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Episode #992

Title: The Skeptics Guide #992 - Jul 13 2024

Download URL: https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/skepticsguide/skepticast2024-07-13.mp3

Link: https://www.theskepticsguide.org/podcast/sgu/992

Episode Image (link): https://www.theskepticsguide.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/eyeball-planet.jpg

Segments:

DumbestThingOfTheWeekSegment(topic='Robot Suicide', url='https://interestingengineering.com/innovation/robot-commits-suicide-south-korea')

NewsSegment(items=[NewsItem(topic='News Item #1 – Mars Simulation', link='https://www.nbcnews.com/science/space/nasa-completes-first-mission-simulating-astronaut-life-mars-rcna160987'), NewsItem(topic='News Item #2 – HIV Prevention', link='https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/science-vs-hiv/'), NewsItem(topic='News Item #3 – COVID Protection Gene ', link='https://www.sciencenews.org/article/never-gotten-covid-19-obscure-gene'), NewsItem(topic='News Item #4 – Nuclear Pasta', link='https://phys.org/news/2024-07-phase-neutron-stars-favors-nuclear.html'), NewsItem(topic='News Item #5 – Eyeball Planet', link='https://www.space.com/james-webb-space-telescope-alien-ocean-lhs-1140b')])

NoisySegment(last_week_answer='3D Printer')

EmailSegment(items=['Question #1: Hydrogen Water\nG’day Team, firstly thank you for providing us all with this show. I stumbled across it a few months ago and have been an avid listener ever since. \nMy question relates to the latest fad of hydrogenated water. It seems that a couple adults have turned a high school science experiment into a con. There’s a lot of studies that hydrogen is good for the body, but hydrogenated water? Smells scammy\nBain,\nNewcastle, Australia'])

ScienceOrFictionSegment(items=[ScienceOrFictionItem(item_number=, answer='Science', text=, url=), ScienceOrFictionItem(item_number=, answer='Science', text=, url=), ScienceOrFictionItem(item_number=, answer='Fiction', text=, url=)], theme='Evolution')

QuoteSegment(quote='“Our illogical deference to Earth’s bounty has become so widespread that researchers had to give it a name: the “appeal to nature fallacy,” which occurs when we automatically assume something is better just because it’s natural, and likewise, worse if it’s not.”', attribution='― Rina Raphael, The Gospel of Wellness: Gyms, Gurus, Goop, and the False Promise of Self-Care')

Transcript:

00:00:03-SPEAKER_03
You're listening to The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe.

00:00:06-SPEAKER_03
Your escape to reality.

00:00:10-Steven
Hello, and welcome to The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe.

00:00:12-Steven
Today is Wednesday, July 10th, 2024.

00:00:14-Steven
This is your host, Steven Novella.

00:00:17-Steven
Joining me this week are Bob Novella.

00:00:19-Steven
Hey, everybody.

00:00:20-Steven
Kara Santamaria.

00:00:21-SPEAKER_03
Howdy.

00:00:21-Steven
Jay Novella.

00:00:22-Steven
Hey, guys.

00:00:23-Steven
And Evan Bernstein.

00:00:25-Evan
Happy birthday, Nikolai Tesla.

00:00:27-Evan
I didn't get you anything, so hope you don't hold that against me.

00:00:29-Steven
Did you get him a Tesla?

00:00:30-Evan
No, I didn't.

00:00:32-Evan
I got him a cage, though.

00:00:33-Steven
Okay.

00:00:33-Evan
Thought he could use it.

00:00:35-Steven
So I had to go to court today.

00:00:37-Steven
Always an interesting experience.

00:00:38-Evan
Wow.

00:00:39-Steven
What's going on?

00:00:40-Steven
Nothing to do with me.

00:00:41-Steven
I just had to appear as a material witness.

00:00:43-Steven
Can't really go into the details.

00:00:45-Evan
Well, then it did have to do with you.

00:00:47-Steven
I had to appear as a materialist.

00:00:48-Cara
It had to do with a patient, probably.

00:00:49-Cara
Yeah, probably.

00:00:51-Cara
But we don't know.

00:00:52-Cara
That's a good guess, though, right?

00:00:54-Steven
I find courtrooms fascinating.

00:00:56-Steven
On one level, it's basically a logical sparring, right?

00:01:01-Steven
So what's not to love about that?

00:01:03-Steven
There's rules, it's all based upon logic and evidence, and the lawyers are playing their game, you know what I mean?

00:01:10-Steven
But on the other hand, it is so incredibly tedious

00:01:14-Steven
Because you have to go through things in sort of technical detail.

00:01:19-Steven
There's so much bureaucracy.

00:01:22-Steven
It's just a lot of bureaucracy.

00:01:23-Steven
I'm watching the jury and I'm like, God, they must be bored out of their skulls.

00:01:29-Steven
It was all these medical minutiae and like half the time I had no idea what the lawyers were going for like And I guess in their head they had some legal reason why they wanted to establish something or whatever But it's like, you know, it's like just going through all this absolute tedium

00:01:47-Cara
Yeah, it's really not like it is on TV, is it?

00:01:48-Cara
Oh my god, it's so 100% not like it is on TV.

00:01:53-Cara
Like full of like, gotcha, edge of your seat moments.

00:01:56-Steven
There's no gotchas.

00:01:59-Steven
By definition, because there's something called discovery.

00:02:04-Steven
And then

00:02:05-Evan
Surprise witness number one.

00:02:06-Steven
I suppose the other witnesses, so it's designed for there to be zero surprises.

00:02:14-Steven
You know what I mean?

00:02:15-Evan
Boring.

00:02:16-Evan
I don't know.

00:02:17-Evan
Someone might think the scientific method is boring in the same way, but that's the way it goes.

00:02:21-Steven
Oh, yeah.

00:02:22-Steven
It's a method.

00:02:22-Steven
I'm just saying.

00:02:23-Steven
Again, it's fascinating on one level, but yeah.

00:02:26-Steven
Yeah, I guess it is like science because science is fascinating.

00:02:29-Steven
But do you really want to stand in a lab all day and watch people run gels or whatever?

00:02:33-Steven
I mean, there's tremendous tedium.

00:02:36-Cara
Oh, yeah.

00:02:37-Cara
I remember back when I had a Wii, I bought this game in like the bargain bucket at a GameStop back in the day.

00:02:44-Cara
and it was like a lab science game and i was playing it with my friends and then i just like got up and walked off and they were like what and i was like this is so triggering i just feel like i'm at work like why would i play this game only if you're earning credits or something not fun yeah i don't get sim games yeah not fun no sim games like what like the sims yeah like no no they're not civilization building games

00:03:10-Steven
Yeah, I mean, I'm okay with games that are resource management if that's part of the game, but if that's the entire game is resource management, just like I have had these moments playing those sorts of games when I'm like managing or something or building something or whatever, and I'm thinking to myself, I could be doing this to my real house right now.

00:03:32-SPEAKER_03
Right, exactly.

00:03:35-Steven
Why am I so, you know, yeah, fastidious about this virtual thing only I am ever going to see?

00:03:43-Steven
But it's okay if it's like, you know, you kill stuff for a while, then it's like, oh, now I'm going to build my resources.

00:03:47-Steven
You know, it kind of flows back and forth.

00:03:49-Steven
Those games are good.

00:03:52-Steven
I need some first-person action now to break up the TV.

00:03:55-Evan
Back to court, though.

00:03:56-Evan
Do you have to go back to court?

00:03:58-Steven
No, that was one and done.

00:03:59-Steven
Actually, I went last week.

00:04:02-Steven
I get there, they're like, they bumped you.

00:04:05-SPEAKER_03
Oh, no.

00:04:05-Steven
Meaning they don't need you.

00:04:08-Steven
Well, it's the schedule thing, whatever.

00:04:10-Evan
Did you have to travel far?

00:04:12-Evan
You don't have to say where you went, but did you have to travel far?

00:04:14-Steven
I think a half hour, not yet far.

00:04:16-Steven
And then they had to reschedule.

00:04:19-Steven
I only have one free chunk of time in my week, and it's Wednesday afternoon.

00:04:24-Evan
Yeah, that's right.

00:04:25-Evan
You're busy.

00:04:26-Steven
It eats into our livestream that we do on Wednesday afternoon.

00:04:30-Steven
End of my prep time, but I'm sitting there.

00:04:33-Evan
Yeah, that goes into your bill, right?

00:04:34-Cara
No, that's the thing.

00:04:35-Cara
It must be so frustrating.

00:04:37-Cara
That's what I was gonna say.

00:04:39-Cara
When you're a material witness, it's completely different than being an expert witness.

00:04:43-Cara
When you're an expert witness, like, you know, I've worked for forensic psychologists before who do this.

00:04:47-Cara
They get paid to review records, to go up and give a professional opinion.

00:04:52-Cara
They have these large retainers.

00:04:54-Cara
It can be lucrative.

00:04:56-Steven
Oh, you get paid well.

00:04:57-Cara
Yeah.

00:04:58-Cara
As a material witness, you're not doing the exact same thing, but for some intents and purposes, you are doing something similar.

00:05:06-Cara
But because you were called, you were subpoenaed, you don't get paid.

00:05:11-Cara
You just get inconvenienced.

00:05:13-Steven
That's right.

00:05:14-Steven
Pure inconvenience.

00:05:16-Steven
Oh, man.

00:05:17-Steven
They never asked me the one question I most thought they were going to ask me.

00:05:21-Cara
No, that's fascinating.

00:05:22-Cara
Did you work in the answer to another question?

00:05:24-Steven
Yeah, right.

00:05:26-Steven
The thing is, when you're an expert witness, this is the big difference.

00:05:29-Steven
You're an expert witness, you can say whatever you want, right?

00:05:32-Steven
When they ask a question, you can say whatever you feel you need to say in order to give context to that question and educate the jury about that question.

00:05:43-Steven
But when you're a material witness, you do have to just answer the question they ask you.

00:05:48-Jay
Oh, wow.

00:05:49-Jay
That's a really—I've never heard that distinction before.

00:05:51-Jay
Oh, yeah.

00:05:51-Steven
It's a big distinction.

00:05:52-Steven
You are in charge when you're an expert witness, right?

00:05:56-Steven
And the judge could—between the judge and the expert witness, the judge could say, you know, tell us more about this or go on, keep talking, whatever.

00:06:03-Steven
They'll just give you—they give you really wide free range, you know?

00:06:07-Steven
The attorneys can object, but it's usually objecting to the other guy's question.

00:06:13-Steven
They want to go in an area, but expert witnesses are given massive latitude.

00:06:18-Steven
Material witnesses are like, if you get asked a yes or no question, your answer is yes or no, and that's it.

00:06:23-Steven
You don't elaborate or whatever.

00:06:25-Steven
yes but I that that that just yeah it's just the answer the question but you know this was this was a little different because even though I was a material witness because this is a medical case and I'm a physician they they almost treated me like an expert witness in terms of giving me latitude and they asked me a lot of questions that you would only ask of an expert witness like what's your understanding of this scientific topic you know what I mean not it was

00:06:53-Evan
Not a binary choice to the answer.

00:06:55-Evan
It wasn't just what happened.

00:06:57-Steven
It was, yeah, tell me what you think about this.

00:06:59-Steven
Because that's part of the case.

00:07:02-Cara
Your professional opinion.

00:07:03-Steven
Yes, my professional opinion was relevant to the case.

00:07:07-Steven
So it was kind of a hybrid.

00:07:12-Steven
I mean, it's interesting because as an expert witness, you could probably talk for almost as long as you want.

00:07:20-Jay
Pretty much.

00:07:20-Steven
I mean, I guess the judge would cut you off at some point, and you probably wouldn't get a lot of gigs if you went off on irrelevant tangents.

00:07:28-Evan
Who gets to decide who qualifies as an expert?

00:07:31-Evan
The court does.

00:07:32-Evan
Wow, so they could really make a bad choice and bring in someone who's not really an expert.

00:07:37-Steven
Both sides have to stipulate that they agree that that person's an expert.

00:07:42-Steven
The other attorney can always challenge you.

00:07:45-Steven
That's the first thing that happens when you take the stand as an expert witness is they challenge your credentials, they challenge your objectivity, whatever they can to tear you down in front of the jury.

00:08:00-Steven
And with the attorney who hired you, you may object or try to defend you.

00:08:06-Steven
But the bottom line is they're going to ask you, they're going to try to make it seem like you're not a reliable expert.

00:08:12-Evan
When did you stop beating your wife?

00:08:13-Steven
But the court and both attorneys have to stipulate that the court recognizes you as an expert in whatever field.

00:08:22-Steven
That's the other thing, it has to have a very narrow field in which you are an expert.

00:08:27-Steven
Like, you are called for this question, right?

00:08:30-Steven
So like, for example, I've been called as an expert neurologist who's commenting on causality.

00:08:38-Steven
And that's the only thing I'm commenting on, meaning, did A cause B?

00:08:43-Steven
I'm not commenting on, is what they did malpractice?

00:08:48-Steven
But I may be asked to comment on the standard of care, is what they did within the standard of care.

00:08:55-Steven
So whatever it is, an expert might be hired within a medical context to comment on that, they are restricted to that, whatever it is.

00:09:05-Steven
But within that, yeah, you could say whatever you feel you need to.

00:09:09-Steven
So the lawyer who's asking you questions can't hem you in.

00:09:14-Steven
You know what I mean?

00:09:15-Steven
They can't play the game of that, yeah, did you stop beating your wife type of question, like asking a leading question.

00:09:21-Steven
So you're supposed to still say, if they ask you a question, like, are you familiar with this?

00:09:28-Steven
You're supposed to just say yes.

00:09:30-Steven
And then they'll ask you the follow-up question, tell me about this.

00:09:35-Steven
So there is still sort of a protocol to how you answer questions.

00:09:41-Steven
But if they stop there, you could say, but, and then just go off on whatever.

00:09:48-Steven
They can't trap you by cleverly asking questions that hem in your answer.

00:09:54-Cara
But the lawyer on the other side can object.

00:09:57-Steven
Yeah, but they have to have a legitimate reason to object.

00:09:59-Steven
They can't object.

00:10:00-Steven
I object.

00:10:01-Steven
The guy I hired isn't doing a good job.

00:10:03-Cara
No, I'm saying on the other side.

00:10:05-Steven
Yeah, yeah.

00:10:07-Steven
Whoever's not asking the question.

00:10:08-Cara
Exactly.

00:10:08-Cara
They can object and say, you know, whatever.

00:10:12-Cara
I don't know.

00:10:12-Evan
And they get to cross question.

00:10:14-Steven
Then they cross, then they could redirect, you know, that goes back and forth a few times until everybody's happy.

00:10:21-Cara
Everybody's happy.

00:10:21-Evan
It's a question of the jury.

00:10:24-Steven
They do do that.

00:10:25-Steven
That happened today.

00:10:26-Steven
They, quote unquote, sequestered the jury, but they sent the jury out of the room, or they delayed bringing them into the room in order to work out some details.

00:10:39-Steven
The whole point was, should the jury be exposed to this piece of information?

00:10:43-Steven
You can't have that conversation in front of the jury.

00:10:45-Steven
So those conversations happen either before the jury gets there or they at one point they literally they did send the jury away so we could resolve a should the jury hear this type question.

00:10:56-Evan
It just takes more time.

00:10:59-Steven
That's the point.

00:11:00-Steven
Yeah, it took a long time.

00:11:03-Steven
It's an imperfect system, but it's a system that we have.

00:11:07-Steven
But at least there are rules of evidence and rules of logic, and that's honestly what makes the system work.

00:11:13-Steven
You can't just make any crack-ass argument that you want, unlike, say, every other sphere of life, pretty much.

00:11:22-Steven
All right, let's go on.

00:11:23-Steven
Evan, you're going to start us off with the dumbest thing of the week.

00:11:26-Evan
Yes, dumbest thing of the week.

00:11:28-Evan
And here to sing the song is Cara Santa Maria.

00:11:32-Evan
Take it away, Cara.

00:11:33-Evan
Nope.

00:11:34-Evan
Nope.

00:11:34-Evan
Okay.

00:11:35-Evan
That's a hard pass for Cara.

00:11:39-Evan
Ouch.

00:11:40-Evan
I don't want to take all the fun every time I do this.

00:11:42-Evan
I'm going to offer it up to my wonderful co-hosts as I go through these.

00:11:47-Evan
So I just want to give you guys the chance.

00:11:49-Evan
Just sharing is caring, right?

00:11:52-Evan
I learned this from a radio show host back in the day who would present a news item this way.

00:11:57-Evan
And what they would do, they read the article kind of in its entirety, in its context.

00:12:02-Evan
And don't worry, this one's not really a long article.

00:12:05-Evan
But as I go through this, I'm going to pause a couple of times along the way to make some points.

00:12:10-Evan
And these points are sort of like the first things that popped into my head as I first read this article, OK?

00:12:17-Evan
So here we go.

00:12:18-Evan
The recent headline, and I saw this first at the website called Interesting Engineering.

00:12:23-Evan
And this was about a week and a half ago, but since then, like in the last two or three days, it's really been on a lot of news sites elsewhere.

00:12:31-Evan
But this is where I first read it.

00:12:33-Evan
And the article's author, his name is Aman Tripathi.

00:12:37-Evan
Okay.

00:12:37-Evan
Here's the headline.

