Steve	sweep

Rogue	Guess
Jay	The famous experiment in subliminal advertising in a movie theater, to increase sales of Coke and popcorn, never happened and was entirely fabricated.
Evan	The famous experiment in subliminal advertising in a movie theater, to increase sales of Coke and popcorn, never happened and was entirely fabricated.
Bob	The famous experiment in subliminal advertising in a movie theater, to increase sales of Coke and popcorn, never happened and was entirely fabricated.
Cara	A recent analysis finds the number of fake publications in biomedicine was at least 5.8%, with 15% being suspicious, amounting to over 100,000 fake papers published every year.
Steve	A recent analysis finds the number of fake publications in biomedicine was at least 5.8%, with 15% being suspicious, amounting to over 100,000 fake papers published every year.

B: On with science or fiction.

U: It's time for.

Voice-over: Science or fiction?

S: Each week I come up with three science these items. Or facts 2 real and one fake and then I challenge my panel and skeptics to tell me which one is the fake. We have a theme this week. The theme is scientific fraud. Scientific fraud. OK, you guys ready for this? Yes, here we go. Item number one, the famous experiment in subliminal advertising in a movie theater to increase sales of coke and popcorn never happened and was entirely fabricated. Item number 2A. Recent analysis finds the number of fake publications in biomedicine was at least 5.8%, with 15% being suspicious, amounting to over 100,000 fake papers published every year and item number 3. Researchers find that 40% of published peer reviewed papers show signs of AI Co authorship, with 10% being fully authored by AI. Go first. Okay, the first one here, the famous.

J: Experiment in subliminal advertising in a movie theater to increase sales of coke and popcorn. Never happened. It was entirely fabricated. That mean that that seems so likely that that sentence is true. You know, it's an urban legend. I could see someone making that up. I could see it both ways, but I think that one is science. The second one here is a recent analysis finds the number of fake publications in biomedicine was at least 5.8% with 15% being suspicious, amounting to over 100,000 fake papers published every year. OK, so this says it's a recent analysis and I mean it's hard to know what the numbers would be, but I absolutely believe that there are increasing number of fake papers going out. You know, biomedicine definitely is a is a category I would expect a ton to be in, you know, over 100,000 fake papers published. If anything, I would say that number is a lot more if this one isn't correct. The last one here, research was fine that 40% of published peer reviewed papers show signs of AI Co authorship with 10% being fully authored by AI. Oh my God, that one has got to be science. Oh man, wow, Steve, I will say that the last one is the one about the researchers find a 40% of published peer reviewed papers show signs of AI Co authorship. I'll say that one is false. OK, Evan, the one.

S: About.

E: Advertising in a movie theater, increasing sales of Coke and popcorn. That is classic urban legend, like urban myth kind of stuff right there. And that it was entirely fabricated. I I believe that is science. Boy, I bet you there are even other examples of things like this. We know the culture just gloms on to things whether it's true or not and if it has legs long enough, last throughout, you know, a generation or decades or whatever. Yeah, stuff like that. This would be a classic case of that, I think. So that one is science. The second one, about the number of fake publications in biomedicine was at least 5.8%, with 15% being suspicious, amounting to over 100,000 fake papers published every year. Holy moly. So there's more than a million biomedicine papers published every year That yeah, that 100,000 is.

S: Based on the 5.8%, so that's the, that's the five, that's the lowest.

E: Millions of biomedicine. Oh my gosh. Well, I guess you know, it's happening all over the world. So then publishing all, but that's a lot. All that information. Oh my gosh. It's this last one though that I think is going to wind up being the fiction 40% of published peer reviewed papers showing signs of AI Co authorship and 10% being fully authored. How could you have a peer reviewed process that would allow for that? That is just why have it at all? I mean, right, If you're not gatekeeping for things like that in 2025, what are you doing? Right. So I imagine they are really doing everything within their power to to stop this or detect it as best as possible. And I don't think 40% of this stuff is getting through. I say that ones fiction. OK, Bob, I agree with you guys.

B: You're I think you're pretty. Much spot on to what to what I'm thinking as well. Subliminal yeah, I've heard about it for literally decades and it wouldn't surprise me that it's fake, but also wouldn't surprise me if Steve, you know, if you're whatever I'm trying to try not to meta meta game too much this time. I think the bottom line for me is that the the biomedicine seems reasonable. 55.815% sounds reasonable for the, for this third one with peer reviewed 40% is just, I, I don't want to believe it. And that would just, it's just, it's such a dramatic #10% fully authored. Even one in 10 sounds a little bit too dramatic at this point in 2025. I, you know, jeez, I hope I'm right here. So I'm going to say this one, the 40% published peer reviewed sewing signs of Co authorship. I'll say that one is fiction. And that's puts me with Jay at this point, I think, right. And Evan, you guys were all?

S: Yep, we're in. Yeah, we're in the same. Boat.

