SGU Episode 1075

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SGU Episode 1075
February 14th 2026
"Grace and power collide on ice during a breathtaking moment of figure skating."
SGU 1074                      SGU 1076
Skeptical Rogues
S: Steven Novella
B: Bob Novella
C: Cara Santa Maria
J: Jay Novella
E: Evan Bernstein
Quote of the Week
"The most difficult time to be skeptical is when we want, or don’t want, to believe. It all comes down to how willing we are to be honest with ourselves."
Melanie Trecek-King
Links
Download Podcast
Show Notes
SGU Forum

Intro

C: 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, February 12th, 2026, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella.

E: Everybody.

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

US#01: Good evening everyone.

S: And we have a guest, rogue, on this episode, Parish Night Parish, welcome to the Skeptic's Guide.

US#01: Thank you so much. Hey y'all.

S: So Cara's not here because she's sick. She has a little bit of a cold, so she rather than coughing her way through the episode, she's went to sleep. It happens, you know, occasionally we get sick.

J: Ed Parrish is a patron of the SGU, and that's why he's on the show tonight.

US#01: Right.

S: So, Parrish, tell us a little bit about yourself.

US#01: I am a Computer Desktop Support Technician and I live in the Washington, DC area. I've worked with a number of different agencies over the years, mostly at NIH, but I've also been with others that are more interesting, including NASA and the Mint. And when I come home, I like to fuss around with my home network and see what kind of damage I can do with inside the house once I'm done damaging things at work.

E: Is this call being recorded for quality assurance?

US#01: I believe it is.

B: It is being recorded. How many times have you said have you tried turning it on and off again? Off and on again I lost. Off and on again, damn it.

US#01: I, I said I've lost count on that one. But I, you know, I did actually have one customer once who sent me an e-mail saying that she needed help because she couldn't send e-mail.

B: And but she emailed you that.

US#01: I, I, I just wrote back and I said really? And she said, oh, she wrote back. And she said, oh, right, oops.

S: Sorry, that's pretty good. I thought you would have said I'm using someone else's e-mail, you know, or something. You know, sane you.

US#01: Think. But no, it wasn't wasn't that.

S: Is that the craziest thing that's happened to you in terms of tech support?

US#01: That's probably the craziest one that I can mention on public podcast.

E: Oh no.

S: All right, so when we talk about computer stuff on the show, how do we do?

US#01: Quite well actually in in fact, I think anyone of you could probably replace me with just a little bit of Polish. Mostly it's it's it's political. You know, you have to be polite and migraine or some agencies are are more casual than others. Like, for example, at NASA headquarters, sometimes I would come in in the morning and before my shift started and there'd be somebody flying an RC helicopter around the help desk area. Now, in in, in some places, if you did that, you know, you'd probably get fired. But at NASA, if the director came in and saw it, he'd probably ask if he could take a turn.

S: Well, tell us about your time at NASA. What'd you do there?

E: Yeah.

US#01: I was the Apple engineer, which one that I was responsible for supporting all the the Macs in the headquarters building, rolling out security patches and helping anybody who was having problems with their computers, which at the time we were using a really bad e-mail client. So I ended up supporting that one quite a bit did.

S: They use Macs on the Space Shuttle.

US#01: Or I'm not sure, but I already I do sometimes I got to help people who are a lot of fun. Like the director of planetary science was having problems with his Mac laptop, so sitting in his office and chatting with him while I was getting that fixed was was really neat. It's a little intimidating.

J: Sure. How many pictures did you download from his computer?

US#01: Look at this, he was watching me a little too close.

B: To this exoplanet he never announced.

E: Did he show you the proof of aliens? The stuff Dave has been hiding.

US#01: All these years I asked him about that, but he said he if he told me he'd have to kill me. So we skipped. It.

E: Yeah, that never works out.

US#01: No.

S: Well, Speaking of UFO alien conspiracies, yeah Evan, I understand we lost a giant in the UFO world to tell.

E: Us, we kind of did, yeah, on January 10th, 2026. Sorry, this is a little bit dated, but it's been a little while since I've been able to do an extra segment.

Quickie with Evan: Erich von Däniken dies at 90 (04:10)

• https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/11/obituaries/erich-von-daniken-dead.html 

E: We'll call it a quickie with Evan Erich von Dinekin died. Yeah, that's. Right.

US#01: Oh Lord.

E: And for the benefit of.

S: Donikin Dine. I never heard Dinek.

E: OK. Donikin, Donikin. It's an A with umlaut. So Donikin Erich von Donikin.

S: So who was he?

E: But if you're 45 years and under, you probably never heard of them. I was about to joke with Cara about that, but she's sick so I'll have to move on from that. Actually, he was in. He was influential and controversial. Definitely a figure in modern pseudoscience. He left behind a legacy that has shaped our popular cultures, fascination with ancient mysteries, extraterrestrials, and the idea that what humanity's past was guided by extraterrestrial visitors. Von Doniken rose to international fame with the publication of Do You Know Remember? The Chariots of the gods. Chariots of the gods. Chariots of the Gods.

S: They're fond of the skies like flies.

J: Yeah, that I mean that that entered the the lexicon big time.

E: Absolutely right in 1968 as as well. Also right, right on the on the.

S: Cusp of the.

E: Heels of of the Apollo program and everything so just remarkable in that book he proposed.

S: Never mind, it's a.

E: Cusp heels Heels is the.

S: Back end cusp is before, so it was the cusp.

E: In this book, he proposed that many ancient civilizations, including the ancient Egypt, the Maya, Mesopotamia, among others, were influenced or even engineered by advanced extraterrestrial beings who were mistaken for gods. And they left evidence of this in the ancient monuments, the artwork, and the myths that were reinterpreted and misunderstood evidence of alien technology. That book was huge. It sold 10s of millions of copies worldwide. It was enormous. Launched the entire genre of ancient astronaut speculation.

S: And to which we go sides from beginning to end. Like really bad.

E: 100 percent, 100%. I mean, think of the documentaries, the TV shows, people who came on the lecture circuits, all the he he sparked that basically that that entire that entire genre, no doubt about it. I call it the contamination of the culture as as it were. His fingerprints are on all sorts of people who are still influencing today. A much younger audience who wouldn't know Erich von Daniken from Eric Estrada. Among those, among those are Joe Rogan, Tom Cruise, Tom Delong of Blink 182 fame, Steven Greer. Oh, and how about Avi Loeb or even John Mack? Our Harvard, our Harvard contingency there. The History Channel has a whole series on this nonsense. Steven Spielberg, was he? Oh yeah, he was influenced. Indiana Jones and that Crystal Skull thing. Oh my. God. Forget it. What file that was. So from the very beginning, von Deniken's claims were rejected by historians, archaeologists and scientists. Unfortunately, that did not have enough influence in stopping people from glomming on to his thoughts and I in his own unique ideas. He was more like an L Ron Hubbard sort of type of character in in my book because his arguments failed to meet basic standards of evidence.

S: Well, he would do what? He would follow up a formula that so many people on TikTok and whatever are still following. Say the whole ancient astronaut thing basically follows this formula where you look at some piece of ancient history or ancient artifact in complete isolation of any knowledge of archaeology, right? And then you just, you know, pull some alien interpretation out of your butt. And seriously?

E: It's true.

S: People have spent their lives studying this and we know a lot about the culture in which it was embedded and what this symbolism means and etcetera, etcetera. There's lots of other examples of it, and we weave together, you know, an interpretation of what this likely meant. They're like, Nope, I just looked at this picture. I see an astronaut in a capsule. Well, good for you. Has nothing to do with what's actually going on.

E: Right.

S: But it's a lot more provocative. Say it's an astronaut, then, oh, here's the all of the evidence that tells us what this actually meant in this culture.

E: Remove all contexts, right? Take, take an image, take take one little snapshot and go nuts. Create a whole mythology around it.

US#01: I always looked at it from the other side. I mean, why would they even be doing this? These alien astronauts, were they bored?

E: They were toying with humans. There's never a coherent story, right?

S: Because when you deal with your mystery mongering, basically you don't really have to have a coherent story. Aliens move in mysterious ways, right? Like we can't imagine what they were doing Good. That gives you a lot of room to maneuver, right? Just to make sure that.

E: And thank goodness for James Randi, who who was one of the oh boy chief critics of von Danikins work. He was he wrote about him in Flim Flam, which is a wonderful book. If you have not read James Randy's Flim Flam, please, please go get a copy and read it. Still relevant today. And he basically used the ancient astronaut theory as the textbook pseudoscience, right? It's like here, here is a perfect pseudoscience and here's how you can break it down. And here's how. And here's how you know.

S: Joe Nickel to Joe Nickel actually reproduced the Nazca lines with technology that was available at the time. It's not hard, you know. You could take a drawing on a piece of paper and turn it into a giant drawing on the ground with some basic techniques without having to happy in a spaceship hovering above the earth.

B: Yeah, like it sounds like. Yeah, like crop circles.

S: Yeah.

E: Right. Yeah. No alien technology required. So how are you going to do it? You're going to do it the hard way with the alien technology. You're just going to do it the way humans manage to. Do it.

S: I'll never forget we were at A at a talk right as the New England skeptics and it was a psychic who was giving the talk and then and she was espousing the crop circles. And of course we were there to ask skeptical questions And somebody said, how can you draw a perfect circle? That's impossible. You know, we're like, have you ever, have you ever seen a compass? Have you ever tied a string to?

E: String to us, you know what I mean.

S: You could draw a perfect circle with a string and a stick. Hello. I hadn't.

E: Thought of it. Some technology is more advanced than others to some people at least, but at least OK, well, I mean, so the, the, the end of an era in a sense, in that he's now passed. We in the skeptic community, we, we will remember him forever, you know, and acknowledge both sides of his legacy. He was not a scientist. His claims were never supported by evidence, but he did play a major role in illustrating why skepticism matters, and why curiosity must be paired with rigor, and why storytelling, no matter how compelling, is never a substitute for science. And there you have it.

S: He was one of those people you hear that they die like they were still alive. He was 90. Like, I haven't heard about him, you know, for in so long like.

B: Literally decades.

S: Yeah.

J: Well, he's living off all that bread he made, you know.

B: Hey, millions of books, man, which we sold millions of books.

S: All right, Thank you, Evan.

News Items

Review of ADHD Treatment (11:31)

• A massive ADHD study reveals what actually works 

S: Jay, tell us about this massive review of reviews of ADHD treatment.

