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

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

• Using CRISPR to Turn Genes On

S: All right we're going to try to power through some news items. We're gonna start with a CRISPR update. There's so much CRISPR news out there. Again, to remind people, CRISPR is a is a fairly recent genetic technology. We've developed from bacteria actually, that your bacteria use this system for─

B: Go bacteria!

S: ─for their immune system. And we were able to leverage that as a way of doing relatively cheap and fast and precise genetic modification. And just the technology's a platform and it's evolving really quickly. So there's so much CRISPR, we're only, we only occasionally talk about it. But for everyone we talk about like 20 papers where significant papers were published probably on the technology. So this was one that I thought peaked up above the background that I would mention. So what the researchers did they they were trying to figure out a way to use CRISPR in order to turn on the expression of a gene. Now we've spoken previously about CRISPR-off and CRISPR-on. That was a use of CRISPR to turn off the expression of a gene, to silence a gene, without altering its code, right?

B: Which is powerful because if you make a mistake and you you cut out a gene and there's a problem, like, oh we got to get that gene and put it back but with the off you're just like, oh, we want to reverse it so you─

S: Just turn it back on.

B: ─it's a switch basically.

S: Which they figured out how to do too. So there's CRISPR-off and there's CRISPR-on, so you could silence a gene then you can unsilence the gene, right?

B: Right.

S: So it's of course it's a it's a way of doing─

E: It's like a mute button.

S: ─yeah, it's a way of doing genetic modification, it's a way of doing research. Say I wonder what this gene does? Let's turn it off and see what happens, you know, it's a great research tool. B ut this technique is different because this is figuring out how to increase the expression of a naturally silenced gene. So it's not turning it off and then on, it's turning on a gene that had been turned off as the natural part of developments, right? So it's a different mechanism. So we all know that you know as as we develop from a totipotent stem cell, right, an egg into a person. Cells develop along different pathways and that's largely done by genes being turned on and off. You know liver cells become liver cells by turning on the liver genes, right? And then heart cells turn on the heart genes and brain cells turn on the brain genes. So if I go to a liver cell and I want to turn on a brain gene, how do I do that? So that's what they're looking at. So of course, right?

J: Because you're saying that all the, it's all there all that.

S: Every cell has every gene, right?

C: As long as they're still totipotent, you're talking about stem cells.

S: No no, this is any cell now.

C: Okay so you're just talking, but you're just talking about in the genetic code.

S: Yes.

C: And they don't necessarily have all the right proteins and stuff if they've already.

B: But if you turn it on.

S: No no no.

C: Yeah yeah yeah.

S: So in fact...

C: If they've already differentiated though things become problematic.

S: But I'll give you a little preview because you could use this to make a differentiated cell into a totipotent cell.

C: Right you can backward.

S: You can back it off by turning on it's just a couple of genes.

C: And you probably have to do that before you can then become a newly differentiated cell.

S: But that's not even what they're doing. So what they're interested, they're, what they're interested in is saying would take a cell and turn on one gene. So that we could know what that gene does, right? That's really the goal.

C: Huge. Because we have yeah we've like gone through the genome, but we still have so many things where we're like, we don't know what that does. Yeah we're really confused about this code.

J: And to clarify like when we say what it does, typically aren't we talking about.

S: What protein does it [inaudible]

C: What protein does it go.

S: But also what effect does that protein have in this in the organism, right? We can go to a mouse turn on a gene and say what protein now gets made and also what happens to the mouse.

C: What does that protein do, yeah, exactly.

B: [inaudible]help us with the proteome.

S: Absolutely.

J: Can I ask a quick side question? When it, when a cell makes a protein, it's ejecting it out into the bloodstream, right?

C: No, not always.

S: Well it gets, so if it's like a eukaryotic cell, like multi, multicellular animals have. The RNA comes out of the nucleus and then it goes to it, it translates the RNA sequence into a protein that's the cytoplasmic reticulum. Or endoplasmic reticulum. And then yes, then something happens to that protein─

C: But that protein may stay in.

S: ─gets further modified it may stay in the cell and they go to the membrane or it may get excreted. It has whatever fate is destined to it based upon its function.

