SGU Episode 1037

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SGU Episode 1037
May 24th 2025
"Remarkable fossils reveal ancient creatures, showcasing Earth's prehistoric biodiversity."
SGU 1036                      SGU 1038
Skeptical Rogues
S: Steven Novella
B: Bob Novella
C: Cara Santa Maria
J: Jay Novella
E: Evan Bernstein
Quote of the Week
"The true function of reason is not to find beliefs, but to eliminate false ones."
- Julian Bagini
Links
Download Podcast
Show Notes
SGU Forum

Intro

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

S: Hello and welcome to the Skeptic's Guide to the Universe. Today is Friday, May 16th, 2025, and this is your host, Steven Novella. We are live from the second NADA Con, the conference that's not a conference, but it is a conference because it's awesome. I am joined today by Bob Novella.

B: Hello, everybody. Hello. Hey. Hey, everybody.

S: Cara Santa Maria.

C: Howdy.

S: J Novella. You guys. Evan Bernstein, Beautiful White Plains, NY and we have a special guest, Adam Russell. Alan, welcome to the SGM. Hello there. Adam, you are two things that I love. You're a musician and a big fan of Star Wars. Tell me about that.

US#03: Yes, I'm a bass player in a band called Story of the Year. We've been around for 20, almost 25 years now.

B: Have you? Started when you were 5I.

US#03: Was yeah, I was only 5. You should have seen me play bass at five. I was sick. No, I'm, I'm aging rapidly.

B: And are we all here?

US#03: You are. My my other job, my like paid hobby is my my podcast. Thank the Maker, a Star Wars podcast. It's Star Wars is like my religion. I say that half honestly, half just tongue in cheek, you know? But Cara was talking earlier about not understanding fandoms. And a lot of it is like the community, you know? And, you know, if there's one positive thing you could probably pull out of religion, it's community, you know? So Star Wars, in a lot of ways, is that for me.

S: What did you think of Andor? Loved it, loved it, right.

US#03: Some of the best Star Wars of all time, but it my favorite. It's also we've been having we've been having this conversation about how the one potential downside is that it's it's making adult Star Wars fans so happy that a new bar has been set. OK, so now anything that's sort of made for kids, yeah, it seems like it has more potential for getting hate because it's like, if it's not and or it's shit, you know then.

S: Maybe they need 2 brands they need like Star Wars kids and Star Wars adults. Star Wars 0 sugar. Was yeah.

News Items

Mosura fentona - New Cambrian Fossil (02:31)

• Half-a-billion-year-old 3-eyed sea creature dubbed 'Mosura' breathed through big gills on its butt 

S: So what you're what looking at on the screen is a very unusual creature. Any of you guys have a guess of what their creature is? From what kind of creature is it?

J: I just read it off your thing.

S: Oh yeah, OK, so that is a Mosura Fentona. I I wrote in my notes a radiodont because that's what it is, a radiodont and it corrected to radio. Don't, but it's a radio dot. You may be familiar with Anomalic Harris. That's not more familiar. To like Harris, I love it. Yeah. So this is related to Anomalic Harris. This is from the Burgess Shale. Does that ring any bells? So that's from the Cambrian explosion. It's one of the most important finds. It was the first find that really, you know, told us what the Cambrian explosion was. So we're going back 500 + 1,000,000 years. This is the first time that multicellular life explodes into the fossil record, right? This is when we, when life created hard parts that could fossilize. Then suddenly the fossil record turns on and we're seeing basically every existing phyla plus a few that don't exist anymore. We're all existence and over a fairly geologically short period of time. We now know from from further evidence that they there's a long history there again, it was just when they started actually fossilizing that they look it creates the illusion in the fossil record that they suddenly appeared. But anomaly Karis is one of those no longer existing phyla, the radiodons. And that thing was a beast. It was a predator. So this is a newly discovered specimen, very well preserved. These are all in the Burgess Shale, so they're, they're kind of flattened 2 dimensionally, you know, between pieces of rock. And then paleontologists have to painstakingly reconstruct them three dimensionally. But this creature had better three-dimensional detail than older specimens. Also, our techniques are getting better. You know, they can examine fossils with X-rays and CT scans and other things that to help reconstruct them three dimensionally. How big is it? It's big. It's, you know, it's several feet. It's it has, it has three eyes, 3 and you can see it's got a third eye in the middle there. It's got these two sort of claw things.

US#02: That's cool.

S: And it does exist. And it's got the, you know, a bunch of fins down the side, you know, kind of looks like wings. So what would it eat? It was it. Whatever was else is when he was probably a time.

C: Predator. Are they actual eyes or are they just eye spots?

S: Not their. Eyes.

C: Actual life.

S: I mean, I think they're, they're fairly primitive eyes, but they're eyes. They're not. They're not, I think they're not eye spots. Yeah. For 506,000,000 years ago, this particular fossil, gorgeous fossil. If you don't know about the Burgess Shale, it's worth reading about. Stephen J Gould wrote a whole book about it. So really amazing, amazing fossil discovery. There's another fossil I'm going to talk about really quickly. Anybody recognize this? Any of you guys up here? I know Cara knows what this is.

Best Archaeopteryx Specimen (05:26)

• This exquisite Archaeopteryx fossil reveals how flight took off in birds 

B: Archaeopteryx.

S: It is an Archaeopteryx.

B: That is a death pose with the neck curled back.

S: That is the latest Archaeopteryx specimen. Guess how many Karen knows this. How many do you think we have now? How many different specific specimens of Archaeopteryx?

B: 1 1/2.

S: This is #14 yeah.

C: We have a lot and they're complete because they're in the in the like, is it sandstone, Limestone.

S: Yeah, they're usually.

C: Lithographica. Lithographica Yeah.

S: So this is found in China. Interesting how this was obtained it we actually don't know where it came from specifically. It had, it was sold from 1:00 private collector to another private collector to another private collector and then to the Chicago Museum. When they bought it, it was, it didn't look like what it looks like now. It was there was, it was basically completely encased with rock and just the wings were peeking out. Oh my God. So they knew that it was probably an Archaeopteryx, but they didn't, they thought it was crap and they're like, should we even buy this? This is like, this is probably going to be the worst Archaeopteryx specimen in existence. Got a good deal then, but but you know, it's an Archaeopteryx specimen. So they but they bought it, then they spent it's at 13,000 hours, what the hell, reconstructing it and that's a lot.

C: Well, good on all those collectors. Not destroying it as it was passed around, I mean. It was because it was a huge. Problem with private. Collectors. It was in case. But that's what I'm saying. Good on them not being like let me. Oh no, they didn't touch it.

S: Yeah, fortunately it turned out to be the single best Archaeopteryx specimen.

B: Why?

S: Why?

C: I mean, I'm partial to the Berlin specimen, but yeah, I hear you.

S: The Berlin specimen is gorgeous and I think this is beautiful too, but it's just it's more complete. It's almost 100% complete, like it's almost 100% complete specimen. And it's not crushed so it preserved 3 dimensional anatomy better than any other archaeoptery. The best specimen? It's the best one. Yeah.

J: Is it partly the best one because they had awesome techniques to extract?

S: Well, yeah, yes, partly it's just a good specimen, but also we benefit from having the good, you know, techniques for, for, for, for exposing it and preserving it and again, CT scanning and doing other kind of examinations.

J: We were at a museum once and the guy was working on a whale fossil you got. All some of that.

C: Nick Pyenson, Yeah, that's Smithsonian. I remember.

J: Looking at him working on it through the window, right, I was like 2 feet away from him and there was like the parts that he had already cleared and then there were the parts that he had not cleared and they were exactly the same, same color, same shape and everything. And I'm like, a part of me was like, what the Hell's going on here? Because I don't see the difference. And how is anybody seeing the difference?

C: Because they do it all day, every day.

J: How? Does he know when to stop chipping away if it looks exactly the? Same.

S: They're they?

C: Doesn't look exactly the same.

S: They're different, these techniques that will take away the stone. That's why it's so painstaking.

C: You can. You can taste it.

S: Yeah. So one of the things they discovered here was that they they suspected Archaeopteryx had this, but they didn't know from any of the previous specimens. So Archaeopteryx is the first bird, meaning that it's the oldest specimen of a dinosaur that was also a bird, right? Birds are dinosaurs. So Archaeopteryx is a dinosaur, but it's also a bird.

B: What's? Proto avis that pops to. Mind yeah.

S: So there are all the other ones that if they if they're over the line to bird, they are younger than Archaeopteryx right now Archaeopteryx probably was not on the line to modern birds. It was because bird that's sad bird like dinosaurs were radiated madly, right. So there's lots of evolutionary radiations and you know, it would be very almost impossible to find something that was on the Direct Line that happened to lead, you know, to modern birds. So everything is going to be an offshoot, right. So it is also an offshoot.

B: But are they sure of that?

S: Pretty much, yeah.

B: OK.

S: But, but it is a bird and it's the it's the oldest. It's the oldest bird. Now we have 14 specimens. So one of the things that they found was it has these secondary flight feathers under the primary flight feathers, which all flying birds have. And again, we thought it it flew, so it probably had them. So it's interesting that it does. All feathered dinosaurs who didn't fly do not have these feathers.

