SGU Episode 1068
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| SGU Episode 1068 |
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| December 27th 2025 |
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"Exploring the highlights and controversies of 2025 in science and skepticism!" |
| Skeptical Rogues |
| S: Steven Novella |
B: Bob Novella |
C: Cara Santa Maria |
J: Jay Novella |
E: Evan Bernstein |
| Quote of the Week |
“Skepticism is an act of doing good in the world.” |
- Joe Nickell |
| Links |
| Download Podcast |
| Show Notes |
| SGU Forum |
Intro
Voice-over: You're listening to the Skeptics Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.
S: Hello and welcome to the Skeptics Guide to the Universe.
Best and Worst SGU of 2025 (00:12)
None
S: Today is Thursday, December 17th, 2025 and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella.
Science News of the Year (00:19)
None
S: Hey everybody. Cara, Santa Maria.
Voice-over: Howdy.
S: Jay Novella.
E: Hey, guys.
S: Evan Bernstein.
E: Good evening everyone.
S: And we have a special guest, Ian Callinan. Ian, thanks for joining us again.
E: Hello. Hello, everyone.
S: How are you?
E: You know. They can see you.
S: Good Man has become a regular on our year end wrap up show. This is it, the last show of 2025.
E: Oh my gosh, what are you? What a year.
US#06: What a Goodyear, right?
E: We'll have one or two things to say about this year. Coming.
S: Yeah, how much worse can it get? Don't, don't.
US#06: Even wait a couple hours.
E: Yeah, yeah, right. Wait.
S: Gosh, I would not assume.
J: I'll break the ice here by letting everyone know that I'm I'm sick with the flu and we told them last week, OK, alright. I just, I just want people to know, 'cause like that is.
E: Still sick?
C: But also, it hasn't been a week since we recorded, it's been 2. Days, yeah.
E: Yeah, it's been a week in podcast time. It's been 2 days in reality. Podcast. The week really flu it's. Forever, OK. Thanks anyway.
J: Now does anyone? Wait, am I not supposed to resign last? Year at this time.
C: I was sick last Christmas. Were you sick last Christmas or the month before? Also I.
J: Right around this time of year, like the pattern is, my daughter goes to school, apparently his best friends with whoever the most sick kid is.
US#06: Yeah.
J: And then she comes home and infects me. And then I infect my wife.
US#06: Yeah.
S: That's that's having kids.
J: They are Petri dishes.
US#06: Is that good for us as no parents? OK. Thank you.
C: It's not it's not good to be exposed to deadly illnesses all the time.
US#06: Oh well, some my uncle on Facebook said otherwise so.
E: I watched a TikTok video once and you. Know oh why thank.
US#06: You.
C: Last year I had a a cold over the over Christmas. It wasn't the flu, but it was a cold and I had, I, I got COVID. I can't remember if it was just before or just after, maybe like a month apart and my cold was like 10 times worse than my covad wow I felt. So. Ill. And when I had Covic, it was like the sniffles for a few days.
E: Did you have the vaccine?
C: I have been vaccinated 3 cards worth times.
E: Has any? Were you close to anyone else around you who was also suffering that a cold with similar symptoms?
C: It's funny, I couldn't find patient zero for that one. I got, I got magic sick. No, I'm, I, I, I have a feeling that I caught something when I was at the pharmacy picking up meds. I remember somebody coughing in the aisle and I held my breath as I walked by, but I had that feeling that doesn't work. That's me. I'm sick. I'm sick right now myself. Get sick from that.
E: I, I, I do know the moment I can pinpoint a moment where I'm like, OK, I have a cold coming. This is it my.
C: Oh, same.
E: My throat is sore. Yeah.
C: But you know how you try to wield it away? For the first two days, I.
E: Know I'm like oh Advil get Advil.
C: Quick Yeah, you're like, it's not really. I just slept with my mouth open.
S: No, I always know when I'm going to get really sick. It sucks at first. Like shit, this is it.
C: It's the tickle. The tickle in your tickle.
B: So uncomfortable. I remember colds.
C: Jay, how did you know? Because the flu is like a whole other beast. It's so much worse than a cold.
J: Yeah, it starts with a like an internal itch. You know, you get like that, you get that like, oh, what's going on? You know, like, and there's always that disdain, but it progressed very quickly. Like I went to bed. I'm like, I feel, you know, I feel like I something's happening, you know, because my sinuses. And then I wake up the next day and I'm like, oh God, this is it hit hard. And I, and that was the entire day. I was suffering from the chills. And that was really horrible.
C: And it's that malaise. I mean, it's the perfect word for how you feel when you have the flu.
J: But it's remarkable of how your energy is gone, like just utterly gone. Like I got up a couple of times.
B: Today, What's going on there?
J: I had to rest from going to the bathroom, you know?
B: That's a lot of work sometimes. He's winded after. Ian.
US#06: This. Is a good actually it is a good segue because I was going to say can you think your way out of that like being sick OK because I wanted to bring up I know if this was what you were going to ask me I wanted to bring up like the failure of the power of positivity if I may a little bit so the last like like week ago or so I attended a funeral of a family very sad thank you I know he had pancreatic cancer. It was like very aggressive. He he survived the whole year like from the diagnosis.
S: That's the average life expectancy diagnosis is one year.
US#06: Yeah, yeah. So like now he was like a little wooey, but like his siblings were all like very like pro science. So like, we did all the things. We went to New Haven, Yale, tried experimental things. You know, it didn't work, obviously.
B: Yeah.
US#06: But, you know, the thing I wanted to bring up is, like, the power of positivity kind of infected everybody in a way that I found was actually troubling because even the week before he died, they're still ordering, like, medical devices to, like, get him in and out of bed. They were besides themselves with like, oh, he'll recover. He was the youngest. He was only 60 when he died, you know, like, he was the baby of the siblings. He's like comedian, the glue of the siblings sort of thing, you know, So like, they were really shook up about it. But the, the power of positivity, I feel like, blinded them to see what was common.
C: Yeah. That's so common.
US#06: With the funeral that we had no plans for him, like didn't know what he wanted. Y'all kind of just winged it, didn't really know what the burial should be, didn't know any. And and so much so that they kind of fell for the idea of like, we should bring him home so he's comfortable while he recovers. So much so that he by the time he got to Hospice, it was like too late. The nurses weren't prepared. Even one of his siblings was a Hospice nurse and he said it was like the worst thing you'd ever seen. Wouldn't drain his fluids, give him medication?
C: That's really common. People go to Hospice long after they should have first gone to Hospice. And when I say should, all I really mean by that is for them to have had good quality of life after they've stopped taking life sustaining treatments or, or, you know, cancer fighting treatments, because in Hospice, there's so much comfort care available to you. And a lot of people wait so long that some of those things can't really be, you know, taken care of as well as they could have early on. A lot of people have when they if they make the decision at the right time, they have time to do things that they want to do and, you know, engage in bucket lists and things like that. But be.
US#06: Cara, how do you breakthrough that wall?
C: Well, it's OK. So I work with the patients mostly, but people on my team work with the families as well. And I have worked with families, I, it's not uncommon for me when I first see a patient in the Cancer Center for them not to have an advance directive and for them not to have thought about a lot of these things. So big thing that we do in therapy is go there, we go to the hard place. And when the patient goes to the hard place, sometimes that helps the people around them go to the hard place, but sometimes it doesn't. So a lot of what we do is work on how we cope with the fact that the bubble of people around the patient aren't thinking realistically about the end. The patient is often the only one right is.
S: I think people feel, I think people feel a lot of pressure to be positive. Yeah, of course, to be supportive. I'm going to like focus on the hope and the positive angle and right. And then that morphs into the magical thinking of the power, educated positive power of positive thinking. Like you can fight, you can fight, you can, you know, just think positive thoughts and everything will be all right. But that's not a healthy approach to this at all. That that then morphs into denial, which I've seen as well. You know, as you know, for a time I was treating a lot of patients with ALS and the denial was the worst thing. That was the absolute worst.
C: Thing especially with ALS.
S: ALM string the management and yeah, the the approach is that you have to gently but firmly tell them like it is, make them answer questions like you, we have to decide whether or not you're going to get intubated when the time comes, etcetera, etcetera. You just force that and then you give them time to we have to just start early. You know, you don't push early and you can even months, you know to come to terms with what's happening. But the to the extent that patients go into this positive thinking denial, they absolutely harm themselves in so many ways. It is absolutely harmful. I agree.
US#06: Is this just like a cultural thing?
C: It is, I think it can be very cultural. It's hard to when you're working with patients where culturally there are some pretty strong rules around what you can and can't talk about because obviously I work in A and you did too, Steve, like a large hospital in a, in a large city, right, with which is a huge melting pot. It's very multicultural, but a few things that I, I would say, Ian, one of the things that I do, it doesn't solve the problem, but it, I think it, it's important to me is I don't use euphemisms. And Steve, I know we've talked about this too. I say the word death and dying. I don't talk about passing or when you go or when you, I'm like very clear in, in my language and I start to normalize that language early. And but I also measure the patient's reaction to that and work with them on their death anxiety. The other thing, though, is that there's a fine line between hope and, as you mentioned, denial. And it's not bad to have hope so long as, and I use this phrase all the time, so long as we understand that hope is a moving target. What we hope for changes based on the progression of our illness when we can't move with the target. And we're maintaining hope that we had upon diagnosis when we still have treatments available to us that have the potential to be life extending. But now let's say we've exhausted all our resources. We've already gone through all the clinical trials and the our oncologist is saying there is nothing left for treatment and it's time to start talking about your end of life options. If you're still hoping that you're going to get better, that's problematic.
S: So the the other layer here that has a massive influence on how you well you're able to navigate this whole situation is the amount of trust that the patient and their family has in the system. And this is where the really terrible effects of conspiracy thinking and all of the anti sort of medicine alternative crap and Wellness industry propaganda is so harmful because when there's a lack of trust and you're telling them, trust me, you have a year to live, we need to you need to prepare for it. They're like, fuck you. I'm going to, you know, I'm going to do other things. I don't trust what you're telling me. And then they go out, they spend all their money, they, you know, waste their time. They don't make important decisions that they have to make. It's really harmful.
C: And it's hard, it's hard to know what anybody, even the most, the strongest skeptic, it's hard to know that what they would do when they realize that there are no good options. You know, we'll all kind of sometimes try things that are a little extreme if we have the disposable income to do it. Or if we're, you know, if even though it's a long shot, we don't see any downside, we may do things that we wouldn't think we would do when we're. Well, yeah, I think one of the biggest concerns that I see, and Steve, I'm curious about your take on this and and Ian, I'm wondering how much insight you have into this. I struggle when I see patients working with providers where the providers have not managed their own death anxiety and so the providers aren't being very clear, they're not giving true prognostication, They're sort of kicking things down the lot. We'll worry about that when that's an issue. Right now, I want you to focus on getting well. And I see this, you know, not a lot a lot, but I see it enough that I find it really difficult to deal with.
S: You know, I'd I'd say I hate to start the show this way, but this is an appropriate discussion for 2025, don't you? Think it is.
E: Well, yeah, it's absolutely. Yeah, sorry about.
US#06: By comparison, it's happening. Here.
S: Ian, the question I was going to ask you.
US#06: Sorry.
S: Is when is the first episode of political reality?
US#06: Oh my God. Oh. God, now you're really putting the screws to me. So we just finished actually a little intro video that we're going to be editing it up, but we have like 7 episodes in the can. They just need a little refinement I think. And I think we're going to post it both by the end of the year, the first of the year, maybe January you. Know we start the year on straight. Decided on that. That's what I thought too. It's like, hey 2026, we're fixing.
S: Yeah, at this point you must just say like first week of January of January, we'll.
US#06: Post yeah, whatever. We still haven't figured out the exact day, but yeah, let's let's let's do first of the year.
S: We have to make it happen.
US#06: We'll commit to it. We'll make it. Make it so.
S: OK, people are starting to doubt that it exists.
US#06: No, it exists. I keep telling them, and they're like, editing is so easy. You could. Yeah. You read it. A podcast.
S: Don't Well. I will say man, this is video and. Video is 10 times harder than audio.
US#06: Yeah, it is a lot more. It is a lot.
E: More we were if we were closer to April. 1st I don't think anyone would believe you but. You know what happened January 1st, 1996, thirty years ago.
C: Oh God, what?
E: The official launch of the Connecticut Skeptical. Society. Oh. 30 years.
C: I thought you were gonna say something that felt like five years ago.
S: A couple of young kids.
E: Yeah.
S: Hoping to change the world.
E: That's right. Yeah, it was. Like, hey, let's. And kids get together and put on a put on a. Show. Put on a show. Kind of yeah, let's it all started that way just.
Skeptical Hero of the Year (14:35)
Hank Green and Dr.noc (Morgan McSweeny) for their social media activitySkeptic of the YearEmily Willingham — for clear, responsible skeptical analysis of emotionally charged pseudoscience (referenced during the Telepathy Tapes discussion). None
S: All right. So the first segment we usually do in this year end review is the best and worst of 2025 and we could start with the best and worst of the SGU. Is there anything that you guys remember from the past year that sticks out?
