SGU Episode 146

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Introduction

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 Wednesday, May 7th 2008, and this is your host, Steven Novella, President of the New England Skeptical Society. Joining me this evening are Bob Novella,

B: Hey, everybody.

S: Rebecca Watson,

R: Hello, everyone.

S: Jay Novella,

J: Hey, guys.

S: And Evan Bernstein.

E: Happy Radio Day to all of our listeners in Russia.

S: Happy Radio Day.

R: Happy Radio Day.

J: Radio Day. What's that celebrate?

E: In 1895, gentleman by the name of Alexander Popov successfully demonstrated his invention, called the radio, gave a public demonstration on this day. This was just around the time that, you know-- Tesla and Marconi were also tinkering with their radio devices, but Alexander Popov is recognized in Russia as being the father of radio, at least over there.

J: And then Popov's grandson then used that radio technology to be a faith healer scam artist, is that it?

E: Uh, yeah, that would be...

R&S: Peter Popoff.

E: Peter Popoff. Thank you. Let's hope not.

R: That took a depressing turn.

E: One was a scientist, the other was a con artist.

SGU 3-Year Anniversary (1:25)

S: But of course, the real anniversary we're celebrating today is... the SGU 3-year anniversary.

(light cheering)

R: What do you get for three years? That's like a clock or something, right?

J: It's the cardboard anniversary.

R: Oh, right.

S: Cardboard, right. It was three years ago that a bunch of crazy kids got together and said, "Hey, let's put on a show!" We decided--

(laughing)

R: I could play the accordion! I can be a jerk!

E: I can sew the curtain and get the barn ready.

S: We do like to, every now and then, take a step back and look at how things have been going for the SGU. We're all still perpetually amazed at our wonderful listeners, and I do think we have among the most loyal and, dare I say, erudite listeners in all of podcasting.

E: Hell yeah.

R: Oh, definitely, and good-looking, and... they all smell wonderful.

E: Our numbers reflect that, though; they really do. They listen--

R: Smell, really?

S: They reflect their good hygiene?

E: Yes, that too. They listen and they stay with us.

J: Steve, on my blog today, on Wednesday, I mentioned that Bob-- I recollect Bob as the person that came up with the name for the show, but how did-- do you remember detail on how that came about?

S: Yeah, you were wrong. I already left a comment because I found the-- Perry's email; Perry came up with the name, which was my memory. We were emailing back and forth as to what we should call it. My suggestion for the name of the show was "The Skeptical Rogues", which we kept as just the name for the panel. Perry responded, "Skeptical Rogues? No, no, no. How about this" and he came up with like a long list of things. Number three on the list was "The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe".

B: Awesome. I forgot that. That's great. Good for Perry.

S: Yeah, that was Perry's idea. Then we had an actual face-to-face meeting where we were finalizing everything and Perry was strongly in favor of "The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe" and it definitely was the one that, over time, that was the clear choice. There really was nothing else in the running.

B: If I remember it, people were coming up with suggestions; some would love a suggestion; some would hate it, and that was the one suggestion that nobody really said anything about, like hmmmm, nobody had any complaints and we didn't instantly fall in love with it, but it definitely grew on us. If memory serves, and I'm glad we picked it, it's great.

E: We threw out YouTube, but we didn't go with that one, so.

(laughing)

J: I was really surprised, though; the email that I posted on there that Steve wrote to all of us. I hadn't looked at those emails in, God-- you know--

E: Three years.

J: Three years. But Steve nailed it, he's like, "how about this" and-- the format of the show that we have today is almost identical to what Steve wrote out, I don't know if that was in lieu of many discussions or whatever but I was very surprised to see that.

S: No, that was my initial email; I was like, "Hey, let's do a podcast." But yeah, we've added segments since then; the Science or Fiction came in, you know, a few episodes after we started doing it, which remains our most popular segment.

E: Yep.

S: But yeah, the basic format of news and interviews, which was kind of obvious, was there-- one thing I noted, I said, "my sense is that we should keep the show light and entertaining but not be goofy and still cover some meat."

E: One out of two ain't bad.

