SGU Episode 925

This episode is in the middle of being transcribed by Hearmepurr (talk) as of 2023-05-15. To help avoid duplication, please do not transcribe this episode while this message is displayed.

This transcript is not finished. Please help us finish it! Add a Transcribing template to the top of this transcript before you start so that we don't duplicate your efforts.

This episode needs: transcription, formatting, links, 'Today I Learned' list, categories, segment redirects. Please help out by contributing!

How to Contribute

You can use this outline to help structure the transcription. Click "Edit" above to begin.

SGU Episode 925
April 1st 2023
"A mammoth meatball has been created by a cultivated meat company, resurrecting the flesh of the long-extinct animals. The project aims to demonstrate the potential of meat grown from cells, without the slaughter of animals, and to highlight the link between large-scale livestock production and the destruction of wildlife and the climate crisis."
SGU 924                      SGU 926
Skeptical Rogues
S: Steven Novella
B: Bob Novella
C: Cara Santa Maria
J: Jay Novella
E: Evan Bernstein
Guest
BL: Blake Lemoine, software engineer
Quote of the Week
The best science communication invites you to consider the complexity of the world, and the worst invites you to ignore the complexity.
Michael Hobbes, journalist & podcaster
Links
Download Podcast
Show Notes
Forum Discussion

Introduction, Steve's senate committee hearing

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

S: Hello and welcome to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe. Today is Thursday, March 30^th, 2023, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella...

B: Hey, everybody!

S: Cara Santa Maria...

C: Howdy.

S: Jay Novella...

J: Hey guys.

S: ...and Evan Bernstein.

E: Good evening everyone!

S: How's everyone doing?

J: All right man.

B: Doing good, doing good.

S: So I had an interesting week this week.

B: Ah, yes.

J: I know what you're going to talk about.

E: And if you had an interesting week, then it's very interesting.

S: On very short notice, I was formally invited to participate in a round table discussion for a Senate committee in Washington, D.C.

C: Oh, cool. On what?

E: Oh, federal senate?

S: Yeah, federal. Yeah, on health care, obviously. What else would it be?

C: But like what aspect?

S: I don't have explicit permission to talk about what happened.

C: Oh, OK.

E: You don't not have.

B: What a tease you are.

C: So it was not on [inaudible]. Come on man.

S: It was no cameras, no press. Because they wanted people to feel free to speak their mind. And it was kind of an exploratory kind of thing.

E: Can you tell us which committee?

S: It was the health committee, health care education, labor and pensions.

E: Okay.

S: So I'll just say, I just want to make some observations. It was about, to some extent, about alternative medicine. And I'll be writing it up for science-based medicine in more detail. But I'll just say, make some general observations at this point until I get more explicit permission of what I cannot say. But there was no surprises for me. It was the kind of things that were said where maybe it was just like, it was good for me to sort of get a feel for, okay, this is what they're doing now. This is where they are in terms of how they're promoting their brand. And essentially, one of the primary mechanisms that they're using for that is to equate all complementary, all integrative medicine with preventive medicine, right? As if those two things are exactly the same thing. Which of course is like, once you frame it that way, then the game is already over, right? So my primary function was to try to separate those things as much as possible. And then everything else, there was no surprises. Their reliance on anecdotal evidence, mixing variables in order to obscure which really going on, etc. So I thought it was all in all it was very good. There were some interesting aspects of what happened there that I hopefully I'll be able to talk about at some point. But-

E: Can you tell us which congressperson's office invited you specifically?

S: I was invited by Senator Cassidy, who is the-

E: Louisiana?

S: Yep, Louisiana, the minority leader on the committee.

C: Wow, Evan, you're good.

E: I know my senators.

C: Yeah you do.

S: Who's a physician.

E: Right.

S: Yeah.

E: That's right.

S: So I had to look up all the senators beforehand just so I knew who I was talking to. But it's interesting. I always find it interesting to step into a completely different culture. You know what I mean?

C: Adapt to it, yeah.

