SGU Episode 877

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SGU Episode 877
April 30th 2022
(brief caption for the episode icon)
SGU 876                      SGU 878
Skeptical Rogues
S: Steven Novella
B: Bob Novella
C: Cara Santa Maria
J: Jay Novella
E: Evan Bernstein
Quote of the Week
There is an urgent need today for the citizens of a democracy to think well. It is not enough to have freedom of the Press and parliamentary institutions. Our difficulties are due partly to our own stupidity, partly to the exploitation of that stupidity, and partly to our own prejudices and personal desires.
Lizzie Susan Stebbing, British philosopher
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Show Notes
Forum Discussion

Introduction, Surgery Recovery

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

S: Hello and welcome to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe. Today is Wednesday, April 27^th, 2022, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella...

B: Hey, everybody!

S: Cara Santa Maria...

C: Howdy.

S: Jay Novella...

J: Hey guys.

S: ...and Evan Bernstein.

E: Good evening everyone!

S: How is everyone.

B: Good good good.

C: I am recovering.

S: Recovering from what?

C: From surgery.

B: Yeah, that's right.

C: I had surgery last Thursday and I'm feeling almost 100% now, I'm definitely have, my appetite is back, I had no appetite for two days, I was super queasy post anesthesia. I'm not quite as weak as I was. I was very weak the first few days, I was sleeping an awful lot. And my head felt really buzzy and just off man, anesthesia sticks with you for a while.

S: Oh yes.

J: That's no joke.

B: That's not normal though, you have, you're, I think it sounds like you have more of an extreme.

C: No, it's pretty normal for total anesthesia. I mean it's why they give you in your discharge instructions like don't operate, you cannot drive today, you shouldn't shower until tomorrow and even then you should take it easy. They say I couldn't lift anything more than five pounds. Ii definitely remember like two days after I got a new carpet cleaner and I got so excited and I cleaned some like spots that Killer had left on the carpet. And it exhausted me. I needed a nap after I cleaned the carpet.

S: Well you know what Bob, you know, part of the reason is so it definitely gets worse with age. And that's just you know the brain.

C: Oh yeah, if you, if the last time you went under you were young, you probably wouldn't.

S: But, there's some pharmacological reasons for that too, I don't know exactly what drugs they gave you or how much or whatever, but when you get, when you get a lot of drugs for that are sedating, because you had prolonged anesthesia or you've been in the hospital for a while getting those kinds of medications. Some of them are fat soluble so what happens is, they give you enough to have a clinical effect, so there's a certain amount in your blood, but in order to achieve that a lot of it gets distributed into your fat. And then over days and weeks that the medications come out of your fat back into your blood, so even though you're not taking the medications anymore it could take days and days for it to clear it out of your system.

C: Yeah some of some of my aftercare said two weeks to be careful about this kind of stuff. And granted for me it was about two-three days but I mean, I remember I couldn't really watch TV. Like, I was like, oh, I'm gonna have a couple days off, I'm just gonna lie about and watch TV and I was like, I can't focus, it's like eyes are crossing. But, but, to be fair I was only under for an hour and a half.

S: Yeah, that's not too much.

C: So I didn't have terrible anesthesia but I do think I was propofol and I had versed which, you know, was like anti-anxiety medication and a fair amount of like zofran and pepcid like things to keep me from barfing, thank goodness, because I didn't barf. But I do think that there are different anesthesia cocktails that, for different purposes, and so you know if people are remembering, oh when I had my colonoscopy it wasn't like that, I don't know if it's quite the same.

S: That's like conscious sedation.

C: Yeah, that's what I thought it's not like the the hardcore stuff. Like, I had a sore throat for two days.

S: They intubated you.

B: Yeah.

C: Yeah, well, luckily they didn't do full intubation, they did this secondary thing that just like it's supra-epiglottis instead of going through your epiglottis but it still carves up your throat. Yeah, I was like oh god. Yeah, so, fun times.

S: I'm glad you're doing well.

C: Thanks.

S: that it turned out alright.

E: You sound great.

Shameless Promotion (3:30)

Upcoming Shows

S: So, we don't often do this, so I have no shame about doing this whatsoever (Cara laughs). We're going to do a segment of a couple of things of shameless promotion. Before we get to the news items. The first thing is that we have some shows coming up. Jay, you want to talk about them?

