SGU Episode 1072
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| SGU Episode 1072 |
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| January 24th 2026 |
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"Humanity stands defiant amidst chaos, facing an overwhelming robotic uprising." |
| Skeptical Rogues |
| S: Steven Novella |
B: Bob Novella |
C: Cara Santa Maria |
J: Jay Novella |
E: Evan Bernstein |
| Quote of the Week |
"Success in creating effective AI, could be the biggest event in the history of our civilization. Or the worst. We just don’t know. So, we cannot know if we will be infinitely helped by AI, or ignored by it and side-lined, or conceivably destroyed by it.” |
Stephen Hawking |
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| 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. Today is Thursday, January 22nd, 2026, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella.
E: Everybody.
S: Cara, Santa Maria.
Voice-over: Howdy, Jay.
S: Novella. Hey, guys. And Evan Bernstein.
E: Good afternoon, everyone.
S: So Jay, any update on the moon landing hoax conspiracy? Connecticut middle school teacher.
J: Well, I did have a, you know, like a 45 minute discussion with the principal and my wife. This was like a big, I don't know. I was like big indicator. I, that's the way I was looking at it, like what was the attitude going to be? What was the, you know, what was being communicated? I'd say in general it went, it went very well. You have to understand there's a lot of HR type of communicating involved in, in meetings like this because of course, the principal is a very high level employee that works for the town. So I didn't expect her to be off the cuff and be like, you know, having big reactions to things and all that. But it was very, very plainly stated that they're taking it very seriously, like they're, they are aware of the weight and gravity of the situation. You know, I made, made sure that we discussed the idea of the misinformation being corrected. And then I offered, you know, my, my services and I included mentioning Steven on that. Like, you know, I have resources that can come in, You know, we were very well acquainted talking to children and that we could give, we could, you know, we could make a correction for the entire class all at once if you want, you know, be very, very easy thing to do and it'd be very entertaining for the kids, blah, blah, blah. Didn't dismiss it, you know, but who knows? What if they actually took that seriously. And, you know, I think overall, you know, they, they, it was communicated that she really couldn't talk about the, the individual and like what their specific outcome might be, you know, like, what would the town actually do? They didn't want to get into that because I guess there's privacy things and all that night, you know, and I just said that we'll look in general, you know, we just want to know, we want to know what the ultimate outcome is. We don't need details. Like, for example, if there was going to be any changes to who, of course, who my daughter's teacher is or if she's not going to be in that class anymore or ultimately if the person loses their job, of course want to know about that. I'm not looking at it as just as class, right? It's about what happened last week, what happened two months ago, what happened last year, Like where, how deep does this go? And that was another point that we had brought up was, you know, this is literally, you know, just a sign of, of what the potential reality could be here, which could be that this is a thing that's been going on for years. Like how, you know, and how do we even research that and try to find out? So I think the next step is going to be like what we'll probably hear back in a week or so, you know, hopefully by next time we record, but if not, probably the time after that. You know, I fully intend on, on having follow up meetings and asking questions like, OK, you know, my, my daughter has told me that no correction has been made to this information and, and it's been 3 weeks now. I really think that something needs to happen now. You know, like, why wait? Because the longer that goes on, you know, the more damage that, you know, this type of stuff could do to the kids without them even knowing it. It could skew, you know, their perception on things. And you know, I've talked to my daughter when she gets home, you know, I'm like, how'd it go in school today, blah, blah, blah. You know, one thing happened like the the day after this whole thing went down and the, the teacher involved was actually talked to by the principal, This teacher sent us an e-mail saying that Olivia had a behavior problem in class. And my wife and I were like, really? Like, this is what you're doing. I know that, you know, and you know that I know that this thing happened, right? You know, the person knows that we pushed back, knows how we pushed back. And and they think that they're gonna send us an e-mail like dinging my 10 year old for a behavior problem in a class. Like she's doesn't have behavior problems in class.
S: It was for for what in my opinion was completely normal 5th grade behavior. Like he's just singling her out now to try to trump up some kind of case against her, which is so irresponsible for a teacher to do to take it out on a student. Take out his problem basically.
E: Totally wrong.
S: The vast majority of our listeners, I think, totally get how serious this is and are, you know, very interested in how this plays out. You always get some outlier emails. One guy thought that we were bullying this teacher, which I think is absurd. First of all, we've done nothing, but first we went to him directly. I'm saying again, I'm saying the the royal, we here that we went to him directly to give him the first opportunity to clarify his position and what happened. And we're going based off of what he exactly wrote in his e-mail. Then he said the moon landing is provably false. It's a scientific fact that it's impossible.
J: It's been improving, it's been proven, it's.
S: Been proven and that he discussed it in class. So he confirmed sort of the two main elements, what he believes. And then he taught that to his students in class. And you know, again, what we're looking for is just three things. Like 1 is we need to correct this misinformation to whichever student was exposed to it. That's a no brainer. Yeah, we need to make sure this doesn't happen again.
J: And we want $1 million one $1,000,000 and.
S: We need to evaluate this is, I think a legitimate reason to evaluate this teachers competence as a science teacher. Now that doesn't necessarily mean again, I'm not thinking oh, he should be immediately fired or whatever blah blah blah. It's more like, sure, if he, you know, and again, it's always a good idea to give people an opportunity to correct whatever the error is fine. If, if he will readdress this issue and, and talk with people or whatever, be educated, be re educated to, to, to understand why this conspiracy is pseudo scientific. While conspiracy theory theories in general are problematic to improve his understanding and it's genuine and he achieves that. I mean, OK, I would, you know, and then be monitored to make sure that that lesson's stuck. That's fine. But if he's going to dig in his heels on this, I think that's pretty incompatible with being a science teacher.
J: I feel so obligated to do something because it, you know, to me, it's the my audience. Actually, when I say my audience, like the people that I hope to help it, it's, it's not winning against this teacher. It's helping those kids get get corrected and making sure that it doesn't hurt further kids. That's the real thing that needs to happen here. My daughter's all set. Luckily, she's got me and my wife as parents. And we know, you know, we've already handled the situation. And if anything, it was a massive and very useful lesson for her. But you know, what about all the other kids and the other kids that are going to come next year and the year after that? Like I want to fix that problem.
S: And just teachers in general need to know they can't shoot from the hip with this kind of stuff. They can't just start riffing about these fringe beliefs that they have authority standing up as a teacher, especially in front of elementary school students. You know, they so they have to to really take responsibility for what they're saying. And parents are the last line of defense against this shit, right? You have to stand up when this kind of thing happens. If we don't express outrage when something outrageous happens, then we shouldn't expect anything to improve or get fixed, right?
E: Yeah.
S: All right. We'll of course keep everyone updated if this if there's any significant developments. Cara, What's the word?
C: So it's been a bit. I found a word recommendation from listener Alex Berg in an e-mail from late last year. They said I've been listening, so I've been reading a book that uses the word cultivator to mean someone who cultivates themselves through meditation.
What's the Word? (08:06)
- Culture
C: Later I heard the word cult in the book and I wondered how they were related and a more common word, of course, culture. So I wonder how they're all connected. So I decided to do a deep dive into the word culture, mostly because one of the reasons that I find what's the word so interesting and, and Steve, you and I have talked about this is when words have different meanings in different scientific contexts. And also when there's sort of a difference between the lay or, you know, the popular cultural definition and the scientific definition. So I thought culture was a great one. So I'll start with just some different definitions before we get into the etymology and different outlets identify the main or the first definition differently. But Merrim Webster says that culture is the beliefs, customs, art, etcetera of a particular social group, place, or time. I myself am a psychologist, so when I looked at the American Psychological Association dictionary, they have a more intense definition of that same take on culture. The values, beliefs, language, rituals, traditions and other behaviors that are passed from one generation to another with any social group. And they get a little bit deeper and they have a second definition, still a noun. The characteristic attitudes and behaviors of a particular group within society, such as a profession, social class or age group. So that is also their culture is their attitude. But there are other definitions. So we've got these sub definitions of that main one like the culture could be the society itself, it could be the beliefs or attitudes of that society, it could be the values of that society. In anthropology they may be more specific. Merriam Webster says that the anthropological definition is the combined pattern of human knowledge, belief, and behavior that depends on the transmission of knowledge to succeeding generations. But then definition 2 is an appreciation for and knowledge of the Fine Arts, humanities, and broad aspects of science as distinguished from vocational and technical skills. Right. Like a person of culture or a very cultured person, you know, refined taste or, you know, interest in artistic activities like theater and visual arts. There's also a definition, the act of developing one's intellect and morals, especially by education. I am becoming cultured or a professional or expert care like a beauty culture or a culture of an office from the actor process of cultivating living material. So now we're getting into some scientific definitions, a throat culture or medical definitions, and then cultivation like of plant matter. Now that's all nouns. We can also talk about culture as verbs, like we can culture microorganisms on a plate right in a Petri dish, and we can also start a culture from seed, for example. So these were the ones that when I see the word culture, it's interesting as a psychologist who also worked as a lab scientist in a neural lab for a long time, is I definitely use context clues because often when I hear the word culture, the first thing I think of is a cell culture. Is that Does that happen to you, Steve?
S: It depends on context, yeah. In a scientific context, yes, Like that's the thing I go to. But otherwise, there's like the the culture, society's culture, yeah.
C: So when we look at the roots of culture, it gets really complicated. So we first started to see this word used in the 15th century where we were talking about the tilling of land. And so this came from the Latin, which sounds very simple, similar cultura, which was cultivating, doing agriculture, you know, care, culturing, honoring. But of course that that requires that we already have that sort of culturing route built in that seems to go all the way back to the roots of the word colony. O colony, late late 14th century, an ancient Roman settlement outside of Italy from the Latin colonia which is settled land or a landed estate which comes from the colonists, tenant farmer, settler in a new land which comes from Colaire. Colaire is the earliest sort of Latin which is to till, to inhabit or to frequent or to practice. Now if we were to dig even deeper, we would get to the PIE. You've heard me talk about the Proto Indo European route. So that one is quell spelled off in kwel, which is to revolve, to move around, to sojourn or to dwell and quilt. Yeah, here quilt. Yep, here we start to see that it is the root of a ton of different related words. So can you guys think of some other than cultural that would have these the quail root or the colore or coler root Culture obviously, but as our listener wrote in cult colonize colonial.
S: How about your the colon of your intestine?
C: I should check and see if that is a different route because I didn't do a deep dive on that.
E: You didn't do a deep dive into the colon.
C: Large intestine from Latin colon. Colon with a short no that comes from a different Greek root with which actually means large intestine, which has an unknown origin.
E: Nor an origin no one's willing to admit.
C: Yeah, exactly. But it is interesting. So we can we can kind of trace it back culture to Middle French, down to Latin, down to Proto Indo European. And there is some question as to whether there is a almost like a convergent evolution of the word. I'm sure there's an actual linguistic term for that because the Greek root of Cologne a part of verse literally lem or member or figuratively clause of a sentence. Oh, and that may be the the root there Steve of the large intestine or the colon could have actually LED led to it. But it does seem to be the case that colony has this separate, separate route. So yeah, it's it's an interesting term. I often think about it in, you know, cell culture, tissue culture, micro biological culture terms, even animal culture. But as a psychologist, obviously I also think about the larger human culture and animals who have culture like orcas, dolphins, things of that nature. But they do come from the same root for sure.
S: Cool.
C: Yeah.
S: All right. Thanks Cara.
News Items
Increasing Lifespan (14:55)
S: Jay, tell me how to live longer all.
J: Right. First, I want to ask you guys a very serious question.
E: All righty.
J: Do you think that you're sleeping, eating and exercising enough?