00:12:39-Evan
Civil servant robot, quote, commits suicide, comma, deadly plunge under probe.

00:12:46-Evan
Here's the sub-headline.

00:12:47-Evan
Witnesses saw the robot erratically circling before its fall, sparking speculation about the cause.

00:12:55-Evan
I'm going to pause here for a second and throw this in.

00:12:59-Evan
Of the five of us, I think I consider myself, and again, of the five of us, the Luddite of the group.

00:13:05-Evan
I admit that freely.

00:13:08-Evan
I know enough about technology.

00:13:10-Evan
I'm able to use enough of it to still function in 2024, but I have no

00:13:14-Evan
by no means the most technically savvy person.

00:13:16-Evan
But if I saw a robot acting erratically, I mean, maybe the 7,000th reason I could think of as to why a machine is malfunctioning is that the machine was somehow programmed with the ability to end its function by seeking to actively fall off a surface.

00:13:33-Evan
But again, that's just me, the Luddite.

00:13:37-Evan
thinking aloud.

00:13:39-Evan
A first-of-its-kind incident has shocked the world after a civil servant robot at Gumi City Council in South Korea was found unresponsive after what appears to be a deliberate plunge down a two-meter staircase.

00:13:57-Evan
Found unresponsive and deliberate plunge.

00:14:03-Evan
That's called anthropomorphizing, I think.

00:14:07-Evan
Maybe a new level of it as far as I'm concerned.

00:14:09-Evan
But back to the article.

00:14:11-Evan
Local media and social media users have called it the first robot suicide in the country.

00:14:16-Evan
The robot, affectionately known as the robot supervisor, had been a model employee.

00:14:22-Evan
Yeah, and I'm sure they intended no pun there, but I saw the pun.

00:14:26-Evan
A model employee, since its appointment in August 23.

00:14:28-Evan
What model number was that?

00:14:29-Evan
Exactly, Bob, right?

00:14:31-Evan
Model employee.

00:14:33-Evan
Here's a quote.

00:14:33-Evan
It was officially part of the city hall.

00:14:36-Evan
It was one of us, an unnamed official said.

00:14:39-Evan
They described it as a diligent worker.

00:14:42-Evan
The officials stated that the robot worked diligently and handling daily document deliveries, city promotion, and information dissemination to local residents.

00:14:52-Evan
Witnesses reported seeing the robot, quote, circling in one spot as if something was there, end quote, shortly before the incident, sparking speculation about the cause of the fall.

00:15:03-Evan
Some experts have suggested that the robot may have experienced an emotional breakdown due to the stress of its work load, while others believe a technical malfunction could be to blame.

00:15:14-Evan
Let's pause for that.

00:15:15-Evan
Emotional stress?

00:15:17-Evan
Emotions?

00:15:19-Evan
Was this machine really programmed for emotions?

00:15:22-Evan
Is that what we're being told?

00:15:25-Jay
Even if somebody said that they programmed something to have emotions, it doesn't actually have emotions.

00:15:31-Evan
Well, right, Jay, that's definitely a valid point.

00:15:34-Evan
And Bob, your point as well, right?

00:15:37-Bob
Is that... Oh, is this an Onion article?

00:15:40-Bob
I mean, it sounds... Is it an Onion article?

00:15:43-Evan
And Bob, absolutely.

00:15:44-Evan
I had to stop.

00:15:46-Evan
I stopped in the middle of the article to make sure this was not satire or something.

00:15:49-Evan
I looked elsewhere to make sure.

00:15:51-Evan
I'm like, am I really reading this correctly?

00:15:54-Evan
No, this is an article in what appears to be a technical site.

00:16:01-Evan
Certainly, all the news articles that have come out more recently about this are

00:16:05-Evan
The exact circumstances leading to the robot's demise are under investigation.

00:16:13-Evan
Pieces have been collected and will be analyzed by the company.

00:16:18-Evan
Mysterious Circumstances The incident has sparked a wave of mourning and curiosity across the nation.

00:16:27-Evan
Local media headlines questioned the apparent robot suicide, asking, why did the diligent civil officer do it?

00:16:35-Evan
Was it working too hard for the robot?

00:16:38-Evan
Social media has been abuzz with reactions ranging from poignant tributes to the fallen robot to serious discussions about the ethical implications of AI sentience and the potential for robot suffering.

00:16:50-Evan
Talking about its equality, the robot was unique in its ability to call an elevator and move between floors autonomously.

00:16:58-Evan
It reportedly worked from 9am to 6pm and even had its own civil service officer card.

00:17:04-SPEAKER_00
Aw, cute.

00:17:05-Evan
Yeah, very cute, very cute.

00:17:06-Evan
You see, but the point is that they're making here is that the robot uses the elevator move between its floors autonomously.

00:17:14-Evan
Why would it even ever consider going anywhere near a staircase, you see, other than did it have other intentions?

00:17:24-Evan
And then finishing up, robotics and ethical concerns.

00:17:28-Evan
Notably, South Korea is a global leader in robotics adoption, and it boasts the highest robot density in the world.

00:17:35-Evan
With one industrial robot for every 10 employees, the nation has embraced automation in various sectors, from manufacturing to public service.

00:17:41-Bob
More than Japan?

00:17:42-Evan
Apparently so, as a representation of the population.

00:17:47-Evan
So that's the article.

00:17:49-Evan
There's a lot.

00:17:51-Evan
to say about this as far as I'm concerned.

00:17:53-Evan
And I know not everyone is gonna have my take on this particular one, and I do not mean offense to any person.

00:18:01-Evan
But for once, I'm standing up for the Luddites everywhere when I proclaim that this is the dumbest thing of the week.

00:18:06-Evan
Take it away, folks.

00:18:08-Bob
Dude, I really have to rethink now when my Roomba is usually pretty good at avoiding stairs.

00:18:15-Bob
But every now and then, I find it had gone over the step.

00:18:19-Bob
And now I'm thinking, maybe I'm just using it too much and putting too much stress on it and it's trying to kill itself.

00:18:25-Bob
Like, wow.

00:18:27-Steven
Is this where we're really going?

00:18:29-Bob
Yes, it is.

00:18:29-Jay
I mean, people personify things, you know, like, yes, they do.

00:18:33-Steven
This is just deliberate, stupid sensationalism from news outlets.

00:18:38-Cara
There's okay, here's nobody believes this.

00:18:40-Cara
Here's my weird take as a psychologist.

00:18:43-Cara
It is important to think about these things, because the way that we treat technology is in some ways a microcosm or a reflection on the way that we treat people, the way that we treat animals, the way that we treat property, and statues, and statues.

00:19:01-Cara
Exactly.

00:19:01-Cara
We can look at the psychology

00:19:04-Cara
of our interactions with these machines and think about the way that we engage because what we, what I at least from a moralistic perspective, would not want to see is a world full of animate but non-sentient things that we treat in a really deeply inhuman way, because that will can and may translate into treating

00:19:32-Cara
people in outgroups that way translate into dehumanizing individuals, because it's a reinforcement of certain types of behavior.

00:19:42-Cara
I think that that is an important component of this.

00:19:44-Cara
I think that the bullshit, ridiculous, dumbest thing of the week component of this is actually believing that the robot is like thinking and feeling and making these decisions.

00:19:54-Evan
Exactly.

00:19:56-Cara
So like, I do actually think that there's a lot of value in those kinds of conversations around robotics.

00:20:02-Bob
Yeah, and I think those kind of conversations are going to become more important as time advances, and we actually have, you know, bona fide levels of intelligence in these devices.

00:20:13-Bob
Or even if they're not very intelligent.

00:20:15-Bob
Not even necessarily self-awareness, sentient sapience or whatever, but some amount of intelligence where you could arguably make a point that it's sophisticated animal-level intelligence.

00:20:27-Bob
All I know is that when I talk to ChatGPT, I always say please.

00:20:34-Evan
That's because you're considerate at all times, Bob.

00:20:36-Bob
Yeah, I mean, that's our social training.

00:20:37-Jay
And I agree with what Kara said, though.

00:20:39-Jay
I mean, I think it probably wouldn't be a good thing to I'm just thinking about my kids, you know, like I would tell them, yeah, I mean, to try to treat them poorly, you know, particularly if they're humanoid, you know, like it gets to a point, I think, where, you know, we're going to need to teach people to treat them like they're people, even though they they're not.

00:20:59-Steven
Yeah.

00:20:59-Steven
It's an interesting research question.

00:21:01-Steven
I'm sure it will be researched at some point.

00:21:04-Steven
And it seems reasonable that there'd be some connection.

00:21:06-Steven
It certainly is a consideration.

00:21:07-Steven
It won't necessarily translate is what I'm saying.

00:21:10-Steven
Just like I'm thinking of playing violent video games doesn't appear to translate to exacting violence in the real world.

00:21:18-Cara
Yeah, but you're also not doing violent AR video games.

00:21:22-Steven
Well, that's another assumption.

00:21:25-Steven
What if the violence is in virtual reality?

00:21:27-Steven
If it's more real, does that matter?

00:21:29-Steven
I don't know.

00:21:30-Cara
Or AR, not VR, but AR.

00:21:32-Cara
Interposing on your reality.

00:21:34-Cara
And it's not that the assumption is that this necessarily leads to that.

00:21:40-Cara
It's the assumption that in the real world, the decisions that we make are often based on natural consequences.

00:21:47-Cara
And when there are no natural consequences,

00:21:50-Cara
because we're treating an object a particular way and that object doesn't talk back, it doesn't reflect, it doesn't say, that hurt my feelings, then does that then translate to a sort of, because we know it, we know it does in the genocidal playbook, right?

00:22:06-Cara
Like when it comes to actual people, we know that this works.

00:22:09-Cara
It's why genocidal leaders, you know, dehumanize certain groups of people and call them things like rats and call them animals and beasts and things because it works.

00:22:18-Steven
So you're saying we should humanize the robots to make sure that we don't dehumanize people.

00:22:24-Cara
Exactly.

00:22:25-Steven
Based on how we treat the robot.

00:22:26-Cara
Exactly.

00:22:26-Steven
That certainly is a legitimate concern.

00:22:29-Steven
I would be very interested in seeing what research actually says about it.

00:22:33-Cara
Yeah, I think, you know, right now it is a hypothesis, but I think it's a hypothesis that has like face validity.

00:22:38-Cara
Yeah, exactly.

00:22:39-Steven
I agree.

00:22:39-Jay
All right, thanks Evan.

00:22:41-Jay
Jay, tell us about this recent Mars simulation.

00:22:44-Jay
So you guys should remember this.

00:22:46-Jay
I talked about this Mars simulation mission that they started just over a year ago.

00:22:52-Jay
So it was called the CHAPIA.

00:22:55-Jay
It means NASA's Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog.

00:23:00-Jay
you know, not the sexiest name, but they're trying to, like, make the name mean something.

00:23:04-Jay
So this this mission concluded on July 6, 2024.

00:23:09-Jay
So to remind you guys, there were four volunteers living in a seventeen hundred square foot structure.

00:23:15-Jay
It was three hundred and seventy eight days in total.

00:23:17-Jay
And the the four people that were in the experiment were Kelly Haston, Ross Brockwell, Acna Celeru and Nathan Jones.

00:23:25-Cara
What's that?

00:23:26-Cara
Paulie Shore.

00:23:27-Jay
Paulie Shore.

00:23:28-Evan
I got that one wrong.

00:23:29-Jay
Ross Ross Brockwell sounds like a fake 80s movie name.

00:23:33-Evan
Totally.

00:23:35-Jay
So they began the mission simulation on June 25th, 2023.

00:23:41-Jay
Their habitat was 3D printed and it was designed to replicate as close as they can get to Martian conditions on Earth.

00:23:49-Jay
Of course, the gravity was gravity or Earth 1G.

00:23:52-Jay
This mission, again I said it's part of the ChatPIA program.

00:23:56-Jay
This is the first of three missions and they created this mission to understand how humans would cope with the stresses of a Mars mission.

00:24:03-Jay
It is a little more complicated than that, so let me get into some details here.

00:24:07-Jay
So the habitat is currently located at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston.

00:24:11-Jay
It included things like bedrooms, a kitchen, two bathrooms, areas for medical treatment and a recreation room, fitness and places to work.

00:24:20-Jay
It also featured a sandbox that was filled with red sand for simulated, you know, Mars walks.

00:24:26-Jay
And they had they had excursions that they had to go on.

00:24:28-Jay
They had to get suited up for that.

00:24:30-Jay
So during this simulation, they performed tasks that people at NASA thought would be likely things that people would end up having to do on Mars.

00:24:39-Jay
This includes, you know, things like habitat maintenance, sample collection, robotic operations and even crop growth.

00:24:47-Jay
And actually, the crop growth is pretty interesting.

00:24:52-Jay
yeah they had to grow several different things but the whole point of this was they wanted to create intentional environmental stressors you know resource limitations isolation confinement just to see how the crew would handle it and see if there was any obvious sticking points that they had to address

00:25:09-Jay
So the crew lived on shelf stable food.

00:25:12-Jay
This included a variety of, you know, freeze dried items.

00:25:15-Jay
They had thermal stabilized meals, but they also had to grow a portion of their own food.

00:25:20-Jay
So they grew vegetables.

00:25:21-Jay
And this was a legitimate and required part of their food source.

00:25:25-Jay
They grew a bunch of different things.

00:25:26-Jay
This includes peppers.

00:25:28-Jay
They grew tomatoes and they had some leafy greens.

00:25:31-Jay
And this part of the simulation included them managing the limited food systems in a Mars like environment.

00:25:37-Jay
You know, this is critical and it was a very important part of them learning the sustainability lessons that they had to go through.

00:25:43-Jay
And absolutely, like think about how important that will be when they're on Mars.

00:25:48-Jay
Right.

00:25:48-Jay
Because some of their oxygen might even come from plant growth that they're going to have to take care of.

00:25:54-Jay
But them being able to have some level of sustainability is going to be critical to what they're doing.

00:26:00-Jay
And further missions that they do, these simulated missions, there's two more coming.

00:26:05-Jay
They're going to, I think, delve deeper into those things.

00:26:07-Jay
So during the simulation, NASA closely was monitoring their health.

00:26:11-Jay
their performance.

00:26:12-Jay
They were gathering lots of data to support the crew during extended missions.

00:26:16-Jay
They were having fake mission control.

00:26:19-Jay
They were identifying potential risks, particularly with the limited nutrition that they had.

00:26:24-Jay
And now they're doing a two-week post-mission data collection and trying to figure out as much as they can over the data that they collected.

00:26:32-Jay
Brockwell who is the CHEPIA flight engineer highlighted the mission sustainability lessons and he was emphasizing the importance of using resources sustainably and processing waste efficiently.

00:26:45-Jay
These principles were going to be crucial for long-term survival and exploration on Mars.

00:26:50-Jay
So, you know, I know that we're going to have to resupply people on Mars, but we're going to try to make them as self-sufficient as possible and have them recycle as much as they can possibly recycle, of course.

00:27:01-Jay
So now NASA had collected this extensive data on the cognitive and physical performance of the crew.

00:27:06-Jay
And this is another huge part of this.

00:27:08-Jay
And this data is crucial for understanding how these extended space missions might impact human health and performance.

00:27:15-Jay
You know, there are pretty extreme factors here.

00:27:17-Jay
People are going to be very far away from the Earth.

00:27:20-Jay
There is no like, hey, we're in trouble.

00:27:22-Jay
Come help us.

00:27:23-Jay
There's going to be a supply chain that we set up.

00:27:26-Jay
But when they land on that planet, you know, hopefully we'll have a lot of resources already there and even 3D built enclosures for them and everything.

00:27:35-Jay
So, of course, these tests are absolutely required because they're figuring out tons of things that they just wouldn't think of on the draft board.

00:27:44-Jay
They have to see people in the environment doing what they're doing and living through the stresses.

00:27:48-Jay
So this mission provided these valuable insights into developing new technological solutions for future Mars missions and the data gathered will help them in designing better systems that will support life on the Red Planet.

00:28:02-Jay
Now, I know that the the gravity is an issue.

00:28:05-Jay
It's not like a horrible situation.

00:28:07-Jay
It's not like the moon where it's very difficult to get around.

00:28:10-Jay
But it still is quite different.

00:28:12-Jay
It could affect people's sleep.

00:28:15-Jay
It could affect, you know, how much energy they expend because I remember we had this conversation, Bob.

00:28:20-Jay
We were talking about moving around on the moon and how, you know, how it's very difficult to move on the moon, particularly if you're wearing a spacesuit.

00:28:28-Jay
And it could even be more exhausting, exhausting to move in a lower G environment because you have to do weird things with your body to get to where you want to go.

00:28:36-Jay
You know, walking is very efficient for us.

00:28:39-Jay
But when you're in a lower Earth gravity, lower than Earth gravity, your whole movement patterns have to change.

00:28:46-Jay
So I'll be really curious to see how they're going to simulate that and see if they can pull any useful data out of that to help the people that are going to eventually go.

00:28:53-Jay
So this was the first of three missions, like I said, with the next two scheduled for 2025 and the following year, 26.

00:29:00-Jay
These missions, of course, aim to further

00:29:04-Jay
explore these challenges and they're going to continue to make things as difficult as possible for them just to see where the breaking points are.

00:29:11-Jay
I think you know them having to develop new technology and everything with Mars in mind is going to be incredibly helpful to them.