C: And remember proteins do almost everything in your body. Proteins are like all your not all your enzymes some are nucleic acids. But most of your enzymes are proteins, so they catalyze almost every reaction in your body and yeah yeah. So they can't, but they can go into the bloodstream but no a lot of times they'll stay in the cell.

S: They'll be in the transmembrane.

J: It's so unbelievably profound to think that like these proteins are being created and somehow the cell knows when I say "know", right, but somehow the physics of a cell and the way things are set up it's going to stay here, it's going to interact with that.

S: Based on the property of the protein.

J: I just find that to be...

S: It's a system.

J: It's remarkable.

C: And everything is reliant on the step before, that's the thing there's all these steps that teach other steps to do. But yeah, you're right, I mean this is Sagan, right, when he's talking about molecular machines and he's like holy crap, like this is mine blowing stuff.

S: We are grabbing a hold of the machinery of life, it's what it is.

J: But it's doing it without a mind.

S: Yeah, it's just, it's just chemistry playing itself out. It's just really complicated chemistry. Let me finish with what they actually did.

J: Sorry, go ahead.

S: So, often the way the genes turned off is through methylation, which is just, you know, you you have methyl groups bind to it. And also you could bind it up in the histone. So histones are proteins, very highly conserved, that basically coil up DNA. DNA is a really really really long molecule. You want to coil them up into nice manageable chromosomes, the histones do that. We have the same histones that like bananas do, right? Like pretty much all life has the same pretty well the same, similar if not identical histones. Very highly con─

B: If your histones get messed up you're done.

S: Yeah, it's incompatible with life, so it's why it don't exist. What they wanted to do is target a gene and then turn off a protein that silences the gene, right? That's responsible for binding it up in such a way that it doesn't get expressed.

C: So they want to inhibit inhibition?

S: Yes.

C: Okay.

S: Right, so they want to block the inhibiting protein the silencing protein. So they said okay so we're gonna take CRISPR, remember CRISPR is, you remember what the acronym is?

C: I never remember.

B: I used to know it so well.

S: Clustered.

B: Palindromic repeats.

S: Regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats.

B: I knew couple of those letters, damn it.

S: Clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats.

B: I even like remember when Steve embarrasses me on the show like Bob, what does CRISPR mean? Like oh I forget and I wrote it out I'm looking, I gotta remember it next time Steve says this on the show. And that was three months ago. Now of course I forgot.

C: But really think about that, but I also love these kinds of names in science. These kinds of names, I love that we've moved into this type of nomenclature in science. It used to be, especially in like anatomy and physiology. Things were like named for the people that discovered them. You're like, there's no meaning in that. And then we did the whole thing with Latin which is great if you know Latin, and that can really be very helpful, you should learn Latin if you're trying to learn about physiology. But when it comes to like okay clustered, you said regularly.

S: Regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats.

C: It it tells you exactly what you're looking for.

J: It doesn't tell me anything. (laughter)

C: But remember that DNA, it's just a series of letters. It's just a series of letters, a base pair.

J: Yeah, I get that.

S: You know what palindrome is? It's the same forwards and backwards.

J: Sure.

C: Yeah and so these are clustered, they are regularly interspaced, they are short, they're palindromic and they repeat.

J: Yeah. (laughter)

S: All right.

C: No but you do get that, Jay come on you got it.

B: [inaudible, I get annoyed with number designations.

S: What does the CRISPR itself do? It basically, you insert a genetic sequence into the, this CRISPR, you know, these, the palindrome repeats. And then it will go to, it'll find the matching sequence in a genome. So this is a way of targeting the sequence in the genome that you want.

C: Down to just a few letters. It's really really specific.

S: But it doesn't do anything, it just finds it.

C: Yeah then you have to cut.

S: But it has to deliver a payload.

B: It's like a google maps.

S: So that's like, yeah, it takes you there but it doesn't do anything. So you often, you may have heard like CRISPR-Cas9, what's the Cas9? That's the payload. Cas9 is scissors, right? So it will, it'll splice the genome wherever the CRISPR takes it. So the CRISPR takes it through the sequence and then the Cas-9 slices it.

J: I have a great way to describe this.

S: Yeah?

J: You guys know that Santa Claus that goes up the chain and then it goes down the chain, you ever have one of those hanging in your house?

S: Yeah.

J: The chain is the DNA and Santa Claus is CRISPR as he's like, you know, he is reading it─

S: Yeah, sure.

