SGU Episode 875

This episode is in the middle of being transcribed by Hearmepurr (talk) as of 2022-06-02. To help avoid duplication, please do not transcribe this episode while this message is displayed.

Template:Editing required (w/links) You can use this outline to help structure the transcription. Click "Edit" above to begin.

SGU Episode 875
April 16th 2022
(brief caption for the episode icon)
SGU 874                      SGU 876
Skeptical Rogues
S: Steven Novella
B: Bob Novella
C: Cara Santa Maria
J: Jay Novella
E: Evan Bernstein
G: George Hrab
Quote of the Week
Let us tenderly and kindly cherish therefore, the means of knowledge. Let us dare to read, think, speak, and write.
John Adams, second president of the United States
Links
Download Podcast
Show Notes
Forum Discussion

Introduction, Live from Boston, Accents

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. (applause) Today is Sunday, March 27^th, and we are live from Boston. (applause) This is your host, Steven Novella and joining me this week are Bob Novella...

B: Hey, everybody! (applause)

S: Cara Santa Maria...

C: Howdy. (applause)

S: Jay Novella...

J: Hey guys. (applause)

S: Evan Bernstein.

E: Hello Boston! (applause)

S: And, not just a special guest but a regular rogue and our brother in skepticism George Hrab

G: Wicked live podcast lot! (applause) Let's pod, let's pod this bastard.

C: They're all shaking their heads.

J: Thank you George. Does anybody in here have a really thick Boston accent?

C: Please.

J: Anybody, please.

C: Come on, you might not know it about yourself. Does anybody point to somebody else?

J: I think you're laughing so you do, don't you?

S: No that's the girl from Virginia Jay if you remember from five minutes ago. So last night we were in New York so of course we were thinking, all right so which city is better? New York or Boston?

J: Throwing down the gauntlet.

S: Just throw it down. So what do you guys think? (laughter)

Special Segment: Over/Under? (1:39)

S: All right so we're going to start off with it with a fun bit that George came up with.

C: Oh you gonna open with this?

G: Guess so. It's just, I've seen other people do this and I wanted to get the Rogues take. This is something called over/under. I'm gonna just list a bunch of random things and the Rogues are going to say whether they think it's overrated or underrated or properly rated. And hopefully it'll foster some nice conversation and debate. Not that that, you know, you guys ever debate about anything in particular.

C: No, agree on everything.

B: We do, we debate on stuff. (laughter)

G: What we should probably do is just do a quick whip down the line and then we can maybe have a conversation about it. So we'll start from Cara and go down. And again say overrated, underrated or properly rated, okay? I got a bunch here.

Avocados (2:25)

G: Let's go with, here's the first one, Avocados.

C: Oh, overrated.

S: Overrated, 100%.

J Properly.

E: Proper.

B: Overrated.

C: We're an anti-avocado bunch over here.

G: Really?

C: Well I live in LA, it's like they they put avocado on everything.

S: I know, it's freaking everywhere. And I hate avocados.

C: Me too they're weird.

J: Yeah that explains it.

C: They're weird soft fruits.

S: Even if I liked them I think they would be overrated.

E: Guacamole?

C: I don't like guac.

S: No, guac is poison.

E: Guac is poison?

C: Okay I grew up in Texas, I eat Kesos, it's gross, I'm gross.

J: You're course of supertasting, you probably [inaudible].

E: Right, you're talking to two supertasters over there, it's a little skewed.

J: I love it, it's great in sushi, it's great in salads, right?

C: It's fair, it's fair.

S: But you want it on everything?

J: No, I don't want it on everything.

S: So it's overrated.

E: Okay, how nutritious, what's what's the nutrition you get out of the avocado compared to [inaudible].

S: It actually sucks nutrition out of your body.

G: It's good fats, right? It's a good fat.

C: And it's got chlorophyll, I mean clearly.

J: George you clearly like avocado.

G: I love it, yeah, I could, I could eat guac every day.

C: So are you properly rated are you underrated?

G: I would say proper or under. I'd say yeah, I'd say properly.

J: Right I mean on a on a ginger salad.

G: Oh forget about it.

J: Oh god, forget, it's awesome.

C: This is fascinating.

Minecraft (3:42)

G: Minecraft.

C: I don't know anything about Minecraft. It's rated. (laughter) Children love it right? I don't know. Skip me, I don't know.

S: I think it's properly rated.

G: Okay.

J: Properly, fr sure.

