SGU Episode 922

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SGU Episode 922
March 11th 2023
T-rex stalking a pair of Torosaurus. Artist: Luis V. Rey
SGU 921                      SGU 923
Skeptical Rogues
S: Steven Novella
B: Bob Novella
C: Cara Santa Maria
J: Jay Novella
E: Evan Bernstein
Quote of the Week
Science is magic that works.
Kurt Vonnegut, American writer
Links
Download Podcast
Show Notes
Forum Discussion

Introduction, Cara's trip to Jordan and Covid

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

S: Hello and welcome to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe. Today is Thursday, March 9^th, 2023, 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:' Welcome back Cara.

C: Thanks, I shouldn't have said howdy I should have said marhaba.

S: Yeah, how was your trip?

C: Right, it was incredible. I'm super sad to be home. Do you have this experience? Like when I travel internationally, especially when I just dive deep into being somewhere that's so different from where I usually live, I don't want to leave and I get really sad before it's time to come home. And it's interesting because some of the people in my trip were like, oh, I can't wait to sleep in my own bed, oh, I can't wait to be back. And I was like, what? I don't have that. I don't want to go home. I want to stay here for forever. It's how I always feel.

S: Yeah, I feel kind of both. I mean, I definitely like getting home and back into my own bed after traveling.

C: The trip, yeah the airplane part.

S: The trip home itself sucks. Yeah, but I enjoy being on vacation, especially being someplace interesting and I'm never ready to go home.

C: Well. Right. Unfortunately, this wasn't really vacation, but it was really, really incredible. And we did do a couple of vacation-y things while we were there, to be honest.

E: And Cara, where exactly did you go, just in case people don't know?

C: All right. So we went to Jordan in the Middle East, which is an Arabic-speaking country. We were kind of stationed in Amman the whole time. I shouldn't say the whole time. Like that's where we went every night to sleep. So we stayed in the same hotel every night and would go on these, like, basically roadtrips and then come back because Jordan's not a huge, huge country, so you can do that. We were doing psychological intervention mostly with Palestinian refugee children. So in a few different sites, a couple of sort of like orphanage type schools, one Catholic. I guess it was sort of like a mission where they had children, like a foster mission. So it was like on the church grounds. And then also in a really, really large refugee camp, which I think a lot of people expect refugee camps to look like, and here I'm kind of speaking to the American listeners, but like FEMA tent camps. I think that's the idea that a lot of people have in their heads, and sure, in immediate crisis situations that is going to be what you have are these temp camps that are set up. But I would say that this refugee camp reminded me much more of like, basically like a shanty town in South Africa. It was like really developed because it had been there since the 90s. And so there was a ton of industry. There was, it was full of people. I think 120,000 people lived in this refugee camp. And so there were shops and hair cut places and grocers and like everything that you would think of. But we visited a school to do some intervention and assessment with children. We also visited a local university and did a couple of other things. And then of course a handful of touristy things that you have to do when you go to Jordan. We visited Petra, which was incredible. We floated in the Dead Sea, which was incredible. We visited this site where supposedly Jesus was baptized, like in the Jordan or near the Jordan River.

J: So he wasn't there?

C: He wasn't there. No, he didn't pay us a visit. Neither did John the Baptist, but there was a lot of really cool stuff there. We visited the citadel. We visited Mount Nebo. The thing about Jordan and you know, a lot of places in the Middle East is that they're old, really, really old. And so you see, I mean, just the archaeology, just the history, we're talking all the way from like neolithic to Byzantine to Greek to Roman, like and you're seeing all of thedifferent, as I call it, lore from-

E: The Creedle of Civilization.

C: Exactly. From like Jewish culture to Christian culture, Muslim culture. Of course, we see all of the infighting over what's considered the Holy Land by so many different warring factions, but I'm just really fascinating and incredible history and wonderful people and oh my God, the food. I can't even.

J: All right so favorite part, worst part.