B: How big was it? Secondaries?

S: It was. It's pretty small.

Voice-over: Yeah.

S: It's, you know, a couple feet high, something 18 inches, 2 feet. This is the smallest specimen.

Voice-over: Really, it's even. Smaller.

S: This is the smallest. One, did they think it was?

C: Yeah.

Voice-over: Young or.

S: Don't know. The thing is. So right now they're considering every of all 14 as the same genus. Archaeopteryx, but they're probably different species, right? So it may be age, but it may also just be this is a slightly smaller species because, you know, they were once found in Germany and China. They're not the same species, probably. Right. So anyway, gorgeous specimen. Just really getting a look at it. This is just coming out now.

B: So cool.

S: Yeah. And new information. Very, very well preserved.

C: So aren't they speculating that they think it flew like a chicken? So reading that a lot, yeah. It was a poor flyer.

S: It was a poor flyer certainly doesn't it didn't doesn't have the modern adaptations of modern birds. It's like specifically like it's sternum. You'll have like a bird sternum is and they have an anatomy that allows them to do something that's called a wing flip maneuver. That's how they take off from the ground. Archaeopteryx does not have that. So it probably would have a lot of trouble and maybe couldn't even take off from the ground, but it had claws that would have allowed it to climb trees. So it probably still was spending a lot of time walking on on the ground and probably also could climb trees and then could fly or glide from there.

C: It's a beautiful intermediate.

S: Perfect.

C: It's got like a beak and teeth.

S: It's got teeth, it's got a Bony tail, but it has feathers and it flew. It is pretty much as close to halfway between a theropod dinosaur and a bird dinosaur as you can get. It's my go to example of a transitional fossil for that reason.

C: That's why it's tattooed on my arm.

S: Yeah, love it.

US#03: It's trans.

S: Yeah, it's absolutely.

C: Transitional dinosaurs.

US#03: So does Archaeopteryx also have sort of like the the few fingers that are at the end of the wings kind?

S: Of thing, yeah, yeah, and and it does and so, you know a couple of them are kind of fixed for being for the wing purposes, but one of them is loose and that's the one it probably was using to climb trees with. So yeah, it has that combination in that, I mean it was land dwelling, but also flying and probably climbing and was half, you know, halfway between the theropod and the. Bird.

C: And don't we know that at least some of its feathers were also black? Or is that still contested? But I think there's some pretty good evidence.

S: We have evidence now of the colors. I know because of, I'm not sure about what the color of the Archaeopteryx is without checking, you know, just to update myself, but I know we have the original. We found pigments for black, for red and for blue. And so there are some birds where we can say, yeah, look, I mean, this had really good soft tissue preservation too. And this is going to be studied for years. We're just getting started. It had both skin and feathers, really good soft tissue preservation. So, but it's but it's the proteins that allow them to to tell the colors because they're the proteins are they react to light in such a way we could say this was this would you know, bestow the color red or whatever.

J: It's so cool. To have any genetic material.

C: Yeah.

J: Oh yeah, yeah, that sucks.

C: Man, long ago it's rock.

S: Oh, it's like 150 million years.

C: Old. Yeah, that's a rock.

S: Yeah, yeah. All right, let's move on.

Chimps Using First Aid (12:59)

• Wild chimpanzees filmed using forest 'first aid' 

S: Cara, what are these chimpanzees doing? They're.

C: So cute. OK, so I I came across a a, a new study, a new publication that reminded me of an episode of my podcast Talk Nerdy that I recorded in 2017. Oh my God, I'm doing this way too long, you guys. So in 2017, I interviewed a woman named Rebecca Atencia, who is a Spanish, a veterinarian and scientist, who at the time was the manager and the head veterinarian at Chimpanga, which is a chimp rehab center, a Jane Goodall Institute chimp rehab center in the Congo. And we talked about her experience with orphaned chimpanzees. The model at Chimpanga was that they were open to the forest. So a lot of these chimpanzees didn't have a chimpanzee parents. They were again, orphans. So they were hand raised and fed, which means that they weren't quite comfortable going back into the wild, but they also didn't want to keep them captive. So, so they left them open to the forest with their own choice, whether they wanted to come back for food or for shelter. And one of the things that she told me, which blew my mind back in 2017, was that as their veterinarian, they developed a relationship and these chimps would go out into the wild. They would get injured. There were juveniles that would be, you know, play fighting and doing whatever. They would get injured and they would come back to her and they would show her their wounds, like offer their wounds to her for, for healthcare. And at the time, I mean, this is, you know, anecdotal, but it was like incredible to hear about. And, and you, you did periodically kind of hear these chatters of different animals like self medicating, whether we're talking about using substances, psychoactive substances like the elephants that drink the marula or just different organisms doing that. We also hear about animals self medicating sometimes with, with bugs or tinctures. But in this new study, which was published, I have it open here, which was published in Frontiers in Ecological Evolution. The study was called self-directed and prosocial wound care, snare removal and hygiene behaviors amongst the Budongo chimpanzees. So these researchers looked at two groups of chimpanzees in the Bodongo Forest in Uganda over the course of four months, the Sonso and the Wybira chimpanzee communities. And they observed a couple interesting findings. And they were like, oh, this is cool. Like I want to dig deeper into this. What they saw that really blew their minds were individual chimpanzees administering, self administering first aid to other chimpanzees. So there had been some examples of chimpanzees doing their own wound care and there had been some examples of chimpanzees doing kind of like hygiene, like tool oriented hygiene behaviors. But when these researchers noticed that the chimpanzees were administering first aid to one another, they decided to go back and like comb over all of these observations and document all of the different sort of medical observations that they could makeover the the four month period. And they found some really interesting things. So they found a self-directed wound care like wounds, licking leaf dabbing, pressing fingers into wounds and applying chewed plant material into wounds. They also found self-directed snare removal and these were human laid sadly like poacher snares or snares for other animals that the chimpanzees found themselves injured by. So they would remove the snares on their own. They also found self-directed hygiene behaviors which every article I've seen is like and hygiene and then they like move on. But in the article, they, they dig deep, they were literally wiping their asses. So they were using leaves to wipe after, after defecating. And they were also using leaves to clean themselves after sex. So like genital wiping after sex. And then they also found licking, finger pressing and applying chewed plant, plant material to the wounds of others. So one chimpanzee is injured, another chimpanzee licks their wounds, or they press on their wounds, or they chew up plant material and they make a tincture and they would pat it onto their wounds.

US#09: Cara, do they do they say that they actually discovered like a plant that actually has some medicinal properties?

C: No, I mean they have gone back at some of the examples of self medication and looked for what could be an antimicrobial or antibiotic property within their wounds. But in this study, because it was observational, they can't say and they're they're explicit about this. We cannot say if their wounds would have healed faster with or without these behaviors. They might have naturally healed on their.

S: Own Do they prefer some plants over others to?

C: Use absolutely prefer they they they do seem to preferentially choose plants and and historically, you know, there there's a good introduction like all good papers have like a deep literature review. Historically specific plants have been identified as good candidates for those kinds of things. They also did find one case of pro social snare removal. So one chimpanzee stuck in the snare and another chimpanzee is helping them to be removed from the snare. And so, you know, not only is this an important finding just because it's like really interesting, but as the authors argue, when we talk about like the, I guess the predecessor or like early modern medicine, we often are attributing that to human behavior. But quite possibly before we were even Homo sapiens, our ancestors, our hominid ancestors, we're engaging in medicinal practices for, for wound healing, I mean.

J: It makes perfect sense. I mean, the Anathols were intelligent enough. I mean, you know, we have a pain response and pain something. Look, you know, everybody gets a cut or whatever. Of course you're going to go to someone in your tribe and ask for help.

C: Well, and we've said we, we know that this happened in hominid species because we have examples of organisms with healed wounds, right? So we know that either they naturally were able to heal those things or they were engaging in some sort of medical care or first aid. But to see this in extant chimpanzees, obviously we know they're good with tools. Obviously we know that they are. We already know that they're self medicating or I had this anecdotal story of them asking a human being for help with a wound that was, you know, either causing them distress or that they were concerned about. But then you add to it pro social wound care within a speech. We're not talking about bonobos, we're talking about chimpanzees and.

S: These are unrelated, genetically unrelated chimps.

C: Right, they were within in in peer groups. So I I don't I don't know if like the. One was it one article I read so that. At least one of the and it was one example.

S: Genetically unrelated chimp.

J: Yeah, Cara, didn't they also observe 1 monkey giving an IV to the other one?

S: They're not monkeys.

J: Chimpanzees. Come on, just a joke.

C: Where? Where are you?

B: Going Jay, I got I got a better joke. My God, Cara. Cara. Have they, have they observed any chimpanzees engaging in medical pseudoscience yet? Well, we don't know yet. All right, That's right. Pseudoscience may be the last human behavior that we don't find a precedent. In it, right.

C: But we also have to to remember that some things that we consider pseudoscience now were precursors to legitimate science then, right? So even phrenology led to important thing bloodletting. At the time it was the best we had based on what we know.

S: Saying chimps are doing phrenology.

C: Well, they may be chewing up a plant that actually has no medicinal purpose. They don't, they don't know, but they're they're throwing things at the wall to see what sticks. And that's really incredible. I mean that shows good problems.