S: No.
B: Eating. Yes. Are you eating well? Yes. High quality. Is this oh, eating Well? Damn. Close. I eat well.
C: I think I'm sleeping and exercising enough but not eating enough healthy foods.
B: Interesting. I'm doing pretty good on all the three.
J: Well, I think you guys are really going to really like this study that I, I came across. It's really cool. I'm really happy that they did it. The study was published in East Clinical Medicine, which Steve, you probably know this, it's part of The Lancet group and they take a careful look at how much difference do you know, do small lifestyle changes actually make an overall health and longevity, right. We've talked about this on the show before, you know, how much does it take? You know, how, how much should you be exercising? And, and you know, details around that. It's, it's a common question that people have and they've, you know, brought some clarity to this. And actually, there's a twist to this study that I think is really smart. So what they did was they didn't want to choose to focus on, you know, what the ideal behaviors are, right? The ideal behaviors would be, you know, you're, you're exercising, you know, two hours a day or whatever, right? You know, there's, there's, there's ways to measure like, OK, if you're getting this much exercise and you're taking extraordinary care of yourself by, by all these different measures, it's not about that. It's about what could, what could people do to make tiny changes or modest changes that would have realistic improvements in sleep, physical activity and diet all at the same time. And that's the key thing here is doing those three things all at the same time. These results will shock you. This is the study that they didn't want you to hear about. And Big Farmer specifically covered up this information, Steve. Well, I'm sorry I slipped into my bullshit podcast personality. That's not that's not the way we talk on this show. So the actual results do show a promising and an encouraging outcome. The study analyzed data from approximately 60,000 adults. These adults were enrolled in the UK Biobank and the study followed the participants for, you know, over 8 years. And unlike previous studies, you know, they, they were not relying totally on self reporting, right? Self reporting can always be skewed. And how much do you actually trust it? In order to get this information, they used wrist worn accelerometers, which could, you know, give them objective measurements on the subjects sleep duration, you know, their physical activity and what, you know what, what were they doing over a repeat of a seven day period, right. So they get, they're gathering all this data passively instead of having to have the person go in and kind of remember it very, you know, very efficient. The diet quality of the test subjects was determined by using a questionnaire, which is really the only way that they can do it. And they were. This questionnaire would generate A composite diet score. The scores were based on, you know, how much fruits do they eat, vegetables, whole grains, fish, meat, dairy, fats, you know, were they drinking sugar sweetened beverages? Lots of questions along those. And I guess they had to give details about every day. The researchers were interested in two related outcomes. I was thinking, Bob, do you know what they are or can you guess what they are?
B: Length of life and quality of life.
J: You got it. Lifespan and health span Good job Bob. Lifespan refers to the total number of years that the person lived, and health span refers to years lived without major chronic diseases, right Cardiovascular disease, diabetes, cancer, anything neurological. Then they use statistical models to determine how changes in sleep, activity and diet were also connected with differences in both outcomes.
B: From my reading, my prediction would be that length of life would not be affected much at all unless it was a dramatic thing like preventing heart attack at 65 type of thing. So length of life wouldn't be impacted that much, but it could be a couple of years, but the quality of life, health span could be greatly impacted. All right. Well, we'll have you have to wait and see, Bob.
S: Well, Jay, one other technical pedantic point as well. They're really measuring life expectancy, not lifespan, Life and other reporting. The the mainstream media reporting on it use the word lifespan. Lifespan is simply the maximum age that you live to. The life expectancy is how long on average you're going to live. You can't really in eight years, you can't measure lifespan, right? Yeah, they're just, they're just measuring life expectancy just. But it's good to know that difference.
B: Yeah, right. It is pedantic, but you're right, it is good to know.
S: Yeah.
J: Well, I went directly to the study as well. So that was my use of the word, I guess. Like that's what, you know, that's what people do because lifespan seemed like an easy way to say it. But I see the difference here, Steve. One of the clearest results was that tiny improvements can add up when they happen together. And this is the secret sauce here, that these three elements added together. More exercise, better diet. And more sleep. Or, you know, higher quality sleep for people starting with poor habits, about 5 and 5 1/2 hours of sleep per night, say, and only 7 minutes a day of moderate to vigorous exercise. And people with low quality diets, adding just a few minutes of sleep, a couple more minutes of physical activity, and a small improvement in what they were eating was shown to be linked roughly to one additional year of life. Which I find really amazing, like when you hear about that, because they're, they're not talking about major swings in any of these things, just making minor improvements. So it's, and it's a, it's a, you know, infinite Shades of Grey here, right? So if you did a little bit, you know, you can gain the benefit of maybe living an extra year, but there is a, there's a better outcome depending on how far you go with it. So the small lifestyle improvements were definitively linked not only to living longer overall, but also to spending more of those years that, you know, the new additional years without major chronic disease. And that's, you know, that's what we're talking about with health span here, right? You could live a very long time, but if you're the last 10 years of your life, you were infirmed, you know, that's not optimal and it's not what it's not what we're all looking for. So that's. What, Jake?
S: As an aside, yeah. So I'm reading the study and it is so silly. So first of all, they're being cutesy with the terminology, right? So span is sleep, physical activity and nutrition SPAN and they have life in small letters and then span and capital letters, life span, right?
C: That's danger.
S: But then in the in the abstract, they say, you know, the sleep, physical activity, nutrition span, capital SPAN are key determinants of both life expectancy that they have in parentheses, lifespan and disease free life expectancy and then in parentheses health span. So they're just, what do they do? I don't know they're they're so they know that it's life expectancy, right? They use the correct technical term, but then they throw in parenthetically lifespan I. I don't know that they're playing off the SPAN acronym that they're coming up with I.
B: Don't know, it's weird they're trying to be. Yeah, you're right. It's. Cutes. It's kids. Some acronyms don't help. Yeah.
S: But they try to.
B: They're trying to be clever and it actually is.
J: It's backfiring a little bit.
S: Yeah, that's confusing. But they did have to use the term life expectancy, you know, to be technically accurate. Yeah.
J: Anyway, so, you know, it's important to point out that individually the changes are minor. If you only increased your amount of sleep, We're not, we're not seeing in the study, we're not seeing like huge benefits, you know, five extra minutes of sleep per night and a couple of extra minutes of brisk walking. Typically these would be dismissed as trivial. But the key point here, like I said, is that these benefits appeared when the changes, the three changes occurred together. So the combined effect was much larger than the sum of the individual effects. And the study's results show that sleep, physical activity and diet interact in, in significant ways. And I'm sure that they, I didn't hear anything or read anything in the study about them, you know, being able to fully quantify that or even what's going on physiologically. They were just showing, you know, they were just measuring the results. Because I would love to hear more about like, well, why, why is combining them more effective than individual? You know, there could be some interesting points to be made. The participants that slept 7 to 8 hours of sleep per night and those who had higher levels of daily moderate to vigorous physical activity and the people who had better diet quality were estimated to gain more than nine additional years of life and disease free life compared to those who were in a lower behavior category. That's a big number. I've never heard that number before. I've never heard adding nine years of life span or like, you know. Expectancy. Expectancy. Thank you. I've never, I've never read that before. I don't know Bob or anybody else. If you've ever read that number, that's a big number.
B: Yeah. I mean, I'm, I mean based on all the readings I've done a lot of readings that seems too much. I mean, the most I've heard is like, even with dramatic improvements in quality, you know, in terms of diet and exercise, a few years or so would be something you would expect. But like I said, also with a, with an increase in a dramatic increase in health span, but nine years increase in life expectancy, I think it would be a dramatic, dramatic change in your your habits.
S: So to to be clear, this is when they compared the best terchile to the least favorable terchile. So this is the people who did the best compared to the people who did the worst. You have the 9.35. Additional, yeah, that makes.
J: Sense.
S: That makes more sense and.
J: You know, the people that did the worst, we don't know really what condition they were in and. You know these, you know they. Could have been very, very, very low quality taking care of themselves and everything. I, I, I also want to make sure to to say this there there's you guys need to understand the limits of what this study shows right? The the results come from statistical models that's based on observational data, not from a randomized experiment where, for example, where behaviors were deliberately changed. The estimates assume that people's habits stay fairly consistent over time, you know, along with other influences like income, education, access to medical care, which is a big problem. So they're not like fully accounting for all the results like they are. They are looking at this information and then they're expanding on it, right? It's not because they only did follow them for for just over 8 years like Steve said. So it is important to note that the authors are clear that the findings should not be read as exact instructions. Like they they give an example the idea that adding 5 minutes of sleep will automatically add a year to someone's life. You know, these are all averages and things like that. But even with the limits, which is good, I mean I like the fact that they mentioned their own limits. Exactly what I'd expect in a in a well done study. You know, this study adds something useful to this conversation about lifestyle change. And the important take away for me is, you know, the it's the end of the year and people are like, I got to go to the gym again and I'm going to go everyday and I'm going to do this and that. And it's like those big lifestyle change swings often don't even manifest completely. You might do them for a short amount of time, but all of us have the room and the space. And that you could improve, make minor improvements to your sleep, you know, sleep hygiene, the amount of sleep you're allowing yourself to get or, or, you know, you might have sleep problems like I do. And you don't have total control over, but you have some control over that and eating higher quality foods. Like just making a decision. Hey, I'm only going to let myself eat something like a hamburger once a week. And that's going to be like on the weekend with friends and stuff. Like during the week, I'm going to eat well, right. And then getting the exercise, like you don't have to go out and do a 5K. You know, you could, you could walk your dog for 10 minutes and just bring that into your life and make it, you know, don't, don't cut off more than you can, you can deal with. I think it, that's a really good way to look at this. It's like minor changes could have a nice impact on you.
S: Yes, I have a couple of thoughts overall about the studies. First of all, these findings are in line with my understanding of all the previous research, right? Yes, we know that good sleep, physical activity and good nutrition are important for overall health and longevity. Absolutely. These are modifiable lifestyle factors. We all there's also been previous research showing that they don't have to be huge differences. Even small incremental improvements have measurable beneficial outcome and at any age. So that's all good. And I agree the the procrastinator's dilemma is like you have these huge plans and you end up doing nothing. You're far better off doing something modest that you will do right then trying to do something big that you're not going to do, and then you can incrementally go from there. So it takes, yeah, take small steps in the right direction. It will immediately have some benefits. The I think the thing they're trying to do with this study is to show that if you look at those three things together, they seem to have synergistic effects. Now, this is a dilemma that all researchers have when you're, you know, where you're looking at modifiable factors. Do we look at one thing at a time to show that that one element clearly has benefits or do we look at multiple things together to capture the cumulative benefit any and synergistic effects? But then we don't necessarily know the individual contribution of each component. It's a trade off. There's no right or wrong way to do it. I think this is sort of complementing older research that that did focus more on individual factors rather than looking at the cumulative effect of several factors. So, you know, it doesn't really change my thinking about all of this. It's kind of in line what they already knew they left out to the other two big factors to to longevity and health span, which is don't smoke and don't drink to excess. Oh yeah, man, those are the five right. Don't smoke, don't drink to excess, get good sleep, you have a good diet, exercise regularly. Everything else is bullshit. Basically that's that's the 99 percenter, right, Exactly. And this is very this is for a again, I always have to caveat, this is for a typical person, you may have individual health, you know, conditions or needs or whatever that you course that that go beyond on that. So you have to talk to your doctor, etcetera. But for most people, just focus on those five things. Don't get diverted about these like to avoid this one food or eat this one superfood or it's all nonsense.