C: Oh, I can't say favorite part. There's too many that were so cool. I really enjoyed the citadel, I would have loved to have spent more time. I really enjoyed Petra, I would have loved to have spent more time. And floating in the Dead Sea was so freaking weird, you guys. The Dead Sea is so weird.

S: High salt content, you float really easily.

C: You float, you can't like stand. It's like you try to stand up straight and you like your feet fly out from underneath that because you're so buoyant.

B: Even standing straight up and down, wow.

C: Standing straight up and down is the hardest thing to do in the Dead Sea. Like yes, if you can anchor your feet on the floor, but if it's deep enough that you can't, like being vertical is almost impossible. You either flip forward or flip backward.

B: Wow. That's even more buoyant than I anticipated.

C: Oh, you're so buoyant in it, it's weird. It also burns. You can't get it in your eyes and you don't want to get it in your mouth or really on your face at all. And if you have any little nicks or cuts in your skin, like they were like don't shave your legs before you get it.

B: Nice.

C: Yeah, because you would feel it. And then of course there's like the Dead Sea mud and who knows how much like woo-woo pseudoscience we're like slathering it all over ourselves. And it was just amazing.

E: Keep Gwyneth Paltrow away. She might get ideas.

C: Oh, I'm sure she already does. Yeah. But it was, oh gosh, just too much to count. It was just incredible. Best part, worst part? I don't think there was a worst part. Oh, I'll tell you what the worst part was.

E: Leaving.

C: Yeah, leaving. I apologize to my cohort. This was a group of people all the way from two professors, two postdocs, myself who's an intern and then down to trainees everywhere from like fourth year, third year, second year and first year graduate students in psychology, okay, so it ran the gamut. Some of, it was a group of maybe like 20-ish people. It was kind of a big unwieldy group. Lots of times it felt like we were hurting cats. We were sort of on Arabic time the whole time. We never really had an itinerary. It was sort of like, yeah, I think it's going to happen. Let's wait and see. So that part was hard for some people. And for me, when I first arrived, one of and love you, if you're listening, love you, but one of the girls literally goes, are there normal plugs in this room?

E: Oh, no.

C: And I was like, by normal, do you mean American? Oh, my God.

E: North American Standard.

C: Wow. So like, it was pretty incredible to see that some people on the trip had never even left the country, and some people were very seasoned travelers, and about four or five of them were actually Jordanian or Palestinian themselves and spoke some Arabic and had ties to the region. And so it was a real, and one of the people on the trip was actually Jewish and Israeli. And so it was like a really interesting mix of people. And it was incredible to see how the trip affected everybody and changed them. So yeah.

J: Awesome.

C: Loved it.

S: Yeah, it's definitely a good thing to visit other cultures, man, because you don't even realize what is cultural about your culture until you experience something different.

E: That's right.

C: Exactly. And I think one of the things that we as sort of, and I say we, because I'm talking about the five of us in this room, but maybe the royal we as well, but you see this a lot in Western culture that people are like, I'm going to go visit another culture. I'm going to Australia. I'm going to England.

E: To Toronto.

C: Exactly. And it's like, okay. So and don't get me wrong. It's, there are things that are different. Don't get me wrong.

S: And it put beets on their hamburgers.

C: But yeah-

E: Savages.

S: Don't get me started.

C: If you've never visited a culture that's like wildly different, like going from an individual list to a collective is culture, going from a predominantly Christian to a predominantly Muslim culture, going to a culture that utilizes, I guess a capitalist it, well, it's all freaking capitalism now, but a democratic rule to a monarch parliamentary rule or the types of laws that we have versus, it's not complete Sharia law, but, a theocracy, like it is important, I think, for people to see how people live all over the world. And to know that what we see in our news media is given to us through a lens, a various lens. Here in the United States, we don't always see the Palestinian view. And so being in a place where the Palestinian view is the dominant view was really eye opening to me.

S: Sounds like a good trip. And then you got COVID on the way home.

