SGU Episode 1030

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SGU Episode 1030
April 05th 2025
A breathtaking spectacle of birds in flight, showcasing nature's incredible beauty and movement.
SGU 1029                      SGU 1031
Skeptical Rogues
S: Steven Novella
B: Bob Novella
C: Cara Santa Maria
J: Jay Novella
E: Evan Bernstein
Quote of the Week
“The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool”
- William Shakespeare, As You Like It
Links
Download Podcast
Show Notes
SGU Forum

Intro

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

S: Hello and welcome to the Skeptics Guide to the Universe. Today is Wednesday, April 2nd, 2025, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella. Hey everybody. Cara, Santa Maria.

C: Howdy.

S: Jay Novella. Hey guys. And Evan Bernstein. Good evening everyone. Cara, how did your test go last week?

C: It went well. I passed the second two exams that are required to become a licensed psychologist in the state of California and.

S: Achievement unlocked.

C: Yep. And so paperwork was delivered today. I sent it on Monday, but I got the, you know, I guess, yeah notification. So now it's just up to the board when they want to issue me the license.

S: Do you level up as well? Is that how it works?

C: Yes. Do you get to wear a badge?

S: Do. You get to wear a badge.

C: No, nothing. I get. I get to see patients with the supervisor career. Yeah, I get to have a career and not be a fellow get. To charge for your professional. Service exactly.

S: That's when the big bucks start rolling in. So unfortunately, Val Kilmer died. Was it just today that he died yesterday?

E: Yesterday. And he was. Suffering a long time with an illness, right? Was he had throat cancer? Yeah. Oh. My gosh, he was a a fraction of the person he was before. Gee whiz, you.

C: Know, but did he die from throat cancer? I thought he was. He died from pneumonia. Yeah, that's what I thought. I thought that he had kind of was on the other side of it. I don't know if he meant any D, but.

E: I remember seeing a picture of him from recent and could not identify him as Val Kilmer. You just couldn't.

S: Yeah, but pneumonia is like a very common final event for chronic illness, for sure. That's like the proximate cause of death.

C: Yeah. I just wasn't sure if he if he had active cancer when he died or if he was no evidence of disease because I think that the diagnosis was like over a decade ago.

S: Yeah, and he had chemotherapy and anything but.

C: Yeah, yeah, he got treatment. I don't.

E: He made his own documentary which I haven't seen yet. I don't know if anyone else saw it called Val back in 2021.

S: Yeah, it was a good doc.

E: You know, everything that all the things that had been to that led him up to right, to right to that point and to his illness and everything. Gee whiz. I mean, it's.

S: Very interesting.

E: You have a favorite movie. You have a favorite.

B: My favorite Val Kilmer role was Doc Holiday Doc. Holiday. Oh, sure. Yeah, absolutely. Far. He's got some good roles but man that character just loved him to death.

S: I liked him as Mad Martigan too from Willow.

E: Yes, he he was that movie. That movie gets forgotten at times. You know, maybe the token people don't like do.

B: You remember the scene when he first appears, He's supposed to be kind of like mean and threatening in that in that movie. So they gave him like, kind of like classic, you know, medieval teeth where he had teeth just did not look good. Oh, yeah. And and then when, then, when, then, then once that scene is over, he. I remember he grabbed the towel and he's rubbing his teeth and then his teeth are like Hollywood teeth. It's like, OK, that was easy.

S: I remember him chewing on leather or something to get that stuff off of his teeth.

B: Yeah.

S: Root No, he's definitely, and I think I called it Han Solo kind of character. You know Scoundrel, you know UN unlikely hero kind of character.

E: I probably first saw him in Real Genius. That's. Probably my first director.

S: Oh yeah, that's a good role for him too.

B: Fun character for his manic, you know, abilities.

E: And of course, Top Gun, you know, just.

B: Oh yeah, Top Gun was he was always probably beat him.

E: He was fine. No. Yeah. But he, well, you know, became superstar, I think.

B: Yeah. With.

E: These wrote with those he didn't.

B: He didn't even want it. He didn't even like the the script when he got it. He changed his mind on that, I'm sure.

J: For Top Gun.

B: Yeah, I think it was Top Gun wasn't.

J: It yeah, he had to do it. He he had to do it. He was in a contract with the studio. So they, you know, he owed them a movie. He didn't like the script. But you know, that's what a lot of actors get sucked into roles that they don't really want because, you know.

B: How about? Doors. Yeah, he was an he. Killed it. He killed it indoors. Like wow, what a Tour de force. He really became that guy.

S: Jim Morrison.

B: Yeah, he just had that guy. Yeah, the name escaped me for a pico second there, but yeah, he was Morrison. I remember. I mean, I haven't seen it in quite a long time, but I remember being very impressed. You really did a great job there.

S: Well, let's go right on with our content. Carrie, you're going to start us off with a what's the word? Yeah.

C: I'm going to do this one a little bit differently because a listener, Glenn Ellert, recommended a what's the word and basically did my job for me. So Glenn, thank you. I'm going to present to everybody what you presented to me. Don't worry, I double checked everything.

What's the Word? (04:45)

• enantiodromia

C: Might add one or two things here and there, but he basically said, I have a suggestion for a word of the day that relates to our current political situation, Anantiadromia, ENANTIODROMIA, the tendency of things to change into their opposites, especially as a supposed governing principle of natural cycles and of psychological development. And that and is important because it's kind of a weird term that has a specific usage in one sort of esoteric branch of psychology. What Glenn says is that that definition basically reflects the two uses and histories of the word, the first one being ancient and the second one being modern. So when we look at the ancient use of that word, we can break it down in the original Greek into N meaning to contain Ant meaning or anti meaning opposite O and then droma Droma referring to like a road or a path or a race like a like a running track. So it literally sort of translated to like the path with the properties of oppositeness, the path that is opposite to this one or the opposite running course, for example. Now, this was a word that was used historically quite a bit. We see it discussed in a lot of traditional philosophies and religions. Definitely. We see it a lot in Eastern philosophy and religion. You know, you think of like yin and Yang for example, but Jung decided, and this was much more, you know, recently because Carl Jung, we all know who Carl Jung was.

US#04: Yes.

C: Just making sure. OK so this would have been mid century around 1949. He decided to introduce this very old word into a newer understanding where he talked about the idea that somehow if you are doing something consciously, you will have an unconscious principle that is the opposite or vice versa, right? So you have an unconscious drive or an unconscious idea, and then there would be a conscious opposing action. So, you know, Jung is known for having had a lot of, let's say, interesting somewhat magical ideas that did influence modern psychology to an extent. There are actually practicing union psychologists today. I am definitely not one of them. But basically his idea was that if you have this tendency to think in one extreme for long enough, there's going to be an opposite position that develops unconsciously and it'll be equivalent in strength. And then eventually that will erupt into consciousness. Now again, this is based on this earlier meaning, this path of opposites where we first saw it in Heraclitus, 6th century BCE. He described the unity of opposites, so opposite things being identical, and then also the doctrine of flux, everything being constantly changing. Now this is very similar to ideas that we modern ideas that we have of things like equilibrium, right balance like these are important, both scientific but also philosophical and psychological concepts. But the idea here, and I love this. So Glenn wrote to us and said, in any case, I thought you might enjoy this word because it seems to describe the current political situation in the United States. As was mentioned on your Wednesday live stream, I'm not sure if they're referring to last Wednesday. The right wing has gone from the party of free trade, balanced budgets and strong ties with democracies to 1 of tariffs, deficits and strong ties with autocracies. I see this as an experience of enantiadromia right now. And then he says I have to disagree with Jung, however, and that I don't think this is a good thing, because Jung often talked about this idea of balance as a good thing. I dug a little bit deeper and I found an interesting post on Reddit where somebody kind of defined it and grappled with the idea of an antidromia. And a lot of people contributed to that thread and came up with their own examples. One example of an anti adromia is that like as a person gets older, let's say a responsible husband and father who's done that his whole life will like might leave his family and run off into a chaotic relationship with a younger woman. Or a person who's working all their life for a charity ends up stealing money from them. And then more people contributed to that. Like the Catholic Church being a great example, right? Centuries of sexual shame and repression. We know what that kind of balanced out to. Or swung the pendulum, swung in the other direction. And it's interesting 'cause I think about this, I've never used this term and I've never thought of it as some sort of unconscious principle. But that's something we all grapple with in our kind of psychological functioning. Very often when I'm working with patients, we will talk about the pendulum swinging and how, let's say you get in a fight with your partner and you say something really mean. You can't just expect the pendulum to go back to the neutral state naturally with time. Often it needs to swing equal and the opposite, right? There has to be behavior that is equal and opposite to the cruelty in order to sort of restore balance and trust. I wonder too, politically if we aren't seeing these kinds of swings. You know, Glenn, Glenn kind of mentioned their example of it. But, you know, is the political milieu right now a direct response to the previous two administrations?

S: 100%.

C: Right. And then will we now see an equal and opposite shift bar, they're in the opposite direction as a direct response to this? And where do we sometimes net out in that balance? Like, I guess the real question is, why are sometimes the swings quite violent? And why are sometimes the swings a little bit more moderate? But yeah, I do think we often see those kinds of swings in our own personal lives. We see them like, Steve, you could probably speak to examples of this medically where equilibrium has to be restored. Obviously, physicists can speak about this, but it's an interesting term. You know, when you look at the dictionary descriptions of an antiadromia, it often will say, like, archaic. I don't think many people are using this term in their regular speech. Yeah, it doesn't really roll off the tongue, but maybe it's when we could bring back or maybe we could shorten it or I don't know.

S: Cara, do you think what reminds me of it? I don't know if you think it's part of this. Is that the psychological phenomenon where if you are, you know, trying to accomplish some goal, but you're doing it in a thoughtless way, you often achieve the opposite? For example, if you are very anxious about your partner leaving you, that will motivate you to be clingy, but the clinginess might drive them away so you actually accomplish the exact opposite of what you're trying to do. Is that related to this? Do you?

C: Think I, I think it could be, I mean, I don't know if Jung would see it that way, but I, I see it that way. And almost another example of that that just came to me is, is sort of is it a Navy SEAL or like a maybe it's a Marine Corps statement that like slow is smooth and smooth is fast. That very often if you're trying to do something fast, the very active like rushing, you make so many mistakes that you have to correct that you end up being too slow, right. So if you just slow down and breathe, yeah, slow down and breathe is the race. Exactly. And in a way, I think that that speaks to it as well.

S: Yeah, it's like speeding and you get pulled over for a ticket and they make you, they make it take so long that you lose time.

US#04: Gosh, they're so they're so rude when that.

S: No, it's effective.

US#04: It is.

S: All right. Thank you, Cara.

News Items

AI Protein Sequencing (12:37)

• https://www.science.org/content/article/ai-revolution-comes-protein-sequencing 

S: Jay, tell us about artificial intelligence and protein sequencing.

J: So do you guys remember in 2002, thousand 23, the Nobel Prize in chemistry was given to researchers who were using artificial intelligence to dramatically increase our understanding of protein folding. You guys remember that?

E: Yeah. I have a vague recollection of that. Yeah. So that alpha fold is that alpha fold.

