File:1069.jpg

2026-01-04T04:00:23Z

Mheguy:

Template:EpisodeList2025

2025-12-29T21:48:45Z

Mheguy: Page created (or rewritten) by transcription-bot. https://github.com/mheguy/transcription-bot

<noinclude>
=== Description ===
This style of template is for collating a year's list of episodes into a table sortable by date and other notable SGU episode features. The column headers for episode features are listed left to right in order of the typically most common occurrence. That is, the most common episode feature is at least one special "non-news" segment, followed by a SoF game with a theme, followed by interviews and guest Rogues.

To add entries, insert:

<pre>
|-
{{SGU list entry
|episode =
|date = MM-DD 
|status = 
|other = 
|sort_other =zzz 
|theme = 
|sort_theme =zzz 
|interviewee = 
|sort_interviewee =zzz 
|rogue = 
|sort_rogue =zzz 
}}
</pre>
Previous year: [[Template: EpisodeList2024|2024 - Episodes 965-1016]]

Following year: [[Template: EpisodeList2026|2026 - Episodes 1068-1119]]

''Note: This table's columns will "fill out" when episode features are added, widening them to more or less match previous years' tables.''</noinclude>

{|class="sortable wikitable sortable mw-collapsible" {{SGU list headers|year = 2025 [[#jump|[↑]]]|range = (Episodes 1017-1068)}}
|-
{{SGU list entry|episode=1068|date=12-27|status=bot|other=n|theme=[[SGU Episode 1068#sof|NeurologicaBlog 2025]]|interviewee=n|rogue=|sort_other=zzz|sort_theme=|sort_interviewee=zzz|sort_rogue=zzz}}
|-
{{SGU list entry|episode=1067|date=12-20|status=bot|other=n|theme=[[SGU Episode 1067#sof|Astronomy 2025]]|interviewee=n|rogue=|sort_other=zzz|sort_theme=|sort_interviewee=zzz|sort_rogue=zzz}}
|-
{{SGU list entry|episode=1066|date=12-13|status=bot|other=n|theme=[[SGU Episode 1066#sof|1066]]|interviewee=n|rogue=|sort_other=zzz|sort_theme=|sort_interviewee=zzz|sort_rogue=zzz}}
|-
{{SGU list entry|episode=1065|date=12-06|status=bot|other=n|theme=n|interviewee=n|rogue=|sort_other=zzz|sort_theme=zzz|sort_interviewee=zzz|sort_rogue=zzz}}
|-
{{SGU list entry|episode=1064|date=11-29|status=bot|other=n|theme=[[SGU Episode 1064#sof|Scientific Fraud]]|interviewee=n|rogue=|sort_other=zzz|sort_theme=|sort_interviewee=zzz|sort_rogue=zzz}}
|-
{{SGU list entry|episode=1063|date=11-22|status=bot|other=[[SGU Episode 1063#dumbest|Dumbest Thing of the Week]]|theme=n|interviewee=n|rogue=|sort_other=|sort_theme=zzz|sort_interviewee=zzz|sort_rogue=zzz}}
|-
{{SGU list entry|episode=1062|date=11-15|status=bot|other=n|theme=n|interviewee=n|rogue=|sort_other=zzz|sort_theme=zzz|sort_interviewee=zzz|sort_rogue=zzz}}
|-
{{SGU list entry|episode=1061|date=11-08|status=bot|other=[[SGU Episode 1061#quickie|Quickie with Bob]]|theme=[[SGU Episode 1061#sof|Frogs]]|interviewee=n|rogue=|sort_other=|sort_theme=|sort_interviewee=zzz|sort_rogue=zzz}}
|-
{{SGU list entry|episode=1060|date=11-01|status=bot|other=[[SGU Episode 1060#ntlf|Name That Logical Fallacy]]|theme=[[SGU Episode 1060#sof|Good News]]|interviewee=n|rogue=|sort_other=|sort_theme=|sort_interviewee=zzz|sort_rogue=zzz}}
|-
{{SGU list entry|episode=1059|date=10-25|status=bot|other=[[SGU Episode 1059#wtw|What's the Word?]]|theme=[[SGU Episode 1059#sof|Human Flatulence]]|interviewee=n|rogue=|sort_other=|sort_theme=|sort_interviewee=zzz|sort_rogue=zzz}}
|-
{{SGU list entry|episode=1058|date=10-18|status=bot|other=[[SGU Episode 1058#ntlf|Name That Logical Fallacy]]|theme=[[SGU Episode 1058#sof|Insects]]|interviewee=n|rogue=|sort_other=|sort_theme=|sort_interviewee=zzz|sort_rogue=zzz}}
|-
{{SGU list entry|episode=1057|date=10-11|status=bot|other=[[SGU Episode 1057#quickie|Quickie with Steve]]|theme=n|interviewee=[[SGU Episode 1057#interview|David Kyle Johnson]]|rogue=|sort_other=|sort_theme=zzz|sort_interviewee=|sort_rogue=zzz}}
|-
{{SGU list entry|episode=1056|date=10-04|status=bot|other=[[SGU Episode 1056#quickie|Quickie with Bob]]|theme=[[SGU Episode 1056#sof|Evolution]]|interviewee=n|rogue=|sort_other=|sort_theme=|sort_interviewee=zzz|sort_rogue=zzz}}
|-
{{SGU list entry|episode=1055|date=09-27|status=bot|other=[[SGU Episode 1055#wtw|What's the Word?]] [[SGU Episode 1055#ntlf|Name That Logical Fallacy]]|theme=n|interviewee=n|rogue=|sort_other=|sort_theme=zzz|sort_interviewee=zzz|sort_rogue=zzz}}
|-
{{SGU list entry|episode=1054|date=09-20|status=bot|other=[[SGU Episode 1054#ntlf|Name That Logical Fallacy]]|theme=n|interviewee=n|rogue=|sort_other=|sort_theme=zzz|sort_interviewee=zzz|sort_rogue=zzz}}
|-
{{SGU list entry|episode=1053|date=09-13|status=bot|other=[[SGU Episode 1053#quickie|Quickie with Evan]]|theme=[[SGU Episode 1053#sof|Gravitational Waves]]|interviewee=n|rogue=|sort_other=|sort_theme=|sort_interviewee=zzz|sort_rogue=zzz}}
|-
{{SGU list entry|episode=1052|date=09-06|status=bot|other=[[SGU Episode 1052#quickie|Quickie with Bob]]|theme=[[SGU Episode 1052#sof|Marine Mammals]]|interviewee=n|rogue=|sort_other=|sort_theme=|sort_interviewee=zzz|sort_rogue=zzz}}
|-
{{SGU list entry|episode=1051|date=08-30|status=bot|other=n|theme=[[SGU Episode 1051#sof|Everyday Chemistry]]|interviewee=n|rogue=|sort_other=zzz|sort_theme=|sort_interviewee=zzz|sort_rogue=zzz}}
|-
{{SGU list entry|episode=1050|date=08-23|status=bot|other=[[SGU Episode 1050#quickie|Quickie with Steve]]|theme=n|interviewee=n|rogue=|sort_other=|sort_theme=zzz|sort_interviewee=zzz|sort_rogue=zzz}}
|-
{{SGU list entry|episode=1049|date=08-16|status=bot|other=n|theme=n|interviewee=n|rogue=|sort_other=zzz|sort_theme=zzz|sort_interviewee=zzz|sort_rogue=zzz}}
|-
{{SGU list entry|episode=1048|date=08-09|status=bot|other=[[SGU Episode 1048#quickie|Quickie with Bob]]|theme=[[SGU Episode 1048#sof|Stars]]|interviewee=n|rogue=|sort_other=|sort_theme=|sort_interviewee=zzz|sort_rogue=zzz}}
|-
{{SGU list entry|episode=1047|date=08-02|status=bot|other=[[SGU Episode 1047#ntlf|Name That Logical Fallacy]]|theme=n|interviewee=n|rogue=|sort_other=|sort_theme=zzz|sort_interviewee=zzz|sort_rogue=zzz}}
|-
{{SGU list entry|episode=1046|date=07-26|status=bot|other=[[SGU Episode 1046#wtw|What's the Word?]]|theme=[[SGU Episode 1046#sof|Malta]]|interviewee=n|rogue=|sort_other=|sort_theme=|sort_interviewee=zzz|sort_rogue=zzz}}
|-
{{SGU list entry|episode=1045|date=07-19|status=bot|other=[[SGU Episode 1045#quickie|Quickie with Bob]]|theme=[[SGU Episode 1045#sof|Not A Pig]]|interviewee=n|rogue=|sort_other=|sort_theme=|sort_interviewee=zzz|sort_rogue=zzz}}
|-
{{SGU list entry|episode=1044|date=07-12|status=bot|other=n|theme=n|interviewee=n|rogue=|sort_other=zzz|sort_theme=zzz|sort_interviewee=zzz|sort_rogue=zzz}}
|-
{{SGU list entry|episode=1043|date=07-05|status=bot|other=[[SGU Episode 1043#quickie|Quickie with Bob]]|theme=[[SGU Episode 1043#sof|Genetics]]|interviewee=n|rogue=|sort_other=|sort_theme=|sort_interviewee=zzz|sort_rogue=zzz}}
|-
{{SGU list entry|episode=1042|date=06-28|status=bot|other=[[SGU Episode 1042#wtw|What's the Word?]] [[SGU Episode 1042#ntlf|Name That Logical Fallacy]]|theme=n|interviewee=n|rogue=|sort_other=|sort_theme=zzz|sort_interviewee=zzz|sort_rogue=zzz}}
|-
{{SGU list entry|episode=1041|date=06-21|status=proofread|other=n|theme=[[SGU Episode 1041#sof|Online Privacy]]|interviewee=n|rogue=|sort_other=zzz|sort_theme=|sort_interviewee=zzz|sort_rogue=zzz}}
|-
{{SGU list entry|episode=1040|date=06-14|status=bot|other=[[SGU Episode 1040#dumbest|Dumbest Thing of the Week]]|theme=n|interviewee=n|rogue=|sort_other=|sort_theme=zzz|sort_interviewee=zzz|sort_rogue=zzz}}
|-
{{SGU list entry|episode=1039|date=06-07|status=bot|other=[[SGU Episode 1039#quickie|Quickie with Bob]]|theme=n|interviewee=[[SGU Episode 1039#interview|Emily Schoerning]]|rogue=|sort_other=|sort_theme=zzz|sort_interviewee=|sort_rogue=zzz}}
|-
{{SGU list entry|episode=1038|date=05-31|status=proofread|other=[[SGU Episode 1038#quickie|Quickie with Steve]]|theme=[[SGU Episode 1038#sof|Jargon]]|interviewee=n|rogue=|sort_other=|sort_theme=|sort_interviewee=zzz|sort_rogue=zzz}}
|-
{{SGU list entry|episode=1037|date=05-24|status=bot|other=n|theme=[[SGU Episode 1037#sof|Dwarf Planets]]|interviewee=n|rogue=|sort_other=zzz|sort_theme=|sort_interviewee=zzz|sort_rogue=zzz}}
|-
{{SGU list entry|episode=1036|date=05-17|status=bot|other=n|theme=n|interviewee=n|rogue=|sort_other=zzz|sort_theme=zzz|sort_interviewee=zzz|sort_rogue=zzz}}
|-
{{SGU list entry|episode=1035|date=05-10|status=proofread|other=[[SGU Episode 1035#quickie|Quickie with Bob]]|theme=n|interviewee=n|rogue=|sort_other=|sort_theme=zzz|sort_interviewee=zzz|sort_rogue=zzz}}
|-
{{SGU list entry|episode=1034|date=05-03|status=proofread|other=n|theme=[[SGU Episode 1034#sof|Metallurgy]]|interviewee=[[SGU Episode 1034#interview|Melanie Trecek-King]]|rogue=|sort_other=zzz|sort_theme=|sort_interviewee=|sort_rogue=zzz}}
|-
{{SGU list entry|episode=1033|date=04-26|status=bot|other=[[SGU Episode 1033#quickie|Quickie with Steve]]|theme=n|interviewee=n|rogue=|sort_other=|sort_theme=zzz|sort_interviewee=zzz|sort_rogue=zzz}}
|-
{{SGU list entry|episode=1032|date=04-19|status=bot|other=n|theme=n|interviewee=n|rogue=|sort_other=zzz|sort_theme=zzz|sort_interviewee=zzz|sort_rogue=zzz}}
|-
{{SGU list entry|episode=1031|date=04-12|status=bot|other=n|theme=n|interviewee=n|rogue=|sort_other=zzz|sort_theme=zzz|sort_interviewee=zzz|sort_rogue=zzz}}
|-
{{SGU list entry|episode=1030|date=04-05|status=proofread|other=[[SGU Episode 1030#wtw|What's the Word?]]|theme=n|interviewee=n|rogue=|sort_other=|sort_theme=zzz|sort_interviewee=zzz|sort_rogue=zzz}}
|-
{{SGU list entry|episode=1029|date=03-29|status=bot|other=[[SGU Episode 1029#quickie|Quickie with Bob]]|theme=n|interviewee=n|rogue=|sort_other=|sort_theme=zzz|sort_interviewee=zzz|sort_rogue=zzz}}
|-
{{SGU list entry|episode=1028|date=03-22|status=bot|other=n|theme=[[SGU Episode 1028#theme|Invertebrates]]|interviewee=[[SGU Episode 1028#interview|Michael Marshall and Cecil Cicirello]]|rogue=|sort_other=zzz|sort_theme=|sort_interviewee=|sort_rogue=zzz}}
|-
{{SGU list entry|episode=1027|date=03-15|status=proofread|other=[[SGU Episode 1027#wtw|What's the Word?]]|theme=[[SGU Episode 1027#theme|Ancient Roots]]|interviewee=[[SGU Episode 1027#interview|Dave Farina]]|rogue=|sort_other=|sort_theme=|sort_interviewee=|sort_rogue=zzz}}
|-
{{SGU list entry|episode=1026|date=03-08|status=bot|other=[[SGU Episode 1026#quickie|Quickie with Bob]]|theme=[[SGU Episode 1026#theme|Hydrogen]]|interviewee=n|rogue=|sort_other=|sort_theme=|sort_interviewee=zzz|sort_rogue=zzz}}
|-
{{SGU list entry|episode=1025|date=03-01|status=proofread|other=n|theme=n|interviewee=[[SGU Episode 1025#interview|Adam Russell]]|rogue=|sort_other=zzz|sort_theme=zzz|sort_interviewee=|sort_rogue=zzz}}
|-
{{SGU list entry|episode=1024|date=02-22|status=bot|other=n|theme=[[SGU Episode 1024#theme|GMOs]]|interviewee=n|rogue=|sort_other=zzz|sort_theme=|sort_interviewee=zzz|sort_rogue=zzz}}
|-
{{SGU list entry|episode=1023|date=02-15|status=bot|other=n|theme=n|interviewee=n|rogue=|sort_other=zzz|sort_theme=zzz|sort_interviewee=zzz|sort_rogue=zzz}}
|-
{{SGU list entry|episode=1022|date=02-08|status=bot|other=n|theme=n|interviewee=n|rogue=|sort_other=zzz|sort_theme=zzz|sort_interviewee=zzz|sort_rogue=zzz}}
|-
{{SGU list entry|episode=1021|date=02-01|status=proofread|other=[[SGU Episode 1021#wtw|What's the Word?]]|theme=[[SGU Episode 1021#theme|The Moon]]|interviewee=n|rogue=|sort_other=|sort_theme=|sort_interviewee=zzz|sort_rogue=zzz}}
|-
{{SGU list entry|episode=1020|date=01-25|status=proofread|other=n|theme=n|interviewee=n|rogue=|sort_other=zzz|sort_theme=zzz|sort_interviewee=zzz|sort_rogue=zzz}}
|-
{{SGU list entry|episode=1019|date=01-18|status=proofread|other=n|theme=[[SGU Episode 1019#theme|Death]]|interviewee=[[SGU Episode 1019#interview|Nick Tiller]]|rogue=|sort_other=zzz|sort_theme=|sort_interviewee=|sort_rogue=zzz}}
|-
{{SGU list entry|episode=1018|date=01-11|status=bot|other=[[SGU Episode 1018#quickie|Quickie with Steve]]|theme=[[SGU Episode 1018#theme|CES2025]]|interviewee=n|rogue=|sort_other=|sort_theme=|sort_interviewee=zzz|sort_rogue=zzz}}
|-
{{SGU list entry|episode=1017|date=01-04|status=proofread|other=n|sort_other=zzz|theme=n|sort_theme=zzz|interviewee=n|sort_interviewee=zzz|rogue=|sort_rogue=zzz}}
|}
|-
|style="border: 1px solid darkgray;background:#F8F9F9;text-align:left;background:#CCD9EA;" |  <big>'''2025 [[#jump|[↑]]]'''</big>   (Episodes 1017-1068)
|}

SGU Episode 1066

2025-12-29T21:47:53Z

Mheguy: Page created (or rewritten) by transcription-bot. https://github.com/mheguy/transcription-bot

{{transcription-bot}}
{{Editing required
|proofreading = y
|links = y
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|categories = y
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|}}
{{InfoBox
|verified = 
|episodeNum = 1066
|episodeDate = {{1000s|1066|boxdate}}
|episodeIcon = File:none
|caption = "Futuristic airlines navigating through a cosmic storm of electrifying skies."
|bob = y
|cara = y
|jay = y
|evan = y
|george =
|rebecca =
|perry =
|guest1 =
|guest2 =
|guest3 =
|qowText = "We are all flawed and creatures of our times. Is it fair to judge us by the unknown standards of the future?”
|qowAuthor = ― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
|downloadLink = {{1000s|1066|download}}
|forumLinktopic =
|}}

{{anchor|intro}}
== Intro ==

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

'''S:''' Hello, and welcome to the Skeptic's Guide to the Universe. Today is Tuesday, December 9th, 2025, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella.

'''E:''' Hey everybody.

'''S:''' Cara, Santa Maria. Howdy, Jay Novella. Hey, guys. And Evan Bernstein.

'''E:''' Good evening everyone.

'''S:''' How's everyone doing? You guys ready for the holidays?

'''E:''' Getting down there. Getting. There.

'''S:''' The.

'''E:''' Decoration.

'''S:''' It's a lot of work, man.

'''C:''' You guys decorate?

'''B:''' I did that last year. Oh yeah, man, sure.

'''C:''' Yeah, you got kids, so that I get. But you guys, everybody else decorates.

'''B:''' My kids in Alaska. Man, I still decorate the crap out of this house.

'''S:''' I got you in the holiday spirit, I guess you don't decorate at all.

'''B:''' Bob, we're talking about.

'''S:''' Put a candle in the window. Put a.

'''C:''' Well, yeah, so my door, I do something minimal. I always get like a little tree from Trader Joe's, like a little tabletop tree. And I put on my dining table and then that's where I throw all the gifts that I'm giving to people. But that's basically the extent of my decoration.

'''E:''' That's OK because then I don't have to do much cleanup. That is the point, the cleanup.

'''S:''' Do you like even like watch holiday movies or anything?

'''E:''' No, really, what was the last holiday movie you think you.

'''C:''' I'd say Elf is the only holiday movie I really watch. But.

'''S:''' You don't watch Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer or.

'''E:''' Miracle on 34th St. The old Classics.

'''S:''' The heat miser. I mean, come on, heat miser.

'''E:''' Right the heat miser. Christmas Carol.

'''S:''' Wow, Santa Claus is coming to town.

'''E:''' Wait the heat, miser. Yeah, but.

'''S:''' You have no cultural miser, cold miser, and the heat miser.

'''E:''' Wasn't it freeze miser?

'''S:''' Snow Miser, Cold Miser, One of those.

'''C:''' Ice Miser, what is happening?

'''J:''' It's it's, it's, it's one of those shows like Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, where they have puppets and they animate them.

'''C:''' Oh, oh, do you guys. It is the Snow Miser.

'''E:''' It is Snow Miser.

'''C:''' OK, I don't.

'''E:''' Yeah. You see, that's how long it's been for me.

'''C:''' I thought it was Freeze Miser, but that's that's you guys remember when we did one of our skeptical extravaganzas and there was a reference to some character from those old claymation movies and I was like, what is this? Were it was. I don't I like it when we're playing those games and I'm like, that is a completely foreign. It's like Quidditch. One time was one of the references and I was like I don't know what that is the. Burger Meister.

'''S:''' Meister Burger.

'''J:''' You know what? Quidditch is now though, right?

'''C:''' Now I do. I've been educated. But you know what?

'''E:''' A Charlie in the Box is tough.

'''C:''' What? It's happening. Oh.

'''S:''' Careful, did you have a childhood Karen, or were you deprived because you were Mormon? They didn't let you watch any of.

'''C:''' These, I think I had a childhood a little later than you.

'''E:''' Yeah, that's right. That's exactly what it is. We had a childhood where there was a television set that had three channels that functioned all the time and maybe 5 that you could get. And this was on television. You had no other real choice to watch something other than this in the 70s.

'''S:''' But I showed these kids. I showed these shows to my kids.

'''C:''' Right, but my parents didn't.

'''S:''' Yeah, So you just had neglectful parents. We.

'''E:''' It's yeah, it was a matter of of scarcity of resources, as it were.

'''S:''' It was the year without a Santa Claus 1974, the Burger Meister Meister Burger.

'''B:''' Voiced by the iconic Paul Freeze, who you may know from the Disney's Haunted Mansion host voice. Yeah, that's Paul Freeze is. Wonderful.

'''C:''' Wait, his last name is Freeze?

'''B:''' That's crazy. Yes, Yeah.

'''E:''' Okay, well, Diehard is still the best Christmas movie out there. Perhaps.

'''S:''' It's yeah.

'''C:''' Does this mean that next week is our year in review already?

'''S:''' Yes, we are recording the year in review on the 17th. So if you're if you're listening to the show soon after it comes out, you still have a few days to e-mail us your votes for best of favorite, this Skeptical hero, skeptical Jackass, the favorite design and Memoriam anything you want us to talk about that reviews 2025, the SGU, etcetera.

'''C:''' So many to choose from this year, Jackass, is that it?

'''S:''' I mean, there's one clear winner which we'll talk about, but. Only we have we have to talk. About runner UPS because otherwise there's only you know.

'''C:''' We there's plenty of runner UPS.

'''E:''' For which?

'''S:''' Category Skeptical Jackass of the Year? Oh my, let's not get ahead of ourselves.

'''E:''' But no, we're teasing full week.

'''S:''' Before we have to do the review show.

'''E:''' Yeah.

'''S:''' All right, let's get down to this episode.

{{anchor|news_item}}
== News Items ==

{{anchor|news_item1}}
=== Young Cancer (04:35) ===
{{shownotes
|weblink = https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/08/health/cancer-young-people-deaths.html
|article_title = https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/08/health/cancer-young-people-deaths.html
|publication = www.nytimes.com
}}

'''S:''' Cara, you're gonna start start us off talking about a light hearted topic, childhood cancer.

'''C:''' No, it's not childhood. Sorry, it's young people. But maybe it's like not childhood.

'''S:''' Okay, young people, but not children. That's okay then.

'''C:''' So no, actually this, this is slightly lighter hearted than than you would expect. So there, there's a new article in the New York Times. It was just published yesterday as of this recording. And the title really caught me. And so I was like, Oh, I what's going on here? And then I was like, oh, yes, this debate. It's, it's an important debate that I've been hearing a lot about. So the, the title of this article is why some doctors say they're cancers that shouldn't be treated, which like, that's a big gotcha headline for an article. So statistics show and there's a clear and kind of irrefutable trend. Now we don't we can argue and actually I want to have a conversation about why the numbers look like this. But statistics are showing that across 8 different cancers, there is a massive increase among younger people. But the question now is, A, what is causing this and, B, should we be doing something about it, which sounds like a duh question, especially if you're a person who is dealing with a cancer diagnosis. Like, it can be really hard to hear somebody say, I wonder if we should have even caught that or I wonder if we should actually try and treat that if you're somebody who has faced cancer before. But let's hear out the experts. So these 8 diagnosis are these eight different cancers, thyroid cancer, kidney cancer, cancer of the anus, the small intestine, colorectal, endometrial cancer and pancreatic cancer. So those are solid cancers. And then also myeloma, which is a blood cancer are on the rise since 1992 and in a pretty significant way. We're also seeing other types like breast cancer that are increasing. But we're not talking about breast cancer in this particular conversation. We're talking about those eight previous that I mentioned this, there's been this sharp uptick and specifically for people under the age of 50. So that's what they mean by young Steve or younger. Yeah. And so why are we seeing a sharp uptick? Well, you're seeing a big division among the experts. But I will say that when you sort of dig into it, what I'm seeing is that a lot of the people who are concerned from an environmental perspective tend to have more epidemiological expertise. But a lot of people who are in the trenches, you know, oncologists who are in the trenches treating cancer have a different view altogether. So I don't want to say there's this like false dichotomy or this war out there of like these people are saying this is the reason and these people, that's the reason is both probably. And there are plenty of rational people who are saying, yes, it's both. But what do you think the two main camps are right now? What do you think is the reason that we're seeing a a very sharp uptick in, in eight different cancers among patients under 50?

'''E:''' Well, better, no better. No way we're detecting it.

'''C:''' There you go. That's like what everybody said first, right? Like because we are checking for them and we are doing that in a better way. So that's what a lot of oncologists are saying. No, no, we're just detecting these things better. We have better resolution. We're doing more screenings than we ever used to do. But there are, you know, epidemiologists and oncologists and and other experts were saying, but even beyond that, what if there is an environmental factor? We do see obesity on the rise. We are seeing more obviously environmental pollutants than we've ever seen before. Climate changes on the rise, like more kind of, you know, some people are blaming like processed food, which I don't think there's a lot of good evidence to support that. But but you know, a lot of people are saying we don't know, but we need to figure this out and we need to research this more. But let's now get down into the trend. So this is the bulk of the reporting here is based on an article that was published in JAMA Internal Medicine by a team out of Harvard and Brigham and Women's Hospital, which is affiliated with Harvard and then Dell Medical School in Austin, TX. And so they wrote a special communication entitled The rise in early onset cancer in the US population more apparent than real. So right there, that gives a little bit away. And they're saying that these 8 cancers with the fastest rising incidents, the ones that I mentioned previously, they they seem to have doubled in incidents since 1992. But what hasn't gone up? So more people are being diagnosed, but what are more people not doing? Death rate, dying. Yeah. And so they argue because the incidence rate has increased, but the death rate has stayed flat. This is probably a diagnostic issue more than anything else. More things are being uncovered, but that doesn't necessarily mean that these cancers were deadly or even dangerous. Now there are people who are still counter arguing with that within the, you know, population of experts saying well, we also have better treatment than we ever had before. So of course mortality is not going to rise in lockstep with incidents because as we're finding more cancers, we're also getting better at people not dying from cancer. And there there is an argument to be said there. That's why this is really, really complicated. But here's an example they discussed in the write up in the New York Times. They said, for example, colorectal deaths are up by .5% a year, but their incidence is increasing by 2%. So there's a mismatch there. Whereas endometrial cancer is in lockstep. We're actually seeing a 2% increase in both the incidence rate and the death rate. So it's it's very likely the case that we can't lump all these 8 cancers together either. We might be seeing different things happening with these different cancers, but one of the big questions is, and, and this is a question that a lot of oncologists are asking, should we be doing the screenings that we're doing as intensely, especially since we're using CT, ultrasound and MRI's that are increasingly more sensitive, We're using them more frequently. We're doing a lot of blood tests and we're finding a lot of cancers via happenstance that previously were not part of routine cancer screening. They say in this article that that there are cancers that will spontaneously go away. There are cancers that will start growing and then just stop and never become a problem. There are a lot of early, early stage cancers that are never symptomatic. And I remember and I don't know if you guys have ever heard this, but when my dad got prostate cancer and he had pretty early stage prostate cancer was so he was able to undergo, you know, aggressive treatment, but he was, you know, he was, I think in his early 70s when he had the treatment. So it may not even be considered aggressive early on, catch it before it spread. There doesn't appear to any be any risk. But I remember his physician said to him at the time, a lot of people will not die from prostate cancer. Some will, but a lot won't. But I will tell you that a lot of people who die will have prostate cancer on autopsy. Does that make sense to you guys?

'''E:''' Yeah. But so does that mean we should continue to screen at the levels we have been screening or we are over screening?

'''C:''' Well, I think my I don't think that's the either of those questions is the conclusion based on what I'm saying. What I'm saying is that in people my father's age, a lot of men have prostate cancer, and they will die from something else first because it's so slow growing. But there are other people who will get prostate cancer. It will grow very quickly, and it will be the cause of a lot of disability and pain and potentially death. And the problem is, right now, we don't know. We just don't know who is going to have a cancer that grows really quickly and who is going to have a cancer that actually never causes them a problem.

'''E:''' Is family history a determinant?

'''C:''' They're hugely yeah. But The thing is, you almost have to set that aside because people who have heavy family histories are already getting screened. Usually the recommendation is to screen those individuals. So. So now there's this question, right? Are we at this tipping point with diagnostic medicine where an asymptomatic patient who has a small abnormality that has no, you know, previously identified clinical relevance, something is caught on a screen, we might go in and biopsy it. We might end up doing aggressive treatment on this patient that can be painful, that can cause disability. And should we have done that? Would this patient, because there's no way to know after the fact, right? There's a huge bias after the fact. The cancer might be gone. Well, is it gone because of the treatment or is it become because it was going to go away anyway or because it wasn't ever going to grow? And so this is a, this is a big, I think, conundrum in clinical oncology right now. We're seeing certain physicians, I mean, really respected physicians. Timothy Rebik is an epidemiologist and geneticist at Dana Farber, which is, you know, really reputable Cancer Center and a Co chair of the American Association of Cancer Research and or of the conference of the American Association of Cancer Research. And he said something very interesting is going on here and it's not good. This is very and another Doctor Who is the chief medical officer at the American Society of Clinical Oncology. That's Doctor Julie Grallo, I think is how you pronounce it. She said the surge in cases is of grave concern. I'm saying this is real and it is dangerous or I'm sorry and it is serious and we need to understand why. But then you have other researchers saying, I don't want to treat a patient that doesn't need to be treated. And I am really concerned about the level of screening that we're doing right now and the level of cancers that we're finding that they may lead to overtreatment. We have examples of when this happened in the past. Steve, you remember when PSA tests came on the scene?

'''S:''' Yeah, there's been a huge for, you know, first they did them and, and prostate cancer incidents jumped because now we're testing or screening for it. Then they, they decided we're screening for it too much, doing unnecessary procedures, let's stop doing it. And then the the incidents plummeted because they stopped doing this, that screening test, you know, again in asymptomatic individuals.

'''C:''' And that's the thing, during that time a lot of men had their prostates taken out and had to undergo some treatments that probably really affect to their quality of lives, but then they wouldn't have needed to.

'''S:''' You know, the the burden of of actual, you know, prostate cancer increased. So now they kind of found a middle ground I. Think middle ground exactly. So it's, again, it's something you got to tweak. You got to find the sweet spot. It's all, again, risk versus benefit, right? So if you screen too much, you end up causing more harm than good. You find cases that are too benign, that don't need to be treated and you end up causing unnecessary procedures. If you don't screen enough, you miss early treatable this illness. You know that that progresses. So there's always those lines crossed at some point. You always look like for.

'''C:''' That point, the question is where is that sweet spot? And I think I think one of the ways to approach this that I didn't really think about, I mean I guess I thought about it, but not in this clear of a way until after I read up on this is that you've got sort of that, you know, under screening over screening question. You've got that incidence versus, you know, mortality question. But you've also got the question of individual patients and epidemiological population wide measurements. And I think that is a question that we're really juggling with here, right? Because as an individual, I can tell you, you find a cancer in my body, I want it out of me, right? And like there's a screening test available to me that I could find something early. I want that. But at the, and it's so hard for an individual to think at a population level because they know that at the population level, any measure we're talking about means some people died. And so it's, it's where is that balance between the two, right between what is best for the everyone without leaving out the few. But also we have to remember when it comes to risk and benefit, it's not just about a surgery you might not have needed. Some chemos can cause other cancers, right? Radiation is not without its risks. Cancer treatment, it can be very aggressive and it is 100% necessary when it is 100% necessary. But if, if it is not necessary, I do not want to undergo chemotherapy or radiation. And that's the question. And I think we don't really know the answer yet of that line in the sand of when it's necessary and when it's not. And that's what we're trying to figure out.

'''S:''' Right. But it's just good to be thoughtful about it.

'''C:''' Absolutely, And that's where things Evan like family history, genetic testing, you know, there are a lot of other parts of the algorithm that you can bring into play. But what we don't want to do is cast such a wide at this, we pick up something and then say, oh, look at this thing we picked up that we never would have picked up before. Just to be safe, let's do a pretty aggressive treatment that could have negative consequences downstream for somebody's health and Wellness.

'''S:''' OK. Thanks, Cara. Yep, Jay.

{{anchor|news_item2}}
=== Adapting to Modern Life (18:11) ===
{{shownotes
|weblink = https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2025/12/251207031335.htm
|article_title = Humans are built for nature not modern life | ScienceDaily
|publication = www.sciencedaily.com
}}

'''S:''' So tell me about this study into how humans are adapting to modern life.

'''J:''' Steve, let me ask you a question. How attached are you to your toilet?

'''S:''' I'm not attached to it at the moment. Yeah.

'''J:''' But it's something you like. Right.

'''S:''' I would. I would find life without it challenging.

'''J:''' Alright, so obviously I'm kidding, but the question is not totally irrelevant. A better question is how much do you guys think the modern world is, you know, relatively healthy for humans?

'''E:''' Compared to.

'''J:''' Not.

'''C:''' That's a hard question. Like, in some ways it's way more healthy because we have modern medicine and, you know, we have all these tools that allows 100 years.

'''E:''' Yeah, right.

'''C:''' But in other ways, it's way worse because we have climate change and pollution and, you know, trade forever.

'''B:''' Chemicals and yes, vaccines are going to be kind of illegal before too long.

'''C:''' Yeah, there's stuff in our blood right now that didn't exist 50 years ago.

'''B:''' A lot of plastic that's.

'''J:''' Yeah, the one that got me is the plastic, the microplastic in my brain. That blows my mind. All right, let's get.

'''E:''' Into the brain.

'''J:''' So we will, we'll look back on human history and, you know, people lived in the natural world among natural materials and features, landscapes that were shaped by geology or the climate and ecology. They were using tools made out of stone, wood and bone. You know, their shelters were super simple, probably temporary and of course, dependent on whatever local materials that they can find. An analysis by evolutionary anthropologist Colin Shaw at the University of Zurich and Daniel Longman at Lot Borough University. They asked a very simple, but, you know, I think a lot of people who read this found it to be a little uncomfortable. They a question that they they put up. They said, have humans changed their habits so fast that our biology can't keep up with it? And is that now eroding our ability to survive and reproduce over the long run? And that is a question that, you know, I think is a legitimate one to ask because there's lots of things that we can point at that. You know, potentially could be doing us harm. And what, what is that harm and what does that harm, you know, long term? What would it do? So they, the authors created the timeline and they said, you know, about 5 million years ago, hominins lived in environments like I was saying before, made of soil, plants, animals, water, rock. And even after the agricultural revolution, people were still mostly in, you know, what we'd call these classic natural settings. But when industrialization started in the late 1700s, and then particularly this crazy rapid acceleration in the mid, you know, the 20th century, human environments have obviously changed, and they've changed significantly. Now we have fossil fuel use, we have industrial agriculture, we have plastics and microplastics. We have explosive urban growth. And what we've done is we've turned much of the planet into what they call an industrial continuum where even like the most natural places now contain microplastic fragments and other pollutants. By 2018, more than half of humanity already lives in cities, right? If you look at if you look at where the population centers are, it's in the cities, of course. And people in other countries like the United States and Canada and the United Kingdom, they, they spend about 93% of their time in doors that that's really when you hear that number and you compare it to your lifestyle, I'm sure a lot of you out there would say, Nope, that's not me. I'm sure a lot of you guys out there would say, yeah, that sounds about right. How much time do you guys spend outdoors when you have a full time job and you have kids and you have to make dinner and you have to get them up in the morning? And then on weekends you're super busy 'cause you got to visit people that, you know, like, are we really spending as much time outdoors as we should be?

'''E:''' I. Try so hard to get outside because of those things, Jay. I make a concerted effort to do it as opposed to being locked in my office at a desk, especially during long hours. I try to get outside as much as.

'''J:''' Possible, of course. I mean, I think inherently most people would just agree with that. Yeah, I should be out more. I should get some sunlight. You know, I need some exercise. But that's not what's happening. And it's not just happening in the country that you happen to live in. It's happening pretty much everywhere. So in effect, we've become these indoor urban creatures, right? And, you know, we we are daily experience is utterly dominated by artificial materials, artificial light, industrial noises, you know, all these things, you know, interacting with our computers. And a big one here guys, is just polluted air. Like, you know, most houses that that we all live in, like, you know, the air inside of our houses isn't a great thing to breathe in. Like you need to air out your house. You know, if you have a gas stove, you're definitely putting a lot of pollutants into the air that could cause you harm. You know, there's just a lot of reasons by living in the structures that we do and in the environments that we've constructed over the last, you know, 100 years, they're not healthy for us. As as hokey as this sounds, you know, we truly did evolve to live in outdoor environments, not in the indoor environments that we are completely surrounded by today. And the core of the paper asks whether this new environment that I'm talking about is undermining these 4 biological systems that directly support evolutionary fitness. And here's what they had to say about this. They said reproductive function comes first. So global fertility is falling, and social factors clearly matter. Here, the authors point to a long list of industrial contaminants that plausibly impair the ability to produce an abundance of offspring. Air pollution is associated with lower sperm concentration and total sperm number. You know, they have poorer mobility. There's a higher risk of pregnancy loss. Pesticides and herbicides can reduce sperm quality and testosterone and are linked to preterm birth and birth defects. Microplastics and nanoplastics accumulate in tissue, triggering oxidative stress, DNA damage, epigenetic changes that can harm male and female fertility, endocrine disrupting chemicals like phthalates, right? These are chemicals that are added to plastics to make them flexible and softer or durable. And some flame retardants interfere with hormone systems that regulate reproduction. So all of these things in combination with each other, you know, there is a measurable effect and, and lots of scientists are finding, you know, finding that they're, they're seeing trends now that weren't there or weren't as obvious, you know, going back even 30 years. The authors, they tie all of this to two mechanisms. 1 is reduced exposure to the diverse environmental microbes that help train our immune systems. The other is direct damage from air, noise and light pollution that disrupts immune cell function and circadian rhythms. Right. So it seems to be that they found some some legitimate evidence and patterns here that we can no longer ignore. And we have to, we have to pay some real consideration to it.

'''S:''' Yeah, it depends on where you live. I mean, if you live in a city that has bad air quality going outside, it's not going to help. That's not going to really do much for you. I mean, there's a lot of speculation mixed in here. Like not everything they're talking about is like there there has been any clear research showing that there's a specific health effect there. There are the ones that I think are the most solid. I mean, clearly air pollution has a massive negative health effect, especially for respiratory illnesses, but but for other illnesses as well. And that's, again, that's one of the biggest things about burning fossil fuels. I mean, it, it costs in the US alone, I think it figures like $100 million a year and increased health care costs just from, you know, again, burning fossil fuels itself. The light, the light is interesting as well, because I treat a lot of patients with poor sleep in modern life. A lot of people, they go all day with the same light level right up to the moment they want to go to sleep, right? Because they're, they're, they're, you have bright lights on, you're looking at electronic devices, you know, and they, they're, they never get any variability in their light level exposure. It's like, well, we, we did not evolve in that environment. You know, you should get outside during the day and then turn down the lights, get some, some dim light at night time. Let your brain know that it's night.

'''J:''' Steve, I think I told you guys this, You know, I was in a physical with my doctor a few years ago and he's like, you know, after dinner you got, you know, six o'clock 7:00 you turn the lights down, you sit down, you start to slow down, you relax and everything. And I'm, as I'm listening to him, I'm like, I'm shaking my head like, okay, sounds great. And I go, hey, I have two kids. They are bouncing off the walls after bedtime. Not even. Like, it's not like, hey, guys, it's bedtime, Go to bed. Yeah. And I get to, like, hang out with my wife for 20 minutes before we both pass out from exhaustion. Like there is no winding down in our culture, Steve. Yeah, particularly.

'''C:''' If you should be.

'''E:''' Yeah, well, right, they're supposed to be. They were working on the farm all day. They'd be exhausted.

'''J:''' But that's the problem. That's the problem. It's a systemic problem. You can't just fix it.

'''C:''' Yeah, no, you can't. And like, you have to make like there are cultural issues that you're not going to change, right. If you go out to dinner at night, maybe if you're lucky and you have money and you're in a nice restaurant, the lights are going to be low. But if you are at McDonald's for dinner, because that's what you can afford, you're going to be in, like, fluorescent lighting. Like there are like systemic things. But like in my home, my lights are dim after the sunsets. I never have bright lights on in my house after the sunset. Yeah.

'''S:''' It's a good idea.

'''C:''' Yeah, and it's partially because we know it's good for us, but partially because it feels cozier. I don't ever have the big light on. You know, the big light is evil. It's always like the little lights around the house. And that's the thing. I'm not saying turning on dimmer lights is going to cure any of your kids like, you know, ADHD or bouncing off the walls, but like starting to kind of curate or foster a calmer environment at home. Your kids might calm down a little, they may not, but it can't hurt.

'''J:''' Yeah, but you know, they're, they crave screens and you know that stimulation as well. And kids are you it? I can, as an adult control myself to a certain degree. But kids, you know, no, not so much. And I just think, you know, we're training them to, you know, generationally like they're, they're screen users.

'''C:''' Yeah, and becoming a part of.

'''J:''' The way they interact with reality.

'''C:''' That's a hard thing too, because that's like a foot down. Like learn good at home hygiene now because you're not going to get it in your school training or your work training. You're only going to get it at home. You know rules about when the screens are off and you know all my screens are pre loaded with with software that darkens them over the course of the night and turns them more and more red.

'''S:''' But I think part of it is there's only so much you could do, as we're saying, on an individual level. Part of it's also just being, you know, politically active, advocating for better air quality laws, better light pollution laws, better, you know, decibel level noise laws, things like that to make the environment a little bit more wholesome, a little bit less stressful with with less pollution. That's really the only big solution here. He's only so much you could do around the edges.

'''C:''' Well, and so much of this is a function of income inequality to, like, study after study shows that there's more tree cover in rich neighborhoods.

'''S:''' Yeah, yeah.

'''C:''' And just like when you're when you're poorer, you're more inner city, it's more hot, hot concrete, you know, that acts as like a heat sink and, and, and also like bounces it back to you and less tree cover. And it's just, yeah, it's, it's, it's devastating.

'''S:''' All right. Thanks, Jay. Yep. Well, if you want, we're going to take a quick break from our show to talk about one of our sponsors this week, Aura.

'''J:''' Frames, if you're hoping to find a great present and you haven't found it yet, Aura Frames has the gift. You're looking for it. Trust me, we got an Aura frame from my mom. This was like 3 years ago. She's constantly commenting on the pictures that come up and she still loves it after three years. How many presents did you give somebody that you think they're still using after three years?

'''C:''' Yeah, and this is what's so great about it. Let's say your moms not very tech savvy. It doesn't matter because you can preload photos before it even ships and then you can keep adding them from anywhere. And also it comes in a really beautiful premium gift box with no price tag. So it's just the best gift possible for a limited time.

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'''S:''' OK guys, let's get back to the show.

{{anchor|news_item3}}
=== Safety of mRNA Vaccines (31:29) ===
{{shownotes
|weblink = https://theness.com/neurologicablog/new-study-on-the-covid-19-mrna-vaccines/
|article_title = New Study on the COVID-19 mRNA Vaccines - NeuroLogica Blog
|publication = theness.com
}}

'''S:''' So guys, I want to talk to you about mRNA vaccines for COVID, the story that just doesn't go away.

'''C:''' Oh my God, we're still talking about this?