J: Yeah we have a lot of stuff coming up Steve. So, we will be in Arizona on July 15^th and 16^th. On both of those dates we'll be doing an extravaganza. On the 15^th we'll be doing an extravaganza in Phoenix and on the 16^th we'll be doing extravaganza in Tucson. We also have two private shows one in Phoenix and one in Tucson. Those dates and times literally by the time you hear this they'll probably be on the website, so go take a look and if not, they'll be there very very soon. You can go to theskepticsguide.org/events to see all this information.

S: Now for the private shows we're doing something a little bit different, so I wanna mention that. Normally we do you record a two hour show, right, and there's a little bit of chit chat around it but basically you're you're you're seeing us record a full two-hour show, episode of the show. But now we're going to be we're starting to do an enhanced private show or private show plus, we're still branding it. (laughter) But it's something like that, where it's going to be three hours, it's gonna be not two hours but three hours. We'll be still be doing a live show in the middle of it, but we're gonna be doing other things just for the live audience, there's gonna be a lot more interaction, we're gonna be experimenting with different games and other events. And, you know, George might do some music or whatever, it's going to be an expanded event with a lot more you know interactive stuff going on and interaction hanging out with us. So, we're going to see how that goes, so yeah, so keep an eye out for that. And don't forget for the extravaganzas we also have VIP tickets where you get to spend an hour with us either before or after the show depending on the schedule of the venue. You get extra swag, you get, you know to to take pictures with us and stuff like that. So if you're not going to the private shows and you you want some VIP time, that is an option for the extra, for the extravaganzas as well.

C: Oh and you get the best seats in the house.

S: And you get the best seats.

C: Yeah.

E: Yep.

Second Book Launch

S: All right and so here's the other, the other half of our shameless self promotion is the our second book just launched. So, not published but it's publishing September 27^th but you can now pre-order it. this is The Skeptics’ Guide to the Future

J: Whoa, that's such a cool title Steve.

S: It is. (laughter) Bob, Jay and I are the authors on this one. We had so much fun writing this book─

B: Oh my god.

S: ─and we learned an incredible amount. Ss much as we felt like oh we're steeped in all of these topics, just doing the research for the book, well, it just takes you to the next level.

B: Right, exactly.

S: I actually changed my mind─

B: There's a new layer on that onion.

S: ─I changed my mind on some of these technologies based upon the research that we did.

B: Sure.

S: It was really profound. So, a lot of fun, I think the book came out very very well. You can, we'll have the link on the show notes, we'll have the link on the SGU site, it's grandcentralpublishing.com and look just look for the Skeptic's Guide to the Future and you can pre-order it, you can pre-order pretty much everywhere both the hard copy, the kindle version and the audio book. So there will be an audio book, I'll be recording that over the summer. So all of those can be pre-ordered. We really, if you feel like you know you might be buying this book, we really encourage you to pre-order it because that helps us get over that threshold to maybe get on a best seller list. Which of course would really help promote the book. So we would definitely appreciate it if you, if you pre-order your copy, that will help us a lot. And I think the cover is totally awesome.

B: Oh my god I love it, my new background on my phone.

J: Steve I was going to get that tattooed to my face, you think that's going too far or what?

E: Not far enough.

B: Just do one cheek, one cheek.

S: Back? Lower back?

J: The lower back?

S: Or maybe a scapula, I would do a scapula. Yeah, so check that out, we're really excited about that.

J: Steve, now, don't forget, there is one more thing NECSS 2022. It's a lock everybody, remember, I think I said last week or this could have been on our live stream, I said we weren't 100% sure. Now I'm 100% sure. We are definitely doing NECSS 2022. It will be the first weekend of August, that's August 5^th and August 6^th and we have a keynote. Not a keynote speaker, a keynote situation. (laughter) You ready to hear this? The keynote situation is that Bill Nye will be having a discussion with David Copperfield.

B: Oh.

C: That's right copper. Oh my gosh I'm so excited.

S: Good try, good try Cara.

J: We interviewed, I know, you keep working on that accent.

C: No no, I intentionally didn't do that's right copper, because this this needed something louder and more exciting.

J: You guys might remember we interviewed David six months ago, middle of the summer I think it was. It's hard, it's hard to tell, the pandemic has destroyed my ability to tell time.

E: It was last fall.

