SGU Episode 669

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SGU Episode 669
May 5th 2018
"[The] team grew the blobs, known as brain organoids, from human stem cells. Once surgically implanted into rodent brains, the organoids continued growing, and their neurons formed connections with those of the surrounding brains."
SGU 668                      SGU 670
Skeptical Rogues
S: Steven Novella
B: Bob Novella
C: Cara Santa Maria
J: Jay Novella
E: Evan Bernstein
Guest
EW: Ethan Winer, recording engineer
Quote of the Week
Reality is what it is, not what you want it to be.
Frank Zappa, American musician
Links
Download Podcast
Show Notes
Forum Discussion

Introduction, SGU Anniversary, announcements

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

S: Hello and welcome to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe. Today is Thursday, May 3^rd, 2018, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella...

B: Hey, everybody!

S: Cara Santa Maria...

C: Howdy.

S: Jay Novella...

J: Hey guys.

S: ...and Evan Bernstein.

E: Good evening, folks.

S: Hey, do you guys know what tomorrow is?

J: Of course.

C: What's tomorrow?

E: Yes.

S: May the 4th be with you.

C: That is not just last year.

S: Star Wars Day. I don't understand why they're releasing the Solo movie, the Han Solo movie, in May, and they're not releasing it on May the 4th, which is also a Friday, which is not a perfect release date.

J: No, right?

B: Wow.

J: It's got to do with schedules and stuff.

B: I'm sure they tried. I'm sure they tried.

C: You guys.

E: They're going for the long weekend with it. Yep.

C: There is absolutely somebody in my neighbourhood. You can get vanity plates in California, like you can anywhere, but they look really cool in California because they're black with yellow lettering. I got one recently for my car that spells Talk Nerdy because I am vain, apparently.

E: Sweet.

C: But there is totally a guy that lives in my neighbourhood who has a vanity plate that says Han Yolo.

E: Oh, my God.

S: Han Yolo.

C: He drives a Tesla. It's amazing.

S: And, of course, the day after that, the day this podcast goes up is Cinco de Mayo, which is, more importantly, the anniversary of the release of the first episode of the SGU.

E: Yes.

C: Really?

J: How many years, Steve?

B: Whoa. That's right.

S: Thirteen. Thirteen years.

E: We're teenagers now. I love it.

C: Guys. That's crazy.

J: Yeah.

S: I have some updated numbers. How many total downloads ever do you think we've had of the SGU?

J: Ninety-nine million.

C: Lots of zeroes.

B: Ninety-eight. Ninety-eight million nine hundred and ninety-nine.

C: One hundred million?

S: One hundred and four million.

B: Whoa. We're growing.

J: Awesome.

S: Five hundred and seventy-three.

J: That is cool.

E: That's tight.

B: Holy crap.

C: Price is right rules, I win.

E: Cara, obviously you weren't there, but in our first year, we were talking a little bit about numbers early on and how wonderful it would be to achieve thousands of listeners, get into the single-digit thousands, that that would be quite a remarkable feat for us who were just a little local skeptics group at the time, essentially.

S: Yeah.

C: Hundred million. Wow.

B: We impressed easily back then.

J: Yeah. We never would have thought. Back in the day, we had no idea. We just really didn't know it was going to go on for this long and that we would have such loyal listeners. We just loved doing it. We get such a wonderful response from our listeners via email and when we meet people in person. I remember we did, what, the 10-hour show last year, and I don't know about you guys, but I committed to another five years. Then I forget when this happened. At some point, Steve said, yeah, we'll just keep doing this until we die.

C: Well, crap. That is what I signed up for, isn't it? Death by SGU.

J: That's the only way out.

E: Cara, it's like a Supreme Court appointment. You're there. Once you're in, you're in.

C: Actually, wait. I only have to stay on the show until most of you die.

S: That's right.

C: Sorry to get boring.

J: What are we talking about? I plan on having an extended lifespan, Cara, so it'll be me and you at the very end.

E: It'll be Jay's head and you, Cara, at the end.

C: Yeah. Sounds good.

J: We're going to shift the show a little bit, though, Steve, and we're not going to tell you how, but we've been talking about it.

E: What it also shows is that we've broken through, I think, to certain parts of the world where I don't know that we've really ever in our wildest dreams expected to reach out, places like China, audiences in Russia, a lot of non-English speaking countries that we do have a presence in. It's just remarkable to think about.

S: Yeah. In October, our first book is coming out, our eponymous book. Right, Cara?

C: Yes.

S: Yeah. The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe. October 2nd, if you look on our Facebook page and, Jay, we're going to put up a page on our website just with links to all the places where you could pre-order the book.

J: Yeah. We're working on that right now.

S: As of today, the book is going to be distributed also in China, Russia, and the UK.

C: Oh, how exciting.

J: We're working on Australia just to see if we can reach out to any publishers there. But so far, things are going great.

S: It's a ton of work. It's still a lot of work, but it's worth it, obviously. Looking forward to it.

E: Can't wait.

C: It's so exciting. The hardest part is kind of behind us, at least for this book, and so now we get to do all the fun stuff.

S: Yeah. For you guys, I'm still knee deep in editing the book.

E: Well.

C: Well, your name is in the big letters.

S: Yeah, I know.

E: That's true.

J: You know, if the big name on the book was Jay Novella, I would be done with the book. That's why Steve gets paid the big bucks.

C: Do you know what else is starting next week? Next Monday?

J: A cool TV show?

C: Oh, wait. My episodes of Bill Nye Saves the World are going to come out on May 11th. Little plug there.

E: Nice.

C: I'm in season three. You can check them out.

E: Can't wait.

C: Next Monday, or as in two days from now when this podcast goes live, I go back to school for the semester.

E: Summer school.

C: Say goodbye to my social life.

B: You had what?

E: It's all part of the big plan.

J: Guys, if you enjoy the work that we do on ESGU, you should really consider becoming a patron of ours on our Patreon. We have a lot of goals behind the scenes. We're all always talking about things that we want to do, but there is a huge limitation for us, and that's usually time. What you can do as a listener and someone that appreciates the show is if you become a patron, you will afford us the ability to spend more time on the show. Another big thing is that we're going to be able to do more targeted outreach. As an example, we want to get into curating a science news page where we would have control over the quality of news reporting on science topics, and of course, skepticism. I think that that could actually be hugely beneficial to people that are looking for reliable sources, links that they want to share, things like that.

C: Yeah, but of course, all this stuff takes so much time, and when you have a day job, time is money. It really is, and that's why support from listeners like you is so incredibly helpful because of course, it's free to download the SGU. Anybody can listen to it anytime they want to, and I really like that. I mean, I think it's really important that anybody who maybe isn't in a position to pay for this content can still access it, no problem, but when people are in a position to help support it, it makes it so that we can continue to make that great free content for everybody.

S: We're always looking for premium content to give our supporters, and we produce it all the time, but let us know if there's anything in particular you'd like to see.

C: Within reason, people.

S: Or even unreasonable. Just anything. Just let us know.

E: You can ask.

C: Keep it clean, people. Keep it clean.

E: You may not get it.

J: So to see a list of the perks or the rewards that we offer our patrons, you can go to patreon.com/SkepticsGuide. I'll tell you right now, we have a Discord server, and if you don't know what that is, it's a collection of chat rooms. They're textual chat rooms, and there's also voice chat rooms that we have, and we have a wonderful community there. Now, we also have, of course, the SGU forums, which is a great community, but there's very much minute-by-minute activity on the Discord. People are actually becoming friends right before our eyes, and as an example, for NECSS this year, we're going to have a get-together for people, for our patrons that are on Discord. You don't have to be on Discord if you're a patron, but the bottom line is we really are developing an SGU community right before our eyes, and we're having a great time doing it. We all jump on there whenever we have free time to chit-chat with people. So go to patreon.com/SkepticsGuide and help support the SGU.

C: Yeah. Jay, that reminds me. I'm like logging on to Discord right now, just said hi to everybody. Hey, guys. I'm going to talk about you behind your back during the show.

J: You can't, because I can see it.

C: Oh, yeah.

E: Nice try, Cara.

J: Damn, I shouldn't have said that. What would you—

E: Log in as someone else.

What's the Word? (8:20)

• Fallacy

S: All right, Cara, don't get too distracted, because you've got to start us off with what's the word.

C: So this week, we are going to talk about the word, da-da-da-da, fallacy. That's a good word, right?

J: We all know that word.

E: Mm-hmm. Yep.

B: Important.

C: But we all know that word. What is the poi? No, it's true. We do know what the word means, but we don't necessarily know where it comes from, and we don't, I think, often talk about some of the specific ways that the word can be used. So what is a fallacy, kind of in common parlance?

S: It's bad logic.

E: Faulty reasoning.

B: Screw up.

C: Faulty reasoning, bad logic. Yeah. Even just a mistaken idea, just like a fallacious idea, right? We use the term really broadly, like that's false, that's a fallacy, but we also use it much more specifically in logic, in philosophy, which is a faulty idea based on like an invalid argument or an invalid inference. And so when we start talking about how logical fallacies work, these mistaken beliefs that come from unsound arguments, there are different ways to slice and dice logical fallacies. We talk about them on the show all the time. We even have a segment called Name That Logical Fallacy. But did you know that usually when we're talking about these fallacies on the show, we're talking about, as Steve points out, informal logical fallacies?

S: Yeah. That's right.

C: So there are a lot of informal fallacies off the top of our head. What are some that you guys can think of?

S: Argument from authority. Appeal to nature.

C: False dilemma. False equivalence.

E: Failed emotion.

C: Gambler's fallacy.

E: No true Scotsman.

C: Absolutely.

S: Straw man.

C: Special pleading. Yeah. All these things.

B: Non-sequitur.

C: Bob, I'm so glad that you mentioned non-sequitur because that's actually kind of a blanket term, even though now we usually use it to mean something that's a little more specific, like what you just said doesn't make sense. It came out of left field. What a non-sequitur.

B: Right. Like Nomad says, non-sequitur, your facts are uncoordinated.

C: Your facts are—exactly. That's so good.

B: I love that line.

C: I love that. But really, it just translates to it does not follow. So it's sort of an umbrella term for all of these different informal fallacies that we usually talk about. But informal fallacies have to do with the content of the argument, generally speaking. Formal fallacies are kind of content independent. It's whether or not the math rules are going the right way. The taxonomy of the fallacy is actually following. So let's say if A equals B and B equals C, then A equals C. If you start to break down some problems with that or if A and B are the same, if B and C are different, then A and C are different. Or sometimes you'll maybe make the opposite claim, which is in and of itself incorrect simply because that's not the way that the logic follows. So there's a lot of different ways that you can break it down. Have any of you taken a logic class and like a philosophy class?

J: Yeah, of course.

S: I did in college.

E: Yeah, way back when.

C: I love that you guys all said yes.

B: I thought about it.

