SGU Episode 870

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SGU Episode 870
March 12th 2022
(brief caption for the episode icon)
SGU 869                      SGU 871
Skeptical Rogues
S: Steven Novella
B: Bob Novella
C: Cara Santa Maria
J: Jay Novella
Guest
BW: Brian Wecht, American theoretical physicist
Quote of the Week
Our Richie? The world’s smartest man? God help us!
Richard Feynman's mom
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 Tuesday, March 8^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 we have a special guest rogue this week Brian Wecht. Brian, welcome back to the SGU man.

BW: Hi, I'm happy to be here.

S: Evan is literally busy doing some Ukrainian man's taxes. He wrote his email saying my friend like this whole horrible situation about somebody who has to go to Ukraine to get their family out or whatever and like he has to do his taxes tonight before he leaves for Ukraine.

BW: Oh poor guy.

S: Yeah so Evan's like I can't not do this I have to miss the recording yeah and we're not flexible unfortunately this week, this is the only night we can record. So no Evan, but we got Brian. Brian's visiting us in Connecticut.

BW: I'm live from Steve's basement.

C: Really?

BW: Yeah, yep.

C: Oh, awesome.

BW: Yep.

S: Not that you could tell, we're all just in front of computers. But yeah he's physically here and he was visiting because we were we're testing our new fully live version of the boomer versus zoomer game show that he's helping us develop.

C: Oh fun.

BW: Yeah it was, the set, so Jay and Ian constructed this set and it looks, it just looks so great. I'm staring at it right now, and it really is like when, when this thing, the first time we're gonna do it live is that the the no-show on, what's the day, is it April 23^rd?

S: April 23^rd.

BW: Right. In Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. And it's gonna be so much fun to have this thing actually go live. We've done it online a few times but this is like definitely a level up from from that.

S: Yeah it's a lot of fun, you know, the bit the core of the show is we pit the four generations against each other. Boomers, gen z, millennials and zoomers. We have different categories of questions. And the questions are kind of balanced so there are some questions that you know the older generation should have a little bit of an edge on and then there's other questions that the young kids will definitely have an edge, on you know what I mean? So it's like who knows more about the other person's generation. It's a lot of fun and yeah we've play tested it several times and the winners have pretty much spanned across the age range, so I think we're you know, George is mostly writing the questions, I think he's doing a great job of sourcing them, you know.

BW: The last couple times it's been the zoomer because yeah we're trying to make sure it's not just trivia, but there's also like other you know kind of mental challenge brain games kind of stuff so it is accessible to really anybody.

Ukraine Invasion Updates (2:45)

S: So we talked about Russia's invasion of Ukraine last week and there's a couple of updates because you know, we're talking mainly off the cuff but yeah we're trying to keep up to date as best as we can on the news. It's hard because obviously we you know, we don't have any special access to inside information,we're just basing what we're saying on the you know public mainstream media basically. A lot of people have asked us like, how does somebody follow an event like this? How do you get access to reliable information? How do you know what's reliable? We don't know, we don't have any inside track, so that we use the usual method which is basically be skeptical of everything. If something sounds weird you know double, triple, quadruple check it. Try to use as many different sources as possible and see if there's, how reliable they are, and are they all sort of pointing in the same direction. But again that doesn't totally answer your question for you because sometimes all of the media is telling the same narrative even though the narrative is bullshit.

C: Well especially when the media's state run.

S: Yeah well, yeah but we're not even talking about like Russian media, just like US media, like how does our US media know what's going on. So you know you want to just listen for clues just like is this speculation, are there, where are they getting this information, you know, how solid. Tis is like an official report from. Is there a video showing the person saying the thing. Like you know, just as much objective information as you can. And then of course the internet is a wash with it, good and bad, right. So there's people on like in the streets where the war is happening showing videos. And yet, and there's also things being shared going viral on social media that are that are misinterpretations or fake. It was funny Jay and I were talking yesterday like oh did you see this the video with the girl driving the tank? And I'm like yeah Jay that that's not real. He's like oh no. It's a Russian YouTuber basically who recorded that like a month ago and nothing to do with the invasion of Ukraine. But that's the thing, if something feels really good, like it's iconic, like it just fits perfectly it's probably fake, right? Or there's you know if it feels too good to be true it probably is.

BW: You know what, what I've been struggling with on this is, is how best to support the people there, like it's so hard and to find a charity that you trust that you think is going to actually get the money on the ground in a way that is going to benefit people.

C: Have you seen what a lot of people I know have been doing which I think is very cool.

BW: No, what?