S: It probably feels better, if nothing else.

C: Yeah, like like packing a. Wound packing a wound is reasonable, yeah.

S: It helps with getting secondary infections and everything keeps it moist.

J: Lick wounds too, I mean, I guess the licking thing is.

S: Like there's, there are antimicrobial like antibodies, saliva's actually not bad for that sort of thing, yeah.

C: But we have better medicine. We have better. Don't lick your. We can do better, Yeah. Don't lick your.

US#04: So Doctor Zeus came.

US#03: From so Speaking of of licking, oh, I.

C: Didn't get. I didn't get that.

US#03: Licking wounds of others. You think about dogs who will come, you know, anytime there's any kind of scratch or anything on me, one of our dogs is is looking at that. I mean, that seems like the same behavior and clearly like an an animal that Co evolved with us that, you know, kind of self domesticated like we were talking about earlier. That makes a lot of sense.

C: And dogs, we know are social animal like, deeply, deeply social animals. Chimpanzees are really complicated, right? Because they do have hierarchies. They do have societies, by definition, they are social, but they are also often seen as very conflict oriented animals. And so like you mentioned, Steve, if this is an animal that I'm not directly related to or I don't know that I'm directly and I, I see you as a potential, I don't know, threat or I, I might be fighting with you for food or for resources or for AIDS, but I see that you're injured and I want to help you. That's like a pretty incredible fine day. Yeah. Instead of just like I'm gonna let you die, you know?

S: Well, there's probably a lot of reciprocal altruism.

C: Yeah, and we see that with grooming behaviors.

S: Apes and and monkeys in general.

C: And that's the thing when, when I saw hygiene behaviors in here and I was like, they only observed like a handful of hygiene behaviors in, in the articles, they don't say what those are. And I'm like, aren't they constantly grooming each other? And then I recognize, no, they're literally talking about cleaning up after going to the bathroom or after engaging. In sex. Flossing. Yeah. Flossing. Yeah, yeah. And that's a pretty incredible hygiene as well.

Treatment for Baldness (22:31)

• Did UCLA Just Cure Baldness? 

C: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

S: Jay, have they finally cured baldness?

J: Well, before we go.

S: It's like almost a cliche like.

J: I want to talk to. Tabloid. Kind of. To talk to people out there. Yeah, First of all, you know, if you guys Bob your hair standing, my hair standing still, it's not.

B: What I've?

US#03: Got to put them on blast up there is.

B: There.

J: Any social thing that's happened, you feel self-conscious in any way, no. Anything.

B: Only when I'm walking away from people.

J: Because I used to have hair like Adam and I don't anymore.

B: Jay, don't you dare complain. Stop it. Look at your hair. I can't. You guys look at. George.

J: George, help me out here. Oh, what?

US#07: What do you need to do for?

J: It Jay. Where can I buy a coat like that? No. But George, I want to know. It's not a coincidence you have that microphone in your hand because I I asked the aunt to give it to you. And I'm gonna I'm gonna impose on you a little bit to answer a couple of questions. You went through the whole thing. You had a beautiful head of hair. I did.

US#07: I had I had a lanyard like hair. It was like sailors would look at me. They. They still do, George.

J: How old were you when it started to go?

US#07: I was about 30. I lost about 40 lbs when I was 30 years old. Like like consciously really went forward and and it worked.

J: It was great. So what did it do to you emotionally? Like what was that like it?

US#07: Was the worst. It was, Yeah. I mean, it really affected me, you know, I mean, I was dying blonde for a long time to kind of hide it. And then shorter and shorter and shorter and then just. All right, I'll start shaving it. And when I first shaved it, I just. I I I still hate it.

S: So you, which is ironic. Because everyone thinks you look fabulous.

J: Well, that's all we know. We don't.

S: I'm just saying it's just.

C: We all see something very different in the mirror.

J: Yeah, yeah. It's interesting. Because of this news item, I was doing some research and, you know, just reading and like, there's a massive emotional response to almost everybody.

S: That's why it's such a common target.

C: Well, and I experience and not to interject too much, but when I'm doing therapy with individuals going through chemo, whether we're talking about men or women, even though it's not always temporary, but even though it is often temporary, sometimes the emotional reaction to losing their hair is like more intense than the reaction to having like, you know, violent emesis or like, like being very, very ill from the chemo. And people will go to these. I thought about it. What would I do if when I had cancer, I had to have chemo? I don't think I would cold cap like and cold capping, if you don't know, is you're wearing this freezing cold like helmet thing on your head the whole time you're going through chemo in an in an effort to try and save some of the follicles. And there's some evidence that shows it works. It's not complete. It's oftentimes people still lose some of their hair, but the violent paint, you're already so sick from the chemo and it's so uncomfortable to sit there with the cold cap on. But it's worth it to a lot of people because the the idea of losing their hair and the idea of going bald during that experience, even temporarily, is so emotionally.

S: My wife just shaved. Just shaved.

C: That's what I would do too. I want to. I want a warm blanket. I want to be able to take baths.

B: Connection to this I experienced a variation of of this whole scenario. I was using Rogaine foam to just maintain what I had and maybe not lose a little more. And I had an I cosmically ironic reaction to it that it, it caused an area this big palm of my hand in the back of my head to fall out in a month, in like 30 days. This, this was basically gone back there and I didn't know what it was. My doctor's like, Oh, it's, it's male pattern baldness. Well, it didn't seem like it because it doesn't happen in a month, You know, over years is one thing, but in a month it really affected me. I thought I, I considered every conceivable way, you name it, I thought about, I'm going to do this, I'll try this, I'll try that, I'll try that. And I, my realization was just embrace it. People don't notice or care that you're bald, but they will notice that you are trying to hide it. That's the key realization right there. And after a year and a half, two years, it grew back. I, I found out it was alopecia areata. It was some weird immune reaction to it. I didn't know at the time it was ever going to come back, and it mostly came back, but it was like a weird experience. You approached me.

US#07: You were like.

B: Dude, look at this, look at this.

US#07: What's going? On I'm like I, I. I don't.

J: Know what it's?

B: Like and my my stupid and my stupid doctor, my doctor's like, oh, male pattern your.

J: Primary care doctor.

B: He was a putt. I said, all right, fine, fine. But why is it, why is what hair is there like white? Why? What's going on with that? You know, it was I wasn't Gray like I am now. And he's like, I don't know, go to a specialist. And the specialist looked at me for three seconds. Yeah.

S: Alopecia areata, what's that's what specialists are for, but also to seriously, the, the it's night and day sometimes, but also to be fair, physicians have a steady stream of people whose complaint is I'm getting older, like they're, they're having symptoms that are age-related.

B: I'm not buying it.

S: And so I'm just saying, yes, there's that 1% where or 2% or 3% whatever where it's something else and we have to sniff that out. But it's easy sometimes for that to get lost in the background of why aren't I-20 anymore?

J: No, I'm not finding that. I'm not buying that when somebody. Can't complain.

S: I'm not excusing it, I'm just saying for contact.

J: I can't go to my doctor and bitch about what I don't like about being I didn't.

S: Say that either.

J: Well, what are you saying, Steve?

S: I'm just giving you.

C: So get back on topic.

J: He's.

C: From.

J: Another point of view. I got to click back to George. All right, now I've already, I've already pushed you, but I'm going to push you further. Did you try anything really stupid? To get your hair.

US#07: No, no, I, I, I investigated everything. I knew everything about Harry, you know, I knew that Rogan does what Rogan does. But Rogan's only for the for the crown in the back, you know, So there's no point.

B: Except in my case.

US#07: Right, right. I knew that stuff that was being recommended to me by hair salon people, I knew it was all Buck. I knew it was nonsense. So I didn't invest any money. I think I did, apart from dying at blonde just to kind of hide it. Yeah, I knew that. This was just this is where it's at.

C: But no interest in like a transplant because that is a thing. Right.

J: I mean. That's that's the only potential that's a real thing, something that could really make. It until now all. Right. So I was going to read off a bunch of weird things that people did. There's just a couple here that here we covered some. I mean, it's funny when we, you know, in modern times, we look back, the Egyptians used to make a mixture of dates, donkey hooves and dog paws and they'd rub it out of their heads trying to do anything. You know what I mean? Probably it was all pseudoscience. It was all, you know, people like, I bet there was a lot of lying and a lot of people spending a lot of money. The baldness cures in the Middle Ages, they they would boil nettles in vinegar. What are nettles?

Voice-over: Plants.

J: Parts of plants. Yeah, and they would, they would use onion juice, salt and bear grease. Bear grease, right? I don't.

Voice-over: I don't want to.

J: Know and and today and today you thought that was weird people use urine today to regrow hair they use cayenne pepper and garlic paste now I know a freaking recipe that that would be.

S: Cayenne pepper, but you want.

J: To put pepper on your head anyway. Onion juice, cow dung and banana. Mix a little bit of onion, really.

Voice-over: Onion.

J: Cayenne What's? Worth. What's actually happening? And I'm this is the first time I've actually been a little encouraged by anything hair related. There's a team at UCLA, William Lowry, Heather Chris, Chris Polk and Michael Jung, and they identified A molecule called PP four O 5 and.

B: So there is pee in.