C: But I do, I do like the point that you're making about all of the research that looks into like moderating and mediating effects and, and kind of this idea of is there a gestalt here? Is the sum is the whole greater than the sum of its parts. And you can think about it this way, somebody who exercises regularly, who eats pretty well and who gets enough sleep but then smokes. It's not that they're undoing the good that those other things are giving them. Those other things are helping them to be healthy. But smoking is so incredibly unhealthy that it has its own negative impacts on mortality. And so if you think about, it's like thinking about it in two ways. Small incremental changes are good even if you're not doing great in one area. Like for me, I'm not doing great with my vegetable intake, but that doesn't make me give up on my gymnastics. It doesn't make me give up on my sleep hygiene. That said, I know that my sleep and my exercise is not probably as effective as it would be if my nutrition was was better.
S: And interestingly, the IT has been studied, the synergistic effects have been studied in the negative, right? So you've seen plenty of studies where like if you smoke and you're overweight and you have and you like they have a, there's a cumulative negative effect. So of course there's going to be cumulative benefits the other way. It just makes sense.
C: Yeah.
S: Yeah. All right, let's move on. Guys.
AI 2027 (31:14)
S: Have any of you heard about AI 2027?
E: No. Is that a movie?
S: No.
E: What is it?
S: It's a there's a paper published by some AI experts and it's getting a lot of buzz in the AI community because basically they predict that AI is going to exterminate your humanity by the mid twenty 30s.
B: I knew it.
E: So I should spend my retirement money now? Right.
S: They're saying take those Social Security benefits now.
B: Terminate.
J: Wait, wait, wait, Steve.
S: Yeah.
J: So on 1st blush, so AI experts right? So this is an unknown group of people.
S: No, no, they, they, they signed a paper, you know.
J: Not anonymous I.
S: Mean they legit Daniel Coco, Toglo, Scott Alexander, Thomas Larson, Eli Liftland and Romeo Dean, right? Those manage mean anything to you.
J: I noticed that the the important names are not on the list, which is the people that are in control of the the AIS that are out there right?
S: Yes, these are like the technical experts, not necessarily the CEO's of the companies making the money off of them. OK, So to to be clear, they're not saying like this is a likely scenario that's going to happen. What they're really saying, they however, they do say that this is a quote UN quote prediction, but they, they're, they're outlying A plausible possible pathway. And what they're saying is and they, they really, this isn't intended to spark conversation, which it's doing. And they're saying is we should probably do things to make this scenario less likely, right? Which which makes sense. So this is the scenario that they envision and they use a, a made-up company so that they're not singling out like one open AI or whatever. So they they they talk about the fictional company Open Brain.
E: Which is brain? It fell out.
S: Which is specifically using AI to get better to use it to develop AI coding, right. So they want to make AI that is good at coding other AI and they develop what they call Agent 0. Again, this is all the.
E: Great, like patient.
S: Zero Agent 0, which is just an AI coder, and that helps the company get 6 months ahead of their AI competitors, right? Because now they're coding faster and they use that to develop Agent One, which is more of an autonomous coder. And then in this scenario, China steals some of the core IP to make their own version of Agent 1. And this sets off an AI competition, you know, between the US and China, in addition to the AI companies against other AI companies. So then things get out of hand, right? So now the US is worried that China's going to use their AI coder to make super weapons because this AI agent now is really powerful and it's accelerating research and is already starting to see real world benefits. And then they, and you know, the US like, well, what if, what if China uses this to get a military advantage over us, so we better do that too. So they start developing AI designed military weapons. Meanwhile, the company uses Agent 2 to create Agent 3. And Agent 3 is based upon its own computer language that nobody understands but the AI. It's a super efficient computer language, just like when we talked about AI developed their own language to communicate with each other that we can't understand. Well, this is the same thing but encoding. And then it uses that language to develop Agent 4, which is a sentient general AI. Basically they're describing the singularity at this point, right, right. Where AI is designed other AI. So then you get to intelligence and then you get to super intelligence with Agent 4. So like agent three, I guess was the first like a human level intelligence AI. Then Agent 4 is a super intelligence, but it also gets out of control, meaning they have no way of knowing whether its goals are aligned with the company's goals. So they designed they use Agent 4 to design Agent 5, which is supposed to be in line with its goals, aligning with the company's goals. But they don't really.
B: Assure it well.
S: Meanwhile, the brinksmanship between the US and China is getting so out of control with their AI developed super weapons that they decide to have a treaty and they'll combine their AI's into one and stop the arms race, the AI driven arms race. And you sort of get a everything's great for a while, just like in the Matrix, right Bob? And for a while things were good where it was so good. The where the AIS are running world governments, basically, they're doing a great job. They're everyone's more prosperous. They're having medical breakthroughs.
B: Do they have any designs on Greenland?
S: So and there's World Peace, everything's good. But the AIS, basically the purpose of the AI, like what's driving them is to become better, to learn more, get more data, more information. And at some point the AI decides that these pesky biological life forms are getting in their way and holding the carbon infestation. So they decide to create a super virus to wipe out humanity. Great. They don't have to waste any resources keeping us alive. And they could just now explore the universe and expand their knowledge, you know, exponentially. OK, so that's the scenario they lay out. And then that, that all plays out basically between now and the mid twenty 30s.
US#06: Wonder if they'll mulch us or use our oils I. Don't know our. Oils. We have essential. Oils use our precious bodily fluids. Yeah.
B: That's right. I'll volunteer as a pet for an AI. I'll be a lot of fun to play with.
S: Yeah, so that's, this is what they're laying out. So I think interestingly, I think every element of this man of this story is pretty plausible. Like I can't point to one thing and say that would never happen. You know, each element is reasonably plausible. I think I've read a lot of criticism of it and it mostly surrounds the timeline, which is like, OK, so it's.
B: Totally up for grab.
S: Add 20 years to it. So what you know well.
B: The good, the good part of that, Steve, is we'll be dead.
S: Well, that aside, speak for yourself. I'm hoping I'll be, but that I'm.
E: Planning for 100.
S: Yeah, so that that is a really helpful for people who are already at the end of their life lifespan. But for for most of for most people, you know, add 10/15/20 years, everyone's like, yeah, it'll happen at if it's not in 10 years, it'll happen in 20 years or in 30 years or whatever. We do tend to overestimate short term progress, underestimate long term progress. So thinking this is all going to happen by the 20 thirties does seem like the optimistic end of the spectrum in terms of how quickly this is all going to happen. But I don't think that really changes the point. If you say, OK, it's going to not going to happen till the twenty 40s or the 20 fifties, it's still medium term a possibility. The authors acknowledge that, you know, we can't actually predict what AI is going to do. It's not that their definition, it's not that they're going to do this, It's that we don't know that they're not going to do this and that it's possible that they could do this. If we give them enough power and we make them super intelligent, we basically lose the ability to predict what they're going to do, to understand what they're doing, and they gain the ability to manipulate us any way they want, right? I mean, like Colossus. Remember the movie Colossus?
B: Oh yeah, forbin project.
S: So they basically would let that genie out of the bottle. We lose total control over a super intelligent AI. We can't really guarantee what they're going to do and scenarios like this become possible. And we've talked about this basic idea on the show before. What do we do about it, right? Do we not develop AI? Do we?
B: Just enjoy the ride.
S: Yeah, do we just roll the dice and see what happens? Hope we get the best case scenario, not the worst case scenario.
J: I don't think it's an inevitability that this is going to happen, right? You know, because it is like a the, the apocalyptic view, but the the. But there is nothing that any of us could do that would affect the development of AI.
S: Well, I, I, I don't agree with that. So the, the, the middle Rd. is we push for regulation and we push for international rules because it has to be international or, you know, or multinational. Otherwise, it's pointless to say, you know, we're going to be evaluating the development of AI, especially anything that's designed to be a general AI or a super intelligence. So that there are guardrails in place before it gets unleashed on the world, released or put in charge of our infrastructure or whatever.
B: But is that naive to think that these guardrails would be universe?
S: Maybe.
B: I think it absolutely.
J: It's crazy to think.
B: Benefits are too are too good for not to have some country do like a skunk works like hidden research and try to and try to make this happen.
J: I I can't I could list countries that I am confident would not follow anything like.
B: That right, China is going to listen to any rules when he could get a leg up on research decades, but.
C: What makes us think we will?
S: Yeah, right. I'm not.
C: At this point, we are a prime example of a country that wouldn't.
B: That's not my. List.
C: Yeah, we love to say we're not involved in that treaty.
B: I think it's, it's not unreasonable to think we would follow that treaty, you know, if we had a sane administration is what I'm.
S: Yeah, but it's at this point it's equally likely that we would not have a sane. Administration. Man, we have an administration right now. It's like no AI regulations. The states can't even regulate AI, right. And if that we, if we're in that kind of political culture at the at critical moment culture, yeah, it's yeah, then yeah, I think there's it's very probably right now it's very probable the US would not ratify such a treaty or participate in there or anything but.
E: It'd be my bet.
S: This is of course the nightmare sci-fi scenario, it's just I'm trying to see what's implausible about it.
E: Well, yeah, I mean, it's sensible to gain these things ahead of time. Why wouldn't we?
S: Because we're lazy and stupid and.
E: Greedy, and I know that some people are actually bringing this to to discussion. Is is a good thing?
J: But, you know, it's very similar to global warming. You know, there people are just going to deny it. You know, like the fact that the world is not bending over backwards and doing everything possible to limit global warming is everything that you need to know about what we're going to do with AI. Mm Hmm.
B: Yeah.
J: That's why I'm like, Steve, I don't want to be negative to a fault here, but I I just look at this like humanity is not built to make good decisions like this.
S: Because we need to do is put.
E: AI to help us exactly let them call the shots I.
J: Hate that that is basically the only solution.
E: I mean, really. It's. It's kind of like circular reasoning, but.
S: I I just refuse to be nihilistic because that becomes a self fulfilling prophecy right? If we said nothing, we could do. So let's not try to do anything. We have done things before. We have international treaties on human cloning and things like that. We.
E: Nuclear. Army.
S: Nuclear army. Exactly. If we look at AI, like runaway AI, like what they're describing as dangerous as nuclear weapons, there is precedent for international treaties that people actually do adhere to, to, you know, to at least to slow the proliferation, to slow the role, to give us a chance to adapt, to build infrastructures and guard.
B: Sure it is possible. I mean, and if any country, you know, there's a hint of kind of secret research being done in that direction, you know, if they have to pay for that. Yeah, sanctions. Government, economic sanctions and all that. It could, I think it could, could delay it by many, by, you know, many, many decades. It is possible. We got it. We got to try for that, right, Steve's? Right.
S: But we do, and, and they've got to try. The first thing we have to do is get our political shit together because this, the most dangerous thing in my opinion, is that this is happening. This disruptive, potentially dangerous technology is happening during a period of political disruption and, you know, worldwide. And so we might be happening at the exact worst moment, which is always the problem, right? Like most systems are resilient to one test, like to 1 stressor 2, it's hard, but possible 3 and you're dead, right? That's like always the case. If three things happen, bad things happen at once, it's no system is resilient enough to to to survive that. And for us, if we get the one, even the 1-2 punch of tech companies in this arms race of AI, they with the move fast and break things culture at the same time that we're experiencing worldwide political disruption. That may be enough, you know, to really 'cause havoc. But the one thing that we, we have control over both of these things, you know what I mean? Like we can get up, get off your ass and vote, you know, get more politically engaged. Let's try to right this ship to some extent. And let's start paying attention to how AI is being developed because the worst case scenario is pretty bleak. Oh yeah, And this guy, I think there's a thousand scenarios where the world ends up shitty, right? With a, with AI, it may not be this. Again, this is not like they're saying this is the exact scenario that's going to play out. They're just saying.
B: Or is it 11,000,000 .2? Scenario.