J: This is really. Awesome. I think anyone that's curious about how to medicate ADHD or how to treat it should definitely pay attention here and then visit the website that we will put into the show notes. So the main question posed to people that have to deal with ADHD, whether it's their own or their child's, is, you know, how do you decide what the right treatment is for you? You know, and of course, one of those decisions might be to do nothing at all, right? But where would you start? I think out of the gate most people would probably either consult A physician, you know, look it up online or ChatGPT, you know.

S: Well, you should be consulting a. Physician not. Researching yourself.

J: Online, yeah, you can read about it, but you got to end up talking to a physician, you know, a specialist that can help you with medications like this. So, you know, the next question is then what would physicians do if they want the latest and greatest information? They would look in clinical guidelines, the individual trials, they'd look at meta analysis. They talk to other physicians, you know, so each of these different places, they offer a part of the picture, but the results are typically with things like this, they're typically scattered, you know, the studies and things that, you know, the information sources could vary in quality. And it's a hard thing to do, you know, even though there's a lot of good research going on out there, it's not always easy to access it. And then the other problem is, and Steve, I know you've, you've said this many times that you have different sources of information from different studies or meta analysis, but they're not always framed in the same way. So you can compare them, you know, apples to apples. If you want to know, you know, take data from one study or conclusions from one study and then kind of compare it to another. It's a lot of times you just can't do that. Just doesn't work that way. So now we have this new umbrella review that was in the BMJ and it attempts to, you know, take a step back and look at the entire landscape of data that's out there for ADHD. And the author's systematically re analyzed all of the strongest available meta analysis of specifically of randomized controlled trials across age groups. And then they built an online platform where the results are organized by treatment type, age group, outcome, and time frame. And this makes the conclusions available and understandable to everyone. And that right there is unbelievably rare and so obvious that this is what studies should do with their data. I know it costs time and money, but it makes it accessible. You know, it, it makes, it makes the data actually much more useful to a lot of people, including physicians, by the way.

S: This is a Herculean task, this kind of yeah, you know, systematic review of systematic reviews and reanalyzing all the meta analysis that this was a lot of time in this.

J: Yeah. What, Steve? Steve, you just described an umbrella review, right? It's a review of reviews. The researchers ended up searching six major databases. They focused on studies that compared actual interventions to passive controls, which included things like placebo, right? The main outcome was ADHD symptoms severity. The and importantly, the authors broke this down into who rated the symptoms right. Could have been a clinician, it could have been a parent, could have been a teacher, it could be self reported. And they also included the time frames involved with this. They examined overall dropout rates and something called tolerability, which means, you know, are people able to maintain taking the medication or, or whatever they're doing to help their ADHD. And, and there's a lot of people, for example, that drop out of, of things like this because of side effects. They stopped taking the medication. The short term findings are great. They're very strong. So in children and adolescents, several medications showed medium to large reductions in ADHD symptoms severity with moderate to high certainty. They showed unequivocally that medications had a medium to large reduction in ADHD symptoms. And this, this could be a game changer for a young student like my kids, right? They, you know, they, when they take ADHD medication, they can focus, they quiz better, they, they test weight, but you know, every, everything that they need to do in school, it's easier and better for them because they, their brains have the functionality to do it. But the ADHD makes it hard for them to access that. Again, that's my personal experience, and I'm not telling you what to do. You need to talk to your physician. And you know, everything has to be individualized, of course. But this study shows that medication is incredibly effective for ADHD, and how lucky are we that we have access to it. In my opinion, some participants stop treatments like I was saying due to the side effects. It's no small problem. It's always a big problem when medication is involved with any kind of clinical studies. You know, people could just say I'm out, I don't want to deal with this anymore. The study tracked the different medications, concluding with which ones were the best tolerated all the way down to the worst tolerated. That's an incredible piece of information to have at your fingertips right there.

S: You know what I found really interesting? You know what overall the best medication with the best evidence was? Methylphenidate which is Ritalin like the original ADHD.

J: Medication, I know.

S: Is is still the best even with even compared to all the newer ones, But that could be an artifact of the fact that it's been out the longest and so it has the most data, you know?

J: Yeah, but the, you know, the good thing about this and methylphenidate as an example, the drug has been around for so long. It's been tested and and studied for so long and so much detail is there. We do. Steve's right. We know an incredible amount about it. I take this medication, by the way, it helps me in a lot of ways and I can't tell you how important it is guys, to not buy into the stigma of taking medication, admitting that you have a mental health issue like ADHD. We just have to ride along with the hands that were given and make the best, you know, outcomes we can for what, what were handed when we're born, right? We have to. We have no choice and there's nothing to be ashamed of and there's nothing to be to feel self-conscious about. Everybody has pluses and minuses to who and what they are. And if you have ADHD, you know, without getting into the weeds here, ADHD could could help you in a lot of ways. There are pluses to it if you learn to work with it. And that's exactly what my wife and I are doing with our kids is we're teaching them, you know, don't, don't determine that this is a horrible thing. Let it be what it is. Mitigate the things that you can and lean into the things where it it gives you, you know, we like to call them superpowers like focus. I want to make sure though, like, you know, non drug interventions are, are worthwhile, that they're there. They're just harder to do because you have to stick with them and.

S: The the only non drug therapy that had reasonable evidence was cognitive behavioral therapy.

J: Of course, and that's always the number one choice with most of these.

S: The the effect size and the the confidence and the results was not as high As for the best medication. Yeah, and that's only in adults. That's also only in adults, not in kids.

J: Yeah, because cognitive behavioral therapy is very hard for children to do because it's a metacognition thing that you have to be able to, you have to have a lot of willpower and you have to be able to control yourself in order to do that correctly. But you know, it doesn't mean that the non drug interventions aren't worthwhile at all. They are. It just depends on who you are, you know, and you and you should explore them as well because some people have an incredibly positive response to to them as well.

S: Well you keep saying them but there's only one with reasonable evidence and that's cognitive therapy in adults. All of the other non drug interventions which they included acupuncture, CBT for children and adolescents, mindfulness in adults had low to very low certainty.

J: Yeah, I'm sorry.

S: The evidence was crap.

J: I'm talking about the different kinds of CBT because there's different flavors of it, yeah.

S: Just to be clear, because they also use non drug interventions to refer to other things and then they were in a completely different category.

J: Yeah, yeah, definitely. So one of the best things though again and I have to, I have to remind everyone that came out of this, it's the online platform that came with it. It's so it organizes results by the intervention age group and then the follow up period. It makes it easy to see what's known and how certain the knowledge is and the goal of the platform. Definitely is not to dictate a single best treatment, but to provide like transparent data that's easy to understand. It helps people make the best informed and individualized decisions about how to treat their ADHD. And I'm telling you, I am going to be all over this website. You know, I'm just not only am I just curious about it, but I'd like to see what it, you know, how it could help me and my kids and and other people that I know. I think it's a fantastic resource.

S: So a couple of things I think are worth pointing out. So 1 is that the authors point out in the sort of the weaknesses of this data is that this is group level data and they didn't have access to the individual data the the people who did this umbrella review. So they can only make group level observations. They can't, for example, say, does this medication work better in, in boys than girls, you know, or whatever in different subpopulations or subtypes. So we don't have that data in this database. That's something that maybe a follow up could bring that in, but they didn't have access to it when they were doing this review. The other thing is that everything that we've been saying applies only to short term results, basically less than one year for long term event outcome, like a year or longer. We just don't have the data. And there's two basic problems there. One is there just there just aren't a lot of studies and the studies that exist are small because it's it's harder, more expensive, takes a lot more research to do a long term follow up than to do say a six month follow up. So we just don't know, like are these effects sustainable for two or three years? There's no particular reason to think that they're not, but we just don't have the data. But it's also the that problem of small sample size is exacerbated by the fact that there's dropout over time because the effective interventions do have side effects. And especially in kids, they often don't like those side effects. So it's, you know, you're going to have a certain amount of of dropout, not because they don't work, but because people may not like the side effects. And what I find that what happens a lot is that people are, you know, are on the drug for a while, it works, but they don't like the side effects. They kind of forget what they were like off the drug. So they go off of it, you know what I mean? Because they're more aware of the side effects and they are of the negative effects of not being on the medication. So then they go through the cycle of going on it for a while, then going off of it for a while, then going on it for a while is not uncommon. But we do need randomized controlled trials with long term follow up with good rigorous methods and with large enough numbers to get meaningful data. So that's another big weakness of this data set. So, but given that, I mean, I think, you know, it is solid evidence that these interventions are effective at least you know, in for in that first year and you know, it can have a significant impact on people's lives. What I what I am most concerned about is the anti medication bias and stigma that exists in our culture, right? It's like everything's risk versus benefit. People think there's something inherently negative about kids or drugging. We can't drug kids, right? As if we've talked about this on the show before. I get to ADHD is really a problem with parenting. No, it isn't. It is not a problem with parenting. It is not something that could be parented away. It is a neurological disorder. I think that's why, you know, it's not just that kids are, it's harder to get them to comply with cognitive behavioral therapy like ADHD in kids. It's like it's really a neurological disorder. You have to take the medication in order to engage in CBT. You know what I mean? You can't really participate meaningfully or effectively if you have ADHD. So you got to kind of take the symptoms, got to whack those symptoms back to a certain extent. And I do think that's most practitioners use a combination of some kind of cognitive behavioral therapy with medication for that reason. You still need to have the behavioral interventions. All right. But yeah, it's a it's it's great when you have experts like make this massive effort to pour through tons of data and synthesize it all into something that is usable.

E: Yeah. Important part of the process, right?

S: Yeah, that's great.

Religious Nones (24:38)

• https://phys.org/news/2026-02-god-believing-nones-align-religious.html 

S: All right. Have you guys ever heard of religious nuns?

B: Of course they're not religious, are they?

S: Yes, of course, all the time. Not N. UNS but NONES the nuns. So when you do surveys asking people what their religious affiliation is, there's always one option called none, right? I am not affiliated with any organized religious group. I don't have any sort of identity. Nothing in particular, right? Just none that's the fastest growing religious group in the United States is the nuns is people who they have no particular religious affiliation. So right now, so it's grown from approximately 16% in 2007 to 28% today since this data has been being tracked. So 28% that's like the largest, you know, individual group. However, there's a, a more recent study, more recent data from the Pew Research Center looking, diving a level deeper into like the people who are in that group, that 28% that are, that would be considered in the nuns. And so they, there's a couple of insights that come out of this. One is they're very diverse group. We shouldn't assume they're all non religious or atheist or agnostic. They're not actually within that group. Atheist is the smallest subset at 16%. Twenty, 1% are agnostic, 28% believe in a higher power, and 35% believe in God. And if you what the the Pew survey found was that if you look at those people who are considered consider themselves none right. They are not affiliated with any organized religion, but they believe in God, their views on political issues and social issues, you know, closely aligned with religious conservatives. And so they support the death penalty, oppose abortion, support school prayer. Yeah. So we, we can't assume that, you know, the rise of this, this group, the nuns is, represents any kind of movement away from religion per SE or even conservative religious beliefs. It's just not, you know, it's just, you know, the younger generations just don't like aligning themselves with traditional institutions.