S: I've lived my life in academia. And you get used to the language and the people and the dress. You pick up on so many social signals within your subculture. And then when you're suddenly thrown into a completely different subculture, you realize how alien it is. It's the same, but it's different. You know what I mean?

E: Is it designed to be intimidating?

S: No. I mean, so, all right. So just walking around, it's a couple of observations. First of all, the level of fashion and dress is way higher than academia.

B: Really?

C: Of course, yeah.

S: Everyone looked fabulous. Hair perfectly coiffed just nice. And almost ubiquitous was the lapel pin. The lapel pin. You have to wear a pin that shows that you care about whatever it is you're supposed to care about.

C: I got you.

S: It's got to be there.

C: [inaudible]

J: [inaudible] pin on your uniform. (laughter)

B: Nice.

E: Good, Jay.

C: Were they mostly wearing American flags or caduceus?

S: No neither. I didn't get up close enough because it was small to see what it was, but they were all different.

C: Oh cool.

S: They were just all whatever they're-

E: Had a little shiny thing.

S: They all had some pin that was together, would it to promote whatever it is that they're supposed to be aligned with.

E: Is it like those colored rubber bands you wear around your wrist sort of?

C: What would Jesus do bracelets? Oh no, like the live strong ones.

E: Well, there was like a thousand different colors that meant a thousand different things.

S: Super clean cut.

C: Of course. That military influence.

S: Whereas like with corporate, it's similar. Like occasionally I intersect with the corporate world and it's also like nicer suits and cologne and perfect hair. But there's something, I don't know, just something subtly different about the corporate world. It's more slick. It's more, I don't want to say sleazy, but you know what I mean? It's less clean cut. It's less clean cut than-

C: It sounds very much like you're describing a room full of men.

S: Well, no, it was both.

C: Okay. But was it like equivalent?

S: Well, I'm not even talking about the committee meeting. I'm not, because I was actually more women than men in that room.

C: Oh, you're just talking about like the halls.

S: I'm talking about walking around Washington DC. I was more in the locations where there were almost no tourists and there was all staff and senators. All people who work there, I was behind the capital building. And yeah, so you're just going to see like this is the dress code. This is the way you're supposed to look. Anyway, it's just interesting. It was like anthropological observation of the culture and everyone feels like they need to conform to those standards.

E: Steve, were you one of several who gave testimony?

S: Let me just say this. I was the only person there explicitly defending science based medicine. I emailed his staff afterwards that people I was actually emailing with and sent them sort of my summary of the talking points that came out of that meeting.

C: Oh, smart.

S: So hopefully they'll be able, I don't know if you'll get it or-

B: That's a good idea.

S: -to committee, but I did what I could.

J: Steve, you goddamn shill. (laughter)

S: I know.

E: Oh, no kidding.

C: You shill for science based medicine.

E: Oh my gosh.

C: Okay.

E: Yeah.

S: It was very... it was an interesting day. I had to fly down in the morning, fly down in the evening, long, freaking day. I had to wear dress shoes and walk around on them all day and it killed me.

C: Oh, that sucks.

S: Because it was the first time I traveled with nothing. You think about it. You ever get on a plane?

C: I've done it before. I've gone to San Francisco and back and it feel like-

B: What do you mean with nothing? You've had a backpack or something, right?

S: No.

C: You don't need it. I traveled before with just a purse.

S: The only thing I had was my iPad.

C: It's the weirdest feeling. You're like, they're going to know. I'm going to get in trouble. It doesn't feel right.

S: You wonder, like, is this guy terrorist because he [inaudible]?

C: Yeah, exactly.

S: But I could only bring what I had to carry with me everywhere, including into this meeting, including through security. And I would have had to go through special security if I brought a backpack. So I literally had what was in my pockets and my iPad and that was it.

E: You need a lackey handler's Sherpa kind of person.

C: Like in Veep, a bag man.

S: A bag man, yeah.

C: Oh my god, I love Veep.

S: All right. We have a really good interview coming up with Blake Lemoine, who is the AI specialist who claims that Google's Lambda is sentient. And it was a good interview. It's fascinating. I really don't think I can abridge it and have it be coherent. We really have to include the whole interview. And so we're going to do that, which means we're going to only do some quick news items so that we can leave enough time for the full interview, the uncut interview.