J: ─except he pulls out a pair of scissors.

S: That's the Cas-9.

J: That's a Cas-9.

C: That's a horrible analogy.

G: What's the Santa on a chain?

C: I know.

E: It's like an elf on a shelf?

J: It's like a toy, it looks like Santa and he's got like these hands that go like this but the chain is is going through─

C: So you have to know this Santa toy.

J: ─and then when it gets to the top some mechanism gets triggered and it climbs back down.

S: If you're spending that much time explaining your analogy it probably didn't help. But anyway, anyway. So but there could be other payloadsthat do other things, right? And if you want to insert a gene then you got to repair the cut in such a way that you insert the new gene, it gets more complicated.

C: We've got Cas-9, Cas-x.

S: Yeah the Cas-10, but anyway if you just want to destroy the gene, there you go, or just want to kill the cell, you could cut, slice it up a bunch of ways so like they're making CRISPR to go around finding sequences that are unique to cancer cells splice them up and kill the cancer cells. Really, it's working out well. What these guys did was they they changed the sequence of the Cas-9 so it doesn't work. And they called that dCas-9 for dead Cas-9, right? So now you have CRISPR with an inactive Cas-9 attached to it. Why did they do that? Because they want the Cas-9 to basically be a connector. Then they attach a protein to the d-Cas9, which is like now your new payload. Which is a protein that is designed to block a receptor, the receptor protein that they want to block.

C: So you're finding on the DNA the repeating sequence. You're bringing the scissors but instead of snipping you're like sticking them there and then you're sticking something to it.

S: Yeah but they're, you're using it just as a payload connector. So think about like if you're assembling a rocket. You have your engine and you have your assembly thing and then you have your capsule, right?

C: Yeah yeah.

S: So it's the same kind of thing. So essentially what it this is.

J: Wait so that was more descriptive and better than Santa Claus? (laughter)

S: Absolutely.

C: Way more.

J: So you got a rocket, oh rocket, then there's a payload, that's CRISPR. (laughter)

S: So, it's not CRISPR, it's CRISPR plus the dead Cas-9 plus the payload.

C: So what's the payload again?

S: The payload is a is a protein that was designed with artificial intelligence, right? AI designed proteins, make me a protein that will block this receptor. They take that protein, they attach it to the dead Cas-9, which is attached to the CRISPR which finds the sequence they want to reactivate. They introduce it and it turns the gene on.

C: So it's not about the specific receptor, it's about the function. We're not talking about blocking a specific receptor.

S: No. Yeah, right.

C: We're talking about the fact that this could block us, yeah, that's cool.

S: This would work for any gene, that's why you need the CRISPR to tell you which gene to turn on.

C: Gotcha.

S: So CRISPR targets the gene, Cas, the dead Cas-9 just a connector and now you have the AI built designer protein which blocks the thing on that gene to turn the gene on. And it worked. About a third of the cells that they exposed to it got had their genes, this target gene turned on.

G: So what's the practical application ideally.

S: The most immediate application is just research. We want to study what that gene does, so we turn it on. And now we know what protein it's making we know what it's doing. So just it's a way of just supercharging genetics research, right? But of course you could think about therapeutics if you have for example a mutation, that means you under produce a protein, you can then, you know, activate, you know, activate genes to produce more of that protein to counteract the genetic disease for example.

J: Steve can we use that to make genes make a protein that we want to use in other applications? Like I wanna, I need a protein.

S: Yeah, sure.

C: Like for medicine or something?

J: Yeah a bunch of this particular protein.

C: Yeah you have an animal model.

S: Yeast or bacteria yeah just crank up this gene, so that we make what we wanted to produce. But the thing that I liked about this story, again this particular application was not really for me. That was not the lead of this story. The lead of the story is, we have a modular designer CRISPR system that could do whatever we want, you know? That's the key, they figured out how to make a designer, right? Because they could design whatever payload they want. Modular, because they just could just attach these things together and using CRISPR to target whatever gene that we need. Now you could, just think about that, we could, you know, do what, you could target any gene for and whatever you designed to attach to that payload could do whatever.

J: But it's important to know that you can't just like inject this into someone and have it happen throughout their whole body.