S: Yeah, yeah, there's, there's just there's a lots of bad scenarios that can play out if we are doing nothing to prevent them from happening.
Deep Reading (45:24)
- Deep reading can boost your critical thinking and help you resist misinformation – here’s how to build the skill [3]
S: Well, everyone, we're going to take a quick break from our show to talk about our sponsor this week, Quints.
J: Guys, I've been shopping quints for years. Me and my wife both both love this brand and all the stuff that we've ordered from them has been excellent. I've talked about how you know their customer service is fantastic. The quality of their their clothes is excellent. This stuff lasts a very, very long time. I'm I'm always impressed when I get something new that I haven't ordered before. It's consistently very good.
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S: All right, guys, let's get back to the show.
Spray On Wound Treatment (46:50)
S: Bob, tell us about spray on wound. Treatment.
B: Yeah, This one is definitely atypical for me, right? But it sounded so fascinating. It's so much potential. Let's see if you guys agree. So. All right, So we've got Korean. Yeah. Oh, nice. Korean researchers working with the army have created a spray on powder to stop severe bleeding almost unbelievably fast, like one second after it, after it hits the blood. So this is from researchers and scientists of KAIST. KAIST stands for Korean Advanced Institute of Science and Technology. So the goal of this product is to provide a better solution to a simple and really underappreciated killer in combat and in emergency situations, uncontrolled bleeding. So even if you had Star Trek level medical technology, that could be utterly useless in in a lot of situations. If you're a red shirt, right, you're bleeding out and it takes many minutes, you know, even a few minutes for you to be noticed and then beamed to sickbay. You could be dead before you dematerialize because the technology you had didn't get to you in time. Time is of the essence in these scenarios, obviously so. But even if the bleeding isn't immediately life threatening, it's often so extra hard to deal with wounds that are, say, deep and irregular, right? And especially in the real world scenarios like combat where it's wet or dirty, battlefields, disasters, disaster zones, or even just bad power tool accidents in your garage when you're building an animated zombie, even that could things could happen so fast and be so deadly. Even, you know, conventional flat bandages are not great for these deep irregular wounds, right? Because they're not. They're not really the wound properly and especially, you know, in 3 dimensional way. And even they've emergency materials that, you know, they've got other powders that are designed to, you know, coagulate whatever and soak up the blood and they can form a decent barrier, like I said, by soaking up the blood. But they're not good at heavy or high pressure bleeding. And also a lot of these are sensitive to heat and moisture and they don't have great shelf lives. So they're trying to come up with an ideal solution for these specific scenarios. So to solve these problems, the CASED team designed a new hemostatic agent. And that just means something that stops bleeding. It's a spray on powder called AGCL. So that's an acronym standing for alginate gallon gum, chetasin and glutaraldehyde. Cross linking step is what is what that this other component is AGCL, these biocompatible compounds that are doing so. The clever part here is that this powder uses the ions in the blood itself like calcium ions as the trigger. This is this is the trigger as soon as it hits blood. So when that happens, it hits the blood and almost immediately it turns into a sticky gel that conforms to the wound and seals it. Cheetosin in the powder helps also helps to grab the blood and tissue, making the seal even stronger and also helping the clotting to kick in faster. OK, so that's basically what it does. So this happens, like I said, in a literal second according to the research, and in these lab tests that they did, it happened within a second. It also absorbs 725% of its weight, which is enough that it it's enough to block an even very strong blood flow. It also has a very strong adhesive strength. It's 40 kilopascals that's 40,000 pascals. So what the hell is that? It's about £6 per square inch. But most importantly, that seal is several times normal blood pressure. So that's the key right there. It's it's, you know, 300% normal blood pressure. So you get to, you know, you get a decent wound here with blood coming out at at a decent rate. It's it's going to help seal that as well. I mean, they didn't test for for the ultra dramatic artery that's been cut in two scenario that hasn't been tested for and that'll be very different, difficult to probably to deal with that. But in these, but in very strong blood flow scenarios, this, this looks like it will be, it will work. It will form these these plugs. And the other critical part of this is that they've shown that in the lab that it's been stable for two years. So if you have it at room temperature and high humidity, it will be stable for two years, which is great for, you know, for like the Army and, and disaster scenarios where you have this stuff sitting in your kit for two years, you could just grab it and the powder is still good. A lot of these similar devices, powders do not have that kind of stability. So this isn't just a topical wound sealer. That's one of the key things here. We're we're talking about deep open wounds. Imagine, you know, it's grizzly, but imagine in the deep open wound, this gel, this adhesive gel will form as deep as a powder reaches, right? So it's, it's essential that you actually can see where the bleeding is happening happening so that you can directly apply the powder and that's where it's going to it's going to work. So, so we can basically reach any place that you can see and form the strong, the strong three-dimensional shapes deep into any any open large wounds. So this part of the study was interesting. They tested it on animals using three different bleeding models. One was a mouse liver resection. Then there was a heart puncture and a tail amputation. There was a three bleeding models. The heart puncture was especially interesting because of the AGCL actually made a good barrier. Even though the heart was constantly moving right, the the heart's constantly pumping and the blood was constantly pulsating right. The AGCL actually still formed a very strong bond even in that specific scenario, which was, I thought pretty damn impressive. They also tested AGCL against a, a clinical standard called Tacocell. Steve, have you heard of Tacocell TACHOSIL? This is a, it's a surgical bio patch of sorts, right? It's organic. It's made from organic materials, but it's a, so it's a patch that they use during surgeries. It's made to stop bleeding and seal tissue. So it's basically essentially what AGCL is doing. This is what this Tacocell does. It's it's basically a very popular standard. It's used all the time. So they compared these two and in all the cases that I found Taco cell underperformed the AGCL, the AGCL powder did better in terms of blood loss and the time it took to stop bleeding. So pretty impressive as well. It seems to me. Let's see another big point here is that AGCL just doesn't form a plug. It's, it's clotting is also accelerated as well. So this surprised me. Listen to this little bit from the study in their in their CLAB in their lab clot clotting as say untreated blood clotted in 10 minutes with AGCL, it clotted in 24 seconds. The clotting process started in 24 seconds compared to 10 minutes. That would seem to be a dramatic improvement. So it's not just a covering, you know, it's not just the the three-dimensional plug into into these wounds. It also enhances the clotting process. It seems to improve it a decent amount as well. And then the other, the other bonus that I could find here from AGCL is that it also promoted, promoted not just this clotting, but blood vessel and collagen regeneration as well. So it's like damn, pretty, pretty interesting advance here. So here's a here's a direct quote to sum this up. To sum all this up, here's a quote from the study. They say these results demonstrate that Hecl integrates rapid coagulation, strong adhesion, long term bio stability and regenerative capacity in a single platform. It's it's powder format offers distinct advantages in versatility, ease of application, storability, making it a promising candidate for next generation topical hemostats in trauma care, surgery and emergency medicine. That's basically a very pithy overview of this entire thing. So all right, some important caveats. AGCL cannot help with inaccessible internal bleeding or hemorrhaging. If you can't see it and get the spray on it, it's not really designed to help that. So of course that's going to be a, you know, still, you know, a dramatic emergency that you need to deal with in ways other than using AGCL. And also, as always, success in animal models that they have shown does not automatically mean the same for people. Obviously we're going to need clinical trials for safety and effectiveness in the, in the real world. So, so there we are. It seems pretty interesting. It's, I would love, I'd love to have something like this at home, right? And that's one of the first things I thought, when could I get this stuff? And I, so I think, and I think it's not unreasonable to hope for that at some point. They didn't. I haven't seen that explicitly addressed anywhere, if it's even possible to have something like this at home, but I think it's pretty certain that we will eventually. Eventually. I have something like this, Jay. Imagine what I could build in my garage when I don't have to worry about my real blood mixing with all that fake blood.
J: Well, but Bob, you're, you're forgetting that when your real blood spills on these these corpses that you're making like it does increase the chances of a demon showing up.
B: It does. It does. I haven't seen any direct evidence of that, but I always have hope.
Monkeys and AI (56:19)
S: All right, Evan, tell me about these monkeys and AI.
E: Yeah, well, gather round, children. I'll tell you the sceptical tale of the monkeys and the goat. This all happened back in the year to 26 January, the 8th to be exact, and yes, 2026. So a few weeks ago, local residents in North Saint Louis began reporting multiple primates, which were later identified by officials at as vervet monkeys. We're roaming near a place called O'Fallon Park. These monkeys are medium sized African primates that are not at all native to Missouri, as you might guess, and in fact, they are illegal to own within the city. At first there was no official count as to how many monkeys were loose and investigators weren't sure where they came from or who owned them. And authorities from the Saint Louis Department of Health and Animal Care and Animal Control began searching that day and the next day deploying teams into the park in the surrounding neighborhoods, but they were unable to locate the animals. That was back on January the 8th. I'll give you a little bit of a day by day account. I find the chronology here to be a little helpful. On January 9th, the 1st police report sighting came in and by the 10th, there were additional reports that had emerged, including at least one sighting confirmed by a local police officer. And we'll get back to that in a minute. But this sort of started to become kind of bigger news in the community and that everyone was sort of put on alert that these monkeys have have escaped their captivity. But officials could not find the monkeys and, and, you know, they continued their search. It was clear to investigators that they were dealing with something that they'd really not dealt with before this. The situation involving exotic primates at large has not happened in any recent recorded time. So they're kind of winging it as they as they could trying to find these things. All right. Saturday, January 10th, that's when the goat joins A black and white goat with a collar was spotted heading north on Union Blvd. Resident photos of the goat began circulating on social media alongside the monkey reports. And so the this was the called the goat on the run angle. It was widely shared online and then picked up in some aggregated headlines as well through the news, but it had not been confirmed in any official reporting. Now by January 12th, you have the Internet basically going crazy with the stuff. You start to see AI pictures of the of monkeys around town, people putting them, you know, in certain poses and scenarios and locations. Some of them, you know, innocent enough, you know, just walking across the street. But then you have other AI photos of the monkeys gathering at a coffee shop and sipping coffee, right? But, you know, with that, with that authenticity that only an AI photo, you know, can can deliver, regardless of the context or how ridiculous it is, some obvious, obvious phony stuff. But then more reports start coming in about some of these pictures that have gone online. And then more reports of people saying, oh, I have, people are posting these reports, you should know about them. And all these departments are now getting more and more calls. So by January 12th, the officials decided to make a shift in their strategy. Rather than continuing a traditional search for animals roaming the street, the Saint Louis Department of Health officially ended the active search and instead pivoted to enforcing local laws prohibiting primate ownership. In other words, what they did is they first of all suggesting that was more likely that the monkeys were not free roaming in the wild perhaps anymore. They were being held, someone found them, or the original owners found them, collected them, brought them in indoors, and that's why officials have not been able to. See them, capture them, take photographic evidence of them, legitimate ones, or get any further eyewitness accounts. It was all pretty much rumors coming in at that point. But the other thing they did is to encourage cooperation. They waived any potential penalties for anyone who turned in a monkey since keeping one was illegal in the 1st place. As of today. I checked the records today, which is January 22. There have been no monkeys or other contraband animals turned in since that January 12th message that that went out. So nobody has turned in any. As it stands Tuesday January 13th the the search shifts to enforcement. Like I said, officials officially do call off the active search for the monkeys and the goat is captured. So they they have it now they have a report that the the goat was secured and apparently the return to its owners. We're not really sure what the what the end of the goat story was or where it wound up, but the goat is no longer part of the missing animals craze that that was going on. Health officials confirm that only one monkey sighting had been truly verified by a police officer. This was a couple days prior, but that LED more people to the question of the first of all the total number animals originally reported. And then people started to suspect. Did this happen at all? Was this whole thing a hoax to begin with?
