SGU Episode 958

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SGU Episode 958
November 18th 2023
Scientists in France have discovered a potential deposit of naturally occurring hydrogen, or "white hydrogen."
SGU 957                      SGU 959
Skeptical Rogues
S: Steven Novella
B: Bob Novella
J: Jay Novella
E: Evan Bernstein
G: George Hrab
Quote of the Week
True science teaches, above all, to doubt and to be ignorant.
Miguel de Unamuno, Spanish writer & philosopher
Links
Download Podcast
Show Notes
Forum Discussion

Introduction, George's music revelations, an Age of Nostalgia

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, November 15^th, 2023, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella...

B: Hey, everybody!

S: Jay Novella...

J: Hey guys.

S: Evan Bernstein...

E: Why is sometimes a vowel? Hello.

S: Hey there. And our sometimes rogue, George Hrabb.

G: When my baby smiles at me, I go to Rio.

S: Oh yeah?

G: Yeah. De Janeiro. Hi boys. I'm getting spoiled.

B: George.

G: I'm getting spoiled. We're seeing too much of each other and I worry that the flavor is going to get like a piece of juicy fruit. It's just going to be like.

S: We don't see enough of you, George.

E: It was so good for like six seconds. Yeah.

G: Boys, I just had a pretty amazing experience on the interwebs over here and I just have to quickly. It's like one of these things, as a supposed musician, I get more and more crusty and crumbly and I'm harder and harder to impress with stuff that I listen to and that I see. People send me links all the time and I go, yeah, that's nice. Or people send me a piece of audio and I go, yeah, that's nice. Rarely is it like, ah, sitting there in tears watching something go by. I just watched. I just watched. You know Daryl Hall from Hall & Oates?

S: Yeah.

E: Sure.

G: One of my favourite bands of all time. One of the biggest hit makers of the 80s. Daryl Hall has a show called Live from Daryl's House. He's been doing this for like 10 years. Very early internet show from way back. He has guests on. People come to his place. It originally started like literally in his house. Now it's in his restaurant called Daryl's House. But he has a musician come on. They perform that musician's music. They perform some of Daryl Hall's music and then they make dinner and they hang out and chat. It's been a wonderful format. Cee Lo was on once. They did an amazing episode. All these artists have been on. Really, really great stuff. Well, today, like about two hours ago, I watched Robert Fripp from King Crimson. His whole life has never done this kind of stuff. He's never done appearances like this. He's never done kind of sort of fun, silly things. He's like a monk. He's like a guitar playing monk. Well, in the last couple of years since COVID, he's really come out of his shell. His wife has really pulled him out. He's gotten very fun, very silly. He and Daryl Hall recorded an album in 1977 called Sacred Songs. This is 40 plus years ago, right? It was like two weeks they worked together. They recorded this album. They released it. It never really did anything. They never played it live. They never played it anything after that for four decades. They get together on Live from Daryl's House and they play a bunch of these songs for the first time in 40 years and absolutely destroy. I couldn't believe how amazing it sounded. Just amazing and the thing that absolutely floored me is both Robert Fripp and Daryl Hall are 77 years old.

B: Aaa! 77?

G: 77 years old. And I cannot, this is everything that music is supposed to be. There is this connection between these two guys that spans 40 plus years to these songs that they wrote quickly in two weeks time in New York City back in 1976-77. You jump forward in time to 2023 and they're sitting playing these tunes for the first time. Literally, Robert says, this is the second time I've played this song. I played it and we recorded it and now this is the second time that I'm playing this song with a bunch of people. It is everything that music is supposed to be. It's like expertise and artistry and connection. By the end of it, they even played a song by King Crimson called Red, which is not an easy song to play, and they nailed it. Daryl Hall's band nailed Red by King Crimson. The fact that I can say that sentence and not raise an eyebrow and be like, it was amazing. I was stunned and just loved it. Once again, reinforce this idea of like, yeah, occasionally you see something that just transcends what you want it to be. It was wonderful.

J: George, did it have a 70s or 80s vibe to it?