C: They've been going on Airbnb and directly renting rooms from Ukrainians and then just leaving messages that say I'm not actually going to stay here I just wanted to support you.

BW: Oh yeah you know when I booked the Airbnb to come out to this trip to Connecticut and right on the front page it says you know get rooms in Ukraine right now.

C: Yeah so because we know that that money goes directly to the pockets of the people who own those homes or those apartments that are that are in Ukraine.

BW: Oh that's interesting.

C: Kind of cool yeah, yeah.

B: I like it.

S: There's one thing I wanted to follow up on because Cara you mentioned briefly like what percentage of the Russian populace that the public supports the invasion.

C: And I didn't mention a percentage by the way.

C: No no you just said like the majority whatever, large portion or something yeah used, you know, vague terminology, because that's all we have, is just the impressions, you know. There's certainly been a lot of protests, thousands of people being arrested, that's unusual you know.

C: And against like pretty scary odds, it's not just like if somebody speaks up there's no you know retribution for that, like they could go to prison they could face something worse. Scary.

S: But, hot off the presses, as we're recording this, an actual survey.

C: Oh no way.

S: Coming out of Russia. Independent. And again according to the article I'm reading on the Washington Post it's, they say that this is a good, reliable, independent you know organization. And you know they're having to keep the details unfortunately hidden just because they're you know that Russia is clamping down on information coming out of Russia. But here it is. About 58% of Russians approve of the invasion of Ukraine, 23% oppose it. The rest are either, don't know or on the fence, you know, don't have an opinion or don't want to say are on the fence. And this, confirming what I've heard in more vague terms but it's the people who are against the invasion of Ukraine are younger and more urban.

C: Right.

S: And then the older and more rural people who are in support of it.

C: Which makes sense because they've been under this sort of propaganda regime for a really long time, older people obviously I think that we do tend to see those tendencies you know, we see similar things in in the United States and in other countries. Like this more kind of patriotic and singular sort of allegiance to whoever's in power. But I also worry that even those numbers. Like how honest can people be right now?

S: Yeah we don't know.

BW: Well and how how did, they say how big the survey is?

S: Yeah it was 1 640 adults, it was a phone survey.

C: It's just like, I don't know, if somebody called me up on the phone and I lived in Russia and they were like "Do you support Pputin" I'd be like "Is this a trap? Yeah of course I do".

BW: 100%, yeah.

C: You know like it's scary to speak out so yeah I'm not sure.

BW: Also who's, who's answering the phone?

C: It's true.

BW: You know like it's 2022. I don't know what the deal is within, in Russia, if it's here, but your phone, random phone rings, if you're old you're maybe more likely to answer it.

C: Right.

B: Yeah good point.

S: Yeah, there's obviously an unscientific survey but it's what we got.

C: And it does it does kind of rock Steve with with some of the emails that we've gotten from people who were like Cara, you and Jay were talking about your sort of empathy for the Russian people whose own you know whose leadership is leading them in a direction they don't want the leadership to go. But like do not underestimate the power of propaganda. Like a lot of people there actually support Putin and support this war. And I'm sort of in that that interesting place, like we often talk about, let's say, anti-vax rhetoric. Like who is duped and and who's the duper. And at what point are they responsible for being duped but then perpetuating rhetoric.

S: Yeah so victim and perpetrator are blend together.

C: Yeah. Yeah and when you've been living under a propaganda regime for a long time it's hard to not believe what you're fed, because all of the media says the same thing.

S: Yeah they're basically being told, the narrative is that this they are liberating Ukraine from Nazis, right? That's literally, that's the propaganda. And it's just a special, it's not even it's not an invasion, it's not a war, it's just a special military operation to liberate those Ukrainians. And they also are being told that Russians in Ukraine are being slaughtered. If you speak Russian like they'll kill you, you know they, so it's, it's also, they're doing a humanitarian effort to save Russians in Ukraine from genocide. That's what they're being told. That's what they're being told. Yeah so that's all you hear. Even if you think, all right this is half, it's still like it's a framing thing, it's an anchoring thing, right? So you're anchored to the propaganda as your starting point, and even if you try to correct for it. You're still I guess but it's probably a good idea that we're going in there, you know what I mean? Whereas you know it's harder to like completely detach from the swamp of propaganda that you're being buried in, and have some kind of independent evaluation.

B: But if you have access to the internet and you see.

C: But they don't.

B: They don't have access to the internet?

S: No. Well it's being it's being censored, they can't get on Facebook, they can't get on Twitter.

BW Especially in the last couple of weeks, stuff has been taken away.

B: Oh wow, I didn't know that.