J: And we had a great time talking to him. He was a ton of fun to talk to.

B: He was great.

J: He has you know an endless number of stories because he's been doing something amazing for so long that he literally like we had to like stop the interview because we didn't have any more time. But we loved talking to him and that was the impetus for asking him to speak at NECSS and he, you know, he very generously said that he would be happy to do it. And you know Bill is now involved with NECSS formally and Bill is going to talk to him. So the two of those guys are going to have a really fun conversation. That's our keynote. It's a, it's a keynote situation that we would like you to enjoy. So you can go to necss.org, n-e-c-s-s dot o-r-g for all the details that you need to sign up. Now keep in mind we're filling in our speaker list as we go. And we have a theme this year and the theme is navigating the misinformation apocalypse. So we will be we will be hitting some themes here during the conference about how how do science communicators deal with misinformation. How should the general public deal with misinformation. How do we deal with it? Because it's everywhere, coming from all directions and that's what we hope to answer during this conference, so please join us.

B: We are doomed.

S: And did you mention that it's an all digital conference?

J: Steve, did you know that NECSS 2022 is all digital? It's live streaming? You can watch this conference literally from anywhere you want in the world.

S: In your underwear.

J: Right. You know, you could be eating cereal as you're watching it. The cool thing is is, you could get your ticket and then you could watch the conference for up to like six months, because it's just there online whenever you want, you can watch it live, if you can't make it you don't have to watch it live, you can watch it basically whenever you want. But if you want to see it live with us, it'll be on August 5^th and 6^th of this year.

S: All right thanks Jay.

News Items

S:

B:

C:

J:

E:

(laughs) (laughter) (applause) [inaudible]

Redefining the Second (10:27)

• Get Ready For the New, Improved Second

NFT Medicine (24:24)

• Go read this report about the virtual doctors at an NFT clinic who can’t legally give medical advice

LHC Restart (42:29)

• Large Hadron Collider restarts to push physics to the edge

Energy Psychology (52:16)

• Emotional Freedom Technique – Acupuncture for the Mind

Researching the Paranormal (1:03:41)

• Anthropologist describes supernatural adventures

Who's That Noisy? (1:14:30)

Answer to previous Noisy:

old-fashioned jaguar call, made with large plastic tub and leather lace

New Noisy (1:20:39)

[bird-like siren sounds and whoops]

J: ... If you think you know what you heard this week or you heard something cool because you're a cool person and you're in cool places and you do cool things, send me a cool Noisy at wtn@theskepticsguide.org.

Questions/Emails/Corrections/Follow-ups (1:21:18)

_consider_using_block_quotes_for_emails_read_aloud_in_this_segment_
with_reduced_spacing_for_long_chunks –

Science or Fiction (1:28:43)

Theme: Future Technology Item #1: Using a quantum 2D material, scientists have produced the highest temperature ambient pressure superconductor, at 250 K (-23° C). Item #2: NASA Scientists have developed a metal alloy that has twice the tensile strength, three times the ductility, and at least 1000 times the durability at high temperature and stress as existing superalloys. Item #3: Using machine learning and genetic modification, scientists have created a bacteria-produced enzyme that can rapidly break down PET plastic (which makes up 12% of global solid waste) so that it can be reused, and is practical for industrial scale use.

Answer	Item
Fiction	Ambient pressure superconductor
Science	Scalable plastic-eating enzyme
Science	Nasa metal alloy

Host	Result
Steve	sweep

Rogue	Guess
Cara	Nasa metal alloy
Evan	Nasa metal alloy
Jay	Nasa metal alloy
Bob	Nasa metal alloy

Voice-over: It's time for Science or Fiction.

Skeptical Quote of the Week (1:55:15)

There is an urgent need today for the citizens of a democracy to think well. It is not enough to have freedom of the Press and parliamentary institutions. Our difficulties are due partly to our own stupidity, partly to the exploitation of that stupidity, and partly to our own prejudices and personal desires.
– Lizzie Susan Stebbing (1885-1943), British philosopher, from her 1939 book, Thinking to Some Purpose

Signoff/Announcements (1:58:53)

S: —and until next week, this is your Skeptics' Guide to the Universe.

S: 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/SkepticsGuide and consider becoming a patron and becoming part of the SGU community. Our listeners and supporters are what make SGU possible.

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