Quickie with Steve (8:08)

• [url_from_show_notes _article_title_] 

S: So I'm going to start just a very quick one because this is actually going to also tease another interview that we're doing either next week or the week after a battery announcement. I know this is, there's battery announcements. It seems like every week. But this one rose so far above the background. We had to at least mention it. A ton of people emailed us about this. The company Amprius announced their new 500 watt hour per kilogram battery platform. They're actually in production. This is not like future thing.

B: In production.

S: In production. It was the news is it was independently tested by an outside company to verify that it was a 500 watt hour per kilogram battery. Now what does that mean? Guys, that's twice the energy density of the batteries that are currently in Tesla vehicles.

B: Twice?

S: Yes, twice.

E: Is it four times the size?

S: No, twice the density means it's half the size. It's also twice the specific density, which means it's half the weight. Half the weight. Half the size.

E: What did they uncover?

S: Well, it's just the I looked into it as much as I could and it's basically seemed like it's kind of using the technology that we've been talking about for the last five to 10 years. This is now coming through the pipeline and into production. The only thing I couldn't find out was how much it's going to cost. They're going to first use them in the aerospace industry like for drones and stuff and then electric vehicles and they're also building a plant in Colorado. I think they'll probably that will should be I think cranking out batteries in 2025. So maybe that will be their electric vehicle factory.

B: Cell phones.

S: And then also portable devices. This is their third category that they're going to use it for. But there's a lot of questions I have. So we're going to get somebody from the company to go to answer all of our technical questions because this seems like a huge deal. I couldn't find any.

B: This is not incremental man.

S: This is not incremental. I couldn't find anything anywhere that was a deal killer or a gotcha or whatever. The experts are saying, holy crap, this is a big deal. And so I feel like we really have to wrap our heads around this. We'll go into far more detail when we do the interview with the technical person from the company. But yeah, I'm almost thinking, should I wait a year to buy my next electric car until these things are coming out? You know, because now we're talking about 500 tile range cars with smaller, cheaper batteries. I don't know. It could be amazing. There's a lot of stuff happening in battery technology. This was just the biggest.

Quick News Items

Mammoth Meatball (10:49)

• Meatball from long-extinct mammoth created by food firm

S: All right, Jay, you're going to actually tell us about a couple of things. Why don't you start with the, this is actually the energy battery. Twice as powerful battery was that the second most emailed news item to us this week.

C: Oh, yes it was.

E: Oh, there was something more.

J: I'll take it from here. (laughter) An incredible milestone in scientific achievement has occurred. Everyone, particularly you, Cara, please make sure you're sitting down because what I am about to say is going to knock your shoes and socks right off. An enormous meatball made from cultivated woolly mammoth meat was created.

B: Oh, my God.

J: It's enormous and it's woolly mammoth meat and they did it. And it's a meatball. Cara, are you okay?

C: I'm okay. I'm okay. And I've been prepped for this successfully because we got like a thousand emails about it and they were all addressed to you, Jay.

E: They brought a mammoth back, killed it, made a meatball out of it?

J: By far, the absolute most emailed news item to me of all time over our 18 years.

B: I love this news item.

S: Jay has to talk about this.

B: We had no choice. There was literally no choice.

J: So let me get into the science now that I got the fun part over. An Australian cultivated food company, they're called VAW. V-O-W. They were working with the Australian Institute of Bioengineering, which is at the University of Queensland. And they created something that is pretty damn remarkable.

B: Remarkable.

J: They decided to try to reproduce cultivated meat of the woolly mammoth. And they did it for a number of reasons, one, to bring awareness about cultured meat, because still a lot of people out there that don't know much about this. And they chose the woolly mammoth because it's obvious. It's meat that's absolutely not available. It's incredibly novel what they were trying to do. They also believe that it went extinct due to climate change. And also, let's not kid ourselves. This is a massive marketing campaign. I believe it was conceived by two marketing companies. They came up with the idea to do this. So the meatball is existing right now. It's on display at the Nemo Science Museum in the Netherlands. And the main question here is, so how did they make the mammoth meat? What was the process that they went through? So samples were taken from frozen mammoth meat that we have, right? We found quite a few frozen solid mammoths over the years, and they've kept them on ice, or at least portions of it on ice. So they were using advanced molecular engineering, and they inserted mammoth, myoglobin, into sheep cells. So myoglobin is a heme protein. We talk about heme on the show a lot for some reason.