E: Right organized.

S: You know, organized religion, but it's not really necessarily a shift in their attitude about supernatural beliefs, religious beliefs, etcetera.

E: OK.

S: I mean, yeah, but you know, 21% agnostic, 16% atheist. That's more than the population as a whole. So obviously those those people are going to be captured in that nun group, but we shouldn't assume that that's universal in that group. So interesting. You know, you have to make sure that you can't make assumptions about things like that.

J: Yeah, definitely. Yeah, Yep.

US#01: Well, the, the growth of that group is, is good in other ways as well for just to, just to have it done normalized as being not part of any particular religion. For example, I remember once I, I cut my thumb, I had to go to the emergency room back in like 85 or so and they were doing the checklist when they were checking me in, you know, how old are you, blah, blah, blah. And they said what religion are you? And I just said none. And, and the nurse looked at me and she said what, what, what you, you, you, you don't have any religion. And that, and that's a lot is likely to happen today shouldn't happen then either. But Even so, 1986.

E: Yeah, we've shifted.

S: I've had that conversation with people. It's been a while. But you know, the idea that there are people who don't believe in anything supernatural is not even part of their worldview. They just don't get it. And then sometimes if they're, if they are like evangelical Christians, they'll say, so you believe in Satan. It's like, no, you're not hearing what I'm saying.

J: Oh my God, Yeah. So let me jump to the big.

S: Thing there are a subset of people who think that atheist means you worship Satan.

E: Right.

S: They do not get it at all.

E: Yeah.

S: And what's also interesting is that this kind of also tracks with the fact that in the United States at least, the number of people who don't affiliate with a political party is also significantly increasing. Sort of independence is now the largest political group.

E: It is, yeah.

S: Bigger than either Republicans or Democrats think. I think they're just sick of anything old.

E: Yeah, there's fatigue. There's a lot of fatigue there.

S: Yeah. All right, Bob, we're going to have a couple of Winter Olympics related items here. Tell us about the physics of the quintuple jump.

B: Like you guys and probably many people listening I'm sure, I've been watching the Olympics in Milano in Italy. There's so many amazing, amazing athletes from so many countries. But one athlete specifically caught my attention and he's the so-called quad God of figure skating, Ilya Malininin. So I wondered, did he really truly deserve a nickname like Quad God? And what about the possibility of him levelling up to an even more powerful God, a quint God? That's five rotations in the air. Might we see that in Milan? So OK, now this is February, the day before Friday the 13th and Ilya is going to the finals is tomorrow. So we don't know what's going what's going to happen. Obviously you guys already know what happened if you if you follow it. But he is Ilya Malinin is widely considered website after website widely considers him a generational athlete on on the level of say Simone Biles, my all time GOAT and Michael Phelps as well. So this guy is, you know, generally considered to be at that level, really just an amazing athlete on so many levels. He's overwhelmingly the favorite to win the men's gold in in figure skating Friday the 13th. And that's, and he's actually one of the largest individual favorites in Olympics history, apparently. So yeah, a lot of people have confidence in him. And it's it's well learned now. People call him the quad God for many, many good reasons. But Malanin is the only person that's ever landed the near mythical quad axle in international competition. That's. What does that mean? For, I'll tell you that's 4 1/2 rotations.

S: You mean the quadruple?

B: So this for this for you know this for rotation jump. This quad is was first ratified in competition in 1988 by Kurt Browning. Now he did the easiest quad. He did the toe loop and there's lots of different types of jumps, but toe loop is generally considered to be the easiest type of jump for a given quad or triple or double or single. It's considered the easiest and it took now this is 1988. It took until 20/22 for the other end of the spectrum, the hardest quad to happen and that's the the quad axle now it's called. It's the hardest because you do a front launch. It's the only, it's the only jump in figure skating where you launch frontwards. You're you're facing forwards, you jump, you do your spins and then you land backwards as you do in every jump, you land backwards. So because you're going from a front orientation and ending at a back orientation, it's going to be an extra half rotation. You got that. So it's 4 1/2 rotations. So every other quad leap is 4 rotations. So generally this is the hardest because it's an extra half rotation. That's why it's the hardest. It's, it's generally on the, the most studied type of, of jump in figure skating much more than than all the others. It's, it's like it's, it's the apex of, of jumping because it's, it's a little bit, it's a half rotation more than the others. Since 1988, lots of people are now doing quad jumps, not the axle of course, because that's only Malinin who's doing the the hardest axle quad, but everyone's doing all the other types of quads as far as I know. In some competitions, if you are not, if you don't have a quad jump in your routine, you are not going to be on the podium basically. That's I don't think that's universally true for everyone. And I'm talking, I'm talking men here. The women have done the quad. I think the first woman's quad was in 2002, which was amazing. But they're really not doing that anymore. There was some controversy when Russian competitors were pulling it off, but there was some there was some some controversy that happened. And basically that's not even happening anymore as far as I know on the women's side of thing. But for the men's side of thing, it's it's basically rampant. You really need to be able to do a quad, but only Maladin can do the quad axle. This hardest quadruple jump. Now, Mel Malanin likes telling reporters that he broke physics, which is he's goofing around. I hope he's goofing around because there's obviously nothing broken here. But Ilya's an Incarnate skating and jumping physics experiment, a walking, skating, jumping physics experiment because of because of what he does and how well he does it. So for example, guys, how many rotations do you think there are per minute for a quad if they could actually do it for an entire minute for?

E: A full minute.

B: Oh God, Thousand.

E: Oh yeah. No, no, no, I have. No idea. Well, let's say they're doing.

S: They're doing 4 rotations in a second, basically 200, two 140.

B: That's, that's reasonable. It's, it's, it's about .79 seconds, you know, around there. So it's about say 340 rotations per minute. Now, how is that achieved? That's obviously ridiculous, right? I mean, how are you going that fast even if you're doing, even if you're even if you're doing it for a brief period of time. So I will then now introduce you to the, the chair spin exercise, which hopefully many of you have done where you're sitting on a swiveling chair, right, that spins around and you spin yourself around, but with your legs and maybe I guess sometimes your arms out, but mainly your legs are out straight. And then when you and you start spinning, when you pull them in, you go faster and faster. And that's right. And everyone know, everyone knows about that. And of course, the, the iconic example is actually the figure skater who, who gets closer, who kind of shrinks their body and gets tighter and tighter and goes faster and faster. It's, it's classic essentially you're moving mass, you're moving more mass closer to the axis of rotation and your rotation speed increases. That's essentially what's happening here. It happens for many things in nature, like say neutron stars, right as they transition from a conventional star to a neutron star, they have what's technically called conservation of angular momentum. I'm sure a lot of you have heard of that conservation of angular momentum happens. And that essentially means that technically as as a moment of inertia decreases, it increases rotation speed. So just look that up if you want more details. It's fascinating stuff. So the rotations are kind of off the hook for the quads, but also other things like just the the pushing force off the ice when you push off the ice to get into the air and initiate your your spins. A quad requires approximately 500 to 550 lbs of force pushing off the ice. I hope you have, you know, I hope you're, you're not skipping late days because that just sounds ridiculous. But yeah, it's about 500 lbs and there's lots of variables here. It depends on a lot of things. It's individual on the person, on your technique. So these numbers can vary great a bit actually. So here, this one was really interesting. If you're doing a quad as as Ilyas do doing his quad, I think this is, this is specifically for his axle. Imagine, you know, he tightens his body and he's experiencing angular conservation of angular momentum, right? He's, he jumps and twists and then he pulls everything in and basically gets his body as tight straight up and down as he can. But we know about centripetal force, right? So the, as you spin, your arms want to go out, right? There's a force that's kind of pushing your arms or pulling your arms out outwards. It's been calculated that that's £200 per arm. So as he's leaping in the air for a quad jump, 200 lbs of force are pushed trying to push his arms or pull it away from his body. Now that sounds like a ridiculous amount of weight to resist. But remember, this is for less than a second. It's about, you know, a 3/4 of a second. So you can withstand that just like you can withstand a lot of GS for a very, very brief periods of time. You can obviously these skaters can obviously withstand that amazing force on their arms when they're when they're in the air for for less than a second. So the thing about Ili is that this guy, he really does deserve this, this quad God nickname that he has because he's really a lot of people consider him to be almost like the perfect package, the perfect package in terms of a figure skater. He's got a slight build, but he's but he's very strong and that, and that's what that's a key thing that he that he just luckily has genetically, because that means that he can, he can get his body into a much tighter formation that basically, like I said, it gets most more mass closer to the axis of rotation. So that's why he could spin very, very fast. If you're, if you're a typical, you know, if you're somebody that's that's much wider and and heavier, you're just not going to be able to, to, to do what he does in terms of spinning so fast and taking advantage of conservation of angular momentum. So now, so now we know how hard a quad is, right? A quad is incredibly hard. Now we'll segue to the quint. The quintuple 55 rotations never been done. Some people question whether it can be done for a quint. So instead of 300 to 400 rotations per minute per minute, a quint would require something around 400 to 500 revolutions per minute. So, so a lot, a lot more rotations going on here. It's basically spinning your body at at about the speed of a ceiling fan man on high or even a helicopter rotor, which which was surprising to me, but that's that's what some of these websites are saying. So never remember it's very brief period amount of time, but it's incredibly fast. 400 to 500 revolutions per minute force pushing off on the ground for a quint instead of say 500 to 550 lbs, it would probably be something around 600 lbs of force to push and twist off of the off of the ice as you leap into the air. Now the centripetal forces pulling his arms away, instead of being maybe £200 per arm for the quad, for the quint it would be roughly maybe 280 to 300 lbs potentially on each of his arms trying to shove them back out into the outward position.

S: But let me ask you a question. Could a large beetle do that beetle?

E: Oh yeah, I'm interested.

J: No, they can only handle about 96 lbs. Steve.