J: It. Golden shower treatment.

US#07: Yeah, PP Therapy.

J: Come on. That was good, Jay. That was good. I have.

US#07: It's like an 80s.

J: Damn. I hate when I miss the obvious ones. Come on. So it's a molecule I could not find. Whether or not they found it or made it, I would imagine that they found it. Now, this is not a hormone. This has nothing to do with hormone intervention, right? So the, the hormone interventions that are out there, you know, Rogaine and oxidil, and they come with side effects and some, some people don't get them and some people get them and they could be really bad. Like the side effects are could be really intense because it messes with your hormone levels. And a lot of the reasons why people go bald is because of hormones. You know, when you get older and your hormone levels change and all that, you know, it's, it's so the older I get, the more I'm like, I don't want to mess with my hormones. It's one of those things that I think we should leave.

C: Alone well and also don't a lot of the drugs like Propecia and stuff, they sort of prevent future hair loss or slow it they don't actually make you grow a lot of.

J: Some can make you grow.

B: A reasonable expectation is. Maintaining what you have.

C: So you start at young, yes, Yeah.

J: The basic info on on going bald, we have hair follicles, right? And these hair follicles, it's common. It's totally typical. Everybody's hair goes through a growth cycle and a rest cycle. And when a rest cycle happens, the hair falls out. So as we get older, like I said, we have hormone changes. Stress can also be a factor in this, where what happens is the hair follicles stop reactivating. They just, you know, they, they take the rest period and then they go on permanent vacation. So the fact is though those hair follicles aren't dead. They're getting a blood supply. They're, they're still viable. They just are, kind of. They're basically hormonally turned off and PP 405 can't. Say that right there, right there.

B: Sometimes you're just too close to it.

J: I literally have the word urine one paragraph above.

C: He's so mad.

J: OK, I got a chance and. If you didn't hear the private show today, right, George, Holy shit, I'm I'm whoever was there, please. It was an adult woman that's.

B: That was great. But Jay, regarding the PPI, got your back. I got your back.

J: Thanks Bob. So the, the this chemical, you guys know what the name of it is, the mechanism targets a particular and very specific cellular component known as mitochondrial pyruvate carrier MPC. And I will refer to MPC in a minute. So they say it's a protein complex that regulates metabolic activity in stem cells, right. So there is a stem cell component to this, which is pretty cool. So the chemical that they're using and it inhibits MPC, it shifts, it shifts the cells metabolism in a way that triggers the follicle to to re exit dormancy, which is perfectly normal, right? And it will begin producing terminal hairs. Now terminal hairs sound like the hair that's about to fall out, but for some reason they picked terminal to mean pigmented strong healthy hair, not Peach fuzz. So this is like your best hair, right? The best version of the hair that you can.

C: Wait, could this reverse Gray too?

J: This is a pigmented pigmented wow.

C: So.

J: This is a heavy hitter here. They spent damn, they spent a decade developing this one chemical or working with it again, I haven't found out if they 10 years and guess what, guys? And this is the part that blew my mind doesn't work. They they in 2023, they completed the phase one human trials in California. And the participants that applied the topical cream, I think they did it for a week for one week before bedtime. And the results were described by researchers as statistically significant. And I want you to realize that statistically significant means good. Like it's not just, it sounds like it was 50, you know, it was a small percent, no.

S: But keep. But for context, a phase one trial is a safety trial. It's not an efficacy trial. So it means what it probably wasn't blinded and you know, it wasn't powered to show that there was an actual effect. It just means it was safe.

C: And statistically significant means it is more likely than chance alone to have that effect.

S: That's. Values.

J: I missed all of that. Jay, we got you, man. While we're here. So wait, so there was more? Because I was not satisfied with statistically significance, so they said.

B: What was the effects?

J: I went to the study.

B: How did I miss PV?

J: And then I used, I used ChatGPT to read the original study, but I used the research one, which like does a huge analysis and actually does a lot of other checking and everything. And then it gave me a wonderful summary. So what they, what they found was that there were, there were absolute signs of follicle reactivation, which means they were, they were seeing that the, the hair follicles there were, there was growth happening and there were no signs of toxicity or follicle damage, which was something that they were like being extraordinarily aware about. Because anytime you do this, you know, they want to know, is there side effects? Are we actually damaging the hair follicles? Is there, is there anything entering the bloodstream? They didn't detect any of that, which is good. This is all really, really nice to hear. And on top of that, Steve, phase one, they're in Phase 2A. Now you know what Phase 2A is.

S: Yeah, it's the Phase 1. So phase two, it's it's a preliminary, I actually true story, very quick courtroom drama thing. I'm in. It was I was getting sued. I'm in the courtroom. And the, the, the the other side had had a researcher to be an expert witness for them and I knew they knew nothing about clinical medicine. So I told my lawyer ask him what a phase three clinical trial is. And their answer was it's the one after Phase 2.

B: Awesome.

S: Anyway, it's a preliminary Was he right?

B: Was he right?

J: So they're doing it. They're doing it now. They have 60 participants. And this is the the part that I knew Cara was going to go backflip for. They deliberately picked various genders, hair types and ethnic backgrounds.

C: They need to, yeah. It can't be a study on white men.

J: Because everybody goes bald. There's, there's people of all.

C: Well, and women, yeah, women experience hair loss like a lot of women experience hair. Just because we don't have male pattern baldness necessarily doesn't mean that our hair doesn't thin significantly as we as and.

S: Some women especially devastating because they're not supposed to to lose.

C: Their hair, right?

S: A lot of women do have pattern baldness, Nothing. Not the same as men, but they wear wigs because we don't see it. You don't see it as much. As you would with them.

J: Well, I have a statistic on that. So 50% of men experience some type of pattern hair loss. 25% of women by age 50 experience some type of hair loss. Those are not insignificant numbers. And then it goes into the they were talking about the psychological distress and everything. I think we covered that. So to give you the overview, phase one trials were completed in 2023. Phase two trials are underway and they're going to be ending this year and they have more people and more diversity going on. And then if the Phase 2 results are good, then they're going to move forward into phase three, which is the one that I think is like that's.

S: That's the one you need to get FDA approval.

J: And then they're saying the best case scenario, if everything goes great and they did find, you know, something that really works, it could be out around 2027, worst case scenario in 2029. So I'm thinking like, man, I might actually like make the curve. Yeah, so. George just might save. The question Yeah, it works. It's safe. Are you rocking a new head of hair?

US#07: No question.

J: Right.

C: Really.

US#07: I mean, if it's again, the problem is something like this, they can, they will literally be able to name their price. Yes. Yeah, probably will not be able to afford what it is in the 1st 10 years of its existence because this is this is the moon landing. It's like bombers. My God George, Gofund owners, they got they took care of 20 years ago and that you know, that is a almost trillion dollar industry in terms of what it was. This I think this will be the same.

C: But it's the same if not, but there's, I mean, I don't want to get into the nuances of the way that our very broken healthcare system works. But if it is an FDA, if it becomes an FDA approved pharmaceutical drug, physicians can prescribe it, prescribe it, right. It's. Not only going to be an open company would have to pay for it. True. True. Who owns the patent on it though?

US#07: That's the thing.

J: Like that, Well, UCLA is doing it, but you know, who knows where it's going to end up in some pharmaceutical. Of course, that's the.

C: Thing but but if you can find a physician that deems it medically necessary and that argues for it, there may be a chance that an insurance company will cover it and then it may be affordable.

J: No, no, what it is is you. If your job counts out, we all need to get jobs where you need hair.

S: No.

J: And then we'll be good. One more quick thing, Steve, before we change. If you're comfortable, you don't have to involve yourself in this, but if you're if you're experiencing any hair loss, raise your hand.

S: Or clap because this is a podcast.

US#07: One big clap. All right, fellow Baldis. Here we go. There it is.

J: Which of you that are experiencing that?

US#07: Was them hitting their foreheads, by the way?

J: Which of you, if you're experiencing it, is it make you sad and uncomfortable? Wow. All right, the opposite. Which of you that have some type of baldness, don't care and you're cool with it? That's fantastic. There you go. That's good for you guys. Smart. I don't like it.

B: What I want to see, I want to see all these phase 1-2, whatever. I want to see the number one before and after the the best response anybody had, I want to see before and after. Wouldn't that tell you if you're going from from bald to something that's got some hair? The answer? That's the answer. We would go now. You want to see an obvious? Yeah.

C: You want a Bosley commercial for this? Yeah, a guy coming out of the pool.

B: Right.

US#07: It's real. I'm not a president.

US#03: So, George, what's the first hairstyle that you get once you have the full head of hair back? Are you just going to go fucking wild or what?

US#07: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I don't care. Like it literally could be anything. It could be, it could be a crew cut. It could be like tiger stripes. I don't care. It could be a bad haircut. But I wouldn't give for like a bowl cut.

US#03: Yeah, all right, There it is. It's a mullet. It's a mullet.

US#07: Case closed. Sun in orange mullet.

J: George Coxcomb. But you're so handsome right now. George, to me, you're you are beautiful and I love you the way you are. Appreciate it.

US#07: I really appreciate it. It's like I'm like 10 years into no relationship, right? So it's like, obviously I'm an asshole. Or. Like it's like the no hair thing and I. Well, we know which one it is so. That's what I'm.