C: We talk about cultured meat a lot.

J: Yeah. So myoglobin is the heme protein that is found exclusively in heart and skeletal muscle cells. And as it turns out, myoglobin is also what gives meat its color, its taste, and its smell. So this is a very important part of the protein. The mammoth DNA that VAW was able to get was not complete. There were several gaps in it. So they used African elephant DNA to fill in the missing information, and African elephants are one of the closest living relatives to mammoths. And that's why they chose them. So people said the meat smelled like crocodile meat. I wouldn't know. I've never smelled crocodile meat.

S: I've had crocodile meat.

C: I've had alligator.

J: Yeah, when we were in Australia, we did.

B: I better think kangaroo meat.

S: And I had alligator meat.

C: I think yeah, I've had alligator for sure. They have that here. I think it all depends on how it's cooked.

J: So the protein that grew in the lab is estimated to be 4,000 years old, meaning that that was the last time that it existed on Earth. So they have to test to make sure it's safe for human consumption. And this is a big part of it. They did not let anybody sample any of the meat because they are not sure what a human body's reaction would be to these particular proteins that they created. So the future lab-

C: That's just what they have to say.

J: Yeah, but they're being careful. They're going to test it.

E: What is somebody volunteer?

C: I know.

S: There's no particular reason reason to think it's unsafe.

C: Right. It's like when I used to do a bunch of stuff, you guys remember Kevin Folta? We've had him on the show a million times.

E: Sure.

C: I used to do like so much coverage of GM stuff. And he would be like, this is GM strawberry. We were producing. It's not on the market. We're not allowed to eat it. Camera stop rolling. Nom nom nom nom nom. You can't legally do it, right? It's a risk.

S: You can't introduce a new food without getting going through the approval process.

C: Exactly. Right.

J: Yeah, so you think somebody did?

C: 100% somebody tasted that. They just can't say they did.

J: Yeah, all right. That makes sense.

B: I feel better about it, I guess.

C: I mean, I don't know this for a fact, but come on.

J: You would think though.

C: You would have done it.

J: I wouldn't be that afraid to test it. I mean-

C: So many scientists through all of his human history test their own thing before it goes through approval.

J: So a couple more things. Well, first off, the future of lab grown meat is projected to be 70% of all consume meats by 2050.

B: Wow.

J: That's also said that lab grown meat has a lower carbon footprint. We've talked about this, than slaughtered meats. Approximately 60% of greenhouse gas emissions from food production comes from animal farming. So this, this potentially could be a very big deal from a greenhouse gas emissions perspective. So I'm for it. I'm for the I don't like the whole slaughtering of animals industry. I think it's horrible. Like Cara, you and I have discussed this in the past. It's, it's horrific what goes on.

S: Jay are you saying that you don't think animals should be raised and slaughtered?

J: I don't. By the way, Italy is not accepting lab grown meat. Did you guys read about that?

B: No.

C: Why?

J: They said nope to lab grown meat because they don't want to lose the historical significance of raising cattle and having it be, having it be genuine, I guess.

C: They'll change their tune.

J: Eventually, of sure. Anyway, that's, that's the first news item I was going to talk about. Very exciting news.

Lunar Ice (17:03)

• Water is trapped in glass beads on the moon’s surface, lunar samples show 

J: The second one, Steve, is water on the moon.

S: Mm-hmm.

E: How much water on the moon?

J: So according to a study published in the journal Nature Geoscience, scientists from China who analyzed the first lunar soil samples returned to Earth since the 1970s, guess what they found? They found that trillions of pounds of water could be scattered across the moon.

B: Trillions?

