SGU Episode 785

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SGU Episode 785
July 25th 2020
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SGU 784                      SGU 786
Skeptical Rogues
S: Steven Novella
B: Bob Novella
C: Cara Santa Maria
J: Jay Novella
E: Evan Bernstein
Quote of the Week
Nothing limits intelligence more than ignorance; nothing fosters ignorance more than one's own opinions; nothing strengthens opinions more than refusing to look at reality.
Sheri S. Tepper, American novelist
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Introduction

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, July 22^nd, 2020, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella...

B: Hey, everybody!

S: Cara Santa Maria...

C: Howdy.

S: Jay Novella...

J: Hey guys.

S: ...and Evan Bernstein.

E: Good evening, folks.

S: Cara, you're all the way in Scotland right now.

C: I am. I'm in the land of Scott.

S: The Highlands. You're enjoying your haggis and your bagpipes?

C: I refuse the haggis. Won't do the haggis.

S: Haggis is good. I had haggis in Scotland. It was good.

C: Do you know what I realized?

E: Was it real haggis?

C: Yeah. Yeah. We had haggis at the bar. I tasted it. Did you know that haggis is illegal in the US? You can't import it.

S: Oh, really?

C: Yeah. You want to know why?

J: Yeah, of course.

C: Because USDA does not consider lung to be fit for human consumption.

S: Well, no Scottish food, no UK food is fit for human consumption.

E: Oh, no.

B: He went there.

C: There's some very good food.

S: Of course.

C: So far, though, we did make biscuits and gravy for breakfast, which is a decidedly not Scottish dish.

S: Yeah. They did import good food from around the world, like chicken tikka masala.

C: Oh, yeah. Indian food is big here. You're right. Indian food is very big. I've been adjusting to my jet lag. The flight was interesting. Flying during a global pandemic, I don't recommend it. Only do it if you have to. Yeah. It was very strange. I double masked. It was really cute. I got all these comments, people saying, like, you can double mask? I thought that would render them ineffective. And I was like, no, you're thinking of condoms. You can't really rub a friction hole in a mask. Yeah. And I just washed my hands a lot. The flight here was quite good. They did very good social distancing. So there's actually nobody in my whole row. And I'm talking two by the window, three in the middle, two by the other window. There's no one in my whole row. But the weird thing was, of course, there's somebody directly in front of me and directly behind me. It's like, OK.

E: Just don't cough away.

S: Just don't move over two seats.

C: But I did find that the flight, the little connector flight from Heathrow to Edinburgh was horrible. It was a completely full flight. I was lucky enough that there just happened to be nobody in the middle seat between me and the gentleman. There were all the middle seats were full otherwise. It was only an hour plus flight. But this is the part I don't get. They go to all these great lengths to disinfect everything. It's always about the disinfectants and the wipes and the sprays. And we're not going to give you a pillow. We're not going to give you a blanket. But on our international flight, they did give us sanitized pillows and blankets, which was nice. And then they serve food at the exact same time to every person on the plane. So everyone takes their mask off at the same time.

E: Oh, right.

C: Like nobody thought about that. So while everybody else is like risking their livelihood in order to eat some salt and vinegar flavoured chips, crisps, apologies. I kept my mask on. The guy next to me eats, eats, drinks and immediately falls asleep. Like mid-chew. So his mask is hanging off his ear. And I'm like, cool. So I just kind of like held my blanket up like a little barrier. I don't know if that works. In between until he woke up and put his mask back on. Because that's the part that freaks me out. I don't know.

E: Your dinner tray doubles as a COVID shield, Cara.

C: Exactly.

E: Hold that up.

C: I think it's that thing where like if I were the owner of a restaurant, but even then I think they feel guilty and horrible when people break mask etiquette. It's like, Steve, like you can be the enforcer because you're a doctor. And so when people are at the hospital and they do something wrong, you can be like, as a doctor, I need to inform you that your mask is not going to help you if it's below your chin.

S: Yeah. I mean, you still got to be a dick about it, though, is the bottom line. You still have to be there's no way to do it without being like little finger wagging like you really should have that over your nose. When I feel like I need to do that, I usually like address the room like rather than pointing and shaming one person. It's like, so the policy is everyone needs to have their mouth, their face mask fully on at all times, just so that we're all aware of that. And like the one person with a below their nose knows I'm talking to them.

C: Exactly. Exactly. But it's so hard when you're like on an airplane or in an airport, you have no authority. You don't know if that person is going to lose their mind and punch you in the throat. You know, it's like tensions are high anyway. And you just want everybody to be cool. It's like, be cool, man. Be cool. I'm not trying to be a dick. So instead, you do what probably most people do, which is just shrink down in the corner, face away and do what you can to protect yourself, which bums me out. I just wish I did find that there were more mask-holes when I came to Heathrow than there were at LAX. Maybe it was a function of population. LAX is very shut down. There's nothing happening. All the restaurants are closed. There are very few people flying. So you could sit an entire gate away from the next person if you wanted to. Whereas at Heathrow, it was bustling. The shops were open. All the restaurants were open. So literally, nobody was wearing their mask correctly. Everybody had it below their nose or just around their chin. It's like, why do you even have that on? Yeah. So that was a little scary and frustrating. I know we're the assholes because we're the Americans and we're the ones who aren't allowed in any countries right now. But it scared me a little bit to see how few people were truly concerned. Maybe it's because we've seen the worst of it in the US.

S: Yeah, I think it's definitely region-specific.

C: Right.

S: And especially in the Northeast, since we've already been through the Ring of Fire, people are pretty good about it. There's still occasional, as you say, mask-holes. But generally speaking, people are pretty good. But I know elsewhere, you watch pictures of gatherings in states that have yet to really get fully hit or are just getting to their peak now. No one's wearing a mask.

C: I think the stories that tend to trend, and unfortunately, being here in the UK, my Twitter turns to UK-centric stuff. I'm getting the UK ads. Every time I log into a website, it goes to the UK version. And so you kind of see how the news, the American news, makes its way here, like what is sort of big enough or interesting enough to cross the pond and what's too specific or regional to really make it. And so what I'm seeing, sadly, are the stories about a woman in Walmart refuses to wear a mask. And when they yell at her, she pees on the floor. You know, like all the crazy stuff that's happening.

E: She got nervous.

C: She was a little excited.

S: Putting our best foot forward.

C: It's so embarrassing. It's like, I promise we're not all like that.

B: We're kind of used to that by now, right?

S: You know, I'm back on inpatient service again this week and starting to see some patients. I'm consulting, right? I've consulted on patients who had COVID back in April and they're still in the hospital and just wrecked. That virus is nasty.

C: Yeah, this chronic... So they're still actively sick, right? This isn't even like the kind of chronic syndrome that I've been reading about more and more lately.

S: I mean, they're over the COVID itself.

C: Okay. They are.

S: Now they're dealing with just the rehab and all the downstream complications of having had very severe COVID, you know?

J: So what does that look like, Steve? Give me details on the different things that you're seeing.

S: You know, patients, for example, can have multiple organ failure from this. They get then complications they can have multiple pneumonias on top of it. We know that it can cause strokes and heart attacks, you know? You know, it's mainly just that like when you're somebody who's really sick from the virus, first of all, you get like a double whammy. There's the viral infection itself, which is not just a respiratory virus. We know it can cause a lot of organ system problems. But then some people get the immune activation the cytokine storm kind of a thing where their immune system then starts wreaking havoc on them. And if they survive, like if that happens to you, like it's like toying costs whether or not you're going to survive. But if you do, you're like going to be in months and months of recovery.

B: Will they fully recover? Will they fully recover?

S: Probably not. They probably won't ever get to where they were before they ever were sick.

C: Because of the damage to the actual organs.

E: Lung damage.

C: I've also seen that there are people who like didn't even have particularly severe COVID. Like they weren't ventilated. They didn't make it to the ICU, but maybe it was one hospital visit or they had a really bad fever for multiple days who, I mean, there are like support groups online about this just like chronically feeling crappy. Like they just never quite felt, feel better. And I'm wondering if there's going to be some really interesting kind of post COVID syndrome stuff that we're going to be learning about, not just medically, but also psychologically.

S: Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, some patients like we're talking about their current medical condition. And the question is, is this COVID? And we have to say, we don't know. We don't know what this virus is capable of doing. We don't know what happens. And with other diseases that have been around for decades, we can say, oh yeah, 23% of patients get this complication. You know what I mean? You have some guidance as to what can and cannot happen. And now obviously we know a lot more than we did a few months ago. But now in terms of late stage complications, we really just have no idea. This is just- We're seeing this for the first time.

C: And I think that's the thing a lot of people don't think about, Steve, is that sometimes when you hear the politicization of the way we're handling the virus, people love to just cite the mortality rate or they say the X deaths. And if they're not dying, we don't have to be as concerned about X, Y, Z. And it's like, there's a big difference between not getting sick at all and dying. And I think we're starting to see that the not quite dying, but getting brutally sick is just debilitating for so many people.

J: Well, from the start, it takes up a ton of resources, right? I mean, that's why I always find it ridiculous when people are focusing on the deaths. It's like, well, sure, people are losing their lives, but then there could be people that are hospitalized for weeks to months, which is the primary resource drain.

C: And like Steve said, some of these people may never get all the way better. Their lives are now changed forever because of the virus.

S: Yeah. We talk about morbidity and mortality, right? It's not just mortality. Morbidity is all of the health problems that you get due to an illness. So we don't know what the full morbidity of this virus is. And this notion that it's a bad flu is just ridiculous. The flu doesn't do this to people. You may, if you get obviously respiratory failure, you can die from the flu, but it just doesn't wreck their body the way that this virus appears to in the most severe cases. This is definitely a different animal. The numbers for the world, again, this is always outdated by the time the show comes out, but we're over 14.5 million worldwide cases, over 600,000 deaths, 3.8 million in the U.S., over 140,000 deaths in the U.S. Numbers are still going up. Deaths are starting to now go up in the U.S. There was a lag, but again, as we keep saying, not only is it not over, we're still in the middle of this. It's still increasing.

C: How hopeful are you about some of the-

B: Not at all.

S: The vaccine news?

C: Yeah, it seems really promising.

S: It's all, as good as it could be at this stage of things, where the preliminary basic science research is promising, the animal data's good, the early clinical data is good, and now we're starting to get, again, there's probably 20, 30, 40 vaccines in development out there. We're getting to the point with the ones that are at the leading edge of this to large clinical trials. So that will be a few months. And then if it all works out, we could start manufacturing by the end of the year. And then the question is, who's first? If one company's the first one to get over the finish line with a working vaccine, are they going to make eight billion doses? You know what I mean? How much are they going to be able to do?