C: What?
E: I know, Jay.
C: Or just like kind of mass?
E: Yes, a mass delusion in its own AI kind of way. There is two more updates yesterday, Wednesday, January 21. The monkey mystery, as they're calling it. This was two weeks after the first report. The Saint Louis Police Department publicly disputed the health department's claim that a police officer had verified it a few days after the initial report. So this further clouds the incident. They're basically saying, yeah, some cop basically said initially on they they saw it and therefore lends credibility that the cops know something's going on here. But now they're saying no, there was no, no police officers have officially reported anything having to do with that. And then today, police revealed that the initial involvement stemmed from a 911 call from a mail carrier. Now get this. The mail carrier says that their coworker, who is another mail carrier, is the one who had seen the monkey. But now the police can't seem to be unable to reach the person who supposedly made this call, the person who made the call about their Co worker making this claim. And they have no eyewitnesses or a direct statement. So the whole thing because become kind of a mess in a sense. Nobody can verify anything having to do with this. But certainly I think the fascination that the public and what obviously caught wildfire are the pictures, the AI generated photographs. And I think it brings up some interesting questions. You know, it, it, it's, you know, this is happens to be a funny scenario. I mean, nobody's injured, nobody's hurt. The animals apparently were not found dead or anything, right? So, OK. But you know, you can get some pretty creative people out there that can cause some pretty elaborate and frankly damaging hoaxes using AI. And all it will take is a report to one agency, one health person, 1 you know, Police Department even for something like this to suddenly become a runaway train in a sense, and might cause some real harm to someone at some point in the future.
C: I think this already happens. I don't think this is it going to start. I think people love to do this kind of stuff. It's just that AI makes it more believable and so it's going to catch on easier and it's going to be harder to debunk.
E: It will be harder to debunk. I absolutely agree with that.
S: But just to clarify, there were monkeys that escaped or the whole thing was a hope for?
C: 50%.
S: Upon We just don't know we.
E: Do not know we. Nothing.
C: There were no original photos.
E: Nothing can be verified.
US#02: Yeah, the.
E: The initial photos looked legitimate. It was simply the, you know, a monkey in a random part of the street not doing anything.
S: Yeah, right.
E: Just kind of walking or, you know, not engaged in some kind of activity, you know, and it was a one off. It wasn't part of a group of monkeys. I don't know if these monkeys tend to stick together in a, in a herd or a pack when they're out on and about. I don't know enough about them, frankly, or if they could go off, run off in their own directions and start doing and doing their thing.
C: Yeah, but this could be like one person had a pet monkey, it escaped, that's it. One person, it could be one, had a pet monkey.
E: Right.
S: But it shows how easy is to flood the zone with misinformation that makes it hard for investigators or authorities, whatever, to do what they need to do. You know, if they're trying to locate an actual like zoo animal or something that escaped or any of 100 similar scenarios and people are just making, you know, fake AI photos about it that are misleading. It's just like the bigger page is harder to discern the truth when it's buried under so much misinformation.
C: Oh yeah.
S: What we need is to teach people how to resist misinformation. How could we do that?
C: Yeah. And very good segue, Steve. But but even to add to that, I think we also, we need traditional broadcast media. We need not just narrowcast media, which is what most people are turning to now. We need reporters, reporters who look for not just evidence to back up their claims, but corroborating evidence. That's what reporters do. They need confirmation of facts before they will report things widely. And you know, until legitimate reporters are reporting on things, it's very hard for me to believe any sort of 1 offs on social media. So Speaking of that, how what is 1 tool that we have in our tool? I mean, there are a lot of tools. We talk about this all the time on the show. There are a lot of tools that we can continue to hone in the sort of big effort to fight or resist misinformation. One tool that we will speak about from time to time on the show is literacy. It's reading. And how does reading connect to resisting misinformation? Well, a new article that was written on the conversation by JT Torres and Jeff Sayers. Foy, who are Professors 1, is the director of the Heart Center for Teaching and Learning at Washington and Lee University. The other is an associate professor of psychology at OH. Is it Quinnipiac?
E: Quinnipiac.
C: Quinnipiac, thank you, University. Oh, great, okay. These two academics work together to write an article about phenomenon that they refer to as deep reading, claiming that obviously deep reading can boost. I hate when people use words like boost your deep rating improves critical thinking and can help you resist misinformation. So like, what is it and how do you build this skill? But before we dive into that, I, I loved what they did at the very top of their article is they talked about some of the problems that we are facing in our sort of modern social media era. So how many times a day do you think that the average American looks at their phone?
J: Oh my God. No, I'll say 100.
E: Yeah, it's probably closer to 100 than 20.
J: 54.
C: 141 hundred. That's average. And how many hours of use? Or I could say minutes I guess, but how much use does that translate to or at?
E: Least two hours, because you said hours, but yeah.
S: 30 hours.
C: 4 1/2 hours a day, on average 30 hours. 30 hours a day, that's. Unpossible and about 57 percent of people in a recent surveys admit that they are quote, addicted to their phone. And so they talk a lot, these these authors about how we engage with our phones. Even though we're actively checking it, we're usually receiving information in a much more passive way, right? We're doom scrolling, we're skimming articles and headlines and we're sort of being fed information. The information is happening to us. We're not often seeking it out, linking it to other things actively, you know, diving any deeper into these headlines. And of course, the head, the flow of headlines and the flow of information is, is very, very passive. It's just kind of there for us to consume. So you add to the way that we engage with our phones. And a big part of that is social media or or mainstream media as well, but through our phones, through the digital apps. And now let's look at literacy. What do you think literacy, kind of the general picture of literacy is like in the US? Obviously, we're a highly literate nation. Most everybody does know how to read. But are we reading well?
E: It's probably tailed off and.
S: Think book reading is tanked?
C: Reading has tanked and one of the big outcomes, I mean, I guess it's a little hard to say if it's a direct outcome of book reading tanking, but reading comprehension scores are at a new low. So we've got a lot of students who are struggling not just to read, but also to understand what it is that they're reading. And and this is, as of, you know, 2024 studies published at the end and, and you know, being written about in 2025 S kind of the last full year that we had that data.
B: Well, kind of related to that care, I read something about a lot of a lot of these students who cannot read an analog clock.
C: I could see that, yeah. I wonder if that is related though. Huh? Do they need to be able to read an analog clock?
B: Well, probably not, because they they, if they don't know it, they probably don't really need to do it, but it's still concerning.
C: But is it concerning? I guess here's the question with that. Does that translate to their ability, for example, to sniff out misinformation?
B: Yeah.
C: Does it translate to their ability to navigate the world that they live in? Now, some might argue that it does. Some might argue that it doesn't, actually. Don't know if there are good studies on that. But there does seem to be a significant amount of literature dedicated to the question of whether being able to read and being able to read well to understand what you're reading does translate to these skills. Surveys show that younger parents don't read aloud to their children as often as parents did in the past. And also, we've talked about this previously on the show. There are not. It's not the majority, but a significant portion of college students say that they never read a whole book.
B: I know it's terrifying.
C: So passive engagement, like we talked about this kind of idea of scrolling things being fed to you. What it often leads to is just endless consumption or dual stream consumption or sometimes multiple stream consumption. So what I mean by that, and I'm, I'm guilty of this all the time, is I'm like watching TV while I'm scrolling on my phone while I'm, you know, maybe doing other things is.
E: Going to have something to do during the commercials.
C: So what is deep reading and why do these researchers this this sort of what they call themselves a cognitive scientist of the psychologist and the literacy expert, what do they believe is or are some of the beneficial outcomes of deep reading? What do you guys think deep reading is first of all?
E: Being able to kind of immerse yourself in the activity of reading with no other distractions for significant periods of time.
C: So that's one of them is sort of reading and only reading while you read.
B: Yeah, I would think that achieving a certain level of comprehension of what you're eating would be a critical component of deep reading, it seems.
C: Yeah. And so maybe instead of looking at the outcome, like are we achieving it, we'd look at the intentionality too. And that's sort of how they define it. They refer to deep reading as the intentional process of engaging with information in critical, analytical and empathetic ways. So while you're reading, you're making inferences, you're drawing connections, you're engaging with different perspectives, you're questioning different interpretations. So that also implies that deep reading is not just about reading non fiction, right? It's about reading fiction, reading novels, reading poetry, reading points of view of individual people so that you can practice empathizing, analyzing and engaging with your critical mind. And so they do not really caveat, but they do say outward in this article like it requires effort and it can trigger negative feelings. Like sometimes when we read, we get frustrated, we get annoyed, we might even feel bored for a minute. That's.
E: What we're reading somehow, also, but yes.
C: True, but imagine that it's not moving fast enough for you or certain aspects of the storyline are bringing up, you know, deep feelings that are unpleasant feelings. Maybe the the content in the the story. Maybe they're talking about death or difficult relationships or your or their parents. And also it can be tough to get through a section of a book. We've all experienced this. Oh yes, we're really liking the book, and maybe it's even a page Turner, but you're like, oh, this chapter's really dragging.
E: The Iliad and the Odyssey was probably my all time sludge fest.
C: You know, yeah, like it's hard to.
E: We took a whole semester reading that book, reading those.
C: Books, right? But the question is, why do we do it? Why? Why is it important to kind of in some ways force ourselves through that as opposed to just reading the Cliffs Notes or just scrolling really quickly or getting the top line, you know, skimming, skimming the work. What do you think?
B: Trainer.
C: So it's training your mind for for what purpose?
B: For, you know, being able to dissect what you're reading and appreciate it at a much deeper level than than just to, to surface reading. Is this right? I mean to engage in deep reading as you've been talking about. Right.
C: So you're saying, and in some ways what I'm hearing at least is the act of deep reading is important to improve your ability to deep read?
B: Well, not, no, not just yeah, not just deep reading, but I think it makes your mind a more adaptable and analytical in in other another endeavors that you, you know, just having a conversation with somebody you.
C: Know so as opposed to like when we've talked about like brain training exercises that make you really good at that one thing you're doing. Reading does seem across several different ways that it has been researched to improve other aspects. So it's more of cognition. Yeah, it increased literacy translates to other skills and that's that's pretty well established. The researchers also point out that if we're not deep reading and we're only kind of scrolling mindlessly, there are studies coming out pretty much every day at this point that show increased boredom, increased loneliness, increased anxiety, and, and sometimes kind of at the existential level, especially when we're doom scrolling. And that, you know, that there's this kind of paradox that even though it feels like we're connecting to the world and to our friends and to our social groups online, we actually feel lonelier when we engage in that sort of passive and scrolling. But attention and effort can increase feelings like meaning and purpose. It can weirdly increase social connection, even though it feels like a very isolated way to engage. And so how would increasing your attention and effort actually be a bridge to better social connection? Like what are some ways that we read socially?
S: Oh book club.
C: So book clubs are a great way to do it. And you can even do that online, right? You can connect, you know, like book clubs, like book talk is a, is an online kind of and there's podcasts that talk about books. You know, there are ways to engage with other people.
E: Well, yeah, you brought it before the example of reading to your children. That's another way.
C: 100% reading to your kids. I read out loud with my partner all the time. It's a very common thing we do before we go to sleep at night. We read to each other I think, which is a huge way of maintaining and increasing connection.
B: Well, how does that work?
C: What?
B: How does that work? We open the book. I'm really curious what you just said. I mean, what do you read to each other and how does that work?
C: Well, so as a quick aside, sorry to take some time, but very often, every single night, we do the New York Times crossword together. OK, so my partner's dyslexic and so sometimes the writing can become jumbled. So it's important for him that he see it. I like to do the crossword without the visuals. I like hearing the clue and being told it's a 7 so.