G: Neither. It was timeless. Timeless. There's like, because Fripp is his own style. It's this weird and he and Daryl Daryl, just still his voice at 77 sounds amazing. So like no more talk about, oh ageism or yeah, rockers out of their prime or dinosaurs or whatever. Both of these guys are playing like the best they've ever played. It's just astoundingly cool. Yeah.

B: How do I watch? How do I see this?

G: It's on YouTube. It's on YouTube. Just go Daryl's live from Daryl's house. Put Robert Fripp in there. There's a song called NYCNY, New York City, New York, they do, which is this crazy like a rock kind of dissonant, jangly, fast thing that guys in their 20s would probably have a challenging time to do. And they just destroy it. And I'm like, I have to tell, I was so psyched that I was going to come on here and tell you about it.

E: That's what a lifetime of expertise looks like.

G: Exactly. Well put, Evan. Well put. A lifetime of expertise. Robert Fripp in his 70s still practice about two to three hours a day. Like every day. And will. And will until he's in the coffin. It's amazing.

E: I can imagine you just never want to want to stop.

G: Yeah.

E: Ever.

S: First a new Beatles song and now this.

G: Right?

S: Yeah.

G: What else could I need?

S: We're living in a golden age of nostalgia entertainment in a way. And I don't remember this any previously, I don't know if it's just our age or, or what, but this idea that entertainers from decades ago are getting like the second life or are still in it, you know?

G: Yeah.

S: Last week we interviewed James Burke, who is-

G: Which by the way, guys, one of my favorite like science TV personalities ever. Nicely done.

S: Yeah. Awesome.

G: Oh my gosh, that was amazing.

S: He's 86.

G: Seriously.

S: And what struck me was not just that he made a fourth season of Connections at 86, was that he's talking to me as if as if he's 30. Like he's saying, I'm doing this, I'm doing that. It's just like, it's ongoing, like there's, there's no indication that he's slowing down or that he's not going to just keep doing it. He's planning for the future, this guy. And it was amazing. And he sounds totally sharp he's again, still at the top of his form. And it's, the evolution of his style is there, you know?

G: Right, right, right. The best TV shot of all time, with the rocket taking off behind him. Remember that shot from Connections?

S: Yeah.

G: It's like the, it's like the most famous live, perfectly timed TV shot of all time. Like Google that on YouTube, James Burke, space shuttle, where he finishes the sentence and the space shuttle takes off and it's like, ah, it's amazing. Amazing.

S: Yeah. That was a lot of fun. There's a lot of that going on. I think it is true too, George, that a lot of it, I think is like an end to ageism. I guess, unless you're running for president, but it's just this recognition that, yeah, you could be productive into your seventies, into your eighties, you know?

G: Absolutely.

S: It's not like you put out to pasture when you get to 40, you know what I mean? Like that, it's great.

G: Yeah. I love that line in Sunset Boulevard, one of my favorite films where it's this ageing actress and she wants to get her glamour days again. And there's a young writer who's basically saying, no, it's over, you're done. It's not, it's not that you're done. It's like, it's, you can have a rest of your life. He says to her, uh, Norma, you're 50. It's not a death sentence. And I'm like, she's 50? Like in my head, she was like 90 it's like, oh, she's 50. It's amazing. Meanwhile, Madonna's 65 and she's on tour selling out places and it's just yeah.

E: Rolling Stones.

G: Rolling Stones. Oh my God.

E: And still making good music.

G: Yeah.

E: Amazing.

S: But I also think this is something we've been talking about a few times. It has to do with the fact that culture has flattened out a little bit like these artists from 50, 60 years ago were still relevant today in a way that wasn't true, I think in previous generations.

G: It's also, there is a fear to really, push new things that are unproven. So if you know the stones can sell out theatres and arenas because they did it 10 years ago, the likelihood of a promoter saying, oh, let's push the Stones again, as opposed to pushing some other ensemble that isn't as proven you push the stuff that you know will sell. That's why you have sequels. That's why you have remakes and reboots and all that.

S: Yeah. I think that's the dark side of it.

G: It is the dark side of it. Yeah.