C: I'm already seeing contracts, right? The US government has already agreed to purchase X number from this manufacturer, and so and so is-

E: Pfizer.

C: We're going to grab Pfizer's, and yeah, these other European companies already have contracts in place. So-

S: I know, I know. One company was saying, we're hoping we could produce two billion doses in the next two years.

C: Right.

B: Wow.

E: That's ambitious.

S: But think about that. That's quarter of the world in two years, though, I mean, that's a long time.

C: But that's only one company, Steve.

S: And that's one company. So we almost need multiple companies to-

E: Absolutely. I would think so.

S: To come up with their own vaccines just so we could spread it out. Or they need to license their vaccine to multiple companies for manufacturing. But that's including massively ramping up their production. So we just don't know, but there's definitely going to be this period, which could be months to a year or two, where it's going to be a scramble to see who gets the vaccine. Typically, the high risk people do get it first.

C: That's my hope. My hope is that it's affordable and that it goes to the elderly, it goes to the people with pre-existing conditions, all that good stuff.

S: Not only that, but their caregivers. And frontline workers.

C: Frontline workers absolutely first, right?

B: So Steve will get it before us, and then I'll get it before you, Cara.

S: But even people in the grocery store, the essential workers who get exposed, they need...

C: The problem is in this country, we don't treat those people with often that kind of... Now I'm saying this country isn't America.

S: You know, the people that everyone's calling heroes, give the heroes the freaking vaccine first.

C: Exactly.

E: It would be a PR disaster if they didn't. I mean, how could they be...

C: We love PR disasters in this country. I disagree. You guys sound way more hopeful.

E: I don't put it past them, but...

B: It's been days since we've had a good one. Let's get another one.

C: I don't know, man. I'm just a little cynical about that at this point. I do agree frontline workers will probably get it first. But I think without some sort of from the top mandate, we're not going to see these going to the right people. And right now I think...

S: Think about it, Cara. The vaccine will probably be available after January 20th, just to pick a random date in the future. So we'll see. It's a big variable out there.

C: True.

B: But imagine people, a lot of people haven't really internalized it yet, but the vaccine will be out and will be effective and people will still wait a long time before they see it. A lot of people will be waiting a long time.

E: Bob, there's going to be millions of people who will refuse... How many tens of millions of people are going to refuse it?

C: I hope it's not tens of millions.

E: Won't it be tens of millions?

S: In the short term, it's not going to be a problem.

C: I hope not.

S: All right. But the thing is, even if everyone doesn't get the vaccine, if you give it to the people who are most likely to contract and spread the virus, that will massively shut down the spread of this virus, this pandemic. So it's not just that we're protecting the people most at risk. By doing that, we're also protecting everybody the most with the vaccine that we have. Right? We're reducing the spread the most. So it makes sense for everybody, for the most high-risk people, in terms of spreaders, to get the vaccine.

E: No argument from me. I'll wait in line. I don't care.

C: Yeah. And what about everybody else? You guys have seen Contagion, right? We talked about it a few weeks ago on the show. They do a lottery in Contagion, where the frontline workers get it first, and then everybody else, it's based on their birthday or something like that. They draw for birthdays. And then they line up and they get it, and everybody wears a little ID bracelet to prove whether they're vaccinated until the end of the full course.

B: I think people who actually have a birthday on a holiday should be prioritized.

E: Yeah. Yeah. And those with neat collections of things. Yeah.

News Items

Human Curiosity (16:53)

• Live Science: Why are humans so curious?

S: All right. We've got some interesting news items to chat about today. So Jay, you're going to start us off telling us about human curiosity.

J: Yeah. So the question is, that I put to all of you guys, is why are humans and other animals so damn curious? Where is it coming from? I think we can clearly see that children are curious. And even though there is noticeable drop off in the level of curiosity as some of us get older, a lot of adults have an amazing amount of curiosity. And we do lots of different things with this curiosity. But what is it, and why do we have it, and what is it for, right? What purpose does it serve?

B: The survival advantage?

J: That's absolutely obvious, and I think a great way to start the conversation. So what does it do, Bob? It motivates us, right? It influences a lot of our behavior.

C: It's also developmental, right? It's how we learn to speak and walk and, you know.

J: Yeah, exactly. As Cara was saying, a baby's curiosity encourages them to explore the world, figure out how things work. Babies also have to learn an enormous amount of information, and curiosity is what keeps them learning. Studies on infants have shown that they get bored. They have a toy, they use it for a little while, they get bored, and they want to move on to a new one. That's not them being a jerk, right? It's them exercising their curiosity.

B: Although some of them are jerks.

J: That's true, but that is also another talk. I could talk about that next week. Now there is another side to that coin. Curiosity can also be deadly.

C: Kill the cat.

J: Yes, absolutely. There's a lot of reasons and things that people have died from being curious and you can see a lot of that on Reddit if you want to. So does science have a way to explain and quantify what human curiosity is? So this is, the answer is kind of. What we do know is that curiosity is part of our DNA. It's not one simple behavior. It's connected to how we interact with our environment. But there isn't a single accepted definition of it. In general, scientists agree that at its core, it's information gathering, right? It's a neat way to kind of just boil it down to its essence. Researchers have identified changes to a gene known as DRD4, and this gene and mutations of this gene are connected to a person's likeliness to seek out new experiences. And that's important because that is a part of curiosity as well. So a person's desire to find new things, this is called perceptual curiosity, and it's what motivates us to seek out new life and new civilizations, right? To boldly go where no man has gone before, Cara, or woman. This is Star Trek I'm quoting from the 60s, so don't get mad at me.

C: I like that catch though, Jay. That was nice.

J: Yeah, but it really is. I mean, even you go back to science fiction has a lot of curiosity built into it because that's exploration. So the fact is we get bored with things, the more we get exposed to them, right, guys? Let's think about all the ways this shows up in our lives, food, clothes, hobbies you can get bored of anything that you do. You love a video game, you play it, you get bored with it.

C: TV shows.

J: Absolutely. And you know how it takes time to kind of be able to go back to something because your brain like detunes the memories and you don't remember it exactly anymore. And then it kind of turns into something new again, and then you can get reinvigorated about it. Except I think humanity largely agrees that pizza is the thing that none of us would ever get bored of.

C: Oh, I don't like pizza.

J: Nevermind.

B: What?

C: Not my favorite food.

J: So I want you to remember perceptual curiosity, right? Babies experiment with making noises, and this is how they eventually learn how to talk. And in the beginning, they're just trying out what kinds of sounds that they can make. But then later on, they realize that they can make similar sounds or vocalizations that their parents do, and then they start to key in on that. They start to remember that, and they start to do it. But curiosity is definitely behind the babbling that comes out of most kids' mouths. They're just listening to the sounds that they're making, and it pleases them, and that's part of curiosity.

C: Jay, I think baby babble is probably one of my favorite developmental things in the entire world. Baby babble is the best.

J: And it seems to be universally adorable.

C: Right. It's so cool, and it's so fun to try and figure out what they're trying to say, and sort of try and interpret it. Sometimes that frustrates them, you can tell.

J: Oh, without a doubt.

C: But other times, they get excited when you figure out what it is they're saying. Ugh, it just warms my heart.

B: Jay, I miss Olivia's babble. Can you teach her to babble again?

J: I was just going to say that. So my daughter Olivia, when she was, from the moment she started vocalizing, she had developed her own, like, it was like her own little language. She wasn't repeating things, but she would be talking to you, trying to communicate something, and making noises like adults do, thinking that she's talking, and she probably was feeling something that was kind of going along with it, but it was adorable. So anyway, crows, I want to talk about crows now, because crows are another creature that has this perceptual curiosity. They're constantly trying out new things, and this leads them to creating simple tools that helps them do, like, lots of little tasks and stuff.

E: Like crow bars.

J: Yep. That's right. They go to the bars, and they tell each other, like, the latest tool that they figured out. You know, crows have also been seen dropping nuts on the road, so cars will drive over them to crack open the nuts that they can't open.

C: They also bring people gifts.

J: That's right. They do. They can bring you sparkly things, which is really adorable. But another kind of curiosity is called, now get this. Ready? Epistematic?

C: Epistemic?

J: Epistemic. It's like, you'd figure maybe one out of ten times I would accidentally say it correctly. Epistematic curiosity.

C/B: Epistemic.

J: Forget it. Forget it. It's a word before the word curiosity. This is only found in humans, this particular kind of curiosity. It's very much like science, right? Just think about how cool this is. It's about the search for knowledge and the elimination of uncertainty. Right? Now, this kind of curiosity develops later in life, and the researchers suspect that it requires complex language skills. But I just want to take a sidestep here. If we have curiosity baked into our DNA, and a kind of curiosity is, and I quote, the search for knowledge and the elimination of uncertainty, then we have science cooked into our DNA.

C: You're saying that maybe if we had evolved separately, we might also have developed something akin to our scientific method.

J: It's just that curiosity happens to be amazingly, it's an amazingly powerful thing, mindset, whatever.

C: And a nuanced version of just basic curiosity is that, and again, it's in our DNA. We have it when we're born. It's there from the beginning. Of course, we could teach it, but science is an expression of curiosity. So I like to think like human beings are scientific creatures. That's just part of us.

S: Well, okay. So just to expound on that a little bit, though, I partly agree with that. I think that curiosity is a necessary, but sort of insufficient criterion for science, and we had this argument or this discussion about Carl Sagan, because he also sort of made that point, Jay, that you're making that sort of young kids are sort of born scientists, but others take a different view, which I agree with that. Science goes beyond curiosity because it has a systematic institutionalized way of addressing that curiosity. It's not just the curiosity. It's also the methods that we use in order to satisfy it. And those methods are not inherent. They are not in our DNA. They are very much a cultural, very much a cultural thing.

C: Yeah. And Steve, a big part of that is that it's counter to bias. It's counter to assumption. Whereas like the curiosity makes us go, oh, everything's so interesting. And then what we learn about the science makes us go, oh, don't trust that first instinct.

S: Yeah, right.

J: I mean, I think we're saying the same thing, Steve. Curiosity is cooked into us, but it is an intellectual gesture that is part of science and it's required. It's required for science because if we didn't have the drive to do it, science wouldn't happen.

S: Yeah.

J: Right?

C: Right.