J: Think that was it. Yeah, that was a big deal. It was a huge step forward. And there has been another one of these AI events happening, a default that I will tell you about South. Recently there's been, it's very significant and they're saying it's 100% due to artificial intelligence helping. And this time it's, it has to do with protein sequencing. So they have a new generation of AI tools that have been developed. And this was this was led by a model called Insta Nova. And it's enabling researchers to identify proteins much faster, more accurately, and without relying on the current incomplete databases that we have that are hugely lacking information to really help them get the job done in the current methodology that they have. They're saying that the implications are wide reaching because it could be used from medical diagnostics to environmental science, archaeology, you know, there's this long list of sciences that can use this technology to help them do the work that they do. So the, the number one problem here is that conventional protein sequencing is very time intensive. And that means it costs a lot of money. And scientists usually start this process by, you know, they cut a protein into smaller bits and these are called peptides. And they they measure how heavy those pieces or these individual peptides are using a machine called a mass spectrometer. So after they weigh it, they try to figure out what the protein is by comparing those cut pieces to a database of known protein pieces. Right. Does that make sense so far? That right there, you know, it's labor intensive. It's not the easiest thing in the world to do. But there's a big problem with that current method. The master list of proteins, of course, don't include all the proteins that are out there, and it certainly doesn't include all of the proteins that could potentially exist. In fact, they say that up to 70% of the pieces that they find these peptides don't match anything in the database. And that means that most proteins can't be identified using this this common method. That's a big percentage like that is, you know, a huge percentage that go on evaluated to the point where they don't know what it is and they they can't gain any information from using the current database. So researchers found that instead of searching for peptide matches, AAI models like the one called Insta Nova, they predict likely peptide sequences based on patterns learned from millions of known proteins. And this seems like really is that it? Is that all it took? It's complicated. It sounds kind of easy, but it's complicated because of course, they have to build this massive database of all the of all of those patterns that exist. But, you know, they did it, which is fantastic. So this new approach accelerates the analysis, but it also opens up the possibility of identifying completely novel proteins, which is another awesome thing that that they're they're finding that it can do so developed. This was developed by a team that was led by someone named Timothy Patrick Jenkins. Anybody.

E: Old man Jenkins. Lee.

J: Roy Jenkins Jenkins. That's so. That's so funny.

E: That's a 20 year anniversary item right there.

J: So it's really older than that. Anyone who doesn't know what that is, look up Leroy Jenkins and you're gonna have a good time. So Timothy Jenkins is at the University of the Technical University of Denmark and Instanova represents this major step forward in AI powered protonomics, right. You guys have Steve, you must have heard of this Cara, I'm sure you've heard of this. So protonomics is the large scale study of proteins, what they are, how many there are there, what do they do, how they interact with each other, Where are they found? You know, there's just a lot of a lot of different pieces of information that they will find and catalog. And it's super helpful to have this this giant database of information. So the model, this AI model uses a deep learning neural network. How many times have you heard that? And it's combined with a technique called diffusion modeling. This is the same strategy behind advanced image generators like Dolly and protein structure predictors like alpha fold, so that you know this is the precursors have already been out there that some of this technology already existed. Diffusion models work by adding noise to input data and then they learn how to remove the noise gradually refining the output. So the this iterative process boosts accuracy, particularly when data is messy or incomplete. Jenkins team using Insta Nova with their database, they dubbed that Insta Nova Plus, which is a lab test, which in lab tests identified 42% more peptides than all previous AI models known. And one of them you might recognize was called Casanova. So that that's a really, really significant percentage and it's proving to be very successful. So if you don't remember, Casanova developed in 2021 by William Noble and his team at the University of Washington. This was the first AI sequencer to use deep neural networks similar to those behind large language models like ChatGPT. So in a head to head test, Instanova Plus was used to analyze a synthetic mixture of proteins from 9 organisms in real world applications. The model identified 1225 peptides associated with the blood proteins albumin and infected leg wounds. You ever hear about this, Steve?

C: Do you say albumin?

J: Albumin. Yeah, eggs. They're saying that the model identified 1225 peptides is associated with the blood protein albumin.

C: Yeah, Albumin Yeah.

J: And infected leg wounds, right? Does that make any sense to you? I mean.

S: Well, albumin is just a is like your most basic blood protein, right? Just have a lot of albumin in your blood and that is responsible for the osmotic pressure of the blood like but that basically keeps fluid in the blood, water in the blood.

J: So the model identified 1225 peptides associated with a blood protein in an infected leg wound. So this is 10 times more than conventional methods. And of those 254 peptides, they were previously undocumented. And the AI also detected 52 bacterial proteins from the same sample, showing its capacity to parse these complex mixtures, meaning that you can get a sample of blood and it has its own proteins, but there could be lots of other things in the blood, right? Like the bacteria that it also was able to figure out what what the peptides were in those protein chains. So that's a that's a huge thing. It's able to parse through all that, sort it all out and really give the scientists like a crystal clear picture of what are what are all the different things that were in this sample. So that said, huge success. You know, this thing could dramatically speed up the process of catalog cataloguing proteins and everything, which of course means that it could lead to advances and so many other things, you know, like new drug development, blah, blah, blah. Can just Nate you know laundry lists of benefits here that that lots of different. Years of science could benefit from. Now, outside the lab, researchers have already been putting these tools to work, like a researcher named Matthew Collins. He's at the University of Cambridge, and he's been, you know, testing several AI models that analyze his archaeological samples. So traditional sequencing methods have particularly, you know, the ones that they use, of course, they fail and and you know, they can't use them to really get to the nitty gritty on the information that they want to get out of these, you know, partial proteins that they find that, you know, be thousands of years old and the samples are, are incomplete. They, you know, nothing we have today can really make it all make sense. It takes a lot of time and you have to find multiple samples. It's like it's just a mess in this context. Ancient proteins, like I said, they degrade or they come from extinct organisms. And, you know, they're, they're not found in any modern databases. But the new models have helped his team identify, for example, rabid proteins at Neanderthal sites and fish muscle proteins and ancient Brazilian pottery, right? Like, check, think about that. Researchers are moving, you know, they're moving over to using these AI models exclusively because it's crystal clear how much more powerful it is and how, how much success that they're seeing. So this is guys, it's a fantastic example of, you know, these very, very narrow, very specific AI models that are being used in science to speed things up, to fill in huge gaps, to do things that do things exactly like we want them to be able to do. They want, we want these AI models to have the ability to speed up these types of research and make the scientist jobs easier and less expensive. And, you know, damn it, it's working. You know, this stuff is really working. Like when they do it this way, it seems like, Oh my God, AI makes perfect sense. Juxtapose that to a lot of the other news items that we talk about where, you know, AI is being used for scary stuff and it's being used, you know, like people are talking about having it run governments. And I wish that humanity had a crystal clear vision on what what's best to use AI for. I certainly don't want AI in the short, especially in the short term, like making any decisions that humans should be making, right? But this stuff, you know, chugging through data and, you know, do you know, analyzing, you know, huge reams of data and coming up with really brilliant conclusions, It's fantastic. And it's, you know, it's perfectly, it's perfectly tuned to do things like this.

Solving the Bat Cocktail Party Problem (22:35)

• https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2407810122 

S: All right. Thanks, Jay. Guys, have you heard about the BAT cocktail party problem?

B: Not at all.

S: What would you guess that refers to? I didn't.

E: Realize it was a problem.

S: Well, OK, so maybe bats are.

B: Communicating in a cave.

S: Bob. Bob's obviously very close.

B: Never mind. Never mind.

S: It's it's not in The Cave though, It's when they're leaving The Cave because they had, because they all leave at the same time.

B: How do they coordinate that shit?

S: And yes, and they and they going through a very small space.

B: Yeah.

S: And yet collisions among the bats is very rare.

B: Well, sure. Yeah, I never thought about that. Yeah, that's yeah.

S: And they leave it at the same time because they're trying to basically overwhelm their predators, right? So you like, there are Raptors, Hawks, eagles, whatever, waiting for them and they'll pick off, you know, a bat here or there, but they're, but they're hiding in the crowd, basically. So it's advantageous for each individual bat. Yeah, to leave when all the other bats leave.

B: Imagine you're the first bat out and you know there's like 3,000,000 bats behind you. That, that sounds exciting, doesn't it? Like.

S: So how do they not run into each other? But now the problem is even worse when you consider the fact that they're they're all navigating with echolocation, right? And so if you have 100,000 bats all using echolocation in the same small space.

US#06: Cacophony.

S: Right. It's going to be overwhelming. That's that's where the cocktail party analogy comes from. It's like trying to hear the conversation in a cocktail party when there's a ton of background noise. You have 100 people talking in a room and how can you pick out one voice? Well.

E: They must have evolved a filter of some kind for it, I would think.

S: Yeah. So that's the question is how what what is the how did they evolve a way to not all bang into each other? Because that could be fatal, you know, if you have a mid air collision.

B: Talk about a pile. Up.

C: Do they have their own sonar sounds?

S: It's echolocation, yeah, but.

C: Or echo sounds we're.

S: Coming up on a study, but the previous research looking at bats in the lab found that bats use slightly different frequency echolocation noises. Right? So they could tell their sound from from other bats. Yeah. But that doesn't work when there's 100,000 bats in a very tight group. That's OK if there's not that many bats around and you're just you're trying to distinguish yourself from a few other bats or dozens of other bats, but not 10s of thousands of other bats.

E: Well, maybe there's a physical component to this, Like they emit some kind of, I don't know, dust particle or dander or something they know to avoid the dander.

C: So it's the question, how do they hear where they are in space, or how do they hear where all the other bats are in space?

S: Well, it's really where all the other bats are.

C: Yeah.

S: Yeah. They have to avoid hitting any other bat, right? So the, the existing research didn't really solve the problem. Is it OK? They they have, you know, ways of, you know, of avoiding jamming each other. They call it jamming, right? If you're if you're overwhelming another bats echolocation with your own echolocation, that's jammed. So why isn't why aren't all of the bats being jammed at the same time when they're trying to get how could they possibly make it through that small space in a very short period of time without having massive pile up? They just basically were not going to be able to solve this problem in the lab. They needed to attach recording devices to bats in the wild.

E: Go. Pros on bats.

S: Not, well, not Gopros. Because they're not interested in visual information. They're interested in acoustic information, right?

E: Oh, oh, microphones and. Exactly. Audio detectors. Microphones small and lightweight.

S: Yeah, so that's what they did. They attached tiny little microphones to a bunch of bats and then released them near The Cave. Now they couldn't get them into The Cave, I think. I think they just had to release them into the flock, you know, after they left The Cave. And then they used computer modeling to, you know, to extend the data that they got. What they found was that when the bats are in a very tight, tightly densed group of bats, they use a much higher frequency of echolocation. It's and they reduce the volume, right? So they increase the frequency and reduce the volume, which basically means they're narrowing the distance that they can see with their echolocation to a very short distance. So essentially, they optimize their echolocation so they could see very precisely where the bats right next to them are.

B: Yeah.

S: Does that make sense?

B: Yeah. Yeah.

S: Because that's all they care about in that moment. All they care about are the bats that are right in front of them, right next to them. You know what I mean? That's it. That's all they care about. And it's like a flock of birds, right in the same.

US#04: Thing. Yeah, I was going to relate to that. Yeah, where there's no one rules.

S: Yeah, yeah, they're just. Each bat is following a simple rule. Stay this distance away from the, that right in front of me and you know, to the left and to the right of me and that's it. They only have to worry about that the bats that are right next to them and, and they, they optimize their echolocation for that purpose. They narrow.

B: Everyone does that. They're skirts.

S: If everyone does that, it works, right? They don't. The collisions become very, very rare. Yeah. Yeah. So I mean, I thought it was interesting just because the question of like, how do the bats not bump into each other is not necessarily intuitive because there's a bunch of things like you said, Evan, like maybe they're using some non echolocation mechanism or something else. But yeah, there's and this. They had to go out into the field to answer this question.