B: Maybe, yeah, maybe Beetlejuice. But this this really isn't speculative, though, because in a recent interview, Malinin admitted that he has already accomplished the quint, citing his parents as witnesses to the act. So that's that's. A wild. Boast. So that's the that's the best video evidence. Apparently no, there's, there's no mention of it. There's no mention of it. So I, I assume that he doesn't have it, but you know, I, I believe him.

S: I I assume he has it, he's just not showing it. He's going to reveal that bad boy at the Olympics. Or well, the competition.

B: Well, yeah, that's that's absolutely possible. But I believe him when he says he's done the quint already in practice because I don't think about it. Think about it though, he's going he's already doing 4 1/2 rotations for the quad axle. He just needs to get he needs to squeeze out just another half rotation and then he could land say a quint toe loop. I think that's total. That's totally believable. All he would need to do is push off with a little bit more force, get a little bit higher, spin his body, make his body a little bit tighter. If you Add all that up, I think that could add up to to 1/2 rotation, an extra half rotation that he's already doing. He's already doing half, you know, the 4.5 quite you arguably more easy than anybody else on the planet. He he actually pulled off 2 quad axles, one right after the other, which a lot of big figure skating fans lost it because that's amazing. One right after the other, two quad axles. Incredible.

US#01: And it's like what being in the matrix?

B: Almost, not quite, almost that whole bending back when he he was asked specifically, hey Ilya, you going to do the quint? And he said maybe, maybe not he and he finished that by saying this. He said this. So physically I'm ready. If the time is right, you might see it. So that there it is with the quint. We might actually see the quint. I think if I had to put some money down here, I think there's a slightly better chance that he won't do it in Milan. He's he's already I've I've watched, I've watched him skater ready that for for this Winter Olympics in Milan. He's so technically dominating everybody else that he's so many doesn't need it. He yeah, he really doesn't need it. His Axel is is his quad axle is so it is so amazing. He might easily think, I would say not want to risk a major fall or a bad injury. So I would not be surprised if we if and probably it won't happen. But as he said, if things go the right way at wherever he interprets that we may actually see it. And if not any Milan, I think we'll certainly see it before long because I mean, how much time is there before somebody, you know, eventually does a quad axle And then and then he'll have, you know, much more serious competition in terms of pulling that off. If he's especially once he's no longer the only person on the planet could that could do a quad axle, I think he might be pushed even more to do that quint. But then again, I, you could really say he will absolutely do this because this guy, I found this quote, he said it's not for the medals, not for the scores or the results. But I really want to change the face of skating. And that's exactly what a quint will do. So I think it's absolutely inevitable that we're going to see it, assuming he really has done it in, in, in practice, he is going to try that before, well before the end of his career. But then there's one other thing I need to talk about. One more thing. You knew I was going to go there. And that is two things. That's the sextuple. What is going on with a sextuple? Will we? We're still talking.

E: About skiing, Skating.

B: Yes, absolutely. Get your mind out of the gutter. Sextuple 66 rotations? What's the deal with that? Is that even possible? And I don't know, but I have to, I'm going to, I'm going to listen to Leak Cabell, who is a bio mechanics researcher so that this guy isn't this, this person is an expert. So I'll have to trust their take on this. They said there will be a physical limit and I think that quintuple is the limit. So he's basically ruling out the possibility of a standard human from doing a sextuple 6 rotations. If that's true, and it probably is, I think then what we will see is I think it's clear that Ilia will do a quint at some point, but an easy one like a toe loop quint at 1st and then the Holy Grail. The Holy Grail at that point will be the, the quintuple axle. I mean the, yeah, the, the, the quintuple axle, that's going to be the high watermark I think for what humans might be capable of. The, the axle, the, the, the 5 1/2 rotation quintuple axle I think might be the thing that that we don't hit for, for many years or potentially even that might be beyond the line where people just can't, it can't be done with based on the bio mechanics of the human body. That might be the point. Sextuple looks like it really is the the the quintuple axle might also be. I don't know, but I'd like to think that someday somebody will do that.

S: Cool.

E: Yeah, I heard he brought in a specialist. He was a spin.

S: Doctor, spin doctor. All right, Evan, tell us about Crotchgate.

E: I'm glad we're sticking with the Olympics here. All right, before I get into crotch gate, did you know that the 2026 Winter Olympics had a campaign slogan contest? OK, I bet you didn't know I entered the contest, but for some reason I didn't win. My submission was the 2026 Winter Olympics. It's all downhill from here. And for some reason that did not win. But all right, we'll try again in another four years. Oh, Speaking of downhill, did you know that the official title or titles of the Olympic downhill skiing events at are the men's downhill and the women's downhill? And they're considered part of the broader Alpine skiing discipline, which also includes slalom, giant slalom, super G and Alpine combined. So, but I'm getting out over my skis here. The Olympics, like any sporting event series and due to the nature of competition in general, always have their controversies. So far this year, with the first full week of the 2026 Winter Olympics under our belts, the biggest controversy has been ski jumping. And it comes not from, well, you know, doping. You know, athletes taking illegal drugs or geopolitics or even some kind of judging bias, but it comes from human anatomy and the clothing that covers it. And they're calling it crotch gate. A few people out there are putting it more bluntly called penis gate, but I think we'll stick with crotch gate.

S: I mean, if you want to go, if you want to one up crotch gate, you go to penis gate, I mean.

E: That's what they did. That's where they went, Robin.

US#01: Williams said that those suits were so tight that you could tell what religion they were.

E: All right, what's being claimed here? Here's the core allegation. There is a rumor that appears to have originated in the build, which is a German tabloid, and they're claiming that some male ski jumpers may be injecting what is it, hyaluronic acid into their genitals. Hyaluronic acid? Have you heard of hyaluronic acid before?

S: I've heard of it, yeah. I've heard of acid.

E: Well, right. I mean, you think like, what the heck is that? And why would you inject acid? Well, it's, it's actually a think of hyaluronic acid as your body's own personal super powered sponge. And even though it has acid in the name, it's not really the kind of burns at all. It's gooey. It's a clear sugar molecule that your body makes naturally to keep things slippery and bouncy. Bob, imagine a tiny sponge. OK, but it can hold 1000 times its own weight in water.

B: Nice, so if SpongeBob could do that.

E: Exactly. So if hyaluronic acid was the size of a grape that could hold enough water to fill a bat, that would fill a bathtub. And when you put it in in your skin or on your skin, it will grab moisture from the air and it will glue it to your face so it stays hydrated. And it's found in your joints as well. Knees. Elbows acts like WD40 for your bones, making sure they slide past each other smoothly instead of grinding together when you run or jump or get old. But what? Doctors and licensed professionals use it as a filler to add volume to the face, and doctors also inject a medical grade version of it into joints, most commonly knees. So that's what it is now. Again, the rumor is that the male ski jumpers may be injecting this into their genitals. Why? Yes. Why indeed? Because of the suits that they have to wear, which are tightly not only tightly fitting but tightly regulated, the athletes are actually body scanned and the suits must conform to strict limits on how much fabric surface area they can have. A slightly looser or larger suit with a little extra material will increase aerodynamic lift and essentially act like a like a little wing and give you that extra extra bit.

S: Yeah, at no point can the suit be more than 4 centimeters larger than their body. Than the body.

E: Yep. So the rumor suggests that if an athlete could temporarily increase, you know, their body measurements or their dimensions in some way, you could qualify for a slightly larger suit. And a larger suit would mean more air capture, more air capture, more distance, especially at the point where the legs meet the crotch right there. And that V that's the claim. What's it based on though? Like, why? Why is this a thing? Because suit cheating is a thing, and a recent thing. There was a real scandal at the 2025 Nordic World Championships where officials were caught altering suits after inspection. No, no, no. Can't do that. They added stiffer material in key areas like the crotch to improve flight characteristics, so that when you have it in that context, then the injection rumor might feel a little bit plausible. And some people might say, well, maybe there is something going on here. Does this really matter? Do physics say that this matters, Bob? And the answer is yes.

S: Absolutely. Of course.

E: Ski jumping is controlled gliding jumpers aim to maximize lift and you minimize drag. And that suit functions as part of that entire system, like a flexible airfoil in a sense, Evan.

J: Jay, did anybody inject their genitals with anything for this?

E: The the the answer to that, Jay, is no. There is no evidence that any athletes are actually doing this.

J: All right, good.

E: It's. Simply, it's simply a rumor, but it's a rumor that has caught attention and has been parroted and been, you know, shared and social media and before TikTok and that's it. Now the world basically knows about this. And again, if you are going to do this there, there are, there are physics behind it. It doesn't matter. Small increases in surface area can change lift coefficients. And that's why the International Ski and Snowboard Federation, they regulate these things that regulate the permeability of the fabric, the thickness of the fabric, fit tolerances as Steve was suggesting, and the body suit to gap measurements also as Steve mentioned. And they do this by using 3D body scanning images to enforce that compliance. So no evidence of this actually happening. In fact, they were the World Anti Doping Agency was recently asked about this rumor and they say no, they don't have no evidence of such a practice occurring. And not that it's technically doping in a sense, so it maybe doesn't exactly fall in their purview, but they were asked about it at A at a recent interview. It's just being dismissed as a wild as a wild rumor. So yes, it's a controversy in a sense, but with no evidence to back it up yet that's what they're talking about.

US#01: Now that would be nuts.

S: Crotch gate. All right, crotch.

E: Gate.

S: I think the whole gate thing has been overplayed.

E: Well, that's another thing is, well that I read a couple things. It's like, what? Won't we put the gate right in in at the end? Of the suffix. Everything can be gate, you know, paper clip gate or whatever.

S: Gate Gate I'm.

E: Sure, that's a thing too.

S: All right, everyone, we're going to take a quick break from our show to talk about our sponsor this week, Quince.

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

EPA Ends Endangerment Finding (54:00)

• https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/12/climate/trump-epa-greenhouse-gases-climate-change.html 

S: Let me ask you a question. Do you know what the endangerment finding is?

US#01: I do not.

S: What have I told you that it has to do with the EPA regulations?

US#01: Well, that sounds right. What are we? What's what's going on there?

S: How about any of you guys know what that that ring any bells? The endangerment finding. I'm with Parish, I know nothing.

B: I think I read recently about that, but of course it's lost in my brain.

S: It is a 2009 ruling by the EPA that, after reviewing the scientific evidence, concluded that the release of greenhouse gases is a danger to American health and to the environment.

E: Yes. OK. So to confirm what was suspected for a long time.