J: Our curiosity allowed human beings to populate the entire planet and have amazing advancement. And modern science, as an example, truly is an extension of our curiosity and necessity. But Cara is the mother of?

C: Invention.

J: There it is.

S: Yeah, it is. From an evolutionary point of view, it's interesting to think about that because it's got to be a risk benefit kind of thing, right? You need curiosity but caution at the same time. If you're all curious and no caution, you'd get eaten by every predator out there, you know?

C: Right. But that's why we often, I think, when we think about classical Darwinian evolution, we forget about the most important, not maybe the most important, but one very important aspect of evolution and of human psychology, which is interpersonal evolution. We did not evolve alone. And so there's the kinship evolution. And maybe that's why different people have these different, maybe you could call them personality types or however you want to define it, where you've got those brave and kind of out there people and then you've got the much more cautious people and they play off of each other.

Twitter Bans QAnon (26:50)

• NBC News: Twitter bans 7,000 QAnon accounts, limits 150,000 others as part of broad crackdown

S: So we've never spoken about QAnon, I think, on this show.

J: No, we haven't.

B: I don't think so.

C: No. We've talked about it offline before.

S: Well, I mean, it's a conspiracy theory.

E: Oh, I thought it was a character in Star Trek. Geez.

C: Sounds like one.

S: But it's a very politically oriented one. And it also is so out there, like not really much to say about it except how nutty it is. But anyway.

C: Except that people are getting elected who are like QAnon people.

S: It's kind of to some extent entering the mainstream. So maybe we should talk about it. But the thing that's triggering my discussion now is the fact that Twitter decided to, I don't know if it's adequate, if it's accurate to say they banned QAnon, but they functionally are limiting it. So they did ban 7,000 QAnon accounts and they limited access to 150,000 others. Not because of what they believe, but because of their behavior, which is, I think, always a good way to approach things like that. They banned them because they were having coordinated harassment of other users. And that's against the rules. Or they were breaking their rules in terms of having multiple sock puppet accounts. Or they broke the rules because they were evading previous rules that were–

E: Yeah. Can't work around.

S: They were doing workarounds.

B: Wait. I thought some of it was because of spreading misinformation. Isn't it tied to that?

E: But isn't that part of the rules?

S: It's part of it. But it's not that they specifically cited what I said, though. When they say they justified it because – they might have said that in describing like how pernicious the group is. But they said because – the banning, though, was because – you know, mainly it was because they're doing targeted harassment and threatening of people. They're swarming, right? Which is –

C: And that's one of their, yeah, right straight up. It's a massive violation.

S: So what is QAnon? Just for those of you who may not – who may be blissfully unaware of what it is. It is considered a far-right conspiracy theory. The essence of it is that there is a deep state conspiracy against President Trump because – and the reason for this is because Trump, his real secret agenda while he's been in the White House for the last three and a half years, has been to root out and bring to justice this secret cabal that is running the world.

C: Aren't they also child molesters?

S: Yeah, of course. So they're running a child sex trafficking ring while they control the world.

E: Pizzagate.

C: And that's, yeah, that's George Soros.

S: Yes, and of course, yeah, who's doing this? It's a – it's Democrats, right? So it's a –

E: Their political enemies.

S: Basically, famous Democrats are secretly running child sex rings. And Trump knows about it and he's been plotting this whole time. And in fact, the whole – he faked his Russia connections in order to enlist Robert Mueller in this effort. Right? So Mueller's secretly working with Trump to root out –

C: Hmm.

E: Huh?

S: You know, it's just really a fantasy story it's just amazing.

E: That's a convoluted pretzel, that is. Wow.

B: It sounds like something Mueller would do.

S: The name comes from the – you know, a person on 4chan who says he's an insider who's now sending, under the name Q, sending information out to the world.

E: Yeah. Believe that.

S: But it's all demonstrably false accusations. And there's it's – many people have called the whole QAnon thing evidence-free and baseless, which I think is being charitable.

C: Bananas.

S: It is kind of – it's a conspiracy cult. I think it's definitely a conspiracy cult evolving into like a fringe religion kind of thing, you know. A conspiracy-based religion. But it's it's very pernicious because there's a lot of – if you think, like, the world's being run by a secret ring of sex traffickers paedophilia sex traffickers, that justifies a lot of action on your part. You know, that's –

B: Sure.

C: Right. Because you're the good guy.

S: And there's been at least one murder attributed to QAnon.

C: What? I didn't know that.

S: Oh, yeah. But, of course, all their predictions are wrong, you know. Everything they've predicted so far has been wrong when they do make predictions. By now we were supposed to have the storm where all of the Democrats get arrested and sent to Guantanamo Bay.

C: Whoa. There's, like, a Democratic rapture in this whole thing?

S: Yes. Basically. And then once that happens, then Trump will usher in utopia, you know.

C: Maybe that's, like, the rounding up of people on the streets in Portland. Maybe this is the beginning of QAnon.

S: You could see everything. They look at everything through the QAnon lens. Like, once you believe in this cuckoo bananas conspiracy theory, then everything becomes consistent with it. The thing that's really scary is there's, like, a number of Republicans running for the House of Representatives are allied with QAnon.

C: Some of them, like, oh, maybe they haven't won yet. You're right. But they won their, like, primary or something.

S: Yeah. They won their primary.

C: Ugh. So scary.

S: It's another lizard, man. People running the world. But in this case, and by the way if you're talking about, like, it's the Bilderberg group or.

E: Right. The Rothschilds. The Vanderbilts. Oh, the Pentaverit.

S: The Illuminati. The lizard people. The deep state. These are all code for the Jews. You guys know that, right?

C: Totally. That's a big part of it.

E: Oh, boy. Don't get me started.

C: Of course. This is all super anti-Soros.

S: Yeah. Right. It's like, why George Soros versus any other billionaire? Because. Yeah. I mean, so that's what this is.

C: And they use, like, white supremacist, like, hashtags and weird stuff. And these, these ones that have been winning their primaries have, like, said these, like, phrases in interviews and, like, flashed things and, like, used hashtags on their Twitter. And, like, people know they're, they're QAnon people because they're, like, saying in so many words. Yeah, QAnon.

S: Or they just have, like, a their, their logo, like, the Q.

C: Oh, yeah. There's all sorts of weird symbols in their names.

S: They also think that the Democrats are engaged in a satanic cult. Not only, not only a child molesting paedophilia ring, but also you have to throw Satan in there.

C: Oh, so are they, like, evangelical Christians, too?

S: There's a lot of overlap there, you know. Absolutely. So, it's, again, it's, there's a lot of overlap with extreme right-wing politics, with evangelical believers, with world conspiracy theorists New World Order kind of conspiracy. There's kind of a mixing a lot of things in there.

C: So, obviously, there's something about their, the rhetoric and something about the lore within QAnon that's, like, really appealing to certain people, right? Because this is, like, we think of it as being super fringe, but it doesn't seem like it's all that fringe anymore.

J: Well, that Cara, but that's the thing as I'm listening to Steve, I'm really thinking about how fringe is it, right? I mean, how many people are saying, I belong to this organization, this loose organization that's joining the current U.S. president and defeating X people? I mean.

C: But there's also a difference, right, Jay, kind of between, let's think about, like, I think a good backdrop would be white supremacy as a function and as a back, like, as a kind of passive worldview and white supremacy as an organized movement, like people who are neo-Nazis or part of white supremacist groups, like avowed members. Obviously, you've got your fringe avowed members, but the message still reaches larger people and they kind of agree with some of it or most of it or, yeah, I could buy that. I'm not a member, but why not? And that's the scary thing.

J: I guess it's really impossible to know how many of them have drunk the Kool-Aid deeply. But I think listening to Steve you're hearing telltale signs of some of these key words and some of these phrases and some of the accusations. So it might, they might not even know it, but they might be reiterating the rhetoric.

C: Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

S: That's how people go down rabbit holes, right? There's something that's interesting to them and then they follow that thread, not realizing that it's leading all the way down the rabbit hole of a deep conspiracy theory that's been, been fulminating now for several years. And we've talked also before about the fact like, yeah, what is, as Cara says, what is the appeal of the conspiracy theory? And it's clearly there's a, I think there's a little conspiracy theorist in all of us. It sort of speaks to us on some level. It's like, here's, it's, it offers an illusion of control and illusion of understanding. You're on the inside. You're the army of light who sees what's actually going on, where the sheeple don't know. It also insulates itself from self, from your, from a reputation. So it completely is a closed in belief system. So anything that you say, anything that happens or doesn't happen, nothing could ever, even in theory, refute the conspiracy theory because it just sort of accommodates all evidence, all facts or lack thereof.

C: It reinforces it.

S: Yeah. It's like you could turn anything into a reinforcement of the conspiracy itself. And so it really is a trap. It's like a mental trap that people are vulnerable to. And I think that social media really has put that on steroids, right? Because now the pathway is just so short now and almost, it's like automated. The path down the conspiracy rabbit hole is automated on social media. It happens very quickly. It can happen very inadvertently. And I I've spoken to people all on all different parts of that pathway, like people who are not conspiracy theorists, but are just like, oh, I've read this thing. I'm curious about it, right? Just it's interesting. I wonder what's going on here versus, and then a little bit farther, a little bit farther, you can almost see the progress towards being a full-blown conspiracy theorist where you're ready to go shoot up pizza parlors because you think there's a child sex trafficking ring in the basement.

B: A basement that doesn't have existence.

S: Yeah. It doesn't exist.

C: Yeah. Right. Like before, Steve, you're right. If somebody has a nugget or a kernel, they can read about that nugget or kernel and then they're maybe going to be lucky enough historically to like, lucky enough in quotes, to like meet somebody else or to read another little breadcrumb. But usually that kernel is sort of in and of itself, but this is, it's all laid out for them. If you find the right chat room.

S: And this is why I think the, yeah, but the Twitter move I think is important, right? Because we're under no obligation to upvote dangerous misinformation, especially if the people who are spreading it are also breaking our rules, you know? So we're going to aggressively enforce our rules against non-harassment, et cetera. You know, especially spending our resources focusing on groups that, that are spreading dangerous misinformation, right? I think that that's, it's justified.

B: I think, I think it's, yeah, it's absolutely justified, Steve. I mean, just look the past couple of years, the way misinformation and conspiracy theories have gripped the nation and the extremes that people will go to, to support their beliefs based entirely on unfounded conspiracies and, and misinformation and just not no skepticism or critical thinking. I mean, it's gotten so worse that I'm actually afraid of what could happen with misinformation run wild, because it is an effective, fast tool to cause all sorts of havoc and chaos.