E: Overrated.

B: Overrated. That blocky graphics like [inaudible] we're passed it.

G: Okay. Evan, why is it overrated.

E: Overrated, well, frankly I don't play it. I think it's cool kind of what people are able to do with it but I still don't find it impressive enough to devote the apparently thousands of hours you need to do to achieve these kinds of artistic expressions.

J: So my my response to that Evan is it's a, it's a wonderful game to let your kids get into as like, as one of their first video games because there's a lot of creative, an enormous amount of creativity. Like if they're playing World of Warcraft for example, you know, they're running around, they're going on missions or killing things and stuff and there's nothing to learn. But in Minecraft there is so much to do, you have to really be leaning on your creativity.

B: Yeah but can we have high res creativity?

J: Well Bob, this is the problem.

B: Is that too much to ask for?

J: The premise behind Minecraft is, it's pretty simple, right? Is, there's a simplicity to it. Now think about it, the smaller you go, with, like let's call it the building blocks. The smaller you go in the building blocks the harder it would be to craft things, right?

B: Yeah but I'm not saying you got to stack pixels but make the smallest block made out of a lot of pixels instead of three, you know, that's all I'm saying. You could you still be creative.

J: There's a give and take, there's a pros and cons to that and I think they would.

S: It would slow down the process. Massively.

B: Slow down the processing?

S: Yeah.

B: With our computers and video games in today's technology, I gotta wait for this block to settle down into that spot.

S: Now Bob you have to understand, you have to understand the engine. It's like, it's a game where you can control any block in a world, you know what I mean?

B: Right so all right you can interact with anything, I get that. That will up the processor but still you could up the res a certain amount. To me it's like, what is it, I'm not playing a video game that looks 35 years old.

S: That's not the important part of it.

B: Visuals are not important for a game? If I'm looking at a computer screen visuals are important.

C: So this is what the none of you hear this on the actual show because it all gets edited out. But what I love about this group of people is that it doesn't matter what the topic is they're equally, we are equally passionate about avocados and Minecraft.

S: Minecraft is like a digital box of crayons, are crayons overrated? People spend too much time drawing stuff or crayons it's like whatever, it's a it's, it's a mechanism, it's a vehicle for creativity in the digital realm. There's a little bit of a playing aspect to it if you want to. But you can also play in creative mode but that that's not there at all. All you're doing is just building and creating stuff.

B: All right, so here's a box of three crayons and here's a box of 20 crayons, which one are you gonna draw with.

S: Bob, do you know that you could build a working computer in Minecraft?

B: Yes I know, I know that for sure it's, the creativity is awesome it's wonderful.

J: We get it.

S: We got your point. You don't have to keep making.

B: Then stop asking about it.

J: Sorry George. (laughter)

G: No no no, it's great, this is why we're doing it we're doing it, I love it, the passion is essential.

B: Yeah, I've got to answer your question.

New Year's Eve (6:50)

G: New Year's Eve.

C: Overrated.

B: Overrated.

S: Overrated.

C: I have to calculate in my head the right answer every time.

G: Jay?

J: Overrated, it sucks.

C: Yeah, like grossly overrated.

G: Evan?

E: Double overrated.

C: Yeah.

G: Everyone's saying overrated, I agree, overrated.

S: It's generally a disappointment.

J: Can we ask the audience? I'm dying to hear, what do you guys?

'Audience: Overrated.

G: Why do we keep spending money on New Year's Eve?

B: When you're young adult, remember we were like young adults like yes, New Year's Eve, not wanna hang out with our parents, let's go out and have fun. And we pay money, good money to be some place─

E: Overpriced.

B: ─and like this really sucks, you try that for a few years and like that's it, we're just going to have impromptu get togethers and and make nothing special about it.

J: We play games at my house.

C: See that's fun, I feel like a lot of New Year's Eve is just about like how drunk can people get before the ball drops and that's not fun for a lot of people. It's an unsafe holiday.

E: Steve and I have written─

S: Three LARPs.

E: Yes, LARPs murder mystery kind of.

S: It's a party LARP, yeah, we had like 20-30 people over (laughter) and we write a game. One of them, a couple of them are period games. We have to come, we give them characters, they come in like 1910 or something.

E: Solve the mystery.

S: You have to solve the mystery, one you have to go out.

[talking over each other]

E: Driving around town to find signs.

S: Tons of fun.

B: I wouldn't be invited to that.

S: Those are good, but you could do that anytime, right?