00:29:18-Jay
So one of the biggest challenges they had was managing this communication delay, right?

00:29:22-Jay
So they're

00:29:22-Jay
Depending on how far away the earth is from Mars the amount of hours it takes to communicate changes But they were using a 44 minute round trip in this experiment But that time will change depending on the distance to the earth But it is significant and the crew had to learn to adapt to these communication limitations While they were trying to maintain their mental health and their team dynamics of course these people were talking to their families while they were you know in this in this situation and

00:29:52-Jay
They were having a hard time dealing with trying to find times that they can talk to their families because scheduling is a big problem.

00:29:59-Jay
Of course, it's not just an open mic.

00:30:01-Jay
They're not going to let them talk whenever they want to.

00:30:03-Jay
It was regimented.

00:30:04-Jay
They had to be very careful on how they did it.

00:30:07-Jay
You can't have a conversation with someone if it takes 44 minutes for round-trip communication.

00:30:13-Evan
You have to artificially delay it.

00:30:16-Jay
They did that?

00:30:18-Jay
Yeah, they did.

00:30:18-Jay
They artificially delayed everything.

00:30:20-Jay
I would imagine that you would communicate with people more with pre-recordings.

00:30:25-Jay
If you think about it, you can't have a sentence-to-sentence conversation with someone.

00:30:30-Jay
You do that with mission control if there's a problem, of course, but you're not going to want to talk to your wife like, okay, I'm going to wait 44 minutes.

00:30:36-Jay
I love you.

00:30:37-Evan
I love the simulation.

00:30:39-Evan
It wouldn't it wouldn't be realistic in this case.

00:30:41-Jay
So they did find a sticking point here with the communication gap, you know, that it was hard for them to deal with.

00:30:48-Jay
You know, lots of interesting little nuggets of information that I think are very important.

00:30:53-Jay
And it's way better for us to figure these things out now than 10 years from now.

00:30:57-Jay
Right.

00:30:57-Jay
We want to have this really, really thought out and understand all the different things that they're going to go through.

00:31:02-Jay
You know, we were talking at one point, Steve, about how like one full-sized tree could produce enough oxygen to make certain... How many people was it?

00:31:11-Jay
Do you remember, Steve?

00:31:12-Jay
Was it one person or was it like 10 people?

00:31:14-Steven
No, I think it was just like one person.

00:31:15-Jay
It was one person per large-sized tree, right?

00:31:18-Jay
So I wonder if they will be building any enclosures to have trees in them.

00:31:22-Cara
I would hope so.

00:31:23-Cara
I think even just for your mental health.

00:31:25-Jay
Yeah, I mean, you don't need trees to get the oxygen, right?

00:31:28-Steven
Any plant growth.

00:31:29-Steven
In fact, an actual Mars settlement, the problem would be making too much oxygen, because in order to grow enough plants to feed everybody, it would produce more oxygen than they would need.

00:31:40-Steven
and you can't have the oxygen building up.

00:31:43-Steven
So yeah, you have to actually either vent it or turn it into water or put it into tanks for fuel or whatever.

00:31:50-Steven
You have to do something with it.

00:31:52-Steven
But making enough oxygen is not going to be the problem.

00:31:57-Steven
It's probably going to be what you do with the excess oxygen.

00:31:59-Jay
Well, that's good.

00:32:00-Jay
I'd rather have that problem.

00:32:02-Jay
The worst case scenario is you just vent it.

00:32:04-Steven
Yeah, but that assumes they're growing 100% of their calories from crops.

00:32:07-Evan
I don't think they will to begin with I mean, I think they'll want to ramp up to that They're gonna have to have a simulation said it was a lot of shelf long.

00:32:14-Jay
Yeah, right But I'd say it's take a year to get more food.

00:32:19-Evan
So, you know that yeah, man Yeah, unless you both like Jay said also unless you pre ship your groceries and a lot of yes, right a lot of long Part of the plan, you know, I as a

00:32:31-Jay
Brain experiment, I try to put myself in a position like, first of all, you know, I'm not leaving the Earth for anything.

00:32:37-Jay
But if I had to go to Mars, like I would be freaking out just about like my limited food selection for the rest of my life, you know, like for wherever, however many years you're supposed to go.

00:32:47-Jay
You know, as I get older, I'm like more and more into food.

00:32:50-Jay
I like to cook more.

00:32:51-Jay
I'm like just way more into it.

00:32:52-Jay
It would be an impossible thing.

00:32:54-Jay
I couldn't get over it.

00:32:55-Jay
I couldn't imagine like you're never going to have, you know, tomato sauce again.

00:32:59-Evan
Well, you could.

00:33:00-Evan
I mean, you would have to, Jay, if you were thrust into a situation in which you had to adapt, you would adapt.

00:33:05-Jay
I mean, I'd do it, but I'd be miserable.

00:33:08-Evan
Yeah, maybe not for long, though.

00:33:10-Evan
I think your brain would kind of— We're remarkably adaptive.

00:33:13-Cara
We are, but also I think some people would have more intense mental health reactions than others.

00:33:18-Evan
That's true.

00:33:19-Cara
And that's why, you know, I think we've talked about this before, but like what we used to consider the quote unquote right stuff

00:33:25-Cara
That's a very different calculation.

00:33:27-Steven
Yeah.

00:33:28-Steven
When you're talking about an extended settlement of something as far away as Mars.

00:33:33-Bob
If I don't get enough meatballs and peanut butter, the other people's lives would be in danger.

00:33:39-Steven
James should write a book called There Are No Meatballs on Mars.

00:33:43-Steven
Is that a horror story, Steve?

00:33:46-Steven
This is an exploration of what it would take to live on Mars.

00:33:48-Steven
I know that book's already been written.

00:33:49-Jay
So Kara, like, tomorrow is my mom's birthday, right?

00:33:53-Jay
So my mom, I was talking with Steve about this today on the live stream, the TikTok live stream.

00:33:59-Jay
my mom wanted to go to Olive Garden and I'm just I'm literally like you're like Olive Garden I'd rather I'd rather eat sawdust than go to Olive Garden okay because they don't cook food there yeah it's a restaurant they're heated up they heat it up it's not a restaurant

00:34:14-Jay
Terrible, so Bob goes.

00:34:15-Jay
All right.

00:34:16-Jay
Well, gee what my mom wants meatballs and homemade bread, you know Bob like Throws out like these two things that of course I love to make and I love to eat but I had to explain to Bob It it's a day of cooking to do all that.

00:34:28-Jay
You know what I mean?

00:34:29-Jay
It's significant It's not like I couldn't actually pull it off by myself because I have to work tomorrow, you know Like this is something I like would typically like do over a couple day period But then my mother-in-law and my wife were like we will cook her whatever she wants.

00:34:42-Jay
So we're actually doing it now Bob

00:34:44-Cara
Okay, can I ask you a question?

00:34:45-Cara
Yeah, cuz I love you guys and I don't get breadsticks I don't want to ask you to be whatever

00:34:51-Cara
If Mom wants Olive Garden, why don't you let Mom have Olive Garden?

00:34:54-Bob
Yeah, that was everyone's plan but Jay's.

00:34:57-Bob
Jay was the only one.

00:34:59-Cara
Why is your distaste for Olive Garden?

00:35:01-Bob
No, we were going to do that.

00:35:02-Bob
We were going to do that.

00:35:03-Bob
I talked to Jay and he agreed.

00:35:07-Bob
He's like, yeah, he'll do it.

00:35:09-Bob
He was going to do it.

00:35:09-Bob
He just made it clear to me in no uncertain terms that Olive Garden, he thinks Olive Garden is shite.

00:35:16-Bob
So that's fine.

00:35:17-Bob
But then I talked to Courtney today and she's like, well, let's ask Mom.

00:35:22-Bob
she if she would be willing to come over and have spaghetti and meatballs and at their house and she said yes I was surprised but that's fine Kara look I told my mom mom I will bring you to Olive Garden next week good we bring her there all the time she likes to go there because she likes to buy the take-home meals then she has food for the week yeah

00:35:42-Cara
And I think the thing about Olive Garden, as somebody who loves the Olive Garden- I know what to get Jay for his birthday now.

00:35:50-Cara
The thing about it, you can talk about the fat content of the food or you can talk about all these different things.

00:35:56-Cara
You can talk about whatever happens in the kitchen, is that it is consistent.

00:36:03-Evan
And I think for people who like routine, who have cravings- Yeah, Pantera and Chipotle, all of them.

00:36:09-Cara
Did you say Pantera?

00:36:11-Evan
Is it Pantera?

00:36:11-Cara
Panera.

00:36:12-Cara
Panera.

00:36:12-Cara
Panera is better.

00:36:13-Cara
Panera is better.

00:36:14-Cara
Panera.

00:36:15-Cara
Panera.

00:36:16-Cara
Panera.

00:36:17-Cara
Panera.

00:36:17-Evan
Panera.

00:36:18-Evan
Panera.

00:36:19-Evan
Panera.

00:36:19-Cara
Panera.

00:36:20-Cara
Panera.

00:36:21-Cara
Panera.

00:36:21-Evan
Panera.

00:36:22-Evan
Panera.

00:36:23-Evan
Panera.

00:36:24-Evan
Panera.

00:36:24-Jay
Panera.

00:36:25-Jay
Panera.

00:36:26-Jay
Panera.

00:36:26-Steven
Panera.

00:36:27-Steven
Panera.

00:36:27-Cara
Of course you would go for her.

00:36:29-Jay
But the thing I'm saying is, and I knew this instinctively, like, yeah, my mom would go to Olive Garden.

00:36:34-Jay
She likes to go there.

00:36:35-Jay
My mom loves coming over my house for home cooked meals because my wife and I, like, just, you know, we throw 100 percent of ourselves into it.

00:36:42-Jay
We try to do, you know, we love it and it's meaningful to us and we cook really good food.

00:36:46-Jay
Right.

00:36:46-SPEAKER_03
Yeah.

00:36:47-Jay
So I knew that she was going to be down for that.

00:36:49-Jay
But, you know, I did have this visceral reaction thinking like Olive Garden.

00:36:54-Jay
My god all of a sudden there was this weight on my shoulder like oh, you just have to know what to order there Yeah, there's some tasty shit there.

00:37:02-Cara
I don't care breadsticks in the Alfredo My biggest we're going we're going to Olive Garden

00:37:10-Bob
My biggest beef is that you go there and indulge a little bit, you're walking away with about 2,500 calories.

00:37:18-Bob
I just had two days of food in one meal.

00:37:22-Bob
If I'm going to eat like that, it's going to be my food.

00:37:25-Jay
It's not going to be their food.

00:37:27-Jay
If I'm going to break my diet and actually eat for two and a half days in 10 minutes, it's going to be on my terms.

00:37:35-Bob
And I'll have breadsticks without Fredo sauce.

00:37:42-Bob
You could eat like four of those before your meal arrives.

00:37:45-Bob
Like, okay, my dinner's, the appetizer's not even here and I'm already 700 calories in.

00:37:53-Bob
It's nuts.

00:37:54-Evan
And that's if you haven't had a drink.

00:37:55-Evan
Some people have alcohol, Bob.

00:37:56-Evan
Oh my god.

00:37:57-Evan
Three, four hundred.

00:37:58-Evan
You're right.

00:37:58-Evan
A pop, man.

00:38:00-Steven
Anyway, go ahead, Steve.

00:38:01-Steven
All right.

00:38:02-Evan
Hey, Steve, you wanted to move on or something?

00:38:04-Steven
Yes, moving on.

00:38:04-Steven
We're going to talk about HIV, which I think we've talked about in a while.

00:38:09-Steven
Yeah.

00:38:10-Bob
They mostly come up occasionally.

00:38:12-Steven
What's there to talk about?

00:38:14-Steven
Let's just start with the lead, all right?

00:38:17-Steven
Just give me the bottom line here.

00:38:19-Bob
Now bury the lead.

00:38:20-Steven
A new study of a new preventive treatment.

00:38:25-Steven
This is something that people who are not infected with HIV take

00:38:29-Cara
Like PrEP.

00:38:29-Steven
It's a PrEP, yeah.

00:38:31-Steven
Which is?

00:38:32-Evan
Oh, a prophylactic.

00:38:34-Cara
Well, there is one out there right now, and it is literally called PrEP.

00:38:38-Cara
That's the name of the drug.

00:38:39-Steven
PrEP is not the name of the drug.

00:38:41-Steven
PrEP is the name of the treatment strategy.

00:38:45-Steven
There are PrEP drugs.

00:38:47-Steven
PrEP is pre-exposure prophylaxis.

00:38:49-Steven
That's what it means.

00:38:50-Steven
Pre-exposure prophylaxis.

00:38:51-Steven
There are right now three, Truvada, Descovy, and Apritude are the three PrEP drugs that are on the market now.

00:39:01-Evan
I think I've seen commercials.

00:39:02-Cara
Truvada and Descovy are- Yeah, it's funny because they always just refer to it as PrEP.

00:39:05-Steven
Yeah, but PrEP is just, again, that's the strategy.

00:39:09-Steven
So the first two are pills, the Apertude is a monthly injection.

00:39:13-Steven
And they're about 99% effective.

00:39:17-Steven
But they have specific populations that they target, like Truvada is for people who get it through either sex or drug injection, whereas Discovey is specifically for sexually active men or transgender women who have sex with men.

00:39:33-Steven
Because there's differences in whether you're getting it through drugs, through vaginal sex, through anal sex, through anal sex, if you're the giver or the receiver.

00:39:42-Steven
All these things are different risk factors for contracting HIV.

00:39:48-Steven
And you can't assume that a drug that's optimal for one is optimal for all of those, right?

00:39:53-Steven
But in any case, those are the three existing treatments.

00:39:55-Steven
But now, there was not a conclusion, but there was a preliminary result from a phase three clinical trial of a new drug.

00:40:05-Steven
This is a twice a year injection every six months.

00:40:10-Steven
and wait a second twice a year every oh yeah that checks out okay yeah yeah except leap years bob you're off with it this is the purpose one trial the drug is lenacapivir lenacapivir and guess how effective it was in the this clinical trial 99.1 99.44 100 so pure it flooded 100

00:40:33-Evan
Wow.

00:40:34-Evan
Nothing's a hundred percent.

00:40:35-Evan
I know, right?

00:40:36-Steven
Nothing's a hundred percent, but this was.

00:40:37-Evan
How many people did they study it on for?

00:40:43-Steven
No.

00:40:44-Steven
So for the trial, it was a comparison between the linacapavir, the new twice a year injection, versus the two oral ones that I talked about, right?

00:40:57-Steven
The Truvada and the Descovy.

00:40:59-Steven
So there were 2,134 women in the new treatment arm for at least 52 weeks.

00:41:02-Steven
And there was zero cases, so zero out of 2,134 over a year.

00:41:17-Bob
How risky was their behavior?

00:41:19-Steven
This is in South Africa, and young women were specifically targeted because they are the highest risk group in that country.

00:41:27-Steven
So it's a very high risk group.

00:41:28-Steven
But here's the comparison.

00:41:32-Steven
1.5% of the women who took Truvada were infected over the study period, and 1.8% of the discovery patients.

00:41:39-Steven
Oh, interesting.

00:41:41-Steven
So even compared against effective PrEP, this was more effective.

00:41:49-Bob
Nice.

00:41:50-Steven
Yeah.

00:41:50-Steven
And you compare it to just background rates.

00:41:52-Steven
They couldn't do a pure placebo arm because it's unethical.

00:41:56-Evan
And Steve, the animal trials before this obviously came up with the same results?

00:42:00-Steven
I don't know if it was 100% in the animal trials, but they had high hopes for it because it's

00:42:07-Steven
It must have come close if not a hundred.

00:42:11-Evan
And when you see a result that yields a 100% rate, does that cause any questioning just because of the result?

00:42:18-Bob
Well, I mean a little bit.

00:42:20-Bob
You have to look carefully just to make sure... But in this case... What's the prior plausibility?

00:42:24-Bob
Is it a new technology?

00:42:25-Bob
What do they attribute the success to?

00:42:27-Steven
It's just very effective.

00:42:29-Cara
Yeah, and remember that in this case, the other drugs are 99% effective, so it's not... Yeah, well, yeah, there was 98.5 and 98.2.

00:42:36-Bob
You see, that last little bit is really tough to get past.

00:42:42-Steven
I looked at the methods and everything.

00:42:44-Steven
It all checks out.

00:42:45-Steven
There's no big red flags.

00:42:46-Steven
It seems like it was a legit trial.

00:42:47-Steven
So I'm not seeing anything like, oh, we should question these results.

00:42:52-Steven
unless there was something not reflected in the write-up, you know?

00:42:56-Steven
But there's two things to point out here.

00:42:58-Steven
So one, it's a new mechanism of action, right?

00:43:00-Steven
So the thinking might be that, well, maybe this is just a really effective mechanism of action.

00:43:05-Steven
So the Truvada and Descovy, they both have Tenofovir in it, and that is... Oh, and Steve, I thought it was pronounced Descovy.

00:43:13-Cara
It could be Descovy.

00:43:14-Cara
I feel like that's what they always say in the commercials.

00:43:16-Cara
Oh yeah, it could be Descovy.

00:43:17-Steven
Yeah, I've never heard it said that.

00:43:19-Cara
I know, these drug names are like...