E: Does that also mean there are other scenarios in which they make those kinds of adjustments with their echolocation in other scenarios? Yeah, yeah.

S: So they so clearly they can adjust their echolocation, right. So they will avoid frequencies that other bats are using. They obviously they will optimize it at other times for prey, right? If they're looking for an insect, they need to be able to see an insect at a much bigger distance, right, to 0 in on it. And, and, and now they have a different, you know, paradigm of echolocation when they're flocking in a tight group, you know, so that's really interesting. But also the technology, you know, the idea that they have to, you have to record bats in the field, You're not going to really solve these problems in the lab. And that we have the technology to attach tiny little ultrasound sensors or the sensors for the frequencies of sounds that bats are using in echolocation. Yeah. So it's a cool study.

B: I hope those poor bats aren't just stuck with those stupid sensors for the rest of their lives.

S: I don't know.

B: She just used their eyes, you know, bat their eyes.

C: Oh boy, I'm assuming that Bob. I'm assuming they fall off after time.

S: Yeah, they probably don't last that long. They did. The study was done in the greater mouse tailed bat.

E: Oh right, yeah. Are all bats? Do all bats have a feature like this?

S: Well, I mean, probably all echolocating bats, especially ones that have, you know, really dense populations and caves.

E: And caves, yeah, I can't imagine all bats live in caves. Or you know.

S: No, like the fruit bats that we saw in Australia.

E: Those are tree. Tree dwelling, yeah. So they wouldn't need that specific.

S: They probably don't have not all that's have echolocation either.

E: Uh huh. There we go.

S: True.

The Extremely Large Telescope (30:15)

• https://www.universetoday.com/articles/the-extremely-large-telescope-could-sense-the-hints-of-life-at-proxima-centauri-in-just-10-hours 

S: All right, Bob, tell us about the Extremely Large Telescope.

B: Yeah.

E: Is it that big?

S: Extremely All righty.

B: So guys, a recent study suggests that the Extremely Large Telescope ELT, which is being built in Chile, could detect signs of life on nearby exoplanets, including those that never transit in front of their stars, which current telescopes struggle with. So the study is in, I'll just read the first part of the study title. The first part says there's more to life in reflected light, which I really kind of like that. So I've become even more enamored with the ELT or Extremely Large Telescope once I did more of a deep dive the past couple days. I really am looking forward to this thing being finished now. It's, of course it's aptly named. It's its primary mirror will have a diameter of a whopping 39 meters, 130 feet primary meter mirror. What? That's nuts. It'll gather more optical light by an order of magnitude than all previous telescopes. Get this one. It's images will be 16 times sharper than Hubble, 16 times sharper than than the Hubble. That's pretty big. All right, so it's main superpower though, we'll be examining the atmospheres of nearby exoplanets. Now this is currently being done, for example, by the James Webb Space Telescope. And So what happens is that is the exoplanet transits in front of its star, the Starlight goes through it goes from the star through the atmosphere and right directly to our instruments. That's the path boom, that's how it goes. Now this creates, it's the very, very clear, very sharp absorption Spectra, which means that certain wavelengths of the star are absorbed by gases as it travels through the atmosphere. And then, and then we know once we get that light, then we could then we could look at the absorption Spectra and say, oh, look, these, these elements are missing when it goes through the atmosphere. That's what must be in the atmosphere right now. The ELT, the Extremely Large Telescope can do that as well. It can look at light coming directly from a star through the planets, the exoplanets atmosphere and right to our instruments. But it would also be able to do something that's impossible for James Webb. Now, many exoplanets don't transit right in front of its star from our point of view, right. I mean, you we just happen to be lucky that that these transiting exoplanets we're kind of edge on right we're edge on to the solar system. So we could see the planet going right in front of it. But non transiting stars that this does not happen. We are at more at a, at a higher angle, right, more of a perpendicular type of angle and it just doesn't happen. But now those exoplanets, they will still were obviously reflect the star's light as well. And that that that can be helpful, but not as helpful as the transit Spectra. So my question to you guys is why do you think that this reflected Spectra, the light going from the star bouncing off the planet to our instruments is not as good as the transit Spectra, which is the light that's coming directly from the star through the atmosphere and right to our instruments. Why? Why is the reflected spectrum not as good?

E: Diffuse diffuse diffusion.

B: Kind of, yeah, you kind of right around the answer. I think they're now the reflected light. It's important to note that this reflected light does have absorption features. It's there similar to the transit exoplanets, but the reflected light, those features are far weaker and it's more and it's also more complex due to the reflection. There's scattering and there's planet surface effects. So it's very like attenuated absorption data. So it's very, very difficult and nuanced and complex. So, so teasing out that data is just not possible for James Webb. It can't look at the reflected light off of a exoplanet and do anything really with it. And that's mainly because James Webb as awesome at as it as it is, it's just too small. I mean, it's mirrors like only what I think 10 meters, not near 40 meters. It's it's got much poorer spatial and spectral resolution. It's contrast detection is not as good, not nearly as good as what the extremely large telescopes will be. So it's just the main reason is that this the ELT it's it's on the it's on our planet. It's not in space. So we could just load stuff onto it doesn't matter how heavy really it is because it's this time it's on the surface of the Earth. It's not like in, you know, some LaGrange point out in space. So the extremely large telescope is optimized to detect and find these bio signature gas is hidden in this reflected light. Okay, it should do should do very well. That's what it was designed for. And that's all fine and good. But these researchers wanted to be able to predict, you know, how good is this telescope going to be when it looks at this reflected light? They wanted to up their confidence levels to say, all right, now that we know everything that we know about the design of the telescope and what it should do. What will it you know, what can it really do? Probably, you know, in terms of just like what do their instruments tell them it should be able to do once they go through what they did is they went through a special program with a cool name of Specter, which stands for Spectral Planetary ELT calculator for terrestrial retrieval, blah, blah, blah, whatever, doesn't matter. OK, so they use a computer program to model and analyze the exoplanet atmosphere. So what this program does is it simulates how different gases absorber reflect Starlight. So with this information, they then can predict with with much greater confidence what the extremely large Telescope should be able to do. So this is what they did. But this is one of my favorite parts of this is these test cases. They they created these these atmospheric test cases and they had four of them. So basically 4 distinct classes of terrestrial planet atmospheres that are possible. So one test case was a non industrial Earth, you know, Earth as it was, you know, a couple 100 years ago, rich in water and photosynthesizing planets, plants. Yeah, photosynthetic biosphere without anthropogenic fluxes. So there's no, it is no humans, you know, necessarily with their industry mucking about with our atmosphere. So it's kind of before that. All right. The second test case case was early our key in Earth. Now this is where life was just starting to thrive on the Earth, say about about, you know, 3 1/2 billion years ago or so. And then let's see the third test case that they ran through their specter program was an Earth like world where oceans have evaporated. So similar to what to Mars, to Venus, planets that that that at one point would would have been almost indistinguishable from the Earth, perhaps. But they had oceans and then they disappeared and things just got worse after that. And then the 4th 1 was prebiotic Earth. So this is like an Earth that's capable of life, but there's no life there. And then for comparison, they threw in another planet atmosphere, but this was more of a Neptune sized world with a with a very, very thick, much thicker atmosphere. And they threw that in there just for for comparison. So why do you think these these researchers had these different test cases? Well, they did it because they they did it. That's fine. I know this is, you know.

E: I was thinking.

B: They did that to determine if the telescope could distinguish between the different Earth like worlds, right? They wanted, they needed to know that that no matter what kind of atmosphere was thrown at it, they would it would do a good job. But even more critical though, they wanted to be able to make sure that, that the Extremely large Telescope could distinguish and not trick us into like a false positive or, or a negative, right? So that was critical because you don't want to, That means that whether a lifeless world would seem to have life or if a living world would appear barren, right, That you don't want that, especially you don't you don't want to have a test case where you have this living world and the telescope says, yeah, there's nothing there. Just go on to the next one. That's like the worst case scenario to miss something like that. So now the findings. So based on their simulations, the researchers found that the Extremely Large Telescope should be able to make accurate distinctions for nearby star systems. So that's that's the good news. It should work as advertised, at least according to the Spectrum program. It should do very well at distinguishing between these various worlds that have life, that don't have life, that don't have life but may seem to have life and vice versa. They said that the program said that this is going to do very well. For me, the most interesting part was the closest star Proxima Centauri and it's act and it's exoplanet called Proxima Centauri B. If you guys, we've talked about that a couple of times on the show. We don't know much about Proxima Centauri B. It's it's, it's the closest exoplanet, which is fascinating, but it's also a rocky world. It's, it's within the habitable zone and we don't know that much more about it, but it's, it's, I mean, this is so encouraging, but we don't know if maybe it doesn't even have an atmosphere. You know, it looks like it's tidally locked, and that's also very problematic. But this is the the closest exoplanet to the Earth. And that means it's going to be about as clear as anything any other exoplanet it's going to be. So the other thing that they found was that this telescope should be able to give us some really good or bad news very, very quickly. They said that it should be able to detect oxygen in 10 hours, it should be able to detect methane in five hours and water vapor in one hour. Just in one hour. Looking at a planet that's over 4 light years away, it could say Yep, there's water vapor on that planet with with very high confidence. I also love how the survey will take into account important pairs of gases instead of just in isolation. So for example, you often will hear that, oh, you know, this exoplanet might have, might have oxygen or it might have this, but it doesn't, you know, oxygen could be, it could be created by life processes or it could be created from geological processes. You don't know. So what they're doing for this is that they're doing, they're detecting these gases in pairs. They're going to focus on that. So for example, if you have an exoplanet with oxygen and methane. That implies that that there's a continuous replenishment of those of those gases and that would make an even stronger case for for life existing. If you notice, I'm pretty excited about this. It, it seems like we've been cataloging all, how many thousands of exoplanets have we found by now? Is it 5005 thousand exoplanets? But we've got thousands of exoplanets and we've been discovering them since what, the 90s? I mean, it was so long. We've been, I think it's time. It just seems the time is right to seriously take it to the next level and check out all of the the closest exoplanets that are inhabitable zones for biosignatures. I mean, it could be, you know, the most tremendous news of the Millennium is imagine, imagine finding, hey, yeah, we've got a high probability, 95% probability that there, that there is life on this planet that's only a few light years away. And I'm four or five light years away. But let's see. I want to end with the next KCD comic that I came across. And it's funny because they have a list of telescope names, and the top three boxes are checked. The Very Large Telescope checked, the Extremely Large Telescope, we just talked about that check. There's also the Overwhelmingly Large Telescope that was actually considered in place of the ELT that I just talked about. They were going to make it the overwhelmingly large telescope. That's the name. The name was going to be that because it was going to be not 39 meters, but 100 meters wide, the primary mirror. But it was obviously too expensive, so they had to cancel it and they they downsized it to the extremely large telescope. But this this comics got a few more here that aren't checked yet. So the so guys, scientists, astronomers, these names have not been selected yet. The oppressively colossal telescope, the mind numbingly vast telescope. Let's see the cataclysmic telescope and let's see the telescope of devastation. That's interesting, ominous. And then there's the final telescope. All of these are unchecked, but actually. That makes me. That reminds me, some people are saying that this telescope, the Extremely Large Telescope, it might be the biggest one we ever create for this type of telescope, a reflector with a, you know, looking at optical frequencies. It's this is, this is so big and expensive that they some people think that we're never going to create any, anything bigger than that and that that would be, that would be a shame. But I totally get it. I mean, I mean, you can't be thrown, thrown around 10, you know, 10, fifteen, $20 billion on something like this is yeah, we might not see and we might not see in our lifetimes anything bigger than this, this this 39 meter behemoth. But I think we got, we got many, you know, once this comes online at the end, at the end of this decade, I think, you know, we're going to have many, many years of, of amazing discoveries. Plus there's, there's other telescopes, four or five other telescopes that I found that would qualify for this extremely large telescope size range. You know, something like 20 to 60 meters or something like that. Or is it, or maybe it's a hundred? I think it goes up to 100 because this is, it's a little confusing because the Extremely Large Telescope is being built in Chile, but there's also a classification of telescopes. When you're in the 20m to 100m range, you are an extremely large telescope. So there are like four other extremely large telescopes that will be coming online for the next 10 years. I haven't looked at those two deeply yet, So, but they will also be a big change, I think in astronomy in terms of just something that are so they're just so big, so much, they're collecting so much light. We're going to see some amazing discoveries.