S: We don't want to burst your bubble there, George.

US#07: George, we can't talk after the packet.

J: I.

US#07: Appreciate it.

S: All right, Bob, what color is this?

New Color - Olo (41:35)

• Researchers Discover New Color That’s Impossible to See without Lasering Your Retinas 

S: Well, what a color am I looking at right now I have.

B: No idea. I'm not going to answer that question. I'm going to do my. All right, let me just start by saying this. I'm going to address that. But I got I got an opener and then go ahead, then I'm going.

S: To all right, Bob, give me your opener.

B: Wait, what are you trying to say? All right. Reduce your setup. Researchers at UC Berkeley, University of Washington have developed a machine called Oz that can kind of hijack a person's visual system to see something that is otherwise unseeable. The color Olo. This Steve, is a representation of the the color of the color Olo.

S: It's not real Olo.

B: It's fake Olo. It's a representation of the color Olo. If if you're listening and not seeing this, it's basically blue-green, or teal. If you're a real geek, it's light at a wavelength of 540 nanometers. Well, more like 542, right? Wouldn't you say? It's more 542, But make no mistake.

S: 540-1542 Whatever it takes.

B: But make no mistake, that is not OLO. It's not even close to OLO. One way to look at it is the creation of a three-dimensional object as a shadow of A4 dimensional object. So to try to understand that 4 dimensional object, scientists will often look at its shadow A3 dimensional object that is really a shadow of it.

C: That is not helpful.

B: I bet it's helpful to to some people it's.

C: Like how when we like, we can't see ultraviolet light, so we make it purple and then we go, oh, there's AUV light on.

B: It's good, yeah. It's kind of like a representation. It's a representation of something that you can't see or imagine, but that helps give you. It's a shadow of the real thing. It gives you a hint of the real object, an object that you can't appreciate. And this is just an attempt to do that. So there is no printer conceivable that can print Olo. There is no digital display that can display play Olo. It's not a limitation of what's coming into your eyes, it's a limitation within the eyes. The retina itself does not have the evolved hardware to to see Olo.

US#04: Would a bird be able to see it?

B: With what?

US#04: Birds or other animals? Do you think they would be able to possibly see it?

B: I I think it would be difficult. You would not have trichromatic vision like a human and and see it. I don't think it is it is, but it's but it's not just specifically. And this is what this is exactly what I'm going to cover. So there are a yet despite all of this, there are five people that have seen Olo and that gets us to Oz. This is the device that they created. Of course, the inspiration was the Wizard of Oz and it was hard to find out exactly what they meant. But in the books, if you you had to put on green filters glasses to to like downgrade the utter brilliance of the green color of Oz. The other obvious connection is that if you watch the wizard, sort of they go from black and white to color, right? That's another, that's another connection. So to better understand this, though, you need to understand photoreceptors to a certain degree to really appreciate this. Photoreceptors are the specialized cells in our retinas, right? We've got the rods and cones. The rods are for low light, but they don't deal with color. It's the cones that produce the color vision for us. But there's three types of cones. There's the short wavelength, there's the medium wavelength, and then there's the long wavelength. So blue-green, red basically. So there's S cones, M cones and L&L cones now, so all the million. Colors you could we could all see. Approximately about a million colors and those colors come from the activation of two or three of these cones together. They, they always activate together. The key point here is that they never, they are never stimulated by themselves. It's always either an S&M cone and oh boy, and M and an M&L cone. It's never cone, never PP cone. It's never a single type of cone. Could I get the next?

S: Can you stimulate an L and an S like the 2 ends but not the middle, the long?

B: Well, let's take a look at this chart then, shall we, Steve? Okay, So what the key take away here is that is you've got this overlap, and because you have this overlap, you cannot stimulate one cone type without stimulating at least one other one. So what that means is that you can never purely isolate, say that see if you could see the peak of the M cone there at like 400 and whatever 50 or 500, whatever nanometers, it could never be stimulated by itself because because you're going to always have a little bit of stimulation of the other cones. So when you see a color like say green you are, it's it's basically attenuated because there's other colors thrown in the mix because the other receptors are being stimulated.

J: Can I ask a? Question.

B: Yeah, please, Please do.

J: I was under the impression it's kind of like a the LE DS and TV where like the combination of the three, the three color grooves make the color. It's it's that's right, Right.

B: Right. Exactly.

J: I thought that was by design that we want them to be stimulated at, you know what I mean?

B: Yeah.

J: That's how we evolved that. We want them to be stimulated at the same time because they have to in order to create the color that you're seeing.

B: Right, right. That's part of it. That's why we can see so many colors because there's so much overlap that you're having various amounts of, of the receptors being stimulated. So you got all the, the million, literally like a million potential colors that we can see. So the overlap is important, but it also means that we can't, you cannot see a pure color, a pure hue without having some other colors in the mix. And because of that, that color will never be as vivid as possible. OK, Now the way that Oz deals with this is that it literally keeping your head very still. It literally will map these M cones in your retina. It maps them individually. It says here, here's an M cone cell, here's an M cone cell, and it finds 1000 or so of these and it maps them. It knows exactly where they are because this is like a fingerprint. Everybody's retina here will have a different distribution of these M cones on on their retina. And this machine can actually stimulate every M cone cell and no other cell is being stimulated.

S: So olo is the color of pure.

B: M cone stimulation and that's where Olo comes from because on the left S is 0 because it's not stimulated, the M is stimulated. So that's A one. And then the L is not stimulated, that's another zero. So O10, Olo, that's where Olo comes from.

C: Is it? Sorry? Sorry to interject but like please do. From what I understand, color blindness is caused by one or more cone deficiencies. So somebody who's red, green color blind has either a deficiency like an anomaly or a difficulty with like just their L cone, for example. I don't know which which cone it is, but with with one cone. And then there's deuteropia and then there's Tri. It's like the what are the words? Yeah.

B: Dichromatic. Monochromatic.

C: Tritinopia. Yeah, deuteronopia and protinopia. So are there not people in the population who can do this because they have deficits in specific cones but not others?

B: No, I didn't specifically study color blindness for this talk. But no, they're I can confidently say that they're not. They're not seeing Olo.

C: I feel like there's got to be people who just don't have one of the types of cones, but.

S: You would have to not have L or S and have.

C: Only that's that's the difference. It has to be just the M cone to be olo everything, right?

J: OK, you. Would only see. Green like blue This teal.

B: Question, Bob.

J: Yeah, we have a hell of a lot more of those in our eyes than than 1000.

B: Right, right. So, yeah, So that there, there's this is imagine you're looking into the retina and you're identifying specific cells that you that you then stimulate. They can only map out say 1000 or 2000 of them, but there's, but there's 2 million, there's 2 million of them. So they're stimulating a subset of of of these M cones. So that's what it does though. They, what they do is they look at your retina and they say, all right, here's 1000 M cone receptor and they stimulate them. So the, the short and long wavelengths are not stimulated at all. That never happens. No matter what you're looking at anywhere, anywhere, you will never reproduce that because you always have some of the other receptors being stimulated. So there it makes any color you see paler than it potentially can be. So what you end up seeing is a blue-green or a teal that is so ridiculously vivid that you bet you cannot really imagine it right now. My big question is, if you've seen it, can you really reimagine it faithfully? And you probably, you probably could. So here's some quotes. You're probably wondering, what do these people say? These 5 lucky bastards that saw Olo, what do? What do they say? So one person said that it was a, a profoundly saturated teal. Somebody said it's blue-green, but with an unprecedented saturation. Saturation means that it's vivid. It's just like more of that color. Did you know that pink is essentially a light red? We we treat it colloquially as as another color. It's not technically another color. It's just a a pale version of red. Red is a super saturated pink in a sense. So care you wanted another an analogy. It's like having somebody look at pink, somebody who has never seen red ever, and saying here's pink. I want to show you a super saturated version of it called red. Do you think you could extrapolate in your mind what deep red looks like by only knowing pink? You probably couldn't do it justice, right?

C: But I also wonder, are the five people who saw this color researchers? Are they these researchers?

B: A couple of them were the researchers themselves. Only a couple.

C: No, yeah, not all of them, because. I would think that there would be a percentage of the population who like, yes, this is so cool scientifically, but you show them and they go, yeah, it's bluish green.

B: No, no, I don't. I don't think, I don't think they had, I don't think they had any of that reaction at all. But.

C: But were they primed to think this is freaking awesome? You know what I mean? Like, you sound so excited, but I feel like there have got to be people who are like, yeah, it's like, it's like.

B: No color. *.

J: Wars and basically we're like yeah, so. I I doubt. What we learned is they don't get to see the movies anymore, and we're never going to ask them to see Olo. That's it, yeah.

B: I doubt they were as excited as me, but I would bet that the researchers that partook. Partook. Were very excited. I'm sure they're very. Even more.

S: I wonder if this would ultimately be leveraged in like virtual reality where you actually have goggles that are fixed to your head and they map out your retina and then they could they're stimulating your rods and Combs who have individual lasers.

B: Yeah, it's it's interesting to contemplate one here's here's a.

C: Question to a problem we didn't have. Those are.

B: The best ones.

S: Those are the best ones to solve.