00:43:20-Steven
So the two pills are replication inhibitors.

00:43:24-Steven
They basically get incorporated into the HIV's DNA.

00:43:28-Steven
Remember, HIV is a retrovirus.

00:43:30-Steven
It has to insert its DNA into a host cell's DNA so that it gets replicated.

00:43:35-Steven
The Tenofovir treatments, they incorporate themselves into the DNA and stop the replication.

00:43:44-Steven
So they basically are replication inhibitors.

00:43:46-Steven
Though every month injection, which is cabotegravir, that binds to an enzyme called integrase, which is necessary for the DNA to integrate into the host DNA.

00:43:57-Steven
So it's an integration inhibitor, an enzyme integrase inhibitor.

00:44:02-Steven
So when these drugs are used correctly, they're 99 percent effective, which leads to the other aspect of the new drug, which is it's thought that it's really effective because it's a once every six month injection.

00:44:17-Steven
Right.

00:44:18-Steven
So the biggest one of the biggest problems with the daily pills that you got to take it every single day.

00:44:22-Cara
I was going to say that the point whatever percent higher effectiveness I think is much less compelling than you only have to get two shots a year.

00:44:31-Steven
But those are related.

00:44:32-Cara
Okay.

00:44:33-Cara
Oh, interesting.

00:44:33-Steven
Yeah, so that's what I'm saying.

00:44:35-Evan
Oh, compliance.

00:44:37-Steven
Right.

00:44:37-Steven
Especially for this population, because they were saying for young women in South Africa, having to take a pill every day can be a stigma, and they may not be able to do it.

00:44:47-Steven
Of course.

00:44:48-Cara
I assumed that they were looking at effectiveness regardless of treatment adherence.

00:44:54-Steven
No, so there's a difference between efficacy and effectiveness.

00:44:58-Steven
But in this trial, I don't know that they were necessarily tracking the compliance of the subjects.

00:45:07-Steven
So there's something called an intention-to-treat model of a trial where it's like, I give the patient a prescription and then we see how they do, right, and it incorporates

00:45:18-Steven
Real world.

00:45:20-Steven
Yeah, like real world, does the patient actually take it?

00:45:22-Steven
As opposed to efficacy, which is if you take it exactly like you're supposed to, how well does it work?

00:45:28-Steven
But a lot of trials combine those because it's basically an efficacy trial, but there may be a greater dropout rate or there may be greater noncompliance or whatever.

00:45:37-Steven
By the way, so the new drug, the Lenacapivir, the twice-a-year injection, is an HIV capsid drug, so it binds to the capsid around the HIV, right, the human immunodeficiency virus, and it blocks three different steps in HIV viral replication.

00:45:54-Steven
So it's a new mechanism that may be more effective.

00:45:58-Steven
But the big thing, the thing they're really touting is people just have to show up twice a year to get the injection and they're covered.

00:46:06-Steven
There's no stigma.

00:46:07-Steven
They don't have to take a pill every day or go every month for an injection.

00:46:11-Steven
So the effectiveness is likely to be superior just for that reason.

00:46:17-Cara
Oh yeah, because from a public health perspective, you can offer that.

00:46:21-Cara
as a public health intervention.

00:46:25-Steven
It's way more effective than you've got to show up and get your pills every month and you've got to take a pill every day and blah, blah, blah.

00:46:32-Steven
That's why people are really excited about it.

00:46:34-Steven
Now the company, which I don't know how and when the company got this name, but the name of the company is Gilead.

00:46:43-Cara
Oh yeah, Gilead Pharmaceutical has been around a long time.

00:46:46-Cara
It is unfortunate.

00:46:47-Steven
So they were happy with The Handmaid's Tale when that came out.

00:46:51-Steven
Yeah, Gilead Pharmaceuticals.

00:46:53-Steven
But they said that they were going to – Gilead Science is actually the name of the company.

00:46:58-Steven
Gilead, huh?

00:46:58-Steven
Yeah.

00:46:59-Steven
But they said that they were going to make the drug available to generic producers.

00:47:05-Steven
So they're not going to basically enforce their patent.

00:47:09-Steven
They're not going to keep it to themselves.

00:47:10-Bob
Oh, that's awesome.

00:47:11-Steven
Good for them.

00:47:12-Bob
Like that Scovelli guy.

00:47:14-Bob
Oh my god.

00:47:16-Bob
That guy.

00:47:17-SPEAKER_00
Oh my god.

00:47:18-Evan
Forget it.

00:47:18-Steven
Screlly.

00:47:19-Steven
Screlly.

00:47:20-SPEAKER_00
Marvin or Marvin or something.

00:47:22-Evan
Scumbag.

00:47:23-SPEAKER_00
Scumbag Screlly.

00:47:24-Steven
This could be potentially huge, right?

00:47:28-Steven
If this drug is picked up by governments, purchase lots of it and make it freely available, which would be an incredibly cost-effective public health intervention because paying for two doses of a drug a year is going to be way cheaper than treating that 1% or 2% or whatever.

00:47:47-Steven
And it's not that low in some of these countries.

00:47:52-Steven
Yeah, right.

00:47:53-Cara
This is like much higher than one or two.

00:47:54-Cara
Oh, yeah, you're right.

00:47:57-Steven
It could be, especially in this population, it could be very high.

00:48:01-Cara
When I was in Eswatini, which is the country with the highest HIV rate in the world, it's high.

00:48:07-Cara
I think we're in the 30s.

00:48:09-Steven
Worldwide, worldwide, there are 39 million cases with over 1 million new infections per year.

00:48:19-Cara
Yeah, okay.

00:48:20-Cara
Eswatini, which is a small country in southern Africa, highest HIV prevalence in the world, 25.9% of its population.

00:48:27-Steven
Yeah, that's prevalence though, not incidence.

00:48:29-Cara
Yeah, that's prevalence.

00:48:30-Cara
Yeah, I was talking incidence.

00:48:32-Cara
The incidence rate is 0.62%, which is about 4,000 cases per year.

00:48:36-Cara
Yeah, I said 1%.

00:48:37-Cara
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:48:39-Steven
So in any case, the World Health Organization had a goal of reducing new HIV infections to zero by 2030.

00:48:46-Steven
They were really nowhere on track to achieving that goal.

00:48:51-Steven
Well, they didn't have the means to be able to do that.

00:48:52-Steven
They're probably not going to achieve that goal, but they were really not on track.

00:48:55-Steven
But this drug, if they really ramp up production and distribution of this drug... They could do it.

00:48:59-Steven
...might change the calculus here.

00:49:03-Steven
and bring it back to, it's actually semi-plausible if they can do it, if not 2030 by 2035 or whatever.

00:49:10-Steven
Zero new infections of HIV would be amazing.

00:49:13-Steven
And this drug, based upon this evidence, could plausibly do it.

00:49:17-Steven
It's just a matter of now just getting it into enough people.

00:49:22-Steven
I have to say, when we do our 1000th episode, one of the topics that we're going to be covering is the history of topics that we've been dealing with for a long time.

00:49:32-Steven
We'll talk about UFOs and what were they saying 30 years ago, what were skeptics saying 30 years ago, what's actually happened over the last 20, 30 years.

00:49:40-Steven
And so this is, we're not going to be talking about this one, but I'm going to talk about it briefly now.

00:49:45-Steven
1980s basically is when HIV exploded.

00:49:49-Steven
You know when the first case was, the first case of HIV in a human?

00:49:53-UNKNOWN
79?

00:49:54-Cara
Well, it was in blood.

00:49:55-Steven
Yeah, they identified it in retrospect in the 50s.

00:49:57-UNKNOWN
1959, 1959.

00:49:57-Cara
But that's when they discovered it.

00:50:03-Steven
There was blood from a patient in 1959 when they looked and said, this guy had HIV.

00:50:08-Cara
Yeah, so it was probably even earlier than that.

00:50:10-Steven
It crossed over probably from the chimpanzees to humans sometimes in the 1930s.

00:50:15-Cara
Yeah, that's what I thought in the 30s.

00:50:17-Cara
And you think about it, that is a spillover event, but it's a very, very small spillover event.

00:50:22-Cara
The truth of the matter is, HIV could be eradicated.

00:50:26-Evan
Well, yeah, isn't that kind of the bottom line?

00:50:28-Steven
Yeah, I don't know if it would technically be eradicated with an animal reservoir.

00:50:32-Cara
I think it would, personally, because I think those spillover events are very, very rare.

00:50:38-Steven
Yeah, but it's very rare.

00:50:38-Steven
It would be eliminated with very rare potential for spillover events, or basically practically eradicated.

00:50:44-Steven
I agree, and this is the kind of thing they can do.

00:50:46-Steven
But the point I was getting to is that we were hit with this new virus that completely transformed the infectious disease subspecialty, by the way.

00:50:56-Steven
It had a massive effect on medicine in general.

00:50:59-Steven
I was in med school in the 80s.

00:51:01-Steven
It had this massive effect of HIV.

00:51:03-Steven
Oh, absolutely.

00:51:05-Steven
Here we are 30 years later.

00:51:07-Steven
It's basically a manageable chronic illness, and now we have effective preventive treatment and 100% effective new treatment that we could potentially be rolling out based upon good old-fashioned reductionist science, understanding how that little bugger works, interfering with the basic science, understanding of how it replicates and how it operates in the body, et cetera, et cetera.

00:51:31-Steven
And meanwhile, over this same period of time, going all the way back to the 80s, there were conspiracy theories about HIV, tremendous alternative medicine treatments, you know, either herbalism or homeopathy or whatever, denialism about whether or not it even exists, etc., all amounted to absolute nothing, a big steaming pile of crapola.

00:51:56-Steven
All of the pseudoscience, conspiracy theories, alternative treatments have not saved a single person.

00:52:03-Steven
They have arguably killed a lot of people by distracting them from a good old-fashioned science, which is basically curing this disease and preventing it and could lead to its functional eradication.

00:52:19-Steven
And we cannot lose that narrative.

00:52:21-Steven
That narrative is so critical because we see it over and over again.

00:52:25-Cara
And this is a disease, I think, when we think about the scale of this disease, it sometimes gets lost because of how far we've come.

00:52:33-Cara
This is, by many metrics, the third most devastating epidemic or pandemic

00:52:42-Cara
ever.

00:52:42-Evan
Yeah.

00:52:43-Cara
In all of history.

00:52:44-Evan
Yeah.

00:52:44-Evan
It's massive.

00:52:45-Cara
Yes.

00:52:46-Evan
I know it's hard to see it on a long enough timescale to recognize it for what it is.

00:52:50-Cara
But yeah, lots, lots of death and all over the world.

00:52:52-Cara
Very few pandemics were worldwide.

00:52:54-Cara
Actually, I think I think HIV AIDS and COVID have been the maybe there's one other.

00:52:59-Evan
No, there are other ones.

00:53:00-Steven
I'm sure the flu

00:53:01-Cara
fully worldwide.

00:53:02-Cara
There's a cholera pandemic worldwide.

00:53:04-Cara
A couple influenzas, yeah, that spread across the world.

00:53:07-Cara
But most of them aren't.

00:53:09-Cara
Most of them have limits on how far they were able to spread.

00:53:12-Steven
Do you have to be worldwide to be technically a pandemic?

00:53:15-Cara
No, you don't.

00:53:16-Steven
Aren't you just, there's outbreak, epidemic, and then pandemic.

00:53:21-Cara
I don't think pandemic has to be fully worldwide, though, does it?

00:53:24-Cara
Let's see, technical definition.

00:53:26-Steven
I think there's a minimum amount of countries.

00:53:28-Cara
I'm sure it doesn't have to be every single country, but it has to be probably in every country.

00:53:31-Cara
It's just widespread over a whole country or the world.

00:53:36-Steven
but that's Oxford.

00:53:38-Cara
Spreads across countries or continents.

00:53:40-Cara
Yeah, I think it's kind of a vague.

00:53:41-Steven
Yeah, continents is kind of always how I talk about it.

00:53:44-Evan
Play the board game pandemic and see what happens.

00:53:46-Cara
I think it does have to cross international borders.

00:53:48-Evan
You'll learn real fast about those.

00:53:50-Steven
Anyway, yay science.

00:53:52-Steven
Yeah, good stuff.

00:53:54-Steven
All right, Kara, tell us about this COVID protection gene.

00:53:57-Steven
What is that?

00:53:58-Cara
OK, so there's a really interesting article that was published last month in Nature.

00:54:04-Cara
called human SARS-CoV-2.

00:54:07-Cara
Remember, that's the name of the virus.

00:54:09-Cara
Yeah, human SARS-CoV-2 challenge.

00:54:11-Bob
I thought that was going to be such a big name and everyone was going to use it.

00:54:14-Bob
Nobody used it.

00:54:15-Bob
It's only in the literature.

00:54:16-Cara
Yeah, we're all like COVID, had COVID, COVID pandemic, during COVID.

00:54:19-Cara
It's like refers to so many.

00:54:20-Cara
It's a time span now.

00:54:22-Cara
It's the virus itself.

00:54:23-Cara
It's the infection.

00:54:24-Cara
But anyway, human SARS-CoV-2 challenge uncovers local and systemic response dynamics.

00:54:32-Cara
Okay, what does that mean?

00:54:33-Cara
Well, there was an interesting study that was by British researchers who did what's called a challenge trial, which we don't often hear about because the ethics can sometimes be murky.

00:54:49-Cara
But it's a situation in which people are intentionally infected.

00:54:54-Cara
So this was at the height of the pandemic.

00:54:55-Cara
It was in 2021.

00:54:57-Cara
I think vaccines were available.

00:55:02-Cara
I'd actually have to look at the exact date of when they started collecting data.

00:55:06-Cara
I'm not sure if vaccines were available, but the individuals that volunteered for this research were unvaccinated.

00:55:15-Cara
They were young, they were otherwise healthy.

00:55:18-Cara
And this was a study with 36 people, where they put a very small dose of the virus in their nose.

00:55:27-Cara
And then the hope was that they could learn a lot about the way that the virus spread the early cellular responses, the immune response, you know, what is going on, they called it the dynamics of the early cellular responses.

00:55:43-Cara
So they put the virus in everybody's nose, these 36 people's nose, and then they pick 16 of those people.

00:55:51-Cara
So they look at a bunch of data across all 36 of those people for their study.

00:55:55-Cara
It's really interesting.

00:55:56-Cara
Oh my gosh, look at all this cool stuff that's happening.

00:55:58-Cara
We've got this, you know, great information that we can now use to try and understand how this virus replicates in the body, how people get sick, what happens in their bodies.

00:56:08-Cara
They take 16 of those people and they go, we're going to do like further analysis with them.

00:56:12-Cara
We want to kind of dig even deeper.

00:56:14-Cara
And this analysis takes a lot of time and money.

00:56:16-Cara
And so we're going to like drill down with 16 of them.

00:56:19-Cara
And they take these 16 people and they start to look and see what happens.

00:56:24-Cara
And something kind of strange took place.

00:56:27-Cara
And at first they were actually kind of mad because they were like, shoot, this like ruins our study.

00:56:32-Cara
But only six of those 16 people actually got sick.

00:56:38-Cara
even though they put COVID in their nose.

00:56:40-Cara
And they were like, huh, now we can't even figure out what's going on with their immune system because they're not getting sick.

00:56:50-Cara
But then later they realized, wait, this is probably actually really helpful.

00:56:53-Cara
It's probably really important that we understand why these people aren't getting sick and how these people aren't getting sick.

00:57:00-Cara
And so they decided to dig a little bit deeper.

00:57:04-Cara
And they realized that of those people who didn't get sick, that was 10 people, of those 10 people, they fell into two different categories.

00:57:16-Cara
Seven of the 10 never tested positive for the virus at all.

00:57:22-Cara
They just didn't

00:57:23-Cara
They didn't feel sick, and they also never showed that they had the virus.

00:57:27-Cara
Three of them didn't really feel sick, but they did show a transient infection.

00:57:34-Cara
So, you know, and we've heard about this.

00:57:36-Cara
If you remember all the stuff that we were trying to keep track of early in sort of the COVID timeline, and it was like, even if you test positive, you might be a carrier, or even if you don't feel sick, you might still test positive.

00:57:47-Cara
So yeah, so three of them were like that.

00:57:49-Cara
Seven of them never even got sick and never tested positive.

00:57:53-Cara
And they did find that there were some subtle changes in some of the immune responses between those two groups.

00:58:01-Cara
But what was really interesting is that there was a big similarity across all of the people in the non-sick group.

00:58:11-Cara
They found that those individuals had a very particular

00:58:18-Cara
gene that was showing elevated activity.

00:58:21-Cara
It was the HLA-DQA2 gene.

00:58:25-Cara
And these are specialized immune cells that had actually been studied previously, but not much.

00:58:30-Cara
They didn't really understand what the gene did.

00:58:33-Cara
Some studies previously had hypothesized that it was linked to milder outcomes from viral infection, but they weren't really sure.

00:58:42-Cara
They also found a couple other kind of interesting things that like, okay, there's this response, it's an immune reaction that is called an interferon response.

00:58:55-Cara
And they found that in the people who were only transiently infected, the ones who, you know, caught the virus and like never really got sick, and the virus went away really fast.

00:59:05-Cara
They had an interferon response that showed up in their nose.

00:59:12-Cara
They were able to swab for it and see it.