C: In a way, Twitter's kind of "lucky" in that these conspiracy theorists specifically, the QAnon group also happens to be inciting violence and happens to be bullying and like, using hate speech. So they don't even have to rest on that kind of seemingly problematic first amendment argument about misinformation. They can even cut before that and say, no, these people are violating our terms of use. We're just going to block them because they're spreading hate.

B: Yeah, that's why if they were more intelligent and more subtle and pernicious, they'd be even more dangerous than they are now.

S: But, but honestly-

C: Like the Russian bots.

S: They'll probably just adapt and will become more nuanced and subtle.

B: Yes. Yep.

S: Right. So the thing not to catastrophize it, I'm not saying this is the case, but when you really think about it and read a lot about it there's this question that comes up is like, has social media broken democracy basically? Has it made it impossible to, to run a functioning democracy given how siloed people are in their bubbles of ideological information? Where we, we, we don't even have shared facts anymore.

C: That's always been the case.

S: Without shared facts.

B: Not like this.

S: Well, it's always a matter of degree though.

C: It's just worse.

S: That's like saying everyone lies. Yeah. Oh yes. There's a big difference between that and a pathological liar. So yes, there's always been misinformation, but there's always been ideological information, but it's not a, there's, I think a different order of magnitude now.

C: But it's also brought more information to people than ever before.

S: Absolutely.

B: We're drowning in it.

C: We're drowning in it. Sure. But I, that means that I also have access. And I think that that's two sides of a similar coin, like to say, is social media breaking a functional democracy? In a way it's also making the democracy more functional than it ever was because people have access to more information. So individual actors have more of a voice than they ever had. Like a functional democracy in the past was still something of an oligarchy. We know that. More people, people who were disenfranchised, they didn't really have a voice. Social media gives more people a voice and yes, that means it also elevates the crazy. And so that's really, and, and people become more siloed, which is problematic, but conspiracy theories always existed and people always were believing within their worldview. I mean, that's why racism is so pernicious, guys. Racism is a conspiracy theory.

J: A few years ago, maybe five years ago, I would have completely agreed with what you just said. But I think we have to totally look at the fact that most of the social media outlets there are not managing their platforms well. They're not incorporating safety measures of people's personal information. As a matter of fact the personal information thing is a joke. We're being sucked dry of our personal information. But the really important thing is like I'm going to focus on Facebook here because I think they're the worst, is that they are letting horrible and obviously wrong information proliferate like crazy and they're profiting from it. And they are absolutely not, they're decisively not doing anything about it.

B: Yeah, right. Decisively.

C: Yeah, intentionally not doing it. Yeah, you're right.

S: So here's the thing. You know, first of all, Cara, I agree with everything you said. I've written everything that you said before. And the thing is, they're both true at the same time.

C: Exactly.

S: Is that social media is great and it's terrible at the same time. But here's the thing, and I've wrestled with this a lot myself. I think that what happens is it magnifies the media divide, the media savvy divide, the scientific literacy divide, and the critical thinking divide. And so that if you are somebody who is media savvy, media literate, scientifically literate, and has reasonable critical thinking, social media and the internet is just this utopia of information. And it absolutely facilitates everything you're talking about. It facilitates participation, connection, democracy, all of those things. Transparency, it's fantastic. But for people who struggle with media literacy or scientific literacy or critical thinking or who fall down these rabbit holes of conspiracy theories, they get pushed into a different extreme. And so the gulf is widening. And that's what we're seeing is that our society is kind of broken because you have now these different groups that are irreconcilable because they have a completely different view on reality, all on the internet, all on social media, but it still doesn't matter. It's like we're just now broken into different realities. And how do we bridge that gap? And Jay's right. Part of the issue is the social media experiment kind of started with maximal freedom and minimal regulation. And again, I agree in principle with—obviously, I'm a total defender of the First Amendment. I have relied on it myself in the past. And these are critical freedoms, and I'm against the oligarchy controlling what information we get. But there's got to be a middle ground where we have access and freedom, but there's some layer of quality control in there so that the social media algorithms are not being exploited and weaponized by the worst elements of our society and the worst purveyors of misinformation and pathological thinking, because that's what we have now. We demonstrably have that now, and it's not working for us. It is not working for us.

C: I also think a lot of that kind of goes back not just to social media. I think this is an obvious outcropping and product of the sort of dissolving of those same regulations that used to exist for media as a whole, for the actual kind of fourth estate. I think historically, media was not—there was no profit motive behind television news, even newspapers. There was just a different way that the ethics of journalism existed. And it sort of was heavily dismantled in the 70s, and then it continued to become profit-driven. And then that sort of facilitated or exacerbated this social media movement. So it's not just about freedom of speech, of course. It's about monetizing that speech in a way that has perverse incentives for, yeah, for information.

S: And not only monetizing it, but then weaponizing it.

C: Yes, exactly.

S: And weaponizing it to profit, to make profit off it. The worst example of that is Alex Jones, where he, in my opinion—and I think this is supported by publicly available information—who has just weaponized misinformation and conspiracy theories in order to hock supplements and snake oil. You know, it's just the two things are together. You know what I mean? It's not either or. It's both.

C: Yeah, if you're not willing to hold up the gentleman's agreement and all bets are off, then all bets are off, which, like, that's the really hard thing. That's why regulation exists.

S: Mm-hmm. Yeah, exactly.

Uncuttable Material (46:25)

• SciTechDaily: Proteus Technology: New Material Is Strong, Light and Non-Cuttable

S: All right, Bob. So what am I hearing about this uncuttable material? That sounds like an extraordinary claim.

B: Quite extraordinary. Researchers say that they've created a new material inspired by grapefruits and abalone shells that they claim is uncuttable.

E: I've cut grapefruit often. What are they talking about?

B: Uncuttable, huh? So I will neither confirm nor deny that my first thought upon reading this was me creating some kind of Iron Man suit. So this research is from an international research team led by Durham University, UK and Fraunhofer Institute for Machine Tools and Forming Technology in Chemnitz, Germany. I love material science whenever we cover it on the show, so this news item totally sucked me in. So this material is called Proteus, after the shape-changing mythical god, and the aptness of that name will become even more clear. Like many new cool materials derived from nature, in this case specifically grapefruit, and the fracture-resistant shells of mollusks. So in this example, abalone, consider abalone. Their shells consist of aragonite tiles, which is a crystal, and it's mainly there to resist other creatures that want to break in and eat all the nice little juice inside. The researchers noticed, though, that they had a specific hierarchical arrangement of these tiles, and what it created was a fracture resistance that was 3,000 times higher than that of a single aragonite crystal. So something about this hierarchical arrangement. So this new material then was inspired by evolution with its millions of years of R&D that led them to make this new material, which they describe in their paper as a new metallic ceramic hierarchical structure. More specifically, it consists of industrial ceramic spheres within an aluminium metallic foam matrix. So what can a weird material like this do? I mean, okay, it sounds unusual, but what can it do? All right, I'll give you the bottom line. The material was tested and shown to be essentially, effectively, functionally immune to being significantly cut by angle grinders, drills, or even high-pressure water jets. Basically, when they did the test, it cut the surface a little bit, but could not go any deeper, no matter how long they tried. So how does that work?

C: Wow. Water jets can cut everything, Bob. That's awesome.

B: Yeah, that one's interesting, although it's a little bit different than the grinder and the drill, but it still was essentially immune. So it works because the material just doesn't sit there and take it when you try to cut into it. It actually has a reaction. There's a change. So when a spinning blade, like from an edge grinder, hits one of the ceramic spheres inside, it puts a localized load on the rim of the rotating disc, which leads to high-frequency vibrations. And that's a good chunk of why this is almost, or essentially, uncuttable. So here's a quote from the paper. The new material system is dynamic with an evolving internal structure that creates high-speed motion where it interacts with the cutting tools. The dynamic response is more akin to living structures. The interaction between the disc and ceramic spheres creates an interlocking vibrational connection that resists the cutting tool indefinitely. So that was an interesting quote, indefinitely. It's to sit there forever and you will not be able to cut it with that tool. So this interaction between the cutting tool and the material actually erodes the cutting blade, eventually making it useless as the energy of the disc is turned back on itself. So its own attack, if you will, the attack from the drill or the grinder, its own attack destroys it. So of course, I couldn't help thinking of this. For Trek fans, this is like Kirk's bluff in the Corbermite Maneuver. Remember that episode? That's the one with that little alien kid, the kid that drinks Tranya. So Kirk says that an attack from the alien ship, the Viserys, will turn back on itself and destroy the Viserys. So of course he was bluffing, but this is kind of like that material. It's like whatever energy you put in it to cut into it is going to come back in the form of vibrations and a couple other little things that will just destroy your attempt. So that's of course where I had my little epiphany. I think this material should not be called Proteus. It should be called Corbermite. I mean, I just think it's so obvious. Okay.

S: No, they really missed an opportunity.

B: Yeah, they really did. Back to reality. And that's not the only defense technique this awesome Corbermite material can deploy. Any ceramic that is worn away turns to dust, which fills the cells of the aluminium foam, making it even harder to cut. So it just gets even harder as you make, if you make any progress at all, it just gets even harder. The tests show that Corbermite works against not only, yes, I'm calling it Corbermite. It works against not only grinders and drills, but also water jets, Cara. And this is different. The convex shape of the ceramic actually reduces the force of the water jet by two orders of magnitude. So a hundred times and making it essentially not effective, but it kind of in a different way than the other methods. So it seems like an amazing material and it sounds superficially counterintuitive, right? They have a material that resists attacks, not based on its hardness, but the vibrations of the ceramic components inside, which induce damaging vibrations in the cutting tools themselves. Okay. So now the future, what are some realistic extrapolations here? So some of these are obvious as hell, security, health, safety industries, imagine a bike lock made of this or lightweight armour, or how about this? What if you have a job that actually consists of you using cutting tools, then you could have protective armour on, that's just like a no brainer, right? Like these tools that will cut through almost anything, will not hurt you. That's fantastic. And of course, the researchers talk about working with industry partners to create products for the marketplace. That's something that should be done for a lot of new material science, because some of these are just can be such a milestone material that can have untold impact that we can't even really imagine at this point. Okay. Here's an interesting quote from the paper addressing perhaps further in the future. They say, shifting the design paradigm from static resistance to dynamic interactions between the material phases and the applied load could inspire novel metamorphic materials with pre-programmed mechanisms across different length scales. Think of all the possible permutations because you could take this material that I described to you with the ceramic spheres, with the aluminium foam, and then you could change it. You could tweak it. You could change the base material. You can tune the foam porosity. You could change the sphere size. You could change the way they're packed. And they even mentioned Mediterranean possibilities, which I find especially fascinating. Imagine if you're working at the nanoscale with this kind of hierarchical structures and having who knows what kind of metamaterials you can make with this material. I mean, there's just so many unknowns here, and they've already, I think, these tests were fascinating. Steve, I think I'll end with the actual cutting test that they did. You might find this interesting. So when they did the cutting test, they used a grinder with cutting discs and a sapphire finish, and they cut these panel samples made of the material out of this corbermite material. So the angle grinder achieved only a partial incision and subsequently experienced high wear. So if you look at the external diameter of the cutting tool, it reduced within less than about a minute. It reduced from 115 millimetres to 44 millimetres. It just totally wore it away. And this was in a minute, 60 to 65 seconds. And at that point, the cutting disc became completely ineffective. So the control was this, Steve. They used the best existing armour materials, rolled homogeneous armour steel. This was distributed under a Mars 220 trademark, if that means anything to anybody. The steel is quenched and tempered at temperatures below 200 C to give it a 440 Brinell hardness. So I will suspect that that's a very high hardness level, 440 Brinell. So the angle grinder completely penetrated the 10 millimetre plate in 45 seconds, completely penetrated through the whole thing. Whereas with the new corbermite material, it just made a little bit of an incision and then it stopped dead and couldn't get any deeper. So-