R: Might not be goofy?

S: Not be goofy. Yeah, so it was pretty close to what we ended up getting to. But the basic concept was there. Entertaining and also informative, and I think that's been our guiding light throughout our podcast.

R: Witty but weighty, isn't that what--

S: "Witty but weighty" is a more witty way, if you will, of saying it.

J: Even though Rebecca wasn't there from the beginning, I think Rebecca has dramatically affected the quality of the show and everything like-- that's when we hit our-- our sweet spot.

B: Regardless, we keep her with us!

R: Aw, shucks. It's good to be a part of the team.

B: Oh, you meant positively impact.

S: Rebecca was that piece that we were missing from the very beginning but just didn't realize it.

R: Oh, like that story about the missing piece.

S: It's true, and then when we-- after we interviewed you, I tell ya, we all independently--

B: All of us.

S: --and simultaneously came up with the idea of "we have to ask her to be on the show" because it was just so obvious to all of us. We didn't even have to talk about it with each other.

B: No, no. That was great.

E: Five minutes after we were done, yep.

R: It was really cute because you guys said, "Oh, you know"-- after we did the interview, you said "oh, we should have you on again sometime," and I'm like, "yeah, this was a lot of fun, I would like to come on again sometime."

E: How's next week?

R: And then it was like, two days later, it's like, "so we'd like to have you on again next week."

S: Every week.

R: And maybe the one after that.

J: What'd you think of that interview, Rebecca; were you like, "these guys are geek lords", or...?

R: "Geek lords"?

E: No, we didn't reveal ourselves totally to you at that point.

S: Only a geek lord would use the term "geek lords", of course.

R: Yeah, that was maybe in fact the geekiest thing you've ever said. No, I thought-- I don't know-- I thought you guys were really funny and sweet and had a good show, and I hadn't heard the show before you asked me to come on. Something that I felt bad about. But I didn't listen to any podcast before I came on the show, and I did listen to one show before I came on.

S: You did your homework?

R: I did. I always do. But yeah, I remember thinking, "hey, you know, this podcast idea isn't so bad." So yeah, you guys were my introduction to podcasts in general, and you know, I was very pleased that you guys wanted to have me on.

S: Well, now it wouldn't be the show without you.

R: Well, that was part of my evil plan.

S: Yes, your evil plot.

J: There's not that many women out there that could really deal with this room anyway, you know?

S: That's true.

R: Yeah, well, sometimes I wonder if I can.

S: You've survived; you've survived for a couple of years so that has some value right there.

R: It does. But yeah, happy third anniversary, fellas.

S: Thank you, Rebecca, and thanks to all of our listeners out there. Just to review some stats, we've exceeded 35,000 regular weekly listeners; we're on schedule, we're hoping to break 50,000 regular weekly listeners by the end of the year. That was the goal, the completely arbitrary goal that we've set for ourselves.

J: To celebrate our three years, Mike has created a little sound file for us of some of the highlights for-- some of his favorite bits that we've done over the past three years. So--

S: Mike's favorite bits.

J: So here we go.

S: You have to be cautious before you send a really critical email to us because we just might use it in our Name that Logical Fallacy segment.

(all laughing)

---

S: We've been over this exhaustively; search for the thread on the forums, don't send us any emails; we're right, you're wrong.

S: That was the Monty Hall Problem.

E: OK.

S: Studies show that carbon nanotubes can-- (breaks down laughing)

(hysterical laughter)

---

J: Steve Novella!

---

B: There's no biological basis to claim that fasting, or enemas for that matter, can cleanse your body of toxins.

S: Not even coffee enemas?

B: It's gotta be decaf.

---

B: If they've won the linguistic battle, then f(bleep) them.

---

J: Bob Novella!

---

S: Does anybody know how long it takes for an electron to circle the nucleus of an atom?

E: Four foot one.

---

E: Mmm, I'm going to get me a handful of them salted monkey nuts.

J: Oh my God.

---

R: You know, I'd like to take this moment to speak on behalf of the non-birding population of our listeners and say: "we don't care."

E: That was the monkey vote right there.

---

J: Evan Bernstein!