S: Bob, you left one name off the list, a telescope of unusual size.

B: Yeah, yeah, they didn't throw that in that comic, but they probably should have because that's definitely a nice Douglas Adams.

S: No, that's not from Douglas.

B: Oh, no, no, that's a yeah. That's the Princess. Princess Bride. Yeah, you're right. Very good.

E: I don't think they exist.

B: You don't?

CIA and the Ark of the Covenant (44:12)

• CIA found the Ark of the Covenant by using psychics, declassified files claim 

S: Well, Evan, but do you believe that the CIA found the Ark of the Covenant using psychics?

E: What I believe part of what you said there for pieces of it. All right, the Ark of the Co. What do you, I mean, the four of you folk know about the Ark of the Covenant that you did not learn from that most wonderful movie, Raiders of the Lost Ark? I know I couldn't.

S: What do I know about the Ark that I didn't learn from Raiders?

E: That you didn't, right? Right. Was what, in other words, was your first real exposure to anything having to do with the Ark of the? Covenant.

S: No, I I knew about it from Bible class, basically, but we didn't. Yeah, yeah, we know. I mean, got the destruction of the temple and Jerusalem and that kind of stuff. But yeah, I'm sure the actual memory of it is probably comes mainly from Raiders.

E: It's got to be right. Contaminated by Raiders. The Lost Ark in in in a certain sense OK for those of.

B: You who know it's a wonderful contamination.

E: Oh, it is. It's still one of my favorite action adventure movies. It's a wonderful movie. For those who don't know, I'll tell you what this is. OK, an ark. What is an ark? Ark. ARK from the Hebrew word Aron, and it literally means chest or box. It can also mean a vessel of protection or preservation. All right, that's an ark. What's a covenant? A covenant that is a sacred agreement or promise between God and in this case, the people of Israel. So the ark of the covenant is a chest made of wood and fashioned in gold, which acts as a vessel of protection. Now, what is it protecting? What is said to be contained in the Ark?

S: Do you know the pieces of the 10 commandments?

E: Yes, those those are that is one of or several pieces of one of the items and there do you there are two other items supposedly in the ark do I does anyone know what those were are?

C: Are they also documents?

E: No, they're not documents.

C: It was. The. Sort of.

J: Shroud Jesus used at the Last Supper.

E: No. No, Moses, his lunch. I thought it. I thought it was and a note from his mom.

C: Is it a shroud Wrong.

E: Testament. Is it a?

S: Cup.

C: You're getting in the right.

E: There's a jar that's New Testament care.

C: You got to go, old. Testament.

S: Yeah, Chalices in the Old Testament.

C: He drank out of.

E: Cups in the Old Testament.

C: What are you talking about? Along with the stone tablets or the remnants of the.

E: Stone tablets of the 10 commandments. As Steve said, there is also something called Aaron's rod, which is, you know what, some kind of like priestly rod. And a. Jar of Mana? Oh man, spells man.

S: I know, isn't that weird spells?

E: The the which is described as the food God provided in the desert. OK, because at the time it was the the Hebrews who were wandering and after they escaped from bondage in Egypt, spent a lot of time in the desert and supposedly magically, I guess food appeared in the jar of mana, so that could help feed the people. OK, Mana from heaven to.

B: Now Steve, my next question was going to be.

E: Where is the story or where is the what's the source of the ark? You mentioned it. It's the Bible and specifically the Old Testament. Very good. Do you know which book in the Old Testament the ark is mentioned in? Are they out of Genesis at that point? I think.

S: They are definitely out of Genesis, Deuteronomy, and then. No, you skipped Exodus, Leviticus, and.

C: Exodus.

S: Yes, of course.

E: And when was and do we know when Exodus was written? Approximately long time ago. Oh yeah, very long time.

C: Ago in.

E: Biblical times, yeah, 14th century BCE. So we're talking roughly what, 34 to 3500 years ago from today? Now, final question, other than the story in the Bible, is there any evidence that the ark and its contents were real? No, I don't think so. No, I'll be correct.

S: There is no no evidence so.

E: It is not mentioned in any contemporary non biblical sources. And they've looked, you know, they've, they've studied tomes from Egypt and Canaan and Mesopotamia from the time there's and nowhere else is it mentioned but in the Bible. What about dead? Some scrolls, some some. Scholars believe it. Could have been a real actual object, but others think it's symbolic. You know, written into biblical texts as a way to show Israel special connection with God. But the Bible itself treats the ark as a very real item, and it was built to exact dimensions and handled with very strict rules and linked to many major events in Israel's early history. Some believe that the ark was lost, destroyed, captured and for a long time certainly forgotten. Did you know that there is a church, the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, obviously, in Ethiopia? And they claim that they have it, that it's housed in a Chapel in a place called Axum Axum. However, nobody's allowed to see it, of course.

Voice-over: But trust us, it's there on a.

E: Tangent to that, there's. A story about in World War 2, I think it was. An officer of the British Army visited supposedly this place where it was housed and supposedly saw it and deemed it to be a replica, something that looks like an ark that they can claim as a holy rock. And you know, and that we know that that's not unusual for churches throughout history to claim that they have specific relics of, of, of of importance, but they are all frankly replicas of what was supposedly the original churches duping people. What?

B: That happened ever, ever, ever so scant. Evidence. No evidence.

E: Frankly, no evidence at all that it ever existed. But has that stopped people from believing the Ark of the Covenant in Israel? No, it hasn't, because why let something like a like lack of evidence get in the way of a perfectly good belief? Now of course, people in the latter 20th century, around the time that the movie Raiders of the Lost Ark came, came out, you know, those sophisticated modern people inhabiting an age of science, technology and reason would never waste their time and money and government resources looking into objects described in the Bible with no evidence to support that the objects even existed in the 1st place, right? Am I right? Well, would you believe the United States Central Intelligence Agency, the CIA, or the US Department of Defense, the DoD would undertake efforts to go looking for the Ark of the Covenant? Oh, yes, they did. And of course, but you know, well, they're going to use the most sophisticated tools at their at their disposal, right? The highest technology, sophisticated methods and calling their most celebrated assets to search for the Lost Ark, right? Well, I'm here to tell you, well, that not exactly. Hey, if you want a movie that more closely resembles reality than Raiders of the Lost Ark, go see the movie or read the book The Men Who Stare at Goats. And that's a fascinating look at US military's utilization of self-proclaimed psychics who use their so-called powers of remote viewing to see things that are hidden away no matter where those things are on this planet or in some cases other planets. We'll get to that then. That's what the CIA and Department of Defense did in the 1980s. They called on the services of scammers, I mean psychics, to try and locate, by the power of remote viewing, the Lost Ark of the Covenant. And that is in the news this week as a slew of declassified documents have been released by our government in recent weeks, some of which admit to these efforts. Now, this is not the first time that these documents have been talked about or parts of them declassified. It was back in 2000 actually, when this was first known and 1st declassified. However, the The thing is, in the year 2000, the Internet is just a shadow of what it is now. I mean, yes, you know, there was the Internet, but I don't know that it had the same cultural saturation sort of that it has today. You know, if something like this hits the Internet now, obviously everybody's going to know about it. But, you know, back in 2000, maybe not so much. So it wasn't as easily an accessible story as it is now, but it's it's experiencing a revival now. And it's why it's a news item now, because it's all part of a slew of other declassified documents that are being released by our government on all kinds of different things. But this one is getting particular attention. You know, obviously it's very click baity and a lot of news outlets, tabloid and otherwise, are running with the story because, hey, who doesn't like a good story about the the Lost Ark of the Covenant? So what did the documents say? What what has been revealed? All right, so they yes, that they admitted that they paid for these efforts, the CIA and the Department of Defense. Yep, they hired these remote viewers. Oh, to the tune of millions of dollars for these entire projects that ran for the better part of 20 years or so. And that means our tax dollars went ahead and paid for it. But not only did they go searching for it, but they were successful and they actually found the Lost Ark. However, remote viewing of an object is one thing, and the retrieval of a remotely viewed object that is quite another thing. This isn't about the retrieval, but it's the story about the remote viewers supposed success in actually finding it through their powers. You got to think back. So this was during the Cold War, like the entail of the Cold War, and the US government was launching secret psychic research programs under the umbrella of what became eventually known as Project Stargate. The programs were aimed to determine if remote viewing could be used for espionage and mostly having to do with the troop movements and defense movements of the Soviet Union. And, you know, and taking a look at, you know, their missile silos and seeing what conditions they were under. But, hey, if you could use remote viewing to look for those kinds of things, maybe you could also use this information to look for, oh, I don't know, lost religious artifacts and relics. So that's exactly what they did. In one particular case, they worked with a remote viewer Who see how they describe it. It Remote viewer #32 Who knows how many hundreds of these remote viewers that they hired over the years? In a remote viewing session on December 5th, 1988, Remote Viewer 32 was tasked with identifying quote a hidden object and they allegedly, allegedly did not know that the object that they were being tasked to find was the Ark of the Covenant. So without that knowledge, just find this hidden object. The only thing that that the remote viewer knew was it was somewhere, something that existed somewhere in the Middle East region, the region of the world known as the Middle East. OK, so the psychic described a location in the Middle East that claimed housed an object that was being protected by entities. And here's what it says. The target is a container. This is right from the document. This container has another container inside of it. The target is fashioned of wood, gold and silver, similar in shape to a coffin, and it's decorated with a seraphim, which is like a six winged Angel or, you know, angelic kind of creatures. The declassified document showed that several pages of drawings accompanying this written description what would turn out to be something resembling what the Bible described as the Lost Ark of the Covenant, that visuals of surrounding buildings indicated the presence of mosque domes. Well, Gee, of course, if you're going to be, you know, if you're given the clue that you're looking somewhere in the Middle East, that's a pretty even. I could have probably told you that without any powers, but that the object was hidden underground and in dark, wet conditions. There's an aspect of spirituality, information, lessons, and historical knowledge far beyond what we know. Remote viewer #32 continued. They described it as being protected by entities that would destroy individuals who attempted to damage the object. The target is protected and can only be opened by those who are authorized to do so. Did they say it would melt your face off?

S: Right. Exactly, Steve.

E: I mean, come on, it's 1988 and the movie. I mean, it is it not clear that this remote viewer figured out on their own And it frankly, it doesn't take much if you're being hired to look for an object in the Middle East, you know, why wouldn't you describe something akin to what you saw in Raiders of the Lost Ark and describing the Ark. But this is considered to be, Oh my gosh, how could this remote, you know, how could the psychic have known what we were going for when all we didn't give him hardly any clues? And so far, apparently some people were very impressed by this information that the remote viewer provided. However, to us in the skeptical community, we know this, you know, as many things, not the least of which is a cold reading and using those kinds of techniques to come up with something akin to what would be a hit in this case and impressing people who otherwise are unaware of such tricks. Yeah, it's completely unimaginative. I mean.