J: Trillions. But it's trapped in tiny glass beads that might have formed when asteroid struck the lunar surface. Now this gets a little, in a way, it's strange. It's kind of-

B: What's strange though? Because I covered this like a year and a half ago.

J: Well, let me, let me tell you and you tell me if, with the big difference is. The study fills in some gaps in a theory about a lunar water cycle, right? So pointing to a water reservoir that's remained elusive to scientists for years. Now these glass beads that are in the regolith formed millions of years ago and can be infused with water when they're hit with solar winds carrying hydrogen and oxygen across the solar system. How about that? These glass-like beads actually when the solar wind hits them become infused with hydrogen and oxygen. And if the hydrogen and oxygen is taken out of these beads that they're able to be replenished within a few years because of the solar wind. So the findings could have implications for future lunar astronauts who are obviously looking for potential resources of water to convert to drinking water and rocket fuel. And the scientists say that the water can be released just by heating up the glass beads found in the lunar regolith. It almost sounds too good to be true. But this is what they found. This is what they're saying. I don't think in the short term it's going to mean anything because we would need to be able to process regolith in a way that would take machinery and energy and all sorts of infrastructure that don't exist on the moon right now. But you know it doesn't mean-

E: You know it's there and it's something to work towards.

J: Yeah, definitely.

S: Yeah, I think the big thing is that it's just too spread out to be really that useful in the short term, as you say. But long term if you have a settlement on the moon a few hundred years from now, they might be glad it's there.

J: Steve, you never, ever know.

First Blitzar Observed (19:15)

• Did we already observe our first “blitzar”? 

S: All right, Bob, tell us what is a blitzar? I know what a magnetar is.

E: You know Dancer and Prancer.

S: I know a quasar.

E: Blitzar?

B: Yes, this is quite different. Researchers may in fact already have detected a blitzar, which could explain some of the mysterious and powerful FRBs that are out there. OMFG, what the hell am I talking about? So let's start with the, with that initialism FRB. I hope many of you remember what that is-

E: Fast Radio Bursts.

B: -because we've talked about it many times. I've talked about it, Evan talked about it. This is fast radio bursts. So these are immensely distant and immensely powerful bursts of radio energy that last from less than a millisecond to a few seconds and they could release a titanic amounts of energy. And even a thousand of a second, it could be more than what the sun releases in three full days. And some of these FRBs seem to repeat and they've been potentially linked to magnetars, which are neutron stars with extra, extra strong magnetic fields. But some of the FRBs don't repeat and that's where blitzars come in. So then what is a blitzar? I'd never even heard about this before last week. It's a hypothetical neutron star that's too big to exist in a sense. Now we all know that the initial process, giant star goes all supernova, the quirk collapses into a super dense ball of probably mostly neutrons and possibly other weirder forms of matter as well, like who knows some weird form of quirk matter. Now if the mass of the neutron stars to great somewhere approaching three solar masses, then it doesn't stop at being a neutron star. It keeps collapsing ultimately into a black hole. So but what happens if two neutron stars collide? Now in that scenario, the resulting neutron star, if it's not too heavy, it stays a neutron star. If it's too heavy, then it becomes a black hole, really easy, right? Common sense, obvious stuff, but scientists suspect that sometimes the resulting merged neutron star can be too heavy, but it doesn't immediately collapse into a black hole. Now it would not be too difficult for this neutron star to be spinning so fast that it essentially can't collapse as it normally would because of this rotation speed. Now the apparent centrifugal forces could be so great that it essentially reduces the weight of the outer layers enough for this to sustain itself. Of course, its mass is unchanged. I'm talking about the weight. So now these same forces occur on the earth. This isn't some esoteric bit of science here. Of course, it occurs to a much smaller extent. Jay, did you know that you weigh ever so slightly less at Earth's equator compared to the North Pole? Did you know that? You weigh less because essentially because you're moving at the equator at a thousand miles per hour in a big circle. Now the apparent centrifugal force works against gravity. That's the key here. The centrifugal force is working against the gravity, essentially pushing you away from the ground like that push you felt as a kid on a spinning merry-go-round. Remember that spinning around really fast? It's trying to throw you out of it.