'''S:''' We're still talking about this and this is still an issue like this is still on social media and politically there is this is still a big issue and there are still a lot of people acting as if there's some controversy over the mRNA vaccines. It's amazing to, you know, what's there's been again, there's been an anti vaccine movement as long as there's been vaccines. But what COVID did in the United States at least was turn the anti vaccine movement because it used to be very bipartisan. We track a lot of these issues like which ones are left, which ones are right, which ones are bipartisan and sort of both sides kind of had their reasons where, you know, if you were an anti vaxxer and you happened to be liberal, you would find liberal reasons to be anti vaxxer. And and same thing with conservative. But with COVID, it really made it into a right wing issue, you know, and it had and so it became very political. It became very, you know, left, right. And so that and we're still dealing with that. So what I want to talk about is a new study. This comes out of France. It was just published and it it so this is a post marketing like what we would call in the USA phase four study, right? So this very quickly, you know, when we look at the safety and efficacy of treatments like vaccines, you do the basic science research, right, the preclinical stuff, animal studies, etc. And then you do preliminary studies like just you want to look at healthy individuals just to screen for any potential risk. Then you do some preliminary efficacy trials. Those are phase true. Then you do if if everything's looking fine, you do the definitive phase three trials, which are the ones that you used to get FDA approval, right. But then there is something that's there's a post marketing phase four trial where you want to look at at what's happening out in the real world, you know, once the drug is is getting used. And that's important because while the double-blind placebo-controlled trial is absolutely necessary to establish efficacy, it also has its weakness, right? That that kind of reap the problem with that kind of research. One, it's hard to get big, big numbers of people, you know, like doing a big study could be hundreds of, of, of people, maybe 1002 thousand. That's a massive clinical trial, right? But even then, if you, let's say you do a clinical trial, 3 or 4 clinical trials that cumulatively have 1000 subjects in it, that would be, that's way more than enough to get like FDA approval. But what if there's a side effect? That's one in 10,000 people, right? Chances are you're going to miss it in the study only looking at 1000 people. So, but also the controlled trials are very controlled, right? So you're controlling for as many confounding factors as possible and you're randomizing, you know, people to either treatment or not being treated. And therefore you're, there's a lot of inclusionary and exclusionary criteria. So you want to look at, you know, fairly uncomplicated group of people to make sure that nothing is going to interfere with the signal that you're looking for. So that means it may not be, it may be difficult to then generalize from that study to the general population. So that's why it's good to, you know, there's a complementary type of research where now you're looking, it's observational, but you could look at 10s of thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of people out in the real world. And where there are factors that don't come in with a clinical trial, like are people not taking the drug because it's too expensive or are they deciding that it's too inconvenient or whatever. There are things that can come into play that usually be controlled for in a controlled clinical trial. All right, So this is a basically a postmark cutting phase four trial of the mRNA, any mRNA vaccine for COVID-19 based upon France's public health database, right? So one of the advantages of, you know, having socialized medicine or living in one of those countries is that they have these complete databases. So this is the French National Health data system, right? They looked for the French population aged 18 to 59 who were alive on November 1st, 2021, and they divided them into two groups, people who had received at least one dose of an mRNA, that COVID-19 vaccine, and those who had not. Guess how many people were included in this study?

'''J:''' All of them. Gosh.

'''C:''' Yeah, hundreds of thousands.

'''S:''' 28 million.

'''C:''' Oh my. God.

'''S:''' So this is.

'''J:''' A robust.

'''S:''' This is a robust study. 28 + 1,000,000 people, 22 million plus vaccinated, 5.9 million unvaccinated individuals. So that's statistically massively robust, right? That's the advantage of this kind of observational study. Again, the, the, the downside is it's not controlled, right? People are deciding whether or not to get vaccinated. You're not randomizing them to be vaccinated or not.

'''C:''' So this is the whole population of not the whole population, but this is a huge sample of what country?

'''S:''' France.

'''C:''' I'm surprised there are that many unvaccinated people.

'''S:''' Yeah, it's a lot. But this is over that period of time, you know, so there are what we call right, confounding factors. Confounding factors are things other than the variables that you're interested in that could be affecting the outcome. So they're they controlled for the obvious ones, the ones that you have to control for in a study like those. Otherwise it's worthless, right? So one is socio demographic characteristics. You can't compare 20 year old healthy people to 60 year old unhealthy people, right? That would be not be a meaningful comparison. So they control for the for like age, sex rates, all that stuff. And then also 41 comorbidities. If you have diabetes or do you not have diabetes, you're obese, so you're not obese. So they controlled for all of that. Now, that doesn't mean that we're not still missing something. And the thing that's the hardest to control for. What would you guys think in a study like this? People who choose to get vaccinated versus people who chose not to get vaccinated, What do you think might be a confounding factor? That's not a comorbidity, meaning it's not a disease and it's not a demographic feature, but that's something that's more behavioral that might be influencing the outcome.

'''C:''' Why they chose to get Yeah, why they chose not to. Was it a religious exemption? Was it a?

'''S:''' Yeah, there's something called the healthy user effect, right? Which means that people who choose to do this are also choosing other healthy things to do.

'''C:''' Of course. Yeah, we see that a lot.

'''S:''' Yeah, it's a generic healthy user effect here. So people, there's something different about people who chose to get vaccinated and chose not to get vaccinated in terms of their how well they take care of themselves, right. People who choose to get vaccinated may just basically take better care of themselves than people who did not. Again, we don't know that, but I'm saying that's certainly a possibility here that there's no way to really control for. But given that they did the best job they could to control for comorbidities, they wanted to see what was there any difference in mortality over a four year period. So this is the longest duration observational study now. And also it's just a very massive 1. So what they found, unsurprisingly, they found that in the vaccinated group over that four year period, they were 74% less likely to die from severe Covic 19 than the unvaccinated group. Wow, that is probably due to a direct protective effect of the vaccine, right? That is the most plausible because that's due to a specific cause and there's a mechanism there. The vaccine would protect you from that cause. And we know from other research that the vaccine does prevent, yeah, reduce your risk of dying from COVID, right? That's the the primary benefit of the vaccine.

'''C:''' It was designed to do that, and it's been proven to do that. This this.

'''S:''' Further supports that you were 74% less likely to die from COVID if you were vaccinated than I'm vaccinated. But they also found over that four year period, the vaccinated group had a 25% lower risk of all 'cause mortality.

'''C:''' Yeah, I could see that.

'''S:''' Even when you eliminate death from COVID. So that's not all. Just not dying from COVID.

'''C:''' Yeah, but they didn't eliminate COVID infection, did they? Because if somebody gets sick from COVID and then they later die of pneumonia, correct? Yeah, yeah.

'''S:''' So, So what are the possible causes here? You I think hit upon probably the most likely 1. So 1 is what I've said already. There could be a healthy user effect going on here.

'''C:''' Sure, sure. Sure. 2 is your people, yeah.

'''S:''' Having less severe Covic, even if you don't die from Covic, right? Having severe COVID that you don't die from may set you up for long COVID or for other infections or for having a heart attack more, you know, at a younger age, whatever. So it's possible that severe COVID causes other ways of increasing your mortality other than dying from COVID, right? But there also may be other protective effects of getting vaccinated that are go beyond COVID. That's another possibility.

'''C:''' Yeah, like we know that one of the common colds is caused by a coronavirus. Like I wonder if there's any transferable protection to other coronavirus?

'''S:''' So that's one or one possibility that maybe may be providing just other, yeah, crossover protection, you know, probably marginal, but it might be in the numbers there. But also there was a recent study that we wrote about on science based medicine where they found that the COVID vaccines actually made cancer treatment more effective and actually your immune system against against cancer. Again, that's preliminary evidence. We can't say that that's absolutely established at this point, but it raises that possible mechanism there. There may be, again, other benefits to your immune system that may even go beyond infections, right? That might even be helping things like cancer. So yeah, it might quote UN quote, sensitize cancer to immunotherapy. So we'll see, you know, if that's if that pans out, but that's another, you know, potential potential mechanism. And there may be other benefits as well. But we The thing is, we just can't say about that group that 25% lower risk of all cars mortality. There's, there's lots of possibilities and this data, because it's not controlled, does not allow for us to disentangle, you know, those, those potential effects. But the researchers didn't really even, you know, focus on that because they were the purpose of the study to see was the COVID vaccine safe and effective. So what they concluded was it was effective in preventing death from COVID-19. And there's no evidence of any increased risk, right? So unlike what many of the anti vaxxers are saying or, or they're trying to argue that like people are more likely to die if they get vaccinated, this showed that that was not the case. You know, there was a 25% lower mortality, all cause mortality if you were vaccinated. So that just shows you there's no increase.

'''J:''' And.

'''S:''' We can't say the vaccine caused the decrease. It was associated with a decrease, but it was not. It doesn't appear to be any signal in here that there was any increase in mortality from the vaccine.

'''C:''' And I'm curious, my guess is that they didn't look at this. And my guess is that even if they did look at this, they wouldn't find it. But was there an attempt to see if in the vaccinated group there was an increased risk of something, anything like did the vaccinated group have more of some negative health consequence than the UNVAC they. Did look at that?

'''S:''' Because they looked at all they looked at, you know?

'''C:''' They looked at all costs, but what did they?

'''S:''' Did they did look at specific causes? As well that's.

'''C:''' Good.

'''S:''' There was number signal there as well. So good. And we're seeing that over and over again, even for the things that we know the COVID vaccine caused, you know, so.

'''C:''' COVID causes it more. COVID causes it more. That's exactly correct.

'''S:''' So like we know that like, OK, there was some cases of myocarditis, you know, yeah, it was cardioma. Yeah, you had some some people got inflammation of the heart with after the vaccine. It's still very rare, 101 in 100,000 to one in a million, something like that. But The thing is your risk of having that was much higher from COVID if you were not vaccinated. So again, the risk versus benefits still massively favors the vaccine. So, and that makes sense too, when you think about it, anything that the vaccine would cause the infection would cause worse, you know, having a an actual infection raging throughout your body rather than a controlled immune response specifically targeted, you know, against, you know, one of the proteins.

'''C:''' Well, and from a statistical perspective now, Steve, I feel like you can no longer be one of these denialists who claims, yeah, but the risk is even lower if I just don't get vaccinated or get Covic. But I don't know if statistically anybody has not had, right, You know what I mean? Like at this point, it's so prevalent that you have, if you've never had Covic, either you just didn't detect it or you have some sort of genetic anomaly that allowed you to, like, I don't know, be immune to it because most people at this point have been exposed to COVID. Yeah.

'''S:''' And you've had a self clinical infection. It's hard to see you guys when you're living in the woods, like if you're never exposed to it.

'''C:''' So there's not even an argument there. It's like there's basically only two groups. Either you're vaccinated and exposed or you're unvaccinated and exposed. You can't be unvaccinated and outrun this disease.

'''S:''' At this point, it's very.

'''C:''' Exactly, Yeah.

'''S:''' It's, I mean, there's probably some people out there, but it's not sure, not enough to work.

'''C:''' But not statistically important. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

'''S:''' Not statistically important. It's a good way to put it. Here's the other one last thing observation here, because the only real wiggle room for Pete, for anti vaxxers here is to say, well, it could be all the healthy user effect, right? I mean, they, they, you really can't argue about the reduced death from COVID. That's I think is pretty solid in this study. But the other 25% lower all 'cause mortality. But OK, you're right, it could all be the healthy user of food.

'''C:''' Why are they healthy?

'''S:''' That's the thing why are they healthier? Why are the people who That's not a good argument for being an anti vaxxer. You're you're admitting that anti vaxxers are make bad health choices overall. That's that's a pretty weak to fast.

'''C:''' Right, 'cause it's probably the case across all vaccines, yes. Right.

'''J:''' That's that's just kind of awesome right there.

'''S:''' That's the other thing, that people who get the COVID vaccine are probably more likely to be compliant with other vaccines.

'''J:''' And that's the exact type of logic they won't understand, right?

'''S:''' The healthy user effect equals the unhealthy non user. Effect.

'''C:''' Yeah, that's the other part of that equation.

'''E:''' It's not dark when the lights go on.

{{anchor|news_item4}}
=== Cosmic Rays Ground Aircraft (46:58) ===
{{shownotes
|weblink = https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20251201-how-cosmic-rays-grounded-thousands-of-aircraft
|article_title = Bit flips: How cosmic rays grounded a fleet of aircraft
|publication = www.bbc.com
}}

'''S:''' All right, Bob, tell us how cosmic rays grounded aircraft.

'''B:''' Yeah, this is really cool. 6000, yes, 6000 aircraft, about half the global A320 Airbus family fleet had to be held on the ground for an urgent software fix because of get this space radiation. So this of course, I dove into this like I got to get more details on this. So this started the day before Halloween, which is I guess what, 123, October 30th. This year. This year when an Airbus A320 suddenly dropped an altitude while flying from Cancun, which is in Mexico, to Newark, NJ in the United States. Some people, one to three people, it's unclear how many had head lacerations and at least 15 people were taken to the hospital after the flight which had to land in Tampa. I believe with non life threatening injury injuries. No major injuries, but they still felt somebody felt it was prudent for these fifteen people to go to the hospital after this. So Airbus fairly quickly determined that that one of the Airbuses computers that control the movable, the movable parts of the wings, right? And then the, the tail caused the problem, right? They further concluded that the malfunction was likely triggered by cosmic radiation that often interacts with our atmosphere. So that's that's what they concluded fairly quickly, I think. So let's see then the next big point here was that the European Union's Aviation Safety Agency, which is ESA EASA, released an emergency airworthiness directive on November 28th of 2025, this year, an emergency airworthiness directive. So here's a quote from that directive. An Airbus A320 airplane recently experienced an uncommanded and limited pitched down event, a limited pitch down event. The autopilot remained engaged throughout the event with a brief and limited loss of altitude, and the rest of the flight was uneventful. Preliminary technical assessment done by Airbus identified a malfunction of the affected ELAC as possible contributing factor. Now ELAC stands for elevator aileron computer. So that's the computer that controls the aileron. So if you, if you look at, if you like looking out of the window when flying like me, you've probably seen aileron many times, there are those hinged flaps on the trailing edge of an airplane's wing, right? So the computer that controls them had a problem and that's what caused this was their conclusion, as they, as they're now saying, or they said in the emergency airworthiness directive. The directive concluded, well, at least my collection of quotes concludes here, with This condition, if not corrected, could lead in the worst case scenario to an uncommanded elevator movement that may result in exceeding the aircraft's structural capability.

'''J:''' That's not good.

'''B:''' Clearly not good. And that's that's really saying something though, isn't it? Because modern commercial aircraft, they have amazing structural capability. I've seen, you know, like granted it was many years ago, but it was in 747 with its wings flapping like a bird, essentially under like the extreme stress and it was still holding together. So I got to imagine that they, you know, structurally they're they're pretty, pretty solid. But man, this thing could fail given a worst case scenario here, the United States FAA or Federal Aid Aviation Administration. They also released a similarly worded emergency airworthiness directive. So luckily though the delays and the cancelled flights weren't as horrible as they could have been. Some airports had had basically negligible impact, other ones had definitely more than negligible. There were flight cancellations and delays and stuff, but it could have been far, far far worse than that. And I think this is mainly due to the fact that about over 5000 of those planes, all they needed was just a softer update. And that can happened pretty fast. I think many planes were completed within within hours. I wasn't sure how how many planes they had done in just a few hours. But yeah, this is this is can be done fairly quick, as evidenced by the fact that there weren't that many delays and cancellations. The rest of the planes, though, close to 1000, they used older Elacs, you know, these computers and they had, they have to be manually replaced. And I'm not even sure if that's even done at this point. But that's obviously much more time consuming to to manually replace these these specific computers. So how did this happen? The most likely culprit here is almost certainly cosmic rays. We remember those guys, right? Oh, yeah. Oh, wait, no, OK, wait. Let me explain them again. Cosmic rays. Cosmic rays are energetic particles emitted by the sun, and they're also extremely energetic particles emitted from supernovae and even more energetic events that are out there. These cosmic rays aren't rays, but are for the most part accelerated cores of atoms that have had their electrons stripped away, right? So such of these are atomic cores, for the most part protons, but you can also get, you know, multi particle nuclear core, atomic cores as well. But that's, that's, that's the 9099 percenter, you know, is these cores and and primarily protons in that group. So the atmosphere protects us from these. But when they hit our atmosphere, some stuff happens, right? And it's fascinating what happens. So these, these cosmic rays come flying in at, at, you know, near the speed of light and they obliterate atoms. So which two atoms in the atmosphere do you think are hit the most?

'''E:''' Nitrogen.

'''B:''' And.

'''E:''' Oxygen.

'''B:''' Very good. Well done. Well done guys.

'''E:''' Want to know how we knew that?

'''B:''' I'm just so I'm just ecstatic that you're, you're paying attention. To that question, I got you I. Got you, bud. This, this obliteration creates secondary energetic particles that rain downwards. And 11A website was telling me that some of them go back out into space. But so if that's true, some of them go down, some of them go go back out into space. But we're concerned about what's going down here, right? So these secondary energetic particles rain downwards and they're further interacting with the atmosphere. They're interacting with each other. Some of these are also decaying into other particles. So all of this creates a zoo of secondary and even tertiary generations of particles and electromagnetic radiation that this initial impact from the cosmic, the energetic cosmic rays causes when it hits the the upper atmosphere. OK, they call this an air shower. This is an air shower and it continues until the atmosphere absorbs all of it, right? Because because you're losing energy as you're going through the atmosphere and stages, right, creating these first generation of particles, second generation of particles, third generation. So you're losing energy as it's being absorbed. So sometimes it's fully absorbed by the atmosphere, but other times some of the some of these secondary particles and tertiary or whatever make it to the ground. And I think muons are, is the one that I'm aware of that actually makes it to the ground. But it's still very safe to fly through all this crazy crap that's happening in the atmosphere with this air shower. It's still safe to fly through this. In fact, at cruising altitude, you are basically constantly flying through overlapping air showers. So you're going through it the the entire time, as far as I could tell, you're going through these air showers. It's just a normal part of the radiation background. You know, not a huge deal. Even crews that have been studied, these are these are, you know, crews that that's their job. They're on a plane at high altitude for hours and hours like every day, right? That's how that's how it works. And when they have been studied, typically the the increase in lifetime risk of cancer is just a little bit. It's, you know, it's, you know, it's just not a bit, not that big of a deal. I mean, sure, any increase sucks, but it's it's a minimal, it's a minimal increase, right? So it's not like you're just being irradiated, you know, horribly every time you you're flying in a plane. It's it's pretty small, OK. But The thing is with airline altitudes where, where these commercial air jets fly, it also happens to be near the sweet spot for some of these secondary particles, particularly like neutrons. That that's where you're going to run into a lot a lot of neutrons at these at these airline altitudes maybe a little bit higher than what's typical. But there's still there's a high neutron flux where airlines, you know, consistently traveled, you know with when they're cruising. And it's because of this high neutron flux from these air showers that cause many scientists to think that neutrons are likely the ultimate culprit here of that the the secondary particle part of the air shower created by the cosmic rays, It's the neutrons. And that's what they think caused the problem with this, this Airbus that left from Cancun now. So ultimately, though, ultimately, ultimately a new Tron is likely to have caused what they say is they describe it as a single event upset. And that showed up as a bit flip in a critical memory cell. So that's, that's the, the bottom line right there. But so let's unpack that a little bit. You guys have heard of bit flips, right? That's when a binary digit in a computer memory sometimes unexpectedly flips from A1 to A0 or A0 to A1. And of course, that could be very problematic, especially if it's a critical bit right in the critical part of of your hardware. So yeah, so that's, so that's a that's a bit flip. And we, that's, I'm not, I'm not even sure if we even mentioned that more than once or twice on this show over the years, but it's, it's, it's, it's, it's a common term that a lot of people are aware of. But now the a bit flip though, can be caused by many different things. It could be radiation, but it could also be electrical noise. It can be manufacturing defects. So there's it's kind of a generic term for this bit flip that could be caused by many different things. But when experts describe what happened here in this scenario with the Airbus, they, they typically will use a better term and that's a single event upset or a single event error. This term is used by engineers that work with radiation effects, right? Their job is to work with radiation and the effects of radiation. They will often use that term of a single event upset or a single event error. But also you hear that term a lot when you're when people when experts anyway, when experts are discussing avionics reliability, you'll hear about this. So a single event upset means specifically that a charge from radiation caused the bit flip, right? So when you hear single event upset, you immediately think, oh, it's radiation that caused it. It's not, It's not electrical noise. It's not a manufacturing defect. This is specifically caused by radiation. So now, if you're paying attention, and I know there's at least a few of you out there that actually are, you might be thinking, you might be thinking, how can a neutron deposit a charge if it's neutral? And that was. That was right. That was I was thinking, well, wait, wait, second, how does, how does this work? It does this by smashing into an atom, right? You get, you have the you have the, the cosmic ray causes secondary particles, creates neutrons that smash into the atom of the computer in the silicon right in the chip. They so it crashes into an atom in the computer and that collision releases charged particles like protons. And it's that charge, it's the secondary charge caused by the neutron hitting part of the computer. That's it's that charge that gets dumped into this tiny region of the computer chip and that causes the single event upset, which causes the bit flip, as our dad used to say. Jane, Steve, you follow me.

'''E:''' So we need planes that can filter out the neutrons.

'''B:''' Yes. Filter neutrons, baby. So you guys, we got to remember. And of course, this news item made me think of the time Rebecca was trying to make a state show with us and her flight got cancelled due to a volcano, which at the time, at the time I said was an awesome reason to to miss your flight because of a volcano. So getting getting your flight cancelled stinks. But I'd love to be able to say in this case, yeah, my flight got cancelled because of cosmic rays. I think that might be even better than a volcano. But I hope, I still hope it never happens.

'''S:''' They're both kind of cool.

'''B:''' Yes, both are as long.

'''E:''' As your flight.

'''B:''' Yeah, I might actually. Yeah, I don't want to head laceration in a plane. But the the big take away though from that is if you're seated on a plane, buckle up. Buckle. Up because you ever see those videos of people's basically flying up into the ceiling because of a wicked turbulence or maybe or maybe a cosmic ray induced elevation loss? Yeah, that that doesn't look like fun. So always break. It up. Please.

{{anchor|news_item5}}
=== Reverse Aging Claim (59:27) ===
{{shownotes
|weblink = https://www.aol.com/articles/simon-cowell-says-hes-aging-171258148.html
|article_title = Simon Cowell says he's ‘aging backwards’ thanks to controversial blood-rinsing procedure
|publication = www.aol.com
}}

'''S:''' All right. Thanks, Bob. All right, Evan, tell us about Simon Cowell's claim that he is aging backwards.

'''E:''' What's the curious case of Simon Cowell Benjamin Button Disease? Nice. Boy, if does anyone not know who Simon Cowell is, I guess I have to give you 2 sentences on him. A British television producer and talent show judge best known for his well, sharp and often blunt critiques on shows like American Idol, The X Factor, and Britain's Got Talent. He's pretty widely recognized as one of the most influential figures in modern reality TV and the music industry. So he's he's big time. Simon Cowell is 66 years old and he claims he is aging backwards. Now this was I read this over at an AOL article, AOL online, where Cal attributes his rejuvenation to a treatment he's been getting at a high end Wellness clinic. He will not specify exactly clinic that.

'''S:''' Much I just threw up in my mouth.

'''E:''' The The procedure involves removing his blood quote, cleansing it, and then putting it back into his body.

'''C:''' Nope.

'''E:''' Well, let me read the quote. Let me let me say it. And should I affect an accent now? I won't. I'll save the embarrassment. I go to this place, this Wellness clinic where they actually take your blood, they rinse it, they filter it, and then they put it back in your body. Then you do all these tests and they tell you your age. So I've actually aged backwards by eating better, more exercise, less stress in certain supplements, he adds, he said.

'''C:''' They they, they rinse it, they rinse your blood.

'''E:''' Yeah, that's stuck out to me too. Right. And oh gosh, so OK, according to the celebrities with their anti aging hacks, I mean, my gosh, how many of these do we really need? But they happen and they happen with high profile people like this blood removal. What's this all about? What exactly is he describing? Well, Simon doesn't name the exact procedure, but based on how it's described, you know, blood being taken out, filtered and reinfused, it is likely he's referring to apheresis or one of its Wellness branded derivatives, A pheresis that is, well, it's not new, it's not mysterious. It's a legitimate medical procedure that is used for very specific conditions, including removing harmful antibodies in autoimmune diseases, treating certain blood disorders, or removing excess cholesterol in people with familial hypercholesterolemia. Right. So too much cholesterol that you otherwise can't get rid of. Yeah.

'''C:''' But they're not just rinsing the blood.

'''E:''' No, no, no. And this is where I So the first thing that came to my mind is like, is this a form of dialysis? Because isn't that really what dialysis is? But dialysis and apheresis are two different things. I I looked. But in any case, that's this is how he just, this is how Cal describes it, right? Take the blood, take the blood, circulate it outside the body. You pass it through a machine that separates plasma from the blood cells. It removes whatever targeted components you know your doctors are going after. And then you return the remaining blood to the patient.

'''C:''' But they're probably doing literally nothing at this clinic. They're probably just taking out his blood and putting it right back in it, I would think.

'''S:''' So they could be, but even if they are doing what they're saying they're doing, it's all bullshit, right? So they're just, they're oxygenating it, which is ridiculous because your blood has the maximum amount of oxygen it can possibly have that, you know, I mean, like when it gets exposed to oxygen, it absorbs up to its maximal capacity to absorb oxygen, and then they're exposing it to ozone. Which is.

'''C:''' That's not good.

'''S:''' Right, which is supposed to induce oxidative stress.

'''C:''' Yeah, you don't want that.

'''S:''' Yeah, but they say, Oh yeah. But that's, it's like hormesis, right? It's it'll make your body defend itself from oxidative stress.

'''C:''' You know that's a. Pump your blood full of free radicals. That's a terrible idea then.

'''S:''' The filtering it like you know what? What are they filtering it of? You know if your kidneys are working, you don't need your blood filter.

'''C:''' And here's the thing, like, it's not just that. It's like, oh, you don't need it because everything works. It's it's harmful to take out too many minerals. It's harmful.

'''S:''' Yeah, free procedure.

'''B:''' No, and the risks that are there are a little scary. They're, you know, it's like this could be bad for like organ failure type stuff.

'''C:''' For sure, because your blood has the right amount of like salt and the right pH and the right amount of water. You go messing with somebody's osmolarity or they're, you know, pH like you can kill them.

'''S:''' We're also going to be taking out proteins. So when we do like this kind of pheresis, you have to put back albumin, right? Because then you're taking out all the antibodies. That's the main primary reason why we use this kind of, I don't know if they're doing that kind of pheresis, but if they if they are filtering out the proteins that would suppress your immune system and want to do that.

'''C:''' That's why I think they're just taking his blood out and putting it right back in them. They might and they're going. It's better we waved a magnet over. It.

'''J:''' But I think it's all bullshit too. I think they're just saying stuff.

'''C:''' Yeah, but I mean, physically he's watching his blood go into a tube and then come back in, so it's literally like they're just taking his blood out to turn around and put it back inside of him.

'''B:''' Yeah.

'''C:''' Yes, and even that is not without risk. You guys, I get iron infusions because I'm anemic. I got a blood clot from an iron infusion like and and it's likely that it wasn't the iron itself, just the physical act of getting an IV place like don't I'm not saying be scared of getting an IV. Like if you need an IV, get an IV, but don't get one if you don't need one.

'''E:''' But Cara, he claims it's reversing his aging though, because they're take because they're giving him tests that tell him, tests that tell him look how healthy you look. You're 66, but you have whatever metabolism or whatever markers of a 50 year old person.

'''B:''' Well, this quote though, but this quote in isolation here actually caught my attention. This is this is the quote from the article. It's he says, Evan you it says you do all these tests and they tell you your age. So I've actually aged backwards by eating better, more exercise. And. Less. Stress and of course, and. Supplements. But wait a second. Yes, that would actually work by by less stress, more exercise, and eating better. Yes, you will by many measures be aging backwards. Because that's what you should be goddamn doing anyway.

'''E:''' No, it's like Lucky Charms with the exactly with the complete whatever healthy charms part of a nutritious breakfast when taken with part of a new when taken with a nutritious breakfast, right?

'''B:''' Exactly. So forget all the crazy shit, just eat better, exercise and reduce your stress and that will Bobby that will do more than almost anything else you can possibly do.

'''C:''' So he's paying for potential risk of, you know, an injection, an IV puncture site and, you know, contamination because he's not doing this in a hospital. And and I mean, those risks exist anyway. So he's paying a lot of money for potential risk and for someone to literally say, oh, looky, your output is that you are you have a blood age of 50. Like that's like.

'''S:''' That's bullshit too.

'''E:''' Yeah, a Ouija board or something, one of those booze where the, where the there's a statue of a, you know, a fortune teller. You spit out a card to tell you. Oh, the, the, the, the dummy told me my fortune. It's so stupid, it's ridiculous. But look, this is a we've, we've seen this before. There's a lot of what like billionaires that go through these kinds of procedures and stuff. So it's a very trendy, high end wealthy person fad kind of thing that sounds.

'''S:''' If you have money to burn crap and you're afraid because you're old, you are prime target for this kind of thing.

'''C:''' But if you're going to get your blood taken out of you, at least get like the blood of, you know, the youth put back into you. I'm like, come on, jeez.

'''B:''' And then you start and. Some people are doing that, no? I know, I know. Wait, wasn't there some interesting test results from that? From that? I mean, I'm not kidding. I'm saying mice, mice results, Bob may not.

'''C:''' It may or may not work, but at least there's like some plausible reasons it could. This is straight up where does the myth come from?

'''E:''' Part of the hype comes from parabiosis studies in mice where young and old mice share a blood circulation, and some experiments showed partial rejuvenation effects of the older mice.

'''C:''' But yeah, that's what I'm saying. I'm not saying it works. I'm just saying if you're gonna go through the process, get some baby mouse blood. Baby mouse blood.

'''E:''' But they said there's even problems with the mice studies that don't even, you know, I mean, please, before you even start to talk about humans with this stuff.

'''S:''' You'd have more luck getting Borg nanoprobes.

'''C:''' Do that then instead. Come on, rich people, Let's get more creative than this at least, right?

'''E:''' Something that lights up and it's flashy.

'''S:''' Well, everyone, we're going to take a quick break from our show to talk about one of our sponsors this week, Quince.

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'''S:''' All right, guys, let's get back to the show.
{{anchor|wtn}}
{{anchor|futureWTN}}
== Who's That Noisy? + Announcements (1:09:52) ==

'''S:''' All right, Jay, it's who's that noisy? Time.

'''J:''' All right guys, last week I played this. Noisy what? Do you think?

'''E:''' Yes, I have a guess. I think it is the audio representation of the air showers that Bob was talking about on board an airplane. Thank you. Excellent.

'''C:''' It just sounds like a creepy soundtrack to like a Steven Soderbergh film or something.

'''J:''' That's that's legit.

'''C:''' You know, like it's like, oh, it's like creepy walking down a hallway.

'''J:''' But what makes that noise?

'''C:''' The mental spaces, Cara, you know, Oh, like a, like a didgeridoo. You're so cute.

'''J:''' No, you could, I bet you, you could get something kind of like that. With enough effects, you could get something similar to that. Not completely, but yeah, I can see that. All right, well, a lot of people guessed, A listener named Matt Soskin said it's a water powered organ and definitely not a bird. Yeah, this is, there is no bird that makes that noise. We all have to establish that amongst ourselves. It's not a water powered organ and now I want to hear what one of those sounds like, but that's definitely not it. Andy Barrett, Ronan said. Hey Jay, Andy from Cheshire in the UK here. Second time guessing, hopefully better than the first. I believe this is the sound of lightning being captured on the surface of Mars. That's not correct, but that's.

'''E:''' Cool. He brought that up, Jay. I think because there's recent footage captured by one of the Rovers of lightning strikes striking the ground on Mars. It was pretty darn cool.

'''J:''' Yeah, I I read about that too. Yeah, it's a good guess, but not correct, Cooper Parrish wrote in and said. Howdy, I think we're hearing elevator hoist ropes being played by someone in the machine room or shaft.

'''C:''' Oh, weird.

'''J:''' Yeah. So shaft, yeah, these steel cables are under tension and you could vibrate them and they can get that echoey sound in there. And it's quite a bit of space to reverberate. That's a really, really interesting and fun guess, but you are not correct. A listener named Steven Badham wrote in and said, I think this is a bowed metal plate being played in a reverberation chamber. Sometimes these sounds are used in soundscapes for theater or in movies to create a creepy atmosphere. This was a close guess, not completely there. And then we will move on to, you know, a couple of winners. Listener named Matthew Bush was the first one to guess correctly. He said, hi, folks. I think this week's noisy is a large orchestral gong, or Tam Tam being bowed by a percussionist. He's mostly correct. And we have another listener named Ben Romney who wrote in. Hey guys, love your show. You bring Sandy and Reason to an increasingly insane world. Keep up the good work. I think I've heard this week's noisy from a video circulating online. It sounds like the 60 inch Sean Aceto gong. And this clay, in this case, played by the amazing skill of Bear love, flew me. So Matthew guessed first, and it was a really good guess. He was a little bit off because it's not being bowed, it's being hammered by like a gong hammer. So Ben did get it completely correct. I see. So this is a 60 inch Sean Aceto gong. Like I said, there's a woman playing it who's wearing a black shirt and she has the word gong in large print on her T-shirt, which which is pretty funny. Let me play it for you again. Now, this isn't like someone smashing it with the hammer, right? This is someone who's like rubbing it kind of. It's a very, very large gong. How cool is that?

'''S:''' Cool.

'''J:''' Very cool.

'''S:''' For the record, Jay, if you exposed A lyrebird to that sound, they could make that sound.

'''J:''' If you think so, Yeah, I do. They don't have the. They don't have the hardware to make that basic. I don't know.

'''S:''' It's amazing what they could do.

'''J:''' We'll have to. We'll have to find one of those birds, Steve, and we'll see what we could do. All right, so this noisy was sent in by me and I'm going to play it for you immediately. If you think you know what this week's noisy is or you heard something cool, e-mail me at wtn@theskepticsguide.org. Steve Jay, we have tickets still available for our show in Seattle, right? We'll be in Seattle, WA. This will be on the January 10th. We're going to be doing a private show. This is a live podcast recording with all all five of us there and George Robb and if you care, Ian will also be there, but he won't be performing. He'll be working, which is him performing, I guess in a way. Anyway, we'll be doing a private show. Plus this is a three hour show, so we would do a live recording of the show and then for at least an hour mixed in, we do other fun things with the audience. If you've been to 1, you know what we different types of things that we do, but no two shows are the same. We just keep changing it up. And also that night, this is also on January 10th, we will be doing a Skeptical Extravaganza stage show. This is our show where we, we have a theme in this show which is you cannot trust your senses. And we will show you all the ways that you cannot trust your senses. It's also very fun, lots of laughter, lots of crazy stuff going on. Hosted by George Robb. If you're interested in either of these, you can go to theskepticsguide.org. There's buttons on there for those shows. We also have shows that are going to happen in Wisconsin. So if you're interested, we'll be in Madison, WI on May 1516, so go to the website.

'''S:''' So, Jay, people are asking about Australia next year. I guess the tickets are not up yet. They're not on the website yet.

'''J:''' They will be up probably within the next few days. Ian and I are working with the web developer for the Australian Skeptics and we're finalizing everything.

'''S:''' By some officials. We will be in LA on July 18th, 2026 for an extravaganza and private show. Then we'll be in Sydney, Australia July 22nd, 2026 for an extravaganza and then Nauticon Australia July 23rd to 25th. And then we'll be in Christchurch, New Zealand on July 30th for an extravaganza, and then for the New Zealand Skeptical Conference on July 31st and August 1st.

'''US#03:''' Cool.

'''S:''' Right, but then those tickets will be up sometime soon.

'''US#03:''' They're. Very soon. They're, they're coming.

'''S:''' They're coming, all right. So is Christmas.

'''US#03:''' With Christmas. Coming home.

'''C:''' There it.

{{anchor|email}}
== Emails (1:17:06) ==


'''S:''' Is all right, let's do a couple of questions and emails. So I was corrected by a few people on the pronunciation of Ralph Fiennes you.
== Who Am I (1:17:17) ==

None

'''C:''' Just did it wrong again his.

'''S:''' Name is spelled Ralph, right? That's Ralph, but it's pronounced in the old English way, Rafe.

'''J:''' Yeah, According to who, though?

'''S:''' According to. Him, According to him, although he said he kind of gave up correcting people because it's a lost cause because people are pronouncing it the way it's spelled. But the old English pronunciation is Rafe. So his name is Rafe Fines, which is interesting because I always either thought he was Ray Fines or Ralph Fines. And I think for a long time, until now, really, I didn't realize that I was remembering both versions of his name, but just at different times. I don't think about him that often. And sometimes he's Ray Fines, sometimes he's Ralph Fines. And I don't really remember. But now the only two people on the planet.

'''C:''' Yeah, both times you're.

'''J:''' Wrong on the planet calling him Rafe is himself and his mom.

'''C:''' That's not. True, everyone calls him Ray. Fine. Bullshit. They do every reporter, every time you hear anybody talk about him on TV, every time he's referred to.

'''J:''' Wait, so is his last name Ines?

'''S:''' Is it Rafe Ines?

'''C:''' No, this is the problem with. Having a name. That ends an F and a name that starts an F.

'''S:''' But here, so he's how many of those people in their heads are saying Ray fines and this sounds like Ray fines. Yeah. His mental There's no difference between Ray fines and Ray and Ray fines. There's no difference.

'''B:''' You know if. He wants to be called Ray. That's fine. My question. Is that's good one, Bob? Who did? Is this something that his parents gave him Ralph Rafe or did he did he like stings Come, come to the you know, the conclusion during his life, I want to be called this. My name is now pronounced this. Way Bob is. What is it? Did he come up with it or his parents?

'''E:''' Bob is basically asking who's to blame here.

'''B:''' Well, yeah, you can think of it. You can think of it that way, but I'm I'm just curious like where that came from.

'''E:''' His middle name is 55, by the way.

'''S:''' Right.

'''C:''' Right.

'''E:''' Well, it's not as bad as what that guy named NVIDIA, right?

'''S:''' Well, that's another thing, Cara.

'''C:''' Well.

'''S:''' It's funny, when you were doing it, I'm like, it's NVIDIA, but I just didn't bother correcting you.

'''C:''' But and in my head, like I'll tell you this, I knew this. Like I knew that I had done a story on them previously. And I was like, I think I pronounced that name wrong. I need to look it up. So I look it up.

'''J:''' It's wrong.

'''C:''' I said NVIDIA, yeah, because it's spelled NVIDIA. So I was like, OK, NVIDIA and then I looked it up and it was like, it's pronounced NVIDIA and I was like NVIDIA, NVIDIA, NVIDIA so NVIDIA like and I don't it's because if they want it to be pronounced NVIDIA, they should spell it NVIDIA, right Rafe?

'''J:''' Yeah.

'''C:''' That's different. They just made this name up whole cloth. Rafe's parents just went back to the old way that that name was always said.

'''J:''' I don't like any of it.

'''C:''' I don't either. Here's the kid. Here's the kid.

'''J:''' Pronounce shit anyway, right? So. So you throw a name like Rafe at him and his last name is Fines? What the hell? Who? Who thinks that this is going to work? Out.

'''C:''' But here's the thing, right? Like there are names from other cultures and other languages that are hard for English speakers to pronounce, and that's fine. This is an English we learned. This is, yes, OK, but it's Old English. That's not actually Old English, But like, if you just make up a name, just spell it in a way that people aren't going to have a hard time pronouncing it. Yeah, like, that's the annoying thing because I looked it up and apparently NVIDIA, which I'm going to say NVIDIA, NVIDIA is based on the Latin word NVIDIA, which is spelled with a freaking I at the beginning. Oh, there.

'''J:''' You go.

'''C:''' That's what they're basing it on. So just call your company NVIDIA.

'''J:''' I know it has to be NVIDIA.

'''S:''' Because that's not even the same thing. If you have to explain how your name is pronounced, that's a fail in my opinion.

'''C:''' And again, it's fine if it's because it's culturally or, you know, like linguistically from something else going on. But if you're like, oh, if I capitalize this one letter and then I hyphenate this thing, it's like Elon's kids, like nobody's ever going to be pronounce their names right.

'''J:''' Yeah, I agree with you. It's it's, it gets to the point where it gets to be a little too much.

'''C:''' It's. Annoying and so, but it's fine that we got literally, OK, not literally, I'm exaggerating, but a million emails about this that we're all like Cara, somebody needs to tell Cara that it's pronounced NVIDIA, it's the most important tech company on the planet and it's pronounced NVIDIA.

'''E:''' But got an e-mail that.

'''S:''' Said Here's the thing. How come when somebody has feedback for any of the guys, they say, Jay, this is the situation or Bob, you made this mistake. And when it's Cara, they say guys tell Cara.

'''C:''' Cara.

'''S:''' Why did they do that? It's.

'''J:''' Mostly. Everybody, it's Sophie. That's because everybody knows that until Cara has been with us for 15 years, she won't get a direct e-mail.

'''C:''' That's it. Yeah, that's the most charitable. It's because my lady brain couldn't handle the responsibility of also being. Here's the thing, when you guys e-mail plus, it goes to all of us. By the way, I read all of those emails about me in the third person. Yeah, don't write.

'''S:''' Don't write emails to all of us talking about Cara in the third person.

'''C:''' Yeah, don't think about.

'''J:''' This don't write emails to any of us complaining about Cara because if you think. The names. You know, it's like every once in a while on Reddit or whatever, I'm just like, Oh my God, the.

'''C:''' Life of a woman on the Internet, but but going back to the NVIDIA. NVIDIA, while I agree that it is a. Very shut up and. While I agree that it is important for us at whatever it's, it's not AB2B company like they do make consumer products. I hear you, but it's not a company that a lot of people like they make things that go in things. Does that mean it's a part? It's a part, yeah. So unless you're like component, you know, building your own computer or you're involved, which Which you guys do, Yeah, Yeah. Or you're involved in the tech industry. And yes, I think increasingly we are going to need to be aware of this company because it is. It is very important in the sector. I'll try, Madame, just to get it right. But I'm sorry. Every time I read the word, the word is screaming to be pronounced NVIDIA.

'''E:''' Do it. Do it. Cara just.

'''C:''' Isn't it? But look at that word and tell.

'''S:''' Me, I think I heard name before I saw it spelled, so I just.

'''C:''' Never had a problem.

'''S:''' Yeah, me too.

'''E:''' It's. Uncomfortable not having a vowel between the N and the V It just is.

'''C:''' Yeah. So you want to put one in there?

'''E:''' Yes. Row one in.

'''C:''' You want to say NVIDIA, not NVIDIA.

'''S:''' All right, ask.

'''E:''' Great.

'''S:''' That dead horse. Come on, we got another e-mail. This one comes from Barry Appleman.

'''C:''' I love that name.

'''E:''' Barry Yeah, but Steve deliberately pronounced.

'''S:''' It it could be Appelman, I don't know. It's AEPELMAN.

'''C:''' Oh, like Doctor Spacheman and Dirty Rock, but not a spaceman. But.

'''S:''' If I were Berry, I would be Apple Man, all right, Yes, he writes. European Union negotiators reached a deal on new rules for gene editing to help farmers produce healthier animals and crops. The new rules exempt gene edited plants and animals from the blocks regulations covering modified organisms because gene editing mimics the natural breeding process. Yes, the law still needs to be formally approved for the European Parliament and the EU Council to take effect. OK, so it goes a little bit more detail there. We'll have that in the show notes. But yeah, this is true. I've been following this and I looked it up just to see what the update is.

'''B:''' That sounds awesome, right?

'''S:''' Yeah, so they they made a new designation called New Genomic Techniques and GTS, and they're going to regulate them more like regular crops, not like GMO crops, because their GMO regulations are ridiculous and onerous. But they're saying, OK, so for things like, you know, CRISPR and other newer techniques, we'll just consider them not GMOs. They're genetic. They're new genomic techniques. It's gene editing, but not genetic modification. And what's the difference? The difference is, well, the GMOs make like significant changes to the to the genes, like introducing new genes that couldn't happen with breeding, whereas the gene editing is making the kind of gene edits that could happen potentially with traditional breeding techniques.

'''B:''' Yeah, just like a faster version of traditional techniques, right?

'''S:''' Yeah, but it's still it's a distinction without a difference in my opinion. They're splitting hair.

'''C:''' I hear you, but I I we've long made the distinction. I mean, this is what's always bothered me. I hear you. If you want to say this is a transgenic Organism versus a non transgenic Organism, like if you want to make that distinction in genetic research, fine. But like we already have a way to make that distinction. This is a trans gene. That's not that doesn't have a trans gene.