B: I disagree. I disagree, but I'll I'll give you some other ideas on that care. But let me finish with the with my favorite quote. Favorite quote significantly more vivid vivid than a green laser light. You've all seen laser light. It's like ridiculously vivid. They're saying it's it made laser light look pale. That's how that's how intense this was in the future it it could help with color vision research, color blindness treatment and retina disease modeling. This could be extremely helpful. I want I want to see this. I don't want to see olo. I want to see ool ool. I want to see this with red light. A hyper vivid, a hyper saturated red, I think would be a lot more interesting than teal. You know, that's my opinion. All right, question for this quick discussion. Is this a new color or is it not a new color? My opinion is this is not a new color. This is blue-green. We know with blue-green, we know teal. This is just a hyper saturated teal that's beyond the mechanisms of our of our retina, but it's not a new color. Everyone here saying it's a new color, it's a technically.

S: It is a new color because all colors are just different versions of the of the three colors.

US#03: I was going to say like more fundamental question, what is a color in terms of how you divide up this continuum of light? You know, isn't it arbitrary to some degree to say we can see a million colors. Couldn't you divide that in half again and we can see 2,000,000 colors?

C: Yeah, there are physiological measurements of what is the least noticeable difference. Like that's an actual measurement in Physiology. So that's so it could be that there's a least. Noticeable difference. Between. A million. Right.

S: All right, let's move on. Wasn't that cool? I love it. I know. I hear you. That's why I'm. Moving in, here she is.

E: Who's?

S: That all right, Evan?

E: Yeah.

S: Who? Sorry, we got This is Elizabeth Holmes.

The Next Theranos (54:01)

• 'This is not Theranos 2.0': Elizabeth Holmes' partner is the CEO behind new blood-testing startup 

E: Yeah, that's Elizabeth. Holmes.

S: Yes, a nefarious character.

E: The former chief executive officer of Thera knows.

S: Isn't she in the Hooskow? How? Why is our news related to her?

E: She's a newscow, but that's right, she is in the news. So Thera knows we have covered this before on the show. The now defunct help technology company, that one soared in valuation 9 billion I think at its crazy peak valuation. However, they did that. This was after the company claimed to have revolutionized blood testing by developing methods that could use a very small volume of blood, such as from a finger prick. That's it. 1 little drop of blood, Steve.

S: Figure it.

E: All out, right.

S: Yeah, which I instantly knew was bullshit.

E: Right. Right. It took you about a second to smell that one out. So yeah, she's in jail. Back in early 20/22, she was found guilty of defrauding investors out of hundreds of millions of dollars, three counts of wire fraud, and one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud for lying to investors about the devices developed by Theranos.

S: But no counts of harming patients, only investors, because that's what's more important.

E: Not guilty on the. Former God. Charges related to America, the allegations that she duped patients who received false or faulty results from the tests conducted by Theranos. 11 years in prison and she has to give back over the course of her life, if she can, $452 million. She is her her her quote is failure is not fraud. And she stands by that still to this day. She believes that she's innocent, that she worked. Everything she did was with the correct and good intentions. And yeah, it was. It merely, it just didn't work. And that's not project. But she also, you know, exaggerated the accuracy and reliability of the testing technology. She falsely claimed partnerships with pharmaceutical companies and the United States military. And, you know, she kind of made-up these fake demonstrations and altered lab reports.

C: Yeah, she straight up used other people's machines and put her logo on it and was like, look, it works.

E: Right. So I think she needs to go back to school to figure out what the real definition of fraud here is. But the reason she's in the news is because, well, she's married. Before she went off to jail, she married a person by the name of Billy Evans. Billy Evans is one of the heirs to the Evans Hotel fortune of people in the San Diego area. I'm familiar with this. Apparently it's a family owned group of hotels. His background is that primarily he was with a company called Luminar Technologies, a company specializing in self driving car technology. He This is Elizabeth Holmes husband Billy Evans has founded a new blood testing startup called Haemanthus. HAEMANTHUS, which means what? Blood. Flower Blood. Blood. Lily, I believe, is what it is. The company aims to develop diagnostic technology that analyzes small samples of blood, saliva or urine using artificial intelligence, and they have so far raised $20 million. 20 million.

J: I mean, hold on a second. So you got this woman who world knows who she is, you know, is a huge scandal. She gets married, goes to prison. Her husband basically says I'm going to make the same thing she did. That's pretty much what's happening here and. People J money. This has AI though now with artificial intelligence. You think the first thing you would do if you're about to hand over, I don't know how many investors there are, but let's say one person gave them 1,000,000 bucks, would you at least do an Internet? Search on who they are I mean.

E: They have to know how can you not?

S: There's this is a whole thing, but you know, and sometimes investors have, you know, the the FOMO, right, the fear of missing out and they invest a lot of money knowing that 19 are going to fail, but one is going to hit. And so if they're open with open eyes saying all right, this.

B: Rolling the dice.

S: They're rolling the dice. That's on them. You know, I mean, as long as they're not being lied to, right? As long as they're not.

C: Isn't there also like, and I I don't know what her settlement or her her court outcome was. I mean, clearly they're able to do this, but you often do see in these like fraud cases, you know, it's some some sort of Ponzi scheme banker. It's like and you are banned from practicing banking. You and your immediate family, you know, but they clearly. Did, but I don't know if this is her husband. This is her husband, I.

S: Don't know if he was included.

C: In it they it should have been, yeah, it should have been you and your immediate family, but it clearly wasn't.

E: Sentences She's not allowed to hold a corporate position until like the year 2037. Or so, yeah, it is. Part of.

C: But it wasn't like no, no more blood companies in your core. But again, this is I didn't.

E: I didn't.

C: Yeah, clearly not.

J: Oh, my God. I mean, just to me, it's like this is the husband of the woman who, you know, had a $9 billion fake company and people are going to throw money even with that, Steve. Like it's like I'll just pick one of the other 3000 venture things that are happening. I'm.

S: Not defending the decision. Fool me one right.

E: Fool me one. Shame on.

S: Put some context I appreciate.

E: You fool me twice, yeah. The company tweeted the other day sort of in response to the very question you're asking about, you know, how and why is this happening? And here's what the tweet says. Yes, our CEO, Billy Evans, is Elizabeth Holmes's partner. Skepticism is rational. We must clear a higher bar. We prefer to fill first, talk later. The science, when ready, will stand on its own. Is. That hilarious sound. Like.

J: Oh my gosh, we want peaceful coexistence.

E: It's like, no, you don't. You want to eat us? Here's here's the next tweet. This is not Theranos 2 point O Theranos attempted to miniaturize existing tests. Our approach is fundamentally different. We use light to read the complete molecular story in biological fluids, seeing patterns current tests can't detect. Not an improvement. A different paradigm. I mean it's. Heard. Before.

S: Superficially, it's fine. Yeah. And if it weren't coming from the, you know, the partner of Elizabeth Holmes, it'd be like, all right, just show me the data, show me the science behind it. But sure, you we could use light to invent, to see what stuff is made of. And sure, we could use AI to look for patterns.

C: And that's mass spec. That's funny.

S: Yeah.

B: Yeah.

S: So it's superficially it sounds fun and maybe maybe we're being too harsh, maybe this will eventually work out. But at the end of the day, they're right in that the science will speak for itself, both positive and negative. Right.

US#02: Yeah.

C: But the way that we have structured startup culture in this country is give us money now, you know, ask questions later. And so where where's the line with fraud? You know what I mean? Like if this is a nothing burger, that's her point exactly.

S: She's like, this is the fake it till you make it culture is just been Heron her. Her point was that this is what everybody does. You're only coming after me because I'm a woman, right, That was her point. There may be an element of truth to that, but I do think that she was way over the line to actual fraud, not just not just hype or, you know, doing the thing that they do. You know, like we're like we have a guy in a costume pretending to be the robot. You know what? I mean, that's different, right? So why wasn't that fraud? Like, why is you know what I mean? So there's there's.

C: Because when you finally have a prototype and your prototype is fake.

S: Yeah, it's a fake prototype, but it's just a demonstration though.

C: Exactly. It's always just a demonstrate because they were, they were already in Walgreens. Yeah, they were already like using consumers.

J: Yeah, Apple was doing it. You know Steve Jobs when he when he demoed the first iPhone? It was fake it. Mean it was. On Rails it was. Like totally on rails and it crashed like like, you know what I mean? Like there was that almost didn't. Happen.

C: But when he sold the first iPhone, he wasn't selling an iPhone on rails. That's the difference. He wasn't selling a BlackBerry, putting an iPhone a. Product that didn't work, they didn't.

J: Never going to get there, but I don't know. I don't trust.

US#03: This and I think that the whole conversation about where's the line between a demo and fraud or whatever can can just be avoided by just creating a clear remarkation between something that's health related where the fake it till you make it equals death. Exactly on this side the fake it till you make it equals you got a shitty phone.

S: You know exactly, which is why it's so interesting to me. And again, but for investors, you could say as long as you're not committing like doing certain things like lying, outright lying or misrepresenting to investors or whatever, then it is like buyer beware kind of thing. You're just, it's all a gamble and they're gambling on something. You're saying I don't have it now. This is just my plan to do this.