00:59:16-Cara
And it came like within a day.

00:59:18-Cara
People who got sick, it took them five days for that response to show up in their nose.

00:59:24-Cara
So something about that time gap

00:59:28-Cara
led the researchers to believe that those who don't have this gene variant, their bodies give the virus time to spread and to divide.

00:59:39-Cara
Whereas, to proliferate, whereas if there's really fast activity, local activity at the site of the infection, that could have prevented the transiently infected individuals from from ever getting sick in the first place.

00:59:53-Cara
Weirdly, in the sick participants, they actually showed the interferon activity in blood samples before they ever saw it in their nose, which is super weird because they gave them the virus in their nose.

01:00:06-Cara
So there was definitely a delayed immune response, which seems like it's pretty typical of the population with COVID.

01:00:14-Cara
Whereas in these groups that either didn't get sick but tested positive, they had a really fast interferon reaction only in the nose.

01:00:23-Cara
And for the individuals who never tested positive at all,

01:00:26-Cara
both of those groups had elevated activity of this specific gene, HLA-DQA2.

01:00:33-Cara
So, you know, the researchers are saying, of course, we've learned a lot since then, but having looked at all of this data and recognizing that this particular gene has probably an important function

01:00:47-Cara
in immune response.

01:00:50-Cara
Not only is it pretty lucky for these folks with regards to COVID-19, but it could also open up, I think, a lot of research into this kind of genotyping for other infections as well.

01:01:04-Cara
So I don't know, maybe in the future, we will have

01:01:09-Cara
you know, we'll be genotyped and we'll see, am I more resistant to these types of infections?

01:01:13-Cara
Do I have this type of immune capability that will allow me to kind of know that in advance versus those who don't have this variant and, you know, are much more likely to get infected?

01:01:29-Cara
It is fascinating to think, and I'm sure that you all know somebody like this, too.

01:01:35-Cara
Like, I've had COVID once that I know of.

01:01:37-Cara
How about you all?

01:01:39-Bob
I had it one time.

01:01:40-Bob
It took a few years for me to get it.

01:01:43-Cara
Yeah, it took a few years for me to.

01:01:44-Cara
I only got it for the first time last year.

01:01:46-Bob
Yeah, I didn't get it until 2023.

01:01:47-Evan
You got it from Florida, right?

01:01:49-Evan
When you came back from Florida?

01:01:51-Cara
No, I got it on a... Oh, you got it on a flight back from... Oh yeah, Bob, you were after me.

01:01:55-Cara
You got it on a flight back from Disney World.

01:01:57-Bob
I think I'm I think I'm over the day after we got home.

01:01:59-Bob
So it might have been, you know, might have been at Disney World might have been at Disney World.

01:02:03-Bob
We're proud to have some big crowds.

01:02:05-Bob
So yeah, it could have been then.

01:02:07-Cara
And I got it on a flight home from Jordan just a few months before that.

01:02:10-Jay
And I got it on a flight home from Italy.

01:02:13-Cara
Nice.

01:02:14-Jay
And I don't know how I got it.

01:02:15-Cara
Jay, how many times that you know of have you had it?

01:02:18-Jay
I mean, I think I only had it once.

01:02:19-Jay
It's possible I had it a second time, very late.

01:02:24-Jay
You know, I was testing, but I definitely had it once really bad.

01:02:28-Cara
Yeah, and Evan?

01:02:29-Evan
One time for me, one positive confirmed test for me.

01:02:33-Cara
Yeah, yeah.

01:02:34-Cara
And we've all known people who have had it like five times, and we all know people, maybe at this point it's harder to know somebody, who either claim or who have, I think, a good story that they haven't had COVID.

01:02:48-Cara
And it's really interesting to say, what is different about these individuals?

01:02:52-Cara
This study inadvertently asked that question,

01:02:55-Cara
and was able to partially answer that question.

01:02:58-Cara
And part of the reason that this study was so incredibly valuable, because this happened in 2021, is that when they try to do challenge studies now, they have a hard time infecting people.

01:03:08-Cara
So many people have immunity, which is probably why we've only had it the one time.

01:03:16-Bob
Can you induce it?

01:03:16-Steven
Yeah, plus all those vaccines.

01:03:18-Cara
I mean, I think that's what I'm saying.

01:03:19-Cara
That's the immunity.

01:03:20-Cara
So it's either exposure to wild type or it's vaccine immunity.

01:03:24-Bob
Or both.

01:03:25-Cara
But yeah, it's both.

01:03:27-Bob
Together, like people that have had both is the super immunity, right?

01:03:30-Cara
Totally.

01:03:31-Bob
For a while anyway.

01:03:32-Cara
And most of the globe has some amount of immunity against COVID at this point.

01:03:36-Cara
So it's harder for them to do these kinds of trials.

01:03:38-Cara
But back then when our immune systems were naive,

01:03:41-Cara
they were able to successfully infect these test participants.

01:03:47-Cara
And they were really surprised when some people were like, just, yeah, I didn't get sick.

01:03:51-Bob
Can we induce that gene variant?

01:03:54-Bob
Can we use CRISPR or something to give it to people so they're superhuman like us?

01:03:59-Cara
Like us?

01:04:00-Cara
We probably don't have it, Bob.

01:04:01-Bob
I assume at least I have it.

01:04:06-Cara
By the time we both got infected, we were so vaccinated.

01:04:10-Evan
Bob already bought a cape.

01:04:11-Bob
That was the last of the extended family.

01:04:15-Bob
But can we use CRISPR or that other new technique?

01:04:21-Cara
I mean, I think that's a pretty open question, right?

01:04:24-Cara
What can CRISPR do?

01:04:25-Cara
What can't CRISPR do?

01:04:26-Steven
It's easier to do it in embryos than adults.

01:04:30-Steven
But the HLA typing is, for a long time, you know, that's old news, right?

01:04:39-Steven
That has a massive effect on risk factors that deal with the immune system, like your risk of getting autoimmune diseases, for example.

01:04:48-Steven
Oh, so they're typing for variants of the opposite— Very strongly with certain HLA typing.

01:04:52-Cara
Oh, so they're typing for the opposite direction.

01:04:55-Cara
They're looking for lowered expression.

01:04:57-Steven
But also, anything to do with immune function, there's an HLA association with it, basically.

01:05:04-Steven
And so, yeah, this is just one more piece to that puzzle of identifying an HLA type.

01:05:10-Steven
Yeah, a specific HLA gene.

01:05:11-Steven
Yeah, that confers some good immunity.

01:05:14-Steven
But I wonder if it also conveys a higher risk of certain autoimmune diseases.

01:05:20-Steven
You know, evolution is all about optimizing trade-offs.

01:05:24-Cara
We always talk about cancer versus aging.

01:05:26-Steven
Yeah.

01:05:27-Steven
So I wonder if like fighting infection versus autoimmune diseases is another kind of trade-off.

01:05:31-Steven
But sometimes evolution also hits upon just straight-up superior genetics, superior proteins, whatever.

01:05:38-Steven
So some people just do have better immune systems than others.

01:05:42-Cara
Yeah.

01:05:42-Cara
And they still don't know why among the people

01:05:46-Cara
who had elevated HLA-DQA2, did some of them have a transient infection and some of them not get sick at all when they had the exact same exposure.

01:05:55-Cara
So clearly it's not the whole picture, but it's part of the picture.

01:06:01-Steven
All right, Bob, I don't know what nuclear pasta is, but I want some.

01:06:05-Bob
Oh, my God.

01:06:05-Bob
This is pretty awesome.

01:06:07-Evan
You can get it at Olive Garden with nuclear breadsticks.

01:06:12-Bob
Scientists have filled in some of the fascinating details of the exotic types of matter in the crust of neutron stars.

01:06:20-Bob
They have shown the likely existence of a phenomenon called proton drip that exists alongside neutron drip.

01:06:27-Bob
and my favorite exotic matter in the universe, nuclear pasta.

01:06:32-Bob
The researchers at the Department of Physics at TU Darmstadt and the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen, these findings are reported in the physical review letters.

01:06:41-Bob
The study's title is neutron star matter as a dilute solution of protons in neutrons.

01:06:46-Bob
So yes, I will now be talking about nuclear pasta.

01:06:50-Bob
When I read those words, I immediately knew I will be talking about this on the show, and I just devoured it.

01:06:56-Bob
So this is just ultimately at its most basic level.

01:06:59-Bob
It's another amazing chapter about the most fascinating objects in the universe, neutron stars.

01:07:05-Bob
When giant stars explode their outer layers and collapse their cores, if the core's mass is above what's called the Tolman-Oppenheimer-Volkov limit, two to three solar masses, then nothing known can stop the collapse and we have a black hole.

01:07:19-Bob
Now I say nothing known because there's some kind of fringe theories out there and some hope that there's a pit stop before black holes and some collapsing masses might create a quark star.

01:07:30-Bob
So that's all I'll say on that.

01:07:31-Bob
Look it up.

01:07:32-Bob
Fascinating possibility.

01:07:34-Bob
So okay, if that final core mass is below the Tolman-Oppenheimer-Volkov limit,

01:07:40-Bob
Then we have a wonderful city-sized neutron star with a mass of about two suns squeezed inside.

01:07:46-Bob
Now, to call this simply a ball of neutrons, it's not inaccurate, but it's like calling Jay's meatballs just spheres of mostly protein and lipids.

01:07:56-Bob
This doesn't quite do it justice at all.

01:07:59-Bob
So, yes, neutron stars are mostly neutrons, but we believe that there are layers of exotic degenerate matter in there that are different depending on how far below the crust they are, what forces are prominent, how much gravity, how much pressure, and lots of other factors as well.

01:08:15-Bob
So, lots of different layers.

01:08:17-Bob
Now, the surface layer of a neutron star, maybe you didn't know this, is only a millimeter thick and it actually has regular atoms on it, like helium and iron.

01:08:26-Bob
I remember, I mean, I've known that for a few years.

01:08:29-Bob
I just didn't think there were anything really any normal elements in a neutron star, but there are on the surface.

01:08:35-Bob
The gravity and pressure on the surface is nasty, of course, but it's not enough to overcome the structural integrity that atoms have that are there.

01:08:43-Bob
So why do you think?

01:08:44-Bob
What do you think?

01:08:45-Bob
What is it about the structural integrity of the atoms that prevents them from changing dramatically?

01:08:51-Bob
It's one answer, and there's multiple.

01:08:52-Bob
The one answer is the electrostatic repulsion, right, Coulomb repulsion.

01:08:57-Cara
I love that you knew we weren't actually going to answer that question.

01:09:00-Bob
That was a rhetorical question.

01:09:02-Cara
You didn't even give us a second to try.

01:09:04-Bob
I planned it.

01:09:05-Bob
I planned on using it, and I got a couple more questions, but that was the easiest one, but I just didn't feel like waiting.

01:09:11-Bob
So the electrostatic repulsion, that's like charges repelling each other, right?

01:09:16-Bob
So positive protons, for example, they can't get too close together.

01:09:20-Bob
They can't get too close to each other because of this electrostatic repulsion.

01:09:24-Bob
They just don't want to get too close unless, of course, you apply enough force.

01:09:28-Bob
So a little deeper into the crust, though, and the forces and the pressures have ramped up enough to create a phenomenon that they're very confident about called neutron drip.

01:09:39-Bob
This week, they've known about for a while and they seem like, yeah, yeah, it exists.

01:09:44-Bob
That was my take.

01:09:45-Bob
So neutron drip, now it's not a type of old fashioned coffee.

01:09:48-Bob
Although, if it were Jay, I'm sure Jay is thinking that if it really were coffee, it'd be better than current coffee.

01:09:54-Bob
But no, neutron drip happens when neutrons experience two things at the same time, the intense gravity that's down there, plus the repulsion of the strong force.

01:10:02-Bob
which doesn't like it when neutrons get that close.

01:10:05-Bob
So these forces are battling out at that level, and that force battle allows the neutrons to essentially leave the nucleus and become independent and stable.

01:10:17-Bob
And if you think about it, or if you're familiar with neutrons a little bit, that's amazing because neutrons

01:10:25-Bob
are surprisingly not known to be hanging out by themselves.

01:10:30-Bob
If you see one, it's in a nucleus.

01:10:32-Bob
It's kind of like quarks in that sense.

01:10:35-Bob
And it's amazing because if you did take a neutron out from a normal nucleus of an atom, it would decay in about on average in 14 minutes.

01:10:44-Bob
So the only thing keeping a neutron stable and lasting indefinitely essentially is because it's in a nucleus

01:10:52-Bob
Or, apparently, if you have it within the crust of a neutron star and the pressures are so intense that it can actually, the pressures and the other forces are so intense that the neutron star can leave the nucleus, the neutron drip as they call it, then it can be stable and it can be independent and it can last indefinitely.

01:11:13-Bob
So that's kind of like the only way a neutron star can be independent is to be within these certain layers of neutron star crust.

01:11:20-Bob
So now we've got the neutron drip area.

01:11:23-Bob
If you go a little bit deeper in the crust, now that's where the magic happens.

01:11:27-Bob
That's where we have nuclear pasta.

01:11:30-Bob
And I'm just not joking about any of this.

01:11:31-Bob
This is legit.

01:11:33-Bob
And this has nothing to do with spaghettification near a black hole.

01:11:36-Bob
Nothing to do with spaghettification.

01:11:38-Bob
This is nuclear pasta.

01:11:39-Steven
That's another good book title.

01:11:41-Steven
Nuclear pasta has nothing to do with spaghettification.

01:11:44-Bob
Yeah, love it.

01:11:45-Bob
It's also a good band name.

01:11:50-Bob
Like the neutron jet, it arises when there's a special balance of forces acting on the neutrons and the protons.

01:11:56-Bob
There's this strong force trying to keep neutrons and protons close, right?

01:12:00-Bob
That's one of the things that the strong force or the residual strong force, what it really is.

01:12:05-Bob
That's what it does.

01:12:06-Bob
If you get close enough, bam, you are locked in.

01:12:09-Bob
Super strong force.

01:12:10-Bob
But then there's also the electrostatic force, called the Coulomb force, which I just mentioned above.

01:12:15-Bob
That's trying to keep the light charges apart.

01:12:18-Bob
So this other competition that's happening creates distorted shapes within the neutrons and the protons.

01:12:25-Bob
It distorts them into stable shapes

01:12:28-Bob
for this nuclear matter.

01:12:29-Bob
So it will hang out, it will last, and they are stable.

01:12:33-Bob
So the first shapes that are created, as you're going down, you're going down into the crust, the first shapes created are semispherical collections of hundreds of neutrons and protons.

01:12:43-Bob
What do you think they call that?

01:12:44-Bob
You got, it's semispherical, not a meatball, you might think maybe a meatball, not a meatball.

01:12:49-Bob
They call that gnocchi, kind of like an Italian dumpling, if you want to look at it.

01:12:55-Bob
that way.

01:12:56-Jay
Gnocchi is made out of potato.

01:12:57-Bob
Huh?

01:12:59-Bob
Gnocchi is made out of potato.

01:13:01-Bob
It's still considered part of nuclear pasta, and I don't want to hear any guff from you.

01:13:06-Bob
So I'd love the scientists to suggest that this naming convention, if it's not obvious, I just love this so much.

01:13:13-Bob
All right, you go a little deeper into the crust.

01:13:15-Bob
The gnocchi are crushed together into groups of thousands of nucleons creating these long rods.

01:13:21-Bob
What phase of nuclear matter is that?

01:13:25-Bob
It's the spaghetti!

01:13:26-Bob
It's spaghetti!

01:13:27-Bob
Long rods of nuclear pasta.

01:13:30-Bob
Of course you're going to call that spaghetti.

01:13:32-Bob
That's the spaghetti phase of nuclear degenerate matter.

01:13:35-Bob
Okay, you go deeper down and then the forces get even stronger and stronger and then these rods are fused together to form sheets.

01:13:43-Bob
You got sheets.

01:13:44-Bob
Now, what phase is that?

01:13:46-Bob
Lasagna.

01:13:46-Bob
Yes.

01:13:47-Bob
All right.

01:13:47-Bob
The non-Italian lasagna.

01:13:49-Bob
Thank you, Evan.

01:13:50-Bob
So that's a lasagna phase.

01:13:52-Bob
And it's so nice to see lasagna pasta represented here.

01:13:55-Bob
It made me very happy.

01:13:56-Bob
Usually they don't go with the lasagna connection.

01:13:59-Bob
All right, a little deeper, a little deeper, and there's another phase of nuclear matter, and this looks like spaghetti, but it's not.

01:14:06-Bob
There's a hole running down the center of it, and this is, I wasn't even really aware.

01:14:11-Bob
Bucatini.

01:14:11-Bob
Strong?

01:14:12-Bob
What?

01:14:12-Bob
Bucatini!

01:14:14-Bob
Wow, Steve, nice.

01:14:15-Bob
Where'd you pull that?

01:14:16-Bob
I wasn't familiar with bucatini, but it looks like spaghetti, long and skinny, but there's a hole down the center, and it's also in the crust of

01:14:25-Bob
of it.

01:14:41-Bob
and nuclear pasta in Italian, and I think I got it.

01:14:44-Bob
Materia nucleate degenerata and pasta nucleate, so I think I'm good.

01:14:49-Bob
All right, so the nuclear pasta is tough stuff.

01:14:51-Bob
Steve, you're going to like this.