S: It's not scientifically controversial. It's pretty clear, you know, that greenhouse gases are warming the planet, that they are increasing the, you know, frequency of severe fire, of severe forest fires, the severity of hurricanes, deaths due to heat waves. And also there's, you know, in the pollution that releases most of the CO2 from burning fossil fuels directly causes exacerbations of asthma and and also other negative health impacts, right? So that has been the, the justification for all of the EPA's regulation of greenhouse gases. And from the time that that ruling was passed, it has been a target by the fossil fuel industry and others who have been trying to, you know, to get rid of the the endangerment finding as a way of undercutting the EPA's regulations of, you know, fossil fuels. But they had basically given up on it, right? So they lost several court cases. The the endangerment finding has been upheld in court numerous times at the appellate level. The Supreme Court essentially declined to hear the case. So they just basically let it stand. So it's basically has been settled law until now because the Trump administrate administration has just gotten rid of it. They just have eliminated the EPA. Yeah. If you mean if you pack the EPA with a bunch of Trump toadies who think that climate change is a hoax, then you can do things like just the EPA changing its rules. They up the greenhouse gases are no longer a danger to the environment or to public health.

E: OK. And that will be challenged, yes. Of course it will be. Yes.

B: Well, how do you think that challenge is going to go, Steve, because this is bad, because the regulations we have that are based on that.

S: So this will eliminate any ability of the EPA to regulate greenhouse gases. This is the end game, right? This is the absolute end game for the fossil fuel industry and for climate change deniers, right? This is this is they.

E: Got their brass ring.

S: If it's upheld in court, it becomes, it's not the kind of thing that you could easily undo, right? What will, what's going to happen now? And it's already being challenged, right? So it'll be challenged in court. There's, there's always a couple layers here. Do they have the legal right to do this? And do they get the science right? So I think the, the science question is always the easier one to answer. Actually, in this case, it's very clear that greenhouse gases cause global warming, which has negative consequences. But the legality, you know, I, they have their claims, the other side has their claims. I think what they're saying is that they that this, because this is settled law, they basically don't have the ability to do this or that their the arguments that I think the better way to look at is that the arguments that they're making are not legally justifiable because it's already settled that the that the EPA does have the right to do this. So they're just sort of resurrecting sort of the old claims that were used previously to try to shoot it down that have already been decided, decided in the courts. And of course their justification for it is always the same old crap. This will give consumers more choices and this would be good for the economy, which is, you know, all dubious. Actually a lot of of industry. The thing is, they've already invested billions in adhering to the EPA regulations and making it go away is not a good thing necessarily for business. Also, what what is going to happen is that states are going to pass their own guidelines. So now instead of having one federal guideline, companies are going to have to navigate 50 state guidelines.

J: Oh. Boy, that makes total sense. Yeah, that's going.

S: To because there's no way blue states are going to sit by and not do something about this, right? They're going to pass their own standards. So it's a disaster all along, and it's entirely based upon Trump basically claiming who knows what he actually believes, if he believes in anything. But it's been his stated public position that climate change is a hoax. That and he has been steadfastly against anything that can be perceived of as green energy or trying to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. You know, even if there's it has nothing to do with climate change, just he's against wind, he's against solar. He wants to, you know, to burn as much coal as possible, even when industry doesn't want to do it. It's just, it's just nuts. A lot of pressure.

B: Fortunately, he's fortunately though, he's definitely, I think he's definitely better in terms of how he feels about. Nuclear, right?

US#01: I saw recently saw that Trump approved a huge expenditure to expand nuclear power development.

S: Yeah, I mean, that started under Biden and I was paying close attention to whether that was going to continue. So that's fine. It it's it's not it's but still we are going to be emitting a lot more COT.

E: Yeah, what good does that do right if we're going to screw it up in other ways, it's.

B: Remember when I was reading about this? Remember when you we were flying into LA in the 70s and LA was, wasn't it like just basically well known for having this like. The layer of. Evolution, that was that. Was absolutely. Visible all the time and and that went away because of that regulation, right?

E: Yeah, the California, Michigan standards became.

B: Yeah. Was that related to the that was?

S: The Clean Air Act pretty much that did that on Fox Business on Wednesday, The Interior Secretary Doug Bergum basically resurrected an old, you know, anti global warming chestnut.

The Physics of the Quintuple Jump (1:00:50)

• https://www.reuters.com/sports/figure-skating-american-skater-malinin-teases-quintuple-jump-milano-games-2026-02-03/ 

S: He said CO2 was never a pollutant. When we breathe, we emit CO2 Plants need CO2 to survive and grow. They thrive with more Co.

US#01: Two, I've heard that before.

S: Yeah, So what? What cognitive error is he making there?

US#01: Fallacy of scale.

S: No, no, I don't think so. It's there's, it's something pretty specific. It's a category type of mistake, but it's it's a false analogy. And so what's the false analogy here, right. So you say, oh, we breathe CO2. So how could that be a? Polluted.

J: How could it be? Of course, yeah.

S: What's the difference between breathing out CO2 and burning? Burning fossil fuel adds CO2 that was not there before.

B: It's. A carbon cycle. It's adding to the. Cycle.

S: So when we breathe out CO2 and plants, you know, breathe in CO2, that's all part of the existing carbon cycle. I it's all already in sort of homeostasis in the environment. Burning fossil fuel is digging up a previously sequestered source of carbon that isn't part of the carbon cycle and then releasing it into the carbon cycle. So that's 2 completely different things. So either our interior secretary is scientifically illiterate and doesn't understand the basics of what he's talking about, or he knows it's bullshit and he's not intellectually honest, or some.

E: Combination of those two, fool or fraud?

S: Yeah, total nonsense. But you know this will have significant negative consequences even in the best case scenario. We even try to mitigate it.

E: Let's hope. The courts do the right thing. Here, yeah.

S: But yeah, even if they do, I mean, it's we're losing years and businesses don't have the any predictability, you know what I mean? It's like you have a fight over an issue, One side wins, the law gets passed, industry makes policy and investments based upon that. And they expect a certain amount of stability. They it's, they don't expect that every four years there's a complete reversal of all of our policy.

US#06: Yeah. About something.

S: And so you can't do business that way. I mean, we may have no choice with Trump, you know, but to try to return some sanity to the federal government. But it's still going to just create this cycle of every four years you get whiplash. And it's terrible for industry.

E: Awful.

S: It's terrible.

E: Bad for a country?

B: Hoping they're hoping, Steve, I'm hoping there are some companies that still just do the right thing.

S: No matter what, because they've already made the investment.

E: Invested, right?

S: So they were, they think all right and did this may not, you know, pass muster in the courts. And even if it does, it may get reversed. So all right, there is a, there is another layer here I'll bring up and that is this. This is also partly a manifestation of the fact that our Congress, Senate and and representatives aren't doing their freaking job. They allow the agencies right to make do a lot of interpretation of how they're supposed to carry out their policy. Now, I'm not saying that Congress should be micromanaging these agencies. That's that's right. There's there's a balance where you could write a law that says, yeah, they're going to, they're going to make the air clean and then let the EPA make all the decisions about how to do that. Or the at one end of the spectrum, or Congress could say the EPA is going to do ABCD and E and then spell out all the things they can and cannot do. That's the other end of the spectrum. Then there's something in the middle where Congress, you know, is, is passing a, you know, a specific agenda, but still with enough wiggle room for the experts to figure out how to accomplish it. Right. But what what Congress has been doing in the last 3 or 4 decades increasingly is just really not legislating. Like not, yeah, they're deferred there. It's just so much easier for them to defer to these agencies. And what that means is like, as here, like this is an EPA rule. Congress never said specifically the EPA can regulate greenhouse gases. The EPA made that rule based upon the endangerment finding, which means the EPA can take away that rule as well. You know, but at any point, Congress can act as say, the EPA can regulate greenhouse gases and then the executive branch can't just take it away because it's now it's in law. So there, there is a balance there. And they are not striking that balance. They are not doing their job.

E: Yeah, they're shirking their responsibility.

S: Absolutely. And this is the kind of shenanigans that that that comes from that. And this is not an isolated incident. This is happening across the board where the Trump administration is exploiting this fact in order to make huge changes to how agencies carry out their mission because they were given so much leeway in the first base in the 1st place by a do nothing Congress. You know, that's not, not not doing their job, basically.

E: Yeah, so much for checks and balances.

S: Right. Checks and balances are, are not functioning in my opinion. So there's that deeper problem that needs to be fixed. Congress needs to get off their ass and and actually codify a lot of these rules so that they're not, you know, there isn't this whiplash every four years when when the executive branch changes.

B: Well, if we don't see some serious codification going on in the next administration, I'm.

S: Yeah, but get that, get the problem there. The problem there is the is the filibuster. So are you going to get rid of the filibuster to do it and then take a chance that then if the other party gets a simple majority in the Senate, then they'll be able to do everything they want to do?

B: I'm hoping that after these shenanigans, that is not even remotely. Possible. Yeah.

S: I thought that four years ago, though, didn't. Didn't we? Yeah, but we can't count on that. So, you know, I think we need some major restructuring, you know, to get to re establish the checks and balances that were imagined by the framers of the Constitution because doesn't seem that we have it now.

B: I'll tell you I want the AIS from the Polity universe to run shit because clearly we can't.

E: Do ourselves, yeah.

B: I'll say no more.

E: Be careful.

B: I've I've said it, I said the AI's from the Polity universe, they're really good.

S: At this point, it's hard to imagine anything wouldn't be better. All right, Jay, it's who's that noisy time?

J: All right guys, last week I played this noisy. You guys know what that is?

E: Yeah, someone's gargling and shooting pool at the same time.

S: It's an aquatic. Mammal.

J: So guys, I played a noise and none of you have any idea what it is.

S: It's an aquatic mammal.

J: Carrot. Yeah. Well, that's not a bad start, Steve. Not bad. Not bad at all. Let me get to the the people here that wrote in Michael Blaney. He said hi, Jay. This week. I'm guessing it's a baby giant panda getting awfully annoyed at it as the keeper is trying to get him back into the cage. And I it made me realize that I don't know what noises pandas make, so I'm going to have to find out or somebody send me one. I don't know. They make do they make a lot of noises? They just seem happy and dopey, you know?

E: I'm sleepy.

J: And sleeping, another listener wrote in, this is Josh. And he says, hey, Jay, this sounds like an animal in a concrete enclosure. So something that people would want to see in a zoo. That's a that's good thinking there. So I'm going to go with an adolescent seal waiting for its fish dinner. Not a bad guess, my friend. OK, Steve, I have another another guest here from a listener named Martin Jane. And Martin says my five year old son was listening tonight and asked if I could guess if the noisy was his little sister Minerva going crazy. And so I did. So he thinks that this is his little sister. All right, remember that guess as I play the sound for you again because there was no winner this week. Ready. Listen again. So that little 5 year old that thought it was his sister going crazy, he actually thinks that his mom sent in the noisy of the little sister.