E: Should we just go to Nauticon right now?
S: Nauticon was great.
E: Nauticon was pretty good.
B: So epic. I mean we put.
E: The first half of. Our year. So much effort went into went into that. I mean, Jay, and you can speak more to that. Than Oh my God. If he can actually. Can't.
US#06: He is.
J: Yeah, Jay would say right now it's an incredible amount of work, but you just do a little bit every day and I get through it no problem. It's largely me and then, you know, Ian is handling the, the technical side, but we do work a lot together throughout that process. But it's a.
E: Good committee.
J: It's so worth it. We had so much, so much fun. Like people really, you know, that was our highlight. I think this year was definitely that conference. I mean it, it felt fantastic and it really, really thought everyone had a great time.
E: We we had high expectations going. Into it, and I think we achieved those expectations at. Least absolutely back we received the first one.
B: The the first one was so perfect. I'm like, how we gonna beat that? And like, well, we we did. It was.
C: And so much of it, I mean, not to undermine all of the incredible hard work and like, I mean, it was, it was phenomenal having all of these great guests there who was there with us, like through the whole thing, it was George, Adam, Andrea and Brian. Yeah, they were phenomenal. But it's like we have like literally the best listeners, the best fans. The group of people that was there with us was just incredible. They made the weekend.
E: Oh, absolutely, yes, totally. The vibe was incredible.
B: Yeah, it would have been boring without him.
C: We would have made it worse.
B: We would have had fun, but it wouldn't have been the same.
C: Definitely not.
S: We got some emails listener Victor wrote from episode 1061, Bob says talking about the neo robot. Bob said it really needed help for almost anything it did it needed help. A carer response. Oh, great, so it's like having a man in your house. So wonderful. You want to go do it. OK, let me help you the whole.
E: That was great.
S: Little sexist Don't care is a little sexist, but of.
E: Truth.
C: That was it was describing reality.
S: Hey, I'm pretty independent for my house chores.
C: That's good to know, but I can point to the vast. Major modern man. Of the literature showing that women do like.
S: Are you gonna quote statistics?
C: Not just the majority, but like a ridiculous amount, like a major major majority of the domestic labor.
S: Yeah, but that's an average, you know, which doesn't doesn't tell you about everybody.
B: Well, how do you? How do you guys do it? Do you, do you have discrete tasks and your significant significant other also has these discrete tasks and that's kind of how or do you kind of swap them and trade them here and there or what, how does it work our.
E: Household has that, but we also do some. Things together?
S: Yeah. It's yeah. For each task, it has its own percentage. You know, like Jocelyn does 80% of the laundry. You know, cooking is like 5050. She hates shopping so I do almost all the shopping.
B: Wow, that's so different than Mayhen Liz. Wow.
S: Well, it's just, yeah, just chore by chore, you know?
C: And so much of it, Steve, like when when I make snide comments like that, and I'm of course I'm being funny, but I'm also trying to hold up a mirror to reality. It's less about what people do, and it's more about the kind of undercurrent of a that the tasks that men tend to do in the home tend to be very visible, and the tasks that women tend to do tend to be very invisible. They're the ongoing, it's never finished work, whereas men tend to do more discreet tasks where everybody can let go. Oh, look, you did the thing. Congratulations or thank you.
US#06: I hung that painting exactly I.
C: Mowed the lawn. I, you know, and then the other thing is that very often we're not actually talking about the, the labor itself, but the cognitive labor paper that goes into it. And so I'm not saying you're the example, but very often a man will say, I go out and I do all the grocery shopping and it's like, yeah, but she makes the list. She tells you what you need to get, you call and you're like, what brand do we use? I don't know anything. And she has to do all of the mental. And that's a very common issue even in liberal progressive relationships with high levels of parity When when dug underneath the surface, most of the the research shows that women are still doing the majority, the majority of the cognitive labor, which is a huge bummer. We've got to fix it.
S: Victor also wrote Favorite quote of the year was from me. Extraordinary claims don't require extraordinary evidence, they require appropriate evidence. Remember saying that? And the funniest thing he's on that. He said it's a recurring joke that if the SGU ever misses a week, something catastrophic must have happened. Said I guess more than once.
B: That is.
C: We've never missed a week, right that track.
S: We haven't That's that's the whole.
C: .0 I see. I get it, I get it right? We got a lot. Can I say I know. I don't even know what order we're supposed to be doing.
S: It's just best of SGU.
C: Stuff, best stuff. OK, we got a lot of emails and I have to agree. And I also agree with the reasoning. It's probably the recency bias.
S: Oh yeah.
C: But that Battle Hastings episode. It was a funny.
E: Recency bias.
C: Yeah, really funny episode. And I think that. You also left in a lot more banter than usual in that episode.
S: Because it was funny.
C: Exactly. But people loved it like we got.
E: 20 years, Steve has learned.
S: Although a couple of people did felt that you guys were a little pushed back a little bit too hard, hard on my love of history and the Battle of Hastings, almost dancing around, almost being a little anti intellectual. I'm not saying you are a couple of people. They have a.
US#06: Point I don't. For humans.
S: But we do have to understand our audience and the vibe of the show. And, you know, saying that, oh, you're a nerd because you like this intellectual discipline is.
C: No, nobody thinks, not at all, that it's bad that you are really into it. I know well Jay Sports. But yeah, I. Know oh. Yeah, Jay was kind of being funny about that. But yeah, but that's just that was just. Bananas.
S: Being funny, yeah. I mean, we just.
C: Think it's bananas that you expected us to be as into it as you? Are well. You know, different.
S: It's appropriate things itself.
B: No, I mean, and I, I specifically said I'm I'm not a history buff and that's fine. Who the hell or any of us to put down someone's niche geekdom. I mean, that would be exact something. It's ridiculous, something that we would never really do quite the you know, so yeah, we were definitely leaning into it And and I'm I am proud to say I I knew what Steve was talking about. I mean that I read that book, I mentioned it and it was an awesome book and I learned a lot and it was pivotal. How do you but and I?
C: Am kind of a history buff, but I, you know, the areas where I tend to focus, the documentaries that I tend to watch, they're just not that. I'm not a big not bad. Yeah, they're not bad.
S: But this was not just it wasn't about the fight, it was about the massive cultural change that resulted. We don't have to get back into that. That's. True. We covered that shit.
US#06: History needs more vampires. I think is if there was a vampire in there, I'd be really.
C: Does anybody I have a favorite? It's so, it's so funny because it's like we think about favorite news stories of the year and often we'll talk about, oh, this was the my favorite, like Science News that we learned. But I was thinking this year about, well, what's my favorite topic that I covered? Like what did I learn the most from?
B: I do that every year. That's. What I do OK? Oh yeah, that's like, this is the one that I covered that I love the most. Because yeah. If it was a dramatically like best of the year news item, I'm grabbing that, man. It's just like, of course I would grab that something. So that's worthy of that list. So yeah, I invariably, although this year I'm not ironically, I'm not necessarily picking something that I talked about because I think it's something that needs to be at least mentioned on the show.
C: So I think they're just two different things. Like some of my favorite Science News, which we'll get to were like huge discoveries and like amazing things that happened mostly in in medicine. But my favorite news item that I did was I had to dig for it. But it was episode 10, 1058, which I think was in October. I covered this study where the researchers described a construct that they called symbolic strength. And we got yeah, really deep into like why people find pride in like denying reality and and why they seem so entrenched and how hard it is to quote change their minds because not only do they not want their minds changed, they feel special having the anti viewpoint And it's just.
US#06: Just the anti viewpoint or is it like yeah, is it like special knowledge?
C: It's yeah, it's definitely special knowledge. It's it's weird the what it's not. And it's not even like the whole conspiracy thing. We're like, we're the ones who know and you don't really know. But it's like, oh, the mainstream they are whatever they would call liberal. It's like they're like, but we, we have the, you know, information, even if it flies in the face of, of evidence.
US#06: But does it require that we that like group think consolidation or like camaraderie that they have it or can they exhibit it on their own individually?
C: I do think it requires the camaraderie because these aren't just like made-up viewpoints, they're they're echo chamber viewpoints.
E: Latter itself, that kind of stuff.
C: Yeah, yeah.
S: It becomes part of the group identity.
C: Exactly.
J: I have a favorite news item from this past year. If you guys remember I talked about talked about lab grown teeth.
E: Yeah, yeah. You did, yes.
US#06: Love that.
J: You know, and if you if you guys remember the this wasn't like a minor achievement this last, this last level that they got to like they're they're legit testing it, you know, like it's it, this could be a thing, it could really happen. So I think that's encouraging.
B: That was fun, yeah.
J: Because, you know, not only is dentistry crazy expensive, but it could be horribly painful. And it's really sad. You know, lots of people have to lose their teeth and they have to get implants and all that stuff. Like if this works out, you know could avoid all of that.
US#06: Wouldn't it still be an implant or? Yeah, I assume you're not growing it back in your skull, then you assume you're growing it externally and then putting it in.
S: Planting the butt in your draw and then. Yeah.
US#06: Oh, they are planting the. Oh, OK, neat. That part that's.
S: I have a couple things from from the interwebs from our listeners talking online. A lot of people liked Bob's mega rant about quantum crystals. You remember that one, Bob?
B: What? No.
S: It was a pseudoscience item, and you got so outraged at the pseudoscience that you had this monologue rant afterwards that.
B: People loved just a classic quantum pseudoscience crap. Yeah, I hate that shit.
E: You probably said grind my gears at some point during.
S: That and you guys have a favorite guest?
B: I remember we had Doctor Nick Tiller, the exercise scientist that was that was a fun interview. I like that one. That professor memorable.
E: On the show.
C: I think one of one of my favorite interviews, I mean, anytime we have the chance to talk to Marsh, I, I went. Oh yeah.
E: Gosh, had we not seen him since QED in 2018? Maybe.
S: In person.
E: Well, that's perhaps the last time he was on an SGU episode.
C: Wow, really, And what a great thing that he and Cecil that they're that they're doing this podcast where they dig into Joe Rogan episode. Oh really?
E: That's like the focus.
C: Yeah, it's the No Rogan podcast.
E: Yep, the no. Rogan I love it.
B: With. AK the no Rogan's nice.
E: Oh gosh, I hope it's also three hours because you need that per episode because you need that much time to to undo what he's doing.
S: I like the interview with Kyle Johnson, the philosopher.
E: Because I think it was like the.
S: Perfect level of wonkiness for the show, You know what I mean? Getting in like let's do a deep dive on logic and like really suss it out because we obviously it's something that comes up a lot on the show. So it was great to talk to a philosopher, you know, an actual expert and like, really dial it in tight, you know?
E: Right. Yep, Yep.
B: Well, we, we did mention the most interesting or best whatever Science News item. I I was going to talk about the whole Oz Olo color thing, which which I I mentioned only because I I talked about it. We're at the Nauticon show on stage and, and I for some reason, this was just so extra fascinating be how color perception and how the, how the retina works and all that. I took a few onion layers deeper than I typically delved and it was just so fascinating. That one really comes to mind. But I, I think we have to mention it's kind of obvious. It's not the best, it's not the most interesting science of the year, but it's the most impactful. And it's, it's pretty obvious, you know, the gutting of science research in the United States this year has been unprecedented. Thousands of researchers, you know, withholding federal research funding, dismantling, you know, climate research. It's it's been devastating. And we'll feel the impact for generations. This is like the biggest Science News item of this year. It's like what, what can impact what, what can compare to this in terms of the sheer impact of science in this country? It's just like, it's ridiculous. It's just like beyond the pale. This is like what? How is this our reality?
S: Another bar brand, all right.
B: Come on man, that's worthy, Jesus.
C: And not just defunding science research, but defunding public health programs like amfar like these Different or USAID.
B: Yes.
C: These programs that I mean, we know for a fact like there's a body count, like there's.
B: And I know, have you read some of the estimates of the numbers there's?
C: Bananas.
B: It's one let's say I read one that was 124. Now these are models right of of of likely deaths and excess deaths because of this slash USA 124,000 adults over a quarter million children, 88 deaths per hour. That's the result of what's been done to USAID. And that's those are the estimates. And even if it's off, I'm sure it's not perfectly accurate, right? But it's it doesn't matter. Even if it's just somewhat correct, it's devastating and like, what the hell. There's there's a study that's. The body count.
C: Yeah, there's a study out of UCLA that was done by their Fielding School of Public Health this July that said more than 14,000,000 preventable deaths would occur by 20-30 if USAID to funding continues, including more than 4 million children under the age of 5.
J: Yeah. But the savings though, you know, yeah.
C: The savings for their bank accounts tomorrow, but the savings for the Globe or even the American government in the long term are not savings.
S: It was it was not, you know, but even if you take it as a savings rather than the investment that it is, it was less than what Trump just decided to hand Avenant to Argentina.
B: Yeah, right.