C: I like that you thought about it, Bob. That's a good old college try. And even Jay, I love that you said yeah, of course, because I don't think most students take these classes unless they choose to like minor in philosophy.

J: Yeah, I agree, Cara.

C: It's a bummer.

J: It just seems like an obvious thing, like expose yourself to philosophy.

C: Yeah, so that you can figure out how to make a valid argument, right? Where does this word, this like false statement, even this deception, where does it come from? Would you think it's Greek or Latin?

E: The word false? Oh, um.

C: Fallacy is definitely Latin. Yeah, it's definitely Latin. And it really does come from these roots that mean like flair or phallus, which mean like to deceive or it's invalid. It seems like in the 15th century is when it was first used in kind of the modern sense, in the philosophy sense, which is funny because we think of this classical philosophy as being much, much older. But not until then did the word fallacy really come into the kind of structure of a logical argument. So there were earlier forms dating back even hundreds of years before that. I feel like I should bring up more related words because this happened recently. We did vagility. Do you guys remember vagility? Fragile animals are free to roam. And then somebody wrote in and talked about the vagus nerve. And they were like, that's the wandering nerve. And I was like, shut up. That is so cool. And so yeah, I love it when those things come together. So obviously a very related word to fallacy is the word fail. They come from the same root. So a failure of logic, in a way, is a logical fallacy. And we talk about them all the time on the show. So continue to tune in because we will continue to get an education on that. Steve's great at springing those on us.

S: Yeah. Yeah. Speaking of vagility, Cara, when I was listening back to that show, I can't believe that you said vagile organism and nobody picked up on that.

C: I know.

E: I, well. Just chose not to comment?

C: Yeah. I'm sure everybody thought of it. But you were very mature. I'm very proud of you guys.

S: Yeah.

J: I mean, that is actually amazing. It's really. Nothing was edited out. I think everyone just was like, nope. Not doing it.

C: Too easy.

S: All right. Thanks, Cara.

C: Yep.

_text_with_mention_of_vagiliy_wtw_episode_

News Items

Flipping Magnetic Fields (13:37)

• Earth's magnetic field may not be flipping 

S: Jay.

J: Yes.

S: You're going to tell us about the Earth's magnetic fields flipping back and forth like crazy.

E: I saw it in a movie once.

J: The Earth's magnetic field. Guys, it is not a constant.

E: No, it's not.

J: I don't remember ever being taught that in school.

C: I know.

J: Like right now where the North Pole is, it's relatively consistent. But even right now it moves. It moves around a little bit.

B: Yeah. You're talking. Remember. Yeah. Like you said, you're talking about magnetic north as opposed to geographic north.

J: Yeah. We're talking about where the actual magnetic pole is. Yeah. It wanders. And did you guys know that the magnetic North Pole has swapped places with the magnetic South Pole, right? Yeah. Did you guys know that this has taken place?

C: I did know that.

J: Yeah. So in fact-

E: Glad I was taught.

J: In geologic history, it's actually considered a common occurrence. Now, of course, when I say the word geologic, I'm talking about huge spans of time, not in a human lifespan, but the Earth is very old. And the last time the poles swapped places was almost 780,000 years ago. So what we're seeing now, since scientists have been studying and tracking the magnetic poles over the last 100 years, is that the Earth's magnetic field has grown detectably weaker. Now, when I say detectably, make sure you don't confuse that with significantly. But we can detect that in certain areas, the magnetic field has grown weaker. The question is, are these changes a sign that the Earth's magnetic poles are going to flip soon? This is what we really want to know. In a recent study, researchers have concluded that Earth's magnetic field is probably not reversing. In fact, that's the title of the paper, Earth's Magnetic Field is Probably Not Reversing.

C: But they mean like, they don't mean ever. They mean like now.

J: Now, yeah. They mean like soon or imminent.

S: Just now.

J: Just now. Now, I don't know about you, but I try to guess, I was thinking about this. How the hell do we know when the Earth's magnetic field had a significant change? What are people doing to study? What are they looking at?

C: Isn't it about like ores?

B: Fossilized.

C: Yeah, like iron.

B: Fossilized.

C: Metals in rocks and stuff, right?

J: Yes, exactly. This, guys, this is why I love science. It turns out that whenever rock is formed due to sediment deposits or volcanic eruption, whatever, the Earth's magnetic field actually moves tiny particles of magnetic substrate so they line up within the new rock. And when the rock hardens, those magnetic particles that lined up, they kind of get locked in place, right? Think about it. It cools, it hardens, and now those particles can't move like they could when it was more of a liquid. Scientists can read a rock's magnetic signature and deduce the orientation of the Earth's magnetic poles at the time the rock formed. And there you have it. Now, you can imagine-

C: And we got some old rocks.

J: Oh, yeah. Of course. Of course.

C: Yeah.

J: All over the world. So you can imagine that in order to get a true picture of Earth's magnetic field a million years ago, the researchers had to take samples from around the globe because they have to age the rocks and they have to go, okay, we have all these rocks globally. We know what position they were in. We know where they're from. And what they do is they examine this collection of rocks and they're able to read data on the strength of the magnetic field and the orientation of the field from the rocks. The researchers can then create a global model where they reconstruct an estimated version of the Earth's magnetic field. Well, in this instance, the last two times the poles flipped. So in this recent study, they look between 30,000 and 50,000 years ago. Now, earlier when I said that the poles haven't changed their orientation in, what, 780,000 years, that was only mostly true. About 41,000 years ago, the Last Champ event occurred where the researchers found-

B: Mostly dead.

J: What, Bob?

B: Mostly dead.

J: I know, right? I thought of that too when I read it.

B: I can't help it. I can't help it.

J: So 41,000 years ago, an event occurred called the Last Champ event and this is where the researchers found evidence that the poles reversed for only 500 years. They also determined that the poles significantly shifted positions before clicking back to where we're accustomed to where they are now.

S: You know what that's called, Jay?

J: What?

S: That's called an excursion. So the full magnetic field reversals happen maybe two to three times per million years. So that when you're talking about 700,000 years ago, you're talking about the last reversal. But for every reversal, there's on average about 10 excursions. An excursion is where the magnetic field wanders for hundreds of years. It may actually get all the way to the other side. So it's kind of a reversal, but it's short-lived, only hundreds of years and that's what you're talking about. These were excursions that have happened recently.

J: Yeah, and they happen. But yeah, like you said, they last hundreds of years. But in geologic terms, that's a blip. It's just blip, blip. You know what I mean?

C: Blip, blip. Just like that.

E: La, la, la.

J: So these events that we're talking about are not what we're detecting today and this is the important realization from the study. The current state of the poles is considered to be strong. Even though we are currently measuring one area of the magnetic field being weakened, the researchers don't believe that this is indicative of an imminent flip. They would expect to see several weak areas around the globe, not just the one that we currently see.

S: Yeah. So yeah, they say it's not the beginning of a reversal or excursion, which is important. It's not even one of these lesser excursions, which we care about because during either a flip or an excursion, the magnetic field can decrease to between zero and 20% of its normal strength.

E: Zero percent?

C: Weird.

J: Yeah.

C: So wait. What happens?

J: I'll tell you. I have an interesting list. I covered that real quick. But let me just finish this because I didn't know this either and I found this very, very cool to know. Now historically, the magnetic field around the equator reverses shortly before the entire planet does. So importantly, they're also not seeing that that's happening right now. Let's talk about this. So over the last 20 million years, the poles have flipped every 200,000 to 300,000 years. And that rate has not been a constant since the earth was created. It's more of a recent geologic trend. But it's pretty reliable when we go back millions of years, we could see this happening reliably. So what would happen if the poles did suddenly do that flippy-flippy and this is what happens? Are you ready? Cara, you're sitting, right?

C: Yes. I'm sitting. Yes.

J: This is going to upset you.

E: Stand up Cara.

B: I've been waiting for this the whole talk.

J: Tons of compasses will not work the way you expect them to work.

C: Well, yeah. That's like the obvious one.

J: The global compass network won't work, guys. The compasses.

C: Yeah, obviously.

J: It's terrible. The scary thing, Steve was alluding to this, the scary thing is that more cosmic rays will be allowed to enter the earth's atmosphere because the weakened magnetic field, it's not there. It can't protect us like it does at the strength.

C: Yeah, I don't like that.

J: I know.

E: That sucks.

C: That's scary.

J: And they're saying that it could cause DNA damage. And scientists think that this could spike the rate of mutations. And they call this, semi-jokingly, the geomagnetic apocalypse. Now also, any animals that use the earth's magnetic field for navigation, including birds and salmon and sea turtles, they could suddenly not know where they are or how to migrate. And that's not good.

C: That's not good.

J: But people are saying, though, that they would figure it out, of course.

E: Eventually.

J: I mean, it's assumed that they do. The radiation levels could also affect the electric grid and some lesser protected spacecraft that weren't developed to have a higher level of protection. But there is one cool upside. Auroras will be visible from a much lower latitude.

C: Oh, yeah. That's pretty cool.

E: Yeah. Or a mutated DNA. We'll love that.

J: Yeah. We can actually see in different color spectrums, Ev.

E: That's right. With my third eye.

J: No. I have a theory here.

C: You have a hypothesis, Jay.

J: I have a hypothesis. You're right. Thank you, Cara.

E: Hypothesis.

J: My hypothesis is when the poles flip, we all could fly.

C: I don't. What is that based on?

J: You can't prove that. You never know. You don't think the Neanderthals could fly?

C: No. I don't think that the Neanderthals could fly.

E: They had fixed-wing aircraft. No doubt about it.

J: Look. I can dream. Okay.

S: All right. Thanks, Jay.

Self-Assembling Space Telescope (21:56)

• NASA greenlights self-assembling space telescope 

S: Bob, you're going to tell us about self-assembling space telescopes by that massive conspiracy organization, NASA.

B: Yeah, right. So NASA has released the list of winners of phase one research money for their awesome NIAC program or NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts.

S: Or so thy say.