B: All right. OK. And Andrea, you get to go.

S: Last yeah. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna go against.

C: The, the group here in the spirit of collective intelligence, someone's got to be gone. So it might as well be me touché. So I'm gonna go with so I think the the five percent, 5.8% biomedicine publications being fake, I think that's science. If anything. I agree with others who said it's it's probably higher, you know, and 15% are suspicious. I'm going to say that the researchers find that 40% of published peer reviewed papers show signs of AI Co authorship. I'm curious about what time frame is that 2025 thus far? Is that the last year? This is all very recent. Just recent.

S: OK, I'm going to say.

C: That that is science because I have less confidence in the peer review process, perhaps having been a part of it myself. You know, it's it's truly often appear and if you're working, you know, AI Co the 40% is just AI Co authorship. So that could mean, you know, very small segments are AI and faculty who are they should be reviewing for these things. But I don't believe that they are necessarily. And I also this is across all fields. I bet there's some fields just pumping out some wild stuff. So I'm persuaded that that number is real, which leaves very controversial. And I'm a bit torn on this, but I'm going to say that the experiment about popcorn and coke being fabricated, I'm going to say that that is the fiction. And I'm largely basing that on one thing, which is I've never heard of this experiment. And so I'm not really like, oh, of course it's false because I don't know what the study actually was. I could see a version of it just seem unlikely that we're in a world of subliminal advertising and that's not fiction. But I'm going to say that maybe the claim itself is that it never happened and was entirely fabricated. I bet some version of it happened and it got way blown out of proportion. So I'm going to say that's the fiction. OK. So you guys all agree on?

S: #2 so we'll start there. A recent analysis find. So the number of fake publications of biomedicine was at least 5.8%, with 15% being suspicious, amounting to over 100,000 fake papers published every year. You guys all think this one is science and this one is science. Great.

J: Yeah, I mean, or not. Great.

C: Oh no, this is a huge. Problem and this number is growing. Fast.

S: SO one one thing you have to change about how you may be thinking about, you know, fake scientific papers. It's not just individual bad actors anymore. There are, there are actually now systems of people basically like organized crime syndicates, you know? Yeah, they're paper mills. You know. Cranking these things out, they hook up researchers who were trying to buy, you know, to pad out their CV by reputation with journals that will publish the article with people who will write the fake papers. And yeah, the numbers are increasing significantly and the journals don't have a sufficient mechanism to to really prevent this. You know, think about that one in 20 paint one in 20 papers at least. It could be, you know, more like 3 and 20, you know, are fabricated or just completely fake. You know, not that they are, they tweak the numbers or something. It's a it's a paper mill. Part of the reason for this too is that there are so many pay to play journals that are a very low quality, which also impacts the third one too. You guys got to keep in mind how many low quality? They may be technically peer reviewed, but it doesn't mean that there's somebody doing a good job there. They're just trying to publish as much as they can because they get paid per paper. Some are straight up predatory, but other ones just have really low standards. Well, their industry is going to collapse if that's.

E: The case I mean, right? Oh totally. People lose faith in.

S: The published science and you know, if it's just you're buried with fake papers just to can't it's not sustainable well and the cost to generate papers.

C: Is basically 0 on an individual level, you can just keep pumping all like that was the big barrier was like at least a paper takes a while to write. But that's not the case anymore right? Well, let's go to the.

S: #3 Then, since these are closely. Related researchers find that 40% of published peer reviewed papers show signs of AI Co authorship, with 10% being fully authored by AI. The boys think this one is a fiction Android. You think this one is science, The gender. And again, it's the same kind of.

Voice-over: Thing it's like.

S: You know, are those numbers reasonable? If you're thinking that there's a ton of poor quality paint, you know, journals out there, this is another way to just pad out your CV. Just have AI write a paper, publish it in some pure pay to play rag and there you go. I hope nobody looks too close.

B: I hope so. Yeah. Yeah. And if it if they do, you.

S: Retract it and move on, which is what they do. So this one is well, this is the fiction. You guys are correct. All right, the. Numbers are the. Numbers are yeah, a nice try. I mean I I could.

B: Absolutely agree with your with your angle as well Andrea, but we may get that. Well, it was the wrong angle.

S: So don't agree too hard.

C: So 10% are Co.

S: Authored it's that's the upper. There's no they didn't even give, They didn't even give a number for a fully co-authored fully authored by I just they found that recent studies show that 10% of published peer reviewed papers are show signs of being co-authored by AI. Yeah. So this is greatly exaggerating those numbers. Does AI have a role?

E: In. These in papers, yeah, right. You could use it so. But but not but not in the terms. Of but it shouldn't be authoring it, no?

S: Editing, analyzing, whatever this means that the famous experiment in subliminal advertising in a movie theater to increase sales of Coke and popcorn never happened and was entirely fabricated is science. So, yeah, this this wasn't really an urban legend so much as this an ad man James Vickery made it up and said it was real and sold it was.