S: There you go. More than what was allegedly, quote UN quote saved by gutting USAID just that was just madness. There's also, I mean, if we're talking about like crap that happened this year, you know, the, the, you know, gutting of, of support for research in scientific research in the United States is terrible. And I could tell you that the rest of the world is like, come here, you know?
B: Yeah.
S: And they are poaching. Talk about a brain drain. They are poaching all of our talent now because they're not compete. You know, if you're even if you're here on a visa and you're completely legitimate, you are afraid, you know, that you're just going to be suddenly deported because somebody doesn't like the color of your skin or something or the country that you came from. So.
C: Yeah, it's twofold, Steve. It's like not only are people losing their NIH grants and losing their funding that keeps their labs afloat, people that are either naturalized or natural born citizens, but then you have individuals who, as you mentioned, are all different levels of immigration status who don't feel safe and many of whom have already been asked to leave. So it's a brain drain not just of American scientists, but scientists who have become American scientists or who are practicing in America. Yeah. Even natural born citizens are like, well, I can't keep my lab open. So this other country that might be offering more funding seems like an interesting place to go. It's like a double loss.
S: And they're like cutting funding for for clinical trials or for research. That is where they're collaborating with a non-us laboratory or scientist.
C: Which is every legitimate.
S: I know within academia, collaborating in with people outside of your institution is considered the best. Like that is what it's what you're supposed to be striving for is that kind of collaboration. And now they're punishing people for that. No, only work with other Americans. It is insane and it's absolute. Horrible. Anti scientific madness. It's crazy and it's going to it's going to it is Lysenkoism, absolutely. And it's going to hurt us for at least a generation, if not more. We may never get to back get back to where we would have been if they did not do this. This is like a permanent hit to to the US, to the world.
C: And it makes me nervous, like I was looking into the best sciences, like the stuff that I was the most excited about this year. And they were, I mean, hands down, gene therapies, gene therapy for Huntington's disease, T cell, acute lymphoblastic leukemia. There's the new CAR T cell therapy, the first CRISPR that was individually tailored. It was like designer CRISPR for. Yeah, for the baby with ACPS 1. And I worry that those stories that is the confluence, the amalgamation, like the the end result of previous year, like a lot of hard work and previous study. How many years are we going to be able to say, look at all this cool stuff that happened at least in the US this year? I don't think we're going to have years like that.
S: Maybe a while.
C: Yeah.
S: Well, let's shift into the into best Science News of the year. I agree that the the genetic stuff is just incredible. And and it looks to, you know, continue. I think we're just getting started.
C: Yeah, maybe not we, but the world. The world, yeah, Yeah.
S: But and along those lines, you kind of touched on this immunotherapy for cancer also is just taking off. It is that, you know, there's continued to be advances and breakthroughs this year for that. Also. A couple of things I noted. There's been a number of significant breakthroughs in quantum computing, you know, authoring by assessment of how likely and how soon we may have actual practic, practical quantum computers. I think they got a lot closer this year, more than any other single year that I could.
B: Remember, it seemed like a definitely a multiple incremental, yeah, you know, leaps.
S: And there's a big year for life in the solar system.
E: Oh. Yes, it was. Yeah, sure.
S: Was you haven't found the Holy Grail yet. We haven't found actual life in the solar in terms of bio signatures. So we talked very recently, you know, about finding all the all the makings of RNA on the asteroid Bennu and, yeah, and the the most tantalizing signs of ancient life on Mars that we have yet.
E: Carbon chain.
S: Yes, yeah, the large carbon chains, yeah.
E: Yeah, we're, we're, we're peeling that back to the point where, boy, it's just incredible what we've been able to figure out. Plus we haven't even gotten the samples back from Mars yet. Yeah, which are still hopefully working on. And I think there was what, a glitch in the system, right, Jay? Or there was there was talk of shelving that, but I think it's back on on schedule if I recall.
J: I haven't checked recently, but I think the last we heard that it was back right?
E: Yes. That's, that was my understanding and that's going to be so significant. And again, the thing about these particular samples, yes, that we, we've seen evidence of these things that have on objects that have fallen to earth, but we're collecting them out in their natural habitat right now and without that contamination potential for contamination. So it just it, it becomes more affirming than anything else that we've that we've been able to study and understand. I'd like to mention, I don't, it's not strictly science, but it was certainly significant and it happened almost a year ago. So it was early in the year, you know, and again, the recency bias takes over at a certain point. But the LA fires was a was a massive, massive story that did that did have certainly elements of science to it, but also a lot of different things. Carrot was first of all, it was, you know, close to home to you having to deal with that on, you know, a day-to-day basis. It lasted for about 3 or 4 weeks, all of January practically.
C: Oh, yeah, and we couldn't breathe the air. I mean, it was even those of us who were outside of the evac zones. I was like in in the, you know, have your go bag ready area, but I never had to actually evac. Oh, it was horrific. Like my, I have two pretty fancy like Dyson air filters in my house. You know, those like stand alone fans that have the HEPA filters and within a week I had changed them within the past month or two and you're supposed to change them maybe once a year. I think within the week they were clogged and not functional anymore. Like it was bananas that the intake filters in my HVAC were black and thick like inside my home. And I have a pretty new home that's pretty well sealed. Yeah. I think the air quality was like in the three hundreds, maybe 3 hundreds. It was something just terrific. Don't quote on that. I have screenshots of it but.
E: Certainly wasn't just grass and trees and things that burned there were. 18. 1000 structures.
C: Yeah, home, yeah, so.
E: In those particular, in the particles there that they're being breathing, there's plastic, there's all kinds of things.
C: Yeah.
E: That is in that.
C: Vintage building materials, you know, there's like all, yeah, there's a little asbestos. Asbestos, yeah, there's everything went up into the air. And you know, from a personal perspective, you know, I know people, I know lots of people who lost their homes because I was close to the Altadena fire. Not the not the fire in Palisades, but because I was finishing my fellowship at the time at this, like, large Cancer Center, I saw patients from all over. And I had patients who lost everything, you know, So not only were they dealing with their cancer, that's why they were seeing me, but they lost everything. Yeah. Like it's, I mean, when an entire city goes up in flames like that, Like I remember a teenager that I was speaking with and they said the school I went to for elementary, middle, high school, the, you know, grocery store I shopped at, the library, I went to, my friend's house, my other friend's house, the place I went to summer camp, they don't exist anymore. Just like her entire childhood was wiped off the face of the map. I mean, it's just, it's pretty hard to fathom. Yeah. And that's that's somebody who survived and is, you know, going to be able to rebuild. There are people who didn't survive.
US#06: Now can we definitively say it wasn't because somebody didn't turn the water on, so to speak?
C: Well, yes, we can, because we know. We know that the the original or the very, very beginning of the fire folks or an individual is charged for for that, right? Yes, for intentionally setting the fire.
E: Yeah, yeah, they.
C: Have fireworks. I can't.
E: No, no, no, he, he, he apparently, oh gosh, it's still, it's still playing out. But the evidence against him is that he, he's deliberately set the fire, but he has shown through his social media posts and other things of fixation with fires. And so I, I don't know what that is. If, if there's a mental illness of some sort that that accounts for something like that, I wouldn't know how to classify it. I don't want arsonist per se, right? Because you know, but definitely it was one person who with a lighter.
C: Yeah, it's a small brush.
E: Started a little fire and it just and and it got out of control. Now they contained it a few days later.
C: But then it. But then the winds.
E: Picked up there go the Santa Anas and you lose total control at that point and it and it turned into the to the devastation that it did.
C: And now we see, I'm seeing here 12 deaths, nearly 7000 structures and $150 billion in damages just from the Palisades fire. That was just and remember we had the two huge fires and lots of small fires around them.
E: 31 direct fatalities from all the fires. There were a total of 14 individual fires as as a result of this. But they're also saying the more that it's hard to measure the long term mortality rate of this because of the breathing issues that everybody is having. You know, it's like it was kind of like in a sense 911 where people were dying years later from the from having exposed, been exposed to that atmosphere.
C: Yeah.
US#06: Do you think this will change how we build houses in America? I mean, especially given that this seems to recur over and over? Or is it, is that a lost cause? Are we just doomed to keep building out of woods?
C: Both, right. I think that in California, we, we've known about fire risks and we've also known about about earthquake risks. And we do what we can to mitigate, but there's only so much you can engineer your way out of these things. But definitely I think it will change the way that we build from a civic perspective like the the infrastructure around the homes.
E: I hope so, yeah. And other fire mitigation.
C: Exactly.
S: Yeah, they have to bury all those electrical, electrical transmission lines.
C: And we do have to be careful about how the pressure that's put on the water system. And are we trying to tap into water that's not meant to fight, you know, a blazing forest fire with water that's meant to fight, you know, a small structure fire?
S: All right, should we go on to Skeptical Hero and Skeptical Jackass of the Year?
Skeptical Jackass of the Year (41:31)
RFK Jr.Avi LoebDr. Joseph A LadapoTelepathy Tapes None
C: Do we start with Jackass so we get all the? Oh, you want to do that first? You want. To do that, well, here's my thing. Everything keeps getting really dark, so if we get the dark stuff out of the way, maybe we can end on a high or no.
US#06: And we'll be happy.
S: It doesn't matter. We could do Jackass first. Did you have? Who did you have in mind?
E: Yeah, who? Who?
C: Well, for me, I mean, it's hard because who, who did we did we ultimately choose RFK Junior last year?
E: You can pick them again well. But right, the administration really didn't start until this year.
C: Yeah. So for me it was.
E: Actually became RFK this year.
C: It was RFK and his band of Mary science deniers. I mean, it's not just him, right? It's like they're.
E: Dragged in with him.
C: Yeah, And I think some of them he dragged in and some of them just also were there because Trump put them in place. Like, we've got to remember that RFK is the secretary of Health and Human Services, but we've got Doctor, how do you say his last name? Bhattacharya. Jay Bhattacharya, who's the director of NIH. We've got Jim O'Neill, who's the deputy secretary of HHS and the acting director of the CDC. We've got Martin Macri, who's the commissioner of the FDA. We've got Mehmet Oz, who is the administrator for, you know, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid. Like these are all science deniers to to some extent in these very important positions.
S: Yeah, and Trump is basically Mia. I mean, he's not doing anything. He just let RFK handle everything. You know, he's really just referring to him. And yeah, I mean, for me, it's it begins to end with RFK Junior, right? Yeah. So all the people that come along with it as well. But he is anti science pseudoscience, conspiracy mongering personified. He is the poster child for all of the harm that can be done when you give actual power to these crazy nut job science deniers and.
E: Unprecedented the power.
S: Isn't it's, it's just mind blowing the harm. Again, we talk about like how many people are going to die due to the reckless, you know, cutting of USAID. You know, RFK already has a body count attached to his nonsense. The only question is how many zeros is he going to add to that, You know, over his tenure and a lot of that Mark Crislop just wrote about this on science based medicine. The fact that you know what the pandemic preparedness plan is to do nothing, to do absolutely nothing. You know, if we have a pandemic in the next three years, we're effed. It's going to be bad.
US#06: Why the the last one was a hoax anyway?
S: We're just going to make people healthy and that they'll be able to fight off the infection. That's basically their plan, which is basically saying we're going to do nothing.
B: And what really sucks is that even after the the horrific results of that plan would be like, well, it would have been worse if we did it your way. It's like whoa. Geez.
C: It doesn't even make sense from a long term political expediency perspective, because who's going to die?
S: Yeah.
C: It's going to be the older people who voted for these, for these folks. It's going to be the unvaccinated people who voted for these folks. It's it's it's going to be a lot of people who are the most vulnerable among us. And it's. Yeah.
S: I mean, I don't think it's going to change the political calculus, but I mean.
C: Like a huge pandemic would, but I mean. You have to be pretty big.
S: I mean, for COVID, COVID death rates were a lot higher in red states than blue states, in states that were not doing the things, you know, that that would be science. Based, that's what I'm saying.
C: Imagine if COVID happened again but this was the administration and no plans in place.
S: Yeah, the DAPO is basically the RFK for Florida, you know what I mean? So smaller scope, but basically the same thing. So I mean, no one can come close to the to the havoc that RFK is wreaking, but you know, it's not fair to all the other pseudoscientists out there. So we have to have some.
C: Exactly. Yeah, can't.
S: Can't let RFK Junior over shadow all the other cranks and charlatans that deserve to be mentioned.
US#06: We need a top ten list of of the cranks honestly.
S: Yeah, top 100. Plus 31, Yeah.
US#06: I mean, I have a couple of the people.
S: Does anybody want to throw something out? Evan, come on.
E: Well, you want the Avi Loeb? Yeah. Oh my gosh. Why does every article I come across have him as part of the article? Why can't I have an Atlas? Right? What is it? 3 all Atlas three I3 I Atlas article that does not mention Avi Loeb. Please, someone out there in media stop referencing this person. I get you have to have clicks and things, but my gosh, there it. It's as if this person is the expert, the only expert on it and he's nothing of the sort. Frankly, all he does is promote his own interpretation of what's going on. I can't find another. I can't find any other reputable scientists that agree with anything. It's all the UFO and UAP community that that back that backs him up. I mean this this guy is the UFO UAP crank of now. He really has become a crazy. Objects yeah he's become the poster child for for for all of this so I mean I know we've mentioned him in the past and I think he's been on this list in the past but he keeps earning it I mean he keeps coming back and and media plays right into his hands unfortunately just today I was reading another one about oh it's approaching earth and it's accelerating at a rate that's going to only be you know unnatural, you know unnatural propulsion bull according to one scientist n = 1 that's.