01:14:52-Bob
Some researchers claim that the strongest known material in the universe is nuclear pasta.

01:14:58-Bob
One measurement, and Steve, you've heard of this, I'm sure.

01:15:01-Bob
One way to measure a material's strength, and there's lots of different types of strength, is shear modulus.

01:15:07-Bob
That measures the resistance to deformation, specifically shear deformation.

01:15:12-Bob
That's just one way to measure the toughness of a material, and it's an important one.

01:15:16-Bob
Now, diamond probably has the highest shear modulus that we know of.

01:15:20-Bob
It's 10 to the 12 ergs per cubic centimeter, and erg is just a unit of energy.

01:15:25-Bob
Don't worry about that.

01:15:26-Bob
It's got 10 to the 12.

01:15:28-Bob
That's 10 times higher than most metals.

01:15:30-Bob
It's the number.

01:15:32-Bob
Diamond is tough stuff.

01:15:33-Bob
It's only a billion, 10 to 12.

01:15:34-Bob
It's just a billion.

01:15:35-Bob
So a billion ergs per cubic centimeter.

01:15:38-Bob
That's the toughest material that we really know.

01:15:42-Bob
Nuclear pasta was calculated.

01:15:44-Bob
Some awesome scientists decided, I'm going to test how theoretically tough

01:15:50-Bob
nuclear pasta is.

01:15:51-Bob
They came up with a sheer modulus of 10 to the 30 ergs per cubic centimeter, compared to 10 to the 12.

01:15:58-Bob
That's a nanillion ergs.

01:15:59-Evan
There you go.

01:16:00-Bob
That's what I'm talking about.

01:16:01-Bob
There you go.

01:16:01-Bob
Everyone's waiting for that.

01:16:02-Bob
A nanillion ergs, or a million trillion trillion ergs.

01:16:07-Bob
It's a ridiculous number.

01:16:09-Bob
Come on, Bob.

01:16:09-Evan
Everyone knows what a nanillion is.

01:16:11-Bob
Well, yeah.

01:16:12-Bob
10 to the 30.

01:16:13-Bob
So but nuclear pasta, then therefore has roughly one quintillion times the strength of diamond.

01:16:19-Bob
Talk about al dente.

01:16:21-Bob
And I've been waiting for that damn line all day.

01:16:25-Bob
So so that's nuclear pasta.

01:16:27-Bob
Isn't it delicious?

01:16:28-Bob
Now we're not sure what's in the core.

01:16:30-Bob
If you keep going down towards the core of the neutron star, yeah, we're not too sure.

01:16:36-Bob
But it's got to be some crazy shit, right?

01:16:37-Bob
It's guaranteed.

01:16:39-Bob
Most theories, I think most people would say that the degenerate matter in the core of a neutron star has to be something beyond a neutron and proton nuclear pasta.

01:16:48-Bob
It's probably quark gluon plasma.

01:16:51-Bob
We've talked about that on the show.

01:16:52-Bob
Fascinating stuff.

01:16:53-Bob
Don't even get me started on it.

01:16:54-Bob
But that's probably what's in the core.

01:16:56-Bob
But we're not really

01:16:58-Bob
I'm totally sure about that.

01:16:59-Bob
It seems likely, though.

01:17:00-Bob
So you might now be wondering, so what the hell is the new research?

01:17:04-Bob
Because this is all just background I'm giving you.

01:17:06-Bob
I haven't even gotten to the meat of this.

01:17:09-Evan
Right, Kara?

01:17:10-Bob
But I know it's basically impossible to top nuclear pasta, but I will try my best.

01:17:14-Bob
So these researchers essentially filled in the gap between the neutron drip phenomenon and the nuclear pasta.

01:17:21-Bob
Okay, get your imaginations going again.

01:17:24-Bob
Imagine we're going down through the crust.

01:17:25-Bob
We're going past the surface.

01:17:27-Bob
And the first thing we encounter in the crust is the neutron dripping, right?

01:17:31-Bob
The neutron dripped.

01:17:32-Bob
We talked about that.

01:17:33-Bob
That's the first thing you see.

01:17:34-Bob
That's where the nucleus is independent and kind of gets squeezed out of the nucleus of the atoms.

01:17:42-Bob
And then after that, there's the nuclear pasta.

01:17:46-Bob
But in between those two, in between the dripping neutrons and the nuclear pasta, the researchers wanted to see if they could find a proton drip phenomena, which is similar to neutron, but nobody really knew for sure.

01:17:59-Bob
Some scientists were saying, yes, proton drips exist.

01:18:03-Bob
Other scientists were saying, no, we couldn't find any evidence of the proton

01:18:09-Bob
So they were looking at it from a new theoretical perspective, a new way of looking at it, and it seems, and their conclusion was, that at very specific depths in the crust, protons can also separate from the nucleus and form their own exotic phase of matter, just like

01:18:24-Bob
neutrons can form their own exotic phase of matter in term of these neutron drips where they can glomerate together outside.

01:18:32-Bob
They leave the nucleus and become their own phase of matter.

01:18:35-Bob
And this is before it becomes the nuclear pasta.

01:18:37-Bob
It's above.

01:18:38-Bob
This is above depth-wise the nuclear pasta.

01:18:41-Bob
So the lead researcher and theoretical physicist Achim Schwenk said, we were also able to show that this phase favors the phenomenon of nuclear pasta.

01:18:52-Bob
So that was awesome because not only did they discover this proton drip, they discovered that it helps kind of shore up the whole idea of nuclear pasta.

01:19:02-Bob
So that was just an awesome bonus right there.

01:19:05-Bob
So proton drip not only improves our confidence and understanding of nuclear pasta, it helps us model the entire crust of neutron stars.

01:19:13-Bob
You know, things like how electro-conductivity works inside there, how thermal transport works inside of neutron stars, and more.

01:19:20-Bob
And all of that, once we have a good handle on that and you know what's going on inside, then that will influence how we interpret what we observe.

01:19:31-Bob
So if we see some bizarre things happening or some mysterious thing happening with neutron stars, and there's plenty of them, we can then tie it back into what we know about the internal structure of the neutron star itself and make sense of what we're seeing.

01:19:46-Bob
Schwenk says, the better we can describe neutron stars, the better we can compare with astrophysical observations.

01:19:51-Bob
So yeah, this could in a sense revolutionize or really greatly help the study and understanding of what's going on in these amazing objects.

01:20:00-Bob
So in conclusion, my only hope now is that whatever exotic degenerate fluid we ultimately find in the core, somebody will call it spaghetti sauce.

01:20:10-Steven
All right.

01:20:11-Steven
Thanks, Bob.

01:20:12-Steven
Are you guys hungry?

01:20:14-Evan
That was actually quite filling.

01:20:16-Steven
Bob, when you go to Rome, you're going to get Caccio e pepe and bucatini.

01:20:22-Bob
That's when you get the bucatini.

01:20:23-Bob
Oh, is bucatini in there?

01:20:24-Steven
Yes.

01:20:25-Bob
Typically, yes.

01:20:27-Bob
Oh, fantastic.

01:20:28-Bob
That's how you know about bucatini, because we never had that at home.

01:20:30-Bob
That's for damn sure.

01:20:31-Steven
All right, Evan, tell us about the eyeball planet.

01:20:35-Evan
Ooh, the eye of Sauron Cecil.

01:20:39-Evan
Well, okay, it's an exoplanet, and its designation is LHS 1140 b, as in boy.

01:20:48-Evan
And yeah, we've known about this for a while.

01:20:50-Evan
Astronomers discovered it in 2017, and upon its discovery it was first believed to be most likely a gas giant, perhaps something, what, akin to the planet Neptune, maybe?

01:21:02-Evan
However, a new observation with our favorite, the James Webb Space Telescope, it suggests that LHS 1140b may not be a gas giant, instead it could be an icy or watery world with a thick atmosphere.

01:21:24-Evan
Oh, yep.

01:21:25-Evan
It could be a world completely covered in ice, similar to Jupiter's moon Europa, or be an ice world with a liquid sub-stellar ocean and a cloudy atmosphere.

01:21:36-Evan
Oh my gosh.

01:21:38-Evan
This exoplanet, it's about 1.7 times the size of Earth.

01:21:42-Evan
And right now, perhaps it's the most promising habitable zone exoplanet yet that they've been able to identify.

01:21:51-Evan
Thank you, James Webb Telescope.

01:21:53-Evan
And yeah, so what, if there's really water there?

01:21:56-Evan
I mean, is that not one of the, if not the best indicator for potential life, at least as we Terrans understand life?

01:22:04-Bob
Robots aside.

01:22:05-Bob
Yeah, that's an amazing solvent.

01:22:06-Bob
It would be fantastic if they could prove it.

01:22:09-Evan
This and this ocean, Bob, may be a temperate water ocean as well.

01:22:16-Evan
The lead author of the paper on this discovery, his name is Charles Cadieux.

01:22:23-Evan
I'm sorry if I butchered that.

01:22:26-Evan
He's a doctoral student at the University of Montreal.

01:22:30-Evan
And here's what he said in his statement, of all currently known temperate exoplanets, LHS 1140 b, could well be our best one to date to indirectly confirm liquid water on the surface of an alien world beyond our solar system.

01:22:46-Evan
It would be a major milestone in the search for potentially habitable exoplanets.

01:22:53-Evan
Bob, you know what kind of planet, what kind of star this?

01:22:57-Evan
the planet orbits around, right?

01:23:01-Bob
I don't know what kind of star it is.

01:23:02-Evan
Well, would you make a guess, right?

01:23:03-Evan
It would be a, what, red dwarf?

01:23:05-Evan
Isn't that usually what we talk about?

01:23:06-Bob
In fact, going with the odds, I would go with that, yes.

01:23:09-Evan
Yeah, yep, yep.

01:23:10-Evan
And this system is only 48 light years away from Earth.

01:23:14-Bob
Oh, man, right around the block.

01:23:16-Evan
Yep.

01:23:17-Evan
And this planet lives in the star's habitable zone, the Goldilocks zone, which we like to talk about.

01:23:23-Evan
Now here's an interesting comment.

01:23:26-Evan
Ryan McDonald, NASA Sagan fellow in the University of Michigan Department of Astronomy, I love that title, he aided in the analysis of LHS 1140b's atmosphere.

01:23:37-Evan
And here's what he said.

01:23:38-Evan
This is the first time we've ever seen a hint of an atmosphere on a habitable zone, rocky or ice rich exoplanet.

01:23:45-Evan
And he suggested that the team may have even found evidence of air on it.

01:23:51-Evan
Oh my gosh.

01:23:52-Bob
Wow.

01:23:53-Evan
I don't know.

01:23:53-Evan
That might seem a little premature, right?

01:23:55-Bob
So some gases then?

01:23:57-Evan
Right.

01:23:58-Evan
Well, right.

01:23:59-Evan
I guess if you're having air, what, that's a measurable atmosphere of some kind on the surface maybe?

01:24:06-Evan
Yeah, no.

01:24:08-Evan
So this exoplanet, again, was originally discovered in 2017, and it's been looked at by several telescopes, Spitzer telescope, Hubble Space Telescope, the TESS.

01:24:19-Evan
But they said something was missing as far as their analysis goes, and that's when they turned James Webb loose on it.

01:24:28-Evan
Without the web analysis, they couldn't really determine was this a mini-Neptune, this gas giant planet, or is it a super-Earth?

01:24:38-Evan
And James Webb was able to give them some additional data to the point where they are saying now that this data has now strongly excluded the mini Neptune scenario and confirmed the world might have a nitrogen-laced atmosphere like Earth.

01:24:56-Steven
Wow.

01:24:57-Evan
They say it's a tentative result, tentative, it needs more study, but the presence of a nitrogen-rich atmosphere would suggest the planet has retained a substantial atmosphere, creating conditions that might support liquid water.

01:25:08-Bob
So I would have to assume that they discovered this through the transit method?

01:25:13-Evan
You know, the article did not speak to that because the original discovery was back in 2017.

01:25:21-Evan
I would assume that's the case, Bob, but I can't say that for certain.

01:25:25-Evan
Because the transit method, I think, is how the vast majority of these are found.

01:25:29-Bob
It seems likely, especially if you're determining what's in the atmosphere, you're going to capture the sunlight coming through the atmosphere and then you see what that light is like, what was absorbed in the atmosphere as opposed to what's coming from the star that doesn't go through the atmosphere.

01:25:45-Bob
And then you can kind of just figure out, oh, these elements are in

01:25:49-Bob
or in the atmosphere, if there is one.

01:25:51-Bob
Interesting.

01:25:51-Bob
I had to read about this.

01:25:52-Bob
This is pretty cool.

01:25:53-Evan
They compared this a little bit to the discoveries that we've made around the TRAPPIST system.

01:26:00-Evan
They're taking a very close look at those planets in that particular system because it has some similarities to our own solar system here.

01:26:10-Evan
However, they said that when you compare this particular planet and its system versus the planets of the TRAPPIST system,

01:26:16-Evan
that LHS 1140 b appears to be calmer and less active, making it significantly less challenging to disentangle LHS 1140 b's atmosphere from stellar signals caused by star spots.

01:26:40-Evan
They made a point of that because apparently, and this is the first I really read about this, is that the analysis with the TRAPPIST system, there could be some interference by these star spots by its host

01:26:53-Evan
star causing interference, I guess, with the readings or the data itself.

01:26:59-Evan
Whereas this particular one, there's less of that fudge factor involved.

01:27:05-Bob
I wonder if the Trappist Star is younger because younger stars can often be very volatile.

01:27:10-Bob
So maybe their Trappist Star is younger and that's why it's so active.

01:27:16-Bob
But this is a red dwarf?

01:27:17-Evan
Yes.

01:27:18-Steven
Yes, so forget about it.

01:27:19-Evan
Yeah.

01:27:19-Bob
Yeah.

01:27:20-Steven
But I mean, unfortunately, I mean, there's still, I guess, a little bit of a window.

01:27:27-Steven
But in order to be close enough to a red dwarf to be in the habitable zone, you're going to probably be tidally locked.

01:27:35-Evan
You are tidally locked, Steven.

01:27:36-Evan
Yes.

01:27:36-Evan
And this is where we get to the eyeball part.

01:27:38-Steven
But you may be it may be resonant.

01:27:39-Steven
I know there may be a resonant orbit where you like you

01:27:44-Steven
the planet revolves three times for every two trips around the planet or whatever, and so it's not 100% locked, so that would be good.

01:27:51-Steven
But the other thing is, yeah, the red dwarfs are very active when they're young, and then they relatively calm down, but they're still way more active than a yellow star would be, even when they're calm, quote-unquote calm, so it's a relative thing.

01:28:05-Steven
And the thing is, if they had an atmosphere during the early phase of this star, the atmosphere would get stripped away.

01:28:12-Evan
What if it's a frozen planet?

01:28:16-Steven
Well, the atmosphere, why would it be frozen if it's in the habitable zone?

01:28:19-Steven
That's the conundrum.

01:28:21-Bob
Well, it could be at the far edge, but because those stars are so small, you'd have to be very close to be in the habitable zone, so chances are it's going to be kind of nasty.

01:28:33-Bob
And what they see as an atmosphere could potentially be like, you know,

01:28:38-Bob
rock, just vaporized rock that's just kind of like… Yeah, if it's too close.

01:28:43-Steven
But the sort of sliver of hope is that the planet reconstitutes in atmosphere after the red dwarf relatively calms down, or it was a planet that was farther away and then migrated in later in the age of the star.

01:29:00-Bob
A lot of unknowns here.

01:29:02-Steven
Yeah, there's some wiggle room there, but it's just not a great candidate for Earth-like or habitable planets.

01:29:12-Steven
The sweet spot is probably orange stars, in terms of their longevity and habitability.

01:29:21-Evan
I get that.

01:29:21-Evan
I totally get that.

01:29:23-Evan
But they still, I guess what?

01:29:25-Evan
An artist's rendition or I guess the computer models are suggesting that if, Steve, I get it, if this is a frozen world, basically, that is somehow close and hasn't been totally stripped away.

01:29:39-Evan
but one side is constantly facing its star, then what could be happening is that a patch of the planet that is facing the star could be, quote unquote, melted away, essentially.

01:29:53-Evan
revealing what would be an ocean.

01:29:54-Evan
And hence, if you envision that, there would be your eyeball, sort of like that patch of a circle within the sphere.

01:30:06-Evan
And I'll leave with this.

01:30:08-Evan
Who's quoted this?

01:30:10-Evan
Okay, this is part of the analysis.

01:30:11-Evan
Current models indicate that if LHS 1140 b has an Earth-like atmosphere, it would be a snowball planet with a bullseye ocean about 4,000 kilometers in diameter.

01:30:22-Evan
and the surface temperature of the ocean may very well even be a comfortable 20 degrees Celsius or 68 degrees Fahrenheit.

01:30:30-Bob
Mm-hmm.

01:30:30-Bob
That's a weird spec... I mean, how do you speculate that?

01:30:32-Bob
There's something that we don't know here.

01:30:33-Evan
Yeah, again, and they admit more, more, more is needed.

01:30:37-Evan
More time, I guess, more analysis with James Webb on this one.

01:30:41-Evan
But it's fascinating, and it was certainly a stunning visual of the island.

01:30:45-Bob
Yeah, right.