C: Everybody's going to be Googling corbermite now when they're trying to reference your story.

B: Good. Absolutely. We need more trick fans. Corbermite or Proteus. Proteus is cool too, but the parallels with corbermite was just too interesting.

J: Bob, I was wondering how hard it is to work with this material. Meaning it's not something that gets shaped after you make it. You have to cast it, right?

S: Jay, it's totally indestructible, but you can't put it in the washing machine, otherwise it will fall.

B: Right. Oh my God.

E: You have to dry clean it.

B: Oh my God. The Jetsons. Nice one, Steve. I didn't even see that connection. But it makes you think. What can't it survive? And apparently the material had some good deformation qualities, meaning that it could be deformed by some other type of attack, if you will. But yeah, it's not going to survive bombs or lasers or stuff.

C: Oh, so you could maybe laser cut it?

B: Yeah. I think basically you're-

S: You'd mold it.

B: Yeah. It's like a mold. Yeah. You're not going to be carving it. That's for sure. So yeah, some type of mold. I don't know if they did the detail of actually how they made it, but they did make it. And they're obviously not carving it. They're probably just some kind of mold.

S: If you invent a universal solvent, what do you store it in?

C: Right. Exactly.

Bunny "Ebola" (56:12)

• Popular Science: What to know about ‘Bunny Ebola,’ the rabbit virus sweeping the Southwest US

S: All right, Cara, tell us about bunny Ebola.

C: Yes.

E: Oh no.

C: I know, right? It's like the saddest sounding story.

S: Tell us about this horrible disease destroying these cute little bunny rabbits.

C: Why did I pitch this story, Steve?

E: Oh my gosh.

C: Okay. So the first thing that I will kind of push back against, and not your fault, everybody calls it bunny Ebola. All of the headlines are calling it bunny Ebola. And it really is a kind of, I shouldn't say pet name, but a common name that people who keep bunnies, who have experienced this disease before, or have come across it, have called it that. And that's because it is a hemorrhagic disease. It's actually called rabbit hemorrhagic disease, or RHD. But just so that you know, it's a lagavirus. But it's in the family Caliceviridae, so it's not a filovirus, which is the class of viruses that like hentavirus, Ebola, and the different kind of human hemorrhagic fevers that we're used to wearing.

B: Nasty stuff.

C: Nasty stuff. This is also very nasty, rabbit hemorrhagic disease. But of course, because it's a hemorrhagic disease, I think that people who keep rabbits have taken to calling it rabbit Ebola, because our point of reference is Ebola, if that makes sense. Totally different virus, though. So from here on out, I'm going to call it RHD, or rabbit hemorrhagic disease, because I don't want to perpetuate the rabbit Ebola myth. So let's talk a little bit about RHD, what's going on, why this is a relevant news story. RHD has been around since the 80s that we've known about it. It originated in China. There's some confusion as to whether it originated in China from German rabbits, or whether it actually formed in China. And the original RHDV, so the rabbit hemorrhagic disease is the disease. So that's like COVID-19, I guess we could say, if we're using analogies. Whereas RHDV, rabbit hemorrhagic disease virus, is the virus that causes. That's more like SARS-CoV-2. Make sense? Yeah. Okay. So RHDV actually causes two different viruses. The original one, RHD, anybody listening to the show from Europe who knows about European rabbit die-offs is probably pretty familiar with RHD, because this decimated rabbit populations in Europe, also Australia, also across parts of Africa. But again, like I said, it started in China. Now there was a very small outbreak of RHDV1, so the original RHDV, in the US as well, but it was quickly contained and neutralized. It also tended to only be able to affect adult European rabbits. Adult European rabbits just happened to be the rabbit kind of species. So Oryctolagus cuniculus, maybe that's how you say it. That just happens to be the rabbit that most people were importing for meat, or were keeping as pets, or were raising for fur. Kind of across Asia, Europe, Australia, and a few other places. So this virus happened to wreak havoc in just these rabbits, but then it caused a lot of damage because those rabbits were pretty much everywhere. Then we saw in 2010, RHDV2 pop up. Now this is also causing a similar syndrome in the rabbits, but it's a different virus. It turns out that this virus is way more widespread, so it actually can be carried by a lot more species. So we saw it in not just European rabbits, but we also saw it in hares. Now in the United States, there's a new outbreak that we're seeing spread across the Southwestern United States, and it's actually affecting a lot of different rabbit species, like everywhere from our cottontail rabbits, our hares, mountain cottontails, desert cottontails, antelope jackrabbits, black-tailed jackrabbits. So we're seeing a lot of different species that are getting affected by this. It looks like the mortality rate isn't quite as high, but there's a lot of things that are really problematic with the RHDV2 virus. One of them is that it actually kills younger rabbits. So historically, the first RHDV would only infect adult rabbits, and the very, very young seem to be unaffected altogether, and adolescent rabbits seem to have a lesser disease from them. But unfortunately, RHDV2 also occurs in young rabbits, and it kills them very quickly. So we're talking between one and five days of an incubation period, and then rabbits have a tendency to look very, very well until they die. This is a common kind of rabbit thing, regardless of their disease state. But specifically also with RHDV, yeah, they classify it as sort of like, it's like the opposite of what we think of when we think of thanatosis. So you know how some animals will play dead? So rabbits tend to play healthy. They tend to play healthy until they're so sick that they can't kind of carry on, and so that's why you see these very sudden deaths where you think almost nothing was wrong. With RHDV2 though, there is some symptomatology if you keep your eye out, like you might see lethargy, and you might see a high fever and a little bit of a loss of appetite. But very quickly before they die, they get bloated, they'll have weight loss or diarrhoea, they become heavily jaundiced, and then oftentimes it's a sudden death. So maybe you didn't see any symptoms, and you just find them dead, and they might have blood around their nose, their eyes, their mouth, or their rectum. And that's because the way that this virus works is that it actually induces apoptosis in the liver. So this is a hepatic hemorrhagic virus. It causes necrotizing hepatitis, which is really brutal. I mean, it sounds like it's pretty painful. Basically that liver just has massive haemorrhaging. There's also some problems with clotting factors, and they, yeah, they bleed out. It's also very, very infectious and incredibly fatal. We're talking sometimes upwards of 90% fatality. Sometimes it's 100% has been measured in close quarters. Yeah, it spreads like wildfire. It's a very dangerous virus. And so animals, there's a really cool New Yorker article, I don't have time to get into it. I've read like 10 different articles about this to try and bone up on it. A lot of people, a lot of news outlets are writing about it, unfortunately, a good search term would be bunny Ebola. But maybe if you search for rabbit hemorrhagic virus, you'll see there's a great article in Science, a great article in POPSCI, kind of American Veterinary Medical Association is writing about it. But there's a New Yorker article that does a lot of great, really detailed background. And they actually talk a lot about the way that the USDA has always kind of qualified rabbits. It's weird. They're not subject to any of the same humane laws that dogs and cats are, even though they're the third most popular pet in America, more than birds, super weird, right? And they're also not subject to the same humane slaughter laws that livestock are subject to, although they are a very common food source. And rabbits are also grown for fur, and they also are grown as like 4-H projects a lot of times. So they're in this weird kind of netherland between being a really beloved pet and being a source of food, which is quite rare in Western culture. And so the way that they are regulated, the way that they are dealt with is quite complicated. Now it turns out that there are vaccines for this, which is great. There are vaccines for both RHDV-1 or RHDV-A and this newer form that is just like brutalizing America right now, RHDV-2. The problem is these are injectable vaccines, at least the RHDV-2 ones, which means that they're a good idea if you have pet rabbits. Like if you're concerned, it's actually been recommended that you get your pet rabbits vaccinated. The problem is your state veterinarian has to approve the importation because it's not USDA approved, because it never was a problem before. We had one small local outbreak, remember? And so the USDA regulation, I don't think has caught up yet, but apparently you can get this vaccine. You just have to get your state veterinarian. I didn't know there was a state veterinarian, but that's a thing. And you have to get your state veterinarian to approve it. They also say frequent hand-washing, disinfecting equipment, keeping your rabbitry closed if you have lots of rabbits, preventing indirect contact. And here's the really scary part. You have to limit wild sources because this can run rampant in both wild populations and pet populations. So vaccinating wild populations is not feasible. I mean, there's so many rabbits and there's no way you can inject them. And even if you did, from some of the sources that I read, the capture and injection is so traumatic that that often kills the rabbits in and of itself. So it's just not feasible. But there are some countries in Europe that are trying to develop an oral vaccine, which means then you could actually bait the rabbits with it. So you could do more widespread efforts. Another problem is, get this, it's so scary. Like fomites love this, or I should say this virus loves fomites. And the more I dug into it, the more I was like, wow, this is brutal. Transmission usually occurs in either live infected animals, dead infected animals, body fluids and hair, but also clothing, food, cages, bedding, feeders, flies, fleas, mosquitoes, predators and scavengers. And they can survive, the virus can survive freezing. It can persist in meat for months and it can live in decomposing carcasses for months. I read a journal article that said it could exist on paper, like non-porous paper or something like that for like weeks. Like it's a super virulent little bugger. And you might think, okay, well, there's lots of rabbits, why is that a problem? But let's be real, we don't really understand, the more I've dug into it, the more I've realized we don't really understand what our rabbit population numbers are like, at least in the US. We do know that there are critically endangered rabbit species, or at least heavily threatened species like Washington's pygmy rabbits. We also know that pika are closely related enough to rabbits that they can likely get rabbit hemorrhagic disease and they are a threatened species. And we know from previous outbreaks in Europe that even if the rabbits were in large numbers and this die off we didn't think of as being that ecologically detrimental. Of course, we also know that ecology is a web. And so because the rabbits died, we also saw that the Iberian lynx died and that certain birds died because they needed the rabbits as food sources. So we've got to remember that everything is in balance. So when we have a really, really brutal pandemic, that's wiping out specific species, it actually is going to potentially lead to a lot of negative downstream consequences. I wouldn't call it rabbit Ebola, but if somebody references it, at least you know they're talking about RHDV. If you yourself keep rabbits as pets, be really wary because this is a real risk and it's a very new risk that just started popping up within the last few months here in the US. If you live in Europe or Australia, you may have been aware of this for quite some time or parts of Africa and other parts of Asia. There are a lot of references online where you can read about outbreaks and what you can do. A lot of great infographics about how to protect your rabbits. And also I would say be wary if you tend to eat rabbit. Now might be the time to limit because imported meat can actually spread to live rabbits. And they think that that's how a lot of these spillover events or these outbreaks have occurred historically is that meat was imported. And then let's say you chopped vegetables near the meat and then you fed those vegetables to other rabbits and then those rabbits caught the virus from the rabbit meat. So you've got to be really, really careful about those events.