S: It NASA recently gave a briefing updating because you know the the comet is coming to to its closest approach to Earth.
B: It's glowing in X-rays, isn't it?
S: Yeah, yeah, it's it's doing all the stuff that comets do when it gets closer to the sun. So they began their briefing by saying this object is a comet. It looks and behaves like a comet and all evidence points to it being a comet. And they specifically called out Avi Loeb.
B: Really good for them.
S: And oh, that's good for his. Posted a non peer reviewed re preprint.
B: And that's wonderful.
S: Yeah, they, they, they shut that down fast. Now it is a freaking comet. It's you know what I mean? The the more, and this has been, you know, there's been a massive mission to observe it from everything we have, looking at anything that we could get eyes on, you know, through our Atlas has been looking at it. You know, we have so much data. And then the more data that comes in, the more obvious it is that this thing is a comet. Now, it's an unusual comet because, of course, it's the first fascinating interstellar comet. So why would we think it would be identical to a typical, you know, comet from our own solar system? But, you know, whatever, nothing that is anomaly, it's just like, oh, that's interesting. A little bit more nickel, OK. Or, you know, more carbon dioxide than a typical Earth, Right. You know, soul comet. Yeah, whatever. Nothing like. Oh my God, this has got to be an alien spacecraft.
E: I have another Skeptical Jackass I'd like to throw out there. It's more of a category, but I do have a couple of names that fit this category and that's Tick Tock. And I don't know if anyone has anyone or anything having to do with TikTok on their Skeptical Jackass, but this, this platform is just pure poison. I'm sorry. I know there's good and I know there's good stuff. On there there's good science communications. There is on. There, and I have it on my skeptical heroes list, I have a list of some people who are doing some very good social media in, in, in science. So it is not just a blanket statement, but these people, for example, you have these three people, Nara Smith, right?
US#06: She but the OK good we'll.
E: Explain it Promoting the consumption of raw milk while pregnant.
US#06: All right, so that's, yes, I, I thought you were just going to be like, because she is like a little quirky and trad wifey and like she does some goofy stuff with her husband and they I think they're vampires like that. Like, yeah, that is fair. She does do something. Yeah. That's how about Paul Saladino. You know, have you heard that?
E: Name.
US#06: My God, we all meet carnivore. Carnivore. Yeah. Oh, I think I watched a documentary about that guy.
S: Vegetables are poison, Evan.
US#06: That's what if you watch, if you watch RFK or anybody in Congress, he is, he's walking around with them usually like especially RFK, he's like always there.
E: Wow. And I want to mention this because it's because it's funny. The Liver King right we've.
C: Oh no, that's the documentary I watch. Yeah, there's a whole thing on the Liver King.
E: Yep, Yep. If you focus on eating large amounts of raw organ meats, then you're going to have, you know, superpower. You'll you'll live longer than anyone in your family ever has.
US#06: Yeah, unfortunately, I think he needs like therapy, like he's not just like a crank fully. Well, you could say that any of these. People lost the plot.
S: There's somewhere between eating therapy and.
E: Being I mean so. Many. There's so many. Yeah, yeah.
US#06: Sure.
E: Yeah, yeah, that too. But just the amount of clicks these people get is is obscene. Have no, no business.
S: Getting Yeah, as you know, Evan, I'm on TikTok.
E: Well, yes, and This is why I qualified.
US#06: Follow at you.
S: Know it helps us produce our TikTok videos and there's there is a a couple of dominant narratives on TikTok that I find myself addressing over and over again just in different guises. One of them is oh this this guy who invented a thing was killed died. Therefore he was killed to hide his discovery kind of thing. Like oh.
E: Diesel.
S: Like, yeah, like we talked.
C: About that diesel.
S: That's that's where that was from TikTok. The other one is that the, you know, anybody to do anybody in the healthcare industry wants you to die, wants you to be unhealthy. Either everything they tell you is a lie, like everything you've ever heard is a lie. And also that history didn't happen. You know, the other thing is like, whatever that Oh yeah, you can't prove anything in history. And therefore, you know, Helen Keller didn't exist. And this building was that nobody built this building. It's in the history Denial is, I mean, Sarah, I'm not, I'm not exaggerating in the slightest. I'm barely giving you.
US#06: Were you there, Steve? Were you? There, that's so bad.
E: The buildings didn't right Could not have been built.
S: There was a huge mud flood around the world 100 years ago. 100 years ago, you think we would have. They're not talking about thousands of years ago. They're talking about like 50 years ago, 100 years ago.
C: Well, they weren't born yet.
S: I know it's.
E: Like it's ridiculous. There weren't cell phones then, Steve. Nobody captured it.
C: Can't prove it unless it was on TikTok.
E: It's a loss. About that molasses spill that killed a bunch of people in Boston. Maybe that's what they think. Which is why I remember.
S: That the memory hole is just profound.
E: Oh. Gosh.
S: It's really, it's a sad and there's a lot of NASA hate on TikTok, Yeah.
US#06: Yeah, that is a weird one. I mean, part of it is I don't know if I'm influencing it because I also kind of source a lot of the videos. So I actively go seek out the crazies. Yeah, but yeah. I mean, it does get a lot of likes, and who knows if they're bots, but it is, like, seemingly pervasive, you know, So it is weird. Yeah. I mean, I think all the platforms, unfortunately, have devolved. I mean, X is notoriously run by, you know, somebody who's not necessarily a straight shooter in many ways. Instagram, Facebook, all of those things are, I don't know, social media. Maybe we shouldn't have started to begin with. Can we go back? There were good. There was an era where but.
C: There's also more and more evidence to show how just like exceedingly damaging it is to young people's mental health.
US#06: Sure, but what what do you do? Because obviously we've heard in the news and maybe it's a little political, but Australia is like banning it for underage 16. However, like if you grew up like Karen and I grew up long ago, we grew up in the world where there wasn't the Internet and then there was the Internet, right And I found ways around my parents putting, you know, like an abstinence policy out there, like I found other ways to get on the Internet. Is this going to do anything you?
C: Think, well, I, I do personally, because I don't think it's, it's the same as abstinence. And I hear, I hear you why you're using that word, but it's, you could also say the same thing about like Australia banning guns and like, yes, they did just have a mass shooting, but their numbers are nowhere near our numbers even, you know, adjusted for population. There's just yes, I think that when you make it so that it's it's no longer culturally normative and when you make it so that it's not as easily accessible, people are always going to figure out ways to do it, but it not not to the same extent as they do now.
US#06: Right. But with the guns, there's not like an analog that you can get around it where you like have mass firing spoons or something like. There's not, yeah.
C: I mean, some kids are going to figure out how to use it regardless, but if there are heavy penalties or I don't really know what they're, how they're going to enforce this. And also if you just straight up ban cell phones in school, that has another like.
US#06: That's a different I agree with that kind of this, but imagine both of them at the same time.
C: What if young people aren't allowed on social media until a certain age? Just like young people aren't allowed to drink alcohol until a certain age. Some of them still do. A lot of them still do, but it's not normative. They're not doing it out in public. They're not, you know what I mean? So you ban that and then you also ban gun or not guns, cell phones in schools. I think you'll see a cultural change.
US#06: But isn't there some of discussion about like, maybe the way that we treat alcohol leads to a binging culture in America versus like, Europe, where they have a little bit more of, you know, a connection with it? So is the solution actually banning it when that might lead to them going down deeper darker social media turns like on 4 Chan? Or, well, but I don't think they're saying like Nazis.
C: They're not. They're not saying they want to ban it all together. They say they want to ban it until the children are at an age at which they can develop a healthy habit with it. And that's that's the same thing with alcohol.
US#06: True, but are they putting their money into fun?
C: Yeah. Would you like to change?
S: It was an interesting experiment. Yeah.
US#06: Sure.
C: Yeah, but I mean, I agree, but social media is not. I think there was a time when we could safely be like, everybody, every generation gets weird about stuff, and it's like the new TV. And I think we can safely say now like no social media is its own beast.
E: Yeah, the evidence is. Adding it's a different animal. It's. It seems to be pointing a.
C: Direction and it's been completely unregulated till now.
E: Well, that's it. It's obviously because. That's.
C: All guardrails are helpful.
E: It would be nice to try something, man. I'm very curious, yeah. That has. Especially for.
US#06: Younger people, but but seemingly they police themselves right like even now, but even with this legislation, they police themselves on what they justify is somebody over the OR under the age of 16. Like there's, there are legal ways that they have to like, you know, upload licenses, but they also have algorithms that determine whether or not you're 16. So what? Like clearly they have a desire to have kids on the.
C: Platform, of course they do. That's why they're proactively doing like now there's like Instagram for teens and stuff because they're trying to prevent things from happening like are happening in Australia. They don't want regulation. They want to say, look, we're protecting kids, but they're not, and we know they're not.
US#06: But they're not. Right.
C: But I agree with you, too.
US#06: Then the legislation writes it to like, put it in their hands. So it kind of just obfuscates it. And it's like, hey, we passed the bill to protect the kids.
C: Course you know.
US#06: So it's just like a political sleight of hand. Like, I don't know, I think it's just a canard.
C: I do agree with you, Ian, that there is a cultural responsibility to develop healthier habits with things that are not going away. And so I think the the alcohol example is actually a good one because our relationship with alcohol can sometimes induce more, you know, binge culture and more abuse. At the same time, if alcohol was freely available to young people, I think that we would have a lot more health consequences.
US#06: Yeah, there's definitely obviously a balance point. I mean, maybe we should be funding things that are scientific, you know, about like therapy for people, you know, like, it would be interesting. This leads me. I want to throw in my skeptical Jackass, if you don't mind, and I'm going to expand it pretty wide. I'm going to say like the whole political. Class. Of every flavor I'm going to I'm sorry, drag netting them a little bit, but it like it kind of I don't know, showcase like the myth that we had serious people. They're so self-serving or uncaring and I even the people that I kind of agree with. I don't know, there's like little bits where I'm like, what are you doing or anti science? It's it's really just you hit your head against the wall, who's running the ship or steering the ship. It's like what is going it's a good.
E: Observation, Ian, I've said for a long time, if you're going to be skeptical about anything, be skeptical of politics and politicians. That's that's a good. That's the hardest thing.
US#06: Like, I agree with you, Evan, with this, where it's like, I'm going to, you know, maybe be a little tongue in cheek, but the skepticism against science is like kind of easy. Skepticism with politics is like kind of crazy. There's so much out there.
E: It's a good way for us to check ourselves.
S: It's an entire industry based on deception, right? I mean, their goal is to not to tell the truth. It's to influence you, influence your role.
US#06: Influence your behavior positively, Yeah.
S: You know. It's persuasion science and it's.
E: Persuasion. Keep them in power. Anything. Yeah, make.
US#06: It happen like you hope the person who's most persuadable actually has good ideas.
S: But I mean, there are some good politicians out there, obviously, of course. But it does seem like the system, there's a selective pressure for people willing to be shamelessly manipulative. You know what I mean?
C: Oh. Yeah, our political system has the same. We often talk, you know, you use the phrase a lot, Steve, where you're like, it's not a bug, it's a feature. Like a lot of the bugs in our political system, I think are similar to the bugs in our economic system. When you have a system that's built in such a way that greed is good. When you have a system that's built in such a way that those who kind of take the most continue to be the most rewarded and are given the most perks so they can continue to take more. This is the system you end up with both of politically and economically, which you know they're and they're not really two separate systems.
E: Right. And people will say like, don't. And in order to change it, you have to, you have to convince these people to make laws, to regulate themselves, and they rarely.
C: Yeah, which is really hard to do. You have to be so politically active and and you have to really hold these people to account. And even then it's difficult when you're living in this like kind of post whatever reality reality where the, the very people who, like you said, Evan, you're asking them to write laws to regulate their, their themselves. Are. Also, and not only is it not human nature, we're now living in a culture where, or maybe not a culture, but a, but a system where the very people in power have like, little connection to an interest in keeping their constituents happy.
E: Yeah, Yeah.
C: And so, like, how do you hold somebody to account who doesn't care if their constituents care about them? It's strange. It's a very strange situation.
US#06: Where it's a.
E: Weird place I.
US#06: Agree, and I know people might say yeah hey, don't both sides it because there are. You know they're not symmetrical. Maybe as objective, they're not symmetrical necessarily, but I would say it like this is like, I don't know what's worse. It's like the killer chasing you with the knife or the person who locks you in the room with the killer. You know, like it was like you're supposed friend. It's really, I don't know where we are in that spectrum, but it seems bad wherever we are.