S: You could have made that up off the top of your head just winging it.

B: You could test ChatGPT into 10. Times better. Totally GPT would.

E: Have been overkill. So yeah, making the rounds, you know, Ark of the Covenant yeah. I never thought we'd be speaking about this on the on the show. You know, I mean actually bringing it so, but they they never went to get it.

S: 'Cause they didn't, right? They didn't say that's here on the map. It's just like they just described the place that it's in, right? Yeah. Give me the longitude. Give me the latitude.

E: Give me the depth, you know, No, no details like that. Just basically a cold reading. I'm surprised I didn't say I.

S: See a giant warehouse and.

E: And. A man with a.

S: With his hat.

E: And a rat and apparent pain.

S: Alright, I'll leave you with this. TuneIn next week when we go.

E: Exploring for more archaeological treasures as those described in that other famous relic hunting movie, Monty Python in the Search for the Holy Grail. Thank you very much. That's historically accurate, that one.

S: Just as.

E: Much as Raiders just all right. Thanks, Evan. Yep.

S: All right, Cara, I think, I don't know.

23&Me Selling Personal Data (58:32)

• 23andMe is potentially selling more than just genetic data – the personal survey info it collected is just as much a privacy problem 

S: I think we mentioned last week that 23andMe went bankrupt, right? And now hearing a lot of stuff about what's going to happen to all that data they got so.

C: 23andMe, the genetic testing company, filed for bankruptcy on March 23rd, 2025. As you mentioned, a lot of people are kind of questioning what is going to happen. A few days after that filing, AUS judge did rule that the company could sell its consumer data as part of that bankruptcy. So could be, you know, chopped up for parts and sold, sold to the highest bidder. We're seeing attorneys general across the country warning different state citizens delete your data. Do what you need to do destroy this, ask them to destroy the spit samples. A lot of people are talking about the genetic data, right? The actual DNA information as this big source of sort of fear what what's going to happen with with the code that makes me. But there's a great article that was written in the conversation by Kate Spector Baghdadi. I might not be saying that correctly. Who's an associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Michigan and she wrote about what's going on with 23andMe and what kinds of things that maybe we haven't thought about and should draw some of our attention to. So the terms and conditions that. We all signed up for and when I say I'm going to say we and be inclusive throughout this process because I am a 23andMe customer, right? Any of you 4 ever do 23andMe? I did not. Nope, None of you.

E: OK. So.

C: When I say we, I'm referring to myself and all of the listeners who are also 23 and weak customers. You know, when we originally signed up, we signed a terms and conditions and a privacy notice and that said all sorts of stuff that we probably wouldn't have wanted it to say if we had read the fine print, right? Like the company can use. Yep. And I mean you can't, but you can't say no or you can't use the product, right? So it's a trade off, right? So they can use our information for R&D. They can share the data in aggregate with third parties. If you did any additional research, which most people did, individual information could be shared with third parties. The language clearly stated that if there were a sale or a bankruptcy, that consumer information could be sold or transferred to another company's holding. That's it, case closed. There you go.

B: So what do we do?

C: So the writer of this article is a lawyer and a bioethicist, and she's especially interested in direct to consumer genetic testing. She talks a bit about what 23andMe is. We don't really have to get into that. I mean, I guess if you're interested, it started in 2007. Obviously it's named after, you know, 23 chromosomes in our DNA. And there are other direct to consumer genetic testing companies, but it was probably, I think it was the one of the 1st and definitely the largest. Interestingly, a lot of these other genetic testing companies didn't last. They just they couldn't figure out the business model. They couldn't make enough money, and so they went by the wayside. But 23andMe had tried to hold on pretty strong. It looks like over 15,000,000 consumers over the course of its life purchased 23 andme. Most of those people consented to research. It was it was valued at $6 billion at one point. But the stock has been declining and the company owes a lot of money to its creditors. The the author of this article attributes some of that to a 20 23 hack where 7 million people's data was shared and also just kind of a lack of interest in doing, you know, the collecting and the, and the genetic information like just fewer people are interested. I think it was a big boom and then it's it's had a long tail. There's the important statement if you're not paying your the product. You guys have heard that before. Yep, right. So, so we know that when we talk about like social media companies, our data is valuable. Our data are valuable. Yeah, subject verb agreement there. Our data are valuable. Our buying habits, our, you know, personal information that helps different corporations learn how to market very targeted things to us. There's a note in in here that I found really interesting. The author references a book that was written this year by a former Meta executive named Sarah Wynne Williams. The book's called Careless People, and she talks about just how like deep this goes. And I think we all know this, but it's just kind of a chilling example that Facebook, for example, would use notion behaviors that they deemed related to self consciousness about personal appearance. Like let's say you put up a selfie and then you quickly deleted it. If you did that, you were more likely to have beauty products promoted to you, you know, so, so it's not just demo graphic data, but it's also behavior online. And really, we're not talking about one datum over here and another datum over there. We're talking about aggregate data and how important a story data in the aggregate can tell about individual users. There are some concerns here not only about my genetic code becoming available online to, let's say, nefarious actors or becoming available online to a corporation that I originally did not consent to have that information. But if you've ever been involved in 23andMe, you know that it's not just your genetic data that's present. There are a lot of sort of quizzes and individual data collection experiences to try and hone the health and Wellness and lifestyle portions of the of the 23andMe. So it's not just like, hey, here's your genealogy. You are likely to have come from this part of the world this far back and you know, these different migrations out of Africa. It's also you're likely to have a widow's peak, you're likely to wake up at this time, you're likely to be less affected by caffeine. And they get a lot of that information by collecting vast quantities of self report data and then comparing that to the genetic data that they have. So we're not just talking about privacy of genetic data. We're also talking about privacy of personal demographic data and survey data as well. I didn't struggle with the accuracy thing at all because the way that 23andMe works is it does sequence your DNA and it does so quite accurately. It's the interpretation that's less accurate, right? It's it's the way that they determined. Oh, you are likely from many generations ago from this part of, you know, this continent because we're looking at extant individuals living in that continent and comparing your DNA to them, which it just doesn't work because there are massive, you know, migrations in and out of places all the time. And we know that like the vast majority of users are like probably what we call weird, right? Western educated. And I can't even remember what it all stands for. Whatever richer white, you know, western users. And so you have like really specific data about what county from England your ancestors came from. But then it's like, yeah, you're just like broadly W African because they just, they didn't have enough participants in those areas. I was never that concerned about that though, because 23andMe does sequence your genome and you have access to the raw data, which then you can plug into other programs if you're looking for specific SNPs, right? Like if I wanted to know if I was BRCA positive, I could find that out with my 23andMe data. I don't have to then go that, go get that specific genetic test. So to me, I saw it as an empowering way for me to have access to my own genetic code. And yes, I had to do it through a third party, but you would have to do that also if you were getting sequence for medical purposes, right? Yes, the protections are much stronger, but there would still there'll be other individuals who have access to that data. There's still risks of, of data breaches, all those things. Now don't get me wrong, my data could already exist on the Internet. There is a lot of fear about this leak. I myself am really concerned. But what I am going to do is what like I mentioned earlier, most of these attorneys general are recommending and what the author of of this article in the conversation recommends, which is to go into your 23andMe and delete your data. So I already started that process before we recorded the podcast, but I didn't want to finish the process because I was afraid I would no longer have access to my settings window. What I want to do is talk folks just really quickly who may already be enrolled in 23andMe and don't realize how much of the private information is actively being shared. I want to help empower you all to log in and figure out what to do. So if you log into your 23andMe and you go to the tab called Settings, you're going to have a bunch of different windows. Most of those windows ask about your demographic and personal information. But then things get hairy when you get to privacy, sharing, preferences, research and product consents, and 23andMe data. So what I did first is I went through all of my privacy and sharing and I blocked sharing or disallowed sharing for everything. I'm no longer participating in DNA relatives. I'm not allowing my connections to see my results. I've blocked sharing invitations. I'm not connected to any apps or any reports. I have no viewers. Then I went through obviously changed all my e-mail preferences and then all of the research and product consents. I revoked consent or declined consent to all of the different research participation that I was actively engaged in and revoked or declined consent for sharing of individual non aggregated data. So all of that now is blocked or revoked. And then the last step is that you can go in and download your your data. And that's what I'm doing right now. There's a report summary, there's a ancestry composition raw data, there's the family tree data, and then there's your all of your raw data. That is, you can even submit a request to download your imputed genotype data, R6 in its uninterpreted format, so they say as a collection of variant calling data files. I'm probably going to do that too, just so that I have access to all of these things. And there's also phase genotype data that you can download. So what format are all these files?

B: In. So they're all different like the raw.

C: Data is a plain text file. The imputed genotype data R6 and the phase genotype data are well. The phase genotype data is an uninterpreted plain text file. The imputed genotype data R6 is called, it's a collection of what they call variant calling data files. I don't even know what that is. So you have to use software like BCF tools to be able to use it. You know, I don't know if I would ever be able to, but at least I would have access to that raw data. And then the rest of them, I'm assuming are going to be like PDFs because these are the reports that 23andMe interpreted from your data. So you'll get a download of everything you've ever had access to. You can also request all of that raw data to get it. And then at the very end you delete it. There's a literally sections that says delete data. Caution, data deletion cannot be reversed. You'll permanently lose access to your reports. Any pending data download requests you've made will be cancelled. So you want to wait and delete it after you've taken everything that you want. There's even a text box. Why are you requesting to delete your data? You can tell them what you think right there. And then you can permanently delete your data. It will be gone. Now the hope is it will be gone from the databases altogether. Yeah, that's what everybody's recommend doing, recommending doing. And you know, then you will be 1 less of a massive database that is then sold for parts. And so I highly recommend, if you haven't done it yet, start that process now because getting some of this data downloaded, if you want to download the data, can take some time. And that's what I'm doing right now. All right, cool. It's a good lesson.

S: In reading the fine print, right, I'm sure most people who signed up for it didn't necessarily know that if it goes bankrupted that all of your stuff could be sold, all your data, all your. Well, even if it doesn't go bankrupt, yeah.

C: Even if it doesn't, I think they get even.

S: More ability to do so they get transfer all of their data, Yeah, but I think it's also I think.

C: It's also worth mentioning because we, we talk about the difference between like efficacy and effectiveness research all the time. We often talk about these things a little bit ideologically. Like, you know, yes, it is a good lesson in reading the fine print, but also, even if we had read the fine print, every word of it, you're making a decision. And that decision is almost always a decision between privacy and convenience. And you can't say I decline and also still engage or have access. And so for a lot of people, they're willing to take that risk because privacy at this point, especially if you look at folks younger than me, folks who kind of grew up in an Internet era, they don't think that privacy is real. They've been hacked so many times. They've seen so many data leaks that they're like, yeah, it's just the cost of doing business. Whereas when you look at generations that are older than me, because I'm right, I'm an elder millennial, right? I'm sort of, I'm not quite a cusper, but I'm an elder millennial. So you look at the older Gen. Xers and then the Boomers who did not grow up with this, there is much more fear and skepticism. You look at the younger folks who always grew up with this, it's not that they're naive in a way, it's that they're kind of less naive, that they know that this is how it is to engage with the world, albeit dangerous. Ambivalent, maybe. Yeah, maybe that's a good way. To put it. And so where is that balance between privacy and convenience? It's different for different people, but I think it's also a little bit naive to believe that we can exist in the world, that we can engage in banking, that we can engage in data transfer, that we can do our jobs online and be perfectly private and protected. Yeah, Yeah. Unfortunately, I think that's.