B: Oh wow.

C: Yeah. Yeah. So interesting.

B: Yeah. Maybe they should call it Corbomite Ebola.

C: But even within the United States, I don't think I fully realized how sort of central to a lot of people's lives rabbits are. I always thought of them as those cute things you sometimes see on the lawn.

S: It's the third most popular pet, right?

C: Yeah.

S: We had rabbits growing up.

B: Yeah.

C: I did too. And the thing is, historically we had a rabbit in like one of those outdoor little cages that had like an outdoor section and an indoor bedding section. So it's protected from the elements. And it always lived in that thing. We would let it hop around our yard. But a lot of people have indoor rabbits, like the floppy-eared breeds that are much larger. That's a very common indoor pet because you can train them to use the litter box.

S: Really?

C: Yeah. Apparently they make amazing pets.

Who's That Noisy? (1:10:42)

• Answer to last week’s Noisy: Yoshi vocalizations

S: Jay, it's Who's That Noisy time.

J: All right, guys. Last week I played this noisy.

[brief, vague description of Noisy]

E: Oh, tell me that's someone making their dog. Yeah, the funny noises. La, la, la.

J: La, la, la. Evan, I just watched that a couple of days ago.

C: It's so good.

J: All right. So guys, this is crazy, right? But it is something. And people sent in guesses. iPuppy wrote in, iPuppy writes in a lot. He says, hey, Jay, for this week's eminently repeatable noisy, I'm going to say that it is a library of computer generated sounds to be used in creating artificial speech. I guess that it's from a library used for an Asian language, but not sure which. That is a very good guess. And that is what I probably would have guessed. And that's what I thought people were going to guess. But that is not correct. But I will give you a star for what I think is a very good guess. Teddy B wrote in, hi guys, I'm going to guess that that was the updated Siri on iOS 13. You tell Siri to change your nickname to variations of hi, hi, et cetera. The natural language voice processing now smooths out the pronunciation, which means Siri tries its hardest to make a nonsensical string of letters sound like it's saying something meaningful. And he says this is very funny and I wish I could try it. So anyway, that's not it. But I would have to hear it to hear how close you got to the sound. Everybody knows Visto Tutti. Visto wrote in and said, sounds like the phonetics of a Mandarin language sounding out of the permutations of the tones, sounding out the permutations of the tones. That is also not correct. We have a winner from last week. Harry Stewart wrote in and said, hey Jay, I actually know this one for sure. Hopefully I'm getting it fast enough. This is the sound for, wait a second, I'll play you what it is. Let's see if you can guess it when you hear it correctly. [plays Noisy] So that is Yoshi, the character, the Mario Brothers character, Mario Brothers character. Yoshi.

C: Mario.

J: I know, Mario, Mario. I don't even know what's reality anymore.

C: It's me, Mario. It's always in the game.

J: You're right. So Yoshi is, he appears in a few things. I mean, I know him from Mario Kart and he also, I believe, is something that Mario rides at one point and he sticks his tongue out. So I just find it absolutely amazing that at some point somebody did this. Right? He's in the recording booth. The director is there. You know, this is a big business. You know, this is a billion dollar business. These characters are just as popular as any famous movie star today. Everybody knows these characters. And the director is like, can you say that again, but with a little more, oh, whoa, whoa, you know? Like, of course this is happening. This is the world we live in and I love it. So anyway, thank you so much. That was sent in by Gwen and Ollie Wagner. It's a great noisy. I got the sense that they said it was a silly noisy. I don't think they thought I would use it. I loved it. I used it.

New Noisy (1:14:28)

J: All right. I have a new noisy for this week, guys. This was sent in by a listener named Daniel Goodale Porter. And here it is.

[brief, vague description of Noisy]

Very, very specific noisy. There is one point where you hear the sound punctuate, and that is what I want you to tell me. What is that? What is going on with this? So if you think you have the answer or if you heard a cool noisy this week, you can email me at WTN@theskepticsguide.org.

Announcements (1:15:18)

J: Now Steve.

S: Yeah.

J: We are at when people hear this, we will very likely be less than a week away from NECSS by the time this podcast comes out.

S: That's correct.

J: I would like everyone to know that the website is complete. Everything all the information that you need is on there. The schedule is complete. We have a wonderful, wonderful and absolutely awesome conference this year. The thing that just happened today, which I was able to finally secure. So Ann Druyen is our keynote speaker and is a director, a producer. She was one of the creators of Cosmos. Ann will be speaking at the conference, but she will be talking directly with Bill Nye the entire time, and they will be discussing a few things that are going on in Anne's life right now. And of course, the conversation will go in pretty much any direction that they wanted to.

S: He's basically going to be interviewing her for her spot. Yeah. For her keynote.

J: Yes. And Bill and Anne are friends. They know each other very well. They were both very excited when I finally was able to let them both know that I wanted the other person involved. They both were like, okay, absolutely. Yes. And it all locked in today. So it's very cool. So Bill is really excited about that. If you're a registered attendee, you can watch the conference for a month. So please join us. We'll see you there. I can't wait. There's only one more show that's going to happen, one more SGU show, and we're recording that when? Monday of next week, Steve?

S: Yeah, but it's not going to come out until the day of.

J: So this is basically it.

S: This is the last show before the conference.

J: This is the one. When you hear this, if you're interested, go register because you will probably miss it if you wait another week.

Questions/Emails/Corrections/Follow-ups (1:16:57)

Question #1: Shellenberger Letter

• Epoch Times: Environmentalist Issues Apology for Misleading 'Climate Alarmism'

S: All right. We have one email. I've been trying to get to this email for weeks where we keep running out of time. Doing it this week, damn it. Because we keep getting emails. We get people asking us, hey, what do you think about that environmentalist who wrote an open letter apologizing on behalf of other environmentalists? So yeah, I do have some thoughts about that. So the environmentalist in question is Michael Schellenberger, and he wrote sort of an op-ed, which was like an open letter apology. So apologizing on behalf of environmentalists for, "climate alarmism". So this is a little bit complicated, but this is—and at some point we might want to just get him on the show or somebody from his group and just ask him what the hell he's—what was he thinking of? But this is how I put it all together. So first of all, I mean, the whole shtick of apologizing on behalf of environmentalists, come on, dude. I mean, that was just—that was not cool. Not up to you to apologize on behalf of everyone in the environmental movement. And it was—in my opinion, it was a horrible piece of science communication. Because the thing is, I—this guy, Schellenberger, is not like a climate change denier. And he is an environmentalist.His colleagues who are kind of on his side of the fence in terms of their approach to environmentalism are, "perplexed" by his opinion piece. Like, I don't know what he was talking about there, but it's not—that's not the Schellenberger that we know, you know. And he's got a book coming out, Apocalypse Never. And so the—one way to look at this is he's just shilling for his book, and it was kind of a publicity stunt, which in that case, it worked, sort of. But I just think it was just a horrible piece of science communication, and here's why I think that. So Schellenberger and others are a member of a self-proclaimed group called Eco-Modernism. I don't know if we've ever talked about Eco-Modernism on this show before.

E: It doesn't ring a bell.

S: Yeah. They published the Eco-Modernist Manifesto in 2015. Here's the thing. Much of their position I completely agree with. You know, within the realm of environmentalism, this is probably the closest to my personal views. The only problem I have is it kind of turns an approach into an ideology, you know what I mean? Like a rule of thumb or a guiding principle into an ism, you know what I mean? Which I think is a little bit of a problem, but that's kind of a soft criticism. So their basic approach to environmentalism, and the reason why they call it Eco-Modernism, is they believe that there's two principles. One is that we should do everything we can to shrink the impact of human civilization on the environment to make more room for nature, right? So that's a pretty vanilla environmentalist kind of position. But they say that they reject the other longstanding environmental ideals, specifically that human societies must harmonize with nature to avoid economic and ecological collapse. So they're saying that traditional environmentalists have sort of these two pillars. One is we need to preserve nature. The other one is in order to do that, we need to harmonize with nature to reduce our footprint, et cetera. They're saying we agree with the first part, but not the second part. We think rather that we should leverage human technology in order to decouple our dependence on like our, to decouple our civilization from dependence on the environment for sustenance and resources and well-being. And the more that we can do that, the more that we can decouple our civilization from reliance on the environment, the better the environment will be. So in other words, we don't want to go back to a more primitive state. We want to go push through, go forward and leverage our technology. So like one obvious example of this would be if we advanced our technology to all renewable energy, that would be a good thing for the environment, right? We don't want to go back to a low energy civilization. We want to go through to a high energy civilization, but one where we have completely sustainable green technology, right? So yeah, I mean, who doesn't, I mean, I get that people do disagree with that, but I completely agree with that. And probably the one issue where they disagree most with their traditional environmentalist colleagues is over what? What would you guess if you don't already know?