B: Yeah, I'd love to go there. Oh boy.

C: Right on the way home. I mean, honestly, I can't complain because I was well the whole time I was there.

S: Yeah.

C: So like that's the part that matters. This sucks. I'm curled up on my couch with my headset on recording the episode, but like can't be complained. I'm comfy here with my dog. So.

E: How does your medicine, how does your medicine taste?

C: Right? We're just talking about it offline. Paxlovid. I call it paxlovid. I've heard some people call it paxlovid. Like COVID.

E: I've heard paxlovid.

C: That just doesn't roll off the tongue.

S: I think it's paxlovid.

C: I said, yeah, paxlovid just sounds whatever. It doesn't matter. It's weird. It's three pills twice a day for five days. So then they're big, honken pills. So it's just a lot of swelling of pills. And the back of my mouth tastes like burnt hair.

J: Oh, god.

S: Sounds horrible.

C: It's so gross. And everyone I talked to says that they had a really similar experience on it. Like, it worth it, right? Because hopefully it cuts down my symptoms and cuts down the time that I'm sick. But you guys, I thought I was, I thought I had magic unicorn blood.

B: No, just me, just me.

S: Bob is the only one left.

C: Three years I lasted.

S: Yeah, I went two and a half years.

E: That's impressive, though.

C: Right?

B: It is. It is. Be proud. You know, you're not quite at my level, but- (laughter)

C: Yeah. Yeah.

E: Bob? Bob.

C: Oh, I'm going to miss this.

E: When you get it and you will likely get it at some point.

C: I guess-

B: I could have even already had it for all I know.

C: True.

B: And not even know it.

E: Yeah, that's the other part.

C: And that's the thing. It's just constantly mutating. We're constantly dealing with these different variants. And you know what I think was the biggest sort of sad thing to me is that when I posted online, like, I guess I'm a mere mortal after all with my like positive test. I got a lot of responses of people being like, oh my gosh, I was doing so well and I caught it recently too or blah, blah, blah, best wishes. This is what I did. But I got a handful of responses from people again, mostly on Twitter. I'm just saying. That we're like, oh, is this really still a thing? Or do we really actually care about this?

S: Yeah.

C: Just people minimizing it so much. And I'm like, no wonder I caught it. Nobody acts like COVID exists anymore.

S: Yeah, I know.

B: It's only like, how many millions of people have died in the past few years from it?

C: Right.

B: So is that still a thing? Millions have died.

C: I know.

B: And many thousands are still dying. I mean, I'm not even sure what the number is right now. It's not, of course, it's not as bad as it was, but it's still a thing.

C: But it's partially only not as bad as it was because it's, because we have better medicine now.

B: Right. And yeah, exactly.

E: Well, until it impacts them someday, maybe they'll change at that point. I don't know.

C: You're right. You're so right.

B: It's kind of like also, it's not so much caring. It's like they're, they're enmeshed within an ecosystem of misinformation.

S: And some people don't still don't believe.

C: Yikes.

S: And they latch onto any, any better news that seems to support their narrative, without looking at the big picture.

C: Yep.

B: Or any good sources.

E: You know, if you can't tweet something nice, don't tweet anything at all. That is what my great grandmother said. (laughter)

C: Elon Musk vehemently disagrees with you on that.

E: I'm just saying.

C: Then like, what is Twitter for?

J: I think it's more complicated though.

S: I think she was quoting Abraham Lincoln.

E: Oh, right. Right, right.

J: I think different people have different things that enable them to do that, like one of them, I think, is just the whole internet balls phenomenon.

C: Internet balls. Yeah.

E: Yeah.

J: You know, it's very easy to be a jerk to someone who you really, you feel like there's zero consequence.

S: That's its own kind of social distancing.

C: For sure. Yeah. It's like, it's the phenomenon of like how you talk to somebody from your comfortable car in traffic versus how you would talk to somebody if you were sharing an elevator with them. It's just completely two different people. Like we are two different people in those situations.