S: True, but I don't think I don't think that means that we just give up and just I agree freely. I completely agree which? Is why I'm deleting all my stuff.

C: Yeah, and I recommend you do too. Delete, delete, delete.

E: You say you can't, you know if.

B: You if you decline, then you really can't even use the service. That's why I kind of like, I seem to get prompted a lot these days with like when I go to websites. All right, here's our cookie policy. You know, what do you want to do? And and I decline everything that I can and but still let you in. It's like, cool. Yeah, but that's a legal protection.

C: And we have to remember that that that is a legal protection that was fought for by consumer advocacy groups. And it's even stricter in Europe. That's why if you ever travel outside of America for the American listeners to certain European countries, you get a pop up every time you go to website. And it's kind of annoying. You're like, Oh my God, why do I have to do this? I mean.

B: But.

C: There are legal protections in other countries where, yes, you have the right to opt out, and there are some legal protections here in the US, but they're not as robust. But that didn't happen because these corporations wanted it to. Trust me, They fought tooth and nail not to allow that. Yeah. Yeah. That's regulation.

B: That's regulation protecting.

C: Consumers. Exactly. Some, Yeah, some companies make it.

B: Difficult to opt out. I love the ones that just had. There's a checkbox decline all like yes I know that's so much easier. Unsubscribe.

C: From all Yeah yeah, but I hate the ones like I hit unsubscribe.

S: And then my malware blocks it. It's like, this is dangerous, right? Funny. How are you taking me?

B: To oh.

C: My gosh.

S: Or. And the ones I struggle with there, it's like. OK, you can opt out, enter in your e-mail and we'll opt you out of that e-mail. Yeah, I don't like that either. I don't like that either. Just.

C: I don't trust it. Just unsubscribe me. I know I don't trust it.

S: I don't like the ones where they let you like.

J: Choose your preferences like. I don't. I want to not receive from this this this list. This. List right, But they never say delete your e-mail from our database, right? Exactly yes, right. And that's.

C: What I'm hoping this 23andMe data deletion, I'm, I'm hoping that there was legally baked in early on these abilities for that reason, because it does say once you've deleted it, like you can't even access it anymore. Yeah. So maybe that means it's no longer in the database, right? But you have your report, So what do you care?

S: Exactly, that's why I'm downloading them all right now.

C: Yeah. All right. Thanks, Cara.

Who's That Noisy? + Announcements (1:15:21)

J: Jay, it's who's that noisy time? Noisy time. All right guys, last week I played.

US#04: This noisy.

J: I'm about to play a noisy that might really irritate some people, so if you don't want to hear it or you want to just lower your volume, now's the time to do it.

U: So what do you think guys?

J: Well. There's a siren a.

E: Car. Alarm. An alarm. You know, but that. Couldn't be it because it? Wouldn't be that simple, right? Some sort of alarm might not be a car alarm.

C: I got a lot of people that wrote in on this one.

J: So Brianna Biebel Bible BIBEL Biebel Brothel Bebel So Brianna says this. Week's Who's that noisy? Sounds like a game of laser tag. And then she has called herself the bumbling biochemist. I mean, I've played laser tag and there's all sorts of noises that happen. Your base is exploding, whatever. Sure. You know, that kind of klaxon noise is in laser tag. Absolutely. That is not this noise. But it's not a bad guess. A listener named Paul Cycle wrote in and said in this week's Noisy we hear two men communicating during an alarm. The alarm is operating because of a critical function. So he's trying to parse through it here. And then he finally gets down to, my guess is that this is a flooded power generation facility and the men are starting up the flood pumps, which we hear at the end. You get 2 points for how specific you were. You are not correct, but you're not, you know, 100% wrong because you have you're on, you're on the, the right track. You just didn't get to the right thing. Timothy Juristish. I mean, come on. He didn't give me his pronunciation. So that's his name. Jurishishish. Timin. Oh, Timin. It's Timin Jurishitish. All right. Cara J. U. RSHHITSCHI pronounced it correctly. I. Pronounce it, he said. Hey everyone, pretty sure I am too late. But this week's noisy sounds a lot like the pace setting of defibrillators. This is cool, guys, he said. It's a. Good audio cue so people. Have to perform CPR. People that know how to perform CPR know how fast they should go. Said around 100 BPM. That's pretty cool. Never heard that, didn't know it existed. Now we do evil. I wrote in and said in the 70s, my mom bought a Buick Regal that had a theft deterrent alarm. You had to use a key near the front left panel to arm or disarmament. If anyone tried to lift the door handle while it was armed, it made the same noise. So yes, some of us go back to the 70s on this show. That is not correct. But thank you for reminding me of wood siding on cars that my parents used to own. We do have a winner from last week. The winner is a listener named Andrew Lotus. And the answer is he's, this is what Andrew said. Jay, I am an air traffic controller and pilot. That sounds like an ELT emergency locator transmitter signal from an aircraft. So this was close enough there. There are more details and more specifics, but you know, Andrew was 100% like there for what it was legitimately. And I'm not even sure that it's any different from airplanes to boats because the original noisy comes from a boat. So let me read to you what this is. It's a EP IRB. These are emergency beacons that are mandatory on all boats traveling a certain distance offshore. They can be manually activated or they will automatically activate when a vessel sinks. And once activated, they admit a signal to a satellite, which is then coordinated by rescue parties to assist similar devices on land might also be called personal locator beacons or PLB. So yeah, bottom line is, as you know, crafts have these airplanes, boats, anything where people might not need to be located. And you know, loud klaxon noise always gets people on their toes if any emergencies happening. So anyway, got a lot of guesses, but there was a lot of people guessing around it, but didn't completely hit it. But anyway, that was definitely a cool noisy. I have a new noisy for you guys this week, sent in by a listener named Emma Powers. There it is if you think you know this week's noisy. Or you heard something cool. e-mail me at wtn@theskepticsguide.org. Steve, a few quick announcements 1. Not a con 2025. There are still tickets available for the conference. You can go to theskepticsguide.org or you can go to notaconcon.com to find out more details. The schedule is up. We have a secret surprise guest, but it's not a secret because we're telling people who we. He is, and we have all of us at the SGU. We have George Rob, we have Andrea Jones Roy, we have Brian Wecht, we have Ian, who you might actually get to see his face if you come to this conference. He will still be hiding it, but sometimes you could see him. You got to just try hard. He's like, I'll point them out to you.

E: So we also have a new.

J: Announcement, guys, we are going to be doing a show in Kansas, Kansas.

E: The show is going to be on September.

J: 20th It'll be outside of Kansas City in a town called Lawrence. It's a college town. What university is there of University of Kansas? The Jayhawk.

E: Yep, we'll be right near there, so if you want.

J: More information Like I said, you can go to either of those two websites. We will also be announcing a private show, which will probably in the location and all the details will come out next week. But if you're interested in tickets for the extravaganza, just go to discussthisguy.org. You'll see a button there. That's it for now, Steve. OK, let's start with an.

Emails (1:21:13)

S: E-mail This one is about RFK Junior and access to vaccines and the message is hello y'all. I believe I could write you an entire novel of my concerns in life right now and provide an unending lift of questions. How much say does RFK have to limit or eliminate vaccine access for the US? What would could we do to prevent it? If he can remove it, how badly would this affect the manufacturing and supply of vaccines once he has gone from office? An example I look to is the Lyme disease vaccine that did exist and disappeared and seems to be making a comeback now. I just do not understand how someone in power like RFK is so willing to be ignorant. Does he believe seatbelts should exist, shouldn't exist because they aren't 100% effective and 50 years of data can be ignored on their effect? I could go on and on and on with the amount of anger that has been building up inside since five years ago. Thank. Thank you for doing a good job. I look forward to your weekly release. All right, so we've talked about RFK and vaccines many times before. David Gorsky actually did an article exactly on this question. What could RFK do to undermine vaccines in the US? So go to Science Based Medicine if you want all of those details. But there is a lot, unfortunately, that he could do. I mean, he can't directly affect the industry, but he can destroy the support that the federal government, the CDC, gives for vaccines. And it doesn't have to create much increase in vaccine hesitancy to have a big effect. So, for example, I just learned today that the CDC removed its reporting on measles. Yeah, I saw that. And which included.

C: A. Be sure to.

S: Get your measles vaccine. So that's gone and the CDC public announcement, you know, public service statements on vaccines are vaccines are a personal choice. Talk to your doctor about the risks and the benefits of vaccines. Well didn't they also recently cancel?

C: Like the meeting that's necessary for them to determine the flu strains that are going to be included next year. Like, that's the thing. They do have a lot of power. Yeah. It's not just about influence. Like they're. Determining where money goes and what decisions are being made about some things like annual flu shots, right? Yeah, They weigh in on that. That's terrifying. Now you could also.

S: You know, again, he's ginning up an anti vaccine study that's, you know, he's guaranteed it's going to produce a result that he wants. We talked about that last week. Again, putting people in charge of the FDA who were also going to be pseudo scientists. There are lots of laws on the books that you could use to you could misuse, misinterpret, interpret in such a way that, you know, just makes it financially or legally difficult to to use vaccines or to sell vaccines. But I think the biggest negative effect that RFK is going to have is just hollowing out the institutional knowledge that we've built up over generations, both in research and regulation and, you know, in knowledge about these topics, which is is will take. It's hard to know like how much time it will take to reverse this. Definitely years, maybe decades before we actually, I mean, we never fully recover in that we will always be farther behind than we would have been had this not happened. And it's not just hollowing out what we know.

C: Now it's completely like, I mean, they're gutting funding to anything coming up. So there are whole labs that are going to be shuttering whole, you know, lines of inquiry are, are, are going to be abandoned. And maybe, you know, how hard is it to pick those things back up? We don't know. I mean, I definitely, if I got all my vaccine, I just got my titers tested yesterday. So I'm waiting to see if I still have my measles immunity. And if I don't, I'm getting a booster ASAP. Like, do it now while your insurance still pays for it. If you have insurance. Yeah. See what you're missing. Now's the time. Now's a better time than ever. I think the thing too that the that the reader asked about. Like I don't understand how someone in power like that is willing to be so ignorant. Does he believe seatbelts shouldn't exist? Because this is not about regulation for RFKRFK loves regulation. He was an environmental lawyer. He wanted ignorance.

S: He's no and it's not about ignorance. He is a. Conspiracy theorist? Yeah, this is. Intentional. Is wrong.

C: It's terrible. I.

S: Mean, you know, he has serious problems when it comes to his ability to logic and to understand science. He cherry picks, he distorts he you know, he has a preconceived notions. He basically unfortunately, his experience as a lawyer is being used for evil, right. He makes a lawyer's case for whatever side he is on and rather than actually looking at the evidence like his side determines how he sees the evidence. The evidence does not determine what he believes, and that's why it's like he's beyond logic and evidence at this point. One other thing that David points out, he is in charge now of the committee that recommends the childhood vaccine schedule. He could alter those recommendations, which is what schools use in order to require vaccines to attend school. So basically he could eliminate the need for some or all vaccines for for attending public school and what kind of mental gymnastics is going to be?

C: Used when we immediately see the results of because you know it's happening already, of course.

S: But like this is going.

C: To be a cross-sectional study, not just longitudinal, right? Like, there's always a new generation of kindergarteners. And so within no time at all, we will have data that show kids are getting sick, really sick, and kids are dying because they're not vaccinated or because they're not getting their vaccines early enough. And what kind of mental gymnastics is the administration and this specific department going to to pull to try to explain that away? Yeah, let's just blame Biden.