In Memoriam (1:02:02)
Joe NickellRandy Snyder, recently died. He was an influential skeptic in the ex-Mormon communityRobert Lee Nadeau (1944 – 2025)American academic and activist against climate denial, known for outspoken criticism of climate change misinformation and deniers.Jane GoodallJames WatsonChen Ning Yang – physicist, work in symmetry paved the way for the standard modelGeorge Smoot - American astrophysicist, cosmologist, and Nobel laureate. He won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2006 for his work on the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) with John C. Mather that led to the "discovery of the black body form and anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background radiation"Richard Garwin – physicist, first hydrogen bomb designGeorge Smith - 2009 Nobel Prize in Physics for "the invention of an imaging semiconductor circuit—the CCD sensor, which has become an electronic eye in almost all areas of photography".Mark Norell - first theropod embryo and for the description of feathered dinosaursXavier Le Pichon – helped create the field of plate tectonicsDavid Baltimore – Nobel prize - "for their discoveries concerning the interaction between tumour viruses and the genetic material of the cell"John Gurdon – Nobel prize for research into turning mature cells into stem cellsHamilton Smith – Nobel Prize 1978 for discovering restriction enzymesElizabeth Vrba - developing the turnover-pulse hypothesis, as well as coining the word exaptation with colleague Stephen Jay GouldDarleane Christian Hoffman confirmed the existence of seaborgium, element 106.Jim LovellCaptain Frederick H. Hauck – space shuttle captainFelix BaumgartnerRob ReinerJune LockhartRobert RedfordHulk HoganOzzy OsbourneDrew Struzan – iconic movie posters, https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/legacyremembers/drew-struzan-obituary?pid=210097735 - "Star Wars," "Indiana Jones," and "Back to the Future," "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial," "Blade Runner," "The Goonies," "First Blood," "The Shawshank Redemption," "The Thing," and "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone." None
S: I have a category kind of Jackass as well everyone involved with the telepathy tips.
C: Oh yeah, we got a lot of emails on that too.
S: Oh my God. It's so pervasive. So the quick recap is, you know, they're, you know, claiming to like do these, you know, interviews with autistic children and they're just doing facilitated communication. And then which was completely debunked nonsense. And but they're usually the facilitated communication. And then they claim that these autistic kids, not only are they brilliant, these non verbal kids, but they're psychic. They're reading our minds. It is like such a classic pseudoscience, but it's gotten so much play I can't tell.
E: You the.
S: People podcasts out there and people who should freaking know better who have said oh what about these kids who are psycho like oh please stop. It's just amazing.
US#06: It's amazing you can repackage the same thing just with like a new name We're.
B: Talking about that literally, you know, a generation ago.
S: It's just a Dumber version of it too. It's just ridiculous.
E: Right, and more popular. It's it's the. The correlation here is mind boggling.
S: All right, Cara, let's pivot to Skeptical Hero of the Year. Who could?
C: Have I couldn't decide. I was really struggling with this. So I have a few different I mean, you may have noticed that over the past several weeks I've been singing the praises of South Park this year. Yes. Think Trey Parker and Matt Stone might be up there for me, but also just the people who turned out to be skeptics that I maybe didn't know were as skeptical as they are. And don't get me wrong, these people aren't perfect. But like John Oliver Colbert, I mean, I've been a fan of Colbert. Jon Stewart came back into the fold. But you're seeing these skeptical takes from individuals who have been sort of beloved for a different reason, doing more and more basically public science communication. And then of course, we have our tireless science communicators across social media platforms. And I think probably the one that I would nominate for this year would be Hank Green.
US#06: Yeah, thanks. Pretty cool.
C: Yeah.
S: He's a good, that's a good choice.
US#06: He's a good boy. I mean, I think you also should shout out like the writers, the men and women who like write all the John Oliver, of course, probably them actually, more than.
C: Yeah. But yeah, the problem is we don't. Yeah, we don't know. Like if I said their names, people might not you.
S: Know there's, I think there's somebody on the writing staff of John Oliver that listens to our show.
C: I think I.
S: Don't have proof of that, but enough of what we have said. I have seen shortly thereafter on the show. The one that really got me was the P hacking one.
B: Yes, right.
S: But plus they also showed, they talked about our show on John. Oliver, they did.
B: They. Yeah. Carter yeah, very few second, but we were there.
S: Very briefly they, yeah, they showed me Carter. So that's that's pretty good. It's that there's some connection.
E: There. And if they're listening now, maybe they want. To reach out confirmation bias, so.
S: Everything good is simply a similarly somebody wrote in Hank Green as well and also Doctor Knock or Morgan McSweeney for this their social media activity. I would add someone who has just been, Again, I'd like to focus on people who I see as tirelessly working, even if they're not, like, seeking big recognition.
C: Sure.
S: And for the person this year, somebody who has had a lot of recognition in the past. But Michael Mann, who, yeah, has been just for being tireless and also for just staying on top of things and shifting his strategy, you know, to keep up with the climate change denying community.
B: Yeah.
S: Like, he's staying on top of it. He's not giving up, you know that. That kind of persistence and energy I really respect like this. He's in it for good. He's in it for the.
C: Long he Co write a book this year he Co wrote a book with a vaccine scientist to kind of approach it from both angles, right? Like this is what happens when public trust in science disintegrates.
S: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
E: Yeah, there are a couple other people in that same kind of category, Steve. They're they're in it the they're in it for the long haul, right. They understand this is a long term effort that that is required. Mick W comes to mind. Especially all the work he's done. Why he is not invited onto, you know, panels or congressional testimonies and things like that so that more people can hear him is beyond me because he can really, really refute a lot of the UFO and UAP stuff, among the other things. Yeah. Another person who's like that is Timothy Caulfield. Yeah, yeah. Who continues to fight the fight? Bruce Hood also. Is is one of those people? And I do want to also give a shout out to Barry Carr. He retired this year. He was the executive director for for CSI. But gosh, our relationship with Barry goes back 30 years. Yeah, God.
B: 90s right?
E: And he has, he has been so good to us in all that time. He's been very supportive from the. Super supportive really, Yes, yes, even though from a from a different organization and everything, he's been nothing but great to us and and he deserves recognition for his lifetime effort as well.
S: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, He's one of those people. Like it's the cause is what matters, right? Skepticism. Yeah, yeah, correct.
B: It's funny, Steve and Evan, you mentioned tirelessly working in it for the long haul. I'm, I'm gonna for this year. I'm for skeptic of the year. I'm throwing out Jay. Uh, he, he is the hardest worker that I, that I know. His work has had clearly a profoundly positive impact on this skeptical podcast and SDU productions, every project that we do. He's also, I'm so impressed with what's the things that he accomplishes. He's a master at working and negotiating with event vendors and. Salespeople. Which I recently they confirmed is actually a form of torture in hell. There's a department Jay and Jay's killing it. He he misses many of the the awesome streaming shows that are out there these day because of his skeptical work work ethic. And it annoys the hell out of Steve and me because we keep we have to leave the room to talk about spoilers because Jay's like, I didn't see that. I don't have time to see that He's just working. It seems like, you know, he's got, sure, he's got two young kids, but he's just working night and day, you know, And I just wanted to give a shout out to him. Like Jay, we appreciate it. We would not be what we are today. We'd be a different kind of a different beast today if it weren't for all the work that you've put in to make sure that we could, we could do this and do not just a podcast, but so many other things. Yeah. Jay's a heart. Oh yeah, so yeah, such. It's so. Ridiculous. Yeah.
S: I couldn't imagine doing everything without Jay.
B: Right. We'd be, you know, we'd get some stuff done, but I don't think we'd do it as good as Jay.
E: Almost.
S: Every day I'm like, Jay, do this.
E: He's a. He's.
S: Jay Jay Jay had to bow out of the show because of his flu. He's really. Had to bed. That's why that's not why he's not participating in this discussion.
US#06: But he's weekly saying thanks, not.
E: Kidding.
S: So we got a couple of more emails from listeners with their votes. So one person voted for Emily Willingham. Willingham for for clear, responsible, skeptical analysis of emotionally charged pseudoscience. And we, we referenced her during the telepathy tapes discussion. Bring that up again, Cara. You got a couple of votes from listeners.
C: Yeah.
S: For this year, for, for everything that you do, not just the SGU. And a lot of people really appreciate your role on the SGU because, you know, Bob, Jay and I are brothers. Evan is basically a brother. He's very close friend. We've known him for a long time. And we can't be a little, you know, closed, you know, close, You know what I mean? It could be a little bit of an echo chamber. And so your audience really appreciates the fact that you are a different perspective and you're not afraid to push back on anything that we say.
C: I, you know, it's, it's funny, I was going to say earlier that some of my favorite episodes looking back or just some of my favorite experiences with the SGU and this speaks to the talk that you actually gave at CSI. Was that earlier this year or was that last year? But it's. It's when skeptics disagree, right?
B: Like, that's the fun part.
C: Yeah. I really enjoy when we have differing opinions about things and we can kind of talk about the nuance and, you know, when it comes to the really big stuff, we're definitely all, you know, on the same team, rooting for the same cause. But sometimes we disagree about how we should get there.
S: Yeah, which is fine. Healthy. That's the discussion we should be having, right? I always say, like on climate change, we shouldn't be wasting our time debating about whether it's happening. All right, it's freaking happening. What the only discussion worth happening is what's the best strategy to deal with it. And there's lots of, there's lots to talk about there.
B: Should we do geoengineering or is that 2? Risky should. We do this or what? Oh man.
US#06: You just burn money. I think that happens. Good. Does that. Does that. Yeah. I think you might do that. No.
S: Ian, who was your skeptical hero?
US#06: I honestly, all of the ideas you had were so good I could not find think of one. I'm like, I think I'm doomer brained. I've been on TikTok or social media so long. They got just like guys, oh God, I don't know what it is. I mean, I think I said this last time and I'm going to do it again. I'm just going to cheat is like the listeners, anyone who's still committed while seeing the world kind of fall apart.
C: Right. Yeah.
US#06: It's maybe our skeptical project over the last decades hasn't fully fixed everything or fixed enough or fixed anything, who knows, But at least you guys are hopefully in with us in the fight as we're thinking, you know, so I, I don't know, just keep up, keep looking forward. You know you got there is some power in positivity to throw it back to the beginning.
S: You know, but it's called strategic optimism.
US#06: Yes.
S: I'm a firm believer in strategic optimism. Yeah, yeah, avoiding self defeating nihilism that doesn't serve any purpose.
B: I know it's hard. It's hard for me to be strategically optimistic.
C: Well, and sometimes it takes and and that's why I always go back to that thing I said before that hope is a moving target. Yeah, you have to sometimes take a step away from the issue and come back into it and and look at how the parameters have changed. Like you mentioned, you've got to be strategically optimistic and that has to do with understanding where are we now, what can be done? We might not be where we were, you know, 15 years ago or 30 years ago or whatever. But like maybe we can compare ourselves to where we were 100 years ago. Or, you know, one of the things that was always really inspiring to me is when I talk to my friends who come from countries who have been through constitutional crises or who have experienced authoritarianism, and they got through it.
S: Yeah, we'll get through it.
C: Yeah. We'll get through it. It feels unique to us, but it's not unique in the world. It is unique in the world in some ways. I mean, I'm, I'm not arguing that, but there will be a future ahead of us.
US#06: Yeah, keep building community, you know, and like, you know, helping each other, you know, in whatever way we can.
S: Yeah. I mean, I think a lot of my strategic optimism is informed by my career as a physician, right? Because talk about you're in a situation every day with your patients where you have to do everything you can, you know, to be an advocate for your patient and to get the best outcome with. And everything that can possibly go wrong, goes wrong, right. But you still, and all the challenges that you could possibly have are there, but you still have to, at the end of the day, you have to have the best, best outcome you can possibly get. And so sometimes you have to say, well, I don't know what's going on, but if this were anything treatable, this is what it would be. So let's treat that and see what happens. You know, that's strategic optimism. Like let's, let's plan. You know, you can, you always have to hope for the best, plan for the worst. But sometimes hoping for the best means acting as if this is something that you can fix. And then if it if it doesn't, you know, you did the best you could, right? You gave it the best odds you can. Same thing like with global warming. It's that if we assume it's hopeless, then it is hopeless by definitely that makes the reality. But if you say, all right, I'm going to go, you know, I'm going to go down fighting or I'm going to, you know, do everything I can and constantly change strategy and try like, like Michael manage doing why I picked him, like just constantly doing what we can do to make it less bad or try to move things in the right direction and, you know.
C: That's the key.
S: It's a bit of a leap of faith. I don't know that it's going to affect the world, but it's better than doing nothing, right? It's better than just giving into the negativity.
C: Well, and it will. It will affect the world. Because once again, hope is a moving target. And sometimes we're not talking about fixing something or putting things back the way they were. Sometimes we're talking about making it less bad.
S: Yeah, less bad is.
C: But less bad is. Is a good goal, yeah. It is.
B: Basically, I think one of the only goals we got left with climate change is making as little bit as we as we can it really.
S: It's all about being less bad. Absolutely.