E: He controls the puzzle. He reads it to you.
C: Yeah. So he reads the puzzle out loud and we do it together. And then after we finish the crossword, very often whoever's book is the most exciting, or whoever is, you know, more engaged or maybe whoever's more tired will choose who reads out loud based on that. And so like right now I'm reading a book about early blood transfusions. Some nights I'll read it to myself alone, some nights I'll read a chapter out loud and he'll kind of fall asleep listening to me read. Sometimes he'll read to me if I have a bit of a headache or something, but I I still want to keep reading in.
E: The days before blood types were known.
C: I know.
E: Gosh. What a nightmare of that one.
C: That's a fascinating one anyway. And and then we talked about this other thing you mentioned The Iliad and the Odyssey, Evan, and I think that's a great example, reading a text in the classroom and then engaging in deep discussion around the text. We used to do that. Oh sure, We used to do that. We used to do. That a lot. OK, so another big thing I want to mention before I kind of close this up is, you know, how, how do you start deep reading if you've been away? Because I know there's people listening to the show right now who are like, I do not read every night. I bought a book three years ago that I intended to read and I have literally not sat down and read a whole book in years. This is not an uncommon thing I hear from folks. You know, maybe I'll read an article once in a while, but it's, it's, you know, sitting down and reading a book can feel daunting. There are ways to take small steps to start engaging without being overwhelmed. You can really start with short stories. You can start with poetry. You can start with, you know, you don't have to dive into a full length novel or into a full length book. You can partner with friends and have sort of accountability buddies and read it in parallel and then talk to each other about it and also break it up. That's what I do. It's sometimes a book I read in, you know, four days. Sometimes it takes me a month to read a book, and sometimes they're the same length. It depends on how engaged I am with the material, how difficult it is to read, but I almost always read a chapter a night.
B: Also, I would recommend anthologies. I love reading anthologies. You can just read, you know, 1 little, you know, short story totally OK, that's and you're done with that short. Story, yeah.
C: And you don't have to remember it or connect it. And that's a good way to get into it. And then eventually I think you will start to get hungry for the story to continue, because that is an important skill in and of itself is being able to walk away and then come back into the story and reorient yourself. And then finally, one of the things that the authors talk about, which I think is an important concept, is the concept of illusory truth. And they talk about why deep breeding is good for counteracting illusory truth. And that's sort of linked to this idea of susceptibility to misinformation. So what is illusory truth? Well, this is an effect that happens when you are repeatedly exposed to information that's somewhat similar because we know that the longer you hear the same narrative, the more believable it becomes, especially if it's coming from different sources. Illusory truth is a a fundamental kind of feature. I mean, I think it's a bug, but you know, social media companies look at this as a feature. Social media algorithms keep giving you what you're already clicking on, right? If you, yeah, if you tend to look at something and you spend more seconds and you don't scroll past it as fast, you'll start getting more versions of it from different outlets and for like slightly different takes. It is pernicious because what ends up happening is that you start to believe it because it feels like that is the world, even though that is your social media bubble. It's called illusory truth. And really sitting with content and giving yourself a couple of seconds to ask questions about it, to connect it to other information, to question it, even just a few seconds is hugely important for counteracting illusory truth. And we do that when we read. We don't do it as often When we scroll, we go, wait, what? What did that sentence mean? Hang on, I have to reread that because my mind was somewhere else. We we figure out how to connect, we go. That reminds me of that other thing. Oh, that's how that works. Yeah. Yeah, That makes sense. And the more we do that, the better we are at counteracting illusory truth and improving our our ability to critically think and to to counteract misinformation. So, you know, these are skills that are important. And I'm going to keep banging this drum, you guys. And every time I see articles about it, I like to be able to talk about them on the show.
S: OK, thanks, Cara.
Who's That Noisy? + Announcements (1:22:10)
S: Yep, Jay, it's Who's that noisy time?
J: All right guys, last week I played this noisy. It's worth a long tail. Very cool, very cool, noisy. I got. I got some crazy responses, some of which I can't read. This is my favorite e-mail I got this week. It's from Kevin Mccreech, and he says this one is easy. It's the ominous noise of fascism. I think it's getting louder. So it was on this, so we'll give. You, by the way, if it wasn't for a few podcasts, primarily yours, my view of the USA would be very poor. Keep it up, Kevin. Thank you, Kevin. No need to explain anything in there. I just thought that was really funny. I got an e-mail from Tracy. Melinda and Tracy says. I have not heard this before, but my guess is that it's an elephant in organ failure. You know, you get it. I got it. I thought it was cute. Listener named Ben Fry wrote in and said, Jay, I think this is a synthesizer playing an organ patch. And then the intonation scheme example, just intonation, equal temperament is being changed. You're not correct, but you're kind of on to it. I think most people that sent emails to me like knew exactly what this is. In fact, I got more correct answers on this and I can remember ever getting before. That's why, if you remember last week, I said, hey, if you know explicitly what this is, you know, don't e-mail in because I wanted to get people to guess because that's, you know, that's where all the fun is. Another listener named Andrew or Andy wrote in and said, Jay, love the show. You guys are heroes. My guess is that the cat was walking on a church organ. You're not correct, Andy, but you are in the exact right ballpark. I got a winner from last week. The winner's name is Ricardo Batalani or Batalani he says. Hey guys, I've been listening to your show since high school but I haven't I haven't been able to see you live yet. Hopefully one day. I'm pretty sure today's noisy is a pipe organs pneumatic system being turned off while keys are depressed. Probably the foot keys considering the depth of the notes. Ricardo, you are absolutely correct. I, I had another e-mail from a listener who gave us a ton of information and his name is with pronunciation Colin, Colin Diek. And he said, hi Jay. I know you said you wanted to let people who don't know guess first, but he knows basically he says to summarize, I know what this is because my, both of my parents built organs. They were organ builders. So I couldn't refute, you know, turn this down because he had some awesome information in here. So he said the organist first begins playing a chord and then expands it. There are also a lot of stops pulled. Each stop is a different group of pipes with their own unique tonality that will be activated when the corresponding note is played, he said. So if you pull out three stops, you know, a flute, A trumpet and an oboe and played in middle C, you would hear three pipes, the middle C played in the voices of a flute, trump and an oboe. Or you get that the mechanism is also the source of the idiom pulling out the stops, which literally refers to pulling out all the stop knobs in an organ. That's pretty cool.
E: Wait, wait, wait is. That where the expression pulling out the stops comes from.
J: That's what he says.
E: Wow.
J: So he, he, he describes like, you know, what happens is the, the the blower, which is the air source is no longer supplying air to the system, but the organ continues to hold the cord, right. The person playing it continues to hold the cord air supply good. And essentially like the build up of air inside the system slowly decreases, you know, because there's lots of channels that it goes through. So the pressure drops, the speed of the airflow also goes down. And that, you know, that in a nutshell, is it when you play a pipe organ in a Church of that size, you, you turn it off and you're going to hear like this slow fade out of it and the, and the tonality changes as well, which I think is just incredibly cool. Very, it is also kind of menacing. If you listen to it with a horror movie playing in your head, it's it's pretty scary.
E: You think it's called an organ because it has a breathing? Kind of, no, no, you know quality about it.
J: Maybe he'll write us back and let us know. I'm sure he's listening.
E: That would be. Neat.
B: Jay, real quick, yeah, you slightly mispronounced the word pronunciation, and that made my entire day.
J: Did I?
B: It was slight, and it was. I know you know how to say it, but the fact that you mispronounced that word is awesome.
E: Pronounced.
S: So guys, my wife and I were in Sicily recently. We're at Catania, Sicily. Oh, there is a cathedral there, the Cathedral of St. Agatha, which as an interesting aside, she was tortured and her breasts were cut off. And so there's a lot of statues of breasts commemorating her, which is you see that why is there a statue of breasts in this cathedral? That's why. But anyway, they they have a massive pipe organ in this cathedral. It's called the Jaco Organ, and while we were there getting the tour, somebody was at the organ and they were playing the Toccata and Fugue and D Minor, which is that iconic pipe organ song that you've all heard.
J: Oh my.
S: It's associated with Halloween and horror movies. It was magnificent. Oh my God.
J: That only imagine.
S: To hear it live on a massive pipe organ, which is something.
J: All right. Well, Steve, I have a new noisy for everybody this week. This was sent in by a listener named Derek, and here it is. Crazy, right?
E: That's someone just pouring their breakfast cereal out-of-the-box.
J: Maybe you need a hint? I was thinking. My hint is I hear the sound quite often. That's the.
B: I think I know.
J: You don't know the.
B: Gargantuan box of Legos being dumped on the floor.
J: No, all right, if you think you know what this week's noisy is, or you heard something cool, e-mail me at wtn@theskepticsguide.org.
S: Hey, so Jay, before we start talking about our upcoming events, I'm going to have somebody join us who can tell us about SYCON, which is coming up in June. Steve Hop, welcome to the SGU.
US#02: Hey guys, thanks so much for having me. I'm just really excited to be able to talk about Sycon.
S: So you've got to be pretty busy. You're the executive director for the Committee of Skeptical Inquiry. You're basically in charge of putting this whole conference together, right?
US#02: Yeah, I mean, I've got a big team of people that help out. You guys gave a shout out to Barry Carr earlier in the year because he retired and he's been really helping plan as well.
S: Great, great, great. So tell us what is going to happen?
US#02: OK, well we've got an amazing events coming up, as you said in June, it's this year's actually the 50th anniversary of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, the organization put together by James Randy Ray Hyman, Carl Sagan, Paul Kurtz and others. And now we're the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry and we're part of the Center for Inquiry and our big yearly conference, Cycon CS Icon is going to be in Buffalo, NY from June 11th to 14th. And I can tell you all about some of the the exciting speakers and events if you're ready.
S: Yeah, tell us.
US#02: So I'm going to kind of go in order, but on the first night, Thursday, June 11th, we just signed best selling author Mary Roach and she's awesome. Yeah, yeah, she's awesome. I'm very excited to have her. She's written a bunch of bestsellers like Stiff and Gulp and Fuzz, a lot of one word bestsellers. But our newest book is called Replaceable You Adventures in Human Anatomy. So she's actually gonna be in conversation with Richard Wiseman, who you guys know well on the stage Thursday night. So it's gonna be a great opening night for the event.
S: Okay, and then what else we got?
US#02: Okay. And then on Friday, we have an A new, new kid on the block in the skeptical community. The Skeptics Guide to the Universe Live podcast will be part of the events included in registration. And then later that night, we've got the skeptical extravaganza of special significance that you guys will be holding. And we're selling tickets to that right now. And it's, and they've really been selling. So we're really excited to have you guys there. And then lastly, on Saturday, we've got Brian Brushwood. You probably a lot of people know him from scam school.
J: Yeah, we know, Brian.
US#02: Yeah, the World's Greatest Con podcast, and he's going to be interviewing Banachek and Michael Edwards, and they were the two kids as part of Project Alpha with James Randi, and they're going to be doing an interview that day. And then that evening we've got a fireside chat with me and Bill Nye the science guy. So it's going to be a lot of fun.
S: Sounds like an awesome lineup, especially those skeptics guys in the middle.
US#02: Yeah, I called you guys the new, the new Kids on the Block because you guys just celebrated 20 years, which is pretty good. And we were also excited to be able to celebrate with you by putting you on the cover of Skeptical Enquirer.
S: Yeah.
J: Thank you for that, by the way. That was a pleasure.
S: Yeah, by the time we get to Cycon, we'll be at 21 years. But yeah, 50 years for CSI man is amazing. I remember going to my first Cycon back in the 90s. That was quite a quite a while ago.