S: Joss and I watched first couple episodes of the reboot of Frasier just to see what it was all about. It was pretty bad, you know? And it was, it was just like, yeah, this is a pretty poorly written sitcom, zero imagination and just like nothing new. It's just like, yeah, it was that sort of safe. Just give them something that they've they liked previously and that yeah, I think that's, yeah, that's the dark underbelly of this phenomenon.

E: Oh gosh. And there's whispers of a Seinfeld reunion.

S: If it's done well, sure. You know, more power to them. The ones that I've seen and I've watched a few of these sort of, resurrecting old popular shows, just no, they just haven't, it is, they've all felt kind of lazy and pointless.

B: Yeah. The exception, one of the exceptions, Picard season three totally worked.

S: It took them three seasons.

G: Took them three seasons.

B: It took them three seasons, but yeah.

E: Another one you can point to would be Cobra Kai. I'd say it was-

S: That was fun.

E: Pretty good.

S: But you know why? That was good because it gave you a reverse angle on that story. It's a Karate Kid story. It wasn't just, they didn't do it again. They didn't just give us the retread of the same story. They deconstructed the story and made us question all the things that we think we remember about the original story.

E: Right. Perspective is everything.

S: That's great.

G: Bad guys, good guys.

S: Yeah. That is fantastic.

E: They found the magic in that. And it was an excellent way of doing it.

J: When we were at NOTACON, we were talking, it was, I guess it was Saturday night when we were packing up and we were talking about like, could you recognize clothing from the aughts and from 20 teens, right?

B: 20 teens. Yeah.

J: And most of us were like no. No real style came out. You can visualize the fifties, the sixties, the seventies, the eighties, the nineties. Like there's all these iconic things. I think Brian did say though, yeah, there's, there is some clothing that, that people were like, it was like low, low cut jeans or something was like a...

S: But it's more, I agree, but it's more subtle, more niche. It's not like it was, not like the eighties, like the big shoulders were everywhere, that wasn't...

G: Someone dressed as George Costanza today in a diner, you would never think, oh, they're going to a nineties party.

S: Right. Exactly.

G: You would never, you would just think, oh, that's not the most fashionable person, but they wouldn't be like, they wouldn't stand out even someone dressed as Kramer even or as Jerry, they wouldn't stand out.

B: It wouldn't be a costume.

G: Whereas if you're in a Brady Bunch outfit, oh, where you're consciously deciding to do that.

E: How much of that is a bias being the age we are and talking about the time span.

S: I don't think it's just that.

G: Oh no, it's also marketing because it's like, they know they can sell the shirt with this size collar, this size collar will sell this amount. So they're not going to push it to make it bigger, smaller, they'll have slight variances in it. You'll have slight color variances. But again, they know these are the jeans we can sell to this extent. So we're not going to really go crazy with the making them super wide or super thin or super whatever. It's just, it's all that homogenization of the market that gets slimmer and slimmer and slimmer because they want the returns to be equal or better than they've always been. And the only way you do that is by homogenizing.

E: Someone 30 today, look back at the year 2000 and can they recognize the fashion change? More than say someone our age.

G: Maybe, maybe, maybe. But again, it's going to be subtle.

E: Yeah. It'd be interesting. We should get some opinion on that at some point.

Attenborough's long-beaked echidna (12:17)

S: So have any of you guys heard of Attenborough's long-beaked echidna, Zaglossus attenboroughi ?

G: Echidnas are awesome.

E: He's the discoverer?

S: It was named after David Attenborough.

E: Okay. Just named after.

S: Yeah. He didn't discover it, but it was named after him. The last time this mammal was sighted was 60 years ago. And then we had a recent picture of like the first picture of it and the first sighting in 60 years.

G: And it's actually on tour. He's playing with the Stones now. 60 years later. It still looks great.

S: Thought it might've been extinct, but it was spotted.

E: But what is it? The Stones.

S: Yeah. It's an echidna. So echidnas are monotremes, right?

B: Ah, yes.

S: Monotremes are mammals that lay eggs and they include duck-billed platypus and four species of echidna, of which this is one.

G: It's sort of like a vole kind of like-ish sort of looking like it's got a weird nose and a-

S: Yeah.