01:30:46-Evan
And you may have heard me earlier, I used the term terran, right?

01:30:50-Evan
The crust of Earth, right?

01:30:52-Evan
So, but if there are people in the Trappist system, they would be called Trapeicists.

01:30:57-Evan
Thank you.

01:30:59-Steven
Trapeicists.

01:31:02-Jay
All right, Jay, it's Who's That Noisy time.

01:31:05-Jay
All right, guys, last week I played This Noisy.

01:31:28-Jay
Lots of stuff going on there.

01:31:29-Jay
What do you think, guys?

01:31:30-Evan
Dot matrix printing.

01:31:31-Jay
It sounds like a printer.

01:31:32-Jay
Definitely has a printer vibe to it, but not a regular printer.

01:31:37-Jay
A listener named Alex Bonert wrote in and said his guess is that this sound you played is a seismograph recording an earth tremor.

01:31:45-Jay
I think I've only seen a real seismograph once in my entire life in a museum.

01:31:50-Jay
Every other time I've seen them, it was on some type of movie where something is exploding.

01:31:55-Jay
Right.

01:31:56-Jay
But yeah, apparently the arm moves really quick.

01:31:58-Jay
Anyway, that is not correct, but that's an interesting guess.

01:32:02-Jay
Another listener named Mitchell Altshuler wrote in and said, hi, the noisy from the SGU podcast and uploaded on July 6, 2024 was the computer called Mother from the original Alien movie.

01:32:15-Jay
That is not correct.

01:32:16-Jay
And then I'm like, I haven't heard that in a long time.

01:32:18-Jay
This is the Nostromo.

01:32:20-Jay
So let me play you a little bit of that and you tell me what you think.

01:32:34-Jay
Yeah, I recognize that sound.

01:32:38-Jay
Definitely recognize it.

01:32:38-Jay
Not a bad guess, but that is not the computer in the Stromo, but that movie from the movie Alien.

01:32:47-Jay
Freaking awesome movie.

01:32:48-Jay
The other listener named Nadine Johnson said, after a couple of glasses of wine and beer, my husband and I are guessing electronic roulette wheel.

01:32:55-Jay
And I don't think I've ever heard one of those, but this is not an electronic roulette wheel.

01:33:00-Jay
It's something else.

01:33:01-Jay
I got another guest here, a listener named Forat Janabi.

01:33:05-Jay
And he said, hey, Jay, longtime listener, second time guesser.

01:33:07-Jay
Actually, my 10 year old son is the guesser.

01:33:09-Jay
His guess is that it is a broken arcade machine.

01:33:14-Jay
I am sure that there are some broken arcade machines that sound exactly like this noisy But it's not correct, but I'm gonna tell please tell your son keep guessing keep trying life is about making mistakes and learning from our mistakes And I think this is awesome that he tried this he's not correct But I want him to guess as many times as he can next week in the following weeks, and he'll finally get it

01:33:37-Jay
All right.

01:33:37-Jay
So, guys, what the hell is this?

01:33:40-Jay
You guys were onto it.

01:33:41-Jay
This is some type of printer.

01:33:44-Jay
It's a 3D printer.

01:33:46-Evan
A 3D printer.

01:33:47-Jay
But there's something special about this 3D printer.

01:33:49-Evan
It prints other 3D printers.

01:33:51-Jay
It is the fastest 3D printer in the world.

01:33:54-Evan
Doesn't sound like it.

01:33:55-Jay
Thing is cranking like crazy.

01:33:56-Jay
Listen to this thing again.

01:33:58-Jay
You really have to see a video.

01:33:59-Jay
But this is a podcast.

01:34:00-Jay
But just listen to it.

01:34:01-Jay
It is moving super fast.

01:34:12-Jay
And later on it goes

01:34:22-Jay
The thing is cranking like crazy.

01:34:27-Jay
The person who developed it is apparently working on making them faster and faster and faster.

01:34:31-Jay
3D printers do not have to be slow.

01:34:35-Jay
I think a big part of the problem is being able to move the substrate, whatever you're using.

01:34:42-Jay
We use PLA plastic in most regular 3D printers and then they use a resin for resin printers.

01:34:49-Jay
This was more of a PLA, you know plastic Printer it is moving super fast.

01:34:55-Jay
Very cool.

01:34:56-Jay
It's the future and I'm really excited about that so thank you all for guessing and Good job to the win Which came oh, yeah.

01:35:05-Jay
Sorry.

01:35:06-Jay
Did I say the winner?

01:35:09-Jay
Okay, sorry

01:35:10-Jay
Oh, and I didn't mention, the winner is Christian Sigurdsson.

01:35:15-Jay
And Christian guessed it the day before.

01:35:18-Jay
Because he's in a country that is so far ahead time-wise that he freaking guessed it on the 5th, not on the 6th.

01:35:26-Jay
I'm like, damn, yeah.

01:35:27-Cara
What time is it in the North Pole?

01:35:28-Jay
Yes.

01:35:30-Jay
I'm like, literally, like, I'm starting to do a search over here and I realize, oh, she's just busting my stones.

01:35:35-Jay
Okay, thank you!

01:35:37-Jay
Thank you everyone for guessing.

01:35:38-Jay
I have a new noisy for this week.

01:35:40-Jay
This noisy was sent in by a listener named Paul Johnson and here it is.

01:35:56-Jay
Good luck on that one, guys.

01:35:58-Evan
Cricket sonar.

01:36:00-Jay
Guys, if you don't know the name of the game, it's Who's That Noisy?

01:36:05-Jay
Sometimes people email me and they say I'm submitting something for What's That Noisy?

01:36:11-Jay
But Steve's daughter actually said Who's That Noisy?

01:36:13-Jay
That's the name of the game.

01:36:15-Jay
My God, Steve.

01:36:16-Jay
We've been doing the show for almost 20 years.

01:36:18-Jay
We came up with Who's That Noisy in what, year two?

01:36:21-Steven
No, I'll lose later than that it was yeah like four or five I think so how old was she like six or seven?

01:36:28-Steven
Yeah, but we've been saying it for years ever since she said it when she okay.

01:36:32-Jay
That's right.

01:36:33-Jay
I remember now.

01:36:34-Steven
Yeah

01:36:35-Jay
Alright, I got a few announcements guys so as you know We're coming up on our 1000th episode if you enjoy this show if you think that the content that we make Has any impact on you or the world please do consider becoming a patron you can go to our patreon at www.patreon.com forward slash skeptics guide we'd really appreciate it.

01:36:57-Jay
I think I mentioned last week that

01:36:59-Jay
as you can tell ads are down and patrons are really what's keeping us afloat so we'd like to thank our current patrons and anyone who's considering to become a patron we'd really appreciate it you can join our mailing list this is for free we will send you an email every week about everything that we've accomplished the week before all you got to do is go to our home page and there's a button on there for that to join that

01:37:21-Jay
You can give our show a rating if you want that helps other people find us would be really appreciate you doing that We have shows with tickets Steve now the the extravaganza Steve mm-hmm August 17th 2 30 is when the show starts.

01:37:37-Jay
This is an afternoon show We're gonna be trying some new bits in that show and it's gonna be a lot of fun There are tickets available if you're interested again go to the SG use homepage for more details on that and

01:37:48-Jay
I have very, very, very few tickets left.

01:37:51-Jay
I think about six tickets left for the 1000th live recording show.

01:37:57-Jay
Right.

01:37:57-Jay
This is on 18th.

01:37:58-Jay
Yeah.

01:37:59-Jay
At last I checked.

01:38:00-Jay
I think there were six or seven tickets left.

01:38:02-Jay
They're going to go quick.

01:38:03-Jay
So if you're interested, get in there quick.

01:38:06-Jay
You can go to the SkepticsGuide.org and there's a button on there for the thousandth show.

01:38:10-Jay
Oh, and I almost forgot, Steve.

01:38:13-Jay
Patreon recently updated the platform and we now can allow free memberships So if you become a free SGU member, you'll get access to one of the channels on our discord We'll also give you portions of some of our premium content So please think about joining us for free today because what else in life is free Steve

01:38:34-Jay
So Steve, that wraps it up.

01:38:36-Jay
That's what's happening in SGU land.

01:38:38-Jay
Back to you, brother.

01:38:39-Steven
All right.

01:38:39-Steven
Thanks, Jay.

01:38:40-Steven
One quick email.

01:38:41-Steven
This comes from Bain in Newcastle, Australia.

01:38:43-SPEAKER_04
Bain.

01:38:44-SPEAKER_04
Hello.

01:38:45-Steven
Bain.

01:38:46-Steven
And he writes, good day, team.

01:38:47-Steven
First, thank you for providing us all with this show.

01:38:51-Steven
I stumbled across it a few months ago and have been an avid listener ever since.

01:38:55-Steven
We do get emails from people who like are stumbling upon our show recently, like, oh my God, there's almost a thousand episodes.

01:39:00-Steven
What do I do?

01:39:01-Steven
What do I do?

01:39:02-Steven
But yeah, we have advice for you if you want to know how to consume our back catalog.

01:39:06-Steven
Anyway, he goes on, my question relates to the latest fad of hydrogenated water.

01:39:11-Steven
It seems that a couple of adults have turned a high school science experiment into a con.

01:39:15-Steven
There's a lot of studies that hydrogen is good for the body, but hydrogenated water smells scammy.

01:39:21-Steven
I agree, it smells super scammy, because it is.

01:39:25-Steven
So this is just hydrogen gas dissolved in water, right?

01:39:30-Steven
And the hydrogen is supposed to be good for you.

01:39:33-Steven
This is a classic snake oil scam in that there's really no compelling evidence that this has any health benefits.

01:39:43-Steven
But there's all that kind of wishy-washy evidence that's used for promotion, but doesn't really answer any questions.

01:39:52-Steven
So first of all, what do you think is the main mechanistic claim made for hydrogen water?

01:39:57-Steven
How does it allegedly help you?

01:40:00-Steven
What do you guess?

01:40:01-Bob
I have no idea.

01:40:02-Bob
Flushes toxins.

01:40:03-Steven
That's a good guess, and they probably say that somewhere in there, but the number one thing is it's an antioxidant.

01:40:10-Bob
Oh, God damn it.

01:40:12-Steven
Right?

01:40:12-Steven
And as we know very well, yeah, there's no evidence that just routinely taking oral antioxidants has any health benefit.

01:40:20-Steven
So right out of the gate, they're on shaky ground.

01:40:23-Steven
A lot of the studies are marker studies, like they're looking at this marker or that marker.

01:40:27-Steven
Those are virtually useless.

01:40:29-Steven
You can't make health claims based upon them.

01:40:32-Steven
That just adds information about what may or may not be happening, but it doesn't tell us that it works, that it's good for anything.

01:40:38-Steven
And the clinical studies are all over the place, no consistent signal.

01:40:42-Steven
As one researcher who reviewed the literature said, for every study you find that says it helps is another one that says it doesn't help, which is sort of the classic pattern that we see for something that does not work, right?

01:40:53-Steven
There's no consistent signal there.

01:40:56-Steven
There's no positive studies significantly in excess of negative studies.

01:41:00-Steven
the random distribution that we expect from a null effect, right?

01:41:07-Steven
Just, you know, again, just mixed results that are all over the place.

01:41:11-Steven
So it hasn't been shown to actually have any health benefits.

01:41:15-Steven
The justifications that are made for it are very dodgy.

01:41:18-Steven
You know, there's no formal recommendation to take it as a health supplement or to be healthy.

01:41:25-Steven
It's basically a waste of money.

01:41:27-Steven
And I have patients who have specifically asked me about hydrogenated water.

01:41:30-Steven
And I basically tell them, there's no evidence that it works.

01:41:33-Steven
Don't just save your money.

01:41:34-Steven
But and this has been around for a while.

01:41:35-Steven
This is not a very recent fad.

01:41:37-Steven
We wrote about this on Science Based Medicine years ago.

01:41:40-Steven
But you know, these things have second lives on TikTok and social media.

01:41:45-Cara
Have you seen the TikTok lady that's like really making the rounds?

01:41:48-Cara
I mean, it's a little old now where she's like, as you know, water does not have hydrogen and it's not hydrogenating.

01:41:56-Steven
And you're like, what?

01:42:00-Cara
And so she's trying to sell hydrogen rich water.

01:42:03-Cara
But she makes these insane, like she doesn't know what water is.

01:42:07-Evan
Oh yeah.

01:42:09-Cara
And it's just so many people are like, say what?

01:42:12-Cara
It's so scary.

01:42:13-Evan
Do not mix your hydrogenated water with hydrogenated oil.

01:42:16-Evan
That is the rule.

01:42:17-Steven
Or how about if you mix your hydrogenated water with oxygenated water, then what happens?

01:42:22-Steven
Does it explode?

01:42:23-Steven
Or do you just get more water?

01:42:25-Evan
It explodes into more water?

01:42:27-Steven
Yeah.

01:42:28-Steven
All right, let's move on with science or fiction.

01:42:33-Evan
It's time for science or fiction.

01:42:42-Steven
Each week, I come up with three science news items or facts, two real, one fake, and I challenge my panel of skeptics to tell me which one is the fake.

01:42:51-Steven
We have a theme this week, and the theme is evolution.

01:42:55-Steven
You guys know a lot about evolution, don't you?

01:42:58-Jay
Well, sure.

01:42:59-Jay
This is about it.

01:42:59-Jay
Yeah?

01:42:59-Steven
All right.

01:43:00-Steven
We'll see if you know this.

01:43:01-Cara
I don't know how much modern evolution research I know about.

01:43:04-Steven
Well, tell me what you know about these things.

01:43:07-Steven
Ready?

01:43:07-Steven
Number one, evolutionary ideas go back to ancient Greek philosophy, going back to Anaximander, who postulated survival of the fittest and that humans evolved from fish.

01:43:21-Steven
Eye number two, the North American pronghorn antelope is actually most closely related to African giraffes.

01:43:29-Steven
And eye number three, although not confirmed until recently, in retrospect, the oldest pterodactyl specimen was discovered in Germany in the 14th century.

01:43:41-Bob
Bob, go first.

01:43:42-Evan
Hey, Bob.

01:43:43-Bob
Oof.

01:43:44-Evan
You always start with a, what is that called?

01:43:48-Bob
Ancient, um, aplosive?

01:43:51-Bob
Um, I don't want to be, yeah.

01:43:54-Bob
Thank you.

01:43:54-Bob
Okay, so evolutionary ideas go back to ancient Greek philosophy.

01:43:58-Bob
I've never heard of that going back that far.

01:44:03-Bob
What year was Anaximander?

01:44:04-Bob
600 BC.

01:44:04-Bob
Oof.

01:44:05-Bob
Wow.

01:44:08-Evan
They know that because they found a coin with 600 BC marked on it.

01:44:12-Bob
Okay, gotcha.

01:44:13-Bob
As a North American pronghorn, most closely related to African giraffes.

01:44:20-Bob
I mean, that's far away, but it wasn't as far a long time ago.

01:44:25-Bob
I guess it's possible.

01:44:26-Bob
It doesn't seem

01:44:28-Bob
Like, oh yeah, no brainer note for sure, but it's not really that crazy.

01:44:34-Bob
And pterodactyl specimens discovered in Germany, but not recognized, but it was discovered in the 14th century.

01:44:40-Bob
I just don't know where, how unreasonable it would be for pterodactyls to be discovered in Germany.

01:44:47-Bob
if you know, have there been other pterodactyls discovered there?

01:44:50-Bob
I think maybe not, but I don't know.

01:44:53-Bob
And I don't know how crazy it would be that they were discovered if they were discovered there.

01:44:58-Bob
You know, if there was like, never been a hint of any pterodactyls, and then, oh, yeah, we found one in Germany, centuries ago, that I might want to say that that's fiction, but I just don't know.

01:45:07-Bob
So the only one that's directly saying no way is Greek philosophy, survival of the fittest, and that we evolved from

01:45:17-Bob
see life.

01:45:18-Bob
I mean, come on.

01:45:19-Bob
I would have heard of that.

01:45:20-Bob
I got to do that card.

01:45:21-Bob
I got to play that card.

01:45:23-Bob
Something I would have I would have heard about and remembered.

01:45:25-Bob
So I'll say that's fiction, but I'm probably wrong.

01:45:28-Jay
Okay, Jay.

01:45:30-Jay
Although not confirmed until recently, in retrospect, the oldest pterodactyl specimen was discovered in Germany in the 14th century.

01:45:37-Jay
Wow, so they're saying they found it in the 14th century.

01:45:40-Jay
Wow.

01:45:41-Jay
Well, I have never heard of that.

01:45:43-Jay
That's interesting.

01:45:44-Jay
I'm not sure about that.

01:45:45-Jay
I don't know.

01:45:46-Jay
Let me let that sit for a second.

01:45:48-Jay
The second one, the North American pronghorn antelope is actually most closely related to African giraffes.

01:45:54-Jay
The pronghorn is a beautiful antelope.

01:45:56-Jay
Have you guys ever seen one?

01:45:58-Evan
No, I haven't.

01:45:58-Jay
You'll never forget it.

01:45:59-Jay
When you see their their antlers, you'll never forget them.

01:46:02-Jay
They're just really cool shaped.

01:46:04-Jay
Yeah.

01:46:04-Jay
I mean, you know, I can't I don't see why I even though giraffes have crazy long necks and everything like, you know, they could have evolved that relatively quickly.