E: Nuclear.

S: Nuclear. Nuclear power.

C: Yeah, of course.

S: So they are totally pro-nuclear, which of course you know I am if you listen to my talking about this topic before and saying that, hey, nuclear, if you want to get away from carbon releasing dirty energy technology, nuclear is the way to go. And then from that we want to go to renewables. So they are saying there is this progress, like the higher tech we get, the better it is for the environment. The problem with coal is that it is an old dirty technology. Now one thing that they say that I think is a little controversial is they think that coal is better than wood burning. And I am not sure that I am convinced about that, but I get there why they say that. And this gets to, this cuts to the heart of Schellenberg's apology his open statement is that he is saying not only are environmentalists often pointing at the wrong thing, that they are, and it is not that climate change isn't real, it is that it is not our biggest problem right now. It is not the greatest threat to the environment. What is the greatest threat to the environment is land use, which I also agree with. Because that is, I think the evidence clearly shows that. And that actually, there is a lot of evidence to back that up. And that is why he thinks that coal is better than wood, because in order to have a wood-based energy infrastructure, you need a lot of land. You basically have to grow trees as a crop on land and not have a natural ecosystem, whereas coal has a much smaller footprint when it comes to land use, even though it has a bigger impact in terms of CO2 release. So I don't, I kind of disagree with that. I think that if you're maybe short term, there is a point there, but long term, the problem is the carbon we release from the coal is kind of, we are releasing long sequestered carbon and it's going to have an effect for 1,000 years, you know. But anyway, that's kind of a side issue. But I have to agree with a lot of the points that, yeah, we should not eschew nuclear if our goal is really to decarbonize our infrastructure. Yes, we should leverage technology, absolutely. GM food, absolutely. Organic is not the way to go. GM farming is. We want to farm more on less land. Land use, absolutely. Do some environmentalists say irresponsible things that set them up for legitimate criticism? Absolutely. So there's I think that there is room in the environmentalist movement for a strictly evidence-based, science-based voice. And I think that the eco-modernists tried to set themselves up as that. And as far as that goes, I kind of agree with them. I'm not necessarily, I don't know enough about every little recommendation and opinion that they have to say that I completely agree with them. I think that I may disagree with them on certain details. But if that was his goal, Schellenberger, in writing this op-ed was to promote that approach, I think he utterly failed. The framing of his apology, what he did was drive a wedge between the eco-modernists and the traditional environmentalists and gave comfort and aid to the science deniers who are just drooling over this, absolutely drooling over his apology. It was it was almost malpractice what he did.

C: Yeah, I mean, I read it as straight up like, sorry, we were alarmists.

S: And that's how we framed it.

C: Yeah, isn't as bad as we made it out to be. Like that's how I read it.

S: No, that's how it reads. And it's ridiculous. He just provided red meat to the climate change deniers. He probably pissed off most of the environmentalist movement. He confused the public. You know, that is a science communication failure.

C: And do you think his book like turns back, do you think it's one of those like crappy things where the headline is basically like, is everything you know about X wrong? And then the first line of the article is, no, no, it's not.

S: No, no, no. I think he's a sincere environmentalist who's trying to be science-based. He has this sort of approach that I described. You can read the Eco-Modernist Manifesto if you want to get all the details. And he's probably frustrated with the fact that and I'm frustrated the same thing. And this is maybe a manifestation of that frustration. I don't know. Like what I'm frustrated about is you have two groups, basically. You have, at least in the United States, like we have two political groups. One is embracing pseudoscience and science denial. And the other is embracing the science of climate change, but rejecting the science of agriculture and the science of energy and rejecting the scientific consensus on probably the two most important ways that we have to fight climate change. And so no matter who's in power, we're not going to succeed. We are going to fail when we try to avoid the worst outcomes of climate change. Unless there's a wake-up call. This was not the wake-up call. This was piss off everybody with a confusing, poorly framed stunt, in my opinion. You know, and again, I think maybe you're being charitable by saying he's just trying to shill for his book. But you know, this is not where we need to be, right? We need to bring the environmentalists over to GM food and nuclear power, convince them that organic farming is a loser because it uses up more land. You know, convince them that again, we need nuclear power if we're going to decarbonize and they're going to have to get over their decades of demonizing it and just get, you know. And again, it's like move away from the ideology towards evidence. Whatever works. Whatever works. Rather than saying this is our philosophy, so we're only going to operate within the paradigm of our philosophy and not just consider whatever works. Maybe sometimes the low-tech way is the way to go. You know what I mean? Whatever the evidence supports I promote evidence-based environmentalism. So eco-modernism has a lot of valid points, but I think maybe it's become too much of an ideology. And then, of course, once you have a label like that, then political groups do kind of like either own it or distance themselves from it. It becomes politicized. It was almost like an invitation to become politicized. So again, now I'm triply frustrated. You know what I mean? We've got to get our head and our ass wired together and solve this problem because this kind of stuff is going on, you know. And that's what people are emailing us is like saying what's going on here? Like they're confused by what his, when you were confused, right, by what his point was. Terrible.

E: Muddy the waters.

S: Yeah. Just muddies the waters further. And then, and the science deniers are doing a victory lap. Just terrible. I don't know what else to say. Very frustrating. Very frustrating. Anyway, let's go on with science or fiction.

Science or Fiction (1:29:01)

Answer	Item
Fiction	Goosebumps
Science	Mammal brains
Science	Rock shape

Host	Result
Steve	win

Rogue	Guess
Cara	Goosebumps
Bob	Rock shape
Jay	Goosebumps
Evan	Goosebumps

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

Item #1: A new analysis of 130 mammalian species finds that brain overall connectivity and connection efficiency are conserved across all species tested.
Item #2: Scientists have discovered that goosebumps are conserved in humans because they protect the skin from frostbite.
Item #3: Researchers have found that the average shape of natural rock fragments is a cube.

S: Each week I come up with three science news items or facts, two real and one fake. Then I challenge my panel of skeptics to tell me which one they think is the fake. And you know what? You at home can play along if you so choose. Are you guys ready for this week's news items?

J: Yes.

C: Yes.

S: All right, here we go. No theme, just cool news items. Item number one, a new analysis of 130 mammalian species finds that brain, overall connectivity, and connection efficiency are conserved across all species tested. Item number two, scientists have discovered that goose bumps are conserved in humans because they protect the skin from frostbite. And item number three, researchers have found that the average shape of natural rock fragments is a cube.

C: What?

S: Cara, you seem interested. Why don't you go first?

Cara's Response

C: Okay. I will take them in order. 130 mammalian species, brain, overall connectivity, and connection efficiency are conserved. You say overall, so it's like, what?

S: Yeah, the patterns are not the same, but the overall connectivity is the same.

C: Right. Overall. Because that's kind of weird because some mammals have like whole parts of the brain that are different. Well, no, that's not true. I'm thinking of birds. Birds are not mammals. It's one in the morning here. Oh, man.

J: Cara, you're going to be okay.

S: What about those lizards?

E: Power through. Power through.

C: Those feathered mammals.

E: Now for those arachnids.

C: Derp. But yeah, some mammals have smaller or larger frontal lobes. But yeah, overall connectivity and connection efficiency, this is a double whammy, are conserved.

S: I'll explain to you what that means. That means the connection efficiency is the number of synapses necessary to complete a single circuit. So if you want to get a signal from point A to point B, it passes X number of synapses. That efficiency is the same for all 130 mammalian species they tested.

C: So it's kind of like that least number holds across species. Okay. Scientists have discovered that goosebumps are conserved in humans because they protect the skin from frostbite. What? Researchers have found that the average shape of natural rock fragments is a cube. When you say natural rock fragments, you mean like what we think of as rocks?

S: Yeah. Rocks.

C: I don't buy that. I mean, minerals. Yeah. I've never seen a square. Well, that's not true. I've seen square rocks. I don't know. Okay. Maybe. Because then they get rounded by things like erosion and like wind and yeah, water. I always learned that, what are they? The erector pili?

B: Pili or something.

C: Muscles that give you goosebumps and like that puff out your hair are, I always thought that they were leftover from either sort of like making yourself look bigger to scare other animals or to like warm yourself when you're cold from back when we were covered in hair. I don't know how that would prevent frostbite in any way, shape or form. So I think I'm going to have to say the goosebumps one is the fiction.

S: Okay, Bob.

Bob's Response

B: The first one, the brain connectivity and conservation. Yeah, that makes sense. I can't think of a reason to shoot that down. The second one, the frostbite protection from the hair. I can buy that because that means that you've got these little muscles. I'm assuming that there's these little muscles that are making the hair stick up and a lot. So that's a, for every hair, you've got like, I guess a ring of muscle or whatever muscle and all that muscle right there may be enough to somehow generate heat to offer some protection from frostbite, bringing some heat. You know, a muscle that's being used is a little bit warmer, I would say. So maybe it can make your skin a little bit more, a little bit warmer by bringing the heat from the interior. So it could protect you a little bit. I don't think it's going to be a lot. I can make some kind of tortuous kind of connection there. That kind of makes sense. The rock fragments. I mean, yeah, that one just seems obvious. Like, sure. That's the one that we're going to just like say baloney. So I'm hesitant to even pick that one, but I can come up with reasons for the first two. So what the hell? I'll say rock fragments are cubes and on average is fiction.

S: All right, Jay.

Jay's Response

J: The first one about the analysis of 130 mammalian species. So basically we're saying here that the overall connectivity is similar, right, Steve?

S: Mm-hmm.

J: And I would think that that is science. I think that mammalian brains are very, very similar in tons of ways. So moving on to the last one. Researchers have found the average shape of a natural rock fragment is a cube. Yeah. So I'm sure that they studied the rocks and how they shear and how they crumble and break and then they were able to suss out what was the average shape that would come out of those natural processes. There has to be something that is the most common and it's not a stretch to think that the cube was it. This last one about goosebumps protecting from frostbite. I would say that this is why I'm picking this one as a fiction. There's no way that goosebumps protect from frostbite. I think that goosebumps have everything to do with hair and making the hair stand up and there's other things that the activation of goosebumps do that have to do with hair and hair growth. So that one is the fiction.

S: And Evan?

Evan's Response

E: Well, I think I'm on with Cara and Jay on this one. I think talking about goosebumps in the context of frostbite might sound convincing. But I think there are lots of reasons why you get goosebumps and cold-related stuff might be one of them but it's probably a whole bunch of different things, emotions among other things. So I'll say that one is the fiction.