Dumbest Thing of the Week (12:47)

• Want more money? Need better sleep? Try feng shui?

S: Okay. Evan, you're going to start us off with the dumbest thing of the week.

E: Uh-huh. I haven't done this in a little while, but yes, in fact, I found an interesting subject for this version of the dumbest thing of the week. I'm also going to spare you the song this time. I don't want to abuse that privilege.

S: Thank you. Yes.

E: I don't, I'll break it out on special occasions. I don't want to be in every time thing. This week's dumbest thing of the week, it begs two questions of you. Number one, do you want more money? Number two, do you need better sleep? Hmm. Well, I can tell you how you can improve your financial disposition and your preferred sleeping position all in one sub-position. Because I read an article. I read an article online just a few days ago. I could not wait to impart this upon the SGU audience. And this article examined those very two questions, those two questions and came up with one miraculous panacea in two four letter words, two four letter words. Bull-shii. Oh, no. I mean, Feng Shui.

C: Oh, no. Yeah, that's sounds about right.

E: Yeah. Feng Shui.

J: It can help your sleep?

E: Oh, Jay, you have, oh my gosh, let me tell you all about it. Feng Shui, for those of you who don't know. Feng, the Chinese word for wind, Shui, the Chinese word for water. And while a literal interpretation of this could define Feng Shui as the act of sneezing saliva and mucus into the air. But Feng Shui is actually, it's the harnessing and direction of energy forces in order to harmonize individuals and animals with their surrounding environment.

C: Oh, and animals.

E: Yeah, it works for animals as well.

S: Why not?

C: Good to know.

E: Really? I mean, hey, people are animals.

C: What does it work for plants?

E: Well, I'm going to talk a little bit about plants a little later in the, in the, so standby for that.

B: Later? I thought this was a quickie.

E: Bob.

B: No, never mind.

E: Bob, patience. Patience.

B: Okay.

E: I get it's not cosmic background radiation and supermassive black holes, but bear with me on this one. All right.

S: Wait, we're from the airs too?

E: Oh, yeah. Through the practice of Feng Shui, a person can control the flow of energy, a chi, as it's known in Chinese, flow of energy in the environment. And through this control of the flow of energy, the person or an individual or an animal, apparently can achieve all sorts of things that they desire, like, well, what more money? Better sleep. Both. Solving world hunger, all of these things are good. And in this particular article I found it was published in The Advocate. The Advocate is a Louisiana newspaper. In fact, it's Louisiana's largest daily newspaper based out of Baton Rouge. It's both available still in print, and of course it is online, which is where I found it. And thank you to the writer of this article, Lauren Cheremy, for putting this together for us. And she asks, so you looking for a raise at work? Do you feel like your relationship is rocky? Maybe you're dealing with family drama again. When face with these situations as strange as it may seem, some people turn to Feng Shui to improve health and wellness, relationships, and monetary goals. And then she has us meet a Feng Shui expert, Cheryl Taylor Bowie. She's been consulting on Feng Shui for nearly 30 years, advising clients about how to arrange their homes, college dorm rooms, radio stations, offices, retail stores, and more. Now here's one example of her Feng Shui success. While working with a client, who is looking to improve family finances, Bowie recommended adding reflective, mirrored tiles behind the stove tops burners. The client took her advice in a few months later a financial windfall came into their lives. In Feng Shui, the stove represents wealth, and the idea that reflecting the burners visually in essence doubles the stove's burners and also the homeowners opportunities for wealth. See how that works?

C: Do they also like boil water on eight pots instead of four?

E: Oh sure, but at two at a time. You can't have odd numbers there. And for someone like Steve who prefers even numbers, Steve, there's some appeal there.

S: Double everything.

E: Anytime you got a mirror, just you know, you're dealing with even numbers.

C: That's true.

E: Now Bowie admits this is not magic, but she believes that Feng Shui can positively affect people's lives. How does she use Feng Shui to positively affect someone's life? With a magic map of course. It's a nine segment Bagua map, B-A-G-U-A. I had to look that up. Bagua map. Have you guys heard of this device before?