G: We all agree, good.

College (8:12)

G: College.

C: Properly rated.

S: That's a complicated question, actually.

C: Yeah. I think, yeah, I think if all things given, all variables properly rated.

S: Yeah I think I would it's, I would say it is sometimes overrated sometimes or underrated and it comes out in the washes sort of an average. But it's not like always properly rated.

C: No, it's definitely not.

J: I'm gonna go with underrated, simply because I would want, I want people to make a bigger deal out of it. I want it to be more of a priority, I think, as a like everybody gets to go to college for free and we are pushing the youths into college.

S: The youths?

C: The youths? (laughter)

G: The youths gotta be smarter.

E: I have to go with under, overrated because return on investment dollar for dollar. My college edu, I have four years, I have four year, a bachelor's degree, I went from 1988 to 1992. State school. For those four years I paid 13 000 dollars, for the all for all four years. And I feel like that was a very good return on my investment.

B: Wow, that's like books cost that for one semester.

E: I don't know, I don't and you see the problems we're having today with student debt it's so beyond out of control. It's bankrupting families.

C: But the thing is there are ways to do college in an affordable way but I don't think culturally, I think we stigmatize community college and we stigmatize local commuter colleges and I would love to see a more of a celebration of that. Like why do we play─

S: And trade schools.

C: ─yeah and trade schools, vocational training. Like why do we put the really expensive private and Ivy Leagues on such a pedestal, I think that's part of the problem.

S: They're over priced.

C: Yeah.

S: I think there's a multiple reasons [inaudible].

C: M undergrad at a state school, I went to the University of North Texas and I had a State of Texas grant, we didn't have money, my family didn't have money and so we were able to get like a waiver. So it was, I got to go to college for free which was really cool. And then my master's was 30 000, that I paid for myself. Actually I took out loans so I paid them off. And I would say my PhD though because it's a, it's, you know, most PhDs, research PhDs, you're on fellowship. So you're using the grant money of your major professor. But if it's a practical PhD like medical school or, that's an MD, or a law degree or clinical psych. I want to say it's averaging out to 150. But I, yeah, but I was very lucky, this is why I went to school late in life. I told myself, I will not take out student debt so I amortize it and I pay a monthly fee, I pay a second mortgage basically, every month, to pay for my University education. It's a lot. But I also think it is a good investment in my future.

B: I think it's over on the whole, I think it's overrated.

C: If we take sort of the financial and that makes it a hard question, right? When we're talking about over and underrated, you have to put the financial consideration into it. But the education and the opening of your mind and the critical thinking skills and, you know, especially if you go to if you have like a liberal arts education, right? Like I think there's almost nothing that compares to that.

S: I agree, that's why that's the underrated problem.

E: I agree with that.

S: It's they're too expensive, but I don't think we need to have this narrow conception of everybody goes to a four-year you know standard college. It could be like, I agree that the the value of─

C: Two years community college.

S: ─a liberal arts education maybe two years is baseline then if you want to add flesh that out to a full bachelor's degree. Or maybe then go into a trade school or whatever. Let's make it more tailored to what people actually need for their life rather than just party for four years and then, you know, you have massive debt and you get into, you know, a job.

G: I think trade schools are tremendously underrated. Some kids should go from high school to a trade school there's no need to to do two two three four years by the way.

S: The European model is basically what we consider high school to for them is like a six year. So it's basically like our high school and the first two years of college are basically one six-year education. And then you go into whatever. You're going to medical school or trade school or whatever it is you're going to do your master's program. I don't know if that's better but that's what they do.

C: The thing about it that's nice is that everybody gets the access to that liberal arts. Because the thing about, if we only did trade schools is that sort of philosophy that, you know, critical thinking it's like missing. Because we don't have that, our high schools don't, I mean, you know. We got overall [inaudible].

J: I have, real quick, I just want to throw this idea out there so hopefully somebody will hear it and maybe do something about it. And it's the beginning of an idea, but I think it would be very interesting if we set up, when I say we, the United States sets up a free a free online college for anybody, I know you're not getting the social stuff.

C: I think that's happening.

S: It basically exists already. You have to cobble it together but it's out there.

C: And you can also Khan Academy and like Coursera, there's like some options. But you might need the self-efficacy to like figure it out and build it yourself.

J: I just think like, like put like if you can't afford college then just do this like go here─

C: And actually get a degree.