'''S:''' Yeah, but I would argue that there's nothing inherently rescue yet about putting a trans gene into an Organism.

'''C:''' No, I agree.

'''S:''' It's based on the, you know, this sort of essence appeal to nature kind of nonsense where it's like, oh, it, you know, a tomato gene is tomatoey and it doesn't belong in a banana plant. Whatever. It's like they're all.

'''C:''' Which is like every single fruit. Not every single, but most of the fruits you're eating and vegetables you're eating have already been bred with not the same species.

'''S:''' Right. And plants, all plants are going to share 70 plus percent of their genes. Already we share 60% of our genes with bananas. Humans do.

'''C:''' And bacteria swapping DNA in and out of us all the time.

'''S:''' So it's whatever, but the reason for this is pretty obvious because they realize that their onerous anti GMO regulations are causing a competitive disadvantage for EU farmers. And you know, there's lots of cool gene modifications coming down the Pike that are necessary to, you know, increase production, adapt plants to a warming climate, etcetera, etcetera. And like, well, yeah, we have to find some way to allow these new gene edited crops while still not looking like to the public like we're caving on GMOs. So this is their the compromise they came up with, which is fine that, you know, I still think it's like that they're making this this pseudo scientific distinction, splitting hairs between gene edited and GMOs. But at least they're allowing, they're making the exceptions for, you know, the newer technologies, which basically obviates a lot of their anti GMO regulations, which is good. All right. Evan. Yeah, Evan, you got a game for us called. Who said that?

'''E:''' Yes.

'''S:''' We've played this before.

'''E:''' We have played this before. Hey Steve, is it too late to change the name of the game?

'''S:''' No to your game called.

'''E:''' The game is called Who am I? Because when I told you in the name earlier, I had forgotten what the name of the game was and I went back and looked it up. Who am I? This.

'''S:''' Is Evan Bernstein.

'''E:''' Thank you. Next one in which I'm going to read a paragraph to you of somebody describing themselves and you have to guess who that person is. The person could be real or fictitious, but definitely has something to do with science or skepticism. OK, so it's not like going to be a baseball player, you know, something like that. Here's how it will work. I will start to read each of you. For each of these are allowed a guess. One guess. OK, if you know it, you will interrupt me by saying I know I will stop reading where I am and you will give your guess. I will tell you if you're right or wrong. If you're wrong, we keep going so the other players can play. Does everyone understand the rules of this so we don't blurt out the answer yourself? Correct, Do not out the answer. I would like to hear an I know. Nice and simple. OK, here we go. For most of my life, I've tried to make sense of a universe that refuses to give up its secrets easily. Singularities, the origins of time, and the strange fact that even a black hole isn't truly black if you look closely enough.

'''C:''' Carl Sagan, Jay.

'''E:''' Gets -1 for the breaking the rule and. You said I have to interrupt you.

'''C:''' Yeah, you interrupt by saying I know. You don't. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I said.

'''E:''' Jay, you're incorrect. I will continue to read and you're out of this and you're out of this 100, Steve.

'''S:''' Can I guess? Yes, I think it's Stephen Hawking's.

'''E:''' It is Stephen Hawking.

'''S:''' There we go.

'''E:''' Yep. OK, I'll read the rest of it through my voice. Eventually came the world, through a synthetic companion that never slowed my pursuit of answering the biggest cosmological questions. I spent decades perched in a motorized wheelchair, moving through the lecture halls instead of galaxies, but always with the same mission to show that the cosmos is not not just the domain of mathematicians and physicists, but something everyone can understand, even in a brief history. How's that?

'''C:''' I get it, Evan. So, like, the longer you talk, the more the more it gives it away. Yeah. Yeah.

'''E:''' All right, let's move on to the second one. I've spent my life listening to minds that behave a little differently. Patients who taste words hear colors.

'''C:''' I know, I know.

'''B:''' Oh, I know.

'''E:''' It was Cara, Oliver Sacks. Oliver Sacks.

'''B:''' Just after you do you.

'''E:''' Mean by a nanosecond. Or lose any sense of their own body, yet still reveals something profound about what it means to be human. I've chronicled these neurological adventures in books that blend science with storytelling, whether following a drummer who keeps time despite amnesia or a man who mistook one very unexpected thing for his wife's hat. When I wasn't writing, I was often on my motorcycle. I didn't know that swimming long distances or diving into music, which I consider as a diagnostic, as any medical test. So there you go, Oliver Sacks. Moving on. My life's work has revolved around understanding how the smallest forces in the universe can trigger outsized consequences. Gamma interactions. Energy thresholds. Cellular cascades. These were once purely academic curiosities, until an unexpected accident tied my Physiology to them in ways I'm still trying to unravel. Since then, I've kept to the margins, offering my expertise discreetly, careful to avoid stressors that could complicate things. Let's just say I've learned that emotional equilibrium is not merely a state of mind, but a matter of public safety. I prefer calm because the alternative can be overwhelmingly disruptive.

'''S:''' Could these be fantasy cut people?

'''E:''' I did say the yes that these could be either real or fictitious. All right, but having to do with science or skepticism?

'''S:''' Is that or? I'll take a guess, I know.

'''E:''' Go ahead, Steve.

'''S:''' Is that Bruce Banner?

'''E:''' That is Bruce Banner, very good. Yeah, that was a tricky 1 gamma interactions.

'''B:''' Oh, Jesus.

'''E:''' Careful to avoid stressors that could complicate things. Yeah, that was a tough one, but that was good.

'''B:''' Well done. No, it wasn't.

'''C:''' None of that would have helped me in.

'''B:''' In hindsight, it's goddamn easy.

'''C:''' Is it is. Is it Bob? Is it easy?

'''B:''' In hindsight, there are two more. We say Hindsight's 2010 here.

'''E:''' Here's the time to catch up, Bob. Two more most people come to me only after everyone else has failed, which is just the way I like it. Patterns hide inside symptoms the way secrets hide in people, and I've made a career out of prying both open, usually while limping through the hospital with a cane in one hand.

'''B:''' And I know.

'''E:''' Bob.

'''B:''' House.

'''E:''' Can I get a first name?

'''B:''' Doctor House is my aunt. Doctor. House Doctor. House.

'''E:''' Yes. Doctor House has a first name, too, if you want full credit.

'''C:''' Hugh Laurie.

'''E:''' Yeah, that's the actor who portrayed Dr. House. Yeah, it doesn't. And no one knows the.

'''S:''' I don't know his first name all.

'''E:''' Right. Then Bob, then Bob's going to get it. Bob will get it.

'''J:''' Wait, wait, hold on a second. You I got dinged for doing something wrong and Bob doesn't.

'''E:''' Why he? Didn't do anything wrong, he just gave a partial answer he gave.

'''J:''' The that's wrong.

'''S:''' It's funny, 'cause when you first said it, I'm thinking that's Sherlock Holmes.

'''US#00:''' I was too.

'''S:''' Then you did the medical thing. I'm like, no, it's the other guy who's supposed to be Sherlock Holmes, Bob. Bob chimed in first.

'''B:''' I think like in other game shows, I think that is plenty. Doctor Gregory. Not partial. Gregory did not know that. I never knew that. No, didn't know Gregory House.

'''E:''' OK.

'''B:''' Well, Bob. It was unreasonable to expect the. Let's give it to him.

'''E:''' Yes, I'm giving it to you, Bob.

'''B:''' I'm taking it you don't have to give it I.

'''E:''' Don't know? You're going to read the restroom. I'm going to go to the last one. Here we go one more. For years I wrestled with the heavens, convinced that the cosmos must be governed by elegant mathematical principles rather than perfect circles. Drawn out. Bob.

'''B:''' Is it Newton?

'''E:''' It is not Newton. OK.

'''B:''' Oh. God, what the hell is? This I think I know.

'''E:''' Rather than perfect circles drawn by ancient authority, working with meticulous observations from my colleagues, I found myself chasing patterns in the wanderings of Mars until its path finally surrendered its secrets. The planets travel in stretched curves, not circles.

'''S:''' I know.

'''E:''' Steve.

'''S:''' Johannes Kepler.

'''E:''' Johannes. Kepler. Kepler. Yes, Nice. Well. Done. Well done. Good job everyone. That was a lot of fun. That's good. I like.

'''S:''' I like how they get more. Of this game.

'''E:''' Yeah, yeah, the reveal. Yes, peel back layers as as we continue. So well played everyone. Jay you Jay, you played well too.

'''J:''' Hey, you know I try.

'''S:''' All right, well, let's go on with another game. Science or fiction?
{{anchor|sof}}
{{anchor|theme}}
== Science or Fiction (1:35:41) ==
{{SOFinfo
|theme = 1066
|hiddentheme =

|item1 = After the Norman Conquest in 1066, French became the official language of England, and remained so until 1362.
|link1web = https://www.humanities.ox.ac.uk/article/medieval-britain-if-you-wanted-get-ahead-you-had-speak-french
|link1title = In Medieval Britain, if you wanted to get ahead, you had to speak French | Humanities Division
|link1pub = www.humanities.ox.ac.uk

|item2 = The decisive technology of the Battle of Hasting was the stirrup, used effectively by the Norman cavalry, but not yet in use by their Anglo Saxon counterparts.
|link2web = https://www.history.com/articles/william-the-conquerer-battle-of-hastings-england-1066
|link2title = How William the Conqueror Won the Battle of Hastings
|link2pub = www.history.com

|item3 = Halley’s Comet appeared in the skies in 1066 and was thought to be a significant omen by both sides, and is even depicted in the famed Bayeux Tapestry depicting the Normal Conquest.
|link3web = https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halley%27s_Comet
|link3title = Halley's Comet - Wikipedia
|link3pub = en.wikipedia.org

|}}
{{SOFResults

|science1 = After the Norman Conquest in 1066, French became the official language of England, and remained so until 1362.

|fiction = The decisive technology of the Battle of Hasting was the stirrup, used effectively by the Norman cavalry, but not yet in use by their Anglo Saxon counterparts.

|science2 = Halley’s Comet appeared in the skies in 1066 and was thought to be a significant omen by both sides, and is even depicted in the famed Bayeux Tapestry depicting the Normal Conquest.

|rogue1 = Evan
|answer1 = After the Norman Conquest in 1066, French became the official language of England, and remained so until 1362.

|rogue2 = Jay
|answer2 = After the Norman Conquest in 1066, French became the official language of England, and remained so until 1362.

|rogue3 = Bob
|answer3 = The decisive technology of the Battle of Hasting was the stirrup, used effectively by the Norman cavalry, but not yet in use by their Anglo Saxon counterparts.

|rogue4 = Cara
|answer4 = The decisive technology of the Battle of Hasting was the stirrup, used effectively by the Norman cavalry, but not yet in use by their Anglo Saxon counterparts.

|host = Steve
|sweep =
|clever =
|win = y
|swept =
}}

'''Voice-over:''' Woo Hoo, it's time for science or fiction.

'''S:''' Each week I come up with three Science News items or facts, 2 real and one fake, and I challenge my panel of skeptics to tell me which one is the fake. We have a theme this week to.

'''E:''' Hemi.

'''S:''' Anyone have a guess as to what the theme is?

'''E:''' Christmas it's gonna be. Yeah, it's gonna be.

'''S:''' I'll give you a couple of hints.

'''E:''' Reindeer.

'''S:''' One is I've been waiting years for this OK and 2 is which episode number is this?

'''J:''' Oh gosh, I don't know.

'''E:''' Yeah. No.

'''S:''' It's episode 1066.

'''E:''' 01066 The Battle of Hastings.

'''S:''' Exactly. That's we go.

'''E:''' There we go. Battle of Ages, everyone.

'''S:''' 1060.

'''C:''' 6 You've been waiting years.

'''S:''' For well, I realized at some point, like at some point we're going to have episode 1066, I have to make that the theme of science or fiction.

'''J:''' And Cara, this illustrates just how boring. You go back for. Me. For me it was episode 666 that got me. Excited.

'''S:''' Yeah. Well, after that, what's the next big thing coming up? This is it. All right.

'''US#00:''' In 100 years this have lagged even the Battle of Hastings. Sure. OK, here we go.

'''S:''' OK, here we go.

'''E:''' I know nothing about this Battle of Hastings.

'''S:''' But after the Norman Conquest of 1066, French became the official language of England and remained so until 1362. Item number 2. The decisive technology of the Battle of Hastings was the stirrup, used effectively by the Norman cavalry but not yet in use by their Anglo-Saxon counterparts, and item number 3, Haley's Comet appeared in the skies in 1066 and was thought to be a significant omen by both sides and is even depicted in the famed Bayou Tapestry depicting the Norman Conquest. Evan, go first.

'''E:''' Do I get credit for knowing that this was the topic based?

'''S:''' On the yeah, you get to go first.

'''E:''' That counts as credit. OK, I'll take it.

'''C:''' Feels like a penalty.

'''E:''' All right, so the first one, did French become the official language of England and remained until 1362? First of all, I don't definitively know the answers to any of these, so it's this total guesswork. I am not drawing on any knowledge that I have. This one could be, you know, this is sort of the binary 1. So this has a 50% chance, you know, it's in a sense of being the fiction. So statistically, in a sense, without knowing really this fact that you, that this very well could be the fiction became the official language of England. Did it? Did it really? I have no recollection of it. I'm leaning towards that being the fiction. The second one about the technology, the Battle of Hastings, was the stirrup considered? Well, yeah, technologies, it's decisive technology. You know, we think of the weapons that they used to define sort of the technology anytime there's a battle. But the stirrup could have definitely been something that that that may have made a difference here. So, you know, where is my mind goes to armaments and stuff. This could wind up really being kind of the trick. One that winds up being correct. And then the last one about Halley's Comet appearing in the skies and the tapestry. Halley's Comet has been depicted in art, in tapestries, in, you know, paintings and many other things and across, you know, across many cultures, I believe as well. Did it happen in 1066? Was it the Battle of Hastings? I think it is. I'm going to go with my initial thought saying French did not become the official language of England. That one is the fiction.

'''J:''' Okay, Jay, I'm going to agree with Evan and say French did become the official language of England. No, he said. That's the fiction, correct? Actually, I'm going to agree with Evan that that is the fiction.

'''S:''' Okay, boom.

'''J:''' Just like that.

'''B:''' I believe that, yeah, some crazy stuff happened back then. I think French did become the official language of English. It was a crazy, it was a crazy time. And let's see the third one, Haley's Comet appeared in the skies in 1066. I'm not sure of all the the dates that appeared, but I think that's that's true as well. The second one though. The stirrup as this, this new invention, I think, I think there was something new that was used for the first time around that time, but I don't think it was the stirrup. So I'll say that that one is fiction.

'''S:''' OK. And Cara.

'''C:''' OK, so it's either that French was not the official language of England, which that one is so bizarre that I feel like that's probably science, or that the stirrup was not the decisive technology of the Battle of Hastings. Or that Halley's Comet did not actually appear in the skies and was not a significant omen and not depicted in a famous tapestry. I would think that if Halley's Comet did appear in the skies, it would be thought of as like a pretty big deal. And they probably, there probably would be art. So it's really a question of did it actually appear? I think the other stuff seems reasonable enough. And then the stirrup 1. I don't know, like, Evan, I thought you were going to pick this one because you were like, we usually think of it as like weapons. I think the decisive technology of any battle is whatever the weapons were. Or maybe the. Yeah. Or maybe the defense, you know, like maybe a shield or something that would either kill more people or prevent more people from being killed. And yes, I guess there could be an argument that a stirrup would help people stay on their horses better and therefore be more effective killers. But I also, it's possible, but I also feel like that kind of technology, it's a loop. Like really one side had it and the other side didn't. I feel like they could see it and go. That seems to be working. Let's make a bunch right now. Oh.

'''B:''' Wait. Oh wait, we're dead now.

'''C:''' True. But like, come on. I don't know, I feel like that one's the one that's bothered me because it's like, yeah, maybe the other side had some loops too to put their feet in.

'''S:''' So that's your fiction.

'''C:''' Yeah, I'm gonna go with Bob on that one.

'''E:''' All right, Steve, before you do the reveal. Oh, yeah. If I'm wrong, if I'm wrong, I think the technology, if it wasn't the stirrup, I think would the technology have been the Longbow? Maybe we'll find out.

'''S:''' That's Steve. Not a bad guess, Steve.

'''J:''' If I'm wrong.

'''S:''' Yeah.

'''J:''' I I want you to know I'm going to completely blame Evan, all right?

'''S:''' Noted. All right, so you all agree on the third one, so we'll start there. Haley's Comet appeared in the skies in 1066 and was thought to be a significant omen by both sides and is even depicted in the famed Bayou Tapestry depicting the Norman Conquest. You all think this one is science and this one is science. That is correct. It was there, they saw it. The, the, the Anglo Saxons were like, this is bad. And the Normans were like, this is good, especially after the fact. Yes, of course it foresaw our great victory or our humbling defeat.

'''B:''' Means whatever I wanted to mean.

'''C:''' OK, so you're saying the Normans won, so maybe French was the official language?

'''S:''' Yes, you didn't know the Normans won.

'''C:''' You know about this battle?

'''S:''' It's why it's called the Norman Conquest.

'''C:''' I don't know if you just made all of this up, Steve.

'''S:''' Oh my God.

'''C:''' I am I am not an English War history.

'''S:''' There is a.

'''E:''' Game of Thrones.

'''S:''' Historical drama on TV right now about the Norman Conquest. All right, so, but here's something.

'''B:''' I almost used this room.

'''S:''' See the thing? I I was kind of, I was assuming you guys had a basic knowledge of the Battle of Hastings.

'''B:''' I did wrote these.

'''S:''' And clearly that was incorrect. So have you ever seen the Bayou Tapestry though? Like it's.

'''B:''' No, never seen it.

'''E:''' I probably have but don't recognize it as such.

'''S:''' Yeah, I'll, I'll, I'll go. With I almost use that one as the the fiction big in that the Bayou Tapestry is not a tapestry, it's an embroidery.

'''C:''' Bayou.

'''E:''' Embroidery.

'''S:''' Technically not a tapestry, it is an embroidery.

'''E:''' Does that mean it was knitted?

'''C:''' And then no it.

'''S:''' Means it was embroidered, Evan stitched.

'''E:''' I know.

'''J:''' OK, All right. Come on. We're boring. Move on. God.

'''E:''' Wow all.

'''S:''' Right, So we'll go. We'll go, I guess, backwards order. The decisive technology of the Battle of Hastings was the stirrup, used effectively by the Norman cavalry but not yet in use by their Anglo-Saxon counterparts, Bob and Kerry. You think this one is the fiction, Evan and Jay? You think this one is science? Now again, I was calibrating this to people who have some basic knowledge of. The Battle of Hastings. It is common knowledge, in my opinion, that the stirrup was the decisive technology of the Battle of Hastings.

'''B:''' But.

'''S:''' The yeah, the Northern Cavalry, they were able to stand up in the stirrups and brace themselves, put all their weight behind their lances, and they stayed in the saddles. They were more stable. They were able to stay in in the South of two nights on in horses going against each other. The one using the stirrup effectively has a massive advantage over the other one.

'''C:''' Wait, Steve, you actually thought I had this knowledge in my head?

'''S:''' Totally.

'''C:''' I did.

'''S:''' I did, yes.

'''C:''' Is this an example of like when you play poker with somebody who doesn't know what they're doing and then they win and it pisses you off 'cause they should have never been in the hand?

'''B:''' A better example would be Kirk beating Spock at 3 dimensional chess. But we get we get your example.

'''C:''' OK, no.

'''S:''' Carers example is better, so I disagree, but this is the fiction for two reasons.

'''E:''' Jay, don't hate me.

'''C:''' Yeah, Bob, thank you.

'''S:''' One noise, the. Stirrup was in use for 300 years. By 300, the Angle Saxons absolutely had stirrups, it just never occurred to them to use it in this way in combat. So the Normans used the stirrup way more effectively than the Anglo Saxons. But they had, they were using stirrups. They had stirrups.

'''C:''' That's extra dumb then. So not only did they see them with stirrups and not have to make their own, they saw them stand up and didn't think to do that too.

'''S:''' It was a technique. Well, again, they this is when they learned that, oh wow, they were really effective at using those stirrups. We hadn't thought of using them in that way. They were obviously trained to use them in a certain way that gave them a massive advantage. But it's also while that's the conventional wisdom, it is it is a controversial one role that actually played in the in the battle, like was it decisive? May probably not the you know. Was anything decisive? Yeah, the thing that probably did it that like changed the battle, was that what William the Conqueror did was he, they feigned a retreat. So you basically had the the the Anglo Saxons were relying on their shield wall and the Normans couldn't breakthrough the shield wall even with their stirrups, right. They couldn't breakthrough. So then they feigned a retreat some some of the people in the shield wall broke ranks to chase them, and then they wheeled around and attacked the weak point in the wall and broke.

'''B:''' That was the entire that was the entire battle right there.

'''S:''' It was brilliant. Yeah. I mean, so this is what we think, right? That this.

'''C:''' Is because this was an era of people literally just lining up in rows right? Like marching shield? Wall.

'''S:''' It was a huge shield.

'''C:''' Yeah.

'''S:''' It was a huge Steve technique, yeah.

'''C:''' Yeah.

'''S:''' Derived mainly from the Romans, by the way.

'''B:''' Yeah, So I'm familiar with this battle mainly because I listened to an audio book by David Mitchell of Mitchell and Webb called Unruly, The Ridiculous History of England, England's Kings and Queens. This, this. I mean, I'm not a big, I don't read history books really. I mean, focus more on whatever science and geeky stuff, but I'm not, I'm not a big science nerd. But I listened to it, didn't think I was going to like it. But this is David Mitchell. He made it hilarious and entertaining, which is so hard to pull off. And, and I if I didn't listen to that book, I might not have done as well tonight. So I mean, I'm just recommending it. If anyone likes David Mitchell, I mean you just. Have he's like total just. Humor, right? He is absolutely. And I'm not a big history guy and I loved it. So if you if you like or love history, I think you'll be nuts over this book. Unruly by David Mitchell. Just going to throw that out there. I loved it. He's trying to. Stir it as well.

'''C:''' There it is, thank. You all right?

'''S:''' Which means that after the Doorman conquest in 1066, French became the official language of England. That remains so until 1362 is science almost 300 years. And what that means is French was spoken by nobility. It was spoken in the court crazy. And it was a spoke in courtrooms, in not only the noble court, but in any legal proceeding. Latin was still spoken by the church and the common folk spoke English. But if everybody who was anybody spoke French for 300 years and there was a law passed in 1362 saying that all legal procedures had to be done in English, that's that's what ended that era.

'''C:''' So there must have been like a few decades after 1066 where people were like, I have no idea what anybody is saying.

'''S:''' But it was the nobility that took over England. That's like we're speaking. French, right?

'''C:''' That makes sense. That makes sense.

'''S:''' And it was, you know, they say it was Norman angle French, whatever, but it was still French. It was that whatever version of French and and French was actually the language of aristocracy in Europe into the like the early into the late 1800s. I think around that time. It it survived in a long time as the language of aristocracy. Alright, well, good job Bob and Cara, despite your relative lack of knowledge in the battle.

'''C:''' Of Hastings.

'''S:''' This is one of those things like I just grew up knowing this, right? To me, this is just like, everyone knows this, right?

'''C:''' It's just hard to.

'''S:''' Yeah, just.

'''B:''' Very, very short sighted of.

'''S:''' You it was, but still it was it was I wanted just wanted to talk about the Battle of Hastings and.

'''B:''' You. Got it now.

'''S:''' I'm glad you had fun.

'''B:''' You waited 20 plus years of.

'''S:''' This I'm agonizing over what I should make. I almost. The other thing I almost made it to fiction was the Battle of Hastings. Of course didn't take place in Hastings, right? That's true. Did not take place in Hastings. Of course it took place 7 miles away on a hill.

'''J:''' Hill, yeah.

'''S:''' Near a town, and the town today is called Battle. That's the name of the town.

'''J:''' Yeah. It's really interesting Shit. It was.

'''S:''' Named that after of course the battle, but by.

'''E:''' Some guy named Rafe.

'''S:''' Initially it was the battle near Hastings.

'''J:''' Yeah.

'''S:''' And then it morphed into the Battle of Hastings.

'''J:''' It's really cool if you, if you actually care about his.

'''S:''' I'm like, I could say the Battle of Hastings took place in York. Would they realize how far away Hastings is from York and how implausible that is?

'''E:''' Probably. To be a moron, to not know how far Hastings.

'''C:''' I don't know if I would have known it was in England before you started talking.

'''E:''' Norman is French.

'''C:''' What?

'''S:''' So if I said to.

'''B:''' You. I think I know what I'm getting you punks for, Chris.

'''S:''' Mercia, you have no idea what?

'''E:''' Mercia. Londonium.

'''B:''' Londonium. I love that Londonium. Wait, why did you say Londonium? Where did you get that?

'''E:''' I got that from the the what that movie, the guy the Guy Ritchie movie of King Arthur. What was it called? Because they called it Londonium in that movie.

'''B:''' That's hard because.

'''E:''' The Legend of the Legend of Excalibur or Legend of the Sword I.

'''B:''' Think it's called because I heard it. I heard it from a short audio story that has the best opening sentence of any short story I have ever read. And that line is, I knew when he walked into the barbershop that his beard was evil. And that's the opening line. And then the narration and the story are wonderful. It's just I wish I. Remember, that's a pretty good opening line. That's a great opening line and and he makes it work. And then the narrator is basically a God in this in this short voice. His voice is an instrument like few narrators I have ever. Ever. Heard before.

'''C:''' Steve, I googled it so now I know what it is. Can you name all 7 kingdoms?

'''S:''' Oh, I don't like Northumbria, Wessex. Mercia.

'''C:''' That's pretty freaking good.

'''J:''' He's looking at Chachi. I'm not.

'''C:''' He's Anglian.

'''S:''' I was watching the series. First of all, I watched The Last King.

'''E:''' Westeros.

'''S:''' Which is about also in the same era.

'''J:''' And now he role played this battle like 2000, right?

'''E:''' And he played right.

'''C:''' He played Call to Hastings Part 2, so you probably know that they called it the Heptarky.

'''E:''' No way. The hep.

'''C:''' Yeah, the Hep Turkey.

'''J:''' Karen, the thing you need to know about Steve is that he remembers almost everything that he reads.

'''C:''' Well, but here's the thing.

'''J:''' That's.

'''S:''' Not really true.

'''C:''' I remember a lot of things I read too I would never choose to read about. Oh, I love this kind of history. That's the difference. I love history too but I think I am just not an anglophile. Like I could care less about all the are you a frank white dudes fighting over land.

'''E:''' Oh, OK, yeah.

'''C:''' It's just not my area of history that interests me.

'''B:''' OK, before we go. I found the name of that awesome short story. It's it's from the it's from the podcast called Pod Castle episode 229. The name of the short story is the Tonsur S Son. Wonderful short story and narration.

'''S:''' Cool.
{{anchor|qow}}
== Skeptical Quote of the Week (1:53:35) ==
{{qow
|text = "We are all flawed and creatures of our times. Is it fair to judge us by the unknown standards of the future?”
|author = ― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
|lived =
|desc =
}}

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

'''E:''' Before I do that, I want to note that we just set the record for the longest post.

'''B:''' Yeah. Oh, science.

'''E:''' Or fiction, You're right.

'''B:''' History.

'''E:''' It only took to episode 1066. Well, please.

'''B:''' This this was an extra fun episode that I think might go on my list for next.

'''E:''' Week This is a fun episode.

'''B:''' For recency bias, we just. Yeah, that's true. Absolutely.

'''C:''' He's just happy that we want science or fiction.

'''B:''' Yeah, that. Too. That too, but I think we're laughing more than usual.

'''E:''' Here's the quote. We are all flawed and creatures of our times. Is it fair to judge us by the unknown standards of the future? So wrote Carl Sagan in his book The Demon Haunted World. Science is a candle in the dark.

'''S:''' I remember that line.

'''E:''' And this is a question we talk about on the show. It does come up.

'''S:''' Yeah, it's a, it's a very interesting question. You know, to what extent do we judge people by the standards of their time versus our current standards? And it's it's complicated.

'''B:''' Not as often as we should. Yeah, it's definitely. Very complicated.

'''C:''' And also to what extent do we give people a pat? Like do we assume that the worst in people of the time was the standard of the time? Because there are always the people who weren't doing that.

'''S:''' Right.

'''C:''' Like any time we look in the past, there were always progressive and inclusive and yeah, but it's like, where was the.

'''S:''' Center of gravity and another standard. If you lived at that time, how would you be right? Because I think we all think, of course we would be the progressives of that time or we would be the people. The more modern thinking of that time now, chances are you as as Seinfeld said, you would have been goose stepping right along with all the other. Nazis.

'''C:''' Yeah. I mean, I disagree because we're living in this this time. We're living in this time. And I know where I stand on this political spectrum. That's true. You know, So I think we are living in. I don't mean you.

'''S:''' Specific care. I'm just saying like the general, like people.

'''C:''' Exactly. It's it's a bell curve I.

'''S:''' Mean it's a bell curve and and if you're in the middle of the bell curve of your time, you know.

'''C:''' How responsible are you? How are that?

'''S:''' Are we going to fault people for that versus? And that's the tough one, the language, our parents.

'''E:''' Use doing it.

'''C:''' Yeah, well, it's.

'''S:''' Easy to be where we are, especially if you're in the middle of the bell curve now and you're, you know, hating on people who were in the middle of the bell curve 200 years ago. That's what I'm saying. There's a little hypocrisy there.

'''C:''' Absolutely, Yeah, there's always a norm and we're always in history. So how do you, where are you relative to the norm right now?

'''S:''' Yeah, yeah.

'''C:''' Ask yourself that.

'''S:''' But it is interesting. I often think about like, how hard it is to get out of history and to look at something objectively. Like people don't know that they're in history. You know what I mean? If you look back at people, like, don't they know they're in the middle of the revolution? Like, whatever, they don't, they don't know that. I just watched Ken Burns American Revolution.

'''C:''' I'm watching that right now. It's.

'''S:''' Fantastic it is, but he's really good at continually reminding you that these people didn't know they were in the middle of the American Revolution.

'''C:''' They're just living their lives in the man. It's getting violent out.

'''S:''' Yeah, they're just doing what they're doing and even.

'''E:''' Aeons but.

'''S:''' But the way it, the way it unravels is just really interesting. It's like, yeah, they weren't planned. The thing was planned. It just sort of happened. In a lot of ways. It's very interesting. All right, enough of that. Don't forget to send us your choice for the best of everything for the neck for our year entry episode. And until next week, this is your Skeptics Guide to the Universe.

{{Navigation}}

SGU Episode 1066

2025-12-29T21:33:59Z

Mheguy: Created page with "Transcription bot failed to generate this episode page."

Transcription bot failed to generate this episode page.

SGU Episode 1068

2025-12-28T04:01:06Z

Mheguy: Page created (or rewritten) by transcription-bot. https://github.com/mheguy/transcription-bot

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|episodeIcon = File:1068.jpg
|caption = "Exploring the highlights and controversies of 2025 in science and skepticism!"
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{{anchor|intro}}
== Intro ==

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

'''S:''' Hello and welcome to the Skeptics Guide to the Universe.
== Best and Worst SGU of 2025 (00:12) ==

None

'''S:''' Today is Thursday, December 17th, 2025 and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella.
== Science News of the Year (00:19) ==

None

'''S:''' Hey everybody. Cara, Santa Maria.

'''Voice-over:''' Howdy.

'''S:''' Jay Novella.

'''E:''' Hey, guys.

'''S:''' Evan Bernstein.

'''E:''' Good evening everyone.

'''S:''' And we have a special guest, Ian Callinan. Ian, thanks for joining us again.

'''E:''' Hello. Hello, everyone.

'''S:''' How are you?

'''E:''' You know. They can see you.

'''S:''' Good Man has become a regular on our year end wrap up show. This is it, the last show of 2025.

'''E:''' Oh my gosh, what are you? What a year.

'''US#06:''' What a Goodyear, right?

'''E:''' We'll have one or two things to say about this year. Coming.

'''S:''' Yeah, how much worse can it get? Don't, don't.

'''US#06:''' Even wait a couple hours.

'''E:''' Yeah, yeah, right. Wait.

'''S:''' Gosh, I would not assume.

'''J:''' I'll break the ice here by letting everyone know that I'm I'm sick with the flu and we told them last week, OK, alright. I just, I just want people to know, 'cause like that is.

'''E:''' Still sick?

'''C:''' But also, it hasn't been a week since we recorded, it's been 2. Days, yeah.

'''E:''' Yeah, it's been a week in podcast time. It's been 2 days in reality. Podcast. The week really flu it's. Forever, OK. Thanks anyway.

'''J:''' Now does anyone? Wait, am I not supposed to resign last? Year at this time.

'''C:''' I was sick last Christmas. Were you sick last Christmas or the month before? Also I.

'''J:''' Right around this time of year, like the pattern is, my daughter goes to school, apparently his best friends with whoever the most sick kid is.

'''US#06:''' Yeah.

'''J:''' And then she comes home and infects me. And then I infect my wife.

'''US#06:''' Yeah.

'''S:''' That's that's having kids.

'''J:''' They are Petri dishes.

'''US#06:''' Is that good for us as no parents? OK. Thank you.

'''C:''' It's not it's not good to be exposed to deadly illnesses all the time.

'''US#06:''' Oh well, some my uncle on Facebook said otherwise so.

'''E:''' I watched a TikTok video once and you. Know oh why thank.

'''US#06:''' You.

'''C:''' Last year I had a a cold over the over Christmas. It wasn't the flu, but it was a cold and I had, I, I got COVID. I can't remember if it was just before or just after, maybe like a month apart and my cold was like 10 times worse than my covad wow I felt. So. Ill. And when I had Covic, it was like the sniffles for a few days.

'''E:''' Did you have the vaccine?

'''C:''' I have been vaccinated 3 cards worth times.

'''E:''' Has any? Were you close to anyone else around you who was also suffering that a cold with similar symptoms?

'''C:''' It's funny, I couldn't find patient zero for that one. I got, I got magic sick. No, I'm, I, I, I have a feeling that I caught something when I was at the pharmacy picking up meds. I remember somebody coughing in the aisle and I held my breath as I walked by, but I had that feeling that doesn't work. That's me. I'm sick. I'm sick right now myself. Get sick from that.

'''E:''' I, I, I do know the moment I can pinpoint a moment where I'm like, OK, I have a cold coming. This is it my.

'''C:''' Oh, same.

'''E:''' My throat is sore. Yeah.

'''C:''' But you know how you try to wield it away? For the first two days, I.

'''E:''' Know I'm like oh Advil get Advil.

'''C:''' Quick Yeah, you're like, it's not really. I just slept with my mouth open.

'''S:''' No, I always know when I'm going to get really sick. It sucks at first. Like shit, this is it.

'''C:''' It's the tickle. The tickle in your tickle.

'''B:''' So uncomfortable. I remember colds.

'''C:''' Jay, how did you know? Because the flu is like a whole other beast. It's so much worse than a cold.

'''J:''' Yeah, it starts with a like an internal itch. You know, you get like that, you get that like, oh, what's going on? You know, like, and there's always that disdain, but it progressed very quickly. Like I went to bed. I'm like, I feel, you know, I feel like I something's happening, you know, because my sinuses. And then I wake up the next day and I'm like, oh God, this is it hit hard. And I, and that was the entire day. I was suffering from the chills. And that was really horrible.

'''C:''' And it's that malaise. I mean, it's the perfect word for how you feel when you have the flu.

'''J:''' But it's remarkable of how your energy is gone, like just utterly gone. Like I got up a couple of times.

'''B:''' Today, What's going on there?

'''J:''' I had to rest from going to the bathroom, you know?

'''B:''' That's a lot of work sometimes. He's winded after. Ian.

'''US#06:''' This. Is a good actually it is a good segue because I was going to say can you think your way out of that like being sick OK because I wanted to bring up I know if this was what you were going to ask me I wanted to bring up like the failure of the power of positivity if I may a little bit so the last like like week ago or so I attended a funeral of a family very sad thank you I know he had pancreatic cancer. It was like very aggressive. He he survived the whole year like from the diagnosis.

'''S:''' That's the average life expectancy diagnosis is one year.

'''US#06:''' Yeah, yeah. So like now he was like a little wooey, but like his siblings were all like very like pro science. So like, we did all the things. We went to New Haven, Yale, tried experimental things. You know, it didn't work, obviously.

'''B:''' Yeah.

'''US#06:''' But, you know, the thing I wanted to bring up is, like, the power of positivity kind of infected everybody in a way that I found was actually troubling because even the week before he died, they're still ordering, like, medical devices to, like, get him in and out of bed. They were besides themselves with like, oh, he'll recover. He was the youngest. He was only 60 when he died, you know, like, he was the baby of the siblings. He's like comedian, the glue of the siblings sort of thing, you know, So like, they were really shook up about it. But the, the power of positivity, I feel like, blinded them to see what was common.

'''C:''' Yeah. That's so common.

'''US#06:''' With the funeral that we had no plans for him, like didn't know what he wanted. Y'all kind of just winged it, didn't really know what the burial should be, didn't know any. And and so much so that they kind of fell for the idea of like, we should bring him home so he's comfortable while he recovers. So much so that he by the time he got to Hospice, it was like too late. The nurses weren't prepared. Even one of his siblings was a Hospice nurse and he said it was like the worst thing you'd ever seen. Wouldn't drain his fluids, give him medication?

'''C:''' That's really common. People go to Hospice long after they should have first gone to Hospice. And when I say should, all I really mean by that is for them to have had good quality of life after they've stopped taking life sustaining treatments or, or, you know, cancer fighting treatments, because in Hospice, there's so much comfort care available to you. And a lot of people wait so long that some of those things can't really be, you know, taken care of as well as they could have early on. A lot of people have when they if they make the decision at the right time, they have time to do things that they want to do and, you know, engage in bucket lists and things like that. But be.

'''US#06:''' Cara, how do you breakthrough that wall?

'''C:''' Well, it's OK. So I work with the patients mostly, but people on my team work with the families as well. And I have worked with families, I, it's not uncommon for me when I first see a patient in the Cancer Center for them not to have an advance directive and for them not to have thought about a lot of these things. So big thing that we do in therapy is go there, we go to the hard place. And when the patient goes to the hard place, sometimes that helps the people around them go to the hard place, but sometimes it doesn't. So a lot of what we do is work on how we cope with the fact that the bubble of people around the patient aren't thinking realistically about the end. The patient is often the only one right is.

'''S:''' I think people feel, I think people feel a lot of pressure to be positive. Yeah, of course, to be supportive. I'm going to like focus on the hope and the positive angle and right. And then that morphs into the magical thinking of the power, educated positive power of positive thinking. Like you can fight, you can fight, you can, you know, just think positive thoughts and everything will be all right. But that's not a healthy approach to this at all. That that then morphs into denial, which I've seen as well. You know, as you know, for a time I was treating a lot of patients with ALS and the denial was the worst thing. That was the absolute worst.

'''C:''' Thing especially with ALS.

'''S:''' ALM string the management and yeah, the the approach is that you have to gently but firmly tell them like it is, make them answer questions like you, we have to decide whether or not you're going to get intubated when the time comes, etcetera, etcetera. You just force that and then you give them time to we have to just start early. You know, you don't push early and you can even months, you know to come to terms with what's happening. But the to the extent that patients go into this positive thinking denial, they absolutely harm themselves in so many ways. It is absolutely harmful. I agree.

'''US#06:''' Is this just like a cultural thing?

'''C:''' It is, I think it can be very cultural. It's hard to when you're working with patients where culturally there are some pretty strong rules around what you can and can't talk about because obviously I work in A and you did too, Steve, like a large hospital in a, in a large city, right, with which is a huge melting pot. It's very multicultural, but a few things that I, I would say, Ian, one of the things that I do, it doesn't solve the problem, but it, I think it, it's important to me is I don't use euphemisms. And Steve, I know we've talked about this too. I say the word death and dying. I don't talk about passing or when you go or when you, I'm like very clear in, in my language and I start to normalize that language early. And but I also measure the patient's reaction to that and work with them on their death anxiety. The other thing, though, is that there's a fine line between hope and, as you mentioned, denial. And it's not bad to have hope so long as, and I use this phrase all the time, so long as we understand that hope is a moving target. What we hope for changes based on the progression of our illness when we can't move with the target. And we're maintaining hope that we had upon diagnosis when we still have treatments available to us that have the potential to be life extending. But now let's say we've exhausted all our resources. We've already gone through all the clinical trials and the our oncologist is saying there is nothing left for treatment and it's time to start talking about your end of life options. If you're still hoping that you're going to get better, that's problematic.

'''S:''' So the the other layer here that has a massive influence on how you well you're able to navigate this whole situation is the amount of trust that the patient and their family has in the system. And this is where the really terrible effects of conspiracy thinking and all of the anti sort of medicine alternative crap and Wellness industry propaganda is so harmful because when there's a lack of trust and you're telling them, trust me, you have a year to live, we need to you need to prepare for it. They're like, fuck you. I'm going to, you know, I'm going to do other things. I don't trust what you're telling me. And then they go out, they spend all their money, they, you know, waste their time. They don't make important decisions that they have to make. It's really harmful.

'''C:''' And it's hard, it's hard to know what anybody, even the most, the strongest skeptic, it's hard to know that what they would do when they realize that there are no good options. You know, we'll all kind of sometimes try things that are a little extreme if we have the disposable income to do it. Or if we're, you know, if even though it's a long shot, we don't see any downside, we may do things that we wouldn't think we would do when we're. Well, yeah, I think one of the biggest concerns that I see, and Steve, I'm curious about your take on this and and Ian, I'm wondering how much insight you have into this. I struggle when I see patients working with providers where the providers have not managed their own death anxiety and so the providers aren't being very clear, they're not giving true prognostication, They're sort of kicking things down the lot. We'll worry about that when that's an issue. Right now, I want you to focus on getting well. And I see this, you know, not a lot a lot, but I see it enough that I find it really difficult to deal with.

'''S:''' You know, I'd I'd say I hate to start the show this way, but this is an appropriate discussion for 2025, don't you? Think it is.

'''E:''' Well, yeah, it's absolutely. Yeah, sorry about.

'''US#06:''' By comparison, it's happening. Here.

'''S:''' Ian, the question I was going to ask you.

'''US#06:''' Sorry.

'''S:''' Is when is the first episode of political reality?

'''US#06:''' Oh my God. Oh. God, now you're really putting the screws to me. So we just finished actually a little intro video that we're going to be editing it up, but we have like 7 episodes in the can. They just need a little refinement I think. And I think we're going to post it both by the end of the year, the first of the year, maybe January you. Know we start the year on straight. Decided on that. That's what I thought too. It's like, hey 2026, we're fixing.

'''S:''' Yeah, at this point you must just say like first week of January of January, we'll.

'''US#06:''' Post yeah, whatever. We still haven't figured out the exact day, but yeah, let's let's let's do first of the year.

'''S:''' We have to make it happen.

'''US#06:''' We'll commit to it. We'll make it. Make it so.

'''S:''' OK, people are starting to doubt that it exists.

'''US#06:''' No, it exists. I keep telling them, and they're like, editing is so easy. You could. Yeah. You read it. A podcast.

'''S:''' Don't Well. I will say man, this is video and. Video is 10 times harder than audio.

'''US#06:''' Yeah, it is a lot more. It is a lot.

'''E:''' More we were if we were closer to April. 1st I don't think anyone would believe you but. You know what happened January 1st, 1996, thirty years ago.

'''C:''' Oh God, what?

'''E:''' The official launch of the Connecticut Skeptical. Society. Oh. 30 years.

'''C:''' I thought you were gonna say something that felt like five years ago.

'''S:''' A couple of young kids.

'''E:''' Yeah.

'''S:''' Hoping to change the world.

'''E:''' That's right. Yeah, it was. Like, hey, let's. And kids get together and put on a put on a. Show. Put on a show. Kind of yeah, let's it all started that way just.
== Skeptical Hero of the Year (14:35) ==
Hank Green and Dr.noc (Morgan McSweeny) for their social media activitySkeptic of the YearEmily Willingham — for clear, responsible skeptical analysis of emotionally charged pseudoscience (referenced during the Telepathy Tapes discussion).
None

'''S:''' All right. So the first segment we usually do in this year end review is the best and worst of 2025 and we could start with the best and worst of the SGU. Is there anything that you guys remember from the past year that sticks out?