B: They'll blame. Biden. Yeah, exactly.

C: They'll blame Obama, and even if he does anything.

S: To rein in industry on food additives or whatever. Like if you are still there thinking, oh, he might do something good, it's going to be an order of magnitude worse. With what the negative effect that he has from the vaccines? Oh yeah, you think your red dyed number?

C: 5 or whatever is more dangerous than measles. Yeah, right. Yeah. Kidding. Priorities.

B: Just another. Government official. With a body count Yep yeah. I wonder how many websites now we have we've.

C: Got to have like a main website and then a drop down where we can click each government. What's the harm? Yeah. One more quick. One, I'm not going to read this whole e-mail, but.

S: This e-mail William from California says that he was on Neil degrasse Tyson's Facebook page and Neil dropped a math problem. It's one of those counter intuitive math problems, right? Where there's an intuitive answer that's wrong and the real answer is hard to wrap your head around. So here's here's the problem. A driver aims to average 90 mph over 2 laps, but he completed the first lap at an average of 60 mph. What average speed is needed for the second lap? What do you guys think? Well, with the knee jerk is 1/20 right?

B: Yeah, that's the intuitive wrong. Answer right?

S: The correct answer is 100.

B: And 80 miles.

S: Per hour. Why is that? This is not my Forte.

C: Because you.

S: Complete the lap in less. Time, right? It's the, it's not the you don't average the laps. These laps are artificial. You average the amount of time you spend at each speed. So if he averaged 60 mph completing 1 lap, if he goes 180 mph, he's going to complete that lap in a third of the time. So it needs to be three times the speed. Does that make sense? That's why it's 180. It's not 120. Yeah, but it gets, it gets a little bit crazier when you extend it. So he he said, for example, what Then a second meme popped up where the first lap speed was changed to 45 mph. I was the first person to jump on this one and didn't realize that for this reason, there is no solution for this version. There's no solution. So essentially, if you do the math, it's like you would need to be go infinite speed. You know it can't be done.

E: Yeah, it can't be done. So you you, you can't.

S: Get down to an average speed of 60 mph. You would have to go so fat, you know what I mean? But there were you saying there are people in the in that discussion on Facebook who refused to accept it. Like, no, it's it's 100. And what's the intuitive? It's 135 mph. That's it. And it's like, stop confusing me with complexity. That's the answer. It's like, no, that's the intuitive wrong answer. Yeah, which this one is not that to me, it's not that hard. Like once you explain like, Oh yeah, you're going 3 times as fast you have to. It's a third of the time you have to do it that way. It's not just the lap, it's the idea of the lap being an arbitrary.

C: Yeah, metric that it's it's that's not half. Yeah. Perhaps a better way to look at it also is to just.

S: You just have to, you have to consider the total time and the total speed. So let's say in the first example, each lap was 90 miles, that's how long the lap was. So you have to. He wants to go 90 miles times 2. That's 180 miles averaging 90 mph. That's two hours. That's the total travel time. But if he's going 60 miles an hour for the 1st 90 mile lap, that's an hour and a half, which means he has to go the second 90 miles in 30 minutes or half an hour. Hence 180 miles. Per hour, right? That way the total time is 2 hours. For in order for the two, the 180 miles 2 * 90 miles per lap to be 90 mph average speed. That's it. And the 2nd 145 miles an hour takes up two hours. So there's zero time left, right? You have to get the rest of the second lap in 0 seconds in order for you to average 90 mph. That's it, right. That's that's once you get that, you're like, OK, yeah, All right. Now the the, the jump to intuitive answer. He was wrong. And then you understand it, but people are are just doubling, tripling down on the intuitive wrong answer. And he doesn't surprise anyone. Yeah.

C: He wants to know what fallacy that is.

S: And he says, is this the Dunning Kruger effect or whatever? Is it just a desire for simplicity? I do think it's partly the people don't want to let go of the intuitive answers because it gives them a sense of control. And it does feel simple and elegant. And when you hear a bunch of complexity that you can't wrap your head around, like that's got to be wrong because it's too complex for me to understand, I'm going to stick with the simple intuitive answer. And of course, that's not what they're actually overtly.

C: Thinking but it is it's motivated reasoning it's this has to be right yeah because the other thing is makes me feel so uncomfortable but there's that's true but I also.

S: Think there is something that just feels right about the intuitive answer? Oh, there is. That's why we all would say yeah, and that's why.

C: It's hard to let go of that, but.

S: It's the holding on even after you're shown.

C: That you're wrong when you go. Nope. Yeah, it's the Monty Hall thing too. It's.

S: Like the intuitive answer just feels right. It's like, no, it's 5050. No, you just can't give it up. Run. Run the experiment and you'll see you'll.

E: You'll see what the result is, and you'll see which has been done, but still just.

S: Without doing that, like just trying to think their way around it, they just, I know they just can't make that connection.

E: But.

S: Again, we, we and we. These are fun, first of all because they're fun, but second of all because they they reinforce how counterintuitive math could be. Our brains are not really built for No, we suck at it. Yeah, well, our brains are.

B: Not really built to be able to.

S: Think like up to 7 digits or something like, but that's that's pretty much it. Well, and I think it's even beyond that because what?

C: We're not talking about is a complex calculation. We're talking about a complex word problem that requires conceptualization of the problem. That's the step folks are missing. It's not a calculation problem. They're missing. They're failing on the word problem. Yeah, they're failing on the.

S: Word problem, yeah.

C: Yeah, yeah, yeah, reminds me, reminds me.

B: Of a Carl Sagan quote I came across today. Understanding is a kind of ecstasy never heard.

S: That one before I love it.

B: All right. Well, thank you, William.

U: That was a.

S: Fun one.

Science or Fiction (1:33:45)

Theme: None Item #1: A review of health records finds that getting the shingles vaccine is associated with a 20% reduction in the risk of developing dementia. Item #2: A new study finds that mortality rates are overall higher in the US than Europe, but these differences disappear for the highest socio-economic groups. Item #3: A systematic review finds that older adults, >35 years old, do not experience greater exercise induced muscle damage than younger adults age 18-25 from the same exercise.

Answer	Item
Fiction	A new study finds that mortality rates are overall higher in the US than Europe, but these differences disappear for the highest socio-economic groups.
Science	A review of health records finds that getting the shingles vaccine is associated with a 20% reduction in the risk of developing dementia.
Science	A systematic review finds that older adults, >35 years old, do not experience greater exercise induced muscle damage than younger adults age 18-25 from the same exercise.

Host	Result
Steve	clever

Rogue	Guess
Cara	A review of health records finds that getting the shingles vaccine is associated with a 20% reduction in the risk of developing dementia.
Jay	A systematic review finds that older adults, >35 years old, do not experience greater exercise induced muscle damage than younger adults age 18-25 from the same exercise.
Bob	A systematic review finds that older adults, >35 years old, do not experience greater exercise induced muscle damage than younger adults age 18-25 from the same exercise.
Evan	A new study finds that mortality rates are overall higher in the US than Europe, but these differences disappear for the highest socio-economic groups.

S: Let's go on with science or fiction.

U: It's time for.

Voice-over: Science or fiction?

U: Each week I come up with three Science News.

S: Items or facts? 2 real and one fake. My channel's my panelists got to tell me which one is the fake. Just three regular news items. Cara, you missed a sweep last week. You swept. No, they swept me.

C: Have you had any sweeps yet this year?

S: Yes.

C: One, I think, right. I think I've had one, yeah.

S: All right, here we go. Item #1A review of health records finds that getting the shingles vaccine is associated with a 20% reduction in the risk of developing dementia. Item 2A new study finds that mortality rates are overall higher in the US than Europe, but these differences disappear for the highest socio economic groups. And Item 3A systematic review finds that older adults greater than 35 years old do not experience greater exercise induced muscle damage than younger adults aged 18 to 25 from the same exercise care. Since you're back this week, why don't you go first? Okey Smokey so.

C: First and foremost, a review of health records getting shingles vaccine. Is that varicella? Is that shingles? Yeah. Yeah. Varicella associated with the 20. I'm still so frustrated that the shingles vaccine is not available here in this country to folks that are younger than. I think it's like 50 or something. Yeah. I want to take a nap. So many people I know who had shingles had shingles in their 30s and 40s. Yeah. Like I had chicken pox. Oh, yeah. I'm at risk anyway. So 20% reduction in the risk of developing dementia, 20% is really high. That's if that's true. That's good to hear. I kind of could see a connection here with dementia and viral illness and sort of preventing that manifestation. Shingles is brutal. And I don't know, I feel like it when it it happens, it happens for like a long time. It's pretty intractable. We'll have to take herpes medication to try and reduce its impact. And I don't know, I do think that more and more we're reading about the risk of a viral infection and its outcome on developing dementia later on. Mortality rates are overall higher in the US than Europe. Yeah, I buy it. But these differences disappear for the highest SES groups. So you're saying the highest European SES groups compared to the highest American SES groups? You're not saying the highest American SES groups compared to the average European? Yeah, if you're comparing the same socio economic.

S: Group it's not different at the highest then we would lose. You're saying we would lose them?

C: I could kind of see it, but I could also see that not being true. I, I mean, I definitely buy the mortality rates are higher in the US than Europe, but I mean, we don't have, we don't have universal access to healthcare, but I think that that affects everybody, even rich people is there's a lot of social inequity that even rich people are still subject to a lot of systemic problems in this country. So, you know, I believe we are only as strong as the, our most vulnerable. So even the rich people aren't able to kind of get off that boat. So I don't know that one kind of rubs me the wrong way. And then older adult, I don't like that you said older adults, 35. That's what the study said. That is not.

S: How you define?

C: Older adults, they do not experience greater exercise, induce muscle damage than younger adults, 18 to 25 from the same exercise. Yeah. I mean, maybe the oldest of old do, but yeah, 35 plus, I think a lot of people are in their prime 3545. Yeah, I kind of buy this one. Why would their muscles be more? I mean, yes, their muscles are older, but does that mean they're more inclined to damage or does it just mean that they're more inclined to like, atrophy? I don't know. Yeah, I think, I think the one that bugs me the most is the mortality rate when I have a feeling that rich people in the US are not saved by being in the US OK, Jay. Yeah. So the one.

J: About the. The shingles vaccine, I think that one is definitely science and that you know, well, Cara was talking about the second one about the the people on the highest incomes in the United States versus those in Europe. You know, the basic question here is, can rich people in the United States buy the same level of healthcare that that people can get in Europe? And everything I've read says no to that. So I'm going to agree with Cara and say this one is the fiction. OK, Bob, the 20% reduction?

B: In developing dementia from shitless vaccine, that's dramatic. I don't want necessarily want to use the card of like I would have heard of that, but that's dramatic shit and if it's true, I'll be. Pissed. Because that should be out there more. Yeah. Wow. All right. The the second one here. Yeah. I think on the surface here, this this sounds it makes a lot of sense because, you know, the upper, you know, these upper socio economic groups will have a lot better access to to better healthcare. That's my gut reaction to that one. And let's look at this last one here. This the third one makes sense to me, although 35 might be a little bit young for it. But yeah, you this is this assumes that that the muscle did the more muscle damage you do, the more hypertrophy you would experience, right? I think it's kind of kind of implying that. So that would make sense then that less damage, less hypertrophy the older you are, which absolutely makes sense because sarcopenia is a bitch. And that's just, you know, sarcopenia is just all that means is that as you get older, you know, you start losing muscle. And this is basically this is downward spiral to death. But yeah, losing losing muscle, I noticed at my age, building muscle is, you know, it's hard. It's a lot harder than it. Of course, it wasn't my my teens and 20s. So, yeah. So I think there's still a relatively dramatic comparison between or a contrast between, you know, 3540 year old compared to like a 15 year old in the gym. So, yeah, so that was makes the most sense of all of these. So I can totally justify that one. So that one's almost certainly science, I think. Are you reading it correct, Bob?