B: We've talked about this before. So this includes plans for extremely large space telescopes that self-assemble in space. And there was another award winner. Another one that won the phase one money and I had to include them as well Steve because this was just way too cool. And the other one was beamed propulsion to accelerate relatively large probes to 10% the speed of light. That's a cool one too. If you can't tell I love NIAC, the idea of rewarding these ideas that are just totally out of the box. At least for the year that you're in. It's like they're rewarding sci-fi sounding ideas that would be at home in the Expanse TV series. You just can't throw any idea out there. It has to be supported by initial calculations. And if it seems promising then you can get to $125 000 in nine months to show how feasible the concept really is. So that's when you really work on it. We had these initial calculations that were promising but let's really dive in, to see how good this thing really work. If it all goes well then you can get to phase two funding which could become available up to $500 000. And then you get two more years, two full years of research and development to continue it. So one that interested me or piqued my interest the most was this self-assembling telescope. So this is the team led by Dmitry Savransky who's an assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at Cornell. So his concept involves a sworm of modules in space that are joined together like Voltron to form 30-meter telescope with adaptive optics to boot which is nice. So the idea is they would launch individually and head towards the sun-earth gravitationally balanced Lagrange point using solar sails. And there they would essentially join together and probably even use the solar sails as a sun shield. But of course that sound amazingly ambitious, but why would we even bother trying to even do it that way? You all heard about the James Webb telescope that's going to be launched in about 2020 I think is the most current date. So excited about that. So with it's 6,5-meter primary mirror this is going to be the biggest such observatory put in space and the entire process to put that together is incredibly complex. It's pushing NASA to its limits. In fact they're announcing some little delays as well. It's just such a monumental thing that they're doing here. And it's hard to imagine creating something even bigger. What would it take to create an observatory like that that's 15 meters or 30 meters using the same process we use today. It's almost un-imaginable. It would just take way to long, be way to expensive, so perhaps this autonomous swarm technique could do it. Mason Peck, former chief technology officer at NASA, yeah I was a CTO at NASA, what a nice job that must have been. So he goes, if professor Savransky proves the feasibility of creating a large space telescope from tiny pieces he'll change how we explore space. We'll be able to afford to see further and better than ever, maybe even to the surface of an extra-solar planet. That would be truly amazing. Imagine seeing the surface of a planet that's light years away, incredible. So that's one. The other one that really caught my attention was called Procsima. P-R-O-C-S-I-M-A.

E: Not proxima?

B: No, right, if that makes you think of Proxima Centauri it should. So the idea here is essentially major conceptual advance for interstellar beamed propulsion, which may increase the period of acceleration by a factor of 10,000 allowing 1 kg probe to go to the closest star, Proxima Centauri at 10% the speed of light, arriving there in 42 years. So we've talked about beamed propulsion I think only once or twice. It essentially uses a laser to push a very small probe to incredible velocities. So the problem with beamed propulsion is like I said, you need a huge beam to accelerate a tiny mass on the order of grams if you want to go to another star within a lifetime. To deal with that you need to deal with beam spreading, right? From diffraction or thermal effects. One of the hallmarks of the laser light is what? That's it's essentially a straight line, it doesn't diverge like a flashlight, it's collimated light. But there's no way around diffracting light. Even with a laser. If you shine a laser on the moon it could be miles wide when it finally reaches the moon. So you've got this spreading beam, even with an efficient laser that's going to limit the efficiency of the beam that needs to focus on a solar sail for as long as possible, right? So to minimize the spread researchers think that if you combine a laser beam with a neutral particle beam. You've got two different beams woring together. So you can essentially, they think, tailor them to interact with each other in such a way to greatly minimize any diffraction spreading or thermal spreading. So the beam becomes at that point, it becomes what's called a solaton. So now the procsima, the name procsima actually makes a lot of sense and I'm sure they had many meeting coming up with these. So procsima kind of is a mish-mash the words Photon-paRticle Optically Coupled Soliton Interstellar Mission Accelerator.

C: What?

B: Yea. And all those words make sense. All those words are the key words that make up this entire concept. So bravo to the team.

C: I have a hard time remembering what laser stands for. That one.

B: That's too easy. So what happens then is that you train the beam exactly where you need it for much longer to accelerate the probe for a period of time that's 10,000 times longer than a really powerful laser but spreading beam can do. My plan, what I just said right here, this is primarily for interstellar travel. You could use similar concepts for traveling within a solar system but it would be very different or significantly different from what I just described. So this is for interstellar travel or they're saying that you could possibly use it to travel to the Oort cloud of comets about a light year out or they said you could use it to send a probe to the solar gravitational lens point which is at 500 AUs from the sun. So there you go. Two really fascinating concepts that are going to have a bunch of money thrown at it over the next nine months to see if they could really – how feasible they really are and hopefully they both get to phase two.

J: Yeah.

C: Neat.

B: Cool stuff.

JFK Headshot (28:58)

• Gunshot-wound dynamics model for John F. Kennedy assassination 

S: All right, Evan. It's amazing. It's 2018 and there's still more analysis of the JFK assassination and the headshot. Tell us about this new article.

E: You didn't think that they would be able to find anything new or different but you know what?

S: It's endless.

E: Technology has a way of sort of catching up to these things.

S: It has a way.

E: It does. One of the long supposed and deeply held pieces of the conspiracy theory puzzle subsumes that there were multiple shooters firing at Kennedy that day and the most popular of the multiple shooter theory is that there was a shooter on the infamous grassy knoll. The collective body of quality evidence – and I'll stress the word quality evidence – that has accumulated in the 54 years since it happened has led us to this conclusion, that Lee Harvey Oswald by his own design and his own hand used his own rifle to fatally shoot President Kennedy from his sniper's nest on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository Building. Right? However, JFK's conspiracy theorists are, shall we say, less than impressed with the cumulative body of evidence which leads to that conclusion. Much of their denial is based on what they believe they are seeing in the Zapruder film. Now if you remember, and really how can any of us forget, there is 8mm footage captured by Abraham Zapruder the moment President Kennedy's fatal headshot occurred along with the seconds before and afterwards, it's 18 seconds of some of the most incredible history ever captured on film, and it's known as the Zapruder film. The fatal headshot, where the film shows the President's head moving back and to the left, and as any Hollywood director or other person with a vivid imagination will tell you, it's indicative of a shot fired from the front right side of Kennedy, right? And what was immediately to the front right side of Kennedy's head? That's right, the grassy knoll. That's how that works. And while the conspiracy theorists will not necessarily dismiss Lee Harvey Oswald's role in the killing, it's the headshot itself, the back and to the left, that means the shot came from the forward and to the right of Kennedy's head. For many conspiracy theorists, that's a cornerstone of their assassination worldview. Now the explanation for why the head thrust back and to the left has long since been established, and that is, and it's been tested and verified many times by scientists, ballistic experts and others, is that that's the exit wound. It's the explosion that causes the head to move backwards because of that thrust from the exit wound. But once again, conspiracy theorists disagree with that. They don't like that conclusion. However-

S: Because reasons, they don't have, you can actually see a jet of brain tissue shoot out of Kennedy's head for 30 feet. Forward and to the right, which, of course, is what is accelerating the head back and to the left. It would have to if you see that jet of material shooting out. So it's QED. I mean, it really is there on film and they don't really have an explanation for that.

E: There's no doubt, no doubt about it. But there's news from this past week. New news. A study conducted by Dr. Nicholas Nally has been published in the open access journal Helion. He's a senior research scientist at IMSG. IMSG is self-described as a leader in environmental, scientific and technical support products and services. Now, Dr. Nally of IMSG conducted an in-depth analysis of the Zapruder film footage. And what is not at all surprising is that his tests yield the same results as the official autopsy findings and everything else we know about it. That the JFK kill shot was the result of a bullet wound shot to the back of his head. But what is surprising is that Dr. Nally has narrowed in on a piece of evidence that no one else seems to have noticed before. His analysis was able to detect a forward head snap at the moment of the fatal bullet impact. And when analyzed using fundamental classical mechanics, the forward head snap, which is visible in the film, provides absolute concrete proof that JFK was shot in the head from behind. And here's how the article about it at phys.org described it. Dr. Nally developed a simple one-dimensional gunshot wound dynamics model to explain the movements observed in the film. The model makes explicit calculations of the forward head snap that occurred before JFK's head moved back and to the left after the gunshot. To do this, the model uses known parameters from the crime scene, including bullet mass, speed and diameter of the bullet, camera shutter frequency, and autopsy measurements. And it's the first time this aspect of the case has been considered so thoroughly and quantitatively. And he says in his conclusion remarks from the actual paper that he did, that it's important, this is Dr. Nally, it is an important one given that it's hypothesized the existence of a shooter in front of the limousine has been the primary physical foundation for virtually all conspiracy conjectures to date on the topic. While the simple one-dimensional physical models presented in the paper were derived for application to this particular study, the underlying physical principles provide an approximate quantitative description of the interaction between high-speed projectile, which is slowed by an intervening atmosphere, and a heterogeneous body compromised of bone and viscoelastic tissue, the human head, and may also form a basic conceptual basis for understanding the wounding mechanics involved in such interactions. So he honed in on something that had not been analyzed before. And with it, I think essentially, at least for us who understand really what has been going on that day, for once and for all sort of put to bed the notion that somebody hit Kennedy from the front, from the grassy knoll. Now you can't, from this, and he admits to it in the paper, you can't exclude, this is not a way, you're not looking to debunk a conspiracy theory with this. But what you can say definitely is that he was not shot in the front of the head. And that's the cornerstone for a lot of conspiracy theorists having to do with the JFK assassination.

S: It's more evidence that the headshot, the fatal headshot came from behind. It came from the direction of the book depository. There was the failure analysis group also looked in detail at all the shots in terms of the Zapruder film evidence, and they came to the same conclusion. If you trace them back, they all sort of point in the rough direction of the sniper's nest. The origin of the bullets. So and this guy went as far, like he tracked every bit of debris from Kennedy's head and tracked where they went in the subsequent frames. And like did the physics, he did all the math to say how much material and the momentum and everything. It all seems to check out.

E: And I shared it with Gerald Posner, who we've had on the show before, he wrote the book Case Closed, and he did his own investigation certainly for a long time into this. And he says it's certainly the most thorough analysis of this part of the assassination that he's ever seen. And Gerald's been on this for the better part of two, three decades.

S: Yeah. I'm sure I mentioned on the show, I had a lecture from a neurosurgeon like 25 years ago that went over the Zapruder film and came to the same conclusion. He didn't notice the forward head snapping, and that's the new bit. But he did show how the film conclusively shows that the jet of brain tissue would have sent the head back. And that actually is consistent with the trajectory of the bullet from behind, because the way it went through the skull, the front of the skull came off. And so that was the whole the amount of energy you impart to the brain tissue from the bullet, because the brain is the living brain, Jay, right, is pulsating jello. Remember that, Jay?

J: You can't prove that.

S: And you impart this massive amount of energy to that mass of jello. And then you make a hole for it to exit out of. Of course, it's all going to go there. And then the rest is just physics. So anyway, this is just adding one more bit to what we already knew. And of course, it's not going to change the mind of a single conspiracy theorist.

J: I have a couple of secondary questions here. I wonder if any of you guys know the answers. So why did Jackie Kennedy crawl across the back of the car? Was she trying to get to safety?

S: No. She was trying to help-

B: Get pieces of his head, I think, right?

C: Was she holding his head back together?

S: The two things. One was she could have been reaching to help one of the agents onto the back of the vehicle. But she also could have been reaching to grab the back of his head that was laying there.

C: Because after that, she held it.

S: Yeah. Because in a situation like that, you are not processing information rationally.

E: No way.

S: You're reacting really to a surreal sequence of events in real time, and your brain can't process it all. So you think and do weird shit.

C: Yeah. I mean, I'm sure like-

E: You overload.

C: Your lizard brain, like you're helping, like, I need to put his head back together.

S: Yeah. No, I remember-

C: This is how I save him.