'''E:''' Should we just go to Nauticon right now?

'''S:''' Nauticon was great.

'''E:''' Nauticon was pretty good.

'''B:''' So epic. I mean we put.

'''E:''' The first half of. Our year. So much effort went into went into that. I mean, Jay, and you can speak more to that. Than Oh my God. If he can actually. Can't.

'''US#06:''' He is.

'''J:''' Yeah, Jay would say right now it's an incredible amount of work, but you just do a little bit every day and I get through it no problem. It's largely me and then, you know, Ian is handling the, the technical side, but we do work a lot together throughout that process. But it's a.

'''E:''' Good committee.

'''J:''' It's so worth it. We had so much, so much fun. Like people really, you know, that was our highlight. I think this year was definitely that conference. I mean it, it felt fantastic and it really, really thought everyone had a great time.

'''E:''' We we had high expectations going. Into it, and I think we achieved those expectations at. Least absolutely back we received the first one.

'''B:''' The the first one was so perfect. I'm like, how we gonna beat that? And like, well, we we did. It was.

'''C:''' And so much of it, I mean, not to undermine all of the incredible hard work and like, I mean, it was, it was phenomenal having all of these great guests there who was there with us, like through the whole thing, it was George, Adam, Andrea and Brian. Yeah, they were phenomenal. But it's like we have like literally the best listeners, the best fans. The group of people that was there with us was just incredible. They made the weekend.

'''E:''' Oh, absolutely, yes, totally. The vibe was incredible.

'''B:''' Yeah, it would have been boring without him.

'''C:''' We would have made it worse.

'''B:''' We would have had fun, but it wouldn't have been the same.

'''C:''' Definitely not.

'''S:''' We got some emails listener Victor wrote from episode 1061, Bob says talking about the neo robot. Bob said it really needed help for almost anything it did it needed help. A carer response. Oh, great, so it's like having a man in your house. So wonderful. You want to go do it. OK, let me help you the whole.

'''E:''' That was great.

'''S:''' Little sexist Don't care is a little sexist, but of.

'''E:''' Truth.

'''C:''' That was it was describing reality.

'''S:''' Hey, I'm pretty independent for my house chores.

'''C:''' That's good to know, but I can point to the vast. Major modern man. Of the literature showing that women do like.

'''S:''' Are you gonna quote statistics?

'''C:''' Not just the majority, but like a ridiculous amount, like a major major majority of the domestic labor.

'''S:''' Yeah, but that's an average, you know, which doesn't doesn't tell you about everybody.

'''B:''' Well, how do you? How do you guys do it? Do you, do you have discrete tasks and your significant significant other also has these discrete tasks and that's kind of how or do you kind of swap them and trade them here and there or what, how does it work our.

'''E:''' Household has that, but we also do some. Things together?

'''S:''' Yeah. It's yeah. For each task, it has its own percentage. You know, like Jocelyn does 80% of the laundry. You know, cooking is like 5050. She hates shopping so I do almost all the shopping.

'''B:''' Wow, that's so different than Mayhen Liz. Wow.

'''S:''' Well, it's just, yeah, just chore by chore, you know?

'''C:''' And so much of it, Steve, like when when I make snide comments like that, and I'm of course I'm being funny, but I'm also trying to hold up a mirror to reality. It's less about what people do, and it's more about the kind of undercurrent of a that the tasks that men tend to do in the home tend to be very visible, and the tasks that women tend to do tend to be very invisible. They're the ongoing, it's never finished work, whereas men tend to do more discreet tasks where everybody can let go. Oh, look, you did the thing. Congratulations or thank you.

'''US#06:''' I hung that painting exactly I.

'''C:''' Mowed the lawn. I, you know, and then the other thing is that very often we're not actually talking about the, the labor itself, but the cognitive labor paper that goes into it. And so I'm not saying you're the example, but very often a man will say, I go out and I do all the grocery shopping and it's like, yeah, but she makes the list. She tells you what you need to get, you call and you're like, what brand do we use? I don't know anything. And she has to do all of the mental. And that's a very common issue even in liberal progressive relationships with high levels of parity When when dug underneath the surface, most of the the research shows that women are still doing the majority, the majority of the cognitive labor, which is a huge bummer. We've got to fix it.

'''S:''' Victor also wrote Favorite quote of the year was from me. Extraordinary claims don't require extraordinary evidence, they require appropriate evidence. Remember saying that? And the funniest thing he's on that. He said it's a recurring joke that if the SGU ever misses a week, something catastrophic must have happened. Said I guess more than once.

'''B:''' That is.

'''C:''' We've never missed a week, right that track.

'''S:''' We haven't That's that's the whole.

'''C:''' .0 I see. I get it, I get it right? We got a lot. Can I say I know. I don't even know what order we're supposed to be doing.

'''S:''' It's just best of SGU.

'''C:''' Stuff, best stuff. OK, we got a lot of emails and I have to agree. And I also agree with the reasoning. It's probably the recency bias.

'''S:''' Oh yeah.

'''C:''' But that Battle Hastings episode. It was a funny.

'''E:''' Recency bias.

'''C:''' Yeah, really funny episode. And I think that. You also left in a lot more banter than usual in that episode.

'''S:''' Because it was funny.

'''C:''' Exactly. But people loved it like we got.

'''E:''' 20 years, Steve has learned.

'''S:''' Although a couple of people did felt that you guys were a little pushed back a little bit too hard, hard on my love of history and the Battle of Hastings, almost dancing around, almost being a little anti intellectual. I'm not saying you are a couple of people. They have a.

'''US#06:''' Point I don't. For humans.

'''S:''' But we do have to understand our audience and the vibe of the show. And, you know, saying that, oh, you're a nerd because you like this intellectual discipline is.

'''C:''' No, nobody thinks, not at all, that it's bad that you are really into it. I know well Jay Sports. But yeah, I. Know oh. Yeah, Jay was kind of being funny about that. But yeah, but that's just that was just. Bananas.

'''S:''' Being funny, yeah. I mean, we just.

'''C:''' Think it's bananas that you expected us to be as into it as you? Are well. You know, different.

'''S:''' It's appropriate things itself.

'''B:''' No, I mean, and I, I specifically said I'm I'm not a history buff and that's fine. Who the hell or any of us to put down someone's niche geekdom. I mean, that would be exact something. It's ridiculous, something that we would never really do quite the you know, so yeah, we were definitely leaning into it And and I'm I am proud to say I I knew what Steve was talking about. I mean that I read that book, I mentioned it and it was an awesome book and I learned a lot and it was pivotal. How do you but and I?

'''C:''' Am kind of a history buff, but I, you know, the areas where I tend to focus, the documentaries that I tend to watch, they're just not that. I'm not a big not bad. Yeah, they're not bad.

'''S:''' But this was not just it wasn't about the fight, it was about the massive cultural change that resulted. We don't have to get back into that. That's. True. We covered that shit.

'''US#06:''' History needs more vampires. I think is if there was a vampire in there, I'd be really.

'''C:''' Does anybody I have a favorite? It's so, it's so funny because it's like we think about favorite news stories of the year and often we'll talk about, oh, this was the my favorite, like Science News that we learned. But I was thinking this year about, well, what's my favorite topic that I covered? Like what did I learn the most from?

'''B:''' I do that every year. That's. What I do OK? Oh yeah, that's like, this is the one that I covered that I love the most. Because yeah. If it was a dramatically like best of the year news item, I'm grabbing that, man. It's just like, of course I would grab that something. So that's worthy of that list. So yeah, I invariably, although this year I'm not ironically, I'm not necessarily picking something that I talked about because I think it's something that needs to be at least mentioned on the show.

'''C:''' So I think they're just two different things. Like some of my favorite Science News, which we'll get to were like huge discoveries and like amazing things that happened mostly in in medicine. But my favorite news item that I did was I had to dig for it. But it was episode 10, 1058, which I think was in October. I covered this study where the researchers described a construct that they called symbolic strength. And we got yeah, really deep into like why people find pride in like denying reality and and why they seem so entrenched and how hard it is to quote change their minds because not only do they not want their minds changed, they feel special having the anti viewpoint And it's just.

'''US#06:''' Just the anti viewpoint or is it like yeah, is it like special knowledge?

'''C:''' It's yeah, it's definitely special knowledge. It's it's weird the what it's not. And it's not even like the whole conspiracy thing. We're like, we're the ones who know and you don't really know. But it's like, oh, the mainstream they are whatever they would call liberal. It's like they're like, but we, we have the, you know, information, even if it flies in the face of, of evidence.

'''US#06:''' But does it require that we that like group think consolidation or like camaraderie that they have it or can they exhibit it on their own individually?

'''C:''' I do think it requires the camaraderie because these aren't just like made-up viewpoints, they're they're echo chamber viewpoints.

'''E:''' Latter itself, that kind of stuff.

'''C:''' Yeah, yeah.

'''S:''' It becomes part of the group identity.

'''C:''' Exactly.

'''J:''' I have a favorite news item from this past year. If you guys remember I talked about talked about lab grown teeth.

'''E:''' Yeah, yeah. You did, yes.

'''US#06:''' Love that.

'''J:''' You know, and if you if you guys remember the this wasn't like a minor achievement this last, this last level that they got to like they're they're legit testing it, you know, like it's it, this could be a thing, it could really happen. So I think that's encouraging.

'''B:''' That was fun, yeah.

'''J:''' Because, you know, not only is dentistry crazy expensive, but it could be horribly painful. And it's really sad. You know, lots of people have to lose their teeth and they have to get implants and all that stuff. Like if this works out, you know could avoid all of that.

'''US#06:''' Wouldn't it still be an implant or? Yeah, I assume you're not growing it back in your skull, then you assume you're growing it externally and then putting it in.

'''S:''' Planting the butt in your draw and then. Yeah.

'''US#06:''' Oh, they are planting the. Oh, OK, neat. That part that's.

'''S:''' I have a couple things from from the interwebs from our listeners talking online. A lot of people liked Bob's mega rant about quantum crystals. You remember that one, Bob?

'''B:''' What? No.

'''S:''' It was a pseudoscience item, and you got so outraged at the pseudoscience that you had this monologue rant afterwards that.

'''B:''' People loved just a classic quantum pseudoscience crap. Yeah, I hate that shit.

'''E:''' You probably said grind my gears at some point during.

'''S:''' That and you guys have a favorite guest?

'''B:''' I remember we had Doctor Nick Tiller, the exercise scientist that was that was a fun interview. I like that one. That professor memorable.

'''E:''' On the show.

'''C:''' I think one of one of my favorite interviews, I mean, anytime we have the chance to talk to Marsh, I, I went. Oh yeah.

'''E:''' Gosh, had we not seen him since QED in 2018? Maybe.

'''S:''' In person.

'''E:''' Well, that's perhaps the last time he was on an SGU episode.

'''C:''' Wow, really, And what a great thing that he and Cecil that they're that they're doing this podcast where they dig into Joe Rogan episode. Oh really?

'''E:''' That's like the focus.

'''C:''' Yeah, it's the No Rogan podcast.

'''E:''' Yep, the no. Rogan I love it.

'''B:''' With. AK the no Rogan's nice.

'''E:''' Oh gosh, I hope it's also three hours because you need that per episode because you need that much time to to undo what he's doing.

'''S:''' I like the interview with Kyle Johnson, the philosopher.

'''E:''' Because I think it was like the.

'''S:''' Perfect level of wonkiness for the show, You know what I mean? Getting in like let's do a deep dive on logic and like really suss it out because we obviously it's something that comes up a lot on the show. So it was great to talk to a philosopher, you know, an actual expert and like, really dial it in tight, you know?

'''E:''' Right. Yep, Yep.

'''B:''' Well, we, we did mention the most interesting or best whatever Science News item. I I was going to talk about the whole Oz Olo color thing, which which I I mentioned only because I I talked about it. We're at the Nauticon show on stage and, and I for some reason, this was just so extra fascinating be how color perception and how the, how the retina works and all that. I took a few onion layers deeper than I typically delved and it was just so fascinating. That one really comes to mind. But I, I think we have to mention it's kind of obvious. It's not the best, it's not the most interesting science of the year, but it's the most impactful. And it's, it's pretty obvious, you know, the gutting of science research in the United States this year has been unprecedented. Thousands of researchers, you know, withholding federal research funding, dismantling, you know, climate research. It's it's been devastating. And we'll feel the impact for generations. This is like the biggest Science News item of this year. It's like what, what can impact what, what can compare to this in terms of the sheer impact of science in this country? It's just like, it's ridiculous. It's just like beyond the pale. This is like what? How is this our reality?

'''S:''' Another bar brand, all right.

'''B:''' Come on man, that's worthy, Jesus.

'''C:''' And not just defunding science research, but defunding public health programs like amfar like these Different or USAID.

'''B:''' Yes.

'''C:''' These programs that I mean, we know for a fact like there's a body count, like there's.

'''B:''' And I know, have you read some of the estimates of the numbers there's?

'''C:''' Bananas.

'''B:''' It's one let's say I read one that was 124. Now these are models right of of of likely deaths and excess deaths because of this slash USA 124,000 adults over a quarter million children, 88 deaths per hour. That's the result of what's been done to USAID. And that's those are the estimates. And even if it's off, I'm sure it's not perfectly accurate, right? But it's it doesn't matter. Even if it's just somewhat correct, it's devastating and like, what the hell. There's there's a study that's. The body count.

'''C:''' Yeah, there's a study out of UCLA that was done by their Fielding School of Public Health this July that said more than 14,000,000 preventable deaths would occur by 20-30 if USAID to funding continues, including more than 4 million children under the age of 5.

'''J:''' Yeah. But the savings though, you know, yeah.

'''C:''' The savings for their bank accounts tomorrow, but the savings for the Globe or even the American government in the long term are not savings.

'''S:''' It was it was not, you know, but even if you take it as a savings rather than the investment that it is, it was less than what Trump just decided to hand Avenant to Argentina.

'''B:''' Yeah, right.

'''S:''' There you go. More than what was allegedly, quote UN quote saved by gutting USAID just that was just madness. There's also, I mean, if we're talking about like crap that happened this year, you know, the, the, you know, gutting of, of support for research in scientific research in the United States is terrible. And I could tell you that the rest of the world is like, come here, you know?

'''B:''' Yeah.

'''S:''' And they are poaching. Talk about a brain drain. They are poaching all of our talent now because they're not compete. You know, if you're even if you're here on a visa and you're completely legitimate, you are afraid, you know, that you're just going to be suddenly deported because somebody doesn't like the color of your skin or something or the country that you came from. So.

'''C:''' Yeah, it's twofold, Steve. It's like not only are people losing their NIH grants and losing their funding that keeps their labs afloat, people that are either naturalized or natural born citizens, but then you have individuals who, as you mentioned, are all different levels of immigration status who don't feel safe and many of whom have already been asked to leave. So it's a brain drain not just of American scientists, but scientists who have become American scientists or who are practicing in America. Yeah. Even natural born citizens are like, well, I can't keep my lab open. So this other country that might be offering more funding seems like an interesting place to go. It's like a double loss.

'''S:''' And they're like cutting funding for for clinical trials or for research. That is where they're collaborating with a non-us laboratory or scientist.

'''C:''' Which is every legitimate.

'''S:''' I know within academia, collaborating in with people outside of your institution is considered the best. Like that is what it's what you're supposed to be striving for is that kind of collaboration. And now they're punishing people for that. No, only work with other Americans. It is insane and it's absolute. Horrible. Anti scientific madness. It's crazy and it's going to it's going to it is Lysenkoism, absolutely. And it's going to hurt us for at least a generation, if not more. We may never get to back get back to where we would have been if they did not do this. This is like a permanent hit to to the US, to the world.

'''C:''' And it makes me nervous, like I was looking into the best sciences, like the stuff that I was the most excited about this year. And they were, I mean, hands down, gene therapies, gene therapy for Huntington's disease, T cell, acute lymphoblastic leukemia. There's the new CAR T cell therapy, the first CRISPR that was individually tailored. It was like designer CRISPR for. Yeah, for the baby with ACPS 1. And I worry that those stories that is the confluence, the amalgamation, like the the end result of previous year, like a lot of hard work and previous study. How many years are we going to be able to say, look at all this cool stuff that happened at least in the US this year? I don't think we're going to have years like that.

'''S:''' Maybe a while.

'''C:''' Yeah.

'''S:''' Well, let's shift into the into best Science News of the year. I agree that the the genetic stuff is just incredible. And and it looks to, you know, continue. I think we're just getting started.

'''C:''' Yeah, maybe not we, but the world. The world, yeah, Yeah.

'''S:''' But and along those lines, you kind of touched on this immunotherapy for cancer also is just taking off. It is that, you know, there's continued to be advances and breakthroughs this year for that. Also. A couple of things I noted. There's been a number of significant breakthroughs in quantum computing, you know, authoring by assessment of how likely and how soon we may have actual practic, practical quantum computers. I think they got a lot closer this year, more than any other single year that I could.

'''B:''' Remember, it seemed like a definitely a multiple incremental, yeah, you know, leaps.

'''S:''' And there's a big year for life in the solar system.

'''E:''' Oh. Yes, it was. Yeah, sure.

'''S:''' Was you haven't found the Holy Grail yet. We haven't found actual life in the solar in terms of bio signatures. So we talked very recently, you know, about finding all the all the makings of RNA on the asteroid Bennu and, yeah, and the the most tantalizing signs of ancient life on Mars that we have yet.

'''E:''' Carbon chain.

'''S:''' Yes, yeah, the large carbon chains, yeah.

'''E:''' Yeah, we're, we're, we're peeling that back to the point where, boy, it's just incredible what we've been able to figure out. Plus we haven't even gotten the samples back from Mars yet. Yeah, which are still hopefully working on. And I think there was what, a glitch in the system, right, Jay? Or there was there was talk of shelving that, but I think it's back on on schedule if I recall.

'''J:''' I haven't checked recently, but I think the last we heard that it was back right?

'''E:''' Yes. That's, that was my understanding and that's going to be so significant. And again, the thing about these particular samples, yes, that we, we've seen evidence of these things that have on objects that have fallen to earth, but we're collecting them out in their natural habitat right now and without that contamination potential for contamination. So it just it, it becomes more affirming than anything else that we've that we've been able to study and understand. I'd like to mention, I don't, it's not strictly science, but it was certainly significant and it happened almost a year ago. So it was early in the year, you know, and again, the recency bias takes over at a certain point. But the LA fires was a was a massive, massive story that did that did have certainly elements of science to it, but also a lot of different things. Carrot was first of all, it was, you know, close to home to you having to deal with that on, you know, a day-to-day basis. It lasted for about 3 or 4 weeks, all of January practically.

'''C:''' Oh, yeah, and we couldn't breathe the air. I mean, it was even those of us who were outside of the evac zones. I was like in in the, you know, have your go bag ready area, but I never had to actually evac. Oh, it was horrific. Like my, I have two pretty fancy like Dyson air filters in my house. You know, those like stand alone fans that have the HEPA filters and within a week I had changed them within the past month or two and you're supposed to change them maybe once a year. I think within the week they were clogged and not functional anymore. Like it was bananas that the intake filters in my HVAC were black and thick like inside my home. And I have a pretty new home that's pretty well sealed. Yeah. I think the air quality was like in the three hundreds, maybe 3 hundreds. It was something just terrific. Don't quote on that. I have screenshots of it but.

'''E:''' Certainly wasn't just grass and trees and things that burned there were. 18. 1000 structures.

'''C:''' Yeah, home, yeah, so.

'''E:''' In those particular, in the particles there that they're being breathing, there's plastic, there's all kinds of things.

'''C:''' Yeah.

'''E:''' That is in that.

'''C:''' Vintage building materials, you know, there's like all, yeah, there's a little asbestos. Asbestos, yeah, there's everything went up into the air. And you know, from a personal perspective, you know, I know people, I know lots of people who lost their homes because I was close to the Altadena fire. Not the not the fire in Palisades, but because I was finishing my fellowship at the time at this, like, large Cancer Center, I saw patients from all over. And I had patients who lost everything, you know, So not only were they dealing with their cancer, that's why they were seeing me, but they lost everything. Yeah. Like it's, I mean, when an entire city goes up in flames like that, Like I remember a teenager that I was speaking with and they said the school I went to for elementary, middle, high school, the, you know, grocery store I shopped at, the library, I went to, my friend's house, my other friend's house, the place I went to summer camp, they don't exist anymore. Just like her entire childhood was wiped off the face of the map. I mean, it's just, it's pretty hard to fathom. Yeah. And that's that's somebody who survived and is, you know, going to be able to rebuild. There are people who didn't survive.

'''US#06:''' Now can we definitively say it wasn't because somebody didn't turn the water on, so to speak?

'''C:''' Well, yes, we can, because we know. We know that the the original or the very, very beginning of the fire folks or an individual is charged for for that, right? Yes, for intentionally setting the fire.

'''E:''' Yeah, yeah, they.

'''C:''' Have fireworks. I can't.

'''E:''' No, no, no, he, he, he apparently, oh gosh, it's still, it's still playing out. But the evidence against him is that he, he's deliberately set the fire, but he has shown through his social media posts and other things of fixation with fires. And so I, I don't know what that is. If, if there's a mental illness of some sort that that accounts for something like that, I wouldn't know how to classify it. I don't want arsonist per se, right? Because you know, but definitely it was one person who with a lighter.

'''C:''' Yeah, it's a small brush.

'''E:''' Started a little fire and it just and and it got out of control. Now they contained it a few days later.

'''C:''' But then it. But then the winds.

'''E:''' Picked up there go the Santa Anas and you lose total control at that point and it and it turned into the to the devastation that it did.

'''C:''' And now we see, I'm seeing here 12 deaths, nearly 7000 structures and $150 billion in damages just from the Palisades fire. That was just and remember we had the two huge fires and lots of small fires around them.

'''E:''' 31 direct fatalities from all the fires. There were a total of 14 individual fires as as a result of this. But they're also saying the more that it's hard to measure the long term mortality rate of this because of the breathing issues that everybody is having. You know, it's like it was kind of like in a sense 911 where people were dying years later from the from having exposed, been exposed to that atmosphere.

'''C:''' Yeah.

'''US#06:''' Do you think this will change how we build houses in America? I mean, especially given that this seems to recur over and over? Or is it, is that a lost cause? Are we just doomed to keep building out of woods?

'''C:''' Both, right. I think that in California, we, we've known about fire risks and we've also known about about earthquake risks. And we do what we can to mitigate, but there's only so much you can engineer your way out of these things. But definitely I think it will change the way that we build from a civic perspective like the the infrastructure around the homes.

'''E:''' I hope so, yeah. And other fire mitigation.

'''C:''' Exactly.

'''S:''' Yeah, they have to bury all those electrical, electrical transmission lines.

'''C:''' And we do have to be careful about how the pressure that's put on the water system. And are we trying to tap into water that's not meant to fight, you know, a blazing forest fire with water that's meant to fight, you know, a small structure fire?

'''S:''' All right, should we go on to Skeptical Hero and Skeptical Jackass of the Year?
== Skeptical Jackass of the Year (41:31) ==
RFK Jr.Avi LoebDr. Joseph A LadapoTelepathy Tapes
None

'''C:''' Do we start with Jackass so we get all the? Oh, you want to do that first? You want. To do that, well, here's my thing. Everything keeps getting really dark, so if we get the dark stuff out of the way, maybe we can end on a high or no.

'''US#06:''' And we'll be happy.

'''S:''' It doesn't matter. We could do Jackass first. Did you have? Who did you have in mind?

'''E:''' Yeah, who? Who?

'''C:''' Well, for me, I mean, it's hard because who, who did we did we ultimately choose RFK Junior last year?

'''E:''' You can pick them again well. But right, the administration really didn't start until this year.

'''C:''' Yeah. So for me it was.

'''E:''' Actually became RFK this year.

'''C:''' It was RFK and his band of Mary science deniers. I mean, it's not just him, right? It's like they're.

'''E:''' Dragged in with him.

'''C:''' Yeah, And I think some of them he dragged in and some of them just also were there because Trump put them in place. Like, we've got to remember that RFK is the secretary of Health and Human Services, but we've got Doctor, how do you say his last name? Bhattacharya. Jay Bhattacharya, who's the director of NIH. We've got Jim O'Neill, who's the deputy secretary of HHS and the acting director of the CDC. We've got Martin Macri, who's the commissioner of the FDA. We've got Mehmet Oz, who is the administrator for, you know, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid. Like these are all science deniers to to some extent in these very important positions.

'''S:''' Yeah, and Trump is basically Mia. I mean, he's not doing anything. He just let RFK handle everything. You know, he's really just referring to him. And yeah, I mean, for me, it's it begins to end with RFK Junior, right? Yeah. So all the people that come along with it as well. But he is anti science pseudoscience, conspiracy mongering personified. He is the poster child for all of the harm that can be done when you give actual power to these crazy nut job science deniers and.

'''E:''' Unprecedented the power.

'''S:''' Isn't it's, it's just mind blowing the harm. Again, we talk about like how many people are going to die due to the reckless, you know, cutting of USAID. You know, RFK already has a body count attached to his nonsense. The only question is how many zeros is he going to add to that, You know, over his tenure and a lot of that Mark Crislop just wrote about this on science based medicine. The fact that you know what the pandemic preparedness plan is to do nothing, to do absolutely nothing. You know, if we have a pandemic in the next three years, we're effed. It's going to be bad.

'''US#06:''' Why the the last one was a hoax anyway?

'''S:''' We're just going to make people healthy and that they'll be able to fight off the infection. That's basically their plan, which is basically saying we're going to do nothing.

'''B:''' And what really sucks is that even after the the horrific results of that plan would be like, well, it would have been worse if we did it your way. It's like whoa. Geez.

'''C:''' It doesn't even make sense from a long term political expediency perspective, because who's going to die?

'''S:''' Yeah.

'''C:''' It's going to be the older people who voted for these, for these folks. It's going to be the unvaccinated people who voted for these folks. It's it's it's going to be a lot of people who are the most vulnerable among us. And it's. Yeah.

'''S:''' I mean, I don't think it's going to change the political calculus, but I mean.

'''C:''' Like a huge pandemic would, but I mean. You have to be pretty big.

'''S:''' I mean, for COVID, COVID death rates were a lot higher in red states than blue states, in states that were not doing the things, you know, that that would be science. Based, that's what I'm saying.

'''C:''' Imagine if COVID happened again but this was the administration and no plans in place.

'''S:''' Yeah, the DAPO is basically the RFK for Florida, you know what I mean? So smaller scope, but basically the same thing. So I mean, no one can come close to the to the havoc that RFK is wreaking, but you know, it's not fair to all the other pseudoscientists out there. So we have to have some.

'''C:''' Exactly. Yeah, can't.

'''S:''' Can't let RFK Junior over shadow all the other cranks and charlatans that deserve to be mentioned.

'''US#06:''' We need a top ten list of of the cranks honestly.

'''S:''' Yeah, top 100. Plus 31, Yeah.

'''US#06:''' I mean, I have a couple of the people.

'''S:''' Does anybody want to throw something out? Evan, come on.

'''E:''' Well, you want the Avi Loeb? Yeah. Oh my gosh. Why does every article I come across have him as part of the article? Why can't I have an Atlas? Right? What is it? 3 all Atlas three I3 I Atlas article that does not mention Avi Loeb. Please, someone out there in media stop referencing this person. I get you have to have clicks and things, but my gosh, there it. It's as if this person is the expert, the only expert on it and he's nothing of the sort. Frankly, all he does is promote his own interpretation of what's going on. I can't find another. I can't find any other reputable scientists that agree with anything. It's all the UFO and UAP community that that back that backs him up. I mean this this guy is the UFO UAP crank of now. He really has become a crazy. Objects yeah he's become the poster child for for for all of this so I mean I know we've mentioned him in the past and I think he's been on this list in the past but he keeps earning it I mean he keeps coming back and and media plays right into his hands unfortunately just today I was reading another one about oh it's approaching earth and it's accelerating at a rate that's going to only be you know unnatural, you know unnatural propulsion bull according to one scientist n = 1 that's.

'''S:''' It NASA recently gave a briefing updating because you know the the comet is coming to to its closest approach to Earth.

'''B:''' It's glowing in X-rays, isn't it?

'''S:''' Yeah, yeah, it's it's doing all the stuff that comets do when it gets closer to the sun. So they began their briefing by saying this object is a comet. It looks and behaves like a comet and all evidence points to it being a comet. And they specifically called out Avi Loeb.

'''B:''' Really good for them.

'''S:''' And oh, that's good for his. Posted a non peer reviewed re preprint.

'''B:''' And that's wonderful.

'''S:''' Yeah, they, they, they shut that down fast. Now it is a freaking comet. It's you know what I mean? The the more, and this has been, you know, there's been a massive mission to observe it from everything we have, looking at anything that we could get eyes on, you know, through our Atlas has been looking at it. You know, we have so much data. And then the more data that comes in, the more obvious it is that this thing is a comet. Now, it's an unusual comet because, of course, it's the first fascinating interstellar comet. So why would we think it would be identical to a typical, you know, comet from our own solar system? But, you know, whatever, nothing that is anomaly, it's just like, oh, that's interesting. A little bit more nickel, OK. Or, you know, more carbon dioxide than a typical Earth, Right. You know, soul comet. Yeah, whatever. Nothing like. Oh my God, this has got to be an alien spacecraft.

'''E:''' I have another Skeptical Jackass I'd like to throw out there. It's more of a category, but I do have a couple of names that fit this category and that's Tick Tock. And I don't know if anyone has anyone or anything having to do with TikTok on their Skeptical Jackass, but this, this platform is just pure poison. I'm sorry. I know there's good and I know there's good stuff. On there there's good science communications. There is on. There, and I have it on my skeptical heroes list, I have a list of some people who are doing some very good social media in, in, in science. So it is not just a blanket statement, but these people, for example, you have these three people, Nara Smith, right?

'''US#06:''' She but the OK good we'll.

'''E:''' Explain it Promoting the consumption of raw milk while pregnant.

'''US#06:''' All right, so that's, yes, I, I thought you were just going to be like, because she is like a little quirky and trad wifey and like she does some goofy stuff with her husband and they I think they're vampires like that. Like, yeah, that is fair. She does do something. Yeah. That's how about Paul Saladino. You know, have you heard that?

'''E:''' Name.

'''US#06:''' My God, we all meet carnivore. Carnivore. Yeah. Oh, I think I watched a documentary about that guy.

'''S:''' Vegetables are poison, Evan.

'''US#06:''' That's what if you watch, if you watch RFK or anybody in Congress, he is, he's walking around with them usually like especially RFK, he's like always there.

'''E:''' Wow. And I want to mention this because it's because it's funny. The Liver King right we've.

'''C:''' Oh no, that's the documentary I watch. Yeah, there's a whole thing on the Liver King.

'''E:''' Yep, Yep. If you focus on eating large amounts of raw organ meats, then you're going to have, you know, superpower. You'll you'll live longer than anyone in your family ever has.

'''US#06:''' Yeah, unfortunately, I think he needs like therapy, like he's not just like a crank fully. Well, you could say that any of these. People lost the plot.

'''S:''' There's somewhere between eating therapy and.

'''E:''' Being I mean so. Many. There's so many. Yeah, yeah.

'''US#06:''' Sure.

'''E:''' Yeah, yeah, that too. But just the amount of clicks these people get is is obscene. Have no, no business.

'''S:''' Getting Yeah, as you know, Evan, I'm on TikTok.

'''E:''' Well, yes, and This is why I qualified.

'''US#06:''' Follow at you.

'''S:''' Know it helps us produce our TikTok videos and there's there is a a couple of dominant narratives on TikTok that I find myself addressing over and over again just in different guises. One of them is oh this this guy who invented a thing was killed died. Therefore he was killed to hide his discovery kind of thing. Like oh.

'''E:''' Diesel.

'''S:''' Like, yeah, like we talked.

'''C:''' About that diesel.

'''S:''' That's that's where that was from TikTok. The other one is that the, you know, anybody to do anybody in the healthcare industry wants you to die, wants you to be unhealthy. Either everything they tell you is a lie, like everything you've ever heard is a lie. And also that history didn't happen. You know, the other thing is like, whatever that Oh yeah, you can't prove anything in history. And therefore, you know, Helen Keller didn't exist. And this building was that nobody built this building. It's in the history Denial is, I mean, Sarah, I'm not, I'm not exaggerating in the slightest. I'm barely giving you.

'''US#06:''' Were you there, Steve? Were you? There, that's so bad.

'''E:''' The buildings didn't right Could not have been built.

'''S:''' There was a huge mud flood around the world 100 years ago. 100 years ago, you think we would have. They're not talking about thousands of years ago. They're talking about like 50 years ago, 100 years ago.

'''C:''' Well, they weren't born yet.

'''S:''' I know it's.

'''E:''' Like it's ridiculous. There weren't cell phones then, Steve. Nobody captured it.

'''C:''' Can't prove it unless it was on TikTok.

'''E:''' It's a loss. About that molasses spill that killed a bunch of people in Boston. Maybe that's what they think. Which is why I remember.

'''S:''' That the memory hole is just profound.

'''E:''' Oh. Gosh.

'''S:''' It's really, it's a sad and there's a lot of NASA hate on TikTok, Yeah.

'''US#06:''' Yeah, that is a weird one. I mean, part of it is I don't know if I'm influencing it because I also kind of source a lot of the videos. So I actively go seek out the crazies. Yeah, but yeah. I mean, it does get a lot of likes, and who knows if they're bots, but it is, like, seemingly pervasive, you know, So it is weird. Yeah. I mean, I think all the platforms, unfortunately, have devolved. I mean, X is notoriously run by, you know, somebody who's not necessarily a straight shooter in many ways. Instagram, Facebook, all of those things are, I don't know, social media. Maybe we shouldn't have started to begin with. Can we go back? There were good. There was an era where but.

'''C:''' There's also more and more evidence to show how just like exceedingly damaging it is to young people's mental health.

'''US#06:''' Sure, but what what do you do? Because obviously we've heard in the news and maybe it's a little political, but Australia is like banning it for underage 16. However, like if you grew up like Karen and I grew up long ago, we grew up in the world where there wasn't the Internet and then there was the Internet, right And I found ways around my parents putting, you know, like an abstinence policy out there, like I found other ways to get on the Internet. Is this going to do anything you?

'''C:''' Think, well, I, I do personally, because I don't think it's, it's the same as abstinence. And I hear, I hear you why you're using that word, but it's, you could also say the same thing about like Australia banning guns and like, yes, they did just have a mass shooting, but their numbers are nowhere near our numbers even, you know, adjusted for population. There's just yes, I think that when you make it so that it's it's no longer culturally normative and when you make it so that it's not as easily accessible, people are always going to figure out ways to do it, but it not not to the same extent as they do now.

'''US#06:''' Right. But with the guns, there's not like an analog that you can get around it where you like have mass firing spoons or something like. There's not, yeah.

'''C:''' I mean, some kids are going to figure out how to use it regardless, but if there are heavy penalties or I don't really know what they're, how they're going to enforce this. And also if you just straight up ban cell phones in school, that has another like.

'''US#06:''' That's a different I agree with that kind of this, but imagine both of them at the same time.

'''C:''' What if young people aren't allowed on social media until a certain age? Just like young people aren't allowed to drink alcohol until a certain age. Some of them still do. A lot of them still do, but it's not normative. They're not doing it out in public. They're not, you know what I mean? So you ban that and then you also ban gun or not guns, cell phones in schools. I think you'll see a cultural change.

'''US#06:''' But isn't there some of discussion about like, maybe the way that we treat alcohol leads to a binging culture in America versus like, Europe, where they have a little bit more of, you know, a connection with it? So is the solution actually banning it when that might lead to them going down deeper darker social media turns like on 4 Chan? Or, well, but I don't think they're saying like Nazis.

'''C:''' They're not. They're not saying they want to ban it all together. They say they want to ban it until the children are at an age at which they can develop a healthy habit with it. And that's that's the same thing with alcohol.

'''US#06:''' True, but are they putting their money into fun?

'''C:''' Yeah. Would you like to change?

'''S:''' It was an interesting experiment. Yeah.

'''US#06:''' Sure.

'''C:''' Yeah, but I mean, I agree, but social media is not. I think there was a time when we could safely be like, everybody, every generation gets weird about stuff, and it's like the new TV. And I think we can safely say now like no social media is its own beast.

'''E:''' Yeah, the evidence is. Adding it's a different animal. It's. It seems to be pointing a.

'''C:''' Direction and it's been completely unregulated till now.

'''E:''' Well, that's it. It's obviously because. That's.

'''C:''' All guardrails are helpful.

'''E:''' It would be nice to try something, man. I'm very curious, yeah. That has. Especially for.

'''US#06:''' Younger people, but but seemingly they police themselves right like even now, but even with this legislation, they police themselves on what they justify is somebody over the OR under the age of 16. Like there's, there are legal ways that they have to like, you know, upload licenses, but they also have algorithms that determine whether or not you're 16. So what? Like clearly they have a desire to have kids on the.

'''C:''' Platform, of course they do. That's why they're proactively doing like now there's like Instagram for teens and stuff because they're trying to prevent things from happening like are happening in Australia. They don't want regulation. They want to say, look, we're protecting kids, but they're not, and we know they're not.

'''US#06:''' But they're not. Right.

'''C:''' But I agree with you, too.

'''US#06:''' Then the legislation writes it to like, put it in their hands. So it kind of just obfuscates it. And it's like, hey, we passed the bill to protect the kids.

'''C:''' Course you know.

'''US#06:''' So it's just like a political sleight of hand. Like, I don't know, I think it's just a canard.

'''C:''' I do agree with you, Ian, that there is a cultural responsibility to develop healthier habits with things that are not going away. And so I think the the alcohol example is actually a good one because our relationship with alcohol can sometimes induce more, you know, binge culture and more abuse. At the same time, if alcohol was freely available to young people, I think that we would have a lot more health consequences.

'''US#06:''' Yeah, there's definitely obviously a balance point. I mean, maybe we should be funding things that are scientific, you know, about like therapy for people, you know, like, it would be interesting. This leads me. I want to throw in my skeptical Jackass, if you don't mind, and I'm going to expand it pretty wide. I'm going to say like the whole political. Class. Of every flavor I'm going to I'm sorry, drag netting them a little bit, but it like it kind of I don't know, showcase like the myth that we had serious people. They're so self-serving or uncaring and I even the people that I kind of agree with. I don't know, there's like little bits where I'm like, what are you doing or anti science? It's it's really just you hit your head against the wall, who's running the ship or steering the ship. It's like what is going it's a good.

'''E:''' Observation, Ian, I've said for a long time, if you're going to be skeptical about anything, be skeptical of politics and politicians. That's that's a good. That's the hardest thing.

'''US#06:''' Like, I agree with you, Evan, with this, where it's like, I'm going to, you know, maybe be a little tongue in cheek, but the skepticism against science is like kind of easy. Skepticism with politics is like kind of crazy. There's so much out there.

'''E:''' It's a good way for us to check ourselves.

'''S:''' It's an entire industry based on deception, right? I mean, their goal is to not to tell the truth. It's to influence you, influence your role.

'''US#06:''' Influence your behavior positively, Yeah.

'''S:''' You know. It's persuasion science and it's.

'''E:''' Persuasion. Keep them in power. Anything. Yeah, make.

'''US#06:''' It happen like you hope the person who's most persuadable actually has good ideas.

'''S:''' But I mean, there are some good politicians out there, obviously, of course. But it does seem like the system, there's a selective pressure for people willing to be shamelessly manipulative. You know what I mean?

'''C:''' Oh. Yeah, our political system has the same. We often talk, you know, you use the phrase a lot, Steve, where you're like, it's not a bug, it's a feature. Like a lot of the bugs in our political system, I think are similar to the bugs in our economic system. When you have a system that's built in such a way that greed is good. When you have a system that's built in such a way that those who kind of take the most continue to be the most rewarded and are given the most perks so they can continue to take more. This is the system you end up with both of politically and economically, which you know they're and they're not really two separate systems.

'''E:''' Right. And people will say like, don't. And in order to change it, you have to, you have to convince these people to make laws, to regulate themselves, and they rarely.

'''C:''' Yeah, which is really hard to do. You have to be so politically active and and you have to really hold these people to account. And even then it's difficult when you're living in this like kind of post whatever reality reality where the, the very people who, like you said, Evan, you're asking them to write laws to regulate their, their themselves. Are. Also, and not only is it not human nature, we're now living in a culture where, or maybe not a culture, but a, but a system where the very people in power have like, little connection to an interest in keeping their constituents happy.

'''E:''' Yeah, Yeah.

'''C:''' And so, like, how do you hold somebody to account who doesn't care if their constituents care about them? It's strange. It's a very strange situation.

'''US#06:''' Where it's a.

'''E:''' Weird place I.

'''US#06:''' Agree, and I know people might say yeah hey, don't both sides it because there are. You know they're not symmetrical. Maybe as objective, they're not symmetrical necessarily, but I would say it like this is like, I don't know what's worse. It's like the killer chasing you with the knife or the person who locks you in the room with the killer. You know, like it was like you're supposed friend. It's really, I don't know where we are in that spectrum, but it seems bad wherever we are.
== In Memoriam (1:02:02) ==
Joe NickellRandy Snyder, recently died. He was an influential skeptic in the ex-Mormon communityRobert Lee Nadeau (1944 – 2025)American academic and activist against climate denial, known for outspoken criticism of climate change misinformation and deniers.Jane GoodallJames WatsonChen Ning Yang – physicist, work in symmetry paved the way for the standard modelGeorge Smoot - American astrophysicist, cosmologist, and Nobel laureate. He won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2006 for his work on the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) with John C. Mather that led to the "discovery of the black body form and anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background radiation"Richard Garwin – physicist, first hydrogen bomb designGeorge Smith - 2009 Nobel Prize in Physics for "the invention of an imaging semiconductor circuit—the CCD sensor, which has become an electronic eye in almost all areas of photography".Mark Norell - first theropod embryo and for the description of feathered dinosaursXavier Le Pichon – helped create the field of plate tectonicsDavid Baltimore – Nobel prize - "for their discoveries concerning the interaction between tumour viruses and the genetic material of the cell"John Gurdon – Nobel prize for research into turning mature cells into stem cellsHamilton Smith – Nobel Prize 1978 for discovering restriction enzymesElizabeth Vrba - developing the turnover-pulse hypothesis, as well as coining the word exaptation with colleague Stephen Jay GouldDarleane Christian Hoffman confirmed the existence of seaborgium, element 106.Jim LovellCaptain Frederick H. Hauck – space shuttle captainFelix BaumgartnerRob ReinerJune LockhartRobert RedfordHulk HoganOzzy OsbourneDrew Struzan – iconic movie posters, https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/legacyremembers/drew-struzan-obituary?pid=210097735 - "Star Wars," "Indiana Jones," and "Back to the Future," "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial," "Blade Runner," "The Goonies," "First Blood," "The Shawshank Redemption," "The Thing," and "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone."
None

'''S:''' I have a category kind of Jackass as well everyone involved with the telepathy tips.

'''C:''' Oh yeah, we got a lot of emails on that too.

'''S:''' Oh my God. It's so pervasive. So the quick recap is, you know, they're, you know, claiming to like do these, you know, interviews with autistic children and they're just doing facilitated communication. And then which was completely debunked nonsense. And but they're usually the facilitated communication. And then they claim that these autistic kids, not only are they brilliant, these non verbal kids, but they're psychic. They're reading our minds. It is like such a classic pseudoscience, but it's gotten so much play I can't tell.

'''E:''' You the.

'''S:''' People podcasts out there and people who should freaking know better who have said oh what about these kids who are psycho like oh please stop. It's just amazing.

'''US#06:''' It's amazing you can repackage the same thing just with like a new name We're.

'''B:''' Talking about that literally, you know, a generation ago.

'''S:''' It's just a Dumber version of it too. It's just ridiculous.

'''E:''' Right, and more popular. It's it's the. The correlation here is mind boggling.

'''S:''' All right, Cara, let's pivot to Skeptical Hero of the Year. Who could?