S: That's not, that's a different issue, that's how. So that that's the vector, right? So the vector is how we get this, the CRISPR system to the cell. Now if you're doing it in a Petri dish it's easy, right? So for research, you're done, right? If you're doing it on blood or something you could take out of the body and put back into your body you could, yeah.

B: What about tumor in the body?

C: But that's where things get weird.

S: Tumor, you could inject it, that's, that's easier if it's a solid tumor.

C: But also this wouldn't really, I mean this might be interesting for a for a tumor suppressor gene, not necessarily for an oncogene.

S: For oncogenes you want to turn them off.

C: Exactly. The tumor suppressors you want to turn off, so it could be one one half of how we treat cancer.

J: But they, but they use CRISPR to to treat somebody's eyes, like it was a fully a fully grown organ and they were able.

S: Then you have to use like a viral vector, the retroviruses are one way but there's a couple other newer methods that are probably better. But there's the, the vector we talked about this before on the show, that's a separate issue. That's part of this whole system though, is being able to deliver this to to which cells you want to get them to.

J: And do you think that that is an incredibly big hurdle or do you think we can, we'll solve that pretty soon.

S: It's a hurdle but we're solving it already, it's partially solved.

C: And also if you only want to target some cells and not other cells, yeah that gets complicated because the body is [inaudible].

S: And there's off-site's, you know, CRISPR's not perfect, there's off-site targeting, you know, it's not, we also figured out how to like speed it up or slow it down. Make it fast and inaccurate and slow and accurate so we're sort of, technology is on the steep part of the curve. This is a whole system of controlling genetics that every couple of weeks we see another CRISPR you know tweak or thing that they figured out about it.

C: But for the most part it is a research paradigm right now. Like we have some clinical applications.

S: There's some clinical applications but it's super charging genetics or genetics research.

J: George, CRIPSR, underrated-overrated? (laughter)

G: I'd say properly rated, I would say properly.

S: It's underrated.

C: By those in the know.

B: Steve, leap ahead 50 years, what do you think we could probably do with this?

S: I mean 50 years it's hard to tell. I mean it's─

J: What we say in our book.

S: ─I know.

C: Basically, personalized medicine. I think that's probably the most umbrella term that we use.

S: That's always the thing that the reporters are going to say, this will lead to personalized medicine. It's kind of an easy answer.

C: But if you really think about it.

S: But it's true, to an extent.

C: It's true, it's understanding a genetic disease that's personal, like especially when I think of cancer, such a good model for that. Because cancer is not one thing and it's not even lots of things. Breast cancer in and of itself is not one thing, because there's HER2-positive and HER2-negative and there's, and so understanding one person's disease model genetically and then targeting their treatments. Which we're getting better and better at but we're still doing it at a chemical level. But being able to do it really at like a molecular level I think would be really.

J: Two questions I want answered are, is CRISPR gonna be able, are we going to use CRISPR to design, you know, babies where they're just gonna.

C: Well that's an ethics issue.

S: It's already been done.

[talking over each other]

Doctor Hey the chinese guy.

J: And then the second thing is is this go, is CRISPR going to be used on living people to extend life?

S: Well again, it's hard to talk about specific applications because that that thing, what exactly are you going to change in the genome to do that.

C: And life extension is a function of disease mitigation. I mean that's a big how, that's how.

S: Let me tell you this, this is what I will tell you. I can't, it's hard to answer specific questions about 50 years or specific applications but I will say that like definitely over the rest of this century and beyond. Very rapidly we are gaining greater and greater control over the genome. The fundamental code of life. To the point you know where our ability to control it is already profound, compared to like where we were 10 years ago, 20 years ago, 50, it's already massively profound. But it's going to get only even more profound. To the point where we're going to have near total control over genetics. And in a way, it's not just that we can do it. We can do it quickly, cheaply, designer, modular. Like it's just there, you plug into the computer, this is what I want, there you go.

C: The limits will be ethical in this [inaudible].

S: Yeah, it will be ethical, and sort of basic knowledge about what stuff does. Well we're sorting that out.

B: Steve, this, I think this is one of the most important advances that's one like the top three and most important advances in the past generation.

S: CRISPR. And all the realted technollogies.

C: Yeah we used to say CRISPR is kind of like CRISPR is like the, it's like CRISPR did for like molecular biology what PCR did. But I think it surpassed PCR tons.