S: I like to think of myself as a rational person, but when my wife delivered our second child in our living room unexpectedly, my first thought was, I have to put it back in so I could take her to the hospital so she could deliver it there.

E: Oh my gosh.

S: That thought actually went through my head.

C: And you're a doctor.

S: For a second. You know what I mean? Until I realized, no, no, that's not happening. I have to deal with this here, you know? But like your brain gets overloaded very easily with situations like that. And then weird shit, you think. So she's like, oh, I have to get his head back.

E: Right. She was sort of scrambling.

S: Like on autopilot, you're not thinking rationally. But of course, conspiracy theorists like to interpret everything as if it was a rational, deliberate decision. And so they can infer motivation from it in a way. And they never accept as an explanation, people just do weird, unexplained shit. You know, that's just never an explanation.

J: They're going to shape everything to help them support whatever their idea is.

C: It's all Monday morning quarterbacking, too. Like none of it is, yeah, thinking about the psychology.

J: My second question is, did Kennedy die immediately?

S: With the headshot. Yeah.

J: Yeah.

S: The first shot that hit him, hit him in the upper spine. He had a reaction to that. He stiffened up as a reaction.

E: Yeah. And his arms elevated as a result.

S: It's a known neurological phenomenon to the acute trauma. But he also, he had a back brace on because he had a really bad back and that made him stiff.

B: Addison's disease, I think.

S: Yeah. So he couldn't bend over. You know, he was sort of propped up. But you could see his arms extend in a typical way that you would expect from an injury there. You also see his tie sort of flip up a little bit from the exit wound.

J: Would that have killed him?

S: He probably would have been paralysed. He might have survived that.

C: But how long was the, between that bullet and the next one?

S: It was just a few seconds.

E: Three seconds.

C: Yeah. So he wouldn't, I mean, that's not even processing speed, time.

S: Yeah. He was barely able to process like what just happened. He probably didn't even feel anything. And then-

C: It was probably just very loud and very frantic and then he was dead.

S: And then it's lights out. And then it's the end of The Sopranos. Remember the end of The Sopranos? That's what he experienced.

E: Oh, they're sitting there in the restaurant, right? And everything goes black.

S: Yeah.

C: Spoiler alert. It's been enough time.

S: It's been enough time. Been enough time. Perry went to his grave in denial that Tony Soprano died at the end of that scene.

E: Oh, yeah. He was a big- Oh, wow. We had discussions about that.

C: Oh, that's hilarious.

S: Couldn't take it.

E: Nope.

S: Okay. Thanks, Evan.

E: Yep.

Growing Brains (41:30)

• What's Wrong With Growing Blobs of Brain Tissue?  

S: All right, Cara. I understand I could grow my own brain in a jar now.

C: You might not be able to, but people would put the appropriate tool, I think, in there. You might not be able to do it. Salk Institute published an article where Rusty Gage and his colleague... What a great name, by the way. Rusty Gage. Just a Rusty Gage. Nothing to see here. Where he and his colleagues were working with brain organoids. These are not new, but they do carry with them, I think, some new ethical questions. What they did is they took these brain organoids and they transplanted them into human brain. I'm sorry, into mouse brains. They're human brain organoids, transplanted them into mouse brains. Let's break all this down real quick. An organoid is different from a network. An organoid is different from a brain. An organoid is not a brain in a jar. It's not a fully functional brain. It's basically a tiny little blob of brain that does have lots of cells, but those cells are sort of connected to each other, but disconnected from anything else. There's different levels that we can study neuronal activity. We can look at things in vivo, inside of the living organism, the living human being, the living animal. It's quite hard to look at in vivo research in a human being, however, unless we're just looking at brain waves, for example, using EEG, or if we're using fMRI technology, CT technology, and there we're really only looking at big structural things. It's very hard to see what's happening at the cellular level in a human being because that would be way too invasive. We have all these different ways that we can do it in animals. There are little windows you can use to look into brains. There are patch clamping things where you can suck onto an individual cell and look at its electrical activity. There's ways to look at the chemistry, all that good stuff. Then now there's these really cool things that are called organoids. It's kind of an in-between level. It tells you a lot more than what individual cells can tell you. It tells you a lot more even than what like a flat kind of artificial network can tell you, but it tells you a lot less than what a whole brain can tell you. It's a glob of cells. I think the one in this article, Ed describes it as being lentil-sized, okay, two to three million cells. Now, the interesting thing, though, is that these researchers used human pluripotent cells to make this organoid. That's a little interesting, right? This is a human organoid. It's human tissue. It's not conscious. Nobody thinks it's conscious. It is not able to sense. Nobody thinks that this is a sensory organ. This is just independent brain cells that are connected to themselves. What these researchers did is they successfully transplanted it into a mouse brain. When they did that, they saw that this graft differentiated. It matured. It underwent gliogenesis, meaning new glial cells, new of these support cells grew. The microglia were integrated, and axons within this organoid grew into other areas of the host brain. After that, they used some special imaging techniques, two-photon imaging, and they were able to see that there were functional neuronal networks and blood vessels within these grafts. They also were able to do some extracellular recording and use some optogenetic technology to see that the graft to the host seemed to make functional synapses, and these cells were firing and affecting the preexisting mouse cells. So this is a big deal. And let's talk about what cool stuff can happen with this because a lot of times we talk about mouse models, right? We're like, oh, mouse models. Mouse models are great. And then we always have to go, eh, it's a mouse. It's not a human, right? And then we do these human like ex vivo or like in vitro things where we're like, yeah, it's human tissue, but it's not in a brain, not a mini brain, not a brain in a jar. I love this analogy that Ed Yong used. They are emphatically not brains in jars. They are not mini brains either in the same way that a leaf is not a mini plant and a doorknob is not a mini building. It is a piece, a tiny piece of a brain. That said, they're useful. Scientists can look at some models of disorders. Scientists have actually used organoids to induce a genetic mutation that's similar to microcephaly and those organoids were small and they were like, wow, that's cool. This mutation led the organoids to be small too. We could learn why. This paper spawned so much conversation that there was a team of ethicists that actually wrote something of a response. It's called the Ethics of Experimenting with Human Brain Tissue. And it was a comment in Nature that was published on April 25th, where they really dug deep into like, what is an organoid? What does this represent? Is it ethical to put these into animals? At what point, how many cells need to be together before they can self-organize and start actually resembling parts of a brain? Where is that gray area? Where is that cutoff? When are we talking about consciousness? When are we talking about perception? Because here's an interesting thing. Researchers have taken that organoid and they've attached retinal cells to it and it fired as if it were receiving light. So okay, is it perceiving? What does that really mean? It's one thing to say these are cells that are kind of in isolation. It's another thing to now take these cells that are in isolation and connect them to functioning systems. Because of course, a brain by itself is not anything. The brain in the jar we have not accomplished yet by any stretch of the imagination. You need eyes, you need ears, you need a nose, you need a mouth, you need all of these perceptual organs to perceive A, but then for that perception to be sort of, quote unquote, downloaded into thought and into memory. You wipe somebody's memories completely, ultimately their ability to make new memories and their ability to maintain any new old memories. What does that do to consciousness? That's a big, big issue. We really do in many ways need memory and we need perception to be able to really have what we start thinking of as consciousness. That said, we haven't cracked consciousness by any stretch. We have no idea how that gestalt of consciousness works. You get these individual neurons together and eventually something greater than the whole starts to happen. That's still the holy grail in many ways of neuroscience. That said, maybe we are not effectively producing conscious brain tissue yet. I think almost every biologist involved in this and almost every biologist commenting on it says kind of without a doubt, no, these things aren't conscious. Don't worry about that yet, but we're kind of on the precipice of something. I don't know when it's going to happen that we're going to be able to induce consciousness in kind of this in vitro or this in vivo grafted transplanted tissue, but when it happens, that's a whole can of ethical worms that we're going to have to tackle and the time to talk about that is right now. I think, Steve, skimming your blog post, it's similar outcome and similar conversations of a separate experiment.

S: Yeah. There's two basic things I think we're talking about here. One is – I guess it could be more than two, but what you're talking about is at how much brain tissue crosses that threshold into being considered a brain, an entity. What I wrote about was they actually just took a pig's head from a slaughterhouse that was dead for four hours and then they tried to see if they could get any cellular activity to go on and they got a little bit, but it really wasn't a lot. The EEG activity was flatline, but they did get some cellular activity. Not surprising.

C: Yeah. I mean that happens in vitro with a very, very basic monolayer cell culture. That said, it's like kindling is what they call it. It fires in this way that looks like a seizure. It's not organized firing.

S: But it raised the question, let's say if somebody dies, you take their brain and then you wake it up.

C: Yeah.

S: So you didn't start with a little piece. You started with a whole human brain.

C: So one is kind of building up from the bottom. The other is coming down from the top.

S: Yeah.

C: It's the same question.

S: Then you just put it in a jar. You give it blood flow. You give it nutrients and oxygen and then now you have a brain capable of being conscious, but it's in a jar. It has no sensory input.

C: But what if you give it sensory input?

S: Or maybe you give it sensory input or you try to–

C: You're technological.

S: You hook it up into a brain machine interface or whatever.

C: Because that's actually the easy part. It seems like the part that we've already hacked is the part where we can modulate or we can reproduce vision really well now with like optogenetics. We're doing it with all sorts of implants.

S: It can work. Absolutely. Obviously, there's a lot of technical aspects to it. But theoretically, we know that we can get brains to talk to machines and vice versa. So it does raise the technical prospect of like putting your brain into a robot. Yeah, that could work someday. That's just a matter of technology.

C: Yeah.

S: The ethics of that, what I said in my blog is you have to treat a brain as a person. That brain is that person and we might have to change our legal definitions of death and personhood and whatever because right now, legally, it's a corpse. The law does not account for the brain in a jar.

C: But the minute that that brain has – is no longer brain dead, is it a corpse?

S: Right. It shouldn't be. Yeah.

S: And you used to always talk about on the show whenever we talk about those like scammy head transplants like these – and you're like, it's a body transplant. It's not a head transplant. Like the head is where all the stuff is.

E: Sounds so much cooler than body transplant. It makes a better headline. Oh, Jay. Jay, why did you tell me to say that?

J: What are you doing to me?

C: But when we're talking about taking pluripotent cells and growing a brain from scratch, who is there to consent?

S: Yeah. I think we're a long way from that, the bottom up.

C: I think so too. But now is the time to think about it, right?

S: Yeah. And it overlaps with the AI discussion. When does an AI get to the point where it has rights? We have to treat it as a sentient entity.

C: Especially if it's a hybrid like organism, right? If it really is bionic. Oh, no.

E: It's been a few weeks since we said that.

S: Let's move on.

Who's That Noisy? (52:20)

Answer to previous Noisy:

Sperm whale sounds

S: Jay, it's who's that noisy time.

J: Last week, I played this noisy. [plays Noisy]

C: Hmm.