Steve Explains Item #1

S: So you guys all agree on the first one. A new analysis of 130 million species finds that brain overall connectivity and connection efficiency are conserved across all species tested. What if I said that included humans?

C: Yeah, I think I was including humans.

E: Well, I figured, yeah. I guess I figured they were in there too.

S: Okay. So including humans, this one is science. And this was a surprising result. You know, this was not what they were expecting to find.

B: Really?

S: I remember we spoke previously about the study which showed that neuronal density does vary considerably.

B: Yes. Those two words came into my head. It's like, oh, how does that relate to neuronal density? But I already put my dime down. So I was like, all right, I made my decision.

S: Yeah. So that was my question. And I was like, okay, is connectivity and neuronal density related? But it's different. And I think you would think of this more as efficiency of design. Essentially what they're saying is that the mammalian brain sort of generically has evolved towards a certain optimization which exists among all mammals. And so that connection efficiency, like the number of synapses to get from A to B, absolutely conserved. And they said like the patterns of connections could be very different. And they were specifically looking at intra and interhemispheric connectivity, like the right hemisphere connecting to itself versus connecting to the left hemisphere. That could be very variable in some species and in some individuals within a species. There could be marked differences in like how much of the connections are on one side versus both sides. But if you look at the overall connections, like as per volume of brain, they were the same. They were surprisingly conserved.

C: That's interesting.

S: Yeah. Really interesting.

C: Cool.

Steve Explains Item #2

S: All right. Let's go to number two. Scientists have discovered that goosebumps are conserved in humans because they protect the skin from frostbite. So Cara's right there, the notion that goosebumps exist in order to raise the fur on animals for display or for heat. Right. And humans don't have fur. So why do we still get goosebumps? It's a vestigial kind of effect.

C: Oh, so it's not a wives' tale. Okay. Cool.

S: Yeah. But the question is why do we still have them? Why do humans still have them when there's no functionality that we know of?

B: Doesn't need functionality, right?

S: Yeah. So it may not need it. It could just be that it is truly vestigial and just a holdover. Or it could be that it's still serving some benefit and that's what it's for. And the researchers did find a function for the goosebumps.

B: But not frostbite, is it?

S: But not frostbite.

B: Crap.

S: So this one's a fiction. Sorry, Bob.

C: Sorry, Bob.

S: So that bit about the frostbite I made up, the real reason, the "real reason".

J: I know the answer.

S: You do? What is it?

J: That it can help hair growth.

S: And did you read that or how did you know that?

J: I read that.

S: Yeah, you read it. That's correct. That is correct. So it's not that it helps hair growth. It's already essential in the basic anatomy that is important for hair growth. So essentially think about it this way. So the muscle cells that currently are responsible for goosebumps, they connect the autonomic nervous system to the hair follicles and are responsible for stimulating hair growth. Now, at some point along the way, they evolved this secondary function of creating goosebumps, of raising up the fur. So even when the benefit of that was lost, the goosebump muscles continued because they need to continue to do their original function, which is critical in hair follicle growth. So that's why we still have them, because we still need them.

C: Don't you see some sort of, Steve, some sort of weird pseudoscience where people like have their heads, have like cold air blown on their heads in order to get goosebumps and regrow their hair?

S: Right. Well, that doesn't do it. But it's the notion that, yeah, so we retain them for their original function and this derived function of raising the fur is no longer relevant to us, but it doesn't matter. So a very interesting sort of evolutionary sort of pathway there. But it makes sense.

Steve Explains Item #

S: All this means that researchers have found that the average shape of natural rock fragments is a cube, is science.

E: Borg.

S: And of course, all the reporting on it is relating it to Plato. You know why?

'J: Yes. Because he called it. He said it.

S: He said it. So Plato, he had the idea that the universe is made of five things, right? Air, water, earth, and fire, and cosmos. And the fifth element, which is the cosmos. And he assigned a shape to each of those. And the shape that he assigned to the earth matter was a cube. So basically, the earth is made of cubes. It turns out that that's, from a certain perspective, that's true. Though it had nothing to do with Plato didn't call anything. It was a coincidence, basically. But, yeah, so what they did was they used kind of technical terminology here. But they did a, they said, I'm just going to read it. Let me read it. I'm just going to say, we apply the theory of convex mosaics to show that the average geometry of natural two-dimensional fragments from mud cracks to earth's tectonic plates has two attractors, platonic quadrangles and Voronoi hexagons. In three dimensions, the platonic attractor is dominant. Remarkably, the average shape of natural rock fragments is cuboid. So, yeah, attractors just means, like, what does it tend towards when you average it out? And it turns out, so there's the cuboid and the hexagons, but the cuboid is dominant in three dimensions. In two dimensions, it's both. But in three dimensions, it's cube. So the earth is made of cubes, or the average shape of rocks is cubes is another way to put it.

C: That's interesting. Because I often feel like, you know how when you go to the gem part of a museum of natural history and you look at all the different minerals and gems, a lot of them are cuboid, like a lot, a lot. And so that was what stuck out for me for this one to be science. But, yeah, it's counter-intuitive because we always see round rocks.

S: Yeah, but if you really look carefully, and I do, and I'm sure Jay has now as well, if you ever, like, are in – spent any time selecting rocks because you want to use them for some kind of building purpose, like I've used natural rock to rim my garden. And I was specifically looking for rocks that have two flat edges on them, right? And there's a ton. There's a lot of rocks with flat edges. It's not hard. Most rocks have one or more pretty flat edges on them. So that cartoon of a round rock is not really accurate. It's not accurate.

B: Yeah, one thing that I thought about that helped me pick that as fiction, though, was like, all right, well, the weathering kind of skews things. But then I was like, all right, where could I look where there's no weathering? How about the moon? There's no real weathering there.

S: There is, though.

B: What?

S: There is, though, by micrometeorites.

B: Right. Yeah, there is. But it's not like on the earth. I mean, stuff there stays pristine, pretty pristine, for much longer than the earth. So if you want to look at a better example, then the moon is better than the earth. And that didn't help me think that they were cuboid either.

S: I don't know if I agree with that because the surface of the moon, the regolith is dust pounded into dust by micrometeorites.

B: Yeah, but I've seen plenty of pictures, though, of moon rocks and some of the hill mountain-like structures there.

S: Yeah, but that's the cosmos material. It's not the earth material. So, of course, it's not cuboid.

Skeptical Quote of the Week (1:43:20)

Nothing limits intelligence more than ignorance; nothing fosters ignorance more than one's own opinions; nothing strengthens opinions more than refusing to look at reality.
– Sheri S. Tepper (1929-2016), American novelist

S: All right, Evan, before we go on to your quote, I forgot to mention at the top of the show, and I wanted to squeeze this in there, Kevin Folta, our friend of the show, reminded me of this. The day this show comes out, July 25th, is Rosalind Franklin's 100th birthday.

J: Wow.

S: 100.

E: Oh, my gosh.

S: And just to remind you, Rosalind L.C. Franklin, born July 25th, 1920, died April 16th, 1958. So she was an English chemist who came up with an X-ray crystallographer who first identified the double helix structure of DNA.

C: But got no credit.

S: Working in collaboration with Watson and Crick. Watson and Crick ended up getting all the credit and the Nobel Prize. But in this case, it was because she died before that was granted. However, it wasn't a rule at the time not to give a Nobel posthumously, but it was kind of a rule of thumb. It wasn't a strict rule.

C: But, really, it wasn't just that she didn't get a Nobel.

S: I know.

B: The attitudes were horrible.

C: She was, like, shit on.

S: Absolutely.

B: But don't forget, another angle, though, is that she's not all just about the DNA. She had an amazing record and legacy in biology, chemistry, and physics. She advanced the science of coal and carbon. You know, whoever heard of that?

S: And viruses.

B: And viruses. And, I mean, the researchers that are today studying SARS-CoV-2, they're using tools like DNA sequencers and X-ray crystallography. And they can do that today because of her, because of Franklin, and her colleagues and their successors.

E: Seriously.

B: And critical scientists for the things that we're even doing today. So, huzzah.

E: So important.

S: Yeah. I know. And she was only 38 when she died. Think about that.

C: Oh, wow. Jeez, that makes me feel lazy. I'm 38. I'm 38 next year. I know.

S: What sciences have you innovated, Cara?

E: Come on, Cara.

C: Dang.

B: We're almost done with the podcast. I'm going to sit on the couch and eat some ice cream.

S: Good for you. Proud of you. But, again, the sad truth is that Watson and Crick are household names, and Rosalind Franklin is not, and she should be, and she should be.

C: And Watson wasn't very nice about her. You can read some of his writings about her.

B: Yeah, right. She's a household name in my household.

C: Yeah.

'E: This broadcast, definitely.

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

E: All right. And this quote was suggested by our good friend, listener Craig Good. Hey, Craig, thank you so much.

S: Hey, Craig.

E: I like this quote. "Nothing limits intelligence more than ignorance. Nothing fosters ignorance more than one's own opinions. Nothing strengthens opinions more than refusing to look at reality." Damn right. Sherry S. Tepper, novelist, born 1929, died 2016. She was a science fiction writer. She also wrote horror stories and mystery novels.

S: Mm-hmm.

E: Yep. I have not actually read any of her works, but now I know, and I will be.

S: A lot of science fiction writers are skeptical. A lot aren't, but there's some that you can kind of tell, but there's some, like, you read Frank Herbert's Dune series, and that's from a skeptical point of view. Like, dang, this guy got it.

E: Yeah, Dune.

S: Epistemology all over the place. All right. Right, Jay? He was very epistemic.

J: Absolutely. I'm agreeing with you.

S: Well, thank you all for joining me for this episode.

J: Thank you.

B: Sure man.

E: Thanks, Steve.

C: Thanks, Steve.

S: I look forward to seeing you on Friday at the live stream.

B: Yeah.

S: There will not be a live stream the following week, because the following week is NECSS.

E: NECSS!

S: The game show Friday night and then the full-day conference on Saturday.

E: Going to be awesome.

S: So we'll see you guys in a couple of days.

Signoff/Announcements

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

S: Skeptics' Guide to the Universe is produced by SGU Productions, dedicated to promoting science and critical thinking. For more information, visit us at theskepticsguide.org. Send your questions to info@theskepticsguide.org. And, if you would like to support the show and all the work that we do, go to patreon.com/SkepticsGuide and consider becoming a patron and becoming part of the SGU community. Our listeners and supporters are what make SGU possible.

Today I Learned

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• Fact/Description
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References

Vocabulary