01:46:12-Jay
I think that that one's probably science.

01:46:14-Jay
Then the first one going back to ancient Greek philosophy with an ex amander who said that survival of the fittest and that humans evolved from fish.

01:46:24-Jay
Yeah, I see what Bob is saying.

01:46:26-Jay
But there was a lot of philosophers talking at that time saying a lot of different stuff.

01:46:32-Bob
True.

01:46:32-Jay
You know, I don't know how if this is true, I don't know how deeply he went into any details.

01:46:37-Jay
I bet you it was just kind of some if it happened, it was light speculation.

01:46:41-Jay
Yeah, I don't know.

01:46:42-Jay
I don't know if they found that that's pterodactyl specimen in the 14th century or something.

01:46:46-Jay
Something about that one is telling me it's not true.

01:46:49-Jay
So I'm going to say that's the fiction.

01:46:51-Jay
OK, Kara.

01:46:52-Cara
OK, so I think that the North American pronghorn antelope being most closely related to the African giraffe is, I don't want to say likely, but could be science, mostly because there are a lot of animals like

01:47:07-Cara
like elephants, hyraxes, which are also known as rock dassies, and manatees are closely related.

01:47:16-Cara
And it's like, what?

01:47:17-Cara
And it doesn't seem likely that an antelope would be related to, or at least not more closely related to a giraffe than other antelopes.

01:47:27-Cara
But most of the antelopes that I know about are

01:47:29-Cara
African.

01:47:31-Cara
Obviously, we do have antelopes in North America.

01:47:33-Cara
But it's also not uncommon for animals to have weird names that aren't actually what they are.

01:47:38-Cara
So because up until we could do genetic work, we were just going, oh, this hip kind of looks like that one's hip.

01:47:44-Cara
They're probably related.

01:47:45-Cara
So that one I think could be science because it could be like a case of mistaken identity.

01:47:50-Cara
But the two that I'm grappling with right now are Anaximander.

01:47:56-Cara
I think the thing that's bugging me about this one is survival of the fittest.

01:48:00-Cara
And so I'm going to ask you a question that you probably can't tell me the answer to.

01:48:04-Cara
But is that our modern understanding of survival of the fittest?

01:48:07-Cara
Or is that his version of survival of the fittest?

01:48:10-Steven
It's survival of the fittest people with who are stronger, faster, better, whatever, are more likely to survive and pass those traits on.

01:48:18-Cara
right.

01:48:18-Cara
Okay, so yeah, it had nothing to do with genes.

01:48:20-Steven
Okay, so clearly, I mean, clearly has nothing to do with genes.

01:48:23-Cara
But I mean, it wasn't also about the fittest like, okay, yeah, it wasn't about fitness.

01:48:28-Cara
It was about and then the one about the pterodactyl.

01:48:34-Cara
Okay, so what from what I remember the first

01:48:38-Cara
dinosaur, and I'm going to be clear because a pterodactyl is not a dinosaur, it's a flying reptile.

01:48:43-Cara
First dinosaur specimens were discovered in like the 17 or 1800s.

01:48:47-Cara
So that would be a, that'd be hundreds of years before the first dinosaur, a pterodactyl specimen was discovered and knew that it was a pterodactyl specimen.

01:48:58-Cara
I don't know.

01:48:58-Cara
I don't think there's anything in the lore or the literature about these giant reptiles.

01:49:02-Steven
No, they didn't.

01:49:02-Steven
That's the whole point.

01:49:04-Cara
They didn't know what it was.

01:49:05-Cara
They didn't know what it was.

01:49:06-Steven
Not confirmed.

01:49:07-Cara
Yeah.

01:49:08-Cara
Oh, I thought you were saying, although not confirmed until recently, that was the oldest specimen, as in the oldest.

01:49:14-Steven
In retrospect, looking back, oh, that was a frickin pterodactyl they discovered in the 14th century.

01:49:19-Steven
But they didn't know until very recently that that's what it was.

01:49:22-Cara
So what, just so that you know, the way that this is written and the way that I'm interpreting it, although not confirmed until recently, in retrospect, the oldest pterodactyl specimen, not the first one discovered, the literal geologically oldest.

01:49:35-Steven
No, the first one discovered.

01:49:37-Steven
Specimen, the oldest specimen, not the oldest species or whatever.

01:49:41-Cara
That would still be the oldest specimen.

01:49:47-Cara
That changes things a lot for me.

01:49:49-Cara
That could happen if somebody found like a finger bone or something, had no idea what it was.

01:49:54-Cara
Let me file it away for centuries.

01:49:58-Cara
And it is also kind of weird to think that we didn't even notice all this really old shit in the ground until like the 17 or 1800s.

01:50:05-Cara
The Bible told us to not look, right?

01:50:08-Cara
More plausible.

01:50:09-Bob
Yeah, it is.

01:50:11-Cara
And I'm still gonna say, yeah, the pterodactyl is the is the fiction.

01:50:14-Bob
Really?

01:50:15-Bob
Okay.

01:50:16-Cara
I don't know, though.

01:50:16-Cara
It's, I don't feel strongly about it.

01:50:19-Bob
God damn twinkos.

01:50:21-Cara
Okay, twinkos.

01:50:24-Evan
Pantera is a group in Panera.

01:50:25-Cara
Yeah, exactly.

01:50:28-Evan
cracking me up.

01:50:29-Bob
And Terra's also a cool car.

01:50:31-Evan
Oh, really?

01:50:31-Evan
I'll have to look that up.

01:50:34-Evan
But we digest.

01:50:37-Evan
Yeah, number one.

01:50:38-Evan
All right, so Anaximander.

01:50:41-Evan
Has nobody here heard of Anaximander?

01:50:42-Evan
Because I learned about Anaximander a very long time ago.

01:50:45-Bob
Yeah, I heard of him.

01:50:46-Evan
Anaximander and Anaxagoras was another one.

01:50:49-Evan
In fact, I had a Dungeons & Dragons

01:50:51-Evan
character, a monk named Axagoras, which I pulled from the name Anaxagoras, which reminds me of Anaximander.

01:50:59-Evan
I just wanted to throw that out there.

01:51:00-Evan
So therefore, I know a little bit about this, but here's why I think this one is science.

01:51:05-Evan
Because if my recollection is such, and I can credit my daughter for this because she used to want to watch Carl Sagan's Cosmos every night for several months, if not a year, before going to sleep.

01:51:17-Evan
So in her room would be

01:51:20-Evan
the DVD player, and the Cosmos series.

01:51:22-Evan
I believe on one of those episodes, Carl Sagan talks specifically about Anaximander.

01:51:29-Evan
No way.

01:51:30-Evan
I believe it was in the context of the first thoughts about these kinds of things, including evolution.

01:51:36-Evan
I'm going to say that that one's science.

01:51:37-Evan
What the hell?

01:51:39-Evan
If my recollection is correct, it might not be correct.

01:51:42-Evan
The second one about an antelope, right?

01:51:44-Evan
Oh my gosh, how could a North American antelope here be closely related to an African giraffe?

01:51:50-Evan
That's crazy.

01:51:51-Evan
Now, I think we've talked about situations before where there is that sort of disconnect, like you said, the manatee, for example, Cara, in which you wouldn't think, or like, I don't know, don't we share a bunch of DNA with a sea anemone or a sponge or something, right?

01:52:08-Evan
So there's all sorts of weird

01:52:11-Evan
play like that happening in the world between animals and things.

01:52:16-Evan
So I'm not surprised by that one, even though I don't have any hard knowledge on it.

01:52:20-Evan
And by the process of elimination, that means all I'm left with is the pterodactyl one, which I have no idea about.

01:52:26-Evan
But because that's all I'm left with to choose from, I have to go with that as the fiction.

01:52:30-Steven
all right so you're all in agreement on the antelope one so we'll start there the North American pronghorn antelope is actually most closely related to African giraffes you guys all think this one is science and this one is science

01:52:47-Steven
Yeah, this is kind of an easy call.

01:52:49-Steven
There's all kinds of screwed up taxonomy.

01:52:53-Steven
You could just have a whole list of things that are misnamed, or you would be shocked to find what they're most closely related to, etc.

01:53:00-Steven
Jay, you referred to the prong horns antlers, but they don't have antlers.

01:53:07-Steven
What do they have?

01:53:08-Steven
What are those things on their head?

01:53:09-Cara
Horns.

01:53:11-Steven
They're not really horns either.

01:53:12-Cara
Okay, they're not antlers, they're not horns, they are... It's hair!

01:53:16-Evan
It's like fingernail material, isn't it?

01:53:20-Evan
Like dead cells, a bunch of dead cells.

01:53:22-Evan
Is that what a horn is?

01:53:23-Cara
That's what a horn is.

01:53:24-Steven
Yeah, it's not a horn, it's not an antler, it's an outgrowth of bone.

01:53:31-Cara
Oh, it's actual bone.

01:53:33-Steven
Just like on giraffes.

01:53:37-Steven
Right?

01:53:38-Steven
They have the same thing.

01:53:40-Steven
What's the third animal, by the way, that's in that group?

01:53:43-Steven
What's the other animal that is most closely related to giraffes?

01:53:47-Steven
I think I might know that.

01:53:48-Cara
Oh, it's the... Oh, Cappy.

01:53:51-Cara
Cappy, yeah.

01:53:52-Evan
That's right, Cappy.

01:53:55-Steven
So it's not an antelope at all.

01:53:56-Cara
It is not, people.

01:54:00-Cara
No, it looks like a zebra giraffe.

01:54:03-Bob
Right.

01:54:04-Bob
It does.

01:54:04-Bob
It looks like a zebra giraffe.

01:54:05-Bob
It's like a zebra deer kind of.

01:54:08-Bob
Oh, and it's got those little little horny things on above its eyes.

01:54:12-Bob
I guess that's the same.

01:54:13-Bob
Those are those bony growths again.

01:54:15-Bob
Cool.

01:54:16-Bob
I could definitely see some giraffe in that bad boy for sure for the Okapi anyway.

01:54:20-Steven
Oh, the Okapi, definitely.

01:54:22-Bob
Yeah.

01:54:23-Cara
Cute little ears.

01:54:24-Steven
Okay, let's go back to number one.

01:54:27-Steven
Evolutionary ideas go back to ancient Greek philosophy, going back to Anaximander, who postulated survival of the fittest and that humans evolved from fish.

01:54:35-Steven
Bob, you think this one is the fiction.

01:54:38-Steven
Everyone else thinks this one is science.

01:54:40-Steven
And this one is science.

01:54:44-Steven
Sorry, Bob.

01:54:45-Bob
Whatever.

01:54:46-Bob
Wow, that's cool.

01:54:47-Steven
And it wasn't just him.

01:54:48-Steven
There were lots of guys back then, several.

01:54:50-Bob
Did they say survival of the fittest?

01:54:53-Steven
I don't know if they used that specific term, but that's exactly what they were describing.

01:54:57-Bob
And it wasn't just like the strongest or whatever, it was the most fit.

01:55:00-Steven
But of course, they didn't understand biology at the time.

01:55:16-Steven
So, he thought there were these primal forces in the universe, and that these try different combinations, and then the ones that work better survive longer.

01:55:27-Steven
But they did think that creatures evolve over time in this process.

01:55:31-Steven
It's almost like mix-and-match organs and stuff, I guess is what they were thinking.

01:55:35-Steven
And he did think, and there were others who also thought that humans evolved from other creatures, like fish.

01:55:42-Cara
It's, it's amazing to think how long Judeo-Christian ideals, once they came on the scene, stymied this kind of thinking.

01:55:51-Steven
Right.

01:55:52-Cara
You know, even Darwin, like, it was, he was like, he didn't publish for years.

01:55:57-Steven
Mm hmm.

01:55:57-Cara
Because he was like, wanted to get it just right.

01:56:01-Bob
Yeah.

01:56:02-Bob
Wallace is on your heels.

01:56:04-Bob
So I better publish quick.

01:56:06-Steven
And they had fossils back then, mainly of marine life.

01:56:10-Bob
Yeah, I'm sure.

01:56:12-Steven
And they had to come up with ideas about, well, where did these come from?

01:56:17-Steven
What are these?

01:56:18-Cara
Was that where a lot of that mythology?

01:56:22-Steven
Sometimes mythology, but they also thought that it was a mineral.

01:56:25-Steven
That this is, like, see, nature just creates these biological forms spontaneously.

01:56:32-Bob
Oh, spontaneous generation.

01:56:34-Steven
A lot of interesting ideas, but there were definitely a lot of evolutionary thinking going back even to ancient Greek philosophy.

01:56:41-Bob
And it never went away.

01:56:42-Steven
You know, again, remember, like the pre-Darwin Lamarck, right?

01:56:49-Steven
Lamarck was an evolutionist.

01:56:52-Steven
And Lamarck, he gets a bad rap.

01:56:54-Steven
He actually, the idea of Lamarckian evolution existed before him.

01:57:00-Steven
He didn't really champion it.

01:57:02-Steven
And he, by the end of his career, he had rejected it.

01:57:06-Steven
He set out to see the idea that there's this inherent progress in evolution over time.

01:57:12-Steven
He set out to show that that was the case.

01:57:16-Steven
But he did good science.

01:57:17-Steven
He made good observations and he actually proved the opposite and came around to it because that's what the evidence showed.

01:57:24-Cara
Sadly, that theory has his namesake.

01:57:27-Bob
Poor guy, man.

01:57:28-Bob
I'd be so pissed at history.

01:57:29-Bob
Screw you, history.

01:57:30-Steven
Oh, you got totally screwed.

01:57:32-Steven
Totally screwed.

01:57:33-Steven
He's like, damn, if you actually look at the fossils... He's a good scientist.

01:57:36-Bob
What the hell?

01:57:37-Steven
Everything's just adapting to its local environment.

01:57:39-Steven
It's all horizontal.

01:57:40-Steven
There's no progress inherent in the fossil record.

01:57:44-Bob
Beautiful.

01:57:45-Steven
Yeah.

01:57:46-Steven
Total bad rap.

01:57:47-Steven
Total bad rap.

01:57:48-Steven
All of this means that, although not confirmed until recently, in retrospect the oldest pterodactyl specimen was discovered in Germany in the 14th century is the fiction.

01:58:00-Steven
I used that, it wasn't random.

01:58:04-Steven
There were pterodactyls discovered in Germany.

01:58:06-Steven
In fact, the most complete pterodactyl specimen was discovered in Germany not too long ago, a few years ago.

01:58:15-Steven
And again, it's not unheard of that there were fossils discovered centuries ago.

01:58:20-Steven
The first dinosaur fossil was named before we even knew that dinosaurs existed, or that the word dinosaur existed, and the species name still sticks.

01:58:31-Steven
The Megalosaurus was the first dinosaur fossil.

01:58:35-Steven
The species name still is Megalosaurus, even though we didn't know what it was at the time.

01:58:40-Steven
But it had precedence, right?

01:58:41-Steven
Because it was named.

01:58:43-Steven
I like to take topics that you know well and find nuances and nooks and crannies that, you know, are not general knowledge.

01:58:50-Bob
Yeah, screw you.

01:58:51-Cara
So when was this?

01:58:53-Cara
I mean, what about this was true?

01:58:56-Steven
Nothing.

01:58:58-Bob
It was bunk.

01:59:00-Steven
I just was riffing off the fact that there was a recent really good pterodactyl specimen discovered in Germany.

01:59:08-Evan
Our illogical deference to the Earth's bounty has become so widespread that researchers had to give it a name, the appeal to nature fallacy, which occurs when we automatically assume something is better just because it's natural and likewise worse if it's not.

01:59:25-Evan
That was written by Rina Raphael.

01:59:28-Evan
Her book, The Gospel of Wellness, Gyms, Gurus, Goop, and the False Promise of Self-Care.

01:59:34-Evan
And Rina Raphael will be joining us at SciCon 2024 this coming October.

01:59:40-Evan
And we look forward to seeing you there.

01:59:42-Evan
Absolutely.

01:59:42-Steven
And she got it correct, the appeal to nature fallacy, not the naturalistic fallacy, which is something completely different.

01:59:49-Evan
There you go.

01:59:50-Steven
That's the well-ought confusion, the is-ought confusion.

01:59:53-Steven
This exists in nature, therefore it's the way we should be.

01:59:57-Steven
That's the naturalistic fallacy, as opposed to this is natural, therefore it's good and wholesome, and that's not natural, therefore it's bad and will kill you.

02:00:05-Steven
That's the appeal to nature fallacy.

02:00:07-Steven
And yes, I'm always enamored of any swipes against goop.

02:00:16-Evan
Absolutely.

02:00:16-Evan
A good target.

02:00:17-Steven
A worthy target.

02:00:18-Steven
All right, well, thank you all for joining me this week.

02:00:23-Steven
And until next week, this is your Skeptics Guide to the Universe.

02:00:30-Steven
Skeptics Guide to the Universe is produced by SGU Productions, dedicated to promoting science and critical thinking.

02:00:36-Steven
For more information, visit us at theskepticsguide.org.

02:00:41-Steven
Send your questions to info at theskepticsguide.org.

02:00:45-Steven
And if you would like to support the show and all the work that we do, go to patreon.com slash skepticsguide and consider becoming a patron and becoming part of the SGU community.

02:00:56-Steven
Our listeners and supporters are what make SGU possible.

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