J: Well?

E: A tooth being pulled in person.

C: Sounds organic to me, like biological. Like some sort of organism doing something.

J: Ian Hollis said, this sounds like an insect, probably a beetle. I'm going to guess it's a death watch beetle because I don't think Jay could resist playing a sound from a bug with a name like that.

C: Is that true? Is that right?

J: I got to look it up. No, that's not right. But yeah, biological. And I read that one first because you said it was a bug. Ryan said, hey, gang, long time listener. First time guesser. Noisy this week kind of sounds like some kind of tape being pulled off the roll. A close up of that sound, if you will. For example, packing tape or duct tape.

C: Oh, yeah. It had a little bit of that vibe.

J: Not correct. Another person named E-House, E-Hoss said, is it an abacus? No.

E: Okay.

C: I don't think that's what an abacus sounds like.

J: So did I tell you last week that the person who sent in the noisy, their name is Pablo Honey 2?

E: No. You didn't tell us that.

C: Like the Radiohead album?

J: Yeah. But do you know where Radiohead got Pablo Honey from?

C: Where?

J: The Jerky Boys.

B: No way.

C: No way, that's awesome.

E: Really?

J: Yes, they did.

C: Was Pablo Honey like a character?

J: It's one bit that they did.

C: Hilarious.

J: Where like the call is that it's an old woman calling up her son. She's like, Pablo, are you washing your ass, honey? Yeah. Okay. So Pablo Honey, thank you for sending that in. This one is, it's the loudest animal.

E: Oh, the mantis shrimp?

J: Incorrect, my friend. The sperm whale is the loudest animal on the planet with a 236 decibel click.

C: That's a sperm whale?

J: Yep.

C: That's cool.

E: Whoa.

C: But it's also a bit cetacean-y, like a dolphin. You're right. I kind of get that.

E: Yeah, it does have that dolphin click.

J: So no winners this week.

B: Whoa.

New Noisy (54:33)

J: I have a new sound for you this week, sent in by a listener named Randy Resnick. Thank you, Randy.

[Horn-like squeaking, increasing in frequency]

Email me at, with any cool noisies that you had from this week, or the guesss at WTN@theskepticsguide.org.

S: All right. Thanks, Jay.

Questions/Emails/Corrections/Follow-ups (54:57)

Correction #1: Annealing WTW

S: All right. We're going to do one quick email. Cara, this is a correction of your discussion of annealing. We had about 1,000 people write in.

C: We have like four people write in, but okay.

S: Well, okay. All right. It felt like 1,000. Say, to make some corrections about our discussion of annealing, as it applies to metallurgy specifically.

C: Yes, specifically.

S: What happened?

C: So I used the word tempering early on when I was describing the top line definitions of annealing. Many, many dictionaries use tempering as kind of a synonym. Specifically as it applies to metallurgy, there are two very specific steps. First, it's annealed, and then it is tempered.

S: Yeah. It is all about the microstructure of the steel.

B: The grains.

S: As some of the emailers, very helpful emailers, pointed out, the reason why steel is such an incredibly cool substance, and it's so useful, and why it is so ubiquitous in our civilization is because it is so versatile. You can give it a lot of different properties, not only by the alloys that you make, the elements you put into it to make different alloys. You can put titanium in there or whatever. You can put different things in the iron to make a different alloy, but also by how you heat treat it. That's become a science unto itself, right? The usual variables are how much do you heat it, to what temperature, for how long, how fast, and then more importantly, how fast do you allow it to cool? Now annealing involves heating the steel high enough temperature to basically reset it, to reset the crystalline structure within the metal. You're basically removing any stress, any cracks, any flaws in the steel. You make it so that it's very, very soft and ductile. It could be worked at that point. Before you're going to machine it or cold forge it or whatever, you'd want to anneal it. Then once you get it into the shape that you want it, depending on what you want to do with what you're making out of the steel, you may want to harden it. You could do that's where the tempering comes into place. Tempering it usually involves heating it to a lower temperature, not high enough to anneal it, but a lower temperature and then cooling it down, again, at a very specific rate depending on exactly the properties you're going for, but it's usually much quicker than annealing. Annealing you want to cool really slowly. You might put it in sand so it insulates it or you might allow it to cool down with the forge. You let the whole thing cool down over a really long period of time. You want it to be very, very slow, but tempering, you cool it very, very quickly. That hardens it, which makes it hard but brittle, but you could also toughen the steel by different heating and cooling permutations. Toughening it makes it less brittle.

J: Steve, is that why they would put the sword in a slave's body and let it cool with the body?

S: Yeah. That's quenching it.

E: What?

C: That's like when you dunk it in the-

S: That would be like dumping it into a bucket of water. It's cooling it quickly to harden it.

C: Quickly. You don't do that when you anneal. You cool it really slowly.

S: Yeah, really slowly is annealing.

C: With glass, it's interesting because even though there is a specific difference between annealed and tempered glass, mostly what the glass looks like after it's broken, both annealing and tempering glass makes it stronger and it makes it less likely to crack extemporaneously.

S: Less brittle.

C: Yeah. Interesting. So annealed glass breaks into larger shards. That can be dangerous. Sometimes people like to temper glass, which breaks it into the teeny tiny pieces if it gets broken. But by and large, you will see that annealing glass and tempering glass is used as a synonymous term, which is really confusing.

S: Right. But definitely not with steel. Yeah.

C: But it's really interesting how many basic dictionaries say, as either their first or second definition, this process by which you heat it up and then you cool it slowly in order to improve or change the structure, blah, blah, blah, and then it'll be like semicolon, tempering.

S: Yeah.

C: It's really frustrating.

S: Dictionaries a terrible place to go for a technical definition.

C: For a technical definition.

S: Let's move on. We have a good interview coming up if you wanted to know about audio pseudo science. And as I do point out for those people who are premium members, the complete, uncut, full interview is available as premium content, we have a shorter excerpt in the show for you here.

[top]                        

Interview with Ethan Winer (59:51)

• Ethan Winer, recording engineer

S: Joining us now is Ethan Weiner. Ethan, welcome to The Skeptic's Guide.

EW: Thank you very much.

S: Ethan, you are an audio expert, and actually you are a member of the New England Skeptical Society from back in the day.

J: Old school.

S: Old school. In fact, you published a couple hundred articles, you were saying, but I'm sure your most influential article was published in the prestigious, the New England Journal of Skepticism called A Skeptic's Call to Action. I remember that article very well. But we were discussing audio issues recently on the show and somebody sent me your name as a great interview, like, God, I really recognize that name. I wonder who that is because I meet so many people over the years, I just forget who's who, you know. And then you reminded me of our old contact over the New England Skeptical Society. So that's great. So the topic I'd like to initially discuss with you is audio pseudoscience or how consumers get ripped off by being told crazy shit about audio.

EW: Right. Well, that's a, yes. And I see myself as a consumerist as much as an audio expert because this is about consumerism. It's it's like selling a lemon of a car or a car with bad features or claiming unrealistic mileage. And there are all kinds of claims. And, of course, there's a lot of legitimate companies the big companies, the big ones in the hi-fi world Sony, Panasonic, I mean, there's a lot of them. The names that you know aren't going to lie when, if they say this amplifier puts out 100 watts per channel with 0.1% distortion, you can trust that. Sometimes with specs, they're not complete. You know, a lot of times they'll give distortion at one watt and they'll give frequency response at half a watt or whatever. But mostly you can trust that. But there is a huge amount of snake oil and outright bullshit, I mean, just lying stuff. I would say that hearing and hearing perception is probably the most frail, fragile of the human senses. Anybody can tell standard definition TV from HD, even from 10 feet away. I mean, it's sharper, it's clearer, it's more in focus. But with audio, if you hear something and then you wait 10 seconds because you changed a wire or something, somebody says, oh, this $100 wire is better than the $3 wire that came with your MP3 player, after 10 seconds, it's hard to remember the exact tonality of what you heard. And this is well known among real audio engineers. But for some reason, the hi-fi crowd, and even some professional engineers who should know better, they just fall for stuff. And there's a whole pile of people that are willing to swoop in and take advantage of that. And I'm sure that some of these, we call them snake oil salesmen, I'm sure some of them know that they're lying. But a lot of them probably believe their own nonsense they really believe it. It's hard to know.

S: Yeah, they fall for their own placebo effects, audio placebo.

J: So what are we talking about here? Like, can you give us an example?

EW: Well, yeah, the first real scam that I'm aware of, and this goes back to the 70s and maybe even earlier, is expensive speaker wire.

J: Oh, yeah.

EW: Now, loudspeaker wire has a very simple task. It has to be thick enough to carry enough current. So if it's a 100 watt per channel receiver, that's a fair amount of current. You need like number 16 wire or something pretty heavy if you're going 10 feet. If you're going 50 feet, you need something really heavy. If you're going 4 feet, it doesn't have to be so heavy. But this is all well known, it's very easy to calculate. There are several tables and calculators online, just put in speaker wire calculator, and you'll get like 10 of them that will tell you for this many watts at 8 ohms you need at least number 12 wire, number 14, whatever. And wire is cheap. I mean, you go to Home Depot and you get that stuff for 20 cents a foot, 50 cents a foot, depending on the wire. But there are companies that will sell you speaker wire for $100, $200, $2,000. And the wire is absolutely no better. It's all sold on expectation and fanciful thinking, and they pretend to be really honest. If you don't like it, if you don't hear a difference, bring it back, absolutely, we'll give you your money back. And they will, I'm sure. But you know, people want it to be better than the wire they got at Home Depot or whatever. So that was the first scam. And then the signal wires, which are a little more complicated with RCA connectors. So we call them RCA wires, though the hi-fi industry, they call them interconnects rather than, well, it's a wire. Yeah, well, no, it's an interconnect. But you know, it has a very simple job. And as long as it's not more than 10 or 15 feet, pretty much any wire will do. And the $3 wire, the wire that comes for free with your CD player to hook up to your receiver is all that's needed. And you can spend, again, into the thousands of dollars on wires sold with a promise that, oh, it's better. The clarity, the presence, the staging, sound staging, all the imaging, all this, a lot of times they're just made up words. You know, they say are better. The most ridiculous of all of these wire scams is, and this is more recent, probably the most recent, is replacement power cords. I mean, if you think about it, a power cord just has to get AC from the outlet to your thing. And that's even simpler than speaker wire because it only has to handle 60 hertz. It doesn't have to handle high frequencies and really low frequencies. And it only has to if it's a CD player, it drives like 12 watts or something. You know, it doesn't have to be a heavy cord. And again, I think the most expensive power cord I'm aware of costs $20,000. But there's a lot of them for $1,000, $500, even $100. So it's like an impulse purchase. When you're buying your $4,000 stereo at the stereo store, the salesperson says, well, look if you really want to get the full value, you're going to have to upgrade your wires. And they even will tell you, well, you should spend 10% of your budget on wires. And this is just pure bullshit. I mean, this is just a complete outright scam.