S: Sounds like you're arguing for the opposite of what it's. Yeah, it sounds like you're arguing for the.

B: Opposite older adults. So if you're greater than 35, you do? Oh, they don't? Yeah, they don't experience greater damage. So the older you are, the less damage, right? No, the older you are.

U: You.

C: Don't the same, it's the same. It's the same.

S: Yeah, it's no worse than if you're.

C: 18 Oh OK, sorry oh.

B: Crap, let me rethink this then. So and I don't know what.

C: To think about that, I.

B: Was so confident about that damn thing. But they still might have less damage. You're right, they could have less damage.

S: It's either the same or less. Yeah, no worse. All right, So based on.

B: That I'm less convinced of it, but but I think I'm going to go with the crew though, with the socioeconomic groups, that that one is kind of kind of rubbing me a little bit the wrong way. I think it's yeah, I think my instincts is going to be wrong with that. So I'll say that that's fiction, OK? And Devin, I'll agree with the.

S: Group and say.

E: That the mortality rates one is the fiction. I'm very curious as to how what the association between the shingles vaccine and the reduction in the risk of dementia is. There's if I knew more about maybe the shingles vaccine, that would make more sense to me, but I'm very curious. Well, let's start with that one, then we'll take these in order.

S: A review of health records finds that getting the shingles vaccine is associated with a 20% reduction in the risk of developing dementia. You guys all think this one is science. Let me just say, if this were true, this would be the single most effective way of reducing your risk of dementia, right? That's a pretty significant effect size.

B: Combined with regular.

S: Exercise. Sounds good to me.

US#04: So this one is.

S: Science. This is science. Wow, get your shingles vaccine.

US#04: Everyone, and this is probably causation.

S: This is probably not just a correlation because of the way they did the study really. So. So it's the, it's the actual.

C: Infection.

S: Because it was.

C: It was.

U: It was.

S: An because it was a natural experiment, it was, it was sort of randomized. In other words, people were not choosing to get the vaccine or not, right. So there it that eliminates a lot of confounding factors. They used a database where the vaccine wasn't available and then it was available, right? So people didn't get it, not because it wasn't available, not because they chose not to get it or couldn't afford it or some other confounding factor. So they just created an opportunity to say, oh, let's make a comparison and see what happened. And there was a 20% reduction in in the risk of developing dementia later in life. And they think it's directly related to the effects of the herpes zoster virus on the brain that, you know, this is a systemic infection. It can cause, you know, it can cause brain damage, basically. Oh, crap. So if you had it, you're still at.

B: You have that greater risk, yeah. So get your shingles vaccine basically.

S: Well, so. And that was your God.

C: Damn it, I'm going to get it.

B: Was that? Irrespective.

C: Of chicken pox status chicken, you can't get the shingles.

S: Unless you had chicken pox in the past. But you're saying right, but I'm saying those who were and were not.

C: Vaccinated, they all had had chicken pox or no, Yeah, because I'm. I don't know because I guess I would be really interested to see because obviously if there's a direct relationship between a shingles infection and increased risk of dementia, is there also a relationship between a chicken pox infection and an increased risk of dementia? Definitely Chicken pox as an adult is really bad.

S: As an adult, but yeah, maybe not as a time.

C: At 12, I was 12 when I had chicken. Yeah, I was a kid. Too.

S: Yeah, I was a kid. That was a bad.

C: Peanut, Bob.

S: Jay, did you have chicken pox? I did. Not have it. I'd never had it, really. Jay, I thought you're having it. For sure you should get can he get vaccinated?

C: There's a chicken pox vaccine now. Yeah, you can get the chicken pox vaccine. Yeah, if you never had it, you.

S: Should get back well, no? None of us were.

C: My wife had had chickenpox as an adult. Oh.

S: It must have been painful.

E: Yeah, Jay, you should get. Vaccinated If if, if.

C: It's approved for adults. I think I did. Oh, OK.

S: Consult your physician.

B: All right, let's go on to #2A new study.

S: Does it matter if I had like a very?

B: Minor case of shingles. Because it was. It was barely nothing. That matters, right? This.

C: Is because the.

S: Check the exhauster is because it's severe and it's right and it affects your brain. It was just like a weird a weird feeling in my.

B: Back not even necessarily even painful, just kind of like, what the Hell's that? It wasn't. And I hear people complain about it like shit, it wasn't much more. You just had a muscle pain. It could be, really. Painful. It could be.

S: I've had patients who were.

C: It they who were in active cancer treatment for severe cancers who shingles was the number one complaint they had. Yeah, way worse than their chemo experience. Yeah, it can be really bad. All right, let's go on #2A new study finds that.

S: Mortality rates are overall higher in the US than Europe, but these differences disappear for the highest socioeconomic groups. You guys all think this one is a fiction. It's interesting that you all assumed and didn't even question that the cause for the difference in mortality rates was healthcare. Well, no, I that's one of many.

C: I yeah, I brought up that. That's. One reason is that they don't have access, that they don't have access or we don't have access to universal healthcare. But there are a lot of other pressures if it were just healthcare.

S: Then this would make more sense because if you have the money you get world class healthcare in the United States totally but there but but I said towards.

C: The end that all of those systemic pressures that we're dealing with here apply to rich people too. All right, Like what?

S: I would say probably.

C: Like certain things aren't as regulated from an environmental perspective in the US as in the as in certain European countries. Education is also not as socialized here, so fewer people have access to free public education for for like later in life. Child care, post maternal care. I mean we pretty much get the shit end of the stick when it comes to social programs. And I think all those things combined probably do contribute to mortality. Well, this.

S: One is the fiction. It is the fiction because the higher mortality rate in the US was greater at every socioeconomic level. In fact, the highest socioeconomic in the US had the same mortality rate as the lowest socioeconomic group in Europe. Yikes. Which means that the lowest SES group is.

C: Probably like, like on par with developing countries. Yeah, that's terrifying.

S: And it.

C: And it they didn't even.

S: I mean, it probably doesn't have really much to do with healthcare, certainly not the higher socioeconomic groups. It has to do with environment. It is a lot of the regulatory things that you're talking about. It's like the, you know, lifestyle factors, diet and environmental factors and things like that. And, and going at the lower socio economic groups were definitely much worse in the US Other than the higher socio economic groups, access to Healthcare is also increasingly a factor as well. That's probably explains the big part of the difference between high and low in the US, But there's a lot of the other factors and it includes things like even social mobility, you know, smoking rates, you know, there's a lot of lot of things that you have to take into effect something as simple as daycare access to.

C: Daycare makes a huge difference if you're having to work three jobs and yeah, right and burn you out fast.

S: There's not there.

C: There are other things as well.

S: We are a large, sprawling nation with very diverse genetic populations and that you, it's hard to compare that to like a country like Sweden, which is very small and homogeneous. So there are some legitimate differences. That may not be a policy difference, but I do think that there are, you know, clearly, I mean, Europe is way more socialized and that does seem to correlate with better, better outcomes, you know, in terms of health care and regulation.

E: Etcetera.

S: And also higher quality of life, yeah.

C: We see that all the time in studies. All right, Number. That means that a.

S: Systematic review finds that older adults greater than 35 years old do not experience greater exercise induced muscle damage than younger adults aged 18 and 25 from the same exercise. That one is science. This was surprising. This was not what the researchers expected to find. They thought that like we're by physiologically in our peak, you know, 18 to 25 and that, you know, the exercise induced muscle damage is, is again as, but Bob was saying is sort of how you build muscle. And they thought that would be superior basically in the younger, younger adults. And maybe they're because they're, even though they're doing the same exercise, they're working their muscles hard or something. But they found no difference. And in fact, in some measures it was less in the older population. So, so it's yeah. So they conclude advancing age is not associated with greater symptoms of EIMD. So they said basically, older adults can pursue physical activity, no problem, you should do it. Yeah, But this is not a contributor to.

C: That lack of muscle or that loss of muscle kind of tone and bulk, yeah, that's good. But the younger, younger, the younger.

S: Adults had more muscle soreness and CPK release into their blood, which makes sense if you have more muscle mass at baseline that muscles and I want you'd experience more soreness and you'd. Have more more. See creatinine kinase in your blood. I wonder then too if I probably it.

C: Is the case that younger people are more at risk of rhabdo than older people? Yeah, maybe. Yeah. Get more muscle has to breakdown. Yeah.

S: Although we end up seeing it in the older population because they have more things that could trigger it. Like the most common reason is that fall down and you can't get up. You're laying down for two days. Oh, that would make sense. But so I should say.

C: Exercise induced Rabdo. Yeah, I've seen Rabdo Many.

S: Times I've seen it almost.

C: Every time.

Skeptical Quote of the Week (1:49:50)

“The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool”  – - William Shakespeare, As You Like It, (description of author)

S: It's a quote UN quote crush injury. It's because you're dead or you're under. You're literally trapped under. That's something people who are in building. Collapses or whatever. Get it? I've saw, I saw one case, probably the worst case of Rabdo I ever saw was not due to that. It wasn't a young patient who had fulminant myositis. His muscles were so inflamed, they were breaking down like over days and just, you know, his kidneys were overwhelmed. Could not clear that this the the Cretan kinase yeah yeah, the only.

C: People I've ever known like in life to have had Rabdo, it was like, you know, it's like the CrossFit effect it was from over or use. Steve can explain this better, Bob, but is it raptomyelosis, Myelitis. Myolysis?

S: Mylysis, yeah, it's where the muscle.

C: Physical muscle breaks down and the components are too big for your kidneys to process them. Yeah, they just overwhelms the kidneys ability.

S: To clear so you got to give them a lot of fluid is the big thing. You got to just So what does it look like, Steve Coca-Cola. Colored urine.

C: That's it will just shut your kidneys down. It could destroy your. Kidneys.

S: But isn't that like the first symptom or like an important?

C: Symptom is coca colored urine, yeah. And like. Severe muscle pain, all right.

S: Good job, everyone. Evan, give us a quote. The fool doth think he.

E: Is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool. Famous quote from William Shakespeare's play As You Like it. So you're saying that Shakespeare?

S: Anticipated Dunning Kruger by centuries? I suppose so, yeah.

E: I mean, it's not exactly the same, but it's same.

S: Kind of thing, right idea, yeah.

E: Yeah, Nope. I think it's very wise.

S: I agree with that. Hey, there you go.

E: Yeah, we all know we're fools here. Well, that's good. That's the humility.

S: Thing that we teach, right, You know, when you know enough to realize how little you know compared to how much knowledge there is. Whereas people who don't know anything, they don't even know what they, they don't even know how much knowledge there is. So they think whatever little bit of knowledge they have is all that there is. So they sort of overestimate their relative knowledge. How sad.

E: But it's but it's totally fixable.

S: Yep, right. Yeah, Become aware of it. First of all, I was.

E: Reminding of that joke.

S: Where someone says to a drunk person, you're drunk and they say and you're ugly and I'll be sober in the morning. That's was that AI think that's attributed to church attributed to church actually is it?

E: Yeah, attributed I. Have don't. Don't know for sure that's the case. Right, ignorance is.

S: Completely. Treatable. Yeah, Yeah. All right. Thank you guys for joining me this week. Right. Thanks, Steve. Right. And until next. Week, this is your. Skeptics Guide to the Universe.