G: Yeah.

S: It almost looks like a kiwi with four legs.

G: There you go. Okay. Yeah.

S: You know what I mean?

E: So they've found... So they have evidence of one.

S: Mm-hmm. The picture.

E: And how many do they think might still be there to have had a population?

B: At least one.

S: At least one, yeah.

E: Well, of course. But I mean... But no sighting in 60 years. I mean, what does... Kind of... How does that translate? And do we have other examples of something passing so long without being seen like?

S: It's an elusive species and a remote setting. So there could certainly be a breeding population that we weren't aware of. This is in Indonesia, the Cyclops Mountains, apparently.

G: One of my favorite Frank Zappa songs is called Echidna's Arf of You.

B: Oh my...

B: Wow.

G: It's a great tune. I remember thinking that seeing that title the first time being like, what? And so I had to look up what's an echidna. Oh, that's what it is. It's cool.

Swindler's List: Romance Scams (14:05)

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S: All right, Jay, you're going to start us off with a swindler's list.

J: Have you guys ever heard of the romance scam?

G: Apart from all my dates? No.

E: Not specifically.

J: It happens. This is this is not going to be a big surprise for those of you who understand that scams happen everywhere. But there's lots of variations on this scam, but the basic idea typically goes like this. You register for a dating site and then somebody pings you on the dating site and it's usually an attractive person of the opposite sex. I would dare to guess that this is mostly like the fake woman seeking out a lonely man type of situation. But whoever their profile is, it's completely fake. It's never the real person's face or whatever. They're just grabbing pictures off the web. Then the fake person begins to show interest in let's say it's Bob, right? They're showing interest in Bob and they eventually want to talk to Bob. They want to email Bob off the platform or they want to text or some type of contact, including like actually real phone conversations. And again-

B: They're catfishing.

J: -they're going to pick people who look more desperate because they're easier marks. So their goal is to build up trust. So Bob's talking to-

B: You're saying I'm desperate?

J: -this person over a few weeks and they're really getting to know each other and they're connecting and there's really, there's sparks flying and everything. And then they start they're giving information about them along the way. It could be anything. I read so many different examples, like I'm in the military and I'm at a military base in Germany and I can't and whatever. Let's say Bob is in the United States and I can't leave I don't have any time off for until next year, whatever. They can't see each other in person. Eventually, they are developing a "relationship" according to Bob. Bob's like, wow, I might even be developing feelings for this person. And then they do what you know is going to happen. They're going to ask for money in some way or another. Give me money for an airline ticket. I'll come see you. I need surgery. One of my family members is sick and I need help, can I borrow some money? I'm sorry to say it, but you know, would you mind loaning me a few thousand dollars or whatever? Victims of this scam reported a record of $547 million that happened. And this is just what was reported in 2021, over half a billion dollars, not insignificant. And that is approximately 80% more from reports that go back just a year earlier. So it's been exploding. It's happening quite a bit. In 2021, victims of the scam reported paying with gift cards mostly. I guess that that's what people are looking for. Like they don't even need to send anything. They could just read off like the serial numbers to the gift card and they can make it work. So you know, if you're out there, look, first of all, if this is happening to you or someone that you know, there's nothing to be embarrassed about because especially with affairs of the heart, you can become very vulnerable and it's something that's happening to a lot of people. So if it is happening to you or has, you're not alone. The FTC on their website makes some suggestions. These are some good pointers that you could keep in mind if this is happening. First off, if it's happening, stop communicating with the person completely and immediately. Just ghost them. Talk to someone you trust. Do your friends or family say they're concerned about your new love interest? You hearing anybody that you care about in your life saying, hey what's going on with this person? What's that? If anybody's showing any kind of like skepticism about someone that you've been getting to know or whatever, listen to what they're saying like take some advice or at least, think about it. Another thing you could do is search online for the type of job the person or the scammer is claiming to have. If they're saying that I work on an oil rig, type in and Google oil rig scammer or U.S. Army scammer and just read stories of other people talking about the scam that got pulled on them. And if it's similar to what's going on with you, you damn well might be involved in someone trying to scam you. Do a reverse image search. I mean, in today's technology, it's so easy to pop an image into Google and do a reverse image search on it and you'd be shocked at what you'd find. This profile picture, I'm sure a lot of pictures on dating sites either don't represent the person. But if you're being scammed these pictures are on the Internet. So if they if they're using them, you probably can find them too.