S: At the end of the day, it's just copper and insulation, right?

EW: Yes. And with signal wires with the RCA wires that actually carry the audio output from your CD player to your receiver or whatever, the capacitance of the wire is a factor. And that's why I say if it's 10 or 15 feet or less, pretty much any wire is going to work. But really, most audio equipment can drive 10, 15, even 50 feet sometimes of wire without losing high frequencies. But in an extreme case with a not very good wire, and if it's really long, and it's kind of a cheap piece of consumer equipment as opposed to professional, maybe you might lose a little bit of the highest frequencies, a little bit of the sizzle, but probably not. I've never actually seen that with—and I have I have like 40 wires sitting around in my bag of wires, and they're all stuff that came for free with, CD players or a cable box.

S: That's—wires is just not something consumers need to worry about. Only in the most extreme case where you have to run a wire across a very long distance could you theoretically lose some higher frequencies, but even then maybe not, and most people wouldn't notice it. So just don't worry about it.

EW: Exactly. That's a perfect summary. And there's also digital signals that travel down these RCA wires, and in that case only one is needed for one, two, or even five-channel surround. It all goes down this one wire. It's digital. And that actually works at a higher frequency. But with digital audio, it either gets to the other end or it doesn't. If there's something wrong because the wire is too long, there's too much capacitance, or the driving amplifier, the circuit that's driving the wire can't handle whatever, you'll hear sputtering sounds and dropouts, or it just won't work at all. But with the idea that you lose subtle clarity or fullness—and fullness is a frequency response. You can easily measure that.

S: So digital audio is all or nothing. It doesn't affect the quality of the sound. It's going to drop out or it's getting to the other end.

EW: That's right. You'll hear obvious dropouts and spitty hissy funny sounds and stuff. Or if it works at all, it's probably working perfectly fine.

J: So Ethan, just as a visual, if we were to say, okay, like the really expensive monster cable or whatever, like some of these companies are, I've seen some that are like thick, like as thick as a—I mean, the circumference of a dime, say, you know. It's like a substantial cable. Now, as an example, how thin of a wire could you use that would be just as good?

EW: Now, if we're talking for speakers, it depends on how many watts are—well, it really depends on how many amps, amperes, is going in the wire and how long it is and how much loss you're willing to accept. I mean, if you used a fairly thin wire, you might lose a tiny bit of volume. Probably not going to change the sound much, but you might lose a tiny bit of volume. But all that stuff—I call them garden hose wires. All of that stuff is nonsense. And if you really do have a long run that you need, like you're running out to your back porch and it's 50 feet and you have a hi-fi out there when you have company, you could use Romex wire, the stuff they use in the walls for electricity number 12 or something wire is plenty and those are not that thick.

J: The Romex wire is it's pretty basic. There's nothing special about it.

EW: Oh, yeah. All of this stuff is basic. All that matters is the resistance. There's also a phenomenon called skin effect, where very high frequencies tend to travel on the outside surface of the wire and not go on the inside, so you actually need slightly heavier wire. In fact, with radio transmitters, when they have like a 500-foot run out to the tower from the transmitter at 50,000 watts, instead of using like big half-inch thick copper, solid copper, they just use copper pipe like water pipe in your house because all the stuff in the middle wouldn't get used anyway. But none of that has anything to do with audio frequencies. That stuff starts at much, much higher frequencies than anybody can hear.

S: Right. So, and again, so like the monster cables, the really big cables, if you're setting up a stereo in your home, it's wasted. Just regular wire will do.

EW: Absolutely. Just regular old zip cord or wire of the appropriate thing and the Romex I was mentioning is stiff because it's not stranded wire, so maybe that's not something you'd want in a portable installation. But you know, there's lots of wire. You know, you can get a 100-foot extension cord of meant for like power tools and that's really heavy. You know, at Home Depot, just cut off the ends and use that wire or buy it by the foot. I mean, there's lots and lots of wire that costs a buck a foot or less and is absolutely fine for speakers.

S: So, but it's really easy to see how consumers would get conned by this because with a lot of electronic equipment specifically and a lot of that kind of technical gear, like I'm a photographer. It's certainly true of lenses and a lot of camera things and certainly we're buying microphones for our show. For a lot of things, it does seem like you basically get what you pay for. You know, if you're spending $600 on a microphone, you're getting a microphone that's about twice as good as the $300 microphone that you're getting. Right?

EW: Well that used to be true. That's not true anymore. That all changed about 10 or 15 years ago when China started producing really good stuff and you can now get a Audio-Technica is a good example. In fact, I'm using an Audio-Technica brand mic that I bought quite a while ago for $300 and when I got that, I took it from the store with a $2,000 mic and I think it was a $3,000 mic and I told the guy, I'm going to buy one of these. This is when I was playing the cello and I really wanted a really good microphone and I had my cello teacher come over with a really fine instrument like a Stradivarius, not in pedigree, but it's really, really good. And we both played, both of our cellos, we both listened and we picked this mic that costs $350 over the other two. And Audio-Technica has a mic that they sell for $100 called the 2020 and it's, I'm telling you it's as good as the $5,000 stuff.

J: Oh my God.

EW: It really is. It wasn't the case when I started doing this stuff professionally in the late 1970s, you really did have to spend a lot of money. There was no such thing as high quality, inexpensive stuff. But there is now.

S: But inexpensive is $100 to $300. If you're getting a $20 computer microphone, you're going to absolutely notice that low quality.

EW: Yes. Yes, you will. And I agree with you, by the way, about the camera stuff because good lenses really do cost more.You're not going to get a great value for 50 bucks. If you have to pay 1,500, that's what it really costs. And I do understand that. And you can easily see the difference if you just put them side by side. You can do it with audio and not so much.

S: Yeah, that's what makes it really complicated for the consumer because there are some things where it's worth paying the extra money and other things where it isn't and you have to have a lot of technical expertise to know the difference. So it's good to have simple rules like wires, don't worry about it. As cheap as you can, you're going to be fine. Microphones, yeah, you got to spend a couple hundred dollars to get into the big leagues and then beyond that, it's probably not worth it. Would you say that's a good summary?

EW: Yes. I get all the audio magazines and every issue, there's like four new microphones from various companies. So there are literally thousands of models and I know five or six or seven of them and there's thousands. So I can't vouch for every $200 mic and say, yes, this is as good as a $3,000 Neumann U87. I don't know. I imagine there's probably some crappy stuff. I know in the really super high-end audiophile world, some of the most expensive stuff is the worst. It's the least competent. Somebody gets plans for a tube amplifier kit and it works and he doesn't know how to measure it but it works. He gets sound out of it. He says, I could go into business and he buys ads in Stereophile Magazine, sells it for $4,000 and sells a couple. There's a lot of that stuff out there. I don't know how many of the big microphone companies are like that. So I can't say unequivocally that once you spend $200, you're going to get as good as it gets. But if you pay attention, you can certainly get – you don't have to spend much more than that.

S: It sounds like the bottom line is in the audio world, the way it is today, if you're going to invest any serious money, you should do your research ahead of time. Read reviews, right? I mean, these are good sources for consumers to get a pretty good handle on what they're getting so they don't get ripped off.

EW: Well that's another problem. Most of the magazines – in fact, I would say pretty much all of the magazines are completely fool of shit and are absolutely just as clueless as the consumers. And some of them are even worse than that and I'll – if I can – if I'm allowed to mention a specific magazine by name, Stereophile is probably responsible for so much damage over the last 20 years because they have created and propagated so many myths and so much nonsense of things that don't matter but they say it does matter, all to appease their advertisers and to sell expensive stuff. There's a lot of online magazines hi-fi magazines. But even the pro-audio magazines, Mix Magazine is the – probably the longest current professional recording studio type magazine. They've been around since at least the early 80s, if not late 70s. And their technical editor a couple of years ago did a whole op-ed about the importance of power wires. And I couldn't believe it. Dude, you should know better than this. I mean, this is just complete nonsense. And every issue – and I've started writing letters to the editor of some of the magazines when I see really egregious stuff saying I can't believe you said – and I say it nicely but it's basically, I can't believe you made such a huge gaffe. Here's the truth and here's how it really works.

J: Do they respond?

EW: Yeah. One of the magazines, Recording Magazine, has actually printed my letters a few times. And the other ones I'll write to the editor because I know them and I'll just email them. And they'll say, yeah, yeah, yeah. You're right. I should have said that better or whatever. So usually they acknowledge it.

J: Yeah. But it's – you know, unfortunately, it just seems like it's all being driven by money.

EW: It is. And that's why I said at the beginning, this is really a consumer issue. And there are so many boogeymen with audio. There's something called phase shift which is not audible. It's not a problem. It occurs in all audio equipment in modest amounts. And even in large amounts, you can't hear it. It doesn't matter. I have several videos on YouTube that are videos of workshops I put on for the AES, the Audio Engineering Society. They have shows around the world and I have given a couple of presentations when they're in New York. And I made videos of two of them. And so I demonstrate. Here's what phase shift sounds like. You can't hear it, can you? Another one is something called jitter which affects digital audio. And it's a timing error. You know, with old record players, if the hole wasn't centered, you'd hear it go. You know, like once per revolution, the pitch would go up a little and down a little. And analog tape, tape recorders have a thing called flutter where it's kind of a fluttery speed. With digital audio, you have this thing called jitter. And it's absolutely not audible. It's never a problem. It never was a problem. Even the earliest digital stuff in the early 1980s didn't have a problem with jitter. But magazines like Stereophile and Mix and all other magazines, both pro audio and hi-fi, all – and I'm sure these guys absolutely believe it. They absolutely believe it because one writes it and the other one reads it. And the next thing you know, it's like the Fox News echo chamber.

S: Yeah. So that brings up another issue. So there are some things like ridiculously expensive wires and you didn't mention but I know I read in your articles about the gold-plated connectors. That's another scam, right? That they don't make any difference to the sound. Then there are other areas where it might make a difference to the sound but nobody can hear it. And certainly the average music listener in their home isn't going to hear it. And so you're wasting your money for something that is only a theoretical difference but not something that you can perceive.

EW: Right. Well, it's right because you can only hear so much. With modern test equipment, you can measure all kinds of things that could never be heard. They can measure 0.0001% distortion which is like the distortion components are like 100 dB softer which is like really soft compared to the music. Nobody could possibly hear that especially in the presence of the music. But even if you took away the music and left just that 0.000 whatever percent distortion, you'd have to turn the volume up like way up unnaturally and put your ear to the speaker in order to hear it. So nobody could hear that even though it could be measured. And there are other things that are like that, noises, artifacts, and various things that can be measured but you can't hear it. Nobody could hear it. It's not even like you could sort of hear it if you're really careful or a trained listener. And now, of course, there are some things that are at the edge of audibility and a trained listener could hear it. One example is what's called lossy compression which is how they make the MP3 files. And if it's severe compression like they used to have 10 years ago when we had modems and they would have to make music files really small, you could hear that swishy swirly kind of a sound. And once you know what to listen for, even when it's not so severe, a trained listener could pick that out and say, yeah, I can hear that. But these days with the high bit rates, I don't – you know, they've been – done lots of tests and even skilled listeners are unable to hear stuff.