'''C:''' Have I couldn't decide. I was really struggling with this. So I have a few different I mean, you may have noticed that over the past several weeks I've been singing the praises of South Park this year. Yes. Think Trey Parker and Matt Stone might be up there for me, but also just the people who turned out to be skeptics that I maybe didn't know were as skeptical as they are. And don't get me wrong, these people aren't perfect. But like John Oliver Colbert, I mean, I've been a fan of Colbert. Jon Stewart came back into the fold. But you're seeing these skeptical takes from individuals who have been sort of beloved for a different reason, doing more and more basically public science communication. And then of course, we have our tireless science communicators across social media platforms. And I think probably the one that I would nominate for this year would be Hank Green.

'''US#06:''' Yeah, thanks. Pretty cool.

'''C:''' Yeah.

'''S:''' He's a good, that's a good choice.

'''US#06:''' He's a good boy. I mean, I think you also should shout out like the writers, the men and women who like write all the John Oliver, of course, probably them actually, more than.

'''C:''' Yeah. But yeah, the problem is we don't. Yeah, we don't know. Like if I said their names, people might not you.

'''S:''' Know there's, I think there's somebody on the writing staff of John Oliver that listens to our show.

'''C:''' I think I.

'''S:''' Don't have proof of that, but enough of what we have said. I have seen shortly thereafter on the show. The one that really got me was the P hacking one.

'''B:''' Yes, right.

'''S:''' But plus they also showed, they talked about our show on John. Oliver, they did.

'''B:''' They. Yeah. Carter yeah, very few second, but we were there.

'''S:''' Very briefly they, yeah, they showed me Carter. So that's that's pretty good. It's that there's some connection.

'''E:''' There. And if they're listening now, maybe they want. To reach out confirmation bias, so.

'''S:''' Everything good is simply a similarly somebody wrote in Hank Green as well and also Doctor Knock or Morgan McSweeney for this their social media activity. I would add someone who has just been, Again, I'd like to focus on people who I see as tirelessly working, even if they're not, like, seeking big recognition.

'''C:''' Sure.

'''S:''' And for the person this year, somebody who has had a lot of recognition in the past. But Michael Mann, who, yeah, has been just for being tireless and also for just staying on top of things and shifting his strategy, you know, to keep up with the climate change denying community.

'''B:''' Yeah.

'''S:''' Like, he's staying on top of it. He's not giving up, you know that. That kind of persistence and energy I really respect like this. He's in it for good. He's in it for the.

'''C:''' Long he Co write a book this year he Co wrote a book with a vaccine scientist to kind of approach it from both angles, right? Like this is what happens when public trust in science disintegrates.

'''S:''' Yeah, yeah, yeah.

'''E:''' Yeah, there are a couple other people in that same kind of category, Steve. They're they're in it the they're in it for the long haul, right. They understand this is a long term effort that that is required. Mick W comes to mind. Especially all the work he's done. Why he is not invited onto, you know, panels or congressional testimonies and things like that so that more people can hear him is beyond me because he can really, really refute a lot of the UFO and UAP stuff, among the other things. Yeah. Another person who's like that is Timothy Caulfield. Yeah, yeah. Who continues to fight the fight? Bruce Hood also. Is is one of those people? And I do want to also give a shout out to Barry Carr. He retired this year. He was the executive director for for CSI. But gosh, our relationship with Barry goes back 30 years. Yeah, God.

'''B:''' 90s right?

'''E:''' And he has, he has been so good to us in all that time. He's been very supportive from the. Super supportive really, Yes, yes, even though from a from a different organization and everything, he's been nothing but great to us and and he deserves recognition for his lifetime effort as well.

'''S:''' Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, He's one of those people. Like it's the cause is what matters, right? Skepticism. Yeah, yeah, correct.

'''B:''' It's funny, Steve and Evan, you mentioned tirelessly working in it for the long haul. I'm, I'm gonna for this year. I'm for skeptic of the year. I'm throwing out Jay. Uh, he, he is the hardest worker that I, that I know. His work has had clearly a profoundly positive impact on this skeptical podcast and SDU productions, every project that we do. He's also, I'm so impressed with what's the things that he accomplishes. He's a master at working and negotiating with event vendors and. Salespeople. Which I recently they confirmed is actually a form of torture in hell. There's a department Jay and Jay's killing it. He he misses many of the the awesome streaming shows that are out there these day because of his skeptical work work ethic. And it annoys the hell out of Steve and me because we keep we have to leave the room to talk about spoilers because Jay's like, I didn't see that. I don't have time to see that He's just working. It seems like, you know, he's got, sure, he's got two young kids, but he's just working night and day, you know, And I just wanted to give a shout out to him. Like Jay, we appreciate it. We would not be what we are today. We'd be a different kind of a different beast today if it weren't for all the work that you've put in to make sure that we could, we could do this and do not just a podcast, but so many other things. Yeah. Jay's a heart. Oh yeah, so yeah, such. It's so. Ridiculous. Yeah.

'''S:''' I couldn't imagine doing everything without Jay.

'''B:''' Right. We'd be, you know, we'd get some stuff done, but I don't think we'd do it as good as Jay.

'''E:''' Almost.

'''S:''' Every day I'm like, Jay, do this.

'''E:''' He's a. He's.

'''S:''' Jay Jay Jay had to bow out of the show because of his flu. He's really. Had to bed. That's why that's not why he's not participating in this discussion.

'''US#06:''' But he's weekly saying thanks, not.

'''E:''' Kidding.

'''S:''' So we got a couple of more emails from listeners with their votes. So one person voted for Emily Willingham. Willingham for for clear, responsible, skeptical analysis of emotionally charged pseudoscience. And we, we referenced her during the telepathy tapes discussion. Bring that up again, Cara. You got a couple of votes from listeners.

'''C:''' Yeah.

'''S:''' For this year, for, for everything that you do, not just the SGU. And a lot of people really appreciate your role on the SGU because, you know, Bob, Jay and I are brothers. Evan is basically a brother. He's very close friend. We've known him for a long time. And we can't be a little, you know, closed, you know, close, You know what I mean? It could be a little bit of an echo chamber. And so your audience really appreciates the fact that you are a different perspective and you're not afraid to push back on anything that we say.

'''C:''' I, you know, it's, it's funny, I was going to say earlier that some of my favorite episodes looking back or just some of my favorite experiences with the SGU and this speaks to the talk that you actually gave at CSI. Was that earlier this year or was that last year? But it's. It's when skeptics disagree, right?

'''B:''' Like, that's the fun part.

'''C:''' Yeah. I really enjoy when we have differing opinions about things and we can kind of talk about the nuance and, you know, when it comes to the really big stuff, we're definitely all, you know, on the same team, rooting for the same cause. But sometimes we disagree about how we should get there.

'''S:''' Yeah, which is fine. Healthy. That's the discussion we should be having, right? I always say, like on climate change, we shouldn't be wasting our time debating about whether it's happening. All right, it's freaking happening. What the only discussion worth happening is what's the best strategy to deal with it. And there's lots of, there's lots to talk about there.

'''B:''' Should we do geoengineering or is that 2? Risky should. We do this or what? Oh man.

'''US#06:''' You just burn money. I think that happens. Good. Does that. Does that. Yeah. I think you might do that. No.

'''S:''' Ian, who was your skeptical hero?

'''US#06:''' I honestly, all of the ideas you had were so good I could not find think of one. I'm like, I think I'm doomer brained. I've been on TikTok or social media so long. They got just like guys, oh God, I don't know what it is. I mean, I think I said this last time and I'm going to do it again. I'm just going to cheat is like the listeners, anyone who's still committed while seeing the world kind of fall apart.

'''C:''' Right. Yeah.

'''US#06:''' It's maybe our skeptical project over the last decades hasn't fully fixed everything or fixed enough or fixed anything, who knows, But at least you guys are hopefully in with us in the fight as we're thinking, you know, so I, I don't know, just keep up, keep looking forward. You know you got there is some power in positivity to throw it back to the beginning.

'''S:''' You know, but it's called strategic optimism.

'''US#06:''' Yes.

'''S:''' I'm a firm believer in strategic optimism. Yeah, yeah, avoiding self defeating nihilism that doesn't serve any purpose.

'''B:''' I know it's hard. It's hard for me to be strategically optimistic.

'''C:''' Well, and sometimes it takes and and that's why I always go back to that thing I said before that hope is a moving target. Yeah, you have to sometimes take a step away from the issue and come back into it and and look at how the parameters have changed. Like you mentioned, you've got to be strategically optimistic and that has to do with understanding where are we now, what can be done? We might not be where we were, you know, 15 years ago or 30 years ago or whatever. But like maybe we can compare ourselves to where we were 100 years ago. Or, you know, one of the things that was always really inspiring to me is when I talk to my friends who come from countries who have been through constitutional crises or who have experienced authoritarianism, and they got through it.

'''S:''' Yeah, we'll get through it.

'''C:''' Yeah. We'll get through it. It feels unique to us, but it's not unique in the world. It is unique in the world in some ways. I mean, I'm, I'm not arguing that, but there will be a future ahead of us.

'''US#06:''' Yeah, keep building community, you know, and like, you know, helping each other, you know, in whatever way we can.

'''S:''' Yeah. I mean, I think a lot of my strategic optimism is informed by my career as a physician, right? Because talk about you're in a situation every day with your patients where you have to do everything you can, you know, to be an advocate for your patient and to get the best outcome with. And everything that can possibly go wrong, goes wrong, right. But you still, and all the challenges that you could possibly have are there, but you still have to, at the end of the day, you have to have the best, best outcome you can possibly get. And so sometimes you have to say, well, I don't know what's going on, but if this were anything treatable, this is what it would be. So let's treat that and see what happens. You know, that's strategic optimism. Like let's, let's plan. You know, you can, you always have to hope for the best, plan for the worst. But sometimes hoping for the best means acting as if this is something that you can fix. And then if it if it doesn't, you know, you did the best you could, right? You gave it the best odds you can. Same thing like with global warming. It's that if we assume it's hopeless, then it is hopeless by definitely that makes the reality. But if you say, all right, I'm going to go, you know, I'm going to go down fighting or I'm going to, you know, do everything I can and constantly change strategy and try like, like Michael manage doing why I picked him, like just constantly doing what we can do to make it less bad or try to move things in the right direction and, you know.

'''C:''' That's the key.

'''S:''' It's a bit of a leap of faith. I don't know that it's going to affect the world, but it's better than doing nothing, right? It's better than just giving into the negativity.

'''C:''' Well, and it will. It will affect the world. Because once again, hope is a moving target. And sometimes we're not talking about fixing something or putting things back the way they were. Sometimes we're talking about making it less bad.

'''S:''' Yeah, less bad is.

'''C:''' But less bad is. Is a good goal, yeah. It is.

'''B:''' Basically, I think one of the only goals we got left with climate change is making as little bit as we as we can it really.

'''S:''' It's all about being less bad. Absolutely.
{{anchor|sof}}
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== Science or Fiction (1:15:31) ==
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'''S:''' OK, let's move on to our In Memoriam segment. This is where we look back and all the people we lost this year focusing on sciences, scientists and skeptics, but we throw in some other, you know, celebrity favorites that we have. I have a list. I don't know if you guys have any names, but I'll just go through my list. If I missed anybody then you can chime in.

'''E:''' Are they in reverse alphabetical order?

'''S:''' No, they're, they're. I'm going to start with a couple of skeptics. Top of the list, of course, is Joe Nickel. Joe Nickel also, again, Joe is again, a tireless skeptic, a real. You know, he was an investigator. He was like, really at there was a time.

'''B:''' Oh my God, yeah.

'''S:''' When he was really the only full time he might have might have been, you know, the only full time skeptical investigator in the world. Yeah. And he would do the nitty gritty hard work. You know, he wouldn't just write opinions or use broad brush strokes. He would do the nitty gritty investigative work and he would do the work that we would cite to say, look, he did all the hard work and this is what that analysis shows, etcetera. It was really indispensable. He's also someone like Barry Carr that we met very early on in our skeptical careers, who was, you know, very friendly, very supportive of great resource. And yeah, he was just, you know, a fan to fantastic guy. Really sorry, you know, to see him go.

'''B:''' Yeah, that was that one hurt, man.

'''S:''' Yeah, there's also one of our listeners emailed us to to remind us that Randy Snyder died this year. So he was also so an influential skeptic, mainly in the ex Mormon community. Did you know him, Cara?

'''C:''' No, but we had him on the show. We. Did have him on the show once, yeah.

'''B:''' Back in I think episode 416 a. Long time ago. Wow.

'''S:''' And then there was also Robert Lee Nadu, who was an American academic and activist against climate denial, not known for outspoken criticism of climate change, misinformation and deniers. So those are the three people kind of in this skeptical, yeah order category that that I that I found. And then for scientists, I think the, you know, there's a few famous scientists who died this year, Jane Goodall.

'''E:''' Not too long ago, Doctor.

'''S:''' Goodall, She had an amazing career, obviously best known for her work with chimpanzees, but also I, a tireless advocate just for the environment and animal welfare.

'''E:''' And yeah. Yeah, I criticized her once.

'''S:''' Yeah, we did she.

'''E:''' We did.

'''S:''' She said some gullible things about Bigfoot.

'''C:''' And nobody's above criticism.

'''E:''' Look, look, not all scientists are disappointing. Are skeptics at the same level that we are right or not exposed to? What we, what we? Concentrate on. They're concentrating on the work they're doing, which is fine, right? But then they kind of speak outside of their element a little bit. And this is, this is what happens. And it can happen to the best of them. And Jane Goodall is an example of.

'''S:''' That skepticism is a unique skill set. It is. Automatically go along with being a scientist, unfortunately.

'''C:''' Yeah, and I don't think she ever claimed to be a skeptic either.

'''E:''' No, Correct.

'''C:''' Right, right.

'''E:''' She was not pretending to be something she's not. Right.

'''S:''' And also the other big name this year was James Watson, also completely beyond any criticism, right?

'''E:''' Oh yeah. Yeah.

'''B:''' I have a decently representative quote about him. This is from scientist Dorian Nathaniel Comfort, said. The most famous scientist of the 20th century and the most infamous of the 21st, which kind of does it a little bit of justice right there? I mean, yeah. I mean, racist views, sexist views were, yeah, we're not good. He, he worked for for decades and moved up the ladder at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory CSHL. And in in 2019, they revoked his emeritus status and they condemned him for, I quote, the misuse of signs to justify prejudice. I mean, that's just like, damn, man.

'''C:''' And it's important to remember, too, that it's not just, I think sometimes we hear people and we had this argument or this conversation before. It's like, well, he was of an era. And, you know, some people might say, hey, lived a little too long. Like if he had died earlier, maybe he wouldn't have gone down in history that way. But we have people like Attenborough who who are 101, right? Like we've got people alive today who were alive when he was alive who didn't espouse those views. Yep, we have to remember that.

'''S:''' But so of course, he's the most famous for discovering the DNA Helix structure with Crick. You know Watson and Crick, everybody knows those. Names and Rosalind Franklin. He used. And ideas from Rosalind Franklin and biophysicist Maurice Wilkins without attributing them. And they didn't get and not even with, with Franklin's permission. So that was that was terrible. You know, it's like, yeah, you know, women do a lot of the hard work that the two guys took all the credit, got the Nobel Prize. It was terrible. But of course, you have to say that Rosalind Franklin didn't get the Nobel Prize primarily because she was dead at the time it was awarded. And they don't give pops to the prize. But that doesn't doesn't erase the fact that you know she was abused.

'''C:''' Right. And even if it was normative at the time, that doesn't make it right.

'''S:''' No, of course not. It wasn't.

'''C:''' It wasn't right. It wasn't.

'''S:''' It wasn't normative or right at the time.

'''C:''' Well, it's still normative that women don't really get as many new. Yeah, sure. Yeah.

'''S:''' Yeah, Bob, do you know Chen Ning Yang?

'''B:''' I don't think so.

'''S:''' Physicist whose work on symmetry paved the way for the standard model of particles.

'''B:''' Oh. I, I know I've come across his name probably just like 2 initials in Yang and that was like, and he was on papers that I've read. So yeah.

'''S:''' I've probably got massive, you know, work for in the standard, which of course even the standard model was at the core of physics today.

'''B:''' Absolutely.

'''S:''' There's another physicist. This is an astrophysicist, just George Smoot.

'''C:''' Oh yeah, Smoot.

'''S:''' Yeah. So he won the Nobel Prize in physics in 2006 for his work on the cosmic background explorer.

'''B:''' Oh yeah.

'''S:''' John Mather led to the discovery of the black body form of anisotropy of the cosmic microwave. Microwave.

'''B:''' Background mediation, huge man. That's great. We probably mentioned him on the show put potentially in 2006.

'''C:''' Wasn't Didn't David Baltimore die this year too?

'''S:''' Yep. David Baltimore.

'''C:''' Yeah, he's another Nobel laureate, right?

'''S:''' Nobel Prize for Discovery's concern the interaction between tumor viruses and the genetic material of this cell.

'''C:''' Well, and he did so much in like I think in the HIV AIDS space.

'''S:''' There's a There are a bunch of other Nobel laureates who died this year. George Smith 2009 Nobel Prize in physics for the invention of an imaging semiconductor circuit, the CD CCD sensor. So that which has become.

'''E:''' A charge couple.

'''S:''' Of this, Yeah, exactly. Which is like all of digital photography.

'''E:''' Every camera, right?

'''S:''' Yeah.

'''C:''' Wow, that's huge. And by the way, David Baltimore discovered reverse transcriptase.

'''S:''' Yeah.

'''E:''' Whoa.

'''C:''' Like, that's enormous. Yeah. Quite did. You tell.

'''E:''' Yeah, for the audience and my sake what that is.

'''C:''' Well, it explained basically how HIV can replicate like that, like, and it's like one of the foundational understandings to like we wouldn't have gene therapy without understanding reverse transcriptase. Yeah.

'''S:''' It's how you get DNA back into DNA, basically.

'''B:''' Exactly. And that's how that's how it gets bedded, embedded into the into the genome by viruses. Yep.

'''S:''' John Gordon, Nobel Prize for Researcher, turning mature cells into stem cells. We just talked about this too, about the stem cell ban. And now that was sidestepped by this science figuring out how to turn like skin cells into stem cells. So he got a Nobel Prize for that research. Hamilton Smith, Nobel Prize in 1978 for discovering restriction enzymes, also huge in biology. So I think that was all the Nobel laureates that I came across. But a few other physicists or a few other scientists who were not Nobel laureates but did but did work. Richard Garwin, any got anybody? So he came up with the first design for a hydrogen bomb.

'''B:''' Wow, really? The.

'''S:''' Yeah, maybe not the legacy you want, but it was still important, you know, to Yeah.

'''B:''' So not so Not just a a fission bomb, a fusion.

'''S:''' A fusion bomb. Yeah, a fusion bomb.

'''C:''' Right in the 50s, I suppose.

'''S:''' Xavier Lapichon helped create the field of plate tectonics.

'''C:''' Cool name too.

'''B:''' Yeah, right.

'''S:''' Elizabeth Verba. Anybody recognize that name?

'''B:''' I. Do I do?

'''S:''' Elizabeth Verba from evolutionary biology. So she's somebody I read a ton of Stephen J Gould, so I know about her, you know, through that work. So she was also at Yale. So the reason why I know her. So she developed the turnover pulse hypothesis, coined the phrase and coined the phrase exaptation with Stephen J Gould.

'''B:''' Nice.

'''S:''' So the turnover false hypothesis is the notion that an ecosystem reaches a stability and then something happens to destabilize the ecosystem. Whether it is climate change or some key index species goes extinct or or the invasion of another species or whatever. The ecosystem gets destabilized and then in a pulse of turnover, a lot of the species change until you reach a new stable ecosystem. And what is exaptation? Who wants to define that word for me?

'''B:''' I used to know.

'''C:''' We did it on the show.

'''B:''' Exaptation ex.

'''C:''' Yeah, it's when one trait gets used for something different later, right?

'''S:''' Yeah, it's evolved for one purpose and then it gets.

'''B:''' Well, that's kind of. Important.

'''S:''' Something else?

'''C:''' Yeah.

'''B:''' Yeah, that's what evolution is, man. That's totally awesome. That's critical key.

'''S:''' Critical concept evolution? Absolutely. Darlene Christian Hoffman confirmed the existence of C borgium, element 106.

'''B:''' Nice. Wow. C. Borgium. That sounds fake. That sounds fake.

'''US#06:''' That's ridiculous.

'''S:''' Mark Norrell or Norrell Cara. This is a dinosaur guy. You know him. Mark first discovered the first theropod embryo.

'''C:''' Oh, cool.

'''S:''' And also known for his description of many feathered dinosaurs.

'''C:''' Oh wow. Really neat.

'''S:''' Yeah, good work. All right. A few astronauts, most famously Gem Lovell.

'''E:''' Gem Lovell.

'''S:''' Yeah, Gem Lovell Yeah, we talked about him on this show. So he first one to go to the twice I believe.

'''E:''' Yes.

'''C:''' Wow.

'''S:''' He is of Houston. We have a problem. Fame.

'''E:''' We've had a problem. We've had. Him. Yeah.

'''S:''' He was 97.

'''E:''' Yeah, good for him. Good run man.

'''S:''' Good run.

'''E:''' Especially after Wow, surviving what he had to survive is amazing.

'''S:''' Yeah, Captain Frederick H Hawk, who was a space shuttle captain, died this year. And not really an astronaut, but kind of in that same vein, Felix Baumgartner.

'''E:''' Yeah. Right. Yeah. At the time. Space jump record. The space jump. Yeah. For the highest space jump.

'''S:''' Jumped from the edge of space, died in a paragliding crash, and paragliding is dangerous.

'''E:''' Yeah, man.

'''C:''' Well, these like extreme athletes. I know, like jumping from space is dangerous too, but yeah.

'''E:''' I don't know how they get.

'''US#06:''' Insurance, Frank Somehow safer jumping from space. Some safer. House. Yeah. He was only 56, right? Yeah.

'''C:''' Yeah, it was. Yeah, it's a bummer that's.

'''US#06:''' By age, that's really.

'''S:''' So that's the scientists and, you know, technologists and space guys, a few just celebrities I thought I'd throw out there. We very recently lost Rob Reiner. Very sad story. He and his wife were stabbed to death by their their troubled son.

'''B:''' Allegedly by the son, yeah.

'''S:''' Yeah, very, you know, terrible thing. So it's so sad. Just we imagine having a child who has mental health issues, drug, you know, use issues. It's so, so heartbreaking. But then, of course, and now ending super tragically, June Lockhart. Anybody know who she is?

'''B:''' Yes, Oh my God. Lost in space. Lost in space and Lassie and Lassie. Wow.

'''S:''' Robert Redford across, of course, probably the most.

'''E:''' Robert Redford.

'''B:''' Oh yeah.

'''S:''' Hulk Hogan died this year. I missed that.

'''E:''' He did, yes. Heart attack was battling cancer and leukemia.

'''S:''' Oh.

'''E:''' Wow, at the time his heart gave well, you know, and what he did to his body and stuff over the years, you know, I can only. Imagine. What kind of toll that took, you know, with the drugs he took and performance drugs and everything else. But still, yeah, I mean, he was, he's an icon. He's an, you know, whether you liked him or hated him, Definitely on Icon.

'''S:''' Ozzy Osbourne.

'''E:''' Oh. Yeah, yeah, sad in that he performed his last concert a couple of weeks before he before. He right. Right. It was his fair. It was his farewell show.

'''C:''' Oh, well, I mean, that's kind of great then.

'''US#06:''' Yeah, it was the way to go, I guess. Yeah, you.

'''S:''' Know. All right. Who knows who Drew Struzan is? Drew Struzan?

'''US#06:''' No.

'''S:''' No chance you'd recognize his name. But you do recognize his work. He's an artist.

'''US#06:''' OK.

'''S:''' Famous for innovating the movie poster responsible for such iconic movie posters as Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Back to the Future, ET, Blade Runner, The Goonies, First Blood, Bob, You'll have this one, The Shawshank Redemption, The Thing.

'''B:''' Nice.

'''S:''' And Harry Potter, the Sorcerer's Stone.

'''E:''' Wow folks. So he they called on him when they.

'''US#06:''' Needed did he invent that like kind of stacking pyramidal yeah shape. OK, that's, yeah, that's very cool.

'''B:''' What was it stacking? What?

'''US#06:''' Well, you know how like movie, like think of Star Wars movie poster, at least what comes into my head is like the head, the people's heads in a pyramidal shape or a triangle or shape, you know, kind of like.

'''B:''' But.

'''US#06:''' Or a tree or whatever.

'''B:''' You would you would be surprised, though, at the calculus that goes into determining whose head is where and where the names are. This is all about negotiating with the actors and the actors people. Because sometimes you have the people, the stars, AB and C, their heads, but above them it's CAB because it's a different set of rules for where the name goes to where the head goes and how big it is. It's this whole thing that probably makes it a horrible process to go through to figure out whose head goes where, how big, where the names go. It's this whole thing that I read. It was fast.

'''US#06:''' Maybe they should just make the movies better you know, and not focus so much on.

'''C:''' That well. When I when I think about those iconic movie posters, I also think about the typeface and the the actual title of the movie, how it takes up so much and it has such a presence in those movie posters.

'''B:''' Oh yeah, you could look at a movie, but it's all. It's funny though sometimes. Like recently I saw a movie poster for a movie that on paper sounded like something I would like. But taking one look at the movie poster, I'm like, that movie sucks because the poster is so bad that this can't possibly be even a halfway decent movie. And I was right. When I did more research, it was horrible. Movie.

'''US#06:''' Would you say that about the Room? I have Tommy wise those The Room. It's like a ridiculous cover, but it's one of the best terrible movies ever. Yeah, so I don't.

'''E:''' Know 1977 Star Wars poster sold for a record 3.875 million in all. Well, this month, just this.

'''C:''' Month doesn't surprise me.

'''E:''' Wow, an original.

'''S:''' It's an amazing poster.

'''E:''' I would. I had. It I had. It. Talk about the. Dollars on my wall.

'''S:''' That Star Wars font itself is iconic. You have Darth Vaders head, you know Luke Skywalker with the lightsaber over his head, Princess Leia, Han Solo is not even in the picture. You got the droids in the background and you got the X wing fighters like a squadron of them in the background as well. And the death *. Hovering and the Death Star I.

'''E:''' Yeah, it's just. It's rained in.

'''S:''' It's a great in my memory, Yeah, it's amazing.

'''E:''' And Drew Strusen also created the Revenge of the Jedi poster, which is also famous because he made the poster and then they changed the title of the movie and they took all the posters away. So if you have one of those, you have a rare item.

'''B:''' Yeah.

'''US#06:''' Do you think anything nowadays could achieve that kind of rare item status or have we jumped the shark with all that kind of stuff? It's like it's hard to predict obviously because like be financially beneficial to you if you could well.

'''C:''' I think so, but there's just a lot more like chaff.

'''US#06:''' Stuff.

'''C:''' Oh yeah, yeah. Yeah, chaff's the bad stuff, right? We want the Wii. Yeah, there's a lot more chaff, yeah.

'''US#06:''' What can you?

'''E:''' Do if you have the first iPhone in the box, I imagine that's worth some bucks.

'''US#06:''' Oh yeah, maybe.

'''U:''' Yeah, it could be are.

'''S:''' You guys.

'''US#06:''' Ready for all your junk? Yeah, go ahead. Ready.

'''E:''' Yeah.
{{anchor|qow}}
== Skeptical Quote of the Week (1:32:25) ==
{{qow
|text = “Skepticism is an act of doing good in the world.”
|author = - Joe Nickell
|lived =
|desc =
}}

'''S:''' Ready for the final? Science or fiction?

'''US#06:''' Oh boy, does.

'''E:''' This count.

'''S:''' It counts I.

'''US#06:''' Think so?

'''E:''' They're not. I'm not not ready.

'''Voice-over:''' It's time for science or fiction.

'''S:''' All right, each week I come up with three Science News items or facts, 2 real and one fake. And then I challenge my panel and skeptics to tell me which one is the fake. But on this episode, first we're going to go over statistics for 2025, so we'll give you just the percentages. So.

'''US#06:''' Depressed already? Come on in.

'''S:''' Last place, higher mass, Last place is. J at 57.4%.

'''E:''' That's a 57 point. Four, that's not bad. That's very bad, yeah. Last place used to be we didn't have 30s and 40s, yeah.

'''US#06:''' And some he's busy negotiating those rooms. OK, you.

'''S:''' Guys are all generally had a good year. I definitely. Are we getting better? East Lacking. Oh, I think you're getting better. I mean, I thought I came up with good items and you sniff it out. Like what? The ego, I don't know what's going on. I have no idea. It's this one like shit.

'''E:''' Yeah, it's like picking stocks. You know.

'''S:''' And your reasoning is usually solid damage.

'''E:''' Carriages.

'''S:''' I gotta get one level more devious in second break or second from the bottom is Evan at 63.8% which again that's pretty.

'''E:''' Good, that's really. Good. Yeah, very, very. Yeah, I'm happy. I'm happy.

'''S:''' Bob, you squeaked by Evan with 64%.

'''B:''' Yeah, man, you suck, Evan. Only by 1%. I'll take second place. I mean, I think we we could all agree there's no defeating the Cara Beast and.

'''S:''' Cara had a great year. 77% Wow.

'''E:''' That's better.

'''B:''' We even tried.

'''S:''' A little bit more than three out of four. That's not bad.

'''E:''' Yes, that's more like an anomaly. Maybe. I think that's. Your best year? We need to investigate this A. Little.

'''C:''' Well, I wonder how many times I went first. I bet you I am. I think one of my skills is riding on you guys as coattails. Yeah, it's it's recognizing which of you are making better arguments.

'''S:''' It's tough.

'''B:''' I don't know, I don't think you need our help. I. Don't know I. Don't think you need our help too much.

'''C:''' I bet you if you look at the number of times that I win when I go first, it's a real low.

'''S:''' It's tough because I hear I want to be fair with who I go first, but I don't want everyone riding on your coattails every week either.

'''C:''' So, right, that's the thing you have to be smart about and, and a lot of times it's about the topics, right? Like when it's a physics thing, throw me first, it doesn't matter.

'''S:''' Totally.

'''B:''' Yeah, Yeah. And then Steve, Steve gives me a dream, science or fiction last week and it's like, alright, I'm gonna get this one. And then every everyone got it. Like what? That's not how it's supposed to go.

'''S:''' That wasn't my plan, Bob. I was hoping for everyone to get it wrong and then for you to school them at the end. But what? Can you do?

'''B:''' They hey, they sussed it out and like, I can't disagree so OK, whatever.

'''S:''' Andrea played three. Andrea Jones. Roy played three. Science or fictions. She got a 0%. Don't tell. Me.

'''C:''' Well, she's got to play more.

'''B:''' Yeah.

'''S:''' George George also played three times. He had a 33%, got 11. Correct.

'''US#06:''' OK, OK, 3.

'''C:''' 183 ain't bad.

'''S:''' Justin Dobb and Adam Russell both played one and got them correct, so they had 100. Percent.

'''C:''' So they win, win. Or win.

'''E:''' Yeah. What do they have? That's the best.

'''S:''' Lee played once and got it wrong, so I had 0%. I you didn't play once?

'''E:''' I didn't play this year. I did everyone. We need to fix that, yeah. I did everyone. We should fix that.

'''C:''' But every time, I've only done it a handful of times, and I get swept every time. I'm not good at writing science or fiction.

'''S:''' Yeah, it's tough.

'''C:''' It's a skill.

'''E:''' Up everyone else's average.

'''S:''' OK, it was a Goodyear. Are you ready for the last fiction of 2020? Five.

'''E:''' Will this impact Bob standing in my standing?

'''S:''' It could. If you win and he doesn't, you may, you may flop. He may get into shit, into second place. Evan, Evan, Ian, what did you? What was your record from last year? You played just once at the end of the year last year.

'''US#06:''' I don't remember getting last year right. I think the prior prior I did. And then I don't remember chatter chatters. I say chatters when I was streaming. What am I doing? Listeners? You tell me if I'm wrong.

'''S:''' OK, so here are the items for 2025. I usually do variations on some kind of look back of 225 for yes this science or fiction that the specific theme I chose. These are all items that I blogged about. On my neurological blog.

'''US#06:''' Interesting reading the. Blog.

'''S:''' So this will be easy for anybody who obsessively reads my blog. OK, which of course, why wouldn't you allow?

'''E:''' Right, available and. Neurologica.

'''S:''' Neurological blog com slash neurological. Item number one, an analysis finds that existing policies on use of plastic bags are mostly ineffective, on average reducing plastic bag waste by less than 10%. Item number 2 an extensive genetic and cellular analysis finds that birds evolved the information caring neurons in their brain mostly independently from mammals. And I #3 researchers presented a new gene editing system that is even better than CRISPR called the Tiger Task System. And as I usually do, we go in reverse order of your score, so.

'''C:''' Adam.

'''S:''' Yeah.

'''US#06:''' But he and Adam.

'''S:''' He will have you go last, so we'll start with Evan.

'''E:''' Oh, oh, I see.

'''C:''' So.

'''E:''' The policies on use of plastic bags are mostly ineffective, on average reducing plastic bag waste by less than 10%. OK, why? Why would you have blogged about this? I have a feeling you you actually did blog about. Good angle of. These right? And it's just I did blog about all three of these. I just. Changed. Not like you made one up wholesale. And I'll give you that. Blogged it. OK, yeah, I, I, I have, I have a feeling this one feels like science to me. And because I'm don't know, there, there seems to be the shift almost a little bit back into the acceptance of plastic bags for a long time, right? They were, they were banned. And I don't know, I imagine they're still banned in some States and some and some places, but I've kind of seen them creeping back into my world in a sense. So in that that would say that basically this really wasn't working, it wasn't effective. And therefore we don't, you know, we're giving up the ghost here. So I have a feeling that one's going to be right. The second one about genetic and cellular analysis, about the birds that evolve the information carrying neurons in their brain, mostly independently from mammals, that strikes me as significant, although I couldn't tell you exactly why that would be the case. Steve, you love birds and I don't. So this one, I'm going to just rely more on you than the actual science itself. Would you have the fortitude, let's say, to go ahead and pervert one of your stories about birds and make it into the fiction, right? I don't know. Are you more of a purist? Like it would be like, now I can't do that to birds because I I love birds and everything about them and it's my hobby and everything. So that one leads me to believe it's also science, which leads me to the last one now, the tiger task system. Gosh, did we talk about this on the show as well? We talked about several CRISPR items this year, and this seems familiar, even better than CRISPR. Gosh. So this one is also science. Therefore, all three are science, I will have to say. Therefore, Gee whiz, I have to say something. I have to guess, even better than CRISPR tiger tasks. I mean, a new system, why wouldn't it be better than CRISPR? That's the point. Why would they develop something that wouldn't be better or just does something differently? I will say the one about plastic bags is the fiction.

'''S:''' OK, Bob, I.

'''B:''' Don't remember too many details about tiger tasks, but I think I'm going to say that one is is science. God I wish I remember the details. It seems like a lot longer ago Steve than 2025. Dude like that? That seems like a 2023 memory to me. But.

'''E:''' It would be the.

'''B:''' Fiction. Are you sure you talked about it this year or is that or is that the premise that I miss? Am I incorrect about the premise just the?

'''S:''' Premise is I blocked some point this year.

'''B:''' OK all. Right, So I'll say that one is science, the the bird one, the bag one makes sense kind of make it makes more sense as it's written. And I think you probably or maybe would not really want to write about it if it were the opposite. Maybe it's kind of strikes me that way. And I'm just this, this the neurons in the birds, man, that's just like neurons at that level. Neurons. I think some of the one of the things and that would be conserved to such a degree that I wouldn't imagine they would be that different. So I'm going to say that one's fiction.

'''S:''' Interesting. OK, Cara.

'''C:''' So it's funny because I think all of them, I think these are really well written because they're all, I don't know, they all stick out in their own way, like the the one that Bob just went with, right? The birds evolving information, carrying neurons in their brain mostly independently for mammals. To me, that's the most holy crap. Like if that's science, that's a big deal, right? And it, it's, it seems the most counterintuitive to me, But that doesn't mean it's not science. And the one about tiger tasks or tiger tasks. I love what Evan said. Well, of course it's better than Chris or it wouldn't be newsworthy if they're like, we came up with this system that's worse than Chris. The fact that I don't remember this at all is really, that's a bummer. And I don't know if that is an indictment of my memory or my attention. I'm not really sure. But this one definitely seems the most, well, not the most plausible, but this one seems plausible. And if this one is science, that's like amazing. So this one's holy crap, that's amazing. The bird one is, Oh my gosh, I can't believe that's true. And then the plastic bag one, it's funny that you put your nickel down on that, Evan, because it sounded like you weren't going to go with this at all.

'''E:''' But I was basing it only on my own personal experience, which is useless. Right.

'''C:''' That's why my personal experience is that I live in California, right? And so we are in many ways a leader in this type of regulation. And from what I understand, there are, first of all, there are a ton of loopholes and there are a ton of reasons why plastic bag bans do fail because like here, just as an aside, there's this stupid thing and I think there are about to outlawed in LA, but there's this stupid thing where you can sell reusable plastic bags. They're like slightly thicker. Yeah. And so the idea is that people will use them more often, but it's just worse plastic to break down in the Yeah, it's like, it's a bad idea paper, right? Like I only use paper bags or or reusable.

'''E:''' For the reusables I use reusables.

'''C:''' All the time. Like if you're gonna ban plastic, you have to ban it out, right? But, and we've got to remember that the way you worded this is very careful, Steve. And analysis finds that existing policies, policies on use of plastic bags are mostly ineffective. So that includes all those loopholes. But then it says, on average, reducing plastic bag waste by less than 10%. And I just don't think that's true. I think places where there are policies in place, we we see a bigger reduction. I think we could see an even bigger reduction though if there weren't so many like stupid loopholes. But 10% seems really low to me so I'm I'm going to say that's the fiction.

'''S:''' OK. And Ian?

'''US#06:''' OK, so I'm going to go backwards a little bit just because when I heard you say CRISPR and Tiger task, I was like, it has to be ending with Tastic, tiger Tastic. I was like, this is clearly a lie. But then when I I you sent it to us, so I saw it written. I was like, OK, maybe it's not. Maybe it is actually scientists, you know, writing a fun little name. At least in my head, that's how it comes out with I could see what it's saying. Even better seems a weird thing as opposed to like maybe it has this different use case that is maybe more tailored to something. So maybe that's where the even better thing is, like that they have slightly different specialties, whatever. So that seems like science to me, even though the even better thing kind of threw me a little bit. The birds, maybe I just don't understand how bird evolution and mammals, you know, evolved. But I don't see why they wouldn't be independently evolving inflammation carrying neurons as opposed to like what what what dependency would they have?

'''S:''' Well, the other option is that that all vertebrates sort of have the same neurons, right?

'''C:''' We all have a common answer.

'''S:''' You have a common. So did neurons develop in the common ancestor?

'''US#06:''' Or they or after the fact.

'''S:''' Developing birds and mammals.

'''US#06:''' I see, I see, I see. Okay, definitely. So yeah, that does interesting adder wrinkle. I'm still going to go with my gut and say that they the the other word that throws me off is the mostly independently. It's like maybe just like completely independently or whatever. I'm going to. I still think that seems reasonable. Whatever convergent evolution. I don't know if that's even like the right terminology to use that it is OK, thank you. I win. And then an analysis finds that existing policies on use of plastic bags are mostly ineffective and developed. OK, I mean, I do hope that regulation does something like, please God, let's that be somewhere. I mean, I, I will agree that like putting a lot of the onus on like the consumer seems to be, you know, maybe that's like the wrong place when so many corporations pollute, blah, blah, blah. We all know that, I think, you know, so, but I would hope I don't see plastic bags unless I go to like Virginia or Pennsylvania. And then it's like they just don't give a damn. But like you Connecticut or LA or like, you know, California, it's like, I don't see them. I don't even see those thicker plastic bags. It's funny that when you get to a certain thickness, they become like a reusual plastic bag that you don't want to throw out. But there's like this middle ground thickness where I'm like, yeah, it's close enough. I do want to throw it out. But anyway, yeah, I it's got to be that, that is that that's the fiction that it's, it is actually effective. Like it is reducing plastic bag waste. Please please.

'''S:''' Bob, which one did you pick again?

'''B:''' Yeah, the neurons. The neurons.

'''S:''' All right, so you all agree on the third one. So we'll start there. Researchers presented a new gene editing system that is even better than CRISPR called the Tiger Task system. You all think this one is science and this one is science. Is this science? Yes. And we we did talk about this on the show.

'''B:''' And it's it was better in a couple. It's better.

'''S:''' It's got some interesting advantages. So it it works on both strands of the DNA in terms of finding the plate, you know, the match and therefore is more reliable. And it's also not limited in the way that CRISPR is CRISPR, you know, requires a a certain particular sequence on the on the RNA to be able to find it. And those are the so-called Pam sequences, the proto spacer adjacent motifs, right? So CRISPR is Pam dependent, Tiger is Pam independent, which means it's more versatile and it's more accurate. So. So it has potential to be even better than CRISPR.

'''US#06:''' So replacement like yeah, I.

'''B:''' Was working on it right? I haven't heard much about it lately. Though, well, it just.

'''C:''' Came out to.

'''S:''' Share You know Christopher.

'''C:''' Got to remember we don't hear much, like we just hear the word CRISPR a lot too. And I think that's become a catch hole, a catch all, like like a zero. You don't often hear like CRISPR cast 9 versus CRISPR cast 10. Yeah, you're right. You know, like I think people just say CRISPR.

'''S:''' When they when they mean genetic and newer genetic system.

'''B:''' That could actually. Happen this CRISPR thing. Technology, yeah.

'''US#06:''' So is it like a complete replacement of all things CRISPR or is it just like no, no.

'''S:''' No, it wouldn't. You know, it wouldn't completely replace CRISPR because there are things for which CRISPR is fine, OK, But there might be some specific use cases where the advantages of Tiger would make it worth it.

'''B:''' Whatever happened, Steve, I remember we talked about a new system that didn't cut anything. It basically just silenced the chest.

'''S:''' That's an application of CRISPR. Again, that's the CRISPR what you know, the attachment. Yeah.

'''B:''' Yeah. That to me that was.

'''S:''' Yeah, basically a toggle. You could turn genes on and off without breaking them, so you could turn them back on again. Just silence is the gene. Yeah, the.

'''C:''' Thing is, it's probably being used.

'''S:''' Yeah, yeah, it's totally being used.

'''C:''' We're just not always like so specific about the exact mechanism at play because it gets really in the weeds.

'''B:''' Yeah, I got to look at that specific. I thought it could, it could replace a lot of regular, you know, regular CRISPR Cast 9. I mean, it's because it just seemed like there's no, you're not cutting anything out, so you're just silencing and you could just turn it on and off. If there's a mistake, I turn it on. You don't have to even worry about cutting or reinserting or anything. I don't know, It just seemed like a great advance that I just don't remember coming across on my news item searches. Every week? Well, you need the words there.

'''US#06:''' Neurological Blog.

'''S:''' Dig deep, dig deep and you'll. See.

'''C:''' Yeah, I doubt it's even getting really highlighted. Yeah.

'''S:''' All right, let's go back to #2 An extensive genetic and cellular analysis finds that birds evolved the information carrying neurons in their brain mostly independently from mammals. Bob, you think this one is the fiction. Everyone else thinks this one is science. So this is a very interesting news item. The Have you ever heard the term the pallium? Yeah.

'''E:''' Nope.

'''S:''' Bob, where do you hear it from?

'''B:''' Isn't that the name of the the publication for the high school we went to?

'''S:''' Canada, What do you? Mean.

'''E:''' How can you say that then? Have anyone heard of something? Only Bob. And the newspaper.

'''S:''' Means something. It's not a random word they made-up. The pallium is basically the cerebral cortex, right? So they use that as the name for their their whatever their monthly magazine. But so the the question is, and all vertebrates have a pallium, right? But the question is how much of the structure, especially at the cellular and genetic level, how much of that is from a common vertebrate ancestor, and how much of it were were evolved independently in reptiles, birds and mammals?

'''C:''' And they are really different like. Organizationally, they're it's. Really different in birds than in yeah.

'''S:''' But so, but that was that all organizational is that the networks or is that the actual neurons themselves?

'''B:''' Cellular level. Right. Yeah. And and how would?

'''C:''' Yeah, I definitely wouldn't know that. I know that like from a mapping perspective. Yeah, Oh yeah, definitely.

'''S:''' So they did a thorough analysis and looked at both these cells themselves and the genes. And what they found was, I'll quote one of the one of the researchers. Their neurons are born in different locations and developmental times in each species, indicating that they are not comparable neurons derived from a common ancestor. So this one is science. Sorry, Bob.