C: No.

E: No, it's new to me too.

B: Is that related to Mogwai from Gremlins?

E: Oh, yeah. You think so maybe, but maybe because Gremlins is based on a Chinese lore, isn't it? So I wouldn't be surprised. But in any case, Bagua map, new, I'm intrigued. I'm discovering something new about Feng Shui, something I've read about for what, 30 years now. It's a grid and it serves as an overlay of like a floor plan of a space and it helps you harness good chi in your homes and isolate and move away the bad chi. There's good chi and there's bad chi, by the way. Each of the nine areas of the Bagua map represent a certain theme. Just for example, I'll give you the locations here. In other words, so a picture in your mind, if you will, a grid, three by three. So it's nine. Hollywood squares or Brady Bunch, picture, whatever it is kind of in your mind about that.

S: Tic tac toe.

E: Yeah, tic tac toe. If you go to the center, there is your health and certainly you want the earth elements in your house or in the room in the center. If you go, I'll say down to the southwest part, then that's the love and marriage area. But if you go to the east, that's all about promotion of family and so forth. And there's nine areas on this particular, random grid. She also gives some sort of practical advice. You don't even need a map to do these sorts of things right now, if you want in your home right now, you can improve your life with Feng Shui by doing these things. Here's a quick checklist. Keep your toilet lids closed when they're not in use because an open toilet seat allows for a big drain of positive energy.

C: So all my positive energy is in my toilet?

E: Or it goes down the toilet, which I maybe is where the expression come. I don't know. Women should never put their purses on the floor. In Feng Shui, the purse should be kept at waste level or higher. Did you know that? Because of an old Chinese proverb, which says a purse on the floor is money out the door. Oh, my gosh. That is just brilliant.

J: Because it rhymes, like really?

C: Does it rhymes in like Mandarin.

B: Probably not.

C: It probably doesn't even rhyme in Mandarin or maybe it does. Who knows.

E: Here's another one. Keep your desk and bed out of the pathway of the door. Yeah. I'd say that definitely helps you open the door and, among other things, and to actually walk into an out of rooms by not having a bed or a desk right there to have to walk around.

C: But technically, isn't every bed in the pathway of the door?

E: Well, yes. And that actually goes to another sort of tip that you can have here. Sit in an office space where you are able to see the door. Okay. You have an office space. Is it like a dog leg or an L shape and you're around the corner and you can't see the, I mean, how many rooms are designed like that? It's, how do you not see the door in an office or a space or a room? So it's a, yeah, interesting one there. So in the same breath, in the same breath, there was yet another article this past week on Feng Shui. This time, the Daily Mail online. Uh, yeah, I know. I know, I know. Tabloid. But you'll thank me after I tell you about this one. This particular expert, her name is Gemma and she can help you in the bedroom. She says there are three things you should never, ever allow in your bedroom. Do you guys want to guess what those three things might be? Go ahead. What would-

J: A bear on cocaine.

E: Bear on cocaine. No, not on the list.

C: Well, okay, two things I don't allow in a bedroom are a television and a cell phone.

E: Well, television is correct. That's one of the three.

S: A venomous snake?

E: No, a venomous snake. Apparently those are okay.

S: Okay.

E: Cara, you touched on it earlier in the segment and I said I'd get back to it.

C: Plutonium.

E: Plutonium is allowed. Cara, what did you say earlier? We talked about... plants! No plants in bedrooms.

C: No plants, what?

E: No.

C: No, you have to have plants in your bedroom.

E: And the third item is a fish tank or an aquarium. You cannot have these three items.

C: I wouldn't want that in my bedroom either.

E: There are reasons why you shouldn't have these items in the bedroom. So the TV, the TV, because it has a screen, it acts like a mirror and it bounces that energy all around the room at night, resulting in poor quality sleep and health problems.