S: Yeah. What we did for the show and we've done this over the years when we were buying equipment. So I would – when I was first doing the show, I ripped it down to different compression ratios like 56-bit, 48, whatever I did. And I just did a whole bunch of different ones. Then I listened to every one to see like where I could start to hear the difference.

EW: Right. Very good.

S: And then I had it at the smallest size where it sounded fine where any smaller than that, I would start to hear some distortion. And Jay, do you remember when we were buying our Focusrite things?

J: Yeah.

S: We bought one setup and then we did like a bunch of test recordings with different setups to see if we could hear the difference or not. And we would only buy the equipment if we could actually hear the difference. It does matter. I mean the external, I do think – you tell me what you think, Ethan. I do think an external sound card does make a difference because the internal sound cards have more noise around them.

EW: Well, yeah, they usually do. And usually the internal ones don't really have professional microphone preamps, you know. So you can use it for like a computer speaker and for grandma on Skype and as long as it's intelligible. And yeah, I have a Focusrite. That's what I'm using right now as a –

S: Yeah, yeah. As we settled upon.

EW: And you know, I just want to mention one thing when you're asking about is there any legitimate place you can get good information. I would be remiss if I didn't mention my own audio expert book which is really unique because it busts all these myths. It takes this stuff head on and it comes with a bunch of online content, a lot of WAV files that actually demonstrate all this stuff and let you hear what can be done. It explains how audio equipment really works, not just, well, here's how to use an equalizer. It does that but it also tells you, well, here's how they're made. Here's actually some simple computer code showing how you implement an equalizer in digital signal processing and here's some simple schematics of basic filters and stuff so that people really can become an expert. And I don't pull any punches if something is nonsense, I say this is nonsense.

S: So, what's the name of the book again?

EW: It's called The Audio Expert.

S: Look it up on Amazon, you'll get it.

EW: But I also have, if you go to my website, ethanwiner.com, right there on the home page there's a box that says read all about the book and there's a very detailed description that goes into much more of what's in the book than what's on Amazon. You can see the whole table of contents and…

S: All right, Ethan, take care.

J: Thanks, Ethan.

EW: All right, great guys. Thanks.

[top]                        

Science or Fiction (1:21:41)

Theme: Mistletoe Item #1: Mistletoe berries are toxic to most mammal and bird species. Item #2: European Mistletoe is the only multicellular organism known to lack Complex I proteins, essential for mitochondrial production of ATP. Item #3: The name "mistletoe" derives from the Anglo-Saxon words "mistel" and "tan", translating to "dung on a twig." Item #4: There are 1,300 species of mistletoe worldwide.

Answer	Item
Fiction	Toxic to birds & mammals
Science	Lacks Complex I proteins
Science	"Dung on a twig"
Science	1,300 species worldwide

Host	Result
Steve	win

Rogue	Guess
Evan	Toxic to birds & mammals
Cara	Toxic to birds & mammals
Bob	Lacks Complex I proteins
Jay	Toxic to birds & mammals

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

S: Each week I come up with three science news items or facts, two real and one fake. And I challenge my panel of skeptics to tell me which one is the fake. This week we have a theme and we have four items.

J: Oh, for Christ's sake.

E: Extra chances to lose. Great.

S: OK. The theme is mistletoe.

C: What? It's not Christmas.

S: It's mistletoe. It doesn't matter.

J: All right. Let's do it.

C: All right.

E: Hey, Bob, what did you read today? Maybe it wasn't mistletoe.

S: All right.

J: Mistletoe is kind of like a word like sizzle chest.

S: Yeah. It has the same number of syllables, Jay. Congratulations. OK. Here we go. Item number one. Mistletoe berries are toxic to most mammal and bird species. Item number two. European mistletoe is the only multicellular organism known to lack complex one proteins essential for mitochondrial production of ATP. Item number three. The name mistletoe derives from the Anglo-Saxon words mistle and tan, translating to dung on a twig. And item number four. There are one thousand three hundred species of mistletoe worldwide. Evan, go first.

Evan's Response

E: I'll take them in reverse order. Thirteen hundred species of mistletoe worldwide. Sure. Why not? Thirteen hundred. Nice number. It might even be a little more diverse than that. Those are only thirteen hundred we know of. Next. The name mistletoe derives from the Anglo-Saxon words mistle and tan, dung on a twig. Basically a shit stick, right? So. OK. Sure. I don't know the origin of the word mistletoe. Who really knows that off the top of their head? The second one you presented to us. The only multicellular organism known to lack complex one proteins essential for mitochondrial production of ATP. Cara chortled at this one as if to say, what the living heck are we supposed to do with that? Really? So I was amused by that, which leads me to the first one you mentioned about being toxic to most mammal and bird species. And we have this concept in our human brains that mistletoe is this dangerous poison and we kiss under it and Christmas time and that's like a juxtaposition of some sort. I'll say that one's the fiction. It's probably not toxic to most mammal and bird species.

S: All right, Cara.

Cara's Response

C: I do think mistletoe is toxic. I thought that they were. It was really toxic. Maybe birds can eat it no problem. Evan, you're confusing me. European mistletoe is the, I didn't even know there was a European mistletoe. It's the only multicellular known to lack complex one proteins essential for mitochondrial production of ATP. So how does it make energy? I mean, obviously, yeah, like obviously it photosynthesizes and then it takes that sugar, but then it still has to go through that chain reaction to produce the ATP through respiration. I don't like it. Mistletoe derives from the Anglo-Saxon words mistle and tan, translating to dung on a twig. I don't know. It does kind of look like dingleberries. I'll give you that. 1,300 species of mistletoe. What if there were 13,000?

J: Nah.

B: Or 13.

C: What if there were 13, 130? Oh, there could only be 130. Crap.

J: Can be only one.

C: I've narrowed it down to the first clue and the last clue. The berries are toxic to most mammal and bird species, and there are 1,300 species of mistletoe world.

B: Well, you had a problem with two as well.

C: No, I, well, I do, but I feel like that's going to be like the amazing thing about it, right? Is that it has some secondary way that it does it and like baffled scientists and now they've discovered it. Because usually when he does these, there's some sort of hook and that seems to be like the science clue. Like none of the other ones are really sciency. They're more just like, this is a fact about mistletoe that you could Google. I'm going to go with Evan because there's strength in numbers and say, even though I am pretty sure we're not supposed to eat mistletoe and neither are dogs and cats, like it's actually really dangerous to eat mistletoe berries. Maybe like birds are totally awesome at eating mistletoe berries. So yeah, that's the fiction.

S: All right, Bob.

Bob's Response

B: I mean, the biggest problem I have is with number two there, the ATP. ATP, adenosine triphosphate, that's an energy currency of life, all life, except one type of mistletoe. Now, I'm not familiar with complex one proteins, but it says that they are essential for mitochondrial production of ATP.

C: Well, previously known to be essential, like essential in every other species maybe.

B: So it means, yeah, but the way that's worded though, it really kind of restricts what it could do there. It's like it produces energy in a completely different way. Screw it. What the hell? I mean, who gives a crap about mistletoe? I'm just going to say ATP fiction, whatever.

S: Okay. Jay?

Jay's Response

J: All right. Well, there are not, I think the last one was at 1,300 species. I think that one is science because there is not 1,300 in one of anything.

E: Well-reasoned. Well-reasoned.

J: Yes. Thank you, Evan.

B: Well-reasoned.

J: I mean, there's dung on a twig.

C: Don't you just want that to be true?

J: Yeah, I do. You know, I'm going to have to just say that because I desire it to be true, therefore it is true.

C: There's an informal logical fallacy there somewhere.

J: European mistletoe, my friend. Okay. I mean, I'm hearing what Bob is griping about over here. The thing that's really sticking in my craw here is that if mistletoe berries, now Steve doesn't say a specific mistletoe. He just says mistletoe berries in general.

C: All 1,300 species?

J: Yes. They are toxic to most mammals and bird species, which would mean that, like you said, Cara, most of those 1,300, why would there be so many variations of it if they're all toxic? You know, birds are a huge spreader of things that are berry-based fruits. I mean, they eat the fruit and they poop the seeds out later, and that's how those plants...

C: That is how that works.

J: Yeah, I just don't think that one is science. I'm gonna G-W-E.

B: Join us. Join us.

J: Bob, you picked number two, man. I'm picking number one.

C: Yeah, Bob, you're separate from us.

E: Yeah.

B: Join me.

S: All right, so let's take these in reverse order, since you guys are clustered around one and two.

J: Okay.

Steve Explains Item #4

S: There are 1,300 species of mistletoe worldwide. You all think this one is science, and this one is science.

J: Yes.

S: There's more species of everything than you think there are. That's true.

E: And that's why I qualified it. We only know the 1,300 species.

S: And most of the things we think of as species are actually a genus or even a higher order. You know what I mean?

E: Oh, they're very smart, yes.

C: Especially with plants and insects, yeah.

S: Generally speaking, even a zebra's not a thing. It's a genus. There's several species of zebra, or anything.

C: Rhinoceros, too, yeah.

S: And so, yeah, so there's 1,300 species. That's a lot. That is definitely a lot. It's a successful plant, which we will be getting to in a moment, why that is.

J: Cara, you know what a really old version of mistletoe was called?

C: Uh-oh, what?

J: Cannonball toe.

C: What?

E: Missile. Cannonball.

B: I get it.

J: Nothing. Nothing?

C: I thought mistletoe meant poop.

S: That was terrible, Jay.

J: When people say, what, after I try to tell a joke, when they say, what, I immediately feel like an ass.

C: You die a little inside.

S: That's a good instinct, Jay.

E: Jay, do not let that deter you from future attempts.

J: Thank you, Evan.

S: The United States and Canada are home to more than 30 species. Hawaii has another six. So where's the other?

C: And where are all the rest of them in the rainforest?

J: Yeah, where's the other 1,200?

S: There's the rest around the world. 20 species are endangered. Yeah, but there's there's 1,300 all over the place.

E: Yeah, right?

S: I guess most of them are in Europe and Asia.

J: There's mistletoe all over the place.

S: All over the place. So let's go to number two.

Steve Explains Item #3

S: The name mistletoe derives from the Anglo-Saxon words mistle and tan, translating to dung on a twig. You guys all think that shit stick is also science. And this one is science.

C: Yes.

E: We're halfway there.

S: So why do they call it that? Why is that? Why is it called that?

J: Because it smells like poop.

S: No.

C: Because it looks like little dingleberries.

S: No.

C: Oh.

S: No.

C: Because they drop off like little poopies?

B: They use it as toilet paper?

S: Nope. Oh my God. No.

C: It's poop on a twig. Why else would you call it poop on a twig if it didn't look or act like poop on a twig?