'''C:''' That's so cool and crazy.

'''S:''' But there were a couple of neurons in common. That's why I had to say mostly, but most of the neurons were like different genetics, different developmental biology these evolved into.

'''B:''' Yeah, man.

'''S:''' Yeah, that's pretty awesome.

'''B:''' Wow.

'''S:''' Yeah.

'''US#06:''' So then what about other like vertebrates though? Because like it's mammals, birds, like what reptiles, amphibians. Do we they have a common neurological ants?

'''S:''' Well, yeah, but we all evolve from fish, right? We're basically all fish. Evolutionarily speaking, we are all fish, right? But yeah, that's why they they, they looked at the derived, you know, groups the reptiles, birds and mammals.

'''C:''' But are reptiles did there? I guess they don't really have a cortex, but they still have a they. Do they have a pallium? Yeah, yeah, they don't. Have a. They don't have a neocortex. Yeah, yeah. But did there are they got the? Newsletter.

'''US#06:''' There you. Go.

'''C:''' Is theirs more similar to birds? No no. So all three of us are just different.

'''S:''' Yeah, all three are different.

'''US#06:''' Yeah. Oh wow.

'''S:''' All right, let's go back to #1 and analysis finds that existing policies on use of plastic bags are mostly ineffective, on average reducing plastic bag waste by less than 10%. That is, of course, the fiction, because the truth is they're quite effective. So you guys, your wish list came true. They are. So the, the study that I was writing about compared states with plastic bag policies, just any plastic bag policy to states without any policy. And they found that the plastic bag waste was reduced by 25 to 47%. So at the high end cut in half, which is still not good enough, but that's, that's significant. That's pretty still they work.

'''C:''' I can't. Believe there are states with 0 policies and on plastic bags.

'''US#06:''' Woke is back look.

'''S:''' Some things are woke, Cara. You should know that, yeah.

'''US#06:''' Sometimes in. 500,000 people in them.

'''C:''' So those 500? 1000 people. It would be so. Easy for them to not use plastic. Bags.

'''US#06:''' Yeah. What? Rhode Island? What are they doing with those bags?

'''S:''' There's also there's no, there's no federal regulation.

'''C:''' No, of course.

'''S:''' This is why it was easy to compare states, because it's all statewide.

'''US#06:''' That's good. Big plastic bag.

'''S:''' Is all you guys heard about the woke fonts, right?

'''US#06:''' Yes, OK, Times, New Rome and I think.

'''S:''' Calibri Calibri is a.

'''C:''' Real thing like I guess that you're being funny, but like big plastic is the reason for. Big plastic.

'''US#06:''' Big plastic, Yeah.

'''B:''' No, it's cool. I think you guys are missing the important take away. Here.

'''S:''' Bob has fallen into third place. Did he?

'''B:''' No, no, no. Even more important and tragic as that is, this I just realized, you know, Kerry gets what, 77? I think she has an absolutely unfair advantage being and living in California. And we shouldn't. We should tell her you got to move to Texas to make it to even it out a little bit.

'''E:''' There you go. Florida.

'''C:''' Hey, but hey. But to be fair, Bob, I'm from Texas and I did live in Florida.

'''S:''' That's true.

'''B:''' OK, right.

'''C:''' I have lived in, I lived in Texas longer than I have lived in California so far and I lived in Florida for one year and New York for one year. So those like they sort of cancel each. Other.

'''S:''' All the big electoral states in the country and you.

'''C:''' Drive a truck.

'''E:''' And you drive it.

'''C:''' Right, I'm quad coastal. I drive a hybrid truck.

'''S:''' You go hybrid truck, you got to live for a year in Pennsylvania or something.

'''C:''' I'm I'm a very confusing person.

'''S:''' And this is often why I'm frustrated because of items like this Cara, because I forget these tangential connections you have to the topic that I'm talking about. Like damn, just from California, you forget all the ways in which you're going to find your because you're right. You like you just knew that. Yeah, we have got back. Yeah, way more, not only 10%.

'''B:''' Oh, I'll be. Reminding you, Steve.

'''C:''' Not only my friend, not only do I live in California, I live in LA and I don't live in West Hollywood, but I spend quite a bit of time in West Hollywood. And West Hollywood, I think compared to the rest of the country, has the most progressive legislation. It's a tiny little city that is mostly LGBTQI. Plus their leadership is as well. And they like, they ban fur. They banned foie gras. They were way early on, the plastic bag and the straw and the Styrofoam bands like yeah, they're, yeah, yeah.

'''US#06:''' It's got the Pink Pony Club, that's where all the people are going. No, anyway, the song.

'''C:''' Yeah, yeah, I'm gonna keep on dancing.

'''US#06:''' There you go.

'''S:''' All right, well, that's a wrap for 2025 guys. Oh boy, Evan, you got to take us out with a quote.

'''E:''' Hey, yeah, well, we're gonna tip our hat to an old friend with our quote tonight.

'''S:''' Yes.

'''E:''' Skepticism is an act of doing good in the world. Joe Nickel.

'''S:''' Joe Nickel, great. Guy yeah.

'''E:''' Joe Nickel. Said that on your Point of Inquiry podcast and it was sweet and short and yeah, we miss you, Joe. We definitely miss you.

'''S:''' Well, guys, it's been a blast doing the show with you in 2025.

'''E:''' Yeah, that's just been. Arrived. We survived.

'''S:''' Let's do one more island of sanity.

'''C:''' One more year, Bob, I'm with you. One more year.

'''E:''' 1.

'''B:''' More year.

'''S:''' Bob only ever commits to one year at a time.

'''C:''' That's the way to live your life far I gotta.

'''US#06:''' Re up man. We have the Internet in one year. Exactly.

'''S:''' Ian, thanks for joining us.

'''US#06:''' Thanks for. You doing? Thank you so much. Thank you listeners to all you do, especially when you go to patreon.com and get to start.

'''B:''' Absolutely.

'''S:''' Thanks for anyone who out there who doesn't know Ian is our tech guru. He is an absolute magician. I use that term.

'''US#06:''' Metaphor. Sure.

'''S:''' But seriously, I mean, he, it's amazing what this guy can do. You know, he he handles all of our live streaming, all of our live events. It's kind of it's kind of like we get in front of the camera, Ian, work your magic, make it happen. Yeah, we're sitting like Ian. Come on, it's taking.

'''US#06:''' 2 minutes, all right.

'''E:''' You.

'''US#06:''' Can just push the button.

'''E:''' I know push. The button push. The button don't look down. The curtain, I thought. The thing? 2 seconds ago. Why isn't it happening?

'''S:''' And also the extravaganza is like the audience will throw out the weirdest random wacky shit and he'll have an image of it in like 2 minutes.

'''US#06:''' Not AI. Thank you. I make it myself. Thank you so much.

'''S:''' Does it the old fashioned way with. Photoshop or something?

'''US#06:''' Yeah. Oh yeah, you're very old.

'''S:''' No, Yeah, really, you have become Ian, indispensable to the SGU we. Really.

'''US#06:''' Thank you very much.

'''B:''' I appreciate that Integral bro.

'''US#06:''' Oh wait, is that a good thing or bad? Oh no.

'''S:''' Once you're all the way in, you never get.

'''US#06:''' Out you never be.

'''B:''' All right, guys, back in.

'''S:''' Thank you again.

'''US#06:''' Thanks.

'''S:''' For thanks. For 2025, thanks for joining me this week.

'''C:''' Thanks, Steve.

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

{{Navigation}}

2025-11-16T12:00:22Z

Mheguy: Page created (or rewritten) by transcription-bot. https://github.com/mheguy/transcription-bot

<noinclude>
=== Description ===
This style of template is for collating a year's list of episodes into a table sortable by date and other notable SGU episode features. The column headers for episode features are listed left to right in order of the typically most common occurrence. That is, the most common episode feature is at least one special "non-news" segment, followed by a SoF game with a theme, followed by interviews and guest Rogues.

To add entries, insert:

<pre>
|-
{{SGU list entry
|episode =
|date = MM-DD 
|status = 
|other = 
|sort_other =zzz 
|theme = 
|sort_theme =zzz 
|interviewee = 
|sort_interviewee =zzz 
|rogue = 
|sort_rogue =zzz 
}}
</pre>
Previous year: [[Template: EpisodeList2024|2024 - Episodes 965-1016]]

Following year: [[Template: EpisodeList2026|2026 - Episodes 1068-1119]]

''Note: This table's columns will "fill out" when episode features are added, widening them to more or less match previous years' tables.''</noinclude>

{|class="sortable wikitable sortable mw-collapsible" {{SGU list headers|year = 2025 [[#jump|[↑]]]|range = (Episodes 1017-1068)}}
|-
{{SGU list entry|episode=1062|date=11-15|status=bot|other=n|theme=n|interviewee=n|rogue=|sort_other=zzz|sort_theme=zzz|sort_interviewee=zzz|sort_rogue=zzz}}
|-
{{SGU list entry|episode=1061|date=11-08|status=bot|other=[[SGU Episode 1061#quickie|Quickie with Bob]]|theme=[[SGU Episode 1061#sof|Frogs]]|interviewee=n|rogue=|sort_other=|sort_theme=|sort_interviewee=zzz|sort_rogue=zzz}}
|-
{{SGU list entry|episode=1060|date=11-01|status=bot|other=[[SGU Episode 1060#ntlf|Name That Logical Fallacy]]|theme=[[SGU Episode 1060#sof|Good News]]|interviewee=n|rogue=|sort_other=|sort_theme=|sort_interviewee=zzz|sort_rogue=zzz}}
|-
{{SGU list entry|episode=1059|date=10-25|status=bot|other=[[SGU Episode 1059#wtw|What's the Word?]]|theme=[[SGU Episode 1059#sof|Human Flatulence]]|interviewee=n|rogue=|sort_other=|sort_theme=|sort_interviewee=zzz|sort_rogue=zzz}}
|-
{{SGU list entry|episode=1058|date=10-18|status=bot|other=[[SGU Episode 1058#ntlf|Name That Logical Fallacy]]|theme=[[SGU Episode 1058#sof|Insects]]|interviewee=n|rogue=|sort_other=|sort_theme=|sort_interviewee=zzz|sort_rogue=zzz}}
|-
{{SGU list entry|episode=1057|date=10-11|status=bot|other=[[SGU Episode 1057#quickie|Quickie with Steve]]|theme=n|interviewee=[[SGU Episode 1057#interview|David Kyle Johnson]]|rogue=|sort_other=|sort_theme=zzz|sort_interviewee=|sort_rogue=zzz}}
|-
{{SGU list entry|episode=1056|date=10-04|status=bot|other=[[SGU Episode 1056#quickie|Quickie with Bob]]|theme=[[SGU Episode 1056#sof|Evolution]]|interviewee=n|rogue=|sort_other=|sort_theme=|sort_interviewee=zzz|sort_rogue=zzz}}
|-
{{SGU list entry|episode=1055|date=09-27|status=bot|other=[[SGU Episode 1055#wtw|What's the Word?]] [[SGU Episode 1055#ntlf|Name That Logical Fallacy]]|theme=n|interviewee=n|rogue=|sort_other=|sort_theme=zzz|sort_interviewee=zzz|sort_rogue=zzz}}
|-
{{SGU list entry|episode=1054|date=09-20|status=bot|other=[[SGU Episode 1054#ntlf|Name That Logical Fallacy]]|theme=n|interviewee=n|rogue=|sort_other=|sort_theme=zzz|sort_interviewee=zzz|sort_rogue=zzz}}
|-
{{SGU list entry|episode=1053|date=09-13|status=bot|other=[[SGU Episode 1053#quickie|Quickie with Evan]]|theme=[[SGU Episode 1053#sof|Gravitational Waves]]|interviewee=n|rogue=|sort_other=|sort_theme=|sort_interviewee=zzz|sort_rogue=zzz}}
|-
{{SGU list entry|episode=1052|date=09-06|status=bot|other=[[SGU Episode 1052#quickie|Quickie with Bob]]|theme=[[SGU Episode 1052#sof|Marine Mammals]]|interviewee=n|rogue=|sort_other=|sort_theme=|sort_interviewee=zzz|sort_rogue=zzz}}
|-
{{SGU list entry|episode=1051|date=08-30|status=bot|other=n|theme=[[SGU Episode 1051#sof|Everyday Chemistry]]|interviewee=n|rogue=|sort_other=zzz|sort_theme=|sort_interviewee=zzz|sort_rogue=zzz}}
|-
{{SGU list entry|episode=1050|date=08-23|status=bot|other=[[SGU Episode 1050#quickie|Quickie with Steve]]|theme=n|interviewee=n|rogue=|sort_other=|sort_theme=zzz|sort_interviewee=zzz|sort_rogue=zzz}}
|-
{{SGU list entry|episode=1049|date=08-16|status=bot|other=n|theme=n|interviewee=n|rogue=|sort_other=zzz|sort_theme=zzz|sort_interviewee=zzz|sort_rogue=zzz}}
|-
{{SGU list entry|episode=1048|date=08-09|status=bot|other=[[SGU Episode 1048#quickie|Quickie with Bob]]|theme=[[SGU Episode 1048#sof|Stars]]|interviewee=n|rogue=|sort_other=|sort_theme=|sort_interviewee=zzz|sort_rogue=zzz}}
|-
{{SGU list entry|episode=1047|date=08-02|status=bot|other=[[SGU Episode 1047#ntlf|Name That Logical Fallacy]]|theme=n|interviewee=n|rogue=|sort_other=|sort_theme=zzz|sort_interviewee=zzz|sort_rogue=zzz}}
|-
{{SGU list entry|episode=1046|date=07-26|status=bot|other=[[SGU Episode 1046#wtw|What's the Word?]]|theme=[[SGU Episode 1046#sof|Malta]]|interviewee=n|rogue=|sort_other=|sort_theme=|sort_interviewee=zzz|sort_rogue=zzz}}
|-
{{SGU list entry|episode=1045|date=07-19|status=bot|other=[[SGU Episode 1045#quickie|Quickie with Bob]]|theme=[[SGU Episode 1045#sof|Not A Pig]]|interviewee=n|rogue=|sort_other=|sort_theme=|sort_interviewee=zzz|sort_rogue=zzz}}
|-
{{SGU list entry|episode=1044|date=07-12|status=bot|other=n|theme=n|interviewee=n|rogue=|sort_other=zzz|sort_theme=zzz|sort_interviewee=zzz|sort_rogue=zzz}}
|-
{{SGU list entry|episode=1043|date=07-05|status=bot|other=[[SGU Episode 1043#quickie|Quickie with Bob]]|theme=[[SGU Episode 1043#sof|Genetics]]|interviewee=n|rogue=|sort_other=|sort_theme=|sort_interviewee=zzz|sort_rogue=zzz}}
|-
{{SGU list entry|episode=1042|date=06-28|status=bot|other=[[SGU Episode 1042#wtw|What's the Word?]] [[SGU Episode 1042#ntlf|Name That Logical Fallacy]]|theme=n|interviewee=n|rogue=|sort_other=|sort_theme=zzz|sort_interviewee=zzz|sort_rogue=zzz}}
|-
{{SGU list entry|episode=1041|date=06-21|status=proofread|other=n|theme=[[SGU Episode 1041#sof|Online Privacy]]|interviewee=n|rogue=|sort_other=zzz|sort_theme=|sort_interviewee=zzz|sort_rogue=zzz}}
|-
{{SGU list entry|episode=1040|date=06-14|status=bot|other=[[SGU Episode 1040#dumbest|Dumbest Thing of the Week]]|theme=n|interviewee=n|rogue=|sort_other=|sort_theme=zzz|sort_interviewee=zzz|sort_rogue=zzz}}
|-
{{SGU list entry|episode=1039|date=06-07|status=bot|other=[[SGU Episode 1039#quickie|Quickie with Bob]]|theme=n|interviewee=[[SGU Episode 1039#interview|Emily Schoerning]]|rogue=|sort_other=|sort_theme=zzz|sort_interviewee=|sort_rogue=zzz}}
|-
{{SGU list entry|episode=1038|date=05-31|status=proofread|other=[[SGU Episode 1038#quickie|Quickie with Steve]]|theme=[[SGU Episode 1038#sof|Jargon]]|interviewee=n|rogue=|sort_other=|sort_theme=|sort_interviewee=zzz|sort_rogue=zzz}}
|-
{{SGU list entry|episode=1037|date=05-24|status=bot|other=n|theme=[[SGU Episode 1037#sof|Dwarf Planets]]|interviewee=n|rogue=|sort_other=zzz|sort_theme=|sort_interviewee=zzz|sort_rogue=zzz}}
|-
{{SGU list entry|episode=1036|date=05-17|status=bot|other=n|theme=n|interviewee=n|rogue=|sort_other=zzz|sort_theme=zzz|sort_interviewee=zzz|sort_rogue=zzz}}
|-
{{SGU list entry|episode=1035|date=05-10|status=proofread|other=[[SGU Episode 1035#quickie|Quickie with Bob]]|theme=n|interviewee=n|rogue=|sort_other=|sort_theme=zzz|sort_interviewee=zzz|sort_rogue=zzz}}
|-
{{SGU list entry|episode=1034|date=05-03|status=proofread|other=n|theme=[[SGU Episode 1034#sof|Metallurgy]]|interviewee=[[SGU Episode 1034#interview|Melanie Trecek-King]]|rogue=|sort_other=zzz|sort_theme=|sort_interviewee=|sort_rogue=zzz}}
|-
{{SGU list entry|episode=1033|date=04-26|status=bot|other=[[SGU Episode 1033#quickie|Quickie with Steve]]|theme=n|interviewee=n|rogue=|sort_other=|sort_theme=zzz|sort_interviewee=zzz|sort_rogue=zzz}}
|-
{{SGU list entry|episode=1032|date=04-19|status=bot|other=n|theme=n|interviewee=n|rogue=|sort_other=zzz|sort_theme=zzz|sort_interviewee=zzz|sort_rogue=zzz}}
|-
{{SGU list entry|episode=1031|date=04-12|status=bot|other=n|theme=n|interviewee=n|rogue=|sort_other=zzz|sort_theme=zzz|sort_interviewee=zzz|sort_rogue=zzz}}
|-
{{SGU list entry|episode=1030|date=04-05|status=proofread|other=[[SGU Episode 1030#wtw|What's the Word?]]|theme=n|interviewee=n|rogue=|sort_other=|sort_theme=zzz|sort_interviewee=zzz|sort_rogue=zzz}}
|-
{{SGU list entry|episode=1029|date=03-29|status=bot|other=[[SGU Episode 1029#quickie|Quickie with Bob]]|theme=n|interviewee=n|rogue=|sort_other=|sort_theme=zzz|sort_interviewee=zzz|sort_rogue=zzz}}
|-
{{SGU list entry|episode=1028|date=03-22|status=bot|other=n|theme=[[SGU Episode 1028#theme|Invertebrates]]|interviewee=[[SGU Episode 1028#interview|Michael Marshall and Cecil Cicirello]]|rogue=|sort_other=zzz|sort_theme=|sort_interviewee=|sort_rogue=zzz}}
|-
{{SGU list entry|episode=1027|date=03-15|status=proofread|other=[[SGU Episode 1027#wtw|What's the Word?]]|theme=[[SGU Episode 1027#theme|Ancient Roots]]|interviewee=[[SGU Episode 1027#interview|Dave Farina]]|rogue=|sort_other=|sort_theme=|sort_interviewee=|sort_rogue=zzz}}
|-
{{SGU list entry|episode=1026|date=03-08|status=bot|other=[[SGU Episode 1026#quickie|Quickie with Bob]]|theme=[[SGU Episode 1026#theme|Hydrogen]]|interviewee=n|rogue=|sort_other=|sort_theme=|sort_interviewee=zzz|sort_rogue=zzz}}
|-
{{SGU list entry|episode=1025|date=03-01|status=proofread|other=n|theme=n|interviewee=[[SGU Episode 1025#interview|Adam Russell]]|rogue=|sort_other=zzz|sort_theme=zzz|sort_interviewee=|sort_rogue=zzz}}
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{{SGU list entry|episode=1024|date=02-22|status=bot|other=n|theme=[[SGU Episode 1024#theme|GMOs]]|interviewee=n|rogue=|sort_other=zzz|sort_theme=|sort_interviewee=zzz|sort_rogue=zzz}}
|-
{{SGU list entry|episode=1023|date=02-15|status=bot|other=n|theme=n|interviewee=n|rogue=|sort_other=zzz|sort_theme=zzz|sort_interviewee=zzz|sort_rogue=zzz}}
|-
{{SGU list entry|episode=1022|date=02-08|status=bot|other=n|theme=n|interviewee=n|rogue=|sort_other=zzz|sort_theme=zzz|sort_interviewee=zzz|sort_rogue=zzz}}
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{{SGU list entry|episode=1021|date=02-01|status=proofread|other=[[SGU Episode 1021#wtw|What's the Word?]]|theme=[[SGU Episode 1021#theme|The Moon]]|interviewee=n|rogue=|sort_other=|sort_theme=|sort_interviewee=zzz|sort_rogue=zzz}}
|-
{{SGU list entry|episode=1020|date=01-25|status=proofread|other=n|theme=n|interviewee=n|rogue=|sort_other=zzz|sort_theme=zzz|sort_interviewee=zzz|sort_rogue=zzz}}
|-
{{SGU list entry|episode=1019|date=01-18|status=proofread|other=n|theme=[[SGU Episode 1019#theme|Death]]|interviewee=[[SGU Episode 1019#interview|Nick Tiller]]|rogue=|sort_other=zzz|sort_theme=|sort_interviewee=|sort_rogue=zzz}}
|-
{{SGU list entry|episode=1018|date=01-11|status=bot|other=[[SGU Episode 1018#quickie|Quickie with Steve]]|theme=[[SGU Episode 1018#theme|CES2025]]|interviewee=n|rogue=|sort_other=|sort_theme=|sort_interviewee=zzz|sort_rogue=zzz}}
|-
{{SGU list entry|episode=1017|date=01-04|status=proofread|other=n|sort_other=zzz|theme=n|sort_theme=zzz|interviewee=n|sort_interviewee=zzz|rogue=|sort_rogue=zzz}}
|}
|-
|style="border: 1px solid darkgray;background:#F8F9F9;text-align:left;background:#CCD9EA;" |  <big>'''2025 [[#jump|[↑]]]'''</big>   (Episodes 1017-1068)
|}

SGU Episode 1062

2025-11-16T04:00:59Z

Mheguy: Page created (or rewritten) by transcription-bot. https://github.com/mheguy/transcription-bot

{{transcription-bot}}
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{{anchor|intro}}
== Intro ==

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

'''S:''' Hello and welcome to the Skeptic's Guide to the Universe. Today is Saturday, September 20th, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella. Hey, everybody, Evan Bernstein. Hello, Kansas. Jay Novella. Hey, guys. Cara Santa Maria and George Trump. Yeah, George. We are live from Lawrence, KS. This is my first time in Kansas. How about you guys?

'''US#05:''' Yeah, first time.

'''S:''' Yep.

'''E:''' Third time. Third time, yes.

'''S:''' How?

'''E:''' Do you? Yeah.

'''S:''' You drove through it.

'''E:''' Twice I've drove, I've driven through it twice, once north-south and once east West and that was it. We may stop for lunch or something while we were moving around the country, but that's it. Never had a whole day in Kansas.

'''S:''' When we were driving from the airport, George said. You know, if we, if we didn't know we were in Kansas, could you tell from just looking around? And other than being flatter than we're used to, not really. Yeah. It's. Pretty.

'''C:''' It looks a lot like Texas. Yeah, honestly. Yeah, but not part of the Hill Country, but like North Texas.

'''US#05:''' Parts look like Jersey or like Pennsylvania too. Like, I mean, that's the problem with, you know, Raymour and Flanigan being everywhere. That's the thing.

'''C:''' That's how it. Works America.

'''US#05:''' America, Yeah.

'''S:''' Yeah, it's Chili's. And basically it's all the same thing.

'''US#05:''' Yeah.
== Special Segment (01:39) ==
Nightmares
None

'''S:''' We're going to start with off with a little bit of a discussion about nightmares. This, you know, Evan suggested this is a possible news item. The item itself is pretty simple. It's like how you can control your nightmares and it makes you healthier. It's like, OK, well, not so much, but there is this issue of, and Bob and I, you know, talked about this for a while about like lucid dreaming or trying to develop the ability to control, like to be aware that you're dreaming and to control your dream, which is a really difficult and a very unstable state. You tend to either dream, you wake up or you, which means you're back into the dream or you actually wake up. It's very hard to maintain that knife's edge of being dreaming, but know that you're dreaming. But we thought we would use this as a jumping off part point to talk about our common recurring nightmares. And interestingly, I had my recurring nightmare last night.

'''E:''' Oh. Do tell.

'''S:''' Because so this, I think this happens more often to me when I'm sleep deprived and just, you know, because of travel and everything and being in a hotel room, I usually don't sleep as well. So I woke up at like 4:00 in the morning and then, you know, went back to sleep and it was hard to get back to sleep. And then I slept for four more hours. And that's, that was the period that was, that was very that was my sleep deprived sleep that I have. So I had a little bit of sleep paralysis, which happens sometimes. I did that thing where I dreamt that I woke up, but I was still dreaming and like I'm, I'm getting out of bed and going to the bathroom. I knew I was had to meet these guys. And I'm like, am I awake? Yeah, I'm awake. I'm awake. I could. I'm walking around and looking at things and everything. You like your dreaming self can't tell that you're not really awake. Then I go. Then I walk back to the bed and I see myself sleeping in the bed. Like, shit, I'm still sleeping. Wow. But the nightmare, the recurring nightmare had some point in there, Jay. You were in it and you were there and you were.

'''US#05:''' There, put him up, put him up. That was awesome.

'''S:''' Jay was there, and there was some other. Person it might. Have been Ian but I'm not really sure so we were being chased and that's my recurring nightmare and being chased by some malevolent force. So this time it was the authorities like the whatever that means and you know how you just know things in dreams. They were chasing us because they thought that we were criminals but it was a misunderstanding. But still we like felt like we had to run away from them and Jay had a portal gun from the portal game. You guys know that.

'''B:''' Wow.

'''S:''' So we're we're using the portal gun to like escape into the Rocky Mountains or something. And but they still managed to track US down. And then the guy had me at gunpoint. I had to wrestle the gun from him and I shot him in the ass. Still didn't, which was surprising because the guns are almost never work in my dreams, right? Like you can't pull the trigger or something or swords are wobbly. You know they have a phasers. Phasers never shooting, never work.

'''J:''' Why is that that? Well, Freud, that's something to say to dream there.

'''C:''' There's no answer to that question.

'''J:''' The thing that bothers me is like dreams are just happening, you know, and, and when a part of your brain is making it up and another part of your brain is experiencing it and why is it universal like big FU? Why couldn't it be ultra successful and ultra fun like?

'''C:''' I don't think it's universe.

'''E:''' Sometimes that can happen.

'''C:''' So, so what's interesting to me, and I don't know if there's like gender differences with this, but I, I've dated, I had a, an ex who is male who had night terrors and almost always he'd be like, no, get away. And I'll be like, what were you dreaming? And it was, he was always being chased or people were breaking it. That literally never happened to me. I've never had those kinds of like I'm being hunted dreams, but I had a recurring dream when I was little and it's like fucked up. You guys. Like honestly, I think This is why my parents put me in therapy like really early on. I don't dream anymore that I know of because I'm on like sleep medication that keep me in delta and I don't I just don't think I dream or I don't remember.

'''B:''' You have to be experiencing R.E.M. At some point.

'''C:''' I don't, I don't get, I don't get much R.E.M. At all but you.

'''B:''' Don't you just don't? Remember that you don't. Remember.

'''C:''' Yeah, but I also the drugs I take prevent me from getting a lot of R.E.M.

'''B:''' But you've got to get somewhere. You'd be like, go slowly crazy. You'd go slowly. Crazy without room you do have to have. Room you have.

'''C:''' To even if you're in Delta all night, yeah.

'''B:''' You wouldn't. You would not last long.

'''C:''' I don't think that's true. I think you can't not have delta. I think you can. I think you can avoid paradox my.

'''S:''' Understanding is is that you really need a good sleep architecture. You need to go through all the the stages of sleep. You know, with a certain pattern, there could be variation. Yeah, I've been bored, but if.

'''US#05:''' Cara, you're actually dreaming right now. Wake up, wake up. This is your nightmare anyway.

'''C:''' As an aside, anybody out there who has narcolepsy or or narcolepsy type sleep disorder? I have IH which is similar to narcolepsy. There's a medication we take which is like GHB it's xywave and it just forces you into delta all night and you're like awake during the day. And without that I am sleepy girl my whole life and sleepy. Anyway, when I was young I had this recurring dream and I'm talking like kindergarten, first, second grade where I would go to sleep and I would wake up just like you did. And I would be like, oh, it's time for school. And I'd go to my parents room to wake them up for school and they were dead in their beds. And I was like holy shit. So I went to find my sister and she was dead in her bed. And so I left the house and went around the neighborhood knocking on doors, some of them were open, went in, everybody was dead, all the animals were dead. And I was the only living soul and it was terrifying. This is a good TV.

'''J:''' Show, watch and it.

'''C:''' Was like everything was dead but me and I spent the whole nightmare trying to search for something that was a lie. You ever find it in the? And I never could. No. I would just be searching. Searching. And then and then I'd wake up. And I had that a lot. And I haven't since I was a child. As an adult, the only things I have are like stress dreams about going to file for my graduation. And I still owe, like a whole credit. Yeah. What? When do I still?

'''S:''' Have the I have to take a final, yeah.

'''C:''' When do those end?

'''S:''' Yeah, never.

'''J:''' Apparently no stressors do it. My so my kid nightmare was anybody when I was a kid, my dad used to let all of us watch all the science fiction movies and everything. So there's one thing where that some dude reanimates an arm, you know from the hell. Remember that? I remember 1 scene like it grabs the guy scared the shit out of me. So my semi reoccurring dream was that there was a gauntlet, you know like a armored hand crawling after me and then I stopped having it when I finally picked it up and I scooped out the mustard that it was that filled it and that how that broke the chain because mustard wasn't scary to me but my real. Wow, the arm was full of mustard. It was a gauntlet. It was like a it was like armor, you know what I mean? OK. And that was that was how my brain transferred it from like a human hand to like a more terrifying gauntlet hand drunk crawling after more terrifying.

'''C:''' That it was full of mustard like, well, yeah, cuz it was like gauntlet. Yeah, it wasn't a real arm. Arm the other.

'''J:''' Arm had ketchup.

'''C:''' Gauntlets are always special. I.

'''J:''' Was in my parents closet and they had a deep closet when we were kids. Yeah, my dad had his safe right there. Remember I was sitting next to it. OK, And the thing came in. Where's the?

'''US#05:''' Mustard come in. I don't understand. I have no.

'''J:''' Idea. I don't know, like mustard? Yeah.

'''S:''' Was it brown or yellow? It was a good yellow mustard. Yeah, George. Do you like yellow mustard?

'''J:''' I.

'''US#05:''' Hate I hate mustard, but I mean.

'''S:''' If the mustard is scaring me, that would make it scary. Gauntlet of mustard. Oh, my God. Yeah, it was.

'''J:''' Yeah. I mean, now that I'm thinking about it, it's pretty messed up. So anyway, my adult dream. So really quick, I got to give you a little background. I have been looking my entire life to have a proper love relationship. And I, and I mean, like many people, just failure after failure after failure. And I got into my 30s, got into my 40s and I'm like, you know, nothing was working. And I finally was at the point where I'm like, it's not going to happen, you know, because it's statistically it, it was getting less and less likely. I meet my wife, who's my best friend and is the the freaking sunshine of everything that's good in my life. She's she's unbelievable. And I've never been loved like this. I've never felt loved like this before. You know, I can go on. This is my.

'''US#05:''' Nightmare, by the way.

'''J:''' So my. With. You my nightmare is that I don't know. I know that the idea of her, like I found someone, she's my wife, but I don't know who she is. I don't know her name, I don't know what she looks like and I don't know where she is. So it's like that whole veil thing, like something's. Wrong. Why am I with? This weird person there's this I'm not supposed to be here. This is not what's supposed to be Twilight Zone kind of dream Yeah, and it. And it totally upends me. Like I wake up freaking out when I because I because you really feel it. And that's.

'''C:''' Like a real neurological disorder, like when people, the Invasion of the Body Snatchers thing where they don't wreck it. Like there's people that they know but they don't recognize. Yeah. That's scariest shit. Like if I ever had.

'''J:''' There is a Yeah, that. Imagine having that. Like in the dream, everything's normal except I know that I'm supposed to be with somebody else and I have no other idea of who that person is.

'''S:''' Yeah, that's kind of like a dream about having cat grass. Like this is not my wife.

'''J:''' Yeah.

'''S:''' That's interesting. Yep. George, about you I had.

'''US#05:''' One very influential dream when I was a kid, it wasn't recurring, but I was probably 4-4 or five, and I was in bed. And to me, it wasn't a dream. I was awake. I mean, in my mind, I was awake in my bed. And subsequently, most of my dreams do take place like in my bedroom. Like literally, I'll be in bed. I'm aware that I'm in bed and something is happening in the room. But I was a very, very young youngster. And it was morning and I looked up and at the foot of my bed was a closet that had the door open. And at the top of the closet was sort of like a shelf at the top. And it was a dark sort of shelf. And there were two hands sort of these wispy, not quite bone, not quite smoke hands just sort of doing this waving motion, just independent. There was no body, there was no whatever. And I remember just sort of looking at it and like being scared, but sort of but not really doing anything about it and just being terrified. I, I told my mom the next day that this had happened and she was like, that was probably a dream. And for probably 10 to 15 years after that, I couldn't have a door open. Like if I was in a, in a bedroom somewhere, like my dorm, the closet couldn't be open. It had to be shut. And it never happened again. It was just that one time. Do you?

'''C:''' Remember, like you said, you didn't do anything about it. Could you move? You might have been having a hypnopom pickle. Yeah, it might have been. Yeah. I don't think that was a dream. I think that was a hypnopompic. It felt.

'''US#05:''' So unbelievable, like I knew what dreams.

'''C:''' Were I knew what dreams were at that. Point.

'''US#05:''' But it was just, and it was just leaning. Towards.

'''C:''' You said it was morning, you were in bed, you didn't do anything. Yeah.

'''US#05:''' So that, and to this day I can sort of still picture it. I'm sure I've modified it in my head over time and now it's Technicolor or whatever, But. And it wasn't, you know, there was no blood. There was no, it was just. That's creepy. That ain't right. That ain't right. Yeah. When I.

'''E:''' Was a kid also, my dreams have changed. I think a lot of people have had that experience as well. You don't dream about the things you used to when you dream about new things. But when I was a kid, the reoccurring dream I would have that would frighten me is that I could not control myself from falling. It's the falling dream, right? We've, I think we've all experienced that, that sort of you're, you're dropping you, it's death is coming. You have that sinking sensation in your body. But I would have the dream where I would try to remain on the ground, yet something was nefarious or otherwise was pulling me up into the sky and would drop me. I would constantly get dropped as a kid. Now as an adult though, I would. I don't really have nightmares per SE, but my reoccurrence is that it's this level of frustration that I can't seem to get something done. I need to be over there now. I know I need to be over there now. Why aren't I over there now? I'm trying to walk. I'm not walking. Why? So I get very frustrated. Yeah, it's called.

'''C:''' A stress stream? Yeah. Oh. Totally.

'''E:''' And, and it's true of all sorts of scenarios, like I know I have to write this thing, why aren't I writing it? Why what is going on? I have to write this, why aren't I writing? So I can't make sense of it and I wind up getting really angry with myself in those dreams. And that takes on many forms and many Mary various kinds of scenarios.

'''B:''' Yeah, I've had plenty of nightmares. I can't really remember any that are like, really like, oh, listen to this one. I've had the stress, the stress. Dreams are common, everyone. But there's one nightmare that I remember that was really fascinating, and it was a nightmare of a movie nightmare. Werewolf, American Werewolf in London. There's a dream sequence where he's a where David Naughton's attacked by these weird creatures with weird faces. So in my dream, I'm in my kitchen and and where we grew up, and they come in the house with machine guns and start killing everybody. So yeah, pretty bad, right? But I was also experimenting with lucid dreams at that time, and I said, this is not real. These aren't real bullets. This is all bullshit. So I walked right up to them like, you're not even real. And they start shooting me. I'm like, see, nothing, guys. So then I'm like, all right, I'm done with you. I walked out of the house and I and I tried to fly, which is what I would do whenever I had a lucid dream. I'd try to fly and I would almost invariably fail because it's so hard. You know, you try to leap in the air like Superman, it just just fall flat. It doesn't work. It's so frustrating. But the few times it actually worked, it was magical. It was just like, holy crap, you feel like Superman. If you ever tried to lose a dream, try to fly because it's like amazing Bob.

'''C:''' When you when you fly in your dream. So when I fly in my dreams, it's I'm like doing the breaststroke and. Yeah. Is that how? Everybody or do you like times?

'''J:''' I have both but that's.

'''C:''' The only way I've ever been it's which?

'''S:''' Is silly, requires a lot of mental effort, and it's hard to sustain. Interesting in my dreams, but you can I.

'''C:''' Can do it in my dreams that. But like, it's this is how you get up a level and you're aloft and I'm always the only one and everybody's going whoa, that's so badass. Yeah, it would.

'''US#05:''' Be Is there any evolutionary advantage to not just dreaming, but nightmares in particular? Is there some kind of can we think of any of any we?

'''C:''' Still don't even understand 100% like what dreams are right, why we dream. So I think it's hard to make that leap. I mean.

'''S:''' You know that dreams, the REM sleep is important for consolidation of memory for right? Your brain is sort of recalibrating like the desktop. Clearance the dream.

'''J:''' Actually have to happen or is your maybe you need to be conscious enough for your brain to do the work that needs to happen during Well, you're not maybe it's a byproduct I.

'''B:''' Thought it's like your brain is just firing in a much more random sequence than norm and your mind is trying to make sense of all of that static and that's kind of how I see but dream imagery when.

'''S:''' You're dreaming. The part of your brain that does reality testing is not functioning, which is why, which is why I think makes sense to you in dreams that don't make sense to you when you wake up because you're a different person when you're dreaming, you're not your decipher, you're not your waking self and the.

'''B:''' Key with lucid dreaming, I think is that you there's a critical threshold of activation in that that lobe of your brain where you can do reality testing like, whoa, this isn't real. This must be a dream. So that's that's the idea, I think so, Bob.

'''S:''' You mentioned that you in that dream, you were in our childhood home. What's interesting is that when I remember my dreams, it's either in a place that's not real. If it isn't a place that I'm familiar with, it's almost always in our childhood home. I don't think I've ever had a dream where it's in my current home that I'm living in that I remember that same for you guys as well. You, but that's.

'''J:''' That's true. Yeah, my dreams.

'''C:''' Are usually pretty typical, like yeah did.

'''J:''' You guys ever Bob and Steve growing up when mom and dad put the extension like put the the party room in, did you ever dream that you were being pulled in there? Did you ever dream that Bob? Because that I don't know why, like I don't being dragged pulled into wires. They're having a shared part of the house.

'''S:''' Explain.

'''J:''' What this is my. Dream was was it mustard? What's going on? Well. It was always like the lights were always off, right? So when we all went up to bed, yeah, it was like that room and then the the new room that they were putting on off of it, it was pitch black. And I always be being creeped, outgoing, quick. I got to go quick. The light, there's a kitchen there and I got to run and turn the corner, get up the stairs before that room gets the light switch doesn't work. So I had a dream that I got pulled into that darkness and it's I still get a little creeped out when I think about it. You know what?

'''US#05:''' I love when when, when pets dream.

'''J:''' Oh, yeah.

'''US#05:''' Like when you're when you're a puppy and they're chasing bunnies. We used to call it ice chasing bunnies. That's just the coolest thing 'cause it's just like, oh, they're dreaming too. So they're, you know, there is some evolutionary purpose for it to reprogram whatever. But do. Yeah. But like, do dogs have nightmares too? Like, is there a sure. Wow, like some mailman, it's got a machine gun or like, what's the that? Could be anything.

'''B:''' Here's one. More, I think we had nightmare cross fertilization when we were growing up because I remember my sister telling us that she her nightmare I think infected some of our nightmares. She had a dream where she called this monster. The beep beep eye. The beep beep. Oh.

'''J:''' My God.

'''U:''' So.

'''J:''' It's where that came.

'''B:''' From in her mind, in her dream, the beep beep by was an eye, right? But it would draw eyes all over you, right? That's my memory. In my version of it, it was a robot because beep beep to me is a robot. So it was a robot that would draw eyes on you. And that's where my memory ends. What's your memory giant?

'''S:''' Floating eye. Yeah, All right. But that was chasing you. That was, again, the just a chase stream.

'''B:''' That's kind of creepy.

'''J:''' In my dream, I ate the eyes and they were meatballs.

'''S:''' Yeah, that's so that tracks.

{{anchor|news_item}}
== News Items ==

{{anchor|news_item1}}
=== The NeuroWorm (18:55) ===
{{shownotes
|weblink = https://www.sixthtone.com/news/1017638
|article_title = China’s NeuroWorm Inches Its Way Toward Brain Disorder Breakthroughs
|publication = www.sixthtone.com
}}

'''S:''' All right. Have you guys heard of the brain worm? Not the brain worm, of course we have.

'''U:''' Yeah, you.

'''S:''' Guys know where that quote comes from, by the way? In the eyes, not the ball worm, Yeah. Anybody know any?

'''J:''' Yeah.

'''B:''' Wait.

'''S:''' Anyone know where it comes from? It.

'''B:''' Sounds like Lord Farquhat. Flash board. Flash Board. Nice flash job. Nice. Such right?

'''S:''' 22 SGU Geek Product points OK wow the.

'''B:''' 1980. Version.

'''S:''' So we have spoken. About brain machine interface before and do you guys remember what the biggest technological limitation of the brain machine interface is yes fidelity the electrodes staying the electrodes it's the electrode but that's that's what I mean it's part of it but it's really the so with the software we kicking butt right we can make sense they.

'''US#05:''' Move they they don't stay in place they what they so. Yeah.

'''S:''' So the the problem with the, so we have multiple choices with electrodes, you can put them on the scalp surface, which is not invasive, but there there's a lot of attenuation with the skull, right. So you lose a lot of information. You could put brain surface electrodes and they're much higher fidelity, but they fibros over, they form scar tissue and you know, inflammation and whatever. So it's not good. Deep brain electrodes, same thing. They eventually will scar over. And then there's the stent roads which you put inside veins, which are still experimental, but those are those will have a lot of promise. But So what we're missing, like the next step, would be to make flexible electrodes. That flex with the brain so it doesn't cause the scar tissue. So that, so that is, you know, there are a lot of groups working on that. So now there's a study not only doing that, but taking it even a step further. And this is this is the the brain worm. So what they've done is they've designed a series of electrodes, right, to look like an earthworm. So if you imagine an earthworm and the bands are each electrodes, right? Yep. And they the in the head of the worm is a magnet. So they can actually have the worm sort of crawl through your brain by moving the magnet, by moving from external magnets. So they could reposition it as desired. And because it's flexible and movable, they tested it in, well, they tested it in because it also could be used for muscle, like you could use this to monitor muscle activity or brain activity. They tested it in the muscles of rats and they went a year with minimal scar tissue, which is that's the key right there.

'''J:''' So you move it to minimize the scar tissue.

'''S:''' Well, but yeah, the fact that it moves, it's not rigid and not fixed in place, then that's where the scar tissue forms. How is it not?

'''US#05:''' Destroying tissue as it moves though, like.

'''S:''' Why would it?

'''C:''' Must be weak on the surface surrounding. Like it's. Going it's going to take the path of least resistance or and the.

'''S:''' Muscles, It's going through the fascia. The fascia is the connective tissue. It's not boring through muscle cells. So it's like moving through the the planes between muscles in the brain. You know, it would be going through your folds, the gyre and the valleys.

'''J:''' I don't know what that is, the sulking you're talking about the surface of your. Yeah, it'd be outside.

'''C:''' Oh, so these are super fit? They're contours. They would.

'''S:''' Be on the surface. This would be brain surface. Select and.

'''C:''' Also, just to clarify, they're modeling it after an earthworm, but they're not the size of an earthworm. No, they're actually.