J: ─you'll get a degree, you know, at least a good enough education. You're not going to have the social stuff and all that but at least you can get yourself educated, why don't we do that?

S: I think again, it already exists but you want to formalize it.

C: Yeah why don't we have national, I mean that's the thing like most developed western nations have free college. Or some form of that a way to like whether you're doing community service in exchange or enlisting in the in the military.

Bacon (13:31)

G: Here's one, here's one similar to that, bacon. (laughter)

C: Underrated. Bacon makes everything better.

G: Okay.

S: I think it's appropriate. I think bacon's appropriately rated.

G: Properly rated, okay, Jay.

J: I think it's but I think everybody perfectly understands how awesome it is, it's appropriately rated.

E: Kevin Bacon's underrated (laughter).

B: Properly, yeah, I mean everyone knows how awesome it is.

S: It's not like it doesn't have a reputation for being awesome.

G: But is it too big of a reputation for being awesome?

S: No.

G: It's the health benefits or the health [inaudible]

C: That's terrible.

E: Everything in moderation.

G: Right, that's what I mean.

J: It's not that hard, it's freaking awesome.

C: We gotta have things in this world that we just love.

Radio (14:06)

G: Let's do two more here.

S: All right.

G: Radio.

C: I think it's properly rated. I don't think it has a rating anymore. I don't think people have much of an opinion about it.

S: It's interesting. Radio.

C: I'm going with FM though, don't ask me about AM because that's the whole, AM is definitely overrated.

S: Yeah again, I don't think it's massively over or underrated. I think it's, you know, again it's, it feels it's a niche and people use it for what it is. I think it's proper.

G: Properly rated. Yeah, okay, Jay.

J: I think it's underrated and I'll tell you why. There's something about the collective sharing of a collection of music as an example, like growing up, like there was a couple of radio stations that I listened to. And and I like the the communal idea that a lot of people are listening to the same music. You also get to know the personalities of the DJs and all that and there's something kind of really good about it.

C: And I don't like that, I don't like being told what I'm supposed to, oh this is popular, this is what you're supposed to listen to.

J: I know but that's why today like we are so on demand, like we can be like everything could be so unbelievably tailored. But, but the thing is, with the radio station you will hear things that you normally wouldn't. I don't know.

C: But the thing is you don't. You just hear the same top 40 over and over. That's the problem.

S: If you listen to a top 40 station.

C: Sure but there aren't that many terrestrial radio stations that are doing cool, like it's like maybe late at night there's the one hour slot.

J: It's just another chip in the whole like, we're less of a community, as much as we're connected on the internet I feel like we're less of a community as a species now because of, because of the internet.

S: We lost a lot of the shared experiences.

J: Yeah like, I just, I remember talking to friends and being like did you hear the thing on the radio, yeah, and it's like it was a it was like a newspaper almost, that everyone was sharing with each other.

C: Yeah it's a generational thing.

J: I like that.

G: Evan.

E: Definitely under under underrated. I grew up a radio junkie, you know, a friend Perry he and I would get in the car, drive around just so we could listen to the radio. And we didn't listen to music, we listened to a lot of talk radio, we listened to a lot of comedy radio, we listened to morning radio ensemble cast. Which is kind of what I like in the Skeptic's Guide too, we are not exactly but sort of like an AM morning show radio format. In which there's a main host and a supporting cast of people around the main host. I've always envisioned us and I think and I know I've learned a lot about my communication skills from having listened to a lot of talk radio having grown up. And it's, it also brings me back to a connection with my father that I had who also enjoyed talk radio. So I, it's, I'm very biased.

C: I think there's a nostalgia factor that you guys are talking about. That's not what talk radio is like now.

G: What does Bob say?

B: I don't, I don't have an answer for this one. I don't I don't know what to say on this one. It's I don't know what anyone, I never talk about radio, I never listen to radio.

J: You listen to Howard Stern.

B: Oh god no. (laughter) I did, I did years ago and now I got I got a new car like, oh I got free XM so I listened to him for a half hour or so. But it's great to pop around to some of the XM radio stations, you know, the types of types of music.

J: That's not FM though.

B: No no no.

C: But now you can just do that with Spotify.

B: I'm on audiobooks, I listen to audiobooks or my music that's it. So I have no idea what people think about radio these days, I can't tell you if it's over or under.

E: It's also universally accessible, in other words you need very little money to get into an opening of all [inaudible]

C: True but also I will say, and this is like an LA bias, so it probably doesn't relate to anybody, but there's so many mountains in LA that like terrestrial radio is garbage in LA. Like it's just constantly going in and out when you're driving around the city, you have to be in the right pockets, it's annoying.