J: Oh, I know why, Steve.

S: Why?

J: Because animals would eat it and the plants would have a lot of poop underneath the plant. Because they would go there, eat it, and poop while they're eating.

S: Because there's often a lot of bird poop on the mistletoe.

C: But that's because they eat it.

E: Oh, which means.

S: Hang on.

J: Oh boy, Bob.

E: We're getting, Cara, we're getting there.

B: Was the special sauce to make it palatable.

S: And the thinking used to be, which is not correct, was that mistletoes would grow specifically in animal poop.

J: Oh, okay.

S: But that is not correct. So, but that false belief of it, oh, it grows wherever the birds are crapping. Well, birds crap everywhere.

C: That's confusing causation with correlation.

S: Yes, they confuse causation with correlation. And yeah, like the word mistle is like in not only Anglo-Saxon, but very similar in all of the languages of that part of the world at the time. Like it's Norse and Germanic and whatever. It's all very similar derivative words. Okay, let's go back to number two.

Steve Explains Item #2

S: I'm gonna torture you a little bit with two and one though.

E: All right.

B: Of course you are.

S: So I'm gonna give you some other facts about mistletoe that might put this into perspective. So mistletoe often spread their seeds by the berries exploding and the speeds shooting out. The dwarf mistletoe-

B: That's awesome.

S: The dwarf mistletoe has been clocked at 60 miles per hour, shooting its speeds out up to 50 feet.

J: What? Doing what?

C: That's awesome.

J: Shooting what?

C: How?

S: The seed, I guess it just gets plump to the point that it explodes and then it shoots the seed out 50 feet.

B: Well, where does the energy come from? Not ATP.

J: Up into the lab.

S: So that's how they spread their seeds. By shooting them.

J: So birds don't have to eat them.

E: Damn.

S: There's also many families of plants that are all toxic. You know what I mean?

J: That's why they call it mistletoe.

B: Which means one is now gonna be science because he's talking.

S: Hang on.

C: He's trying to confuse us.

S: I'm trying to confuse you. Something you don't know about mistletoe, Bob, which might put one and two also into more context. Did you guys know, did you know that all mistletoe are parasites? They are eating other trees.

J: See, I never liked mistletoe.

S: Mistletoe grow in these little balls.

B: So they use the complex one proteins of the trees. They usurp them.

C: Ha, ha.

S: Maybe. So they are.

B: Crap on a stick.

S: They are common locations. The bunches of mistletoe basically just stuck on a tree, right, because it's a parasite on a tree. It's called a witch's broom. And lots of birds will nest in the witch's broom of mistletoe. And squirrels have also been seen to nest there. And they also are important sources of nectar for butterflies and bees. Butterflies will often lay their eggs on mistletoe. Mistletoes have an important effect on the ecosystem of a forest where there are lots of mistletoe there are many more hollows in trees. For birds that nest in hollows and other animals. They do shorten the lifespan of the tree because they suck the life out of it because they're parasites. They are hemiparasites because they can do their own photosynthesis. So they do some of their energy from the photosynthesis and some from their parasitic activity on the host plant. So with that said, with the shooting seeds, but they're parasites which could impact either one of these two, let's go back to number two. European mistletoe is the only multicellular organism known to lack complex-1 proteins.

E: He's laughing already.

S: For mitochondrial production of ATP because Bob sees the handwriting on the wall. Because this one is science.

J: Sorry Bobby.

S: Previous studies showed that there is a massive loss of genes in mistletoe which has already been observed as a general phenomenon in parasites. Parasites tend to lose genes. They tend to become very simplified in their metabolism, their physiology. They actually evolve in the direction of less complexity. It's one of the examples that Stephen Jay Gould used to give of not all things are becoming more complex over evolutionary time. Parasites are a notable exception. And so at one point they discovered a few years ago that the European mistletoe is lacking in pretty much all of its mitochondrial genes. And so the question is, were they all translocated to the nuclear DNA? Yeah, so is it just all nuclear DNA?

C: Are they there somewhere else?

S: Are they there? Yeah, but they're not in the mitochondria. So are they in the nuclear DNA? And this study is a follow-up. And they go, no, they just completely lack complex-1 proteins which are important and necessary for the functioning of the mitochondria. So clearly they're doing something else. They don't know yet what they're doing. They have some alternate energy production pathway that probably is tied up with their parasitism. It's probably only a viable pathway for a parasite like the mistletoe. But they haven't figured, that's the next step now, is where are they getting their energy from? Because they're only getting part of their energy from the plant. And they are still undergoing photosynthesis because they're only the hemiparasites.

Steve Explains Item #1

S: Okay, that means that mistletoe berries are toxic to most mammal and bird species is the fiction. They are horribly toxic to humans. People should not eat them. But a lot of bird and mammal species will feed upon mistletoe. Lots of birds, squirrels, deer, other mammals. So a lot of animals eat the mistletoe berries, just not people. People should not eat them.

B: Are they ever killed by the exploding berries?

S: Well, so that's the dwarf mistletoe.

B: He's gonna keep talking about them, isn't he?

S: So think about, if you're in a forest, right, and you have a cluster of mistletoe on one tree, and it shoots seeds out in every direction up to 50 feet, it's gonna stick to the next tree over. And so it's just spreading tree to tree by shooting its seeds out. But also, other than those 1,300 species, other species just have very sticky seeds. So when animals come in to feed on the berries, some of the seeds will stick to them and then will drop off somewhere else. And as I said, a lot of animals nest in the mistletoe and the seeds will just shoot out and stick to the animals and get carried away as well. So that's their seed dispersal mechanism. It's more about the shooting of the seeds than the passing it through the poop. But a lot of animals do eat the mistletoe seeds. They are an important feast. They're an important part of the ecosystem and they are an important food source where they are common for the local fauna.

E: Wow.

J: And why do we have mistletoe in the house at Christmas?

S: So that tradition goes back thousands of years, actually.

J: To the Druids.

S: That goes back, yeah, that goes back a long way. The first instance actually may be in Greece, not even with the Druids, in terms of using it, the connection of mistletoe with fertility, because those Greeks were all about fertility. The kissing custom can date back to at least the 1500s in Europe. It was practised in the early United States. Washington Irving referred to it in Christmas Eve from his 1820 collection of essays. So that specific tradition goes back to 1500s in Europe.

C: Neat.

S: Yeah, and it's very pretty. I've always loved it. The bright red and dark green, that is obviously, we associate that color combination with Christmas, but I think it's a very beautiful natural look to it, the mistletoe, very pretty. So good job, guys. Bob you went for my diversion.

E: Hey, Bob, you know.

S: That was the fake out. You reacted exactly.

B: Slain by the false dichotomy again.

S: Yeah. I think what we're discovering this year is that I'm really good at fooling Bob.

B: Oh, yeah. That's my theory and I'm sticking to it.

S: I am attracted to the ones that Bob falls for, I think, because Bob and I might think a lot alike. And Evan and Cara have been doing a good job sniffing out. I gotta mix it up, because you guys really did totally pick out my strategy.

C: Crap.

S: The European mistletoe was the news item. I built the theme around that news item.

C: Yes, I knew it. That one felt like a science.

E: Yeah, it did.

S: It was, that was the science.

C: Evan, he's gonna start splitting us up.

J: At least he mentioned your name. I wasn't even mentioned. I don't.

S: And then Jay also ran.

J: Thank you, Steve.

E: Jay was in there somewhere, too.

S: Good job.

E: Thumbs up.

C: Oh, shit.

J: This'll be forever go down as Bob's shit stick.

S: All right, Evan, give us a quote.

Skeptical Quote of the Week (1:40:41)

Reality is what it is, not what you want it to be.  – Frank Zappa (1940-1993), American musician, composer, and bandleader

E: Oh, boy.

S: It's been about 13 years of this to you.

E: I know, 13 years. And what I did is I went back through my emails, and I have a lot of them. And I wanted to look for a quote that a listener suggested that we wound up not using and got buried away somewhere. I'm pulling it back out. So Paul LeClaire, if you're still listening, suggested some Frank Zappa quotes a long time ago. And I don't know that we've quoted Frank Zappa. I looked it up and didn't see it. So we're gonna do it tonight for Paul. And this request comes seven years after you asked for it, Paul. So here it is. "Reality is what it is, not what you want it to be." Frank Zappa.

S: Very pithy.

E: Very pithy. Straightforward. And Frank Zappa, he was a fine skeptic.

S: Yeah, that is a good overall summary of the skeptical movement. It is, right? It really is a skeptic. Reality is what it is, baby. It's not what you want it to be. You gotta filter out all of the what you want it to be and come up with a process to figure out what it is. What it is.

E: And George Hrab is a student of Frank Zappa. That is to say, he's an enthusiast. If you have any specific questions regarding Frank Zappa, my go-to would be George Hrab.

Signoff/Announcements (1:41:57)

J: Hey, Steve.

S: Yes?

J: Jennifer Ouellette.

S: She's our keynote at NECSS.

J: That's right.

E: She's great.

C: Oh, I love her.

J: NECSS 2018. She's a science writer and editor, author of four books, contributor to the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, L.A. Times, and a lot more.

E: And she judo flipped me once.

C: She did?

E: Absolutely, she did in a demonstration. She flipped me. It was awesome.

C: That's awesome.

J: Yeah, so she will be giving our keynote on Saturday, July 14th at 5 p.m. You gotta come to NECSS this year. We have an amazing lineup. We really, really put a lot of energy and time into picking our speakers. And we ended up with one of the best conference lineups that we've had in a very long time. So please come. You can go to necss.org for all the information.

S: Yeah, I'm doing my workshop this year, Jay. I chose my topic. It's going to be how to interpret the scientific literature.

E: Oh my gosh, that's great.

S: And science news stories. And science news stories.

E: So important.

B: Yeah, it's gonna be good.

C: Yeah, that'll be really helpful.

J: Yeah, if I happen to not be-

E: I need that too.

J: Yeah, I'll sit in on that if I'm not running my own conference, my own workshop.

S: Your own workshop.

C: Your own conference? Okay.

J: I'll have a conference all by myself that weekend.

C: I bought my plane ticket yesterday.

E: Yes.

C: Yes. So I will definitely be there.

E: We will all be there.

S: Thank you all for joining me this week and for the last 13 years.

B: Sure, Steve.

E: It's been great.

B: Thanks Steve.

C: Thanks, Steve. I wasn't there for 13, but a solid three.

E: Yes, Cara, you're on three.

S: —and until next week, this is your Skeptics' Guide to the Universe.

S: Skeptics' Guide to the Universe is produced by SGU Productions, dedicated to promoting science and critical thinking. For more information, visit us at theskepticsguide.org. Send your questions to info@theskepticsguide.org. And, if you would like to support the show and all the work that we do, go to patreon.com/SkepticsGuide and consider becoming a patron and becoming part of the SGU community. Our listeners and supporters are what make SGU possible.

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Today I Learned

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