'''S:''' They're smaller and they're flatter.

'''J:''' Flat worms so.

'''S:''' Would you feel that? Could you? Your brain does not feel anything.

'''J:''' But I know, but it's not your brain. It's on the surface of the bottom of your skull. Has any sensation?

'''S:''' Well, so it would be the dura, right? It would be the lining around your brain. Is it?

'''C:''' Underneath the dura.

'''S:''' Yeah, the whole point would be to put it on the surface of the brain, right? So we could crawl along the surface of the brain. So the advantage here is 1. So the primary thing is if they could get these electrodes to last for years, that would be amazing, right? That would that makes it much more viable as a technique.

'''J:''' So it's not like a a prong that's stuck into your brain. It's just touching the surface. It's just skimming on the surface. All right, That's what's.

'''C:''' What diseases are that? Because I don't know. I think about like DBS that that's by definition deep brain. So how helpful it is what, what kinds of things can this help with? So.

'''S:''' First of all, just for studying the brain, right? So if you have somebody has epilepsy, let's say, So what you know, we could do EEG's, you know, electroencephalograms from the brain. Sometimes we do, you know, from the skull surface. But then for if we're planning on cutting out a chunk of your brain to stop your seizures, we need to know exactly where the seizures coming from, which means we need to capture it right as it starts.

'''C:''' But you still aren't going to know depth. You're only going to know well.

'''S:''' Yeah. But The thing is, if you could, once you put the electrodes in place, then that's it, you're getting one spot. Yeah, this would say, let's, let's see what's happening over there, let's move it. How long can you bring? I mean, in real time they're just moving it with magnets.

'''J:''' Yeah, but I mean, like, could you move it from here to here in like 3 seconds or you has to?

'''S:''' I don't know exactly how long it takes, but it's not a limiting factor. It doesn't take long to move.

'''US#05:''' It could this theoretically could this be non invasive like like the bug and wrath it's?

'''S:''' Minimally invasive. They don't call it, put it in the ear.

'''US#05:''' Or put up your nose or something and it like finds its way. That's a.

'''S:''' Good point. It's minimal. It's considered minimally invasive because like with the if you're laying electrodes along this the brain surface, you got to open up the brain to do that. But here you could literally bore a hole bore, right?

'''US#05:''' Put the worm.

'''S:''' In there and then get it to the place where.

'''US#05:''' It's got to go so.

'''S:''' It's less invasive for that reason. You only have to bore a small little hole. And then for brain machine interface the the thing, because it's dynamic and flexible at the same time, you could calibrate it, get it to the right part of the brain to have the functionality that you want, right? So there's more flexibility there. Rather than putting it someplace hoping it's the right place and seeing how well it works. Like if this isn't working, outlet's move it a millimeter to the left and see if that works better. Whatever. It'd be just more of a dynamic relationship.

'''J:''' So I know it's super small. Yeah. But like, let's say here's the head, like my thumb is the head. It's long.

'''S:''' I mean, it should, you should think it's not short. It's it's the hope. You want it to be long so it could go because the whole, the whole thing is electrodes, like 60 electrodes. And so you want them spaced out, you know, for a reasonable disk.

'''J:''' How do they control where the tail is?

'''S:''' So I just think because of the way it moves, you know, but there is only a magnet on one side on the on the head. Yeah, that's correct.

'''J:''' OK. Is this built?

'''US#05:''' Or this is this is theoretically here is it?

'''S:''' They published a paper where they did it. They showed that it works in the muscles of rats. In the muscles.

'''US#05:''' Yeah.

{{anchor|news_item2}}
=== Ant Gives Birth to Different Species (25:18) ===
{{shownotes
|weblink = https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09425-w
|article_title = One mother for two species via obligate cross-species cloning in ants | Nature
|publication = www.nature.com
}}

'''S:''' Wow, Tara, tell us about these ants. Yeah.

'''C:''' This is a really interesting story. It was actually published earlier this month in Nature. It was a big deal. So these ants. This is a picture of Queens of a Mediterranean harvester Ant. The species here is called Messer ibericus. They're in Spain. So we're going to have to hold two different species in our heads in in explaining this story because it's a little bit complicated. So there's M ibericus, Messer ibericus, and then there's M structor or Messer structor. So two different species, same genus, right, M ibericus, M structor. So researchers were observing these M ibericus colonies and they realized that there were some M structure drones hanging out within the M ibericus colony. They also realized that there were some hybrids of these ants within the within the colony. It's a hybrid.

'''S:''' It's.

'''C:''' I'm going to say that word so many times. Be cute for a minute. And, and so the researchers were like, OK, it's not that uncommon to see hybrid species within some kind of colonies or structural organizations of animals, right? We've seen hybrids of different like dog species or different marine animals animals.

'''S:''' Are always getting busy, yeah.

'''C:''' And if they're close enough, like if they're the same genus and the species is close enough, they can often make offspring, but the offspring might be sterile. So in an Ant colony, it doesn't really matter if the drones are sterile because as a general rule, the drones aren't there to mate. They're there to do jobs. But what the researchers noticed was that there were drones that were from a different species within the colony. But the species in question, M Structor, sometimes was like hundreds of miles away geographically. And they're like, how did these ants come across these other ants? Also bear in mind that these ants diverged about as long ago in evolutionary history as we did from chimpanzees. This will be important for the analogy that the researchers make later. So they're trying to figure out where did they come across these, how did they make these hybrids? And at the beginning, they were all joking, like, what if they were giving birth to a different species? That's ridiculous. And then the more they dug in, they were like, shit, I think that's what happened. So they start observing these these queen ants and they're noticing that they're laying eggs and they're, they have offspring that are a different species. And so they look at the offspring and they're like, how did they get there? Maybe they came across some drones somewhere. What's going on? They looked at both the M structor and the MI baricus ants and they found that they all had MI baricus. Was it MI baricus or M structor? So now I'm confusing myself. Doesn't matter. They all have the same mitochondrial DNA. And they were like, well, that's weird. What is going on here? As they dug a little bit deeper and they were able to actually watch these Queens lay and then look at the genetics of of the eggs that they laid, they realized that without any exposure to the other species, these queen mothers were laying a different species of Ant, which is the first time that's ever been observed in any animal anywhere on the planet. They're calling it xenoparity, foreign birth. So.

'''J:''' It's just a coincidence, no?

'''S:''' No.

'''C:''' So it seems to be an evolutionary quirk. That's helpful because if you can increase the diversity of your colony, because what often happens is that a queen will mate with a fertile drone to produce offspring, but they're all genetically the same, which is bad. Queens also tend to have something they call selfish genes. So sometimes when a queen mates, she just makes more Queens over and over and over. And you need to have a balance of different roles in the colony. So one way to prevent that is to mate with a different species and then the queen is less likely to make more Queens. So what ends up happening, and this is the analogy that they use because one of the journalists on this was like, wait, so is this like if a human woman mated with a chimpanzee and then produced a hybrid offspring? It's a hybrid that that was sterile and couldn't produce more. And they were like, no, it's even weirder than that. It's if a if it's if a woman, a human woman mated with a chimpanzee in an effort to produce hybrid offspring so that they could have workers continuing to make the colony run. I am.

'''J:''' I'm so afraid that someone's going to try to do this this.

'''C:''' Is amazing. Well, The thing is we had we didn't even think this was possible. And so it's funny, I was telling Bob about it earlier and he was like, but how does it work? And I was like, I don't know. They didn't tell us that I think they're still trying to figure that out. They they they figured out that it does work. They were able to observe the outcome to clarify.

'''S:''' Though they're giving birth not to just hybrids, but to the other they're giving birth.

'''C:''' To the full other species, so then they can mate with the full other. Species. And produce hybrids, so.

'''S:''' But they must have the genes then for that other species.

'''C:''' They all have it in their mitochondria.

'''S:''' But that's. Is that enough though? I.

'''C:''' Guess we'll figure out how that mitochondrial DNA is making its way into the gametes. I don't know. Or maybe there's some other They still don't understand how it works. Yeah, I.

'''S:''' Think I'm missing something? Well.

'''C:''' I think they are too like they were like this isn't possible, but then they observed it and they were like this is the only explanation. Is it?

'''S:''' Possible they made it in the past like they're saving the sperm from the other species for late for later.

'''C:''' Hundreds of miles away and they're ants. So it doesn't. I don't think it is possible.

'''S:''' Yeah, Yeah.

'''C:''' But maybe. Maybe.

'''S:''' But once you've eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, exactly because.

'''C:''' The because the truth of the matter is this seems impossible, right? So it could be, could be, but but either way, they are giving birth to a different species, whether they're holding onto that sperm and they call it sometimes like sperm paratism, paratism or something like that, parasitism or whether they have the genetic code somewhere in them and they're able to kind of like drum it up. That's what's happening. It's the first time it's ever been observed. So this.

'''US#05:''' Kills like every creationist argument about not having another species come from, you know that transition?

'''C:''' Add it. To the list. Yeah, they.

'''J:''' Don't care, it's right there.

'''US#05:''' That's that's astonishing. The.

'''J:''' Phenomenal, right?

'''C:''' But.

'''J:''' It also isn't. It's not like a deliberate choice. It's all happening like automatically like.

'''C:''' Yeah. I mean, we never know. Like what is deliberate mean? Are they, are they, you know, having philosophical topical debates about it? No. But are there certain environmental pressures? That's what.

'''US#05:''' Must have what must have failed previously to lead to this being successful and then be reproducible well.

'''C:''' It doesn't always mean that something has to fail. Sometimes it's just that something is more successful. Right, Right. So yeah, I mean, there either way, there are environmental pressures that are allowing for this to happen.

'''S:''' That's freaking cool evolution.

'''C:''' Very cool.

{{anchor|news_item3}}
=== Primordial Black Holes (32:11) ===
{{shownotes
|weblink = https://phys.org/news/2025-09-black-hole-reveal-foundations-universe.html
|article_title = An exploding black hole could reveal the foundations of the universe
|publication = phys.org
}}

'''S:''' Bob, you're going to tell us even more about black holes.

'''B:''' This one's cool. I love this news item so much. The new research seems to suggest that there could be a 90% chance that in the next 10 years we could see an exploding black hole there.

'''S:''' Could be a 90% chance, yes. What's the percentage chance that there is a 90% chance?

'''C:''' Sex Panther. 80% of the time. You can't.

'''B:''' It's unknowable at this current time. If this is true, this would be the biggest. Gift. To astrophysics physicists in our lifetimes, the upside is so good that it's, it's fun talking about, even though it might be unlikely, but it's fascinating. And I and I learned a bunch of things that are that are actually 100, you know, probably 100% true. All right, So, all right, so do appreciate this. We got to, we got to just talk a little bit about just black holes and Hawking radiation black holes. We all we, we have all heard of black holes, right? You've got a couple of varieties. We've got super massive black holes, millions to billions of solar masses right there, amazing other fantastic objects. There's stellar mass black holes, a lot smaller, maybe 3, three solar masses to perhaps 150 solar masses. OK, but there's also a hypothetical black hole called primordial black holes. Now these, if they exist, they, they would have formed in the first second after the after The Big Bang. After The Big Bang, there was so many density fluctuations happening that they think that these black holes could have formed not by an imploding star, but by just these these density fluctuations that enough mass was in one space, enough mass energy was in one space. That black hole forms. These black holes, when they're talked about today, they typically say, yeah, they probably have the mass of maybe Earth mass or down to an asteroid or even, you know, much even smaller than that. So if if you had a, if you were a super primordial black hole with a mass of say an asteroid, you would your event horizon would be about as big as a, as a dime, very tiny. These are obviously very, very small black holes. So the next critical component here is Hawking radiation. Now we've talked about Hawking radiation. Stephen Hawking, of course, came up with the idea Hawking radiation that let me just set the table for this a little bit. Hawking radiation is a result of black holes losing their immort immortality and becoming just, you know, objects that won't live forever. When when Stephen Hawking looked at black holes through a quantum lens, he realized that they have a temperature, they actually have a temperature and because of quantum effects, then if they have a temperature, then they they're emitting thermal radiation. And if they're emitting thermal radiation, that means that they're going to be losing mass, which means they have a finite lifetime. So that's what that's what his conclusion was. So what happened was the idea is that the black holes would emit radiation and shrink and get hotter and then emit more radiation and then shrink and get hotter and that cycle would continue. So Hawking radiation, though, is probably not being emitted from the big boys, the supermassive black holes and and the solar mass black holes, because they're they're colder than the universe is. So they're not really going to be emitting. There's no net loss of mass from these big guys, but the primordial black holes, if they're still around and they're they're small enough, they're going to be small enough and hot enough to be emitting something that we could potentially detect. The problem is nobody thinks they've been emitting radiation or gamma rays these years because we would have seen that glow in the universe. We would have seen this gamma radiation glow. So here's the new bit. Now, the new bit is that they're trying to incorporate some new theories and models of dark matter into these primordial black holes. So the end result would be that these primordial black holes perhaps have a charge like a static, a static charge, very, very small charge. But if it has that charge and some models seem compelling, if these whole black holes have the charge then and they would basically have been in kind of like a slow motion stasis for the past, you know, billions of years. They would not have been emitting anything. They would not have been shrinking, but not. But according to this theory, they could be doing that now. They could be releasing this in this, this they could be exploding in the near future. So that's where the 90% comes from. If their model is correct, then there is there's a 90% chance in the next 10 years we could see an exploding black hole. Bob. Can I ask you a question?

'''J:''' So which black holes could potentially explode? the Super small ones? Yeah, only the.

'''B:''' Small ones cause the bigger ones are are too big. They're not going to be releasing any, any real radiation for, oh, about 10 to the 67 years, right?

'''J:''' So what is it a big deal if it explodes like what happens so?

'''B:''' It's going to be so awesome. And that's what I'm getting into right now. Wait, wait. Wait, what?

'''J:''' OK, nevermind. Go ahead. Sorry. Yeah, we want.

'''S:''' You're going to cover it.

'''J:''' You're going to cover it.

'''S:''' I mean, it's a good thing.

'''B:''' And tell us why. All right. So say we see the explosion, What what does that mean on its face? It's, it's fantastic because it proves so many things. It's ridiculous. It proves that hockey radiation is real. If we see, if we see a gamma radiation burst that disappears very quickly with no, you know, with no delayed afterglow that gets smaller and smaller and other things. If we see that and we've got detectors that can detect that, then we know that hockey radiation exists. Huge coup right just there. We would also prove that primordial black holes exist. Another huge coup right there. We would also have evidence for this dark electromagnetism that's related to dark matter. That would also maybe even be the biggest discovery right there having finding some link to dark matter in this. But the other thing, and the thing that really caught my attention and blew my mind is that the particle explosion, when this tiny black hole exploded, it would emit essentially an inventory of all possible particles that could exist. Think about that. It would emit everything that that that we have been looking for, that we have theorized about, that we've already found everything that that black hole could create could be emitted and we could detect it about. That you're not talking about blew me. Away you're not.

'''J:''' Talking about elements, right?

'''S:''' You're not talking about particles, different kind of particles.

'''B:''' Electrons, protons, quarks, axions, neutrinos isn't.

'''C:''' I mean, all of those things are out there, Higgs.

'''S:''' Well, no. But see there are very high, high energy particles that we've never detected and we can't create even in a large hydrogen Collider. So this would basically be like a super, super, super, super Collider with energies orders of magnitude beyond what we could ever create. I hear spitting out part high energy particles that would otherwise we would never say well.

'''C:''' But that's the question, right? So are you saying that we would need some sort of detector near this? No.

'''S:''' No, we on earth, yeah, but.

'''C:''' Then aren't all of those particles, they've been created at some point in the universe? So they are out there, we're just not able to detect but.

'''S:''' It's just an event we.

'''J:''' Have to capture. We have to capture the event, right? So when a black hole sucks something in, right, Yeah, like, you know, this is black.

'''C:''' Holes don't suck.

'''J:''' Pull.

'''C:''' They they pull, it's just gravity pull.

'''J:''' Whatever. Yeah, When? A thing goes into a black hole. Yeah. And it's made out of matter. Yeah, it it automatically strips that down and turns all of that matter which we're talking about, you know, elements of singularity. Well, wait, no, it doesn't turn them into these particles or the well.

'''C:''' They're already made of those particles. I know, I know.

'''J:''' It takes them all apart and makes them.

'''C:''' Spaghettifies it, yeah.

'''B:''' When something enters the event horizon or a black hole, we don't know what happens. Our physics breaks down with singularity is just a placeholder for we don't know what the hell is going on. So you, you can't speculate. Where do we come up with quantum gravity? Then we might have a better idea, but it's, we don't know what's going on. But The thing is, it's not, it's not like the particles are in there waiting to leap out. What's happening is that this black hole that that's exploding is, is releasing. When it gets hot enough, it releases one particle, say a photon. When it gets a little bit hotter, right? It shrinks and it gets hotter then it then it releases electrons. Then it gets smaller and hotter, then it, then it releases protons and then it goes through the inventory of all the possible, the possible particles that are related to the temperature of the black hole at that time and it goes through all of them. And so we're getting what we can detect from this is gamma radiation. So we're looking at this gamma radiation and when a new particle is emitted, it changes, it changes the slope, it changes the energy spectrum. And we can see that little step. And then, oh, here's another step, here's another step, here's another particle. And when we look at it, we could say, here's the standard model of physics. I see the electron, I see the, I see the protons, I see quarks, I see all of these things that we know that we've already discovered. But then you keep looking at this gamma ray signal and you're like, what the hell is that? What the hell is that? We don't know what that stuff is. It could be, it could give us a road map to all these particles that we probably never would have found maybe in 1000 years of technological advancement. It could give us just a road map for all these particles beyond standard physics, which we've been waiting for for so long. And it would be just an amazing occurrence that I hope, I really hope this is true. Because if it's if it's not true, then we would have to wait. And I calculated how long we would have to wait for a small black hole, like a stellar mass black hole, say the smallest black hole is about probably 3 solar masses. The small stellar mass 3 mass. We would have to wait. I calculated 10 billion octo decillion years in order for that thing to evaporate. And I don't think we're going to be around in, but in our billion because the universe is so. Old.

'''J:''' Isn't there things that are kind of positioned to do that, right? No, it's only 13 billion.

'''S:''' He's talking about Octo Gazillion or I don't even know what you meant. I'm.

'''B:''' Talking about the I'm talking about the evaporation of a black hole that's more massive than the sun, not the primordial little blood that.

'''S:''' Would take so long that so long, yeah, but the but the primordial ones could happen or happening now apparently. And if we keep looking for them, maybe we'll see one. And here's the catalog of every possible particle that exists in the universe, even the ones you haven't discovered yet. And that will give us like the road map to this, complete the standard model. That's cool.

'''C:''' Two quick questions. The first one is. How do we detect that? I was going to say. How visible? What? What instruments?

'''S:''' Gamma ray detectors?

'''B:''' We have them. How do we?

'''C:''' Detect the event. I mean, how do we detect all of those? Really just the. Energy of the particles.

'''B:''' It's we would detect. The easiest way to detect this is through gamma radiation, because there's going to be a lot of gamma radiation, gamma radiation coming out of this thing. Even particles that come out, we would never detect them because they decay too quickly, I'm saying, but they decay into gamma radiation. So that would be part of the gamma ray signal. And we that, that we could interpret. We could.

'''C:''' Interpret that to know the high energy particles. Yeah, because that's the part that I was confused about. I know we can do this in a Collider, but that's a closed system. When all this stuff is just flying through space. How do we even know? And it's decaying so quickly. Yeah, it would.

'''B:''' All it would. By looking at the gamma radiation we did, we can detect what's going on the signature. Inside because it's all. The fingerprints of all these articles are embedded within the gamma radiation. That's changing the the energy signature, the spectrum, the energy spectrum, all that stuff is being affected by the new art, the new particle that has just been created and released.

'''C:''' And so the other question is, if it's such a high energy explosion, right, would it also cause a ripple in space-time? Like would we be able to detect it with gravitational wave detectors? LIGO?

'''S:''' Not necessarily. Necessarily. Gravitational event, yeah.

'''B:''' LIGO and gravitational waves are all about mass. Accelerating mass like 2 neutron stars. Remember it?

'''S:''' Has the mass of an asteroid and it's way too small. Yeah.

'''C:''' But what about the explosion itself, even?

'''B:''' But even explosions I don't think is optimized for for a gravitational wave detection would.

'''US#05:''' It be at all visible or that we're just talking purely like you can see in.

'''B:''' Gam, if you could see gamma radiation, you will be. It'll be visible to you. Yeah, hard tell us. We wouldn't see anything. It would be a gamma radiation telescope purely.

'''US#05:''' A radiation kind of thing. It wouldn't be like that cool dot that all of all of a sudden appeared kind of thing, right? It's not big enough. A couple.

'''B:''' Of caveats, this was a simple test model that they created. It was a proof of concept to to show that their idea could work. And also we don't know how many of these black holes formed. We don't know how much hidden charge they may have had. And so those questions are open and the the answers to those questions can make this be a not even a not even issue a non issue that might not even happen. But if it did, if it did happen, what I love about this is that it would be, it would be like a genie came to an astrophysicist and said, what do you want? I'm like, give me a road map and every particle that's possible in the universe and you could get it from this type of explosion that may happen 90% chance if this is true in within 10 years. So there's a.

'''S:''' 20% chance the.

'''US#05:''' Genie's like, really we'll be doing. That follow up 10 years from now, that's. Absolutely.

'''S:''' But at least it's, it's falsifiable, right? I mean, in that we, if this is true, we should see this happen.

'''B:''' So basically like three people are excited about this. I hope, I hope, maybe, maybe we're up to with this audience, maybe four or five of us, I think.

'''E:''' It sounds cool to me. We're excited.

'''B:''' Thank. You thank you tell.

'''J:''' Them, Bob.

'''B:''' I love this news item, Bob.

'''J:''' You really? I I learned a couple of things about black holes that I didn't quite wrap wrap my head around in what you just said, so I thank you for that.

'''B:''' Yeah, because I've heard about hockey radiation for decades and I never really thought, well, what the hell is Hawking radiation? I thought it was just maybe some particles, some type of radiation. I didn't know that it was potentially everything. It's just. All the particles, all of all energy dependent.

'''S:''' Well, everyone, we're going to take a quick break from our show to talk about our sponsor this week. Quints it's.

'''C:''' Getting cold outside and when it's cold, I like to have great layers. One of my favorite pieces is from Quints. It's $50 Mongolian cashmere sweater. I have this amazing zip up hoodie. It's so warm, it's so cozy and it's so much less expensive than the other guys, but even better quality. Yeah, I.

'''J:''' Think I talked about this sweater last year and I got another one. It's the Mongolian Cashmere Fisherman Pullover hoodie. That's a lot of words. All it means is it's a super comfortable, awesome hooded sweater. I wear it all the time, Cara, and I am not afraid to tell you I look awesome.

'''E:''' So give and get timeless holiday staples that last the season with Quince. Go to quince.com/SGU for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada too. That's QUINC. e.com/SGU Free shipping and 365 day returns. quince.com/SGU. All right.

'''S:''' Guys, let's get back to the show.

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=== Cultish (46:52) ===
{{shownotes
|weblink = https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultish
|article_title = Cultish - Wikipedia
|publication = en.wikipedia.org
}}

'''S:''' All right, George, you've been reading this book, Book Cult, as you were talking about it. Tell, tell us what's going.

'''US#05:''' On yeah, I love I love when you read a book or you see a show or you get some piece of information that sort of re challenges sort of beliefs that you may have or makes you kind of re examine what you may think or how you've acted in the past. The whole sort of skeptical experience of, you know, the hardest thing to be skeptical about is stuff that you believe in, you know, things that confirm what you believe and you have to kind of take a second sometimes to stop. And this was a nice sort of journey in reading this book. It's called Cultish. It's by Amanda Montel. And in essence, Miss Montel writes about this idea that the language of cults is very specific. What people that sort of control other people do it in multiple ways. And one of the ways they do it is by modulating and and using language in a particular way, which isn't surprising. We sort of all know that you kind of get that, that, you know, the Tom Cruise mile stare kind of like thing. But what was interesting is that her approach to this book, she talked about how it's not just Scientology or the Jim Jones cult that things like CrossFit and soul cycle, you know, Etsy workers and stuff that are people that do a lot of beauty products, you know, like makeup and Amway and things like that use very, very similar language. It's, it's sort of it's, it's an idea of expressing an intense ideology, creating a community and then controlling that community. And So what you do is you essentially create this language that is exclusive, you know, so in Scientology there's these great, you know, someone is suppressive, right? There's a suppressive person that's like the worst kind of person you can be in turbulate. That's a great Scientology word, you know, decludge. The other one is yet you decludge something basically like declutter, sort of figure out, you know, unravel, but you decludge it. And so non Scientologists don't decludge. Scientologists decludge. It's a great word occlude and you start having similar words like that, that. And this is the part that I sort of realized my own experience years ago. A couple years ago I did, I did CrossFit for a while. And CrossFit in an odd way is almost proud of itself being a cult. You know, they sort of embrace this idea that yeah, we're we're a good kind of cult because we make you healthy and strong and all that kind of stuff. And I started realizing they had all these keyword keywords and phrases and stuff, you know, things like WOD, the workout of the day, or AMRAP. I mean, what an AMRAP is as many rounds as possible, right? So you do this thing where you try to, you know, you have 30 seconds and you have to lift the kettlebell until it smashes your face and do it as many times as you can in a minute or whatever it is, many runs as possible. You don't go to the, you know, it's not a gym that you go to. It's an affiliate. You know, it's a or, or, or box. You go, yeah, I'll see you at the box. You know, the other interesting thing was that just struck me was they have workouts that are named after women. They call them the girls. And there's the there's the Annie, there's the Grace, there's the Chelsea. And there's certain kinds of exercises that you have sort of put together. So like Amy I know is 1, which is like you do 5 pull ups, 10 push ups and 15 squats. That's an Amy do that five times. And I thought like, oh, you name it, like a female to of course you can do that because it's named after a girl. You know, this idea of like this kind of cult programming of like, yeah, strong male pseudo, you know, strong guy, jump into this thing and do it. And then I started thinking about my musical experiences and how jazz has this sort of particular language that's associated with it. That hasn't changed since the 40s. You know a gig, right? You have to go to a gig that's. A Gaz thing That's I. Mean that's like music, music and sort of you go to, yeah, I got a gig. That's where that's from. Clams. You know what's a clam? Money.

'''B:''' You know what a clam is?

'''US#05:''' No, a clam is a mistake. So like if you're playing, if you're playing and you make a mistake, it's like, oh man, the clams tonight. Oh, it was a seafood buffet tonight. Oh my God, the clams a head like is the top of the song, you know, or or rushing, dragging all that, all these like little expressions. And it just made me start to think about like, have I been adding to this kind of cultish language? But.

'''C:''' Isn't the difference then that if if an in Group evolves organically and so there's in Group status and it's a way for everybody to feel like a familiarity versus an out group or when there's a intentionality and a leadership that says think this way, talk this way. That's the difference. That's what she.

'''US#05:''' Addresses. She talks about Soul Cycle and Soul cycle, for those of you that aren't aware, it's sort of a Peloton cycling thing. You sign up and you do these classes online and again, they're very specific. They have very specific language. You pick your instructor. The instructors have sort of things about them that certain people like to do. And what, what the author of the book talks about, she says the difference between Soul Cycle and Scientology is when the Soul Cycle class is over, no one is saying you can't leave the class. And no one is insisting that you use those Soul Cycle terms in the rest of your life. And that if you don't use those Soul Cycle terms, you're being suppressive or you're being whatever. And that there is a, an agreement, a tacit agreement that like we're coming here to this Soul Cycle class or maybe this makeup tutorial or whatever it may be. And we understand that we're kind of kind of winking. We're doing cult like cult, cult ish cult light, maybe even. But we understand we can leave at any time. And that's that's sort of yeah, that that that main difference. Whereas if you're at the Jim Jones compound or you're in Scientology, they're going to do everything they possibly can to make you not leave. They want to maintain you Amway. They don't want you to stop, you know, selling their garbage to your friends. A bunch of other sort of multi level marketing thing that used it. The one, the one example from that that it made me think that CrossFit started to crossover into this kind of dangerous cult was there's a, there's a, a thing called Uncle Rhabdo, which the more I thought about this, the more this disturbed me. So rhabdomyol, rhabdomyolysis. Rhabdomyolysis is where if you work a muscle too much, if you exercise a muscle too much, it it releases portions of itself into your bloodstream it like.

'''C:''' Breaks down it basically. Breaks down.

'''US#05:''' Yeah, it releases much.

'''S:''' It's any exercise done that it does. OK, if you. Actually, you're doing it now. It's just a it's a it's just a matter of degree, OK, if you work, if you have a good workout and then I tested your blood, you would look like you have a mild abdominal, OK, right, right, right. And in fact, we often have to, I've had to ask patients, have you done any exercise in the last few days? Because that I have to just how do I interpret the number based upon that but.

'''US#05:''' It kind of stinks. Get to that. Point of like where you actually have liver damage, yeah.

'''C:''' When you have Coca-Cola colored ear kidney. Damage.

'''S:''' OK, Kidney damage.

'''US#05:''' Yeah. So to take this Rhabdomyolysis and they created this character called Uncle Rabdo, the idea of like, it's actually kind of a badge of honor. To get that. Awful. Yeah, it's. Awful. It's awful. And so you did die. From that I had. I had read an article about you know what, you know, someone had referenced Uncle Rapdo and I just didn't get a chance to ask what it was. I looked it up and I'm like, wait a minute, that's terrible. So I went to this sort of main training guy and I said, what's the deal like with this Uncle Rabdo and and, and Rabdomyolysis? And he was like, well, yeah, you know, I mean, it's and like, because like people have gotten really ill and and, you know, they aren't aware of how hard they're working. And, and he's like, well, yeah, I mean, you could cross the street and get hit by a bus.

'''S:''' Yeah, that's a great answer.

'''US#05:''' I'm done. Thank you much. Bye. You know, like, and that was the justification like, yeah, no, you're not working hard enough until you're literally like you're you're destroying cold, colder, you know, And so I thought, OK, that's that's where it's crossed over. So it just, it just made me think about what else in my life that maybe has is.

'''S:''' On that borderline, it's important to recognize and we, we've we've spoken about this before we we got, we were really involved in anti cult activity early on. Yeah, pre pre SGU and we were doing with just the New England Skeptical Society because there's a lot of that based in Connecticut around us. But anyway, so the, you know, a cult is first of all, the belief system is irrelevant, right? It's just the behaviour and the behaviour is a continuum. It's it's not a black or white and there's a what we call a demarcation problem. There's no sharp line that divides something that isn't a cult from something that is a cult. It's a it's just a continuum. And so yeah, a lot of things have we have a jargon and we have a community and we have commonality or whatever. But the the more of these features of cult like activity that you build up at some point you do crossover this fuzzy boundary where they all right now this is really operating like a full blown cult. Yeah. And of course, there's a lot of things that are just are blatant cults, like they're doing it, they're doing it all and it's top down, it's deliberate. It's not organic or cultural. It's not a jargon for rug for pragmatic reasons. It's just it's meant to separate you from other people, to get you inside the community, to make you dependent on the.

'''C:''' Community, that's the main thing. Like as a psychologist, when I see people who are who are trying to like heal from having been in a cult, it's no different than a woman who was in a coercive relationship. So it's whether it's one person or whether it's 50 people, the what what I think of as definitional is that it's a high control environment that takes like your volition away from you. And so sometimes.

'''S:''' They deliberately try to break down your resistance, yeah.

'''C:''' And they'll still.

'''S:''' Sleep deprive you, they will. Yeah, they will starve you and.

'''C:''' The ones that are the best at it are the ones that make you think it was your choice all along. Like that's when it starts with the language which.

'''US#05:''' Starts with this, which what she writes about, it starts with these, you know, these subtle memes they put into your brain, these little like portions.

'''C:''' Of it, you know, it's funny, as you mentioned Amanda Montel and I was like, that name sounds familiar. And I just looked she was on my podcast. There you go. Last year, she had another.

'''US#05:''' Book called Yeah the.

'''C:''' Age. It's called the age of magical overthinking. OK, notes on modern irrationality. And we did like a live recording for the Toronto Public Library. Cool. And like, yeah. So I was like, I know her. Cool, we didn't. Talk about cultish we should have.

'''US#05:''' Think of last year thing just came out so highly recommended. It's nice. It's very conversational too. So just yeah, sticks with you.

{{anchor|news_item5}}
=== Common Pseudosciences (57:11) ===
{{shownotes
|weblink = https://uk.news.yahoo.com/27-things-actually-pseudoscience-people-203103359.html
|article_title = "It's Junk Science" — People Are Sharing The Things That Are Actually Pseudoscience That Most People Just Take As Fact - Yahoo News UK
|publication = uk.news.yahoo.com
}}

'''US#05:''' Thanks.

'''S:''' George, what's All right, So we're gonna talk about Miss common myths, common misconceptions that are being spread around social media. There's just an article that went through like 15 of them. We can't go through all of them, you know, very deep. We don't have to. Most of these we've talked about before, and some are very quick hits. Evan, you sent this to me. What? Just what was the first thing on the list? I'm going to pull it up.

'''E:''' And again, the the question that triggered all this is they someone wrote about this who says it came across the post on the popular ask Reddit page from user whoever who said what are some things that are actually pseudoscience that people don't realize? And the list was extensive. A alpha based dog training. I don't know that we've actually covered that well on the show. The.

'''S:''' Idea that there is an alpha male in a dog pack is that's been pretty debunked, right? So anything derived from that is also. Well, yeah.

'''C:''' And the idea that your dog thinks that you're his alpha is ridiculous. Yeah, can.

'''U:''' We.

'''US#05:''' Have that like in Sky writing across every other podcast, like every comedian's podcast. Can we just make it like there's no such thing as the alpha? Please stop talking about it. What?

'''J:''' About like wolves don't have kind of like a de facto leader.

'''S:''' No, I mean, there are more or less dominant dogs in the pack, but there's no berries to that's the alpha and everyone else is a beta that doesn't exist. It's not that simple. It was.

'''US#05:''' A flawed study that a guy did like whatever that was 100 plus years ago.

'''C:''' And while there are some animals where there are, yeah, like leaders within the group, that doesn't translate to, like, domestication of dogs to us. Even if there were an alpha in the pack, they wouldn't go like, human alpha. Now follow you. Like that doesn't make any sense.

'''E:''' Astrology was on the list. We've covered that quite extensively. Here's one. They call it Barnes and Noble Science. So these are books published by people who can't get peer reviewed papers published.

'''U:''' Yeah.

'''E:''' And that's a pretty wide category of things we've.

'''S:''' Talked about that a lot too. Like basically if you're bypassing peer review and going right to the public with your wacky idea, you're a crank, right? That's what again, that's one of the things that cranks do. But now of course, you don't have to publish a book. You can just make a website or you can make a YouTube. Now get a.

'''US#05:''' TikTok TV like TikTok PDF on Amazon.

'''B:''' Or worse than that, you have a, you have a like a fake journal of the bullshit journal and submit to that. Like see unpublished peer reviews. Like, Oh my God, that's it's a journal of.

'''E:''' Bullshit research. Biorhythms, mood rings. Oh my God.

'''B:''' Remembering other things. Biorhythms.

'''E:''' Mood rings. Got it. How old were we, 24? Yeah, I totally.

'''J:''' Believe that when we were younger, you did.

'''E:''' Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. That was one thing. You know, like most of these. And when you're kids, they impress you, but they also impress adults sometimes. Blood type astrology. Oh.

'''S:''' That's yeah.

'''E:''' We've talked about that blood type diets that's such.

'''S:''' Common in Japan, right? Yeah, very.

'''E:''' Common in Japan, the.

'''US#05:''' Blood type diet thing, there's nothing to that, correct? 00, Absolutely. Because I started debating someone about this and like they were so vehement and I was just, I was trying to be nice. I was trying to just and I was like, OK, maybe I totally missed something, but there's nothing.

'''S:''' Good to question yourself if you're not 100% sure. I mean, yeah, do I really am? I sure because it sounds like bullshit, but maybe there's something to it. But in this case, there's zero to it. There's absolutely. I mean, this is just the the immune proteins on your blood cells. It says nothing about any other aspect of your Physiology, your biochemistry. It is complete nonsense. So you could be confident, OK about that.

'''J:''' So basically there's a bunch of people out there who believe in this who are basically not eating certain foods because it's not their blood. Yeah, right.

'''S:''' They're eating their, they're eating to their blood type. That's like eating to your astrological. It's like eating.

'''C:''' To your eye color yeah blue eye people really shouldn't be eating too much meat that's.

'''S:''' A good way to put it, How about?

'''E:''' How about this one? This is one I've heard of in the past, but never thought of it. Your brain develop is is continually developing until you're on an average of age 25. Yeah, I've. Heard that over and over. I've. Heard that a lot.

'''S:''' It's zero to that. So really, yeah, there's there's nothing to that. Another one.

'''US#05:''' And so you have to think about it for a while the.

'''S:''' The study that kind of kicked that off, they only looked at people up to 25 seriously. I said, look, the brain is developing until you're 25. Oh.

'''US#05:''' That's so funny, but.

'''S:''' Then they but they didn't look at people after 25. And here's the other thing there. What's the difference between developing, maturing and learning?

'''C:''' And and rapid pruning.

'''U:''' Right.

'''S:''' So there's one of those is about growth, like your kid in your brain doesn't get any bigger. Well, it's not just about size, it's also not to you, but to a lot of like the strength.

'''C:''' Of connections.

'''S:''' It's it's, but it's myelination, it's connections for the states. Wait, let me just say justification.

'''J:''' Let me ask you from a person who doesn't know as well as you, at what point on average does a, a child into adult till their their brain stops growing bigger?

'''S:''' That just depends on when they stop growing bigger.

'''J:''' OK, so it's rando, but what is it?

'''S:''' What's the age range, you know, upper teenagers, typical something like that. But but just the great the brain getting bigger doesn't mean that it's necessarily developing more. So I think again this is the definitional thing also.

'''C:''' The brain to body ratio is different. It's it's not linear, like little kids can't put their arms over their heads because their heads are so big, but they're. Adorable. Yeah, the. The ratio is different, Yeah, the. Ratio is off, yeah.

'''S:''' So like, if you're like, we know, we've raised we've raised kids at some point, like you could see different circuits kicking in place in your brain, like they couldn't put words together. Now they can whatever. And and also just even with coordination and we used to joke about their cerebellum is not fully myelinated yet, right? That's development.

'''J:''' Actually sons video game circuit turned on two years ago and it's powerful. My God.

'''S:''' So there's that kind of just you actually getting the the basic nuts and bolts of how the brain functions in place. You, you have that by the time you're through puberty, right? But then teenagers don't have the mental discipline that adults have. But what is that? Is that just maturity? Is it because the brain hasn't fully developed yet? Does it ever really stop? Is it just And if you look at people who are 5060, their brains function differently than people who are 2030.

'''C:''' 2 They're conflating, I think, the nature nurture of executive function with brain with overall brain development, which we should really only be talking about frontal like prefrontal cortex anyway. Yeah.

'''S:''' But even if you're just talking about that, it's so.

'''C:''' It's still. Yeah, it's a.

'''S:''' Continuum and you know it. There's different ideas mixed in here, like development bleeds into maturing the bleeds into just learning stuff and getting better at moderating your emotions or whatever. I.

'''C:''' Think The thing is the courts want to be able to say there's a one to one ratio right they want to be able to say you know the difference between right and wrong you are an adult and you should not be responsible it's.

'''S:''' Actually being used in sentencing and in policy, it's like, oh, we can't. Like, you know, you can't drink until your brain's fully formed or whatever, and it's just pseudoscience. It's this black and white again. Like there's no demarcation the.

'''C:''' Demarcation is because it's very easy to say A5 year old may not understand with a gun the outcome of their actions. It's much harder to say that about a 14. Speaking of. Drinking.

'''E:''' How's this one breast milk pump and dump after alcohol. So these are these are mothers who are breastfeeding. They'll have a drink, but then they'll go ahead and pump out the breast milk that they've got because that was contaminated with the alcohol that they just drank. That way they're not giving alcohol to their children. Hadn't heard of that one before. Of course you.

'''U:''' Had.

'''E:''' Heard about it? Yeah, but.

'''C:''' I don't like the way they're debunking it either they're saying they're being very all or nothing about it. You should pump and dump if you drink way too much or you shouldn't so.

'''S:''' Some drugs pass through breast milk and some don't. Yeah. And we have to know that. Like if I'm prescribing to a breastfeeding mother, I got no. Is this something that gets passed through the breast milk or not? I actually don't know off the top my head about alcohol. Alcohol.

'''C:''' Does but in small quad but.

'''S:''' So in small, quad small, if you're like really, that's what.

'''C:''' I'm saying I don't like that they're saying if you're breastfeeding drunk.

'''E:''' In a site that they source that debunked. It said no, it has to. It would have to be a lot of alcohol, but for some.

'''C:''' People, they are drinking a lot of alcohol. So I again, I wouldn't say that that's 100%.

'''S:''' Yeah, it's more a matter of degree. It's a.

'''C:''' Matter of degree, I'll go.

'''E:''' Quickly through some of these other ones a lot of them we touched chiropractic conversion therapy detox the general detox feed a cold starve a fever at old wives tales. No, no good fingerprints, a unique fingerprints that it's it's undetermined. They don't have good science on this as to determine whether a person's fingerprints are unique or not. And.

'''S:''' Also the whole fingerprint analysis is way more art than science. Like the like on television shows and movies that pretend like, oh, like, you got a partial here I met the computers flash through the images and you make a match, right? That's not what's happening. That's not reality. It is more of this. Oh, yeah. I could kind of see, you know, it's really, it's very subjective. It's not a but there. Is a database.

'''C:''' There is. There's a code, but yeah. And then.

'''S:''' Maybe you can be. That's the other thing is, and there's a couple of things coming up on this list that are like this. It's not as black and white as TV pretends. It's way more subjective, but that does not equal useless. It doesn't mean you can't maybe rule some people out because of fingerprints. Same thing with we can jump to the lie detector. The lie detectors are not detecting lies like we talked about this. They're stressed and stressed and people get stressed for different reasons and people have different ability to hide their stress. And So what you're detecting.

'''E:''' Just taking a test could be stressful.

'''S:''' But that doesn't mean they're worthless. True, they, they may not be like you can't say, well, he failed the lie detector, therefore he well, was lying 1:00 to 1:00. It could be that well, or he passed a lie detector, therefore he wasn't lying. You can't say that it's it's just possible that he was really good at hiding a stress or he was stressed out over being interrogated by an authority figure. You, you psychologists.

'''C:''' Use these tests all the time inside, they just don't call them lie detectors where.

'''S:''' They're useful is basically just intimidating the person into telling the truth because they think you can tell them.

'''J:''' Oh, that's awesome.

'''S:''' That's how they're really used I.

'''C:''' I also think with the fingerprint thing, what it what the list is saying is that you know, whether or not no other person on the planet has the same fingerprint pattern. We we can't know that because nobody's it's almost. Unknowable. Yeah, right. But for the most part, fingerprints are relatively unique, the same way that zebra stripes are relative they.

'''B:''' Find your fingerprint at emergency and you got some splaining to do that. Yeah, well, that's right. That's you can't just say, oh, it's it's not unique. So I'm I'm free.

'''US#05:''' Koalas have very human like fingerprints apparently. It's it's, it's thwarted some some police investigations, apparently.

'''U:''' Being.

'''E:''' Being a police, yeah. Being a police, yeah.

'''US#05:''' Right. Yeah, the koala, Yeah, had some kind of being.

'''E:''' A police investigation for certain forensics, bite analysis, Ballistics analysis, and blood splatter analysis.

'''S:''' What, Dexter.

'''E:''' Dexter's not true. They're all subjective. That's all raw.

'''S:''' Not that they're not. It's not. It's not all or not.

'''E:''' Not they're not. A slam dunk they're not.

'''S:''' The slam dunk that the That's the bottom line.

'''E:''' Well.

'''US#05:''' You're you're interpreting data. As soon as you interpret data, it's like, yeah, the biting.

'''S:''' Analysis, I think is the worst of the really I. Think by Yeah, that's.

'''C:''' The one where I think. It's a lot more completely.

'''S:''' What are they testing for? Like they look yeah, the shape they're looking at. Does the bite mark match your? Like if you do a test bite mark, does it match and?