G: There's a whole thing that's happened. I've had a couple accounts on like OKCupid and some stuff like that and there is a whole trend of sort of CGI created photos that you start to see them after a while. It's just you see these like these profiles and you realize it's like the same basic person, even though all the names are different and all this. And like so the interests are they just they just do this vast, vast kind of sweep of interests and whatever. So they match with as many people as possible. But after a while, you just start to see like, oh, that's a totally fake. So it's not even like you can do a reverse image search because it's just a manufactured CGI face that's there. But they're like the same faces show up all the time. And it's really, really scary and really, really sad, too, that people get taken advantage of like that, because like you said, Jay, it is people that are often very lonely and sort of like reaching out for any kind of connection.

S: Yeah.

G: And it's just the worst kind of human that will take advantage of that.

S: You guys know where the term catfishing came from?

J: No.

S: How old do you think that term is?

J: I'm going to guess old.

B: Probably a century.

E: 831.

S: 2010. 2010.

B: I was off a bit.

E: That's what I said.

S: Yeah. It was an American documentary, Catfish, by Nev Schulman. He basically was following his own investigation of himself being catfished. This like 40-year-old woman was pretending to be an 8-year-old girl online on Facebook. And the term catfish itself came from the woman's husband, who compared what she was doing to this myth that they used to ship cod with catfish to keep the cod active and healthy. I don't know why he made that comparison. But then he called the documentary Catfish, and that's where we get the term from, catfishing. It's only 2010. That's it.

G: That guy went on to do a whole series on MTV that's called Catfish. That original movie is pretty amazingly done, and that guy exposed himself. He really laid out how involved he was, like, because they were having intimate phone conversations and it's really something to watch. It's amazing that, yeah, it's only 2010, but what an influence that's had on the culture. It's pretty amazing.

S: Yeah, absolutely. All right. Thanks, Jay.

News Items

S:

B:

C:

J:

E:

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

Whole Eye Transplant (21:15)

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Hottest Year on Record (34:51)

• [url_from_show_notes _article_title_]

Neutron Thickness (49:43)

• [url_from_show_notes _article_title_]

Hydrogen Deposit in France (57:07)

• [url_from_show_notes _article_title_]

Trust In Science Declining (1:06:51)

• [url_from_show_notes _article_title_]

Who's That Noisy? (1:18:47)

Answer to previous Noisy:

Anna Marie Hefele's polyphonic overtone singing

New Noisy (1:25:15)

[_short_vague_description_of_Noisy]

...what this week's Noisy is

Questions/Emails/Corrections/Follow-ups (1:28:20)

Correction #1: Oldest Photo

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Science or Fiction (1:31:26)

Item #1: Researchers have discovered the first "vampire" virus, a parasitic virus that attaches to the "neck" of another virus in order to enter a host cell and take over the reproductive machinery. Item #2: A new study finds that Google DeepMind's machine learning weather prediction model can outperform existing models for 10-day weather prediction, 90% of the time in under one minute. Item #3: Scientists present a new fossil of a flying feathered dinosaur, avioptera, which dates to 185 million years ago, 20 million years older than the group (paraves) which is believed to have given rise to modern birds.

Answer	Item
Fiction	New flying dinosaur
Science	Vampire virus
Science	Deep Mind's predictions

Host	Result
Steve	clever

Rogue	Guess
Bob	New flying dinosaur
Jay	Vampire virus
Evan	Deep Mind's predictions
George	Deep Mind's predictions

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

Skeptical Quote of the Week (1:45:56)

True science teaches, above all, to doubt and to be ignorant.  – Miguel de Unamuno (1864-1936), Spanish writer & philosopher

Signoff/Thanksgiving Farewell (1:48:06)

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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Today I Learned

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• Fact/Description
• Fact/Description

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