E: Yeah, you were falling off, right?

B: Yeah. So now a person who weighs 150 pounds would then weigh about 0.55 pounds less at the equator. So that's what it translates into. But if we ramp it up, what if the Earth spun so fast that a day instead of 24 hours was 90 minutes long, an hour and a half, that 150 pound person would weigh 35 pounds total, 35 pounds. All because of this apparent centrifugal force. Now, metrically, you want to talk metrically, that would reduce a 68 kilogram person to only 16 kilograms. So it would be dramatic. But of course, on a neutron star, it's much more dramatic. So now we have a neutron star that should collapse into a black hole, but it's spinning so fast that it's below that critical threshold of weight and it does not turn into a black hole. So how long does it stay that way? We don't know really. There's still so much, a surprising amount that we don't know about neutron stars. And what's going on in the interiors? Maybe it's all, maybe it's mostly neutrons. Maybe it's not. We're not sure exactly what's going on. So depending on the conditions, though, I think most scientists would agree that it's not going to last long in this situation where it's spinning so fast, it stays neutron star. Probably doesn't last that long. Some scientists were saying it could potentially last much, much longer, even on the scale of millions of years, some were saying anyway, but I think it's much, much less than that. But it can't stop the inevitable, though, forever. And that's because the neutron stars in tensed magnetic field, that field radiates rotational energy away in a process called magnetic breaking. That means that eventually its spin will slow enough that the black hole physics says, ha, I got you. The centrifugal force can no longer work against gravity enough. And the neutron to generously presser, pressure, and repulsive nuclear forces cannot hold back any more collapse. And the massive neutron star then collapses into a black hole. So that's the idea. But the fun isn't even over yet when that happens. The no-hair theorem for black holes, it's called the no-hair theorem, look it up, says that black holes do not have magnetic fields. That means that within the millisecond or so, it takes to form the black hole it has to shed the energetic dynamo and the magnetic field that it creates. And this is one hell of a magnetic field. This can be a magnetic field for a neutron star, it could be a hundred million. Some say even a quadrillion times stronger than the Earth's magnetic field. A lot of energy in there. So it's theorized that this shedding of the magnetosphere, as they describe it, releases the energy in one intense burst of radio waves. And that, my friends, is the mysterious mythosore. Oh, wait a second, sorry, I've been watching a lot of Mandalorian. Let me start that again. That burst of radio energy, that is the blitzar itself, that effect of radiating that intense energy really quickly. That's what a blitzar is. The intense signal that a long delayed black hole has finally been born. That's a blitzar. Okay. And finally, this is in the news. Why is this even in the news this week? And it's because researchers have examined the results from two different observatories and they found two very interesting coinciding events. They found a gravitational wave observatory found a likely neutron star collision, and less than a day later, a few hours actually, another observatory that's really good at detecting FRBs, found one, and roughly the same part of the sky at the same distance. Now in terms of probabilities, I think the confidence is high. Researchers think that this co-localization happened by chance at only 0.004. I think it was Sigma, like 2.8 Sigma. So not the gold standard of five, five or six, I think five is a gold standard. So it's not there yet, but it's the confidence levels are pretty high that this is from the same event. Now, if this is true, it seems that what we've been calling a fast radio burst FRBs are two distinct phenomena. It looks like right now. One version can repeat the blast, and these have been associated with magnetars, as I said earlier. The FRBs do not repeat, however, the ones that seem to go once, and then that's it. They may be these blitzars that researchers may have already detected. It looks like if they exist, that they may have already detected it. And now we'll know for sure once we get more of these observatories looking at them, so we can more precisely pin down their locations. So finally, it seems to me that these mysterious and powerful FRB signals are slowly revealing to themselves. Thanks to science. Thank you, science.

S: Thank you, science. Yeah, pretty cool. Pretty cool.

B: Yeah. Interesting. Blitzars.

S: It's always fun to think about these massively energetic events happen.

B: And these neutron stars are more fascinating than even black holes. They're amazing.

E: That's saying a lot, Bob.

B: It is. It's just, black holes are simple. They're amazing.