---

R: So long as there's hot bonobo-on-bonobo action, I'm fine.

---

R: Skeptic team activate!

B: I love that.

---

R: We need a control-Z for this podcast.

---

R: You know, you guys are one unitard away from living the dream, aren't ya?

---

J: Rebecca Watson!

---

J: A lonely man.

---

J: The molecular man!

---

J: (bad Indian accent) You must pull on my penis for me to make sure it does not slip inside my body while I sleep. Thank you.

Mike Lacelle: Jay Novella!

(laughing)

J: So last week, Mike says, "Jay, you know that stupid thing you do with the quotes?" I'm like, "yeah". He goes, "can you say everybody's name like that and record it for me and send it to me?" And I'm like, "Mike, of course I'm going to ask you why, you know?" He's like, "no, no, no, it's no big deal. I just thought it'd be funny" and he's trying to totally play it off like I don't get it, you know.

S: Right.

J: I figured something like this was coming, but...

S: And then he did your name.

J: He did my name.

E: That was funny.

B: Good job, Mike!

S: Thanks, Mike.

J: Thanks, Mike, that was good.

E: Well done.

J: So, how about this: In everybody's opinion, how many more years do you think we're going to do this?

E: Ummmmm

R: Twenty? Thirty?

B: Point five.

R: At least until we transplant our brains into robots.

S: Right. I think the answer is--

B: 15 years, then.

S: --unless and until something better comes along. You know, always-- once we decided to start the New England Skeptical Society, we decided skepticism, promoting that and promoting science and promoting science education was our thing, right? This is the thing, the cause that we were going to dedicate our spare time to, and I don't think that's ever going to change. How we go about doing that, we'll decide as it comes. As long as the whole podcasting thing works out as well as it does and there's nothing better that we could be spending our time doing, I think we're going to continue to do it.

E: That's right, podcasting is the vehicle now that we're all driving in; if a better, sharper, larger, with better exposure vehicle comes along, we'll jump on that. Let's hope it happens.

S: Right.

J: Yeah, like "bodcasting". You know, we'll get into that.

R: "Bodcasting", really?

S: And we are constantly experimenting with new media; you know, we have two podcasts and three blogs, and we're working on producing other kinds of content. The great thing about Web 2.0 and the new media and the Internet is that it gives us the opportunity to experiment, with the only investment up front really being our investment of time and effort, you know? But there's really no limit to what we could do within that context, so--

R: I think the next step is you guys moving to Boston and doing a vodcast.

E: Oooh.

S: Think so?

R: Yeah, all together.

E: Well, I don't know about the "moving to Boston" part, but, the vodka...

R: It's kind of necessary to be in the same-- you know.

S: Yeah. Definitely video is in our future; I forsee that in some form or another.

J: Another thing I've been promising on the boards: As you listen to this episode, if you go to the SGU-- sorry theskepticsguide.org, you can see our brand-new logo. It's not going to replace the existing one until we redo the website, but I'm hoping that Steve's going to put that in the picture for this week's show. We're very, very happy with it and it's going to shape the look and feel of the Skeptics' Guide for the next five or so years.

S: Yeah, so for our-- our present to ourselves for our third anniversary is a brand-new logo, so take a look at it on the website.

E: Nice.

R: I was hoping for jewelry, but OK.

S: You'll have to settle for that.

E: We'll make some jewelry with the logo for you.

News Items

Florida Academic Freedom Law Follow up (12:47)

[1]

Florida Teacher Fired for Wizardry (15:00)

[2]

Skeptical Quote of the Week (1:14:31)

It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.

S: The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe is produced by the New England Skeptical Society in association with the James Randi Educational Foundation and skepchick.org. For more information on this and other episodes, please visit our website at www.theskepticsguide.org. For questions, suggestions, and other feedback, please use the "Contact Us" form on the website, or send an email to info@theskepticsguide.org. If you enjoyed this episode, then please help us spread the word by voting for us on Digg, or leaving us a review on iTunes. You can find links to these sites and others through our homepage. 'Theorem' is produced by Kineto, and is used with permission.

References