B: There's no comparison.

C: There is though. You really don't understand what laboratory work was like before PCR.

B: PCR is a great tool but it doesn't, the effect is not as profound.

C: It doesn't have the outcomes.

J: I would think the only thing that would beat this would be nanotechnology.

C: The promise of nano technology.

B: And I read a lot of science fiction, this is science fiction right here, the CRISPR, it's amazing. It's, it's just it's an amazing advance and it's accelerating because it's so cheap and anybody can do this.

S: It's going to challenge our concept of what it is to be human, of what is life. And it's going to challenge the ethics of our technology.

B: In a century everything's going to be different because just because of CRISPR. And you're not even adding the other technologies. AI, quantum computers that are going to have that are going to also─

C: We're already utilizing them.

B: interact, and that's crazy. This alone, our society is not going to be recognizable in my opinion.

S: Yeah.

B: We wrote a book about it.

S: Coming out this fall. It's, no, it's true, you think about it and more and more we're reading news items about. And they of course they used AI to design the thing. Which would have taken years previously, now they just said make me a protein that binds to this receptor and boom there it is. I mean that's just amazing that they could do that. So it is underrated George.

B: Oh my god. (laughter)

S: This whole this, this is going this is going to change the world in ways that we do not, have not currently wrapped our head around. It's already happening. And again it's going to be that thing where like, I'm, we're hyping it now. And 10 years from now, you know, what happened all that stuff Steve said was going to happen. In general the short-term progress is a lot slower than you think it is. But then it inflects and the long-term progress is orders of magnitude greater than you think it is. We are on the inflection point right now. And yeah be 5-10 years, I mean the world may not look different but you know 20 years, 30 years, 40 years, now you're going to turn around a total change.

C: Well and we also won't really necessarily, some people might not realize the difference because you know for for many like regular consumers of medicine for example or technology. Like what happens inside of the machine we're not privy to.

S: It's a black box.

C: And I think for this too, it's like we'll see all these amazing outcomes but we won't realize that was all because of CRISPR.

S: Lay person might not realize that CRISP made this possible. Right, exactly.

[commercial brake]

Acrhomatic X-Ray Lenses (45:05)

• An achromatic X-ray lens

S: All right let's move on. Bob, you're going to tell us, recently you told us about plasma lenses. Now you're going to tell us about X-ray lenses.

E: Oh I got those in the back of the comic book, you know, right, you signed, two dollars.

B: Yeah but in between then Steve, I talked about the anti-universe, which is really cool.

S: You did.

B: But I'm not talking about that today. So scientists have made, recently made a breakthrough of creating the first X-ray achromatic lens. And I read that I'm like, okay. So? Why is that such a big breakthrough, I mean, I know what, you know, chromatic achromatic kind of knows, I know what that word means, but but an achromatic X-ray lens, why, why is that something that is dramatic. And it really kind of is dramatic. Now an achromatic lens or an acromat, acromat essentially is great for making imagery, it focuses different frequencies together either on at a point or on a plane instead of having all the different frequencies kind of disperse out.

S: If you have an expensive camera, you have an achromatic lens in it, so you don't get chromatic aberration.

B: I tried to find out if like iPhones have it and they don't. I mean you could probably get an attachment but it basically gives you superior image, imaging. So it's really important now we've had achromatic lenses for optical imagery for 200 years. 200 years we we've basically had this technology. And what it does is, it I mean what's happening is this you have two different lenses. One say, for example concave and convex, you put them together. The first lens disperses the light kind of like a prism. The second lens focuses it all into a point or in a plane. Whereas without, if you just had the one lanes, the different frequencies of light like the blue would focus here, the red would focus here and then so you get you wouldn't get a superior image.

S: The focal point would spread out based with frequency so this brings up to a point.

B: So and you can get say 200 nanometer optical resolution, which is, which is good, which is really good, but that's. So that's what how, that's the situation with an optical achromatic lens. Now X-ray chromatic lens, achromatic lens, that could focus to 20 nanometers. So in order you have an order of magnitude greater optical resolution, you could zoom in on stuff and see amazing details with it. And you could also it's, it's X-ray, you could see in some substances, you can see inside it as well. So this is, you know, an amazing imaging technology, that you could use.

J: Bob, just to clarify though. Is this for actually taking just regular pictures?