US#02: Yeah, they've really put on a bunch. And really, Psychop is there's a lot of people think of as the beginning of organized skepticism. And people can go to our website, csiconference.org, to see the full lineup of amazing speakers.
S: Awesome. Thank you, Steve. Jay, very quickly, Jay, let's get people updated on our other events.
J: Yeah. OK, so we have the Madison, WI shows. We're we have three shows there. But the big thing to tell you about is that we had to change the date for the extravaganza. So the entire weekend is going to be the 29th and the 30th. So all three shows will happen on those two dates. The extravaganza is happening on May 30th. So we'll have the the Secret SDU meet up on May 29th and we have the private Show Plus which will be earlier in the day on May 30th as well. And then Nauticon 2026. This is going to be happening in Sydney, Australia. You can go to skepticon.org dot AU or you can go to nauticon.com. Every time I say that, I get a little angry at Ian, but it's all good. Anyway. Go to those websites if you want to buy tickets to see us in Australia and that this is all happening in 2026.
S: Yep, there's a lot of happening this year. All right, Steve, we look forward to seeing you in Buffalo.
U: So excited about it.
US#02: Can't wait to see you guys.
S: Thanks Steve. Take care, Take care. All right. Thanks, Jay.
Emails (1:33:26)
S: We have one e-mail. This one comes from Vance in Santa Clarita, CA. Where is that Cara?
C: It's like northwest of me, Northwest. And it's near LA.
S: Near LA? Yeah, Santa Clarita Vance writes. Are the studies and grave predictions of global warming falsifiable? There must be other ways to falsify other than wait for 100 years or so and measure the changes he goes on. But that's the question, right? He talks about global warming and the etcetera. Are we coming out of an Ice Age and how do we separate man made global warming from natural cycles and blah, blah. So how can all this be falsified? So what do you guys think? How do we falsify the predictions made by climate climate scientists?
B: It's models, models and simulations, you know, you see what these models, these these simulations predict and you see that can they predict the easier stuff, you know, the stuff that might be not, not as you know, that's more short term. And we've, we've all, we've made predictions and over the decades, we've compared them to reality and we find that they are in the right direction. And often they are actually, they're actually not strong enough, you know, in terms of negative consequences, they're actually worse than the negative predictions we've made. I mean, so I mean models and simulations are a key answer to that question I would think, right?
S: I think that's it in fact. So, yeah, I mean, obviously there are many ways you can falsify elements of global warming, especially sort of the it's caused by industrial released CO2. Every time you do a study looking at other things that could be driving the climate, if we found other things driving the climate, that would obviously falsify the, the anthropogenic hypothesis. If we, there's many different ways that we look at the increasing temperatures historically. And so every time we do that, that's, that's a potential way of falsifying the, the hockey stick, right? The fact that there's been not just the continuation of a long trend, but a rapid upturn timed with the industrial revolution in both CO2 in the atmosphere and global temperatures. But the big way I mean, there's he says, do we have to wait for 100 years? Like, yeah, sort of. I mean, unfortunate. There's no way around that when you're when the bottom line thing that you're predicting is what's going to happen into the in the future, only the future has the last word on that, right. But Bob, what you're saying is correct. What we do have is is models. I know people dismiss that. It's like it's only a model, right?
B: But. God, what a horrible thing to say.
S: But the the models do a do a couple things. So first of all, right, the climate sciences put every factor that they know about into the model. And then and then they first thing they do is they retro dict, right? They say, does this model spit out the temperatures in the past that we already know happened? And if it if it matches the historical record, then at least it's viable. It doesn't mean it's correct because there could be thousands of incorrect but viable models, but at least it's viable, right? You can. So you can falsify the model if it doesn't match historical records, but then you have to predict future warming, right? In order for the model to be really fully scientifically validated, it has to survive the potential of being falsified by future data. So we have at this point about 50 years of climate model predictions that could have been falsified. And as Bob said, if you look at all the models, even the ones from the 70s that are primitive by modern standards are pretty damn accurate. They've called the warming that we've actually seen very accurately, like within, as we say, it's within 2 standard deviations, which in science means correct, right within that, within that range, that 95% confidence interval, blah, blah, blah. So yeah, the models are accurately predicting the warming that's actually happening over 5 decades. And they could have completely falsified those models, right? Anthropogenic global warming has so far survived 50 years of data that could have falsified it. But in terms of what's going to happen over the next 50 years, the next 100 years, we'll have to wait and see, right? All we could say is that the models are working out so far. They're actually getting better over time, and that's scary. Yeah. I mean, that's good evidence that we should probably take them seriously, right? And nothing is absolute metaphysical, metaphysical certitude. It's all probability, risk versus benefit, saying so far they're working pretty well. So we should, you know, take them seriously.
B: Right. And like, unlike the theory of evolution, as we all know, I mean, it, the evidence it would take to to to make these predictions wrong would be, I mean, it's really, you can't really reasonably expect these predictions now to be egregiously wrong. Subtly wrong for sure, but egregiously wrong is, is basically, yeah, that's really not going to happen with such a high degree of certainty. Well, how did Gould put it? It would be. It would be perverse.
S: To withhold provisional ascent, yes, yeah. The other angle though, I think where where the uncertainty remains is in where the tipping points are true and true.
B: Yeah.
S: So because that is, again, there's complicated feedback loops and, and we're not really sure exactly how that's going to play out nonlinear. We know what's going to happen eventually. So that's the other thing. It's like our confidence that these things are going to happen eventually is very high. Exactly when they're going to happen is what we don't know. That's really where all the uncertainty is. And they could be sooner than we predicted, could be later than we could predict. But again, it's probably somewhere in the 95% confidence intervals, you know, that an expanding wave of a, you know, slope of uncertainty that you see on those data charts. It's probably so far as we've been in there. But yeah, that's the thing. Like when are when are the, the Antarctic ice sheets going to collapse? You know that we can't say for certain. Could be 200 years, who knows? But we know it's good. It will it will happen eventually. Again, under certain conditions. Like we don't do anything to mitigate global warming. And we know that once it does happen, it's it's irreversible on a human time scale, at least given any reasonable projection of current technology. So those are the kind of statements we could make, right? There's no certainty. There's no absolute metaphysical certitude. It's all probability statements. But yes, they could have been falsified. It hasn't been falsified. It's looking good so far. And the predictions, if anything, are getting more accurate. OK guys, let's move on with science or fiction.
Science or Fiction (1:40:20)
Theme: None
Item #1: Engineers have developed a robotic which is more dexterous than a human hand, and can even detach, crawl across the floor, and retrieve objects.[6]
Item #2: A new study finds that disconnecting from media is associated with significant and long lasting reductions in reported stress levels.[7]
Item #3: A new analysis finds that ice-age kangaroos, which were more than twice as heavy as the largest extant kangaroos, could still use hopping for locomotion.[8]
| Answer | Item |
|---|---|
| Fiction | A new study finds that disconnecting from media is associated with significant and long lasting reductions in reported stress levels. |
| Science | Engineers have developed a robotic which is more dexterous than a human hand, and can even detach, crawl across the floor, and retrieve objects. |
| Science | A new analysis finds that ice-age kangaroos, which were more than twice as heavy as the largest extant kangaroos, could still use hopping for locomotion. |
| Host | Result |
|---|---|
| Steve | win |
| Rogue | Guess |
|---|---|
Bob | A new study finds that disconnecting from media is associated with significant and long lasting reductions in reported stress levels. |
Cara | A new analysis finds that ice-age kangaroos, which were more than twice as heavy as the largest extant kangaroos, could still use hopping for locomotion. |
Jay | A new analysis finds that ice-age kangaroos, which were more than twice as heavy as the largest extant kangaroos, could still use hopping for locomotion. |
Evan | A new study finds that disconnecting from media is associated with significant and long lasting reductions in reported stress levels. |
Voice-over: It's time for science or fiction.
S: Each week I come up with three Science News items or facts, 2 real and one fake, and then I challenge my analyst skeptics to tell me which one is the fake. Three regular news items this week, the 1st of 2026. No theme. You guys ready?
E: Yep, here we go. You swept us last week. I did.
S: I In fact, I did sweep you to my delight. Let's see how you do this week. Item number one. Engineers have developed a robotic hand which is more dexterous than a human hand and can even detach, crawl across the floor and retrieve objects. Item number 2A new study finds that disconnecting from media is associated with significant and long lasting reductions in reported stress levels. And item number 3A. New analysis finds that Ice Age Kangaroos, which were more than twice as heavy as the largest extant Kangaroos, could still use hopping for locomotion. Pop go first.
B: This robot hand? Hang on. I got to call Christian Hubecky. For a second here. Damn, that's probably not cool to do. But your fingers awesome. Is that man more more dexterous than the human hand? I'm skeptical of that right out of the gate. I mean, how are you? You know, how are you defining dexterity in in this specific case? I mean, I may have to just say that's fiction just out of the gate, because I mean it's human hand is just so damn dexterous and I've seen some good robotic hands, but and detaching and walking across the floor. That's such a evil dead ash hand to move. I just love it to death. Let's look at this other one here. This this one is just a noise crap out of me because it seems so obvious, right, right. Disconnect from media, significant long lasting reductions in stress, of course, in 25 and 202026. Duh. I mean, I can't take large doses of news these days. I just got to go to my happy place after a little while. So that just sounds too obvious. And the kangaroo twice as heavy but still able to jump. Is it still efficient enough to warrant using the jumping as a as a way of getting around? And I don't know what's the what's the what's the the tipping point there? What's the what's the point where it's just like you're just too heavy for this to be a good strategy for locomotion. So I have no goddamn idea. Yeah, but you got to grab with some fingers and then walk back with other thing with the other fingers. I mean, that's or so that's. I mean, sure, if it's small. Yeah, you can grab something with two fingers and then walk back. Not very if it doesn't seem very efficient to me, but super cool to think about. Yeah. I'm just going to, I'll just do this meta decision here of just going with the the one that's just too obvious, which of course is still a roll of the dice because you know, you know this strategy well. So I'll just say disconnecting from the media is fiction.
S: OK, Cara.
C: It's funny because like, I mean, especially given the topic that I just covered, but I don't like how a lot of things are worded in the media 1 so I'm going to go through the other two first. I OK a robotic hand. I don't like this. More dexterous than a human hand. By what measure? Like dexterity is like a multi variable measurement. Is it about fine, you know, grasping? Is it about I'm assuming that with a robot there are things that hands just can't do that you can make a robot hand do. So by that measure, maybe it could be more dexterous, but there might still be things that a human hand is better at. But maybe it's like on the total. So that one, I don't think that you would do a fiction where it's like, you know, by this measure it is whether that measure it's not. So I'm going to say maybe that one science Ice Age Kangaroos more than twice as heavy as largest extant. OK, so the things were big. Yeah. And they could hop still. Why wouldn't if they were twice as heavy, why wouldn't they still be able to hop? They had twice the muscle tone too, probably, or not twice the tone, but twice the muscle size. That one could be the catcher. It could be OK. They were more than twice as heavy, but they couldn't hop, you know, they could only walk. So that one's a little bothering me. And then but this one, I just feel like you did not write enough on, on the middle item, a new study. And that could be literally be anything. I hate it when it's a single study. Disconnecting from media. Bob, he didn't say social media. Yeah.
S: That includes like your phone and things like that, yeah.
C: That includes like movies and like newspapers. So basically.
S: Well, I should say digital media.
C: Oh OK cool. So a digital detox basically is what you're saying. A person going on a digital detox is going to have significant and long lasting reductions in reported stress levels. This could go either way. I could see it being significant but the long lasting I mean. And maybe you can answer this but maybe you can't. Are they still disconnected?