Science or Fiction (1:15:31)
Theme: NeurologicaBlog 2025
Item #1: An analysis finds that existing policies on use of plastic bags are mostly ineffective, on average reducing plastic bag waste by <10%.[1]
Item #2: An extensive genetic and cellular analysis finds that birds evolved the information-carrying neurons in their brain mostly independently from mammals.[2]
Item #3: Researchers presented a new gene-editing system that is even better than CRISPR, called the TIGR-Tas system.[3]
| Answer | Item |
|---|---|
| Fiction | An analysis finds that existing policies on use of plastic bags are mostly ineffective, on average reducing plastic bag waste by <10%. |
| Science | An extensive genetic and cellular analysis finds that birds evolved the information-carrying neurons in their brain mostly independently from mammals. |
| Science | Researchers presented a new gene-editing system that is even better than CRISPR, called the TIGR-Tas system. |
| Host | Result |
|---|---|
| Steve | sweep |
| Rogue | Guess |
|---|
S: OK, let's move on to our In Memoriam segment. This is where we look back and all the people we lost this year focusing on sciences, scientists and skeptics, but we throw in some other, you know, celebrity favorites that we have. I have a list. I don't know if you guys have any names, but I'll just go through my list. If I missed anybody then you can chime in.
E: Are they in reverse alphabetical order?
S: No, they're, they're. I'm going to start with a couple of skeptics. Top of the list, of course, is Joe Nickel. Joe Nickel also, again, Joe is again, a tireless skeptic, a real. You know, he was an investigator. He was like, really at there was a time.
B: Oh my God, yeah.
S: When he was really the only full time he might have might have been, you know, the only full time skeptical investigator in the world. Yeah. And he would do the nitty gritty hard work. You know, he wouldn't just write opinions or use broad brush strokes. He would do the nitty gritty investigative work and he would do the work that we would cite to say, look, he did all the hard work and this is what that analysis shows, etcetera. It was really indispensable. He's also someone like Barry Carr that we met very early on in our skeptical careers, who was, you know, very friendly, very supportive of great resource. And yeah, he was just, you know, a fan to fantastic guy. Really sorry, you know, to see him go.
B: Yeah, that was that one hurt, man.
S: Yeah, there's also one of our listeners emailed us to to remind us that Randy Snyder died this year. So he was also so an influential skeptic, mainly in the ex Mormon community. Did you know him, Cara?
C: No, but we had him on the show. We. Did have him on the show once, yeah.
B: Back in I think episode 416 a. Long time ago. Wow.
S: And then there was also Robert Lee Nadu, who was an American academic and activist against climate denial, not known for outspoken criticism of climate change, misinformation and deniers. So those are the three people kind of in this skeptical, yeah order category that that I that I found. And then for scientists, I think the, you know, there's a few famous scientists who died this year, Jane Goodall.
E: Not too long ago, Doctor.
S: Goodall, She had an amazing career, obviously best known for her work with chimpanzees, but also I, a tireless advocate just for the environment and animal welfare.
E: And yeah. Yeah, I criticized her once.
S: Yeah, we did she.
E: We did.
S: She said some gullible things about Bigfoot.
C: And nobody's above criticism.
E: Look, look, not all scientists are disappointing. Are skeptics at the same level that we are right or not exposed to? What we, what we? Concentrate on. They're concentrating on the work they're doing, which is fine, right? But then they kind of speak outside of their element a little bit. And this is, this is what happens. And it can happen to the best of them. And Jane Goodall is an example of.
S: That skepticism is a unique skill set. It is. Automatically go along with being a scientist, unfortunately.
C: Yeah, and I don't think she ever claimed to be a skeptic either.
E: No, Correct.
C: Right, right.
E: She was not pretending to be something she's not. Right.
S: And also the other big name this year was James Watson, also completely beyond any criticism, right?
E: Oh yeah. Yeah.
B: I have a decently representative quote about him. This is from scientist Dorian Nathaniel Comfort, said. The most famous scientist of the 20th century and the most infamous of the 21st, which kind of does it a little bit of justice right there? I mean, yeah. I mean, racist views, sexist views were, yeah, we're not good. He, he worked for for decades and moved up the ladder at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory CSHL. And in in 2019, they revoked his emeritus status and they condemned him for, I quote, the misuse of signs to justify prejudice. I mean, that's just like, damn, man.
C: And it's important to remember, too, that it's not just, I think sometimes we hear people and we had this argument or this conversation before. It's like, well, he was of an era. And, you know, some people might say, hey, lived a little too long. Like if he had died earlier, maybe he wouldn't have gone down in history that way. But we have people like Attenborough who who are 101, right? Like we've got people alive today who were alive when he was alive who didn't espouse those views. Yep, we have to remember that.
S: But so of course, he's the most famous for discovering the DNA Helix structure with Crick. You know Watson and Crick, everybody knows those. Names and Rosalind Franklin. He used. And ideas from Rosalind Franklin and biophysicist Maurice Wilkins without attributing them. And they didn't get and not even with, with Franklin's permission. So that was that was terrible. You know, it's like, yeah, you know, women do a lot of the hard work that the two guys took all the credit, got the Nobel Prize. It was terrible. But of course, you have to say that Rosalind Franklin didn't get the Nobel Prize primarily because she was dead at the time it was awarded. And they don't give pops to the prize. But that doesn't doesn't erase the fact that you know she was abused.
C: Right. And even if it was normative at the time, that doesn't make it right.
S: No, of course not. It wasn't.
C: It wasn't right. It wasn't.
S: It wasn't normative or right at the time.
C: Well, it's still normative that women don't really get as many new. Yeah, sure. Yeah.
S: Yeah, Bob, do you know Chen Ning Yang?
B: I don't think so.
S: Physicist whose work on symmetry paved the way for the standard model of particles.
B: Oh. I, I know I've come across his name probably just like 2 initials in Yang and that was like, and he was on papers that I've read. So yeah.
S: I've probably got massive, you know, work for in the standard, which of course even the standard model was at the core of physics today.
B: Absolutely.
S: There's another physicist. This is an astrophysicist, just George Smoot.
C: Oh yeah, Smoot.
S: Yeah. So he won the Nobel Prize in physics in 2006 for his work on the cosmic background explorer.
B: Oh yeah.
S: John Mather led to the discovery of the black body form of anisotropy of the cosmic microwave. Microwave.
B: Background mediation, huge man. That's great. We probably mentioned him on the show put potentially in 2006.
C: Wasn't Didn't David Baltimore die this year too?
S: Yep. David Baltimore.
C: Yeah, he's another Nobel laureate, right?
S: Nobel Prize for Discovery's concern the interaction between tumor viruses and the genetic material of this cell.
C: Well, and he did so much in like I think in the HIV AIDS space.
S: There's a There are a bunch of other Nobel laureates who died this year. George Smith 2009 Nobel Prize in physics for the invention of an imaging semiconductor circuit, the CD CCD sensor. So that which has become.
E: A charge couple.
S: Of this, Yeah, exactly. Which is like all of digital photography.
E: Every camera, right?
S: Yeah.
C: Wow, that's huge. And by the way, David Baltimore discovered reverse transcriptase.
S: Yeah.
E: Whoa.
C: Like, that's enormous. Yeah. Quite did. You tell.
E: Yeah, for the audience and my sake what that is.
C: Well, it explained basically how HIV can replicate like that, like, and it's like one of the foundational understandings to like we wouldn't have gene therapy without understanding reverse transcriptase. Yeah.
S: It's how you get DNA back into DNA, basically.
B: Exactly. And that's how that's how it gets bedded, embedded into the into the genome by viruses. Yep.
S: John Gordon, Nobel Prize for Researcher, turning mature cells into stem cells. We just talked about this too, about the stem cell ban. And now that was sidestepped by this science figuring out how to turn like skin cells into stem cells. So he got a Nobel Prize for that research. Hamilton Smith, Nobel Prize in 1978 for discovering restriction enzymes, also huge in biology. So I think that was all the Nobel laureates that I came across. But a few other physicists or a few other scientists who were not Nobel laureates but did but did work. Richard Garwin, any got anybody? So he came up with the first design for a hydrogen bomb.
B: Wow, really? The.
S: Yeah, maybe not the legacy you want, but it was still important, you know, to Yeah.
B: So not so Not just a a fission bomb, a fusion.
S: A fusion bomb. Yeah, a fusion bomb.
C: Right in the 50s, I suppose.
S: Xavier Lapichon helped create the field of plate tectonics.
C: Cool name too.
B: Yeah, right.
S: Elizabeth Verba. Anybody recognize that name?
B: I. Do I do?
S: Elizabeth Verba from evolutionary biology. So she's somebody I read a ton of Stephen J Gould, so I know about her, you know, through that work. So she was also at Yale. So the reason why I know her. So she developed the turnover pulse hypothesis, coined the phrase and coined the phrase exaptation with Stephen J Gould.
B: Nice.
S: So the turnover false hypothesis is the notion that an ecosystem reaches a stability and then something happens to destabilize the ecosystem. Whether it is climate change or some key index species goes extinct or or the invasion of another species or whatever. The ecosystem gets destabilized and then in a pulse of turnover, a lot of the species change until you reach a new stable ecosystem. And what is exaptation? Who wants to define that word for me?
B: I used to know.
C: We did it on the show.
B: Exaptation ex.
C: Yeah, it's when one trait gets used for something different later, right?
S: Yeah, it's evolved for one purpose and then it gets.
B: Well, that's kind of. Important.
S: Something else?
C: Yeah.
B: Yeah, that's what evolution is, man. That's totally awesome. That's critical key.
S: Critical concept evolution? Absolutely. Darlene Christian Hoffman confirmed the existence of C borgium, element 106.
B: Nice. Wow. C. Borgium. That sounds fake. That sounds fake.
US#06: That's ridiculous.
S: Mark Norrell or Norrell Cara. This is a dinosaur guy. You know him. Mark first discovered the first theropod embryo.
C: Oh, cool.
S: And also known for his description of many feathered dinosaurs.
C: Oh wow. Really neat.
S: Yeah, good work. All right. A few astronauts, most famously Gem Lovell.
E: Gem Lovell.
S: Yeah, Gem Lovell Yeah, we talked about him on this show. So he first one to go to the twice I believe.
E: Yes.
C: Wow.
S: He is of Houston. We have a problem. Fame.
E: We've had a problem. We've had. Him. Yeah.
S: He was 97.
E: Yeah, good for him. Good run man.
S: Good run.
E: Especially after Wow, surviving what he had to survive is amazing.
S: Yeah, Captain Frederick H Hawk, who was a space shuttle captain, died this year. And not really an astronaut, but kind of in that same vein, Felix Baumgartner.
E: Yeah. Right. Yeah. At the time. Space jump record. The space jump. Yeah. For the highest space jump.
S: Jumped from the edge of space, died in a paragliding crash, and paragliding is dangerous.
E: Yeah, man.
C: Well, these like extreme athletes. I know, like jumping from space is dangerous too, but yeah.
E: I don't know how they get.
US#06: Insurance, Frank Somehow safer jumping from space. Some safer. House. Yeah. He was only 56, right? Yeah.
C: Yeah, it was. Yeah, it's a bummer that's.
US#06: By age, that's really.
S: So that's the scientists and, you know, technologists and space guys, a few just celebrities I thought I'd throw out there. We very recently lost Rob Reiner. Very sad story. He and his wife were stabbed to death by their their troubled son.
B: Allegedly by the son, yeah.
S: Yeah, very, you know, terrible thing. So it's so sad. Just we imagine having a child who has mental health issues, drug, you know, use issues. It's so, so heartbreaking. But then, of course, and now ending super tragically, June Lockhart. Anybody know who she is?
B: Yes, Oh my God. Lost in space. Lost in space and Lassie and Lassie. Wow.
S: Robert Redford across, of course, probably the most.
E: Robert Redford.
B: Oh yeah.
S: Hulk Hogan died this year. I missed that.
E: He did, yes. Heart attack was battling cancer and leukemia.
S: Oh.
E: Wow, at the time his heart gave well, you know, and what he did to his body and stuff over the years, you know, I can only. Imagine. What kind of toll that took, you know, with the drugs he took and performance drugs and everything else. But still, yeah, I mean, he was, he's an icon. He's an, you know, whether you liked him or hated him, Definitely on Icon.
S: Ozzy Osbourne.
E: Oh. Yeah, yeah, sad in that he performed his last concert a couple of weeks before he before. He right. Right. It was his fair. It was his farewell show.
C: Oh, well, I mean, that's kind of great then.
US#06: Yeah, it was the way to go, I guess. Yeah, you.
S: Know. All right. Who knows who Drew Struzan is? Drew Struzan?
US#06: No.
S: No chance you'd recognize his name. But you do recognize his work. He's an artist.
US#06: OK.
S: Famous for innovating the movie poster responsible for such iconic movie posters as Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Back to the Future, ET, Blade Runner, The Goonies, First Blood, Bob, You'll have this one, The Shawshank Redemption, The Thing.
B: Nice.
S: And Harry Potter, the Sorcerer's Stone.