C: Because we do have an FDA, right?

S: But the patients who were harmed by fraudulent actual medical care, that's didn't.

C: Well, and that's a. Different thing here. Like if we have ostensibly a Food and Drug Administration that has to approve certain types of devices or certain types of procedures, anything before it receives approval is research, is research. And once it receives approval and it's, you know, open to the public, at that point, you're committing fraud, Right? Yeah.

S: Evan, anything else to wrap this up or?

E: Yes, here's the wrap up line. Now, you mentioned the prototype, right? Prototype of the machine, The one this company. This new company also released a photo of their prototype, and according to the NPR article I'll quote, it looks suspiciously like Theranos's defunct.

S: Testing machine but Evan this is not Theranos 2 point O this is.

E: Not Theranos 2 point O as long as you get that.

S: Straight, as long as you keep saying that you're good. That's right. All right, All right.

Bespoke Genetic Therapy (1:03:30)

• World's First Patient Treated with Personalized CRISPR Gene Editing Therapy at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia 

S: Look at this cute little guy. So this is KJ. This is KJ. He has a genetic disorder, CPS, one deficiency, carbonyl phosphate synthase 1 deficiency. This is a urea cycle disorder. So you know, we breakdown proteins into ammonia, then the ammonia gets converted to urea and then you pee the urea out, right? That's, that's normal metabolism. This enzyme is what turns ammonia into, gets ammonia into the urea cycle, right? So it eventually spits out urea. So with this enzyme isn't working. You don't make urea. Ammonia builds up. Ammonia is a toxin. It can damage the brain. It could damage the liver and it can cause permanent brain damage and it can cause death. 50% of children born with this disorder die. They don't to 50% mortality. The ones who survive, most mainly survive because they get liver transplants. The idea. So you have to keep them alive until they're old enough to get a liver transplant. What age tends to how fast they grow and how much they thrive. But, you know, they have to, you know, be like 1-2 years old.

J: But is that where the problem is? It's in the liver.

S: It's that enzyme. It's a genetic mutation of that enzyme. What would they have in the liver?

J: Yeah, it's in the liver. It's in the liver, yeah.

S: And one of the treatments to keep them alive is you have to reduce their protein intake, which, you know, you kind of need protein to grow. So they're, you're giving them the least amount of protein we can to to have them kind of survive long enough to get a liver transplant. You also have to give them drugs that scavenge the nitrogen, right, That scavenge the ammonia to try to get to get rid of that as much as possible. It's, you know, it's expensive, it's dodgy again, 50% mortality rate. And The thing is, like with an enzyme like that, they're there could be hundreds of mutations that inactivate that enzyme, right? So it's not one specific genetic mutation. It's just anything which makes that enzyme not work. It could be hundreds of different mutations. All right. So KJ was born with this disease. He has his own unique mutation that is inactivating this enzyme. When he was born, the, you know, his pediatricians who, you know, had been working with CRISPR and genetic, you know, treatment like maybe we can design A CRISPR to treat KJV specific mutation, but we'd have to do it fast, you know, because he's not going to live that long or you're not live that long without a liver transplant. It took them six months to basically make the CRISPR.

Voice-over: God, Wow.

S: They then gave him 3 infusions of that. The CRISPR. Remember CRISPR is a genetic engineering tool. Yeah, then it Yep. Remember what it stands for.

B: About shut up.

C: Clustered.

S: Clustered.

C: Repeating.

B: Palindromic repeats.

C: Oh no, not repeating cluster.

S: Interspace palindromic repeats.

C: OK, I knew two of the letters.

S: CRISPR.

C: What's the R?

B: Keep going, OK?

S: Repeat, repeat.

C: Yeah.

S: So anyway, he so they did it. They packaged them in these liposomes, right. We talked about that before as well. They got it to the liver, I suspect. I couldn't find this, but I think the liver has its own venous system, blood supply through the because the portal system, because it drains the everything you absorb in your gut goes to your liver first, so the liver can detoxify it. So, but anyway, they got it to the liver. They did the three times or like from February to April of this year and basically to try to fix this mutation in as many of the liver cells as possible and it freaking worked.

B: Wow.

S: Now not 100% cure because it didn't fix every cell, but it did enough that at least so far, he is able to eat more protein. So he's growing better, he's thriving, and they were able to cut the dose of his medication in half. And so is probability. I don't know if this is going to be enough to keep him from getting a liver transplant or if he'll just really maximize his chance of surviving long enough to get one. And again, this was the first treatment. This is the first one.

C: And he, I mean, it was only three infusions, like he could get more.

S: He can get more infusions, right? Keep doing it until you had enough of those cells.

B: They didn't give the parents a bill for $30 million, but.

S: The parents agreed to do it and of course, this is research, right? Basically, this is a milestone, right? This is a milestone, just like the first IVF baby was milestone. This is the first time we've done bespoke genetic therapy to treat a genetic disorder and we did again, we've done within a time in vitro.

B: Therapeutic one kid, I mean there might not be any other kid that has that specific.

S: No, they have to engineer it for each person.

C: And it's not just, it's not just the first time we've done a bespoke version, it's the first time we've done it in vivo, in vivo in a living child, not, not in utero.

S: This is a game changer. This is the this is the first. This is opening the door to potentially treating any genetic disease. This is an absolute game changer. I think we will look back on this one case as like the the Seminole case, the first case, but in this.

B: But this had a good vector though, right? I mean, that's not all these.

S: Yeah, but The thing is good vector, you're right. But the liposome, yeah, you're right. I don't know if this would work in the brain, for example, but the what this, this is the the vector technology. So you have like the CRISPR is the genetic engineering technology. The vector is how you get it to the cells you need to get it to with the, with the FDA approved treatments, thalassemia and sickle cell, we take the cells out and then we do it, you know, in in vitro. This is doing it in vivo in, in a living Organism. And again, it depends on where in the body it is. And as I said this the liver is kind of convenient to get access to, but still this is an absolute game chamber. We had the vector worked, the CRISPR worked amazing, the targeting worked and the and it worked and it and it improved this child's life and their chance of success.

C: And whether they do it in in the body or they take the cells out, crisper them and then reinfuse them doesn't really, for all intents and purposes, it doesn't matter. Like car T cell therapy, we're doing these things outside. It doesn't matter. You're still reinfusing these things.

S: Into the body, whatever works for whatever specific thing you're trying to treat. Anyway, we had to talk about this. This is an absolute game changer.

Science or Fiction (1:09:44)

Theme: Dwarf Planets Item #1: The most massive dwarf planet is Pluto, about 27% more than the next most massive, Eris. Item #2: Haumea is the fastest rotating object in the solar system of its size, resulting in an equatorial diameter about twice as long as its polar diameter. Item #3: Of the five official dwarf planets, four have one or more moons, while one has a ring.

Answer	Item
Fiction	The most massive dwarf planet is Pluto, about 27% more than the next most massive, Eris.
Science	Haumea is the fastest rotating object in the solar system of its size, resulting in an equatorial diameter about twice as long as its polar diameter.
Science	Of the five official dwarf planets, four have one or more moons, while one has a ring.

Host	Result
Steve	clever

Rogue	Guess
Adam	The most massive dwarf planet is Pluto, about 27% more than the next most massive, Eris.
Evan	Haumea is the fastest rotating object in the solar system of its size, resulting in an equatorial diameter about twice as long as its polar diameter.
Cara	Of the five official dwarf planets, four have one or more moons, while one has a ring.
Jay	Of the five official dwarf planets, four have one or more moons, while one has a ring.
Bob	Haumea is the fastest rotating object in the solar system of its size, resulting in an equatorial diameter about twice as long as its polar diameter.

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

C: It's time for science or. Fiction.

S: Each rank I come up with three Science News items are facts 2 real, one fake. And then I challenge my 3 panel of experts, skeptics, to tell me which one is the fake. And you guys can play too. All right, but first we're going to ask the rogues to give their answers. Then we'll see how the audience decides. Voted. Are you guys ready? So there's the theme. The theme is I had to do, we had to prep 4 shows in basically 8 days. I couldn't do all news items. All right, here's the theme. The theme is dwarf planets. Here we go. Dwarf planets are cool #1 The most massive dwarf planet is Pluto, about 27% more than the next most massive. Harris I #2 How Maya is the fastest rotating planet or dwarf planet in the solar system, resulting in an Equatorial diameter about twice as long as its polar diameter. And I number three. Of the five official dwarf planets, 4 have one or more moons, while one has a ring. OK, Adam, as our guest, you get the privilege of going first.

US#03: I was so quiet I didn't make a single sound you.

S: Did very well.

US#03: God, OK, everything works sometimes all. Right. OK. So the last one number three, one of the five official dwarf planets. Of the five official dwarf planets, 4 have one or more moons. Why one has a ring that sounds very familiar that sounds. I don't see why that couldn't be possible. The middle one I have no idea. I'm so completely confused on what this means at all. And the 1st. One. So I'll tell you what it means.

S: So how Maya is one of the dwarf plants? So it's spinning so fast that it's squashed right so that the Equatorial diameter is twice the polar?

US#03: Diameter, so like an oblate spheroid.

S: Really oblate?

US#03: It's like polar diameter being like the north. Pole, the South flushed.