B: Oh my God.

J: He's convinced that's his little sister. So I like, I like what's going on in that house. All right, so nobody got it right, but, you know, some close guesses. This is a this came from a video of two South American giant river otters. The the person Michael Clanton that sent it, sent it in. Apparently he works with them. And he said they make very entertaining noises while they eat. And he said they remind me of Wookies. And the clip was taken during a nightly feeding. You know, they come out in the evening. And he said, Please note that his facility is very strict about social media. So he asked, you do not share the video, but I was able to at least talk about it. So yeah, these are giant river otters just completely like, these are gourmands, you know, like enjoying their dinner.

B: Nice.

J: You know, you ever see a dog eat dinner? You know how like that joy, that moment of joy that lasts about 3 seconds for them poor bastards. All right, Anyway, thank you for guessing guys. This week. I have a new noisy for you guys this week. It was sent in by a listener named John. And here it is. This is John Kelly. That is the sound I have submitted. If you guys think you know what the sound is or the noisy is this week or you heard something cool, e-mail me at wtn@theskepticsguide.org. All right guys, we have a ton of SGU events coming up. George will be there.

S: And you know what? George is here right now, in fact.

US#06: I just, yeah, I just came in the room on as as are you talking about the our, our, our upcoming events?

J: George, sit down and join us. OK, we got to get.

US#06: There again, I saw the the bat phone went off. So I thought, all right, let me get let me get in here. George. Hi, guys.

J: Hi, I was just telling them about the, the private show that'll happen, you know, in the late morning and early afternoon on May 30th in Madison, WI. You're aware of this May 30th, right? So the, the, the the secret SGU meet up is going to happen on May 29th this Friday night. Then Thursday morning we're just going to keep repeating this Thursday morning we have the private show Plus, which is a private SGU recording. And then on the 30th that evening we are going to have the extravaganza show. This is our stage show. A lot of you have seen it. It's a ton of fun. You got to come check us out. If you haven't seen us, you can get all these tickets on theskepticsguide.org website. The other big thing is we have tickets available for both the Nauticon conference that we will be having in Sydney, Australia. This is happening the weekend of July 20. It starts on July 23rd. Don't. I won't go through each day and everything, but there's tons of events happening at this conference. We have private shows, we have Extravaganza, we have VI PS There's all sorts of stuff you should check out. You can. Go what else we have, Jay. What do we got?

S: Doctor Carl.

J: Yeah, you know what? We talked. Steve and I talked to Doctor Carl today.

US#06: Oh, how cool is Doctor Carl?

J: George, check this out I I said this to doctor Carl I go, hey doctor Carl I explained to him what not a con is I had to give him like the 30,000 foot view like this isn't speakers that we're not flying in people to come talk about anything. We are flying in people we're flying in people to entertain people for fun. And he and then I told him, you know, we did we do this thing where we like pretend we're reading a movie script and one person doesn't know what movie it is. I give him a couple of other examples and he he wants it. He wants to do everything.

US#06: He's all in, right?

J: He's.

US#06: He's the best man.

J: Yeah, so he's, he's awesome and he'll he will be there. I will be putting more information up on the website soon about the details. But right now all the ticketed events are up except we will be adding in like I said, the secret SDU meet up which will be happening in Australia. This is very likely to happen on Wednesday, July 22nd at night. You'll hear about this next week and I'll probably have it up by then so you can buy tickets if you're interested.

US#06: Aren't we doing some cool thing in June also up there in New York?

J: I have a list I'm getting to OH.

US#06: My gosh. OK, what's that about?

J: Yeah. So we're going to be at SYCON 2026. This is happening June 11th to 14th. What will be happening at Sycon is there will be a live SGU recording that will be on, you know, whatever their mainstage is for everyone to see. It's part of the conference, but we will also be running a extravaganza. I believe that is happening on, on Friday night. You could check their schedule, but I, I do think it's happening that Friday night. But we'll be there, George. Of course, we'll be running that show and we're super excited. Stephen Huff told us the tickets are selling really nicely and there is a limit to the number of tickets. So if you're interested, you should go check it out right now.

S: They're almost certainly going to sell.

J: Out and on top of that, guys, the conference itself is awesome. The speaker list is fantastic. You really should just go take a look. Yeah, I've been, I looked it over a few times and I I just, I'm excited to be speaking with everyone that's going to be there this year. It's going to be a great time. June 11th to 14th in Buffalo, NY.

US#06: Yeah, it's not Las Vegas. It's in, it's on the East Coast, it's in Buffalo, NY So if you've always wanted to go to one of these things, but it's been too far away because it's, you know, over there in Las Vegas or whatever, go to New York. It's going to be fantastic.

S: We're going to shuffle off to Buffalo.

US#06: We.

J: Go to Sycon conference.org. I'm sorry, CSICONFERENC, e.org. Now, I know a lot of people don't want me to say this, but the Star Trek Museum is only four hours away from where the conference is happening, and I might fly. One teleportation. It's not even. George, I might fly up a day early and go do this.

US#06: Transport Yeah, might big quotes.

J: Very likely it's going to happen. I'm telling you, I want to do it if you're interested. Jay Dallas, Hello.

S: Remember, we looked at the map first of all, from where we are, Buffalo is basically due West and Ticonderoga is basically due N You are no closer to Buffalo when you're at the Star Trek Museum than you are right now.

J: So you're telling me that you don't want me to go? Is that I'm.

S: Just and it's like 6 hours away.

E: Don't miss 4 hours. Away can't miss leave it's.

J: Steve, you ever have a love play? No one else have a love. It's funny 'cause we think.

S: Of upstate New York as being north, but it's really West.

J: So you don't like Star Trek?

S: I love it. I'm actually I'm watching my way through every Star Trek series.

J: OK, well, maybe you'll join me then and stop talking. Thank you. OK, so go to cyconconference.org for that. Now there is another conference. My God, this is the busiest freaking year. All right, We're also going to go to this year's New Zealand Skeptics Conference. It's going to be in Christchurch and we will be there like that Friday night, July 31st and August 1st, which is and that'll be the day that we are providing content for the conference, the entire day. So if you're interested, look up the New Zealand Skeptics website and go check it out because we're going to be there. And I'll tell you what, this might be the last time, guys, it's an incredibly long trip and.

S: They're really putting us to work down under.

J: Oh, hell yeah. I mean, they want us to do everything. They were talking, talking to us about helping with politics over there, You know, because we have it so well over here. It's it's. Crazy.

S: All right. And George, you got some stuff going on. Too.

US#06: I have one really cool concert. I think you're gorgeous, attractive, intelligent listeners will really enjoy on March 7th right here in Bethlehem. You guys remember the Ice House? We did the no show there. Yeah, of course we did 2 no shows there. Actually 2 no's show there. I'm back in the Ice House on March 7th and I'm doing a piece that I've kind of been working on for more than a decade. Back to 1213 years ago, I decided to write one song for each element on the periodic table. So it's 118 mini songs. They're all done. I have a band, this unbelievable band, playing all these tunes. It's 118 elements, it's 118 songs. It's 90 minutes long. Some songs are like 5 seconds. I think the longest song is maybe 2 minutes or so. And it's going to be happening at the Ice House right here in Bethlehem. It's every style of music. It's such a, it's such a fun thing and that I get to do it with a band. I've done it solo before. I've done this whole show solo, just me and a guitar, but I've never done it with a band. And the whole thing about the band is that the musicians I have can do all these styles because it's punk and it's funk and it's, it's Prague and jazz and classical and polka and, and it's like every style of music within these. There's a sort of, yeah, there's like a Scott tune. There's like one one of the Scottish kind of kinds of tunes.

E: Is there zydeco?

US#06: There's not really zydeco, but maybe, yeah, if any more are discovered, maybe we can add some. I mean, like name an element, name an element. Anybody.

E: Copper. Copper. So. That's right, Copper.

US#06: So, well, that's it. Copper is. You'll never take me alive. Copper. That's copper.

E: OK, I'm there. All right. Molybdenum.

US#06: Molybdenum. Molybdenum. You got an M and AB and AD molebdenum. I guess that's what confused me because I'm a dummy. I'm a dummy. They're like, they're all little, little little sketches like that. I pretty much have the whole thing memorized, which is kind of crazy.

J: But they're dancing at this show.

US#06: Well, I'll be dancing and if you want to dance by the end of the by the end of the night, once we get, you know, into the one hundreds, people will be up and they'll be dancing and boogying. I can guarantee so. So it's it's me and the George Rob Band, which is Eric and Vinnie and Kira and CJ, some amazing musicians. Most of these are very, very silly. They're very fun. They're very light. It's a wonderful distraction for 90 minutes. You can go to 118elements.eventbrite.com, 118 elements.eventbrite.com. That's BRITE. eventbrite.com and get tickets for it and come see the show. It's like, it's just like nerd heaven because it's music, it's science, it's everything, everything you guys love and that your audience loves. And I'm super excited to do it with a real band. So please come on out March 7th.

S: All right. Thank you, George.

US#06: Thanks guys. All these events, All right, be safe. Bye, bye, bye.

S: All right, guys, we're going to do a couple emails. The first one is a correction of a correction. I love these. So last week we talked about the yellow sun and why the sun appears, why the sun is white even though it's classified as a yellow sun and why it appears yellow even though the light from it is actually white. And I mentioned Neil degrasse Tyson's example of the well, the snow would be yellow if the sun were actually yellow. And I didn't understand that because of the sun still looks yellow, doesn't matter why it looks yellow. But about 3000 of our listeners pointed out that even though the blue light is scattered from the sunlight, making the sun look yellow, that blue light does eventually get to the ground. That's why you see the sky is blue, which of course makes total sense. And so essentially all all the white light is hitting the ground, it's just separated into blue light from the sky and yellow light from the sun. Does that make sense?

B: Oh, OK, yeah. Yeah, totally.

E: Combine the two, that's what.

S: Yeah. So that makes sense. Yeah. So that thanks. Thank you everyone for sending in that clarify. I I did check it out. That does make a lot of sense. OK, have you got another e-mail? This is really a name that logical fallacy kind of thing. This comes from Jeffrey from Columbus, OH and he writes ran across this cognitive bias with while exploring impacts and trends in AI. Turkey illusion was first introduced by Bertrand Russell to illustrate a problem with inductive reasoning. Never heard of this cognitive bias before. Wondered if you guys had any thoughts? Have any of you heard about the Turkey Illusion?