S: Yeah, it lasted while they were disconnected. It's not implying it lasted beyond the disconnection.
C: So long lasting is throughout the disconnection period. Yes, OK. I also could see a scenario in which after being disconnected for a few days, people start to get anxious again and needing to reconnect. And so that is the thing that maybe it's between that and the old and the big old kangaroo not being able to hop. But I'm going to go with, you know, how do we define long lasting? I think it probably lasted a day or two. But then for most people, unless this is very well practiced, like, you know, people who camp regularly, I think that they're going to start to get anxious and their stress levels will go back up and they they need to quote, reconnect. So I'm going to go with Bob with this one.
J: OK, Jay, yeah, I mean the the one about stress, the digital detox, I can argue both sides very easily. But the, the question here is, you know, I guess is like, what is there any long term effects on lowering stress from, from, from, you know, lowering how much content you, you take in or how much you use your device or whatever. You know, my personal experience, you know, I definitely get short term benefits from it. And I, and I did have a spell where I really tried to detach and I didn't have like what I would describe as significant and you know, semi permanent lowering of stress. You know, I, I still live in a highly stressful world. I still know what's going on. So I, yeah, I mean, I, I think I agree with Bob and Cara on this one. Regarding the hand thing, though, like, as Cara mentioned, you know, how do you determine what dexterity is or whatever that I think what we're seeing here, Cara, is that this is the reporting. This is what the reporters are saying. It's not necessarily true, right? That's the way that they're describing it. You know, I, I wouldn't put it past, you know, people saying it's more dexterous, dexterous than a human hand with a light interpretation. You know, it wasn't like I don't think they did this massive study to to compare it to a human hand. It's more of like a reaction, I think, if anything. But anyway, I'm with Bob and Cara. Number 2 is the fake.
E: OK. And Devin I. Don't know. I don't know mechanically why there couldn't. That couldn't happen, right? And all the components, I didn't have to really invent anything new. It kind of just had to piece it all together and make it happen. So I think that's what they did. But yeah, the one about disconnecting from media, Oh boy, there was stress before social media, that's for sure in a lot of ways. So just because you, you know, stop your consumption of digital media does not, I don't think necessarily link to, as this reads, what's significant and long lasting reductions in reported stress levels. Because there's like Jay was saying, there's plenty of other things out there to stress you out about. And that's what used to happen before digital anyways. And the last one about the Ice Age and the kangaroo is a fine. So I'm with everyone else. It's a sink or swim.
S: All right, so there's going to be another sweep this week. Did I get a double sweep or did you guys even the score?
B: So Steve, before you continue, I want to explain to care of my thinking of the the kangaroo. My thinking is that my thinking was that at a certain way, because what happens is that the kangaroo, it stores and releases elastic energy right from their attendance. If you're too heavy, then that tendon would have to be too robust, too big in order to do that effect efficiently enough to warrant making. That's how you get around. So that's what that's what my thinking was on there.
C: Yeah, so, but is it twice as heavy or the three times or four times as heavy point?
S: Well, let's start with that one then. A new analysis finds that Ice Age Kangaroos, which were more than twice as heavy as the largest extant Kangaroos, could still use hopping for locomotion. You all think this one is science, so let's discuss what Bob what you were saying. So the that's the question, right? Is it, are they too heavy for this sort of spring effect of the tendon to work? And if it if it if they did exceed whatever that limit is, they would not be able to hop around like Kangaroos hop around, right? For locomotion, They would have to either walk on fall 4 or just walk, you know, bipedally. So this one is science. This is science, but you know, I didn't say it in the thing, but until this study, scientists believed that they couldn't top for locomotion for those reasons because they were extrapolating from existing Kangaroos. And when they included updated data from the fossil Kangaroos, the giant fossil Kangaroos, they realized that there there are biological differences that would allow them to hop.
B: What were they?
S: So modern Kangaroos get as big as about 90 kilos. And they previously said that the upper limit of hopping was at 140 to 160 kilos. And the giant fossil Kangaroos were over 200 kilos. So that's why I said now they're too big, they couldn't hop. But then when they looked at the the fossils more closely again, there was 2 limiting factor, bone strength and tendon size. They found that both of them together were were robust enough to allow for hopping. And you're correct, Bob, when the tendons, they have to get bigger to hold the weight and the bigger they get, the less efficient they are.
B: Right, exactly.
S: At absorbing and releasing that energy, but it would still be, you know, possible to hop even they did have larger tendons. They could see the insertions and the bones of the larger tendons. However, they said that they didn't necessarily hop all the time. They probably used it as one of many different types of locomotion. They probably also walked on all fours and George just walked on their feet. But then they would hop when they needed a burst of speed to get away from a predator or something. So yes, that was a change in our thinking about the giant Kangaroos with this study.
B: Interesting.
S: All right, we'll go backwards. A new study finds that disconnecting from media is associated with significant and long lasting reductions and reported stress levels. You guys all think this one is the fiction and this one is say. It. The fiction good.
C: Bob, good job.
S: Yeah. And you keyed in on the things that I made-up. So there was a study looking at people disconnecting from media, from digital media. And they, they decided to do an observational study rather than a controlled study because all, most of the previous studies, you basically tell people how much digital media they can consume and when, or you say like, you're not going to touch it for the next 24 hours, the next 48 hours or whatever. And they were worried that involuntary disconnection caused stress, right? So they said what happens when people voluntarily disconnect from, from digital media? So of course, if it's voluntary, it's observational, it's not controlled. And what they found was that there was improvements, there was improvements in well-being, right, subjective well-being, energy and social connectedness, but that these were short lived and they were pretty small and they reported no difference in stress levels. So I basically flipped everything about what the study showed.
C: Did it say how long they were disconnected?
S: For different amounts of time because again, there was all individual, they were choosing when to do it. So it could have been hours to days, you know?
C: Yeah, I think for me, and I do think that's super interesting and I'm kind of not surprised, but I'm much more interested in people who do this regularly and are practiced at this. Yeah. Because I bet you you'll see much larger changes maybe. But doing it like one time for a day, it's stressful in an yeah.
S: They sampled them over 2 weeks, but they looked at the times that they were connected versus disconnected over those two weeks.
C: Yeah, like most people don't ever disconnect from their phones.
S: Yeah, it's a complicated question, obviously, and this is just looking at it from one slice. But that's why it's easy, because it's the fiction and none of that matters, right? Whether but they did, they definitely did not show this, right, that there's this big long lasting effect, you know, with stress there. That was the one thing that was not affected.
C: It's not a panacea for.
S: Sure. All right. Which means that engineers have developed a robotic hand which is more dexterous than a human hand and can even detach, crawl across the floor and retrieve objects is science. And yeah, of course you hear that. More dexterous than a human hand, and immediately that sounds dubious, but so this is a robotic hand. It is not limited by the anatomy of a human hand. It could have as many.
C: Coming off of your wrist makes you more. Intense.
S: But even that aside, that's not the piece that made it more dexterous. First of all, it could have two thumbs, which gives it a lot more options in terms of how we could hold on to things. It could have more than five fingers, and the fingers can bend backwards basically. So you could hold things on the back of your hand, not just on the palm of your hand, right? So this thing can detach from the wrist and then it could use its fingers to crawl across the floor. It could pick something up with fingers it's not using to walk and hold it against either the back or the palm of the hand. It has way more options. It's weekend. So in that context, it's way more dexterous. It could move.
B: And I was thinking of of I was thinking of extra digits. And it's, it's, it's funny how the, the, the assumption, yes, of a of a typical hand was so strong that I discounted that right? I should have asked, but I should have. Asked. I could have asked.
S: And that was the that was that's interesting because that's one of the key insights that these engineers has. Like, wait a minute, we don't have to be limited by a human hand.
B: My God. Yeah.
S: You can have two thumbs. We can have six fingers. We can do whatever we want. And once you once you're freed of that assumption, then you could optimize a hand without evolutionary constraints, right? You can make it do whatever you need it to do.
B: Yeah, I'm also seeing robots becoming more popular that that can move like a normal person, but aren't limited by human range of emotions. They could do, they can make, like you said, they can their arms move in ways that no human could possibly move. And that's of course an obviously great idea for robots because why should we? Why should we put a straight jacket on them like?
S: That yeah, wasn't that. I'm trying to figure I have AI. Remember an image from some sci-fi show where somebody grabs a robot from behind and the robot just flips everything around and now he's facing him. You know what I mean?
B: Yes, I what was that? I could I could picture it too, but it's not enough detail to tell me. What it was? But yeah, we saw the same thing.
S: And again, you know it, this is robotic, but it could also be prosthetic. You know that that could be.
C: For sure, yeah.
S: Yeah, for attached to a person's prosthesis and I've.
B: Seen it that it exists.
S: Yeah, but you, I'm saying you might, I know that. I mean the whole idea of robotic hands, but even we're for human prosthetic limbs, we don't necessarily have to limit ourselves to the human in anatomical form.
B: And then two thumbs, baby. And there's the key.
S: The the key point to that, though, is the human brain can adapt to new configurations, new anatomical configurations. We're not limited to what came before.
B: Sure man. And you know, change the homunculus? Why not? You can.
S: You can, absolutely.
C: And we, yeah, studies show that over and over. Sew fingers together, split fingers. Yeah, we've done all sorts of cool studies on that.
B: Yeah, man, your brain's like I totally got this.
S: The way I think of it and the way what the evidence shows, like the difference between your dominant and your non dominant hand. So like when you go outside of the the body plan you were born with, it's probably going to be your level of control. Be more like your non dominant hand.
C: Oh yeah, not as good as you're. Going to be a skilled pianist with eight fingers.
S: But still, that's damn useful that way.
B: That's.
C: True.
S: That's true. If you were born that way and there was, you know, connected to you in that window, it could be. Yeah.
Skeptical Quote of the Week (1:57:55)
"Success in creating effective AI, could be the biggest event in the history of our civilization. Or the worst. We just don’t know. So, we cannot know if we will be infinitely helped by AI, or ignored by it and side-lined, or conceivably destroyed by it.”
– Stephen Hawking, (description of author)
S: All right, Evan, give us a quote.
E: Success in creating effective AI could be the biggest event in the history of our civilization, or the worst. We just don't know. So we cannot know if we will be infinitely helped by AI or ignored by it and sidelined or conceivably destroyed by it. Stephen Hawking.
S: Yeah, he was very concerned about it. And you chose that quote before you knew what my news on.
E: I did. How's that?
S: Yeah, a bit of a coincidence.
E: Right. Yeah. Or is it?
S: Or is it?
C: Yes.
E: Yes, it all right. Spoiler. Alert come.
S: On thank you all for joining me this week you're.
E: Very.
C: Good. You're mad.
E: Thanks. Everyone.
S: And until next week, this is your Skeptics Guide to the Universe.
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- ↑ www.livescience.com: Study hints at the 'optimal' combo of sleep, diet and exercise to extend lifespan
- ↑ theness.com: The AI 2027 Scenario - NeuroLogica Blog
- ↑ theconversation.com: Deep reading can boost your critical thinking and help you resist misinformation – here’s how to build the skill
- ↑ scitechdaily.com: Scientists Develop Spray-On Powder That Instantly Seals Life-Threatening Wounds
- ↑ www.stlpr.org: AI images create chaos as St. Louis looks for escaped monkeys
- ↑ www.nature.com: A detachable crawling robotic hand
- ↑ journals.sagepub.com: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00936502251387830
- ↑ www.nature.com: Biomechanical limits of hopping in the hindlimbs of giant extinct kangaroos