SGU Episode 863

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SGU Episode 863
January 23rd 2022
(brief caption for the episode icon)
SGU 862                      SGU 864
Skeptical Rogues
S: Steven Novella
B: Bob Novella
C: Cara Santa Maria
J: Jay Novella
E: Evan Bernstein
Quote of the Week
Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution.
Theodosius Dobzhansky
Links
Download Podcast
Show Notes
Forum Discussion

Introduction

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

S: Hello and welcome to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe. Today is Wednesday, January 19^th 2022, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella...

B: Hey, everybody!

S: Cara Santa Maria...

C: Howdy.

S: Jay Novella...

J: Hey guys.

S: ...and Evan Bernstein.

E: Good evening folks!

S: How is everyone this week?

E: I'm feeling good today.

C: We're alive.

J: Pretty tip-top.

What is SGU reading at the moment

S: So we get a lot of questions what we are reading, so maybe at the top of the show instead of bantering something random we talk about what everybody reading at the moment.

C: Yey!

E: It's on random.

C: Is everybody reading something at the moment?

S: Oh yeah, I always got something keyed up.

C: I wanna see out of the five of us, how many are reading fiction and how many are reading non-fiction right now? I'm non-fiction.

J: Fiction right now.

E: I am non-fiction but I had to put the book aside because tax season for me, so a really have every minute I spend working on, you know, work. So I'm in a tough time right now.

S: Yeah I go back and forth I just finished a fiction series and now I just started a non-fiction book What Remains.

C: What is it?

S: It's a book about forensic science. It's cool it's about death, you would like that Cara.

C: Yep.

S: But also like physical death and also forensic science investigative tool, salving mysteries with forensic science which sounds cool.

C: I like that.

S: I just finished reading the same series I believe that Bob is reading right now.

B: Yes this is a, by Drew Hayes who did Super Powereds, this is based in the world of a basically DND and adventuring but with so many twists and it's not what you think at all, highly recommend it this is the fourth book, I'm almost done with the fourth book. Steve and I just plow through them. It's really I mean it's Drew Hayes, the guy, excellent, he's one of my favorite authors, fantastic series, highly recommend it. And if you have played DND and table-top gaming adventuring, you will there will be a lot of in jokes that you will love. But I guess you don't need to know much about it at all, to really enjoy just great stories.

J: What's it called Bob?

B: It's a NPCs.

E: NPCs non-player character.

B: The series, I'm not sure what the series name is but the first book is NPCs by Drew Hayes.

S: I think that's the series name, NPCs it's actually Spells, Swords, & Stealth.

B: As well, OK.

S: Yeah.

E: Cool. Right after tax season I'll get all over that.

S: It's a fun quick read, if you're looking for something just to turn your brain of and just enjoy fun story telling. It's good.

C: What did you put to the side, Evan?

E: I'm reading Gerald Posner's book Pharma, you know we had him on few months back and I finally did order the book and it came in right before Christmas so I cracked into it all about the Sacklers you now that whole─

B: Oh boy.

C: Oh yeah, don't get me started.

E: ─that whole insanity. I haven't gotten too far.

S: Terrible terrible story.

E: But I'll pick it up again soon.

C: Very cool.

J: So I got two things percolating, Bob recommended I read or listen to Super Powereds, so i have that as a book on tape, and that's good for certain times, you know like if I'm driving or if I'm in the shower or whatever like I'll throw that on. But you know what because of the Dune series, the Dune movie made me crack open the first Dune book, I have like four copies of it in my library.

B: Wow.

J: I just you know it was funny was I haven't read it in such a long time, that I actually forgot how he uses language and I just forgot his way of writing. So I just wanted to re-experience it. And it sucked me right in. I'm like, I'll read a chapter just to─

S: It's so good.

J: ─it's such a good book, it's unreal how good that science fiction is. His world building is phenomenal. And the story is, even if you know the story, it's compelling, you know?

S: It's yeah, it's definitely a sign of a good author in the speculative fiction realm if that they make you believe the world is real. You feel like it has enough depth and nuance and connections like it feels the complexity level of a real world. And when you don't achieve that, it's so flat. it just completely fails.

C: It also feels like homework at that point.

J: Yeah.

C: It's like drudgery to get through, when you're trying to go like, who's that person, why did they?

J: Oh yeah I hate that.

C: What is this reference?

S: Remember together like we were playing some multi-player online games like sword and sorcery type games, and I was looking for a new one, cause we were kinda burned out on the ones we were playing. I played this one game for like 10 minutes and I'm like nope, not gonna do it. Because the story like the background was so cookie cutter flat just generic─

E: I hate that.

S: ─all these weird names that don't really feel like any culture it was just forget it, I can't do this anymore, this is like such crap. Literally lasted 10 minutes. Nope.

J: Yeah, I know of course that's the difference between good and bad fiction.

S: Yeah, totally.

C: So I just finished Mary Roach's book, her most recent book Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law it was really good, if you've never read any Mary Roach I highly recommend her to everybody listening, he's just the best.

B: Oh yeah, she's great.

C: And at any given time I'm always reading for school cause I'm working on my dissertation so I'm reading some like, you know source material from Heidegger like some phenomenology books that are really dense and hard to get through. And to give my brain a brake I opened up, my best friend gave me, she always gives me the best Christmas presents. She gives me like a box just full of crap, she's collected over the year that reminds her of me. And it's the sweetest, so lots of random things. And she got me a book, she's like, I know you've read this book, you've read this book haven't you? And I was like, oh my god, I've never read this book but I've always wanted to. She got me Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee.

S: Oh yeah I've heard about that book.

C: It won a Pulitzer like 10 years ago and it's got a lot of clout, so he is an oncologist and it's, the way he positions it, I'm about 80 pages in now and it's a page-turner. The way he positions it is it's a biography of cancer.

J: Oh wow.

C: Which I think is really cool. Yeah it's like the natural history of this disease, but he brings it to life trough all the different characters who discovered things, who have done research on it through all of the different specimens, everything from ancient times and ancient writings to today and it's a gosh, it's fascinating.

S: All right we have a great interview coming up later in the show, with Brad McKay who is a GP in Australia talking about fake medicine, so let's get right to our main content. Jay you're gonna start us of with a special segment on 5G and airlines, what is the scoop here?

News Items

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B:

C:

J:

E:

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Who's That Noisy? ()

New Noisy ()

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Science or Fiction ()

Answer	Item
Fiction
Science

Host	Result
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Rogue	Guess

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

Item #1: _item_text_from_show_notes_ Item #2: _item_text_from_show_notes_ Item #3: _item_text_from_show_notes_ Item #4: _item_text_from_show_notes_

Skeptical Quote of the Week ()

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– AUTHOR (YYYY-YYYY), _short_description_

Signoff/Announcements ()

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

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

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Today I Learned

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