E: No, no, I haven't.

S: Yeah, so I've, I've never heard this term before. I'm familiar with the cognitive bias, but let me explain to you why it's called the Turkey illusion. So a Turkey gets fed by the human who owns him every day, right?

E: Given.

S: So, and this happens every day. And so the Turkey observes the trend. I get fed every day by this human and they believe that that trend is going to continue indefinitely. Because yeah, I wouldn't. It happens every day without fail over a fairly long period of time. It's a well established trend, right up to the point where the human kills the Turkey to eat it, right?

J: Sure.

S: So the fallacy is the Turkey not understanding the reason for the trend, right? So he extrapolates the trend without understanding why the trend exists and therefore has doesn't have the cognitive framework to recognize that there is a trend break coming. Right. OK, so the Turkey would have to know, ah this human is fattening me up for the kill. It would have to know that context to realize that this trend will stop at some point. Does that make sense? So that is the Turkey illusion. It's basically assuming that a trend will continue indefinitely because you don't understand the nature of the trend and why it will inevitably lead to a trend break.

E: The hot hand fallacy that. Got it.

S: I don't think it's the the hot hand fallacy is different. That is seeing a trend of 1 doesn't exist. In this case there is a trend, it's just you're extrapolating it indefinitely into the future because you don't understand its true 'cause OK got it right. Can you get any of you guys think of another example of that? All right, I'll give you 1, please. There's a political 1. So everyone was saying, like after the 2024 election in the US that the American electorate is shifting to the right, right? Because that was the trend in voting over the last couple of elections. But actually there are a lot of experts that think that the actual trend is away from incumbents, not towards the right.

E: Interesting.

S: And so it's appear.

E: Right.

S: Yeah, which is actually a worldwide trend and is, is true. So over the last several elections, right, we've that is the last three elections the incumbent party was voted out. So if you don't understand the true nature of the trend, the recent trend is not a shift to the right. It is an anti incumbency trend that will cause you to mispredict the next election, right? Does that make sense?

E: Lead you astray? Sure.

S: So it's, it's, it's good to keep in mind, I think the broader concept, which we have said on the show many times and we actually talk about it in our book, guys, right, that you cannot assume that an existing trend will continue indefinitely. Sometimes there are inherent limits, right? Alright, So Bob, like for example, the the increasing the number of rotations in the yeah, in skating we can't assume like Oh yeah. So they went from doing triples to doing triple axles to doing quads, doing quad axle. Now we're going to do a quintuple. It'll keep going. That trend will.

B: Continue sextuple, Sep tuple octuple. Octuple.

S: But it won't, because there are you forget.

B: Human Bio.

S: Mechanics involved, yeah, there's another related trend. Another related cognitive bias is that we assume that trends are linear. There's a linearity bias, right? And and many train trends are not linear. They're either geometric or.

B: Exponential.

S: Exponential or something? Yeah.

E: Or more of a cycle right up. Down or a cycle. Like a wave form almost.

S: Right, I've heard of double exponential.

E: Is that a thing?

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

Crotchgate (1:25:01)

• Crotch-gate: The biggest controversy heading into the Winter Olympics involves … ski jumping? - Yahoo Sports 

C: It's time for science or fiction.

S: Each week I come up with three Science News items or facts, 2 real and one fictitious. Then I challenge my panel of skeptics to tell me which one is the fake. There's a theme this week and I'm very sad that Cara is not here.

E: Oh, is it about cold?

S: I didn't pick this theme for her, but I was thinking of her when I did. The theme is Astronomy 3 Astronomical news items Here we go. You guys ready? Item number 1 Astronomers have confirmed for the first time the presence of a lava tube on Venus. Item number 2, Astronomers have observed the quiet collapse of a super giant star into a black hole without first going supernova. And I #3 exoplanet hunters have described a rare inside out stellar system with four gas giants close to their parent star and four rocky worlds further out. All right, Parrish, as our guest, you get to go first.

US#01: Oh, the first lambd of the slaughter.

S: Eh, absolutely.

US#01: OK, well let's see here the quiet collapse of the supergiant into a black hole without passing into any of the intermediary steri stages that we would be expecting That one doesn't strike me as too improbable. I know that that's been theorized and some people are wondering whether might it might happen with Beetlejuice and the the physics there. It doesn't seem too far out assuming that the the Super giant, it has large enough and has enough mass in the 1st place to surpass or bypass the the neutron star stage. So I I think that one's going to be science. The exoplanets inside out stellar system with the gas giants near the sun and the rocky planets farther outside. That one seems somewhat farther fetched because the planets closer to the star should be warmer and thus less likely to form into gas giants. So I'm not too sure about that one. The only reason I'm, I'm holding off is that the, the lava tube on Venus, I believe we don't have any active probes around Venus right now. So I'm not sure how we would confirm that. So I, I think it's a pretty close call between those two. But I think I'm going to have to say that the lava tube on Venus is the fiction because we just don't have anything there right now that would be able to see something on that scale. So I'm going to say yeah, Lava Tube is the fiction.

S: OK, Bob.

B: Yeah, the lava tube on Venus. I mean, I really don't have any problems with that. The only potential problem here is that you say for the first time, I wouldn't be surprised if they found this, you know, many years ago as well. So, but that's more of a subtle thing that you maybe maybe wouldn't have done. But I don't have any trouble with that. I think the quiet collapse of a super giant star into a black hole. Wow. Yeah. Because you classically think that this gun, there's got to be a supernova, right? There's got to be a huge explosion. Yeah. So I'm not too, I'm not familiar with this theory or this or this possibility. But there's something about the the rebound, the rebound of the of the star that actually becomes this supernova that we see. I guess that could potentially happen in a way where that rebound just doesn't happen. I'm not sure exactly how that would work, but that seems possible. Let's look at this third one here. A rare inside out. OK, so we've got 4 gas giants in close and the rocky worlds are out. That's pretty wack right there. But we do know that the giant planets can migrate to the hot Jupiter can migrate in closer to the star and and I could imagine that would be wreaking havoc in the inner solar system and potentially knocking out the rocky, the rocky planets. But I just think if you've got how many here, three or four of these of these gas giants, 4 gas giants close to the parent, that just seems like something that that wouldn't be too rare to be reasonable. I think they would probably kick out those planets it just out of the out of the solar system entirely. The fact that they could, that they can migrate back out and and be in stable orbits doesn't seem terribly likely because if they formed it far away from the sun, then they would have, then they would have huge gashes envelopes around them as well. So yeah, I'm going to say that the inside out stellar system is fiction.

S: OK, Jay.

J: Yeah. You know, I've been thinking about these as you guys were talking and I don't have a lot of things to go on with the exoplanet. You know, the exoplanet hunter is describing the inside out stellar system. I mean, I just think the universe is so big and wacky that something like this could happen. You know, statistically weird things are going to happen out there. You know, the the second one about the astronomers observing the the quiet collapse of the Super giant star. It didn't go supernova first. I I don't know enough about that. Like, you know, what could have happened for it to not have an, you know, have that mega explosion event. I don't know. But the one that I, you know, kind of agreeing with Parish here about the first one because, you know, going on one, Travis, how the hell do we know what's going on on the surface of Venus? I don't think we could pick up details like that about the surface of Venus, like, unless we have a probe there that can verify anything, like what the hell do we know? You know what I mean? It's like super obscure. And on top of that, like things don't last long at all on the surface of that planet. So I just don't think we know about lava tubes on Venus.

S: OK. And Devin?

E: Well, the pushback for the lava tubes on Venus would be that they analyzed old data that was collected in the 70s or from the the time the Soviet Union launched probes there and came to the conclusion that some of the data revealed a lava tube. Didn't know it at the time, whatever. So that could be the case. I don't think so though. The the Super giant collapse of the Super giant star into a black hole without going supernova. I you know, I usually rely on Bob anytime the word black hole comes up and he didn't go there. So that's kind of really all I have to go there. But he did say that the Exoplanet 1 was the fiction because we don't know how those rocky planets could have gotten out there unless there's captured rogue rocky planets that got captured somehow on the outside. But why wouldn't they have been pulled in more? I mean, I suppose it's possible. So yeah, it's either that or Venus. I'll, I'll hang, I'll hang out with Bob and I'll, I'll join you, Bob. Exoplanets are fiction.

S: All right, so we've got an even split, but you guys all agree on the second one. Astronomers have observed the quiet collapse of a super giant star into a black hole without first going supernova. You guys all think this one is science and this one is science. This is science, Yeah. So not crazy. It's it's just hard to observe it, right. This is the first time I think that where they saw the star, it was going, it was, you know, becoming a super giant. It was looked like it was about to go supernova and then it just went dark. It did not go supernova. And so it's like, Yep, that star, given the mass, given its mass, it has to be a black hole. But it never went supernova. So essentially the theory is that that the shockwave is not strong enough to produce a black hole right with the core collapses. So again, very, very quickly, when when stars burn through their fuel at their core, if they're heavy enough, they go on to the they start fusing the new fuel, right? They have to. They collapse down to higher heat and pressure until they could burn the new fuel up to the limit of their mass or iron, which is the the heaviest element that star stars can get energy out of. And then once they can no longer burn their fuel, at their core, there's nothing to hold the star up, right? There's no outward pressure of gravity wins. So gravity wins. It collapses down. That creates A shockwave, which then produces A supernova. But it's possible that it that the shockwave is just not strong enough to eject the outer envelope as a supernova it but the star still has enough mass to collapse into a black hole. So we're just kind of right, yeah, Fades away into a black hole rather than going.

B: So basically the star's outer envelope is gently expelled rather than explosively ejected, right?

S: Yeah, exactly.

B: So that one is.

S: Let's go on to the third one. Exoplanet hunters have described a rare inside out stellar system with four gas giants close to their parent star and four rocky rolls further out. Bob and Evan, you think this one is the fiction Parish J you think this one is science. So first let me explain to you why this It would be rare to have 4 gas giants close to a star and four Rocky rolls further out. I remember wondering this when I was younger, like basically my whole life until I learned what the answer was. But it's like, so is our solar system typical, right? We have the four rocky worlds, you know, Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars. And then, you know, closer to in the inner solar system and the outer solar system is Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, all gas giants. And it doesn't seem random, right? It seems like, you know, there might be a reason for that. And I wondered, are, is this typical? Is this what we're going to find when we start finding exoplanets? Or could planets be in any configuration? It turns out, no, this is a typical configuration. There's a very good reason for it. So rocky worlds that are close to their stars, they can't collect the the lighter gases like hydrogen and helium because the solar wind blows them away, right? So basically strips.