E: Wow folks. So he they called on him when they.
US#06: Needed did he invent that like kind of stacking pyramidal yeah shape. OK, that's, yeah, that's very cool.
B: What was it stacking? What?
US#06: Well, you know how like movie, like think of Star Wars movie poster, at least what comes into my head is like the head, the people's heads in a pyramidal shape or a triangle or shape, you know, kind of like.
B: But.
US#06: Or a tree or whatever.
B: You would you would be surprised, though, at the calculus that goes into determining whose head is where and where the names are. This is all about negotiating with the actors and the actors people. Because sometimes you have the people, the stars, AB and C, their heads, but above them it's CAB because it's a different set of rules for where the name goes to where the head goes and how big it is. It's this whole thing that probably makes it a horrible process to go through to figure out whose head goes where, how big, where the names go. It's this whole thing that I read. It was fast.
US#06: Maybe they should just make the movies better you know, and not focus so much on.
C: That well. When I when I think about those iconic movie posters, I also think about the typeface and the the actual title of the movie, how it takes up so much and it has such a presence in those movie posters.
B: Oh yeah, you could look at a movie, but it's all. It's funny though sometimes. Like recently I saw a movie poster for a movie that on paper sounded like something I would like. But taking one look at the movie poster, I'm like, that movie sucks because the poster is so bad that this can't possibly be even a halfway decent movie. And I was right. When I did more research, it was horrible. Movie.
US#06: Would you say that about the Room? I have Tommy wise those The Room. It's like a ridiculous cover, but it's one of the best terrible movies ever. Yeah, so I don't.
E: Know 1977 Star Wars poster sold for a record 3.875 million in all. Well, this month, just this.
C: Month doesn't surprise me.
E: Wow, an original.
S: It's an amazing poster.
E: I would. I had. It I had. It. Talk about the. Dollars on my wall.
S: That Star Wars font itself is iconic. You have Darth Vaders head, you know Luke Skywalker with the lightsaber over his head, Princess Leia, Han Solo is not even in the picture. You got the droids in the background and you got the X wing fighters like a squadron of them in the background as well. And the death *. Hovering and the Death Star I.
E: Yeah, it's just. It's rained in.
S: It's a great in my memory, Yeah, it's amazing.
E: And Drew Strusen also created the Revenge of the Jedi poster, which is also famous because he made the poster and then they changed the title of the movie and they took all the posters away. So if you have one of those, you have a rare item.
B: Yeah.
US#06: Do you think anything nowadays could achieve that kind of rare item status or have we jumped the shark with all that kind of stuff? It's like it's hard to predict obviously because like be financially beneficial to you if you could well.
C: I think so, but there's just a lot more like chaff.
US#06: Stuff.
C: Oh yeah, yeah. Yeah, chaff's the bad stuff, right? We want the Wii. Yeah, there's a lot more chaff, yeah.
US#06: What can you?
E: Do if you have the first iPhone in the box, I imagine that's worth some bucks.
US#06: Oh yeah, maybe.
U: Yeah, it could be are.
S: You guys.
US#06: Ready for all your junk? Yeah, go ahead. Ready.
E: Yeah.
Skeptical Quote of the Week (1:32:25)
“Skepticism is an act of doing good in the world.”
– - Joe Nickell, (description of author)
S: Ready for the final? Science or fiction?
US#06: Oh boy, does.
E: This count.
S: It counts I.
US#06: Think so?
E: They're not. I'm not not ready.
Voice-over: It's time for science or fiction.
S: All right, each week I come up with three Science News items or facts, 2 real and one fake. And then I challenge my panel and skeptics to tell me which one is the fake. But on this episode, first we're going to go over statistics for 2025, so we'll give you just the percentages. So.
US#06: Depressed already? Come on in.
S: Last place, higher mass, Last place is. J at 57.4%.
E: That's a 57 point. Four, that's not bad. That's very bad, yeah. Last place used to be we didn't have 30s and 40s, yeah.
US#06: And some he's busy negotiating those rooms. OK, you.
S: Guys are all generally had a good year. I definitely. Are we getting better? East Lacking. Oh, I think you're getting better. I mean, I thought I came up with good items and you sniff it out. Like what? The ego, I don't know what's going on. I have no idea. It's this one like shit.
E: Yeah, it's like picking stocks. You know.
S: And your reasoning is usually solid damage.
E: Carriages.
S: I gotta get one level more devious in second break or second from the bottom is Evan at 63.8% which again that's pretty.
E: Good, that's really. Good. Yeah, very, very. Yeah, I'm happy. I'm happy.
S: Bob, you squeaked by Evan with 64%.
B: Yeah, man, you suck, Evan. Only by 1%. I'll take second place. I mean, I think we we could all agree there's no defeating the Cara Beast and.
S: Cara had a great year. 77% Wow.
E: That's better.
B: We even tried.
S: A little bit more than three out of four. That's not bad.
E: Yes, that's more like an anomaly. Maybe. I think that's. Your best year? We need to investigate this A. Little.
C: Well, I wonder how many times I went first. I bet you I am. I think one of my skills is riding on you guys as coattails. Yeah, it's it's recognizing which of you are making better arguments.
S: It's tough.
B: I don't know, I don't think you need our help. I. Don't know I. Don't think you need our help too much.
C: I bet you if you look at the number of times that I win when I go first, it's a real low.
S: It's tough because I hear I want to be fair with who I go first, but I don't want everyone riding on your coattails every week either.
C: So, right, that's the thing you have to be smart about and, and a lot of times it's about the topics, right? Like when it's a physics thing, throw me first, it doesn't matter.
S: Totally.
B: Yeah, Yeah. And then Steve, Steve gives me a dream, science or fiction last week and it's like, alright, I'm gonna get this one. And then every everyone got it. Like what? That's not how it's supposed to go.
S: That wasn't my plan, Bob. I was hoping for everyone to get it wrong and then for you to school them at the end. But what? Can you do?
B: They hey, they sussed it out and like, I can't disagree so OK, whatever.
S: Andrea played three. Andrea Jones. Roy played three. Science or fictions. She got a 0%. Don't tell. Me.
C: Well, she's got to play more.
B: Yeah.
S: George George also played three times. He had a 33%, got 11. Correct.
US#06: OK, OK, 3.
C: 183 ain't bad.
S: Justin Dobb and Adam Russell both played one and got them correct, so they had 100. Percent.
C: So they win, win. Or win.
E: Yeah. What do they have? That's the best.
S: Lee played once and got it wrong, so I had 0%. I you didn't play once?
E: I didn't play this year. I did everyone. We need to fix that, yeah. I did everyone. We should fix that.
C: But every time, I've only done it a handful of times, and I get swept every time. I'm not good at writing science or fiction.
S: Yeah, it's tough.
C: It's a skill.
E: Up everyone else's average.
S: OK, it was a Goodyear. Are you ready for the last fiction of 2020? Five.
E: Will this impact Bob standing in my standing?
S: It could. If you win and he doesn't, you may, you may flop. He may get into shit, into second place. Evan, Evan, Ian, what did you? What was your record from last year? You played just once at the end of the year last year.
US#06: I don't remember getting last year right. I think the prior prior I did. And then I don't remember chatter chatters. I say chatters when I was streaming. What am I doing? Listeners? You tell me if I'm wrong.
S: OK, so here are the items for 2025. I usually do variations on some kind of look back of 225 for yes this science or fiction that the specific theme I chose. These are all items that I blogged about. On my neurological blog.
US#06: Interesting reading the. Blog.
S: So this will be easy for anybody who obsessively reads my blog. OK, which of course, why wouldn't you allow?
E: Right, available and. Neurologica.
S: Neurological blog com slash neurological. Item number one, an analysis finds that existing policies on use of plastic bags are mostly ineffective, on average reducing plastic bag waste by less than 10%. Item number 2 an extensive genetic and cellular analysis finds that birds evolved the information caring neurons in their brain mostly independently from mammals. And I #3 researchers presented a new gene editing system that is even better than CRISPR called the Tiger Task System. And as I usually do, we go in reverse order of your score, so.
C: Adam.
S: Yeah.
US#06: But he and Adam.
S: He will have you go last, so we'll start with Evan.
E: Oh, oh, I see.
C: So.
E: The policies on use of plastic bags are mostly ineffective, on average reducing plastic bag waste by less than 10%. OK, why? Why would you have blogged about this? I have a feeling you you actually did blog about. Good angle of. These right? And it's just I did blog about all three of these. I just. Changed. Not like you made one up wholesale. And I'll give you that. Blogged it. OK, yeah, I, I, I have, I have a feeling this one feels like science to me. And because I'm don't know, there, there seems to be the shift almost a little bit back into the acceptance of plastic bags for a long time, right? They were, they were banned. And I don't know, I imagine they're still banned in some States and some and some places, but I've kind of seen them creeping back into my world in a sense. So in that that would say that basically this really wasn't working, it wasn't effective. And therefore we don't, you know, we're giving up the ghost here. So I have a feeling that one's going to be right. The second one about genetic and cellular analysis, about the birds that evolve the information carrying neurons in their brain, mostly independently from mammals, that strikes me as significant, although I couldn't tell you exactly why that would be the case. Steve, you love birds and I don't. So this one, I'm going to just rely more on you than the actual science itself. Would you have the fortitude, let's say, to go ahead and pervert one of your stories about birds and make it into the fiction, right? I don't know. Are you more of a purist? Like it would be like, now I can't do that to birds because I I love birds and everything about them and it's my hobby and everything. So that one leads me to believe it's also science, which leads me to the last one now, the tiger task system. Gosh, did we talk about this on the show as well? We talked about several CRISPR items this year, and this seems familiar, even better than CRISPR. Gosh. So this one is also science. Therefore, all three are science, I will have to say. Therefore, Gee whiz, I have to say something. I have to guess, even better than CRISPR tiger tasks. I mean, a new system, why wouldn't it be better than CRISPR? That's the point. Why would they develop something that wouldn't be better or just does something differently? I will say the one about plastic bags is the fiction.
S: OK, Bob, I.
B: Don't remember too many details about tiger tasks, but I think I'm going to say that one is is science. God I wish I remember the details. It seems like a lot longer ago Steve than 2025. Dude like that? That seems like a 2023 memory to me. But.
E: It would be the.
B: Fiction. Are you sure you talked about it this year or is that or is that the premise that I miss? Am I incorrect about the premise just the?
S: Premise is I blocked some point this year.
B: OK all. Right, So I'll say that one is science, the the bird one, the bag one makes sense kind of make it makes more sense as it's written. And I think you probably or maybe would not really want to write about it if it were the opposite. Maybe it's kind of strikes me that way. And I'm just this, this the neurons in the birds, man, that's just like neurons at that level. Neurons. I think some of the one of the things and that would be conserved to such a degree that I wouldn't imagine they would be that different. So I'm going to say that one's fiction.
S: Interesting. OK, Cara.
C: So it's funny because I think all of them, I think these are really well written because they're all, I don't know, they all stick out in their own way, like the the one that Bob just went with, right? The birds evolving information, carrying neurons in their brain mostly independently for mammals. To me, that's the most holy crap. Like if that's science, that's a big deal, right? And it, it's, it seems the most counterintuitive to me, But that doesn't mean it's not science. And the one about tiger tasks or tiger tasks. I love what Evan said. Well, of course it's better than Chris or it wouldn't be newsworthy if they're like, we came up with this system that's worse than Chris. The fact that I don't remember this at all is really, that's a bummer. And I don't know if that is an indictment of my memory or my attention. I'm not really sure. But this one definitely seems the most, well, not the most plausible, but this one seems plausible. And if this one is science, that's like amazing. So this one's holy crap, that's amazing. The bird one is, Oh my gosh, I can't believe that's true. And then the plastic bag one, it's funny that you put your nickel down on that, Evan, because it sounded like you weren't going to go with this at all.
E: But I was basing it only on my own personal experience, which is useless. Right.
C: That's why my personal experience is that I live in California, right? And so we are in many ways a leader in this type of regulation. And from what I understand, there are, first of all, there are a ton of loopholes and there are a ton of reasons why plastic bag bans do fail because like here, just as an aside, there's this stupid thing and I think there are about to outlawed in LA, but there's this stupid thing where you can sell reusable plastic bags. They're like slightly thicker. Yeah. And so the idea is that people will use them more often, but it's just worse plastic to break down in the Yeah, it's like, it's a bad idea paper, right? Like I only use paper bags or or reusable.
E: For the reusables I use reusables.
C: All the time. Like if you're gonna ban plastic, you have to ban it out, right? But, and we've got to remember that the way you worded this is very careful, Steve. And analysis finds that existing policies, policies on use of plastic bags are mostly ineffective. So that includes all those loopholes. But then it says, on average, reducing plastic bag waste by less than 10%. And I just don't think that's true. I think places where there are policies in place, we we see a bigger reduction. I think we could see an even bigger reduction though if there weren't so many like stupid loopholes. But 10% seems really low to me so I'm I'm going to say that's the fiction.
S: OK. And Ian?