B: Yeah. Pictures, high resolution images of the of the, of the the nanoworld, the micro world, the really small images, high resolution images of tiny things that an optical, that optical imaging can't really do.

J: Can you can you give me a comparison, like 4k, 6k, 8k? Or do you have any idea like words?

S: It's more the resolution of the pixel size go. It would go from 200 to 20.

B: So 200 nanometers to 20 nanometers. So nanometers, billionth of a meter, right? Super-super tiny.

J: So that's that's that's hugely more.

C: It's an order of magnitude.

B: It would be a great tool but we don't have an, there's no achromatic, why am I looking at them? There's no achromatic X-ray lens. They don't exist and that's because there's, they couldn't find two materials that you could then stick together that are different enough, that could disperse the X-rays and then focus them down those two materials like the concave and convex lens just, they don't, they didn't exist. So what you had to do, if you wanted to take a resolution X-ray, you know image, you'd have to go to like a lab or something. And go to a synchrotron which is basically a super bright X-ray source. Very very bright. And then, and then you would use that and you would take your image. But then you would have to filter out all those all those frequencies that were outside of your plane. You'd focus, you'd filter them out and then you'd focus, filter those out and you would have just your tiny little frequency. Like a monochromatic X-ray image and, and that would be fine but it would be very inefficient. And it would be dim because you're you're taking away most of the frequencies, you're just focusing on just that one frequency that that happened to focus because it's monochromatic. And it would be very expensive. Now it would be bright because you had, you went to this big synchrotron and but it would be expensive. You would have to plan it, you would have to call them and say all right I want to take this image. When can you fit me in? Three months. Like you know you can't do quick nimble research with a device when you're counting on something like that. You need something smaller cheaper that you could just have in your lab in your, in your company. They didn't exist until these guys started really trying to develop an achromatic X-ray lens. So what they did was they figured out, let's see, they said the trick was to realize that we could position a second refractive lens in front of our defractive lens. So they, what they did was they had to look at not similar materials but different optical principles and put them together. So refractive, diffractive. And the other critical component that only recently became available was, they did using 3D printing with a special polymer. They were able to create, they were able to build the specific lens component that they needed to refract the X-rays.

E: You're saying they couldn't do it until 3D printing was able to do it?

B: Yeah, right, they couldn't they had that the mental breakthrough that you could put the refractive in front of the diffractive. And then they needed to build that refractive piece, where they needed to build the component using 3D printing.

J: Bob they 3D printed something that was, because 3D printing you know, it's not super precise like that. Like I thought lenses had to be like molecularly like damn near perfect.

B: Right but so they used, they used two photon like, lithographic techniques. So this is not this is not a printer that, that you and Ian are messing around with for the SGU.

C: But it's still using a polymer?

B: Yes so─

C: Is it optically clear?

B: ─two well it's, two well what's happening is that you, I didn't go too deep into that aspect of exactly how the 3D printing aspect worked but it's basically it's called two, two photon lithographic laser. Like laser designing and it basically uses that to, to harden the polymers, right? So you shoot the laser to harden the polymer and that hardened part is what is being used in additive manufacturing.

S: That the highest resolution type.

B: Right, and what we're talking nanometer resolution. I mean crazy, crazy resolution. So this really didn't exist until recently. So so they designed it, built it and then now when they put that all together. They prove that they have an achromatic X-ray lens that they can now use to image the nanoworld in very inexpensive nimble devices that most, many companies can now use. So you'll be seeing, doing, people doing research for microchips, batteries and Cara material science. Lots of material science research using this now. So this could really, just open up a whole new world to researchers to really develop these technologies a lot, as before.

J: So Bob, as an example like they would look at the innards of an old battery, right, and they'd use this and they'd look and say oh now we can really see like what's going on inside here, like they're looking for this is an information gathering.

B: Right and they could if they really wanted that information before, they kind of could do that but it would be slow and expensive take a lot of time. Here they can be, they could just do it but you know in their lab with the machine that they bought or whatever. And they wouldn't have to go to these big these big places. It's like CRISPR where now every─

S: Every lab could do it.

B: ─lab lots of, lots more labs can do this type of research so cool, cool stuff.

S: Yeah I wonder how far off medical applications are. Obviously X-rays, you know, something that's used in medicine to this day.

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