C: Wait, well, what if you just had a mirror in your bedroom? Is that ok? There are so many loopholes.

E: Cara, Cara, Cara, apparently you're not a Feng Shui expert like Gemma is.

C: This is so stupid.

E: And you know, and her TikTok video on this is like half a million views already.

C: That's actually pretty low for TikTok, but okay.

E: Yeah, I know. It's early. It just got, it just came out this week.

C: Got you.

E: Number two, plants. Plants you don't have in your bedroom because they have too much Yang energy. You see there's a Yin and then there's Yang.

S: Can you just bounce back more Yin?

E: No, apparently not because according to her, there's, she says way too much Yang energy. I think way is a technical measurement that would overcome anything of Yin in the room. And number three, the fish tank. Yeah, too much Yang energy again. And also moving water sometimes activates negative energy and there's that toilet again, right? So this all is connected, you can see the logic.

S: So no toilets in the bedroom.

E: But as long as the lid is closed, you can't see the moving water, which if, is attracts, the negative energy and brings it into the house. Yeah. So. And that constitutes the dumbest thing of the week.

S: That's the dumbest thing forever. I mean, it's just pretty good.

C: Forever.

B: I wouldn't go that far, but quite dumb.

S: It's quite dumb. And yeah, it's just, it's pure magic. That's one of the things I always amazes me about Feng Shui. It's just pure magic. And the storytelling is so dumb. It's such simplistic metaphors, like the energy is going down the drain, whatever. It's just so ridiculous. All right.

E: Right. If there weren't people and corporations and governments actually spending money on this stuff, it would be genuinely just hilarious. But a lot of people sink money into this and nothing proven about it. Obviously, it's been looked at and studied and science says no.

S: Yeah.

E: None of it.

News Items

S:

B:

C:

J:

E:

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

Blood Test for Anxiety (24:02)

• Blood Test for Anxiety Developed

Mars Sample Return (43:05)

• The big reveal: What's ahead in returning samples from Mars?

Dinosaurs' Colors (51:02)

• Dinosaurs like T.rex could have resembled brightly coloured birds, says palaeo expert

Cosmic Rays and the Pyramids (1:04:47)

• Scientists have mapped a secret hidden corridor in Great Pyramid of Giza

Who's That Noisy? (1:12:09)

Answer to previous Noisy:

Simon game

New Noisy (1:15:05)

[Repetitive, whirring, buzzing, and beeping of various intervals]

short_text_from_transcript

Questions/Emails/Corrections/Follow-ups

Correction #3: BetterHelp concerns (1:24:02)

• FTC: Online counseling service BetterHelp pushed people into handing over health information – and broke its privacy promises
  • BetterHelp's Response to the Recent FTC Settlement

[top]                        

Science or Fiction (1:32:26)

Theme: COVID-19 pandemic news Item #1: A new analysis finds that if California did not shut down during the pandemic, and kept business as usual, unemployment would still have risen, to 5.4% from 3.9% pre-pandemic, instead of the 8.4% actual unemployment rate, but an additional 120,000 deaths from Covid would have occurred. Item #2: A systematic review of 137 studies worldwide finds that symptoms of anxiety and depression significantly rose during the pandemic, especially among women. Item #3: A new study finds that New York City rats are susceptible to and have been exposed to the Alpha, Delta, and Omicron variants of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

Answer	Item
Fiction	Anxiety, depression rose significantly
Science	California with no shut down
Science	NYC rats get Covid

Host	Result
Steve	win

Rogue	Guess
Cara	Anxiety, depression rose significantly
Bob	Anxiety, depression rose significantly
Evan	Anxiety, depression rose significantly
Jay	California with no shut down

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

Skeptical Quote of the Week (1:50:10)

Science is magic that works.  – Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007), American writer and humorist

Signoff

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.

[top]                        

Today I Learned

• Fact/Description, possibly with an article reference
• Fact/Description
• Fact/Description

References

Vocabulary