US#06: OK, so I'm going to go backwards a little bit just because when I heard you say CRISPR and Tiger task, I was like, it has to be ending with Tastic, tiger Tastic. I was like, this is clearly a lie. But then when I I you sent it to us, so I saw it written. I was like, OK, maybe it's not. Maybe it is actually scientists, you know, writing a fun little name. At least in my head, that's how it comes out with I could see what it's saying. Even better seems a weird thing as opposed to like maybe it has this different use case that is maybe more tailored to something. So maybe that's where the even better thing is, like that they have slightly different specialties, whatever. So that seems like science to me, even though the even better thing kind of threw me a little bit. The birds, maybe I just don't understand how bird evolution and mammals, you know, evolved. But I don't see why they wouldn't be independently evolving inflammation carrying neurons as opposed to like what what what dependency would they have?
S: Well, the other option is that that all vertebrates sort of have the same neurons, right?
C: We all have a common answer.
S: You have a common. So did neurons develop in the common ancestor?
US#06: Or they or after the fact.
S: Developing birds and mammals.
US#06: I see, I see, I see. Okay, definitely. So yeah, that does interesting adder wrinkle. I'm still going to go with my gut and say that they the the other word that throws me off is the mostly independently. It's like maybe just like completely independently or whatever. I'm going to. I still think that seems reasonable. Whatever convergent evolution. I don't know if that's even like the right terminology to use that it is OK, thank you. I win. And then an analysis finds that existing policies on use of plastic bags are mostly ineffective and developed. OK, I mean, I do hope that regulation does something like, please God, let's that be somewhere. I mean, I, I will agree that like putting a lot of the onus on like the consumer seems to be, you know, maybe that's like the wrong place when so many corporations pollute, blah, blah, blah. We all know that, I think, you know, so, but I would hope I don't see plastic bags unless I go to like Virginia or Pennsylvania. And then it's like they just don't give a damn. But like you Connecticut or LA or like, you know, California, it's like, I don't see them. I don't even see those thicker plastic bags. It's funny that when you get to a certain thickness, they become like a reusual plastic bag that you don't want to throw out. But there's like this middle ground thickness where I'm like, yeah, it's close enough. I do want to throw it out. But anyway, yeah, I it's got to be that, that is that that's the fiction that it's, it is actually effective. Like it is reducing plastic bag waste. Please please.
S: Bob, which one did you pick again?
B: Yeah, the neurons. The neurons.
S: All right, so you all agree on the third one. So we'll start there. Researchers presented a new gene editing system that is even better than CRISPR called the Tiger Task system. You all think this one is science and this one is science. Is this science? Yes. And we we did talk about this on the show.
B: And it's it was better in a couple. It's better.
S: It's got some interesting advantages. So it it works on both strands of the DNA in terms of finding the plate, you know, the match and therefore is more reliable. And it's also not limited in the way that CRISPR is CRISPR, you know, requires a a certain particular sequence on the on the RNA to be able to find it. And those are the so-called Pam sequences, the proto spacer adjacent motifs, right? So CRISPR is Pam dependent, Tiger is Pam independent, which means it's more versatile and it's more accurate. So. So it has potential to be even better than CRISPR.
US#06: So replacement like yeah, I.
B: Was working on it right? I haven't heard much about it lately. Though, well, it just.
C: Came out to.
S: Share You know Christopher.
C: Got to remember we don't hear much, like we just hear the word CRISPR a lot too. And I think that's become a catch hole, a catch all, like like a zero. You don't often hear like CRISPR cast 9 versus CRISPR cast 10. Yeah, you're right. You know, like I think people just say CRISPR.
S: When they when they mean genetic and newer genetic system.
B: That could actually. Happen this CRISPR thing. Technology, yeah.
US#06: So is it like a complete replacement of all things CRISPR or is it just like no, no.
S: No, it wouldn't. You know, it wouldn't completely replace CRISPR because there are things for which CRISPR is fine, OK, But there might be some specific use cases where the advantages of Tiger would make it worth it.
B: Whatever happened, Steve, I remember we talked about a new system that didn't cut anything. It basically just silenced the chest.
S: That's an application of CRISPR. Again, that's the CRISPR what you know, the attachment. Yeah.
B: Yeah. That to me that was.
S: Yeah, basically a toggle. You could turn genes on and off without breaking them, so you could turn them back on again. Just silence is the gene. Yeah, the.
C: Thing is, it's probably being used.
S: Yeah, yeah, it's totally being used.
C: We're just not always like so specific about the exact mechanism at play because it gets really in the weeds.
B: Yeah, I got to look at that specific. I thought it could, it could replace a lot of regular, you know, regular CRISPR Cast 9. I mean, it's because it just seemed like there's no, you're not cutting anything out, so you're just silencing and you could just turn it on and off. If there's a mistake, I turn it on. You don't have to even worry about cutting or reinserting or anything. I don't know, It just seemed like a great advance that I just don't remember coming across on my news item searches. Every week? Well, you need the words there.
US#06: Neurological Blog.
S: Dig deep, dig deep and you'll. See.
C: Yeah, I doubt it's even getting really highlighted. Yeah.
S: All right, let's go back to #2 An extensive genetic and cellular analysis finds that birds evolved the information carrying neurons in their brain mostly independently from mammals. Bob, you think this one is the fiction. Everyone else thinks this one is science. So this is a very interesting news item. The Have you ever heard the term the pallium? Yeah.
E: Nope.
S: Bob, where do you hear it from?
B: Isn't that the name of the the publication for the high school we went to?
S: Canada, What do you? Mean.
E: How can you say that then? Have anyone heard of something? Only Bob. And the newspaper.
S: Means something. It's not a random word they made-up. The pallium is basically the cerebral cortex, right? So they use that as the name for their their whatever their monthly magazine. But so the the question is, and all vertebrates have a pallium, right? But the question is how much of the structure, especially at the cellular and genetic level, how much of that is from a common vertebrate ancestor, and how much of it were were evolved independently in reptiles, birds and mammals?
C: And they are really different like. Organizationally, they're it's. Really different in birds than in yeah.
S: But so, but that was that all organizational is that the networks or is that the actual neurons themselves?
B: Cellular level. Right. Yeah. And and how would?
C: Yeah, I definitely wouldn't know that. I know that like from a mapping perspective. Yeah, Oh yeah, definitely.
S: So they did a thorough analysis and looked at both these cells themselves and the genes. And what they found was, I'll quote one of the one of the researchers. Their neurons are born in different locations and developmental times in each species, indicating that they are not comparable neurons derived from a common ancestor. So this one is science. Sorry, Bob.
C: That's so cool and crazy.
S: But there were a couple of neurons in common. That's why I had to say mostly, but most of the neurons were like different genetics, different developmental biology these evolved into.
B: Yeah, man.
S: Yeah, that's pretty awesome.
B: Wow.
S: Yeah.
US#06: So then what about other like vertebrates though? Because like it's mammals, birds, like what reptiles, amphibians. Do we they have a common neurological ants?
S: Well, yeah, but we all evolve from fish, right? We're basically all fish. Evolutionarily speaking, we are all fish, right? But yeah, that's why they they, they looked at the derived, you know, groups the reptiles, birds and mammals.
C: But are reptiles did there? I guess they don't really have a cortex, but they still have a they. Do they have a pallium? Yeah, yeah, they don't. Have a. They don't have a neocortex. Yeah, yeah. But did there are they got the? Newsletter.
US#06: There you. Go.
C: Is theirs more similar to birds? No no. So all three of us are just different.
S: Yeah, all three are different.
US#06: Yeah. Oh wow.
S: All right, let's go back to #1 and analysis finds that existing policies on use of plastic bags are mostly ineffective, on average reducing plastic bag waste by less than 10%. That is, of course, the fiction, because the truth is they're quite effective. So you guys, your wish list came true. They are. So the, the study that I was writing about compared states with plastic bag policies, just any plastic bag policy to states without any policy. And they found that the plastic bag waste was reduced by 25 to 47%. So at the high end cut in half, which is still not good enough, but that's, that's significant. That's pretty still they work.
C: I can't. Believe there are states with 0 policies and on plastic bags.
US#06: Woke is back look.
S: Some things are woke, Cara. You should know that, yeah.
US#06: Sometimes in. 500,000 people in them.
C: So those 500? 1000 people. It would be so. Easy for them to not use plastic. Bags.
US#06: Yeah. What? Rhode Island? What are they doing with those bags?
S: There's also there's no, there's no federal regulation.
C: No, of course.
S: This is why it was easy to compare states, because it's all statewide.
US#06: That's good. Big plastic bag.
S: Is all you guys heard about the woke fonts, right?
US#06: Yes, OK, Times, New Rome and I think.
S: Calibri Calibri is a.
C: Real thing like I guess that you're being funny, but like big plastic is the reason for. Big plastic.
US#06: Big plastic, Yeah.
B: No, it's cool. I think you guys are missing the important take away. Here.
S: Bob has fallen into third place. Did he?
B: No, no, no. Even more important and tragic as that is, this I just realized, you know, Kerry gets what, 77? I think she has an absolutely unfair advantage being and living in California. And we shouldn't. We should tell her you got to move to Texas to make it to even it out a little bit.
E: There you go. Florida.
C: Hey, but hey. But to be fair, Bob, I'm from Texas and I did live in Florida.
S: That's true.
B: OK, right.
C: I have lived in, I lived in Texas longer than I have lived in California so far and I lived in Florida for one year and New York for one year. So those like they sort of cancel each. Other.
S: All the big electoral states in the country and you.
C: Drive a truck.
E: And you drive it.
C: Right, I'm quad coastal. I drive a hybrid truck.
S: You go hybrid truck, you got to live for a year in Pennsylvania or something.
C: I'm I'm a very confusing person.
S: And this is often why I'm frustrated because of items like this Cara, because I forget these tangential connections you have to the topic that I'm talking about. Like damn, just from California, you forget all the ways in which you're going to find your because you're right. You like you just knew that. Yeah, we have got back. Yeah, way more, not only 10%.
B: Oh, I'll be. Reminding you, Steve.
C: Not only my friend, not only do I live in California, I live in LA and I don't live in West Hollywood, but I spend quite a bit of time in West Hollywood. And West Hollywood, I think compared to the rest of the country, has the most progressive legislation. It's a tiny little city that is mostly LGBTQI. Plus their leadership is as well. And they like, they ban fur. They banned foie gras. They were way early on, the plastic bag and the straw and the Styrofoam bands like yeah, they're, yeah, yeah.
US#06: It's got the Pink Pony Club, that's where all the people are going. No, anyway, the song.
C: Yeah, yeah, I'm gonna keep on dancing.
US#06: There you go.
S: All right, well, that's a wrap for 2025 guys. Oh boy, Evan, you got to take us out with a quote.
E: Hey, yeah, well, we're gonna tip our hat to an old friend with our quote tonight.
S: Yes.
E: Skepticism is an act of doing good in the world. Joe Nickel.
S: Joe Nickel, great. Guy yeah.
E: Joe Nickel. Said that on your Point of Inquiry podcast and it was sweet and short and yeah, we miss you, Joe. We definitely miss you.
S: Well, guys, it's been a blast doing the show with you in 2025.
E: Yeah, that's just been. Arrived. We survived.
S: Let's do one more island of sanity.
C: One more year, Bob, I'm with you. One more year.
E: 1.
B: More year.
S: Bob only ever commits to one year at a time.
C: That's the way to live your life far I gotta.
US#06: Re up man. We have the Internet in one year. Exactly.
S: Ian, thanks for joining us.
US#06: Thanks for. You doing? Thank you so much. Thank you listeners to all you do, especially when you go to patreon.com and get to start.
B: Absolutely.
S: Thanks for anyone who out there who doesn't know Ian is our tech guru. He is an absolute magician. I use that term.
US#06: Metaphor. Sure.
S: But seriously, I mean, he, it's amazing what this guy can do. You know, he he handles all of our live streaming, all of our live events. It's kind of it's kind of like we get in front of the camera, Ian, work your magic, make it happen. Yeah, we're sitting like Ian. Come on, it's taking.
US#06: 2 minutes, all right.
E: You.
US#06: Can just push the button.
E: I know push. The button push. The button don't look down. The curtain, I thought. The thing? 2 seconds ago. Why isn't it happening?
S: And also the extravaganza is like the audience will throw out the weirdest random wacky shit and he'll have an image of it in like 2 minutes.
US#06: Not AI. Thank you. I make it myself. Thank you so much.
S: Does it the old fashioned way with. Photoshop or something?
US#06: Yeah. Oh yeah, you're very old.
S: No, Yeah, really, you have become Ian, indispensable to the SGU we. Really.
US#06: Thank you very much.
B: I appreciate that Integral bro.
US#06: Oh wait, is that a good thing or bad? Oh no.
S: Once you're all the way in, you never get.
US#06: Out you never be.
B: All right, guys, back in.
S: Thank you again.
US#06: Thanks.
S: For thanks. For 2025, thanks for joining me this week.
C: Thanks, Steve.
S: And until next week and next year, this is your Skeptics Guide to the Universe.
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