S: Is from top to bottom gotcha? Gotcha of the Equatorial diameter, so it's twice as wide as it is high.

C: It's short and fat.

US#03: Yeah, it's a chode. OK, That that seems like a pretty crazy fast rotation, almost too much to be possible. But the top one seems so familiar. And it seems familiar in the way that that makes me feel like the opposite is true. Like it's. I don't know, the one seems like fiction to me. I think I've. Heard. That it is absolutely not the largest dwarf planet. It just happened to be the first one that we categorized that way after we started to find other things in the kyber belt and so on. I'm going to say #1 is fiction.

S: The Pluto being the most massive dwarf planet, Correct? All right, we're going to skip over to Evan because I am the Lord of Science or Fiction.

B: It's just it's 1-2 or three. There's no letters here.

E: Yeah, I don't recall Pluto's relative size to the to the other ones. It it may be bigger. I don't know if it's 20% twenty 7% more so that one could be the fiction. Also Homea. It's the fastest rotating planet. I've never heard of that before. I ever feeling that one will be science and five dwarf planets 4 have one or more moons while one has a ring. I don't remember raining. One had a ring. I don't I don't recall that being the case. Doesn't mean it's not right. But I'll say the the the one dwarf planet with a ring. That's the fiction, OK?

S: Cara.

C: Yeah. So the thing that I'm noticing is that you're saying Pluto is the most massive dwarf planet, not the largest, right? And I think that's an important distinction. I don't know if Pluto's the largest in terms of size, but it may be the densest, right? Or the most massive. So that one might still be true even though it's not true. If you read it like quickly. So how Maya being so like spinning so quickly that it squished it, would it squish it in that direction or would it squish it in this direction? If it's spinning really or sorry so fast, squish it this way. Something spinning fast or squish it this way. I'm not good at physics.

B: I know, but I can't tell you, it says.

E: Equatorial.

C: No, I know I'm saying, but would that happen if it was spinning really fast? Would it flatten into a pancake or would it? I mean, yeah, probably it's like a like a spirally like a thing. But that would have to happen after it formed that it would be squished, right, Unless it's spinning while it was forming and and congealing. That's not the right word. Aggregating. I don't know. So 5 of fish. I don't even know if there are five official dwarf planets, four with so moons on dwarf planets, moons on dwarf planets, or are they moons of other moon? Maybe it's the moon thing that's getting me. Could they be moons of other moons? I think I'm going to go with evidence, say this one is the fiction, because there are any. There's so many details in that one that could be wrong.

J: OK, Jay. Yeah. The second one about Hamaya, I mean, I, I'm fairly confident that that one is science. I mean, I was definitely remember reading about this, something like this happening and I'm just going to, I'm just going to say that that was what I was reading. The one about the, the so we have, we have 5 official dwarf planets, right? So one of them being Pluto 4 have one or more moons. OK. And while while one has a ring, now just be specific, Steve, you're talking about the dwarf planet has a ring, not one of the moons.

S: Yeah, yes, one of the one of the five dwarf planets has a. Ring.

J: I have absolutely no reason to doubt that a dwarf planet could have a ring. I mean, at one point I think our moon had a ring, so hey, slow down.

C: There, Jay, hurry up.

S: You got 10. Minutes. Yeah, I think I'm the one. Sticker. All right, Bob, Good.

B: Man, I'm embarrassed. I haven't really looked at dwarf planets in so long. I focused like on deep space and not that close. So it's like whatever, yeah, whatever, just sitting the stage here. So for me, lowering the expectations yes, a little bit got to do it in this case, you bastard. So yeah, the number one here with Pluto, it sounds right. I forget some of the the later discoveries though I could be wrong on that, but that sounds pretty good for the third one. Have dwarf planets having moons and a ring kind of rings kind of rings a bell. Oh, and so that that could work, the one that just struck me viscerally was the second one. I, I think a rocky planet spinning that fast and make making it so that it's twice the Equatorial diameter is twice the polar diameter. That's a hell of of a of a spin of a rotation there to to be to make such a dramatic oblate shape there that so that one's rubbing me a little bit. I mean, I could I'm not I'm not very, very confident here. What's annoying the hell out of me, But I'm going to say the that one number two there is.

S: The how May is spinning is the fiction. All right, so good. So we have a good spread. So the rogues were not very helpful to all of you.

C: What did you pick?

S: I picked the.

C: How may I? Oh, you picked. You picked without them.

S: We picked Pluto, so Pluto, Pluto, Pluto, Hamea and then the no, you picked Pluto.

C: No, it's Pluto, Pluto Hamea. And then we picked moons and rings.

S: Moons. And rings Pluto, Pluto hamea. All right, so we're going to do this the George Rob single clap method. George, do you want to do what you want me to just do it? All right, I'll do it. So in the audience, if you think that number one about Pluto being the most massive dwarf planet is the fiction clap. If you think that how Maya spinning fast is the fiction clap. And if you think that there the moons and ring one is the fiction clap. So I'm hearing 21, then 321 and then three.

B: All right. You sound happy with that so.

S: Let's we'll start with the word that got the least amount of. Votes the. Three of the five official dwarf planets, 4 have one or more moons, while one has a ring. Evan and Cara think this one is the fiction. A minority of the audience thinks this one is the fiction and this one is science. This is science. Cool. So Pluto has five moons.

J: Wow 5.

S: Hamea has two moons, Snow Moon, Eris and Maki Maki have one moon.

C: Each or the Cheron? Each. OK.

S: And Ceres, which is the only one, only dwarf planet that's in the inner solar system, right? It's in the asteroid belt. It is not a trans Neptunian plutoid dwarf planet. Plutoid has no moons, right? So 4 have moons, one has a ring. How Maya has a ring.

C: That's cool, that's cool. That might be telling of.

S: May be related to other things happening. Let's go back to #2 how Maya is the fastest rotating planet or a dwarf planet in the solar system, resulting in an Equatorial diameter about twice as long as it's polar diameter. Bob, you think this one is the fiction? The clear majority of the audience thinks this one is the.

B: Fiction. Stop smiling, bastard.

S: That is what the.

B: Hell, and that's rotating like.

S: That is how Maya So you're the upper left hand. So this is this is science. This is science. The upper left hand picture here is an an edge on view, like an Equatorial view of how Maya. Look at that thing.

B: That is nuts.

S: Really squashed.

B: How could I not see that before?

S: The second picture is a polar view. My question is, and I could not find an answer to this question, so if there's an astronomer who can answer, let me know. Why is that not circular from the polar? Why is it also ovoid in that direction?

J: It's all screwed up. Something's pulling on.

S: It Now what's interesting is every single site I went to described Hamea as either egg shaped or Oval. But it's not egg shaped. It's not. It's a flattened egg, right? I don't know why it's not just a flattened sphere. I don't know why it's a flattened egg, but it is.

B: It might have mass anomalies.

S: Yeah, there could be. It's got to be some other kind of material.

B: Some density anomalies within the crust, yeah. Interest or the mantle, probably.

S: But it's but it's spinning super 4 hours. That's that's with one rotation every four hours, which is fast for something.

B: That what? What's the long the long diameter? Do you remember?

S: I think it's like 2000 kilometers and 1000 kilometers, something like about that. OK, which means that the most massive dwarf planet is Pluto, about 27% more than the next most massive heiress is the fiction. So congratulations Jay and Adam Nice.

B: I'm the smartest man alive.

S: Good get, man.

B: All right. It's a perfect record, Terra.

S: You hit upon the magic. Word the Max.

C: Word. But you got Yeah, damn it.

S: So Pluto is the largest. That's what I was thinking. That's what I was, but it's not the most massive. The most massive is Eris, which is 20% more massive than Pluto, but it's a little smaller because Eris is a lot denser than Pluto. So sometimes these these turn on one key technical word and you did hit upon that so. Congratulations.

J: I attribute this win and me and Adam both winning to the fact that we're both bass players.

S: I thought it was because you're both Star Wars fans.

J: And Star Wars. Fans.

S: Yeah, you have both those things.

J: Both. Those reasons are valid, yes.

S: Yeah, OK.

C: I. Am just. Really sick of being right for the wrong reasons and wrong for the right reasons. That's on. Your existence character. Yeah, you. Have the best. Record almost every year though.

S: That's your mojo.

C: Yeah, Yeah, that's true.

Skeptical Quote of the Week (1:22:01)

"The true function of reason is not to find beliefs, but to eliminate false ones."  – - Julian Bagini, (description of author)

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

E: The true function of reason is not to find beliefs, but to eliminate false ones. Julian Bikini.

S: Julian Bikini? Who is that?

E: English philosopher, journalist, author of 20 books about philosophy written for general audiences. He's written extensively on the philosophy and books on atheism, secularism and the nature of national. Identity.

S: Is he Live Today? I'm sorry you Live Today.

E: Oh yeah, OK. He's a patron of the Humanists UK and organization promoting secular humanism. So Julian Bagini.

S: I like it. That's true. That's what science is all about. It's eliminating the false stuff, not proving yourself right. All right, Well, thank you guys all for joining me this. Week.

C: Thanks, Steve.

E: Good.

S: Thank you all for coming. And until next week, this is your Skeptics Guide to the Universe.