G: What's really curious though is that with the proliferation of podcasts, podcasts are essentially radio broadcasts, are radio shows and it's amazing that the popularity of podcasts once you once you change accessibility and the way you can receive it, they just exploded. Because people like this audio content.

[talking over each other]

C: They're free, there are million ways to listen, yeah.

G: They're not interrupted by mountains and by clouds and things like that.

S: And it's on your time, yeah, you can stop and pause and all that.

G: All right one more, here we go, let's end with something light.

First Amendment (17:58)

G: First Amendment. (laughter) Overrated, underrated, properly rated.

C: Under, I mean well properly, under, I don't know, it's awesome. I don't know what else to say, it's awesome. When when when appropriately interpreted, yeah (laughs).

S: There's caveats, I mean I think overall it's underrated.

C: Yeah.

S: Because, you know, countries that don't have it, have a problem. But it's also massively abused which is kind of tangential to you what we're talking about. I would say underrated but complicated.

J: I would say we have, I'd have to label it as underrated because just how epically important it is. You know we should always act as if it's underrated. Like we need it, it has to be there. The government cannot and shall not take it away from us and we it needs to proliferate around the world.

E: Yeah what Steve says, what Jay says, definitely underrated. Yeah there's a reason why it is the First Amendment, there's, leave it at that.

B: I agree with everybody.

G: My only thing about it is is, you look at the Second Amendment, and a lot of the arguments for modifying the Second Amendment is that because when it was written, weapons were what they were, you didn't have, you know, automatic weaponry and things like that, you had you had musket you know barrel loading things and weapons were used in a very different way. As soon as you try to apply that to the First Amendment of saying well you didn't have internet, you didn't have web accessibility of information. Like that's the only thing that makes me sometimes take a pause and go, does it need to be reconsidered on some like because I think that's the Second Amendment should be.

C: But it is, that's the thing, there's are limits on the first one and we forget that. Like it's not just free and open.

G: Well that's the thing is it is it seen as being like it is absolute and it's like─

C: By some people.

G: ─by some people, right, and it probably shouldn't be as, you know, especially in sovereignty.

C: Also I think we forget that it's not just about freedom of speech but it's freedom of assembly, it's from the press, it's also freedom not to put one religion over another religion and like there's a lot of good and it's all about the government's actions you forget what it is.

S: Yeah George your comment makes it seem to me that you're conflating just freedom and open speech with the First Amendment. First Amendment's about the government, right?

G: For sure.

S: Like you know I've had this conversation with my free speech attorney, right, which I unfortunately had to have at one point. And he also has a blog where he writes about this kind of stuff which I read all the time. And he's like, the first question you always have to ask is is this a First Amendment question. Is this a First Amendment question? Usually the answer is no. And then you're done. Because if it doesn't deal with the government's relationship to the speech─

C: The government abridging speech, assembly, religion all this things, yeah yeah yeah.

S: ─punishing speech or whatever, then it's not a First Amendment issue. If it's a private company regulating their own platform, it's not a First Amendment issue.

C: It's like I have the right to block comments on my own blog or to block you on twitter.

G: But if you let's say have a government that's going to say you know you like the, you can't false advertise, like you know, you can't run an advertisement that's promising something that's not right delivered. And that's a government can kind of step in and do that. So what is the premise that that's necessarily false? Is false information, the whole thing kind of expands from there. You know so someone regulating social media, let's say government jumping in and saying you can't say that because it's not true or what? Again it it, it's a, it's weird, it's weird.

C: But that's why we have a judicial system.

G: Sure.

C: You know, to help interpret these things.

S: I know and then we talk about this it's like well if we have the big tent companies do it, is that really better than having the government do it. Because they're like not beholden to anybody but themselves, they're shareholders. So it's it does get complicated. I agree, I read, I probably read the same article you did about the fact that, you know, yeah the First Amendment's a couple hundred years old and you know basically free speech has been weaponized. In a way that could not have been anticipated by the framers of the constitution. And do we have, does that make us reconsider this relationship with with freedom of speech and access to information etc etc. I just think the risks of of allowing government regulation of speech is so massive we have to always err on the side of not doing that. But I think what we need to do is just educate people about what it actually means.

C: Yeah because I think the weaponization is the is the missing also the misinterpretation.