S: Right.

B: And that's a no-hair there. They're simple. There's not a lot there that's going on in terms of interacting different types of black holes. But neutron stars, oh my God. I mean, there could be quark matter inside. There could be so many superfluids inside. So many different things. We're not sure. Not sure. Amazing stuff.

England Allows Gene-Edited Crops (27:35)

• England Allows Gene-Edited Crops 

S: All right. Very quickly, that's one that I point out that England just passed the Precision Breeding Act, which will allow gene-edited plants to be developed and marketed in England. So this is England only, not Northern Ireland, Wales or Scotland.

C: But still.

S: This is one of the good things to come out of Brexit because the European Union is very anti-GMO. But now, England's like, screw you, we're going to develop GMOs. However, these are not GMOs. They're GM-edited plants.

C: Okay.

S: And this is what I wanted to point out because this is the evolution of the regulatory process. Remember, so GMOs are genetically modified organisms. What they are depends on what regulatory scheme you're operating under. But essentially, it is any plant or animal that uses a number of different genetic technologies bioengineering technologies in their development. So inserting a gene, taking out a gene, silencing a gene, these things are all considered genetic modification. The US is moving towards the broader term bioengineering. Like this product has been produced with bioengineering to get rid of the GMO tag because of the stigma that has been deliberately attached to it by the anti-GMO crowd.

E: Thanks for nothing.

S: And also because of the evolution of genetic engineering technologies, right? So now we can do gene editing like using CRISPR, for example. And the distinction that England is making is that if it, as long as you're not inserting a trans gene, it's not a GMO. It's a gene-edited plant.

C: Interesting.

S: Yeah, so it's very interesting. That means you can insert-

C: So it has to be, just to clarify, a trans gene, does it have to come from another organism?

S: Yeah. So transgenic meat, so this is their definition. Transgenic is a gene that comes from not only a different organism, but from one that could never get mixed into this plant through normal breeding techniques. So if you could get it there through hybridization or anything, it's not a trans gene. Even if it's from another cultivar, another variety, even in other species.

C: So that's cool. So you can turn on and turn off genes all you want.

S: All you want, you can take out genes, you can turn them off, you can even slip in new genes as long as they could have gotten there somehow through natural breeding. Then it's only gene-edited. It's not a GMO. So that gets them out of a lot of, again, anti-GMO kind of rhetoric. I still think it's not a good idea to demonize trans genic bioengineering because it's based upon this false idea that there's something different about a gene. It's like an essentialist kind of approach.

E: Frankenfish.

S: Yeah, it's like we share 60% of our genes with bananas. There's no banana genes and people genes. There's just genes. You know?

E: Right.

S: The only thing that matters is what they do and how they're regulated and if you're controlling that, then that's, then it doesn't matter where it comes from.

C: And I hear you when you say like we don't want to demonize that and I agree 100%. But we're not starting from scratch here. There are ready demonizing it. I know they're actually making good progress.

S: I agree. This is a good way to subvert the demonization. But it's unfortunate that it's necessary. But I'm just saying that it doesn't make sense.

C: Right. Yeah. I agree.

S: Anyway, I'm hoping that this is going to be a trend to basically at least to minimize the damage of the anti-GMO misinformation and allow for most genetic engineering to happen under this new sort of regulatory scheme. So we're sort of moving in that direction in the US. England is now explicitly moved in that direction. Hopefully this will continue to spread.

Who's That Noisy? (31:24)

Answer to previous Noisy:

First recorded sound

S: Okay. Jay.

J: Yeah.

S: We're going right to Who's That Noisy. All right, guys. Last week I played this Noisy:

[Crackling and background buzzing with buzzing hums]

All right, guys.

E: Whatever it is, it's running a vacuum.

S: Is there a tune being hummed in there?

J: Possibly.

S: So it's like, what's the tune and what's humming it? Is that the puzzle?

J: Yes. I mean, what are you hearing? You Cara?

C: Isn't that the point of it?