C: And they also just, the very last independent news network just went offline, right? Yeah, it's scary. And and this is coming from people who live in the United States where I think it's important for us to to also kind of reflect on ourselves and exercise some humility that we ourselves have our own propaganda that we you know our own anchoring problem.

B: Oh yeah.

S: Yeah.

BW: For sure.

C: And yes, it's completely different because we do have a free press. But, in some ways it's not that different, we've had a long national narrative of like American exceptionalism, and this is an anchoring problem that a lot of Americans come from. And so we have blinders on when we do terrible things politically and geopolitically and we're moving from that.

S: Our international listeners frequently remind us of our American narrative anchoring, absolutely. And we try to be as aware of that as we can be and we love you know getting feedback from other perspectives. But also, it's not just an American narrative Cara, it's, there are sub culture narratives within America. There is a definitely a republican narrative, a democratic narrative, a libertarian narrative, a religious right narrative there's─

B: A Halloween narrative. (laughter)

S: ─and those are narratives those are way more intense, those sub ecosystems of information are a much more insular, much much more extreme, you know much more unforgiving of information that goes against the narrative.

C: It kind of also just goes to show how dangerous nationalism, patriotism can be, that there's a dark side of a singular pride that people feel in their country, especially when their countries are a large military power.

S: So I think yeah for me I think there's always a sweet spot like there's a balance. Like I think it's okay to be patriotic but not nationalistic, right? Like there's a point where like yeah I can take pride in my culture, and the good things about the place that I live etc., but you have to stop short of it becoming a prejudice─

C: Or we are somehow better than others.

S: ─or becoming jingoism. Us versus them. It's more like, we're great, you're great too. It's just all the diversity of humanity. And wouldn't it, wouldn't it suck if we were just one homogeneous you know culture, that would be terrible, it's great that we have these deep cultural differences and histories, and it's you know, but we have to learn how to celebrate that without making it in us versus them, or demonizing or othering you know different groups.

BW: I mean for for me in my, in my lifetime, I feel like the real shift was right around after 9/11, was when it started to be it started, I mean at least in my adult maybe, I was born in 1975 so that was a you know a young adult at the time, and that's when it started to feel like people were pushing way too hard on some of the pro-America stuff. That felt like an inflection point to me, but that also might just be my age.

C: Yeah, yeah it could be that that's when you you know had those formative experiences, but you're right I think obviously 2000, 9/11 was a watershed moment for a lot of people.

S: But my my recollection was there was kind of a good kind of patriotism and love of country after 9/11 but of course that gave way eventually to old [inaudible]─

C: Mass destruction.

S: ─reasserting themselves

BW: Pretty quickly, yeah.

S: Yeah. All right let's move on, got a lot of interesting science news items to talk about.

News Items

Solid State Batteries (14:06)

• Solid State Li-ion Batteries

Are Coronal Loops Real? (24:56)

• A solar illusion: Coronal loops may not be what they seem

COVID Anosmia (34:25)

• How the Coronavirus Steals the Sense of Smell

Alcohol and the Brain (43:48)

• Alcohol Is Bad for the Brain

Quickie with Bob (1:14:49)

• 3D-Printed "Nano-Skyscrapers" Help Bacteria Convert Sunlight Into Electricity

Who's That Noisy? (1:17:16)

Answer to previous Noisy:

Air going through 3D-printed vocal cords, esophagus, and palate of an ancient mummy

New Noisy (1:22:05)

[two things in a jungle setting making horror movie-style cries/calls]

J: ... If you think you know what it is or if you heard something really cool this week, you know what to do. You have to email me at WTN@theskepticsguide.org.

Announcements (1:23:26)

J: Now, Steve?

Science or Fiction (1:24:28)

Item #1: A new study calculates that the addition of lead to gasoline in the 20th century resulted in the loss of 824 million IQ points from more than 170 million Americans alive today. Item #2: The oldest Vampyropod squid fossil discovered, 328 million years old, indicates that the common ancestors between squid and octopuses had only two arms. Item #3: A study of linguistic convergence finds that people imitate speech they hear, even parts of speech they do not hear but anticipate, such as imitating parts of a Southern American accent they were not exposed to in the experiment.

Answer	Item
Fiction	Two-armed ancestors
Science	IQ points lost to lead
Science	Imitating anticipated speech

Host	Result
Steve	swept

Rogue	Guess
Brian	Two-armed ancestors
Bob	Two-armed ancestors
Jay	Two-armed ancestors
Cara	Two-armed ancestors

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

Skeptical Quote of the Week (1:49:08)

Our Richie? The world's smartest man? God help us!
– Richard Feynman's mom

Signoff/Announcements (1:50:55)

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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