'''C:''' Very often people have been let go when they realized, oh, that was made by a tool like that wasn't even a bite. Like they'll assume it's a bite based on the shape. And very often when you see a criminal proceeding, the prosecution and the defense are going to bring in their own spatter analysts and they're going to say opposite, you'll find. You just dueling.

'''J:''' You think though that a bite would be kind of consistent because your teeth typically stay in the same well, what conditions were you doing the bite under?

'''S:''' You know, there's so many other variables in there also. How you think?

'''C:''' Is your bite and. Also, is it a bite? What we're talking about is actually when there's an analysis of a bite on skin. Yeah. Like, is it even a bite or was that from an animal or was it, you know? Yeah, like if you.

'''J:''' Bite into like a mold thing. It's going to be your teeth. If you bite into the surface of an orange, it doesn't, right And.

'''C:''' If you bite somebody's leg, it might just look like the bruise.

'''US#05:''' If you have Charlie from the Chocolate Factory teeth then it's very.

'''B:''' You guys have? Seen.

'''C:''' Does anybody, does anybody know what I'm talking? Yeah, there's like memes. The kid who played Charlie in Willy Wonka like his teeth first.

'''B:''' Movie. The first movie, yeah.

'''C:''' The original and not just jacked like like I think there's some sort of physiologic problem like you. Were explaining molars. Yeah, right.

'''S:''' Let's come on. Yeah.

'''E:''' Continuing Sigmund Freud Apparently everything Sigmund Freud did was.

'''S:''' Preliminary and early on in a very new and difficult yeah, there's a big.

'''C:''' Different I mean, I'll soapbox this for a second. I am not a psychodynamic psychologist. I'm an existential psychologist, but I have, you know, colleagues who are psychodynamic. Generally speaking, we all learn about Freud and I think what they're saying in this listicle is that a lot of people just stop there and they go, OK, that's just how things are. But the reason we learn about it is from historical perspective to know where the field was early on. There is a field now called psychodynamic psychotherapy, which is based on actually like object relations. Like it's, it's very, very different. But there are some things that Freud talked about that now have evolved into understandings that we it's kind of like.

'''S:''' Saying Darwin was wrong about a lot of things. Of course he was. He was whipping up a whole new scientific discipline. He's amazing how much he got right. But we've pretty much everything you said, we've evolved into different versions of what what he said. But.

'''C:''' We have actually had to just be like, let's ignore that thing. Yeah, there's something. Yeah. There's like, I mean, he was like giving his patients coke and like, you know, all the women were his standard, so.

'''S:''' Psychiatry is way more wishy washy wobbly wobbly than yeah I.

'''B:''' Mean you I don't my take is that he's not very relevant today. He's not true, right? It's not, but every.

'''C:''' Psychology student learns about him and that is a problem with how we teach psychology because if you get a 101 course, you get a bunch of history, but you don't get a lot of like modern lens. And so a lot of people think that that's how we're all got you now.

'''E:''' Yeah, handwriting analysis, graphology, we've talked about that. Immune system boosting. No, no, we've talked about that. You don't.

'''C:''' Want to boost your immune system? Right, exactly. It's. Bad. Terrible. Unless you're immune, you know so.

'''S:''' Either with the immune boosting thing. What I find is either the snake oil supplements, whatever that claim that they boost the immune system do nothing, or they're bad for you because they they actually, you know, can cause autoimmune disease. Yeah. Yeah. Like your immune system needs to be tightly regulated. Just make suppressing it or boosting it or increasing it is not necessarily an inherently good or bad thing. Oh.

'''C:''' You should only do that under the like with with medication with a physician because you have a diagnosis that requires.

'''S:''' It, yeah, but aren't generically just boosting your immune system aren't.

'''B:''' Vaccines and immune boosting technology.

'''S:''' They're a way of targeting your immune system against a very specific right. So if you can, I think the word boosting is very vague. So if that's what you consider boosting, sure. But that's not what people are talking about. But.

'''J:''' That's not the same as. Taking. Vitamins are on the list be.

'''S:''' More robust and just a vague I mean, if anything, sleep will do that.

'''J:''' Sleep will. Sleep will keep you.

'''S:''' You know anything that keeps you healthy makes your immune system function better. Just like your muscles won't function better and your brain functions better. But you don't want well nourished. And well rested and hydrated all your systems operate but.

'''C:''' There is A and this is not a demarcation problem. There is a point where your immune system is over functioning and that is bad because it starts attacking your own body. Yeah. Correct.

'''E:''' We all know about that. Natural and organic. We've talked about that ad nauseam, the Myers Briggs personality test. Yeah, we.

'''C:''' Don't use that at all in psychology. It's like a wind.

'''E:''' Up toy that just won't stop and. I mean, that's culty. Oh. Yeah, like George totally called quantum anything non physics. Yes, Oh my God, poor quantum. Stay in your lane. Quantum rain based illnesses like catching a cold from being out in the rain. That's been disproven so.

'''S:''' You we can go beyond that even there's there's an open question about whether being cold can make you sick. Like being you know what it well, it's not really. I mean, it's been pretty much been debunked. I don't know that the the final nails in the coffin on that one because you get the question is do are some viruses, do they spread more easily in the cold weather or things like that? But certainly you can't catch a cold by being out in the wet rain. Yeah, because you need a virus. You need Yeah. And.

'''C:''' That's like in it's people always conflate like epidemiological data with individual data, right? Yeah, it's like it. And mostly.

'''S:''' It's mostly that's when the kids are at school. That's mostly what the winter viruses.

'''US#05:''' Yeah.

'''B:''' Plus, yeah, when it's cold out, you're you're amongst people in, in, in a building inside and that's and it's spreading that way. What about? The what about the bones?

'''US#05:''' Bones like feel like you can tell the storms coming because your hip hurts. Oh.

'''S:''' Yeah, pressure, that's.

'''B:''' Humidity. That's.

'''S:''' That's that's real. There's barometric pressure for migraines. There's humidity for arthritis. So some people, like, they know when the storms coming because they get a migraine. Yeah, that's what I thought.

'''US#05:''' That's real. Yeah. That's really cool.

'''E:''' Three more O2, more taste map of the tongue. Oh yeah.

'''S:''' I mean, who?

'''E:''' Wait, heard about a song?

'''J:''' Raise your hand if you believed it. I was hot.

'''E:''' OK, everybody believed that. I'm very shocked.

'''J:''' To see like when I was a kid that would, that was the thing and like, and I did it, I tested it and it, and I tricked myself into thinking that, that, well, the, once you put something in your mouth, your saliva dissolves it and it goes all over your tongue, right.

'''S:''' So you can't, it's really hard. And we do, this is part of a neurological exam. And if someone has Bell's palsy, I want to know if where the lesion is. And there's one specific place where you also pick off taste to half of your tongue. So if, if they have, that's where it is, then it's in the facial canal. If they, if they have retained taste, then something else could be on. It could be a stroke, it could be something else. So that's a very important thing to do. I had to learn the technique to do that. You have to like really make sure that they're not, they can't close their mouth, they can't swish it around. You got to just touch it with a, you know, what do you do with lemon juice or something? No sugar, sugar, water, and you go to the very side of the tongue without letting them swish it around at all. Can you taste that? What does that taste like? They should immediately be able to know that it's sweet. If they don't, if they go there, I can't tell. Then they close their mouth, they go, oh, it's sweets again. That's 'cause you just now you got it washed over the other side of the tongue. So that's probably what was going on.

'''E:''' And the last one's the what they call the troubled teen industry, like wilderness survival, you know, throwing these kids who are having problems not. Just pseudoscience extreme. Scenario harmful.

'''C:''' Yeah, there's a great book by Maya Salivitz about that. She, yeah, kind of blew the doors off of that.

'''U:''' All right.

'''S:''' Evan, you're also going to tell us about this one. What is this? Looks like a nightmare. This is the BP by Jeez. You've.

'''E:''' Heard the expression. The truth shall set you free. Right. We're familiar with that.

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=== Tooth Eye (1:16:11) ===
{{shownotes
|weblink = https://www.nbcboston.com/news/health/man-has-tooth-implanted-in-eye-to-restore-vision/3807265/
|article_title = Man, 34, has tooth implanted in eye to restore his vision – NBC Boston
|publication = www.nbcboston.com
}}

'''E:''' Well, this one is the tooth. Shall let you see. That's a tooth. No, sorry. The little little extreme graphic here. Yeah. So tooth in eye surgery. Also known by its medical name, osteoodonto Keratoprosthesis. Yes. Prosthesis. O OK. P for very short. OK, Yeah. So this is a legitimate procedure. In fact, I shared it with Steve. I said, Steve, what? You know, this looks like a one we should talk about. He's like, Are you sure about this? And we we had to. Look it up. We had to look it up and a multi source.

'''S:''' It's real specialized.

'''E:''' Surgical technique used when the cornea is so badly damaged by either scarring, chemical burns or autoimmune disease, which we just talked about that regular transplants won't work. So this is this is where they go next. You a patient will, they'll extract a tooth, usually a canine tooth from from the patient itself. They'll include small amounts of bone to serve as a structural support for a tiny lens. OK, so then they drill a hole right through it. They implant the tooth lens piece under the patient's cheek somewhere. So they take this, they put it into their cheek somewhere where it allows blood, tissue, blood and tissue growth to, to, to secure, I guess, you know, keep it, keep it all in place. The body also builds up support and integration for it. Then what they'll do is they'll prepare the eye, they'll remove the scar tissue graft, mucosal lining from the inner cheek over the corneal surface. And then after the toothpiece has matured while it's in your cheek, they'll take it, remove it and implant it into the eye, replacing the damaged cornea, allowing light through the optical lens. That is the procedure. And yeah, it's legit. You don't get 2020 vision though out of it, but in in about 1/4 of the cases they get you get 20302040. The majority of cases, about 60% of patients are somewhere between 2040 and and 2100. Much better than, you know, blind blind. Do you have to brush that tooth?

'''S:''' I think that's why they put the membrane over and everything. Yeah. So The thing is the corneas are really hard structure to to mimic, right? It's got to be rigid, hard and transparent. So this is the one, this is from the 60s, right? This is like been around for a long time. I'd never heard of it. This is, it's only, they've been a few 100 cases like since the 60s where they've actually done it. So it's pretty rare procedure. This guy, the patient that they were talking about had like 5 or 6 cornea transplants and they just only lasted for a few months and then they would degrade. So this wasn't working. That's why he was one of the cases where like, well, we could try this really rare thing. I'm sure the surgeons haven't done many of them because there's only so many that have ever been done. We.

'''C:''' Don't have something that's like not, you know, like plastic because.

'''S:''' I guess because the body rejects it. You just want that's why they own bone is because people.

'''C:''' Can wear contacts so you would think that you have.

'''S:''' To change them every day and clean them and everything. Yeah, OK.

'''C:''' Some.

'''S:''' Can go a couple of days, you can change.

'''C:''' Your cornea and that.

'''E:''' Is kind of the key. These are your own body parts anyway, So the rejection, your body won't reject this. You know, it's not like you grow it somewhere else and try to bring it in. Yeah.

'''S:''' Just a weird but true kind of thing. Tooth eye.

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=== Snake Oil (1:19:33) ===
{{shownotes
|weblink = https://pharmaceutical-journal.com/article/opinion/the-history-of-snake-oil
|article_title = The history of snake oil - The Pharmaceutical Journal
|publication = pharmaceutical-journal.com
}}

'''S:''' All right, Jay, tell us about the history of snake oil.

'''J:''' Yeah, so this this one caught my tooth eye because. Because. I, you know, I knew what the, what snake oil means to us as critical thinkers, but I didn't know the history of it. You know, I was just curious to know more details about it. And I really found a cool story here. So where did it come from? Where did the phrase come from and why did you know? And why do people today use it to say that things are BS, you know, that it's a scam or whatever? So originally what happened was there were Chinese railroad workers that came over to work in the United States. They this was like, you know, early to mid 1800s and they brought this snake oil remedy with them. But it was real. It was actually real. Like they had, well, real in quotes.

'''S:''' I mean, The thing is. It's not like it's a pharmaceutical. Like it was really effective. It was one of their, you know, herbal type of remedies that yeah, it probably had some.

'''J:''' It did have some effects, some effects. They tested it, but it was.

'''C:''' Real in the sense that it was Oil of snake doesn't.

'''S:''' Mean that they all the things they used it for it was effective.

'''J:''' Well basically this is what I read that they only used it for inflammation and let me get into the details here. So first of all, they only took oil from a water snake. And the way that they would extract the oil from the snake is first that they would, they would boil like snake fat, of course, and that's where the oil is coming from. Then they'd skim off the oil that rises to the top when they boil it, and they would just simply bottle it. And then when they needed it. Now, the history says that, you know, these people were working incredibly long hours. It was a really, really hard life to be a railroad worker like that. And that the, they'd rub it on the exterior of their body and that there would be, you know, help joint muscle pains, inflammation, things like that. So that oil from that snake is rich in omega-3 fatty acids and it's also rich in EPA, which is another type of fatty acid. And it, it has been proven to have anti-inflammatory effects and Scientific American actually verified that it works. It actually has a, it, it does do something of the like Steve Wright.

'''S:''' It's not like, Oh my God, it's like, but it's like a liniment.

'''J:''' But but it did something and it was real in in that effect. So specifically we say, why did it work? Well, EPA, the you know, that type of amino acid, it reduces inflammation muscle like modern pain relief creams or whatever, but not as not as strong or whatever. And again, they just rubbed it on themselves and you know, it was widely used in that community. So then of course, what happened is people found out that they were using this and some guy in particular named Clark Stanley, he called himself the Rattlesnake King, and he became the most famous snake oil salesman. So this was in the late 1800s. OK, so it says 1893. He was at the Chicago World's Fair and he completely won over a very large crowd of people. He would pull out a live rattlesnake. You know, he would extract the the, the fatty tissue from it. This is all on stage. He'd boil it right there. He'd bottle it right there. And he would be selling it. And he, of course, this was the type of person that would say this can cure any anything. You know, we know the whole that story. Your very common idea is that it's a panacea. You know, what do you got? It'll cure that. Did he?

'''US#05:''' Call it snake oil, apparently.

'''J:''' He did OK and his product became a national sensation. He became very famous. The the problem is that American rattlesnakes they have almost no Omega threes and none of the other fatty acid that actually was the active ingredient, which of course doesn't matter because he was making money. So in 1916 the the government actually did something which doesn't happen anymore. So they had the Pure Food and Drug Act. This is in 1906. And this gave the government authority to regulate these false medications that were beginning of the FDA. Yeah, it was so bringing.

'''US#05:''' Back snake oil because I think it's going to be a good thing. I don't think I.

'''J:''' Haven't been biting my tongue this entire podcast with that brain worm shit. I was about to explode anyway.

'''S:''' Not the brain worm.

'''J:''' So they take his stuff, they test it. the US Bureau of Chemistry, which Steve said the precursor to the FDA, they got lab results and they revealed that snake oil had the following, had baby oil, which is mineral oil. It had less than 1% of beef fat. It had red pepper, turpentine and trace amounts of camphor. So this guy, Stanley, he pleaded guilty, plead no contest, and he was fined anyway. Just guess, how much was he fined?

'''E:''' $10.

'''J:''' 20 bucks there you go.

'''C:''' What year was it though 19?

'''J:''' 16 It was early 1900s so.

'''C:''' What was that worth now about?

'''J:''' Like 600 bucks, nothing this less than a slap on a wrist that he probably made, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars selling this crap. But what did happen was there was a you know, the newspapers reported it and he you know, it cemented the snake oil is BS name and that's where it came from. So this goes back, you know, 100 / 100 years ago. And of course, you know, again, like the last thing to say is, you know, now snake oil means everything. Anything that particularly a skeptics think is BS, you know, but most people use snake oil if they want to talk like, oh, it's fake, it's snake oil. And that's where it comes from. I like this. Now, as a critical thinker, I didn't know any of that. I've been using snake oil the whole time. You know, we've been doing the podcast probably, you know, many, many years, even before that. It was just, you know, a phrase that that was put into my head and there's a legitimate story. And the fact that it started off as something that actually worked, not great, but worked, blows my mind. But.

'''C:''' Doesn't that always have pseudosciences? There's like that little kernel of truth, and then they just expand it and expand it and expand it until it no longer even exists. Yeah.

'''S:''' But they're also very common at the time and still today was taking something that was used by some either foreign culture, exotic culture or indigenous culture, right? There's a huge industry of remedies that were taken from American Indians. And again, it was not the American Indians who were promoting it. It was some snake oil salesman, some, you know, some con artist who hit upon it. It's like, oh, you know, the echinacea falls into this like, oh, they use they use echinacea. It's like, OK, this is a, and even if they didn't, they just said they did anyway. But some the echinacea was actually used by some, you know, America. Right.

'''US#05:''' Also, quinine was a bark.

'''S:''' Yeah, so right. Well, yeah, but quinine actually can does stuff right.

'''US#05:''' But but wasn't it used or was that or was that coincidental that it's I thought it was used by South South American.

'''S:''' Yeah, yeah. But they didn't know what it was doing. Oh, OK.

'''US#05:''' Yeah.

'''S:''' I mean, I think that, you know, some cultures did hit upon certain things that were obvious, of course.

'''C:''' I mean, there are there are like things that will.

'''S:''' Make you fall asleep, there are.

'''C:''' Indigenous practices that come from things that we ultimately made into pharmaceuticals. There are animals in the wild that use certain remedies. Yeah, that's true.

'''S:''' But here's the thing they were using in Asia for a whole bunch of different stuff, but not flu, not the thing that it was currently being marketed for. They would use it for snake bites and leg injuries, whatever. There's like random stuff and it was not based on anything but the idea what this is an ancient remedy used by this natural people was the marketing thing. And I'm sure the snake oil thing was the same where it's like, Oh yeah, there's from ancient Chinese remedy, right? I don't know if that all comes from there too, but that's the same kind of thing. Usually when there's something specific like snake oil means generically A fraudulent treatment, it there's a specific source to it was we we often will use things that have a specific reference and then we generalize to mean that type of thing. But that's.

'''C:''' Also fun because then you can be that asshole who watches movies and somebody says the word snake oil but it's anachronistic because it was too early. It wasn't.

'''S:''' They didn't use that.

'''C:''' They didn't have.

'''J:''' Snake oil in 1874 the proper. Way, the proper way to to evoke that is actually actually actually all right.

{{anchor|news_item8}}
=== Flowing Water on Asteroid (1:28:01) ===
{{shownotes
|weblink = https://www.space.com/astronomy/asteroids/scientists-find-evidence-of-flowing-water-on-ryugus-ancient-parent-asteroid-it-was-a-genuine-surprise
|article_title = Scientists find evidence of flowing water on Ryugu’s ancient parent asteroid. 'It was a genuine surprise!' | Space
|publication = www.space.com
}}

'''S:''' One more news item. One more news item.

'''B:''' One more. Yeah. All right, then we're.

'''S:''' Going to do science of fiction sounds.

'''B:''' Like a plan, all right.

'''S:''' All right, so this, I don't know if this is high. I think this is high Abusa. Remember that high Abusa, this is the asteroid that or no, like the high Abusa was the satellite, right? And yeah, this is the Ryubi or something asteroid. And they collect, they've managed to rendezvous with an asteroid, collect samples, do some science right there. And they brought samples back to Earth. So this is a news item based upon a recent analysis of some of the samples from this asteroid, and they found something very interesting. I'm going to save the conclusion till the end. So they were looking at what?

'''J:''' Isn't that what the end is, though?

'''S:''' Well, you know, you could, you could sometimes lead with the answer and say this is how they found, but then you don't have a conclusion. Anyway. They were looking at, yeah, this is something very, very technical and wonky, but it's very interesting. They were looking at the ratio of letrium and hafnium. These are two elements. The thing is lutetium was decays into hafnium and so they could they we know how old the asteroids is, right. So they said, well, this the ratio of hafnium to lutetium in the sample should be this much right? That's physics doesn't change, right. The half lives are one of the, you know, you could hang your hat on that, that it doesn't change throughout the history of the universe. So unless you're a creationist, then they say, oh, it changes by whatever amount it has to have changed in order for the Earth to be as old as I want it to be. But real scientists say they can, you can use it as a as a constant, right? So the problem is the there was far less hafnium in the sample than there should have been.

'''J:''' So when there's less hafnium, is it quarterm?

'''U:''' Yeah.

'''J:''' You know I'm trying I I wake up with the intent to entertain the people that spend money to come see us. Stevens all like science and shit over here like I just want you guys to have fun. All right, go back so that.

'''C:''' That means it's younger.

'''S:''' So you would think that it means it's, but it can't because it it's an asteroid. We know when it formed. We know where it formed in the soul is an out, you know what I mean? So we know those things could.

'''B:''' That hit a younger asteroid well.

'''S:''' You're close to the answer.

'''E:''' So with contamination, it's not.

'''S:''' Contamination. It's not contamination if that's your thought so, but it's good. This is the what the conversation I would have. What could have happened? Why is there less hafnium than there should be? It's not because it's younger, because we know it isn't. It's not contamination from another box. Could I have a guess?

'''J:''' Could it have been like evaporated off by as going too close to a sun or something?

'''S:''' You're getting close, getting closer to the answer. There's not a.

'''J:''' 3rd element that has affected the other previous one it's.

'''S:''' Not a chemical or or, you know, it's not, it's not, it's not it something washed away some of the hafnium.

'''C:''' So it did undergo the change and then it somehow went away, right.

'''S:''' OK. And. This is so again, they don't know that this is what happened, but this is what they're left with. Again, they've eliminated every other possibility they could think of, and this is what they're left with Solar.

'''US#05:''' Wind.

'''S:''' No, it would have had to have been something liquid. So therefore there was flowing water inside this asteroid. Why wouldn't it freeze? Well, it did freeze. It refroze, but the so they're saying, but it would have had to have been much later than they thought it should have been because, you know, we solar system formed out of a cloud of gas and dust. Everything is hot and then it cools down. And you know, we know where asteroids form based upon its constituents because there are different constituents at different places, distances from the sun. And you can tell how this formed in the outer solar system then came inside or whatever. They can tell these kind of things. And a lot of a lot of it is by the volatiles, right? Things that would evaporate if it gets too close to the sun or if it goes too hot. So this, you know, we, we know there's ice in, in the asteroid and we know where it's from, but at some point that ice must have melted, washed away the hafnium and then refroze or, or evaporated.

'''B:''' So, but if it washed away the stuff, some of it, where did it actually go though?

'''S:''' Well, then it washed it away, away from the asteroid. So we evaporated out into space. How?

'''B:''' Much gravity is required to wash something away on the surface. Are we talking about this happening on the surface? Deep within the But if the water evaporates, it doesn't take the hafnium with it. It did, though.

'''S:''' I mean, no, that's why it had to be liquid water that literally physically washed it away. Like so they're saying. So the only answer they're left with is this the conclusion. This is the conclusion. OK, here we go. This is why I wanted you. I wanted you to tell me what you thought first. I agree. But what could have done it? So they said the only thing that's left on our list of possibilities is that there was liquid water percolating through this asteroid much later than it should have been.

'''U:''' Why?

'''B:''' Water well.

'''S:''' Liquid. So yes, liquid. Liquid, probably liquid like other liquid stuff too.

'''J:''' Different.

'''S:''' Probably mostly liquid solvent.

'''C:''' Yeah, some some liquid solvent so.

'''J:''' What if it was? What if the regolith had frozen water and then it got near a sun and then it liquified?

'''S:''' But but we kind of know about where it was in the solar system based upon what it's made of and it's consistent.

'''C:''' Does it does it just not have enough of its own gravity for the water to like stay on it? Like how does the water just this?

'''S:''' Is inside, yeah, but then.

'''C:''' You said it had to wash away so.

'''S:''' What do they think happened so. Percolated through it. Washed away from whatever they wherever they got the sample doesn't necessarily mean it washed away from the asteroid, but it could have if it got to. If it percolated to the surface, it would have gone away. Gotcha.

'''C:''' Gotcha, gotcha. They're.

'''S:''' Sampling deep in the asteroid and there should be hafnium there, and there's a lot less of it than there should be something, so maybe.

'''C:''' They'll see like a band if they actually did a core or something.

'''S:''' The samples we have we. Don't have the whole.

'''C:''' Asteroid.

'''S:''' So this is what they're thinking. At some point after a lot of the happening him already was created through radioactive decay, another asteroid impacted. It melted the ice washed away the hafnium and then it refroze the liquid that had the hafnium in it just whisked off into space or or again just away from the sample that just to.

'''C:''' A different part of the asteroid.

'''S:''' So that's their that's their current hypothesis. Something hit this thing melted the ice from the heat of the impact, and then it eventually refroze. But some of the hafnium went away. Is that it? But water should have been percolating through that sample way later than the history, the life history of that asteroid should have made it possible. Is that cool? But the chain of logic is, is interesting how they can infer they have these little pieces of the asteroid and they're this they're figuring all this stuff out. And that that radioactive decay thing is always such a an important piece of information because again, it is something that we could say this is physics. This is what had.

'''US#05:''' To have happened where did they get the pieces this is.

'''S:''' For them, this was recovered from the the high abuse of OK.

'''US#05:''' Yeah.

'''S:''' The centre probe and they brought it back in.

'''B:''' The future, they get another sample and there's too much happening. I'm like, this is where it went. It went over here, I mean.

'''S:''' Maybe.

'''U:''' Yeah.

'''S:''' All right. Cool.
{{anchor|sof}}
{{anchor|theme}}
== Science or Fiction (1:35:21) ==
{{SOFinfo
|theme = None
|hiddentheme =

|item1 = There is a large population of bison in Kansas, and while they may appear docile, there are score of reported attacks and injuries per year.
|link1web =
|link1title = None
|link1pub = None

|item2 = Wind account for 52% of electricity production in Kansas, the third highest state in the US.
|link2web =
|link2title = None
|link2pub = None

|item3 = The incorrectly named Spanish Flu of 1918 started in Fort Riley, Kansas, from which it spread to the rest of the world.
|link3web =
|link3title = None
|link3pub = None

|}}
{{SOFResults

|fiction = There is a large population of bison in Kansas, and while they may appear docile, there are score of reported attacks and injuries per year.

|science1 = Wind account for 52% of electricity production in Kansas, the third highest state in the US.

|science2 = The incorrectly named Spanish Flu of 1918 started in Fort Riley, Kansas, from which it spread to the rest of the world.

|rogue1 = George
|answer1 = The incorrectly named Spanish Flu of 1918 started in Fort Riley, Kansas, from which it spread to the rest of the world.

|rogue2 = Cara
|answer2 = There is a large population of bison in Kansas, and while they may appear docile, there are score of reported attacks and injuries per year.

|rogue3 = Jay
|answer3 = Wind account for 52% of electricity production in Kansas, the third highest state in the US.

|rogue4 = Evan
|answer4 = There is a large population of bison in Kansas, and while they may appear docile, there are score of reported attacks and injuries per year.

|rogue5 = Bob
|answer5 = The incorrectly named Spanish Flu of 1918 started in Fort Riley, Kansas, from which it spread to the rest of the world.

|host = Steve
|sweep =
|clever = y
|win =
|swept =
}}

'''S:''' Well, everyone, it's time for science or fiction.

'''U:''' It's.

'''Voice-over:''' Time for science or fiction?

'''J:''' What we should make an Stu Snake oil?

'''E:''' Yeah, like I could be careful.

'''J:''' No. No, no, wait, let me just This is like your Homeopops idea for cooking.

'''E:''' That was actually Evan's idea. Homeopops.

'''J:''' You came up with evaporative therapy? Evan came up with Homeopops.

'''E:''' No, I just.

'''J:''' It'd be a cool decorative bottle.

'''E:''' It looks like an old snake oil bottle.

'''J:''' But then we have like, an Stu logo or maybe you're the Barker or something. It'd be. Yeah. There's an idea in a bookshelf as swag, you mean. Yeah. Bookshelf item. Fake.

'''S:''' Fake snake oil Doc.

'''J:''' Novella's old timey remedy. Evan. Evan, you see me? I appreciate that. Thank you. I. Got you Jay, but we'd have to you.

'''B:''' Know you have to write on it like a 100% bullshit. Yeah, well. Yeah, it's got fused.

'''J:''' Well, Jay, But Jay, what would it cure?

'''US#05:''' What would that, what would the SGU cure be?

'''J:''' Yeah. What would it?

'''US#05:''' What would it be? Everything. What would it be or what?

'''J:''' Ills you like like. Politics. Let me see. It's some kind.

'''US#05:''' Of yeah, like a a remote control on we. We're so. Silly like this cures. Like it'll.

'''J:''' Keep you from giving, getting this with the scabies, the scabies, what's like a what's like a kid heebie jeebies, heebies, something like that cures all scabies. Is a real thing. Oh, scabies are real, yeah. Yeah, OK. Sorry, I don't know.

'''S:''' I love the old timey diagnosis too. It treats consumption, Yeah.

'''C:''' Drops.

'''S:''' Nervous condition. Dropsy. Yeah, nervous, Nervous. Nervous penile dropsy.

'''U:''' Nervous.

'''J:''' Penile dropsy. Oh my God. Can we call it a liniment?

'''C:''' What they used to there was a liniment. Liniment.

'''S:''' Yeah, liniment. Yeah, Or my favorite one as a neurologist, of course, is neurasthenia. Neurasthenia.

'''C:''' Oh it. Can calm the nerves if I made the.

'''J:''' Snake oil. Who would like who would like it? Just have to see. I forget it. I'm not doing it. No, no, no. Percussive.

'''US#05:''' Melancholy cures percussive melancholy.

'''S:''' Percussive melancholy.

'''J:''' Nice, nice.

'''US#05:''' Guaranteed 100% George. You have percussion guaranteed.

'''S:''' OK, each week I come up with three Science News items or facts, 2 real and 1 fictitious. And then I challenge my panel of skeptics. Tell me which one is the fake. We have a live audience, which means you all get to play along. We're going to do this very specifically. We're going to ask the panel to give me their answers 1st. Then we'll ask you to weigh in. And you have to be sure not to give away the answer before they vote, right?

'''J:''' You don't want them to say, hey, I know the answer.

'''S:''' I don't want them to indicate in any way what they think the answer is. How many people here, by the way, you can do the one clap thing or whatever. How many people here are from Kansas?

'''U:''' A lot.

'''S:''' That's good, right? The theme of the science or fiction this week is Kansas. I didn't.

'''B:''' Do the research, Evan.

'''S:''' Asked me yesterday, is the theme going to be Kansas? Like shut up, I.

'''E:''' Said you should. Have thrown us a curveball. Say it's Oklahoma.

'''S:''' I sometimes I don't always do the place we're in, but we've never been here. It's sometimes I do the place that we're in. But cures quizzical Bernstein that they can't know for sure. What's that?

'''US#05:''' Cures Quizzical Bernstein.

'''S:''' Yeah. All right, so keep it cool. Yeah. Poker face about in the audience out there. You won't necessarily know the answer, but I don't know sometimes I think yeah, I have to think to myself like what a local know this app.

'''J:''' How much do you really know about Connecticut? That's the question that's part of what I ask myself.

'''S:''' So I'm not going to do the state bird, you know I mean, you guys should know it's state bird is the Meadowlark. Thank you guys are all going to know that right.

'''US#05:''' Meadowlark would.

'''C:''' You know that about your state.

'''US#05:''' I think it's these these construction crane is mine.

'''S:''' Come on, you know, you know what Pennsylvania is, No. No the. Bird, You don't know what it is, Larry.

'''C:''' California Larry Bird.

'''US#05:''' The Bethlehem bird is the swift. I know that the swift is.

'''C:''' California The Condor.

'''S:''' Yeah, OK. Connecticut is Robin the American Robin. Thank you, Robin. This has been your birding moment with Steve. It's not going to add about birds. I almost said Kansas birds. It was going to be my theme, and I found a couple of good ones, like just describing birds. Did you know there's a bird in Kansas called the Dick Sickle? That one is fiction, all right.

'''C:''' The bird is the quail. I would not. Have the quail.

'''J:''' Some some person who found the birds like. Dick. Sickle.

'''C:''' Like they had to know exactly.

'''J:''' What they were. Is there a reason? Is there an operational reason? Yeah, yeah.

'''S:''' I don't know what it is for that one, but there, there, there is. And some of them have really funny names. But if you break it, if you deconstruct it, it means.

'''US#05:''' Oh yeah. Jay, it cures Dick sickle, Yeah.

'''S:''' Right, right.

'''US#05:''' That. Down I. Like it? I wish.

'''J:''' More than three people raised their hands. I I really like it.

'''S:''' Like, there's the tip mouse, but we know that we have tip mice in Connecticut. Yeah. All right, here we go. Item number one, there is a large population of bison in Kansas, and while they may appear docile, they are there are score of reported attacks and injuries per year. Item number two, wind accounts for 52% of electricity production in Kansas, the third highest state in the US. And item number 3, the incorrectly named Spanish Flu of 1918 started in Fort Riley, KS, from which it spread to the rest of the world. OK, Should I start with Bob or should I start with George? All right, George, go first. It's their fault. George. Thank you.

'''US#05:''' Large population of bison. I like that. I like that that's I like that being true. Winding, winding wind accounting for 52% seems awfully high. Seems awfully high, which makes it feel like that's probably true because it's like it's being deceptive. So I bet that's true. And the Spanish food did not start in Spain. I know it did start here some somewhere in I guess in the United States. But would they would OK, Would Steve know that the audience knows this? What is the What does Steve think the audience is going to know you can't play?

'''C:''' These head games, man, No, I know it always gets us. I know to.

'''S:''' Clarify, George. Just I tried to find ones. I thought they wouldn't, that they wouldn't, but I'm not good at doing that.

'''US#05:''' Oh. OK, so I want. Them to not chime in so. I think. I think, OK, I'm going to say the bison is is the fiction, the bison's fiction.

'''S:''' OK, Cara.

'''C:''' Yeah. So we know Spanish flu started in the US We also know Spanish flu was spread around the world by soldiers. And so if it originated at Fort Riley, I don't know. I don't know, like the main place where they were getting it, but maybe that was a port or something where a lot of training was happening for for the war. I agree with with George that 52% feels high because I think about wind, where are we doing a lot of wind, like offshore? Maybe not, I don't know. Is it windy here? Was it windy? Do you guys remember? Was it windy today? They're not supposed to say anything, I know. But it is like it's flat here. So planes, I don't know, maybe. And then yeah, bison, Bison. I mean, they used to be everywhere. I think about them in like Montana, but I do think about them in like American grasslands, Prairie. Good. I'm gonna go with George on this. I'm not sure. Maybe it's.

'''US#05:''' Buffalo. Maybe he's being sneaky and it's actually Buffalo and not. I don't. Think he would do that?

'''C:''' I think that's too similar. Yeah, I don't think he would do that. Steve, I'm gonna. Go with George on that, OK?

'''J:''' OK, Jay. Yeah, I did. I, I know that the Spanish flu did not start in Spain. It started here. I don't know. I don't think of my years of having Steve do science or fiction. I don't think that he would assign it to, you know, a local heat, you know, like a place in Kansas. So I think that one is science. I'm going to pop over to now the, the, what do we got the, the murder bison. I mean, look, you know, there, there's a lot of people who are growing bison for for the meat, you know, then I would think, OK, it's perfectly fine if they grow them here. It's ton of flat land. Seems like a really good state to grow bison and and do all that. And they're dangerous. Of course they are. They're wild animals. I, you know, I don't know if they're like particularly feisty bison, but I think if you, if people like are, you know.

'''US#05:''' Band name Feisty Bison.

'''J:''' If they go on to other people's property, you know, teenagers and stuff, people can get injured, sure. You don't want to be around giant animals like that. So I think that's science. I, I, you know, I don't think, I think what George says was the 52% seem too high. And I think that's where Steve, Steve likes to be tricky in those areas. I'm going to say that one's a fiction, right? OK, Evan.

'''E:''' The Bison of Kansas. I just don't know about these reported attacks and injuries per year. I mean, you know, anytime you get people and animals together, there are going to be some injuries. Scores of reported attacks and injuries per year. Yeah, that would be the reason why I would go with that one as fiction. Now, the wind, 152% and the third highest state in the US. So the other two would what be coastal. And you know, hey, when I landed yesterday off the plane in here in Kansas City and we went to pick up our rental car and noticed signs by the bathrooms, tornado shelter. And I started seeing tornado shelter, tornado shelter, tornado. So, you know, yeah, there's a lot of wind in Kansas, actually, so feels.

'''C:''' Work in tornadoes.

'''E:''' Well, sure. It just, you know, we're from Connecticut, we don't have those things. So we come to a state where we're not familiar with and just odd to see tornado shelter signs on a regular basis in a lot of places not in.

'''C:''' Texas so.

'''E:''' I'm leaning towards that one being science. The last one about Fort Riley, KS. No I don't, I don't know that for certain. So I guess I'm going to have to go with George and Cara and say it's the bison one all.

'''S:''' Right. And Bob, I was so.

'''B:''' Happy when I saw the Spanish fluke. I'm like, yes, I know it's not from Spain. I some from some other country. And then everybody seemed to say, oh, we all know it's from the United States and like it is. I didn't I didn't know that I told it. So thanks for the info and thanks and thanks to you guys for picking George first. So that's good. So the other thing, I'm kind of really bummed now that I wasn't looking out that plane window because I think Jay was glued to the window and he saw that there was a lot, he saw bison. So he's like, all right, that's science. And I think I think he didn't see a lot of windmills. So that's why he that's why he picked the the windmill. So I'm going to go with that. How could I not go with that? So that's fiction. Oh boy.

'''S:''' They're wind turbines turbines.

'''B:''' Windmills, turbines, Let's.

'''US#05:''' Start with the third one well.

'''S:''' 1st we have to pull the audience. Yes, all right. So I'm going to do the George thing, but you're going to go, you're going to follow me. Look at my eyes only. All right, If you think that the bison is the fiction clap, If you think that the wind is the fiction clap. And if you think that the Spanish flu is the fiction clap. OK, So the audience thinks the like the the wind turbines the audience.

'''US#05:''' Is going J&B boy? Yeah.

'''S:''' So let's take these in reverse the order since nobody went for the third one on the panel. Very minority of the audience. The incorrectly named Spanish Flu of 1918 started in Fort Riley, KS, from which it spread to the rest of the world.

'''B:''' Would you be pissed if you were in Spain and they named this deadly? Oh yeah. Now. Scourge after the country you lived in. It is.

'''S:''' True that it did not come from Spain. Do you know why they was called the Spanish Flu? Nobody.

'''B:''' Else is reporting right because. There's World War One. I'm. Not going to fess up, no.

'''S:''' Country wanted to report their their mortality numbers because that would make them look weak and Spain didn't care. So they accurately they were the only ones to accurately report their numbers. So it looked like there was a lot of cases in Spain and not so much everywhere else. But it was a total lie. So it got called the Spanish flu for that reason. It did originate in the United States, but where in the United could could have come from anywhere in the United States right. That's the question.

'''J:''' That's what I point.

'''S:''' Very easy just to say, OK, I'll make it Kansas, right? This one is. Science.

'''J:''' Did come from Kansas. Did you guys did everybody here know? No.

'''U:''' Yeah.

'''S:''' The my understanding is that Fort Riley is a town, right? It's not. It probably was a Fort at some point. But so they came from camp something. I actually forgot them camp something in Fort Riley. And yes, it was primarily spread through soldiers because it was World War One. That's what made it so bad. So that one is true. Let's go back to #2 wind accounts for 52% of electricity production in Kansas, the third highest state in the US Bob and Jay and the majority, the vast majority of the audience who are from Kansas, apparently think this one is the fiction and this one is science.

'''US#02:''' Oh Dang, no, I thought. We had it, man.

'''S:''' 52.

'''US#02:''' Percent.

'''S:''' What are the two states that are higher? Iowa, North Dakota, Those are the 2 that are higher. But yeah, Iowa's number one. Yeah, there's a lot of a lot of wind in Kansas. Well, to answer Everett's question, you know you can't use wind turbines during a tornado, I didn't think.

'''C:''' So.

'''S:''' Nor in just If the wind gets too brisk, you have to shut them down. You can. Use them once you've. Got to shut those things down if the wind gets too hurricane, any kind of like really stormy kind of weather. No, they got to.

'''C:''' All those Kansas hurricanes. Yeah, I.

'''E:''' Wasn't implying that you'd, you know, Yeah, a lot of electricity. Let's get more tornadoes going. I was just saying that you don't realize how, you know the conditions of the place you're going. You also.

'''C:''' Realize tornadoes aren't just a function of like lots of wind, right? It doesn't just get so windy it becomes a tornado. I get that doesn't doesn't work, but yeah.

'''S:''' There are a lot of flat states in the Midwest that have a lot of wind turbines. You know, Oklahoma, that's, and I was in Oklahoma. I was in Oklahoma, I was in Oklahoma and giving a lecture and there's wind turbines everywhere. Now, of course, Oklahoma's a very RedState. So the not in the cities. When you're in a city, it's like any other city anywhere else, right? But it's the rural areas that are very regional in terms of their beliefs and culture and politics and stuff. The population in Oklahoma believes that their dramatic increase in earthquake frequency is due to the wind turbines. Sure, not due to the fracking, which is actually what's causing it, because that's what they were told. And then it's those damn wind turbines. All right? You should.

'''E:''' Go attack them that.

'''S:''' Means that there is a large population of bison in Kansas, and while they may appear docile, there are score of reported attacks and injuries per year. Is the fiction now? What about it is fiction? Are there a lot of bison in Kansas? Yes, there are, but a lot. What's a lot is for the population is 5000 to 6000. A lot. That's a sizable herd. Some a lot of them are in private herds, but some of them are not. But then they are not docile. They are dangerous wild animals. Anybody here play the game Medieval dynasty? Yeah. So there are medieval bison, not bison there. I could what they call them. There are similar creatures in there. They will run at you and kill you. They are really dangerous in the game. And that's very accurate in.

'''C:''' Oregon Trail. They help you cross the trail.

'''S:''' Almost forgot. About that game. Defining.

'''E:''' My childhood. So are these just like protected somehow or are there?

'''C:''' Yeah, there probably just isn't that much human conflict with.

'''US#05:''' Them so the there had there's zero.

'''C:''' Injuries per year I think, I guess.

'''S:''' Because people who are around them know not to get near them. The last reported injury was from 2022, so 3 years ago. So not score per year. Yeah. But again, like that kind of number, like you could sound reasonable and particularly if they're on private farms and all that, like the people who work there know what they know what they're doing. Yeah, yeah.

'''J:''' Are there any bison in the audience? Is there? Do we have anybody here see a bison in Kansas? Do bison moo. Maybe bison?

'''C:''' Move some noise, bison moo.

'''S:''' No, somebody mooed in.

'''C:''' The honor, I'm just saying they.

'''E:''' Must have some.

'''S:''' Kind of. They make noise, some kind of noise, yeah. But it's not.

'''C:''' It's not. I wouldn't call it a moo.

'''US#05:''' Not mowing, no, they licked. Your salt off your car get too close.

'''S:''' All right, so good job to the non novellas up here and like 3 people in the audience.
{{anchor|qow}}
== Skeptical Quote of the Week (1:52:15) ==
{{qow
|text = "I may have discovered a planet, but the real achievement is the inspiration it provides to future generations. "
|author = - Clyde Tombaugh
|lived =
|desc =
}}

'''S:''' Yay, Evan, give us a quote.

'''E:''' I may have discovered a planet.

'''S:''' But the real achievement is the inspiration it provides to future.

'''E:''' Generations Clyde Tombaugh, who is the discoverer of the planet Pluto, the dwarf planet Pluto the dwarf. Got to put that in brackets.

'''S:''' Now in the quote the.

'''E:''' Planet.

'''S:''' Scare quotes.

'''C:''' Who? Who?

'''S:''' Studied. Here at the University of Kansas. University of Kansas alumnus.

'''E:''' So that is why we chose the quote to honour him. Thank you, Evan. Well, thank you all for joining me this week. Yeah, you guys see you.

'''S:''' Thank you all for coming.

'''US#05:''' And thanks to all the.

'''S:''' Kansans.

'''U:''' Is that how is the Kansans? Is that?

'''S:''' Correct. Good. We're kineticutions. I love that. Yeah. Thanks to all the Kansans for your wonderful hospitality since we've been here. And until next week, this is your Skeptics Guide to the Universe. Thanks, guys. Nice.

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