S: It's the misinterpretation of what it is. It's like, this is censorship, this is, this is a violation of free speech.

C: You de-platform someone that's yeah that's the First Amendment issue.

S: This is an editorial decision about quality. It has nothing to do, you don't have, you don't deserve to be on my platform or whatever it is.

J: Steve apparently though that nuance is beyond a lot of people.

S: But that's the problem, that's why I wanted to clarify. That is the problem, is that people conflate it all to freedom of speech.

C: I have the right to say anything anywhere to anyone under any umbrella without any consequences.

S: You don't have that right, it's no, that's not at all.

J: I think it's important to just say something, I don't know if everyone's seen this but like this was this is mind-blowing to me and it's horrifying. Like so I see reporters in Russia very recently and they're talking to a woman, she literally held up a sign, I think they had like 2022 on it.

G: No it said it said, she was holding up a sign that said "two words". It literally, there's an expression in Ukrainian, I'm gonna give you two, it's like my two cents basically. She said, can, if I hold up a sign that says "two words" do you think I'd be arrested? And the cameraman was like yeah probably, and she holds up a sign and it says "dva slava" which means two words and the cops came in or whoever, the the soldiers came in.

C: Basically I have a voice, that's all she was saying.

G: Basically yeah, yeah.

J: Within like 10 seconds, within like 10 seconds.

G: It wasn't like no war it literally, it literally said two cents.

C: Yeah it was like I have a voice and they silenced her.

J: Now imagine living, could you imagine?

G: What's amazing with that clip, if you saw the if you keep watching. Another woman comes up after the first woman gets taken off because she holds up the sign that says two cents, two words. Another woman comes up and she's like, you know, I think, you know, the war is fine and we should be in Ukraine because there's a lot of awful stuff going on. She gets arrested. So they pull her off into the van. So she's literally pro, she's like for Putin and for the war but because she's talking to a camera the cops come in and take her off. So it's this weird like schadenfreude.

C: So they're equal opportunity, yeah.

G: It's like just no speech at all, at all, it doesn't matter.

C: Yeah, they don't have a First Amendment.

E: Brutal.

G: Do you think I'd be arrested if I held up a sign said two words, two words.

S: Yeah so it's this strange hybrid where like you have to jealously, you know, defend the First Amendment but not over apply it to situations to mean like anything goes, there's no editorial policy, there's no quality control. Like abuse it. And essentially it's always a, being abused so that people, you know, say I have the right to be an asshole whenever and wherever I want.

C: Yeah it's like people call, they yell censorship when they don't want to be censored. And then...

S: Then they ban books.

C: Then they ban books, exactly.

G: Anyway, that's over-under nicely done.

B: Nice.

S: That was fun.

(applause)

News Items

S:

B:

C:

J:

E:

(laughs) (laughter) (applause) [inaudible]

New CRISPR Mechanism to Turn On Genes (24:50)

• Using CRISPR to Turn Genes On

Acrhomatic X-Ray Lenses (45:05)

• An achromatic X-ray lens

Cleaning Solar Panels (52:20)

• How to clean solar panels without water

Public Media and Healthy Democracy (1:00:45)

• Do countries with better-funded public media also have healthier democracies? Of course they do

Pareidolia and Gender (1:15:17)

• Illusory faces are more likely to be perceived as male than female

Science or Fiction (1:24:44)

Theme: New England Geology Item #1: New England is primarily composed of volcanic island arcs. Item #2: Plymouth Rock geologically originated in northern Canada and was deposited in its current location by the Laurentide glacier 20,000 years ago. Item #3: New England was adjacent to modern day Morocco in Africa when part of Pangea, evidenced by their identical lithographic sequences.

Answer	Item
Fiction	Plymouth Rock origin, glacier
Science	Volcanic island arcs
Science	Once adjacent to Morocco

Host	Result
Steve	clever

Rogue	Guess
Jay	Once adjacent to Morocco
Evan	Once adjacent to Morocco
Bob	Volcanic island arcs
Cara	Volcanic island arcs
George	Plymouth Rock origin, glacier

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

Skeptical Quote of the Week (1:42:42)

Let us tenderly and kindly cherish therefore, the means of knowledge. Let us dare to read, think, speak, and write.
– John Adams (1735-1826), second president of the United States

Signoff

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.

[top]                        

Today I Learned

• Fact/Description, possibly with an article reference
• Fact/Description
• Fact/Description

References

Vocabulary