Skeptical Quote of the Week (1:38:17)

"It is easy to get international agreement in science. Scientists have all the same standards - they are set not by beliefs, but by what works best. Of necessity, there is therefore universal unity. And unity makes for goodwill.” Bernd Heinrich - professor emeritu, biology department, University of Vermont, author of a number of books about nature and biology. Heinrich has made major contributions to the study of insect physiology and behavior, as well as bird behavior.  – submitted by Terry from American Canyon CA, (description of author)

S: But then he later said I was all just a quote UN quote publicity stunt, which means he lied and got caught. Right. But but The thing is that it kicked off a whole generation of people believing in subliminal advertising. Yeah, I've heard this since I was a boy.

J: Yeah, I've. Heard that many times, yeah. And and that's where the urban legends then take over, right?

S: And then embellish it. But the science never showed that it that it was true. And then eventually people did do actual research on it and it just was a complete bust. It doesn't work. Yeah, I was gonna say, is there any?

C: Evidence. I would be shocked. Yeah, there is priming right you.

S: Can you can't prime people, and you could prime people very subtly, But the idea of subliminal is that it's imperceptible consciously, but it's still affecting you and there's no evidence for that. Right? Right. One of my favorite priming.

C: Studies stop me if I've already said it was, it was a study where they had people come into little cubicles in an office and like draw a picture or solve a crossword puzzle. And then they gave them like a little cookie or, or a snack. And the treatment and control, They told them the treatment and control were something with like the puzzles, but the treatment and control were whether or not they were pumping a lemon scent into the room where they were doing the study. And the the rooms that got a lemon scent, the people were more likely to pick up the wrapper from their little snack and throw it away than the ones that didn't have a lemon scent. Because they wanted to maintain.

E: These perceived cleanliness, there's like, yeah, something about this smell.

C: Like primes us to think about cleanliness or order or oh, there's someone in here cleaning up. I don't know exactly what the the mechanism why they lemon sent all those. Cleaners, right?

S: Yeah, because that's what I.

E: Think about when I go in or that's why everyone did it. It's because, yeah.

C: We're already programmed so we now. Associate it, yeah. But I mean, yeah, that's not subliminal, but it's pretty clever and it's and you are perceiving it. You just don't really know the effect it's having on you. I just thought it was super cool. Fascinating. All right, Evan, give us a quote this week.

S: 'S quote was submitted by a listener.

E: Terry from American Canyon, CA. Thank you, Terry. It is easy to get international agreement in science. Scientists have all the same standards. They are set not by beliefs, but by what works best. Of necessity, there is therefore universal unity, and unity makes for goodwill. And that was said by Bernard Heinrich, who is a professor emeritus of the biology department at the University of Vermont and an author of a number of books about nature and biology. He's also made major contributions to the study of insect Physiology and behavior, as well as bird behavior, including talking Ravens. Thanks. All right, Well.

S: Andrea, thanks for joining. Us, of course. Thanks for having me. We love having you.

C: Andrea, you're always awesome. Andrea so great.

E: Oh.

S: You're always awesome.

E: This was super fun.

C: I, I, I'm always happy to and we'll, I'll be seeing you next week. We'll be.

S: Recording the next two episodes of the Political Reality Podcast and One Day People.

C: Besides, us can listen. They'll actually be out there in a week. We're.

S: Getting ahead, you know, we're a development podcast, a backlog while we do the, you know, we're having discussions with the editor and we're sorting all that stuff out. But once they hit, they'll be every week. Yep, Yep. That's very exciting and it's been a lot of fun.

C: So I'll see you and then you're committed. Then we're committed.

B: That's it, That's it.

S: We. Andrea.

B: We haven't missed an episode in 20 effing years. So that's so your dance card is going to be filled for a long time. Wow. Not a single episode. Not a single.

C: Week in 20 years.

S: No, I'm impressed and and we're not.

C: Stressed out at all?

S: Yeah, and and it doesn't. It's not.

B: Taking a toll on anyone's help but.

C: Now it's like we we don't want.

S: To break our break our record. So we can't. Gotta do it now. Yeah. If you ever miss a week, we'll all know that.

C: Everyone died. Yeah. Something bad happened. No or no we. Might we've collided?

S: With if we miss.

B: A week, at least two of us are dead. Yeah, or we're about to.

C: Get launched out of the solar system as a plane. God, there you go. That's my prediction.

S: Yeah.

B: Steve. If if we. Get approached by a hyper velocity white dwarf. I am not recording this. Noted. All right, this is the.

S: Ultimate show to record.

C: Bob, you got a short 1 quickie with Bob.

B: I'm quickie with Bob.

C: Yeah, something more.

B: Quick than that, all right. Well, thanks again for joining me this week.

S: Everyone bye Thanksgiving to. All Happy Thanksgiving.

B: Thank you. Bye.

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