J: All right. So a listener, a listener named Will says: "Hi team, This week's who's that noisy sounds like the pickup from a laser light microphone, a tool that can be used to pick up sound by interpreting mic movements in an object near the audio source." That's a really cool guess. It's not correct, but it was a very good guess. I've heard this technology done and the fidelity is similar, maybe a little bit better, but it's not that clear, but it is possible to do this, like using the laser light that bounces off, say, like a potato chip bag from outside of the room, could interpret that the movement of that potato chip bag to figure out what sounds are being made in the room. It's pretty interesting. It's like a microphone. Another listener named Chris said: "Hi, Jay, is this week's noisy one of those rock polisher machines."

C: Rock tumbler.

E: A rock tumbler.

C: I have one of those because I'm a nerd.

J: Yeah, we had one for my kid.

C: For your kids. (laughs)

E: Simpsons episode.

J: They take a long time to work.

C: They do. You have to leave them in the garage because it's like five days.

J: It's not a rock tumbler, but I mean, maybe similar on the annoying sound how annoying the sound is. I don't disagree. Rock tumblers are really, they could be really loud. Another listener named Keely Hill wrote in: "Hello, you really primed us for insects this week, but with what sounds like wind in the background, I'll guess it's fabric like tent material caught on something and flapping just right to produce a few different frequencies during a wind storm."

B: Huh.

J: That was a very-

E: Creative.

J: -interesting and unique guess. Not correct, but I can, the way you described it, I could easily visualize what you were talking about. I got another guest here from Steve Panelli and Steve said: "Hi SGU, this week's who's at noisy sounds like a pressure washer tool with a rotating nozzle. Thanks, Steve." Very cool all these guesses and how different all of them are, but that was not correct, but we do have a winner from last week. And the winner writes in, this is Tracy McFadden and Tracy says: "Hi Jay, Well, I think I absolutely know the answer to this week's noisy. This is the first ever recorded song, pre dating Edison by 20 years. It was a French folk song. All Clair de la Lune" please, I know I didn't pronounce that.

C: Claire de lune.

B: Claire de lune.

J: Yeah, but it is, it is said that it's spelled the way that I said it.

C: Oh.

S: It's like maybe the full name for the, yeah.

C: Oh, okay. Yeah, everybody just say Claire de lune.

J: I believe it means in the light of the moon, right? If you translate it. This song was sung and recorded by Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville on April 9, 1860 on a device called a phonautograph, phonautograph.

C: Huh.

J: It outputs visual lines of information onto a medium. Yeah, so it's similar to when you think of the way that sound was written on like those wax cylinders.

E: Cylinders, yeah.

J: It's that type of thing, right? It's very physical. Pretty interesting you think about the first recording and how poor the actual sound quality was and what we are capable of doing electronically would sound today. I mean, we're talking about just massive improvements in what we can do with sound.

New Noisy (35:21)

J: Anyway, I have a new noise for you guys this week. It was sent in by a listener named Graham Lamb.

[Grinding background with a light clanging in the foreground ]

I'll give you a hint. This is something that many of the of our listeners today are very familiar with. Does that help at all?

E: Not me.

J: It's a hard one, but it's fun and Bob will really like it.

Announcements (36:00)

[top]                        

Interview with Blake Lemoine (40:05)

• Talking about LaMDA, Lemoine's firing by Google and AI sentience

[top]                        

Science or Fiction (1:33:09)

Item #1: A large survey of life on Earth finds that total biomass remains fairly consistent (within one order of magnitude) across the entire range of body size for all living things. Item #2: Researchers find that plants under stress emit recordable sound, about as loud as a normal speaking voice. Item #3: Researchers created intracellular sensors that use nanodiamond quantum sensing.

Answer	Item
Fiction	Total biomass consistent
Science	Plants emit sound
Science	Intracellular sensors

Host	Result
Steve	swept

Rogue	Guess
Bob	Total biomass consistent
Cara	Total biomass consistent
Evan	Total biomass consistent
Jay	Total biomass consistent

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

Skeptical Quote of the Week (1:44:45)

The best science communication invites you to consider the complexity of the world, and the worst invites you to ignore the complexity.  – Michael Hobbes, journalist & podcaster

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