B: Kind of gravity to hold on to them. Yeah, they don't have enough.

S: Well, they they could, but not that close to the sun, the outer solar system, where it's cooler. As planets form, they can hold on to those lighter gases and get bigger and bigger and bigger and turn into gas giants. So you're always going to have rocky worlds close in and gas giants farther out. Bob is correct. A certain percentage of systems, however, have so-called hot Jupiters, which is when a gas giant which formed in the outer system migrates into the inner system, migrates in close. That does typically kick out all of the inner planets, so when that happens.

US#01: There's a bad joke about ice in there somewhere but I can't find it.

S: Oh boy. So how likely is it to have a an A typical quote UN quote inside out stellar system? Everyone agrees they would be rare, but have they actually found one?

E: Right. One that we can observe from or.

S: Yeah, you know, we can't have limited, categorized, categorized thousands of exoplanets.

E: Sure, but that's a small smidgen of all the systems. It's a yeah.

S: Is it a pick it up sample size where we would expect something that's to happen? Or maybe it's more common than we think? Maybe there is some way this can happen?

B: Some mechanism we're not accounting for. I mean, I doubt it, but.

S: So.

Who's That Noisy? + Announcements (1:37:01)

E: Therefore.

S: Exoplanet hunters have found what they're calling an inside out stellar system, but this one is still the fiction.

E: OK, because it doesn't gas giants because.

S: It's not this dramatic. So they what they found was and they get inside out is really like they're pushing it. You know, that's I wouldn't I would reserve that term for one that's more like what I'm describing here. What they found was a red dwarf with a rocky inner planet, followed by two gas giants and then another rocky planet as the 4th planet. That's what they're calling the Inside out system. Yeah, right. It's not anything.

E: Yeah, they're trying to get more.

S: Hits but it's still it's still a dilemma of well how did that rocky world form further away than they why isn't it a gas giant So what they they're working hypothesis is that the.

B: Magnetic field No magnetic, no magnetosphere capture.

S: Nope. That the planets formed at different times so early on in the formation of the stellar system. You know, inner planets would get stripped of their atmosphere and outer planets would hold on to it and form into gas giants. But if a if the outermost rocky world formed late in the age of this system, then when when it was forming, there was no longer any gas around to form a gas giant. So it, even though it was far enough out to hold on to it, it just wasn't around. And so it that's why it never evolved into a gas giant.

J: So that's pretty sad.

S: Yeah. So that so that what they're thinking of is the what mechanism would cause planets to form at different times rather than all form at the same time. You know, with the primordial disk, right? With gas and stuff.

B: So could have been a capture potentially.

S: They don't think so. They think it formed in place just later in the age of the star. But we'll see. You know what, you know what this is the planet, by the way, is LHS or the system LHS 19 O3. You could look it up. So it's the first, it's considered to be the first quote UN quote inside out solar system that has that outer rocky world.

B: Semi inside out.

S: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's not, yeah, you know, 4 gas giants in the inner solar system and four rocky rolls in the outer solar system.

B: That's whack, man. That's whack.

S: Yeah. We don't know how that that's that's a different thing altogether.

B: Yeah, that sounds, if it's even possible, right? Exceedingly rare.

S: It'll be very rare, yeah. And we, yeah, we have a challenge to figure out how that. Happened.

US#01: Is it possible that something like that will happen with our solar system after or the sun expands to a red giant and then collapses into a dwarf several billion years from now?

S: Well, we still wouldn't have the gas giants on the inside.

B: Yeah, we still, yeah, they wouldn't be migrating down at that point that that happens early, that happens.

S: Well, when our when our sun expands into a super giant, it's.

B: Going to it's.

S: Going to eat all the inner planets. Yeah, we will be a cinders.

J: And there's no way to prevent that either.

S: No.

B: Well. I mean, they were holding out one possibility that as the sun loses its outer layers and its gravity actually goes down, that we will go out into A to a higher orbit and and, you know, potentially, you know, miss the nastiest heat. But I think they but that's could be old information. They may have they may have revised that and say, no, it's bits. We're going to be fried to a sender definitely. So I'm not sure what the.

S: Theoretically, do it ourselves just to, you know, by by doing the gravitational breaking or gravitational assists to move the Earth slowly over millions of years into an outer orbit just to keep pace with the evolution of the Sun. That would be challenging to orchestrate that, but not theoretically impossible.

B: True. Like getting some asteroids and bringing them in or something. But yeah, that's something that centuries and millennia of time, Yeah, something that's absolutely not. Implausible.

S: All right? Which means that astronomers have confirmed for the first time the presence of a lava tube on Venus is science. So how is that? How is that possible? So, so Evan is correct. Actually they used the evidence from 1990 to 1992, the synthetic aperture radar instrument aboard the Magellan spacecraft mapped to the Venusian surface. And this is a reanalysis of that data leveraging SAR imaging technique developed for, so basically a new technique that didn't exist in the 90s for detecting and characterizing accessible subsurface conduits in the proximity of skylights. So, Bob, have you ever heard the term pyroduct?

B: No, a pyroduct is a lava tube.

S: Yeah, Yeah, a pyroduct makes sense. Pyroduct And you know what a skylight is, right?

B: Yeah, that's when top of it collapses and you can see down into it.

S: Exactly. So that's what they were able to image was the skylight looking down into a pyriduct, a lava tube. So yeah, there's a part, a portion of the roof collapses down, exposing the lava tube. And what they were seeing, they said, was kids characterized by a diameter of about 1 kilometer diameter, a roof thickness of at least 150 meters and an empty void height of no less than 375 meters. So that's a big boy extends in the subsurface for at least 300 meters from the skylight. So pretty cool. Not to be unexpected. There's a lot of volcanic activity on Venus.

B: Sure.

S: Or there has there has been. So it's. Yeah, it's a feature that we expect to see where there has been volcanic activity. And of course we're interested in in lava tubes in pyroducts Moon.

E: Mars More yeah for. On the moon and on Mars, they're a great place to put.

B: Oh my God, it's a no brainer. It's a no brainer. The radiation and the damn regolith. This. It's such a nasty place on the surface of the moon for extended periods of time. The lava tube. I mean, I don't need to do I need.

S: To it's a ready made it's underground dwelling.

E: Yeah, right.

B: A Hobbit hole. Ready to go? We will. It's such a great idea. We will eventually be there. Yeah, totally. Basically guaranteed.

Emails (1:43:21)

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

E: The most difficult time to be skeptical is when we want or don't want to believe. It all comes down to how willing we are to be honest with ourselves. Melanie. Tracy King.

S: Yep, very true. Although I I saying it all comes down to I think no. It's willing to be honest with ourselves as a necessary but insufficient criterion for being skeptical. I think the biggest impediment to like, having a, like a really skeptical attitude on a specific topic is motivated reasoning.

E: Oh, yeah.

S: Because it was motivated reasoning. You could convince yourself of any position and you you convince yourself that you have good skeptical reasons or scientific reasons for believing it. And we're just really good at it. And The thing is, smarter people are better at it. And so skeptics who are used to thinking skeptically and scientifically can leverage that through motivated reasoning to arrive at desired conclusions. It's the hardest thing to to, to really be on the guard for, you know?

B: It is because once you're you're certain about something like that, then that's then you don't question it and it's like it's never re examined. It's it's obvious to you. So that's the the most pernicious types of belief.

E: All right.

S: And even if you do, again, if you're well, if you know, motivated reasoning basically means you will leverage facts and and logic and analysis, but it's all sort of twisted to, you know, leverage towards a desired conclusion and you are subconsciously working backwards. So you do have to really discipline yourself, say, OK, I'm going to pretend like I really don't care what the outcome here is. And and or or go out of your way to like defend the other side, the other perspective. You know, you have to be your you have to consciously be your own. Were skeptic, but just like thinking of reasons to defend a position you already have. We're good at that. We're really good at that.

E: Oh, yeah.

Science or Fiction (1:45:25)

Theme: Astronomy Item #1: Astronomers have confirmed for the first time the presence of a lava tube on Venus. Item #2: Astronomers have observed the quiet collapse of a supergiant star into a blackhole, without first going supernova. Item #3: Exoplanet hunters have described a rare “inside out” stellar system, with four gas giants close to their parent star and four rocky worlds further out.

Answer	Item
Fiction	Exoplanet hunters have described a rare “inside out” stellar system, with four gas giants close to their parent star and four rocky worlds further out.
Science	Astronomers have confirmed for the first time the presence of a lava tube on Venus.
Science	Astronomers have observed the quiet collapse of a supergiant star into a blackhole, without first going supernova.

Host	Result
Steve	sweep

Rogue	Guess

S: All right, guys. So, Parish, thank you for joining us. I hope you had a good time.

US#02: I did, thank you for having me. Thanks man. Thanks Paris to have you.

S: And thank all of you guys for joining me as always.

US#02: Of course the feel better Cara.

S: Yep. Feel better, Cara. And until next week, this is your Skeptics Guide to the Universe. Skeptics Guide to the Universe is produced by SGU Productions, dedicated to promoting science and critical thinking. For more information, visit us at theskepticsguide.org. Send your questions to info@theskepticsguide.org. And if you would like to support the show and all the work that we do, go to patreon.com/skeptics Guide and consider becoming a patron and becoming part of the SGU community. Our listeners and supporters are what make SGU possible.

Skeptical Quote of the Week (1:45:25)

"The most difficult time to be skeptical is when we want, or don’t want, to believe. It all comes down to how willing we are to be honest with ourselves."  – Melanie Trecek-King, (description of author)

S: All right, guys. So, Parish, thank you for joining us. I hope you had a good time.

S: So, Parish, thank you for joining us. I hope you had a good time.

U: I did, thank you for having me. Thanks man. Thanks Paris to have you.

US#02: Thanks man. Thanks Paris to have you.

S: And thank all of you guys for joining me as always.

U: Of course the feel better Cara.

S: Yep. Feel better, Cara. And until next week, this is your Skeptics Guide to the Universe. Skeptics Guide to the Universe is produced by SGU Productions, dedicated to promoting science and critical thinking. For more information, visit us at theskepticsguide.org. Send your questions to info@theskepticsguide.org. And if you would like to support the show and all the work that we do, go to patreon.com/skeptics Guide and consider becoming a patron and becoming part of the SGU community. Our listeners and supporters are what make SGU possible.

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